The illusion disappeared. The Purifier broke into a jog, but he still didn’t fire.
Your arrogance will be your downfall, monster.
A dark hole appeared above the Vax. Air rushed into the hole, and a few stray branches flew inside. The Purifier stopped, straining against the force trying to pull it into the deadly portal. A pulse of green energy blasted from the armor, and the portal vanished.
Yona gasped. Impossible.
The Purifier leapt through the air, raising his arms. He crashed through branches as he rained down energy blasts on the elves. Several of them died in an instant. All their magic and attention had been focused on the World in Between ritual, not defense.
The survivors managed to summon their shields as the Purifier drew closer. He landed with a blade down, cleaving another elf in two. His other arm and the shoulder appendages continued to fire.
Shields saved a few elves from the first attack, but the Purifier sliced and stabbed, his blades piercing their magic with ease. One elf managed to escape with the help of a gust of air.
The Purifier fired both appendages and his arm blades, and several volleys of green energy struck the fleeing man. The third volley pierced his shield and ripped into his back. He tumbled to the ground, dead before he hit.
Yona stared at the image wide-eyed. Thousands of years of life had been destroyed in moments. The monster turned his featureless helmeted head back and forth a few times before resuming his march.
There must be some other way to stop this monster.
Chapter Eight
Shay leaned against the headboard of the bed, her legs underneath the blanket as she swiped through images on her phone. A single lamp illuminated the bedroom. “I still can’t get over what you did.”
James grunted as he finished brushing his teeth and put his toothbrush in its holder. “Huh? What are you talking about? Taking a shower and brushing my teeth?”
“I was just reviewing the guest list.” Shay held up her phone. “And having to add Frank Altieri plus eight reminded me of your…I don’t even know what to call it. Genius? Insanity? Strange-ass plan?”
James shrugged and walked toward his side of the bed. “I was there anyway, and it’s a good idea.”
“I know. As strange as it sounds, I agree with you. Since you’re giving Heather extra time off, I’ve got Peyton tracking down the best contact info for all the major organized crime leaders. We’ll just mail them invitations. It saves you time.” Shay winked. “And here I thought the whole idea was a joke, but look at you, James Brownstone, doing the ultimate power play over the entirety of the Los Angeles underworld.”
James crawled into bed with a frown. “I’m just trying to be smart about this shit and save myself trouble down the line, but is it going to be a problem? We’re talking about adding a lot of people. Can we find a place that big? Maybe I should have kept it to mob leader plus one.”
Shay shook her head. She tapped her phone a few times before turning it around. The phone displayed an aerial photograph of a forested island with a large white mansion in the center, a paved road leading to an almost-as-large beach cabana. “I was thinking of renting this island for the wedding.”
“We’re gonna rent an island?” James didn’t hide the doubt in his tone. “For our wedding?”
Shay grinned. “You think we should buy it instead? It’s surprisingly cheap, as far as islands go.”
“What the fuck would we do with an island?”
Shay flipped her phone around and started swiping again. “I could put warehouses there.”
“Not very convenient,” James replied. “You gonna fly to an island every time you need to grab some gear?”
“I could store my really dangerous artifacts there.” Shay shrugged. “Okay, no buying the island. We’ll rent it, so it doesn’t matter how many people we invite. Groomsmen, check. Bridesmaids, check. Food, check. Shit, this wedding is starting to come together. Hiring that wedding planner really helped.”
“Good to hear.” James nodded. “Anything that doesn’t involve me having to do shit sounds good to me.”
Shay’s grin turned predatory “Still need to figure out a honeymoon. If you don’t give me input, maybe I’ll do something evil.”
“What’s evil?” James asked.
“Like book us a trip to a vegan resort.”
“Now that’s just fucking twisted.” James shook his head. “No fucking vegan resorts. Not vegetarian, either. I get that there might not be American-style barbeque there, but I at least want access to grilled and sauced meat. That is non-negotiable.”
Shay laughed. “I’ll take that under advisement, James.”
He frowned at a sudden realization. “What about Alison?”
“What about her? She’s happy to be a bridesmaid.”
James shook his head. “No, I’m talking about after the wedding. We gonna just leave her home alone with Thomas?”
“Yes, the poor, poor child. You think she can’t survive a few weeks by herself even though she’s almost an adult, has powerful magic and has participated in hunting down bounties?” Shay smirked. “If you’re that worried, just ask if she can stay with someone when you’re gone—Mack or Charlyce or Heather. Whoever.”
“Okay, that works.” James laid his head on the pillow, his thoughts churning with everything that was coming up in the next several months. “I still have to figure out the wedding ring, but I’ve got an idea.”
“Oh? This ought to be interesting. Let’s hear it.”
“That lele in Romania gave me a diamond, right? It’s just sitting around gathering dust. I’m gonna take it to some jeweler and have them cut it down and make it into the ring. I figure some diamond that I got for helping take down a three-headed dragon in a haunted forest is pretty fucking epic as a wedding ring.”
