Authors: Scott V. Duff
“Whatever you’re trying to pull out won’t come that way,” I said without rancor.
He looked up at me, helplessly, his face a horrified mask. His fears bled out around him, not for himself though, for his brother. His brother was down in the oubliette and there was nothing he could do to help.
“You both knew there were risks,” I said, but not without feeling. The other mage was regaining sensibility, so I Faraday’ed him while he was still groggy. Dad and Mike were slowly creeping down the stairs now, making their way toward us. “You’ve broken into my home and fired on us. We had no choice but to protect ourselves.”
“Who are you people?” he asked me. “You weren’t here when we arrived and this house hasn’t been occupied in close to a year.”
“That gives you that right to loot it?” I asked. “It’s still my house, my father’s really, but it’s been transferred to my name. The taxes paid. I’ve seen the receipts. Now answer my questions or you’ll join your brother in a one-way trip that I won’t bother trying to help either of you out of.”
“Shut up, Briggs!” snarled the other man, trying to sit up against the wall with difficulty. His head lolled from side to side as he fought to focus on us, his blue eyes blood-shot and wavering but showing a sharp contrast to his deeply tanned skin.
“Does that make you Stratton?” I asked, but he didn’t get my little joke. “Never mind, but if you want him to shut up, then come over and make him.”
Hearing the slide of a cocking gun, I turned to see Jimmy with a pistol of some kind, similar to the Sig Sauer that Calhoun carried, taken from one of the dead soldiers. Taking aim at the blue-eyed man on the wall, he said, “Pow,” recoiling as if the weapon fired. “Stratton” stiffened in fear, relaxing only slightly when he realized the joke was again on him.
“Now, why were you hiding the magic use?” I asked again. “It doesn’t make sense. I presume your brother knows, so that’s four of the ten of you that knew. So, why? What’s the ruse?”
“Testing… computer system,” blue eyes sputtered out, keeping his eyes on Jimmy while grasping at every hint of energy he could find.
“Pow,” Jimmy said, recoiling slightly and arching an eyebrow. “If I hear another unauthorized word from you, the next one shows me how much punch this puppy has.”
“The higher ups thought we might find a way into some Faery realm that McClure is linked to, somehow, through this house,” the man said, defeated. Dad and Mike walked in quietly, splitting and each taking a side of the doorway. Neither said a word yet, just watching. “McClure trashed a huge operation last night, then dropped it into the government’s hands and disappeared into his Faery world. Now they’re looking for a way to harass him.”
Glancing at Dad, I could see the disbelief creasing his face without consulting his aura. “That only explains why you’re here, not why you’re hiding the magic,” I said. “Try again and with feeling this time or you’re joining your brother in that hole.”
“There’s someone in there?” Dad asked, alarmed. I nodded slowly, keeping my attention on my Faraday cages. The man gulped visibly, taking note of Dad’s concern and deepening his own worry for his brother.
“They were hoping to hide it under the background static,” the man said, rather desperately now. He believed it, which was the disturbing part.
“Ooohhh, I’m being dense,” I said, finally understanding the purpose of their little circuit board contraptions. “You were using them to hide that you’d been here at all. Clever, create your own little mouse hole while sweeping the trail up behind you.” Reaching back across the side yard, I grabbed each tripod and dropped them behind us, including the one I jammed up in the moss. “Dad, would you mind reinvoking the wards for me? They’re a bit noisy right now.”
“I can do that, Seth,” Dad said, pushing casually off the wall and picking his way through the maze of tripods to the inside wall. Pulling a battery from his pocket, he glanced my way. “This should handle it just fine.”
I chuckled. “Hold on to that for now. I’ll take care of jump-starting the ward.”
“If you say so,” he said, grinning slyly but keeping the battery at hand, not quite believing me. Reaching up, he drew a glyph on the column of what I thought was plumbing from upstairs. A panel popped loose on the front of the column, flush with the wall and hidden well. He pulled it open, wiping his hand across the crystalline design there, clearing its efficacy. The screaming stopped immediately. Then Dad started its re-invocation.
I watched as it built and, more importantly, they watched, presumably hoping to see something that would allow them back through at a later date. Once it started seeking energy to build the bridges across the perimeter, I stepped in.
“Dad, you might want to look away from that for a second,” I said.
