by D. Levesque
I wait ‘til the last second and then in a move that’s easier than I thought possible, I get out of its way by moving to the left, actually lifting my right dagger and cutting along its length as it passes me, shaving it like you would a long piece of wood. I can feel the grin on my face get bigger. Gordo, on the other hand, starts to look worried.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” I say with a grin. Then, in a blink, I rush forward.
Chapter Thirty
I’m moving so fast, even I’m surprised by it. Gordo reaches down for another spear, but it feels like he’s doing it in slow motion. By the time he grabs it, I am only two feet away from him. Whoa, this is awesome! Just as I think that I have to duck, as Gordo ends up using the spear like a large staff instead of throwing it. I dodge its swing, and as I go by I slash at his leg, but he moves out of the way just in time, so all I end up doing is cutting the brown pants he is wearing.
I know there will be a follow-up, so I jump back. As expected, the spear has been turned, and Gordo jabs it in the spot I had just been standing in.
I grin at him. “I hear you’re pretty strong. Battle Worthy?” I ask him.
I must be right, since he jerks in surprise. Abruptly, he reaches into his pocket and shoves something into his mouth. Uh oh. That confirms it. The good thing is that it doesn’t increase his speed, only his strength. But now that means I need to stay out of his reach.
Gordo bellows in pain as the muscles all over his body suddenly increase in size. The spear that was in his hand ends up snapping in half from his grip. Yup, he is definitely stronger now. So I will need to be faster and figure out what Magic to use. Fuck, I wish I had more training in this Magic shit.
His head comes back up to look at me, and he’s glaring, but there is now something else in his eyes. Almost brutish. He is looking at me with murderous intent. This man, this Beast, now wants nothing more than to kill me. I need to figure out how to take him out, quickly.
Suddenly he rushes forward to grab me, but I move out of the way, lifting my dagger and running it along the underside of his arm.
He cries out in pain but also rage and swipes his arm sideways. The arm hits my shoulder, and pain hits me as I go flying across the pit. A good five or six feet across. Knowing there is always a follow-up with folks like him, thank you martial arts classes with Mike, I throw myself back doing a multi-backflip kind of thing. My daggers had disappeared automatically and my right arm hurts like hell, but I can tell nothing is broken. It’s going to bruise like a mother though.
After flipping like a damn trapeze artist three times, I stop and land on my feet. I look over at him just in time, as a spear flies towards me. Without thinking, I jump up and run along its length as it goes under and behind me, landing back in the same spot I had just jumped from. What the fuck did I just do? Actually, how the fuck did I just do that would be more the question. It’s like my body knows what to do. Grinning at him, I call up my Foci until both daggers are once again in my hands.
“Who the fuck are you,” Gordo growls at me.
“Let’s just say that you fucked with the wrong person,” I tell him with a smile. “You took my wife and my partner. But not only that. You killed her partner five years ago. Oh, she hates you for that.”
“Ah,” he says, understanding blossoming on his face. Then he smiles. “I guess I will be killing another one of her partners. That last partner of hers was all high and mighty. She thought she could arrest me. Well, she learned the hard way that you can’t kill Gordo. No one touches Gordo.”
“Really? Talking about yourself in the third person?”
“Whatever that means,” he says with a shrug. “I’m still going to kill you. I might even throw your body down in the pit with her so that she can look at your dead body for days before I kill her. By then, she will have two bodies to look at,” he says with a grin. Shit, right. Sir William Tonlia is down there as well.
“Very well,” I tell him with a nod. “Last chance. Will you submit to M.A.G.I. for arrest for the crimes you have committed today and for those you have committed in the past? I am sure there are many more than just the murder of her partner. I just don’t have access to them.”
Instead of answering, he rushes forward and raises his fists together, slamming them towards me, as if looking to cave in my head. But again, it feels like he is doing it in slow motion. So I wait ‘til the last minute, but then I remember what it felt like when he hit my arm. I fall to the ground just in time, as his arm ends up swiping the space where my head had just been.
