The Delacroix didn’t waste any time. They closed with us, and Henri hit us with a command. “Stop! Do not move!” My muscles seized up on me, and I started to panic before I realized that I knew how to slip out of his control. I’d trained for months to the point that it was just automatic. It was disgusting that after all that work, I’d nearly panicked. I pushed through the tissue thin command holding me and returned it tenfold. I didn’t have time to wonder about how natural it felt, but with a prayer to God, I threw everything could pull through the Caduceus.
“Stop!”
Nicholas and Angela, the youngest, fell over onto the wet gravel. Tristan, Katerine, and Henri froze in their tracks. I turned to my own frozen friends and extended my will. “Dave and Jen, shake it off, it can’t hold you.” As quickly as thought, they were moving. They ran to me glancing at our attackers with awe. I looked to make sure my friends were unhurt and forgot to pay attention to our foe.
“Finn!” shouted Dave. He sprang in front of me with a jump worthy of an Olympian. He flew past me and landed in the gravel. I only had a split second to think
What the...
before an incoming motion drew my attention to Henri. He ran straight at me, and my recent intense training with Uncle Mark kicked in. Colette’s training augmented it, but I was the wrong size so everything felt uncoordinated and awkward. I closed with Henri and yelled as I attempted to block his strike. I was technically successful. His knife didn’t hit me in the eye or throat. Instead, it drove deep within my forearm. I saw the point come out through the back in a spray of blood. I didn’t even feel it, so it didn’t slow me down. I yanked my arm back with a twist, trapping the blade between my radial and ulnar bones, and pulled him into me, while I drove my out-thrust elbow into his throat. He dropped the knife and his hands flew to his neck. His face opened wide in shock, as he went down.
“Ow! Holy fuck that hurts.” moaned Dave from the ground. Jen was there next to him. I hadn’t seen her get there.
I checked to make sure none of the others had broken free of my command yet and turned my attention to my friend. “What happened, Dave?”
With Jen’s help, he rolled over showing bloody hands grasped around the spreading red stain oozing from his stomach. He made a jerking motion and came away with a scarlet throwing knife. More blood poured from the hole it left behind. I looked away only to see another river of blood flowing from the knife wound in my arm.
Suddenly, terror hit me. Blood! Too much blood! I was standing in oceans of blood, the blood of loved ones. I was drowning in it. Panic and horror clamped around my limbs—I couldn’t move!
Finn! Go! Shake it off!
shouted Spring in a voice which echoed through my mind.
Finn! Stop it!
Suddenly my arm was on fire. A shot of incredible pain speared through me and broke me free of my crippling vision.
I dropped to Dave’s side and pulled his hands away. He moaned and looked at the blood spilling out from the wound. “Goddammit, Finn. Ow!”
I flashed on what had happened. Dave had seen Henri throwing a knife at me and had jumped between us to protect me. “What the fuck, Dave! You idiot, couldn’t you have just yelled ‘duck’ or something?”
“Jesus, Finn! I was trying to catch it! Next time, remind me to just let you take the hit. Ow. Ow. Ow.”
With only an instant’s hesitation, I plunged my hands into my friend’s blood one more time. I pushed my Sight into his wound and started exploding red blood cells to encourage clotting and supercharged the skin and muscle cells in that area. That’s as far as I got before a silver net of force landed on me and took me down to the ground.
This was a variant of what Colette had done to me. I found myself helpless to move.
Spring, get me up!
My body pushed itself off the ground, and I stood up to meet the gaze of the one who threw it. It was Granny, and her strength dwarfed Colette’s. I was stronger, but I still couldn’t break free. I found myself meeting her eyes. They were a startling pale blue set into the face of an apple-core woman. She was as wrinkled, wiry, and every bit as scary, as I remembered. Her eyes were wide with shock as she regarded me. People didn’t get out of her net—ever.
Technically, I hadn’t either. She just hadn’t counted on there being two of us in this brain. My face spread into a taunting smile, and my index finger came up in wagging reproof. My mouth said in English, “Sloppy work, Granny.”
