Wanderers 4: A Tough Act to Follow (The Wanderers)

by Richard Bamberg

  The look on his face was priceless. I laughed, coughing out blood as I did.

  Someone beside me brought a hand down and hit me in the chest, hard.

  Hell. That was going to leave a bruise.

  Then I felt the cold steel that had penetrated my ribcage.

  I spasmed and felt my heart quiver as my vision darkened.

  I coughed one last time before I died.

  Chapter 2

  Therese

  The first couple of weeks after the fight between every sonofabitch–and his cousin–in the Garden of the Gods were hectic, even more so than my first couple of weeks as Raphael’s Apprentice Wanderer. It wasn’t enough that Rafe needed time to heal from his grievous injuries. No, we also had to round up all the escapees from the battle. Some were easy to find, the lower intelligence creatures that had been herded through the portal into our world made no active effort to hide as the sapient ones did. I don’t mean to imply they just stood around waiting for us to send them back to where they belonged, but at least they weren’t using magic and tricks to try and stay in our world.

  It also wasn’t just a matter of location and pushing them through a portal. No, that would have been too easy. Some were dead set against leaving and were quite violent in their desires.

  I knew it’d take at least a week to regrow the legs Rafe had lost to Rowle’s dragon, but he was too restless to wait. He used the spectral appendage spell to generate energy shells that served as temporary legs and then on the second night after the big fight–when we (mostly Raphael) had defeated Rowle and stopped his attempt at bringing Ragnarök into being–we started hunting all of the escaped critters down. Some had already been captured by the authorities and were being held in portions of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It had the only nearby facilities for holding some of the large creatures. Rafe decided that those could wait until we tracked down the ones on the loose. The zoo had wanted to let the public view the bizarre menagerie, but too many government agencies nixed that idea. Ostensibly, it was to protect the public from violent creatures of unknown capabilities.

  That gave Rafe and me a good laugh.

  During this period, a week, or so after the battle, we arrived at the conclusion that we should recover the three crossbow broadheads I’d lost in the black dragon that had cost Rafe his legs. The government had moved the carcass for study and apparently, there was only one place the government owned that was large enough to refrigerate a body larger than an elephant.

  We reached Ft Walton Beach, Florida, on a cool night in early December. We had flown, via familiars, and made good time but the flight still took all day. Manticores and hippogriffs can fly fast, but they aren’t jets. It was after dark and Eglin AFB was easy to spot. Most of its 450 thousand plus acres was undeveloped pine forest and the sudden shift from normal inhabited land was abrupt. Passing Pensacola and Interstate 10, the lights of buildings, homes, businesses and the such, just stopped at the border of the vast Eglin range. While I didn’t know much about the Air Force or this particular base, I did know it was the largest USAF base in the world. Huge tracts of land were set up for various weapons testing and, of course, there were no inhabited buildings in those areas. Ergo, the dark forest we flew over. The night was cool, nowhere near as cool as the day had been when we left Colorado Springs, and the humid air bore smells of both marshy dampness and salty bayous.

  Rafe pointed toward bright lights in the distance. I could make out the runways from several miles away, even at just a thousand feet of altitude–we’d stayed low to avoid fast moving aircraft. On the other side of the runways, the surface became even darker than the land. We’d gone over a map of the area and I understood that the darkest areas were the large bay and the Gulf of Mexico in the distance.

  “We’ll fly lower from here,” Rafe called. “I don’t want to interfere with any aircraft coming or goings.”

  “Sounds smart. How low will we have to go?” I called back.

  “Treetop level. Any antennas or such should have marking lights, but we’ll travel slowly, just in case,” Rafe replied. Then to Beast, he said, “As low as you can safely go and slow. We’re only a few miles away and there’s no rush.”

  “As you wish,” Beast growled back.

