Dire would want me to spare him.
A spear arced past, and she turned to follow it as it rose, twisted, plunged down into the heart of downtown a scant few miles away. He wasn’t caring about who his spears struck when they missed.
She will understand. I am stopping him from killing more people.
She turned back, ate another spear to the chest, and cut loose with both particle beams. And when she missed she did it again, nudging the power up a bit more. The spears slowed as he dodged, whirled and darted from cover to cover, but once she got the slider up far enough there was no more cover. There were only gouts of steam and explosions as the hungry beams tore through all in their path, seeking his death. The spears had stopped, at least, and somewhere around the fifth volley all the power along the street went out.
Ah, there went the wires!
Distantly, she noted that there were no more phone screens visible, and the few people illuminated in the actinic flare of her shots were fleeing at full speed. The street was cratered and broken, water flooding upwards as cars groaned and sank into spreading holes, and buildings to either side started to collapse. Finally, she lost sight of him and ceased the barrage, sliding to the side and rebounding off a few buildings before she found a rooftop and landed.
Silence, as the dust settled and steam rose up. She turned, seeking him. It took two or three tries to switch the armor’s mask over to nightvision, but she managed.
“This ain’t like you, Dire.” His voice echoed around the rubbled hellscape, and she turned, as a shape loomed out of the fog. Just a chimney, tilting as its house tilted.
“YOU ARE ACTING STRANGE AS WELL.”
“I finally got my priorities straight.” A flash of silver through the fog, whispering by yards off. Another spear? Yes. From the distance he didn’t know exactly where she was, and that was good. At this point, all Minna had to do was stall until Martin called Bunny, and Bunny had the smartframe teleport her out. Her job was done, now all she had to do was survive. She crouched low, behind the edge of the roof. “So many years wasted. I should have killed you when I met you! Twenty-eight thousand people paid the price because I was too gentle.”
Minna growled, and the sound echoed through the street. She remembered Dire, laid up in bed after fighting him. If Khalid hadn’t given her the bone healing paste, she would have been out of action. And everyone in the camp would have died in what followed.
No, Minna decided. It wasn’t enough just to survive. This whining asshole had to pay.
She pushed up from the edge of the building, darted straight up. By going up, she only had one direction to watch; down. And sure enough he couldn’t resist the target, and the spears flashed up toward her.
There. She blasted downwards, blowing apart the building he was using for cover, and tracking the motion through the smoke. “Lock on,” she whispered, and the suit’s targeting computer did.
Even with the targeting computer, the blasts didn’t hit him. He was quick, and he was nimble, and every time they came close they slowed just enough for him to get out of the way. His powers protected him.
A spear thudded off her forcefield, fell as steel rain back to the ground. The field was perhaps down to half, it was hard to tell. Regardless, she would not win this way.
So she charged.
He was not expecting that, and froze up. By the time he was moving again she was coming in fast, fast enough to crash... except that she wouldn’t. As soon as she got close to him she slowed down, and he slowed down too.
I remember what Dire told me of how she beat him.
In slow motion, she watched her gauntleted hand come around and settle on his shoulder. In slow motion, she watched as her other arm cocked back, and shot at his face. He struggled, tried to get a hand up to stop her but by then they were both falling in slow motion as she bore him to the ground, her charge slowed but not canceled out as she hammered him in the jaw. Bones gave before the suit’s inexorable strength, and her field flared as they both hit the ground and bounced, spinning up into the air. Then her view was gravel, the screeching of metal, and the last desperate cries of the forcefield as she rolled and twisted and tumbled head over heels. At some point she lost hold of Ballista and her speed snapped back to normal.
Finally, with a crunching shudder, she felt herself stop. Thrown around in the ill-fitting harness, she knew she’d have bruises from this later and she took stock as she levered herself up out of the rubble and looked around.
More dust, but her nightvision detected a burst of light as a flare popped overhead. Ah. They found it. Good.
