by Scott Duff
“Well, Peter did say you gave interesting first dates,” he said laughing. “I don’t see how you could top this one!”
Toothpick elf disapproved of our banter. He drew a sleek black dagger from the folds of his coat and slung it up at me. Before the dagger left his fingertips, the Day was moving me, turning me until my practice took over and I saw what was happening. The Day shifted up into my forearm a half-second before my thumb closed fully around the haft of the dagger.
“Oh, you did bring a knife. Kudos for branching out,” I snarled at him, tossing it back hard. He wasn’t as deft with his hands. The knife pierced his chest and drove him down to the ground. “And then there was one!” I turned to the last elf. He’d been the least active of the four, the three-quarter staffed elf. He was backed up against Gordon’s last elf, another staff. His stick was thinner with smaller rings of different metals. There were etchings on many of its surfaces, infusing it and bonding it with power to fight certain fights. It was a cool looking stick.
“We’re in a crossfire, aren’t we,” called Gordon. “You’re down to one now?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I think the other one is in iron poisoning. Looks pretty awful to me. Funny thing is, I didn’t even touch him,” I shrugged at the elf facing me. “How’d I kill him?”
“You severed his connection,” the elf trilled to me. “The one that existed between the saber and he.”
“Yeah, got that part. I severed the connection. Then what? Massive stroke?”
“The relationship a swordsman forms with his weapon is a connection that holds back the effects of iron poisoning throughout his lifetime,” the elf was actually explaining this. He had to be stalling for something. If they were, then they had to be communicating in some way. Well that was stupid, of course they were. MacNamara spoke through them. While he was talking, I hardened the outside of the armor helmet then attached one end of a portal inside the helmet mouthpiece with the end at Gordon’s ear canal on my field, like I had with Dillon.
“Gordon, they’re stalling us,” I told him. He stiffened slightly at the change in my voice. “They expect me to strike. Take them both out… Now!”
I twisted left and wrapped myself in a portal, appearing on Gordon’s right side to parry the thin rod’s attack on him. The elf’s eyes were locked on Gordon as he released his sheet of percussive force. The Night seared the surface of the staff, taking only a subtle sip from its magic and stripping away a small portion before Gordon’s wave hit. And it hit with the surety of gravity.
Unlike Gordon’s first spell on the elves, the one that teased and battered, this spell was an all-in, designed-to-kill spell. The elf had time to realize I parried his blow on Gordon and turn his eyes to me. He felt the Night strip away that simple layer of power and the pain that went with it. Then he felt Gordon hammer him, beat him like a tectonic plate during an earthquake. His staff was supposed to protect him from such things. It was supposed to make them bend around him like bamboo. The Night appreciated the irony of stripping away that protection and thrummed as the elf was crushed to gravelly bits under Gordon’s onslaught. I almost missed the fact he got the other one, too.
I sheathed the Night and caught Gordon as he stumbled. The huge channeling of power left him weak. I portaled us back to the ballroom balcony then again into the corner of the ballroom near his father, staging the jumps so I wouldn’t run into anyone. Cahill took a hold of his son’s left arm and shoulder, alarmed at his red face and heavy breathing.
Melting the helmet, I told his father loudly, “This man is freakin’ awesome!” I turned and looked for Ferrin. I spotted Peter near the balcony and jumped. Ferrin lay on the floor between two slender women deep in concentration.
“How is he?” I asked Peter quietly. Ferrin looked very pale, even for him.
“The knife was poisoned,” he said calmly. “It nicked his left leg, near his femoral vein, and got pulled through a good deal of his body. They’re still trying to find all the poison.”
I bent down and touched Ferrin’s forehead. I sensed the seeking the women were doing, the careful prodding they made as they moved through his body. I could appreciate their skills. I had done a similar action with Kieran a month or so back, under different circumstances. Kieran had been more hurt but the poison wasn’t as… debilitating. Two different extremes. And I really wanted Ferrin to see Ian’s graduation someday. One of the women found a small amount of the poison and began extracting it as I watched. It looked familiar to me. Yes, it is familiar. It was an extracted part of…
“Does anyone have any Esteleum?” I called out into the room.
