Authors: Scott V. Duff
Retrieving a foil-wrapped hunk of dark chocolate from my pocket, I broke a piece off and handed it to Zero, then popped a piece in my mouth to melt. “Peter gave me chocolate after my first burn. Much different circumstances, thankfully, but it commonly helps with the fatigue and depression that follows a tremendous uncontrolled power burn.”
Zero bit the piece in half and asked, “So there is a difference between a ‘burn’ and a ‘burnout’, Lord?”
“Yes, a big difference,” I said, sighing heavily. “A burn is normal, especially for you, exercising young muscles, as it were. It will lessen with time and practice. A ‘burnout’ is much more extreme. With a ‘burnout,’ the wizard has poured so much power through his mind and body that there’s a good chance he’ll never touch magic again. Considering how little I knew at the time and how much energy I was tossing around, it’s surprising that didn’t happen.”
“Is that what’s happened with Mr. McClure, Lord?” he asked cautiously, worriedly. That my dad was ill was well known but we hadn’t released the cause of the illness.
“Yes and no, Zero,” I said very quietly. “My dad is a very old man for a human, far older than he appears to be. Men aren’t like the elves and especially the High Elves. Men don’t have the extremely long lives that elves do. A powerful wizard can expect to live maybe three or four hundred years on the outside, most live two hundred to two-fifty. Certainly a respectable extension of their lifetimes, tripling or quadrupling them. My dad somehow far exceeded that and is having difficulties because of it.”
“How old is Mr. McClure, then?” Zero asked.
“A little under two thousand years, I think,” I answered, noticing where the fascination finally ended outside the fence line. Being bowed, it exceeded the outside fences by a mile on the east and west, but no one lived on those sides.
“Two thousand years,” Zero echoed, astonished. “That is a long life indeed, sir. As
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, he could live at least as long as that.”
“Not if he doesn’t survive the month,” I said, sighing. “He’s dying, Zero, and I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it.”
Zero gaped at me as we walked, shocked at my pronouncement. Here I was, a veritable god to them and I could do nothing to save one man, a very important man to me. He didn’t have a clue as to what to say.
“I’m terribly sorry, Lord,” he said meekly, looking at the sidewalk. “If there is anything, anything at all, that we can do to help…”
Smiling wanly, I said, “Of course, Zero, I’ll let you know, but my brothers and I are working on it. If there’s a solution, we’ll do our best to find it.”
A crowd started to accrue on the parade grounds as the four nearby barracks emptied. Streams of men and women from the other two barracks came through the darkness around the buildings, not following the sidewalks or roads, to see the conflagration, even though the fire was out. Tom was on the move at last and at a furious pace from the scratches of transits I felt. It was the transits back that would be the telltale though.
“Zero, stick close and remember that this isn’t about fighting,” I murmured as we approached the parade grounds. A troop of twelve men ran up the road behind us and into the crowd without paying the least attention to us. They would soon enough. Our pace was close to the troop’s running speed so we made it to the crowd quickly, skirting around the edges, and listening. I wanted the brass there before I intervened in the spell and the good Colonel Juan Almareda left his house with his lieutenants moments ago. They had about a mile to drive yet.
I searched the crowd for magical talent while I waited. I found only twenty-one capable of manipulating magic with enough strength to do any damage, not wizards or magicians exactly, more like one or two-trick ponies. There was still a Faraday cage in their future, just to contain any heroics. Tagging them on the Map allowed me to forget about them for the moment and count everyone. It was easier to count the stars in the sky than a throbbing mass of six hundred and eighty men and women. Only ten were missing and six of them were in the car on the way. That left only four unaccounted for. Searching the compound, I found them locked in a room with one door in the Colonel’s house. Well, that should be easy enough to remedy.
