Authors: Scott V. Duff
“They’re close,” I muttered, tensing. I could feel them now, Kieran and Ethan. Feel their presence coming at me from the cavern, rushing, chasing. It was preternaturally fast, what they ran to capture. I moved forward into the mouth of the next chamber, the next twist in the line. Another flash of aura and small rocks clattering down, hitting pools of water providing a snippet of sound for another partial view. They were closer still.
A blur shot through the path ahead of me and I thought I heard breathing nearby. A bulb in the string blew out, suddenly darkening the cross-connection they’d gone down, then another closer to me. The enemy was coming at me. I crouched as low as I could, motioning for Peter and Jimmy to do the same. With another pale flash of aura among the stalactites, the string of lights was pulled from its anchors along the ceiling, falling and breaking almost completely to me. Then the thing seemed to flip down and fly at me. Fast.
I could not tell what it was. At first I thought it was the missing bat-thing, but its aura was very masculine and human-like and there was a definite intelligence that the va-du-seet lacked. It was half-way down the corridor before I realized I didn’t have a clue as to what this thing was and three-quarters of the way when I realized I wasn’t armored anymore. I called for the Night in mid-thrust of my left-hand, armoring at the same time, but I knew I’d barely nick the thing as it passed. I saw the leathery wing phasing out of reality just as the Night hit the plane it existed in and passing through the rapier before it could grab onto the beast astrally. This was a va-du-seet, then.
“Incoming!” I yelled, turning to follow it. Seeing Peter and Jimmy take on defensive poses and track the blur as I tried to regain my target on it, I started flooding the energy plane behind them with energy. It was harder to maintain down here as the energy siphoned back into the calcite and other mineral rich rocks much faster. Ethan entered the next chamber over, running in this direction. Kieran wasn’t far behind him, bounding off the cave walls.
The bat-thing shot through the air, bounding off stalagmites and columns like a monkey in a tree, and tried to exit through the apartment. It met Jimmy’s staff soundly once on the side of its head, causing it to wheel wildly in the air. It grabbed and clutched at everything, finally catching a stalactite tip and shoving. It flew toward the altar room.
The howling of it dying as it hit the wall of energy at the entrance was eardrum piercing. The flash of energy that followed the bat-thing’s death was very nearly blinding. I almost missed seeing Dieter thrown out of its body to the cave floor, adding his own scream of pain to the bat-thing’s. His lasted longer and, unfortunately, he didn’t die with it.
I ran down the corridor, Peter and Jimmy falling in with me. Dieter heard us coming. We saw him turn and look over his shoulder. Snarling as he rose, drunkenly, he ran forward, toward the altar. We followed, skidding to a halt as the room opened up.
Dieter stood, huffing and heaving, shocked. He whirled around at us, his face a savage mask of anger and hatred. “What have you done with it!” he yelled, pointing at the empty spot that once held his ugly library.
“What’s with you and nudity?” I asked calmly, choosing to not address his question and advancing slowly with the Night ahead of me. He was naked now. I suppose fusing with the bat-thing required that.
“You’ve got no idea what you’ve taken!” Dieter cried. “Give it back! Now!”
“No,” I said, as Kieran and Ethan entered the cave behind us, stopping very briefly to look at the dead va-du-seet on the ground. We had it cornered now. Whatever Dieter was, it wasn’t getting out of this cave. “You’re all done here now, Dieter. Time to say good-bye.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t lived this long to be killed by a boy. No.” He looked around desperately for something to defend himself as I kept coming at him. “I will find a way, boy, and I will kill you.”
He leapt at me, leaning right, and shoved his hand into the tub of body fluids. I stepped forward, leaning into a lunge with the Night. He tried to block the blade with a bloody bone pulled from the putrid liquid, but the Night sheared the bone off. I missed him by a half-inch anyway. I changed position for another strike hurriedly. He jumped on the concrete slab and shoved the bone shard into his gut, yelling something in what sounded like Portuguese. As I lunged again with the Night, his aura flared hot with an unnatural yellow, blinding me for a full second as the Night passed through the space he occupied. I didn’t feel any resistance, though. I knew before I could see that something was wrong.
