Mike fingered the torn edge of his coat and smoothed his fraying wig into place. “Thank you, sir.”
“Mr. Nigel, sir,” Elena began.
“Please, my dear, just call me Nigel.”
“Okay. Nigel, then. I was wondering what this instrument is.” She alluded to a clocklike device on his desk with numbers arranged in a circle from zero to one hundred.
“That is a lifeometer,” he replied. “It measures the amount of Lifeforce sustaining our army at any given moment.”
With dismay, I noticed it hovered around number thirty-nine.
At that moment, Jin, a fourth class agent with distinctly Asian features, brought in our tray. Nigel served the refreshments and poured glasses of sweet tea that Jin thought to include. After we were well-fed, Nigel got down to business. “I hope this meeting has been scheduled because you have something to report,” he began.
“You gave us very little to go on,” Mike said with a note of accusation.
“I apologize for that. We had virtually no information to give you.”
“Can you tell us what you do know?” Mike asked. “It may help interpret the data we uncovered.”
“Very well. Our intelligence agents reported seeing Swain entering and leaving Hades more often than usual. We assumed a connection with the tree, which must be protected at all costs. Coupled with the child of prophecy coming of age,” he glanced at me, “we assumed the time was right to act. It was our hope that you might locate Findul and uncover Swain’s plans.”
“We’ve made good progress, sir,” Mike said.
“What have you got for me?”
Mike hesitated, so I leaned forward. “We think we found Findul.”
Nigel’s eye gleamed with intensity. “Where?”
“Mount St. Helens.”
Nigel leaned back in his chair with a whistle.
“We’ve been on Swain’s tail for days,” Mike relayed cautiously. “We uncovered documents that do show a specific interest in the region.”
I fished my iPod out of my backpack, located the images from Swain’s office, and handed it to Nigel. He scrolled through them wordlessly. “Elena and I don’t think Swain is after the tree at all, sir,” I said.
Nigel looked up questioningly. “No?”
“We think he’s after Findul’s fire.”
“Impossible,” Nigel replied. “The flames would kill him.”
“But what benefit would Swain gain from the tree?” Elena put in. “He already has unending life. And destroying it would destroy everything, including him. We think he wants power, not destruction.”
“And if Swain was so intent on Davy’s island, why would he show such an interest in the volcano?” I asked.
Mike spoke haltingly. “I’m afraid we’ve been unable to come to a consensus on this matter.”
Nigel scrolled thoughtfully through the remainder of the pictures. “What’s this?” he asked.
Mike looked over his shoulder. “Blueprints for an underwater vessel, which is why I am of the same opinion as you. Swain simply can’t reach Mount St. Helens in a submarine.”
I shifted uncomfortably. That was the one catch I couldn’t figure out.
“But,” Nigel pointed out, “it would deliver him right to Davy’s door. Ranofur, what do you think of all this?”
The big angel shrugged. “Not my department.”
“Hmmm, yes.” Nigel peered closely at the tiny screen. “We seem to have come to an impasse.”
“I think we should show these to Agent Schmiel,” Ranofur suggested.
“Just what I was about to say,” Nigel concluded, handing back my iPod. “I would greatly like to hear his opinion. Unfortunately, he’s in meetings with the brass all afternoon. Some new weapon he’s developing. I’ll see if we can schedule you in this evening.”
He pressed another button on his desk. “Jin? Connect me with Schmiel’s office, please.”
“Sure, boss,” came the reply.
Within moments, a voice with a soft French accent drifted in through hidden speakers. “Hello, Nigel, this is Beauregard. Can I help you?”
“You sure can, Beau,” Nigel answered in his deep British tones. “I have the team working on the Swain issue here in my office. They have some rather interesting information on which we would appreciate Agent Schmiel’s thoughts. Can you tell me what his schedule looks like this evening?”
We could hear the faint tap of keys. “Hmmm…” Beauregard mumbled under his breath, but the words traveled clearly over the wires. “Meetings through dinner. Seven o’clock, martial arts. Eight o’clock, painting lessons, Nine o’clock, yogurt bath. Ten o’clock, lab work.” The agent cleared his throat and addressed us in a louder tone. “It appears he has a full schedule this evening. May I pencil you in for tomorrow?”
