“Be careful,” I said just as a squeal of metal came from the rear.
The slivers of light widened as someone, or something, pried open the door from the outside. Voices filtered in, and they did not sound friendly.
“No chance,” she replied, holding out her hands. “But I will try to aim a little better this time.”
I felt a sensation, almost like someone else was in my skin, as Kelly again drew upon my power. For a moment, instinct demanded I clamp down, shut the door, but with some effort I consciously resisted the urge.
Again, that oddly colored glow, almost a perversion of my power – silly though I knew that was – sprang forth from the witch. This time, however, it coalesced into a beam that flew straight and true toward the back of the van.
There came a loud clang as if someone had sounded a gong in close proximity. The door disappeared, torn free of its hinges as if they were made of paper. I could hear cries of pain and surprise coming from the outside.
Before the owners of those voices could regroup, Kelly did it again – sending out another lance of power, this one blasting through the now open back.
When it was done, she dropped to her knees, sweat pouring off her face.
“Are you okay?”
“Sorry,” she said wearily. “Missed a few the first time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to throw up.”
* * *
While Kelly purged her breakfast, I placed my hands upon Vincent’s temple and opened myself up to the energies inside of me – switching my focus from protection to healing. For a moment, I was afraid that what came out would be that strange energy Kelly had somehow employed, that my power was now corrupted. Fortunately, that turned out to be little more than paranoia on my part. A white glow, dim at first, enveloped his head. I concentrated, trying to pull in more, and the glow brightened. After several seconds, the wound began to knit itself shut. I smiled at the sight. Of all the strange things I’d seen and done, this was one I would probably never get tired of.
Unfortunately, time wasn’t on our side, and it was taking more effort than it normally did. Thankfully, the wound was superficial. After another moment, he let out a low groan and his eyelids fluttered open.
“How does it look?” I asked, doing my best to help the Templar knight back to his feet.
Kelly was leaning against the door, still a bit green around the gills, but otherwise okay. “They’re sleeping like babies ... concussed babies anyway.”
“Are they...”
“I don’t see any body parts. Good enough for me.”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that. You’re the one with the wonky power. Damn. I can still feel my insides twitching.” She jumped out of the back of the vehicle, took a look around, then waved me on. Though she appeared a bit unsteady on her own feet, she nevertheless helped me get Vincent out.
I hopped down and surveyed the scene.
It was as if the people who’d captured us were pins in a bowling alley and Kelly had just scored a strike. I glanced around to see if we had any other company. Aside from the downed humans around us, though, and despite being broad daylight in a major city, it was eerily still. I turned my attention back to our former captors.
Though clearly out for the count, most appeared only stunned. Oddly, I didn’t see any sign of a battering ram or whatever they’d been using to force their way inside, but it seemed an unimportant detail once my eyes fell upon Cynthia. She lay unmoving several yards away from the vehicle, the crumbled door atop her legs. Considering the power with which it had been sent flying, that didn’t bode well. Despite her intentions for us, I couldn’t leave without checking on her first.
“Can you walk?” I asked Vincent.
“I’ll try my best,” he said.
I was about to ask the same of Kelly, but found her busy scavenging weapons off of our unconscious foes. She finished up and walked over to me before I could approach the downed leader of our captors. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stick with these until we get back to the others.”
“I thought you didn’t like guns,” I said with a slight grin.
“I had a change of heart.”
“Was syncing up with me that bad?”
“It was like licking a car battery. Heads up.” She tossed a handgun to me just as I stepped away. It wasn’t my weapon of choice by any stretch of the imagination, but like her, I now found myself rethinking my stance. I tucked it in my belt as well as I could before kneeling at Cynthia’s side.
“Leave that. It won’t be of any use to you.”
I glanced back to find that Kelly had picked up one of the black-bladed knives. “Why not? What if we run out of bullets?”
Vincent replied, “It’s said the corruption makes the metal brittle. Templar steel it is not. Go ahead, see for yourself.”
Kelly tossed the weapon into the air. It landed with a clang on the asphalt where the blade shattered into multiple pieces as if it were made of glass. I wouldn’t exactly mourn one less of those things in the world. I allowed myself a grim smile then turned back to where Cynthia lay.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure she’s okay,” I said, placing my hand upon Cynthia’s unmoving form.
“I’m a live and let live kind of girl, but I’m thinking we need to let these assholes tend to their own. We have places to be.”
“I know.” I forced myself to concentrate and my hands began to glow. “This will only take a minute.”
“Your holiness, I must concur with Kelly. These people are not worthy of your attention.”
I turned my head to fix him with a glare just as I was about to pour my power into the fallen woman. “We don’t know what their story is. We have no idea what the true situation is in this town. You saw Jacob back there. That wasn’t an act of evil. Those were the actions of a desperate man. I don’t have to be happy about it, but I can at least make sure that tomorrow he still has his daugh ... urk!”
Kelly and Vincent both shouted out warnings, but it was unnecessary. By then I was quite aware that Cynthia’s hand had shot up and gripped my throat with frightening strength.
