Authors: Scott V. Duff
“Of course I did, sweetie, I said I would,” I said stroking her hair lightly. “Seems I picked a bad time, though…”
“Ana, we’re going outside! First is letting us go outside! C’mon!” Donny squealed excitedly.
“Only if you want to, Ana,” Mitch said, trying to calm Donny down. “We’re going to visit some of the brownie and sprite clans in the forest to say hello and thank them for their help. Ask what we can do for them. Would you like to go with us?”
“Is that where everybody else is going?” she asked me, suddenly shy again.
“Likely,” I answered. “Now that
Fre
and the others can talk to them, we feel better about letting everybody meet and mix. Mitch, do you know where you’re going?”
“We will be going to visit Arwene and his family with Zed, Beer, and Lager is what I’ve been told,” Mitch answered then he grinned. “Seems weird that I’m gonna go out into the forest and find ‘Sam’ and ‘Isaac’ and ‘Fred’, but here it’s ‘Car’ and ‘Airport’ and ‘Benzene’.”
“Oh, my, you are just going to be so pampered,” I whispered to Ana. “You’re going to meet an expectant mother and two expectant grandmothers. They’ll take one look at adorable you and want to just stuff you full of candy and cookies. Take a bathing suit if you’re uncomfortable naked, though they won’t mind in the least since Arwene and Orlet will be.”
“Actually, I believe we’re visiting with Arwene and his family as well,” Serita chimed in, the eight girls gathered around her. “First says the boys should enjoy the riverbank.” I burst out laughing at the thought. Arwene could blast them with water on the riverbank while he stood in the inlet talking. He was just as mischievous as her boys and far more able to do something about it.
“Just make sure your hooligans don’t drown my water nymphs,” I said, still laughing. “I’ve got to get to work now. Y’all have a good time.” I handed Ana off to Mitch while everybody said goodbye to me. Serita tried to look offended except she thought of them as hooligans, too, and the absurdity of drowning a water nymph was short-circuiting her sensibilities. She gave up and giggled.
Shifting Peter and I out to the Pentagon, we walked the hall toward Harmond’s office in our fake uniforms with their shiny badges and medals. I’d managed to delay us until just before seven o’clock eastern time so the building was pretty busy. I’m sure we got a few evil glares because we weren’t paying attention to protocols or ranks. Two silver bars made us lieutenants, right? I’m pretty sure we almost ran over a few clusters and bronze birds without paying attention to them.
Sgt. McNeely was poring over some pages of text and didn’t notice our entrance to the office. She didn’t even notice when I dropped the glamour and let the blue and green silks show. Peter glanced over at me, intrigued.
“What are you reading, sergeant?” he asked quietly.
“I’m sorry, but that’s classified,” she answered absently and automatically, still somewhat unaware of us. “Major Thorn and Lieutenant Hanson are unavailable today. If you’d like to make an appointment for tomorrow…” That’s when she finally looked up from her papers and saw to whom she was speaking. “Oh! Mr. McClure! Mr. Borland! They weren’t expecting you so early.”
“Are they available?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” she said nervously, reaching for her phone. “They’re in a meeting with Gen. Harmond. I can have them both here in just a moment.” I smiled and nodded as she picked up the phone. Peter read her papers upside down and rather obviously, but she didn’t make any moves to cover or hide them from him. He started snickering and I looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“That’s a really bad example,” he told her, pointing at her papers. “First off, a dragon would never bargain with sprites. He’d go directly to the Queen or, at worst, the
sidhe
. Sprites would assume he’s looking for lunch and scatter. Second, he wouldn’t go to sprites for spiders; he’d go to fairies or pixies. They’re better at finding them. And most importantly, a dragon doesn’t need spiders for anything.”
“What are you reading?” I asked, amused suddenly by Peter’s synopsis.
McNeely opened her mouth, deciding whether or not to answer since this was “classified,” but apparently she decided we were of the right class. “This is a study guide from the M-division for the Rules of Hospitality that you’ve demanded that we know.”