While I’m down there, I stab my dagger into his foot, piercing him, and he screams in pain. I jump backward and land a couple of feet away from him, but I am short a dagger now. No problem. I cancel the Foci and both daggers disappear, including the one that had been piercing his foot. With a thought, I call up the Foci again, and once more I have two daggers in my hands.
Gordo now looks at me more carefully, hobbling on his foot. Yeah, you aren’t going to catch me that easily. I know it’s painful, but you are making it out to be worse than it is. He must catch my smirk as I look at his foot, because he grins.
“Worth a try,” he says. “Why don’t you stop and fight me like a man?” He lifts both hands with his fingers outstretched.
“Are you an idiot?” I say with a laugh. “I know how strong you are with Battle Worthy. And I know I can’t fight you for hours before you become immobile,” I say, and at that, he winces. Yep, I know about the side effects, my friend.
Gordo, I guess, figures enough is enough, because suddenly he reaches out to grab me. But then he does something I don’t expect. He falls to the ground, and where I had expected him to rush me and had therefore moved sideways, he instead ends up grabbing my leg and squeezing.
My ankle feels like it shatters and the pain is excruciating. I stay on my other foot and try to yank my ankle away from him, but he’s holding on too tight. I stab my daggers downward but he moves onto his stomach, and the blades enter the upper muscle of his back instead of the sides where I had aimed.
Again he squeezes and I almost blank out from the pain, but then something in me cries out in fury. I am not about to die like this. I had cancer and I was going to die, and I was ready for that. But now I am cured, I’ve learned there are magical worlds out there, and I found out I myself have Magic, and there is no way I am about to give up my life now.
I dispel my Foci and slam both my hands onto his back and, with a thought, call my Foci back again so that the daggers are in my open hands. Gordo tries to jerk away from me, but it’s no use. Both my daggers enter his back, but this time I make sure my hands are over vital organs. Gordo starts to cough up blood, and without warning, he grabs my leg and throws me across the pit, my daggers still in his back.
I roll across the pit for a good ten feet, and my ankle seems to hit the ground each time I turn, causing the pain to explode over and over. Once I am done rolling, I stop and shake my head, trying to clear it. Before I know it, I feel a solid fist connect with my shoulder. Looks like shaking my head had saved me, since that’s where Gordo had been aiming. With another explosion of agony, this time in my shoulder, I go flying backwards and slide onto my back.
Looking up in pain, I see Gordo standing over me.
“You are so done. Goodbye,” he growls with a triumphant grin.
“Yeah, but you forgot something,” I tell him with my own pain-filled grin.
“What’s that?” he says, looking at me suspiciously.
“You have my daggers in your back, inside your lungs. I want them back, please.”
“What?” he says, confusion on his face.
With a thought, I cancel the Foci, and the two daggers that had been in his back, which had punctured his lungs but kept the blood from coming out as long as they were inside him, are no longer there. Suddenly he coughs again, and this time there is a ton more blood. He sways on his feet, his eyes turning blank. Then, before he can react, I rush forward, crying in pain whe
n I put weight on my broken ankle and call up a spell as I place my hand on his chest. Shatter.
Suddenly, his back explodes outwardly behind him, with blood and bone going everywhere. His eyes roll up into his head and all I can see are the whites before he slowly falls back onto the ground. Dead, since I blew out not only his lungs but his heart as well.
Falling backwards onto my ass, I notice I am breathing hard. It must be the pain. I look at my ankle and I’m pretty sure that I made it worse with that last step. Hearing footsteps behind me, I turn around quickly on my back, ready to fling another spell, but it’s Tallen. He doesn’t have the spear through his side anymore, but is holding his shirt, which he had taken off, against the wound. For a slim guy, he is pretty muscular.
Milta is flying next to him, looking at him worriedly. Then she directs that worried look at me and her head keeps going back and forth between us. I can’t help but smile.
