by John Conroe
“As I said, you can’t argue with someone who won’t listen to a word of logic. But Candace, I know that you’ve met Father in person and that you’ve researched all of the events you listed. You know what kind of character he is.”
“Well, to be fair, he does refuse to help people by modifying weather or disasters,” Candace pointed out, clearly willing to add fuel the dumpster fire that was her interview.
“Lies, more lies,” Macha interjected.
“I’m talking about his refusal to help people?” Candace said in a confused tone.
“And I be telling ye that he lied. He interferes with nature all the time to help people. Disrupts events he has no business meddling in,” Macha said, turning to her granddaughter.
“We know for a fact that the recent forest fires in the western United States were brought under control within a few short days despite the historic draught conditions and heavy winds,” Einin said. “Magic was used. And that cyclone lined up to banjanx Hong Kong two months ago suddenly became just a mild storm despite the warm waters it traveled over. There is no Circle on Earth that could do that, even combined with several other Circles.”
Candace was nodding. “Those events did baffle the experts.” She turned to Omega. “Did he lie to me? Did all of you lie to me?”
“Not once. Father said he avoided meddling with nature, not that he’d never attempted it.”
“But those forest fires were just weeks ago?”
“Father is interested in bringing balance back to this planet—specifically the temperature balance,” Omega answered.
“Global warming?”
“Exactly. He’s using excess heat generated by global warming to power our projects and remove it from the planet.”
“Remove it from the planet?” Candace asked.
“I am sending defensive units to the far corners of our solar system. Even at the speeds my drones can achieve, it would take months and years to cover those distances. Father can open portals in space to transport my combat drones while simultaneously removing vast amounts of excess heat from the planet’s atmosphere—and help people at the same time.”
“Then why all that blarney about not responding to requests?” Candace asked, clearly frustrated.
“Because what we are attempting is so complex and unpredictable that we have to work slowly and cautiously. We have to pick very specific events under exact conditions. He can’t and won’t just take on any disaster or the consequences would be worse.”
“Worse than climate change?”
“An abrupt shift in ocean currents or the cooling of a volcano could have equally abrupt reactions.”
“Like the movie The Day After Tomorrow?” Candace asked.
“Yes, or worse,” Omega said.
“Setting aside his, shall we call them experiments, there is still the question of him being a warlock, which seems something like a violent drug addict, if I understand Macha’s definition. Or is that a lie too?”
“One thing I find fascinating and also a bit frustrating about humans is this incessant need for labels. Father is a warlock like an Obliterator is a drone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that poor William has magical aptitude that is almost nonexistent. Of course, he gets a major rush from the glyphs that focus his meager abilities back into his muscles and nerves. By their own admission, Father is orders of magnitude beyond that. Do you honestly think that an adrenaline high can compete with the ability to bend quantum physics to your will?”
Candace looked horrified and the two witches wore smugness like a badge.
“By that comparison, he would be the worst power-drunk, mind-addled man ever to live,” Candace said.
“So you would think. But you’ve met him and you’ve met a traditional warlock. Which seemed more psychotic to you?” Omega asked.
Candace pulled back and considered the question, her face troubled.
“Here now! Ye can’t fall for rubbish like that,” Macha interjected, smug no more.
“When last we met, Candace, I asked you if you believed in a higher power, a Creator, God. I offered you evidence of divine intervention. As you have just noted, absolute power is known to corrupt humans absolutely. Yet where is the evidence that my father is corrupt? Psychotic? Unstable? The best these women can offer is his desire to meddle with nature to help his fellow man. This is real life, Candace, not a comic book, yet there is a small group of people who meet and exceed the definition of superheroes on this planet right now, at this time. No, they don’t fly from building fire to bank robbery to falling bus, they don’t wear costumes, and they rarely give speeches or interviews. But none of them abuse their power… How is that possible?”
“I would say it isn’t,” Candace said.