Another quick look, and she found Ballista a few hundred feet away, crumpled next to a car. He was twitching, and she nodded. It would not have done to kill him. She had aimed for his jaw, not his forehead, for just that reason. Debris pattered down, but even now his power protected him, so she gave him no more thought and turned away.
And then a burst of heat overhead, as a figure arced down, and gravel pinged odd notes as it rattled off golden armor.
“There you are.”
Minna froze in horror as her night vision showed her every detail of the caped, armored figure. Not armor like hers, sleek and modern and mechanized, but simple medieval armor like she’d seen in the storybooks of old.
Crusader was here. He studied her, arms crossed, then looked around at the destruction.
“You’re not her, are you?”
She stayed silent, afraid to move.
“Your breathing. It’s different. There are other things, but that’s the most obvious to me.” His helmet turned to regard Ballista. “Stay here. If you run I’ll catch you.” With a few quick steps he moved over to the fallen hero, hoisting him effortlessly, and carrying him off into the night.
Her commlink chimed. What? They were supposed to stay off the comms. She opened it.
“So, I’ve already figured out you’re not Dire,” Arachne’s voice chirped. “Which means you’re a distraction.”
Minna ground her teeth, and moved to turn off the commlink... and found she couldn’t. “What—” she clamped her lips shut before any more words could escape.
“Oh, you’re Minna! Excellent. So, uh, let me ask you a question. What made you think you could teleport twice, and not expect me to trace it back?”
Minna’s eyes went wide with horror.
“Oh yeah. You want to say hi to Bunny? Or your kid? I’ve got them now. And I’ve shut down your teleporter. There’s no escape for you now, I’m afraid. I’ve also got that photonic resonance amplifier you stole, and doesn’t that raise questions?”
No teleporter? No escape! She turned her head, frantically searching for a way out. Most of the nearby buildings were wrecked, but maybe if she could take to the sky... Her armor clicked as she tried, and she remained groundbound. GRAVITICS OFFLINE her display read. MANUALLY REROUTE CIRCUITRY FOR RESTORATION. Then it flashed to diagrams and menus and she knew nothing of how to fix it. She was not Dire, and this made no sense to her at all.
“VORPAL?” she called, and only silence answered. She had backup out there, somewhere, but no idea where. And that was if Vorpal could find a way to help at all.
“You stayed.” Crusader said, landing with a soft ‘thud’. “Sensible. Not what I expected. Now, would you like to tell me exactly why you are doing all of this? What purpose does this accomplish?”
“Yes, you could explain it to him.” Arachne cooed. “But if you say a word about me or the hostage situation I’ve got you and your fellow minions in, well, it won’t go so well for Anya.”
Crusader’s head jerked up, and he stared in surprise. He heard that!
But her heart sank, as she realized it didn’t change anything. Anya died if she talked. Dire would never return if she didn’t hold Crusader here. If he stopped her too easily or if she surrendered, then he would be free to look around. He’d find Martin... there was no way that Martin had made the handoff yet. It would take minutes, at least, and only seconds had passed
from the flare.
In the end, there was no choice at all.
I owe Dire everything.
Minna put her fists up, and shook her head. Crusader’s sigh echoed through the silence and the dust, as he nodded.
“As you wish.”
And then he was charging her, his arm swinging back for a brutal punch...
CHAPTER 11: DIRE – IN THE HOUSE OF DARKNESS
“Ah yes, Herr Mitternacht. An alias, of course. A man who so desired drama in his life, that he threw everything he had into playing the part of a serial villain of the most melodramatic sort. Of course, the problem arose when it turned out he was quite dangerous, despite his melodrama...”
--Jacob Bryson, chatting about his World War Two adventures on the set of the 1953 movie “Unstoppable: Reich Wreckers”
The stars were wrong, and I could not say why it troubled me so.
