Queen of Wands-eARC

by John Ringo

  “Thank you,” Marquez said, hefting his machete. “That allows us to open up the whole can of whoop-ass.”

  Barb and the Opus Dei team charged forward at virtually the same moment, and the scene descended into a maelstrom.

  Barb was in the unfortunate position of having seven of the Stepfords on her side of the ritual. Three were wielding epees, and the other four foils. She knew very well that a good “touch” from any of them would put her out of the fight, probably dead. Just because they looked like toys didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.

  “Laz, do not get near the swords,” Barb said, then stepped forward.

  Barb danced around the seven for a bit, feeling them out. Fortunately, only one of the girls using an epee appeared to be well trained in fencing. She quickly concentrated on that one, blocking the others as she needed to keep alive. The girl was good, and more than willing to put the others to the front to retain her ability to dash in on Barb when there appeared to be an opening.

  Barb brought her katana across, blocking a thrust from one of the foils, then up and across, taking off the Stepford’s arm. The girl shrieked and backed away, her stump spurting. However, the bleeding stopped almost immediately and the girl simply picked the foil back up.

  Another slash took off an arm at the shoulder and had much the same result. Scream, stop bleeding, get back in the fight.

  The expert epee wielder had circled to Barb’s left and rushed in, going for a thrust to the chest. Barb performed a desperate Sparrow Circling Flowers, taking the head off of one of the Stepfords and the hand from the epee wielder. Cutting off the Stepford’s head did not, however, have the effect she expected. The girl’s body began to stumble around until it could bend over and pick up the head. Then it set it back on.

  “Oh, you did not,” Barb said.

  “You cannot kill us,” the epee wielder panted. “That wound will heal in moments. We are made invincible by the power of our Goddess.”

  “Really?” Barb said, blocking a foil. She rammed the katana into the mouth of the foil wielder and called upon the power of God. A surge of power went down the blade, and the girl twitched and dropped. “My master is the One True God, brat. And I’m here to explain to you, permanently, the error of your ways. Prepare to be spanked like your momma should have long ago.”

  She dodged out of the forming ring and came in on the beheaded girl’s flank. The katana slid up through her ribs like butter. With another surge the Stepford dropped, fully dead.

  Dodging again, she crashed directly through the group, blocking epees and foils on either side, then into the ritual.

  “Nooo!” Reamer screamed, throwing a frantic levin bolt.

  Barb blocked it and took two heads off of the ritualists in two quick slashes.

  She turned back to the group of sword wielders, blocking more thrusts and taking off arms with abandon, figuring if they didn’t have any arms, they couldn’t use swords.

  She had seen, in her brief crossing maneuver, that Opus Dei was barely holding its ground. She wasn’t sure that they could call God’s power in an offensive manner. She’d been told that was, to say the least, unusual. Which meant killing these Stepford bitches was mostly up to her.

  One of the foils finally managed to plink her in her left arm, which hurt like hell. She adjusted her chi to fight the pain and wondered if God was willing to send some healing her way. Or some energy since she was starting to flat wear out.

  Levin bolts. Foils. Epees. One of the remaining zombies. At one point Barb ended up stumbling over a flopping and apparently still-alive arm. The hand latched onto her boot for a moment until Barb cut down, close to her body, and took it off at the fingers. She retained it as the oddest image of the really weird entire night: Clutching pink fingernails with yellow French tips. It was a horrible combination. Barb wanted to track down the manicurist and cut her head off.

  Most of her blocks and cuts were hair-close. She was spinning and slashing so fast she was well beyond technique. It was just a dance of death, with the air so full of spraying arterial blood the whole clearing smelled of smoke and iron and roasting pork.

  She had more cuts than just the plink on the arm at this point. Frankly, her tacticals were so cut up, she was starting to feel half naked.

  She finished off the last of the sword wielders on her side and waded into the group continuing the ritual. She expected, given the amount of time they’d been at it, that whatever demon they were summoning would have appeared by now. Barb was, in fact, sort of looking forward to it. Generally, if you took out the demon, the acolytes ended up running or going mad. At the moment it looked as if she was going to have to kill them all. Which was just work, work, work.

