Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  I also wore my cloak. The restriction on capes only applies to heroes.

  We headed out to the garage. Bronze was already waiting.

  “Do you want to come along?” I asked. “We’re trying to be sneaky.”

  Bronze was of the opinion she could be sneaky.

  “As a beautiful giant of a horse?”

  She obligingly changed color into mottled shades of grey.

  “Uh,” Mary started. We both studied at her. She licked her lips. “Not to cast aspersions or anything, but I thought the chameleon ability thingy was from enchanted bracelets…?”

  “Apparently, she’s learned how to fix her chameleon circuit.”

  “What’s a chameleon circuit?”

  “A geek reference. Skip it. She’s duplicated the enchantment. Don’t ask me how.”

  “Oh, I can tell you that.”

  I looked at Bronze. Bronze looked at me. We both looked at Mary.

  “Uh, well… she’s part of you, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, as Bronze nodded.

  “Well, you’re a crazy-genius wizard type, right?”

  “For the sake of argument, I’ll agree.” Bronze simply nodded. She thought I was a crazy-genius wizard type, too.

  “Did you think she wouldn’t share any of your talent?”

  “I never thought much about it,” I admitted. Bronze snickered. “Okay, smarty pants. Do you want to be a horse for this, or would you rather possess a car?”

  Bronze cocked her head at the Impala, thinking it over. The car would be faster and provide a trunk in an emergency. It could conveniently carry more. It couldn’t leap a wall and go charging into a house, though. Then again, it wouldn’t be immediately regarded as unusual… Bronze turned one eye to me.

  “No, I don’t have a preference.”

  Bronze tossed her head and snorted, narrowly avoiding a ceiling beam. She stepped lightly to the side, out of the way, and touched one hubcap with a hoof. I felt her gather herself and I stepped back. She leaped…

  The Impala started, revving high, then settling to a fast idle.

  “Interesting,” I said, examining the inanimate statue.

  “What?” Mary asked.

  “There’s not a mark on it. I expected some melting around the point of contact, but the hoof is undamaged.”

  “You did say orichalico-whatever—”

  “Orichalcum.”

  “Yes, yes—the magic metal stuff. You did say it was a magical superconductor.”

  “Yes. Maybe we should see about putting an orichalcum bolt in the bumper, or getting some jumper cables made.”

  “Now?”

  “No, you’re right. We have things to do. Let’s get moving.”

  Moments later, the engine revved, the tires grabbed, and we shot down the driveway toward the road.

  Salvatore’s house was mostly rectangular concrete and glass, set in a grassy lawn, all surrounded by trees. It wasn’t an estate, just a big house with a sprawl of yard. The trees on the borders of the property made it feel more isolated, diminishing the sounds of the neighbors and the not-too-distant highway. The trees also concealed a fence, increasing the privacy without compromising the illusion.

  I liked the place. It was designed by somebody who enjoyed cubist art and Frank Lloyd Wright. The only things I didn’t like about it were the overly-religious motif in all the ground-floor windows and the full-sized swimming pool. I’ve got nothing against hot tubs or wading pools, but I drown far too easily for my taste. I also thought the grill was a bit overdone. It was a grill fit for a football team’s dinner. I could stuff full-sized logs in the firebox—or a body. Given Salvatore’s occupation, it might have been used that way at some point, but I doubt it. He would never grill food on it again.

  Mary and I parked on the shoulder of the road, between driveways. Call it a quarter mile or so from his gate. We all—Bronze included—searched the place in the rear-view mirror, floating an invisible scrying sensor through the building.

  “Well, the place won’t burn to the ground,” I observed. “The internal walls are concrete, too. It’s probably designed to be earthquake-proof. Want to bet the place was built with a bomb shelter in the basement?”

  “The place can burn out,” Mary mused, “but it would take Firebrand to burn it down. Or a determined horse of exceptional ability to kick it to pieces,” she added, patting the dashboard. The engine rumbled contentedly.

