by Scott Duff
Peter was performing some kind of triage action on one of the boys, not exactly healing his injuries but stopping them from getting any worse and dulling the pain somewhat. Jacob and Ian stood close by, watching and eager to help. They were still scared by the fact they couldn’t quite see all of Peter, but they could see the results of what he was doing.
Peter looked up at them and said, “Talk to them. If you know them, say their names and tell them we’re here to help. We’ll get them more help and we’ll get them home as soon as we can, okay?” They nodded and knelt down beside the hurt boys and started talking to them softly in whispered encouragement. Peter moved to the next boy. I hated to interrupt him.
“Peter, can you take the cell from me? I need to clear the rest of the campus and I might lose control of it,” I asked.
“I’ll do it,” said Gordon, breaking his embrace with Martin, wiping away his tears. “Martin, help Peter now. Let’s be useful here. This is what Da has been training us to do, after all.” That was an interesting statement to hear. I’d have to remember to ask about that later.
Gordon straightened up as Martin moved over to help with the first aid. Crossing his arms over his chest, he slowly insinuated himself into the control structures I held over the cell walls. The gun-and-portal trick I’d played had faded with the lightning show so all of them were watching us. Their fear was conspicuous.
“You people have taught me two things today,” Gordon said loudly to the group. “First is that I could kill a man if I had to. Second, I never really hated anyone before today. I only thought that was hate. Just give me a reason…” He made the ground shake with emphasis—and I don’t think he did it on purpose, either.
The wards needed to be reset to be effective, but that was a secondary goal. Primary was saving the survivors and getting rid of the soldiers. I had enough control of what still existed to sense where everyone was, just not of their defensive powers. We’d cut a huge swath into their middle without realizing it, taking out half of their fighting force at the same time. To do anything about the rest, I’d have to be within sight of them. Not a problem. I shut the front gate from where I stood.
I held out my hand for Ian and said, “Come on, Ian. Let’s go get Michael.”
Chapter 42
Ian took my hand and we headed for the auditorium. Gordon was having the men disarm. We were taking prisoners now apparently. I understood the decision from defending ourselves. I wasn’t sure I had the cold-blooded murderer in me, either, even if I hated them as much as Gordon did. And I refused to allow myself to consider flash-frying the five sociopathic rapists as cold-blooded murder. File that under pest control, beside monster.
“Is Michael a’right?” asked Ian as we got closer to the door, squeezing my hand tightly.
“He seems to be, but he is hurt,” I said to him. “They’ve left him alone at the moment, turning their attention to their missing men.”
There was movement around the door we were about to use. The wards here were spotty, most likely because of the psychic onslaught of the murders and beatings that had occurred outside the building recently. I pushed out harder with my augmented second sight, focusing on the energy patterns beyond the walls and fixed on four auras around the door, two on either side. They’d seen us coming. From the layout of the land and the direction of the building, I guessed that they could see Gordon standing ominously in front of the other soldiers, but not Peter and the other boys kneeling close to the ground administering what aid they could.
“Ian,” I said, looking down at him. “As long as you hold my hand, you will be completely safe from the four men around the door. Okay?” He looked up at me and nodded, pale blue eyes wide with fear. His aura said it all, though. He was going to help his brother and no simple fear was going to stand in his way.
We stepped through the door and paused to let our eyes adjust to the dimness.
“Hold it right there, hellspawn!” a gruff voice demanded to my left, shoving the muzzle of a weapon into my back. It might have hurt, but the Stone only let me feel a slight pressure. I snickered.
“Hellspawn?” I asked, still snickering. “That’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“I saw what your friend did with the witchfire,” the man growled. “Hellspawn works just fine. Now move. Commander wants you.”
That sounded promising. “Good,” I said, turning to the speaker and smiling. “I’d like to meet that man before I kill him.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right. Move.” He waved his weapon toward one of his men in the hall for Ian and me to follow so I followed, taking a leisurely pace. The spokesman took up behind us, leaving the other two at the door to guard it. It was a useless tactic because as soon as we were out of their sight I tossed both of them through portals and dropped them into the holding cell Gordon was keeping. From thirty feet up in the air. I needed to thank Harris for teaching me how useful portals could be against the unprepared.
The man led us through three different corridors, studiously avoiding the auditorium itself. I couldn’t see the room through the wards, but I could feel the hotspots there. They’d taken casualties from someone in there. So they had issues treading through their own blood, but none with treading through ours. How… grossly hypocritical of them. When they attempted to change our path away from Ferrin toward their commander, I just pushed them both through a portal to Gordon’s cell rather than deal with them. Ian and I went our own way then. After the first two, Gordon didn’t bat an eyelash when others got added in or that they started from a height.
We turned into the hall leading directly to the auditorium. The building contained several small amphitheaters surrounding one big one. The two surviving adults had been taken to the largest one and held there in some sort of cage. This cage was the first magical implement other than the gemstones that I’d seen the soldiers using. It was far more complex than the gems and it was active magic, not passive. They had help setting this trap. I studied the trap from the time we entered the room, but Ian didn’t see it until we stepped up onto the stage.
