Portals of Infinity: Book Five: Demigods and Deities

by John Van Stry

  "Well, is there anything else you can tell me?" I asked hopefully.

  "I'm sorry, William, you'll have to make your own decisions on this one."

  "Well, it still didn't hurt to ask," I smiled a little weakly. "What's Barassa up to? And how are things in Marland?"

  "Marland is doing rather well. Your friend Evean has left to go back to Roden's main temple however."

  "I'm not so sure she's my friend," I laughed, "She sure surprised the hell out of me though. Why'd she go back? Is she still planning on smuggling priests into Barassa?"

  "Possibly, I think some of Barassa's neighbors just may be thinking about taking a few of the northern provinces away from King Stivik," Fel said smiling. "In fact, I think a few are even considering a trip down to the capitol and seeing just how well those walls have been maintained. If they do, I'm sure Roden will have her tag along and do what she can to spread his faith."

  "Huh, think they have a chance of taking the city?" I asked.

  Fel shook his head, "Not this year, I think they all know that too, but the simple fact that they're considering something that no one would have ten years ago, says a lot. Both Evean's actions and Jane's actions have also brought more interest to both Roden and Fordessa."

  "Well everyone looks at Evean, and all they can think of is 'sex,'" I agreed. "Finding out that she knows how to lead men and fight, I don't think anyone expected that."

  "Oh, her ability to lead men is well known, just into other things," Fel laughed. "But her abilities on the battlefield have drawn a lot more fighters into Roden's temples than she was able to before. He's rather pleased with her right now."

  "And Fordessa?"

  "Her musicians are getting much more respect now that people have seen that their order is willing to fight to defend themselves. Quite a few martial types who are interested in music are taking an interest in it now as well. Everybody does love a winner after all, William."

  "And how have you been doing?"

  Fel smiled widely, "As I said, everybody loves a winner, and as Roden and I have reached something of an understanding for now, my priests are now welcome in a few places that I hadn't been able to reach in the past."

  "Huh, thinking of bringing Roden into the pantheon?"

  Fel smirked, "Well, there's something to be said about 'wine, women, and song,' right?"

  I groaned, "You serve beer, Fel."

  "Actually, I serve both, I just like beer more," Fel said still smirking.

  "Who knew? Is there anything else on the home front I need to know about?"

  "No, winter is coming, so everyone is pretty much settling in."

  I nodded, "Well, until next time, Fel."

  Twenty-two

  Sandy

  "Will, wake up!"

  I opened my eyes and my sister was at the foot of the bed, shaking my foot.

  "What?" I said and looked around. Nothing seemed to be going on.

  "I saw Cenewyg!" She said.

  I sat up quick and looked at her. "Where?"

  "At the store I was shopping at, about ten minutes ago."

  "Are you sure it was him?"

  She nodded, "I saw Cameron in the car. I thought about doing something, but I remembered our problem with him not staying dead and all that."

  I nodded, "Almost tempting to try though," I growled.

  "Well, that's not all," She said. "I heard him on the phone while he was in there, he was calling somebody. I couldn't get close enough to tell, but after he left I asked the clerk about the phone call."

  "And he told you?" I asked a little skeptically.

  "Eh, I shook my tits at him, and asked in a roundabout way. Clerk said that there's a mining camp down the road a ways, jade or emeralds, not sure which. Anyway, there are a lot of tough customers down there."

  "So you think Cen was talking to them?"

  She nodded, "Either he called to get passage, or he called to set up an ambush. Those are the only two things I can think of that he'd call about."

  I rubbed my temples and nodded, "Makes sense, I can't think of any other reason for him to call."

  "I think we should go now. I watched him after he left; he drove off outta town, probably trying to stay ahead of us. If someone's going to set something up, better to get there before they've had too much time."

  "Yeah, but it's going to be dark soon, they know the territory, we don't.

