Winterfall

by John Conroe

  I nodded. “Got your goggles on?” I asked my bride.

  “Please! I’ve been waiting on you,” she said with a smirk.

  “Just try to keep up, dear, and don’t feel bad when I double your score,” I said, perhaps unwisely. My Tanya is uber-competitive.

  The inside of my goggles lit up with images and numbers while my own thermal vision still came through the clear lenses.

  “Drones in place. Be advised that subjects are beginning to mass inside building one. I suggest you go now,” Omega said into all our earpieces.

  “Going—now!” I said with a nod at my team.

  I went in the left building. Tanya went right.

  Grim took control and the fun started. Kick door off hinges, shoot black-eyed zombie bitch holding a small dining room table that was now full of door splinters. Shoot male zombie charging from back of apartment. Kick small child-shaped zombie already three-quarters covered in black armor and shoot twice in head. Apartment clear.

  More black-armored figures appeared as we entered the tight hallway on the first floor, each dropping with stunning shots to the head. It mostly took two shots to each cranium. Behind me, the hammer wielders pounded the armored bodies, their intent to truly stun the zomboids so that the acid sprayers could go to town.

  I heard gunshots next door, then I heard my vampire sing a note. The zomboid in front of me wavered, his armor fluttering at the sound. My vampire was cheating, singing the aliens into submission, or at least into dropping their armor.

  I felt myself grin. Her voice was powerful enough to impact my targets, too. Probably not the effect she was looking for. I bent my knees, dropping my body so that my next head shot went through the unarmored skull and up into the ceiling instead of through the exterior wall.

  Then the hovering drone off my left shoulder copied the note and all the zombie bastards started to lose their armor.

  The shots came close together as I hit a mass of them, my fingers twitching so fast it was almost full auto. Somewhere behind me, Omega’s voice projected from a drone, “Clear for incineration.” There came a thrum of power and a sizzling sound followed by a whump.

  The last of my zombiods fell, two of my hammer crew smashing twitching bodies while acid hissed and fumes rose. Double-checking the building, I found it clear of upright zombie aliens. Here and there, a drone or three ganged up on a stunned zombie and burnt it to ash with surges of power that made the lights flicker. I noticed at least a couple of drones parked on electric outlets, probes obscenely plugged into the Rome power grid.

  The gunfire next door stopped. “All clear,” came my vampire’s dulcet tones over the radio. “Concur. All alien infected are down and in process of elimination,” Omega reported.

  “Forty-seven, zayka,” Tanya said to me.

  “Fifty-one,” I replied.

  “Only because you hogged the building with more bodies,” she said.

  “That’s actually completely true,” I said, totally magnanimous in my win.

  “Probably best. Otherwise you’d pout and bitch like a baby,” she said.

  “Now kids, playtime’s over,” Lydia interrupted. “Time to clean up your toys and make sure nothing gets away.”

  She no sooner said that when one of the acid-spraying vamps yelled a warning.

  Tanya shot across the room to a body that had started to come apart. She sang a long note in the key of I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-it-was, and the body stopped all movement. Three drones zipped up next to her and began burning the quivering arms, legs, and head.

  “I think that adds five to my score,” she said. “Fifty-two.”

  “What? You can’t add body parts taken with a Sound of Music solo. It’s strictly shooting that counts,” I said.

  Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. Each body part jumped as it took a round from Tanya’s righthand gun, then continued to burn down to ash under the drones’ onslaught.

  “How’s that?” my vampire asked sweetly.

  “Pretty sure it’s still cheating, but whatever,” I said, pretending disdain. Secretly, I was proud as hell of both her shooting and her improvised gamesmanship. We both headed outside.

  We spoke at length to several sets of Italian authorities, Tanya speeding up the debrief with her fluent Italian, although there was a part of the fluid conversation where she waved at me and then herself, and the two officers and one government official all congratulated her while giving me conciliatory smiles. Sure, go ahead and brag in Italian, I thought at her. She smirked.

  “Particle weapons are proving to be twenty-three percent more efficient than lasers of any wavelength for alien incineration. Rerouting power grid to compensate for increased electric usage,” Omega said, completely ignoring our rivalry. “It will be interesting to see how the pyromanic witches compare to these latest version drones.”

  “How does operation Arcane airlift stand?” I asked.

  “The Demidova 747 has left Burlington International Airport and is en route over the Atlantic. ETA for landing—nine hours and three minutes.”

  “Thank you Omega,” I said. “How are things in Fairie?”