  The ritualists were unarmed, but that didn’t mean they went down easily. Some of them were, unbelievably, able to block the katana with their hands. Rhino. Tough. Skins. Barb had started to cut their heads off then kick them aside. That kept them out of the game for a while at least. She managed to punt one bottle-blonde all the way to the river.

  “Marquez! How you doin’?”

  “I’m going to apply to the See for a pay raise after this one!” Marquez yelled. “How do you kill these things? Oh, good Lord Jesus…”

  Barb looked across the clearing as one of the Opus Dei team surged back to his feet and began lurching towards Marquez.

  “Go with God, Brother Sutphin,” Marquez said, taking off his head with the machete.

  “God damn you all!” Barb screamed, suddenly losing all technique. She began wading through the group, katana slashing in a butterfly. The blazing sword, finally carrying the full weight of God’s fury, was no longer simply “hurting” the Stepfords. At its touch they were dropping in severed and quite dead bits.

  Technique dropped away, thought dropped away, time dropped away. At that moment, it became simply the dance of the sword. Blood and limbs flew through the air like fleshy butterflies as Barbara Everette, Warrior of God, brought His judgment down upon the coven.

  Reamer finally ran, and Barb paused in her slaughter just long enough to draw another tanto and put it squarely in his back. He apparently didn’t have the same resistance as the Stepfords; the tanto sank into his back and straight into his heart.

  With Barb’s berserker charge, the Stepfords all started to flee, scattering in every direction. They were, however, on an island, and Barb wasn’t done by any stretch of the imagination. It took the group of God Warriors, with able help from a tracking cat, about twenty minutes to finally clear the island.

  Barb found Vartouhi and Dr. Downing boarding one of the boats on the eastern end.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, leaping aboard.

  “You can’t do this,” Dr. Downing said, holding his arms over his head as if they were going to stop a sword. “You can’t just go around killing people! There are laws!”

  “More like guidelines,” Barb said, tiredly. “And there’s no such thing as angels, demons, supernatural, zombies, and the Vatican doesn’t have special-operations troops. You can, at this point, surrender. You’ll be given a very quick and very unfair trial and incarcerated in a very special holding facility.”

  “What about me?” Vartouhi asked. Her arm was completely healed.

  “Stepfords are classified as a special form of undead,” Barb said. “Executive termination, absent retention for examination, which means dissection, by the way, is authorized. In other words,” Barb continued, bringing the katana across and taking off the thing’s head, “kill first, ask questions never.”

  “You, on the other hand, doctor,” she said, “are going to be asked a great many questions…”

  * * *

  “I suppose the real question is, what do we do with this?” Barb asked, holding up a tablet. She’d tried wiping some of the blood off her face, but her arm was even more coated.

  The center of the ritual had been a rough stone altar. Really nothing but some river rocks piled up in a makeshift fashion. On them, however, had b
een an obviously ancient clay tablet. The tablet felt absolutely malevolent and actually seemed to be sucking in the blood off her hand. “Take it to the Foundation?”

  “You put it in the bag,” a man’s voice said from behind her.

  She spun in place, katana at the ready, and paused. There were two people who had somehow gotten behind her, a short man with dark curly hair in a frumpy overcoat carrying an old-fashioned sample case, and an equally short redhead who looked a bit like a younger, punkier version of Janea. Given that Barb was keyed to the max, nobody should have been able to sneak up behind her, but she checked the impulse to behead both of them. Despite the fact that the redhead was carrying what looked like…a ray gun?

  “Whoa, sister!” the redhead said, holding up her unweaponed hand. “Friends! Friends! Nice job on the slice and dice, by the way. Best use for prep girls I can imagine.”

  “You put it in the bag,” Brother Marquez said, walking over. “Hello, Artie. Long time.”

  “Karol,” Artie said, putting on a pair of purple rubber gloves and pulling a Mylar bag out of the sample case. “Cairo…right? Cairo? Just put it in the bag.”

