by S. D. Stuart
They were all in this together. But, they each had different reasons to be here. And while she couldn’t fully understand why this frightened her, it did.
However, nothing frightened her more than the Tin Man. Whenever she looked in his direction, she always found herself staring at the sharp, claw-like hands. Claws that could cut her in half with a single swiping motion. She shook her head and tried not to dwell on such things. Fortunately, the Tin Man had moved to the roof of the locomotive a couple of hours earlier. He said he wanted to watch the path ahead, to keep an eye out for any signs of trouble. She didn’t care why he went up to the roof. As long as it kept him, and his claws, as far away from her as possible.
Whatever programming was used for the Tin Man, she hoped it was not prone to insanity. Why was she thinking like that? She had to be positive if they were going to succeed in their quest.
Just as she was trying to banish the negative thoughts from her mind, the Tin Man jumped down into the engineer’s compartment, grabbed Caleb in a huge claw and threw him off the locomotive.
Dorothy’s scream caught in her throat as the Tin Man reached for her and Toto.
Chapter 18
Before his mind could even properly register the fact that the Tin Man had thrown him out of the locomotive, Caleb hit the ground at high speed. His armored suit hardened instantly and he tumbled several hundred feet across the sun-baked ground before coming to a stop on his back.
Something streaked across the sky in his field of vision, leaving behind a trail of fire and black smoke. A shrieking sound pierced his eardrums and hackled the fur over his entire body.
The head splitting scream was coming from the fireball, and judging by the angle of smoke trailing behind it in the wide arc it made across the sky, it was coming back down to the ground.
He sat up and focused his attention on the screaming fireball.
His mouth went dry when it impacted with the locomotive and exploded.
The shock wave shoved him back several feet, his armor easily deflecting the shards of thick cast iron that tried to impale him with their twisted shards.
He regained his footing and gawked at the meters wide crater where he last saw the locomotive. For the next minute, twisted pieces of metal, each no bigger than his fist, dropped out of the sky. Whatever hit the locomotive, had exploded with more destructive force than he had ever seen before in his life.
However, the shrieking sound was something he had heard before.
And it never meant anything good.
He heard the whooshing sound of jump jets right before the Tin Man, holding a terrified Dorothy and struggling Toto in each bent arm, landed near him. He didn’t bother releasing them and instead surveyed the crater where the locomotive used to be. “What the hell was that?”
Caleb scanned the skies for more trouble. “I don’t know, but I have an idea of who sent it. I hope, for all our sakes, I’m wrong.”
He saw them moments before their wailing sounds reached him.
He was not wrong.
They flew through the sky, born on black and brown stained canvas wings, like large bats against the pale blue sky. Even at this distance he recognized the cone shaped face masks that came to a sharp point, like the beak of a bird, and the large plume of black feathers extending out from their helmets.
But the dead giveaway, of who was fast approaching, were the black steel gauntlets worn over their left hands. The elongated metal claws always sharpened to a razor’s edge and dipped in poison before they engaged the enemy.
Their name alone was enough to send even the hardest criminals in OZ into a flurry of blind panic. It was a word rarely spoken in hushed whispers or during polite conversation.
It was usually screamed in terror.
Caleb screamed that word right now. “Banshees!”
The five Banshees adjusted their angle of flight when they spotted the survivors from the obliterated locomotive.
A quick glance around proved Caleb’s worst fear. There was nowhere to run, and there was nowhere to hide.
His sword and gun sprang out at his nonverbal commands while the Tin Man set Dorothy and Toto down.
Without a single word passing between them, Caleb, Toto and the Tin Man placed themselves between Dorothy and the coming threat.
And prepared for the worst.
Because the worst was coming.
The Banshees landed ten meters away, shed their canvas wings, and extended their clawed hands. They did not rely on brute force to overcome their enemies. They relied on their speed and agility. And they let the poison dripping from the tips of their extended claws do most of the heavy lifting. One scratch was an assured, and painful, death sentence. Caleb’s special armor might protect him from the claws, but he still had exposed skin at every joint that still left him vulnerable. The only ones immune to any kind of poison were Toto and the Tin Man. With the two automatons, and his armored suit, they might stand a chance against the five Banshees.
Worse than the screeching that signaled their impending arrival was their silence as they moved in for the kill.
Toto was the first react. He charged at the closest Banshee, growling and snarling fiercely. He leaped through the air and the Banshee caught him with her clawed hand. He let out a terrified yelp and dropped to the ground, lifeless.
The Tin Man raised his gun and fired. The Banshees scattered in every direction, each one avoiding the steady barrage of bullets. One held up her clawed hand and sparks of lightning shot out to engulf the Tin Man. He stopped firing, and fell face down into the dirt.
These Banshees had upgraded their gauntlets to deal with automatons. With both his strongest members down and out for the count, and with all five Banshees still untouched, he was not going to win this fight. The only way to protect Dorothy, and save himself, was to get as far away from them as possible.
