Got To Be A Hero

by Paul Duffau

  Unlike the front of the building, this strange room exuded the sweetness of the flowers and a powerful underlying mint.

  “Tea?”

  Mercury stood at the far end of the room, his left hand out, gesturing to a battered metal pot and a pair of mugs.

  “Uh, no,” said Mitch, taking another step into the room. The carpet was the color of grass, and spongy. He stepped back, then forward again, testing the floor. Same thing, the gentle give like a well-manicured lawn. He swiveled his head to take it all in.

  “I like to work in natural spaces,” said Mercury, by way of explanation.

  “You said you were a cop,” said Mitch. The mint smells were soothing, and he kept filling his lungs with the scent. Today was going from weird to crazy. Hunter acting squirrelly, the electronics blowing up for no reason, Kenzie, Mercury.

  “Mitch, are you okay?”

  Mitch shook his head. “No.”

  “Come sit down, son.”

  Mitch did as he was told. The seat of the chair was hard, but not uncomfortable. Mercury sat in front of the ledger. He procured a glass of water from somewhere on the far side of the desk.

  “Here,” he said. “It will help.”

  Mitch sipped. The water tasted delicious, like liquid fresh from a deep mountain lake. It woke a memory of camping, when he was tiny, and his parents still loved each other. The lake was cold, and the craggy mountain still had snow on it, reaching down like a white velvet cape to the far edge of the shore. Memories whispered: splashing with his father, the droplets brilliant in the air, the sparkling laughter of his mother.

  He put the glass down, chest heaving, and shoved the images far away.

  “You said you could give me answers.”

  Mercury’s face bore an expression of sympathy, and Mitch felt a reflexive anger build to shield against it.

  “Some of the answers, yes. Let’s start with what you already know, and build.”

  Mitch nodded.

  “Good,” said Mercury, leaning an elbow on the tabletop and squaring up to face Mitch. “Your first introduction to this mess was the attack on one McKenzie Graham. You rushed out to save the fair damsel—” An upraised finger forestalled commentary from Mitch. “—taking out the knees of one of the men. The fair damsel had already dispatched the other with what you’ve described as a rather vicious kick to a perilous region.

  “Since then you have discovered, probably the hard way, that Miss Graham has a father who works for the Seattle Police Department. Mr. Raymond Graham can be rather unpleasant to confront. He also is a master at interrogation. Hence he found out about the card that I left you. He has since tried to trace the number, with, I’m afraid, very little success.

  “Mr. Graham is married to a Sasha Graham, who is CEO of a very specialized technology company that is proceeding with an investigation into certain esoteric subjects that have attracted the attention of some rather predatory actors in the technology field.

  “With me so far?”

  Mitch held his face blank. “Yeah,” he said, processing the information and seeing the enormous chasms of missing data. He bet himself that Mercury was going to dodge the important stuff.

  “Your role has been protector for young Miss Graham. The attack was a direct response to the research efforts, to try and use the leverage of the kidnapped child against the mother. They want that technology, want it quite a lot, actually.”

  Mercury distractedly scratched the stubble on his chin.

  “The technology is world-changing.”

  “What is it?” Mitch said, slipping his words in quickly and stopping Mercury’s monologue.

  Mercury glanced away to the scene outside the windows, then turned his gaze back to Mitch.

  “The nature of the device is open to some conjecture.”

  “You don’t know?” Mitch tried to keep from sounding incredulous, without success. “Some geek in a lab builds a machine that you think is world-changing and you don’t even have a clue what it does?”

  A fire lit in Mercury’s eyes, and to Mitch, the room darkened. The older man straightened in his seat and leaned forward. “We have suspicions, but none fit to share with a fledgling such as you.”

  As he spoke, his hand reached out to thump Mitch on the meaty part of his leg above the knee with a closed fist. Mitch recalled the strength of those hands from their previous encounter but refused to be cowed by Mercury.

