Separated from Yourselves

by Bill Hiatt

  Unfortunately, the love in this case was still attached to physical arrows. Crying out in frustration, Alex shoved the sword straight through the concrete in the street. Yeah, thanks to Ares, he was strong enough to do that even without the forces of chaos to destroy anything in their path. Through the broken window, I thought I heard the sound of arrows snapping, and when he yanked the sword out again, one or two seemed to have been knocked off, and the chaos throbbed visibly from the gaps.

  Dark Me, still playing the lyre, moved up behind me to look out as well.

  “I guess that isn’t going to last,” he admitted. I’m going to have to up my game a little.” He started playing furiously on the lyre, and the wind picked up noticeably. He must have been planning a weather attack.

  While Alex was trying to scrape the arrows off the sword of chaos, he became distracted enough to enable Eva to hit him with her arrows. He was wearing Olympian armor, though, so even the bow of Artemis couldn’t easily penetrate.

  “Aim for the head!” commanded Dark Me.

  “I’m not trying to kill him!” said Eva, glaring at Dark Me.

  “Then aim for the exposed part of the arm,” said Dark Me grudgingly. The sky was already darkening with his clouds.

  Eva did manage to hit Alex in the arm, but she only inflicted a flesh wound, not enough to stop him. He howled and raced toward the house, waving the sword furiously, arrow bits shaking free with each movement. As soon as he hit the front lawn, though, he also hit one of the house’s magic protections and fell backward as if he had hit a brick wall. I wasn’t sure whether it was the magic in the sword or just the fact that he was coming with evil intent, I think Tal called it, but either way, he was not getting in any time soon—at least until Alcina figured out a way to breech the defenses.

  As Alex got up, cursing us and waving the sword again, I noticed one of the guards, hit earlier by Khalid’s arrow, pulling himself off the ground and looking around, dazed. Then he asked, “What the hell is going on here?”

  The collision with all the power in the arrow must have snapped his connection with Vanora’s psychic network, which also meant whatever mind control she had been exerting on him was temporarily gone. He and the others Khalid had hit, once they became conscious again, might complicate things for their still-controlled comrades.

  Apparently, the guy I took to be the one in charge had the same idea—or whoever was pulling the strings did. Either way, he drew a handgun and without even a second’s hesitation shot the guard who had spoken. Then he shot the other three, just to be sure. From where I stood, I couldn’t tell where they were hit, but there was blood—far too much blood.

  Why would he do that when he could have just tranquilized them?

  Lucas had been right about the bullets. He must not have seen enough to realize we weren’t the targets.

  “What’s…what’s…” Tal started. He had walked up behind the preoccupied Eva without anyone noticing.

  “Get him away from the window!” shouted Dark Me.

  “You’re not the boss of me!” Tal snapped back. Strong as his voice sounded, he seemed to be trembling, and he looked even paler than before.

  “Jimmie!” said Eva, at the moment focused on keeping Alcina busy with arrows. “Get Tal away from the window.”

  Jimmie moved fast, but Tal struggled against his grip. “Get your hands off me!”

  Khalid’s quiver produced more arrows but very slowly, so at the moment, he was still out of ammo. Leaving his post at the window, he ran over and threw his arms around Tal. Surprised by this move, Tal stopped thrashing around for a second.

  “Tal, I know you don’t remember me, but you’ve saved my life more than once,” said Khalid. “Everybody else’s, too. Please, please don’t make us watch you die.” Maybe Khalid had forgotten the extra bullet protection Dark Me had set up—or, more likely, he just didn’t trust him. I wouldn’t, either, except that I knew Dark Me needed Tal alive. Come to think of it, though, Dark Me was the one who first ordered Tal back from the window.

  Dark Me had in mind some attack that could conceivably still reach Tal, but what?

  The sound of thunder rattled the windows and drew my attention back to what was happening outside. Lightning struck within inches of Alcina, who staggered backward. The surface of the street had been blackened where the bolt hit.

  A strike powerful enough to do that would have fried Alcina—and Carla with her.

