Vicki blinked her eyes and found Gabrielle, Karleen, and Lyssa standing around her… all nude. They looked at her with intense expressions, and it took a couple repetitions before she realized they were asking what happened to Wyatt.
Grams always said she had to own her failures before she could have any successes, so she wiped her face and pushed herself to her feet once more as she fought to control a heaving sob that tried to tear through her.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said. “There’s a ward protecting the bunker, and it’s centuries beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It took my Greater Dispelling and used it to strengthen itself and shock Wyatt. Then, it warped my teleportation to send him somewhere inside the bunker. From what I know of wards, that’s not possible.”
Karleen’s fierce gaze bored into Vicki as she grasped Vicki’s shoulders. “So, what do we do? How do we get Wyatt back?”
“I don’t know that we do,” Vicki answered and fought the sobs that tried to overtake her again. “I can’t get through the ward.”
“What about your grandparents?” Gabrielle asked, and Vicki felt the blood drain from her face.
No. She couldn’t tell her grandparents. Just… no. She already hated herself for what she’d done. She couldn’t add her grandparents’ disappointment to it as well. But they’d have to be told eventually, and if anyone told them, it should be her.
Own her failures, right?
“You might want to shift back to animals,” Vicki remarked. “I’m going to use the Magi equivalent of a video call, and they’ll see everything in my immediate area.”
By the time Vicki finished her first deep breath hoping for something resembling calm, a lioness, night-black jaguar, and a dire wolf surrounded her. One more deep breath. Okay. Time to face them.
She recited the words to the spell she wanted, and an oval-shaped image appeared that was frayed and wispy along its fringe. The image was a window to the destination of the ‘call,’ and showed the back deck at her grandparents’ estate. Both her grandparents stood at one of the staircases that led from the deck to the garden. They were talking with Miles—the oldest groundskeeper on the property—about something before they noticed the spell.
“Vicki, dear,” Grams gushed, “whatever is the matter? You look a fright?”
Vicki started to speak, but the sobs surged again. She clenched her jaw and took a couple breaths to drive the sobs back from whence they came. A faint surface calm descended on her mind, and she tried again.
“I… I’m in trouble, Grams. I lost Wyatt.” She couldn’t meet their eyes. She didn’t want to see their disappointment.
“Tell us everything.” Grandpa said. It was odd. He didn’t sound disappointed.
“We’re tracking Special Agents Hauser and Burke. They disappeared while investigating the black ops organization that hunted Sloane.”
Grams interjected, “Those were the federal agents we met during the abductions case?”
Vicki bobbed a nod. “We found their bunker, but Wyatt triggered a ward that feels like it’s designed to keep people inside it. When I tried Greater Dispelling, the casting strengthened ward and shocked Wyatt into unconsciousness. When I tried to teleport him out, the only thing I can think of is that the ward corrupted the teleportation and sent him deeper into the facility.”
She still stared at the ground as she spoke, so Vicki missed the look of recognition that flitted across Miles’s expression.
“I… can’t break through the ward,” Vicki continued. “I… I failed to protect Wyatt, Grams. I’m… I…”
“Och, lass,” Grams said, her accent slipping out, “ye haven’t failed. We’ll get him back. I promise.”
“No, Maeve, you won’t.” Shock obliterated Vicki’s despair and soul-crushing sadness, and she jerked her head up at the sound of Miles’s voice. It was calm, certain. His brogue coming out in full force. “That working is beyond even yer mastery, the both of ye combined. I will handle this.”
Vicki watched as Miles whispered a word as he took a step and vanished… only to step out of nothingness twenty-odd feet away from Vicki and farther from the ward. His gait was steady, relentless, inevitable as the sea against the shore. As he passed Vicki’s position, he lifted his left hand toward her, his hand cupped as if holding a cylinder… or perhaps a staff.
Before she could fully process what happened, Vicki felt a swell of… happiness? …from the staff as it ripped itself free of her grasp and flipped end over end like a twirler’s baton until it struck Miles’s palm with a clap.