“Michael!” he shouted the moment he saw his brother and tried to run to him.
“No!” I jerked him back by the hand and scooped him up by the waist with my free hand. “You touch the cage and it’ll hurt you both. Let me get him out first.” He wriggled furiously in my arms, trying to get free. “Ian! Let me get him out!”
“Yon?” croaked Ferrin inside the cage. He was barely recognizable as he lifted his head off the floor, one eye swollen shut.
“Mikey,” Ian cried out. “We’re coming, Mikey. Hold on.”
“McClure,” he hissed. “You behind this?”
“Yeah, Ferrin, that’s me,” I said sarcastically. “I couldn’t kill you in Faery so I concocted this convoluted trap just for you.”
The cage they had him in was made of brass and there were eight of them on the stage in different stages of readiness. Four lay at the edge of the stage, collapsed but ready for use. Two others were currently empty, but had recently been used—there was blood and other bodily fluids on the floor—and two currently in use with Ferrin and another man, a teacher presumably. The bars were etched with sigils that locked into the ley lines once activated. They fed that power back and forth through a complicated pattern, creating greater oscillations inside the cage. Anyone trying to reach for energy from the leys got a lot more than they bargained for as a result. It was almost the exact opposite of what Peter called my Faraday cage and definitely more cruel to the occupant. It was a pressure cooker that fueled itself and I couldn’t see a relief valve anywhere.
I felt the spell taking hold in the air as it flew toward us unbelievably fast, but the Night was faster, burning through the air as it snapped a broad circle in front of Ian and me. The coalescing fireball stopped in midair and the Sword punctured the middle of its circle and slurped the magic up noisily. Ian jumped at the sudden display and wrapped both arms around my waist. I took advantage of my now free h
and and called the Crossbow out, firing five times at the fuzzy spot starting to run offstage. The elf got two, maybe three steps before the first Bolt hit his shoulder, sending him spinning. He didn’t cry out when the other three hit his chest in a line, slamming him back against the wall, pinning him there. The fifth Bolt hit dead center between his eyes. I don’t think I’ll forget those eyes.
I turned back to Ferrin and his cage and started draining away the energy from the room. If I had any hope of getting either Ferrin or the teacher out, I needed to stop the amplitude magnifications first. I sent the Crossbow home, but kept the Night at hand, kneeling down at Ferrin’s cage with Ian beside me. Taking the cages off their power supplies wasn’t enough, though. It was a devious trap to get thrown into, almost an oubliette except it was visible. But I was not without options as the Night Sword hummed in my hand. Its influence pushed on my consciousness so I followed where it led and dove into the foam of reality to feel my way through the charms that held sway on the brass bars.
From outside, I could see the relationships the sigils held between each other and how the energies shifted and flowed through each. What I didn’t see was the dependence on the medium. The sword wasn’t seeing this dependence either. It wasn’t a true intelligence hiding in the ebony blade, or in any of the tools, not that I could define exactly what it was. Or if it was intelligent, it was truly alien. But once I saw the need for brass at the beginning, I figured out how to break the spell, I just needed to figure out where to start.
I pulled back out to myself and touched the Night sword tentatively to the side of the cage. It sparked lightly against the Sword. I followed the trail of the spark back and carved the sigil off the bar that started the current flow. Then I followed the trail up to each occurrence of that sigil, again carving off each instance of it until it was completely removed from the brass bars. Ferrin sighed heavily in relief when I sliced of the last one, breaking the connection between the cage and him. There was a huge backwash of power from him as the cage lost its ability to hold its energy within the cell. He’d been using all his strength to push back against the cage and as it lost its cohesion, the energy he was pushing had somewhere to go finally.
The door to the cage swung open on its own. Ian was watching me, eagerly waiting for my permission to help his brother. A quick nod from me and he was greased-lightning in helping Ferrin to crawl out of the cage. I repeated the procedure on the second cage to release the other man. He was in far worse condition than Ferrin, barely alive and breathing.
I tapped my earpiece. “Peter?”
“Yeah?” he answered.
“I’m about to send you another survivor in need of medical attention and the Ferrin brothers. Then I’m going after the rest of them,” I said. “Can you handle it?”
“All I can do is stabilize them for a while but yeah,” he said in my ear. “You sure you don’t want help?”
“I’d love some company,” I answered. “If you think Gordon can handle that alone.”
“Well, funny you should mention that,” he said. That sounded ominous enough for me to look out over the field to see what was happening. Gordon was sitting on the grass next to Martin, both facing away from the still active cell. Close by were the five beaten boys I didn’t yet know, either laying back or sitting up, interspersed with the boys I did know. They were talking quietly to each other, waiting and fearing I wouldn’t come back and something awful—more awful—was just around the corner. What was wrong with the cell? The walls were still up and active, containing the men, wait… None of them were alive.
“After you left, Gordon was making them disarm. Had them pile their weapons in a corner, then he melted them to slag. Rinse and repeat. Shortly after your last two, some idiot yelled out something about us being hellspawn and tried to lob two hand grenades over the walls of the cell. His neck was snapped before the grenades bounced off the first wall. His friends didn’t appreciate what he did in the least, seeing as they already knew the walls were too high.”
