by Bill Hiatt
“You mean—” began Carlos.
“Yeah, I mean it’s not just that he’s twelve now. If we don’t lift the spell, he’s going to be twelve forever.”
I looked around and saw that everyone was as horrified as I was. Dark Me tried not to show any feelings, but even he looked worried, and his failure to insult any of us gave him away, too.
“I’m going to have to let him wake up shortly,” said Dark Me. “He keeps shaking off the sleep spell, too, and continually reinforcing it will eventually drain me without getting us any nearer a solution. I’ll resize these ridiculous clothes, which might make him a little more comfortable, but him I can’t fix anywhere nearly that easily.”
“But…you will be able to help him eventually, right?” asked Eva.
“Don’t underestimate me,” said Dark Me, but without his usual arrogance. “It won’t be as easy as I thought, but I’m sure I can figure out what happened and reverse it. I just can’t do it quickly.
“Before I let Tal wake up, I’m going to do a quick scan and see what our enemies are up to.”
He closed his eyes, but only for a moment. He looked a little shaky when he opened them.
“Good news and bad news. The good news is your parents aren’t being used as hostages.”
“How do you know that?” asked Jimmie.
“Because they aren’t here. No one is, except Vanora’s security men. The town looks as if it was evacuated.”
“How is that even possible?” asked Carlos.
“I can’t tell without spending more time than we have looking around. At a guess, Vanora or whoever is really doing this cooked up some phony emergency.”
“What does that accomplish, though?” asked Lucas.
“Quite a bit,” replied Dark Me. “Whoever is responsible for the attack must have a lot to do, especially if compromising Olympus was part of the plan. Mind control takes a lot of energy. Emptying the town reduces the number of people who need to be manipulated.”
“But we didn’t hear anything!” protested Eva.
“It must have been done quietly to avoid panic. Maybe house-to-house police visits or something,” said Dark Me with a shrug. “I’m sure your parents were given the usual load of crap about you guys helping Vanora with something, so no one would immediately question your absence.”
“So what’s the bad news?” I asked.
“A move could be made against us any minute,” Dark Me replied. “If our enemies don’t have to be subtle, they could risk a shootout. This house is well secured against magic, but that won’t stop mundane weapons like, I don’t know, grenades, rocket launchers, what have you. Who knows what kind of weapons cache might be available at Vanora’s little fortress? I’ll wake Tal up now, so be ready to restrain him. Then we’ll portal out of here.”
“Wait!” I insisted. “We need ground rules first.”
“Which part of the fact that we could be attacked any time did you not understand?” asked Dark Me in mock patience.
“If we agree to work together, understand that you’re going to do things our way.”
“You mean the stupid way?” asked Dark Me, sarcasm returning. “Let’s get to Alcina’s island, and then we can bicker about methods.”
“That may not be a good idea,” said Khalid, who had been watching out the window again.
“Why not?” asked Dark Me impatiently.
“Because Alcina’s here, out in the street, talking to the security guys.”
“You mean Carla’s back?” I asked. I noticed he was actually shaking.
“No, I mean someone did something to her…something like they did to Tal. It’s Carla, but back to the time when Alcina was in control of her body. And that’s not all. Alex is here, too, but he’s back to being mean Alex, the pawn of Ares. I think he has the sword of chaos.”
I glanced quickly out the window to confirm Khalid’s assessment. Even from a distance I could tell that Carla’s normal beauty was marred by a totally cold expression and hate-filled eyes. Alex was nobody’s idea of beautiful on a good day, though once he started smiling, he looked much better. Now, though, he had back his old bullying-victim-out-for-revenge look, which was chilling even from a distance.
Even Dark Me seemed a little unsettled by the arrival of Alex and Alcina. If need be, we could have beaten Vanora’s goons. We probably could have beaten Vanora, especially with the lyre of Orpheus. Beating Alex with a sword whose smallest touch could destroy anything would be more complicated. Beating Alcina, who could cast the world’s strongest love spell with a glance, would also be tough—it’s hard to fight someone without looking at her.