“I’m afraid this is urgent,” Nigel replied. “Can you tell me where his painting lessons will be taking place?”
There was silence on the intercom.
“Unless, of course, you’d rather we interrupt his bath,” Nigel prompted with the hint of a smile in his voice.
“You heard that, did you?” came the weak reply.
“Loud and clear,” Nigel chuckled. “But don’t worry. I never reveal my sources.”
Beauregard sighed. “Agent Schmiel’s art lessons take place in the Shiloh Conference Center, room 106.”
“Thank you, Beau. We’ll catch up with him there.” Nigel turned to Mike. “It looks like you’re free until eight. You can find the Conference Center?”
“I’ve been there a thousand times, sir.”
“Good. Have Schmiel send me a report of his findings. Then you must proceed in your mission with all haste. The tree has been insufficiently protected for far too long.”
Mike saluted. “Very good, sir. Will that be all?”
“For now.” Nigel walked us to the door where he paused. “Good work, all of you. I’m very pleased with your—”
The shrill scream of a siren cut the air, and a red bulb spun above the door like the alarm of a nuclear facility, soaking the room with bloody light. “Red alert…red alert...enemy forces approaching,” droned an electronic voice over the office speakers. “Red alert…red alert…enemy forces—”
“This can’t be good,” Elena guessed.
I tugged frantically at Ranofur’s arm. “What’s wrong? What does this mean?”
I could barely hear his answer over the wail of the siren. “I think we’ve been followed.”
Lesson #16
Sightseeing Is Even More Fun Without Gravity
“Get the kids to shelter,” Nigel snapped as he and Ranofur raced down the hall. Mike turned in the opposite direction. “Come on!” he shouted.
We followed him through a maze of corridors, pushing against a stream of agents. Eventually traffic thinned and we picked up speed, dashing down a concrete stairway. “In here,” Mike gasped, pulling open a heavy metal door labeled 2B. The hallway beyond was dank and dark. Clearly we were underground. The lights flickered faintly, but the siren and the electronic voice had grown muffled.
“Where are we going?” Elena panted.
“To a safe room where we’ll wait out the attack.”
“But we can fight!” she protested, drawing her crossbow out of her satchel.
“Put that thing away before you shoot one of us,” Mike snapped.
We arrived at another steel door. Mike ushered us into a concrete cell and bolted the door behind us. I spun in a circle, taking in our surroundings. The room was completely unadorned save for a bare bulb in the ceiling. “What now?” I asked.
“Now we wait. And we pray that I don’t spend the next few hundred years as green goo and that you two live out the night.”
“Let us out,” Elena persisted. “We may as well die defending the place as cowering in the cellar.”
“Orders,” Mike said shortly.
I was rather glad to escape this new opportunity to prove my ineptitude in battle. I settled again
st the wall and shrugged out of my backpack. Somewhere inside I still had Ranofur’s book of Sudoku. I ripped out a page and handed it to Elena. “Here. Sit down and relax.”
She swiped it from my hand with an impatient huff, but neither of us finished a puzzle. We were straining our ears for any indication of the events transpiring above us.
“Does this happen often?” I asked. “Red alerts, invading forces, everyone to your battle stations…”
“Never,” Mike answered.
I gave him a quizzical look. “I thought you guys did this stuff every day.”
“Sure, out there,” he answered. “On Earth or in the far reaches of space. Never here.”
“Never?” Elena repeated.
“Not for thousands of years. Not since—” His face drained of color. “Not since the Great Rebellion.” He shuddered.
“So why now?” I asked. “Why practically the minute we arrive?”
Elena gave me the “duh” look. “Why do you think? They want you, Davis.”
I gulped and leaned my head wearily against the wall.
After twenty minutes of dead silence, someone pounded on the door. If I’d been scheduled to live for seventy-five years, I’m pretty sure that knock bumped me down to seventy-four.
Mike leaped up. “Who is it?”