  "You can use your champion form in the dark, Bro. In the daylight, you'd stand out and everyone would be shooting, not just the bad guys."

  "Assuming they're not all bad guys," I sighed.

  "Hey, the town's still standing. Come on, let's get a move on."

  I nodded and got up, quickly getting dressed and gathered my things back together. Ten minutes later we were on the road.

  "So how much of a lead would you say he has on us?" I asked Nikki as I drove and she scanned ahead. We had both of the carbines duck taped to the inside roof of the car, right above our heads. Another one of Nikki's ideas of course. Which I had to admit, was pretty sneaky, most folks when they walked up to a car were looking down into it, and never looked at the ceiling.

  "Well, I watched him drive off through the window, then spent about ten minutes chatting up the clerk, five or so to get back to the room, another fifteen to tell you, and get cleared out. So figure half-hour."

  "I'm wondering if we should lay back and give him a bit more of a head start."

  "Why?"

  "Because if we get into a firefight with these people, he's gonna hear it, and know that someone is on his tail."

  "Bro, if there's an ambush up ahead, he already knows that someone's on his tail!"

  "Well, do we need to let him know he's so close?"

  "Fine, pull over and we'll eat dinner. But after that, we drive on," Nikki sighed.

  I pulled us off the road and she reached in the back, grabbing the food she'd picked up at the store. We sat in the car and ate while the sun set.

  "Car coming," I said nodding to the lights coming down the road.

  "Wonder if they'll stop?" Nikki asked unbuttoning the top three buttons on her shirt.

  "What's that for?"

  "Miners are all guys, and guys are always horny," she said and laughed at my expression.

  I just grumbled, because she was probably right.

  They saw us and stopped, turning their vehicle to point at us, it was some kind of a truck, but I really couldn't tell as the headlights were in our faces.

  Three men got out, all of them were armed. One stood by the truck watching us, the other two came up, rifles in their hands, going one to either side of the car.

  "What are you two doing up here?" The one on my side asked.

  "Hey, guys," Nikki said smiling and leaning a bit towards the one on her side, giving him a nice view I was sure.

  "We're heading up to Clemsville," I told him. That was the next town on the road.

  "Yeah, our uncle said we could come work for him," Nikki said.

  "I don't see no weapons, Jeff," the one on Nikki's side said, "But I do see something I'd like to get my hands on!" and he guffawed after that.

  "Who's your uncle?" The one by me asked.

  "Tom," I said pulling a name out of the air.

  "I don't know no 'Tom' in Clemsville!" He said and motioned with the rifle, "Out of the car!"

  I started to open the door with my left hand and put my right hand up in the air. "Okay, don't shoot! We're unarmed."

  "Could you help me with the door please?" Nikki said to the guy on her side, she had both her hands up. "It sticks."

  "Oh that's not all I'm gonna help you with!" He said and laughed again.

  Nikki shot him as he opened the door, and I pulled the gun on my side down and kicked the door open and shot the guy on my side, then dove out and rolled across the road and out of the headlights.

  The guy by the truck fumbled to unsling his rifle and turned to follow me, then dropped as Nikki shot him from the back.


  I got up and quickly ran to the truck, and checked it out, it was empty, but it was a lot more solid than our car was.

  "Let's switch to the truck," I said to Nikki who was searching the bodies.

  "Yeah, they see that, they'll figure the gunfire was these assholes killing somebody."

  I went back to the car and grabbed our backpacks, and tossed them in the back, then grabbed the box with the extra food and water in it. Nikki dragged the bodies off the road and out of sight.

  "Okay," I said and got in the truck, "let's go."

  "Might as well shift," Nikki said to me, and then grinned. "I mean the cat's out of the bag already, right?"

  I growled, "Shut up you," But I shifted anyway.

  Fifteen minutes later we came to a roadblock. I tapped the horn and waved, a couple people waved back and the car in the middle of it backed up and opened up a hole for us to drive through.