A large van inched its way through the crowd of men toward the demolished viewing stand, horn blaring. It had a hundred and twenty feet to go and they’d probably make better time on foot, but it gave me time. Putting my hand on Zero’s shoulder, I moved us outside that locked door in Almareda’s house. Touching the doorjamb and throwing a sensing into the wall, I found that the door was merely a double-key bolt lock on a steel-reinforced door. Slipping force into the locking mechanism and turning the bolt back into the lock, I opened the door slowly, reaching to grasp it near its frame at the same time.
Calling the Stone to reinforce the door, I glanced back to make sure Zero was behind me while we waited for the man to pick up his gun and fire. It seemed an eternity before the bullets, a burst of three, pierced the steel and released my tension. I wrenched the door from the frame as another burst hit. The shooter’s placement was excellent, chest-high, in a triangle, on the first, then a diagonal downsweep on the second. I tossed the door to the right and Zero was a blur as he ran past me around the shield. The shooter followed the door for a split second, long enough for Zero to rush in and hit—not him but his gun. The
huri
fieldstripped the weapon, a SOCOM-16, while the man attempted to aim and fire! I didn’t think that was possible, but then, why not?
I busted a gut when the assault rifle flew into pieces around the man. The surprise on his face was priceless and the hesitation it caused him allowed Zero time for a leisurely punch in the stomach. Then Zero kneed his head as it came down, driving the man back through a door into the next room. Still laughing, I followed Zero into the room where the other three men sat frozen in their seats, hands mid-stroke at keyboards. Zero poked the middle man, peering around him, curious.
“Zero, that was glorious!” I said, clapping him on the shoulder as he moved away from the man. Looking back at the review stand, Almareda and crew finally made it and were poking around the ruins and eyeing the crowd anxiously. The pull, the desire to be there was the peculiar thing, they knew. “Now, let me show you a little about controlling magefire…” I said, grinning, and willed a marble-sized sphere of fire into the air. “Follow the golden ball carefully now.” Gesturing for performance sake, I made the ball fly through the wall. Zero looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. I couldn’t quite tell if it was questioning or sarcastic and that made me laugh again.
Nodding back to the wall, I projected a perspective of the marble from ten feet back for Zero to watch. It flew across the grounds, dodging tree limbs, bushes, and building eaves, and slowly grew larger. When it came out over the parade grounds, I threw the perspective high over the crowd to encompass everyone, then let it fall back to my now yard-wide ball of fire bouncing above the crowd of men in front of the van. They started backing away, speeding up as they realized what was above them. A ten foot circle cleared, so I wrapped my three frozen men in portals and dropped them there, along with the rousing man that Zero thoroughly embarrassed. Then I moved the ball a few yards off to clear another circle. The men were faster to clear away this time, but I wanted more room.
When the circle was at twenty feet and climbing, I moved us to the center, holding us fifteen feet above the ground. The Stone provided a platform under our feet. With a wave of my hand, I sent the fireball higher into the air. With a crack like thunder, I snapped my fingers. The sphere rippled along the surface like a computer-generated supernova and a thick ring exploded from the equator of the ball, expanding outward and thinning. I snapped again, and again and again, until the sphere was gone and four concentric rings expanded and slowed, lighting the entire parade grounds.
The next step was the Faraday cages. Those were simple and fast, all twenty-one of them, unseen but definitely felt by those encompassed within. By then it was time to turn my attention to the men yelling at us from the front of the van. Zero waved at them politely since there was little chance of communication with the background noise. Men stared at the rings glowing almost fluorescently in the night sky and murmured about what was going on.
“Hello, everyone!” I said loudly, projecting my voice over the sea of people around us. “So glad you could make it, as if you had a choice. I’m Seth McClure and, among other things, I’m a magician.” Zero giggled at me, making me pause. I wasn’t exactly used to making threatening speeches, after all. “Just this morning, a team of my men, highly trained and remarkably effective, infiltrated the headquarters of a known illegal arms dealer and fixer for mercenary work. His entire store was turned over to the FBI, along with copies of his computer systems. Copies. This person was known as ‘The Russian’ and was being investigated by us because his name has been attached to many attacks on me and other wizards and magicians in what has become an all out war against us.” My mood had gotten progressively more stern. Not angry, just stern, though admittedly there was more than a small touch of Daybreak protruding around the edges. I started ranging over the men as I spoke, not thinking of the platform as necessary.