“And yet nobody has any evidence, video, or even uncorroborated stories of corruption.”
Suddenly I heard a voice from inside the inn. Nika’s. “Chris, you need to come in here,” she said in a quiet voice that I was still able to hear.
“Tanya, something’s happening. I have to go,” I said.
The interview disappeared, replaced by my Chosen’s image. “Okay. Everything alright?”
“I don’t know, but you can catch me up on the negative feedback from that interview later.”
“Well, yes, but the thing is it’s been mostly positive.”
“Chris!” Nika said with more emphasis.
“Honey, I really have to go.”
“Okay. Be careful. Call me.”
Chapter 20
As I entered the front door, it was immediately clear what had alarmed Nika. Declan’s nano bracelets had both melted and reformed into a pair of dark gray glasses and attached ear buds. He was staring into space and talking to someone who wasn’t present.
“He’s talking to an admiral on a Navy aircraft carrier,” Stacia said. I noticed that her left earring was gone and instead a silver-colored earpiece was in its place. She reached a finger up and touched the side of Declan’s gray glasses. “Show us.”
Almost instantly, a red wireframe hologram appeared in the middle of the open restaurant floor, right in front of all the other customers, who had been staring at our table. All of them were alarmed and more than a few looked seconds from bolting out of their chairs.
I recognized the holographic scene as the bridge of a ship, not that I’ve spent any time on Naval ships, but I’ve seen plenty of movies. And the men and women were all clearly wearing Navy uniforms even though they were outlined in red. The ship was alive with tightly controlled activity, people moving briskly, speaking rapidly into headsets, eyes wide with excitement and maybe a little fear. Flashes of bright red and white light flickered across the walls of the room, coming from outside the bridge windows.
“It’s a US Carrier Strike group somewhere in the Pacific,” Stacia explained because Declan was busy talking to the admiral.
“Omega has unlocked all of your new weapon systems,” the young witch said. “Your people will have to take on the scout; I’m trying to save the sub.”
“Omega interrupted us because the strike group appeared to have flushed out a Vorsook scout ship during normal operations,” Stacia said quietly. “It was deep underwater and it damaged the USS Ketchikan, one of the group’s two attack subs, on its way to the surface. Declan is preventing the sub from sinking below crush depth.”
“From here? On Fairie?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s not actually him doing the work but a big water elemental that he called out of the depths. He’s got it pushing the sub up toward the surface. Something about an energy beam striking the forward part of the boat and causing massive flooding,” she said.
In our time, in the restaurant on Fairie, Declan turned his head to the left, away from the admiral. The holograph moved, showing the view outside the bridge windows. Angry jagged blue lines displayed a churning ocean that was rocking the ship like a roller coaster. I think it was night, as it somehow seemed dark. M
eanwhile, beams of harsh light flashed upward from the deck of the carrier and from the three other ships that we could see, all converging on a glowing disk that jinked and jived as fast as it could. The alien ship sent an occasional blast of its own downward, but the sheer firepower of the strike group’s new weapons kept it on the run and its attacks just flared against invisible force fields.
“Why doesn’t it just fly away?” I asked.
“There are fifteen F-45 Quantum Lances flying above it, waiting for exactly that,” Declan answered, his eyes still locked on the scene outside the bridge. Then he lifted one finger, which I now saw had an exoskeleton of nano material on the back of it. Immediately the scene on the bridge whirled away to be instantly replaced by the flight deck of the massive carrier. The startled responses of sailors firing handheld energy weapons indicated that his hologram had become as visible to them as they were to us. The view moved downward, as he looked at the roiling ocean to the ship’s left side. Port, I recalled. It was called the port side.
There was nothing but angry ocean until I noticed a burst of lighter blue dots on the computer-generated surface. Air bubbles, I realized, massive globes of air bursting up from below, followed rapidly by a long black shape.
The sub’s conning tower emerged first, the rest of the boat bobbing up like a child’s tub toy, as if it had been shoved from below.