“Well, that’s one case you can ignore,” I said, holding out my hand. “May I?” She handed me the six pages of case studies someone had prepared for them. I sat on the edge of the desk and started reading, passing pages to Peter as I went. Chuckling by the end of the first page, I was laughing out loud at the end of the second and I slipped off the desk laughing by the end of the fourth. Peter nearly dislocated my shoulder hauling me up off the floor.
“This is different,” remarked Hanson, standing beside Thorn a half-dozen feet away and watching us, bemused.
“What’s gotten him so tickled?” Thorn asked, grinning at us as Peter fought to get me upright again. He finally managed to get me to lean on the desk again.
“We’ve been reading your study guide,” Peter said smiling. “I’ve only read the first two pages, but they were quite amusing.”
“Here, Pete, read number six,” I said, shoving the rest at him. “It’s hilarious! It’s like a blind man describing a dandelion. Captain, who wrote this?” I was still a little slaphappy and giggly.
“I’m not sure. It was circulated this morning from the M-division,” Thorn said.
“Sgt. McNeely, it’s totally understandable that you’re having a hard time with this,” I said, waving my hand at the papers Peter was doing his best not to laugh out loud while reading. “It’s tripe, more confusing than the real thing. Pete, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
He barked a laugh and asked, “A giant what?”
“You’re asking me?” I asked chuckling. “We don’t have very long, captain. Very busy today, but I’ll save y’all some time and say don’t bother with that. Feel free to send it back with a note that says I said it was crap.”
“Emily, would you call the Colonel and tell him that, please? They were just beginning to go over it,” Hanson said.
“Were you able to deliver those items I asked you to drop off?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, finished just before dawn this morning,” Thorn said.
Concentrating on the diamonds hidden in the fake pebbles, I located the hundred and twelve locations through Europe where the pebbles were tossed. I could feel the pulse of magic around each one along with the signatures on the wardings. Suddenly, I had a backdoor into over a hundred estates and manors belonging to wizards and magicians across Europe and they were none the wiser. And all the stones were on the ground, no loss.
“What was so important about those stones that they had to be spread out so specifically?” asked Thorn, his forehead creased with curiosity.
Peter tilted his head slightly at me, grinning. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Marchand?”
“Not on the map I had.”
“Mr. McClure, what did we do for you?” Thorn asked, bristling with urgency and beginning to get a little ticked off.
“You threw rocks at giants, Jensen, nothing more. Your people had plenty of time to examine them. They aren’t roc eggs about to hatch or anything,” I said, making Peter snort at the end.
“He did tell them, more or less, that he’d arrange something like that,” Peter said in my defense. I stood there looking innocent for a moment until he bought into it.
“We can see the progress on the Rules. Please tell Mr. Dominick that he needs to do much, much better or he’ll force me to educate him. None of us want that.” I tugged on Daybreak’s aspect hard for a second then let off. “Now on other matters, the favor I asked about adding some of my men to troop transports will have to be delayed a few days. We’ve had a major change in our staff and they’ll need a few days to adjust.”
“Nothing… serious, I hope,” Hanson said slowly and surprisingly, he was actually concerned.
“Very serious,” Peter said ominously.
“Peter,” I admonished him, laughing as I gently shoved him sideways. “Don’t give them the wrong idea.” Looking at Lt. Hanson, I cheerfully said, “Yes, very serious. Potentially, if I screwed up in the least, over twelve hundred people will die, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be okay. Everyone looks strong and healthy. Another night should tell the tale.”
“Was there an accident?” Thorn asked, concerned now.
Shaking my head, I glanced down at Sgt. McNeely and realized that she was actually a nice looking woman. She was tall and a little overweight. Slumped in her seat in that frumpy beige uniform, she even looked older than she truly was. “Isn’t it interesting how we’re still standing around your desk in this great big office with many chairs? Sit up straight, Emily. If they can’t handle your height, they can wear lifts in their shoes. You shouldn’t pay for someone else’s insecurities.” I might have added a touch of Daybreak’s fascination to my words. Emily giggled and smiled, sitting up straight with her hands in her lap, casually pushing her breasts up, too. She was quite a buxom woman.