  “Mack has been healed of his injuries and is inspecting a bronze forging workshop. Father is meeting with a member of the elven society that oversees the portals. Ashley is continuing to ignore the wishes of the dragons, which has increased tension among all parties.”

  “We should never have sent them there,” Tanya said and I found myself nodding in agreement.

  “In other news, I have just intercepted an Armenian police dispatch from Bagaritch, Armenia. A crowd of violent people is flowing out of the building that houses the ancient temple of Mihr. The message reports that they won’t die, even when shot multiple times. I am coordinating the police efforts and have directed additional forces their way. Drone delivery in one hour and seventeen minutes, although I calculate at least seventy-three percent of the village will be infected by that point.”

  “We need to get there fast,” I said.

  “Military jet would still take four hours to put you on site. Hence the most reason I redirected a delivery of drones—they were already en route. Armenian military is responding and I have given them the latest information on fighting techniques and weapons. I am re-tasking a Russian satellite to observe the infected area. I will be with them throughout the battle and should they fail to contain the threat, I have Turkish F-16s being armed with incendiary weapons,” Omega said.

  “Holy shit,” was Lydia’s succinct summary.

  “Each alien emergence has occurred in a previously dedicated Mithraic temple site. I am notifying all world governments with other such locations to monitor them closely. At this point, it has only been the very oldest such locations.”

  “We have been reacting, not attacking. Maybe it’s time we attempted to send them back our own version of a care package,” Tanya said.

  “I must admit that I do not, at this juncture, understand the mechanism that opens the portal. My father is currently in conversation with several members of the elven Watchers of the Veil society to learn what he can of inter-dimensional portal construction and activation. I predict he will learn the required skills and begin to apply them in a very short period of time. Once he has begun, I expect him back here on Earth within a short timeframe. That may be the appropriate time to consider delivery of our own weapons.”

  “So we get the witches on the ground, fine-tune our hunting techniques, and consider what we might want to counterattack with,” I said.

  “Omega, how likely is it that Declan can learn to open portals?” Lydia asked.

  “I calculate the probability as high as eighty-nine percent. He is extremely motivated and is operating in a magic-saturated environment. He has already begun to display abilities he never had here on Earth.”

  Tanya, Lydia, and I shared a glance. Senka, who appeared partway through his update, was watching and listening as well.

  “What abilities, Omega?” my vampire asked.

>   “His limited abilities with Air have greatly expanded. Beyond that, I am uncertain but have several suspicions. He is agonizing over a rather delicate decision. If he makes it as I feel he likely will, his Fairie-bound abilities will expand greatly. What that will mean here, on a less magical planet, I do not know. Be advised that members of the Italian government, the Vatican, and representatives from the United Nations are all arriving on scene and will be looking to you for updates and after action reports. Prepare yourselves.”

  “Politics. Awesome,” I said, my gut sinking.

  All three vampire women smiled. All three smiles were predatory. Senka patted my hand. “Sit back and observe, great-grandson-in-law.” Suddenly I felt better. This might actually be fun to watch.

  Chapter 17

  Clacher Hold, Fairie

  The forge had a block of black basalt for an anvil, a beat-up bronze hammer, and a clay-over-stone forge. It was better than Mack had expected. Clacher looked at him expectantly and the thirty-something-year-old local smith glowered at him from slightly behind and to the left of the lord of the keep. Sergeant Kellan stood directly behind Mack, watching both him and his sister, who was sitting on a rough barrel of water.

  Mack frowned, looking at his sister’s rough water-filled chair and then glancing around. “Any oil?” he asked, watching Clacher as his phone translated.

  The lord frowned. “What ye need that for?” he asked in a grumpy tone.

  “Because quenching your prize in water will almost guarantee cracks and warps. Gonna be hard enough to weld it back together with what I have here,” Mack said dismissively. Truth be told, he was feeling a little more optimistic upon seeing the forge.

  Clacher’s great prize was an ancient rusty, pitted, and most importantly, broken Claymore sword. It was broken a third of the blade length from the hand guard, and it wasn’t a clean break either. The steel had shattered like it had been extremely cold. Cold. Duh… Winter Realm. Not hard to see how that might happen. Bet there’s a story there.

  Clacher chewed his mouth around, annoyed, but looked to Kellan with raised eyebrows.

  “We’ve a small keg of torch oil,” the sergeant said, looking a bit uncertain for the first time since Mack had known him.

  “We need that to light the walls,” Clacher said, looking more and more like a thunder cloud.

