Got To Be A Hero

by Paul Duffau

  Kenzie breathed deeply and replaced the stone. The two kids continued in their race of futility, and mutterings reached Kenzie’s ears, along with a pleased-sounding yes from Belinda, but all the sounds washed over and around her without leaving a mark. The scent of the Glade when she had arrived, like tangerines, drifted to an older, earthier odor.

  Eyes half-closed, Kenzie held the idea of the pebble in her mind, and let her hands inscribe the sign, emulating Harold as closely as possible, conscious of the fluid grace of his gestures in the forefront of her mind. Just as she released her hands and began to lift, she inhaled. She swayed, light-headed. Through the slits of her eyes, she watched the pebble grow larger, felt it grow light.

  Now, she thought. She closed her eyes and exhaled.

  An audible gasp filled the circle and startled her. Kenzie’s eyes flew open. Unlike Harold’s stone, her pebble glowed like an earth-bound star eight feet above the ground. Shock relaxed her arms, and they fell to her sides. At the edge of her vision, Harold turned a palm down as though he were swatting a fly. The pebble glowed a fraction of a second longer, then fell back to the circle.

  “There is no extra credit, Kenzie,” said Harold. The modulation of his voice carried a worried subtext below the gentle humor of his words.

  A dozen faces gaped at her with something akin to awe. One face, though, twisted into a malevolent snarl. Belinda’s.

  Kenzie shook her head and turned her back on the circle, wrapping her arms around her torso.

  Behind her, she heard Harold instruct the rest of the class, “Focus on your own process. Belinda, you did very well. You others, slow down and remember to focus. Go ahead and begin again. I will be right over there.”

  Kenzie had no doubt where “there” was. Her suspicion was confirmed a moment later when Harold materialized at her side. Feeling the weight of the sleepless night and her tiff with Mitch, she waited for him to speak first, to chastise her for her screw-up.

  He harrumphed under his breath, and then asked, “Who else has been teaching you, Kenzie?”

  The question took her by surprise. “No one, why?”

  “You don’t know what you did?”

  “I did what you showed me,” Kenzie said. She didn’t like the defensiveness in her voice. “I don’t break the rules on training in the arts.”

  Guilt seized her at the mention of rules. One of the reasons for bringing Wilders into the fold of the Family was to train them properly. The laws that governed all the societal interactions, from marriage to conduct outside the Glade, also dictated the steps that every acolyte had to complete on their journey. Her relationship with Mitch, her telling him of this existence, shattered those rules. Her knees quaked.

  Harold put a hand on her shoulder and let it rest there lightly.

  “You picked up your pebble, held it. Why?”

  Kenzie’s mind raced. “I wanted to understand the pebble.” Since that sounded stupid, she added, “In my Tang Soo Do class, the martial arts I take, the black belt, Jules, has been teaching me how to use what she calls the third eye. It’s kind of like seeing without looking.”

  Harold dipped his chin, and his eyes narrowed. “I think I should meet this Jules. Your sensei—”

  “Sabomnim. Sensei is Japanese. Tang Soo Do is Korean.” She thought of Harold joining Jackson and Mitch on the benches at the studio. I have an entourage. The idea almost made her smile.

  “I stand corrected,” said Harold. “What you’re learning is how to reach a higher plane of consciousness, to tap into your intuitive capabilities. These are skills that we attempt to teach young enchantresses as they approach full wizard status.” He raised a bony finger. “Every living thing moves within its own energy potential, and it is possible to jump those levels in leaps without passing through each lower level. Sadly, very few can reach inside themselves to attune their greater selves to the universe.”

  “Why did the pebble glow?”

  Harold graced her with a shadow of a smile while warmth lit his eyes. “You made an amulet.”

  “Hunh?” Kenzie glanced over her shoulder. The pebble remained hidden in the grass. The rest of the class was staring at the pair of them despite Harold’s instructions to continue practicing.

  Harold explained. “Whether or not you know it, you sought the underlying nature of the pebble. When you applied magic to lift it, you also added a . . . charge to it.” His eyes drifted to the horizon. In a voice that bore an abiding sadness hidden in its depths, he continued, “Very few others could do such a thing.”