  “Well, you’re going to have to share something, because so far you haven’t told me anything that I hadn’t already figured out myself. Tech is changing constantly without thugs resorting to kidnapping, so it’s not tech, it’s the application.”

  Pieces shifted, coalesced in Mitch’s mind, and, with a snap, things sharpened into focus.

  “It’s a weapon of some kind, or can be used as a weapon?”

  He was pretty sure of his guess but phrased it as a question. More pieces shifted, but he held his tongue and waited for Mercury’s response.

  “That is our presumption, that it could be used as a weapon. It appears that someone else has made the same connection and wishes to possess it.” Mercury frowned. “Obviously, such a person should not be permitted control of the . . . power.”

  The slight stumble in Mercury’s speech caused a spasm in Mitch’s gut. Mentally, he substituted the word “magic” for “power,” and Kenzie’s role, and even Mercury’s, became much clearer. The puzzle piece labeled “Hunter” still didn’t fit, but somewhere there was a connection tying Hunter Rubiera to the rest of this mess.

  Mercury sat back, head tilted like he was looking through the bottom of bifocals, and gave Mitch time to think. Mitch ran a hand through his hair and stood. He paced. At the far end of the room, he turned back and spoke.

  “Kenzie’s still in danger.”

  Mercury nodded but did not speak.

  Mitch trod across the accommodating softness of the floor. He was nearly even with Mercury when it clicked.

  “Why me?”

  “Why you what?”

  “You want me to look out for Kenzie, so why me? She’s got Jackson.” Mitch shot a glance to Mercury to see if he knew of Jackson, found the old man nodding. A deadly chill filled his stomach, and the hair on his arms started to lift. “You don’t think Jackson is enough. Why?”

  “The threats almost certainly will overwhelm Mr. Jackson, fine man that he is.”

  His vision narrowed onto Mercury, the edges fading to black, until there was just the man’s face, each line stark and sharp. Mercury’s lips pursed, and words reluctantly fell forth into the air between them.

  “Mr. Jackson is very competent against ordinary threats, but the competitor—or, shall we say, enemy—has the resources to defeat him. More importantly, Mr. Jackson is only cognizant of a single thread of attack. We are aware of at least two.”

  “Magic,” whispered Mitch. His voice strengthened. “It’s not two threads, it’s two modes.”

  Mercury’s normally gray face drew grim and ashen.

  Mitch continued, gesturing with his right hand in a herky-jerky flutter. “You want me to what, back up Jackson? You said he’s competent.”

  Even as he uttered the words, the implication of Mercury’s request released more memories, not the happy ones like the water, but the last minutes of his first life. The coldness took over, tied up his muscles, making his limbs clumsy, while the memory played itself out, the nightmare that haunted him because it wasn’t a nightmare to awaken from.

  They were at the cabin, high in the mountains. Unexpected June snow had trapped them overnight, and his mother fretted, sending nervous glances toward his father. He watched the mood change overtake his dad as the meds, psychotropic drugs to take the sting off the lows and the edge off the highs, wore off. The rest of his supply resided in the cabinet above the master bath sink at home, unreachable as the darkness filled him.

  His dad drank. Mitch later understood the effort to self-medicate, but in the moment the alcohol simply reinforced th
e death spiral in the warped areas of his dad’s brain. The fight started when his mother tried to take the booze away. The first blow came when she reached for the bottle. Not the first time ever he’d hit her, just the opening act for that evening.

  His father raged and hit his wife again, and Mitch, ten years old, flew to intervene. A hard backhand launched him across the room to land in an ungainly heap next to a bunk. His mother had run to him, and he had looked to her face, the tracks of the tears. A freshening bruise under the red weal on her porcelain skin.

  “No, Mitchell, don’t fight him.”

  The rest blurred, stumbling into the snow outside where the falling sun tinted the clouds ruddy. A single shot, and then . . . nothing except a soul-stealing cold.