  “I’m not gonna use it up. It’s just to quench the blade. A little will burn off, but you’ll hardly notice. If I have to quench in that barrel of water, we might as well not even attempt it,” Mack said. “Also, I’m going to need some of my gear.”

  Clacher’s expression first lightened then turned to suspicion as Mack talked.

  He sighed. “I have tools that you don’t have here that I need. I see no files or pliers, and my sister and I have both on our harnesses.”

  “Show me, but no trickery,” Clacher said, waving the okay to Kellan. The sergeant, in turn, led the way to the next room over, where the Suttons’ gear was piled on a rough plank table.

  Mack started to slowly lay out pieces of his and his sister’s kit, moving slowly. He lined up the two rifles, then separated his vest from her chest pack harness. Nether of their big knives were there but Mack had already spotted his Bowie on Clacher’s belt. Dollars to donuts his sister’s was gracing the side of the treacherous little Iona.

  He shoved his sister’s ammo carrier toward her, then made a show of rearranging his vest.

  “I have no idea where your multi-tool is but grab it for me, will you?” he said to his sister as he pulled his own from its pouch on the side of his vest.

  “This, Lord Clacher, is a Leatherman tool,” he said, holding it front and center to capture their attention. “It has enormous utility, but what I’m mostly interested in is this file blade.”

  Clacher leaned close, reaching a hand to touch the file and Kellan, who’d half drawn his own blade, moved just slightly to see for himself.

  “I need this to both test the hardness of the sword when I’m done as well as clean and fix the edge geometry,” Mack said. Jetta was moving over her gear in his peripheral vision and he could only hope she had the opportunity to get something useful.

  “Here’s mine,” she said holding her own multi-tool out across the table. Kellan took it from her, examined it, and passed it to Clacher, who pulled on it experimentally before grunting and tossing it down.

  “Enough. Show me your skill, boy,” the lord said.

  Mack headed back into the forge, moving to the lit fire, the resident smith, whose name was Aylwin, grudgingly moving aside for him.

  He stirred the charcoal, wishing for coal but relieved it wasn’t just a hardwood fire.

  He unwrapped the leather from the Claymore’s hilt. “The new blade will be shorter. Big chunk missing and I have to overlap to get a good weld. Do you have any flux?” he asked Alwyin.

  The man just stared at him, brow beetling in confusion.

  “I’ll take that as a no. I’ll need very clean sand instead,” Mack said.

  “Why?” Lord Clacher asked suspiciously.

  “Because that’s what I need to forge weld this broken piece of… because that’s what I need,” Mack snapped.

  Taking down a pair of long-handled copper tongs that were hanging from a hook in the beam overhead, Mack picked up the broken blade and hilt with blade stump and put both in the fire, making sure the two blade halves were deep in the coals.

  He grabbed the bellows handle and started to pump it, the fire flaring bright with every gush of air.

  Clacher stood still, glowering, his sergeant and smith watching him for direction. Finally he nodded and turned to Alwyin. “Get him his sand,” he said.

  “As clean and as fine as you can find,” Mack added, watching the metal start to glow.

  “I’ll send a man for the oil,” Kellan said.

  “And one of those little horse troughs you’ve carved from logs,” Mack said. Silence greeted his words so he looked up and then sighed at the cloudy expressions.

  “I have to have something long enough to dunk the whole blade in when I quench,” he explained.

  “One of the fired clay pipes might be better,” Alwyin said, speaking for the first time.

  “As long as it’s long enough to get the whole blade into it,” Mack said.

  The smith nodded and moved away. Kellan backed up a step and spoke to one of his guardsmen before coming back to watch the Suttons.

  “Jet, run this bellow for me, would you?” he asked.

  His sister moved over and took the handle from him, while he used the tongs to pick the top half of the blade out of the fire. It was glowing almost white at the broken end and he put it on the basalt anvil and started to hammer it flatter.

  Inspecting his work, he took the little file on the multi-tool and scraped the flattened side free of scale, then put the whole thing back into the fire. He then repeated the procedure with the hilt half before setting it back to heat up again.

  Alwyin came back in carrying a basket of fine sand and a three-foot-long clay pipe.

  Mack grunted as he inspected the sand, then sprinkled some on the two blade ends. Next he picked up the small splinter of steel still on the table where the sword had rested and pinched it in the pliers of his Leatherman. He touched the splinter to the now-white-hot ends, holding it for a second, then pulling back to see if it would stick.

  “Almost. You, Alwyin, is it? Grab those other tongs. I’ll need you to hold the hilt half steady on the anvil,” he said. The bronzesmith moved over, his expression almost greedy as he followed Mack’s instructions.