“Ladies, I believe introductions are in order. Since you are the hosts, I feel that you should go first.”
“You either have a good sense of humor or are too stupid to realize what kind of trouble you’re in,” Armstrong said.
“I have a finely developed sense of humor, thank you for noticing. Now, are you two ready to explain yourselves?”
Armstrong stepped forward, but the mage shot out a hand and grabbed her arm. “You can’t enter the circle.”
Armstrong jerked her arm free and glared at me. “I’m not stupid. I saw how well your circle works.”
“What’s the matter, Jennifer? Will your boss not let you play?”
“What? How do you know my name?” Armstrong snapped.
“I told you that your survivor would have told him anything he wanted to know,” the mage said. “Stop thinking of him as a kid.”
“Oh, yes. Abrams didn’t mention that she gave you my name. I’m Jennifer to my friends; to self-important wizards, I am Ms. Armstrong.”
“Sorry about that, Jennifer. Now, if you will just tell me your demands, I can see what I can do about negotiating my friends’ release.”
Armstrong coughed as if she had something caught in her throat. “Demands? I don’t have any demands for you. As for your friends, well, they’ll be released unharmed, in time.”
I felt the metal of the handcuffs shrink beneath my thumb and finger. It wasn’t much, but the spell was beginning to work. Now if I could just keep these women talking.
“No demands? Then which one of you very lovely ladies came up with the idea to ambush me and then kidnap my friends?”
“That would be me,” the mage said.
“Oh? So, are you working for Rowle or do you have some agenda of your own?” I asked.
The woman smiled. “See, he knew right away that Rowle was behind this. I told you he was smarter than he looked.”
“But what could persuade you to send a bunch of mundanes out after me? You had to know that would be a waste of time and resources,” I said.
“It got you here didn’t it?” Armstrong said.
“No, I wouldn’t have come here if you hadn’t taken two of my friends and threatened them. Your little ambush was just a waste of manpower. I don’t like waste, especially when it leads to me killing people that didn’t know any better.”
I could feel the skin of my thumb and finger beginning to touch. In a couple more minutes, the steel would split, and I’d have my hands free. There was still the circle to worry about, but first things first.
“So,” I said since the women didn’t seem to be able to keep a conversation going. “You’re the bad guys this week. Do you want to start monologuing now or do you have some insidious threats to spout first?”
“We are hardly the bad guys. You’re the one who’s trying to prevent Rowle from stopping Ragnarök,” the mage said.
I gave her my best winning gaze and said, “And you bought that? What else did Rowle the Saint claim?”
“He didn’t claim anything. He merely stated that a rogue Wanderer was trying to bring about Ragnarök and that he needed my help to stop you. For what it’s worth, I don’t see the problem. Regardless of what Rowle claims of your capabilities, I haven’t seen anything to convince me that you’re the threat he makes out.”
“Look, lady, you can protest all you want for Jennifer’s benefit, but between you, me, and the fencepost we know that Rowle is the renegade. If lying about his motives is what it took to get this mercenary to work for you, fine, I'm not judgy about it. I just want to get straight who the kidnapper is and whether we can negotiate a truce or if we are going to do this the hard way.”
Armstrong started laughing. It was a mirthless laugh. I waited patiently for her to finish. After all, I needed a little more time to finish the handcuffs.
“Go ahead and tell him, Doctor Frazier,” Armstrong said.
“Doctor is it? Medical or one of those people that just like to be called doctor?” I said.
Frazier frowned and straightened her frame to give her a slightly elevated stance. It was cute. She was insulted.
“My degree is in philosophy. I am a doctor of letters, and I earned the right to be called doctor,” she puffed.
“Don’t feel insulted,” I said. “Plenty of people like being called doctor. Now, doc, what’s the price for letting my friends and me go?”
“There is no price. We’re just holding you until the window passes,” Frazier said.
“Window?” I wondered.
“Doctor Frazier tells me that after noon tomorrow your time window for opening this portal to start Ragnarök will have passed and you’ll no longer be a threat. Doctor Frazier wants to turn you over to the cops for killing my employees.”
“Oh? How civilized of her. And how about you, Jennifer, what do you want?” I asked.
“I want to take you for a one-way copter ride over the Grand Canyon just to see if I can hit the river from a mile up. And stop calling me Jennifer!” Armstrong snarled.
I heard a thud above me and all three of us looked up at the ceiling.
“You two expecting company?” I asked.
There came the sounds of scraping, shattering, and then debris began to rain down on the room. Inside the circle, I was protected, but the two women backed hurriedly out of the room while Frazier began a spell to shield them from harm.
The fluorescent lights flickered and died and then two of the four fixtures dropped from the ceiling, shattering their tubes, and adding broken glass to the debris already covering the floor. A hole appeared in the ceiling above me and in the remaining light, I could see a claw the size of my head pull back from the opening.
A moment later, Tess’s face appeared in the opening. She took a quick look around the room and then dropped through the hole. Her feet hit the circle’s perimeter about two feet above my head, and she slid off to land feet first on the floor between my position and the door where my captors stood.
