by Bill Hiatt
The new arrivals were the most shocked by the news that Dark Me, now going by Magnus, showed signs of becoming a decent person.
“I will believe it when I see it,” said Shar, looking at me as if I was crazy to even suggest such a thing.
I was most shocked—but also relieved—by the fact that my dad was now in on the big secret. I had wanted to tell him ever since the beginning, and now, given the likelihood we would be rescuing at least some of the faerie rulers from their current attackers, they wouldn’t be in a position to gripe too much about one more mortal knowing.
Of course, since nothing is ever simple, at least in my life, that issue sparked a conversation in which many of my friends understandably wanted to tell their own parents. Saying no seemed hypocritical, but telling twenty or so more people would be likely to bring the collected wrath of faerie society down on me, and it wasn’t exactly like I was universally loved to begin with.
Nor was that the only problem I’d face. I had a hard time imagining most parents would be pleased by the situation. Can you visualize a conversation something like, “Wow, son! It’s so wonderful that you’ve been risking your life every other week or so”? Yeah, right. Anyone who thought the reaction would be anything other than sheer horror really didn’t understand how parents thought or felt at all. Since only a few of us were legal adults, we’d be lucky if the only thing that happened were parents forbidding their sons or daughters from having anything further to do with me. I could try to magick the parents into being OK with the whole thing, but bending someone’s natural inclinations that far tended not to hold—unless it broke the person involved.
While I was trying to think of a diplomatic way to say no that didn’t make me feel like complete scum, Stan called me aside.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of everybody,” he began, his hesitation obvious. “Frankly, it’s something I’m ashamed of.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Stan, it can’t be that bad. Just tell me.”
“I kind of glossed over how Umbra escaped from the shadow assassins. That’s because…she didn’t exactly escape.”
“What did she do…exactly?”
“Apparently the Populus Umbrae are having a major public-relations debacle over not being able to pull off a simple training exercise, not to mention all the times we’ve now beaten them. They were willing to spare Umbra’s life—but only if we became clients and gave them a spectacular target, someone whose death would restore their credibility.”
Gee, I had been wrong. It actually was that bad.
“You agreed?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” he said, looking down at the floor. “Technically, David was the one who agreed. He stepped up so I wouldn’t have to be the one to make the decision.”
“Well, what else could you really have done but agree? I wouldn’t have let Umbra die, either,” I reassured him. He was just trying to do the right thing in a situation where there wasn’t a right thing.
The fact that we were now going to the centerpiece of what amounted to an ad campaign for assassins was just…well, no, there really was no way to put a good spin on that.
I knew, and Stan agreed, that we had to tell everyone else. Dan and Shar already knew. The others looked as shocked as I had felt originally—and some of them didn’t cover it very well.
“You have to be kidding me,” said Lucas.
“We can find an evil target,” I pointed out. “Nicneven comes immediately to mind. It’s not as if we’re going to kill some innocent person.”
He looked back at me for a minute, dumbfounded. “Look, I know I’m the new guy. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying what I think. I know we don’t exactly have a shortage of adversaries, and I know…you guys sometimes have to kill, right? Like in battle?”
“We avoid it when we can,” said Shar, “but yeah, if it comes down to it, we do. Wouldn’t you do the same, if someone was threatening you or the people you love?”
“You don’t have to sell me on that,” said Lucas. “I’m not a pacifist. This is different, though. This is hiring assassins. We can’t control exactly what they do. What if an innocent person gets in the way? Worse, what if we do help them repair their reputation, they get more jobs, and some of them involve killing good people? How many lives are we willing to throw away to save hers?” He looked daggers at Umbra, who just sat and stared back, perhaps unable to respond.
“Can we find a way to save Umbra without having to hire the shadow assassins?” asked Eva.
“The contract has been accepted,” said Umbra quietly. “A breach would…not be well regarded.”
“Meaning they’d come after us?” asked Dan.
“At least after the ones who were present when the contract was made,” she replied. “I cannot say with certainty what would happen to the rest of you, but given the situation, it is at least possible that the Populus Umbrae would come after all of you.”
“Tal, you can protect all of us with magic, can’t you?” asked Lucas, gripping the medallion that warded him.
“Given enough time, yes,” I said, “but there are ways around that. Suppose, for example, that the Populus Umbrae go after someone you care about because they can’t get to you. I can’t protect everybody we know.”
Lucas looked more than a little frustrated. “But don’t we have that situation already, at least with me?”
“That was a training exercise,” said Umbra. “I have the impression the Populus Umbrae decided to cut their losses on that one. A breach of contract, however, is not something they could afford to forget about.”
“I’m not sure I can remain part of this group if we’re now in the business of hiring assassins,” said Lucas.
Even leaving aside the fact that we had stumbled into an ethical minefield, we couldn’t afford to have Lucas withdraw. If the visions I had seen were true, we might not be able to succeed without him.
“We have some time to name a target, correct?” I asked Stan.
