Relic: Shield

by Ben Zackheim

  “This is where I leave you,” the troll said, clapping his huge hands together. “I still want to get to Chicago tonight, but thanks for the fun time.”

  “You sure you’re okay to travel, Dino?” I asked. “You look wiped.”

  He was as stoned as a troll in the sunlight.

  “Good, my brother, all good,” he said and then he glanced down at Rebel and winked, a long red tongue slithering out of his mouth to wet his lips. “So good.”

  And he walked off, clearing a path through the scrambling, screeching tourists.

  “I think I might vomit,” she said.

  “Don’t,” I said. “That’ll just make him come back.”

  Fox’s nose wrinkled. “What do you...”

  “Drop it,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it, or remember it, or know that the custom even exists.”

  Rebel shivered.

  I heard one tourist say, “Holy shit!” I figured it was an Alabama boy seeing Times Square for the first time. But then I heard a woman say, ”Oh, my God.” Within seconds we were surrounded by a choir of people saying “Oh, my God” or “Holy shit” so I assumed we were in the middle of some kind of cult flash mob with weird ideas about God.

  “Holy shit,” Rebel said, looking up.

  “Oh, my God,” Fox said.

  The big screens in Times Square slowly filled up with the same images.

  It was a video feed from a number of security cameras. Each feed was in its own square and arranged like a tic-tac-toe game.

  HAPPENING NOW: MANHATTAN, KANSAS CHAOS

  It was hard to tell what was going on. The cameras caught movement. People were somewhere in the chaos. Or Supernaturals. They jerked violently as they ran, trampling smaller bodies. At one point the face of a young woman fell right in front of the camera. Her eyes were mad. With fear or rage, it was hard to say. But those eyes were not seeing anything we could understand.

  The girl opened her mouth and screamed. She wasn’t mic’d but we could all hear it in our heads.

  The entire crowd gasped.

  The crawler at the bottom of the screen read

  RESIDENTS RIOT | MORTALITIES REPORTED | NATIONAL GUARD ON ITS WAY

  “What the fuck is this?” Rebel asked no one.

  “Vampire attack?”

  “I don’t see any Vampires,” Fox said.

  I dialed my man at Spirit HQ. Well, I was pretty sure he worked out of his mom’s basement, but all field support was non-centralized to make us a harder target.

  “Where the hell have you been, Arkwright?”

  That was Eric’s standard greeting.

  Eric was the most normal guy in the history of guys. I saw his background check before he was hired and it was about as exciting as half a roll of toilet paper. But he was very good at one thing. Finding emergencies before anyone else, and having a plan within seconds.

  “I’ve been busy,” I said.

  “We’ve been trying to reach you for an hour!”

  “What’s going on in…”

  “Manhattan, Kansas has lost its fucking shit,” he said. I didn’t like the frantic edge to his voice. Eric wasn’t known for keeping his cool, but he usually lost it after a few drinks, not because of supernatural events. “About 6pm Central there was a spike, energy surge of some sort. Our satellites picked it up but the nerds haven’t identified the phenomenon yet.”

  “Do we have anyone on the ground there?”

  “Almost. 30 minutes out.”

  “Any interference with signals out there?”

  “Maybe. The news is showing some twenty minute old footage from some hard-wired community watch cameras. But there’s been no comm in or out of that area. Either no one is calling and answering their phones or the energy spike is messing with signals.”

  “I’m going to call it like I see it and guess that the whole town has gone insane.”

  “That’s not a technical term, Agent Arkwright.”

  “You get the gist of it.”

  “Yeah, that’s our best guess right now. Doesn’t look like any kind of chemical leak, or protest or terrorist attack. But how the hell does an entire town just lose its marbles?”

  “In the technical sense?”

  “Deserved that. A little freaked out.”

  “I get it. We’re heading to HQ. We’re bringing the twins so lock down all transportation because I don’t want a repeat of last time’s carjacking. Rose will try for the Porsche again, guaranteed. And tell Polk to gather all the info he can on Ley Lines.”

  “Ley Lines? You think this is being caused by Ley Lines?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I lost the shield in my...”

  “You lost the shield? How did you lose the shield?”

  “It disappeared in my portal, Eric. Baldr went in after it.”

  “You found Baldr? That demigod dude?”

  “He found us.”

  “Wait. Then you lost Baldr? And you lost the shield!”

  “Just do it, Eric! Ley Lines. Everything you’ve got. I’ll explain when we’re in the air. Full debriefing, I promise.”

  “Yeah, okay, but come on, you lost the shield?”

  I hung up and took a look around Times Square.

  People were frantically calling their loved ones on their cells. Some were starting to run, probably afraid that Times Square was next if this was some kind of attack.

  “How’s our favorite Eric?” Rebel asked.

  “He’s holding it together.”

  “This is going to be a messy one, Kane,” she said as we searched for a taxi.

  I took one last look at the screens above us. They’d made a video loop out of the screaming girl with the eyes that saw nothing.

  Chapter 22

  Spirit HQ didn’t like visitors.