“Alcina’s island is out,” said Dark Me. “Wales it is, then. We can get in touch with Coventina and start rounding up allies.” With a wave of his hands, he started to open a portal, which then fizzled—just a little silver flicker. Dark Me actually clenched his fists and spared a few seconds for spitting out every expletive he could think of.
After pulling himself together a little, he said, “I don’t know how, but our enemies have figured out I’m here. Right beyond this house’s magical defenses, someone has set up a spell to block portals. Nobody would bother with that unless they knew someone inside could open a portal. I’d rather not fight the way things are, but we don’t have a choice now.”
“What about Tal?” I asked quickly. “He’s not even combat trained anymore.”
“He needs to hang back,” agreed Dark Me. “Eva, I think you’re the only one he’ll listen to. You’ll need to stay with him to make sure he doesn’t go blundering out into harm’s way.”
“You’re just being sexist again,” she protested. “I have Artemis’s bow—”
“I don’t care if you have the goddamn spear of destiny!” snapped Dark Me. “Stay here and guard Tal. Everybody else, if Alcina catches your eye, you’re going to be under her control, and with a spell we can’t easily break. If Alex so much as scratches you with his sword, your body is going to start breaking up, and you’ll be dead. Got it?”
Everyone nodded. All of us except Lucas had seen both the sword of chaos and Alcina’s spell in action.
I saw Dark Me hesitating. Like Tal sometimes did, he was having difficulty choosing between White Hilt, now lying conveniently in the same pile as Tal’s discarded dragon armor, because Dark Me could use it like a flame thrower or a force field; and the lyre of Orpheus, because he could easily control both minds and elements with it. As Tal was waking, Dark Me made his choice and grabbed the sword, which immediately burst into flames.
“I think I can cook Carla and Alex before they realize what hit them,” he said confidently.
“You can’t do that!” I practically shouted. “We need to capture them and break the spell on them.”
“Dude, it’s them or us. And admit it, Carla risked you all when she tried to bargain away her soul to get Tal’s love, and Alex sold you all out to Oberon. You don’t owe them anything.”
“We are not killing them!” I insisted. “If you even try, I will…” I was going to say, “end you,” but I couldn’t, without ending Robin Goodfellow as well. Besides, we did need Dark Me.
“Yeah, I thought so,” said Dark Me. “You know I’m right.”
Then, so fast my eyes could barely follow the motion, Lucas, who had been maneuvering closer to Dark Me, took Dark Me’s legs out from under him with one of those capoeira sweeping kicks. Dark Me was so surprised that Lucas was able to grab the sword away from him. It stopped flaming in Lucas’s unfamiliar hands, and he passed it to me.
Dark Me was up in a second, murder in his eyes. “Bad mistake, New Kid!”
In unarmed combat, Lucas could probably take Dark Me, but I had no doubt Tal’s evil twin would resort to magic, and against that Lucas had no defense.
At that moment, however, both of them turned in the direction of the street.
“Something’s different,” said Lucas, who I knew could sometimes feel magic fluctuating around him.
At a
lmost the same time, Khalid said, “Alex and Alcina are doing something with the sword.”
I looked out the window. Alcina’s chanting and arm waving suggested she was using magic, and Alex was swinging the sword back and forth. Its blade, constantly in flux, was hard to look at.
“Alcina is trying to use the power of the sword of chaos to strip the protection off the house,” said Dark Me slowly.
“Can she do that?” I asked, still trying to follow what was happening outside.
“The protection isn’t located at a specific point in the physical universe so that Alex could just slash it away, but yes, if she can focus the sword on each layer of protection somehow, it will disrupt magic almost as easily as it disrupts matter,” replied Dark Me.
“That’s a time-consuming approach,” he continued. “Whoever is in charge wants to keep us alive…for now, anyway. At least it gives us a minute to think. New Kid, if you don’t want me to skin you alive, you’ll give back White Hilt.”
“I’m happy to give it to you,” said Lucas coldly. “Right up the—”
“What’s going on?” Tal, who had obviously awakened during the scuffle, demanded. “Who are you people really? And why are you so mean to each other?”
