“But it was so peaceful. I—”
“Enough.” The skeletal figure, a lich, I realized, snapped his fingers and Noreen’s mouth snapped shut. Herb’s face reddened and he brought the shotgun up to his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he whispered, tears running down his cheeks. “I love you.” He pulled the trigger and the shotgun roared. The red light vanished from Noreen Wallenby’s eyes as the shells ripped her torso apart.
The lich let out an inhuman shriek of rage. “You little bastard! I will flay you alive for this!” But before the lich could do anything, Vernon stepped into the room and flung out one gnarled hand. Black lightning erupted from his fingers, forked around the lich, and drilled into the bookshelf behind him. The entire shelf exploded in a burst of splinters and torn pages, and when it cleared a moment later, only a single book was left on the shelf unharmed.
“That’s the phylactery, boy!” Vernon called. “Do it!” The lich shouted and rushed forward, but Vernon’s black lightning struck him in the chest and sent him sprawling. Herb was openly weeping, pumping the shotgun between sobs. Tears streamed down his pudgy face as he shakily brought the shotgun to bear on the phylactery. He took aim, squeezed the trigger, and the shotgun roared. The book exploded. The lich dropped mid-step and collapsed at Herb’s feet.
The shotgun dropped from Herb’s hands, and he fell to his hands and knees, hands pressed against his face. Tears leaked out from between his fingers.
Vernon knelt down next to his grandson and put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, boy. Easy. You did good.”
“I shot Mom and Dad,” Herb whispered.
“No, son,” Vernon replied. “Your mom died a long time ago. That wasn’t her. And as for your father, the good man he was died whenever he decided to become that thing. You didn’t do anything wrong tonight, Herbert. You put something right. You sent your mom back to her rest, and your dad’s gone on with her. You’re a brave man. Braver than most. Hell, I don’t know as I’d have been able to do what you just did.” Herb rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand and looked at Vernon, who nodded. “I’m proud of you, son.” Vernon got to his feet, his knees and back popping as he did so. “Now come on, let’s head home.”
My Glimpse kicked off. Holy shit, Herb’s dad had become a lich? My experiences with those were limited to when Gearstripper and I had played Dungeons & Dragons, but my understanding was a lich was a badass undead who stored his soul in a special container called a phylactery. So long as the phylactery remained intact, a lich could regenerate over and over again, essentially becoming immortal. When Herb had destroyed the phylactery, he’d destroyed his father’s soul.
Herb, unaware of what I’d Glimpsed, had kept talking. “Caulborn agents came to our house after that, and we had to explain what had happened. My father’s corpse completely disintegrated and my mother had to be re-buried. It wasn’t a fun time. But what I learned was my grandfather was only part right—our magic could be evil, if put to evil or selfish purposes. He used it for good, though. And he spent the last few years of his life teaching me to master my own latent magic and only use it if I had to. And above all else, he drilled into me that no matter what I did, I should always help people.”
I nodded. So the soup kitchen, the helping retirees, all that was Herb doing exactly as he’d been taught. He had no hidden agenda, no ulterior motives. He had been raised to be a good human being. I felt a bit guilty for not trusting him sooner.
Finally, Herb’s Taurus pulled up to the curb by South Station. “Call me as soon as the device is ready,” Herb said as I opened the car door. “I’ll come right away.”
“Will do, Herb. And thanks for your help tonight. We couldn’t have done it without you.” He nodded and pushed the release button for the hatchback. I checked my watch. It was just after one in the morning. The T stops running at midnight, so I figured a half-god, a gremlin, and a small clan of kobolds would go mostly unnoticed. They scurried out of the Taurus, and I shut the hatch. Herb waved to us as he drove away.
Gears climbed into his backpack, and I led the kobolds down the stairs and through the doorway that led to the Gray Line. Deke sat in the conductor’s chair, his hat over his eyes, snoring lightly. “Hey, Deke,” I said, prodding him gently.
He came awake with a snort, his hat falling into his lap. “Whazza? Oh, Mr. Corinthos.” His bleary eyes suddenly widened and cleared. “Is this a Caulborn emergency, sir?” His hand snapped onto the car’s red lever, fingers shaking with excitement.