  Dark Me was not just trying to defend us; he was going for a kill shot.

  “Stop that!” I yelled. “You can’t kill Carla!”

  “She isn’t Carla right now—may never be again—and Carla did things just a couple of months ago that could have gotten you all killed. You owe her nothing,” replied Dark Me, face tight with concentration.

  I couldn’t really argue with the last part. When Carla sold her soul to get Tal’s love, she started a chain of events that could have done just what Dark Me said, though that wasn’t what she intended. Still, I no longer trusted her.

  There is a big difference, though, between not trusting someone and wanting her dead.

  Lightning struck again, even more violently, and again Alcina, moving at faerie speed, only just managed to avoid it.

  I had only a few seconds at most to decide what to do. Dark Me was maybe the only one right now with enough power to keep our enemies in check. He was also clearly ready to kill Carla, and I suspected Alex as well, with no more remorse than the guard who had just shot his comrades.

  I threw myself at Dark Me, tearing the lyre from his unprepared hands and throwing it as far away from him as I could. It hit the carpet near the other end of the room, jarring us with a discordant note. Dark Me, face twisted with rage, tried to dodge around me and retrieve the lyre, but Carlos scratched him with the sword of drowning as he passed by. Carlos knew Dark Me could heal himself and prevent the wound from cutting off his oxygen, but he would have to focus on that first, giving me time to get across the room and grab the lyre before he could reach it. By now Jimmie had drawn his sword, and its sunny glow lit up the room. Lucas stood ready for capoeira, which, if nothing else, would make it easier for him to keep White Hilt from Dark Me. Tal, still entangled with Khalid, stared wide-eyed at the scene.

  “You’re all idiots!” yelled Dark Me. “Without me, you’ll all be dead, or at least captured, and for what? To save Carla?”

  “No killing anyone under a spell,” I insisted. “Not Carla, not Alex, not the security guys, who are clearly being compelled. If you can’t handle that, we’ll toss you outside and let Alcina and Alex do whatever they want with you!”

  Instead of answering, Dark Me, who had clearly accelerated himself to faerie speed at some point, dodged Carlos and came straight at me. Lucas shot a kick his way at xana speed, but this time Dark Me anticipated Lucas’s maneuver, evading it and continuing his charge toward me.

  This was a stupid move on his part. He was faster, but I was stronger, and I was used to taking punishment. By the time he overcame me, Jimmie, Carlos, and Lucas could certainly have reached him and restrained him.

  Unfortunately, Dark Me must have figured that out, too, because he abruptly turned and, instead of smashing into me, shot up the stairs, presumably headed toward Tal’s room. Even Lucas, caught by surprise, didn’t move fast enough to intercept him. We heard the door slam. We didn’t hear it lock, but I was pretty sure it had.

  However, we had both the lyre and White Hilt. Dark Me still had his magic, but anything he could do to us, like put us to sleep, wouldn’t work immediately on the partially supernatural Lucas and Khalid, nor on Jimmie, for Apollo’s sword gave him a certain amount of magic resistance. The three of them could probably take Dark Me, especially if he was unarmed, and it would only take Jimmie a couple of sword strokes to get through the door. Nor could Dark Me use a spell-of-mass-destruction approach, even if he had the power for one without the lyre, without risking Tal and Eva. The way I saw it, we had the upper hand.

  Th
en Lucas, armed with another vision, shattered my certainty in one blow. “Alcina and Alex will have the defenses down in about five minutes.”

  I looked out the window. While we had been preoccupied, Alcina and Alex had moved out of Eva’s range. That gave Alcina the ability to go back to spell casting in peace. Alex went back to scraping what was left of the arrows off the sword. As soon as Alcina could figure out how to direct the sword’s force against our defenses, we would be finished. If Lucas’s vision was as accurate as usual, that wasn’t going to take her long.

  “I’ll have to get closer,” said Eva, moving toward the front door. “Maybe if I can back them up farther, Alcina won’t be able to do what she needs to do.”