The moment Requiem touched Miles’s hand, its crystal erupted kaleidoscopic incandescence, and all semblance of the kindly old groundskeeper vanished in the blink of an eye. The white, bushy beard almost touching his sternum remained, as did his full head of snow-white hair. But his gait bore no trace of infirmity whatsoever, and a black robe embroidered with all manner of runes and symbols hung from his shoulders.
Those runes flared brighter than the sun for the span of a finger-snap, and sheer power unlike anything she’d ever felt before struck Vicki like the leading edge of a tsunami. Not even the entire Magi Assembly radiated that much raw power. And suddenly, Vicki knew.
The kindly old groundskeeper who ambled around her grandparents’ estate was the greatest Magi to have ever lived. The founder of the Assembly. The author of its guiding tents and the Arcane Laws.
He was Merlin.
Vicki pulled her focus away from her spiraling thoughts in time to see Miles—no, Merlin—stop just short of the ward. He lifted his hand, fingers and thumb splayed wide, and power crackled around it like the globe of a Van de Graf generator as he touched the ward. He stood motionless and silent for several heartbeats. A frozen tableau.
At last, he withdrew his hand as he shook his head, and Vicki thought she heard him say, “So be it. I warned her.”
Her? Her who?
Before Vicki could voice her confusion, he stepped back from the ward and lifted his face to the sky.
“Mab! Did you really think you could interfere again without my notice? Release this ward at once!”
Holy… did he mean Mab, as in Queen of the Winter Fae? The Queen of Air and Darkness? What did she have to do with this? Wait… wasn’t she a myth?
“Answer me, Mab. I know you can hear me.”
Vicki didn’t know how long her runaway thoughts spiraled into the dark recesses of her mind, but however long it was, it was long enough for him to run out of patience.
“Very well,” he said, shouting into the wind. “I gave you the chance.”
He rolled his shoulders, then took a step forward. As he stepped, he thrust Requiem toward the ward, crystal first, and the moment it touched the ward, he spoke a word. It didn’t sound like any word Vicki had ever heard, and the power it released would have staggered the Himalayas.
The ward stood no chance.
The spell shattered, releasing a thunderclap, as lightning erupted from the ground all around the cave entrance. Arcs reached out to kiss the cavern’s walls, and a couple even reached a camera and keypad closer to the doors. A cascade of sparks exploded from those devices, and faint alarms began to blare deeper into the mountain.
He swept Requiem in a side-to-side wave—as if wiping a squeegee across glass—and the lightning dancing across the ground vanished. The way clear, he turned to Requiem.
“Thank you, old friend. It was good to work with you once more, but it’s time to return. Serve my great-great-granddaughter as you would me, and protect her. I fear a sea-change is on the horizon.”
With that, he released the staff, but it didn’t fall. It flew unerringly back to Vicki and came to rest in the grip of her right hand, just where she always carried it. When she pulled her astonished gaze away from the staff, Merlin was gone.
Before she could revel in the absence of the ward, the huge doors to the bunkers began a ponderous slide down into the ground. Within moments, people in tactical gear with weapons stormed through the entr
ance, and the fight was on.
My cheek pressed against something cold. That was the first understanding I processed as I woke. Then… I felt twitchy. Why did I feel twitchy? Why did I feel sore all over?
I opened my eyes. I lay in the center of a room no more than fifteen feet square. The floor was concrete, the walls the same. Industrial fluorescent lights buzzed above my head. One wall held a door; it looked to be made of metal. As I pushed myself to my feet, I saw that I stood inside some kind of circle with weird inscriptions. Runes, maybe? Glyphs?
Where the hell was I?
After some quick stretches and squats to loosen up the tension that seemed to saturate my body, I walked toward the door. I thought I remembered Vicki and our grandparents talking about circles or something during one of my visits recently, but I couldn’t remember what they said. Containment or protection, maybe? It didn’t seem smart to just walk toward the door full steam ahead, so I proceeded at a cautious pace, my hand in front at about half an arm’s length.
