by John Conroe
“I detect nothing poisonous in her selections,” Omega chimed in.
“Thank you Omega. I don’t know if I have a choice about drinking it. Mom looks kinda badass and my bartender looks like she might be really put out if I don’t. Aw, what the hell,” he said and tipped back the cup. “Yuck, tastes like your cooking, Jet.”
“Screw you. My cooking’s fine,” his sister said, although her tone lacked true conviction. Mack had only been half joking. Of the two of them, he was, by far, the better cook. Suddenly he noticed his head. Or rather noticed that he didn’t notice it.
“Whoa. Headache’s gone,” he said.
“What? That fast?” Jetta asked.
“Yeah, it’s completely gone,” he said, reaching up to feel the back of his head. “Lump’s almost gone too. That’s crazy.”
He looked at the girl and stuck out his hand. “Thank you!” he said.
The girl jumped a little when he did and the mother twitched but stopped her reaction.
Hesitantly, the girl reached out and touched the tip of her fingers to Mack’s. He laughed and gently took her hand, then slowly shook it.
“Thank you. That helped a great deal. I’m Mack and this is my sister Jetta.”
Again the girl looked with big eyes at the translating iPhone. Then she pointed at herself. “Aylin,” she said in a soft voice. Looking at her mother, she pointed at her. “Ari.”
“It is very nice to meet you, Aylin and Ari,” Jetta said, smiling and reaching out to pat the girl’s hand. “Thank you for helping Mack.”
Aylin smiled back and it was like a light in the darkness. Even her mother’s expression lightened at the sight of Aylin’s even white teeth and upturned lips.
The door rattled and one of the guards outside said something that Mack didn’t need Omega to know meant hurry up.
Aylin quickly rolled up her herb kit and tucked it away in her pouch, just finishing as the door opened and an annoyed guard looked in.
“Move it, half-breeds,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Ari, who had assumed a submissive posture.
Without a word, the mother and daughter left the room, the guard closing the door and, from the sounds of it, bolting it.
“Half-breeds?” Jetta asked.
“Did you see the mother? Ari?” Mack asked back, helping himself to a hunk of bread. “She got all fierce and catlike. Maybe she’s a were of some type. Leopard, maybe. She had spots.”
“I didn’t know there were any weres on Fairie,” Jetta said, grabbing a slice each of cheese and meat.
They were both quiet for a few seconds as they chomped and chewed. Mack studied the simple table as they ate. Suddenly he took the two trays off the top and set both on the floor. Then he flipped the rough wooden piece over.
“Just bored four holes in a thick-cut plank and then jammed cut down tree limbs into them,” he said, tugging on leg. It resisted for a few seconds, then wiggled a little in its socket. Twisting and pulling, Mack gradually backed it out of the tabletop. It was about two feet long and maybe an inch, inch and a quarter in diameter. He studied it for a second before looking up at his sister. “Bet I can make two better weapons than you can,” he said, smiling his challenge.
She snorted. “Please. Without steel and a forge, you’re just a hack,” she said, starting to rummage in her pockets. “You should probably just hold that one and call it a club. Now grab me two of those legs and let me show you how it’s done.”
Soon all four legs were out and various pieces of pocket gear were spread out on the table plank. Both kids continued to eat while they worked and both borrowed from each other’s survival stash without question or remorse.
“Let me borrow that Swiss Army knife when you’re done diddling that stick,” Jetta said. “Hey, that looks like Declan’s knife.”
“One of his SAKs. He’s got like a half-dozen or more. He gave me this one because I kept borrowing it,” Mack said, folding the awl blade shut and handing it to his sister.
She folded out the exact same tool and also stared to bore a hole in the end of her table leg. Mack was by this time unraveling one of his two paracord bracelets. He untwisted a length of rough wire from the cord.
“Is that a wire saw?” Jetta asked.
“Exactly,” he said, pushing two nails through the loops at either end of the wire to act as handles and then proceeding to cut almost three inches off the stick where he had just made a hole.
Jetta took the knife blade out and started to pick apart a seam on her dragonskin shirt. The stitches came out and she slid a slender length of sharpened steel rod out of the material. Six inches long, it was a little less than half an inch thick at the middle with both ends narrowing to sharpened needle points. She wedged the middle of it into the groove she’d made in the top of her table leg so that over two inches of hardened steel point poked out the front and back. She glanced over at Mack to see if he noticed her wicked little spiked mace. He was back to boring the underside of the short piece he’d just cut off, and making pretty quick work of it.
