Hero's Curse

by Jack J. Lee

  Tim gave me the keys. I locked the back door, picked up my bag and we walked toward the van. The rest of the group was already there. Mina was standing off to the side of the van talking with Andi and Aidan. I couldn’t believe how much I wanted to stop and talk to her. I looked away and threw the keys to Ben. “You’re the designated driver to Boise. You know how to get there?”

  Ben looked mildly insulted, “Sure, it’s just I-15 to I-84 straight into Boise.”

  I turned to Aidan, “Do we need to put ourselves to sleep now?”

  Aidan opened the door of the van, “We should be good until we pass Bountiful. I’d like to stay awake for as long as I can.”

  We piled in after him. The van had three bench seats. Ben got in the driver’s seat with Andi riding shotgun. Mina got in before me and was sitting in the second row. When I got in, she gave me a look that told me I’d better sit next to her. I stared longingly at Aidan in the back row; there were so many questions about magic I wanted to ask him. It was almost like she was reading my mind. The look turned into a glare—a promise of hell to come. Nineteen trolls and an archangel wanting to kill me weren’t enough; I also had to deal with a relationship. I wondered if this day could get any better as I sat down next to her.

  “What’s going on, Vic?”

  I told myself that Mina wasn’t trying to be a pain in the ass. I tried to keep my irritation from having to explain myself from my voice as I spoke quietly near her ear, “Besides the obvious, I can’t tell you. The Jotunn somehow are getting real time intel of what we’re doing. I’m worried if I tell you now, I’m also telling them. When we get to Boise and we have some protection, I’ll explain everything I can.”

  Mina’s expression didn’t change, “The Jotunn need to die.”

  My anxiety evaporated. We all have blind spots—mine were becoming obvious. I had a hard time believing a beautiful woman wouldn’t be a pain in the ass. This was the second time today that Mina had surprised me. Failing to learn from experience was stupid. If I wanted to maintain my own self-respect, I needed to stop underestimating her. When I replied I didn’t have to hide my feelings, “You and I have the same goal. But in order to get to it, I need to ask Aidan a bunch more questions. I’m not trying to put you off.”

  At that moment, Aidan interrupted, “I could not help overhearing that, Victor. You can ask away but first I have some good news.” He scooted forward on his seat until his head was just a foot from Mina’s and mine. “Tim just told me about your previous discussion about tracking the Jotunn. I have been working on that for some time. This morning, I had an idea that I think will work.”

  The leprechaun handed Mina an Etch A Sketch. In the center of the screen was a line drawing of our van. “If a group of more than nineteen creatures—animal, human, or in-between—come within twenty miles, even if they’re split between different vehicles, they’ll show up on the screen.”

  Tim wedged his head into the conversation. “But will it track the Jotunn?”

  Aidan leaned back, “It should. It finds every creature with a heartbeat in a twenty mile radius. If there is a group of nineteen or greater animals following us for more than a couple of miles, they’ll show up on the Etch A Sketch.”

  The leprechaun sounded amused as he tapped my shoulder from behind, “Tim, as much as I like being called a genius, if it hadn’t been for Victor here, I never would have gotten the idea to look for a human tech based solution to our scrying problems. His idea to use firearms—modern human technology—made me think of tracking the Jotunn the same way human intelligence agencies would—by their actions. Since we’re looking for them by what they do, rather than who or what they are, we should be able to bypass their defensive spells.”

  His apprentice looked confused, “Their actions? Their actions how?”

  Aidan was so pleased with himself he actually chortled, “As you well know Tim, all the scrying spells I have taught you work by looking for the target’s soul. The defense spells you know make it difficult to magically home in on a person’s soul. None of the typical defense spells against scrying obscure or hide a person’s actions.

  “No matter what shape the Jotunn take, they will have a heartbeat. My spell looks for a group of nineteen or more heartbeats moving in our direction. Most of the groups we pick up won’t be trolls, but better false warnings that than not getting a warning at all. I see no reason why the Jotunn would think to obscure their heartbeats or split up, so it should work.”