Tess held her crossbow, cocked and loaded, in her right hand.
“Welcome to the party, Tess. You might want to turn around,” I said.
Armstrong had a pistol, held in a shooter’s stance, and Frazier was just finishing her spell. A shimmer appeared in the air in front of her and Armstrong.
Without turning, Tess dropped to one knee and placed her left hand on the floor just outside the circle that bound me.
I felt energy being released. Tremendous amounts of energy.
What the hell was Tess doing?
Armstrong raised her handgun to firing position, apparently not realizing that Frazier had activated a shield in front of them both.
The earth surged.
With a tremendous cacophony of rending metal and cracking cement, the floor beneath me split open and bulged toward the ceiling. Great chunks of concrete and tile cracked and rose. The walls began shaking and pieces of the ceiling rained down around me. The chair and I were hurled back from Tess. I slammed into the back wall just as my spell finished dissolving a section of the handcuffs. I triggered my shield tat and focused it immediately in front of the doorway just as a pistol fired twice.
I stood slowly and brushed at the dust that coated my leathers. Tess still knelt in a small circle of clear floor amongst the devastation that had destroyed the room. She rose on wobbly legs. I reached for her, but my hand was stopped by her shield. Good, I was afraid she’d forgotten it.
“Nice rescue, Tess. I’ll take it from here, if that’s all right with you,” I said as I moved beside her.
“No, problem, Boss. They’re all yours. I’m just going to watch from here on out,” Tess said. Her voice sounded tired.
Armstrong still held her pistol in shooting position, but she was staring at the two bullets that had fallen to the floor at her feet after hitting Frazier’s shield.
I raised my right hand and triggered an energy blast.
Frazier’s shield held, but she’d not anchored it. The two of them were blast
ed through the doorway at their back, taking a good share of the wall with them. I moved to the door and took a quick look down the hallway to either side.
My senses tat was fully active now, and I could hear running footsteps. Many footsteps. I stepped into the hallway, reforming my shield into an ovoid that stretched across the hall. The ladies were getting to their feet. The room I’d knocked them into looked like a storage room. Filing cabinets and shelves of equipment had been knocked over and office supplies and weapons lay scattered about the floor.
I raised my left hand and pointed down the hallway to my left. I didn’t really need any interruptions while the ladies and I finished our discussion.
I triggered my fire tat and flame swept down the hall. I left it on for a few seconds until the walls and ceiling were burning. Then I repeated the gesture to my right until that hallway too was filled with flames.
I turned back to the two women who had so recently held me captive.
I smiled broadly, okay, it was probably a threatening smile, at least it had the effect of appearing threatening to them.
Frazier started to speak a spell, and I shook my finger at her.
“We’ll have none of that. You get to keep living as long as you cast no other spells. Stop immediately.”
Frazier stopped and stared at me with unhidden venom.
“There now. See you can be civilized about this. Now, tell me where my friends are.”
“Can’t you do anything?” Armstrong asked without taking either her eyes or her gunsights off of me.
“Rowle told me to not try and best him with magic,” Frazier said.
“How good of Rowle to give you a warning, but that doesn’t answer my question. Where are my friends?”
Armstrong tipped her head to her right. “They’re in another room at the opposite end of the hall.”
I heard a crackle of static and a voice came from Armstrong’s suit. “Ms. Armstrong, are you all right? The hallway is on fire, and we can’t get to you.”
“Ah, your lackeys. Tell them that if they want to keep breathing, they are to holster whatever weapons they are carrying and stay clear of the hallway,” I said.
Smoke was filling the hallway and making it difficult to see past the flames. There must have been a door open somewhere because the smoke was flowing into the room at my back and out the opening, Beast had torn in the ceiling.
Armstrong looked to Frazier for instructions, and the mage said, “Do as he asks. There’s no point in dragging this out.”
Armstrong pulled a small electronic device from her pocket. It was the size of the cell phones Tess had forced me to buy. She raised the device to her lips and said, “Holster your weapons. No shooting, I mean it, none. Then move back from the hallway.”
“Are you sure, Boss?” The man’s tone was concerned.
“Of course I’m sure,” Armstrong said. “Just stay out of the hall and don’t interfere.”
“Should we call the fire department?”
“I wouldn’t have him do that,” I suggested. “Unless of course, you’d like to explain to the police why you kidnapped my two friends.”
“But the fire–” she began.
“I’ll handle the fire,” I said.
“No, don’t call anyone. Just move back to the front of the building and wait for further instructions,” Armstrong said into the phone or radio.
“Yes, Boss.”
I raised my left hand and triggered my chiller tat. A wave of cold encompassed the hallway to my left. Within a dozen seconds, the fire was out, and frost was forming on the walls. I repeated the spell on the right hallway and then called the wind to clear the remaining smoke.
When the hallway was mostly clear, I motioned for the women to join me.
They walked toward me but stopped when Frazier’s shield impacted the destroyed walls on either side of the opening.
“My shield won’t fit,” Frazier said.
I clucked my tongue in sympathy.
“If I decide to kill you, the shield will make little difference. You can drop it and feel just as safe,” I said with a smile.
