But he wasn’t lying on the lawn anymore. Beneath him was a smooth expanse of polished wood floor. Karen’s eyes and magesight revealed they were inside a room. Briefly she thought it must be her aunt’s house, but she recognized it a second later—it was the floor of her bedroom. Not the room she had stayed in back in Ipswich; it was her apartment in Boulder, Colorado.
She wanted to disbelieve it, but there was no mistaking the place. She had wanted to be there, and she could still remember the feeling as she had made it happen. In the fantasy novels she had read, the main character was usually disoriented when they discovered their hidden ability, but this hadn’t been like that. It had felt entirely natural. Though she had never done it before, or had any idea how to, when the need had arisen, it had been as easy as breathing.
Karen also had little doubt she could return to whence she had left, though she was far too tired to contemplate trying it again at the moment. Nor had she any good reason to do so. The image of her aunt’s brutal murder rose again in her mind, and her heart clenched in her chest.
It felt as if she were dying herself, as intense pain radiated outward from her heart and stomach. There were still no tears, but it hurt when she forced her chest to relax enough to draw air again. For a little while, she’d had family again. Roberta had been everything Karen had imagined and hoped she would be when she was growing up.
As a child, she had often dreamed of having a mother—a mother who cared, who loved her. Whenever she had lain in bed, sad and lonely from her mother’s rejection, she had often imagined what it would be like if her aunt had been her mother instead. It had always been a childish fantasy, but the past week had shown her the truth behind it. In a few brief trips during her childhood and the past week and a half, she had known more love and concern from her aunt than she had ever received from her ‘true’ mother, if that term even had any meaning anymore.
Looking down at Matthew, she remembered the dragon’s death, and she felt selfish. How would he feel when he awoke? Was it the dragon’s death that had rendered him unconscious? He had told her they shared some mystical bond, but she had no idea how it worked. He might never wake up, she feared.
Her room was a mess, and not just the casual disorder she felt comfortable with. Someone had ransacked it. Probably a lot of someones, she corrected herself. The mattress had been upended and slashed open. The drawers of her dresser and nightstand lay scattered around the room, their contents distributed all over the room. Expanding her magesight, she could see similar amounts of wanton chaos and destruction throughout the rest of her home.
Her next thought was an uncomfortable one; They probably left surveillance devices here too. How long before they came bursting through the door? At this point they might not even bother with soldiers. They don’t seem to care about civilian casualties. They might just nuke the whole damned city. Her virtual father’s warnings were still fresh in her mind.
They needed to leave.
Pushing her senses to their limit, she confirmed that her pert was still parked in its covered spot outside. Assuming they hadn’t taken anything from it, her camping gear should still be inside. Taking the pert itself was a tempting option, but it was probably tagged with a tracking device; plus, moving Matthew all the way there by herself was a daunting task.
Teleportation was a possibility, of course, but she still felt drained; she wasn’t sure how many more times she could do it, and the thought of running out of aythar in an exposed position was not attractive. She studied Matthew once more. He positively glowed to her magesight. During their desperate battle, he had been drawing heavily on Desacus’s power, so much so that he had been almost painful to look at with her new senses. Despite the shock of whatever had knocked him out, he still retained the energy he had drawn. Karen wished there were some way to borrow that power, but she still had too little experience to know if that was even possible.
“Stick to what’s important, Karen,” she told herself. Closing her eyes, she imagined her apartment as it had been before it was rummaged through. She let her memory range from one room to the next, thinking of what had been there, what items she might recover that would be useful in the future.
“Toothpaste, soap, blankets—clothes! Definitely clothes!” She had been surviving on borrowed items for so long that the thought of her own clothing was like a drink of cool water on a hot day. “God, yes!”
Karen stood up and reclaimed her backpack. She went to her closet and began gathering her hanging clothes up from the floor where they had been dumped. Since time was precious, she just bundled everything into piles and stuffed it into the pack. Then she began grabbing her socks and underthings from the floor near the dresser and added them into it as well.
Next, she stuffed her tumbled bedding and pillows in before going to the bathroom and raiding it of everything remotely useful. Makeup, why not? Face cleanser, sure! She raked everything from the top of the sink counter into the pack and then emptied her medicine cabinet into it as well.
In the kitchen, she took every utensil she could find; forks, knives, spoons, bowls, and even a few pots and pans. She spotted the can opener on the floor. “Hell, yes!” she said, stuffing it in the bag. That reminded her of something even more important. Ignoring the refrigerator, she opened the pantry and began pulling the canned goods off the shelves. Tuna, beans, soup—she even took the vegetables she had been ignoring for the past year or two.
“Oh, my god,” she exclaimed when she spotted a package of cookies. She added that along with the box of crackers and several boxes of cereal. “I can’t take the milk,” she lamented, “but fuck it, I want my goddamned Crunchy Puffs.”
Once she was done there, she made another pass through the apartment. In the living room, she stared at the remote for her television. Of course, it would be completely useless to her, but with a perverse sense of spite she took it anyway. “If someone wants my TV, they can fuck off,” she said aloud, though she couldn’t bring herself to smash the television itself.
