by Scott Duff
With some relief on my part, the next step was emptying his lungs of blood and reinflating them. Probably not the best way to do this, but he was going to need cover soon anyway. I picked him up and started for the dorm. Blood started running out of his mouth again and he started coughing hard. I held him as close as I could, saying, “We’re going for cover, man. Just hold on, we’re running for cover.” I pulled the door open and looked cautiously down the hall. “How many more men are in this building?”
“Who wants to know?” his voice hoarse, barely above a whisper.
“I’m part of the rescue team sent to get you guys out of this, whatever this is. Now to keep you as safe as possible, I need to know how many of our enemy’s men are in this building.”
“Another ten, I think, still searching the floor above mine. Don’t think they found ‘em yet though.”
“Found ‘em? There are more of you hiding in the building?”
He had another coughing fit, poor kid. I tried to ease him through it as I clutched him close, moving into the building. The first room was a meeting room—sort of a game room, it looked like. It had a bunch of couches and chairs, tables and such. All of it overturned and ransacked. I went to the back of the room, shoving a couch around to block the view from the front. Setting him down carefully, I propped him up slightly at his shoulders and head, then looked at his chest again.
“What’s your name?” I asked once I got him situated. The smaller breaks would have to heal on their own. The break that punctured his lung might shift when he moved and re-puncture it. I didn’t think he’d survive that. Of course I was operating on instinct and no real knowledge.
“Jeff,” he mumbled. “Who’r you?”
“I’m Seth,” I said, making the headgear disappear so he could see my face. “Jeff, this is gonna hurt but I need to knit some ribs together so it doesn’t puncture your lung again, okay? Try to be still.”
“You’re Martin’s friend?” he slurred, barely audibly.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. The first break was close, so it was the easiest to fuse. His chest tightened against the pain of the moving bones, but I couldn’t put enough of myself into him to block the nerve impulses. I hoped I never got enough practice at it. I moved the rest of the shards in line as rapidly as I could and fused them together. His breathing was very shallow by then. I’d done what I could for him right then.
“Jeff, you said there were more students in this building?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Ian… brother… Martin… Jacob… I think that’s all.”
“So four of you?” I asked. “And about ten of them? All wearing camo, right?”
He nodded once at each question, grimacing with every motion. “All right, Jeff, this is what I need to do,” I said, clearing the armor away from my hands to make sure we had skin contact. Then I put my left on his shoulder and took his right hand, still dripping in his own blood and I pushed energy into him in a miasma of colors that filtered through my emotions and into his. He had to feel like he could make it through this situation. He had to have the will power to fight for his life. He was worth fighting for. He had someone fighting for him. “I need for you to stay alive, Jeff, while I find the others in the building. Then take care of the bad guys. You can stay alive for me, right, Jeff? Till I come back?”
“Yeah,” he answered, looking a bit rosy with the infusion.
“Good,” I smiled at him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I trotted back to the hall and down, listening for movement in the building. There was no sense of anyone else on the bottom floor, but if I could hide, surely someone else could. At the stairwell, I looked up. The outside wall was glass all the way up through the four floors, but it was built oddly so I could only see up to a mezzanine between the second and third. I wasn’t here to review the architecture.
I tiptoed up the stairs as fast as I could, staying to the sides of the stairwell. It occurred to me that the building lacked a number of features I was used to in my life. The lack of electrical wiring was what caught my attention first. If the attackers were normal humans, they probably thought more or less like I would about things like heating and cooling systems, general ventilation. There could be hundreds of cubby holes stashed in this building where they wouldn’t think to look. I decided to go for the top floor and work down and make adjustments to that plan as necessary.
Nothing to see on the second floor landing. Nice carpeting over the woodwork. The mezzanine level gave a nice view of three buildings further down the hill through an oak tree. Still no sounds came from above. I slipped a slight sound buffer around me and ran up the steps of the stairs and out on the fifth floor. At the top, I sneaked a peek down the hall and found it empty, but there was noise on this level. Men moving around. Pushing out my awareness, I could see them finally, some of them anyway. Six men on this floor. If Jeff was right, that meant that four were still unaccounted for in the building.
I stepped further down the hall, past three opened doors, checking the rooms as I passed them. The men were trashing the place as they went, leaving a light dusting of something behind them. I heard a faint gasp as I passed the third door and stopped. I turned and looked menacingly into the room. I hoped it was menacingly, anyway. The room looked empty, torn up but empty of people. Ephemeral traceries of magic lit the walls, floor, and ceiling, but you’d expect that in such a place, right? Then a slight movement near the outside wall caught my attention and the veil evaporated from my mind and I saw him, hiding in the crevice between the stone wall of the fireplace and drywall. His fear was palpable, once I knew he was there.
“Stay put,” I whispered. “I’ll be back when I get rid of them.” His eyes grew to the size of dinner plates when he realized I was talking to him and he tried to sink even further into the stone. He looked like he was twelve, maybe thirteen.