  He dropped suddenly and Maia and I followed in a steep dive. My stomach leapt for my throat. No matter how many times we did that, it still gave me that moment of queasiness that you get from the first big drop on a rollercoaster. A few seconds later, we were flying close enough to the pine forest to have to rise occasionally to avoid a taller tree. Beast had decided for himself what was safe, as he should since he was the one doing the flying. Maia refused to fly any higher than Beast, even though she would have if I’d asked. Personally, I’d have preferred staying well above the trees.

  “Do you know exactly where this hangar is?” I asked.

  “Approximately. It has to be adjacent to the flight line in order to move airplanes in and out of it. It also has to be big enough to house the Air Force’s largest planes.”

  A minute passed as I studied the rapidly approaching flight line through my enhanced senses. I’d only burned that tat a few days ago and I was still marveling at its capabilities.

  “Ah, Rafe. I see at least five hangars that would fit your requirements,” I said pointed ahead of us.

  “Don’t you have your senses tat active?” he asked.

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then tell me what makes one of those hangars different than the others.”

  I frowned and took a closer look at the huge buildings.

  Damn it, I should have noticed that immediately.

  “The second one from the farthest,” I said. “It’s a lot cooler than the others.”

  “Exactly,” Rafe said. “They would have the Climatic Hangar set to below freezing to keep Rowle’s familiar from decomposing.”

  Now he was dropping into mansplaining. He knew I was smart enough to figure that out, but he had to point out the obvious. When was I going to learn not to ask him questions until I had given the question enough thought to keep him from mansplaining?

  “Okay, got you. So, you still think we can just walk in and take the broadheads without anyone trying to stop us?” I asked.

  “Probably, it’s not like they expect someone to try to steal forty or fifty tons of frozen dragon. We’ll just slip in, do a little slicing and dicing, and leave with your broadheads before anyone is the wiser.”

  “That sounds a lot like what you expected to do at the hangar in the Springs when we rescued my aunts,” I reminded him.

  “Humph! Totally different circumstances. They had not only expected us, but also had a mage’s help in setting up the ambush. I’d still like to know what that gas was that dropped me. My healing tat would have activated for anything poisonous and neutralized it in short order. It couldn’t have been magical based because our shields block harmful magics.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “Could it have been nitrogen? It’s not poisonous, per se, so a healing spell wouldn’t affect it, but if the concentration is high enough, you can’t get oxygen into your blood.”

  Rafe rotated around to study me.

  After a few seconds, I said, “What? You think it’s not possible?”

  “No, I think that’s a clever guess. Almost as clever as them thinking of using something like that against us. I wonder why it occurred to them?”

  “Well, they did have a mage. She would have known that your shield would stop magic and that a healing spell would defeat knockout or poison gas.”

  “Yeah, but to think of flooding an entire hangar with nitrogen seems a stretch.”

  “Maybe not. I Googled gases and came across an article about a NASA accident back in 1981. Five technicians were asphyxiated by nitrogen and two died. Anyone older than me might remember the incident since it was during prep for the very first Space Shuttle mission.”

  Rafe nodded. “I think I remember something about that.
Did I ever tell you that I watched that first launch?”

  “No, I think I would have remembered,” I said. “What was it like?”

  “Mostly noisy. Beast and I flew in and watched from less than a mile away. I remember the way my chest vibrated with the noise. It was impressive.”

  “If you two want to bring your attention back to the present, we’re here,” Beast growled.

  We were circling the cool hangar, but I’d been paying attention, regardless of what Beast thought.

  “Don’t get smart,” Rafe said. “Set us down next to one of the low buildings near the main doors.”

  Beast didn’t respond verbally, but as we passed the massive doors that faced the flight line, he swooped and glided to a landing next to a one-story building on the flight line side of the hangar. I flipped a leg over Maia’s, my familiar–a hippogriff–neck and slid to the ground without bothering her about kneeling. Mounting was another story and I always appreciated her kneeling. I looked up equine terms one day after she’d become my familiar and I learned that in horse terms she would be at least seventeen hands high. Sure, with the trick of applying magic into muscle strength, I could have leapt that high, but that still took me longer than having Maia kneel.

