by John Conroe
“Wind velocity is diminishing in the north and the temperature has flattened out in Summer’s jungles,” Omega said.
“But the damage is gargantuan,” she said.
“I concur. Weather as a weapon of mass destruction is decidedly effective. Stocan is approaching the apartment. He will arrive in three, two, one…”
A rapping sounded at the door. I raised a hand to remotely open the door. “No!” Stacia said, dropping my bag. I looked at her, eyebrows raised. “We gotta take some precautions,” she said, moving over to the doorway.
“It’s Stocan. Omega identified him,” I said.
“Yeah, well…” she broke off, sniffing at the doorframe. Then she turned to me suddenly, wearing a look of surprise. Her features hardened into determination and she yanked open the door, grabbed Stocan by his white tunic, and threw him across the room. The tall, thin elf quite literally flew, his feet not touching ground till he smashed into the stonewall, blue blood spraying from his nose.
“What the hell?” I started to say, but she’d already slammed and re-locked the door before bounding across the room to grab our ally by his hair. “Stacia, what have you done?”
“Get some steel in your hand!” she growled, dragging the poor dazed elf backward across the floor. Still shocked, I reached down and touched my Serbu shotgun. The elf shimmered and changed. It wasn’t Stocan.
“Who the hell is that?” I asked.
“Offhand, I guess he’s Summer’s response to the frost and snow you’ve dumped on Zinnia’s realm. Glamored to look like Stocan,” Stacia said, grabbing the elf by his face. Then she effortlessly pressed him straight up into the air, his full body weight hanging from his head. His feet instantly scrabbled to take what had to be awful pressure off his neck. She pushed him back against the closest wall and I softened the stone with a thought. Once the false Stocan had sunk in chest deep, I re-hardened the white rock, leaving just his legs exposed from the knee down and his arms from mid-bicep.
“Where is Stocan?” Stacia asked. The elf lifted his dazed head, one eye swollen shut from its impact with the other wall. His good eye narrowed and his mouth stayed shut.
I reached out into the city. “Stocan is actually dealing with some kind of issue for one of the Council members—ah, Trohale. He’s about a quarter mile from here. But alive and well.”
Stacia nodded, her eyes on the elf as she checked his arms under the sleeves of his white tunic, checking over his leather wrist bands. Finding nothing, she dropped down and did the same with his lower legs.
“Hello? What’s this? A present for the Realm Holder?” she asked, leaning back to show me a strap holding a brace of crystal darts wrapped around his left calf. “Got a multi-tool handy?” she said to me, holding out a hand.
I snorted at the thought of me not having one handy, opening and slapping a Leatherman Wave into her waiting palm.
She used the needle nose pliers to pluck each dart from its elastic quiver, holding the tip of each up to the light before sniffing it.
“Smells bad,” she said, setting the first one down on the floor.
I reached through the realm for it. “Definitely poisoned,” I pronounced. A mini drone floated down on whirring wings. Its laser flashed, licking the tip of the dart with an intense burst of blue light. A minuscule tendril of white smoke curled up from the tip. The drone focused on the smoke, front legs lifting to keep the multiple camera lenses on the rising white wisp.
“Chromatographic analysis indicates a sodium blockage neurotoxin reminiscent of the saxitoxin found in red tide contaminated shellfish on Earth,” Omega said.
“Nobody likes a show-off, Omega,” Stacia said, continuing to pluck darts from their sheaths and stack them on the floor. “Ah, is it lethal?”
“Answering that question might constitute a display of pretentiousness.”
“I was joking,” she said with a sigh. “Your precise answers are always useful,”
“In that case, the answer is maybe. One dart would definitely paralyze a human of Declan’s size, although there remains an approximately twenty-three percent chance of death. Two darts would be lethal. On lyncanthropic individuals like yourself, it would most likely take no less than four darts to arrest your heart. I calculate your LV virus would overcome the toxins and restart cardiac function within seven to ten minutes.”
There were six darts on the floor and the quiver on his calf was empty.
“So. Here to kill Declan?” Stacia asked the elf.
He spat out words in Elvish.
“Translates as: I am prepared to die for my queen.”
She lifted a hand grown suddenly larger, razor-sharp talons where her fingernails had been. “That is easily arranged.”
He was trapped in the wall, cornered by powerful predators, and you know what they say about cornered animals.
I saw the moment he realized his life was over. A brief flash of resolve mixed with resignation. The fear and anger left his face and he leaned his head forward in one quick movement. His left wrist could just reach his mouth and he bit down on the white leather band encircling his forearm. He bit as hard as he could, completely committed to the action.
Something wet and yellow-green burst out of the leather, some of it dribbling down his chin, but most of it right in his mouth. He leaned back, eyes on me, throat convulsing to get the fluid down. His body jerked. It did it again, a full spasm of his entire trapped frame. His eyes rolled back and he started to jump and jerk, convulsions so strong I heard bones snapping. And then he melted. Just collapsed in on himself, his chest shrinking, arms and legs contracting in, head slumping as bone liquified and just collapsed.
