by Jaxon Reed
The shorter one said, “Magic is easier.”
“Magic should be used against the hunters, not to attract their attention needlessly.”
The umpire called the third out on the next batter, and the pitcher retired to the dugout with his teammates.
“What difference does it make?” The shorter one held a tone of resignation in his voice. “We can’t kill them; they’ve already died. You can’t kill somebody in their afterlife. But they can kill us.”
The taller fae said, “True, they cannot be killed. But we can make their lives as miserable as possible. And we can destroy that home they’ve built for themselves. We can scatter them across the multiverse with no way to get back. We can render them useless.”
They watched as the new pitcher wound up and threw his first ball. The catcher tossed it back to him.
“They still can’t be killed,” the shorter one said, stubbornly.
The pitcher threw another ball.
The taller one shrugged.
The pitcher threw again. After a moment’s hesitation, the umpire jerked his thumb, indicating a strike.
“There are some things,” the taller fae said, “worse than death.”
The pitcher threw again. The umpire called another strike.
“I’d like to offer you an opportunity to strike at our enemy and do some serious harm. And this time, now that so much knowledge has been hard-earned by your predecessors, you certainly shall not fail.”
The pitcher threw once more. The batter swung and missed. A moment later the umpire’s voice floated up to them.
“You’re out!”
Chapter 10
Alone in the Wildflower Room, Cait’s human interface walked down the path toward the rowan door. She stopped suddenly, turning her head toward the flowers to her right as a black-lined rip in the fabric of reality split open, revealing a hole leading to another world. In the distance, the crack of a baseball bat hitting a ball fluttered through.
The split closed as suddenly as it opened. Cait continued staring at the apparently empty field.
“You realize that here, I can sense spiritual entities without difficulty,” she said.
The shorter fae materialized suddenly. Before his true form took shape, he transformed into a tall, handsome man, with thick black hair and tufts of gray above his ears. He smiled, showing perfect white teeth behind a dark gray Van Dyke beard.
“Correct. You can sense spiritual entities when they’re right in front of you. You have a much harder time with your distant sensors.”
Cait remained silent. The fae sneered. He thrust both his arms out and a stream of multi-colored light shot from his hands, incinerating Cait’s body.
Smoke puffed up from the path, a black spot on the ground the only evidence remaining of Cait’s human interface. The fae faded from sight again, his grin and beard the last to disappear.
A moment passed.
The rowan door flew open and the Walker ran over the hill, sliding to a stop at the black spot on the path.
Nancy and Rick ran to join him. They all stared at the mark.
Rick said, “What happened?”
Jason said, “The fae found a way to get in. Somebody took out Cait when she was alone.”
“Are they still here?” Nancy said. She pulled out her iron rod, which instantly lengthened, and assumed a fighting stance.
The breeze blew lightly, the wisteria gently swaying. The three of them stood in a rough triangle, trying to see in all directions at once.
After several tense moments, Jason said, “I don’t think so. I think this was a guerrilla attack. And an effective one at that. I suspect they didn’t stick around after losing two people during their last one. A hit and run makes sense.”
“I can’t believe they got Cait,” Nancy said.
Rick said, “So what’s this mean? No computer?”
Jason nodded. “No human interface, anyway. I’ll have to see how much of her processing power is gone. But right now, even if she’s fully functional, which I doubt, we’ve got no way of communicating with her. Not easily. And, we’re blind. The fae could be wreaking havoc on two or three dozen worlds right now and we’d never know it.”
Rick’s face paled. He gave Nancy a nervous glance. She frowned back at him.
“Come on,” Jason said. “I’ll be able to get a better read on things from her terminal.”
He turned and hurried back toward the rowan door. Nancy and Rick followed.
A light breeze carried the smoke away and brought a thin layer of dust covering the black spot on the path. Flowers swayed gently in the breeze, adding their subtle aroma to the air as it swirled around the blooms.
Several moments passed and soon it appeared as if nothing had happened, save for the telltale scorch where Cait had been standing.
Several more moments passed.
Then, if anyone had been present out of a corner of their eye they might have noticed a slight movement. Likely, they would have dismissed it as a speck of dust in their eye, or maybe considered it a trick of the light.
But if they had been able to see into the spiritual realm, they would have noticed the fae standing there, smirking, his beard twitching in silent chuckles.
Once it became increasingly obvious he was alone, and that nobody was coming back soon, he materialized fully and moved to cast an incantation. Stream of black light spewed out of his hands, and huge rips in the fabric of reality tore open the air above the wisteria.
The fae cast another incantation, and the holes began sucking things through. Flowers, trees, and soil sailed up and out of the room.
Jason, Nancy, and Rick stood behind Cait’s desk in the foyer, staring at the holographic monitor floating in the air.
“I’ve initiated our emergency protocols,” Jason said, “but without Cait, I can’t be sure everything’s going to work like it’s supposed to.”
An alarm clanged at the computer terminal as the room shook suddenly, and dust drifted down from the rafters. Gas lamps flickered, sending odd sluices of light everywhere.