A man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, dressed in an Italian business suit and smelling faintly of roses, stepped up and started digging through one of the woman’s bags, coming up with a small silver box about two and a half inches to a side square. He handed it to me and I pulled it apart. Inside on cotton padding sat a fresh light purple Esteleum. I drove my sight down into the flesh of the fruit looking for the chemical that was killing Ferrin.
Kneeling, I bent Ferrin’s head back and opened his mouth. I crushed the fruit, still looking for the poison inside it. There, I found it, near the seeds, to help protect them but not part of them. I crushed the fruit, letting the juices run down my hand and into his mouth. The part I needed though was the seeds. Trapping five seeds between my thumb and forefinger, I squeezed and pushed tight threads of heated blue healing energy through them, winding the threads around the embryonic plant then ripping them out of the seeds. Dripping the juices with it, I pushed the embryo pill under his tongue like nitroglycerin and closed his mouth, pushing energy down through him to force the Esteleum to work its magic even faster, slipping my power underneath the women so I didn’t interfere with healing him. When I reached his feet, I stood up. I’d done all I could do now.
Something big exploded to the west of us. “McClure!” Bishop shouted.
“Can’t I get a break!” I shouted back, but shoved my mind up into the wards anyway. Bishop was there in full control now, but with the picture he was giving me, that was only a small favor. Rommel had smaller armies. Maybe not, but it felt that way at that moment.
“What exploded?” I asked. Bishop centered the ward on a burning building, a once solidly constructed outbuilding with concrete and cinderblocks.
“It held grounds keeping equipment, mostly,” he projected through the ward. “Had a good amount of gasoline and some minor grade dynamite. It blocked the road to the armory, too.” He indicated one of two access routes to another building further out from the main house. That building was surrounded by elves, fading in and out of the wards’ perceptions.
“Why are they fading like that?” I asked.
“They call it ‘Dancing the Veil,’” Bishop explained. “It’s done to confuse us. They pass partially into the veil between Faery and here and back again, fading from view. It plays havoc with wards, but it leaves them open to attack. They can actually appear to be in more than one place at the same time which means we really don’t know exactly how many we’re up against here. If they hadn’t trounced the wards so badly, I could do something about this, but as it is…”
“You’re kidding me,” I said, flatly. “We’re looking at radar ghosts?”
“Effectively, yes, some of them are ghosts,” he admitted.
“Be right back,” I said, pulling my attention back and turning to Peter watching Ferrin. “Pete! You ready for more action?” He nodded once, angrily. I jumped us to the dais beside Bishop. He startled slightly but Peter was unfazed by the transition. Good, because we were going to be doing that a lot in the next few minutes.
“Bishop, let Peter into the wards,” I said. “This is what we’re gonna do…” I talked fast then launched myself into Peter’s mind, attaching my power to his control in his cavern and let go. I felt his touch as I called the Crossbow and felt the foundation Stone growl fiercely at me in complaint but it acceded to my wishes. In each hand Peter formed four balls
of green fire mottled with oily black, each the size of a quarter. We turned back to back and I felt my power rise.
Peter wrapped us in portals and shifted us into the night directly into the middle of a group of eight elves. Simultaneously, we yelled, “Dance now, elves!” I fired the Crossbow twice and Peter sent a ball of oily fire directly into the chest of the elf in front of him. Then he raised my power again and we shifted to another group. And I fired the Crossbow twice and Peter shot out another oily green fire. I called the Night forward now and Peter called my power. We shifted differently this time, choosing different positions and angles. Peter got two in this group and I skewered one with the Night and two with the Crossbow again.