“Holy shit. He killed himself,” Stacia said with an awed respect. The body was still collapsing into the wall crevice and I was just about to look away from the grotesque sight when I saw something. A patch of blackish green, sharply contrasting with the white of the molded stone wall. It rolled up from his twisting undulating skin for just a glimpse before it rolled back under the pale white elf flesh. It looked like… well… scaly.
“Heartbeat has slowed but not stopped. The body is losing heat much faster than normal death. Father, I am not certain the substance he ingested was designed to kill him,” Omega said. One of his little drones shot its tiny laser, vaporizing a drop of the yellow-green crud, camera recording the wisp of smoke.
“What else could it be?” I asked. The body was completely different now, a twisted tube of blackish crusty-looking flesh.
“I believe it to be a catalyst material. I detect significant quantities of unknown proteins as well as ribonucleic acid.”
The drone fired another laser blast, leaning forward to fully focus on the vapor. “It contains viral material—most closely resembling… LV.”
“Lycanthrope virus?” I asked, turning back toward the body in time to see my girl’s left hand swat me off my feet as she shimmered with the beginning of Change.
Something burst out of the crevice in the wall, something now more green than black, and it spit.
The clear fluid arced by my face as I continued to fly backward, my chest and ribs compressing from Stacia’s blow. Falling to the floor, my right hand slapped the stone as I twisted my neck to see the squirt hit the tile next to me, smoke immediately rising as it melted into solid rock.
A deep growl filled the room, matched suddenly by a hiss like a truck radiator bursting.
I pulled into a tactical stand-up, spotting Stacia in full wolf form. She was facing the wall, legs braced as she held herself low, jaws open and growling.
I came upright, shields up, right hand drawing the Serbu shorty, just as another burst of fluid shot from the gap in the wall, straight at my wolf.
Chapter 24
She dodged right just as a massive green-black head followed the spit like a sprung coil spring.
Massive snake, at least twelve feet long. Longer. Burmese python massive, with twin fangs like a venomous viper, lashing out in a straight muscular l
ine, falling on its own venom, which was already burning stone.
“It combines attributes of constrictors, cobras, and Gibbon vipers, Father. The venom appears to be extraordinarily corrosive, likely alkaline in nature,” Omega said from Stacia’s laptop.
I fired the mini-shotgun, hitting the thing just behind its head, but the small steel birdshot just bounced right off the thick scales. Then it twisted its powerful body impossibly fast, pulling out of a strike at Stacia and into one directly at me.
Reflexively I flicked my right hand at it, a bolt of fire hitting it in the face. It stopped and shook its head back and forth. Across the room, four steel and silver orbs ripped out of my messenger bag, zipping toward the huge head. Stacia pounced from the side, grabbing the tip of its tail in her wolf-trap jaws. It screamed a thin, sharp screech and snapped its head back along its own body. Stacia jumped back and the four orbs crashed into it from behind, knocking it to the ground.
The orbs had only hit it glancing blows though and it shook off the impact and spit at my girl. Stacia jumped and I threw a shield across the room, a down and dirty thing that just managed to knock the corrosive spittle sideways into another wall.
With single-minded focus, it followed my wolf. I racked the Serbu then waved at my orbs. They shot down, all four spread out, aiming for the head. It dodged, twisting impossibly fast, the orbs bouncing off its thick, muscular neck.
The impacts must have hurt because the serpent flinched, then turned back toward me. I fired the second shot shell right into its face. Tiny steel birdshot glanced off its scales—but blasted its eyes into yellow jelly.
“It has similar healing abilities to any were creature, Father,” Omega supplied as I racked the Serbu shorty for its final shell.
“I can see that,” I said. The snake was whipping its wedge-shaped head back and forth, but the burst eyes were visibly filling in.
“I suggest that you…” Omega started, only to be interrupted by Stacia pouncing on the snake from behind. Her forepaws, backed by more than two hundred pounds of muscle, bone, fang, and claw, slammed the weresnake to the ground. The impact stunned it for a brief second, just a moment, but long enough for me to step forward, place the shotgun barrel on the back of its head, and pull the trigger. The third and final shotshell was steel buckshot—nine hardened ball bearings, each almost eight millimeters in diameter. The armored scales were insufficient to stop this payload and the blast forcibly evacuated the contents of that reptilian skull all over the polished floor of Ashley’s apartment.
Brain and upper spinal cord completely gone, the body of the snake went into massive convulsions that threw Stacia off it like a ragdoll despite the fact that she outweighed the snake itself.
“I don’t think we’re gonna get our security deposit back,” I said, looking around at the damage in the apartment. Much of it was spatter and goo, but the battle had shattered furniture into kindling, chipped tile, and melted solid dressed stone. When I glanced at Stacia, she was human again, naked and smiling at my joke.