Tiff and Booker came running into the foyer. Tiff said, “What’s going on?”
Jason looked up from the virtual screen and said, “Reality breach in the Wildflower Room. Apparently our guest did not leave, after all.”
He rushed to a collection of iron rods hanging on the wall in a rack like pool sticks, grabbed one and headed for the rowan door. The others followed. As he placed his hand on the latch the door blew open, throwing him backward. Everybody fell down in a jumble of arms and legs.
Beyond the doorway, black and purple light flashed through the air as more and more rips in reality tore open. The last of the wisteria flew off into the nearest opening. Soil and trees ripped away from the ground, sucked through black gashes hanging in the air like malicious maws, pulling everything up and away.
Laughter echoed through the foyer, magically enhanced, bouncing off the walls.
Jason picked himself up off the floor and crouched, holding the rod in one hand. The fae floated in the air in his human form, power coalescing around his hands. He thrust outward with a shoving motion, and streaks of bright yellow light shot through the door. Jason twisted out of the way before a bolt hit, leaving a streak of fire on the floor.
The Walker recovered quickly and rushed the door, throwing the javelin hard. It flew into what used to be the Wildflower Room and separated into spikes. They were quickly sucked away into one of the black gaps in reality.
The gashes grew wider, their darkness covering everything as they merged into one, swirling like oil slowly going through an upside-down drain.
The fae laughed again, his arms twirling. All the soils was gone now, along with everything else in the Wildflower Room.
The fae said, “Time to take a walk, Walker!”
He made a beckoning motion with his hands, and pure energy pulled Jason toward the room. He slid along the floor closer to the black swirling melee. He threw his arms up and caught
the sides of the doorway. The fae laughed and shot a streak of light toward his middle. Jason grunted and let go, reflexively covering his stomach.
He somersaulted away into the maelstrom, his body disappearing into inky darkness.
The fae made more beckoning motions toward the others, still lying on the floor. They were pulled to the doorway in a jumble. Darius and Rick went next, sucked into the black, spinning away.
Tiff jumped up and grabbed a rod from the wall before letting herself get pulled through the door. She rode the air current up through the room, then threw it hard at the fae.
This rod did not have as far to go this time. It flew straight as a lance into the fae’s heart.
He screamed, and the look of horror in his eyes was the last thing Tiff saw before she was dragged into darkness.
The fae spiraled downward, the rod stuck through his center.
PHOOM!
Everything disappeared in the fae’s last explosion. Blackness was replaced by void.
Nancy stood up, shaking. She approached the doorway slowly and looked out at . . . nothing. The room was no longer black. Instead, there was a complete absence of light, color, darkness, reality. Just . . . nothing.
She heard footsteps behind her as other hunters ran into the foyer. She turned, and realized the looks of shock and alarm on their faces probably matched her own.
Niko was the only hunter of Asian descent. She had lived during the Tokugawa shogunate in the mid 1800s. Skinny as a rail, as always, Nancy thought. Now her pretty brown eyes shone bright in alarm.
She was followed by Toya, a beautiful African-American woman who died in the 20th century on her alternate. Ian ran in too, a dark-haired Irishman who had lived during the late Roman Empire.
“What happened?” Niko said.
“A fae got into the Wildflower Room and tore it apart. There were so many rips in reality, I don’t know where everybody went. He zapped Cait’s human interface, too.”
“Is the fae still around?”
“No. Tiff took him out with a rod but his body got swept away with everybody else.”
Toya said, “I’ll take a look at Cait’s terminal, and see what I can do.”
Ian looked through the doorway into nothingness. He ran a hand through his thick black hair and said, “I guess that’s what oblivion looks like. How are we going to travel anywhere without a Wildflower Room to help port us?”
Nancy said, “I think we’re stranded for now. Let’s try and locate the others. Maybe we can help them. If there’s a way to get Cait back online, that should be our first priority.”
“It doesn’t look promising,” Toya said from behind the desk. “The terminal is down. I’ll try to reboot it, but this is not exactly Windows, if you know what I mean.”
“Do your best,” Nancy said. “If we can get Cait back, it’ll help tremendously.”
“Maybe I can find something in the library,” Ian said.
As he ran off, Toya shouted, “Check on Eb, too, while you’re back there! We can use any computer power you can find.”
After a moment’s thought, Niko said, “I should gather up weapons in case we’re attacked again,” and ran off after Ian.
Toya and Nancy exchanged glances. Toya said, “This is gonna take some time.”
Nancy nodded, and suddenly felt very tired. All the recent events caught up with her. The travel back to her own alternate, the sudden loss of loved ones. Everything hit her like a ton of bricks.
She sat down wearily on the floor in front of the doorway and stared out at nothingness again.
“Wait a minute!” Toya said from the computer terminal. “I’m getting a read on two of them. They’re showing up in the chronologistics program.”
Nancy waited, patiently. When Toya offered no more information, she said, “Who do you have a read on, and where are they?”
“Uh, this isn’t good. I’m seeing . . . Rick is it? He must be new, I’ve never met him. And Tiff. I don’t see Jason and the other new guy, though.”