“Huh?” he asked, turning to me. Surging power into the energy cells, I started rewriting the crystalline structure on the wall before the ward had a chance to finish, causing a bright flare of light in front of Dad and startling him. Then I rose up into the ward control structure and implemented the same changes there. Flooding through the swamps, creeks, and river shouldn’t be an issue anymore and neither should the floodgates. I also added a hidden structure that would notify Dad of intrusions while he was away, locking in only Mother, him, and myself as allowable entrants for the time being.
“Is this too sensitive for you?” I asked while I was tuning the outer edges to my satisfaction. “Do I need to set additional filters?”
After a moment, Dad said, “Wow. These are as good as Ehran’s. Maybe better.”
“Thank you,” I said, chuckling. “But he has gotten better and most of this is his.” Turning to the hole in the floor, I asked, “Where does this lead?”
“That,” Dad said turning to the hole in the floor with the yellow rope sticking out from one side, “is a one-way, non-casual, two-dimensional loop. I use it for dumping highly volatile waste. Why anyone would think to go into it is beyond imagination.”
Glaring at the brother got me an answer. He stammered, “It was supposed to be a vault. A vault with other maps, more valuable.” He was having difficulty with the concepts involved with the loop, non-causal being the hardest for him to grasp.
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for your brother and his companion,” I said as calmly as possible. “They entered a non-causal dimension. Normal physics don’t apply there. There is no atomic cohesion there. Nothing to hold the energy together. These loops disperse the energy fairly evenly. Even an attempt would take an eternity.”
“But I can still feel him…” he trailed off, staring into the hole.
I pushed into his mind to see if it was his imagination, or an echo, or a real connection he felt. Sadly I believe it was either an echo or merely denial. I sealed the construct, including the physical façade above the hole slowly so as to not jolt the man too much. He needed to accept it, though. It may be callous of me but none of this was our fault. And quite frankly, I didn’t much care how well these two fared at the end of our altercation.
“Gentlemen, I need your attention for a moment,” I said, catching each man in the eye in turn and pushing into their minds heavily with the same compulsion I used yesterday. Stressing the force of will over the loyalty and patriotism of yesterday’s was simply a matter of letting go with the aggravation of having to kill people in my father’s house. They both just stared at me as it locked into place. “Go stand in the hall facing the opposite wall. Wait there until we come to get you.” The dutiful little soldiers did as they were told. At least, they were dutiful little soldiers now.
“So what are those?” Dad asked, pointing at the tripods once the other two were outside the room.
“GPS transmitters,” I answered. “The copper plate served as the power source with the wiring both conducting the power and acting as antenna for the signal. As they backed out of the ward and it re-exerted itself, it should cause a slight electrical charge at the confluence of energies at those points. When that happened, the plate charges, sending the signal. A satellite grabs the position and time, along with a few cell phone towers probably. From that, they can figure out the weak spots in the field. Then when they want to see what’s happening here, a short burst of radiation—X-ray, laser, any number of other, non-lethal forms—and they’re watching us mow the front yard or whatever. It also gave them a way in and out.
“But it would only work until one of us came back and re-invoked the ward,” I went on. “Something they obviously hoped wouldn’t happen.”
Dad moved to the wall shared between the map room and his office and began tapping the wall in several places, speaking words of power quickly forgotten in the susurrus emanations of the door opening next to him. It swung open slowly, revealing a small closet between the two rooms barely two feet deep. He pulled the door open fully and stood in the frame, putting his clenched fists on his hips and sighing heavily as he considered the contents.
I’d never really considered my father to be a romantic man or even particularly sentimental one, but here was considerable content otherwise. The emotional waves coming from him were epic. There was no other word to describe them: Epic. I felt his six hundred years of life then. I didn’t look into the vault, not because I didn’t want to see, but because I wasn’t invited. My father’s privacy meant that much to me, at least, and he’d show me when he wanted.
The decision he made fell into place in his mind like an iron gate slamming: Take three things and expect the rest to perish. That bothered me, but I didn’t argue it with him as his eyes darted from object to object, completely ignoring the weapons hanging on the door beside him. There were several short swords and knives and a fine longbow with an ivory stock carved into a horned stag in elegant detail and contrast to the darker wood of the door. It was a very pretty and dangerous looking bow with the string twined carefully along the bow. The others looked dangerous as well, but none looked quite as cared for, sitting in its form-fitted notches covered in soft cloth.
I snuck in between him and the door, ducking under his arm and leaning into him. Slipping my arm around his waist, I said, “Impressive collection of stuff ya got here, Dad. Why just three? Why not send the lot to Gilán so you can show them to me some day, seeing as I have some six hundred years of history to hear about and I bet this stuff has a lot to do with that.”
