by TR Cameron
He picked up several of the toothpicks and set them aside muttering, “Later.” Max regarded him quizzically, his head cocked to the side, and the troll realized he’d spoken in his own language. He repeated it in English. The dog’s tail thumped once, and he lowered his head to his paws to watch.
Rath broke each toothpick in half with wrenching snaps. When he had finished, there were enough to cover most of the strings. He set the first one across a pair of the tiny ropes a little down from the top and tied it in place with a knot on each string with the pointed end facing out. The next was reversed so the point faced inward. He tied that one immediately below the first. Rath sighed. “Will take long. Boring, but necessary.” He snapped his fingers. “Rambo again.”
The troll bounced up, found the remote, and started the movie once more. Before it was half over, he had finished his project. He arranged the two bandoliers across his chest and rotated them to tie the ends at the proper length. Finally, he looked down and admired his handiwork. “Good. Is good.” Max snored softly, and Rath smiled. “Max. Good. Rest between battles.”
He took the remaining toothpicks and broke one in half. With a piece in each hand, he swung them in bold strikes from below and from the side, and then straight stabbing motions. The troll nodded and set them aside before he retrieved one of the unbroken ones. He wielded it two-handed, stabbed with it like a spear, and practiced the sort of blocks he’d seen on the kung fu channel. The tiny creature laughed with real delight.
No parental control of kung fu.
He couldn’t figure out how to carry the knives, so he decided to be satisfied with the spear for the moment. Rath took a long drink of his juice, then ran back to the kitchen and experimented to find the right distance from which to look at his reflection in the oven glass. It would do, for now.
“Put down your weapons and prepare to be judged.”
Would look better with armor. Maybe tomorrow.
He crossed to the other room and went to Max.
Time to train.
The dog woke up as the troll climbed up his fur. He raised his head and gave Rath the bounce he needed to vault onto his back. The troll found a comfortable position and grabbed Max’s collar with his left hand, then made experimental stabs with the weapon in his right.
“Max. Kitchen. Go.”
The dog gave a soft bark but didn’t move. Rath sighed and stood. He climbed up over the head and walked down the Borzoi’s long nose to look him in the eye. He pointed at him, then at himself. “Max. Rath. Partners. Must train.” The dog blinked, and Rath was satisfied with what he saw. He scrambled back to his previous position.
“Max. Kitchen. Go.” The dog lurched to his feet and jogged to the kitchen. Rath had ridden on his back before but always lying down with both hands twined in his smooth coat. This was a different skill. He grinned.
Getting better.
“Too slow. Max. Bedroom. Go.” They dashed out of the kitchen. When the dog reached the stairs, the troll added his second hand to the collar and barely managed to not fly off as they tromped excitedly to the second level.
Meant downstairs bedroom. Need to be more clear.
Max did not need to know about his mistake, though, so he simply said, “Max. Good.”
He guided his mount to the edge of Diana’s bed, which was large and comfy and covered with a thick blanket. His mind worked on strategies for attacking with a partner. “Max. Head up. Go.” The dog raised his head and made a bridge to the bed with his pointed nose. Rath bounced a few times in thought. He smiled and clapped. He pointed at Max. “Rocket tube.” He pointed at himself. “Rocket.”
The dog’s expression didn’t change.
Yes. Language troubles.
The troll pantomimed what he wanted, and the dog’s tail wagged. Rath climbed back onto his nose and crouched, and Max lowered his head gently.
“Max. Launch. Go.” The Borzoi’s neck snapped up, and his passenger was thrown in an arc toward the center of the bed. He tucked and rolled at the apex, held his weapon out to one side, and landed in perfect balance, the spear in guard position before him. He growled at the invisible enemies arrayed in a circle around him and leapt to the attack. Several minutes later, his foes had been vanquished and Rath was exhausted. He crawled to the edge of the bed, and the Borzoi stretched his neck out. Rath made it onto his nose and hugged it. “Max. Good. Living room. Slow. Go.”
The little warrior was snoring softly by the time they arrived. Max rolled him gently into the corner of the couch and climbed up beside him, his head inches from the troll’s sleeping form. Rath stirred in his sleep and yawned. “Partners. Good.”
The dog’s tail thumped once before he, too, succumbed to the wisdom of resting between battles.
Chapter Sixteen
The lead agent watched as his team underwent a close-combat training session. The morning had been spent on the rifle range, where everyone had performed with the same excellence they always did. Diana had proven to be a match for anyone other than Brenner and Johnson, the preternaturally skilled snipers. Bryant had cautioned the team against using magic, without providing an explanation. He wanted a clear assessment of Diana’s mundane skills before moving on to the magical ones.
She sparred with Davis, the ninja she’d temporarily replaced, armed with stiff rubber Bowie knives. They each used classic positioning with the offhand blade forward and pointed at the opponent and the dominant hand knife reversed along the forearm to allow forehand slashes and backhand stabs. Davis made use of his longer arms to frustrate her attempts to get close. The rules prohibited anything other than knife fighting, or she’d doubtless use some of her MMA blocks and kicks to eliminate his advantage.