My hand touched something right over the outer line of the circle. But there was a spongy-ness to it that felt odd. I wasn’t sure it was supposed to be springy like a trampoline or the like. I placed my hands side by side and pressed against the springy spongy-ness, and the harder I pressed, the more it gave. Until I both heard and felt a POP! and all resistance vanished. I took a falling step forward, and I felt static or needle-points all over my body as I stepped past the edge of the circle. But I was free. Of a sort.
My eyes moved to the door, and I couldn’t help but wonder. Did the people responsible for the circle also lock the door, or did they rely on the circle to contain any arrivals? Time to find out…
My fingertips just brushed the doorknob when alarms blared and wailed beyond the door. They were so loud that they hurt my ears… and I mean hurt. It would be a minor miracle if my ears didn’t start bleeding soon. Was it because of me touching the door? Was that it?
I couldn’t hear anything with the awful racket beyond the door, and I hated the idea of just opening the door and stepping into whatever lay beyond. But at the same time, I didn’t like the idea of staying put like a good Smilodon. Until I knew where I was, there was no good Smilodon.
The doorknob didn’t zap my fingers as I brushed them against it, so I took hold and tried it. The knob turned without impediment, and the door swung into the room as soon as the latch fully retracted into the door. Huh…good for me, but kinda stupid for them. Too much faith in the circle, I guess.
I stepped into a hallway maybe six feet wide. Concrete construction all around. And I promptly brought my hands up to cover my ears, because I stood directly under a speaker for that damned alarm siren. No signs anywhere to be seen, but down the hallway to my right, I saw people in tactical clothing running past. I wasn’t sure I was up for confronting all the people I saw running past that end of the hallway, so I turned to my left. And found a dead end about sixty feet away. Two more doorways broke off from the hallway before the end, but again, no signs.
Damn. This was getting me nowhere.
Something had to give about that alarm, too. I could barely force myself to think with it blaring as loud as it was. I stepped back inside the room with the circle and slammed the door shut. With that minor reprieve, I unbuttoned my shirt and removed it. I then set about wrapping as many layers of cloth as possible between the outside world and my ears. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t going to be perfect. But it muffled that wail enough that inside the room I could barely hear it, which led me to hope I could step outside and hopefully think even with the horrid wailing.
Well, no time like the present to find out…
I opened the door once more and smiled when the sheer tsunami of sound didn’t immediately assault my ears. I stepped into the hall and took a couple breaths. That alarm was still loud, but it wasn’t the eardrum-splitting wail that prevented any and all hope of coherent thought it was just a few moments before.
Good enough.
I didn’t see anyone running past the intersection to my right anymore, but I still felt a little leery about heading that way without checking those two doorways. When I reached the first, I found a steel door with all kinds of strange symbols carved into the metal. They pulsed with a silvery light at a steady cadence, fading in and out with a complete cycle every second to second-and-a-half. There was one of those observation slits covered with a piece of metal that slid to the left, and what looked like a cuff and tray port sat lower down the door.
Huh… just who was so special they rated a metal cell door inlaid with magic? And were they good people? Not for the first time, I wondered if I was inside the bunker where Hauser and Burke disappeared. But if I was, how did I get there?
I fought the urge to growl as impatience swelled within me. I needed to stop thinking, stop debating, and decide. Either check the room or don’t, but the dithering had to end if I wanted to go home to my ladies.
That thought bore a striking resemblance to the tone and feeling of the growly voice, but it didn’t sound like the growly voice. I wondered if that was part of the integration and synthesis it mentioned.
