Authors: Scott V. Duff
“What is it you’re looking for? You keep studying us, looking for something. Looking for what?” I asked him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. McClure, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, giving me a confused look, but completely lying to me.
“How many people can see that Echols is lying?” I asked.
“Is that what the orange swirl through there means?” Jimmy asked Ethan in a harsh whisper. Ethan nodded, grinning. Jimmy raised his hand with the rest of us, making a forest of fingers wiggling in the air for Echols. We dropped our hands after a few seconds, snickering at him.
Frustrated, Echols said, “I could lose my security clearances over this!”
“Ours are higher, Colonel,” Calhoun said smugly. Messner didn’t say anything, but Calhoun was probably right. “You’re ‘Ma-1’ as of three days ago. We are both ‘M’.”
“Ooh, cool!” I said. “Do I have any top secret security clearances, too? I’d love to bandy some codes around in dusty, hot tents with everybody else.”
Calhoun and Messner exchanged desperate looks. Messner laughed, “He asked you, not me! Your hole, Marshal.”
“No, sir, you are generally one of the people we try to gather information about,” Calhoun answered quickly, then turned to Echols to change the subject. “You were saying something, Colonel Echols?”
“Yes, Colonel, you were about to tell us what you were looking for,” I said, turning back to Echols and snickering at Calhoun, still.
He sunk into his chair further, slumping his shoulders. “I thought this was a big joke on me, an elaborate, hugely expensive joke. This whole ‘Magic’ security crap, but when I saw that firewall… Amazing. I was trying to figure out who the elf was.”
“An elf?” Dad said, amazed. “You were looking for an elf?”
“There’s not an elf within a hundred miles of here,” Mike said.
I wasn’t sure what bothered Echols more, that we didn’t have an elf to show him or that we weren’t bothered by the idea that elves were real.
“You’re kidding me, right?” he asked. “This crap is real?”
“Very,” Dad asserted. “But there are no elves here. Lord Daybreak won’t allow it.”
“No,” I said, drawling the word out. I don’t think Echols got the clue, though.
“But that’s crazy!” he said excitedly. “Why wouldn’t everybody know? Why wouldn’t there be proof of them? They’re supposed to be magical creatures and there’s no such thing as magic, either!”
“My father built a hundred and fifty foot wall of fire in front of your eyes and you doubt that magic exists? Talk about tough sells,” I said mildly sarcastically. I hopped off the table and walked around to Echols. He faced me the entire time. Having watched quite a few prestidigitators on television variety shows, I was familiar with the showmanship involved. Framed by the light from the tent’s doorway, I pushed up my sleeves and waved my hands before to show I held nothing in them, humming lightly. The weapons were in my cavern, ready to play in my little joke. I thrust my hands forward at him once, humming louder for effect, doing nothing but continuing ineffectually waving my hands around. Thrusting again though with a loud “Hah!” I called the armor forward, asking for the Day Sword in my hands instead of on the belt.
Echols tried to scramble out of the back of his chair and onto the table, scared out of his mind. The Day does have quite an effect on people. Everyone else was startled, flinching back from the unexpected brightness, except Ethan, of course. Mike and Jimmy expected it, so flinched less. I smiled at his reaction, safely hidden behind the faceplate.
“Showoff,” Ethan muttered loudly, giving Dad and Mike something to laugh at.
Sending the weapons back into my cavern, I said, “That was the Sword that took off Troy Pennington’s head, Colonel Echols. He was most definitely trying to kill me at the time, so don’t expect any remorse from me over it. I don’t have any. I gave him every opportunity to stand down.”
“You killed Troy?” he asked.
I nodded. “Rather ingloriously, too, in this tent in front of a few of his officers, but they didn’t understand what was going on. For whatever reasons he had, General Pennington was under the impression that because we can do a little magic, we wanted to control the world or the country, the state, the county, the city, whatever.
“He was mistaken,” I asserted, pulling his chair back from table a little and patting the back, a lame coaxing job at best, but the Colonel was sprawled out over the table. “Basically he held the belief that all magic users were evil and plotting to take over the world. Think about that a second. If that was true, why hadn’t it been done by now? If we’re all so high and mighty powerful?”
As I moved away from the table to give him some room, he sat up slowly, realizing his rather undignified position. Sending a slender tendril of power back through the tent, I tossed a chair over the station walls, catching it blindly in my outstretched hand and swinging it around to sit down. Ethan snickered, with Mike close behind. I cut my eyes over to see Ethan hiding behind his fists, his blue eyes bright and his skin rosy. He was trying hard to hold it back, but when our eyes met, he lost it.
“You are being such a show off!” he said, laughing, and Mike joining him. Dad was smiling with them in tacit agreement. “I’ll be glad when you’re done with the Queens’ emissaries so we can knock ya down a few pegs.”
“Brothers,” I whispered loudly, shaking my head. Then asked, “Agent Messner, what is the difference between the designations ‘M’ and ‘Ma’?”
“The ‘Ma’ designation is a Pentagon code for someone who has been indoctrinated with the numeral after defining to what extent,” explained Messner. “An ‘M’ designation describes someone who can use magic and there are no further designations. Specialties are too nebulous. Strengths are too hard to define.”
“And to have said ‘M’ clearance, what must one go through?” I asked.
“You would first have to be a member of one of the law enforcement teams or military organizations that use those designations and also go through the selection process for Top Secret clearance,” Calhoun answered this time, adding credence to the policy as neither Messner nor Echols disagreed.
“So no cool letters for me, then. Darn,” I said sticking out my bottom lip and pouting. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to be happy with the three names I have.” Straightening up in my chair and leaning into the table on my forearms. “Now Colonel, I’m afraid I’ve lost sight of your question. What was it again? Who were you looking for?”