  “Mitch,” said Mercury. The tone was controlled and insistent, as if he had repeated the name more than once.

  Mitch clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering as the sight of Mercury’s room replaced the memory.

  “I . . . ,” he said, blinking rapidly, unable to finish.

  The thought was stark, unassailable truth.

  I failed. I couldn’t stop him, save her.

  Mercury gave his head a sorrowful shake. “Yet you helped save McKenzie. As to your mother, you were too young to find your measure in such an act. There is always the possibility of redemption, if that provides motivation for you. McKenzie is not safe. Will you help?”

  “I’m not, you know . . . magical.”

  God, that sounded stupid! But he’d rather talk about anything than start reliving and re-dying in his memories.

  Mercury eyed him, and then seemed to make a decision. “That is the second time you’ve mentioned magic. Why?”

  “Because I don’t have a better word. Kenzie did it when she healed me, that’s why you were asking those questions at my house.”

  Mitch stopped talking as a question drifted through his mind. “Why did you care if she used words?”

  Another thought, another question, asked before Mercury could reply to the first.

  “What’s with the hands? All of you . . . well, not you, but everyone else does this stuff with their hands.” Mitch demonstrated a looping circle with his right hand, emulating Kenzie and Hunter.

  I need to talk to Hunter, he thought, in the gap between his questions and Mercury’s response. The back of his neck crawled at the thought. Mitch stopped his pacing to face the old man.

  “Are you a magician or wizard or what?”

  Mercury laughed, deep and rumbling. “Probably ‘or what.’ Some people who can do what we do call themselves witches, some warlocks, some think of themselves as wizards. All are convinced that they are superior. I started as a wizard, became a fool, and now hope to grow old and wise. The first happens quite easily, the latter will tell in time.”

  Mitch scrutinized Mercury’s face. “I didn’t expect you to admit it.”

  “It’s safer. To answer your other questions, the use of words implies training versus natural ability simply manifesting. Both the hands and the words are ways to concentrate properly to use the energy, or magic. Understand?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know how I can help.” Mitch’s left shoulder lifted in a half shrug while his lips twisted into a grimace. “It’s not like I can do any of that. I’m lucky when I don’t get hit by a car.”

  “You do, however, have a habit of being in the right place at the right time. I do not believe that the world operates randomly. You were there to help Miss Graham for a reason, even if I am not able to divine why.”

  “‘God doesn’t play dice with the universe,’” Mitch murmured.

  “Exactly, Einstein was quite correct,” agreed Mercury.

  Mitch kept the surprise off his face. He hadn’t expected Mercury to recognize the quote.

  The wizard continued. “Since the universe has seen fit to include you in this squabble, my interest is to see that you participate on the side favoring freedom. Not every problem can be resolved with force, whether of the brutish sort employed already or by magic, as you called it. The use of intelligence can often defeat either, when properly applied. You possess both intelligence and a resilient mind.”

  Keeping his attention on Mercury’s hands, Mitch gave another half shrug. “You’re leaving parts out.”

  “I told you I didn’t know everything.”

  The answer was less than satisfactory. Mitch approached the proposition the same way a hungry dog approached tainted meat. He couldn’t see the trap or poison, but his brain worried at the voids. What was the device? Why would wizards give a damn about a new glitzy piece of electronics? Why would magic be opposed to magic? This last question followed logically from Mercury’s statements. At that thought, Mitch snorted. Magic kind of negated logical thinking.

  Mitch searched Mercury’s face. He judged the sincerity of the man and made his decision. “I’ll help Kenzie.”

  Mitch went out the door he’d come in and turned left into the street, crossing at the first intersection. He opted to walk the mile back to his house rather than hop the trolley. He needed time to think. He glanced back at the building he’d left. Behind it sat more commercial property and rows of houses hanging on to the flanks of the hill that formed the geographical separation from his neighborhood and Kenzie’s, on the other side of the spine, down to the edge of the lake.