I put my head down on the ground and stare up at them as they get closer. “That was pretty amazing to watch,” Tallen says, sitting down next to me and groaning in pain.
I lift my hand to heal him, but he reaches out and slaps it. “Don’t. I will heal, just slower. Keep your power in case you need it. There are still all those Trolls out there.”
“No, there isn’t,” Carmen says, making me, Tallen and even Milta jump in surprise, as we had not heard her approaching.
She is bleeding, has a fat lip and blood on her chin, her clothing is torn in some places, and she seems to be favoring one leg.
“You got them all?” Tallen asks her worriedly.
“Yep. Damn, that eye shooting trick works well. But it takes more than one shot. Thank Gods it doesn’t take real bullets. I would have run out,” she says, patting the rifle that is over her shoulder. “Though, I am almost tapped out of power.” She lets out a tired sigh and sits down next to me, looking at the body of Gordo critically.
“Your work?” she asks, looking at me.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding and grinning.
“I knew you could do it.” She looks at the body again and asks, “What spell did that?”
“Shatter,” I tell her.
“Hmm. Going to have to learn that one.”
Suddenly, we hear a voice coming from the hole in the ground. “So, are you all just going to sit there and chat and have tea or are you going to come and rescue me?” shouts the voice of Marrisa.
I look at Carmen, Tallen, and Milta, and we all burst out laughing.
“Coming!” Carmen shouts back at her.
Chapter Thirty-One
I walk over with a limp thanks to Gordo shattering my ankle, or did he? I seem to heal quickly, to the hole in the ground and peer inside. Sir William Tonlia is curled up in a ball on his side with his eyes closed and a grimace of pain on his face. His clothes are torn, and his black hair is disheveled. Marrisa isn’t in much better shape. She has a large bruise around her left eye, and her clothes are just as torn.
“Hi,” I say, waving down at her.
She stares up at me in shock. “What are you doing here?” she cries.
Just then Carmen comes up next to me and looks down into the hole. Marrisa’s face gets red with anger. “And what is she doing here?”
I look over at Carmen and she is looking at Marrisa with a big grin. “I’m here to rescue you, sweety. You can thank your husband for that.”
“What?” Marrisa says, her anger disappearing. She looks at Carmen with confusion.
“It seems after you took off and left him on your quest to go after Gordo, Kevin got himself to HQ and explained his problem to Bower. I sort of overheard and thought I would come find you and help you out,” Carmen explains.
“What do you want?” Marrisa says suspiciously.
“What? Nothing.” Carmen smiles at her.
Tallen walks over to join us and looks into the hole. He sees Sir William Tonlia and exclaims, “Shit,” and then jumps down into the hole, which is a good ten feet deep. He lands next to Sir William and bends down, placing a hand on his cheek. Then he glances up quickly at Marrisa.
“How long has he been like this?”
“I don’t know. Half a day?” she tells him, looking worriedly at William.
“All right, so it’s not all bad,” he says, opening one of William’s eyelids. I can see from here that they are red.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I would say it’s some kind of silver poisoning. I’m not sure. I need to bring him in and attempt a blood infusion, but that might kill him.”
“But you said it wasn’t all bad,” Carmen says to him, kneeling at the side of the hole and looking down.
“Well, that’s relative. He could be already dead. I need to get him somewhere to heal him.”
“Will a regular heal work?” I ask, lifting my hand.
Tallen looks up at me and shakes his head. “No. Not if the silver is in his blood. He wasn’t shot with a silver bullet. He was most likely injected with liquid silver. We need to get it out,” he says in frustration. “I don’t know how to do it short of a blood infusion, but that is dangerous as well. And we are too far from where I can do it anyway. If he has been like this for half a day, he might not have long.”
“Can’t you simply call up an Earth element and have it pull it out of him?” I ask, thinking about a solution. It makes sense to me. An element can pull the metal out of the ground. Why not out of a person?