“Stuck!” Peter called out, so we ran. I’d expected that. That was part of the plan, for the elves to thicken space again. They couldn’t Dance the Veil that way. We couldn’t escape either, but that’s what I needed Peter for. I could keep our escape route cleared if Peter could watch for the jumps. I could do all of that up until we got stuck. At that point, I had to either test the thinness of space or watch the wards for enemies, but not both.
Two elves ahead of us were doing the best to look like trees along the path. I sped up and leapt, pushing off with both feet. Switching swords and hands, Day was suddenly swinging hard right and taking me with it. It cut deeply into the first elf, its blade cutting sharp and its magic driving it deep. The elf’s sword swept through where my chest had been and the torque of his action continued the Day’s cut. He fell to the ground, halved, as I hit on my shoulder and rolled to face the second elf, thrusting the Day Sword up into his ribcage. He was still watching the pelvis of the first elf when he died.
Peter stopped against a tree opposite me as I pulled the Day free and tossed the tall body aside. We both needed a moment to breathe and the wards showed we were clear for a time. Only one group of elves had stopped fading though. The one we’d just left was dispersing. I felt the Quiver regaining its bolts.
“I am so not up for this,” I rasped out. Peter glanced over and grinned at me.
“You ready?” he gasped out, still breathing heavy.
“Whenever you are,” I said. “We can’t help ‘em if we’re dead doing this.” At least my lungs were telling me to be pragmatic. Peter gave me another full minute.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, standing. I sighed and stood up, exchanging the Day for the Crossbow, and Peter jumped us. I fired down this time, once straight and once down and slightly to the right. Peter jumped us to solid ground again and I fired rapidly in a semicircle. The Night flashed into my left hand and I thrusted up to parry a strike directed at Peter. “Stuck!” he cried and fired shot after shot of oily fire. Each orb hit its target, but there were more targets than the ward showed.
We were caught in a trap. Just as in Atlanta, though, Peter controlled his panic. He sidestepped through the brush to the path, tossing his spheres at every elf brave enough to risk the searing agony of those black and green orbs to try to get past his shields. And we were invisible to them in all but one aspect, the power that flew out of Peter and the weapons that I used. They could feel the power and energy of normal mages, but we drew our power from my batteries and they were hidden in our auras. Still, Peter was channeling a lot more magic than I was. He was tiring out faster. I had to end this.
“Peter, take the Crossbow,” I called, handing it to him behind my back and silently pleading with it and the Quiver. I called the Day and stepped forward to face the enemy head on. “It’s showtime,” I shouted and this time, the Day was true to its name. The clearing shined as bright as the day at noon. All five of the weapons thrummed in tempo with my heart racing with the adrenaline surge. The foundation Stone reached across the connection that Peter and I had formed and channeled the Crossbow and Quiver with it. He fired and I moved.
It looked like a carefully orchestrated dance, but it was really a melee. I took two steps then thrust right and parry left, slash, cut, kill, turn, duck, punch, decapitate, parry, parry, turn, slash. On and on. Bolts flew past me in a flurry, never hitting me and I never had to duck for one. At the edge of the clearing, I backflipped over a sweep of the legs by a stick fighter, thrusting out with both swords in different directions as I landed, skewering both elves around me as a Bolt blossomed in each of their heads at the same time.
I straightened, sheathing both Swords without looking, as Peter walked the path toward me, looking into the woods after one last escaping elf. “Go for it,” I called. He grinned and raised the Crossbow up over the trees and fired once more. The Bolt flew through the night sky, almost lazily, before starting to fall. Through the wards, we watched as the elf stumbled then disappeared. The Bolt reappeared in the Quiver a moment later, along with all the rest Peter had fired. All forty-six of them.
“This is an amazing weapon,” Peter said, handing it back to me. The Stone pulled back on its connection to Peter. I slipped the Crossbow onto my back into its place on the Quiver. “Ah. It’s a little intense.”
I smiled at him. “That was three of the five,” I said. “You should try all five at once.”
“They’ve stopped the Dance,” Peter said, concentrating on the wards.