“No,” I said as calmly and serenely as I could. “Sorry to wake you, Deke, but I just need a ride into the Undercity.”
Deke’s face fell. “Of course, of course,” he said as he pulled his hat on snugly. He noticed the kobolds for the first time then. “Newcomers, eh? The name’s Deke. You need a ride to and from the Undercity, I’m your man. Welcome.” With that, he pulled the other lever on the car and we started forward.
“Where are you taking us, Vincent Corinthos?” Kleep asked. The others had cleaned up his snout and his golden eyes took in the surroundings with curiosity.
“A friend of mine has a place down here with more than enough room for you,” I replied. “You’ll be safe there until you can find a place of your own.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were at Cather’s front door. I didn’t bother knocking, I just Opened it. The kobolds ooh-ed and ahh-ed as we walked down the lushly furnished hall. I heard laughter coming from the living room, so we headed there. Cather, wearing just his boxers, was sitting on a couch. He had a beautiful woman in lingerie in each arm, and a third was standing behind the couch feeding him grapes. They were all giggling.
“Evening, Cather,” I said, projecting as much sunshine into my voice as I could.
The laughter stopped. The women froze in place, looking from Cather to me. Cather turned his head slowly to look at me. He smiled pleasantly, but his eyes were angry. “Vincent Corinthos,” he said with forced joviality. “What an unexpected surprise. May I ask why you have come into my home this evening?”
“Absolutely,” I replied perkily. “I have some friends visiting from out of town, and they need a place to crash.” I gestured the kobolds in. The women didn’t cry out at their appearance, so Cather had a harem of magicals. Lucky bastard. For their part, the kobolds were gawking at Cather. They’d recognize a dragon for what it was, regardless of what shape it had assumed. “This is Kleep,” I said, placing my hand on the kobold’s shoulder. “And the rest of clan Drego. They will be staying here for a time.” I turned my attention to the kobolds. “Cather is renowned for his hospitality. You will be safe here and will want for nothing.” I glanced over my shoulder at the dragon. Smoke was starting to drift from his nostrils.
“Of course,” Cather said in too pleasant a tone. “My home is theirs.” The kobolds actually began to dance with glee and rushed over to Cather. They dog-piled him, giving him hugs and licking his face affectionately. At this, the women bolted from the room. Cather struggled up to his feet and tried to stomp over to me, but having a kobold ride along on each of his legs spoiled the effect. His eyes glowed green as he jabbed a finger at my chest. “You owe me for this, Corinthos,” he hissed.
“Bullshit,” I replied, jabbing a finger back at him. “Now we’re even. Remember this next time you’re thinking about planting cursed pirate treasure on someone.” Cather’s eyes flared brighter and more tendrils of smoke drifted from his nostrils, but then he looked down and sighed. When he looked back at me, his eyes were normal again and the smoke had stopped.
“Very well,” he said. “Attention,” he called as he clapped his hands twice. The kobolds immediately arranged themselves into two lines. “I will show you to your quarters now. After you have washed, eaten, and rested, we will sing songs of the old ways. Come.” He gestured over his shoulder, and the kobolds followed him like children on a field trip trailing after their teacher. “I trust you can show yourself out, Vincent,” he said without looking at me.
&
nbsp; I adjusted Gears’s backpack and we left the lair.
“Wow, the kobolds really took to Cather, didn’t they?” Gears said as we walked back to the Gray Line station.
I smiled. “Dragons and kobolds are cousins. Kobolds have a bit of hero worship going on for dragons, and dragons have an innate compulsion to watch out for kobolds. I figure by the end of the week, the kobolds will be polishing Cather’s hoard and Cather will be their new leader.”
“What if Cather doesn’t want that?”
“Don’t you worry, Gears, I’m pretty sure he’ll warm up to the idea before long.” We walked back to HQ from South Station, the cold air stinging my ears and cheeks while Gears snuggled down in his cozy backpack. Kleep’s ministrations had fixed me up pretty well, but my nose was sore and I could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. Once we were in the office, Gears hopped down and raced up to his lab, the blueprints streaming out behind him like a cape. I stopped off in my office to get some aspirin and then joined him.
“All right, Gears,” I called as I entered. “Whaddaya got?”