“What?” Tallen says, looking at puzzled.
“Well. It’s how I called up an Earth element when I fought you. I had it bring metal out of the ground. What if we tell it to, I don’t know? Touch him,” I say, pointing down at William, who is still in a fetal position. “Then we can ask it to extract the silver out of his body. Does the body need silver? I think us humans have low concentrations of it. But I don’t know the physiology of Vampires.”
“Bloody hell,” he says, looking at me in wonder. He turns and looks down at William thoughtfully.
“It’s dangerous,” Marrisa says slowly.
“Right now, he is dying. And I can’t have him die in my world. I would never live it down as the Count,” he says. “Either way, he might die.”
“Want me to do it?” I ask him. He looks at me questioningly.
“Well, I’m the human. Why not let me do it and if he dies, they can all blame the human. Which seems to be par for the course anyway.”
“You would do this? Knowing that his death would be on your hands?”
“Well,” I say uncomfortably. “I’m hoping it will work rather than kill him.”
Tallen doesn’t answer me at first, but he finally nods. “If you do this and succeed, I shall be in your debt not only as the Count, but also as a friend.”
“Let’s see what we can do first, right? So how much silver does a Vampire have in them naturally?”
“Hmm,” Tallen says, thinking before he responds. “I would say very little. We can be shot by a silver bullet and survive. Unless critical organs are hit, or if we’re hit directly in the head. I don’t know, to be truthful. It would be best if you didn’t take it all out and kill him that way. Can you leave a trace amount? His Vampire healing, if the silver is not meant to be there, would remove it. Right now, the issue is he has so much of it that the body won’t heal at all.”
“Sure, I can do that,” I say, looking down at William.
Tallen moves away from William, and without pause I jump into the hole, bracing myself to fall over on my face or ass. But instead I am shocked when I jump the ten feet and land on my feet, as if I had simply jumped three feet down.
Tallen smirks at my look of surprise. “Benefits,” he says, and simply leaves it at that. Carmen jumps down next to me as well, and Marrisa moves to the other side of the pit, away from her.
“Damn,” I say, whistling at my jump.
I sit down next to William, placing my hand on the ground, and cast the Earth element spell. In my mind, I can feel th
e connection to the element. I try to pass on what I want it to do. At first it’s confused, so I explain it in my mind using images of what I want it to do, adding words when I can’t come up with a picture.
Mainly I want it to touch William and, without pain, bring the silver out of William’s body, leaving a tiny trace amount. When it tries to ask how much, I pause. I figure it can’t be that much, so I think of a tiny sliver on the tip of my fingernail, and tell it that it needs to be spread out throughout his body. Then, I get an idea.
“Tallen.” I look up at him and realize he is looking down at me curiously. Everyone is, for that matter. “Can I have the Earth element touch you so it can figure out how much silver you have in your body?”
“That’s brilliant,” he exclaims. “What do I need to do?”
“Can you sit next to me and place your hand on the ground so that the Earth element can touch you? I will tell it to do it painlessly.”
Tallen nods and sits down as instructed, placing both his hands on the dirt. I tell the Earth element to touch Tallen through the ground and painlessly check the amount of silver in him. Then I explain that is how much silver I want William to have. I can feel understanding coming from the element. I don’t see it move as it is underground, but suddenly Tallen jerks in surprise. He looks at me but doesn’t remove his hand.
“This is a very peculiar feeling, Kevin. I will admit, I had never thought of using the Earth element this way. I will have to give some serious consideration as to what I can do with it, later on.”
“Tell me about it,” I hear Carmen mumble. I look up at her and she grins down at me. “Hey, I am not opposed to learning, even at my age.”
“Age?” I ask her with a raised eyebrow.
“Let’s simply say that I am older than your wife,” she says with a laugh.
I look over at Marrisa and she is glaring at Carmen. Damn, what is their history? What did Carmen do to piss her off so much? There is definitely some animosity there.