“What the hell are you making?” she asked, curiosity overcoming sibling rivalry.
He reached over to the pile of pocket supplies on the table plank and picked up the single .308 round she’d grabbed when she had cleared his M1A’s chamber. It almost fit into the hole he’d bored in the hunk of table leg.
“You’re making a… bang stick?” she guessed.
“Ding, ding, ding, give the girl a prize,” he said, working some more on the hole with his knife. “I’ve still got my .44, but you need something more decisive than just a short spear. It’ll be a one-shot wonder but it’ll pack a punch.”
“A wonder if it works,” she said, although she didn’t doubt her brother’s work for a heartbeat. She might give him shit—hell, she was his sister; she was almost obligated by law to give him shit—but she knew he was really, truly skilled.
He got the round to fit, then started to fit a nail into the remaining length of tableleg. Finally he used snare wire to connect the bullet-loaded hunk to the main length by tacking a loop of wire to each of four sides.
“It should still hold the table up as long as we don’t rough it around,” he said, refitting it into the plank.
“Or drop anything heavy on the table. Boom!” she said.
“I put a little piece of wood between the nail and the cartridge primer as a safety. You’ll need to pick that out before you jam it into anyone. It’ll be loud and you may get some splinters blown back at you and you’ll be left with a club,” he said.
“A club and a mace,” she said, holding up the lashed and final product of her own efforts.
He took it from her and studied her work, testing the lashings with a finger. Then he flipped it upside down and put it back into the table. Picking up the little Swiss Army knife, he picked apart one of his own seams, this one inside the flap of his cargo pocket.
The elves had copied Ian Moore’s battledress uniform pants when they sewed the dragonskin clothing. Mack and Jetta had immediately sewn various pieces of kit into their sets. What Mack pulled out was a set of two small, slender harpoon knives. He set the edge of one blade onto the top of one table leg and smacked the unsharpened edge with the other leg, batoning it into the leg enough to form a split. Then he reversed and did the same with the other. A few minutes more and he had the harpoon blades wedged and lashed, making short spears out of the two remaining legs. Then he put those legs back in the holes on the tabletop, tapping the ends of the legs to set the points of his spear tips into the wood enough to hold it.
They set the table back up right and wiggled it. “Kinda tipsy, but it’ll have to do,” Jetta said as her brother set the now-empty meat and cheese tray on it.
“That was good cheese. I wonder where they keep their cows?” Mack asked.
“It was goat cheese. I saw a few small flocks as we approached the barricade. Two and three person teams watch over them. They must bring them back in at night. Too many predators here f
or cows to survive,” his sister said.
“So the meat?” he asked.
“Goat,” she said with a smirk, waiting to see how he handled it.
He shrugged. “Pretty good,” he said.
The door to their cell flung open and Sergeant Kellan stood in the doorway, pretty much filling it completely. “Come.”
“Where ya think we’re headed?” Jetta asked her brother.
“I think it’s proof time for my smith credentials,” he said.
“Quiet!” the big sergeant said, waving them through the door.
Three more guards waited outside the room, falling in around them as Kellan led the way out of the keep and across the open yards toward the back section of the palisade wall.
A group of boys and young men trained on the flat hard-packed ground, some swinging staffs, some training with knives, and a few shooting crossbows and regular bows. All were under the watchful eye of a grizzled-looking older man with a pronounced limp and a sharp tongue.
A few of the boys called out to Kellan, who seemed popular. One called out something at Jetta. Kellan stopped and turned to the commentator. “What?”
The kid, surprised at the reaction, nonetheless carried forward on bravado. “I asked to see what she is hiding under those gaudy clothes.”
Kellan looked annoyed, but before he could say anything, Jetta spoke up. “Nothing you could handle, little boy,” she said, letting her phone project the translation.
His fellow trainees laughed at him and his face clouded.
“Jetta,” Mack said in warning, but the kid was already headed over and the grizzled trainer said nothing to stop him. Kellan didn’t say a word either, just watching curiously. The boy, while obviously younger than Jetta, was both taller and heavier. Mack watched him come across the ground, evaluating his movements.
“Jet, these are some tough kids. They train from birth and live in the middle of predator central,” he said.
“I got this, Mack,” she said, standing hipshot with a challenge on her face and a hand on her hip.
“Looks like elf hand-me-downs,” the boy said over his shoulder to his companions as he got closer. Jetta unbuttoned her shirt and opened it to reveal the skintight black performance tee underneath. She had his complete attention.