  “Why?” Barb asked.

  “You’re holding that with your bare hands?” the redhead asked. “Your bare hands. Seriously?”

  “Mrs. Everette could probably hold anything in the Dark Sector,” Artie said. “In her bare hands. Just put…put it in the bag.”

  “Why not?” Barb said. “And why am I putting it in the bag, and, more to the point, who are you people?”

  “So what’s so special about her?” the girl asked.

  “We’re the people telling you to put the artifact in the bag,” Artie said.

  “We’re the people that handle artifacts,” the redhead said. “And what’s so special about her?”

  “Artifacts?” Barb asked, still unsure if she should just give up a symbol of evil to rather odd people she’d never even heard of.

  “Secret Service,” Karol said. “They handle static items. Artifacts. Power symbols. That sort of thing. FBI, well, we handle nonstatic items.”

  “What are nonstatic items?” the redhead asked. “If it’s chopping up oh-my-gods, I’m your girl!”

  “You don’t want to know,” Artie said. “Now put it in the bag.”

  “You aren’t, in fact, our sort,” Karol said, smiling to relieve the blow. “You, Claudia, are much more a Warehouse type. Trust me on this.”

  “But what’s the other type?” Claudia asked.

  “People who can deal with nonstatic items,” Artie said. “In. The. BAG!”

  “Alright already,” Barb said, dropping the “artifact” into the bag. There was a brief flash of purple light and the feeling of malevolence dropped to nearly nothing. “What is that?”

  “None of your concern,” Artie said, putting the bag in the sample case. “We really ought to take that sword as well.”

  Barb went to immediate two-handed cat stance.

  “Whoa, whoa, sister!” Claudia said. “Friends! Friends! I’m sure he was just kidding, right? Kidding. Right, Artie?”

  “I’m sure we’ll end up with it eventually,” Artie said with a sigh. “Although where we’ll find the room…”

  “See you next time,” Karol said.

  “Drinks?”

  “Murphy’s?”

  “Friday?”

  “Rome. There’s going to be sooo many reports about this one.”

  “Have your people call my people. We really need to get together more often.”

  “Ciao.”

  “But what are nonstatic items…?”

  “What warehouse…?”

  “Ask Germaine,” Karol said, looking around at the mess. “He’s a Regent. And we really should check on your cohort.”

  “Janea!” Barb said. “Just let me…take a dive in the river, I guess.”

  The Maiden’s Tale

  CHAPTER ONE

  Doris shook her head and looked around the room. For a moment it was like she’d just woken up from a nightmare. There had been pain, so much pain. Then she was here. Wherever “here” was.

  It was a large room with medium-height ceilings, brightly lit. It clearly was in a big structure, maybe a hotel. There were various exits and signs, none of which were really penetrating right away. People were entering from a door behind her and going past her in twos and threes, most of them talking excitedly. From somewhere in the room a song was booming an electronic beat.

  Today is your birthday

  But it might be the last day of your life

  What will you do if tomorrow it’s all gone?

  You won’t be young forever

  It’s only a fraction to the sum

  You won’t be young forever

  Nor will anyone

  She had to think. It was like her brain was filled with cotton wool. She was…

  She had a plastic bag in one hand and a backpack over her shoulder. Looking at the bag, it said “Dragon*Con” on the front, with some sort of a symbol. It had…some books and papers in it. There was a sign across the room Hyatt Hotels Welcomes Dragon*Con!”

  So…Sure, she was at Dragon*Con. Of course. Bob had told her she could find “people like her” there. People who didn’t think she was weird or ugly or strange.

  Come to think of it, some of the people did look sort of strange. The music—she could finally find its source—was coming from over by some tables halfway down the room. The people gathered around them, setting up some sort of booth, certainly fit the bill of “strange.” Uber-Goths with bright-colored hair and black clothes. The girls’ hair was mostly an almost-fluorescent red that bordered on purple, while most of the guys had black. One of the guys had a skater cut with dreadlocks, black eyeliner and a weird, slumped look. Strange. Stranger than her. Not…her sort. Not that there was her sort anywhere.

