by John Conroe
“Just as you can write and read lines of code as easily as talking, some of us can Craft using just our thoughts,” I said. The arc traveled up between my thumb and index finger and then snapped out of being.
“Why do I feel like that is a gross understatement?” he asked.
My phone pinged and a schedule reminder popped up with a fifteen-minute warning for a Poly Sci class I wanted to sit in on.
“I’m going to try and make that class. Hopefully the professor will let me listen in,” I said.
“Usually they get some kind of notification or request beforehand,” he said, frowning.
“I have taken the liberty of sending just such a request from the office of the university president,” Omega said.
If anything, McCraken was more impressed with that than with my fire and lightning routine.
“If we tried to throw you out, it wouldn’t work, would it?” he asked.
“You tell me, Professor. How much of our world runs on computers?” I asked, standing up to go. “Still happy with your decision to stay on as my advisor?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” he said.
Leaving the Comp Sci department, I headed down the hill toward the parking lot where Beast was waiting for me. The wind off the lake was brisk, making my eyes water, which was slightly embarrassing when three girls walked by me. Two ignored me but one glanced my way just as a tear formed in my left eye. Turning away to my right was automatic, a basic social reflex. It may have saved my life.
The attack came in a blur, a dark figure rushing at me over the snow mounded on the side of the sidewalk. Literally right on me, my only reaction a double shove with both arms that pushed the speeding figure away and sent me falling backward, a sharp burn on my forehead.
Chapter 3
Falling back, my hands automatically slapped the ground as I rolled back. I distinctly remember the cold, wet feeling of the concrete on my palms as I levered back up and then became aware of a warm, wet, gushing sensation on my face.
The figure, a man, had bowled over the three girls and was springing back to his feet with the elasticity of a rubber ball. He was up and facing me before I could brace my left foot and right hand on the ground. Before I pushed my body up high enough to draw my right leg back under me, he was already coming at me again, leading with a long black knife. I blinked to clear my eyes of the fluid that was pouring into them.
My left hand was up in a block as I used the tactical stand-up to get off the ground and back into the fight. It was a judo and Jiu-jitsu tactic that Jenks made us do as a warm-up exercise.
I wasn’t going to be quick enough because this guy was fast… real fast.
My left hand pushed out on its own when he was still ten feet away. Mr. McFasty Feet flew backward fifteen yards, landing in the street just as a GMC pickup truck was accelerating out of the nearest crosswalk.
It should have hit him, but he somehow jumped straight up, high enough to clear the hood. His booted feet stamped down, crumpling the GMC’s hood and sending him up into a forward flip that landed him in the snow by the curb.
He blurred sideways, right into the three girls, and came up with the very one that had glanced at me, his big tactical blade jammed against her neck.
Standing still but almost vibrating with energy, the man was fully visible for the first time. Short and stocky, he was built like Mack, but Mack didn’t normally have lines of dried blood running down his face and into his t-shirt, and Mack couldn’t run a hundred meters in like three seconds, either. Of course, neither could I. This guy had a reddish black watch cap jammed down over his head, and it glistened in the morning sun. He held the girl without effort despite her struggles and when one of her friends tried to get close, he kicked out with lazy ease, knocking the friend flying, his eyes never leaving mine.
Enough. Twenty actions ran through my head, each discarded, one after the other. The problem was time and speed combined with the hostage being pressed right up against him. Thermal attack out, lightning ditto. Kinetic blast would hurt her. Air blade not accurate enough. A kinetic object moving at bullet speed would be great, but I had to see to hit and my eyes were filled with blood. Hmmm. Blood.
I double-checked my options, even as he bodily lifted her and started my way. Nope, nothing that wouldn’t kill her except—water. Time for something new.
I lifted my left hand and shut my useless eyes. The senses I used were still new, a drunken gift from Middle Fairie. I could feel the blood on my face. I could sense the water weight of the hostage and, yes, I could feel the fluid-filled sack of crap that was the attacker.
I felt my left hand make a fist and pull. Come to me. Leave him. Come to me.
Someone screamed. I opened my eyes and wiped away as much blood as I could. The screamer was the remaining friend, as the kicked one was still on the ground. The hostage was wide-eyed but silent with shock. The attacker was frozen behind her, his own eyes wide but mostly because his eyelids and facial skin had dried up into leather. The arm holding the knife had pulled away from her neck, the bare skin of his forearm shrunken down to rawhide. He was smaller than before, lighter looking, and when the hostage girl finally grabbed his arm and pushed it away, the skin and muscle tore and it flopped away from him.
The girl fell forward and I saw the back of her hoodie was completely soaked through like she’d fallen into five inches of water. The man fell backward, body rigid, eyes staring straight up, mouth and lips drawn into a hideous, teeth-baring grin.
Students started to gather, and the driver of the pickup was helping the kicked girl get back to her feet.
