Winterfall

by John Conroe

  “We use metal and mechanicals as we do not yet have your skill with the biological sciences. As for destroying our environment, there are a great many humans who work to protect it and recruit more protectors,” Ashley said. “The school we all attend is very much dedicated to environmental protection.”

  “Yet your defile Fairie with your mechanicals,” the queen said.

  “I warned you all, back at the beginning, that you were dealing with a vastly different Earth than you were used to. I told you that stealing our children would paint you as threats,” Ian said. “You should be thankful that this is the only threatening thing to come through from our world.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Ian Moore. I would say you’ve brought more than one threatening thing to my world,” the queen said, turning her eyes to Declan, who had been very quiet and calm throughout the interview. Now he widened his eyes a bit, then gave her a slow nod. “Such arrogance,” the queen said, but her tone was even and without temper. “But let me show you what we think of your mechanicals.”

  She leaned over the broken drone and started to speak some other language under her breath while using her right pointer finger to scribe circles in the air above it. The language sounded different from Elvish and there was no translation in Mack’s ear. She only spoke one or two sentences, whereas Mack was used to seeing and hearing the witches of Arcane go on for paragraphs. At her final word, a fat blue spark jumped from her finger to the micro drone and the tiny device vanished in on itself like a micro implosion.

  There was silence in the hall and everyone held their breath, waiting. Nothing else happened and the queen finally sat back, looking thoughtful.

  Mack turned and glanced at his roommate. Declan arched one eyebrow back at him.

  “Sympathetic magic. Linking threads and connections back to either others like it or to its makers,” Declan said softly. The queen’s head snapped around to stare at him.

  “And how do you judge my efforts?” she asked. Mack’s danger sensors went wild at her deceptively quiet tone. Keep the mouth under control Dec, please, he chanted in his head.

  “I don’t know, your Majesty. Your spell had an obvious and powerful impact on the micro drone, but I didn’t feel any others implode. Maybe it was by itself, or maybe the connection only works if the gateway to Earth is open,” he said.

  “Or maybe the tangled paths that link it to others of its kind were already severed?” she mused, studying him with narrowed eyes. Abruptly she sat up straight, expression shifting to bored. “Enough. This audience is at an end,” she said, standing smoothly. Mack had somehow forgotten how beautiful the Winter Queen was until that moment. As her slender frame moved away from her throne, following the bulk of her smelly, massive Bigfoot guard, he was reminded that she was both wholly alien and at the same time incredibly hot.

  She paused and looked back, her deadly daughter stopping just behind her. “Good day to you, Speaker,” she said, her gaze traveling over all of them for a second before she turned and exited the room, Mack shivering slightly as her eyes slid over him.

  The instant after she left, the room became noisy, as the elves of the Winter court conversed while simultaneously turning intense and curious stares on Ashley’s party.

  “This way, Speaker,” Stocan spoke up, appearing from the back of the crowd, his white suit standing out among the blacks, grays, blues, and dark browns that most of the elves wore. At least those elves that wore anything, Mack thought, his eyes getting caught on various exposed parts of female elven anatomy.

  “Eyes back in your head, brother,” Jetta said loud enough for Ashley to glance back at them. For some reason, that embarrassed Mack more than he cared for.

  They exited the throne room, the glowering guards closing the doors behind them.

  The hall of wooden columns stretched before them, like an orderly row of trees in a dark and ornate forest.

  “Gotta keep your mind off the boobs, Mack,” Jetta added, breaking the camel’s back on his temper.

  “Nah, ‘cause I can always just follow the fart cloud you always produce after too much venison. You ate a lot last night,” he shot back with a brother’s knowledge of her digestive issues.

  “You ass,” she hissed, red face, her left hand slamming his shoulder and knocking him up on one foot.

  She started a second strike at his shoulder but he caught her arm. That’s why they both went flying when the white goblin hit them. Mack had an instant’s perception of a bulky mass leaping from between one set of columns. The next instant, he was falling, his sister falling with him even though his hand had released its grip on her arm. The polished sides of two more columns, a ripple of mirror, his stomach twisting in sudden, severe cramps, and then a jarring impact on dirt and pine needles.

  He sat up, untangling his feet from his sister’s sprawled and groaning form. The corridor was gone, replaced by a real forest with real trees, with a cold breeze rattling the bluish-green needles of evergreens he’d never laid eyes on before.

  “Ah, I don’t think we’re in the city anymore,” he said to Jetta, who was sitting up and looking as bewildered as he felt.

  “According to my best estimates, you are seven hundred and twenty-six miles east of Idiria and twenty-one miles north of the neural zone border,” Omega’s voice said into his earpiece.