  “No way!” I said immediately. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “The defenses cover the front lawn,” replied Eva, “and we’re now protected against physical attacks like tranquilizer darts and bullets. I’m as safe out there as in here.

  “And,” she added, “if you’re thinking about forbidding me, you can stuff it! I’m so sick of everyone treating me like I’m going to break just because I’m female. If it were Lucas or Carlos with the bow, you wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

  With that, she looked around, probably assessing the attitude in the room. Carlos and I both shifted toward the door. Making good use of her gymnastics training, she escaped through the nearest open window before anyone could stop her.

  “What do we do now?” asked Carlos.

  Before I could answer, we heard guitar music from upstairs.

  The lyre of Orpheus was a great amplifier of Dark Me’s power, just as it was of Tal’s, but any music would give it some boost. Immediately, I began to feel drowsy.

  “Lucas, Khalid, Jimmie, get upstairs and—” By that point I was on my knees, more or less out of it. I did hear them move to follow my instructions, though.

  Then, through half-closed eyes, I saw the now-unguarded little Tal jump out the same window Eva had used.

  This can’t be good, I thought to myself as I fell asleep on the floor.

  I must only have been asleep for a minute. The loud crashes upstairs seemed to have awakened me, but probably what really did it was the interruption in Dark Me’s playing. Wiping drool off my chin, I dragged myself off the carpet. Carlos was doing the same.

  I immediately looked out the window and saw with relief that Eva was still in one piece. The defenses appeared to still be up and did indeed include the lawn, so Alcina’s magic was useless against Eva. Nor could Alcina, Alex, or any of the security guards reach her, blocked by the shield against evil intent, and tranquilizer darts were in fact bouncing off an invisible wall created by the magic protection. Thankfully, so did a bullet, though the sound of the shot made me cringe. Eva naturally flinched, too, but then she went right back to shooting her arrows. Alcina and Alex could have moved farther back but didn’t. Alcina had evidently decided she couldn’t be too far away if she wanted to cut through the defenses.

  Down the stairs came Dark Me, screaming every obscenity he could think of. Lucas had one arm and Jimmie the other. By now Khalid had at least one arrow aimed to wound Dark Me pretty badly if he managed to break free. As soon as they reached ground level, Carlos stepped over with his sword, ready to distract Dark Me if he needed to.

  Dark Me stopped cursing when he realized Eva and Tal were not in the room. “Where’s Eva? Where’s Tal?” he demanded.

  “Eva went outside to keep Alcina and Alex from breaking through. Tal followed.”

  “You morons—” Dark Me started.

  “We could have done something about it if you hadn’t been trying to overpower us,” I pointed out. “Anyway, didn’t you tell us you’d taken care of attack from darts or bullets? Don’t you trust your own magic? And the original system prevented anyone from approaching, either physically or magically. So where exactly is the danger?”

  “I don’t know that there is one, but I’d rather not take chances, Mr. Don’t-Kill-Anyone. Get them back in here now!”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re not exactly in a position to give orders,” I pointed out, not without a little twinge of happiness at being able to frustrate him.

  “As long as she keeps Alcina busy, the future that Lucas saw won’t come to pass,” said Carlos.

  “But then what? We’re all trapped here, with no clear idea of what kind of resources our enemies have or what they want. I think Eva’s quiver generates arrows faster than Khalid’s, but I’m not sure how fast, and it certainly doesn’t keep Eva from getting exhausted. Alcina’s got her magic to sustain her, plus whatever support she’s getting from whoever is calling the shots. Alex is supercharged on nectar, ambrosia, and Olympian blood. Eva will wear down faster than either one of them. Then what? New Kid says Alcina can break through in five minutes.

  “That doesn’t even account for other physical weapons being deployed against us,” he continued. “I’m the only one who can add to our defenses, remember? Suppose someone shows up with a bazooka? They could pick off Tal and Eva with no trouble.”

  “They wouldn’t do that!” I insisted. “They want us alive!”