More people arrived and someone pushed a cloth against my bleeding head, telling me that I was going to be all right, that head wounds always bled like crazy. I held the piece of cloth as the guy moved over to the hostage. He seemed to know what he was doing, like EMT training or something. Sirens filled the air, the sound getting louder by the second. A group of college kids gathered around the fallen assailant, cell phones out, filming away. A campus police SUV squealed to a halt, lights flashing.
Two hours later, I was still sitting in the UVM Medical Center Emergency room, trying to keep my hands away from the bandage on my forehead and finishing my statement to the police. Gina Velasquez sat near me, listening carefully as I explained that I had no idea what had happened.
The officers taking my statement had wanted her to leave but she’d produced Oracle identification that somehow stopped their demands, although they were none too happy about it.
“So you attend this Oracle facility on Pine Street and you claim you don’t know what happened to the man?”
Gina took a breath, but I beat her to it. “Not what I said, and you know it. I said I didn’t know who he was or why he attacked or how he could move so fast, but that my vision was blurry with blood when he died and I didn’t see what happened,” I said. “Now you’re just doing that thing where you mis-quote me to rattle me. You know my step-aunt is a deputy, right?” I asked officers Andreas and Borski.
Borski grimaced, but his partner didn’t so much as let a flicker of emotion cross her face. Her response was canceled when the privacy curtain flipped aside, revealing Agent Krupp from the FBI Occult task force, who stood there, hard eyes taking in the whole scene.
Her credential folder was up and out before the cops could take a breath. “This one’s mine,” she said, not taking her eyes off me.
“Since when do the Feds take an interest in campus assaults?” Officer Andreas asked.
Krupp’s head swiveled to her and now I saw a little micro flinch on Andreas’s face.
“Since the assailant crossed into Vermont this morning from New Hampshire after killing his girlfriend and soaking his hat in her blood,” Krupp said.
“Not to mention coming to Burlington to attack a known witch and employee of Demidova,” Andreas shot back.
I hadn’t mentioned any of that and my surprise must have shown on my face. Mack says I’m his favorite card game
victim for a reason.
“You don’t think we know who you are, kid?” Borski asked. “Or your aunt? Or Director Velasquez of the mysterious Arcane school?”
“Valid points, Officers. Send me your report notes,” Krupp said, handing her card to Andreas, dismissing them by turning back to me.
The pair of Burlington cops closed up their notebooks and left without further comment.
Krupp took Andreas’s chair, eyes once again locked on me. “So what happened?” she asked.
“I’m sure you know the gist of it, but essentially a dude wearing a bloody red cap attacked me and held a hostage,” I said.
“You emphasize red cap… why?” she asked.
“Again, I’m certain you know, but what the hell. Let’s see—faster and stronger than human normal and wearing a blood-soaked red hat. It seems to fit the legends out of the UK of the infamous Red Caps. And there’s a lot more than one of them, right? Virginia, Washington, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, and Florida,” I said. Omega had kept me informed while the ER doctor had knit my head back together.
“And this one drove straight over here to attack you,” Krupp said. “Why?”
“Let’s see… a mythological being from folklore is attacking me, recent vacationer to Planet Fairie,” I said. “I’m guessing I forgot to tip the hotel staff, or maybe it was that towel I stole.”
I knew she knew about my recent sojourn, as my personal ghost-in-the-machine was again keeping tabs on, well, everything governmental.
“But what about the others?” Krupp asked. “Think they’re lining up for a shot?”
“I will err on the side of caution and say yes. Although there was that explosion in San Francisco that leveled a private warehouse and a murder-robbery in St. Petersburg, Florida at a marine salvage yard, so maybe a few are distracted.”
The curtain twitched aside again and Caeco was standing there. Krupp didn’t turn as she spoke. “You were going to review the body?”
“I did. It didn’t take all that long,” Caeco said, her eyes on me too.
“And?”
“The suspect is almost completely desiccated. Coroner has barely begun, but I heard and saw enough. Almost all the water in the perp’s body is gone. And seeing as the hostage he held at knifepoint was suddenly soaking wet, I’d say the attacker died of intense dehydration brought on by attacking a witch without a brain,” Caeco said.
I felt the frown on my face. “You mean the attacker had no brain, or the witch?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Krupp interrupted. “You ever see anyone do a spell like that?” she asked Caeco.
“Nope. Never heard of it, which leads me to think he did it?”
“He’s a Fire and Earth witch?” Krupp asked.
“Yeah, and Air too. So why not a quadfecta?” Caeco asked.
Krupp’s eyebrows rose but she didn’t seem as shocked as she should have been. Seems someone had been telling stories out of school about me again.
“Really? That’s an interesting theory, Agent Jensen. What do you think, Director Velasquez? Any possibility of a four-power witch?” Krupp asked.