He spun around and bear-hugged Dorothy. He crouched and felt the jump jets engage right before every muscle in his body constricted.
Still gripping Dorothy, they both collapsed into the dust.
He and Dorothy stared at each other, unable to move. He was not unconscious, but had no control over anything. He couldn’t turn his head. He couldn’t move his eyes. He couldn’t even blink.
It took three Banshees working together to pry them apart and lay them each on their backs.
A Banshee entered his field of vision and removed her metal beak. If he still had voluntary control over his body, he would’ve gasped in surprise. He knew that only women were allowed in the ranks of the Banshees, but he hadn’t expected any of them to be so beautiful.
They were ruthless killers, and it was rare that anyone saw them without their mask. He had expected them to look more mannish.
Maybe he’d listened too long to the drunken rationalizations of men in pubs, discussing why a woman would choose to become a Banshee. They always seemed to settle on the same reason. She must be as ugly as a mule and couldn’t find herself a man.
Clearly, as he stared up at the smooth features of her face, that was not the case. She spoke softly to him, like a mother tending to a sleepy child.
“I’m going to close your eyes now. We wouldn’t want them to dry out.”
She swiped her hand across his face and the world became nothing more than a bright orangish hue as sunlight filtered through his eyelids.
As he lie perfectly still on the ground, he listened to the Banshees speak to each other in a language he’d never heard before. It was a lilting, breathy language that seemed to be very old, and not as consonant heavy as the modern languages.
He heard wagon wheels crunching on the hard ground and sensed, rather than felt since he still had no control or feeling of his body, the motion of being lifted and placed in the wagon. It must’ve been a covered wagon, because the light filtering in through his eyelids darkened slightly.
It was unsettling to be awake and aware, yet not be able to move or feel any part of your body. The only senses he had we
re sight and sound. He could not feel anything, but he could hear his heartbeat, and his breathing and swallowing at regular intervals. Even though he lost control of his body, at least the involuntary functions were still working.
The sense he missed the most, was smell. He hadn’t realized how much he relied on it to gauge his surroundings until it was gone.
He always closed his eyes upon entering a new city so that he could memorize the smells. Every city had its unique smell and he was able, during the few times he’d been hooded and whisked away to meet a contact in a secret location, to know exactly where he was.
For the first time in his life, he was flying blind and had no idea where they were taking him.
Or why.
He tried to focus on possible reasons why they destroyed the locomotive and captured them. But not being able to feel one’s own body was too distracting. His mind wandered too easily from the lack of stimulus. Reduced to the single reddish color of his eyelids and the random sounds around him, his brain struggled to reconstruct the rest of his environment. But rather than try to reconstruct the environment around him, he instead hallucinated that he was seated at the dinner table back in Nero’s casino, years ago.
He could smell the food. He could turn his head and look all around the dining hall like he was there.
But none of it was real, and he forced himself to focus on the sounds around him rather than let his brain create a new reality.
The rumbling of the wooden wagon wheels shifted tempo as they moved from a dirt road to cobblestone pavement.
He had no way of judging which city they had just entered, because he had no way of knowing how long they had been traveling, or at what speed.
The only indication that time had passed was the gradual darkening on the other side of his eyelids. He couldn’t hear Dorothy in the wagon next to him, or anyone from the rest of his group. Which made sense. He couldn’t speak himself, so none of them would be making any noise.
A chilling thought suddenly occurred to him. What if they had been split up. What if Dorothy, the Tin Man, Toto, and he were sent to different locations?
His mind grabbed that thought and propelled him beyond the boundaries of sanity. He used all his will to force himself back to reality. He focused on the details of his quest, which only made him angry about his current situation.
His imagination took over and showed him a world where a select group of humans used the ancient hybrid’s weapon to subjugate everyone on the planet. It was worse than he could’ve ever imagined. It wasn’t a world united. It wasn’t heaven. It was hell.
He forced himself back to reality again. He had to do something.
How long was his body going to be frozen like this?
If they would only let him speak, he could tell them how important it was to them, and to all of OZ, that his group be allowed to keep going without interference. Precious time had been wasted already, and he was frantic to get to the Brahmastra before the humans did, now more than ever.
The wheels stopped grinding over cobblestones and fell silent. Several voices exchanged comments in that strange language before someone said something he understood.
The voice was very close, as if it’s speaker was inspecting him from only a few inches away.
“You’re right. Maybe this is the half-human half-animal creature the Oracle spoke of. Wake him up.”
Every muscle in his body constricted and knotted up. The tingling sensation started in his fingers and toes, and worked its way up through his arms and legs. His equilibrium was shot to hell and his head spun wildly. When his face felt numb, he thought about opening his eyes and he did.
He was seated, tied to a chair. His brain registered he was no longer lying down and his equilibrium reset. Once properly oriented, the room stopped spinning.
He tested moving his head by looking around the room. Slowly at first to fend off the waves of nausea that washed over him with each motion. His neck was stiff, but at least he could still move it with some effort.
