Authors: Scott V. Duff
“Ah, we’ll be fine,” Mike told him, hugging his brother. “You know what a worry-wart he is. It’s probably nothing and we’ll come for you in a few hours.”
“Driver, how much longer?” Calhoun asked through the intercom panel next to him.
“I probably am worrying about nothing,” I lied, trying to assure Ian. “Let’s just be sure.”
“About ten minutes to downtown, sir, then another five to the hotel,” answered the driver over the intercom.
“I’ll drop you off beside
my
door to the castle, okay?” I told Ian. He nodded, giving me a grin, trying to tell me he was okay. We both knew the other was lying but it was a nice try. I pushed him home, to my home, just in front of the doorway that led to my room in the Cahill’s castle. My Mom and Dad’s room was just down the hall and Mike and Ian’s room was across the hall. The Cahill’s decided to keep that wing as ours for the time being and we happily accepted. I felt Ian’s presence immediately as he darted quickly for the doorway. It was a much different feeling to me, shifting someone to my home and opening a portal, even though the two acts were incredibly similar. Of course, the difference may be purely in my mind…
I relaxed a little once Ian was through to the castle. “The driver doesn’t seem to know he’s going in the wrong direction and I don’t see any bugs in the cabin. Whoever this is likes to lace everything with complacency spells.”
“Quite effectively,” said Mike, looking toward the roof above the driver.
Ethan
, I called, pushing on the anchor again and dropping down into my cavern. Ethan popped into existence in front of me so I replayed my views of the driver and the top of the car. “If the driver stays on his estimates, he’ll be stopping in about six minutes,” I told Ethan.
“Kieran’s sweeping the hotel now and Peter’s checking out the car service over the ‘Net, but he says that’s not likely to be definitive,” Ethan said. “I can still come get you either there or at the airport.”
“We may need that option, but Mike and I may be able to learn something from this, don’tcha think?” I asked. “Besides, it’s obvious that they’ve pegged Mike somehow. We’ve got to find them sooner rather than later before they get lucky.”
“All right,” Ethan agreed reluctantly. “Just remember you’re no more invulnerable than I am and I’m a split second away if you need help.”
I reached up and hit the release on the sunroof, starting its slow slide open and letting more light into the cab. Calhoun stared at me quizzically. I ignored him as the limo slowed to turn off the Expressway, turning left under the overpass. I stood up through the sunroof, shoving my head and torso through, and looked at the sigils seared into the roof of the vehicle.
Then I called for the Night Sword, one of the five ages old weapons I was given by Ethan and Kieran a few months back to help me protect myself as we searched for my parents. Each one of the five had proven to be far more effective than merely weapons of assassination that they’d been used for by the Black Hand, the elven assassins Kieran took them from. The elves lacked imagination if that’s all they used them for. The ebony and silver blade gleamed in the afternoon sun and showed how much blue and indigo actually existed in the black paint used in automobiles. Carbon black was no match for the distilled essence of night.
Sliding the rapier’s edge between the sigils and the sheet metal of the roof, the Night pushed its influence under and around the magic, lifting it up and away from its focal point. Then it consumed the magic, drinking it into the dark night and dragon’s bone in four small sips. It wasn’t a picky or greedy Sword, either. It was more than willing to spit those spells out for me again to use later. It knew there would be more. Damn, these were cool toys!
I sent the Night to its scabbard as I slumped back to the seat in the limo, thanking it on its way. None of the tools had a definable sentience that we could detect but they had all worked much more diligently for me than they had for their previous holders, so I handled them as if they did. Besides, I felt like they each had personalities. What could it hurt?
Calhoun pulled his Sig Sauer and was rattling several small coins in his left hand, rubbing one with his thumb and forefinger. We both watched the driver as the effects of the sigils on the roof faded. Another personality took hold in the man. The limo sped up.
“He’s in on it,” I said quietly, “and he knows we broke the spell.”