Declan’s finger flicked again, and we were suddenly inside the sub. A fit middle-aged woman turned to Declan’s image, clearly surprised but not astonished.
“Okay, Captain DuBois, you are on the surface as promised. You either need to secure the boat to other ships or deploy some kind of temporary floatation system,” Declan said to her.
“We attempted an emergency ballast blow but too many compartments were compromised,” she said.
“If I can convince an air elemental to blow out some of the water, can your people secure enough compartments to keep the Ketchikan afloat?”
“Affirmative,” she said, turning to a stocky man standing to her side. Before she could speak to him, we were back outside, standing on the carrier deck, looking up at the aerial combat just as three big beams of energy from two different ships intersected the dodging, spinning alien craft. A flash of blue light that I recognized as a defensive shield failing lit the night, causing sailors to look away. Declan wasn’t really there, so his eyes were protected by Omega, which meant that we saw the moment the scout ship came apart in a massive fireball. Declan turned his head away from the explosion, focusing on a cloud far overhead. After a second, something came hurtling down toward the sub. I say something because all I could make out was a shimmer of swirling purple lines, the bulk of it transparent.
The twisting shape of mist and air settled over the sub, followed a moment later by huge turbulence in the water around the boat as bubbles rumbled and broke on the surface. The sub visibly rose at least a foot, maybe a foot and a half.
“How is it that you can project holograms there? I didn’t see a single Omega drone,” I said.
“Every warship on Earth has Omega tech and microdrones,” Stacia said. “And based on today’s demonstration, those weapons work.”
“Captain, you have about ten minutes before the elemental holding you up gets bored,” Declan said, now back inside the sub.
“It’ll have to do,” she said. “Ah, what is it that is holding us up? Sonar says it’s bigger than the Ketchikan.” Almost the entire crew of the bridge was paying attention when he answered.
“I’m not sure it has a name,” our witch replied. “The Hebrew Bible speaks of a leviathan, and I think that may be a reference to this one. Water elementals take shapes as they age and grow. Those shapes vary quite a bit.”
“I see,” the captain said. “On behalf of the crew and officers, could you… would you thank it?”
“Absolutely, and the air elemental as well, while I’m at it,” Declan said with a big smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
And we were back on the carrier bridge. “You have a short window to secure the Ketchikan, Admiral Drayson. Maybe ten minutes.”
“We’ll make it work, Mr. O’Carroll. Thank you and thank Omega for us, please.”
“I’m sure he’ll be in touch. Lots going on. Now, I have to go. Interplanetary cross-galaxy communication is rather tiring,” Declan said, then flicked his finger and the hologram disappeared, his gray glasses melting and running back toward his wrists, as did the fingerpiece.
“I get the entanglement bit for communicating with the ship and the holograms,” Nika said. “But how did you communicate with the elementals from another world?”
“Omega hijacked the sub’s sonar systems, which allowed me to project infrasound down into the depths. We had visited that elemental just a few months ago, so I knew it was there, and it remembered me, which was lucky.”
“Lucky? Someone’s taking the humble routine a bit far, don’t you think?” a new voice asked from the doorway.
We all turned to find a tall, slim elf with white hair and black dragonskin clothes, holding a spear that seemed to be morphing into something else.
Chapter 21
Neeve looked at ease but the fact that she’d already deployed one of her Black Frost blades into a spear was telling. Movement behind her on her left side showed white fur. A squatty ape shifted to one side and a single red eye focused on me.
“Admit it… You miss us,” Declan said. “Every time we come over to Fairie, you find an excuse to pop in and say hi.”
“I like to make sure my prey is fattening up appropriately,” she said with a sneer. “You seem well on schedule.”
I scooted back in my chair. “How about me? Am I looking fat enough?” I asked.
She frowned at me slightly. “You look too stringy and gristly,” she said, “but I’ll admit that I’ve wondered at your vaunted prowess.”