  “So, where’s Salvatore?” I asked. “We’ve been through every room and every wall. He’s obviously got gunmen hanging around, but he’s nowhere to be seen.”

  “Basement?” Mary suggested. I adjusted the scrying sensor, panning down and moving it around below the house. Yes, he had a basement where he built model sailing ships as a hobby. He also had a fallout shelter. Nice one, too. He wasn’t in either section.

  “I don’t know where he would go,” she admitted. “I’m not his appointment secretary.

  “I don’t suppose you have enough to do a scan for him?” I asked.

  “I can scrape up enough energy if I have room for the full monty—chanting, spell diagrams, the works. I’m still not sure how you manage it without all the extras.”

  “I reach farther when scraping up energy. When it comes to energy-gathering tendrils, I’m extremely well-endowed.”

  “So I’ve noticed, O Ancient Master of the Mystic Arts. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know the guy well enough to target him. Got anything intimately personal of Salvatore’s for me to use as a fix?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then we can settle in and wait. He might not be out all night.”

  “I don’t like it,” Mary grumped.

  “Well, we could kill time in other ways. We could drop by Ted’s house and pick up our old stuff. I want my underwear, our amulets and rings, all that sort of thing. I think I mentioned I’m a little sentimental about my sword. It’s a copy of the one I gave Heydyl.”

  “That’s fair. How will you find the place?”

  “A paper map, first, to get a general location, then a compass with an orichalcum needle. I figure I can home in on the phone pretty easily when the gate is active.”

  Mary cocked her head at me.

  “You seem so much more…”

  “Sexy?”

  “No.”

  “Dorky?”

  “No.”

  “Quixotic?”

  “If you’ll shut up a minute, I’ll think of it.” I decided to let her think. At last, she said, “You seem more dynamic. I think that’s the word.”

  “Dynamic.”

  “Motivated. Active and engaged. Willing to get up and go do and make things happen. No,” she corrected, “maybe ‘willing’ is the wrong word. More than willing. Eager, maybe.”

  “I am in a better mood. No idea why.” The interior light came on for a moment, shining a golden-yellow color before going out again. “Oh, now I have an idea,” I finished.

  “You two,” Mary snickered. “So, are we going to wait here all night or track down your numbskulls?”

  “We should at least find them,” I agreed. “We can check on Salvatore again before I attempt to bargain with vampire hunters.”

  “Seems fair to me. Let’s go.”

  Suspending a pointer over a map, targeting the active gate in my old phone, pointed us to the little town of Thermal, California, over a hundred miles away.

  “Too far?” I asked. Mary shrugged.

  “I don’t have to grab Salvatore tonight, I guess. What does Bronze think?”

  The gearshift dropped into Drive and we were off. She kept it reasonable, since we were on well-traveled roads, but she does have an aggressive driving style. She doesn’t like slow drivers and isn’t afraid to roar past them and spit fire as she does so. She didn’t cause any crashes, but there were several panic stops.

  Mary, I noticed, kept her seat belt fastened and tended to white-knuckle the door. She’s a vampire. We don’t have any real b
lood circulation, aside from the incidental movement from changes of internal pressure. Flexing muscles, moving arms and legs, all those will move blood around inside us, but we don’t have heart action at night. It takes a while for white knuckles to go away.

  As for me, I wore my seat belt because that’s what you do in a moving vehicle. The traffic around and suddenly dropping behind us was utterly unconcerning. Not that I have any special immunity to worry—far from it! But Bronze was driving, Bronze knew what she was doing, and Bronze I trust with my life. She was unworried, slightly annoyed with obstacles—other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights; those things—and pleased to be out for a brisk trot.

  I spent my time gathering up magical energy and casting spells manually. When we left the garage, I put an energy scoop on the windshield to absorb magical power while we were moving. It helped power other spells I wanted.

  Oh, my. Can I plug a small electromagical transformer into the cigarette lighter? I may have to get Diogenes to make one for her.