“So here I am because you are in training for a war against us. And
that
puts me between a rock and a hard place.” I called up a wall of Gilán fire a yard out from the perimeter of the crowd. The men shrank to the center, so I moved it in another yard but left them the rest of the nine to twelve feet, depending. “You see, unlike you, I don’t believe in killing, especially just because of some random bigotry. But I’ve been personally attacked by men trained from such places as this and I’m still standing.” I slid the Day Sword into my hand, letting it blaze in the faces below me. Coming around full circle, I pointed the Day at Almareda. “Do not mistake me. I am fully capable of defending myself. I just don’t like it.
“Now I have to find a way to destroy you without killing you,” I said, staring the stout Hispanic man down. I won. Grinning at the small victory, I swung the Day onto my shoulder, flat of course, and went on. “Mainly, I and those that have been attacked are seeking out those higher up the ladder, the ones who started this invisible war. You can go back to where ever you came from, just don’t come back into this conflict. You will find that this facility is no longer equipped to train you in anything other than hand-to-hand combat.” My grin got bigger as Almareda tried to understand how that was possible.
“Allow me to introduce my companion. His name is Zero and he is
huri
. This is his first visit to this realm. I promise I won’t let this prejudice him against us. He already knows quite a few really nice humans, after all. Wouldn’t you agree, Zero?” I asked, stepping back onto the Stone’s platform beside him. He stood near the center and turned slowly watching the men encircling him. Still, his stance was confident and casual until I called on him, then he stood up straight and smiled from the attention. It was starting to weird me out.
“Yes, Lord,” Zero said, cheerfully, making the mistake I needed right on time. “I personally know several hundred very nice human men and women. It became easier when you made them get to know us and we started talking together. I think that you made them realize then that we were more alike than different. Now with the
Ransé
and the
Huri
, we are even closer.”
“Thank you, Zero, that’s kind of you to think that way,” I said. Turning back to the group of officers, I homed in on Almareda, waving the Sword in his direction. “I could easily assess guilt on many acts of violence and death based on the evidence I have. You’ve acted above the law and I don’t see any reason not to reciprocate. But I’ve killed enough and I don’t see the need here. Like I said, you can’t train with nothing and I’ve just stolen everything you have. I doubt your bosses will pay to refit you, Colonel Almareda. Apache helicopters cost in the tens of millions and you had three. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in munitions alone have been… liberated. Millions in assault rifles, machine guns, pistols, and sniper rifles are gone. Knives and blades of all sorts have been stolen. Support equipment from computers to troop carriers has disappeared. You might want to consider that option, Colonel Almareda, before your bosses find out.
“As for the rest of you,” I raised my voice as I turned. “I strongly advise a change in vocations for all of you. If I cross paths with any of you again, I’ll show you my proficiency with this Sword.” I shot a column of Gilán fire through the outside of the platform upwards through the sky to the first inside ring of light. The ring flared violently into the second and cascaded each into its neighbor. The fourth and final ring flared down into the perimeter wall, pushing it into the ground. Everyone watched the light show in horrified desperation, following it up and around behind them.
When they turned anxiously back to us, we were gone.
~ ~ ~
There were over nine hundred brownies to take part in the raid on the Arizona camp, but only about a third now remained in the storage rooms we’d allotted. Ellorn had to double the space when Tom started dropping off the loot. Byrnes and Velasquez began sorting the equipment from the drop zones immediately and had the
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carting it off quickly. The heavier equipment, like the helicopters and trucks, took more coordination.