The Stone decided it was time to make itself known and thrummed to life in my head, bringing the other four weapons into alertness. Both the Day and the Night traveled down my arms to sit just below my elbows, ready to jump into my hands. The Crossbow and Quiver eased in between my shoulder blades, the bow humming in harmony with the Stone, quickening the Bolts in the Quiver and heightening my awareness of the dangers around us. Cool, cool toys!
The driver and I locked eyes in the rearview mirror. I could see the cool determination there, the hatred built up in his dark eyes. At the same time, the Quiver showed me three teams of two atop buildings surrounding us, aiming long cylindrical tubes at the intersection ahead of us. Three seconds to make a decision.
“Crap!” I said loudly. Two seconds. “Hold on!” The three tubes shot out rockets of some kind. I really needed to study up on conventional weapons. One second. I pushed the four of us home.
And we were flying toward the waterfall at about fifty miles an hour. Whoops! I was the only one not screaming at the top of my lungs, not that I blamed anybody. I shifted us again, further out over the lake and changing our trajectory so that gravity would bleed off our momentum. Mike and Calhoun were kicking, swinging, and screaming through the air as I soared in majestically beside them.
“Straighten up!” I yelled as we rapidly slowed in the air. Mike caught on fairly quickly, recognizing finally where we were. I shifted him to the shore of the lake with barely a bump. Calhoun on the other hand was having great difficulty in resolving what was going on around him. He’d already lost his gun and his coins in his caterwauling through the air and seeing me flying around in the air next to him wasn’t calming him at all. I’d have to let him fall in the lake along with the driver. I didn’t care if the driver got wet. Or hurt. But I didn’t want Calhoun hurt. When we reached the height of our upward motion, I shifted us both again, me to the shore beside Mike and Calhoun to just above the water, letting him plunge into the cool, clear lake at just a few feet deep.
Mike was bent over, leaning on his knees and breathing deeply. “What happened?” he asked, looking up at me.
“They were waiting for us at the intersection,” I answered. “Shot some sort of rockets at us, three of ‘em. Didn’t know if I could protect us, so I ran. Couldn’t get Calhoun calmed down enough to get him to shore without hurtin’ himself, so I figured lettin’ him fall in the lake would be safer.” I was aggravated, more at myself than anything. I felt like a coward running away like that. The driver broke the surface of the water, choking and gasping for breath and Calhoun was still thrashing about. He finally found the ground about the same time the driver tread water, both looking around and trying to get their bearings. They were both tremendously confused about their surroundings but the driver started swimming away from us. Like that would do him any good. I let him swim.
Mike chuckled as he watched as Calhoun figured out he could stand up. “Well, better wet than dead.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I replied, letting go of some of the aggravation. Shrank flew out of the woods near us, making a beeline for Mike. They still couldn’t see me, even with the Fae connection to the realm, but they could still see Mike, Calhoun, and the driver. That meant Shrank and all the Fae I took with me from MacNamara’s Arena knew I had to be here, too. Except for the door by the bridge, I was the only way in and they guarded the door.
Calhoun gave us the evil eye as water dripped and ran off him. “Where are we?” he growled, hugging himself for warmth.
“Safest place in the universe, mate,” answered Mike, cheerily. “Well, not for him, maybe.” Mike nodded toward the far side of the lake at the driver as he neared the shoreline. This guy knew how to swim so he made better time than Calhoun did.
“Let me go collect him,” I murmured and shifted to the other side. This was definitely
not
like wrapping myself in a portal and opening a gateway that way. I’d gotten really good at that recently and knew exactly what that felt like. Here, on my world, moving around was literally as simple as thinking, “I want to be there,” and I was there. If there was any power use involved, I wasn’t able to discern it and neither was Kieran or Ethan. They watched for it. They both said that it was possibly hidden underneath the pervasive sense of “me” that permeated the whole of the realm but we hadn’t had that much time to experiment with it either.
