Close enough to see scrambling on the yacht deck, the jet ski had taken me and Itabimori far out enough to see something that wasn’t entirely visible from the shoreline.
Far out, probably just on the edge of international waters, I caught sight of an immense ship sailing in the distance. A cruise ship, if I had to guess, with a dozen umbrellas just visible on the main deck, and a sleek modern curve to the front hull. Swordfish and sharks were brightly painted onto the lavish front.
If I’d seen it anywhere else I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but sometimes it’s the company you keep that incriminates you.
Question: Where do you hide an entire magically potent army of mages, their zombie thralls, and all the luxury, gear, and pompous quarters that the proud and decadent Magi were used to?
On a converted cruise ship.
“I’d almost prefer Tlatani,” I said to Itabimori. “It can get tiresome fighting the well funded kids all the time. Where the hell is my cruise ship, Nine Towers?”
“What do we do now?” Tab asked.
It can be intimidating seeing the business end of a mage army, but she didn’t seem all that phased. Good.
“Stop them before they reach the mothership. Get the heads of the archaeologists. Then we ride off into the sunset.”
Itabimori nearly crushed my ribs when I accelerated again. As we raced the yacht, an idea crawled into my head.
“Can you do something for me?” I asked Itabimori.
“Whatever you want,” she replied breathlessly.
“Sea weed. Can you grow some to stop their propeller?”
Itabimori gasped. “That’s a great idea! Of course I can.”
I grinned from ear to ear. “Perfect. Do it.”
Chapter 17
Withdrawing an arm from my chest Itabimori dragged it along the surface of the sea as her body tightened against my back. Before I realized it, we were gaining on the yacht. Propeller disabled, struggling against a forest of kelp.
Now for a little bit of sword and board.
“Keep a low profile and their propeller stuck. I’ll go take care of business.”
Itabimori nodded. I drew up next to the yacht, closing my right hand into a fist and pouring all the stray magical energy within my body into hand. When I opened my fist a tiny flickering ball of light escaped, rising slowly into the air.
I turned to Tabi, and raised a hand to cover my eyes. She caught the hint and did the same thing. A second later, I snapped my fingers. The almost unnoticeable wisp of light erupted like it was a star that woke up late for the Big Bang.
And why yes, I do save a mint on flash bangs with this trick.
The wonderful thing about zombie thralls is that they’re useless unless given specific orders at precise moments. They might be blind, but if their masters can’t see me, they can’t tell them to do anything more than spray and pray.
Cries of agony erupted from the deck above, followed swiftly by panicked gunfire. Unprepared Magi made easy targets. I pulled myself up on deck, pulled out my gun and shot the nearest Magus dead. By the time the second had recovered, the driver by the looks of him, I was close enough to cut him down with one slice of my wand sword. Kevlar can only protect so much of your vulnerable parts.
“I wonder if there’s any rum to plunder. Maybe below deck?” I muttered to myself.
Rushing down the stairs to the lower level of the yacht, I had just reached the bottom when a cinder block flew past me, almost turning my head into mashed potatoes. It had been thrown so hard that the block punctured a hole in the yacht’s hull.
Water spilled onto the boat. I turned my head just in time to avoid another cinder block. The shock of the near miss was enough to send me sprawling. A massive figure loomed.
One very large thrall. Chained throat, grenade belt. Grandma must be nearby. The cramped quarters of the yacht and the withering onslaught of crushing blows made it hard to even respond. The cramped corridors gave the thrall all the advantages in the world.
And unlike normal humans and wizards, the thralls only stopped thrashing around if a limb was severed. Good luck shooting him with all that body armor on too. I rolled to my feet and swept my wand sword in an arc, catching the bruiser in the elbow.
He didn’t register pain either. Without even flinching the giant rammed a fist into my stomach, sending me crashing against the yacht’s wall. I saw a chance as the thrall’s cinder block flail was raised high. I leaped through the bruiser’s feet, water spraying everywhere as the cinder block missed. When the thrall turned around my blade had already been swung.
The blow connected. My wand-sword cut the leather straps holding up the giant’s chest plate, falling to the floor with a clang. Poising the supernaturally sharp tip of my blade forward like a rapier, I thrust into the center of the hulking thug’s chest.
The blade struck true, piercing the bruiser’s heart. His fall made the whole ship shake.
I wiped sweat from my brow. Just one loose end left. When I reached granny Magus, she’d turned her back on a radio system and regarded me from behind her pitch black sunglasses and white bandanna.
“It’s over.” I told her.
“What kinda apprentice do ya take me for, huh? It’s over all right. For you. Walk good, Hellhound.”
The Magus had hidden a very peculiar enchanted item beneath the folds of her robes. A sort of trump card. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a Lodestone. Exceedingly rare, if enough magic was poured into it, the stone would react by instantly transporting it and anything in physical contact with it to a previously prepared location.
In other words, teleportation stone.
If I’d noticed sooner, I wouldn’t have wasted time and cut her down. Instead the mage was consumed by a bluish white light, and disappeared instantly.