“Ranofur,” came the reassuring answer. “False alarm. We were tailed by a team of Churkons. They did a fly-by, apparently confirmed our position, and retreated. The red alert has been cancelled.”
Mike slid back the deadbolt with a wide smile. “Well then. We have several hours before we’re due to crash an art lesson. Shall we do some sightseeing?”
****
We exited the building the way we came in. Before leaving the complex, however, we stopped in an equipment storage facility. Ranofur emerged carrying two canvas suits that he handed to me and Elena. “Here, put these on.”
Elena eyed hers with suspicion. “They’re not Schmiel body suits, are they?”
“Nope,” he said with a grin, but he wouldn’t answer any more questions. “Just put them on.”
I stashed my backpack in a corner of the shed and slid the garment over my arms and legs. It was similar to the coveralls a mechanic might wear, but it fit more snugly. I tucked in my jeans and fleece, tugging the zipper up to my neck. Then I turned to face Elena. We looked like a couple of overstuffed sausages.
Next, Ranofur gave us each an old-fashioned flight jacket, helmet, and goggles like Q’s. “Are we going up in a biplane?” I asked. I would have loved to take a spin in an old World War I relic; I just couldn’t imagine it.
Mike chuckled. “Of course not. After the Great War in Europe, Quinset purchased crates full of surplus RAF uniforms. Sort of a hobby of his. Imagine wearing such a ridiculous costume,” he snorted.
“Imagine.” Elena rolled her eyes.
“It will protect you where we’re going. Put them on,” Ranofur instructed. We did. “Now jump as high as you can.”
Elena balked, thrusting out one hip with a fist planted firmly on it. “You dressed me like a freak to do calisthenics?”
“Trust me,” Ranofur smiled.
With a long-suffering sigh, she conceded, grumbling the whole time. She bent her knees and launched into the air. Way into the air. “Sweet holy Moses!” she exclaimed from twenty feet over our heads. “What are these things?”
The angels burst into hearty laughter. “Anti-gravity suits,” Ranofur said, letting us in on the secret. “Another Schmiel invention.”
With a loud whoop, I sprang to join Elena. The force of my launch sent me spinning head-over-heals past her. I felt as if I was sliding on ice, only with a new spatial dimension. “How do you steer these things?”
Mike, having no need of a suit, was beside me in an instant. “Just lean in the direction you want to go. The mechanism is weight-based.”
I thrashed against empty air, having nothing to push off from. “I can’t do it!”
“You don’t have to turn in the direction you want to go. Just lean,” Mike instructed. “Tip your body to the left.”
I threw my head and shoulder in the direction he indicated. My legs counteracted the motion and I arced like a banana in midair. But I began to move! “I’m doing it!” I yelled.
Elena sailed past me, as sleek and streamlined as a paper airplane. “Come on, Davis!” she laughed. “I’ll race you to the river!”
With another whoop of joy, I followed the others, bobbling erratically. We left the parade grounds, topped the buildings, and soared over the valley I had seen from Nigel’s window.
The wind roared against my helmet and snapped across the snug-fitting coveralls. The meadow blurred into soft shades of summer—stream and daisies, grass and soil—like a watercolor painting. My face tingled with the chill. It was a wild, alive feeling, skimming over the ground, becoming one with the smells, the wind, the light.
Elena frolicked over our new playground, joy spilling from her mouth in long streams of laughter. She would corkscrew over the river then soar into graceful loop-de-loops. I followed, nearly lost my lunch during a sharp descent, and decided to stick to fast, level swoops that skimmed the tips of the grass.
The angels joined us, Ranofur matching Elena’s every contortion and Mike holding tightly to his wig as he streaked after me. After the initial hilarity wore off, Ranofur pointed to a peak overlooking the valley. “Let’s take a break on that summit,” he suggested. “The view is amazing.”
I was panting heavily from the exertion and glad for the warmth of Q’s flight jacket. My face was stiff from the wind and from the smile I’d been unable to erase since take-off. A terrible thought suddenly wiped it from my face. “How do we land?”