All that was left now was to reclaim her camping gear from the pert. Examining it once more with her magesight, she verified that her bags were still in the storage compartment. They had probably been searched, but whoever had done it had been careful to restore everything to its original position. They probably thought I’d go to the pert first and didn’t want to tip me off, she figured.
Searching the area around the pert, she didn’t find any guards or suspicious androids in the open nearby, but there was an android in a vehicle two spots over from her own. It might have been a neighbor, if one of them had had any logical reason for sitting in his pert rather than going into his apartment. The rifle laying across its lap dispelled even that possibility.
“Fuck.”
She thought about the problem for a minute before holding her hand up in front of her. The way she had killed the cybernetic soldiers at her aunt’s house had been far too inefficient. She didn’t know much about magic yet, but she knew there were better ways. What’s the best way to disable a robot?
Crackling sparks of electricity arced between her fingers. “Yeah, that’d do it.”
Afraid she would lose her nerve if she hesitated, she acted without thinking her plan over further. With a surge of will, she teleported, placing herself beside the pert that held the stranger.
The android didn’t register her presence at first, so she tapped on the side window to get his attention, hoping he might open the window for her. His startled reaction and immediate grab for the rifle dismissed that optimistic vision.
“Dammit,” she swore. Wrapping her hand in what she hoped would be a solid ball of force, she drove it into the window. Years of martial arts training paid off, and the window shattered. Unfortunately, her experience with magic was more lacking. Her hand was unharmed, but a long piece of glass tore through her sleeve and gashed her forearm.
She ignored the pain and blood and before the android could move, she caught his head in her hand and sent
a powerful arc of electricity through it. Smoke rose from her hand, and the machine jerked, but almost immediately it began struggling to escape her.
Military androids are probably built with shielded electronics, she realized. Karen sent another powerful discharge through the soldier’s body. It jerked again and slumped in the seat, but within seconds it began to slowly move again. It was stunned but not defeated.
She discarded her tactic, since she needed to conserve her aythar. Instead she reached down and jerked the rifle out of its lap. Seconds seemed to stretch into hours as she fumbled with the weapon, trying to find the safety and release it. The android was already clambering across the seat, trying to reach the door on the opposite side of the car, when the gun finally went off.
The first burst of rounds went wide, tearing through the interior of the vehicle without hitting her target, but the following shots found their mark. The butt of the rifle shuddered against her shoulder as she emptied most of the magazine into the android.
The silence that followed was filled only with the pounding of her own heart as adrenaline and shock left her swaying on her feet. I really did it, she thought.
She was wasting time, but she couldn’t seem to force herself to rush. Repeated bouts of fear, adrenaline, and stress had left her numb and sluggish. Idly she noted the blood dripping from her right arm onto the pavement. I should probably do something about that.
Karen walked to her pert. It was locked, and without her PM it wouldn’t open automatically. With trembling fingers she keyed the door code into it and got the storage compartment open. It felt like an eternity passed as she clumsily unloaded her camping gear and shoved it into her backpack. With every breath, she felt the place between her shoulders itching. There could be a sniper taking aim at her even now.
The tent was the worst. Due to its size, it barely fit through the opening of her pack even lengthwise, but eventually she got it in.
She hadn’t been shot yet, but she sensed figures running from the other side of the building. Her time was up. Holding onto the pack, she envisioned her bedroom once more; and with a rushing sensation, she was there.
The two teleports in rapid succession, combined with her brief fight in the parking lot, left her feeling even more fatigued. Wearily she sank to her knees beside Matthew, but she couldn’t afford to relax yet. They needed to go—but where?
She didn’t think she could afford to teleport more than one more time. Hell, I’m not even sure I have enough strength left to teleport now. Someplace isolated would be best, like South America, or perhaps Canada—to her knowledge there were no people living in those places at all anymore. But she had never been to either.
The area she had originally met Matthew in would have been ideal, if it weren’t for the fact that the military had already attacked them there. It was highly likely they would still be observing the area, plus she had no idea whether they had bombed it or released other toxic agents in the region. It could even be a radioactive wasteland, now for all she knew.
Karen’s magesight spotted figures moving up the stairs outside. She pulled Matthew’s head and upper torso onto her lap and put her pack on his chest. She had made her decision. Closing her eyes, she concentrated, and then put her will into it.
Nothing happened. She felt something, as though she had tried to push against an invisible barrier, but her strength hadn’t been enough to break through. Is it because of the extra mass? she wondered, thinking of Matt. No, she had been able to move them both before. Maybe I’m just too tired.
“That’s just too damn bad!” she swore. “We have to go now.” She pushed again, straining against the inertia that seemed to be keeping them in place. No luck. “No, no, no…,” she muttered desperately. “This has to work!”
She heard the door to her living room burst open, followed by a ‘whoomph’ sound that was so loud she felt it as much as heard it. Small holes appeared in her bedroom wall as pieces of shrapnel tore through the sheetrock, and a sharp pain in her neck told her that at least one of the pieces had found her.