  I might be a private guy, but my employers made me look like a party animal. They work under a shroud of privacy, though some would call it a steel reinforced slab of granite more than a shroud. The U.S. headquarters is nestled in the Rockies. The exact location is top secret but let’s just say you can see the whole damn world from its front door.

  Which is nothing like an actual door.

  It’s more like a giant asshole.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” the troll growled at me.

  “Hi, Sally,” I said, smiling my super-fake, fuck you smile. “Boss called us in.”

  “Boss don’t like you,” the troll said. Sal the troll had been trapped in the sun four hundred years ago but instead of turning into solid rock, he’d turned into mostly solid rock. His stone body was capped with a non-stone head and two humongous flesh arms that could swipe a tank aside like a bug.

  When Spirit found him a few mountains over they gave him a choice. They could kill him and put him out of his misery, or he could become the door to Spirit HQ.

  I didn’t like the dickwad, but he was a good door. He just had a bad attitude. He’d taken the job because they promised him bacon. But after a few tons of that the Spirit doc told him to lay off or he’d be a dead door.

  "You going to let us in or not?" I asked.

  “Maybe not. That New York fight with Blues has you on shit lists. Many, many shit lists.”

  “That’s a huge concern of mine.”

  "What's the boss want to see you about?"

  "I don't think that's any of your business, talking door."

  "Oh, you want to get nasty now, do you?"

  "Can you two just wrap this foreplay up, please?" Rebel broke in. She and the twins huddled together, mist drifting from their mouths. "It's freezing out here and I need to grab some oxygen before I pass out."

  "It's top secret, Sal" I said.

  "Ooooo. Top secret. Tell me something genius, who do you think you're talking t..."

  "A door that's not allowed to eat bacon," I interrupted.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Okay, that’s it,” Rebel said. She marched up to the door and stuck a fingernail up the trolls nostril. “I
n, Sal.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, shoving his stone body away from the cave opening that his ass was covering up.

  We didn’t break our glares as I passed.

  “Hack,” he muttered.

  “Home Depot Fall Special motherfucker,” I muttered. I turned my back and he swatted me across the cave. Rebel was ready with a spell to ease my fall, of course. I could never get past Sally without an injury.

  Another reason to never visit that place.

  I dusted myself off and stood to find myself right in front of Ronin. She was trying to look normal in a jacket and skirt again. As usual, she was failing. She belonged in a field uniform, no matter how much she denied it.

  “Hey Resist,” I said. I called her Resist because her sister’s name was Rebel and I thought it was really clever. Never mind that she was my boss. But one of the benefits of being a billionaire was that I didn’t care if she fired me. I’d still fight the good fight for humanity without her and pick up some cool shit on the way.

  I’d probably do a better job of it, too.

  But that’s cocky Kane talking.

  “You’re still funny, I see,” she said to me. She glanced over my shoulder and smiled at her sister.

  “Rebel, is he treating you okay?”

  “No,” Rebel said. As usual.

  I was ready for it this time. I ducked under Ronin’s snake punch.

  “Big miss!” I yelled just before she smacked me with the back of her hand.

  This was another fucking routine I had to go through when we visited Spirit.

  I wasn’t the only one to have to live through the special hello. The head of each Spirit team had to go through the hazing every time we entered HQ.

  Sal’s chuckle felt like it rolled from the walls.

  “You’re lucky I let you in here after New York,” Ronin said.

  “I’d like to see you do better,” I said.

  “So you want to get Polk’s take on Ley Lines?” she asked.

  “Yeah, we think they might have something to do with all the nuts falling off the tree.”

  “Such a delicate use of words,” Ronin said.

  “I’m a refined guy,” I said.

  “Where’s the Vampire?”

  “We left Fox in the village, just like you ordered us to. But he’s coming along for the mission.”

  “I agree,” she said, surprising me. “If he knows this Baldr character that you told us about then he may be a useful bloodsucker.”

  Rebel shot a look at Ronin. It was weird to see my partner act defensive of a Vampire. Before we met Fox, she would have been the one cursing the undead.

  “Can we get a reading on these Lines?” I asked. “I mean, do they even exist?”

  “Oh, they exist, all right,” Ronin said.

  “Do they have any kind of signature we can pick up on?”

  “Yeah, I think you could say that.” She left it at that. I knew Ronin. She wouldn’t give me anything else. She liked to surprise her agents.

  Chapter 23

  We walked down the long hall to the control room. The steel doors slid apart with a soft shuffle that marked the end of anything that would make any sense for a while.

  Spirit’s control room wasn’t like any control room you’ve seen in the movies. Spirit’s control room was seriously fucked up.

  The room was a large cavern that acted as a hub for Spirit’s Magicists. The space was both an energy source and a monitoring room. Wherever magic was used, no matter how much or how little, the agents could pinpoint it on the map. That is, if anyone was paying attention. Budget cuts meant that we were on our own more often than not.

  The room was also a notorious catalyst for magic. It always had something new to mess with our heads. The turnover in the control room was pretty intense. Most people couldn’t handle more than a day or two before they ran off screaming.

  That’s why the place was packed with elves.

  Those fuckers could handle anything. Cool as a cucumber. Some say they have no emotion but that’s bullshit. I think they have a lot of emotions. They just don’t feel the need to broadcast it like us melodramatic lifeforms.