Mike was drifting on his back nearby. “No problem. Just pick a flat area and dive. At the last moment, pull up to break your momentum and kick out your feet to absorb the impact. The trick is in the timing.”
I frowned at a vision of my skull driving into the turf like the point of a javelin. “Got any other ideas?”
Mike grinned a little too widely. “It can be a little ticklish your first time, but you’ll get the hang of it.”
I figured if I didn’t get the hang of it the first time, it would severely limit my number of repeat chances. I pursed my lips. “Mike, you know I’m about as athletic as petrified wood. Why wasn’t there any mention of landing before we took off?”
“You’ll do fine,” Mike assured me with a nervous cough. “What can happen?”
“What can happen,” I muttered as I scoped out the mountaintop below. This time the ground was made of rock and bone, with sharp edges and steep drop-offs. My soft watercolors had all bled away, leaving the blacks and grays of death.
Mike signified a low, grassy hill with about a hundred feet between boulders. “Try there,” he said. “Plenty of room.”
There was nothing else for it. Sooner or later I’d have to come down for food and water and a bathroom break. I might as well die in comfort, before those complaints drove me to my doom. I took a shuddering breath and leaned into my descent.
The ground rose at an alarming speed. My vision blurred. “Pull up! Pull up!” I heard Mike’s screams as if they drifted in through a hazy mist. Then warm blackness engulfed me.
Vaguely, I was aware of a pressure on my ankle, then lightning bolts traveled from my shoulder to the tips of my toes, electrifying every nerve in between. My happy, warm darkness was interrupted with bright flashes of pain. I groaned in agony.
Mike’s voice reached through my fog, thick with relief. “You’re not dead then?”
I struggled to sit up, checking tenderly to see if my arm and shoulder were still in place. “What happened?”
“You dove too steeply and all the blood rushed from your head. You passed out.”
“I crashed?” Like the answer wasn’t obvious.
“I managed to catch your foot and slow your fall, but if Schmiel hadn’t fitted those suits with airbags, you’d be coming
through Heaven’s front door right about now.”
That explained the yards of white fabric.
Elena landed softly beside me with the tinkling laughter of tiny bells. “That was amazing!” she gushed.
“Yeah, amazing,” I repeated. “Up until the point where I made contact.” I forced my battered body to a standing position. My knees creaked ominously, and the muscles in my back and shoulders were stiffening like fire-baked clay.
Ranofur stood over me with a drawn sword. He sliced away the airbags then held high guard position. “Fight me,” he challenged.
I gaped at him in disbelief. My head ached, my joints burned, and I wasn’t convinced I hadn’t broken half my ribs. “I just mashed myself into a mountain and you think this would be a good time to spar?”
Ranofur held his pose. “The exercise will stretch your muscles and keep them from tightening.”
“Too late,” I muttered. But he insisted, so I unzipped my jacket and flight suit, fished around in the pocket of my fleece, and extracted my makeup case. Then, muscles screaming, I managed a wobbly middle guard.
Ranofur slashed. His blinding quickness threw me off balance and the flat of his blade struck my shoulder. “You’re dead.”
I took up my position again. This time I managed to parry an attack or two before the blade slapped my leg. Ranofur moved like the wind. “You have to match the speed and skill of supernatural adversaries,” he said. “Again.”
I narrowed my eyes, planted my feet, and determined to hold him off this time. And I did, for about twenty seconds. “Better,” he encouraged, and for the next thirty minutes he instructed me in specific offensive and defensive techniques. By the end of the session, I was gasping for breath, but my shoulders felt better.
Mike sat on a rock, completely absorbed in his laptop. Elena sprawled beside him watching our match. “You’re getting better, Taylor,” she encouraged.
“Your turn,” Ranofur announced, tossing another sword at her feet. She looked up in surprise. “But I have a crossbow.”
“Your weapon has limited power,” he told her. “If Taylor should fall, you may have to wield the Sword of Findul.” He closed Mike’s laptop with his foot. “You too.”
Taylor Davis and the Flame of Findul (Taylor Davis, 1) Page 13