by Bill Hiatt
“Jimmie can handle himself in this kind of—”
“Then where is he?” asked Tal. “If he loves you so much, why isn’t he here?”
Without a bow of his own, Jimmie wouldn’t have been of much use out here, but Tal’s question did make me wonder what was happening inside. How could everyone have missed the fact that Tal was outside, and why wasn’t anyone doing anything about it?
Despite the distraction, I had noticed the arrival of another van. I also saw a new weapon that looked like some kind of futuristic cannon.
“Tal, go inside and ask…the guy who looks like an older you what he makes of that.” I took a second to point with the bow.
Tal look disgusted. “This is just a way to get rid of me!”
If only it were that easy!
The security men were setting up the new weapon, which conspicuously pointed right at us. I knew the best move at this point would be to shoot it; I doubt its metallic shell would stand up well against the arrows of Artemis. When I tried, though, a combination of Alcina slowing the arrow and Alex knocking it off course with his sword thwarted me every time.
The movements of the security guys suggested they were getting ready to fire. I’d have taken the chance myself, but whatever else he was, Tal was still a friend, and one who had saved my life more than once. I couldn’t leave him at risk like this.
“I don’t know what that new weapon is, but we need to go inside,” I said to Tal, who seemed willing enough now. I guessed he wanted me out of danger as much as I wanted the same for him.
Unfortunately, I made that choice a few seconds too late. As we moved toward the front porch, I was focused on the door, but Tal must have looked back just in time to see the weapon fire. One second he was next to me, then he was behind me, throwing himself right into the path of whatever kind of blast the weapon created.
I turned in time to see him crumple to the ground, screaming as he fell.
That scream, so like the one he had made the day the awakening spell first hit him, turned my blood to ice water.
I could see some kind of wound, a deep one, in his back, though there was no blood. Judging from the screaming, he was holding on to consciousness, but I doubted he could walk on his own power. I wondered if there were any chance I’d have time to pick him up and get inside the house.
I dropped to the ground to avoid a second blast. No, no chance I could make it to the house with him. If someone inside didn’t come to our rescue, we were probably both as good as dead.
Whatever the others had been doing before, they were now alerted by the sound of Tal’s screams. I didn’t see the arrow fly, but the cannon shuddered with the quadruple blast from one of Khalid’s arrows. Since the cannon was a device of science, not magic, the various blessings on the arrow would have little effect, but an arrowhead created by Hephaestus would certainly penetrate any metal, and this one sank in far enough to cut wires. Smoke billowed up. The cannon was out of commission, at least for the moment.
Dark Me abruptly appeared right beside us, furiously playing the lyre of Orpheus. I couldn’t sense magic like some of the others, but I suspected he was throwing some kind of powerful protection around us.
“You hurt?” he asked. He might have been faking concern, but if so, he was a very good actor.
“It’s Tal,” I replied. “Help him!”
By now everybody else had come out. Jimmie helped me up, while Carlos and Lucas picked up Tal as gently as they could. Gordy, sword in hand, looked at the cannon suspiciously, clearly wishing he had a bow. Khalid lobbed a couple more arrows at the cannon, both of which hit, just to make doubly sure it would not be a threat in the near future. Dark Me kept up whatever protection he was casting in case any other advanced technology we weren’t already protected against was somewhere on the scene.
During the seconds of our retreat, Alex again charged and again rebounded off our shield. The defenses were still intact—for the moment.
Once we were inside, the guys laid Tal, who had passed out at some point, face down on the couch, and Dark Me raced over to examine him.
“There’s no wound,” he said.
“I saw it!” I objected, walking over to the couch.
“Oh, it was there,” said Dark Me, indicating the hole in Tal’s shirt. “It’s just not there anymore. See for yourself.”
I leaned over, wondering if I needed better light. However, there could be no doubt. All I saw was the pink of healthy, completely unmarked skin.
“What happened?” I asked.