“I… didn’t think of it, Seth,” Dad said, dropping his arm down to my shoulders. “And I think I’d like that.”
I looked into Dad’s office in his apartment on Gilán and found a closet behind his desk behind the bookcase. It shared a similar layout to this closet but was roomier with better display space. That wasn’t my call, though. I’d let Dad decide what to show off. Instead taking the closet shelf by shelf, I shifted everything over including the items hanging on the door, then searched the closet again.
“Did I miss anything?” I asked. “Anything tucked away in a hole?”
“No, everything…
was
right there,” he said, kind of dumbstruck. “Where did you put it?”
Pushing an image of the bookcase sliding forward and the vault door swinging open for him,
The door will only open for you,
I sent across the link. “And if there is something you actually want to get rid of, I do have a few… deep holes that will never fill and quite a few volcanoes and few other, very primal and destructive places to put things.”
“Don’t tell your mother that,” he said, grinning and patting my shoulder as he slipped away from the closet. “What do you want to do about Huey and Dewey?”
“Well, I guess we’ll leave ‘em with the Marshals and the FBI when we check on them,” I said, pulling the door shut to the vault. “Let me clean up my messes first, though.” Time to litter the Atlantic some more, but I took some solace in that they’d feed something. I was taking a lot of similar solaces lately.
Loud voices greeted us at Yaeger’s. A heated argument was in progress between Calhoun and someone we didn’t know inside the tent. No doubt the second party had something to do with the complement of Military Police standing in formation several yards outside the tent and the truckload still debarking. We stepped in through the back of the tent with Mike leading the way.
“…Jurisdiction ended there!” Calhoun yelled. “Now turn your ass around and get the hell out of here!”
“These are military personnel, Marshal! This is a military operation!
You
don’t have the jurisdiction to interfere,” the Colonel shouted in return. “Now leave before I have you tossed out on your ass!”
“You and what army!” snapped Calhoun, spittle flying.
“You’re kidding me, right?” the Colonel asked more quietly, waving his hand back to his right blindly and hitting me in the chest as I came up behind him. I looked down, bringing my eyes up slowly and meeting his eyes with disdain. “Who the hell are you?”
“The injured party,” I replied. “Why are you interfering with Marshal Calhoun?”
“Why should I explain anything to you? Who the fuck are you?” he snarled.
“I’m the guy who captured over four hundred soldiers last night before they attacked my house for no apparent reason,” I said, drawing him in and pushing attitude down his throat. “I’m the guy that killed fifteen of twenty-four men attacking my house this morning after breakfast and another four guys of ten attacking my father’s house after that. Here’s some dogtags for the four if you have any doubts, but there was nothing left of the others.” I held the chains out with the black-coated aluminum tags. He reached out slowly to take them, cowed by my glare, but not completely.
“I’m supposed to believe a snot-nosed kid took out Pennington?” he asked quietly. “He was a decorated war hero, for Christ’s sake! What could you possibly have done?” He was starting to push past the “Fae Countenance” and get his arrogance back. He had a lot of that.
“Don’t care,” I told him, hopping up on the table next to Calhoun. “Marshal, we’ve got two more for you. They were with some Marines out of Jacksonville, but they aren’t real military so they’re really your purview, regardless. Colonel Echols can worry about notifying the next of kin. He’s got their identification.”
“Okay, Seth,” Calhoun said, nodding to another Marshal who took the gesture as orders and slipped around us to take control of our latest “acquisitions.”
“If they were posing as military personnel during a Marine operation, then they fall under Pentagon, and therefore
my,
jurisdiction,” Echols announced imperiously, standing straighter and throwing his shoulders up.
“I really don’t care anything about your jurisdiction, Colonel,” I said, swinging my legs under the table. “What I do care about is stopping people from trying to kill my family and me before they actually succeed in doing it. So far, the FBI and the Marshals have been far more accommodating in that regard than the military. Guess who I’m siding with.”
“Like you have any control here, boy,” Echols snapped, sneering.
“More than you,” Dad said quietly, watching the parade from the tent flap. Echols whipped around to glare at Dad now.
“Where’s Messner?” I asked Calhoun.
“Sleeping,” Calhoun said gruffly. “He’s been up for close to fifty hours and was getting… irritable.”
Chuckling, I said, “Well, that explains some things I suppose. Is this guy for real?”