  Shit! He looked so proud. I could tell the leprechaun had no idea that he’d stepped in it. “Aidan, I was just saying to Mina, there’s a good chance the Jotunn are scrying us now. You’ve just have given them a good reason to obscure their heart beats. Can you modify the spell so it can track them some other way? And for God’s sake man, don’t tell us how you’re doing it!”

  Aidan developed a bug-eyed, frozen grimace. He didn’t try to explain, argue, or make excuses. He silently held out his hand to Mina until she handed him the Etch A Sketch. He sat back in his seat. He was completely lost in thought as he gestured and mumbled over the toy.

  No one else said a word. I stared out into the distance, mentally exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to make plans for what to do next. I couldn’t believe just four days ago, I had been in control of my own life.

  I knew I should be thinking about what to say when I called Boise, but all I could focus on was how close Mina was to me. I was intensely aware of her body next to mine. It bugged me that I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Should I turn and stare at her like a stalker? What did I want to say to her? How about the line, ‘I guess we’re soul mates?’ So what if we were? Did it mean she couldn’t be the mole?

  So in the end, all I did was sit and wallow in my emotions like a teenage girl. It was ridiculous how good it felt when Mina placed her hand on mine. Her skin was warm and slightly rough, probably from gardening. She was nervous, too. Her palms were slightly damp. It was starting to sink in how much I wanted her. I didn’t know anything about her. I was old enough to be her father and it still didn’t matter. For the first time in my life, I was feeling the emotions described in every stupid love song. A small voice of reason deep within my brain screamed ‘this is insane!’ The rest of me focused entirely on her hand on top of mine.

  I’m not sure if I’ve ever really known what it felt like to be at home. My first memories were growing up in an orphanage dormitory. As an adult, I had always been content to leave one disposable place for another. I’d kissed Mina before; this was the first time our hands had touched-or was it? I couldn’t remember. It was strange and inexplicable and completely irrational, but in the midst of a shit storm, I felt at peace. I couldn’t help it. I trusted her.

  I lost track of the time. I was as surprised as everyone else when I stood up abruptly and shouted, “Ben, pull off on the next exit!” We were in Bountiful. I’d wondered what would happen when I reached the boundaries of my prison. I pictured B watching me laughing his ass off. I had been lost in love, and just to make sure it hurt, Joey had reached His Metaphorical Hand up my ass and turned me into a fucking sock puppet again.

  In the silence created by my outburst, Aidan chimed in distractedly, “It is going to take a couple minutes to finish the spell. We will need to pull over for a short while.”

  Ben pulled off at the exit, stopped at the first gas station, and got out to top off the tank. Tim and Andi got out and headed into the convenience store. Aidan remained behind in the van, lost in his project. I stayed sitting next to Mina. After a few minutes of sitting without either of us saying a word she sighed. She didn’t say anything but somehow I was sure I knew what she was thinking. What the hell were we doing?

  I considered telling her we were soul mates destined to fall in love—that when it came to love free will was a joke; on the pro side—it was the truth, on the con—did she really want to know that no matter what she wanted or wished, she had no choice but to love me? If I were her, would I want to know the trut
h? It occurred to me if the Jotunn killed me—if I became an angel and had my balls cut off, I wouldn’t have to worry about Mina. The thought of a silver lining made me laugh, “Mina, we have a lot on our plates. We need to take care of the trolls first. Let’s go a step at a time and see what happens.”

  “Victor…”

  From behind us Aidan exclaimed, “It’s finished!”

  Without thinking, I stood up. “Great, I’ll get the others.” As always, when it came to Mina Swenson, my first instinct was to flee. Aidan’s interruption gave me the perfect excuse to bail from this conversation. It sucks to find out you’re smaller than you thought you were. I’ve never been nervous about women before. I now understood I’d never previously cared enough to get anxious. It isn’t a big deal to ask a girl out, or make a pass, if you don’t care how it turns out. In the past, the possibility of rejection had never bothered me.

  When it came to love, I wasn’t just a coward, I was a cliché; the guy who could handle everything physical but scared to death of anything emotional. Regardless of how it happened, I cared about this girl. What happened to her mattered—the thought of anything happening to her…I didn’t know if I could handle that. Instead of brushing her off, I promised, “Mina, when we have time, we’ll talk.”