  "Find anything?" Someone called as we drove through.

  "Nope," Nikki said and shot him in the face.

  I shot several of the ones on my side of the truck, and then floored it as they scrambled to react.

  "Now what?" I asked her as we careened down the road.

  "First corner we go around, pull across the road to block it. We bail out to either side, and light them up when they stop or crash."

  "Sure thing, Sis!" I said and at the next corner, I locked the brakes up, stopped us across the road and turning the truck off I jumped and ran for cover at the side of the road. Nikki had bailed as soon as I hit the brakes.

  Sure enough, they came flying around the corner after us, the first truck lost control trying to avoid the truck I'd left in the roadway, and hit the ditch on the side of the road and flipped over several times before coming to a stop.

  The truck behind that just plowed into it, the two guys in the front seats flew through the windshield, their bodies smacking into the body of the truck; I guess they weren't wearing seatbelts. If they weren't dead, they probably would be soon enough.

  The third truck stopped before it hit anything, and the doors flew open as several men jumped out. Nikki and I opened fire from either side of the roadway, and it didn't take long to finish them off.

  "Grab our stuff, we'll take the third one," Nikki called out.

  So I dashed over to the truck we had been driving, which was pretty well trashed now and got our backpacks, then hopped in the third truck and looked around for Nikki. She was doing something with first car that had wrecked, then came over and jumped in with me.

  "Let's go."

  "Should we grab the rest of the supplies?" I asked.

  "I don't think we have the time," she said and I put it in gear and drove off.

  "What did you do with that other car?"

  "Just wanted to make sure we weren't going to get shot at, while we drove off."

  Just then the other car exploded and I floored it.

  "What the hell did you do?" I growled.

  "Fuse in the gas tank," Nikki said and smiled.

  "I thought that was impossible," I grumbled.

  "Not if you attach it to this!" Nikki said and showed me a small cardboard tube.

  "What the hell is that?"

  "Improvised explosives. Made a few last night when you were sleeping, thought we might need a diversion, figured these would work."

  I shook my head and drove. "How much further?"

  "Take any left at this point that you see, and just keep driving until we feel something."

  I nodded.

  "And turn the headlights off."

  "What?"

  "You don't need them to see, do you?"

  She was right, so I switched them off.

  We drove on a few minutes more, before I found a side road on the left and cut down onto it.

  "Just in time, I see more approaching lights," Nikki warned.

  I made sure to keep my foot away from the brake pedal and glanced briefly back at the way we had come. I could see some lights, but that was it.

  "How many of them?" I asked.

  "Let's see, one, two, three, four, whoa that's a big one! Six. Five trucks like this and one really big one."

  "Well, let's hope they don't see us," I said and drove on.

  "At this point, I'm not so sure that they're going to want to," Nikki laughed.

  Ten minutes later we felt it, I drove us as close as we could get, then we abandoned the truck, grabbed our gear, and hiked for the gate.

  "Think he's on the other side waiting for us?" Nikki asked as we both checked the portal. It felt okay to me.

  "If he is, it's going to be messy," I said.

  "Well, lock and load!" Nikki said and we both charged through together.

  Twenty-Three

  Some Street

  "Oh, Shit!" I swore and Nikki did the same thing, as we both hid our weapons and dove for hiding places.

  We were on the side of a road, a fairly busy road, and there were cars driving along it at a fairly high speed, and while it may have been dark out, the street was well lit with lights about every hundred yards.

  "Stash it and let's get out of here!" Nikki called. I had already stuck my carbine in my pack as she came over.

  I shifted out of my champion form and stood up, then followed her as she jogged off away from the road.

  "We need to change our clothing, first chance we get, so no one can identify us," I told her.

  Nikki laughed, "Oh, like that's going to matter!"

  I looked at her, "But that will be in any description anyone might give to the police!"

  "Yeah, right along with the seven-foot-tall cat man!" She laughed. "They may come out and look if they noticed the guns, but more likely than not, they're going to think someone was playing a prank."

