The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (66 page)

“Danner, do you know where you’re going?”
Marc asked,
his question relayed via Trebor’s kything.

“The man, or dybbuk,
or whatever he was, gave Brican directions to a warehouse that’s several blocks
from here,”
Danner replied the same way.
“I used to pass by it all the time on my way to and from
Faldergash’s
place during our training.”

They cleared the alley and the buggy dropped back to all
four wheels, allowing Danner to accelerate safely again. Cutting through the
narrow alley was dangerous, because of the insane technique necessary to fit
through, but it shaved precious minutes off their travel time.

They reached a wide street where Danner had to make a
left-hand turn, and he slowed just enough so he wouldn’t lose traction and fly
into the buildings lining the cobbled road. As a city designed by dwarves,
Nocka was laid out with perfectly straight streets and right-angle corners at
every intersection. It made navigation easy, but turning at any great speed was
somewhat problematic.

At this late hour, and with the ongoing war only a couple
miles away, the streets were deserted, so Danner wasn’t worried about hitting
any pedestrians. He did see a few frightened people scurrying from building to
building, but they heard the roaring engine of his buggy approaching and stayed
clear.

Trebor pointed to a wide road on their left, then spoke in
Danner’s mind,
“Once we’ve got her, that
road will take us back toward camp. Marc says it’s a wide, straight-away that
will take us all the way to the Barrier if need be, so we can grab her and haul
ass out of there if necessary.”

Danner gripped the wheel with grim determination, careful
not to give in to his inner tension. Moving at such a reckless speed, the
slightest mistake would probably wreck the buggy, at best, and at worst kill
them all. Then no one would save Alicia. Danner’s hands clenched, then he
relaxed them.

“We’ll get her back,”
Trebor kythed with as much
confidence as he could muster.

“God help the man or
demon who tries to stop me,”
Danner replied grimly.

As they neared the warehouse, Danner killed the engine and
allowed the buggy to coast forward almost noiselessly. He braked softly, and as
soon as they stopped, the three men slipped free and approached the warehouse
cautiously.

“Trebor, sense
anything inside?”
Danner asked.

“Alicia is in there,”
Trebor confirmed.
“She’s scared. Hang
on.”

Trebor’s kythe fell silent. Then pictures appeared in
Danner’s head, and he realized he was seeing through Alicia’s eyes.

“I told her we’re
coming,”
Trebor kythed.
“I can sense
seven men in the room, but that one closest to Alicia, I can’t sense him at
all. He makes eight, and I think we found our dybbuk.”

The man in question was off to Alicia’s left side, and when
Trebor asked her to shift her gaze they found out her head and body were tied
to a post in the middle of the room. One of the men was behind Alicia with a
sword ready to slay her, but when Trebor tried carefully to kythe in his mind,
he still couldn’t see the dybbuk. The man was facing the other way.

“How do we do this?”
Trebor asked.
“Marc wants to sneak in and
take them from behind.”

“They know we’re
coming,”
Danner replied.
“I wouldn’t
trust any supposedly secretive way for us to get in. How do you two feel about
a little frontal assault?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Probably, but that
doesn’t mean it won’t work,”
Danner thought to him,
“and we’ve got an advantage they don’t know about.”

Trebor read Danner’s intentions and couldn’t suppress a
mental chuckle. Then he stopped and grew worried.

“Just be careful,”
he kythed to Danner.
“You know what…”

“I know,”
Danner
cut him off.
“She’s worth the risk. Have
her look up as far as she can to check the ceiling.”

Quickly, Trebor relayed their plan to Marc, then the three
of them hurried back to the buggy. Danner shifted the buggy out of gear, then
they pushed the vehicle fifty yards backward and behind a building.

“Go get ready and let me know when,” Danner said. “
Treb
, you know your first priority. You two just get to
Alicia. I’ll be by your side as soon as possible.”

