Authors: Edward Lazellari
“Cat…,” Lelani said quizzically. She came around the island staring at a spot to Cat’s left on the stove. “That red light…”
Cat thought she might have set the oven timer by accident, until she saw the lens flare on her kitchen window and realized the red dot Lelani pointed to glided along the stove, the wall, and toward her.
Cat lunged at Lelani. Trying to push the redhead back was like pushing a confused horse. The kitchen window behind Cat exploded, as did the spice rack on the counter and the wall behind it. Several more shots in quick succession, eerily quiet on the firing end, blew holes through the wall next to the window as the gunman attempted to recover his target. Cat’s kitchen exploded into shards of shrapnel. The centaur, finally realizing they were under attack, backed up, pulling Cat with her into the dining room.
“He’s on the roof next door!” Cat shouted.
Mrs. Sullivan’s building was a floor higher than hers and jutted out farther in back, giving the gunman a perfect vantage point into her apartment. The dinner table blocked their way to the front door—but before either woman could make a dash for it, the dining room window crashed inward, spraying them with glass. A man dressed in black rappelling gear and a ski mask swung in on a line and landed loudly between them.
The invader’s momentum had pushed Cat back toward the kitchen. He turned toward her just as she hit the ground and smashed into her stove. Cat couldn’t help notice how awful the man smelled, like he’d just crawled out of the sewer.
Lelani attacked the invader from behind. He was swift, grabbing her wrist and twisting her arm until Cat thought it would break. The move was intended to throw Lelani off her balance, but it didn’t work. He didn’t know there was four hundred pounds of invisible horse attached to the redhead. Lelani put her free palm up toward his face and sparked a phosphorus ball. She grew it rapidly and fired at his head. He twisted to avoid it, and the shot flew wildly into the wall and curtain, setting it ablaze.
Cat grabbed the kettle off its burner and doused the flames.
Lelani started another phosphorus ball, but the man whipped out a canister of mace and sprayed her point-blank. The centaur shrieked. He let her go and she jolted backward, slamming into the far wall and collapsed to the ground, hands pressed against her burning eyes.
The assassin pulled out a hunting knife and turned toward Cat. She banged her head into the oven handle trying to getting up, jostling the can of bug spray on the counter. As the assassin came toward her, she grabbed the can, pressed the nozzle, and ran the spray past the burner, igniting a jet of fire that she swept around toward the killer.
His mask and turtleneck caught immediately. He dropped the knife, pulled off his mask and vigorously patted out the flames on his shirt. The man had a Middle Eastern look about him—black hair in a military crew cut, unruly eyebrows, and deep-set brown eyes.
Cat ran toward the Colt .32 in her coat on the sofa. The assassin grabbed Cat from behind. Lelani barreled into him with the force of a freight train and he pulled Cat along, refusing to relinquish his grip. Lelani’s eyes were closed and tearing, but she didn’t need to see him to know where to stick her dagger. She stabbed him repeatedly on the side of his torso. He finally let go of Cat.
She retrieved her gun, clicked the safety and waited for Lelani to finish. The killer head-butted Lelani harder than should have been humanly possible. The centaur staggered and fell over. He squirmed his way out from under her, seemingly unaffected by Lelani’s vicious stabbings. Cat fired three shots point-blank into his chest. The force drove him back, but didn’t stop him. He continued to move toward her. She fired a shot into his temple, clearing out bone and gray matter. Again it drove him back, but he righted himself and came again.
Oh shit,
Cat realized.
He’s one of those.
The assassin was almost upon her. Cat was about to let fly her remaining bullets, when her front door smashed open.
Two men dressed like Secret Service agents burst in and fired indiscriminately at the attacker. Their silencer-tipped guns drove the killer back down the hallway toward the bedroom until their clips were empty. He started toward them again.
“Hold him!” came an order from a third man—about five feet two, of stocky build, wearing an expensive business suit with thinning coppery red hair and a thick neatly trimmed beard to match. He was carrying the big fire ax Cal kept in the stairway by the fire alarm.
The Secret Service guys grabbed the assassin’s arms and held him.
“Do you see, Tom … what I mean about magic now?” said the shorter man. “You can’t kill him by normal means. He feels no pain and is a thrall of a greater power.”