“Seems to be,” he answered. “The Pentagon is starting to reel over Pennington. The accusation of treason is not lightly taken in Washington.”
“It wasn’t lightly bandied in Alabama,” I said.
“It’s bullshit is what it is,” Echols snarled, switching targets back to me and trying to be threatening again. “Who killed him anyway? And where’s the body?”
“That would be me,” I offered cheerfully. “And I have no idea what the Major did with his body but I imagine it’s laying somewhere near his head. Were there any other attacks yesterday, Marshal?”
“None that I’m aware of, Seth,” Calhoun said. “But I am out of that loop, being here. This is a pretty big job.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said, nodding. “Any major issues other than Colonel Echols?” The Colonel was getting frustrated again, mostly with being ignored and talked about.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he grumbled and stormed out of the tent, bellowing, “Simmons!”
“This should be fun,” Dad said, close on his heels.
I looked at Calhoun and asked, “Shall I take him down a peg or two or would you like the pleasure?”
“Eh, it really should be me,” he grumbled, heading after Echols. “Wouldn’t mind the backup, though.”
I grinned, hopping off the table and following with Jimmy beside me. Once clear of the tent, we could see the MPs had finished debarking and formed a clear rank and file in the field. They’d attracted the attention of most of the camp, drawing many curious people out of the tents and bunkhouses to observe the fiasco in the making. A loud riff of laughter sounded when they saw me, but it was brief. It was punctuated with catcalls at Echols, though. Apparently he was known by some of them.
“Simmons!” Echols shouted again as I stopped next to Dad standing a few yards from the tent, arms crossed on his chest, and watching the circus start.
“Yes, Colonel!” Simmons hollered, trotting out from between two phalanxes of men in green camouflage uniforms.
“Simmons, prepare the men! We are taking control of this camp!” Echols yelled angrily, turning back to glare us. “I warned you, gentlemen.”
“Yes, you did,” Calhoun said calmly. “And again I say that under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, you have no authority here. If you make one move to take these men from us and we will consider you and your men complicit with their crimes. Understand
that
, Colonel.”
“Oooh, I didn’t think of that,” I said quietly enough that just Dad, Mike, Jimmy, and Calhoun heard. “That is a good point.” The Posse Comitatus act limits the use of the military as law enforcement within a state, unless certain conditions are met. They weren’t met here.
Mike walked up beside us biting into a huge meatloaf sandwich.
“Where’d ya’ get that?” Jimmy asked, almost drooling. Watching where Mike waved, he looked at me for permission.
Dad and I looked at each other in disbelief. “How can you two eat again?” I asked, shaking my head and waving him on with both hands. “Go, feel free.” I could feel
my
arteries hardening sympathetically.
“Troy Pennington is no more treasonous than I am,” Echols yelled, cementing his belief of the General’s innocence. “Simmons, deploy the men!”
Feeling Calhoun begin his attack on Echols, I started with Simmons, deploying a Tower of Babel spell immediately. Simmons just stood there between the two ranks of men looking like he was trying to say something but not knowing how. Which, of course, was the point of the Tower of Babel. You just scramble their ability to communicate complex ideas. I got the idea from the Twice-Dead God. He’s got a worm of some kind embedded in me that makes me unable to talk about certain things. Him, for instance. Anyway, I really wasn’t trying to kill or maim the man. He just needed to be useless for a few minutes.
Calhoun was following a similar tact with Echols, using a simple tactile push to knock him off his feet and send him flying toward us like he’d been punched in the face. Echols came up swinging at his unseen foe, shouting indecipherably. Calhoun walked slowly in his direction.
“
I
warned you, Echols,” he said as he entered the Colonel’s space. “Now we wait for NCIS or I arrest you. Your choice.”
Echols swung at him, narrowly missing Calhoun as he ducked backward with a little magical assistance in speed. “Simmons!” Echols yelled again, adding, “Grant, Edwards!” Two more men snapped to attention and came forward from the ranks to help him. Simmons saw them moving and wheeled around to face Echols, then started toward him, too. I pulled the Babel spell from Simmons. He needed to understand his situation.
“How far do you want to let this devolve?” Dad asked off-handedly.
“Hadn’t thought about it,” I said, waiting for them to near. “It’s really Calhoun’s show, but I’m not risking anyone’s life for this.” The three men converged on Calhoun and two ranks broke and began flooding toward the fistfight, leaving two to stand there gaping momentarily. “Yeah, it’s time to call a halt to this, I guess. Any ideas on how?”