Gearstripper was standing on a table off to my right, a dry erase marker in one hand. The marker was so huge in his tiny hand that I was amazed he could write with the thing, but notes in his tiny scrawl littered the whiteboard behind him. Hammond’s schematics were laid out in front of him. “Vinnie, this is amazing. The skill it took to design something like this is unbelievable. I wish I’d known Hammond back in the forties.”
“You were on the wrong side back then,” I said. Despite the fact that Gears comes across as a kid on a perpetual sugar high, he’s over eighty years old and worked as a saboteur for the Germans during World War II.
Gears shrugged. “Still. The Mother would have loved this guy.”
“So how long will it take you to build?”
Gears glanced back and forth from the whiteboard to the blueprints. He snagged a calculator from the table and tapped furiously for a few moments. “There’s a lot of delicate work involved with this one; platinum-wrapped gold rods take time to prepare properly.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “What do you need those for?”
“They collect the extradimensional energy and focus it,” Gears replied. “Lucky for you I do keep a store of precious metals.” He grinned, then became serious. “The tricky part is that Hammond’s design calls for some really rare elements that I don’t keep in my shop.”
“Like what? Unobtanium? Vibranium? Wonderflonium?”
Gears snorted. “If only.” He tapped the letters Cn on his whiteboard. “No, this is copernicum. It’s got a half-life of about twenty-nine seconds, and only seventy-five atoms of it have ever existed. The stuff hadn’t even been discovered back when Hammond designed this; he must’ve guessed that an element with this atomic weight existed. The man was a genius.” Gears tapped on the whiteboard again. “I’ll have to try and replicate the experiment that created it.” He made some notes on the board. “If I remember right, I’ll need zinc, lead, a heavy ion accelerator, and about forty-five Whatchamacallits.”
“Whatchamacallits?” I asked. “Is that a technical term?”
“No, Vinnie, it’s a candy bar. Do you think I’m going to be able to pull this off on an empty stomach?” He gave me a sharp-toothed smile. “Just the same, twenty-nine seconds isn’t a lot of time. We’ll have to be super fast once the device is ready.” He regarded the calculator in his hand and tipped his head to one side, as if doing math in his head. “If I work through the night, I should be able to get it done for tomorrow. The trick will be getting that ion accelerator into my secondary workshop.”
“You have another one?” I cringed to think what that might look like.
“Sure. Galahad doesn’t let me work on the really volatile stuff here. There’s an abandoned bomb shelter in the basement of one of the other buildings on this block. I’ve got a tunnel into it from here, and I do my dangerous work there. I’ll put in a call to some of my contacts at MIT. They owe me a favor and I should be able to get the equipment there.”
“You have contacts at MIT? And they owe you favors?” I looked around. “And the work you do here isn’t dangerous?” I was having a hard time wrapping my head around that one. “What kind of favors are we talking about?”
“Trust me, Vinnie,” Gears replied with a wicked grin, “you’re better off not knowing.”
I called a cab to take me back to the apartment. I was sliding into the back of the cab when a panicked, high-pitched voice exploded in my mind. Vincent Corinthos, we need you now!
Kleep? I hadn’t realized kobolds were telepathic. What’s wrong?
Cather’s lair is under attack. Cather is hurt. Hurry, please!
“Where to?” The cabbie asked.
“South Station,” I replied.
“The trains aren’t—”
“There’s an extra twenty bucks in it for you if you can get me there in less than five minutes.” I was slammed back against the seat as the cab peeled out like a dragster. I threw the money at the cabbie as I exploded from the car and down the steps into the train station. This was taking too long, c’mon dammit, move faster. I Opened the door to the Gray Line and took the stairs to the train platform two at a time. “Deke!” I yelled.
The old conductor leaned out of his trolley car as I approached. “Emergency Caulborn business, Mr. Corinthos?” he asked, hope in his voice.
“Yes, get me to the Undercity as fast as you can,” I panted as I clambered into the car.