  “But how?” Kenzie asked.

  Harold rolled his shoulders and turned a sheepish gaze to her. “I don’t know. Can you explain how you did it?”

  “But I don’t know what I did,” said Kenzie. She clenched her hands, the frustration showing in the tendons popping out on the backs of her hands.

  This was met by an understanding nod from the old wizard. “I thought not. The Incantaraus lacks a mention on it. As with many other things, we know that it is possible, but not how. Much of what we teach you is based on tradition. We know it works, even if we don’t fully understand why.”

  Kenzie pondered Harold’s admission. She realized she took magic for granted, a part of her everyday reality. Why were there any rules about training in the Arts if no one really knew how magic worked? She closed her eyes, touched the swirl of magic around her, and opened them again.

  Before she could ask her next question—so many questions!—Harold spoke. “Rejoin the others, Kenzie. Focus only on the exercise of lifting your pebble,” he said, voice crisp.

  Kenzie hesitated, contemplated forcing answers from the wizard. “Yes, sir,” she said, reluctance clear to her ears. “One last question?”

  Harold was good at sighing. “One,” he said.

  “That doesn’t explain why it glowed, just how. Why did my pebble, my amulet, glow?”

  A fleeting expression of concern showed on his face, and he was slow to answer. When he did, he kept his voice down. His gaze was direct, and his words shook her. “Amulets are almost always created by a wizard in great need. They take many forms, but the magic they are imbued with is there to guide, defend, or empower the wizard.”

  He paused.

  “I think, and only you will know for sure, that you are in a dark and frightening place and seek a light to the way out.”

  The rest of the lesson was a disaster. Kenzie found herself unable to perform the simplest of spells. Harold watched her, and she sensed his sympathy. Thankfully, he left her alone. When the class was over, she paid her respects to him with a minuscule bob of her head, then fled. In her hand was her pebble, inert and unassuming.

  She crossed the brook and followed it to the solitude of the lagoon. The small beach extended to the water’s edge with its white sand undisturbed. She wavered and walked to the water, her feet leaving pockmarks in the sand. A shudder started in her chest and moved to her shoulders, and she sniffled. She clutched her robe and held it tight against her body.

  How deep is the water?

  She dipped a foot into the lagoon. The liquid surface broke, and water warm as tears accepted her entry. She took another step, the bottom hem of her robe brushing across the surface.

  A drop from her eyes splashed the surface and rippled forth. The pattern of rings intersected with waves from the waterfall, and the sad song of the undine rose with a delicate apparition that formed into the shape of a woman. From across the pool, Kenzie stared and, for a dizzy second, felt as though she were looking into an aqueous mirror. The sprite tilted her head and words formed in Kenzie’s mind, feminine and comforting.

  Believe, daughter.

  Kenzie, alone with no one to witness her weakness, sobbed.

  She heard her name being called from far away. Startled, she looked to the silver light above. She was late, really late.

  The tears had stopped much earlier, but she had stayed with the embrace of the water. A semblance of calm had come with the cleansing of the
tears. She hurried to shore. The wet cloth of her robe stuck to her skin. She’d have some explaining to do, although to the best of her knowledge, there was no prohibition against getting in the water.

  She hustled along the brook, the dashing music of the water heading in the same direction she was. She skipped across to get to the side closest to the exit grotto and found the trail leading away. She broke into a soundless run, bare feet caressing the soft footing of the trail.

  She turned a bend and skidded to a stop, her mortification spreading in a hot stain across her face. Belinda and Aric, only partially robed, were engaged in the kind of carnal acts that Kenzie had assumed were absent from the purity of the Glade.

  Belinda saw her first, and if the look during Harold’s class had been malevolent, the expression Belinda wore now contained black hatred. The Wilder lifted an arm from under Aric, causing him to tip over.

  Kenzie had no idea what spell the woman planned to cast, but she didn’t intend to stand there while Belinda conjured. With a voice that cracked, she whispered, “I’m terribly sorry,” and sprinted away from the pair of lovers.

