by Scott Duff
Ahem. “Peter, who do you suppose that is?” I asked nodding toward the monitors and crossing my arms on my chest. Huh. How do ya like that. Apparently, I was a bit jealous of the attention Peter was showing Dillon. Or maybe it was Dillon was showing Peter over me. For whatever the reason I felt the need to show off the goods. I wasn’t built as well as Ethan or Kieran, but I’ve had a lot of call to use my upper body strength lately, both in training and in the field. And I admit I was a bit pleased when Dillon watched me while Peter and I studied the monitor and he thought I couldn’t see him. A month ago, I wouldn’t have. With great power comes a great stroke of the ego.
I have got to get over myself.
Another pair came in about fifteen seconds behind the first one. “Peter, we have company,” I said. “This can’t be normal.”
“No, it can’t,” Peter agreed. “Dillon, call up camera eighteen please and focus it on the rail.”
Dillon moved quickly back around his desk and typed on his keyboard, a definite disadvantage to an inset system. The top right monitor changed to show a long range shot of the rail from across the dance floor. He reached into a small cabinet to his right and pulled out a handheld computer pad and started touching and prodding it to life. In a moment, he was standing beside us with his computer in his palm, already adjusting the camera to show us a better picture and to follow the man and his tail.
The man moved past the rail to sit at the bar and order a beer. The tail found a tall bar table recently vacated and overtook it just as a mob of surfer types seemed destined to win a beach. Apparently, their fuzziness threatened where the jeans, white T-shirts, and black leather jackets just look like a uniform. Of course, there were a lot of uniforms around here, I thought.
“That’s Ferrin,” I said, finally recognizing the man at the bar. “What’s he doing here?”
“Meeting us. I’m his ride,” Peter said, grinning.
Chapter 50
“Does Mike know this is a gay bar?” I asked Peter.
“He’s lived in London for years,” he answered noncommittally.
“Two more coming in,” said Dillon. “What’s causing this? And why only on the faces? That’s some pretty cool gear. Why is this camera getting your friend’s image?”
“It’s across the floor with about twenty different mirrors angling between it and him,” said Peter. “See if you can get twenty-four turned on the two at the table.”
Dillon started rapidly tapping on the remote. One of the blanked screens flared to life and showed a distant part of the room, a darkened doorway where a few bare-chested men were slipping furtively behind a dark curtain. The image swiveled away to the much brighter bacchanalia. He tried several different commands but the picture never increased beyond a colorful blur. Dillon shook his head.
“No joy. It’s too far away,” he said. Turning to Peter, he asked again, “How are they doing this? You said something about the mirrors. How are mirrors being between the focal point and the camera affecting the picture? Just by their presence? That doesn’t make sense, Peter. What’s going on here?” Dillon was getting aggravated and concerned. There was too much happening around him that he didn’t understand. Poor guy, I understood that first hand.
“Dillon,” Peter said in a calm and placating voice, but still watching the monitors, “I told you a year ago that there was more in the world than what fit into your mold of reality. I even showed you a small part of it, remember?”
“That parlour trick?” Dillon snorted out. “What’s really going on here, Peter?”
“Turn on camera fifty-one, Dillon,” Peter said quietly, still not taking his eyes off the monitors. He met my quick glance at him. Peter was worried, both about Ferrin and Dillon. The second pair of tails met up with the first at the table. We couldn’t tell what they were doing because we couldn’t tell exactly where they were all facing, really. A bar server passed near them and they apparently caught his attention long enough to order something.
In the meantime, a second blanked monitor had come to life and yielded a picture of the three of us. Dillon stood in profile, facing the backside of Peter and me. The lens was wide enough to show from our knees to above our heads. Or rather, to the fuzzy area where our heads should be. Dillon gasped.
“How are you doing this?” he asked, frustrated.
“The same way Seth is holding that sword, the two cds, and you wouldn’t believe what else,” Peter said. I flashed Dillon a quick, innocent smile then looked back to the monitors.
