The Myth Manifestation

by Lisa Shearin

  The corner space appeared to be empty.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Kenji was curled next to Kitty and me under a Ford F-250. Who worked in Manhattan and drove a big-ass pickup truck? With a lift kit. Don’t get me wrong; I was grateful. We all fit under it, and it was too heavy for the scorpion that had us pinned down to flip.

  For now.

  This one was a go-getter. It kept trying.

  “The space isn’t empty,” I assured Kenji. “Just cloaked and warded out the wazoo.”

  “Again, you have got to be kidding me.”

  Yeah, I was kinda in agreement. We had a bit of a problem. I could only see through the cloaks and wards. It was Rake’s job to destroy them, but he was busy at the moment. Apparently giant scorpions were intelligent enough to use objects—such as a Smart Car—as simple tools to smash their prey.

  I didn’t think scorpions were all that bright, being insects and all. If you turned over a rock it was hiding under, or stuck your hand in its hole in the ground, you’d get stung for your stupidity. After stinging you, the scorpion would run away. This thing wasn’t going to stop until it killed us, and maybe eaten us. I had no clue what real scorpions ate, but I could see this one having a hankering for human and elf.

  A few heart-stopping moments later, Rake rolled under our truck-on-tippy-toes. Unsmashed.

  He was grinning like a maniac. Flipping off Death did that to him. “Everybody okay?”

  No one answered. I think he understood that we didn’t share his enthusiasm. Then he saw the parking space where my light was shining, and his happy went bye-bye.

  “Please tell me it’s just cloaked and there’s a car there.”

  “It’s cloaked,” I assured him. “And warded.” What I was less confident about was Rake’s ability to get through that ward, since presumably his magic was still on the fritz.

  I didn’t get a chance to ask. With a screeching of metal being torn, the truck was being lifted off of us.

  Shots rang out, and the scorpion dropped the truck. A huge buzz saw of snarling red fur hit the scorpion a split second later, and bug pieces and parts started flying.

  Kitty screamed and so did the truck’s alarm.

  Then I smelled gas.

  I scrabbled out from under the truck, dragging Kitty after me. Rake hauled Kenji out, yelling what I assumed was an incantation and not a really colorful stream of Goblin profanity. He waved his hand back toward the spreading puddle of gas, and the fuel and the smell evaporated.

  I think Rake was more surprised than I was.

  Then it was my turn to grin like a maniac. “Monsters are dying, and magic is working!”

  Rake said a few words I couldn’t hear over the car alarms and gave a cocky hand wave. The cars stopped screeching.

  Rake Danescu beamed. His magic was back. I’d never seen him so relieved and purely happy.

  “I hate to interrupt your reunion with yourself,” Ian said, “but we’re not finished here. And just because that was the last scorpion doesn’t mean there won’t be more coming.”

  We turned our attention to the cloaked and warded car.

  Rake picked up a scorpion claw and tossed it in the direction of the ward.

  It was instantly vaporized.

  He let out an impressed whistle. “Talk to me, Makenna. What are you seeing?”

  “The parking spaces on either side of the car are actually empty. The ward extends halfway into both spaces.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Purple with black flecks.”

  Rake swore.

  Based on what it’d done to that scorpion claw, I agreed with his assessment.

  “When it zapped the claw, the color faded for a moment,” I told him. “Does that mean it weakened a little?”

  “It does. And it sounds about right for that kind of ward.”

  I took a step toward the car. Rake reached out to grab me and pull me back. “Don’t freak out,” I told him. “I can see where the ward starts. I’m just getting close enough to the car to look inside.” I got as close as I dared and stood on tiptoe, trying to see past the seats to the floor. “The front and back seats are empty. It must be in the trunk.”

  “Okay, step back, Makenna. I’ve got an idea. The ward’s lethal, but each strike lessens its power. The bigger the target it strikes, the more power it loses. Yasha, would you be so kind as to throw the rest of that scorpion at the car?”