  “Damn it,” she heard Aric say, while Belinda spat invectives at her. She ran and didn’t look back. Definitely don’t look back.

  Out of breath, she found her parents waiting.

  “Where were you?” asked her father, glancing at his wrist and remembering too late that that watches did not exist here.

  “Why are you wet?” Her mother’s tone came across as an accusation.

  “I soaked my legs in the lagoon.” She had planned to come up with a better excuse than the truth, but the encounter in the woods had flummoxed her.

  Her parents shared glances. Her father asked the question. “What lagoon?”

  Chapter 40

  Mitch leaned against the railing with the sun over his left shoulder and faced toward the large flat circle of a fountain with the Museum of History and Industry in the background. At his feet was his backpack. In his hand was one of the two cell phones that Lassiter had given Kenzie. The secure bag for it was folded and in the backpack. He might need it later.

  It had taken an hour and three streetcar transfers to get downtown. The swaying motion of the electric cars had relaxed him as the bustling neighborhoods sped past the window. He had jumped off at the museum at South Lake Union and Terry Streets and walked across the park on the concrete paths that wound across the greenscape of meticulously tended lawns. The grass was freshly cut and the smells mingled with the saltiness of Puget Sound drifting past. On the far side of the fountain was an observation deck jutting into the lake. Gulls wheeled overhead, their calls shrill. One tucked its wings and dive-bombed the water, searching for food.

  Instead of looking out to the lake, Mitch kept his eyes trained on the foot traffic to and from the park. Three minutes after he’d exposed the phone and turned it on, the promised text message had arrived. He had glanced at the message, which bore the single word “acknowledged,” along with the day—Tuesday—and time—10 PM—for the rendezvous. He closed the lid.

  Thirty minutes later, they started to gather. It confirmed his suspicion that Lassiter would have monitored the locations of the phone used to signal when they had what he wanted, as well as his and Kenzie’s personal phones. Lassiter had been explicit that Kenzie should signal him. Mitch deliberately violated those instructions. His phone was in his backpack, acting as confirmation that it was him, not Kenzie, that had used the first of the throwaway phones. Lassiter would be pissed, but he’d have to investigate.

  First, a man and a woman, dressed in business suits too warm for the day, meandered into the park and settled on a bench across from the water feature. The next to arrive went to the pier to the left of his mini-peninsula and took up residence, nonchalantly scanning the waves made by the passing boats, with his opaque glasses hiding his eyes. The dude held himself balanced like he was a professional fighter. Mitch could see knots in the man’s arms and decided he did not want to tussle with the guy.

  The last to arrive was a woman. She was petite and in yoga pants, hair up in a ponytail, a dark blue lightweight jacket with baby blue piping. She had stopped to stretch, but the right pocket of her jacket hung heavily. Might be a cell phone, Mitch thought. He wasn’t positive she was one of them until he saw her exchange glances with the others.

  He straightened up, and they reacted as a team, the man to his left cutting off that avenue of escape, the couple splitting to follow the perimeter of the fountain. The cutie closed off the right.

  Mitch allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smile that earned a frown from the woman in the activewear. He held up the phone, turned, and with a fully cocked arm, hurled Lassiter’s phone out into the lake. All four of the watchers stopped. The runner put her hand up to her right ear. Mitch watched her lips moving. They must all have been connected via earpieces and mikes like the FBI used.

  She nodded and walked toward him.

  She was even prettier up close and barely came to his shoulder. When she spoke, her voice carried warm overtones. “Mr. Lassiter is questioning why you have elected to violate his instructions. What should I tell him?” Her smile encouraged him to answer. Mitch bet that not too many guys turned down that smile, in that face.

  “Tell Lassiter that I have the other phone as well. I’ve stashed it away, and Kenzie doesn’t know where it’s at. When we find what he’s looking for, we’ll get hold of him on that one. He gets to set the time, I get to set the location.”