He was gone.
I stood over a concrete square in a ridiculous pose in a cave in the middle of the night holding a very unique Sword and achieving absolutely nothing.
“What just happened?” I asked weakly.
Kieran and Ethan walked in and stood beside me, looking at the slab.
“I have no idea,” Kieran said. “What happened to the altar?”
“I put it away. For safe keeping,” I said and sent a sense of the vault in the Palace to him. “It… seemed too dangerous to leave lying around.” I thanked the tools as I returned them to my cavern around the base of my Pact sigil.
“Good idea,” he agreed, nodding. “I don’t see anything special about this. Bone and blood mixed with part of the mortar but nothing that can’t be duplicated.”
“How did you kill this thing?” Ethan asked, kicking the bat-thing.
“He juiced the energy plane,” Peter answered for me. “It feeds off of the potential energy difference between the physical and the astral planes as it shifts between them. He figured out that if you flood it with energy that they can’t make the shifts.”
“It fries them in place instead?” he asked me, grinning at the thought of it.
I nodded. “Sort of.”
“We’re still missing four of the brown robes,” Peter said.
Ethan shook his head. “No. They toss the bodies into a crevasse a couple of hundred yards back into the cavern. It took us a few minutes to figure out who was who before the bat came into the picture. They ran through these caverns like rats in a maze. We didn’t have quite so easy a time at it at first. He… used two of them to merge with
that
and the other two were cannon fodder, more or less.”
“Let’s get out of this hellhole,” Kieran said, then pulled one of my tricks. Wrapping the five of us in portals, he moved us to the clearing, to the road just in front of the house. We all breathed a sigh of relief. This wasn’t a perfect site, but better than where we were.
Peter pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I’ve got a signal,” he said, surprised.
The rest of us checked ours. Kieran and Ethan’s phones were broken. The dimness of the cave covered the filth, scuffs, and scrapes of scrambling through the cavern. Their clothes were ripped and torn in many places. Frankly, I was surprised they weren’t worse off, running around in the dark like they were. Actually, that was true for all of us. ‘Cept I was armored most of the time so I was clean.
“Y’all wanna talk to Mike and Richard and get cleaned up while we deal with the Feds?” I asked Kieran, watching the line of soldiers walk past the command tent. I had no idea what they were doing, but I believed it was disarming. They couldn’t have broken my compulsion spell.
“That’ll work,” Kieran said, twisting his arm around and stretching. “You three stay together and call if you need help. Go nowhere alone.”
They shifted together to Mike’s living room.
“Who do we call?” I asked, wandering toward the house, Jimmy and Peter following behind me. “Harris or Messner or somebody all together new?”
“Well, the Marshals will probably be involved in some fashion anyway,” Peter said, “and this definitely crosses state lines, so Messner makes sense, too. But, he still needs some taming. You feeling up to that tonight?”
We stopped fifty yards out from the house and in clear sight of the command tent. None of the soldiers in line looked our way directly, always down and around us. Didn’t bother me in the least.
“Why not? I’m a bit ornery after losing Dieter,” I said, picking Messner’s name on my phone list. “You got Harris?” Peter nodded, so I hit dial and waited.
“Messner,” he answered on the second ring.
“Agent, this is Seth McClure, I have a situation that requires your attention—” Then he had the gall to interrupt me.
“McClure, I am not at your beck and call,” Messner said. “I do have other responsibilities here and you’ve already given me plenty to do.”
I paused for a moment, gathering my anger and putting it away. He was too minor an issue for that much anger. Instead, I got snippy and said, “Very well, Agent Messner, I will go to more local law enforcement agencies. I wonder, though, how well equipped this county’s sheriff’s department is to handle a case involving the treason and death of a brigadier general? And all for totally unknown causes? I will have to remove all physical and other traces of my brothers and me before I leave. Peter has Marshal Harris. We’ll see what he’d like to do. Sorry for bothering you.” I disconnected the call and turned to Peter.