That’s enough of that Spring. We’re not Dirty Harry. Let me talk
,
okay? We’ve
got to be more diplomatic.
The net around me fell to silvery motes of nothing and vanished. Granny must have dropped it when it didn’t seem to have any effect on me.
Spring smirked in my mind.
Granny said, “Give me the I
esu-sacrificium, beg for forgiveness from God, and I will let you leave here alive.”
“Look,” I said desperately. “I don’t want to fight, but I can’t give you what you want. I need it. I promise, I won’t abuse it. Can’t we form an alliance? We both face the same enemy right now, and I know how ruthless he—it is. I can—”
“There are no other arrangements possible, Mister Morgenstern. After what you have done, it is obvious that you are not fit to be a Bearer of the Cross.”
My heart sank. She knew what had happened with Colette.
“Give it to me, and beg for forgiveness for your sins before you are branded an enemy of God.”
Despite my guilt, stated desire not to piss Granny off, and previously noted lack of strong belief in God, her questioning of my faith burned. “So you’re claiming to be God now? The purveyor of his mercy and executor of his justice?”
“Of course not, and I will not tolerate your blasphemy. God has entrusted the
Iesu-sacrificium to us. It is his will. To defy his will is to defy God.
“
You seem quite certain this is his will. Did God appear to you in a burning bush?” I clamped my mouth shut to avoid provoking her even more. Damn, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. This wasn’t me—ah shit! It was Colette—her influence—I hoped.
“
Do not mock our holy calling. This heavy burden was placed upon us
by Jacque
s
De Molay, last of the Knights Templar, as he sat in prison the day before he was burned alive. Ours is a faith and purpose spanning centuries, with a dedication that you could not possibly fathom.”
I bristled at the condescension, and couldn’t let it lie. “I know your beliefs
,
old woman, you track down the pieces of the cross and kill anyone who stands in your way. Tell me this, how could a piece of the holy cross
find its way into a burial mound created over a thousand years ago in America? That’s where I found it. Hasn’t it occurred to you that God’s will is greater and more mysterious than even you can know? He saw fit to deliver this burden to me. How can you question His will?”
“It is not His will that I question. Deliver the relic to me with proper deference and contrition, and I shall let you live.”
“Don’t hold your breath. I don’t kneel to you, only to God.” Holy shit, did that come from my mouth?
As I struggled to regain my balance, a double crack of sound hit me. The first came from a rifleman running into the courtyard, the second was his bullet hitting the car behind me.
I reacted on instinct. I reached out and twisted the light around me. I finally understood how Colette had done it. I poured my will into it and suddenly, the entire world disappeared into a horizontal smear of colors. Grays, browns, greens, and a few lines of glowing white shimmered in bands around me. It was like being in a tornado of light. I couldn’t see a thing. Crap! This never happened to Colette.
Spring still controlled my strings, and my body dropped to the ground as another shot spanged into the car behind me. Several people in the courtyard cried out, and my body started crawling. I didn’t have to ask. She said,
We’ve got to get Dave and Jen and get out of here.
I listened to the chaos around me, and I realized that everyone else was caught in the kaleidoscope of light I’d created. I let Spring keep the reins and concentrated on keeping up the flow of power into my will. I crawled head first into Jen.
“Ah!” yelled Jen.
“Shhhh. It’s me! It’s me!” Spring hissed with my voice. “How’s Dave?”
“I’m working on him, it will take a couple of minutes before he is ready to be moved.”
“Fuck that!” said my mouth in a hiss. “Suck it up, Davey boy, we need to go.”
Dave hissed back, “Next time, I’m going to dive
behind
you.”
The stream of power I commanded continued to roar through me to be transformed and manifested as my will. It was a bit like controlling a raging flood with walls of sandstone. Where the power met my will, it scraped and burned. The force of it abraded my mind, and I could feel bits of me being carried off. I couldn’t worry about that. Even with the fireworks, Granny could still probably locate me with her Sight, so I clamped down on my aura like I—Colette—had done when she broke into my room. That’s why I hadn’t seen it at first! I prayed it was enough. It was tough doing both things. Like patting my head and juggling cats at the same time.