  Rafe joined me at the front of our familiars.

  “Weapons?” I queried.

  Rafe shook his head. “We don’t have any reason to hurt these flyboys. So no, if there’s a problem, stay behind your shield while I get us out.”

  I nodded in agreement. I hadn’t expected to need a weapon and had left my glamoured crossbow slung over my back. I hadn’t learned to glamour yet, but at least I could see through a glamour with my enhanced senses. There were just so many spells to learn. Not all of them would qualify as something useful in a tattoo, but there were many pages in Rafe’s grimoires and I’d started copying them into my own book. It was odd to think that years from now, I’d be on my own and having to rely on everything Rafe taught me. Rafe still carried his own mentor’s grimoire and had allowed me to study any spell from either book.

  The only spells he refused to let me study were the night magic spells in his special grimoire. He’d given me a royal chewing out after learning that I’d burned the tremblor spell into a tattoo. I’d done it to save his life, but he hadn’t thought that was a good enough reason. Rafe can be a typical pig-headed man.

  “Beast and Maia take top cover and warn us if something appears amiss. If something goes wrong, we’ll whistle.”

  “Not that anything would ever go wrong with one of your plans,” Beast growled.

  Rafe glared at him, but didn’t rise to the bait Beast set. The two of them were like teenage boys at times, always teasing or taunting each other. Maia and I, on the other hand, were more mature in our relationship.

  Our familiars leapt into the night sky behind their hawk glamours and I reached out for Rafe’s hand. He took it in his and in a few seconds, we meshed auras, senses, and emotions. It had become so automatic for us that we meshed anytime one of us was going to use magic. It was all for my benefit, of course, Rafe could handle himself without assistance–except for the part of getting himself killed or maimed–but I needed all the practice I could get with magics, even those that I hadn’t learned yet.

  I felt the snap of power when Rafe cast a glamour on us. This time he had us appear as a couple of Air Force Security Police, complete with perfectly creased uniforms and shiny boots. Both bothered me, the military had gone away from starch and spit-shines except in formal situations. A moment later, noticing my concern, Rafe altered the uniforms to how I pictured the modern military.

  He winked at me as he dropped my hand. Once we were meshed, we could hold it without physical contact, as long as we didn’t get too far apart or have something break our concentration.

  “So, we just walk in the front door and take what we came for?” I asked.

  Rafe shrugged. “That’s the plan. We’ll see how it works out.”

  “You’re the Boss,” I said without emphasis, but he caught my thoughts.

  “You think I should just cut an opening in the wall, rush in, and then rush out before anyone can respond?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll be very alert. It’s not like someone is going to try and steal a dragon carcass that’s larger than a full grown elephant.”

  “I could make the opening easily enough, but I couldn’t repair it so they couldn’t tell someone had been here. I’d rather try to keep anyone from knowing we were ever here,” Rafe said.

  “What difference would it make? You don’t worry about government interference in Wanderer business.”

  “True, but the less we appear on their radar, the less chance of that changing in the future.”

  He may have had a point. I nodded in agreement and followed as he started for the corner.

  We went straight to a personnel door set in one of the huge hangar doors. My enhanced senses revealed infrared motion detectors that were actively sweeping the exterior of the hangar. It was a common enough security arrangement, but Rafe had arranged his glamour to disguise our heat signature from any detection, just as he had our visible spectrum. Since my enhanced senses tat was active, I could see the little detectors that glowed in the infrared band at each corner of the hangar’s exterior.

  We made it to the personnel door without the squeal of an alarm interrupting us. Rafe stopped before the brown metal door and raised one hand before it. He activated a tattoo and then nodded.

  “No problem, nothing fancy on the door except what looks like a tamper switch to send a signal to whoever watches over this building for intrusion. It won’t be a problem.”

