by John Booth
Lana gave me an exasperated look. “Not before I scare them. No one shoots at me and gets away with it.”
She stood up and fired at them with the little gun she’d offered me. Massive explosions followed. I poked my head above the wall with a shield protecting my head. The stone wall the officers had hidden behind was rubble. If looked as if Lana had been aiming to miss them, but every officer had been injured by shrapnel. None of them was in a fit state to shoot back.
Lana grinned at me as she put the gun back in her pocket
“I told you these guns are good.”
“Those people were on our side.”
She sniffed. “Then they should not have shot at me.”
I grabbed her hand and hopped us inside a building I’d spotted where we could watch the tunnel in safety. We had a clear view out of the window of the tunnel and where we’d been a few moments ago.
I saw Esta appear where we had been standing, surveying the area When she looked up towards us I leaned out of the window and waved. A second later she was in the room.
“Was it The Bomber?”
“Calamity Jane and her gun,” I replied.
Esta gave me a puzzled look.
“Why did you shoot at the local police?”
I shrugged.
“They were shooting at me,” Lana said as if that explained everything.
Perhaps it did because Esta seemed satisfied with the answer.
“The police on the other side have not seen us. We hopped to an alley and then made our way on foot to where the tunnel comes out.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, trying to change the subject before she asked how we had been spotted.
“Loud explosions. We thought it might be the Bomber. I’ll get back now I know it was just Lana and the police.”
Esta vanished.
Lana laughed. “I am not sure which is worse, your idea of sneaking around or my reaction to the police shooting at us.” She held out shaking hands. “Look at me trembling with excitement.”
“We need to get back to watching the tunnel.”
Lana came close so our bodies were touching. “Are you really fully operational after last night, despite my very best efforts?”
“I’ve had training.” Esmeralda could be a hard task master.
“Then you keep watch out of the window while I do something to fix it.”
I was about to ask what she was going to do when she slid down to her knees and her hands reached for zipper.
I tried very hard to concentrate on the tunnel entrance.
40. Fire
Lana knocked my hand away from under my chin and I only just stopped my jaw from hitting the windowsill. There are certain things that make a man sleepy and Lana had done a number of them to me; very well I might add.
She pointed out the window and I looked. The tunnel entrance was clear. Not a sign of attack.
“Not there. Out in the river.”
I raised my eyes and saw the island with the smokestack was billowing smoke out across the river. Red flames became visible through the black smoke every few seconds.
When I looked back at the tunnel I saw a thin sliver of smoke rise from the top of the arch.
Lana hopped. It took me a second to get my wits together and hop after her.
It can be a tricky business, hopping into fire. Your subconscious tends to protect a wizard if conditions are particularly unfriendly, putting a protective shield around you as you enter real space. But fires are erratic and what is safe one second can be intolerably hot a second later. I chose to hop a safe distance from the island, put a shield against smoke, heat and bad air around me, and then fly in the last quarter mile.
Lana had not been so cautious and I found her lying half in the water at the islands edge. Her face blackened with soot. She was coughing when I landed and it was a simple matter to clear her lungs of muck. Not so easy to clear the hemoglobin in her blood of carbon monoxide, but it wasn’t all that difficult. Smoke billowed around my shield as the winds shifted.
“All better now?”
She glared at me. “You are an arrogant bastard sometimes.”
I ran my finger over her nose and studied the soot I removed. “Black suits you.”
She snapped her fingers and the dust fell off her. Pulling out her gun she started to work her way around the island, a shield every bit as good as mine protecting her. I went in the other direction, strengthening the shield in front of me in case she shot before she looked when we met on the other side. The smokestack was about fifty feet across and the island added another twenty beyond that, so we wouldn’t have to walk far before we met.
Jeram and Esta prowled the water’s edge, each projecting a shield at least twenty feet around them. It was just as well because the smoke was much worse on their side of the island and I wouldn’t have seen them without it. Our shields touched and I allowed mine to join with theirs in much the way soap bubbles do.
“Any sign of him?” Jeram asked.
“Nothing.” I said, “Our side of the tunnel is fine. We saw this and came to investigate.”
“As did we,” Esta agreed. She waved as Lana came into sight.
“If he’s on the island he’s down the smokestack,” Jeram growled.
“Let us look,” Lana said. It seemed she was still angry over her mistake when hopping to the island, or maybe it was with me in general. She began to float into the air and we followed.
Overlaying magic fields without cancelling each other out is not easy. We had trained in this on one of the courses, but it turned out we weren’t very good at it and as we floated over the smokestack, heat and smoke penetrated our badly combined shields.
“Let me do it,” I suggested and put a field over the other three. The other shields snapped out of existence and the air cleared.
I dropped us down the smokestack slowly, using magic to light the way below us. When we reached the bottom of the shaft, we discovered that the tunnel was about to collapse. Dragonfire was eating the brick walls, melting steel rails and roaring into the distance in both directions. We were physically close to each other but not touching so hopping us out together wasn’t an option.