  Once we made it to Thermal, we got off highway eighty-six and headed back west again, along Airport Boulevard. We stopped to feed Bronze and pick up a local map. With it, we took bearings from my new compass, drawing lines, triangulating, and heading for the intersection.

  The house was a two-storey frame structure in a neighborhood full of them. It was once a neighborhood for the well-off, probably right before World War Two, but didn’t stay that way. Yards were only moderately well-kept, paint peeled in out of the way places, and one house had a large piece of plywood nailed over one of the ground-floor windows, and it had been there for a while. Sidewalks were mostly intact, but the concrete had grass in the cracks, slabs were beginning to tilt, and one broken slab held a muddy crater. It was a good neighborhood for any enterprising young man with a lawn mower and an edger. It was a good neighborhood for any imaginative child with a bicycle and a mother with an understanding attitude about dirt.

  The house we wanted was no exception. The yard needed a little attention and the brick walkway angling up the slight slope to the front porch had tufts of green squeezing between the bricks. The house was a pale yellow, painted in the last five years or so, and otherwise in good shape. The driveway leading to the garage in back had recently been covered over with new gravel, too.

  We cruised past it to confirm the location. Now sure of our target, we drove on and parked behind a store to get ready. I switched from the armored outfit to more mundane clothes—still with armored underwear, mostly because I’m not as trusting as I could be—my not-suicidal bomber vest, and my cloak, transformed into an overcoat.

  Mary stayed in her tactical ninja gear, but she got out a carbine with a thermal scope. She also pulled out a long, thick silencer for the carbine, but didn’t screw it into place.

  “Are those armor-piercing rounds?” I asked, as she checked and loaded her weapon.

  “Yes.”

  “What for?”

  “Shooting through walls. These are wooden houses, not concrete or brick.”

  I didn’t argue. Why would I? Her concern for my welfare was strangely touching. She swept the house with the thermal scope, counting people. I tried scrying the house, but there was a charm on the place. It wasn’t much of a defense. I could have broken through it by accident if I hadn’t been on the lookout for something like it. Breaking it might have triggered something else, however, so I left it alone.

  That might have been its purpose, come to think of it. If someone probes the house, the spell warding it breaks, alerting those inside. It could work that way, I suppose, but I think the intent was to hide the house, make it register as a Perfectly Normal House, regardless of what magical shenanigans went on inside. Unfortunately, it wasn’t set up to deal with the magical signature of an active interuniversal wormhole.

  “Four men, two women, two kids,” Mary told me, whispering in my ear through a spell. I didn’t want to let anyone know I was in constant contact by wearing obvious communications gear. “The kids are upstairs, in bed. One of the women is upstairs with one of the kids. The other woman is downstairs with the men.”

  “Got it.”

  “Does it matter to you that one of the kids appears to be sick?”

  “Sick?”

  “The upstairs woman just hung a new IV bag for the kid. The bed has a rail on it and an electric blanket. I think I see a collection of pill bottles, but it’s hard to tell through the scope. So, yeah, sick.”

  “I don’t think it matters. At least, not for this. I’m bluffing with a fake bomb, not a real one.”

  “Roger that.”

  It wasn’t even midnight when I rang the doorbell, package in hand. An older gentleman answered it. He was tall, heavyset, with a fringe of grey hair around the gleaming dome of his head. I saw the flickering of pale fire about him, the aura of a vampire-repellent charm.

  “Yes?”

  “Delivery for Ted,” I told him, and handed him the cardboard box. He took it by reflex even as his eyes widened. “It’s the new underwear,” I went on. “You did say you wanted to meet in person, didn’t you?”

  He stepped back and shouted for “the boys.” Three younger men came running. While they pounded up the stairs, my overcoat turned back into a cloak and I pulled the deadman switch off my belt.

  Handguns appeared out of nowhere, impressing me with their firepower. They were all crowding the door, though, which did not impress me with their professionalism. At least they were all wearing charms to ward off vampires. No doubt they wore them full-time, all the time.