I turned back to the hall with angry determination and walked to the first occupied room. Three men to a room, one to guard while the two men searched, all three were armed. The guard held something out from him, a gold and ruby gem of some kind on a silver chain. They weren’t getting out of that room. At least, not in one piece.
“Hi, guys,” I said cheerfully, walking up beside the man with the gem. “Whatcha got there?” I was pretty sure he couldn’t see my smile through the armor, though. The two searching jumped, surprised by my voice, but being consummate professionals, my assumption, brought their weapons the bear on me while the guard fell away from me and the line of fire. He quickly brought his own handgun up.
“All I did was ask what the pretty rock was,” I said, then they started yelling at me. Yelling things like “Get down” and “On the floor, punk” except theirs had nastier language, violent, threatening, and demeaning. Their yelling was good in the respect that it got the other team’s attention on the otherwise quiet floor. A quick glance at the wall behind the guy on the floor showed their auras moving in this direction quickly. Good, that means I’ll get the six at once or at least in the same room.
“Day,” I said, softly, holding out my right hand, then went into motion. Three quick steps and I was between two of the gunmen. They started firing their semiautomatic weapons on the first step, but the Sword’s graceful magic kept me ahead of the bullet-stream. Then a sweeping semicircular motion a bit higher than my shoulders stifled both weapons and I was facing the door with two men still falling to the floor dead when the other three men entered the room running. They opened fire immediately, seeing the shining Sword and the green and black armor.
Time seemed to slow for me as the three separate streams of steel-jacketed lead headed for me at amazing speed and accuracy. My tiny amount of training kicked in and I bent back and away from all of them, twitching left and spinning against a table, changing my height slightly. The streams followed without touching me and still I moved left and up over the table. I swung the blade down to intercept two of the streams momentarily as my feet left the tabletop. It sent
them rebounding into the wall behind the men a half-second later, forcing them to separate for an easier swing. I dropped the Sword as I rolled face down on the floor behind a small sofa. Keeping my momentum going, I bounced up, kicking off the wall and jumped full force on the rock-holder of the first set of three men. Knocked the breath out of him and cracked a few ribs, too. Felt good. Calling the Night forward, I turned to move on the three new arrivals.
Then I froze. Another man appeared in the doorway, holding the boy from the room two doors back. The boy had a huge gash on his head that was bleeding profusely. And he’d wet his pants. The man held a gun jammed to the boy’s temple.
“Hold it right there, freak!” the man yelled at me. I stepped off his man, watching the boy and the gun. “Make another move and the boy dies.” He grinned wolfishly at me as I stood there and his men formed a loose circle around me, weapons ready to fire again.
He relaxed a little then and surveyed the room. He saw the bullet-ridden walls and the two decapitated men at the far end of the room, still bleeding out onto the carpeting. I waited patiently and politely for him to finish.
“Bullet-proof armor, huh?” he growled at me.
“Don’t know,” I shrugged. “They haven’t hit me yet.”
The man stared at me without a word for a few seconds. “Drop the sword.”
The Night Sword fell obligingly to the floor, so one of the gunmen bent to pick it up, keeping his eyes on me.
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” I warned, staying completely still. He ignored me, of course. As his hand wrapped around the hilt, I felt the Sword questing outward for me. I felt a rush of gratitude from it. It knew I’d let others hold the Day and it was making certain this was not another of my friends it was about to eat. I gave it my assent. The man’s screams lasted longer than his physical body existed, thanks to the acoustics of the room, roughly a second and a half longer. His entire aura was enveloped by a quick wave of black smoke that left behind about a half a pound of some sort of soda ash that fell to the floor. The soft thud of the Night Sword on the carpet signaled the end of his scream.
“Warned him,” I said sadly.
The two around me rattled their weapons as they tensed and took a half step back. The man holding the boy tightened his grip on him, inhaling sharply. The man on the floor scuttled away like a crab, holding his chest with one arm and his pistol aimed at me.
“What did you do to him!” he barked angrily.
“Me?” I asked innocently. “Nothing, but some things don’t like to be touched. That’s one of them. I did warn you.” The Day Sword’s scabbard clunked against my thigh and the Crossbow hung heavily on my back. They didn’t ask for those.
“That does bring up an interesting question, though,” I said, thoughtfully. I decided it was time to get a little sneaky on this thing impersonating a man. The two gemstones they were carrying had a passive magic attached to them, both easily wiped out and not threatening to me at all. In fact, they didn’t register to me in any way. They did register to the boy. That’s how I figured how what they were. They were measuring aura strength in some way. I mean, for some reason. I could see how it worked.
“Why, exactly,” I started asking, and as I did I sent the Armor home and the Stone set a cylindrical shield around me from floor to ceiling. I wanted these men to see the boy who was going to kill them. Damn, I was feeling cold now. “Does a group of men bearing conventional arms come into a school of magic and start killing children? Surely there’s someone here who could take you on.”
“Think of us as the clean-up crew,” he said, grinning. He thought he’d won. “You come along quietly and the boy won’t get a bullet to the brain.”