The things that Dottie had called ‘Fae’ led us through the primal forest, as the strange and untethered stars flickered and moved in the violet sky above us. The horrible, rolling headache that had slammed me from the moment I’d entered this place had abated, a bit, but my brain still felt raw and tender. I seemed to be the only one affected so, judging by Henri and Bryson’s wide-eyed stares at our surroundings, the fae moving on either flank, and the wispy, multi-colored lights that flickered and darted ahead of us.
Dottie walked behind them, and I walked with her, holding her hand tight. She’d requested it, and I saw no reason to refuse. She trembled as we went, and I cast my gaze over to her every now and then. She seemed on the edge of tears, though I couldn’t say why.
“She doesn’t like leaving Unstoppable behind,” I groused to Dottie.
“It means he probably lived. Probably.” She gnawed her lip. “He’ll be fine if we can take care of the source of the lycanthropy.”
“The what now?”
“The source of the werewolves. Loge.”
“Should you be saying that name out loud?” After that whole bit about how gods could hear their names, it seemed like it was tempting fate.
“He has no dominion here. It should be fine.”
“Alright. So how do we handle Loge?”
“Hopefully you— we won’t have to.”
“Then what are we talking about?”
“Loge was defeated and bound by Mitternacht. So hopefully, if you can negotiate a deal with him and break the binding, he’ll go popping off back to Ysgard, and without him powering the werewolves they should revert back to people. Probably drain Mitternacht something fierce, too.”
“Probably. Hopefully. Troublesome, those words.”
“Necessary, sorry.” Dottie sighed. “There’s nothing for certain, here. If I’d passed my initiation, if I’d been a full-fledged witch rather than a dilettante dabbler... well I’m sorry, what I know is what you’ve got.”
I gave her hand a squeeze. “You’ve done fine by us so far.”
Her smile was weak, but it was there. I smiled back. “So where are we going?”
“Schloss Mitternacht. After he told us right where his home was, I figured that’s where he’s keeping Loge. If you free him, then that will save Unstoppable. Do it fast enough before he gets home and Bob’s your uncle.”
“What?”
“She means that it will be simple,” Bryson said, turning back to us. “Though in my experience, that’s rarely so. Miss Hampston, you’re asking us to outbargain a trickster god. From my admittedly limited experience, regular gods and goddesses are difficult to barter with in the first place. A trickster god? That could prove problematic.”
“Good thing you’ll be there to help us.” I gave her hand another squeeze.
“Ah. Well.” She gnawed her lip, opened her mouth—
“Time,” Henri said, looking back at us with wild eyes. “Is time the same here?”
“What?”
“The tales. The man in the hollow hill. Tannhäuser. The farmer who spent a night with the faeries and came back a century later. Those stories, are they true?”
“Oh. That.” She shook her head. “They could do that if they cared, but I negotiated a good deal. They won’t. It helps that Mister Mitternacht made them rather cross. They’re just as eager to cause him mischief as we are.”
Thank heavens. I had enough troubles with time travel already. But I held the thought as another one took its place. There were a lot of these guys, and they looked dangerous. Stranger things than the humanoids moved back in the forest too, black hounds that stood twice my height, with glowing red eyes. Ghostly women with ropes wound around their mouths. Shambling things so large that I could only see their legs, moving along the trees and blending in with the trunks as they stepped with delicate paces. “Just how cross are they, Dottie? And might they be cross enough to help with our mission?”
“Not that cross I’m afraid.” Dottie shook her head. “When La Société’s depredations drove the rural Germans to flee to more civilized regions, the brasher among the fae took it as a sign to move back into their old haunts. They were some of the first things the Thulites hunted and bound. Atlantean magic, no matter how fragmented, trumps anything they could bring to bear. It’d be a bloodbath.”
“They did fine against Mitternacht in the church.”
“Caught him by surprise when he was negotiating.” Bryson snapped. “The world’s moved on, and their magic hasn’t. Wicker armor that will turn any blade is of little use against bullets, and no elfshot’s been made that can pierce the iron of a tank.” He turned his eyes to Dottie. “Speaking of negotiating...”