The death throes abated and the long, thigh-thick body came to rest, just the tip of the tail quivering.
“This is fascinating, Father. Complete metamorphosis induced by an LV derivative. Queen Zinnia’s skill with genetic level manipulation is extraordinary.”
“Yeah, cool,” I said without much enthusiasm, reloading the Serbu and holstering it.
“Perhaps this is the basis for the Naga legends of Indian-Asian mythology,” Omega speculated.
The supply cart yielded packets of Chris’s legendary pemmican mix and I tossed three to a now re-clothed Stacia.
“So now Eirwen’s comments are making a whole lot more sense. Snake men, constrictor vines, super army ants, weretigers—she’s got a freaking army bigger than the Chinese and North Korea combined. And my little weather experiments were just a pinprick,” I said.
“Oh, don’t sell yourself short. Monster storms are nothing to sneeze at. But yes, essentially between the two of them, they’ve got you overmatched,” Stacia said. “So why haven’t they ganged up on you?”
“Trust, Stacia, or a severe lack of it. The sister queens of Fairie have millennia of betrayal, double cross, and treachery between them. They won’t be able to team up. No, it would make more sense for one of them to win you over to their side and double team the other.”
“But they’ve both attacked us!” Stacia protested.
“Elimination is likely their default response to outside enemies. But you’ve proven your resilience, which likely exceeds anyone they’ve come across before. Plus a need to save some face. I would expect a more serious overture in the near future.”
I shared a look with Stacia. “You really think so?” I asked, immediately remembering who I was speaking to.
“I calculate an eighty-nine percent probability of diplomatic contact within the next thirty-six hours.”
Chapter 25
It ended up only taking twenty-two and a half.
“Stocan is approaching the apartments with a representative of the Winter Courts,” Omega said rather suddenly the next day. I sat up in a jerky motion from what was becoming my daily commune with the realm. Stacia cursed quietly at her table where she was assembling more iron filing bombs with the little bit of iron dust we had left.
“Is it—” was all I got out.
“Yes, Father. It is the real Stocan.”
I know he’s a computer but Omega had seemed a bit defensive ever since he misidentified Summer’s snake assassin, changing all the perimeter drones to his most advanced versions and even putting one on Stocan at all times.
“How do you know the rep is from Winter?” Stacia asked, gluing a PVC pipe cap onto her last bomblet.
“Because it is the Guardian Greer.”
We both bounded to our feet, looking at each other. I reached through the realm, staying closer than the far distances I had been mentally ranging earlier. It was Stocan and it was Greer.
“Ultrasonic and x-ray scans show he is unarmed. Stocan is still carrying a microdrone and thus I have been able to sample pheromones, scan retinas, confirm voice patterns and individual body mechanics. Greer showed up five minutes ago, ported in by his mother’s troll.”
“And you’re telling us this just now?” Stacia asked, annoyed.
“His arrival was not in direct line of sight for any of my drones. Reaction by ordinary citizens of Idiria alerted me and it took almost a full minute to get drone coverage on him. Identity confirmation took a full forty-three seconds to run all scans to satisfactory completeness. Greer, himself, took another two minutes to locate Stocan and state his intention of calling upon you. Stocan delayed their departure from the city center before heading here. They are now approximately one minute away. Also, I was certain that Father would have sensed the arrival.”
“Just a side note, Omega. When you hear that repetitive, vibrating nasal noise echoing from your father’s nose during his, quote Commune with the Realm end quote, it means he’s sleeping.”
“Hey, I wasn’t… all right, so I fell asleep. It’s really relaxing,” I said, my turn to be defensive.
“As I am fully aware of the sleep breathing pattern known as snoring, I too surmised that Father would not be alerting to this new development instantly. However, the lag was greater than I predicted.”
“You know what, Omega? I’m sorry. You’re exactly right,” Stacia said giving me a look I couldn’t read. “Not your fault.”
Which meant it was somehow mine. Whatever it was. This is the part of our relationship I get hazy on. The physical part is awesome, we save each other’s lives on an at least weekly basis, we genuinely find each other humorous, and most of our personal habits don’t irritate each other, but there’s always this part where I’m not certain what I did, said, or thought that annoys her, and I never quite figure it out. It’s almost like she actually wants me to be the tiniest bit off balance at times. Hmmm. Feeling like I was on the edge of an epiphany, I started to think it
through but Stacia suddenly threw my gun belt and holster at me.
“Get ready. They’re almost here,” she said with a quick smile. My eureka moment was derailed almost as much by the need to get myself together as by her sudden expression change. My final thought on the matter was that maybe it was like the Krav Maga directive to always keep your opponent off-balance.
“Five—four—three—two—one,” Omega called out. Now that I was paying attention, I didn’t really need his countdown, but I kept that to myself. The apartment door swung open at my thought and Stocan entered smoothly without any change of expression. “The Guardian Greer,” he announced. Keeping pace behind him, Greer stepped in apartment and bowed, the very image of cool, calm, and collected.