“Still my win,” I muttered to myself.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a reply.“You’re in danger,” murmured a cracking, wispy voice.
It took me a moment to finally find where the voice had come from. Hidden in a half open drawer was a severed head. When I opened it wide, I saw that the drawer actually had no less than eight severed heads in it. All fairly lively, too.
“The archaeologists, I presume.”
“The old woman,” mumbled a bearded head. “Coordinates. Battleship. Beware.”
The blood chilled in my veins. “…It’s not a cruise ship is it?” I asked.
“Beware. Flee,” spoke another of the heads.
“I can’t. Where are the ruins? The ruins leading to Xibalba? I’m an agent of Nine Towers. Tell me,” I demanded.
It was like I asked them all to shout their favorite flavor of ice scream at the same time. A babble of words and directions, names and warnings came all at once from eight severed heads. I didn’t get a word of it, but I just so happened to have someone on hand who would understand it all.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Leave us. Avenge us. Freedom, at last,” they all cried at once.
Who was I to disagree? I bolted up the stairs, ran to the starboard side of the yacht, and jumped off just as I heard a sound like thunder rumbling in the distance. Always take what severed heads tell you very seriously.
Just in time, I made it to the side of the jet ski. As fast as I could I grabbed Itabimori’s wrist and pulled her into the water.
There was a terrible crash, followed my a spectacular explosion. Not a cruise ship. A battleship disguised as a cruise ship. That’s what the Magi brought to play with. The shock wave of the explosion must have rattled my brains. The world seemed to run together as my limbs went limp.
When I came to my senses, I was in the air pocket beneath one of the yacht’s capsized life boats. Itabimori was shaking me furiously.
I coughed my lungs up as the snake woman gasped.
“Charles, thank goodness, I thought you were--”
“Dead?” I asked.
The water droplets on her faced looked a lot like tear trail
s.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Relax. Thanks for saving me.”
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
The press of her lips on my own was searing hot. Even if I had the strength to push her off, I don’t think I would have.
Chapter 18
It must have been late afternoon by the time we floated our way to the beach. The Magi had been certain of our deaths with the sinking of the yacht, because as soon as they blew it up, the cruise ship turned battle ship lumbered back out to open water.
At least that’s what I think happened. I was too busy counting how many inches long Itabimori’s tongue was.
All good things must come to an end however. After we hit the shore, Itabimori let out a long sigh and stood to her scaly feet with uncharacteristic moroseness.
“I hope I didn’t disappoint you,” I said.
Tabi’s eyes focused and her face turned bright red. She laughed nervously before replying, “No no, that’s not… We failed, didn’t we Charles? No skulls. Bad guys got away. It was a complete flop.”
“Oh? And what does an unaffiliated semi-divine trouble maker like you care whether or not my dark nebulous masters win or not?” I asked.
Her frown was adorable. “Of course I care. I want to help you Charles. You’ve got brains for miles. And that’s a huge turn on for me. Plus, even though you’re rough around the edges, and you’re uh, a little tall and a little mysterious, I think you’re a really a good person underneath it all.”
If Lis were here that last line would have had her laughing her ass off.
“I didn’t want to be the one tell you this, Itabimori, but who the ‘good guys’ are is totally subjective. I’m only doing what I’m doing to cover my own ass.”
“Well, you’re a good guy to me. How’s that for subjective?”
“Why don’t we change the subject. I have enough pushy women in my life,” I muttered.
“Well make room for one more, because I’m not going anywhere,” Itabimori insisted.
Was that a confession? I nearly asked. I don’t think I could handle hearing her response to that question though.
I cleared my throat and averted my gaze. “Our little boating trip wasn’t a complete loss, for your information. I found the skulls, and got the required info out of them before they were blown up.”
The snake woman’s eyes widened, “Really? You’re amazing! How?”
“Well, there wasn’t enough time for me to memorize their gibberish, but thankfully, I had a personal recording device with me.”
“But Charles. Whatever recording device you had must have been drowned in water.”
I grinned wickedly. “Relax, this thing is harder to dispose of than you might think. Plus I keep him in a plastic bag just in case something like this might happen.”
“Him?”
Reaching into my back pocket, I dug deep before I felt the tip of something plastic. Cracking open the back and hooking my finger into the metallic circle, I withdrew my ‘recording device’ with pomp and flourish.
“Behold. Cho, Lantern of Weakness,” I declared.
“So hungry,” Cho gasped like a dying man. “Fire… Need fire.”
Itabimori practically jumped out of her snake skin. “What the flip is that?”
“It’s a problem, know any convenience stores around here?” I asked her.
A quick walk off the beach, a swift exchange of currency for goods, and before long we were leaning on a wooden bar just on the edge of the beach.
“Hang in there Cho. I got you the largest candle they had,” I fibbed.
It was the largest I dared to try and stuff into the miniature lantern. One of those birthday candles made to look like a number. I scraped the big colorful number six out of its casing and stuffed it in Cho’s center receptacle.
“Lighter,” I asked, reaching out to Tab.
“I uh, don’t smoke,” she replied.
Of course she wouldn’t. She probably never even got a parking ticket, despite deserving to get her license revoked after what I’d seen her do with a car today.