“I’m waiting to be put through,” Peter said as my phone rang.
I answered, holding the phone at arm’s length saying, “And I push which button?” Then disconnected him again. Peter chuckled while Jimmy just looked confused. This could get tedious, so I reached across to Gilán and grabbed three folding chairs from the earlier picnic, pulling them back. Messner called again.
“What is it, Agent? I’m trying to find a telephone number right now. The Pentagon isn’t in the Yellow Pages.”
“How did you get involved in a case of treason with a brigadier general, Mr. McClure?” Messner asked.
“No, Agent Messner, you made it perfectly clear that you did not wish to be bothered with my problems,” I said testily. “I have to admit, though, that considering the high profile that this is going to obtain that sounds like career suicide to me, but that was your decision and not mine. Good night.” And again, I disconnected the call. “Okay, I’m starting to feel a little better here.” Jimmy snickered this time. Peter was listening to his phone, distracted.
“Mr. Calhoun, this is Peter Borland of the McClures,” Peter told Calhoun an abridged version. I hit the “Ignore Call” key twice and let it ring through to voice mail on Messner once while Peter did. I finally answered the fourth call.
“What, Messner.”
“I apologize, Mr. McClure, I should not have snapped at you that way,” Messner said, trying to sound contrite. I didn’t need to see him to know that was a lie. “It’s been a very stressful day and I am in new territory.”
I paused for a moment to give him the impression I considered his apology. “Mr. Messner, I am currently forty minutes from your hotel. You’ve had ample time to have your partner track the GPS signal in both our cell phones, so you know where I am. Be here within forty minutes and we will continue this discussion of power plays and how I don’t like them. At that time, I will decide whether you will continue to be involved.” He had better be hoping I lost more of my irritation at him by then, too.
Peter disconnected from his call and sat down beside me. “Calhoun will be here as soon as he can arrange transportation of his men. He’s going to call me back. Harris is in transit on personal business for the day. Usually checks back in between eleven-thirty and twelve-thirty, so he’s still normal. Hey, everybody’s got have a little personal time, and he actually schedules it. More power to him.”
“Well, I’m betting Messner will get here in about twenty minutes with at least four men,” I said. “Which he’ll see immediately isn’t enough and try to start ordering people around. That’s when I get to play. I really don’t like these games. Why do they insist on playing them?”
“Maybe he feels he didn’t get a chance to show his,” Jimmy said. “You want me to check on those guys?”
“They look okay from here,” Peter said. “Let’s see who gets here first and let them handle the first problems. We’ve done enough for tonight.”
“But I haven’t,” Jimmy said. “I haven’t done much of anything.”
“Yeah, ya have,” I said, defensively. “Stayin’ alive is a lot harder around me than you can realize. We need to work on some non-lethal outlets.”
“Where do the Swords come from?” Jimmy asked hesitantly.
“There are five weapons and tools attached to the bend where my soul meets my physical body and mind: The Crossbow and Quiver holding the Bolts, The Day and the Night Swords, and the Foundation Stone. When I need them, I can pull them from that place. Kieran and Ethan’s are a different matter. Theirs, I think, are made on site.
“If you’re asking about the Swords’ history, I’m afraid I don’t know much about them,” I told him. “Shrank may know more.”
Eleven and a half minutes. For eleven and a half minutes, it was extremely pleasant around us merely because it was quiet. The air was drier than usual and the evening heat blended into a cool breeze through the hills that felt good, likely due to the ton of ice melting up there. At least for those eleven and a half minutes, anyway.
Calhoun returned his call and told Peter he’d be here in an hour with three men. The rest would take longer, but that wouldn’t be our problem. This was a welcome intrusion to some degree. It gave us some idea of how long we’d be tied down here because regardless of how strongly I believe in the compulsion spell, there were still some unresolved issues that would require outside interference, like transportation. Something had moved these men here and something expected to move them back to wherever they belonged when it was over and there wasn’t anything to move anyone on the property now. This whole situation was going to have serious repercussions to be felt for some time. I almost wished I could stay and watch it all happen. Almost.