“This actually makes perfect sense,” said Dark Me, still staring at the spot where there had been a serious wound only minutes before. “I don’t know if this is what the spell caster intended when locking Tal into his current state, but apparently the spell causes him to resist not only efforts to change him back but any other kind of change, including injuries.”
“Neat!” said Khalid, pushing between us to get a look.
“At least it means we don’t have to worry quite so much about Tal,” said Dark Me. “Remember, though,” he said, addressing everybody, “he regenerates fast but not instantaneously. Enough damage in a short enough period of time could still kill him.”
I knew Dark Me was motivated by self-interest, but I could have sworn I heard a little caring in his voice.
Tal recovered consciousness at that point, sat up, and looked around.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You don’t remember?” said Dark Me, again sounding concerned.
“Eva and I were outside, but we were starting to come in. I saw those men fire that gun, and I tried to push Eva out of the way, but…but I got shot.” He looked confused, probably by the lack of pain.
“Buddy, you were shot,” said Dark Me. “We just discovered, though, that you can heal rather fast.”
Tal scoffed but managed to reach the spot on his back where he remembered being shot. He could feel the hole in his shirt, but he could also tell there was no longer a wound.
He looked around at us, frightened again. “I don’t understand. I just don’t.”
I sat down on the couch next to him. “Tal, we all know this is hard for you. You do get we’re in danger, though, right?” He nodded. “Please understand that right now we have to focus on getting all of us out of danger. I promise we’ll explain everything later, OK?” He nodded again, though I doubted he was really OK with everything—or maybe anything. He looked more stunned, at best just going through the motions of agreeing with me because he had no idea what else to do.
“We need to get out of here fast,” said Dark Me.
“What was that weapon?” asked Carlos.
“Do I look like Nerd King?” asked Dark Me, obviously referring to Stan. “I do know Winn Industries has some government contracts. That must be an experimental weapon Vanora or whoever is really running the show got here with the help of a little mind control. The important thing is that we don’t know whether or not there are any more surprises like that headed our way. Nor do we know how many spell casters are working against us. From what I’ve seen, though, I’m willing to bet pretty heavily Vanora and Alcina are far from being the only ones. Just manipulating all her security guys at the same time would be too much for Vanora, let alone getting a top-secret weapon here. Let’s not forget the shield that blocks portals. It’s high power, and someone created it in a matter of minutes. Even Vanora and Alcina together couldn’t have done something like that so quickly, and Alcina has been otherwise occupied.”
“What do we do, then?” asked Gordy.
“With the lyre I can probably break the spell that keeps us here, but first I need some breathing space. I’m going to go out and give the other side something else to occupy them for a little while. Khalid and Eva, you’ll fire a few arrows—from inside the house, understand?” Khalid and I nodded quickly.
“OK,” he continued. “Keep up as much fire as you can. That won’t stop Alcina and Alex from working on our defenses, but it
will push them and security a little farther back. I’ll—”
“Since when are you the one giving the orders?” asked Gordy.
“What do you think this is, a freaking sitcom?” Dark Me shot back. “Am I supposed to yield to you now so that you can give the same orders I just gave?”
“I guess not,” Gordy muttered. “But,” he continued much more loudly, “You can’t kill anybody.”
Dark Me sighed. “I don’t intend to kill anyone…unless I have to. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t do the same.”
“You’re not planning to kill anyone, though—right?” Gordy asked.
“Not unless I have to,” Dark Me repeated. “Now, the longer you argue with me, the more time our enemies have to break our defenses.”
Dark Me moved toward the front door. I thought Gordy might try to block him, but he just stood there, and Dark Me went out onto the front lawn.
Khalid and I took our positions at the windows. In the few minutes we’d been talking, Alex and Alcina had indeed moved closer, so we gave them enough arrow fire to push them back.
Dark Me stood there with the lyre in his hands, but he didn’t start to use it. I wondered if he was playing some mind game. As far as I could tell, everybody outside was focused primarily on him.