Leaning back in a move that brought her chest up and more into view, she suddenly shot her right foot straight into the boy’s diaphragm in a textbook perfect front kick, completely knocking the wind out of him. He folded forward, face stricken, and she reached forward and shoved down on the back of his neck, his body collapsing and twisting until he was sitting on the ground, back to her, clutching his stomach.
“Boys and boobs, Mack—it’s universal,” she said, closing her dragon skin shirt and re-buttoning it.
“Exactly right, miss,” the old trainer said. “Not very sporting of you, though.”
“One, I’m not a sporting type of fighter, and two, at least I didn’t kick him in the balls,” she said.
“Hear that, boys? The young miss is not prone to fighting fair. What have I told you about fighting fair?” the trainer said. Mack decided he was probably only forty or so, but looked much older.
“Fair fighters are dead fighters,” the boys chorused back.
“So picking fights for fun isn’t always fun, getting distracted by beauty is a sure path to defeat, and for the gods’ sakes, don’t underestimate people, particularly if they wear dragon skins. Now thank the pretty miss for the lesson that only one of you had to pay for,” the gnarled veteran said.
After another chorus of thank yous, the older man turned. “Thank you for not maiming the boy, miss. I’m Macallam.”
“Jetta, and that’s my brother Mack,” she said. He smiled at her then turned to look at her brother, studying him up and down.
“You the smith they’re talking about?” Macallam asked.
“That’s what we’re on our way to find out, Mac,” Kellan said. “If you and your girls are done slowing us down.”
“Right then. You heard the sergeant, ladies. Get back to drilling!” Macallam yelled, nodding at Mack and touching his forehead to Jetta.
Kellan gave Jetta a curious look with maybe a touch of a smile and then led them onward.
“What exactly did that do for us?” Mack asked.
“Set a bit of respect, Macky boy. That’s never a bad thing,” Jetta said.
“Oh, you mean it’s a good thing that none of these men or boys will underestimate us again?” he asked sarcastically.
“We still have lots of elements of surprise,” Jetta shot back.
“Quiet,” said the big sergeant leading them.
Chapter 16
Chris
Rome, Earth
The kid was right—witches were great at tracking down alien body parts. Veleslava took Doc Singh’s glass-sealed tissue sample and led us right to the thumb or finger or whatever the hell it was that fell off the alien zombie. She was so accurate that we found not only the thumb but half a block full of the thumb’s newly infected buddies. Mr. Thumb had been busier than a rabbit hutch in springtime.
The infection had spread between Via Annia and Via Marco Aurelio. Again, thanks to Veleslava’s magic, we could tell infected from uninfected using our nifty improvised detector modules. Senka’s witch made four of them, four being the number of complete board games with unbroken game turn spinners that we could find in the Elder vampire’s ancient castle estate. There weren’t any stores near her house that sold anything similar. Walmart, where are you when I need you?
So giant, menacing vampire warrior Arkady checked the inhabitants of what we thought was a clear building with the spinner from an Italian version of Risk.
Three other teams checked people in buildings on the west side of the block, then evacuated the cleared while the Italian military cleared out the surrounding blocks.
Tanya and I waited with our own teams, all of our people experienced vampires at least a hundred years old. Hovering in the air around us was the latest version of Omega’s mini-drones, these all packing sonics packages and particle weapons.
“You ready?” I asked my vampire, who was double checking her FN 5.7 pistols. Wait—what? Tanya with guns? Yup. My killer hottie had recently taken an interest in modern firearms and came to me for instruction. She mastered them quickly, already giving me a run for my money, but I still held an edge on her… or at least Grim did.
“I was born ready, zayka,” she said, looking calm, cool, and really adorable in her combat gear.
The two of us each carried two 5.7mm pistols with thirty round mags. I’d asked for something that could give body armor hell, thinking that here in the land of Beretta I would get something in 9mm. But our military partners had produced the 5.7s, which had a reputation for defeating body armor. Whether that would be reproduced now, with the dimondoid carbon armor of the invaders, we’d have to see.
So Tanya and I had guns. The vamps behind us, four to a team, had modern versions of war hammers, and the four vamps behind them carried specially constructed sprayers loaded with a really, really nasty superacid, called fluoroantimonic acid, and two more carried sprayers with a neutralizing agent. Both teams were lined up across the street from two nearly identical buildings.
“Sir, all teams are in place and ready,” my military liaison officer said.