“We can move into my office,” Thorn suggested hurried, sweeping his arm across the desk unnecessarily.
“That’s okay,” I said, waving him off. “We’re almost done now. The information I asked about yesterday I gave to the FBI after we were able to substantiate the facts. I believe that Special Agent Messner or someone from his office has been or will be in contact with you regarding what they found. Vague enough, I think.” Peter nodded once at me for confirmation so onward I went. “Between that and other information we’ve found recently, it’s possible we might be able to cause the conspiracy with the military to collapse. If we’re lucky.”
“That’s very good news,” Hanson said, grinning.
“What can we do to help?” Thorn asked, shuffling on his feet.
“Push,” I said, pointing at the useless study guide, then I turned to Peter. “I’m running out of errands. This is the last one I have so you better start thinking of something if they don’t call soon.”
“We’ll come up with something, hotshot,” Peter said with a smile. “Where to?”
“The lobby of Davis’ hotel. We’re barging in, so we should call first.”
He wrapped both of us in portals and jumped us across the ocean to London, picking the hallway the conference banquet was held in. Pete led the way to the lobby while I twisted reality a little and changed our appearance considerably. Somebody here might remember us from yesterday. Ryan needed a more secure location to operate as an attorney—at least as my attorney. Bishop owned this hotel and he owes me, so why was I feeling paranoid and closed in?
Peter sat down in a chair next to a house phone and glared up at me with nerdy, gold, wire-frame glasses and a weak pretense of a mustache. Turning quickly before he could see me grinning like a shit-eatin’ dog, I pushed out a Stone wall around us and swept the hall for active magic. Seeing nothing active, I did see a latent matrix weakly attached to the walls near the ceiling, almost like a cobweb. Standing in the other chair as Peter talked to Ryan, I nearly crawled up the wall for a better look. It felt oily between my fingertip and thumb, hadn’t expected that. The color was right, nearly black with just the tiniest hints of brown and red held in the magic.
Peter hung the phone on the hook. “He’s coming down. Says he’d like to leave the building because of this horrible oppressive feeling that’s been around all day. What’s wrong?”
“Looks like someone has been naughty and left a bomb for someone else,” I muttered, still staring along the dusty wall. Jumping down from the chair, I dropped the disguises on us because frankly if anybody tried anything now, it would be a kamikaze run on their part. Standing in the middle of the hall and staring up at the blood curse on the wall, Daybreak envisioned the form of the curse and its carrier and rushed out through the hotel with an angry heat. I found five more blood curses in strategic places around the hotel. A lot of people died for that crap. Now I was pissed.
“Novac deom calic cha!”
Daybreak said aloud, thrusting his power through the hotel. “Gather each separately, now.” The full force of the Lord of Gilán was not to be denied. Each of the six curses flew off the walls and out the crevasses in a tornado-like swirl of the dust they mimicked. Each one flew down the stairwell and down into the lobby straight to us, which meant the hallway curse on top of us formed first. It hit the floor in front of me like a tiny cyclone and impacted into a four-inch nasty cake of blood. The other five followed within moments, slamming into the floor hard. Footsteps beat the floors above us, chasing after my dark cyclones.
“What are they?” Peter asked, squatting down before the row of cylinders.
“Blood curses, similar to the one that got Jimmy,” I said, glaring down angrily at the piles of evil intent at my feet. “I’ve attracted some attention. They’ll get here before Ryan, I think.”
Ryan, would you bring six glass containers with lids or stoppers, please? Preferably real rubber or cork.
I’ll see what the hotel can get for me
, Ryan answered through the diamond.
Should I be alarmed about the three groups of men running down the stairs in your direction?
Just don’t sneak up on us,
I sent back, tempering the thought with humor.