I became uncomfortably conscious of both Jimmie and Tal standing behind me, each trying to hover protectively, each getting in the other’s way. I tried to tune them out, but that got harder by the second.
What was Dark Me doing? Now he dropped the lyre on the grass. Alcina had stopped her spell-casting efforts and was just staring at him. Apparently, she couldn’t figure out what he was doing, either.
Without warning Dark Me raised both hands. He must have been unleashing some kind of magic—a guess confirmed by the fact that in seconds both Alex and Alcina fell. She seemed to be unconscious. He thrashed around on the sidewalk, clutching his side as if he had been wounded there, and he cried out so pitifully it was hard to resist the impulse to run to him.
“Dark Me…he…he used the awakening spell,” said Khalid, who could see magic.
A person exposed to the awakening spell for the first time would have past life memories ripped out of whatever forgetfulness normally covered them and thrust into the victim’s conscious mind. Tal, because of exposure to a knowledge potion in one of those past lives, could remember many at first, more as time went on. A typical person tended to remember only the past life with the strongest will, but the spell often left that past persona in charge of the body, with no easy way for the present life persona to regain control. Not only that, but the past life persona, not knowing what had happened, was frightened at best. Sometimes that persona fixated on the moment of his or her death, as Alex’s seemed to be doing.
For Carla the situation was more complicated. A second exposure to the awakening spell normally resulted in coma or death. She had been in a coma once already because of a second exposure, so this was really her third. From where I was, I couldn’t be sure she was breathing.
Gordy tore out of the house and started punching Dark Me. Gordy was both bigger and stronger, but Dark Me had boosted himself to faerie speed, and once he realized what was happening, he had no trouble evading Gordy—at least until Lucas, moving as fast as Tal, joined the battle. Carlos and Jimmie also joined, and again Dark Me was subdued, much to the surprise of the security guards, none of whom thought to go to Alcina or…well, whoever Alex was at the moment. Instead, they stared at the unseemly brawl, probably thinking we would be easy to take down if we couldn’t even avoid fighting among ourselves.
“Let me go!” demanded Dark Me as soon as they had dragged him through the door.
“You said you wouldn’t kill anyone!” shouted Gordy. “You said—”
“Shut up!” snapped Dark Me. “They aren’t dead.”
“Not even Carla?” asked Khalid. Carla was the big sister of Gianni, Khalid’s best friend, and no matter what, Khalid was always protective of her.
“Carla is still alive, and if you let me finish, I’ll break the guards out of Vanora’s control, and they can get her to a hospital. As she is, she could die without medical help.”
“Glad she’s not dead, but she is in a coma,” said Gordy, visibly struggling to stay calm. “Removing that second casting last time took—”
“Tal, Nurse Florence, and two faerie rulers, and it exhausted all four of them. Yes, I know. All part of the plan. Now, are you going to let me save her, or would you rather use me as a punching bag and just let her lie there dying?”
A rushed conference among the guys led to Dark Me being released, but all of them clustered around him as he returned to the front lawn and picked up the lyre. Dark Me played something that caused the guards to fall over and writhe on the ground for a disturbingly long time. Finally, they rose, looking dazed.
“What’s…what’s going on?” asked one of them. As with the one freed by Khalid’s arrow, they must have been under total control, mere puppets, since they obviously had no memory of what had happened.
“Someone has taken control of Vanora or is impersonating her,” said Dark Me, his tone subtly different. I realized he must be playing Tal for the benefit of the security men.
“Whoever it is took control of Vanora’s whole security team. We don’t know what’s up, but if you stay here, you’re going to be taken over again, perhaps in minutes. I need you to leave town as fast as you can, and I need you to take our friends to a hospital.”
Normally, protecting Tal in particular but also to some degree the rest of us was a high priority for Vanora’s security force. Without asking any questions, they loaded Carla into one of the vans.