Off to his right, a couple of women inspected pieces of armor that looked exactly like his.
He tilted his head down to look at his chest and legs.
It was his armor.
Fortunately, he was still dressed in the brown leather under-suit. He hadn’t been stripped naked. Of course, with fur covering his entire body, he really couldn’t be naked. Technically speaking.
Three more women were in an animated discussion on the far side of the room. And by animated, it looked like they were arguing over something. Most likely, they were arguing over him.
With feeling returning to normal, he tested the bindings that held him to the chair. While the ropes were not tight enough to restrict blood flow, they had very little play. He would not be wriggling out of them anytime soon.
One of the three women noticed him tugging on his ropes and walked over. The two with her, followed close behind.
She stood with her hands on her hips, a fire burning in her eyes. “I’d like you to give Ellis a message for me.”
He wasn’t sure what he had expected her to say to him, but this caught him totally off guard.
“Huh?”
She punched him across the face, his teeth rattling from the impact. He flexed his jaw as the heat level rose on the left side of his face.
“You tell him, the next time he sends a bomb headed directly toward my city, he will not live to see another sunrise.”
“What are you…”
She struck him again. This time, he felt his brain bounce around inside his skull. She didn’t look very muscular, but she hit like someone twice her size. Her hand flashed back across his vision and he noticed the glint of metal from something gripped in her hand.
She bent down to speak to him at eye level.
“I will give you the night to regain your strength and recover from your,” she gripped his chin in her hand and inspected her handiwork. “Accidental fall down the stairs.”
One of the two women who’d been inspecting his armor approached. He recognized her is the same one who closed his eyes immediately after they attacked. She had those same bright blue eyes with pinpoint dark pupils that were unforgettable. “Ma’am, do you think the Oracle will want to speak with him?”
The one who punched him across the face looked ready to hit Blue Eyes. “The Oracle is an idiot. We are no longer going to do what he says. I’m in charge now, and if anyone has a problem with that, my door is always open to hear complaints.”
She looked around, challenging anyone to question her self-appointed leadership. The other woman lowered their heads.
Caleb had just witnessed a shift in power. It didn’t sound like a change for the better.
She regarded him with an evil grin.
“Very well. Put him in the dungeon with the others. Tomorrow morning, we will send back just enough of him to deliver our message.”
Chapter 19
Deep in the bowels of Center City, Caleb was pushed into a jail cell. He stumbled, but quickly regained his balance.
The bars clanked shut behind him.
The two Banshee guards whispered to each other in their strange language and laughed at their private joke as they headed back up the stairs.
Dorothy sat on the dirt floor of the same jail cell with her back against the wall. Toto’s head was in her lap and she stroked the fur along the back of his neck. He didn’t react to her attention, or to Caleb entering the cell. The electrical shock from the Banshee gauntlet must have fried his electrical circuits. Whether it was permanent, there was no way to tell. Caleb wondered if the Tin Man had fared any better.
Caleb crouched down next to her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m doing better than Toto. Where are we?”
“You don’t remember this place?”
She looked around her at the bare stone walls. “Should I?”
“We’ve been here before. We’re in the dungeon of the Wizard’s Castle. We’ve only been gone for six
months, but it doesn’t seem like Scarecrow is in charge any longer. Ellis mentioned that everything has gotten worse around OZ, in just the past couple of months. I wonder what’s been happening out here since we left?”
A new voice outside the cell answered his question. “The Oracle can answer that.”
He stared through the bars of the cell into same bright blue eyes of the one who had risked standing up against the self-appointed Banshee leader. She had backed down quickly, but here she was again. And most likely breaking some rule coming to see them.
“You’re the one who kept my eyes from drying out.”
She grinned at being recognized. “My name’s Tara.”
“You mentioned this Oracle before. Who is he?”
“He is the Oracle. He looks like an ordinary man, but he fell from the sky as a gift to us from the gods. The only reason the High Priestess did not order his immediate death is that he came to us broken. It was my task to nurse him back to health so he could stand trial for his crimes.”
“What crimes?”
“It didn’t matter. He was a man in OZ, and therefore, must have committed crimes against someone, somewhere.”
This was the most absurd thing he’d ever heard in his life. And he grew up in OZ, so nothing should have surprised him. “You were going to put him on trial under the assumption he had committed a crime?”
“Children were not born in OZ until after the first few years. Reason dictates, everyone over the age of twenty was sent to OZ for committing a crime. So, logically, he had crimes he needed to be punished for. But I was able to convince the High Priestess that he was not an ordinary man. That he was a gift from the gods.”
“A gift from the gods?”
“I told you. He fell from the sky.”
“So, after you nursed him back to health he was put on trial?”
“No. He talked in his sleep through many a fevered dream and spoke of a life outside of OZ. A life that did not involve crime. And he knew things that only the creator of OZ could know. He spoke of the creator as if he knew him personally. I convinced the High Priestess that he was not here because of judgment, so we could not judge him further.”