“Hold onto Cho,” I told her.
She did. I drew back my sleeves, pulled out my wand, and pooled a bit of magic into my hand. I traced a double circle into the air, focused the energy onto the tip of my wand, and then?
Poof. One lighter flame. A grievous misuse of magic, but what was Nine Towers going to do, demote me to a warlock? The six was lit. Cho sighed gratefully.
“Where did you get such a strange critter. It can speak, but--”
“Japan. At a hundred years old, items gain a twisted little soul of their own.”
“He’s really cute.”
“If only he were ugly but had a solid grasp of ethics,” I replied. “Cho. Did you get everything the archaeologists told you?”
“Mm. Yes, master Charles.”
“Good. Hit me with it,” I said.
“Weaknesses detected: Gullibility, recklessness, and lower back sensitivity after freshly shedding skin.”
“Weaknesses?” I asked. “Whose?”
“Who knows,” Tab replied, laughing loudly. “Charles was talking about what the archaeologists said though, right? Cho?”
“I understand now. Yes, master, those beheaded heads told me a story.”
“A story?” I asked anew. “Give me a snippet.”
“Er, ‘Speak! Call! Do not cry or moan, spoke the pilgrim, and show me the way to the Sunken Shrine beneath Huracan’s throne and She Who Has Borne Children’s crib’ they said, and then a bunch more. It’s a story about a young priest making pilgrimage to Xibalba. Whatever a Xibalba is.”
I let out a low rolling laugh. We had them.
“That’s exactly what we need. With this info you’ll be able to--” My eyes narrowed as a horrible thought crossed my mind. “Cho, you don’t know where any of what was spoken is, do you? All you have is metaphorical directions that have been highly diluted by religious ceremony and tradition.”
“Yes,” the lantern declared proudly.
“Useless,” Itabimori and I said in unison.
“Well crap. What do we do now, Charles? We’re stuck again,” the snake woman asked, scratching the back of her head.
Even the contour of her shoulders looked smoking hot.
“I take it you don’t know what it all means either?” I asked her.
“Well, I know Huracan was one of the old gods. Storm and fire. Only had one leg. I never knew he had a home address though.”
“That’s fine. Luckily for you, Itabimori, I happen to be both handsome and resourceful.”
I withdrew my cell phone, began the laborious process of drying it out from the little swim it had. I removed the battery, conjured a minor wind spell to hair dryer any stray moisture from within it, and then popped the battery back in and turned it on.
Tabi clapped excitedly when it turned on without short circuiting. Can’t have only bad luck, now can I?
As soon as the phone finished booting up, it rang.
Click.
“Warlock Locke,” I greeted. “You say it we slay it.”
“Where the hell have you been? You miserable devil pandering excuse for--”
I had to hold the phone away from my ear as Cazador ranted and raved. I turned my gaze to Tab and smiled.
“My babysitter. Just the one I wanted to speak to, too.”
Chapter 19
“Have you even bothered checked the news lately?” Cazador demanded.
“I don’t think anyone has ever told me to check the news when something good has happened. I’m on the beach enjoying some sun burn Cazador. Could you give me the cliff notes for the oncoming tragedy?” I asked.
“Car crash in Cancun, multiple bodies discovered. It was your doing, I wasn’t it? Do you know what’ll happen to you if you get discovered by the mortal authorities?”
“Slap on the wrists?” I asked.
“Egomancers mind wipe you with extreme prejudice,” Ca
zador said. “That or ritual execution. The safehouse was--”
“Turned into a slaughterhouse, well aware. Only one survivor to the best of my understanding. A Ms. Pall, if I recall correctly.”
“Unacceptable losses.”
“Gee, if only Nine Towers had deigned to tell me that we had the archaeologists all along, I might have been able to show up preemptively. It was the Mabinoy that did the killing, by the way.”
“Well aware,” Cazador replied.
“Aware that the Magi have a battleship skirting international waters? Disguised it as a cruise ship.”
There was a pause on the line before Cazador spoke up again.
“It’s all bad news. At this rate we’re really going to have to go to war. Losing the archaeologists means losing the race to Xibalba.”
“Actually, I think I have that covered.”
Another pause on the line.
“You do?” Cazador demanded. “How? The archaeologists were reportedly decapitated.”
“What can I say Cazador except that I’m massively over-talented and horribly under-payed. I’m going to put my recording device up to the phone now so I hope you have a pen and paper ready.”
It was nice getting back at that asshole once in a while. I put Cho right up to the receiver and told the little spirit lantern to say all of what the severed heads had told him. Of course, Cho hadn’t thought of speaking slowly.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was Tabi. Probably confused. “Nine Towers has sorcerers from half the world over,” I explained. “I might not specialize in Mayan ritual, but we’ve got lore jockeys that’ll get the directions figured out in no time.”
Itabimori smiled. It beamed like the sun. “You’re so clever I could just kiss you.”
“Later.”
The snake woman cleared her throat. “So, is this going to take a while?” she asked.
“A bit longer. And then some more time to translate. Why?”
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