“I’ll take us back out unless you want to hop individually?” I said.
“We should stay together,” Jeram advised. “We don’t want to encounter the Bomber one on one.”
The others indicated assent and I set my bubble shield to rise back the way it had come, only at a significantly faster rate than when we came in.
“He could still be in there,” Lana said angrily as we started to rise and the tunnel dropped out of sight.
“It could also be a trap,” Jeram said calmly.
“He’s long gone,” I told them. “The dragonfire was being maintained by a spell on automatic.”
“Are you sure?” Jeram asked.
“I’ve seen it done before.”
We shot out of the smokestack into bright sunlight. As we rose into the air the smokestack collapsed and the river fell away as the tunnel below collapsed. A few seconds later, swirling eddies and white waves running across the river were the only sign anything had happened.
“You lot go back to the warehouse while I see if I can find his trail in hop space.”
“We could help,” Esta said.
“And muddy hop space to the point where nothing can be seen? Go to the warehouse and fly some distance away from here before you hop.” I didn’t wait for an answer, dissolving the shield around them I transitioned into hop space.
Hop Space is impossible to describe properly. Think of a mist with pin pricks of light that might be stars, galaxies or universes. It never has the same scale when you enter it, so it can be difficult to tell what you are looking at.
When a wizard moves through hop space he leaves a trail of eddies in the mist. They don’t last long and it is possible to mask them if you know someone is trying to follow you or if you happen to be paranoid. Dafydd was certainly paranoid, but
then I was an exceptionally good tracker, so it would be an interesting experiment in motivation as to which of us would win. I felt extremely determined.
There were four obvious trails converging on the island. I saw fainter trails where Esta had hopped across the river. What I was looking for was something different. It took some time before I spotted it.
There was a line of zero disturbance cutting through Esta’s trails and making eddies in the mist disappear. This was Dafydd’s trail, a clear absence of disturbance. I followed this absence of a trail in a straight line. It wouldn’t go far because I was sure he was staying somewhere on the planet. In the immensity of hop space that wasn’t even leaving the garage.
There it was; a pinhole in the hop space ether where he had exited into normal space. I hopped into real space and immediately hopped out again. I must have been in the room for less than a tenth of a second, but now I knew exactly where it was. Thousands of miles east of the warehouse, the room was located on the other continent.
I hopped back to the warehouse.
“Well?” Jeram asked listlessly. From the look on their faces they had concluded I would fail.
“I’ve found his base. It’s on the other continent.”
“Is he there?” Lana asked. She took her gun out of her pocket and flipped out its clip, replacing it with a full one.
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.”
“Do we go now?” Esta asked.
It was a good idea and I was all for it.
“We should wait until it is the middle of the night over there,” Jeram said. “That is still several hours away. Best if we catch him off guard while he sleeps.”
“One bullet will sort him out,” Lana said. She caressed her gun while looking pointedly at me.
“We need a plan,” Esta put in. “And we have nothing to do for a few hours, unless Jake and Lana have other things to do that can’t wait?”
“I can wait,” Lana replied, a little too aggressively.
“A plan seems like a good idea to me,” I said cheerfully. “Anybody got any ideas?”
41. Gillian
I hopped the team into the room. It was pitch black so I generated a low intensity light some distance across the room. We were in a lounge or possibly a library. There were comfortable looking padded chairs with a low table in front of them and every wall without windows was lined with books. There was a large window hung with heavy curtains. Lana peered behind them and came back to where we stood.
“It is overcast out there. I can see almost nothing.”
Jeram nodded. He had become our team leader by popular vote. I only got my own vote. “Follow the plan.”
Jeram took the lead with Lana close behind. Taking us to the nearest door he silently opened it. Beyond was a large lobby with a wide staircase leading up to the next level. Jeram generated a magical light of his own and pointed up the stairs. That was to be our search zone, Esta and me. On Whydar most people slept on the ground floor, so we had drawn the short straw.
I moved our light up the stairs and we followed it. When I stood on a stair and it creaked I used magic to lift me above them and glided up the remaining flight. Esta followed my lead and we ended up floating a few inches above the landing.
Precise flying is a pain and I let my feet drop slowly onto the thick carpet below them.
Esta pointed at the first door and we made our way towards it. I prepared the complex spell that would render Dafydd unable to hop. I was the expert on anti-hopping spells as I’ve been subjected to so many of them. It wouldn’t stop him for long, but long enough for us to render him unconscious. That was the plan we’d come up with, though it also had a couple of nuances.
Esta opened the door and I lit the room in bright light. It was some kind of study and was empty of life. Dousing the light, we moved forward to the next room.
By the time we got to the sixth room I was bored, so bored that when we saw the shape on the bed, it took me several seconds to drop the anti-hop spell into place. The figure stirred in their sleep and Esta readied the magic that would knock him out.
“Don’t bother. It’s not him.” I had scanned the person in the bed and she had no magical ability.