Eva sat down next to him. “Tal, I really am Eva, even though I know I look older. I can explain, but you have to trust me.”
“Why should I?” asked Tal grumpily. “You say you’re Eva, but you also say you’re with Jimmie.”
“As cheesy as it is,” said Dark Me, ignoring the impending argument, “if I recall correctly, the sword of chaos can be neutralized by being coated with love.”
“None of us except Tal were there then,” I said. “But didn’t that take Tal, Carla and Nurse Florence?”
“Ah, but I have the lyre,” said Dark Me, waving it around as if we had all forgotten. “I can use it to amplify the power of our…love.”
The very way he said the word told me that plan would fail. The real Tal had explained enough about that particular experience for me to know we all needed to be linked mentally to combine our emotions in the necessary way, and I doubted any of us would trust Dark Me long enough to let him into our minds.
Then there was the problem of the emotions we needed for raw material. I didn’t believe Dark Me was capable of feeling real love. All of us hated him. Tal loved Eva but now felt betrayed by her and mistrustful of everybody else. Eva and Jimmie loved each other—or so they thought, but I’d never completely believed in that relationship, though I wouldn’t tell Jimmie that. It was too convenient; Eva fell in love with the desperately crushing Jimmie just when he needed love most—more like mercy than like real love. I couldn’t see it lasting once Jimmie got out of his current hot-mess phase.
Dark Me and angry little Tal excluded, the rest of us felt intense enough friendship that we might be able to make that work, but it didn’t seem like it would be enough, especially considering how distracted we were. Unless the sword could be neutralized by a coating of ambivalence, I thought we were probably screwed.
“I think love is in short supply right now,” I admitted, speaking more loudly to be heard over Tal’s steadily rising voice.
Dark Me still clearly wanted to rip Lucas a new one, but he had enough of Tal’s combat sense to know now wasn’t the time. Turning to Tal, he said, “If you want to live long enough to see tomorrow, stop yelling. I have to concentrate.”
Tal, close to hysteria as he was, actually did stop. I wasn’t sure why he would respond to Dark Me and not the rest of us. Dark Me probably looked like the big brother he never had. Whatever! The yelling was giving me a headache, so I was grateful for any relief from it.
Dark Me closed his eyes for a minute and actually looked a little happier when he opened them. “Alex and Carla were rush jobs, I think. They aren’t locked in the way Tal is. The spell is still incredibly powerful, so I can’t break it right away, but at least they are vulnerable to mental manipulation.”
Without waiting for any comment from me, Dark Me started playing the lyre of Orpheus. He was absolutely the worst human being I knew, if I could even call him human, but he was as good a musician as Tal, and the music made me feel better. I joined Khalid at the window to see what effect, if any, Dark Me was managing to achieve.
He must have been aiming something like sleep at them. Alex staggered almost immediately. Alcina, stronger willed, and the security guards, protected by Vanora’s magic, didn’t instantly collapse, but even without being able to see or sense magic, I could tell from their facial expressions that they knew something was wrong.
“It’s working!” said Khalid happily.
At that moment the window we were looking through shattered. We were lucky: we didn’t end up with glass in our eyes, and the tranquilizer dart hit Khalid’s dragon armor and bounced off. However, the flying glass did cut us. Khalid looked really scared, but having seen more combat than someone his age should have had to see, he had his bow up and returned fire almost before I realized what had happened. Like Lucas, Khalid was naturally faster than ordinary guys like me.
He hit one of the security guards in the arm, and the explosive force of the arrow strike made the guy drop the tranq gun and fall to the ground. Khalid nailed three more of them before they started firing again. The lyre music was making them sluggish. At that moment, I thought we might actually be able to bring them down and escape.
Alcina, however, was not going to be taken down as easily. She straightened, and I thought she had probably borrowed Tal’s trick of deafening herself to avoid the lyre’s psychological effects. Then she did the same to Alex, who sprang up, sword ready. It was not going to be easy to get past him.
Realizing the possible threat, Khalid started aiming at Alex and Alcina. The sorceress must, at some point, have accelerated herself and Alex to faerie speed, because they dodged successfully.