  He cast a spell and the door’s lock made a soft click that I wouldn’t have heard if not for my enhanced senses. He cast another spell and I saw a small point of cold appear on the top corner of the door. Rafe rotated the heavy metal handle and swung the door open. He stepped through and I followed closely.

  Once inside, I turned toward the door and saw a point of intense blue in the corner of the doorframe.

  As Rafe eased the door shut, he transmitted over our meshed link, *That’s the sensor. I froze the workings so the contacts can’t move. Once we leave, the contacts will thaw out, but if the door is shut then it won’t send a signal that it was ever opened.”

  I nodded, thinking Rafe wanted silence while we were in the hangar. Knowing the paranoid state of all military units, there was bound to be other sensors and some would probably detect sounds.

  I turned and stared out across the massive bay of the climatic hangar.

  The facility was huge. The Air Force had tested their largest aircraft in this hangar for more than seventy years. Steel rafters supported an insulated roof and the sidewalls had “R” values that I couldn’t begin to guess at. The cavernous space was nearly empty tonight, except for the Greyhound-bus-sized monster that lay at rest in the center of the chamber.

  The monstrous black dragon was as frightening to see now, as it had been when it was still alive. Its great head, although torn and rent from our digging Rafe from between its jaws was still the stuff of nightmares. Black armored scales covered most of the massive body and its long tail. The beast lay still, as well it should with the damage we’d dealt it. Still, the sight of it gave me a shudder that started low in my spine and threatened to send me screaming from the hangar. Dragons were terrifying enough when you were fighting for your life, but when you were in a quiet chamber, just you, and a creature that had no business being in our world…damn, I just wanted to get my broadheads and get the hell away from the beast.

  *Are you okay?* Rafe queried.

  *Hell, no! That thing scares the crap out of me.*

  Rafe’s hand touched my shoulder and I felt his calming thoughts wash over me.

  *Quit that! I know it’s dead, but you don’t have to pamper me by tamping down my emotions. I can handle myself.*

  *Sorry.*

  I felt his touch on my emotions re
lax. What the hell was it with men and their thinking? Just because a woman had a reasonable fear of a monster that could gulp her down with one swallow she was being emotional. Hell, Rafe had nearly been swallowed by this beast, but he hadn’t had to watch the one person that was expected to train and protect him getting eaten. I’d rather our roles have been reversed. I still woke up with nightmares of him being eaten, leaving me alone, an untrained Wanderer.

  He flicked a finger against my earlobe. It stung.

  “What the hell!” I swore spinning on him forgetting that we were trying to be quiet.

  He grinned that damn sexy grin of his and I wanted to box his ears for him.

  “Let’s get a move on. You can think about the dragon when we’re home. For now, just remember that we killed it, not the other way around. We’re the Wanderers, we eat dragons for breakfast.”

  His levity was infectious and I found myself forgetting my dread of the beast.

  I nodded. “Okay, sorry, memories…you know.”

  “I know, but let’s stick to the here and now until we’ve done what we came for. Come on,” Rafe said as he strode purposely across the hangar’s concrete floor, the heels of his riding boots made a soft click with each step.

  I followed closely and in a moment, the click of our boots merged into one sound. Rafe was only a couple inches taller than I was and when I was hurrying, I could match his stride.

  A layer of frost covered the colossal beast and light gleamed off of its open eye almost as if there were still life in the creature.

  We stopped beside its front leg. It had been placed on its right side, but its head was turned so that the massive wound that Beast had torn in the side of its muzzle was plainly visible. Huge teeth and white bone gleamed in the raw wound.

  I caught a shudder of emotion from Rafe and knew that he was remembering what it was like to be inside those colossal jaws. I wanted to put my arms around him and hold him, but I rejected the thought as soon as it occurred. Rafe wouldn’t appreciate my noticing his reaction and trying to comfort him would wound his pride. Sheesh, men.