“I was looking for an elf,” he said. “I’ve never seen one before and I wasn’t sure what to look for. The initial report on this said that the attack was stopped by a friendly elf-lord and his cadre. Our files had little to no information on the lords but plenty on the Queens. And we know about the veils and glamours and such. But I couldn’t tell who. It’s… scary not knowing who you’re dealing with but knowing they can do so much more than you.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure that Mike’s right,” I assured him. “There aren’t any elves within a hundred miles or so of here. We tend to move around too much for them to keep track. And it’s not easy to pick us up again. Instead of risking running into us before next Wednesday, they are either in hiding or returned to Faery for a time, at least near anywhere they believe that we go.”
“So the story of this camp being taken by an elf-lord and his cadre is a joke on me,” Echols said slowly.
“No, Colonel Echols, though the phrasing is wrong, the intent of the statement is correct. My brothers and I took this camp last night, but we are not a ‘cadre of men’. And technically, I am an Elf-Lord. Specifically, I am Lord Daybreak of Gilán. And before you get upset about anything about that title, it is earned in Rite of Challenge and Ordeal to another who was trying to kill my family and me. I was born in this country by parents that were born in this country. My citizenship is unquestionable.” No one was looking at my father when I said that. This was a good thing, otherwise that lie might be caught. Ethan knew he was older than the country and Mike may have, I don’t know.
“But right now, this is useless information,” I said. “Right now, let’s talk about your presence here. What are
you
doing
here
?”
“I am to facilitate the containment and removal of these men from these premises to a location yet to be decided where they can be properly processed for their actions,” he answered mechanically.
“And taking over the encampment?” I asked prodding him.
“An extreme case,” Echols said. “When we arrived, the inmates were running the prison. This is never a good position to enter.”
“Yes, I can see that would be upsetting,” I said chuckling. “But you do understand that this case in under the control of Marshal Calhoun and Agent Messner, correct?”
He hesitated in answering, “There is some question there.”
“And why is that?” I asked.
“The charges made against these men are rather extreme,” Echols started. “If after reviewing the evidence, the charges are lowered, as I suspect they will be, it’s likely that a majority of these men will face a military hearing rather than a civilian court. If this is the case, it puts them outside of the Marshals’ and the FBI’s purview.”
“And will likely create no end of trouble in their futures,” I said quietly. “Did Marshal Calhoun explain
why
the inmates were running the prison?”
“He said they felt obligated,” Echols said shaking his head ruefully. Calhoun sighed heavily, shaking his head ruefully, too, with his eyes clamped shut. I snickered.
“Are you sure he didn’t say, ‘They are compelled,’ or ‘They’re under a compulsion’?” I asked, smiling at him.
“That was the word he used, yes,” Echols said, knitting his brows and looking confused.
“A compulsion, Colonel, is a type of spell,” I told him. “In this case it’s a very strong spell that’s built into the heads of every man out there but yours. It says that they are to cooperate fully through their trial by jury and their punishment. If that ‘trial by jury and punishment’ step is removed, the compulsion spell will never dissipate. Do you know what happens then, Colonel?”
“No,” he answered in a small, scared voice.
“I don’t either, but I don’t want to find out,” I said, tapping the table. “So as the point man for the military in this, the onus falls to you. Either make sure this happens for these men or find me. And Marshal Calhoun can attest that we are not easy to find.”
“Oh, yeah,” Calhoun muttered in agreement. “Hard as hell to find when you want them. All up in your corn flakes when you don’t. More than ready to drop a fifty ton problem in your lap, yeah, but might as well be on Pluto when you want them.”
“You need some sleep,” Messner chuckled.
Calhoun laughed and half turned to him. “How many days have you known ‘em? How many problems have they dumped on you? You’re two fer two, right? Talk to me tomorrow!”
“Now hold on,” I said defensively. “Technically, they’re the same problem.” Okay, not even Jimmy bought that one and Dad just sat there not understanding, but enjoying watching everybody else laugh at me about it. Only Messner didn’t laugh. It took a moment for me to regain control of the conversation.
“Agent Messner, you seem to be the only one in agreement with me,” I remarked.
“There is a strong enough relationship between the ritual murders of the Morgan family and the blood rites committed here to keep the FBI involved in this site,” he said calmly. “The military will not be able to take complete control regardless.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. It’s what I wanted anyway. “So, Colonel, our problem at the moment is deciding how to proceed now, from the top down. Namely, who’s in charge? The funny part about that question is the answer. The simple fact of the matter is I am, even though I have absolutely no authority in the matter. I left that responsibility to Agent Messner and Marshal Calhoun because I felt that they were better able to handle the situation than me. I won’t allow you to take it from them by force, but I will allow them to move that responsibility to you so long as you understand the requirements of the compulsion spell and understand that we will continue to track down the people who are trying to kill us.
“And that looks like that means we will be involved with the military again,” I said, feeling as though I was tightening a noose around him. “Are you willing to be our ‘go-to guy’ for military issues, Colonel?”
“I… would… have to discuss that with my superior officer,” Echols said slowly.
“You do that,” I said with a smile. “Let Marshal Calhoun know by the end of the day or I will have lost interest in you as a candidate. Until then, work
with
Messner and Calhoun until they agree to give you control here. If I have to come back, there will be more than three men on the ground, I promise.”
I stood up, pushing the chair back as I went. “Now we all have work to do today but ours is elsewhere. Mike will call this evening for an update, Glen.” He nodded in acceptance. I chuckled a little, looking to Messner. “Make him get some sleep, please.”
As we filed out of the tent, I heard Echols ask in a whisper, “Who the fuck is that kid, anyway?”
“Seth?” Calhoun responded. “Probably the most powerful man in the world.”