Shay looked thoughtful and nodded. “I can’t disagree. Not as functional as my engagement ring, but stacking shields doesn’t usually work anyway. You’re gonna take point on that?”
“Yeah. I’ll handle it. Do you want it to be big or small?”
“Big!” Shay cackled. “I want everyone in my department to be, ‘Ack, Shay your wedding ring is blinding me. I have to put on some sunglasses.’ Screw being classy. I’m going straight diva with that thing.”
“Might be hard to fight with it,” James observed.
“I’ll take it off when I need to kill someone. Easy.” Shay set her phone on her nightstand and stuck her hands behind her head. “It’s weird when I think about it, all the way back to that first raid together. I never saw anything like this coming.”
“Lots of shit I didn’t see coming. I never thought I’d have a kid and a wife.” James stared up at the ceiling, oddly soothed by the patterns in the paint. “Or, shit, semi-retiring from bounty hunting.”
“Are you worried at all?”
James shook his head. “Nah. It feels…right. That’s part of the reason I want those mobsters and shit there, so I can put everyone on notice that just because I’m not doing it full-time doesn’t mean I can’t come out and kick some ass if I need to.”
“Not just because you like seeing them squirm?”
“That shit’s fun, too.” James shrugged and grinned. “I was never very interested in the Brownstone Effect. Being a bounty hunter was just the only thing I could figure to do with my skills. I wasn’t trying to clean up the city.”
“What we want and what happens are two different things.” Shay nodded toward her phone. “Maybe that’s why I’m picking an island for the wedding.”
“What do you mean?”
“That was my big plan, remember? To make enough money to disappear to an island. I wasn’t supposed to be getting into a relationship, or having a new daughter and a new life.” Shay chuckled quietly. “Or friends who are actual friends, and not the kind of bitches who’ll kill me in my own kitchen.” She sighed. “It’s kind of weird. It’s almost like when I couldn’t trust people, I knew what to expect, and now, liv
ing a more normal life is simultaneously more relaxing and more stressful at the same time. I actually have to give a fuck about people.”
“Because life is more complicated. You can’t have friends and shit without things being complicated.” James sat up. “I get that now. I don’t know, maybe if Father Thomas hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be so fucked up.”
Shay gave James a sideways glance. “You’re a genetically-modified alien whose parents sent you to Oriceran when you were a little kid to prevent you from becoming the bitch of a biotechnological symbiont with delusions of grandeur. Sorry, James, you didn’t stand a chance of coming out normal, but you’re doing pretty well, all things considered.”
“There’s something else we need to talk about.” James frowned. “We should have discussed it earlier when I proposed.”
“What?”
“Kids.”
“Alison?” Shay’s expression turned confused.
James shook his head. “Kids in general. I’m not sure I can have any. I might have been genetically modified by Whispy to be more human, but I’m not human. Are you okay with that?”
Shay laughed. “I wasn’t exactly eager to get pregnant anytime soon. We’ve got a perfectly great kid in Alison. I’m not really going to worry about it.” Her smile turned to a look of concern. “Are you concerned about it?”
“I don’t know.” James stared down at his hands. They weren’t as calloused as he was used to, a side-effect of Whispy’s regeneration modifications. “I’m satisfied with the family I have. I’ve got two great women my life and a great dog, even if he is a whiny little bitch when it comes to wanting my barbeque sauce.”
“I’m feeling good.” Shay slipped underneath the covers and turned off the lamp. “And you should, too. I think our luck’s turning around.”
“Meaning?”
“I think as long as I avoid any tomb raids, we won’t have any trouble. Pretty much all the threats from my tomb raiding days have been taken care of.” Shay let out a contented sigh. “Even the ones I didn’t know about. I figure if we mind our business, the universe will take care of the rest for us.”
“And if the universe decides to cause trouble?”
Shay turned on her side, an evil look on her face. “If someone fucks up our wedding, you better blow up a city to punish them.”
James grunted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Chapter Nine
Here we go again, Senator Johnston thought.
He picked up his coffee mug and took a sip. It was too damned early in the morning for another meeting, but the Oriceran failure to stop the advancing Vax had turned the situation from a diplomatic to a potential national security issue.
Ambassador Yona slumped in her chair, pale since she’d explained what happened to the team.
“You’ve got no choice,” the National Security Advisor declared. “You’ve got to release strategic-level magic. Magically nuke the bastard. Nuke him until he glows, then nuke him again. Leave a crater so deep, it’d take him years to crawl out even if he did survive.”
Yona slowly lifted her head, pity in her eyes. “You humans think you understand destruction. You think your great world wars and your nuclear weapons have made you the gods of death, but you know nothing of real destruction. You know nothing of the kind of war that scars an entire planet. Of the kind of war that etches itself in memories for the rest of existence.”
“Be that as it may, Ambassador, that Vax will kill more people. Worrying about your treaty and some war that happened thousands of years ago when you have a clear and present danger seems short-sighted. You need to act quickly to take the monster out. You know its location, so do what you need to do.”