“Eva,” yelled Khalid. “Get to the other window and fire on Carla and Alex. They can’t dodge two of us as easily as one.”
Dark Me kept playing the lyre but stopped singing long enough to yell, “No, stay back from the window and protect Tal.”
“I don’t need to be protected,” Tal said grumpily, but I could see he was shaken up. Twelve-year-old Tal had never been in battle, and seeing the tranq dart shatter the window must have caught him more by surprise than he’d admit.
“I don’t take orders from you,” Eva told Dark Me and moved quickly to the other window.
Khalid got an arrow very close to Alex, but Alex used the sword of chaos to deflect it. The defensive move worked, but I noticed the sword flicker oddly in the blast Khalid’s arrow created when it struck.
I tried to make myself think as Tal would have if he were his normal self. Damn it, what caused those explosions the arrows made?
The brightest burst came from the archangel Raphael’s blessing. Too bad that blessing had been directed at slaying demons rather than breaking spells, or enough hits might have destroyed the sword. But what was the rest of it?
Though Hephaestus had made the arrows, they got blessings from Helios, which gave them the power of sunlight, Hestia, which gave them the protective magic of the hearth fire, and…and…Eros, which gave them the power of love. We knew that love could neutralize the sword, and there was love in the arrows.
“Dark Me!” I yelled.
“Don’t call me that!” he snapped. “What is it?”
“The blessing of Eros on Khalid’s arrows. Could we repurpose it somehow to coat the sword of chaos?”
There was a silence so long I thought maybe he was concentrating too hard to answer. At last he said, “You may not be quite as dumb as I thought. Khalid, how many arrows you got right now?”
“Ten,” said the little guy without looking.
“Should do. Take them out of the quiver but don’t shoot them.” Khalid complied, but somewhat reluctantly.
“It’s OK,” I said quietly. “I don’t trust him, either, but right now he wants the same things
we do.”
“Does he really?” asked Khalid, looking me straight in the eye.
Before I could answer, Lucas shouted, “Do what you’re going to fast. I’ve just had a vision. About four minutes from now, there’s going to be shooting—with real bullets.”
Chancing a glance out the window, I didn’t see any sign of other weapons, but Lucas had told us his visions were always accurate, unless someone did something to change the future he was seeing.
Eva was keeping Alcina and Alex busy enough dodging arrows that I didn’t think they had made much progress breaching the defenses. Perhaps frustration at being unable to capture us was going to lead one of the security guys to start shooting. That didn’t really make sense to me. They would have started shooting already if they hadn’t wanted to keep us alive. Maybe something had changed, though. We badly needed intel we didn’t have.
I heard changes in the lyre music, and after a minute Dark Me said, “We’re covered. I added a spell to the defenses to stop projectiles like bullets and tranquilizer darts.”
I glanced at Lucas, who shrugged. “Sorry, but I don’t get auto-updates to visions if something changes. I can’t tell whether the future will now be different or not.”
“You guys know I’m as good as Tal, right?” asked Dark Me. “Why would you doubt me?”
“That was kind of fast,” said Carlos. “And I think Tal told us he has the defenses on this place locked, so only he can make changes.”
“The lyre’s power helps me accomplish magic faster, and the protective spells see me as Tal,” Dark Me said impatiently. “How do you think I got in, in the first place? Are you ready, Khalid?”
“Yeah,” said Khalid, looking tense.
“Toss the arrows in the air.”
Khalid did what he was told, and as the arrows left his hand, Dark Me took control of them with magic. They flew out the window in tight formation and headed straight for the sword of chaos, glowing as they cut through the air.
Alex, probably assuming the arrows were aimed at him, reflexively held up the sword, and the arrows, instead of slamming into the blade as Alex swished it back and forth to shield himself, synchronized with it, then abruptly closed on it with such a jolt that Alex dropped the sword. The arrows shuddered as the chaos inside sought to shatter them, but they held. I guessed Dark Me had brought the love within them to their outer surface. Whatever he had done, it worked.