I squatted down beside the shore ten yards up and watched him crawl up on the bank, falling on his back and heaving for breath. A semicircle of brownies or sprites, I haven’t yet asked the difference between them, slowly formed around him and another, larger one around them, all brandishing sharpened sticks and curved stone implements that looked like scythes. My friendly little Fae were moving in to protect themselves and they had teeth! I was rather proud of them.
“Greetings, Lord Daybreak,” a trio of pitched voices called from behind me, halting the progression of the two half-circles around the man but not removing them. The driver startled and sat up, staring at me and then the tiny defenders arrayed in front of him. I turned to the trio speaking to me.
“Hi, guys,” I said to an elder trio of different clans. “Y’all are lookin’ pretty sharp this afternoon. You’d scare me if I were in his place. Good for you!”
“Thank you, Lord,” they said in unison, bowing deeply and terribly pleased with themselves. “Shall we dispatch the human?”
“Nah,” I said, sighing deeply. “I still need him, but I appreciate the offer all the same.” I stood, crossing my arms and staring at the driver as the Fae faded back into the grass. “Why exactly would you ever think it is acceptable to be a part of an action that fires rocketry at a twelve year old boy?” I asked the driver. “I mean, really. A kid?”
“You’re just a kid. Collateral damage happens in any war,” the man said standing. He was measuring me, deciding the best way to take me out. He wasn’t really taking getting thrown in a lake seriously. I shifted four feet behind him.
“Does that include you?” I asked. He whirled around to face me, falling into a crouch and leading with his right. “Um, mister? Before you get any bright ideas, just take a moment and look around. Setting aside the issue of me, where would you go? Seriously, I will guarantee you one minute to look around without any interference from me.” I stood back and waved my arm melodramatically over the lake to the waterfall and to the mountain ranges beyond, smiling devilishly the whole time.
But he looked. He saw Mike and Calhoun across the lake watching us. And he saw the nearly four hundred-foot waterfall, splitting and rejoining on the sides into several different streams but with one long, hard stream in the center. He stopped at the top, a little to the right. His jaw dropped.
“Yeah, I looked like that the first time I saw it and I was a lot closer,” I told him glancing back at the Palace. “We’re over a mile away here.” His eyes bugged out. I’d never actually seen that before. “Where do you think you are?”
“We’re in New York. You’ve done something to my head,” he snarled, falling back into his fighting stance.
“I released a massive complacency spell that was seared into the roof of the vehicle you were driving,” I acknowledged. “I caused the release of the chameleon and compulsion spells that were on you. So I guess you could say I messed with your mind, yes. But I am beginning to wonder as I speak with more of you, exactly how much of this fervor you exhibit isn’t brainwashing.” He gawked at me, confused. “What part did I lose you on? Never mind, your minute’s up.” I shifted us to Mike and Calhoun. “He thinks this is a giant hallucination. Is anyone set up to take care of prisoners?”
Calhoun squirmed and said, “Not really, but we’ll make room somewhere. We haven’t had too many prisoners come out of this.”
The driver jumped to attack. I was closest. Not bothering to turn around, I let him have the four cheap shots, two kidney punches, a blow to the back of the head and a kick to the back of the knee, before clamping force fields down on his forearms and lower legs. None of the blows he threw connected on me; the Stone’s protection saw to that and provided the manacles to bind him. The Stone had protected me through a lot worse than him. I yanked his arms and legs back hard behind him and up off the ground, pushing his gut and chest out. He yelled out from the pain of the transition. And from the shock of suddenly being half blind. Shrank buzzed angrily in his face, holding his three-inch sword a quarter of an inch away from his right eye and ready to drive it as deeply in as he could.
“You attack the Lord of the Realm,” Shrank snarled. “You should die.” I swear the little ones are more fearless than the big ones and just as fearsome. And Shrank wasn’t even one of mine.
“Seriously, dude,” I said to the driver, “There’s over a million of these little guys running around here. You wouldn’t last ten minutes. And where would you go?” Shaking my head at the contorted man, I brushed up against the anchor again.