“Okay,” said the older of the two men, looking a few years short of retirement age. “I’m a believer, Mr. Robbe. What now?” They struggled to hold the killer.
Mr. Robbe approached the killer, reared back with the ax, and as his men ducked, swung for the assassin’s neck.
2
A well-groomed man in his thirties, with hazel eyes, brown hair, and tanned complexion brewed four cups of tea in Cat’s kitchen. He wore an olive cardigan sweater over a pink dress shirt with the sleeves folded up one turn, pleated brown trousers, gold Rolex watch, oxblood loafers, and stood perhaps two inches taller than his boss, the man that had come in the nick of time.
The Secret Service guys had left with the still-moving dismembered remains of the attacker rolled up in a carpet that had yet to be laid in the apartment upstairs.
Mal had arrived in a limo with a black security van trailing him. Cat didn’t feel right about lying to the rookie cop who wondered about all this activity. The kid’s inexperience helped cover their story that the men in suits were the carpet store owners personally picking up a return because of a shortage of laborers and that what he thought were gunshots were actually a nail gun’s misfires. It was a thin story, but Cat sold it and would never again complain about the deficiencies of a public education.
Robbe’s people identified the assassin as a world-level terrorist suspected of dozens of killings throughout the Mideast and Europe, including children and families. Mal sent the killer to his research facility, where he’d be put to a final rest in one of his industrial ovens. The diminutive boss was unfazed by his role in making this man “disappear.”
Lelani finished flushing out her eyes in the kitchen sink. They were bloodshot to the nth degree. She had a nasty welt just above the bridge of her nose where she’d been butted. A few inches lower and he would have broken her nose. She joined Cat in the living room.
“This is Sergeant Robbe,” Lelani said, formally introducing the man.
“Sergeant Malcolm Robbe of the Dukesguarde, at your service,” he said. He held out his hand palm up. Cat accepted it and Malcolm bowed. “Lady MacDonnell,” he said.
Cat made an awkward curtsy.
“No,” Lelani said, shaking her head.
“Huh?”
“You’re his superior.”
Malcolm straightened and smiled. “She means you are not required to curtsy. I actually work for a living.”
“Oh,” Cat said, cursing the stupid rules of aristocracy under her breath.
“This is my partner and man Friday, Scott Wilcock,” said Malcolm.
Scott approached with the tray and placed it on the coffee table. He shook in the traditional manner—his hand and his grip were soft. The term “partner” took on a new dimension.
Scott greeted Lelani more cautiously.
“You’ll have to excuse Scott,” said Malcolm. “Aandor and magic are new to him.”
“Join the club,” said Cat.
“I’m creating a twelve-step program for spouses and partners,” Scott said mischievously. “Meetings twice a month, and be prepared to sing ‘Kumbaya.’”
“I’m in,” Cat said. She liked him immediately. Scott had been thrust into the same boat as she; it was nice to have another oarsman.
Lelani claimed a spot on the floor in the space between the loveseat and couch. She swallowed one of her purple allergy pills with her first sip of tea.
“I’ll have some men come in to repair your apartment,” Malcolm said.
“That’s very nice of you,” Cat said, “but—”
“Least I can do after all you’ve been through. Finding you wasn’t hard; I have friends in the authorities that clued me into what had happened the past few days. I’m a man of some means in this reality. Had I never been reminded of my origins, I would not have died unhappy.”
“Damn straight,” Scott mumbled.
“The memory spell was our doing,” said Lelani. “I know that it was not a pleasant experience, but Lord Dorn was systematically hunting down the guardians.”
Lelani looked glumly into her tea. Cat understood that the centaur felt responsible for not rousing the prince’s guardians from their long sleep sooner. She barely managed to save Seth and Cal. For all her competence, Lelani was still young—hardly a woman. The pressure she was under would have broken most folks, but high stakes for her people in the Blue Forest spurred the centaur on.
Cat placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Tristan was not your fault,” she told the girl. Dorn had murdered Cal’s lieutenant.
“A shame,” Mal said solemnly. “I was just reading about his death. My security service has been searching for all the guardians. I’m gathering everyone at my suite in the Waldorf-Astoria as we speak. Has anyone heard from Fronik? Where would a centaur hide in this world?”
Lelani’s sullenness took on an angry tinge. Cat could feel her muscles tense under her hand. The handle of her teacup cracked, and the tea spilled on the carpet.