  Mitch held his breath, waiting for her to relay the information. Her hands stayed put. She regarded him with amusement, as though she were privy to a private joke.

  “Are you going to tell him?” Mitch asked. He forced his eyes to keep moving. He glanced to the other three. They stood sentry, facing out.

  As if to answer, a phone at her waist emitted a tinkling tone. She unclipped it, checked the number, and answered, all in the space of two rings.

  “Yes, sir, he is right here.” She listened. “Yes, sir, understood.”

  She held the phone out to Mitch.

  “Our microphones are quite sensitive. Mr. Lassiter heard your message and would like to converse with you for a moment, if you have the time.”

  Another incredible smile. Mitch’s fingers took the phone, brushing the lady’s as he did. He glanced at the screen, but the number was blocked. No luck backtracking that trail, then.

  Phone to his ear, Mitch said, “Hello.”

  Lassiter spoke, voice as precise as a laser. “Mr. Merriwether, every action has attendant consequences.”

  Mitch interrupted. “You can’t hurt Kenzie, because she is the one that needs to dig up the flash drive for you. Me you need, because I have the last phone.”

  “Mr. Merriwether, I believe you have miscalculated your importance. If need be, I could remove you and arrange for another means of communication.”

  “Maybe,” Mitch said, a tremor in his hand, “but her dad’s a cop, a detective. How many coincidences do you think it will take before he switches from protecting Kenzie to nailing your ass to the wall? Me showing up dead might be one event too many.”

  “Playing percentages, Mr. Merriwether, is called gambling. I choose not to gamble.”

  “Then do it my way. You’ll get what you want, and I can protect Kenzie.”

  Mitch quashed the urge to wipe his free hand on his jeans while Lassiter made him wait. His fingers rubbed against each other, gliding on a thin layer of sweat, matched by the dampness he felt at his brow. He saw movement from the corner of his eye. The big dude had abandoned his position and was walking toward him.

  Come on, he thought, making eye contact with the fighter.

  “Mr. Merriwether, this will be the final change to our agreement, do I make myself clear?”

  With an explosive release of pent-up pressure, Mitch said, “Yeah, you do.”

  “Please hand the phone back to my representative.”

  Mitch handed it back to the woman. He kept
his eyes locked on the man. Lassiter wouldn’t let him off that easy. Mitch glanced to the water. He could always swim for it.

  A scuffing sound brought Mitch’s head around in time to see the cutie pulling something from her jacket pocket. He had time to recognize his mistake, the heaviness of her pocket earlier, the phone at the waist.

  The electrodes struck him in the chest. Unlike the bee sting of the stun gun, the Taser hit him, and hit him, and hit him, and wouldn’t let go. Red pain filled his sight as he fought to grab the leads embedded into his muscles, but wave after wave of high-voltage electricity short-circuited the commands from his brain.

  He tried screaming, “Enough, enough” but the words never made it past the immobile muscles of his mouth. His whole body joined with the screaming, and he heard the runner speaking, he could hear everything, while he stood rigid, the voltage destroying any ability to move.

  Her voice still carried the deceptive overtones of compassion while she electrocuted him at nineteen shocks per second. Her words broke up the eternity of pain into discrete blocks of agony. “Mr. Lassiter wished me to reinforce his point that there will be no more alterations to the plan. Also, that if he truly wanted to know where the second phone is, he has the wherewithal to get that information. He asks that you do not further abuse his patience or kindness.”

  Mitch didn’t know how much longer it went on, just that it stopped. When it did, he faded to blackness, but not before feeling gratitude that his gamble had paid off. He was still alive. . . .

  Chapter 41

  For them, there was no lagoon. Kenzie tried to wrap her mind around the fact that her parents had walked the path along the brook and never discovered the waterfall and the pool of water below it. In a hurry, they refused her offer to lead them to it, to prove its existence.

  With a numb feeling from the tip of her head to her toes, she followed them out through the portal back to the mundane world. Her robes transformed back to jeans that bound her hips, a blouse, and her running shoes. The pebble, still clenched in her hand, came through as she expected, so she slipped it into a pocket.