  Her quick answering smile, and how good it felt to please her made me want to puke on my shoes. It didn’t take long for me to get Ben, Tim, and Andi back in the van.

  Aidan looked my way, “Victor, do you remember how to cast the sleep spell on yourself.” I nodded. “Mina, Ben, Andi, if you say ‘excito sursum’ we’ll wake up.”

  I made sure everyone could hear, “Mina’s in charge. Wake us up when we get to Boise.”

  I had the feeling I was forgetting something but I couldn’t remember what it was. I muttered the sleep spell under my breath.

  Chapter 17: Sabotage

  When I woke up, I remembered what I had forgotten to do. Drew was on his way to Salt Lake City. I needed to tell him about the change in plans. My head was resting on something that smelled great but was too low for comfort; my neck felt like hell. I opened my eyes. I had been sleeping with my head on Mina’s shoulder. From how stiff my neck was, it must have been for hours.

  I sat up slowly and stretched my neck. The van was stopped on the side of the highway. We were still in rural Idaho. We were nowhere close to a major city. Mina’s face was inches away from mine, her expressive eyes intent on me. It wasn’t the time or place for it, but I didn’t care. I was tired of being torn—of wanting her and hating myself for it. I brushed her hair behind her shoulder, lightly placed my hand along her neck, and slowly moved my lips closer to hers. I couldn’t believe how fast my heart raced as I waited for her response. For a second, she froze in surprise. I saw her eyes widen, then close, and then she melted into me.

  “Oh my God! Get a room!” I was willing to ignore Andi’s shrill, annoying voice, but Mina wasn’t. As she pushed me away her face came into focus. Her eyes were bright and her face completely flushed. Her dominant expression was embarrassment. I smiled, almost on the verge of laughter. It must have been contagious because she started smiling too.

  Tim sounded barely awake, “What’s going on? We’re not in Boise.”

  The stress in Andi’s voice was clear, “We’re about an hour away. The check engine light went on a few minutes ago. Right afterwards the engine conked out. Ben’s outside trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  It took a possible life-threatening crisis but I was finally able to focus on something besides Mina. My first thought was the van had been sabotaged; my second was to ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately ascribed to incompetence[9]’ or bad luck. Stupidity and bad luck are more common than malice. It didn’t make sense that if we had a traitor, he or she’d try to sabotage our ride, but there was no point in jumping to conclusions before I had the facts. I hadn’t paid much attention to the van before. “Tim, does this van have a diesel or a gas engine?”

  “Gas. It’s a 2008 Chevy Express with an E85 flexfuel V8 engine.” I was tempted to ask if he’d kept it serviced but I didn’t. Idiots who don’t change their oil or maintain their vehicles usually won’t admit it. There was no point of asking a question when I couldn’t trust the answer.

  The check engine light was on. According to the instrument panel, the oil level and engine temperature were okay. We had a quarter of a tank left.

  I got out of the van and the others followed. Ben was standing in front of the open hood looking helpless. Until last year, he’d been the son of a guy pulling down a million a year. The chances were good he didn’t know how to fill up his windshield wiper fluid, much less figure out what was going on with the engine.

  The engine was fairly clean. All the fluid levels looked okay, including oil and radiator coolant—the color and consistency of both were good. The battery seemed to be in decent shape. I opened the driver’s side door. “Ben, throw me the keys.”

  I turned the ignition to run, just before the start position. I couldn’t hear the fuel pump start. There’s a well known urban myth that pouring sugar into a gas tank will completely destroy the engine. In theory, the sugar dissolves in the gas tank. The heat of a running engine then caramelizes the sugar into a thick impossible-to-remove sludge that causes the engine to seize. The reality isn’t that bad. Sugar doesn’t dissolve in gasoline. Modern fuel filters will almost always catch all of the sugar before it can destroy the fuel pump or fuel injection system.

  “Tim, do we have a tool box?”

  “Yes. I’ll get it.”