  “Miss, people are trying to walk here,” a heavy-set man said as he dodged around her. He wasn’t impolite about it, just sort of informative.

  “Sorry, sorry…” she answered and moved to the side. He’d almost bumped her.

  She hugged the wall and looked around. There was a sign that said “Women” down the same wall about halfway across the room. She stayed by the wall and carefully crept into the ladies’, trying not to be noticed.

  She finally found the refuge of a stall, slid the bolt and sat on the toilet, trying not to panic. There were just too many people, too much chaos even though the large room had had barely thirty people in it. It was just like school. People meant bullies, boys and girls. The cheerleaders and the football players. The Names and the In-Crowd. The people that made sure she Knew Her Place every single day. And her place was right square at the bottom.

  Doris…She knew that much. And Bob had said to go to Dragon*Con. That there were people “like her” there. But most of the rest of it was a blur.

  Okay, take stock. She was apparently at Dragon*Con. That was in Atlanta. She had a badge pinned to her shirt. It said “Doris Grisham.”

  That was better. Okay, sure. Doris Grisham. She’d grown up in Mt. Union, Alabama. Her dad was a lumber cutter, worked for Weyerhaeuser ’til he got hurt, then mostly just sat in the trailer and drank. Which was what momma did all the time.

  She’d gone to Hill Crest High. She knew that much. She’d learned her place fer sure in Hill Crest. The only place she was safe was the library. She’d lived in the library as much as she could.

  Nearsighted, too ugly to get a date, too dumb to pass a class. That was Dumb-ass Doris. She was a total loser. A nobody. She Knew Her Place. It was to marry some redneck as dumb-ass as her and push out another passel of useless kids that’d cut wood ’til they got hurt and lived the rest of their life on assistance.

  But that was then. Whenever then was. Who was she now? And why couldn’t she remember, when Hill Crest was clear as day?

  She opened up the backpack and rummaged through it. Some cheap T-shirts, mostly thin as paper from much washing. Granny underwear tha
t wasn’t much better. The baggy jeans she was wearing had holes, and they weren’t stylish holes at all. Worn running shoes in “guy” colors. A T-shirt three times too large for her. Most of the ones in the bag were XXXL, for that matter.

  There was a toothbrush in the bag, and a tube of lipstick. Rolling it out, Doris knew instinctively it would make her look like she had some sort of lip disease. It was completely the wrong color. So was the dusty, dry, and unused-looking pack of cheap eyeliner. Contacts. Contact solution.

  All the way at the bottom of the bag was the one thing that wasn’t totally generic. It was a brooch or a barrette, it could probably be used for either. Made of steel, it had a figure carved out in relief of a woman in armor driving a chariot drawn by cats. It was remarkably intricate work. Doris suspected if she had a magnifying glass, she could pick out the details of the woman’s face. But it really didn’t tell her much about who she was or why she was sitting in the stall, so she carefully put it away.

  She checked the pockets of the jeans. A crumpled twenty and a couple of ones in her front pocket. In the back pocket, though, was a driver’s license! Hallelujah!

  Doris Grisham. Female. Check.

  Birthday: 9/3/1984. Okay. So it really was just about her birthday.

  5'9" tall. ’Bout right.

  110 lbs. Huh. Liar.

  Eyes: Green. Have to check a mirror.

  Hair: Red. Yep.

  Address: 200 River Road, Chattanooga, TN 37405.

  Okay. That was something. She now knew she lived in Chattanooga, TN, although it really didn’t ring a bell at all.

  “Okay,” she said, definitely. “I’m Doris Grisham. I’m from Chattanooga. I’m at Dragon*Con. I’m here to find people like me or something. How the hell, though, do I get home?”

  “Honey, if you’re practicing a secret identity, you might want to keep it down,” said a voice in the stall next to her. “And if you’re talking to your voices, take it from me, it’s a bad idea. That way they’ll never shut up.”