Gina, on the other hand, looked truly shocked. Actually, her expression started at incredulous but flickered to shock before smoothing to blank.
“We don’t know…didn’t know, of any three-powered ones,” she said, staring at me like I was a new bug.
“I do,” Caeco said, frowning at my bandage. “You getting slow, O’Carroll?”
“Dude was faster than you on your best day, Jensen,” I said.
“Can I talk to you in the hall a moment, Director Velasquez?” Krupp asked. Gina nodded and followed her out of the emergency room.
That left Caeco watching me with a distasteful expression on her face.
“If it smells so bad in here, hop on out,” I said.
She shrugged. “Sometimes you gotta suck it up for the job.”
“Suck up. Yeah I can see it,” I said.
“Well, you’re the expert. Nobody does it better, do they?” she asked.
I thought of Fairie and laughed. “Actually, I know a whole planet that wishes I was a better suck up.”
Another shot of shade rose up from inside her and almost made it to her mouth but suddenly died on the vine. Instead, she took a breath. “Fairie was rough?”
“Hard to tell. I was drunk on magic the whole effing time,” I said. She frowned and I could almost see her soldier-assassin brain trying to wrap around that. “Explain?” she asked.
Part of me wanted to drop some snide comment, but another, stronger part was tired of the fight.
“Magic is so thick there that it’s hard to think straight. It permeates everything. How else could a thirty-ton dragon fly without jet propulsion?”
“Thirty tons? You exaggerate,” she said.
“No, there were some even bigger. It was like a Disney movie on crack. Tinkerbell is a bug, a deadly stinging bug, Little Fuzzy is a flying piranha, Gollum is jacked like a boss ape, and the Keeblers all move like Mr. Red Cap, but with living weapons.”
She frowned and I knew she was working through the cultural references, but she had seen some of those things because I had helped introduce her to them. Not sure she’d get the H. Beam Piper reference though.
“So you suspect the queens of Fairie?” she asked, waving a hand at my forehead.
“Well, we parted on bad terms,” I said.
“How bad?”
“I kind of beat them both up and foiled their evil plans. Plus I might have left a third of their world angry with them.”
“That I find entirely believable. Nobody I know can piss people off like you,” she said.
“We all gotta play to our strengths.”
“So, Water, huh?” she asked.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Junior Agent Jensen.”
“You do know that you still have a few of my nanos roaming your, blood right? And I can tell if you’re lying?” she asked.
“You do know I can ask Omega to just shut down all your nanos, right?” I said.
“You reprogrammed them, remember?”
“Yeah, so that your old bosses couldn’t do anything to you. Never programmed them against a super-quantum AI that eats every other computer out there,” I said.
“Except Vorsook computers. They leave a bad taste in my processors,” Omega said from Caeco’s phone.
“Yeah, well, alien comp sci is an acquired taste, I hear,” I said.
“So it’s got your awful sense of humor too?” she asked.
“Please, I’m funny as F,” I said.
She opened her mouth to reply and Omega interrupted. “Incoming Hostile,” he said.
My shields came up just as a dark shape loomed behind the fabric privacy screen. Metal rings pinged as the curtain was ripped from its overhead track, the cloth coming down over Caeco’s head and torso. A short dude with crazed eyes and a bloody head and bloody hat had his arms around a wrapped-up Caeco.
My magic was in full bloom, powered by the heat of the building, the power in its wiring, and the steady traffic through its elevators. UVM med center is a Level 1 Trauma center and a very busy teaching hospital so I had tons of kinetic energy to pull if needed, but I did nothing. Just sat back and watched as the Red Cap released one arm in order to grab a hatchet from its belt.
Bad move, Reddy. Keeping both arms in place was pretty much your best shot right there.
Sure enough, a set of razor-sharp talons punched through the privacy cloth and ripped downward as soon as Reddy dropped his grip. A thoroughly pissed-off Caeco tore through the thin material and jabbed those same sharpened fingernails at Reddy’s face. Reddy leaned back but a jack-hammering knee smashed into his privates so fast, I couldn’t count the impacts. Then a small fist with the clenched density of steel pistoned into Reddy’s throat and face like a junkyard car crusher.
Reddy fell back and almost onto the poor woman in the emergency bed one ove
r from mine. Not sure what she was in for, but she was in a gown under the covers and was pretty much out of it.
Nope, not cool. I interceded. Reddy fell backward and stopped against a wall of nothing. Gotta give him this, his recovery time was pretty damned quick. He bounced right back up with a front kick that was so fast, Caeco’s block missed it completely. It hammered her in the gut, knocking her flying into the wall. He started to turn my way but a blur wearing a government-approved suit caught him before he got even halfway around.
Krupp and Gina came barreling in, each with a gun, which wasn’t surprising with Krupp but was with Gina. I guess once a cop, always a cop.