There goes that set.
“We haven’t yet been able to locate Galen, Linnea, or Tilcook, either,” Mal continued. “Is it possible they changed their names and are raising the prince somewhere safe?”
Cat and Lelani glanced at each other, realizing Malcolm had only half the story. “Galen and Linnea were killed in a car accident thirteen years ago,” Lelani said. “The prince has been lost since infancy. He is unaware of his identity.”
The tight line of Malcolm’s mouth betrayed his disapproval. “But he knows, now,” Mal said. “The spell…”
“The memory spell undid Seth’s damage from thirteen years ago,” Lelani explained. “But the prince was only an infant then. What memories could he have? A stormy night under a tree for which he’d have no frame of reference?”
“Then the prince is completely unaware…” Mal broke off and again studied the view outside, his face painted with concern.
“Not much longer, hopefully. The captain and Seth arrived at the prince’s home in Maryland this morning.”
“See,” said Scott, rubbing the tension from Mal’s shoulders.
“What is MacDonnell’s plan once we have Danel back?” Mal asked more cautiously than his previous tone.
Cat wasn’t comfortable with Malcolm’s casual reference to her husband. Her husband, it seemed, had several titles, including “mister,” and his sergeant ought to be using one of them.
“Captain MacDonnell will adopt the boy,” Lelani said.
“What?” Cat blurted out.
“Apologies, my lady—I thought the captain had discussed it with you.”
Cal had brought the matter up, but they had not made any final decisions. At least Catherine hadn’t.
“After that…,” Malcolm said. “What about Aandor?”
“We haven’t thought that far ahead,” Cat said, though she wondered if Cal had, and simply hadn’t clued her in. Her husband was a different man—more buttoned up and secretive.
“Is there something specific you had in mind, Sergeant Robbe?” asked Lelani.
Malcolm took another sip and let the question hang for a moment. He stretched out the pause, studied them, and seemed to conclude they did not have the answer he was looking for.
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s a moot point while the boy is in danger.” He looked out the window again, lost in his ponderings.
“He told me about his village…,” Scott said. “Back there.” Scott jabbed at the wall behind him with a thumb, but Cat understood it to mean much farther away.
“His village?”
“Malcolm’s people are in a similar situation as mine,” Lelani said.
“He’s a centaur?” Cat asked.
“What’s a centaur?” Scott asked.
“He’s a dwarv.”
“A dwarf?” Cat repeated.
“That’s not very nice,” Scott insisted.
“Dwarvs,” she repeated, emphasizing the V, “are highland dwellers. Farrenheil drove them from the eastern kingdoms. They are craftsmen—armor, shields, weapons, jewels…”
Mal emerged from his ponderings to explain. “Dwarvs and men share common ancestors, but like Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons we diverged at some point long ago. Farrenheil does not consider us ‘pure.’”
“Farrenheil gets worse the more I learn about them,” Cat said.
“The only laws their ruling family enforce are the brutal ones that serve them,” Mal said. “Prince Danel was our best hope at keeping those jackals in their place. That’s what this universe hop was for. If Danel dies, Farrenheil will soon have the next closest claim to the regency of the empire. All these breeding races—crazy way to run a society, wouldn’t you agree?
“Here’s the craziest part … there are several girls who would qualify for princess regent of the empire—except, we don’t count girls. One of them will be paired up with the prince to produce the next emperor.”
Cat was frustrated with all the rules and accords that had turned her life upside down. “Why do the people put up with this crap?”
“People?” said Mal, disgusted. “Wars burn down their farms and homes. But they could give two bits about politics or law even though it’s in their best interest to care. They care only enough to know what the highborn ladies are wearing to the balls, who ranks at the top of the jousting lists, or the latest scandal or gossip.”
Cat felt a headache coming on. Cal’s family was neck deep in this ass-backward method of running a society. It went against everything she believed in, everything she struggled for in her youth to bring about a more inclusive society. She followed Lelani’s example and stayed quiet, something she imagined she’d have to learn to be better at if she ever met her in-laws. Cat would present a united front with Cal in public, and take these issues up with her husband in private. If he really expected her to go back to Aandor with him, and part of her hoped that wasn’t inevitable, some commitment to change was forthcoming. Some agreements on how they would raise their children.