“I see two questions here,” Peter said, turning to me. “’Does he know he’s being followed?’ And ‘Is he being followed for something he’s done or because someone knows he’s with us?’ Two entirely different circumstances.”
“No easy way to tell, either,” I responded. “If one of us goes down there, we’re caught immediately. Even with a disguise we suffer from the mannequin problem.”
“Stop!” yelled Dillon. He was not a happy gay bar owner, all red-faced and confused. “What the hell is going on here?”
Peter sighed heavily again. “For the last time, Dillon, get this through that thick skull of yours. There is more to the universe than you are aware of. Magic exists in the world. Magicians, witches, and wizards exist. There are seven examples of mages that do not wish to be identified on cameras right in front of you. Take the hint.
“Now, make the bottom row of monitors show the outside of the building all around,” Peter finished while pointing at the screens. Dillon took a moment to process what Peter said, then mechanically tapped the remote. The bottom row changed to outside pictures except that two of them immediately rolled into interference patterns and never resolved. “Damn,” muttered Peter. “There’s more of them in the parking garage, then, and in the park, too.”
“Does Ferrin have a phone?” I asked.
“No, he throws off too much to carry a cell reliably,” answered Peter. I nodded in understanding while Dillon shook his head in confusion. We were talking Greek to him. The thought drew a small chuckle from me. How the tables had turned and so quickly!
“Why are they bothering hiding from cameras?” I asked Peter. “Doesn’t that seem out of place a bit to you?”
“Why? What do you mean?” Peter asked.
“Well, the camera picks up an outward appearance, right?” I said, trying to follow the logic through to its illogical consequences. I turned toward the camera hidden above the television behind us. “So if I wanted to hide or just not be recognized from that camera, all I would have to do is change my appearance, like so…” I concentrated on making a thin shield around myself, shifting light ever so slightly to mirror Dillon standing a few feet away. The monitor changed to show Peter suddenly surrounded by mirror images of Dillon.
Both Peter and Dillon jumped in surprise. “Seth, stop that!” Peter called out loudly, his hand shooting out to my shoulder. Just as suddenly, he was laughing hard and falling into a chair before he fell on the floor. Dillon was leaning on his desk, pale and shocked at the display. He was also starting to be afraid of us. Too much strangeness for him, I supposed.
“I had a dream like that once,” gasped Peter as his laughter slowed. Dillon flashed him a look I couldn’t decipher and his emotions were roiling too much for me to pin down right then. “That is a good point, I guess,” Peter said.
“It looks like I won’t be meeting your other friends tonight, Peter,” I said. “We need to figure out what’s going on here and disarm the situation before someone gets hurt.” Someone like your other friends. Dillon. Us.
“We need to know their intent,” Peter said. “How many of them are there and what kind of collateral damage they are willing to commit to get to their goal. How do we do that?”
“Your pigeon’s on the move,” Dillon said quietly from the desk. We both turned to the monitors to see Ferrin’s fuzzy-headed body slowly moving past the bar and around toward the back side of the dance floor, away from the table of four tails. Two of the four stood,
splitting up and slowly flanking each side of the gyrating, flashing madness.
“Dillon, can you bring up a floorplan of this building on that monitor?” I asked, pointing at the big monitor behind us.
“Somewhat,” he mumbled, looking down at his remote in thought. He turned to the keyboard and hit several keys upside down, then he went back to the remote for more. He brought up five architectural design scans. Two floors melded together in several places, creating one big area except where structurally necessary. The building was converted and adjusted many times over. The three of us huddled around the big monitor.
“We are here,” Dillon said, pointing to a room on the third floor. His apartment took a third of the floor space with the rest used as storage and access to equipment below, like the lights. I didn’t see direct access from his apartment to that area at all. “Ferrin is here and his tails roughly here and here and here,” Dillon said. He was still disturbed as he pointed out these positions for us but he was coping now.