They nodded and hurried off into the night. Trebor spent
several minutes finding a building tall enough for his purposes, then burst
through the door and hurried up the stairs. He emerged on the roof and leapt
off the edge, glided down with his cloak, and landed softly on the edge of the
warehouse where Alicia was held. There were numerous skylights, which Trebor
had seen through Alicia’s eyes, and as he’d hoped, there were some closer to
where Alicia was tied up. Trebor peeked through one cautiously and saw the room
below in murky detail.

Trebor counted only seven guards now. The man closest to
Alicia, the one they suspected of being the dybbuk, was no longer there, or at
least Trebor couldn’t see him.

“He left through a side door somewhere behind me,”
Alicia replied when Trebor asked her. He quickly relayed the change to the
others, but Danner brushed it aside. Marc was in place by a first-floor window,
so Trebor gave Danner the “go-ahead.”

Trebor drew his sword and readied himself. He wasn’t a
paladin, but nevertheless, Trebor murmured an
altiara
.

“Lord God, forgive these men for what they do, and forgive
us all should their deaths prove necessary. Help me to forgive myself as well.
Protect and guide us, Lord.”

He heard Danner and Marc doing the same in their thoughts as
he scratched an image of the
Tricrus
in the grime on top of the roof. He
stared at it, thinking of his shattered dreams. In the distance, Trebor heard
the engine rev up and the tires squeal as Danner charged forward.

“Now!”
Danner’s thoughts shouted out, and Trebor
smashed through the glass skylight with the hilt of his sword just as Danner’s
buggy came crashing through the main doors of the warehouse. Trebor leapt
through and glided downward. He
mindblasted
the
thoughts of the guard behind Alicia and sent the man to the floor clutching his
head in agony. By the time Trebor’s feet touched down, the guard was
unconscious.

Marc, meanwhile, had bashed through a window on the right
side of the room and cut down one of the men, and he was now rushing toward a
second. Trebor looked to Danner and saw a scene of chaos.

Danner had spun the buggy as soon as he’d entered the room,
and the back-end had smashed into one man and crushed him against a support
beam. The beam had also served to stop the buggy’s spin, but Danner was no
longer anywhere near the vehicle. He had asolved his wings and thrown one man
across the length of the warehouse, not even bothering to draw his sword.

The last two men were awestruck at the sight of a vengeful
angel in their midst, and their surprise lasted until Danner’s fist caved in
one man’s head. The second had the presence of mind to swing his sword at
Danner, which cut through his leather armor but bounced off his body without
leaving so much as a bruise. Danner turned his gaze toward the man, and Trebor
was shocked to see that Danner’s eyes had begun to glow along with his wings.
It was as though a blue flame had erupted and had engulfed Danner’s eyes in an
azure inferno. With a snarl, Danner punched the second man in the chest,
shattering his sternum. The man dropped his sword and clutched his chest, then
fell to the ground dead.

Trebor looked away and saw Marc finishing off the last man,
then the Orange paladin rushed to his sister’s side.

“I’m fine,” Alicia said as soon as her mouth was free. She
rushed across the room and threw herself into Danner’s arms. He held her
tightly, his wings still glowing and his eyes still aflame.

“Oh, Danner,” she cried. “He said you’d come for me.”

“Who?” Danner asked. His voice sounded cold.

“The Yellow paladin who came for me,” she said. “He came to
Fal’s
house and said he’d been sent to bring me to you, but
when we left these men jumped me and tied me up. He said I was bait to bring
you here, and you were sure to come for me.”

“It wasn’t a very good trap, if they wanted to catch or kill
Danner,” Marc said, looking about him. “Especially since they even
told
him to bring two of us along.”

“That’s what the other man said,” Alicia told them. “I never
got to see him, but I heard him before he left. He said his job was
accomplished just in having drawn you away from your uncle and a trap outside
the Barrier. He didn’t care whether you rescued me or not. That’s why he left.”

“So it’s not me, it’s my uncle,” Danner said, and now his
voice wasn’t so much cold as it was a raging blizzard. He made a quick
decision, his thoughts sharp and precise like the blade of a sword. “Marc, take
her to the Prism’s chapterhouse as quickly as you can and stay with her.
Trebor, let’s go.”