That wasn’t a flashbang, she thought with strange clarity. That must’ve been a regular grenade. With her magesight she saw heavy military assault units storming through the door.
A vibration rose in her throat as she began to growl. Grinding her teeth, she pushed again, putting everything she had into the effort. Again, she felt the resistance, as though she were trying to push a boulder uphill, but she refused to give up. Pressing harder, she heard a primal scream leave her throat. The barrier broke, and she felt a searing pain in her chest.
And then they were through.
Weak as a kitten, she collapsed backward, squinting her eyes against the harsh sunlight beating down on her face. Towering red cliffs stretched toward the sky above her, and a river made its way quietly between them, close to where she and Matthew lay.
Slowly, she pulled and tugged until she had gotten her legs out from under Matthew. It would have been easier to sit up and move him, but she didn’t have the energy for it. When she was finally free, she lay next to him, staring at his unconscious face.
“We made it,” she told him with satisfaction, patting his cheek with one hand. It left a wet red handprint on his face. “Oh, yeah, the glass—forgot about that.” Looking down she could see that her right sleeve was soaked with blood. “I’ll never get the stain out,” she muttered sourly, trying hard not to think of the person who had given her the shirt.
There was a first aid kit mixed in with her camping gear, but she knew she didn’t have the strength left to dig it out. She had stuffed a small mountain of stuff into the pack, and dragging it all out, finding the right bag… “Nah, that’s not gonna happen.”
Her eyes felt thick and heavy, and when she blinked, her vision grew blurry. It felt as though the lids wanted to stick together. Rubbing at them with the back of her hand, she saw more blood on her skin as she drew her hand away. “Bleeding from the eyes too,” she noted. “How quaint.”
Maybe it was the grenade, she thought, but somehow she doubted it. I think the shrapnel hit my neck. She focused her magesight there and found more blood, but it seemed to be drying. Either it wasn’t a deep wound, or I’ve run out of blood.
For some reason the thought comforted her. She tried to reach Matthew’s belt to get his knife so she could cut her sleeve off. The shirt was ruined already, so using the material for a tourniquet was a sound idea. But the world grew dim as she reached for it, and her hands felt cold.
That’s odd. You’d think it would be warm in the sun… She didn’t finish the thought, as oblivion claimed her awareness and she sank back down into the grass.
Chapter 23
Matthew’s head was pounding. Not just the ‘had a few drinks too many’ sort of pounding, but the ‘drank the whole damn keg’ sort of pounding. It was something he had rarely experienced, and he didn’t think it was from drinking too much. He was suffering from feedback. The explosion at the end had cracked a shield he was actively reinforcing.
Desacus! he thought, as he remembered what had happened. Desacus, he thought again, projecting it as a message, though it sent painful knives through his skull.
There was no response.
Extending his senses brought more pain. It was an experience akin to waking up with the sun in your face after a long night of drinking. The only thing that made it any better was the fact that there didn’t seem to be any actual light assaulting him. Slowly he cracked his lids open to confirm his suspicion. It was relatively dark, but not entirely. A riot of stars cut across the sky above him in a jagged swathe, bordered by pitch black on either side.
That seemed odd, but his mind wasn’t ready to deal with figuring it out just yet.
Despite the pounding in his head, he managed to confirm the rough details of his immediate surroundings. He was lying on a stretch of rough ground with sparse patches of grass around him. Karen’s pack lay on his chest, and close by he could sense her body. In the distance, a
towering wall of rock rose toward the sky, which probably explained the darkness on one side of the stars he had seen. If there was a similar stone rise on the other side, it would explain the other patch of darkness.
I’m in a valley or ravine or something, he noted. A flat expanse of water to one side was probably a river.
None of it helped him understand where he was or how he had gotten there. Only one person could do that. “Karen,” he said, grateful that at least the sound of his voice wasn’t painful.
“Karen,” he repeated, since she hadn’t moved or stirred.
Growing more concerned, he forced himself to sit up. The movement made him want to vomit, but he managed to control his rebellious stomach. Several sore spots in his back paid testament to the rocks that had been underneath him.
Karen’s body lay in an unnatural position, with one leg folded and the other stretched out. The arm nearest him was stretched out as though she had been reaching toward him, but it wasn’t at an angle that could have been comfortable. Even if she had fallen asleep she should have shifted her position.
Something was wrong.
He felt a sensation of panic as his heart seemed to rise into his throat. Forcing his mind open once more, he searched her body with his magesight. Her heart was still beating, but its pace was rapid and weak.
What does that mean? he wondered. “The heart tries to make up for lost blood by beating faster,” he remembered his father saying. How much had she lost?
He scanned the rest of her, looking for wounds. A small cut on the skin of her neck was crusted with dried blood. Her eyes were also scabbed over, which raised more questions, but didn’t seem serious, so he continued.
Her right arm had the only serious cut. The sleeve was dark and stiff and the wound was still seeping slowly. The main artery was intact, as well as the larger veins, but a few small ones had been cut. The body’s natural constriction and clotting had mostly stopped the flow, but she had probably lost a considerable amount of blood.
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