  "Oh, right," I sighed. I hadn't thought about that.

  "What do you think, do we keep the guns? Or do we dump them?" I asked.

  "The carbines are going to be hard to hide, and we don't know what people are like here."

  "I'm still worried about getting rousted by the cops," I admitted.

  "Yeah, me too. But I hate getting rid of weapons. Besides, if we get rousted by the cops, we've both got enough knives on us to get in trouble anyway."

  "Yeah, there is that," I agreed. "Let's stash the carbines someplace we can come back to, if we need them, while we find a hotel and figure out what we're dealing with here."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  Ten minutes later we buried them in a small hole near a street sign on another, less traveled, road we'd come too. We'd wrapped them in one of my shirts to keep the dirt out of the actions.

  Finding a hotel wasn't too hard after we'd taken care of that, we just followed the main road, just from a distance. Two hours later and we were in a rather large suburban town, with a room at a cheap motor lodge.

  "Ugh, this place is like the places Dan used to take me to," Nikki grumbled as we settled it.

  "Dan? Wasn't he the guy you dated in high school?" I asked

  "Yeah, he was always taking me to this cheap motor lodge," Nikki sighed.

  "You could have said no," I laughed.

  "But then I wouldn't have been getting any!" She said with a smirk. "Dan may not have had much money, but what he did in bed more than made up for it!"

  I sighed and shook my head, "Too much information, Sis. How about you go clean up, take a nap, and I'll go see about getting some maps and other information?"

  "Sounds like a plan, Bro."

  Two hours later I was back at the room with maps and fresh food. Apparently they had fast food here and something that looked suspiciously like a certain hamburger place back home.

  "Wow, they've expanded into other spheres?" Nikki laughed as she unwrapped a burger; I'd bought a dozen, plus fries and shakes.

  "More likely, some portal traveler copied their business plan and came here," I said and took a bite of my burger.

  "How do you know it didn't start here first?" She grinned.

  "Poi
nt made." I nodded to the maps we had spread out on the bed. "We have quite a ways to go, again."

  Nikki nodded, "Yeah, but I bet they have airplanes here! So we can fly."

  "Yeah, I saw a few up in the sky," I pointed to the map, "and there's an airport."

  "Do you think we should hit the local portal traveler shop?" She asked looking at the maps.

  "Why bother? It's just going to slow us down. You saw the way the manager's eyes got wide when we offered him some gold. I say we go get a bunch of cash from him, grab a cab straight to the airport, and get the next flight out of here."

  "As easy as that?" Nikki said looking surprised.

  Everything slowed down at that point and we both dove off the bed as the door was kicked open. Two men with guns came in.

  "Up against..." One of them started, but didn't get any further than that; one of Nikki's knives was sticking out of his eyes at that point.

  I grabbed the other one and pulled him down to the floor, snapping his wrist as I disarmed him, then put him in an arm lock and jumped on his back, pinning him to the floor.

  "Clear!" Nikki called out from by the door, looking up and down the parking lot outside.

  "What the hell?" I said looking at the guys, and then back at her.

  She shrugged, "Maybe the owner called them when you paid in gold?"

  I growled, and twisted my hold on the guy's broken wrist, he cried out in pain. "What do you say we find out?"

  Four hours later we were on an airliner to our destination.

  "I still say we should have done something to the manager for what he did," Nikki grumbled.

  "I didn't want to spend the time, or take the risk," I told her. "They had more than enough money, they had local weapons, and they had a nice car to get us here to the airport."

  "Yeah, I guess," She sighed.

  "Besides, I'm sure when their bodies are found by the maid; the police are going to have some interesting questions for him, not to mention their friends."

  Nikki nodded. "So why the rush anyway?"

  "I'm thinking I want to get there first. Find Stephanie if I can, and talk to her. Maybe she can do something that our own gods can't."