“How do we know we can trust you?” Armstrong said.
“Because I’m the good guy here. As long as my friends haven’t been harmed, you stand an excellent chance of getting out of here alive.”
“Rowle said you were the bad guy,” Frazier said.
She was still playing charades, and I couldn’t decide what purpose it would have. Did she really believe Rowle was a good guy or was she just trying to keep Armstrong in the dark? I guess I could always use a truth potion to make them talk.
“But then Rowle isn’t here, is he? He let you go up against me knowing that the most you could do was delay–”
Man, I can be slow. This whole thing was a delaying game to keep me away from the site of the breach Rowle was planning. Frazier had said noon. If she’d been honest about that much, then they were coming through in the next few hours. I glanced back toward the room where I’d so recently been a captive. The airport lights were bright enough that I couldn’t tell if the sky was still dark or if dawn was upon us.
I noticed that Tess had rightened the chair I’d been using and had sat down on it in that little undamaged spot of the floor where she’d cast her spell. Her head was bent low over the crossbow that lay across her lap.
“Are you all right, Tess?” I asked.
She nodded weakly. “I’m good, just get my Aunts.”
I turned back to Frazier and Armstrong. “Times up, ladies. Step into the hallway and take me to my friends or I’ll kill you both and find them on my own.”
The women exchanged glances and then through my enhanced senses, I saw Frazier’s shield wink out.
I stepped back from the doorway and collapsed my shield down to an inch from my body. First Armstrong and then Frazier entered the hallway and moved in the direction Armstrong had indicated earlier.
They stopped at the last door on the left side of the hall and opened it.
I motioned them back and looked in.
“Rafe,” Ashley exclaimed.
The two women were sitting side by side at a small metal table. A metal ring was set in the table, and a single pair of handcuffs linked one of each of their hands to the ring. The rest of the room was empty, but there was a large mirror covering much of the right wall. My enhanced senses could see figures in the next room.
“Jenifer, you have an interrogation room? How butch of you. Emily, Ashley. Are you two all right?” I asked.
“They haven’t hurt us, except for the black eye Emily’s going to have,” Ashley said.
Her eyes moved slightly to something behind me, and she opened her mouth to shout a warning.
Armstrong’s handgun discharged about a foot behind my head.
Chapter 26
Raphael
The bullet smacked into my shield and ricocheted into the ceiling.
I triggered an energy blast as I raised my hand. Armstrong was blown through the door on the opposite side of the hall and into the far wall. She hit hard and crumbled to the floor in a heap.
While I was dealing with her, Frazier completed a spell with a pop of energy.
For a fraction of a moment, I thought something had gone wrong with her spell because I couldn’t see anything coming at me. I turned to check on Tess’s aunts, but they were okay. Except for still being restrained. I spoke a spell of unbinding and the handcuff holding them fell open.
Emily leapt to her feet in an instance and then pointed as once again I had my back turned to the wrong people.
I whirled, strengthening my shield as I did in preparation for Frazier’s assault.
An orange and black multi-horned demon had appeared in the hallway between Frazier and me. The demon stretched out, bringing it to its full height, and its top two horns buried themselves in the ceiling. Its cloven hooves cracked the tile floor wherever it stamped them. It was blatantly male and sported parts that would have made most stal
lions jealous. The fretha demon curled up its fist and shook one of them at me.
“Raphael, you worm,” the demon snarled. “I’ve been hoping some fool would summon me while you still lived.”
Uh-oh. I’d only banished one fretha demon, and that was more than thirty years earlier. Who knew those things still bore a grudge after that much time?
“Well, I can’t say I remember your name, but I’ve no beef with you today. Step aside so I can kill the mage that summoned you and you can be about your business,” I said as I stepped slightly to the side. If I could get a good shot at Frazier, the demon summoning would reverse itself with the summoner’s death.
“And pass up my chance to eat your marrow? No, Wanderer, your service to Fate ends this day.”
It punched out, aiming at my face with a fist the size of my head. The impact on my shield drove me back down the hallway the way I had come. I slammed into the wall at the end. The concrete block shattered under the impact. More debris rained down on my shield and fell to the floor around me.
I extracted myself from the wall, raised my right hand, and triggered an energy pulse. I didn’t hold back as I had with Armstrong. A full strength blast would have pulped her flesh against the outer wall.
My blast forced the demon back three steps before it got its balance.
Damn, how had I fought this thing all those years ago?
The fretha demon shook its head free of the ceiling, dropping more burned plaster and blackened drywall onto the floor. It spoke a spell in some dialect that I couldn’t remember hearing before.
I raised my left hand and summoned lightning. The runes on my fist glowed, and the building shuddered as a scintillating bolt of energy tore through the roof and struck the demon full on.
It spasmed. Its flailing limbs slammed into the hallway walls sending shards of the metal studs flying in every direction.
Damn it. I had to get it away from the women I was trying to rescue. Canceling the lightning tat, I took a couple of steps toward the demon until I was even with the door to my recent prison. I could lure the demon outside where I could deal with it.
Wanderers 3: Garden of The Gods (The Wanderers) Page 27