Regardless, I opened the observation port. I’m sure it made a sound as I slammed the sliding cover against its stop, but who would know with the alarm wailing overhead? The room on the other side of the door was indeed a cell, and it held an occupant. A young woman lay on a concrete cot with wafer-thin pad between her and the concrete; she held her pillow folded around the back of her head and pressed against her ears. She wore orange scrubs with a white t-shirt under her top, white socks, and white tennis shoes. One wall held one of those steel toilet-sink combination units you see in pictures of jail cells, and the floor angled down to a large grated drain that looked at least four inches across.
I closed the observation port and moved to the next doorway. It held a door just like the one before, complete with pulsing symbols. I opened the observation port and found an empty room. The concrete slab didn’t even have a thin mattress pad.
I returned to the doorway with the occupied cell. Several rods of steel rebar—almost an inch thick—prevented the door from opening, but only one of those rods sported a padlock and hasp to prevent the rod from being removed. I crouched and looked closer at the padlock and fought the urge to snort. It wasn’t even a high-security padlock; it didn’t look any different than a padlock one might find at the local hardware store.
Damn, people… overconfident much?
I willed the shift back to the synthesis form—the Smilodon-Human hybrid cat-man—and took hold of the padlock with my right furry hand, threading one finger through the arch of the padlock—which barely fit—and pressed my left hand against the hasp with the padlock between my index finger and thumb. It was all about strength, now.
I squatted down just a little bit to lower my center of gravity as I widened my stance, making sure to press my left foot against the bottom of the door. I tensed my muscles and pulled on the padlock’s base with everything I had. Several moments passed before I felt something weaken. Then, all at once, the lock’s mechanism broke free of the arch. I dropped the ‘box’ that housed the lock’s mechanism and removed the arch-piece from the hasp. I was sure breaking that lock made all kinds of noise, but again, who’d know with that insufficiently damned alarm that still blared.
I held the hasp open and slid the rebar out of the wall, then slid the rest of the rebar rods back to free the door. Then, the door swung open of its own accord. Part of me hoped for some kind of grand, heroic entrance like you see in the movies, but with the pillow wrapped around her head to block out the alarm, she had no idea I was there. I couldn’t even see her face.
There was no telling how soon someone could come to investigate that circle, so I didn’t really want to take my time. But I just couldn’t leave her. Sure… there was the chance she was some kind of criminal, but if this was the bunker we originally sought, I really doubted that. Which left me with only one decision. How to get her atte
ntion without scaring the daylights out of her. I approached her bed—such as it was—and tapped my finger against her ankle.
Her entire body flinched as she scrambled into a sitting position and threw the pillow at me before she crab-walked backward as far as she could. She stared at me with wide eyes.
Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her over the alarm. I gestured that I couldn’t hear her and stepped closer until I leaned in front of her with my hands clasped behind my back, trying to present an aura of safety… or at least no imminent threat.
“Who are you? You don’t look like one of the guards,” she shouted into ear.
I moved to lean close to her ear, and I couldn’t keep from grinning as I said, “I’m Wyatt Magnusson, and I guess I’m here to rescue you.”
30
Hauser lay stretched out on her bunk, watching Burke pace their tiny cell like a caged predator. Every time her circuit took her to the metal door, Burke gave the offending item a solid kick before resuming her pacing. Anywhere else—anywhen else—Burke would have worn Hauser’s nerves beyond fraying. But in their captivity, the pacing and resistance Burke displayed served to bolster her own resolve.
It didn’t help that they both sported orange scrubs like inmates, and the process they’d endured before donning them hadn’t been great, either. After all, they were not the bad guys. They stopped the bad guys.
Ever since taking up their current place of residence, they followed a strict regimen of exercise as best they could, in between being taken to an interrogation like some kind of maximum-security mass murderer. Yep. Anytime one of them left the cell, it was hands cuffed behind the back with shackles at their ankles. Not fun at all. If they stayed ‘on schedule,’ someone would arrive to take Burke sometime in the next thirty minutes or so.
Suddenly, the lights flared super-bright then flickered… and kept flickering. A loud BANG! shook their cell, and the lights—along with the door’s magnetic lock—died.
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