CHAPTER 20
I turned back to find Cynthia wide awake, her eyes staring at me with what appeared to be little more than bored contempt.
Grabbing hold of her arm, I tried to pry her from my windpipe. It should have been a simple twist to dislodge her, but I might as well have been trying to tear a car door off with my bare hands for all the good it did. Not only was Cynthia still alive, but she was pretty spry for someone who’d just been plastered with a steel door.
The surprise attack had caught me completely unprepared. Already my head was starting to feel woozy.
My aura flared to life instinctively, though it was pointless. Faith magic didn’t work against humans.
Sparkles of light began to dance before my eyes, but then there came a roar of sound and I opened my mouth to let loose a silent scream of fear. I knew a gunshot when I heard it. This was close ... as if someone was firing at me point blank like on that awful day so many months ago. My aura fluctuated around me, faltering as the fear took over.
All at once I was free from Cynthia’s grasp, falling back to land face up on the asphalt. Movement registered in my periphery and I realized it wasn’t me that was being fired upon.
Vincent stood over Cynthia, emptying his weapon into her. Then my view of him was blocked as Kelly stepped over to me, grabbed me by the hand, and dragged me to my feet.
“Let’s go!” she shouted at Vincent as she once more took the lead and dragged me away.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to see the aftermath. All I could do was tell myself that Cynthia had chosen her path. Her ruination was of her own doing. Eventually I might even believe it.
Had I not allies ... friends with me, her end might have been mine, but it hadn’t. Fate, apparently, was not finished with me yet.
Of cours
e not. Why would it be when there were certainly many more horrors in store for my future?
* * *
“That’s twice now,” Kelly said with a nervous laugh once we’d put a few blocks between us and the scene of our hasty escape. My head was just now starting to clear. I had no idea whether we were headed in the right direction or not, but at that moment it seemed almost the least of our concerns. “Once more and I think I’m eligible for a free healing.”
“I’m sorry,” I croaked.
“Okay, fine. No healing, but I might insist you treat me to a bowl of clam chowder when this is all finished.”
“Not that.”
Kelly lowered her voice to a bare whisper as Vincent took point. “I get it. Just know that my offer to talk is still out there.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. On the one hand, it was absurd. I was an Icon. Legends about my kind, stretching back thousands of years, all spoke of the same thing – heroes who stood tall in the face of any opposition, never bending, let alone breaking, in the face of insurmountable odds. If I was to be the last of that lineage, what a poor joke that would be.
Still, that a witch – one of a group that lived in fear of my coming – could offer me something as simple as a friendly ear, served to renew my faith in the world a little bit. “I may take you up on that.” My vision blurred, and I raised a hand to wipe my suddenly wet eyes. “But for right now, we need to find the others and get moving.”
“At least they’d been taking us in the right direction,” she said.
I followed her gaze and took notice of the shop signs all around us, something I’d failed to take in during our escape. A mix of English and Chinese characters up and down the block. That made sense. Cynthia had mentioned taking us to Vehron.
“Any chance of...” I trailed off for a moment as I tried to remember what Christy had called it. “Sending us to the others?”
“Sending?” Vincent asked over his shoulder.
“You know, Beam me up, Scotty,” Kelly replied to him, seeming to take a bit of pleasure in watching him blanch at the suggestion. “Relax, tough guy. Teleportation isn’t one of my specialties, at least not without a proper circle.” She turned to me. “Besides, I’m not entirely sure I could use your power to do so, at least not without scattering us in a million different directions first.”
“Walking is good,” I quickly replied. “I for one haven’t had enough cardio today.”
“I concur,” Vincent said.
I peered down the strangely silent street. “I just wish I knew where to.”
One wouldn’t have been remiss to think that perhaps the end of the world had played itself out while we were confined. Even at three in the morning, following a snowstorm, one could find more life than this on the streets back in New York.
“With any luck we won’t need to worry about that,” Kelly said.
I stopped looking up at the windows on the second and third floors of the buildings we passed, trying to discern signs of life, and turned my attention to her. “What do you mean?”
“Back there in the van, I put out a lot of energy.”
“I noticed,” Vincent said wryly.
“Oh quit your bitching. You survived, didn’t you?”
“Your point?” I prodded.
“Sorry, Vinnie there keeps sidetracking me. Anyway, we – meaning witches – can’t scry people like you. Something about your power completely futzes with the energy waves we can sense. But, I’m hoping that by rechanneling your energy through me I rejiggered it into something my sisters could pick up. A burst of power that big should have registered on their radar.” She paused for a moment. “If they were listening.”
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
“Honestly, me too. Meg is too much of a bitch to die easily. I mean, she’s my coven sister and all, but her personality can be like twenty-four grit sandpaper at times, if you know what I mean. Don’t tell her I said that, by the way.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Good, because otherwise I’ll tell Bill you said he has cooties.”