  “No, idiot, they want some of us alive,” said Dark Me. “Since they already had Tal and let him come in here, probably to distract us, it’s not him they want, or they would have just kept him. What if Eva is another person they don’t actually need? What then?”

  I didn’t want to admit this to Dark Me, but the bullet aimed at Eva supported the idea that she was expendable to whoever was giving the orders.

  “OK,” I said grudgingly, “we still need your help. You’re going to have to be bound by a tynged, though. That’s the only way we can trust you.”

  “I’d love to agree, genius, but you’re forgetting one thing. Ordinary people like you can be bound by a tynged, but you wouldn’t be able to tell whether the spell I was casting was implementing a tynged or not. You’d have to trust me—and if you’re going to do that anyway, what use would a tynged be?”

  Everybody was looking at me expectantly, but I didn’t have a clue how to resolve this problem.

  I heard another van arriving and looked out the window. To my horror, a couple of the security guys were pulling a very large weapon out of the back. I knew it couldn’t be a ray gun, but that was what it looked like. Anyway, unless it shot bullets or was magic, our current defenses wouldn’t stop it. If it was as nasty as it looked, it could take down Eva, Tal, and, for all I knew, the whole damn front of the house.

  Unfortunately, Dark Me could read my expression as well as Tal could. “You have to let me go, Gordy, and you know it. Something’s happening, and you need me to fix it.”

  Well, there it was—another decision I wished somebody else would make.

  I stared at Dark Me as if I were trying to give him the evil eye. “You can’t try to kill anyone again.”

  “Gordy!” snapped Carlos. He couldn’t have made it any clearer he thought I was making a mistake.

  “I won’t kill unless there is no other way,” said Dark Me.

  “That’s not enough,” I insisted.

  “Eva!” Jimmie reminded me—as if I didn’t already know what the stakes were.

  “You wouldn’t believe me even if I said I’d never kill,” said Dark Me, “so what’s the point of insisting on my promise?”

  At that moment I heard a scream from outside and knew I had taken too long to make up my mind.

  Chapter 3: Déjà Vu (Eva)

  I tried to concentrate on my aim and forget about the miserable situation all of us were in—not an easy job, considering the very people I was aiming at were a constant reminder.

  Carla and I weren’t exactly close, in part because of her well-intentioned but painful efforts to get me and Tal back together, even though she obviously still loved him herself. Regardless of any issues we had, having to shoot at her was unnerving. I knew I needed to do it, though; she could not be allowed to focus long enough to use the sword of chaos to break
our defenses.

  The sight of Alex, too, disturbed me. I had just gotten to the point where I could trust present Alex, and now here was past Alex, the one who had broken every bone in Khalid’s body and gotten me kidnapped to Olympus and nearly killed. He looked at me with unconcealed hatred, and I knew that if he could get to me, he wouldn’t hesitate to end my life.

  Suddenly Tal was beside me.

  “What are you doing out here?” I said as calmly as I could.

  “I…I got nervous thinking about you out here. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I know you’re in danger. I want to help.”

  The sincerity of his tone cut through me like a knife. I had once again broken his heart, but even as a relatively immature twelve-year-old caught in what to him must be a nightmare, his first thought as soon as he calmed down was to protect me.

  God, how much simpler everyone’s life would be if I could just love him!

  I spared him a glance. “I know you don’t remember this, Tal, but I’ve been in combat. I can take care of myself. You’ve had that experience, too, but you no longer remember, so you’re actually in bigger danger than I am. You need to go back inside.”

  I looked away before I had even finished speaking, not only because I needed to keep those arrows coming, but because looking at him the way he was now was like driving ice picks into my eyes.

  I didn’t love Tal anymore, but here he was, the Tal I had loved long ago, down to the last detail. He was my first kiss, my first crush. I couldn’t admit this to him now, but he was my first love, almost before I knew what love was.

  “There must be something I can do to help!” insisted Tal.

  “Go inside,” I repeated. “You’re distracting me.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t say that to Jimmie,” he replied bitterly.