  Yasha tossed the carcass at the ward, it was vaporized, and the ward’s glow was noticeably weaker. Rake was on to something.

  “Keep ’em coming, gentlemen,” I said. “It’s working.”

  It took nine horse-sized scorpions to drain the ward’s charge. I didn’t even want to think what it would have done to one of us. The ward and cloak winked out, revealing a late-model, blue Mazda sedan. An innocent-looking car. No outward sign of carrying a monster portal generator in its trunk.

  Rake cautiously approached the car, and whispering his personal shields into place, tentatively reached out, touched the trunk . . .

  . . . and was not vaporized.

  We all started breathing again.

  “That doesn’t mean the trunk’s not booby trapped,” I said.

  Rake laid both hands flat on either side of the trunk lock. A second later, a godawful metallic grinding and tearing came from inside.

  So much for the poor booby trap.

  Rake snarled something unintelligible, and the trunk lid—or whatever it’s called—simply vanished.

  I smiled. Yep, Rake was back. “Is it safe for Kitty and Kenji to do their thing?”

  “As safe as it’s going to get.”

  We gathered around the trunk and looked inside.

  Kenji’s mouth fell open. “What the frack?”

  Phaeon’s magetech generator looked like a cross between a gadget from Dr. Frankenstein’s lab and the guts of a futuristic bomb.

  It filled the entire trunk.

  Ian leaned in to look. “Does anybody know what to do with that?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” Kitty admitted.

  On top of the generator was a little window that let you see down inside of it. A glowing blue cube inside was spinning and strobing at an incredible speed.

  “Guys, I don’t think that’s good,” Kenji said. “I think it’s overloaded. Phaeon opened too many mirrors.”

  “Or he set it to blow,” Ian said. “If the monsters couldn’t kill everyone in the hotel, the explosion would.”

  No witnesses.

  And no one to stop whatever the Silvanus family did next.

  Phaeon would simply make another generator.

  I couldn’t say the same for us.

  “How do we destroy it?” I asked anyone with an idea. “Without it destroying us.”

  “I’d prefer not to destroy it,” Kenji said. “We need to study it, figure out how—”

  “I’d prefer it not destroy us,” I snapped.

  “Duly noted. But that doesn’t change—”

  Rake called up his power, the glow around his hands pulsing in time with the cube.

  The generator did not like that. The cube strobed even faster.

  Rake quickly stepped back and raised his now non-glowing hands. “Take it easy, buddy.”

  “It doesn’t like goblin magic,” Kenji noted. “Or maybe it’s just Rake.”

  “Probably any destructive magic would set it off,” Kitty added.

  Yasha growled and raised both massive paws.

  “I don’t think it’d take to being Hulk-smashed either,” I told him.

  Rake swore. “Phaeon would’ve protected it against any magic he knew of.”

  Ian reached around and drew Lugh’s Spear from its scabbard on his back. The spearhead’s golden glow was blindingly bright in the dimly lit garage.

  I bet Phaeon Silvanus didn’t know about the magic inherent in the spear of an ancient Irish demigod. Ian was betting on that, too.

  My partner never took
his eyes from the furiously strobing cube. “Any objections?”

  No one had any objections—or better ideas.

  The cube was flashing faster and faster. We were running out of time.

  “I can try to contain any blast,” Rake told him. “And shield both of us.”

  Ian quickly glanced at him. “Us?”

  “I can’t do either one unless I stay.” He put his glowing hands on Ian’s shoulders. “Everyone else, take cover behind—”

  The cube’s strobing light went solid.

  Time was up.

  Ian drove the spear’s tip through the glass and into the cube.

  I’d instinctively grabbed Rake around the waist with one arm, and gathered Kenji and Kitty to me with the other. Yasha had thrown himself at Kitty, so the circle of contact with the goblin mage’s shield was complete.

  An intense pressure crushed the air from my lungs. I’d squeezed my eyelids shut, but I didn’t see a red glow beyond them that meant an explosion. After a few seconds the pressure released, and I opened my eyes, just a little.