Hurry up
,
Spring.
Finn, can you pick up Dave and try to heal him while still keeping up the light show?
No. I’m maxed on the hoodoo. I’m not going to be able to keep this up too much longer either.
“Okay Dave,” said Spring with my lips. “I’m going to pick you up. Try not to squeal like a girl.”
“Finn,” said Jen. “I’ll try to deflect their attention, then you can drop your whatsits, so we can see.”
“You go, girl!” came tumbling out of my mouth as my hands groped around to find Dave’s head and knees. After a few false and embarrassing starts, I managed to pick him up. Jen got up with us, grabbed my arm and the three of us walked slowly away from the car. I was pretty sure it was away from the car. I hoped.
Meanwhile, the power continued to roar eagerly through my core. The edge of me containing it, channeling it, screamed in pain as it succumbed, layer by layer and was stripped away, and I was getting tired. Most of the power came from the totem, but it still took effort for me to direct it.
I thought to Spring,
Ask Jen...
My mouth whispered, “Jen, do you have it up yet?”
“Yes.”
Spring kept talking through my mouth. “Okay, Jen, Finn’s going to let go of the light show in a few. Let’s pray that your trick will work against the holy rollers.”
Spring, keep walking until I say stop. I want to get as much distance as possible between us.
I took back my mouth. “I’m going to get us into the colonnade, where we can get some cover.”
“You can see?” asked Jen.
“No, but I remember the place pretty well. We shouldn’t be too far.” I kept the flow going and the walls of my mind kept abrading away.
“When were you here?” asked Dave.
I didn’t even grunt a response. Jen was now guiding us. I could only concentrate on the erosion of my control and the increasing pain and exhaustion. Finally, it became more than I could bear, and I let loose my grasp of the light and the power. As the power flowed away, it took my consciousness with it.
“Finn! Come on, wake up.” Someone slapped my face gently.
I came to. We were in the southern colonnade, leaned up against the stone between two arches. It wasn’t a very good hiding place, and my first thought was to get us out of there. My second thought came when I tried to move, and I discovered that some bastard had tied huge lead weights to my arms and legs. I couldn’t see them, but it was the only good explanation why I could barely twitch my limbs. Maybe this hiding place was good enough after all.
“Thank God,” said Jen, whose face hovered a foot from mine. “There is no way I could move you any further.”
“What happened?” I asked with my own mouth.
“You collapsed, dropped Dave, and fell flat on your face.”
“I guess that explains why my nose hurts. Do you still have your hoodoo up?”
“No, I dropped it about fifteen minutes ago.”
My brain tried to squeeze up a little urgency, but nothing happened. “So what—”
“The Delacroix are all out hunting for you or nursing their wounds. They carried knife guy and the girl inside. Granny got the other three up. The others headed out of the courtyard.”
Damn, I hoped they got to Henri quickly. I was afraid I’d crushed his trachea. If so, they wouldn’t have much time to heal him. I didn’t want to see either Henri or Katerine hurt. Henri was generally a little full of himself, but it was not without reason. He was talented and handsome, and he knew it. Katerine was a bit too like Granny for my tastes, but they were both good, God-fearing people.
“Can you help me move Dave,” asked Jen, “so we can get out of here?” I flopped my head over and saw Dave out cold against the stones beside me. My entire body hurt and my arm was screaming panic at me, but I tried to move. A wave of darkness swept through my vision. “I would, if I could move my own arms and legs. Just...just give me a minute to rest...” And, I was out again.
The next thing I knew, a pair of strong arms wrapped around me. Dave was hoisting me off the floor. When he saw my eyes open, he said, “Jesus, Finn, what have you been eating? Rocks?”
I managed to say, “Sorry.”
“Shut up... okay Jen, which way?”
“I think we should get as far away from this place as possible.”
“Amen, sister,” he agreed and started walking to the open end of the courtyard.
“No,” I said between breaths. “No, we’ll be caught. No place to hide. Open fields.”
Dave scowled at me. “You got a better idea?”