“He won’t,” I said matter-of-factly. “He won’t get hurt at all from this point forward. Not from you, anyway. There are many things that you don’t seem to understand about standing in the middle of a school of magic. The first being that you would definitely run into people who know how to do magic.”
Stealing a page from Harris’ book of tricks, I made four different portals, each about inch across and slipped the openings around each man’s weapon. The other ends, I put directly in front of each of the four gunmen, aiming their own weapons at them directly between their eyes. I rushed forward and grabbed the man’s arm hard, pulling the boy loose. The men started moving around, trying to shake the guns from their face in some way, but I held the portals in place while I dragged the boy a little back into the room.
“Stay this time,” I said to him sharply, halfway back. From here, he couldn’t quite see the gory mess of the decapitated bodies. He nodded up at me, his lips quivering in fear and his looks darting quickly between me and the men with the gun problems. They were getting more aerobic in their attempts but still hadn’t released their weapons. I went for a pistol off one of the dead bodies and one of the small radios they carried. As I stood up, I called the Day Sword off the floor and sent it up my arm for the time being. They all knew we weren’t done fighting for the day, but at this point the kid needed to see me as a human.
“What’s your name?” I asked as I came even, putting my hand on his shoulder.
“Jacob,” he said, quietly. He was an inch or two shorter than me, slight build, curly brown hair cut too long for him, and a prominent nose that together gave him a mousy appearance.
“Jacob, do you know how many of you are in this building?” I asked him.
He shook his head no. And he was lying to me. It was clear as a bell in his aura, and his body language, and his voice cracked. I grinned at him, “You’re a terrible liar, Jacob, but I have to get everyone out of this building to safety. What’s Ian’s brother’s name?”
“Michael, I think,” he said.
“Jeff said there’s you, Ian, his brother, and Martin in the building with ten of them. Does that sound right to you?” I asked moving us to the door, past the gun waving men as they continued to jerk and spasm, still trying to get their weapons out of their faces. If it weren’t a horrendous situation, it’d be funny to watch.
“Jeff’s okay?” he asked, his voice full of hope.
“He’s hurt really bad, Jacob,” I said seriously. “I did what I could, but he needs better help than me. That means you and me need to get rid of them as fast as possible. Now Jacob, please, how many of you are there in this building.” I was getting frustrated.
“Me, Jeff, Ian, Michael, Martin,” he said, ticking the names off on his hand. “That’s all I know of.”
“Okay, Jacob, that’s good. Let’s go,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him through the door. “Stay close and my shields will cover you.”
I pulled the door closed as we left and went to the next room, pushing out for energy signatures, any hint of power use. Then we called out names. Nothing. We went to the next room and tried the next, and the next. It didn’t make sense to me that they had six guys searching for Jacob. I didn’t think Jeff’s estimate of ten could be right, but I also didn’t think that someone could have been on the next floor down and not heard the hellacious noise from their barrage against me earlier.
Speaking of barrages, the four men needed taking care of. It was simpler than I thought it’d be. I already had a portal centered on their guns. I just sent an electrical charge through each one, forcing the hand to spasm. Boom times four. It was sickening but necessary.
“Is there another way down to the next floor?” I asked Jacob, looking back. He’d stayed very close, fearful that he’d lose me. We stood at the end of the hall and had searched all ten roomy suites, including closets, utility rooms and miscellaneous other small spaces that seemed unused currently.
“No, just the main stairs,” he said quietly, so I moved us down the hall to the stairs. As we passed it, I felt Jacob turn toward the closed door and shudder. That reaction I understood completely, I just didn’t have the time to join in.
“Where’s your room?” I asked.
“Third floor.”
“W
hen we get down to that floor and make sure it’s safe, you change clothes into something less bright, more durable. Shoes you can run in, rubber soles. We still have to get off the campus and we don’t know what we’ll run into, okay?” He nodded. He was also starting to stink, poor little guy. “Now wait here for a moment and let me make certain the next landing is safe.”
I left him at the rail and tiptoed down the steps, looking down over the rail. That’s when I realized I’d gotten back into a stealth mode instead of the brazen attack from the hilltop. Looking up told me why: Jacob, Jeff, and anybody else still on the campus. I may be mad as hell and powerful because of the weapons Ethan gave me, but I couldn’t protect everybody. Especially if I didn’t know they were there. Still, I could be more obvious in this building, and I had three students and three or more soldiers to find and I needed to speed this up.
I waved Jacob down. Once he’d clumped down hurriedly, we started yelling their names and beating on doors, literally. We were back to the stairs a few minutes later empty handed. We repeated our pattern down the steps with Jacob waiting on the fourth while I scouted the landing on the third, except this time, I did hear someone. Looks like we found some soldiers, finally. I put my finger to my lips and waved Jacob down in slow motion. He took the clue and stepped lightly. We stepped lightly out into the hall and I motioned Jacob behind me to my left with me in the center of the hall.
They’d found something and were trying to dig it out. We’d found them and there were more of them than we thought.