The woman turned towards us and saw us. She pulled the sheets up over her breasts to cover them.
“Who are you?” she asked in English.
Esta looked puzzled so I grabbed her hand and fed her the language.
“We ask the questions. Who are you?” I demanded.
She stared at me, a look of fear and horror growing on her face. “You’re him, the Great Destroyer. Dafydd told me you were Welsh.”
Esta laughed, though she sounded a little strained. “The Great Idiot, more like.”
“Where is Dafydd?” I asked.
The woman recovered her poise. “Where you will never find him, Jake Morrissey. He’s going to rid the universe of you.”
To my surprise, Esta stepped closer to the woman and slapped her across the face. It wasn’t a gentle blow and the woman screamed before putting her hand over her cheek and bursting into tears.
“Where is he?” Esta asked and raised her hand to strike again.
“He hops everywhere. I don’t know.”
Jeram and Lana burst into the room. Lana had her gun out and it was pointed straight at the woman.
“Downstairs?” I asked.
“Servants. Fast asleep now,” Jeram replied. “And her?”
“The Bomber’s whore,” Esta answered. “Just about to talk.”
The woman’s face slackened as mind control took effect. I turned to Lana to protest.
“Were you planning to beat it out of her? This way is quicker and surer.”
While I couldn’t disagree with the logic, it seemed to me that this way was also much dirtier.
“Who are you?” Jeram asked, unfortunately in Balmack which just left the woman looking puzzled.
“Try asking in English.” I touched Jeram and Lana teaching them the language.
“Who are you?” Jeram asked again.
“Gillian Braithwaite.”
“Where is The Bomber?”
“I don’t know anyone called the Bomber.”
“The man you call Dafydd,” I interjected.
“He left this evening for Earth.”
“Where on Earth?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
That stumped us. Jeram looked at each of us in turn.
“Did he say why he was going?” Lana asked. That was a good question that I should have thought of.”
“To get money for the other continent,” Gillian said like a zombie. I hated this and wanted to free her.
“When is he coming back?” Jeram asked.
“Later tonight.”
“He won’t be,” I said and the others stared at me.
“When he gets to his safe he will find the money gone because I took it when we arrived on this planet. The man is paranoid. He will go to ground as soon as he discovers the theft.”
Esta had not finished with Gillian.
“Why do you think Jake is the Great Destroyer?”
Lana giggled.
“Dafydd told me. He was told by a leader of the Elves and asked to kill him because prophesy says that only a close relative can kill the Great Destroyer.”
Lana turned to me. “You said you were related to him?”
“First cousin,” I admitted.
Esta asked, “Are you the Great Destroyer?”
That was a good question and deserved an honest answer. However, as I didn’t have one I said something else.
“If I am, the prophesy is rubbish, because Dafydd has killed a load of bystanders, but he’s never come close to killing me.”
“It changes nothing,” Lana said forcefully. “In all the time I’ve known Jake he’s killed no one and tried to protect the innocent. This bastard has tried to kill us all.”
Jeram nodded. “Despite what Jake thinks, there
’s a good chance the Bomber will come back here, if only for his woman. I vote we wait.”
The others agreed, so I did as well. There was only one thing still bothering me.
“Can you take the mind control off her? It’s freaking me out.”
Lana snorted, “Him, the Great Destroyer? Don’t make me laugh.”
I placed an anti-hop spell over the mansion, and then taught the rest of the team how to escape it. We set up a schedule. I got the first shift while the others slept.
Gillian sat up in bed, wide awake. She’d asked to get dressed but the others were against it, so she was still naked under the covers. I sat on a chair facing her.
“You are Jake Morrissey, aren’t you?”
“In the flesh.”
The silence went on for some time.
“You don’t look evil.”
“I try not to be. Do you know how many innocents your boyfriend has killed trying to kill me?”
She drew up her legs so she could hug them.
“He gets upset about it. You killed his mother.”
“He turned her into a living bomb and blew up the whole street.”
It still upset me, even now, after nearly two years.
There was another long silence.
“Dafydd isn’t evil. He’s doing what he thinks is right. And you have been hounding him. If you hadn’t chased him, he would have given up after his mother died.”
“No justice for the murdered innocents then?”
Gillian started crying. “You aren’t here for justice. You want vengeance.”
That was so close to what Issus had told me that it took me aback. Inspector Thomas wanted vengeance, he’d told me to kill Dafydd and not bring him back for trial. That was after he blew up the police station, long before he took out my street. The others wanted vengeance because he’d tried to kill them. But what did I want? I couldn’t bring him back to Wales for trial, even his sworn confession wouldn’t be believed. Welsh justice wasn’t written to allow for magic.
“What will you do to him, when you catch him?”
“I won’t kill him, if he gives me the choice.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Gillian sobbed into her knees and I wondered how the hell I’d ended up here. I’d never wanted anything, but a quiet life in Wales with Jenny.