“Where are they? Where are Rick and Tiff?”
“Uh, let’s just say they’re not in good places. Both alternates are showing a lot of deviation. High probability of fae involvement. In fact, both worlds are displaying potential for early chaos. Has this Rick dude had any training at all?”
A flash of black light rippled around Rick. Light suddenly appeared below him as he fell into another world. A floor rushed up to meet him.
Kathump!
Sprawled on the carpet, he felt the floor go down suddenly. People screamed. The distinctive high-pitched whine from prop engines overwhelmed all other sound.
The angle of the floor finally leveled out, and Rick pulled himself up. A flight attendant turned around and saw him getting up. She snapped at him in a clipped British accent.
“Please return to your seat, sir! And for heaven’s sake, buckle in!”
Confused, he stood, then sat in the nearest aisle seat on the back row. Sitting next to a window, a nun stared at him wide-eyed. She crossed herself as he snapped the buckles on his seat belt.
She said, “You weren’t here a minute ago.”
He nodded, and said, “That’s right, Sister.”
He stared all around the plane and tried to figure things out. He looked through the window, and could barely make out the props on the wings. He was in . . . a passenger plane? Everything seemed quaint and old fashioned. The men and women seated in front of him, still alarmed from the plane’s sudden loss of altitude, all wore fine suits and dresses. He looked down and found himself in jeans and a t-shirt.
The interior of the plane pulled at his memory, its outlines and features somehow familiar.
“I know what this is,” he said to the nun. “It’s a DC-4. Man, these used to be the airplane back in the day. I flew one for a while, before we transitioned to the Lockheed Constellation. That was nice because it had a pressurized cabin. And then, of course, we moved to jets.”
The nun stared at him, speechless. She crossed herself again.
The cockpit door burst open in the front of the plane, and a man in uniform wearing a white shirt and a blue pilot’s hat staggered toward the passengers. Rick tilted to the side and watched as the man pulled at his collar, foaming at the mouth. He shuffled a few more paces before collapsing in the aisle. Several people screamed.
One of the flight attendants at the front of the plane stood up, arms stretched out, palms raised. She said, “Everybody calm down! Our co-pilot has the controls, and everything is quite alright!”
Through the doorway, the passengers watched as the other man in the cockpit slumped at the controls suddenly. The nose of the plane went down again, and everybody screamed. The flight attendant rushed in and wrested the copilot off the controls. She pulled the wheel back and the plane leveled out again.
Another flight attendant in the front stood up. She said, “Do not panic! Now, can anybody onboard fly a plane?”
Rick turned and winked at the nun. He said, “How fortuitous.”
He unbuckled his belt, stood, and headed for the cockpit. He passed a man with a plate of food, the inflight meal untouched. Rick said, “Don’t eat the fish.”
He noticed some of the passengers wearing cowboy hats. Near the front of the plane he recoiled in shock at the sight of a man wearing a Nazi officer uniform. By the look on the man’s face, he seemed surprised, too. Then the surprise gave way to a look of . . . disappointment?
That’s odd, Rick thought. Really odd.
In the cockpit, the flight attendants had pulled the co-pilot out of the way by the time he got there. The head attendant looked to be about 40 years old. She stood thin and tall, with a commanding aura that seemed to pulse all around her. Her dark blue eyes took in Rick with a glance. She spoke with the same British accent.
“Can you fly this thing?”
Rick nodded. “It’s been a while, but it’s like riding a bike.”
She blinked, her commanding aura faltering momentaril
y. Then she said, “Well get to it, whoever you are.”
He nodded and took the controls, sliding into the pilot’s chair. He glanced over the instruments and gauges, reorienting himself to the interior of an airplane he had not flown in centuries. Things were slightly different than the way he remembered, but the important dials all seemed to work as they should.
The radio crackled alive. “Tango, I say. Are you there, Tango? Speak to me, old boy.”
Rick looked over to the middle of the instrument panel where a “T” preceded a string of numbers over an ID plate.
He said to the attendant, “Ah. We must be Tango.”
She nodded.
He picked up the mic and said, “Tower, this is Tango. I’m afraid our pilot and copilot have become incapacitated. I’ve taken over the controls and I need to make an emergency landing. Please clear the nearest runway for me, and guide me in.”
A long pause. Finally, the British voice came back, “Who are you? Where are you from? What’s that ghastly accent, I can barely understand you.”
“This is Captain Rick Strickland, uh, retired. Formerly with TWA. It’s been a while since I’ve flown a DC-4, but I shouldn’t have any problems if you boys just point me the way down.”
Another long pause.
“I have no idea who you are, or what you are talking about. You are at the controls of a Victorian Seagull, property of His Majesty’s Air Service. Where did you say you were from again?”
“I’m an American. Always happy to help the Brits out, in war or peace.”
Yet another long pause.
“A colonial! I might have guessed by the accent. Now see here, old fellow. This is not a time for fun and games. If both pilots are incapacitated, that aeroplane is suffering a tremendous emergency. We need somebody to take the controls who at least has a fighting chance of bringing our bird down safely.”