Diana attacked and had to duck as he swung at her head with his main blade, then stumbled back as the other stabbed at her. Her shout carried across the room and engendered a round of laughter from those not engaged in their own bouts. “Damn it to hell, man, what are you—part giraffe?”
She dashed in again and thrust with her off hand, but Davis delivered a brilliant one-two move. He slid to the outside of the strike to sweep his main blade in a block, then knelt to lunge up with the other. It looked awkward, but the blow would have cut deep into her triceps to disable her arm at a minimum and almost certainly cost her the fight.
The woman sighed and lowered her arms. Her expression was as upset as Bryant had ever seen it, but it had an edge of recrimination that told him it was self-directed. She pushed the frustration aside with a visible effort and turned to Davis. “Will you teach me?”
He nodded and started to do exactly that.
Taggart’s voice sounded from behind his right shoulder. “She handles herself well.”
Bryant swiveled to his superior who stood barely a step away. “You still have those ninja skills, boss.” He turned back to face the fighters. “Yes, she does. I thought she would lose it there for a second, but we haven’t managed to push her that far.” He paused, then grinned. “Yet. I’m sure I can get there eventually.”
Taggart laughed. “It’s true, there are few people on Earth with the ability to be more annoying than you.”
The agent waited, but his boss didn’t continue. “So, did you come down only to watch?”
He grunted.
“Bad news then?”
The other man sighed. “It seems that’s all we get these days, isn’t it? Yes. The investigation team we sent in after you cleared the place found a number of artifacts in addition to the one the mage used. All but a few are powerful enough to be of concern on their own. That collection in one place is downright frightening.” Taggart intruded into his peripheral vision, holding a phone. On it was a symbol that looked like it had been carved into metal. It was a pair of intersecting figure-eights arranged in an X shape. A glyph sat within each oval.
Bryant shrugged. “It’s pretty, if a little simplistic. Where did you find it?”
“In the remains of the desk in the upstairs office. We would never ha
ve discovered it, the agent said, except that one of the blasts from your fight destroyed its hiding place.”
He laughed. “Go me. That lady sucked.”
“They all suck.” He stowed the device in an inside jacket pocket. “The code breakers are working on it now, but there are no records in our history or in anything the Oricerans have provided that corresponds exactly to this image. Basically, we’ve never seen its like before.”
“What are you not telling me?”
Taggart sighed. “It bears a resemblance to a…well, a cult might be the best word for it, from a while ago. The followers of Rhazdon.”
Holy Hell. There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.
“Which is definitely a worry, I guess. I’m unclear as to why, though. Is there something other than the image that’s relevant?” He clapped his hands and barked support as one of his people made an impressive double stab.
The SAC’s voice was more serious than Bryant would’ve liked and sucked all the fun out of the moment. “This was etched into a coin.”
He sighed. “And there’s never a reason to make only one coin.”
“You have it in one.”
“Dammit.”
His boss clapped him on the shoulder. “That does about sum it up, doesn’t it? Bring Sheen over once you’re done.” The agent turned and watched him enter the unmarked door that connected this boarded-up, soundproofed, and highly secure office park warehouse to their base through an underground tunnel.
Damn, damn, and double damn.
Diana had showered and dressed in what had become her usual training uniform—sneakers, jeans, and an FBI Academy t-shirt. Only the SAC felt obligated to dress up most days.
Taggart greeted her as she sank into the seat across from him. “So, you got stabbed.”
She shook her head. “Seriously, he must’ve spent his formative years hanging on a rack or something.” She grinned. “Knife fighting isn’t my strong suit, but I’m getting better.”
“That is why we train.”
Bryant lowered himself into the chair beside hers. “You haven’t made it to a session in a while, boss. Maybe you should go a few rounds with our newest recruit.”
The SAC shook his head. “Those days are behind me. I’ll stick with things that kill from long range, thanks.” His chair squeaked as he rotated back to Diana. “How do you think the raid went?”
She took a second to order her thoughts. “The initial strategy was sound and worked well. They were reasonably easy to take down in the chaos. It helped that they weren’t particularly good at their jobs.”
“You get what you pay for,” Bryant interjected, “and that group comes cheap.”
Diana glared briefly at him and continued. “It might’ve been better to bring in a second team, so we would have had more support up and down.” Taggart nodded. “But from what Bryant told me and from what I encountered, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. The whole thing was a setup. We’re merely lucky they underestimated us.”
The SAC nodded again. “We are indeed.”
She frowned. “How did we not know it was a trap?”
“The analysts are working that angle right now. Clearly, we were fed information, but we’re still not exactly sure how. Our systems gather stuff from all over, and then they do the initial sifting and matching. There’s too much data coming in for humans to take care of that part. Somewhere along the line, false intel got in and made it through the system. We will find the hole and either plug it or turn it to our advantage, rest assured.”
Diana nodded, despite the unsatisfying answer. Taggart stood and gestured for the other two to rise. “Let’s relocate to the core. There are some things you should see.”