“Yes, the imperator is content to allow you time to choose,” said Umbra. “However, that time is not infinite. At some point he will demand a choice.”
“Then let’s postpone this conversation until after we have made some headway against our enemies,” I suggested. “Lucas, will you stick with us for a while longer? Maybe we can figure out a way to avoid this moral dilemma. Right now that can’t be our primary focus, though. Is that OK?”
Lucas nodded slowly. “I owe you guys my life. I’ll stay for now. I just can’t guarantee I’ll stay after you name a target.”
“That’s fair,” I said, looking around. Umbra looked blank. Pretty much everybody else looked stressed in one way or another. This next part was not going to be easy.
“Lucas, it’s good you’re staying, because the visions Arianrhod conjured up for me suggest that you could be the key to beating our enemies.”
“How so?” he asked. I could tell he already wasn’t loving the idea.
“Your connection with magic is more than just your encantado and xana ancestry. Someone you were in the past was somehow connected to a force maybe comparable to an elder Olympian, and our enemies won’t be expecting you to pack that much of a punch. If you allow us to awaken those past-life memories—”
“No!” he interrupted. “That’s what Magnus wanted me to do. I already said no.”
“It wouldn’t be like what I went through,” I said quickly. “Arianrhod has the power to release those memories peacefully. There’s no risk—”
“I bet there’s still some,” protested Lucas. “You don’t know who I was exactly, do you? I could still turn out to be evil, like Carla’s past self.”
“That is not what the vision suggested,” said Arianrhod gently.
“‘Suggested’? So you aren’t sure?” he asked, his tone more belligerent than it was wise to take with someone like Arianrhod.
“Have you forgotten I can see who you were without needing to rely on those visions?” asked Arianrho
d. “I found Ruggiero for Atlante.”
“And that didn’t exactly work out well, did it?” Lucas was on the verge of creating a major problem.
“Through no fault of my own,” said Arianrhod. Her tone was definitely getting colder.
“Why does this worry you so much, filho?” asked Mrs. Golfinho, pretty much the last person I expected to be on my side.
Lucas was a little surprised, too, given how opposed his great-grandmother had originally been to his fighting by our side.
We had won her over. Surely we could win him.
“I…I know it may sound strange to some of you,” he said finally. “You started out being supernatural.” He glanced at his great-grandmother. “If not, at least you’ve known for months that the world was…a lot different from what you thought it was. I’ve known for a few years that something was…different about me. I had no idea what, though, so I haven’t really had much chance to get used to all this supernatural…stuff. Look, I wanted to repay you guys for all you did for me. I still do. Honestly, though, if I could go back to being just an ordinary guy, I would. I’m beginning to feel as if my life is being taken away, piece by piece. Now I could still go back to pretending to be normal. I could go somewhere else eventually and have the life I used to visualize. Can you tell me honestly that such a life will ever be possible once I take this next step?”
He had me there. I was certain he could still lead a good life. An ordinary one? That would probably be off the table.
“You know, none of us exactly chose this life,” said Gordy. “None of us is an idiot, either, so we don’t want to be in danger all the time. Truth be told, I’m not that crazy about combat anyway. Part of the time I feel as if I’m in the army or something—something I didn’t volunteer for. On the other hand, the bad guys would still be out there whether our lives had taken this turn or not. In the beginning Tal didn’t bring Ceridwen into the world. She came into it to get him. Nicneven would still be out there. Hecate would still be out there. They might not be out to get us…but they’d be out to get someone; that’s for sure.”
“I wouldn’t have a family or a home or friends if not for these guys,” said Khalid. “If they’d made other choices, I’d be living on the street.”
“I’d be dead,” added Jimmie.
“I’d be a bullied loser,” said Alex.
“Some things are still a work in progress,” said Shar, but he said it affectionately. Everybody except Lucas laughed.
“Most of us would never have become friends, at least not like we are now,” added Shar. “I never would have met Khalid…my brother…I love more than anything I could possibly have gained by keeping my life on its original path.”
If you had told me a year ago Shar would start tearing up over a little kid he had only known a short time, I would never have believed it.
I couldn’t help thinking that if I had never been pulled into the supernatural, I would probably still be with Eva, but this was most definitely not the time to talk about that.
“What if I can figure a way out of our shadow-assassin dilemma?” I asked suddenly. “Will you allow the awakening then?”
Umbra looked at me in alarm. The others looked at me pretty much as if they were now sure I was crazy.
Lucas just looked angry. “That’s not fair!” he snapped. “I didn’t get us into that mess. It’s not right to make me responsible for getting us out. If you know a way to do it, then do it.” He shoved back his chair with a loud scrape, got up, and rushed away from the table.
“That could have gone better,” said Michael, too young to realize he was just rubbing in the obvious.
Thinking about it, I realized that one sentence could pretty much summarize my whole recent life.
Chapter 16: No Way Out (Lucas)
I liked these guys. I really did. Besides that, I owed them big-time. That didn’t mean I had to transform into something else just because they said so.