“But…” Alicia said, reluctant to let him go. Danner gently
disengaged her hands, showing real warmth for the first time since they’d
broken into the room. Alicia looked up and flinched at the sight of his eyes.

“Alicia, I have to go help him,” Danner replied softly.
“They wanted to keep me away for a reason. That means I can help him.” He
pressed his cheek to hers. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Danner,” she replied, and quickly kissed
his lips. “Go, then, quickly.”

“Let’s move,
Treb
. You’re
driving,” Danner said over his shoulder, already running to the buggy. He
dekinted his wings, jumped onto the back of the vehicle, and started digging
through a pile of stuff on the floor. Trebor slid into the driver’s seat and
fired up the engine, then raced off.

“Where are we going?”
Trebor’s kythe was calm and
surprisingly soft in Danner’s mind, clearly audible despite the roar of the
engine and the ripping wind.

“Take that
straight-away you mentioned,”
Danner replied.

“You sure about this?”
Trebor kythed.

“If they want me out,
I want me in,”
Danner replied grimly.
“If
they want me out, that means I can help.”

“That’s a big
assumption, Danner,”
Trebor warned.
“You
could be throwing your life away.”

“He’s my uncle. I’ve
got to try.”

Trebor nodded silently. As he turned his head to look down a
side street, out of the corner of his eye he saw frenzied motion in the back of
the vehicle.

“What in San’s name
are you doing back there?”
Trebor asked.
“Talk to me. What’s the plan?”

“Just a bit of cloak practice,”
Danner replied. With
swift, practiced movements, Danner slid himself into a harness with a large
expanse of canvas attached to it with strong, lightweight cords. As soon as the
harness was in place, he reactivated his wings and felt strength and energy
flow through his body in a wave of cold, ecstatic power. He clipped a strong
rope to the front of the harness and secured the other end to the buggy.
Without another pair of hands, using the winch to let out the rope was
impossible.

Since having his angelic heritage dominant made Trebor’s
kythes
all but impossible, Danner leaned forward and put
his mouth near the denarae’s ear. “Get up as fast as you can go,” he shouted.
“Don’t brake until you absolutely have to. I need to be as close as possible to
keep up speed.”

“You’re insane,” Trebor shouted back. “You know that,
right?”

Danner grinned in reply, but the expression faded after only
a moment. It felt as though his emotions were locked away somewhere deep inside
him, and it was a struggle to feel anything. In their place was an overwhelming
sense of invincibility and power that scared Danner even as he drank in its intoxicating
nourishment. A fleeting thought told him there had to be some other way of
helping his uncle, but it was washed away in the ecstasy of immortal power
welling up from within him.

Trebor turned onto the wide street he’d pointed out before
and stomped on the accelerator. The buggy leapt forward with such force that
Trebor nearly lost control of the steering wheel. Danner watched their
surroundings as best he could, trying to gauge how close they were to the
Barrier. When he deemed they were close enough, he threw the canvas out behind
him and held on to the back of the buggy with all the strength his immortal
heritage gave to him. The canvas ripped at the harness on his back, trying to
pull Danner up and away from the buggy. Had Danner’s wings been corporeal, they
would have gotten tangled with the cords of the canvas parachute. As it was,
the twisting cords passed through harmlessly, sending chill, tingling
sensations down Danner’ spine.

Trebor held up one hand to signal him, but Danner waited a
few seconds longer before letting go of the buggy’s frame.

He was ripped backward with a jolt that made his jaws clap
together with a loud snap he could hear even over the popping of the canvas
behind him. The rope connecting him to the buggy fell limp as Danner started to
descend, then the slack ran out and snapped Danner forward with another jolt.
He started to gain altitude, then leveled off as the rope balanced the canvas’s
tendency to rise with the forward momentum of the buggy.

From his lofty height, Danner could now see not only the
Barrier, but the plains beyond. He saw a few torches near a dark circle of
seething bodies and knew he would find his uncle in the center of that
Hell-spawned mass. He watched the distance between the buggy and the Barrier grow
quickly less and less, and then he saw Trebor waving his hands wildly and
Danner knew his friend would have to decelerate now.