A brown-haired, skinny tech awaited them in the core, which had privacy mode activated with the wall panels fully extended. They all donned their AR glasses, and he called up a display on the center table. On one side was a strange, etched coin with interlocking ovals and some symbols. On the right side, half the area was devoted to blown-up versions of the images, each in its own separate square. The other portion showed an analysis in progress, similar to facial recognition, which apparently tested the symbols against pictographic languages.
“What are we looking at?” Taggart asked the tech.
His voice made her subtract a few years from her guess at his age. “An ancient Dwarven language at the moment. The systems work from the most likely matches down to the more obscure ones. It’s run for twelve hours and hasn’t found one yet. We’ll move on to records from Earth once the Oriceran languages are complete.”
Bryant leaned forward to peer at the symbol. “What’s it made of?”
The tech pressed some buttons and an analysis drew in on top of the coin’s image. “Thirty percent gold, sixteen percent copper, and the rest are substances our computers don’t recognize.”
“So, Oriceran, then.”
“We’ve reached out to an expert,” the man confirmed. “We should have the data into the system soon.”
Diana pointed at small raised bumps at the cardinal points of the coin. “Are those significant?”
Taggart and the tech both smiled, and the latter answered. “Good catch, Agent Sheen. Hidden under there are tiny chips of power stone.”
She frowned. “So, the coin is an artifact?”
The tech shrugged. “We haven’t definitively verified that. It could be simply a power source or even a trigger for a different artifact rather than one in itself—kind of like a portable battery.”
Bryant’s voice was dark. “Or a detonator.” The tech assistant paled at the suggestion. Diana’s stomach didn’t like the idea either.
“What about the glyphs, other than pattern recognition?” She pointed again. “Do you have anything on them?”
“All we’re sure of is that they’re so smooth that the coin is most likely cast from a mold.”
She looked at him, and he raised his hands placatingly.
“I know, that’s not helpful. We will continue to work on the problem. Hopefully, we’ll have something more soon.”
Taggart thanked him and secured the room after his departure.
“Our working hypothesis is that these are membership tokens. It’s essentially a covering all the bases perspective, as it assumes that this is not an isolated incident and there is a group of connected people at its core.”
The two agents nodded simultaneously. She exhaled to discharge her frustration at the lack of clarity. “So, where do we go from here?”
Their boss smiled. “Same as always, Agent Sheen. We let the techs do their work. We heal, we train, and we investigate every angle we can think of.”
“We could case Brownstone and steal some anti-magic bullets,” Bryant suggested.
“And get our asses kicked. His reputation is real.” Diana rolled her eyes at him. “So, hurry up and wait.”
Taggart laughed. “You’re fitting right in.” He withdrew a small case from under the table and pressed his hand against the sensor on the top before he dialed in a code. The latches released with a synchronized clack. The container held a pair of smaller boxes with their names on them.
Bryant received his with a smirk. “Presents, boss? You shouldn’t have.”
The other man’s reply was good-natured. “Shut the hell up, Bry.” He gestured at the packages. “It seems our enemies are fond of using illusions. These will help with that.”
Diana opened her box to find a metallic broken-circle bracelet. It shone silver with balls on each end to help keep it secure on the wrist and was covered with engravings. She held it up to the light but couldn’t make sense of them. “Is that a language?”
Taggart chuckled. “Probably. All I can say for sure is that we had to get them made on Oriceran, they were very expensive, and they’re attuned to your auras, whatever that means.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How did you manage that? Has Bryant been stalking me again?”
He gave her a thin smile. �
��Remember the VIP who visited a while back?”
Diana’s brow wrinkled. She’d taken no particular notice of the person at the time since the woman had been escorted by Taggart.
“She took care of the attunement. These will give you a warning when an illusion is present by growing colder the nearer you get to it.”
“How do they do that?”
He shrugged. “Something about different kinds of magic having unique signatures that can be detected. It’s actually less complicated than being able to detect all types of magic. Or so they said.”
Bryant laughed. “Having someone else make gear for our agents will piss Kayleigh right the hell off.”
Taggart nodded and grinned. “Kayleigh is aware and is planning to collaborate with the creators on several projects. So is Emerson.” An authoritative tone entered his voice. “Okay. Break time’s over. Back to work.”
Bryant slipped through the dilapidated entry to the Stagecoach Bar. It was a dive populated by middle-level disreputables from both Earth and Oriceran. He spotted two gangsters and a suspected arms dealer in a booth together and made a mental note. His contact waited at a table in the far corner, her back to the wall. She hid her pointed ears and long white hair under a watch cap, but there was no missing the peculiar darkness of her skin that marked her as a kind of Drow Elf.
Kienka had been one of the first to cross over, she’d explained, and had made a lucrative living ever since by trading on the margins of legality. She professed to be unconcerned with the nature or purposes of her clients, only in their ability to pay. Bryant slid a purple Crown Royal bag across the table as he sat in the booth opposite her. He had liberated all the power stones he could find at the raid scene, except for the ones obvious enough to be missed. The woman only accepted payment from him in magical items.
“Very nice, Bryant.” She drew out the T, which made his name sound vaguely threatening. “What do you need?” On another woman, the voice would’ve been sultry. On her, it called to some instinct deep inside that made him want to run.