Ambassador Yona shook her head. “King Oriceran has made his will clear. We will not risk abrogating the treaty. We won’t risk Oriceran’s total destruction out of panic. You mock the idea of worrying about a war that happened in the distant past, but it is our respect for that past which has prevented another such war.”
The National Security Advisor scoffed. “How many people need to die before you buy a clue? I might be a short-sighted human, but at least I can see the truth.”
Several other people at the table winced. Senator Johnston sighed.
Yona’s face contorted in rage. “How dare you, human! Most of the Oricerans who have died at the hands of this creature had lived for centuries. We are keenly aware of the loss of every such being, and I won’t be lectured by a human on the matter.”
Senator Johnston cleared his throat. “If I might interject?”
Everyone swung their heads toward him except Ambassador Yona, who kept glaring at the National Security Advisor.
“I actually agree with Ambassador Yona,” Senator Johnston explained.
The National Security Advisor snorted. “Really? I expected better of you, Angus.”
“Yes. I understand where you’re coming from, but they just lost an entire team of elves trying to send him to the World in Between, and that’s not counting the other teams they’ve lost. For all we know, the Vax might be immune to even a strategic-level spell.” Senator Johnston gestured toward the ambassador. “So nuking a bunch of the Oriceran countryside to stop one Vax might not only be overkill, but pointless overkill. Besides, you heard what she said in the briefing. The Vax keeps passing up opportunities to take out towns, and at least there are no significant population centers in the way before he hits the ocean. If they evacuate the smaller areas in between, that means almost no casualties.”
The National Security Advisor looked at Ambassador Yona and Senator Johnston with a confused expression. “So, what…your big plan is for him to drown? I’m willing to bet the kind of aliens who send super-soldier killing machines across the galaxy understand they might occasionally run into an ocean or two.”
Ambassador Yona took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “The Vax won’t go to the ocean.”
“Why are you so sure?”
The elf’s face twitched. “Because contrary to what you seem to believe, we’re not naïve fools. Since the destruction of Alazi, the creature’s course has been unerring. It’s going somewhere in particular.”
The National Security Advisor nodded. “But where?”
“We’ve been examining the areas intersecting its general course,” Ambassador Yona explained. “We’ve been looking for unusual magic or anything that would explain the creature’s goal on Oriceran.”
“He’s searching, and he has a trail,” Senator Johnston suggested. “I’m guessing it’s probably searching for Brownstone.”
“That’s our belief as well. We did find something: an area with unusual portal resonance. The Vax has been directly marching toward that area.”
A quiet murmur swept the table.
“I’m not an expert on magic, Ambassador,” Senator Johnston replied. “Could you clarify the implications of that for me?”
The elf frowned. “I would if we had a better understanding of it ourselves. The resonance is like nothing we’ve encountered before, and there’s only one other place on Oriceran we’ve been able to find that has a similar resonance.”
Senator Johnston sighed. “Let me guess. Right outside of Alazi, I presume.”
Ambassador Yona nodded.
The National Security Advisor looked at the two of them. “It’s looking for wherever Brownstone portaled onto Oriceran? What good does that do? He’s not on Oriceran anymore.”
“Because, sir,” Senator Johnston explained, “Brownstone eventually ended up on Earth. I’m guessing that once the Vax finds that area, he’ll go to where Brownstone next appeared.”
“Which is where, exactly?”
“Los Angeles.”
The National Security Advisor gritted his teeth and glared at Ambassador Yona. “We can’t let that thing into a major city. I understand the losses you’ve suffered, but we’re not talking hundreds here. We’re talking millions of people at risk. You have to nuke the bastard.” He looked at Johnston. �
�Or is this some sort of spy thing? He’s going to hook up with Brownstone, and they’ll attack together?”
Senator Johnston scoffed. “James Brownstone could have brought the pain without a rude family member. No, I suspect this is not all that different from what any oppressive, violent government does to a defector when they have a chance. I suspect this is an assassination. It just so happens that this assassin isn’t bothering to be subtle.”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs slammed a fist on the table. “Then we should take Brownstone and stick him in the middle of the desert. We wait for the Vax to come through, and we drop our own nukes on him.”
Senator Johnston chuckled. “We start setting off nukes or strategic-level magic on this side, and it won’t only be the Oricerans we have to worry about. I’d rather not accidentally start a nuclear war, gentlemen.”
The National Security Advisor frowned. “We’d be nuking ourselves. We can even tell them why.”
“You tell other countries that we’re dropping nukes because of an alien invasion, and I guarantee they toss a few nukes our way too. Next thing you know, we’ve done the Vax’s work for him. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there will be much need for a senator in a post-apocalyptic radioactive wasteland.”
Ambassador Yona watched Senator Johnston with an appreciative look on her face.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs pointed up. “What about asking the Alliance for help?”
“We don’t know what they might do. For all we know, they might decide they have to boil the Earth to get the Vax. Besides, if we go hat in hand to aliens for help, they’ll think we’re weak, and that has negotiating implications going forward. We need to prove that we can defend ourselves.”
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