  He stopped next to a sign advertising Kenyan food, the smell of roasting meat from the restaurant triggering his hunger. He got his bearings relative to the inside of Mercury’s fancy little museum.

  Nope, he thought. Should be a park there. The sunlight was wrong, too, a different color.

  He looked back to the building, looking under the stately maples shading the other side of the street.

  The door he had entered was gone. Now there was a bookshop there, spanning the storefront.

  Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.

  Chapter 22

  Mercury sat in the chair, staring out the door where Mitch had left. Behind him, he heard soft footfalls.

  With a sad sigh, he spun around on the wooden seat of his chair. From there he could see his brother, and the doorway into a darker realm that contrasted with the view out the windows.

  “He’s keeping secrets from me already, Harold,” said Mercury. “Did you see what he did with his hand? Looked pretty close to a compulsion spell from the old days.”

  “One of the Families that broke away in the Splintering? The hechiceros?”

  Mercury felt a shudder ripple down his spine. The Spanish Family traced its lineage back to the wizards of Arthurian legend and the era of knights. Some of their thoughts, at least a half century ago when they were last heard from, had not evolved beyond the master and serf feudalism of the Middle Ages. He doubted that they had changed much at all. The Spaniards were not for change. They had even attempted to turn other, lesser wizards into chattel.

  “This would be much easier if I could ensorcell him with a spell,” grumbled Mercury.

  His brother, a year older, didn’t smile. “We need his willing cooperation. The energy required to force him to sacrifice himself against his will is beyond either of our abilities.” Harold paused. “Tremendous power is gathered; I can feel it, as you can. The thunder is coming, just as with the Splintering. This time we must gain control of the magic and direct it to safety.”

  “If the hechiceros still live, they will try to beat us to it,” replied Mercury. He stood abruptly and faced his brother. “He also didn’t promise to help me. The boy is deep in puppy love. Still, he fulfilled part of the prophecy. ‘A hero will come to save her—and us.’”

  “‘Trust his heart,’” finished Harold.

  Mercury pointed a finger at his brother’s chest. “How sure are you of McKenzie?”

  “Sure enough to call you back. She’s the most naturally gifted enchantress I’ve encountered and, despite her parents’ best efforts to adopt the contempt of the Family for the rest of humanity, she resists. If anyone has the ability to men
d the rift in the Families and heal them, it is she.”

  They stood, eye to eye, each taking the measure of the other.

  Mercury nodded as if reassured. “Then we gather the storm and ride the wind.”

  “Agreed,” said Harold. “And we protect McKenzie, so she can repair what we broke so many years ago.”

  Harold turned to leave, striding to the door that led back to the Glade. At the threshold, he stopped and turned.

  “Do you think you can keep the youngster alive, brother?”

  Mercury had the same question, and didn’t answer. They held a long look that shared the same understanding. McKenzie must be protected. Anyone else, including Mitch and themselves, was expendable.

  Chapter 23

  Kenzie opened the door to find her mother had beat her home. Not good. Her mother was forever working late and was always the last one home. Jackson trailed in behind her, looking hungover from the spell. Kenzie diverted her mother’s attention with a forced but cheerful greeting.

  “Hi, you’re home early.”

  The response was slightly warmer than icicles. “Yes, I wanted to talk to you.”

  Kenzie managed to keep guilt off her face. She had a harder time with anger. “About what?”

  Her mother raised an eyebrow at the tone. She glanced in Jackson’s direction. “Mr. Jackson, thank you very much. Please excuse my daughter and I. We’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked at Kenzie. “See you at seven thirty?”

  “Sure,” came the surly reply.

  After Jackson had left, Sasha turned to Kenzie. “That was quite rude of you with Mr. Jackson.”

  “I’m tired of being babysat. Jackson doesn’t bother me much, but you haven’t let me have a single minute to myself since the—”

  “Since armed men tried to abduct you,” interrupted her mother. “I think our precautions are perfectly reasonable, even if your manners are not.”