“We need to see one of them,” muttered Peter to himself. “Direct line of sight, without them seeing us first. How do we do that?”
“People who do magic, mages or wizards or whatever you call them, see the world differently than you do,” I told Dillon. “When these people look at other people, they see an aura around them, sort of like a thermographic image that shows a lot of different aspects of that person. Depending on the sensitivity of the mage, he can read that aura to tell things about that person. Another mage’s aura, though, is obvious. It’s quite a bit brighter, like comparing a candle to a hundred-watt light bulb. That’s not saying the mage is better, mind you, just that moving energy around increases the brightness considerably.
“Peter and I have the exact opposite problem,” I continued to explain. “For whatever reason, what my brother is teaching us is hiding our auras completely. We can hide in a room full of furniture, but we stand out in a room full of people. The mannequin problem.”
“How… odd,” was all Dillon could come up with. I couldn’t disagree with the assessment. “Does Ferrin have the same problem, then?”
“No,” replied Peter, “just the family.” I found the comment intriguingly pleasing.
“But he should be able to tell if those four are mages or not, right? And you need to know that?” he asked. “Tell me what else you need from him and I’ll go ask.”
“No, you can’t get involved,” Peter objected. “It could get dangerous.”
“The way you two are acting now says it’s dangerous now,” he said, rising to his feet. “Is it? Or are you just being a drama queen?”
Peter grimaced. “The last time somebody followed one of us, it ended violently. They didn’t fare well against Seth. A lot of people died.”
“Blame me!” I said defensively. “You and Gordon took care of your share of the violence.”
“The lion cub roars,” Peter murmured with a grin, then he sobered, looking at Dillon. “Okay, you’re right, Dillon. It’s already dangerous, but let’s make this as danger free as we can get it. Go change into something less… ‘you’ while Seth and I decide what you need to find out from Ferrin.”
“Less ‘me’?” Dillon asked, incredulous.
“Just pretend your last trick is beating on your door,” Peter said, snarkily.
“That’s what I pay Corey for,” Dillon replied with equal cattiness, crossing his arms on his chest. I definitely wasn’t understanding what they were actually talking about any better than their relationship, because they both seemed to be enjoying this. And I had no idea what a trick was or why it would be knocking on Dillon’s door.
I tried one. “Go make yourself less hot, Dillon.”
“Now he’s a good boy,” Dillon said. “That I understand.” He strutted out of the room, turning slightly at the door to angle his arms out so he didn’t have to relax his tensed biceps. Peter watched him through the glass walls until he disappeared into the closet in his bedroom.
I picked up the remote and studied it for a minute. The interface was simple on the first glance. But certain motions on the screen brought up different menu options that quickly became confusing. I was able to control the positioning of certain cameras, though, and that would do until Dillon came back.
“You’re still carrying a torch for him, aren’t you?” I asked quietly. I didn’t know how well Dillon could hear into this room so I didn’t want my voice to carry far.
Peter’s attention snapped back to me gently and he smiled. “Yeah, to some degree, I suppose I always will love him,” he said. “Don’t tell him I said that. There just wasn’t enough right to hold us together, is all.”
“Well, maybe someday,” I said optimistically.
“Why Seth McClure,” he said with mock surprise, falling into a chair. “A romantic? I would never have imagined.”
I snickered. “So when do I get to meet some of the stereotypes?”
“Damn, Seth, there are half a dozen of ‘em on the screens right now,” he said, pointing at the middle row.
All I saw were a bunch a guys in leather. In odd places. I knew there was some sort of fetish associated to it. I think that at the moment, I had too many other things going on to worry about someone else’s sexual appetites. “On to more concrete issues then?”
Sitting up in his seat, he ticked off points on his hand as we said them, “If he knows he’s being followed…” One.
“Normal or magical…” I said. Two.
“How many does he know about…” He said. Three.
“How many are outside…” I said. Four. “Wait, who exactly are they after, anyway?”