Alex, however, was another matter. When they tried to approach him, he—or the persona now in charge, anyway—got his act together enough to shout at them and draw his sword. A natural enough response, especially if the persona had no connection with Alex yet, and therefore no clue what was happening.
“Leave him!” yelled Dark Me. “Come to think of it, we can help him more than a hospital could right now.” The leader of the security detail nodded, and they all started to get into the vans.
With a jolt I remembered that one of those vans had the bodies of the four men the leader had shot. There was no sign they had discovered the corpses, but surely at some point they would. How would they deal with that? While I worried about them, they all loaded into the vans, still not noticing their shocking cargo, and all the vans just drove away, heading for the border as fast as they could.
Alex, whoever he was now, looked at us with undisguised apprehension—at least until Dark Me put him to sleep. That was complicated by the fact that Dark Me had to force Alex to put the sword of chaos back into its special scabbard before he fell asleep. I’d heard the kind of havoc the sword could wreak if it hit the ground. Dark Me got the job done, but even with the power of the lyre behind the spell, Alex took a minute to drop. Whoever he was now had iron willpower.
With Alex secured, Dark Me, who was still playing, turned his power on the guys, and, caught by surprise, most of them staggered immediately. I felt drowsiness flowing over me, too, in great, lazy waves, like a warm ocean, and I knew I would last only seconds.
Fortunately, Khalid, a little more magic resistant than most of us, hit Dark Me with one of his arrows. It gave its usual satisfying explosion, knocking the lyre from Dark Me’s hands in the process.
He bent to retrieve it, and I got off a shot, though my vision was a little blurry. The shot went wild, and Dark Me’s hand touched the lyre, but Lucas, like Khalid of partially supernatural ancestry, tackled Dark Me, knocking him to the ground.
Feeling a little more alert, I looked around. Dark Me’s spell, supercharged by the lyre, had taken down Gordy, Carlos, and Jimmie. Lucas and Khalid remained awake, as did Tal, who made me jump when he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Sorry. I just wanted to know if everyone was all right.”
“I guess,” I said, still a little groggy a
nd not entirely sure what was happening.
Dark Me was struggling against Lucas, enough to make Khalid yell, “Stop or I’ll shoot!” which sounded suspiciously like a line he had picked up from an old movie. Even so, Dark Me stopped fighting. In his current position, he couldn’t do much to keep Khalid from wounding him two or three more times, after which he’d certainly be in too much pain to even think about casting a spell.
After deciding there was no immediate threat outside, Tal, Khalid, and I went out to get a closer look.
“We have only minutes until whoever is after us retaliates,” said Dark Me, squirming a little under Lucas. “I’m the only one who can get us out of here.”
“Maybe, but we can’t trust you,” I said. “You just tried to whammy all the guys.”
“I was only making sure I had time to work on removing the barrier against portals,” insisted Dark Me. “Gordy kept interfering. I couldn’t risk him suddenly deciding to make me a prisoner again.”
I glanced at Lucas.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I don’t know whether he’s lying or telling the truth. I’m not seeing the future, either. I am getting a pretty strong sense that something is about to happen, though. The only other time I’ve had that was when I was being chased by shadow assassins, so I can only assume whatever is coming our way is big and bad.”
“You have to let me up!” demanded Dark Me. “What you’re feeling is undoubtedly the other side making its next move. I was hoping losing the guards and a couple of allies might distract our enemies for a while, but apparently that didn’t work.”
“Allies?” I asked.
“I don’t think either Alcina or Alex were being coerced. For whatever reason, they were here willingly.”
“Of course, they were both evil at the point in the past the spell regressed them to,” pointed out Khalid. “It’s not that strange they would join an evil force that’s out to get us.”
“Whatever!” said Dark Me impatiently. “Let me up now!” He looked right at me with uncomfortable intensity. “Eva, you and Khalid can keep your arrows pointed at me, and New Kid and Tal can stand right next to me. The four of you can stop me if you feel anything out of the ordinary.”