  No incinerated cars around us. Best of all, no incinerated us.

  “Can we move now?” Kenji’s voice was muffled against Yasha’s fur.

  “It’s over,” Rake said.

  “In a good way?” the elf tech asked, still muffled.

  I peered around Rake’s shoulder and into the car’s trunk. The cube’s glow had gone out. The reason was a golden spear embedded in and fused to it.

  My partner looked bewildered. “Uh, how do I get my spear back?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When the magetech generator was destroyed, the pocket dimension encasing the Regor Regency vanished. Our comms came back up, as did the Internet, phones, satellite TV, and everything else SPI staffers and our tech-loving delegates could desire.

  Best of all, the hotel’s front doors unlocked and we could leave.

  Alain Moreau and SPI’s commando teams from Atlanta, Chicago, and LA were the first inside, though pretty much all that was left for them to do was to help with an extremely messy cleanup.

  Roy Benoit was immediately evacuated to SPI’s trauma center, but not without trying to supervise his people who were working in the lobby as he was carried out.

  Ian had reluctantly left his spearhead inside the cube.

  The best we could figure, the spear had broken the contact between the cube and the ley lines, preventing the magetech generator from destroying the hotel and everyone in it.

  SPI had an armored, shielded, and warded truck for transporting things that should not escape into the outside world. Our folks drove the truck down to the garage’s third level and loaded up the magetech generator—and the car it was in—and hauled both back to SPI’s labs for study. While we had secure facilities for such objects, we were dealing with what Kenji had taken to calling the bastard lovechild of technology and magic. Kitty went back to SPI HQ with the containment team to create a pocket dimension for the car and the lab. Between the normal defensive measures in place at headquarters and Kitty’s pocket dimension, any efforts by Phaeon and Isidor Silvanus to either recover or remotely destroy the generator would fail miserably.

  If the Silvanus brothers didn’t hate SPI before, they sure did now.

  Our nightmare was over, but it could be just beginning for the elf and goblin home world.

  Phaeon’s magetech generator had been a prototype. Yes, we had it in our possession with the intention of figuring out how to counter its effects, but the plans for the generator still existed, and the inventor had escaped.

  The elf and goblin home world had ley lines, plus a new power source had been recently discovered there on a previously unexplored continent. Phaeon’s invention meant that any mirror or reflective surface, windows, even water, could become a way in for assassins, strike forces, or even a small army. Mirrors could be destroyed, but not everything reflective. And it wasn’t just the Seven Kingdoms that were in danger. New York was full of skyscrapers covered in mirrored glass. Something really big could be sent here, or to any city, through the solid reflective side of a building. Think Godzilla-level big.

  Any reflective surface could be a doorway into any world.

  The potential uses for terrorists on our own world were staggering.

  “Science and magic are dangerous enough by themselves.” Vivienne Sagadraco paused to take a bite of a freshly baked cinnamon scone. She was as perfectly groomed as she would be during a normal day at the office. It must have been some kind of dragon-magic thing. “However, combining the most dangerous capabilities of the two is attempting to tame a power that was never meant to exist, let alone be enslaved for the use of petty creatures such as we.”

  I was having a peaceful breakfast with Ms. Sagadraco in the Regor Regency’s enclosed garden, to the tweeting accompaniment of the exotic birds Rake had brought in. The garden was familiar to me. Ian and I had had breakfast here months before with Rake, though it had been more like an interrogation. It had been here that I first heard the name Isidor Silvanus. Then it had been in connection with the brimstone drug and the accompanying murders. Now, it concerned his brother’s deadly invention, and the pocket dimension Isidor had imprisoned us in like lab rats to test it—and to get rid of Rake and SPI’s upper management at the same time.

  Yes, the Silvanus brothers were going to be a thorn in SPI’s collective side until we tracked them down and brought them in. And bring them in we would.

  Rolf and Yasha were sitting on the other side of the courtyard, enjoying being outside for the first time in days. At least they would have been enjoying it had they both not been nursing what appeared to be huge hangovers. The last time Rolf had been in New York, he and Yasha had gotten into a bit of a drinking competition after our first mission together. Yasha had lost that time.