Dottie’s hand squeezed my own. “Yes?”
“What precisely are the terms of your deal with these folk?”
The seconds passed in silence, and Bryson and Henri stopped. Around us the fae slowed as well, turned inhuman eyes upon us. The only noise came from the clattering of their bone charms, and the occasional clink of bronze as one of them shifted.
“Dottie?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”
She swallowed. “They’re taking us to Mitternacht’s home. I used his blood to give them the scent, and they’re keeping a few drops of that to unbind his enchantments when they find them. His blood’s good for that, you get the blood of someone you can undo magics on them or magics they made—”
“Miss Hampston.” Bryson shook his head. “There’s a part we won’t like. Tell us that part.”
“That’s a hell of an assumption to make!” I snapped at him.
“I’ve dealt with creatures like this before. There’s always a price, and it’s always painful.”
“He’s right,” Dottie whispered. “But you won’t have to pay it.”
I let go of her hand, as she wrapped her arms around her chest, hugged herself tight. “Dottie? What did you do?”
Silence again, and I put my hands on her shoulders, gave her a shake. “It won’t get easier because you waited. Come on, spit it out. We won’t judge.”
“Me. I’m giving them me. In exchange for safe conduct, no tricks or traps, and you all getting there alive.”
A cold shock down my back, and I shook my head. “No. Unacceptable.”
“N-no, it’s... it’s penance, of a sort. Besides, it’s not forever. I’m just... staying with them for a time.”
“It’s children, isn’t it?” Bryson asked, planting his cane in the ground. “You’re going to marry into the family, so to speak.”
“H-how? How did you....”
“They can’t breed. Nikola and I dealt with this a few years back, with the Erl King’s raiders in the Black Forest. Some calamity befell them in the past, and rendered them mostly sterile. They need humans to make new children, and the half-breeds that are produced are... fluid enough to be transformed into true fae.”
Total silence. Eyes wide, I shook her again. “Dottie, no.”
“It was my choice to make. I made it.” Haunted eyes met mine. “You don’t understand.”
“She understands that we’re sure as he
ll not leaving you behind to be a brood mare for the rest of your life.”
“It won’t be the rest of my life! It’s nine children. Nine babies. And I’ll be treated well, with right of refusal to my bed. I might even take a husband, if I find one I like. Better odds than I had back home.”
“What are you talking about?”
Dottie shook. “I... wasn’t a very nice person. Back home. My initiation into the order... the police interrupted it.” The cold chill on my back spread to the back of my skull. I remembered Unstoppable, and his comment about being disturbed by the fact she could recognize a human heart on sight. “The police interrupted me, before I could sacrifice the ba—”
All the little silences, that the others had exhibited around her. All their hesitation, and their wariness towards her, it made sense now. In a heartbeat I knew, and before she could finish the last word I acted.
I put my hand over her mouth, and the tears streamed down her face now, as she sobbed and pulled me into a tight hug. I bent over her, holding her close. A sigh seemed to ripple through the clearing, and the fae leaned in closer, whispering strange words. They were almost excited, and their eyes almost glowed with unknowable thoughts.
“Damned voyeurs,” Bryson said. “Hungry for sensation, emotion, something that means a damn. Bad at it themselves, you see.”
“We could fight them,” I whispered into her ear, and her back stiffened, as she twisted her neck, shook away my hand.
“No! You musn’t! They never forget a slight. And we’re in their home, they’re more powerful than anything we can bring to bear!”
“They don’t know Dire,” I growled.
“What?”
“Nevermind. Look, if you can work a way to get us out of here, we can ambush them on the way out, drag you with us—”
“No!” She pushed me away. I stumbled back, surprised by the strength in her thin arms. “This is my choice. This is my penance. I tried to take a life I had no right to, so now I bring nine more into the world. Not the world I planned to stay in, but well, what can you do?”
DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3) Page 20