“Huh,” was all I could say to that. Twenty-one people were dead because of one idiot. “We tried.”
Two men turned down the hall coming to the auditorium. I had less than a minute before they’d be in the room with us. I had to get these three out of harm’s way.
“Up and at ‘em, boys. Time to leave,” I said, slowly lifting the hurt teacher up off the floor. “Ian, help me out here, please.” Ian scurried over and took the teacher’s other side so we were able to get him to close to standing. “Ferrin, come take his other side, so I can send you three out. Hurry, we’re running short on time.”
“No,” he growled, “I can help you take these fuckers.” He was weaving in place as he said this.
“Ferrin,” I said irritably, slamming the doors closed on the men trying to come into the auditorium. “I know you’re quite capable. We need you to help protect those less able to protect themselves.”
“Protection isn’t my forte,” he grumbled.
“Maybe,” I said, looking pointedly at Ian, “but there are nine kids out there that need it and your forte is adapting, so adapt.”
He hobbled over to us quickly, grumbling the entire way. “You are a bossy little cu…” I skipped the three of them outside before he finished his statement and threw the auditorium doors open, letting the two men banging on them in. One fell over his own feet from the change in momentum, the other one rushed in almost on top of him. I just stood at the edge of the stage with my hands clasped behind my back, grinning at them.
“Take me to your leader,” I said, still grinning when they finally got enough together to threaten me in unison. They ogled the empty cages for a second, then waved their guns back the way they came. One took the lead and one followed me.
“Seth, I’ll be there in a minute,” Peter said in my ear. “And Gordon’s got another cell set up for you. You don’t even have to think about where it is. He’s got a chute rigged so you can drop ‘em same place as before.”
“Cool,” I responded, then added with a sing-song voice, “Incoming.” I skipped the guy in back over the cell and watched outside as he fell from thirty feet in the air, then hit an invisible slide at twenty and tumbled to the ground. That had to hurt.
The leader whirled around, taking my warning for him and took aim for my chest. I slid a portal around the muzzle about three inches and cast the end pointing out into his face, just like the others, but this time the effect only operated when he aimed at me. It meant I’d have to keep track of him for a bit, but, hey, he was pointing a lethal weapon at me.
“I’d suggest that you point that elsewhere,” I told the man, cocking my head to the right to see past the barrel, “you’ll only be hurting yourself.” The shield of the Stone would hold up to a lot more energy than the bullets his weapon would fire, even in this diluted form.
The man jerked his rifle down angrily. “Whatya do wit’ Spense?” he growled.
I cocked my head again and with absolute serenity said to the man, “Far less than you people did to the groundskeepers, to little boys and to little girls. Now move along.”
He looked startled, but turned on his heel and led me down the hall, turning left to go up the stairs. Peter opened the door for us at the top of the stairs, again startling the soldier. I tripped the portal open into his face again.
“If you’d prefer,” I offered cheerfully, “we could completely disarm you. That way you couldn’t hurt yourself.”
“Oh, let me,” Peter interrupted with a childish glee. “Gordon showed me a couple of really neat magnetics I hadn’t seen before.”
The man’s head snapped back and forth between us. “I’d like to see you try,” he said with as much bravado as he could muster. He had confidence in himself but he didn’t understand what he was up against and it showed. I wonder if there was a wizard’s version of poker.
“The ferrous blends are the easiest and I think we might be able to link in the portals you’re using,” Peter said. As he
spoke, he pushed a wave of energy over the man that he more than likely wouldn’t feel as it resonated too low in our spectral range for light and sound. It did, however, provide enough differentiation to latch a spell to or to wrap a spell around, like a portal. Blocks of metal hummed quite nicely for us and provided a ghostly image of the object without too much fuss.
“Give it a try,” I said. “It sounds neat. And the ultimate in pickpocket techniques should I ever have the need. Well, if it works. Go ahead. Kick the mule.”
“Kick the mule?” the soldier asked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“He means let’s get started. We pulled him from the woods just recently,” said Peter smiling sympathetically. “He has a different way of saying things. He is suggesting that I go ahead and take this out of your hands and dispose of it.” Peter was holding the man’s rifle up to him in example. He paled rapidly as he realized he’d lost his grip on the weapon.
“Cool!” I said. “What about stuff like the knife in his boot?”
“Give it a try,” suggested Peter as he pulled the man’s pistol from the holster on his waist. I tugged on the metal knife, slipping the dimensional portal spell over its cool, slick surface and slipped it through space to my hand.
“Hm. I suppose with some practice I could get the sheath, too,” I said, “but, that’s still pretty cool.” The paramilitary man was backed against the door we’d just come through and was beginning to come apart as we basically undressed him piece by piece. I was familiar with the feeling, but I wasn’t going to let him know that.
“Shall we continue?” I said to him, waving a hand to the hall.
He was hesitant to move, but he decided we weren’t going to give him much choice in the matter and led us to the first floor conference room. Posted outside the room were two guards that took notice instantly that our guide was weapon-less and Peter was holding several rather loosely in his hands, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with them. They raised their rifles, only to find them pointing back at them between their eyes.