  This morning, Rolf actually looked worse than Yasha.

  Point for SPI New York.

  Rolf cradled his blond head in his hands. “Have American birds always been this loud?”

  Ms. Sagadraco had just told me that she had put out an APB on Phaeon and Isidor Silvanus with all supernatural law-enforcement agencies worldwide. And our contacts at the NYPD, FBI, and Interpol were working on their own charges, to get the mortal agencies in on the hunt.

  “Alain was aware of our difficulties within minutes of our being imprisoned,” Ms. Sagadraco said. “They took up residence outside the hotel disguised as workers cleaning the exterior of the building. They determined that the culprit was a pocket dimension, but they were unable to find a way to free us. They could not see through to the inside.”

  “If they couldn’t see in, neither could anyone else,” I said. “At least New Yorkers weren’t being treated to a show of bukas and flying monkeys.”

  “Alain arranged for the hotel to be cordoned off from the surrounding streets to prevent civilians from getting too close. If there had been a breach in the pocket dimension, it could have helped to minimize casualties.”

  I took a sip of my tea. “The Silvanus brothers went to a lot of trouble for a field test—though it would’ve gotten rid of most of their problems in one fell swoop, namely us and Rake. I guess if you’re going to be inter-dimensional supervillains, go big or go home. Was the first summit this eventful?”

  “Perhaps even more so.”

  I blinked. “You’re kidding?”

  “Not in terms of monsters coming out of mirrors, but many of the delegates who are banding together now were at each other’s throats last time. It was a miracle there weren’t any more deaths than there were. It took us most of the next hundred years to mend the diplomatic damage.”

  “So, an event like this is a success if no one dies.”

  The boss gave an elegant little shrug. “It’s about all I can reasonably hope for.”

  Not only had the delegates not tried to kill each other, they had protected each other, and helped with monster eradication. Heck, some of them had told me that they’d enjoyed themselves, that th
ere wasn’t nearly this much excitement at home. The only thing that would’ve made it better was if they’d still been able to do the tourist thing in the city. A lot of them wanted to stay to vacation a little—while still staying at the Regor Regency.

  Rake’s reputation as a host had not only emerged unscathed, it’d been elevated to legendary status.

  The dwarf delegation was going to stay a few extra days as well, to take care of the grimtog infestation. All of the monsters had been explained by the magetech generator—and the ones that had still been alive when the generator had been deactivated had vanished.

  Not the grimtogs.

  We had no idea what had brought them. Maybe it was simply bad dwarf beer god karma. Who knew? Anyway, the dwarves were going to stay and take care of it. They considered it the height of bad manners to leave a host to clean up a mess of their making.

  Rolf insisted (with a wink) that their extended stay had nothing to do with their inability to enjoy New York’s craft beer scene during the summit.

  “There you are!” boomed Mago Benares from the garden doorway. “Lord Danescu said that I might find the two of you here.”

  Ms. Sagadraco smiled warmly. “Ambassador Benares, we are almost finished and ready to go. Please join us.”

  I looked from one to the other. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “We have a little business to attend to in the penthouse,” the boss told me. “I thought it would be nice for you to be present for part of it.”

  “Okaaay. Does it have anything to do with your change in clothes?” I asked Mago. “Very nice, may I add.”

  Mago Benares would probably consider himself resplendent in his tailored midnight blue suit, crisp white shirt, and rich blue tie with an itty-bitty crossed sword pattern. Quite frankly, I thought he was hot. What can I say? Every girl’s crazy about a sharp-dressed man. And nothing looked better or hotter than a gorgeous man in a well-made suit.

  The elf gave me a gallant bow. “My thanks, Lady Makenna. Lord Danescu sent his tailor to me first thing this morning. The man is a wizard—quite literally. All I need now is a slight glamour for my ears, and I shall blend in perfectly on our excursion later today.”