  “See if you can get me some rags, too.” I motioned toward Aidan. “There’s a chance someone poured sugar into our gas tank. If that’s the problem, could you use magic to pull the sugar out?” Before he had a chance to answer an obvious question dawned on me. “What’s the chance of a Jotunn using magic to stop our engine?”

  “Separating out sugar from gasoline is simple as long as you use the principles of contagion and similarity…”

  “Aidan, normally I’d be all kinds of interested, but we don’t have a lot of time. Could magic be used to stop our engine?”

  The leprechaun shook his head. “I would know if magic was being used. I am sure it’s not.”

  It wasn’t a big deal to remove the circuit relay and pop off the gas cap to depressurize the gas tank and fuel lines. I was crawling underneath the van to get to the fuel filter when I noticed a cigarette pack-sized device that had been attached to the bottom of the van with duct tape. It was a battery operated GPS tracker. They’re not hard to find. You can buy them for about seventy bucks from Amazon.com.

  I used a crescent wrench to remove the fuel filter and rags to plug up the fuel lines. The filter was completely fouled up with sugar. “Is-ay ere-thay an-ay audio-ay ug-bay in-ay e-thay an-vay?” My soul gauge came up. My soul hadn’t recovered much from a few hours ago. Half the bar I had left blinked orange. If I used this spell, I’d be wiped.

  Tim was right. It was impossible for the Jotunn to use magic to find out where we were and what we were doing. None of the other paladins and Brothers had bothered to check for human tech surveillance equipment. I briefly considered asking Tim or Aidan to look for audio bugs. What were the advantages or disadvantages of allowing the traitor to know I was on to him? Did I want the others to know we were being tracked? There weren’t any clear right or wrong answers to these questions. Fuck it. “Ake-it-so-may.”

  The van on top of me became translucent except for a spot underneath the driver’s seat. As I focused on it, the area magnified and I recognized the surveillance devices. One was a UHF Crystal Controlled Transmitter—otherwise known as a wireless microphone—the kind used by musicians or guys like me who wanted a cheap, easy to obtain, high quality audio bug. I even recognized the brand. It was a Shure PG1 Wireless Bodypack Transmitter connected to a microphone. The 9V battery that powered the transmitter usually lasted eight hours. The transmitter had an operational distance of two hundred
fifty feet. Last but not least, there was a digital voice recorder. I made a bet with myself that it was voice activated. The van became solid again.

  As I expected, I felt like shit. I was glad I was already lying down. Aidan and Tim popped their heads into view. Aidan sounded concerned, “Victor, what did you just do?”

  Well, there went any plans I had of keeping what I’d found out undercover. It truly sucked to not know crap about magic. “Let me crawl out and I’ll tell you.”

  After I got out from under the van, I didn’t have the energy to stand up. I propped myself into a sitting position—my back against the van and the filter on the ground next to me.

  Aidan, like usual, was on top of things. He handed me a couple candy bars and a Coke. When Mina tried to help me up, I didn’t have the strength or the heart to wave her off. The leprechaun placed his hand gently on her shoulder, “Mina, Victor needs to get his blood sugar back up. It is best to let him sit while he eats.”

  “Is Victor diabetic?”

  Aidan shook his head, “To be sure, he isn’t. He cast an awfully powerful spell. The magical energy, in part, came from his body.”

  The others gathered around me as I ate and drank everything that was handed to me. Finally, Tim couldn’t take it anymore, “Victor, why did you cast that spell?”

  I took two more bites to finish the last energy bar and thought about my answer as I chewed. I pointed to the filter next to me. “It’s completely clogged up with sugar. Someone poured sugar into our gas tank. There’s also a GPS tracker underneath our van. I wanted to see if there were any other surveillance devices in the van.”

  Tim’s face blanched, “What did you find?”

  The van doors and windows were closed. The audio microphone shouldn’t be able to pick up my voice, “There’s an audio bug and recorder underneath the driver’s seat.” Aidan looked grim. He wasn’t surprised by my answer. Mina knelt by my side, her face filled with concern. Like always, Tim was on the verge of panic. Ben was in open-mouthed shock; Andi looked scared.