They just didn’t understand what I was going through. Jimmie was an ex-ghost, or whatever you wanted to call him. Khalid was a half djinni. Tal, Shar, Alex, and Stan all carried people I’d studied in history or mythology around inside them. Dan knew who was inside him, though the memories weren’t awake. Michael? I didn’t even how to describe him, or Magnus, for that matter.
Even the ones who were more or less ordinary people, like Gordy, Carlos, and Eva, were used to working with magical weapons and sometimes armor.
They were used to a lot of things I wasn’t—things I didn’t want to get used to. Killing, for example, or accepting helping a group of assassins as part of the cost of doing business.
When I pulled away, I had expected one or more of them to follow me to the far side of the room and try to talk to me. I didn’t expect the first one to be Umbra, though.
“Come to finish the job?” I asked.
“If you mean the ‘job’ of assassinating you, no,” she said in her usual stilted manner. “I have failed that task, and it is too late for me to redeem myself.”
At least that was an honest response, if not the one I was expecting.
“So you would go ahead and kill me if you had the chance to redeem yourself?”
Umbra looked at me as if she didn’t quite know how to respond. I couldn’t help noticing she could be a pretty girl if she could learn to act more naturally. She would never be a striking beauty like Eva or Carla, but pretty I thought she could manage.
“I want to stop being one of the Populus Umbrae,” she said at last. “I want to find out what it is to be human.”
Then I felt bad for hassling her, but I also felt a little suspicious. Why was she over here?
“Do you know who my parents are?” she asked.
“No, who are they?” I said reflexively.
“I do not know,” she replied, deadpan as usual. “I would not have needed to ask you if I knew.”
Umbra might know eighteen different ways of killing me in the next thirty seconds, but she obviously knew nothing about human society. Yeah, seven billion people on Earth, and she expected I would automatically know her parents!
Under other circumstances I might have ended the conversation as fast as I could, but something in her eyes stopped me. “Perhaps Tal can help you find them. I remember him mentioning something about that.”
“He did,” she replied, “but then I was put in a cell, and I did not see him again until a short time ago.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but Umbra spared me by continuing.
“When others wanted to kill me, you spoke up for keeping me alive,” she said.
“It seemed unfair to kill you when you…didn’t know any better than trying to assassinate me.” I really didn’t know what else to say. This conversation was getting on my nerves, but I didn’t know how to end it without being mean to her.
“I was wrong,” said Tal. I hadn’t realized he was right behind me, and I jumped a little. My nerves were more shot than I realized.
“Wrong about what?” I asked, trying to cover my nervousness.
“Wrong about the Populus Umbrae. We can’t allow that deal to stand. I’ll find a way out of it—no bargains, no strings attached. If you don’t want to awaken what’s within you, you don’t have to. It was unreasonable of me to tie the two things together.
I couldn’t tell if he was sincere or trying a different kind of emotional manipulation. Umbra, however, took his words quite literally.
“If you do refuse to honor the contract, the Populus Umbrae will never leave you alone,” she said, eyes filling with fear.
Their attention drawn by her reaction, the others began to move over. Arianrhod, whose hearing must have been very sharp, immediately joined the conversation.
“From what I know of these shadow people, encounters are best avoided. Breaking an agreement with them is like slicing your throat with your own knife.”
“I wasn’t so much going to break it as to renegotiate the terms,” Tal said.
“How?” asked Stan.
“That depends upon what Umbra tells me,” he replied. “Umbra, can you tell me about the geography of the Land of the Shades?”
“Geography?”
“The layout. Entries and exits, that sort of thing.”
“Any shadow can be a point of entry, but only for one of the Populus Umbrae. No one else can enter or leave that way.”
“By any shadow, do you mean any shadow in any world?” Umbra looked back at him, confused.
“You know, like where we are now is a different place than the human world. The Olympian world is a different world, too. Can you walk through the shadows there if an Olympian doesn’t invite you?”
“Ah,” said Umbra, “I know of what you speak. It is possible for some shadows to be sealed to the Populus Umbrae, as they are in your city. Olympus has powerful seals upon it, but the imperator can enable us to pass through.”
I must have looked confused, because Gordy said, “Remember, dude, I told you about this. When we were on Olympus, Hestia told us a story about how God created the Olympians for a specific purpose, but like a lot of other groups, they got off track by pretending to be gods themselves. At a certain point God sealed them up on their own plane of existence so that they couldn’t do any more damage.”
“You were listening to all that?” asked Tal, clearly amazed.
“Yeah,” said Gordy. “Just because I was bored to tears doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening. Anyway, the fact that the shadow assassins can still travel to other planes means they can’t be Olympians. The fact that the imperator can allow others onto the Olympian plane suggests he must be an Olympian himself.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” objected Stan. “If the Land of the Shades is part of the Olympian plane of existence, the shadows should be trapped there, too. If it’s not, then an Olympian couldn’t very well rule it, because an Olympian couldn’t leave Olympus.”
“There you go trying to apply logic again,” said Gordy, grinning broadly.