Had this been any other circumstance, I would have laughed. Right then, though, it was an apt description. We did have cooties as far as the other was concerned, big explosive ones. I sighed and pushed that thought away. The only thing I needed to worry about Bill, Ed, and the rest for right now was that they were safe and that we would get there in time to help them out. On the upside, if Cynthia’s crew was any indication, we were having some effect on the distraction front. The question was whether it would be enough.
“What about you?” I asked. “Can you scry them?”
She gave her head a slow shake. “Nope. I’ve been trying to reach out, but again, it’s your power. All I got in my head was a lot of static. In fact it was starting to give me a headache, so I disconnected.”
Now that she mentioned it, I realized that sense of another was gone. The last several minutes must have been too hectic for me to have noticed it.
“So how’d you like your first ride aboard the Icon Express?” I asked.
“Needs more scissoring.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “What?!”
Kelly burst out laughing. “Oh the look on your face. You really are too easy!”
“Blessed One, are you okay?” Vincent asked, turning at my outburst. His eyes darted between us before finally resting on me. Concern crossed his face, and I realized I probably looked a bit flushed at Kelly’s wicked little remark.
“I’m fine. It’s just ... a bit warm out today.”
He continued to look at me as if debating whether I was telling the truth, until finally he turned and continued leading us onward.
“Yep,” Kelly whispered. “Far too easy.”
CHAPTER 21
The cry caught us all by surprise right as we stepped out from between two buildings onto the empty street. My aura flared to life, the cold, calm sureness of it readying me for battle. My two companions raised their weapons in the direction of the sound, and I followed suit.
A second later, we spotted the figure running toward us.
There really is something to the saying that fate protects fools and small children because, through some minor miracle, none of us opened fire.
“Slow down, you idiot!”
Veronica ignored Meg’s warning and continued to race in our direction. Looking past her, I could see the older witch standing at the forefront of a larger group – the Templar.
My two companions lowered their weapons. I was a bit slower in doing so, the warrior inside of me stubbornly insisting that battle be joined. I did my best to push it back down, dimming the glow around me until it was extinguished. A smile formed on my face as the realization hit that we’d managed to find our missing comrades.
Or that they’d found us.
Veronica squealed with delight as she came upon us, throwing herself into Kelly’s arms and almost knocking the both of them off their feet.
“Jeez, V, chill out a bit,” Kelly said. “It’s not like I came back from the dead or anything.”
Veronica disengaged herself. “I’m just glad to see you’re okay. That all of you are,” she quickly added. “You have no idea how ... tough it’s been with you gone.”
Kelly lowered her voice. “It’s cool, V, they know.”
“They do?”
“I didn’t have much choice. It kinda came up at the spur of the moment.”
Veronica stepped back and looked warily at Vincent and me for a moment. I remembered Kelly’s warning that the nature of catalyst witches wasn’t a widely known fact, something they preferred to keep that way. “Mums the word,” I said, miming zipping my lips.
Veronica looked back at Kelly, who nodded reassuringly. She then turned to Vincent, staring at him expectantly.
“As a Knight Templar, I am sworn to tell the truth to members of my order.” After a moment, though, his expression softened. “However, if they don’t ask me specifically about i
t, then I see no reason to bring it up.”
* * *
“...And then when you three took off, they paused, like they weren’t sure what to do next.”
“That gave the faithful enough time to re-arm and cover our escape,” Bernadette finished.
“They were after me,” I said, my hand resting on the hilt of the blade once again strapped to my waist. Reuniting with it felt much the same way it had when Bill had returned it to me some months back, the euphoria of feeling somehow complete again. I glanced over to Kelly and Veronica standing side by side and got the impression they were feeling much the same way about being back with each other.
“I’d say that was pretty obvious,” Meg replied, drawing my attention back.
“Wherever the Blessed One walks, the evil of this world will congregate against her,” Bernadette said.
Though she’d lost more men, many of them young enough to have barely begun living their lives, I was happy to see the majority of the Templar had survived the ordeal. Many were wounded, a few fairly badly, but I took care of them as I relayed what had happened to us – minus a few details, of course. Thankfully there were no requests for elaboration as I moved through the Templar ranks, laying hands upon the injured and restoring them to fighting shape.
“Though I am pained to admit it, Blessed One, we would never have found you were it not for the witches.”
“Could you say that again?” Meg asked. “I wasn’t recording it.”
Bernadette spared her a sour glare before adding, “It’s true enough. We had been wandering aimlessly ever since you disappeared.”
“Doesn’t seem aimless to me,” I replied. “You were heading in the right direction after all.”
The Templar commander nodded. “It seemed a prudent course of action, considering our mission, but it was slow going. We were spread out, looking for you, covering as much ground as we could while trying to attract as little attention as possible.”
“Did you run into any more trouble?”
“We came close,” Meg said. “Saw a few cops off in the distance. Also, one of the Templar heard some moaning from down an alleyway, thought it might be you guys, and just barely managed to escape from a pair of zombies.”
Tome of Bill (Companion): Shining Fury Page 9