  So that particular visit ended up being one of the trippier ones. The room, a large cavern with three levels of monitoring stations, swung back and forth like it was hanging on a rope. Yeah, the whole room pendulumed its ass off.

  I was nauseous within seconds and tried to back out, but the doors shut behind me.

  I knocked into Rebel.

  “Sorry,” I said and looked up at her. But it wasn’t Rebel. Well, it was. Kind of. She had a long beard. “Jesus!” I screamed. She saw my horror and felt her face.

  “Well, look at you!” she yelled back as if I’d just insulted her beard.

  I glanced down at my chest. Well, breasts. They were huge.

  Dizzy, I still managed to find the focus to touch them.

  “Oh, those are nice,” Rose said, cupping her hands under my breasts.

  “Yeah, right?” I said. I touched them again.

  Then I vomited from sea sickness.

  Then I touched them again.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt your self-discovery but could you follow me, please?” Ronin asked. She was a dwarf now. I could tell it was her from the uniform which didn’t fit anymore. “We’ll get some relief in the map room.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked in a sultry voice.

  “DNA Spell,” Ronin said.

  “Science and magic,” I said, knowing exactly where she was going. I’d heard about the idiots who thought that mixing and matching science with spells was a good idea. For the betterment of mankind, or some kind of crap like that.

  More like a weaponized spirit world.

  What could go wrong?

  “Why aren’t the twins changing into anything fucked up?” Rebel asked in a voice that sounded a lot like mine.

  “We’ll have to look into that,” Ronin said.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Rose whispered, still studying my chest.

  “I guess the DNA Spell didn’t go well?” Cassidy asked.

  “What makes you say that?” Ronin answered.

  We walked through a door and the effects of the spell started to dissipate. I said goodbye to my boobs and spotted Polk across the room.

  He was an elderly black man whose face told me all I needed to know about his history. It was long. It was storied. And none of us would ever get even a peek at the details. He was a private man. Smart.

  I liked him.

  Polk leaned over a table and studied what looked like a hologram. It floated in front of him like a ghost. But I didn’t like the way it was moving. It was disturbing. Like a web of snakes. But they convulsed as if they were suffocating.

  “Hey Polk,” I said.

  “Kane Arkwright, good to see you,” he said in his shaky voice. “Excellent job on this you two. The Ley Lines are indeed a critical clue. And this Baldr-Shield connection is one for the history books.”

  “What the hell is that?” I asked as I got a better look at the floating image. It looked like some kind of three dimensional web, constructed of colored lines. Each line was, upon closer inspection, a snake-like creature of some kind.

  But they were being stretched around each other.

  Their tiny mouths were open, as if screaming in pain.

  “These are creatures of magic,” Polk said. “These are the Ley Lines.”

  Chapter 24

  “They don’t look happy,” Rebel said.

  Polk shrugged his shoulder, face unreadable as usual. “We’ve had this piece for three years now. They’ve never been happy.”

  “Piece?” I asked.

  “Idiot!” Polk yelled at himself. Polk struggled with Tourette syndrome. He’d insult himself whenever he felt like he’d been rude to someone. But, being a genius, he was always way ahead of us. So, in his mind, he was “rude” often. “This visual representation you see hovering over the table
is a portion of the Ley Lines phenomenon. It’s a… how do I put this? It’s a piece of their essence. Every bit of them is made up of every other bit of them. Like a hologram. Yes, yes, like a hologram. So this little piece of Ley Line doesn’t just capture their likeness, it contains a portion of their power.

  Rebel reached out to the floating image.

  “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” Ronin said, grabbing her sister’s wrist gently.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it will fry your brain,” Polk said. He pointed to a serpentine line and traced it with his fingertip. His skin was millimeters from touching it. “This one here almost killed a new recruit.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Ronin said, defensively.

  “So the Ley Line’s power is dangerous,” I said, though it was really a question.

  “I wouldn’t say that, Polk said. “It outputs power on a level we don’t quite understand yet,” Polk said. The glow of the Lines reflected in his eyes. I could see that Polk had a new obsession.

  “What kind of output?” I asked. Sometimes it took Polk hours to get to his point. We didn’t have hours.

  “Psychic output, I guess you could say.”

  “Oh, that clears things up,” Rose said.

  “Dirty little moron asshole!” he screamed at himself. “This is the Magicist in me talking, mind you, not the Scientist. The Ley Line infrastructure appears to be a foundation for all life on the planet. We stand on them. We feed off of them. And they, us. You touch one and you touch the essence of every life form it touches.”

  Where were Dino and his ganja when I needed them?

  “But what are they?” Rebel asked. “Skyler said the Lines were the power of the earth. You say they touch our essence. But why do they exist?”

  “I only have a theory, but have you heard of the idea of the human brain processing reality so that it makes sense? Reality, with all of its dimensions, is a complex image for our senses. We have a limited ability to see, touch, hear, smell and taste our world.”

  “Holy crap,” Rebel said. “Then Dino and his stinkweed brain were right. Our senses construct our perceptions so they make sense.”

  “Can I have what you guys had?” I asked.