“Hot damn!” Deke cried. “Hold on to something!” His hand closed around the red lever and he yanked. The world stretched as the trolley car rocketed forward. A high-pitched keening split through my forehead and made my fillings ache. Not having heeded Deke’s warning to hold on to something, I was thrown to the floor of the car and slammed into the far wall. Stars bloomed in front of my eyes and I shook my head to clear them. An intense pressure formed on my chest, threatening to crush my ribcage. I put a telekinetic bubble around myself, and the pressure and nausea abated. A breath later, Deke was swinging open the train’s doors. “We’re here, Mr. Corinthos, you’d best be moving, hurry on now and good luck!”
I thanked Deke and ran for the city. And to think I used to pay to go on rides like that. Are you all right? I sent to Kleep.
We protect Cather. The attacker is relentless. Hurry!
It was a ten-minute walk to Cather’s lair. I didn’t have time for that. Ahead, I saw one of the old horse and buggy rigs that served as taxis. My switchblade dropped into my hand, and the Olympian Steel cut through the horse’s harness in one swipe. I telekinetically launched myself onto its back and grabbed onto its mane. “Caulborn emergency,” I called over my shoulder. “I’ll bring her back soon.”
I don’t know how to ride a horse. However, that’s not an issue when you can telepathically compel animals. I told the horse where to run and it ran. The horse’s hooves were like thunder over the cobblestones, and the dim Victorian landscape blurred by as we shot through the Undercity. I’m coming, I sent to Kleep. Hang on.
As I rode, I opened my mind to the Urisk, replenishing my faith as much as I could. A minute later, I was at Cather’s lair. The front door was torn off, one hinge still hanging by a single screw from the doorframe. Tendrils of smoke were drifting from the living room. “Kleep? Cather?” I called.
A kobold appeared next to me and grabbed my sleeve. I jumped at his sudden appearance. “This way,” he said, tugging. We ran into Cather’s dining room. A figure clad entirely in black held a sword above his head, ready to deliver a killing blow to Cather, who was prone on the ground. A kobold appeared next to the assailant, leapt up, and shattered a plate on the assailant’s head. The kobold disappeared as the attacker shook his head, showering Cather with ceramic dust.
I lashed out with telekinesis and slammed the black-clad figure into the wall. He crumpled and fell to the ground. Other kobolds appeared in the room, cheering. They dog-piled on the assailant, punching, kicking, a
nd biting him. I left them to it and knelt next to Cather.
His left eye was completely swollen shut. A series of thin cuts ran along the right side of his face, his copper-colored blood smeared like war paint. His other eye flickered open. “Vincent Corinthos,” he managed through shattered teeth. “How nice of you to drop by.” He coughed and more copper blood trickled from the edge of his mouth. “Please forgive me if I don’t get up, as I think my legs are broken. Terrible inconvenience, that.” His open eye rolled back up in his head and he blacked out.
The kobolds squealed in unison as the attacker threw them all aside and heaved himself up. He pointed the sword at me. My switchblade dropped into my hand and I snapped it open, the Olympian Steel glowing blue in anticipation of a fight. I gave my opponent a quick once over. For all the biting, clawing, and burning that the kobolds had done, this guy didn’t have a scratch on him. The black suit he was wearing looked like it had just come from the cleaner’s.
He pointed his sword at me. A pale blue liquid dripped from its tip. Poison? A line of light rippled down the blade, and the liquid changed color to a deep purple. I didn’t like the look of this.
So I sent a wave of fire at him.
The flames rolled off of him like water off a duck’s back. The wall behind him had a perfect reverse silhouette of his form burned into it. He spun his sword, and droplets of the purple liquid flicked toward me. They splattered against my face and clothes. I wiped them away without taking my eyes off him. Something about the sword was familiar. It was jet black and nearly as long as my arm. The tip of the blade flared, as did the ends of the cross guard. He came at me, so fast that I barely had time to register the attack. I hastily wrapped a protective telekinetic bubble around myself. The sword struck the bubble and slowed, like it was trying to move through liquid glass. My attacker grunted as he tried to keep the blade moving.
I concentrated as hard as I could, draining more and more of my faith reserves to keep the blade stationary. Anything that could cut through barriers composed of sheer mental energy was definitely going to put a crimp in my style. I shifted my focus and slammed my attacker in the stomach. As he doubled over, I slashed my switchblade across his back three times in rapid succession. A triangle of black material fell away, giving me a view of pale flesh beneath.
Promise: Caulborn #2 Page 19