“Good. Let’s walk back then,” I said, melting the helmet. “I need a breather.”
Chapter 55
“Damn, these shoes are ruined,” Peter groused, turning back up the trail. “They weren’t made for running.”
“We’ll send Mac a bill tomorrow. He trashed a lot of property here tonight,” I answered. I could see Peter’s back through tears in his shirt. He had some nasty looking scratches. “Your shirt is ripped to shreds, too.”
“You’ve gotten very good with those things, ya’ know,” he said, ducking a sapling leaning across the trail.
“Huh?” I asked.
“The weapons,” he said. “You’ve gotten very good at controlling them, using them.”
I barked out a laugh. “They do a considerable amount of that work themselves,” I said, still chuckling.
“I’m not so sure of that,” he said in return. “I mean, yes, there is a certain amount of magic to what they do and how they work and I’m not belittling their power in any way. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t belittle your own ability in the equation of how well you work with them either.”
“Like I could do a backflip or pick Gordon up,” I said, pulling my shorts out from between my cheeks. Thankfully, Peter was in front of me so he didn’t get that lovely sight. “I am soaked.”
“Me, too,” Peter said, adjusting himself. “Does this mean we never get to dress up again?”
“I hope not. I do actually want to have a date sometime.”
Peter laughed. “The best dates end all sweaty, though.” He grinned at me slyly, looking back. “You ready to take your power back?”
“You in a hurry to be rid of me?” I asked as I pushed through the connection and pulled it back to me. It was a simple, gentle pull that Peter released easily.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” Peter said.
“I know. It’s a very… intimate contact, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said, pausing long enough for me to come up beside him. He threw his arm across my shoulder and the Stone let it sink in below the armor to touch my sweaty back. “It is. I don’t think I’d be comfortable doing that with anybody else.”
“I know I couldn’t,” I replied.
The wards started buzzing. Both of us whipped our heads toward the house. Bishop was projecting our names through the wards. He couldn’t find us. We both focused on the remaining elves and saw them forming into lines. No, the lines kept breaking up. People in and around the house were moving out, some were confronting small groups of elves and some were just running away, trying to escape.
“I can’t tell what’s happening,” I said.
“Let’s get to the house,” Peter said. I wrapped portals around us and jumped into the ballroom again. It had emptied considerably since the last
time we’d been there.
“You bellowed?” I called to Bishop. This time he was so startled he fell off the dais.
“Damn it! Somebody put a bell on that boy!” he yelled.
“Do you want to be the one to try that?” called Cahill from the doorway. Gordon came in behind him, laughing. The two of them could fill the room all by themselves with their presence.
“What’s happening now?” Peter demanded. Good, at least someone else was getting tired and cranky.
“I don’t know,” answered Bishop, aggravated. “I can’t figure out what the damned elves are doing. I’ve got people spread out to protect us and the house, but too many people are running scared. Cockroaches abandoning ship. And we still have traitors loose.”
“We stopped the Dance of the Veil, though,” I said.
“And killed close to a hundred doing it,” Peter added. Bishop’s head swung around at that. Peter stared him down. “The proof is still bleeding on the grounds, dude.”
“How many are left?” I asked. I didn’t feel like counting.
“Sixty-three,” Bishop answered.
“The ley lines are stretching,” I said. “Why? Are your people drawing a lot of power right now?” I pushed my senses out, feeling for the draws.
“Of course we are,” Bishop scoffed. “The two of you have to be using immense streams all by yourselves!”
“No,” Peter said dismissively. “He’s right. This house sits on a nexus of three ley lines. You, Gordon, and Felix could pull from them all day long and not make a dint in them. And Seth and I draw from a… different source. This has to be the elves.”
“How far away is the coast?” I asked, watching the elves through the ward as they shifted their positions. They were moving more slowly now, moving in wider swaths through the woods, even though it made them easier targets. And I could feel them tensing, but I didn’t know what that meant or why I could feel it.
“About forty miles east of us. Why?” asked Bishop.