  I waggled the deadman switch at them.

  “Now, now. We don’t want to do anything hasty!” I gestured to emphasize the vest.

  There was a thick, difficult silence, but nobody shot me. There seems to be a rule about not shooting the guy wearing explosives while you’re in the blast zone. I do love it when a plan comes together.

  “What do you want?” Ted asked, quietly.

  “My stuff. I’ve already given you the lives of six idiots and a brand-new box of bulletproof underwear. I’m tired of this. Either hand it over or quit dicking around and start shooting.”

  “I don’t think we can do that.”

  “Fine. That’s all I needed to know. You’re an untrustworthy, lying bunch of bastards who wouldn’t recognize an opportunity if it bit you—although I haven’t. You’ve stolen from me, attempted to double-cross me, accepted my tokens of good faith and betrayed it. Go to hell in your own time, because I’m no longer interested in helping to keep you out of it.” As I spoke, I unbuckled my vest and shucked out of it.

  “You’re a creature of black magic and evil,” Ted stated. Watching my cloak move around might have had something to do with his opinion.

  “Oddly enough, an angel once told me I’m a creature from the realm of chaos, not evil,” I corrected. “I have no relation that I know of to those things you know as vampires. And, considering you morons can’t tell the difference, I don’t care to have relations with you, either. Now shut up. I’m leaving. When I get far enough away you can’t conveniently shoot me, I’ll be too far away to detonate this package.” I thumped the vest down on the doorstep.

  “How do I know you won’t just blow us all to kingdom come?”

  “Six religious nuts are alive because of me. I chose to let them live. You have armor,” I pointed at the package he still hadn’t put down, “that will turn a lethal bullet wound into a nasty bruise. Why? Because I’m a nice guy. And now, the nice guy is saying go to hell, you dickheads. What does that say about you?” I turned my back on them and started walking.

  “Hold it!” Ted snapped. I stopped and turned. He put the package down and stepped over the fake bomb, despite the urgent, whispered protests of his sons.

  “What do you want?” I demanded. “You have soulless minions of evil to kill. I have schools to finance, refugees to feed, and an oncology ward to cure come Christmas. We’re both busy men.”

  “You can detonate this bomb any ti
me you want, can’t you?”

  “If I squeeze too hard or simply let go,” I said, holding up the fake detonator. “It’s called a deadman switch for a reason.”

  “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “And double-cross me with a box full of dynamite and kerosene?” One of the men inside the door grimaced. Probably the one who came up with the idea.

  “No. You control the bomb. I just want to carry it away from the house.”

  “Away from your family, you mean, because you don’t trust me to simply walk away.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  I thought about it for a moment and an idea hit me.

  “I’ll make you a counteroffer,” I told him, “and give you one final chance to prove you’re not the lying momzer you seem to be. You bring the vest with us. You spend the rest of the night with me and I’ll show you things you’ll never see anywhere else. I’ll have you back here, safe, alive, and unhurt, before sunrise. Then we go our separate ways.”

  He didn’t hesitate. Family is so important.

  “I agree.” He picked up the vest, gingerly, as though afraid it would go off.

  “Dad!”

  “Quiet! All of you!” He held up the vest. “Do you have any idea what this would do? It’s the only way to be sure!”

  “But I could run—”

  “No! He’s standing right there! He could blow it before you took two steps. No ‘but’s! We’re not risking everybody! Shut up and soldier!” He turned to me. “Well?”

  “Come along.” I whistled and Bronze grunted down the street to stop in front of the house. “Get in.”

  He followed me down the walk and reached for the door handle. He seemed nonplused when the door opened for him. He had a harder time accepting there was no one in the car. I waited until he was in the car before getting in. I whispered to Mary as I walked around the car. She stayed in place to watch the house. Once I sat down, Bronze roared away from the curb and swung down the street, headed for the highway.