  “That was a portal?” Jetta guessed, touching her own earpiece to reseat it.

  “Apparently a one-time, one-way temporary portal constructed as a trap,” Omega said.

  “What happened to the others? Is Ashley okay?” Jetta asked.

  “The others are fine. Stacia killed the goblin before it could regain its feet and they are demanding an investigation, but there is no obvious evidence as to who set this trap. The goblin was painted white. Its fur was actually black underneath, which leaves it unattached to either court. I have informed Father and the others of your approximate location and condition. Unfortunately, I only have three micro units on you, Mack, and two on you, Jetta. They will not be able to provide any defensive use to you and their ability to recharge your phones is severely limited. I must go silent now, as triangulating your positions has exhausted the units’ limited power for now. I will contact you again shortly. Let the units get near your skin, as they will convert body heat to electrical energy for charging. Goodbye.”

  “Wait, Omega? Omega?” Mack asked. The earpiece stayed quiet. Mack could feel little feet crawling from under his collar and onto his neck. He shuddered but stopped his hand from automatically slapping as the units moved up into his hair.

  “That’s friggin itchy as hell,” his sister said as she got to her feet and checked her rifle.

  “That itch is our ticket back to the others. Declan will find a way to get to us as long as Omega can track us,” Mack said, checking his own rifle, “or maybe they’ll just fly a dragon here.”

  “I’ve got two mags on my vest, one in each cargo pocket, one in the gun, and a ten rounder in my shirt. That’s one hundred and ten 7.62. I have, between the drum and all my pistol mags, a hundred and sixty-three rounds of 9mm,” Jetta said, turning to him.

  He checked all his vest pouches and the cargo pockets the city elves had cleverly copied onto his dragonskin pants. His rifle and Jetta’s could both use the same M1A magazines and most of their Glock magazines were interchangeable as well. That was purely by design.

  “Five on the vest, two in pants pockets, one locked and loaded, and two ten rounders. That makes… one-eighty of 7.62 and one-sixty-six of 9mm. Also got my Charter Arms Bulldog with five loaded and another ten rounds of .44 Special in two speedloaders,” he said, patting the side of his shirt. The little revolver was tucked in an undershirt holster under his arm, the speedloaders on the opposite side.

  “Oh, I forgot the PMR-30. Two thirty round mags and a box of 50 .22 mags in my pocket,” his sister said, patting her own shirt and side.

  “So that’ll get us through the night. What’ll we do tomorrow?” he asked, looking
at the forest around them.

  “No joke, Mack. Ashley was telling me about this world. It’s almost all wild because there aren’t that many elves and there are tons of predators. We need to find a defensible place to camp till help gets here… if help gets here,” Jetta said.

  “Dec will friggin rip that city apart, Jetta, till he gets to us,” Mack said, a touch fiercely.

  She turned and patted his arm, brushing off some dirt. “Declan is a force of nature and I know he will try, but he’s got a lot stacked against him, even with Stacia and his computer, plus they gotta guard Ashley. We’ve got to take care of ourselves for the foreseeable future.”

  “Point. And we always take care of ourselves. We’re damned good at it,” he said. After a pause, he continued, “Sorry about the fart comment.”

  She sighed. “I know. I embarrassed you in front of Ashley, but for the love of God, Mack, why don’t you just tell her that you like her?”

  “That obvious?”

  “It is to me. Probably obvious to Dec and Stacia too,” Jetta said.

  “Okay, as soon as we get back with the others, I’ll talk to her. Probably scare her right the hell away,” he said.

  “She friggin’ translates for dragons. She’s not scared of a little old Mack Sutton,” Jetta said.

  “Probably scared of that ass ripper you let go last night. Honestly Jetta, I though you’d ripped a hole in space and time.”

  She threw a stick at him, but she was laughing as she did it.

  “Space and time?” she asked.

  “Thought there’d be a gap in midair and a bunch of Spielberg’s Jurassic monsters coming through,” he said, laughing at his own comment.

  That’s when they heard the scream. Long, terrified, female… and really close.

  Chapter 12

  Chris

  Rome

  Rome burned… again. Wow, dramatic much? Not my normal shtick, but sometimes you’ve got to try new things, right?

  Anyway, part of Rome burned, a very small part, just a bit around San Clemente, but anytime buildings older than the United States burn down it’s a bad thing, especially when they’re only a few blocks from the Colosseum. The fires were contained to a tiny block of buildings just south of Basilica di San Clemente, a strip that seemed to have housed several cafes, an Italian post office, and some apartments. Soldiers, police, and lots of firefighters surrounded the tiny block, but the firefighters weren’t trying to put out the fires. They were letting them burn, which was causing said firefighters a whole lot of stress. I’m sure all their instincts told them to put those flames down, but the senior officers were taking direction from government people who seemed to be taking direction from Senka.