“A few,” Dad said. I felt a push on the energy plane and a wall of flames erupted between the complement of Marines and Calhoun’s fistfight. Twelve feet high, the wall threw off a lot of light, but no heat, but it stopped them from getting to Echols. No one wanted to test the veracity of the suddenly appearing wall. A few did however try to go around. I met the other three a few yards out from Calhoun.
“Sorry, guys, but Marshal Calhoun is busy with your Colonel Echols at the moment,” I said. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes.” They didn’t take me seriously, assuming their training and abilities superior to mine. It was written in the sneers on their faces.
“Just get out of the way, kid, before you get hurt,” said either Grant or Edwards, raising his hand to push me aside. I caught his hand by the wrist before he made contact, twisting hard and breaking one of the two bones in his forearm before he twisted back into the turn. He yelled out, but I didn’t know if it was pain or shock of his first sight of the flame wall. I didn’t have time to consider as the other two attacked me, which wasn’t too terribly bright of them since I still had their man by the hand.
Marines take a great deal of pride in their hand-to-hand combat skills. Their training in such can be quite extensive, I’ve read, blending several styles into a skill set that they believe to be well-rounded and effective in most instances and venues. While I couldn’t argue with the philosophy, I could certainly argue with this specific execution of it. Totally ineffective, very slow and clunky. I question how well they delivered the philosophy completely, really. They both went for the exact same move: an inside jab.
I pulled on the man I had from behind, dropping to the ground and simultaneously jerking him to me and into the path of fists. Planting my feet on his butt as I fell, I lifted him off the ground as they connected with his jaw. I heard more bones cracking and breaking as he flew over my head, ass over elbows, his feet connecting with each man as he passed. I stood straight before he landed behind me with a bone-jarring crunch. The left man, Edwards, I think, was off-balance from his swing. Grabbing his collar and kicking his leading leg out from under him, I slammed him down to the ground. Before he hit, I turned and slipped under Simmons’ guard as he tried to recover from his misdirected punch and shoved my elbow into his gut hard. Continuing around the man, I clasped both hands together and slammed them down between his shoulder blades, instantly regretting the act. I heard his heart stop when he hit the dirt from the triple assault on his chest—two solid hits from me and then the ground.
Damn, I was fast.
I relaxed a second later when his heart stuttered back into a too rapid pattern. Two of my three were now unconscious and the third was only barely aware. Glancing over at Calhoun, he and Echols were in a crouched face-off with Echols swishing a six-inch knife through the air in front of him. It didn’t look the type to affix as a bayonet to me but I had already admitted my lack of knowledge on modern weaponry.
“A knife, Colonel?” I asked as I stepped into their field of vision. “If you’re feeling that insecure against Marshal Calhoun, we could get you a gun instead. I think Sergeant Simmons was carrying one. Would you like his?”
Calhoun snorted a laugh, showing teeth with his smile and making him rather shark-like. Echols feinted to Calhoun’s right, then jumped to his left at me, just in time to meet Jimmy’s truncheon as it slammed down hard onto his knife-hand. Echols dropped the knife and cried out loudly in pain, grabbing his doubtless broken wrist.
“Good meatloaf,” Jimmy said as he reset his stick. “You can wave that at the Marshal all you want, but Seth is out of bounds for you, asshole.”
“Jimmy, language, please,” I warned lightly.
“Like you really care,” Calhoun said, picking up Echols’ knife. “Thank you kindly, gentlemen. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining why I had to kill another one to Harris just yet.”
“The medics are ready to come in now, Seth,” Jimmy said as he polished off his sandwich. I looked for Mike and Dad, finding them at opposite ends of the firewall, just watching the far side at the moment. Looking through the fire, the ranks of men reformed, sufficiently cowed apparently, and were awaiting real orders again. Glancing at us, Dad started lowering the wall, extinguishing the last two feet in one imaginary gust of wind. That helped to lower the tension level, but it was a small thing.
Ethan brushed lightly against the anchor, calling for my attention but not strongly.
“Yes, Ethan?” I asked tugging on him to let him know we weren’t doing any heavy lifting. He erupted through the anchor, appearing beside me and startling everyone nearby.
“More? Don’t these guys get tired?” he asked cheerfully looking over the rank and file in front of us, then down at the four on the ground around us. “They getting uppity with you, Marshal?”