“Whoa, girl. He’s married and a father,” Stacia said. “Cool your already icy hormones a bit.”
“I wouldn’t mate with his dead body, let alone while he’s alive,” the elven princess said.
“That sounded extra creepy, even for you Neeve,” Declan said.
“I do not want to procreate with him… I want to fight him,” she hissed.
“Do you? Are you sure?” Stacia asked, eyebrows up. “Might get more than you bargained for.”
Neeve stared at her hard, the only movement her odd weapon changing from a spear to a long whip. I was shocked at how easily Stacia had taunted the thousand-year-old elf into losing her temper, but at the same time, I was aware of Grim watching the elf warrior closely.
“I am under orders to leave you alone, dog, but Mother never said a word about your little vampire friend,” Neeve said, and then she was moving.
She was fast, very fast, her whip slashing at Nika so hard that the tip turned red hot from friction with the air. But the burning hot lash never landed as Grim had taken control, lunging me across the table to grab the whip with my left hand.
Like a snake, the weapon wrapped itself around my hand and constricted hard until Grim pushed aura out of my skin, armoring it. I yanked, pulling Neeve off-balance. Then the whip was gone, coiling itself back without any motion or effort on its owner’s part. Neeve righted herself with easy grace, her weapon morphing into a short stabbing spear while the armband on her left arm snaked itself down, around, and into her hand, immediately forming a double-sided black blade at least a foot and a half long.
I was already up from the table, my legs moving even as the whip had retracted. When she came at me, I was circling toward the door, determined to get this fight outside.
She jabbed with the spear, followed by a cross slash with the short sword, then spun in place like a running back faking out an NFL defender. I blocked all three attacks with aura-armored skin, instantly reminded of the battles we had fought in China against monsters wearing black diamond-hard skin.
She pulled back and studied me, eyes gleaming. Then she started to spin her sw
ord in one hand, the right-hand spear changing to a matching short sword.
“Chris is part of your mother’s accord,” Declan said quietly.
“You all take witness that I absolve your Realm Holder of any potential breach of the accord he has with the Winter Queen,” Neeve said, never taking her eyes off me.
“And this has to take place outside,” Stacia said. I looked at her, shocked that she was going along with the elf. She just shrugged. “Bitch has no idea what you and Tanya can do. I say show her.”
“Yes, please show me,” Neeve said, striding for the door. Without conscious thought, my feet followed as Grim took up the challenge.
Outside, it looked like half the town had turned out to see what was happening. The large open area in front of the inn was now ringed with locals, the platinum-haired elf standing in the middle. Just behind her stood a massive specimen of a goblin, fully five and a half feet tall and almost as wide.
I stepped off the porch and it started. No fanfare, no words, just instant combat. The goblin bounded for me with one muscular jump while his mistress circled to my left. He was slow, way slow. Faster than my old self could have handled but slower than a new vampire. I slipped sideways, to my right, eyes on the elven huntress. She was circling, spinning both swords in lazy arcs, watching my reactions, my movements, as the goblin sailed past and landed on all fours.
“Two on one, Neeve? What’s up? Are you nervous?” Stacia asked from the porch. She was leaning casually against the railing, arms crossed, a little smile on her face. Declan was just behind her, his expression flat, but his posture loose and casual. Nika stood in the inn’s doorway, watching, her face unreadable.
Neeve took in their body language and then returned her eyes to me. “Fallen ones are supposed to be a big deal,” she said, her stalking turns bringing her closer. “Torg is as much a part of me as my blades,” she said, lunging as she said the last word.
I avoided the point of her right-hand sword by a few inches by simply twisting and stepping back with my left foot. I’m new to swordfighting, but my instructor is world class. The elven princess had perfect form, her motions efficient, powerful, precise, and fast. Part of me wondered what a dual sword fight between my Chosen and the Winter Princess would look like. Probably masterclass level. If Tanya slowed herself.