  I headed for the knot of important types only to be intercepted by a blue-eyed angel.

  “Couldn’t stay back?” I asked my vampire, already sure of her answer.

  “I tried. Can’t do it. Nika, Doc Singh, and about twenty vampires and human staff are handling the twins. I need to be here,” she stated, arching one eyebrow to see if I was stupid enough to argue.

  “Sounds good, zayka,” I said. “Let’s go see what trouble your grandma’s up to.”

  She glanced sideways at me as we walked but I was focused on the group up ahead. As we got close, I slipped in one final comment. “You’re never gonna be the stay-at-home type.”

  She looked at me for a second, then a rueful grin slipped into place. “Doesn’t seem to be in my DNA,” she said.

  Senka turned from her conversation with two crewcut middle-aged men in black suits, cutting off one’s stream of Italian in mid-sentence. “If you are done with your couple’s moment, we have a situation here,” she said to us. Her expensive designer pantsuit was torn, stained, and smelled of smoke, and there were smudges of soot on her cheek.

  “I’m guessing something, a hand or big toe, got away?” I asked, raising a brow at her appearance.

  “Several somethings. We didn’t have it easy like you, Christian. Two of the team were infected,” she said.

  “Looks like you had fun nonetheless?” Tanya asked.

  Her ancient, world-dominating vampire grandmother stared hard at her—for like six seconds, then suddenly grinned. “It was a hell of a fight, dear.”

  “Elder Senka and Security Chief Arkady fought a tremendous battle. They managed to destroy one weaponized individual and most of the second. Two mobile body parts escaped into the buildings you see. Their Carabineri contingent helped clear the residents while they set the fires,” Omega said from the phone in my pocket.

  “And they didn’t get past this block and into another one?” I asked.

  “I was able to blanket the streets with drones. Nothing was detected crossing any of the surface streets. I am unable to make that observation for subterranean passages or sewage systems, however.”

  “What about the evacuees?” Tanya asked.

  “We have checked them thoroughly. None have been infected,” Senka said.

  “And they just let you burn down a block?” I asked.

  “Not withstanding the issue with anyone letting me do anything, the Italian authorities have been exceedingly cooperative,” Senka said.

  “I have informed the world’s governments of the dangers of this attack, providing all the information, data, and evidence we have to date. They have, for the most part, wisely chosen to listen,” Omega said.

  “And of course that has nothing to do with the fact that you control all of the world’s nuclear weapons, does it?” I asked.

  Senka raised both eyebrows high, looking at Tanya, who simply nodded.

  “That fact does seem to lend some credibility to my presentation,” Omega said.

  “It controls all the atomic weapons?” Senka asked, possibly the most surprised I have ever seen her.

  “I will not allow myself, my father, or the planet to suffer weapons humans have no business wielding.”

  “Omega’s a bit precocious,” I said with a wink. Seeing the senior elder of the Coven knocked off her stride was easily the highpoint of the night.

  “I don’t know whether to be delighted or terrified. What don’t you control, Mr. Omega?” Senka asked, highly interested. I could about hear the gears of plot and domination turning in her head.

  “If it’s tech, he pretty much owns it,” I said.

  “Not entirely accurate, but close. If it has wifi or Bluetooth connectivity or is hardwired to any system with Internet access, I have influence. Stand-alone systems require additional steps to be integrated.”

  “He is Borg… you will be assimilated,” I said in my best monotone.

  Senka just gave me look, the kind reserved for special idiots. Tanya snorted what might have been an aborted laugh. “You, my Chosen, are an immense geek,” she said.

  “Resistance is futile,” Omega said, at which Senka turned to Tanya with a questioning look and Tanya turned to me, mildly alarmed.

  “Your father would be proud of that one, Omega,” I said, grinning ear to ear.

  “He would, wouldn’t he? I got that one correct,” Omega said.

  “Perfect delivery and timing,” I said. “His sense of humor is pretty much in my wheelhouse,” I said to Senka.

  “Because he learned his from a nineteen-year-old boy and yours has never advanced beyond that stage,” Tanya said.

  “Exactly,” I agreed.

  “These must be modern cultural references that I’m missing. Despite my curiosity about this mysterious borscht you are all becoming, I would like to point out that we are burning down buildings that are older than most Darkkin. This situation needs to be grasped firmly and crushed,” Senka said.