“Well,” Peter said, cautiously, “if he knows anything at all about them in the first place, it’s possible he’s in with them, after all. I barely know him at all and you’ve had two incidents with him that I wasn’t present for. One of those times, he was trying to kidnap you. How much do you trust him?”
“This bloke tried to kidnap you?” Dillon exclaimed from the doorway. “Let the wolves have at him, then!” We both looked at him and were more surprised by his looks than his reaction. He was very “un-Dillon” right then. He wore baggy jeans that barely hung on his hips and showed a few inches of his dark blue designer name boxers. He wore a light blue, nondescript work shirt with the name “Bob” ironed on and peeking out behind the worn silk jacket of what I assumed was a local sports team of some kind. He finished his disguise with some dirty canvas trackers and a ballcap for the same team as the jacket he wore. Somehow, he’d manage to look like he’d gained twenty pounds and lost a couple of inches of height, too. All in all, it looked like a pretty effective disguise to me.
Peter, on the other hand, was drooling. I elbowed him. “Um, yeah, Dillon, that’s perfect,” he said, trying desperately to recover his grace.
“We may need to recognize, though, that we might not find out anything at all here,” I said. “We may just have to grab Ferrin and run.”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “It might be best for everybody, but that would really suck for us.”
“Why? What’s wrong with that?” Dillon asked.
“We don’t know what they’ll do here after we leave, for one thing,” Peter said. “For another, we’re involved in a war right now, Dillon, and they’re the enemy that we know nothing about.”
“A war. Now you’re just blowin’ smoke up my ass,” he said in disbelief.
“Close to three hundred people died in the last week over this, Dillon,” Peter said. “Some of those people were children. I couldn’t be more serious.” They stared at each other for a long moment. Dillon gave in first.
“Aw’ight, then,” he said softly. “Can’t you just magic the information out of them?”
“I don’t know of any way, but I’m sure they exist,” Peter said slowly. Then he looked at me expectantly. I didn’t know what he was getting at.
“What?”
“Well, you know my life’s story…” He let the sentence hang there. And it
hung there to appall me. My jaw dropped and Dillon, who didn’t—couldn’t—understand what Peter meant, took a step back and to the side. If Dillon couldn’t tell how mad that made me, then Peter could. I certainly made no attempt to hide it, or how badly it hurt. He was mentally backpedaling furiously, trying to come up with the right thing to say to placate me. Tall order, I thought. He hadn’t figured out why it ticked me off yet.
“Go home, Peter,” I said, tightly. “Go home and think about all the ways that thought is wrong.” I sent him back to his room at the Cahill’s. If he objected, I didn’t feel it and if the Cahill’s wards were up, I didn’t feel those either. I was just too damn mad. How could he ask me to do that to someone knowing how I felt when I had to do it to him? I turned and kicked the wall behind me hard, at the same time yelling, “Damn it!” The fake marble shattered, engulfing my foot at least three inches. Dillon gasped behind me.
I just stood with my forehead against the wall breathing heavily and trying to calm myself with my foot in the wall for a few minutes before trying to extricate myself. Dillon finally got up the nerve to ask, “What did you do to Peter?”
“I sent him home,” I answered as calmly as possible, still facing away from him. I didn’t want him to see the tears running down my face, though I wasn’t sure how long I could hide that.
“Is he coming back?”
“Not tonight,” I said. “Well, at least not without help and even then it’ll take time. I still need to help Ferrin.” I turned around and wiped the tears out of my eyes. I needed to help Ferrin and if Dillon turned me out because I booted Peter out then I’d just deal with it. “Are you still going to help?”
“Um, yeah, I suppose,” he said cautiously. “You gonna tell me what that was all about?”
I shook my head no. “Let Peter explain it,” I said, hoarsely. “Maybe by that time, he’ll understand why it was so reprehensible.”
“Ha, that’s my Pete,” he said with a small smile. “He always did know just the wrong thing to say at times. Hoof and mouth disease.” He caught sight of me on the monitors. “You’re visible now.”