Pendragon's Heir

by Lori Bond

  “How is Vortigern these days?” asked Will. “I hear Arthur Keep almost gave him a laser lobotomy.”

  The blood rushed from my head, and for an idle second, I wondered what would happen if I passed out during a vision. Would I pass out in real life? Then, my brain refocused on what Will had said. Vortigern was Evie’s father? Her father was my father’s archnemesis. Did that somehow make us archnemeses by association? I didn’t feel up to having a true archnemesis. Constant Dreki “recruitment” was bad enough.

  Clearly, my mind was spiraling out of control. I pulled my focus back to the conversation.

  “I had heard you were protecting Pendragon’s latest pet,” Evie said with a sneer. Now that I was looking for it, the family resemblance was obvious. Evie might be prettier than a botanical garden in full bloom, but she had Vortigern’s cold, dead, snake eyes.

  Will’s eyes narrowed. “She’s as much of a pet to Pendragon as you are to Vortigern. She’s Arthur’s daughter.”

  “What?” For a moment Evie lost her mocking mask, and the real girl seemed to peek through.

  “Did Daddy forget to mention it?” asked Will in a condescending voice that kind of made me want to slap him. He might be tied up and in need of rescuing, but it still annoyed me when guys talked to girls like we were mentally deficient.

  Apparently, Evie shared my feelings. She walked up and slapped Will hard enough on the cheek that his chair rocked for a moment. “I have my father’s full trust.”

  Will shrugged as much as his trussed-up body would allow. “I’m sure Vortigern forgot to mention it.”

  “Father and his men are coming soon.” Evie had regained control of both her temper and her mocking manner. “I wanted to see your pretty face one more time before Dimitri starts in on you.”

  Will didn’t answer or appear to respond. I balled my fists, frustrated by my utter uselessness but also frustrated with Will. He had the power to end all of this. He could “persuade” Evie to help him escape. Instead he’d used his powers to break out of the safety of his bedroom.

  Evie patted her lips as if thinking. Then she gave a small tight-lipped smile. She leaned down and kissed Will. The kiss was long and deep, and it seemed to surprise Will. His eyes shot wide open, and then he kissed her back like kissing her was something he’d done before.

  I felt like they’d kicked me in the gut. I barely kept myself from doubling over and being ill on the floor. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the two had some sort of past. After all, they had gone to the same school for years and had lots of the same interests like guns and whatever secret agents did for fun.

  And it wasn’t like I was Will’s girlfriend, no matter what Arthur said.

  Evie finally came up for air and glanced up at a corner of the room. I almost missed it, her eyes darted there and back so fast I wondered if I had imagined it. Turning to see what she was looking at, I found a camera monitoring the entire scene. I wondered who was watching this little performance. And then I wondered if this was a performance or something else. Maybe Evie mourned seeing her ex turned over to her father and his goons.

  Evie stroked his cheek for a moment. “Remember that day under the Eiffel Tower in Paris.”

  I wanted to gag. I could only imagine what they had been up to under the tower. If that kiss was any indication, massive amounts of PDA had been the tasteful parts.

  Will tried to remain impassive, but his left eye twitched like he was holding in a strong emotion. He said nothing.

  With one last pat on his cheek that bordered on the edge of another slap, Evie turned to leave. Since Will just sat tied to his chair, as stoic as ever, I turned to follow Evie from the room.

  She twisted and turned down a few hallways until she entered a large control room. Vortigern looked up from a radar screen. I rotated in a slow circle taking in the room and its familiar surroundings.

  At that point, perhaps because I had wandered too far from Will, Evie and her father faded only to be replaced by my father as he cut the connection to Stormfield’s office in the middle of a Stormfield rant.

  “Idiotic paper-pushing politician puppeteer,” muttered Arthur. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath as if trying to calm himself enough to keep from killing Stormfield through the screen. “I can’t tell if he’s sending a team after Will or not. I’m not sure Stormfield knows.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  Arthur’s eyes popped open. “So, you’re back from your vision.”

  I gave Arthur a big smile, pleased he had noticed my clouded eyes even while arguing with Stormfield. “I’m more than back.”

  Turning, I ran to the file cabinet where Ginny had stored the drawings I had spent so much time creating my first week in the Rook. I pulled out one that looked almost like a floor plan and another of an elaborate control room.

  “Dad, I Saw where they’ve taken Will.” I pointed to a room in the flying fortress thing I had drawn all those weeks ago. “He’s here, and I know how we’ll get him.”

  22

  WHERE I DEMONSTRATE THAT PLANNING MIGHT NOT BE ONE OF MY STRENGTHS

  TO HIS CREDIT, ARTHUR LISTENED TO MY IDEA, AND HE DIDN’T TRY AGAIN to talk me out of going after Will. Even he admitted that LANCE was no longer Will’s best option. He rubbed his eyes again, as if getting a massive migraine, and then sighed. He opened his eyes and gave me a small smile. “This isn’t the worst plan ever, but it’ll be close.”

  By that point Patrick had joined us in Ginny’s office. He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s not brilliant, but do you have anything better?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it would matter if we did,” Arthur said, not answering my question. “You’re determined to be the one that rescues Will, no matter what. I don’t like it either, but I can see it working.”

  Patrick opened his mouth to say something or to argue, but Arthur rubbed at his eyes again and cut The Defender off before he could speak. “I can see it working,” he said again.

  Patrick’s mouth snapped shut, and he gave a sharp nod to Arthur. He didn’t look happy, but he would help.

  Arthur tossed Pendragon back his glove, and then he turned to leave and waved for Pendragon and the rest of us to follow. “Let’s go see if Dame Morgause has been fixed.” Arthur turned and gave me a stern glare, the kind that wasn’t half-joking but dead serious. “And you’re not stepping a toe out of this place until we’ve got your armor repaired—even if I have to lock you in the labs to keep you there. Do you understand? My minuscule faith in your plan disappears if you don’t have working armor. Are we clear?”

  “Like a cloudless day,” I said, following him out of the room toward the staircase hidden at the end of my hall. “I promise not to go anywhere without armor.” I wanted to rescue Will, but I wasn’t stupid. “But I doubt you’ve got so much as a working lock in this place. Isn’t everything electronic?”

  I couldn’t see Arthur’s face, but his hands clenched into fists. “Oh, the labs will be working. They have even more shielding than Ginny’s servers, and those withstood the EMP just fine.”

  “You expected a pulse weapon?” I don’t know why this surprised me. Arthur’s paranoia knew no limits. “Why didn’t you shield the whole place then?”

  “A directed EMP pulse gun? No, I hadn’t expected one of those. I have no idea how the Dreki got a hold of one without me even learning about a prototype.” Arthur’s already grim voice became even more pessimistic. “No, for some time now, I’ve expected a nuclear bomb.”

  “What?” I halted mid-step, tripping and stumbling up the stairs we climbed. “A nuke? Why?”

  “Occupational hazard,” Patrick said with a shrug, but Arthur and I ignored him.

  Arthur turned to glance down at me, probably wondering why I had stopped. “I built the entire core of this building to withstand a small nuclear blast even if someone dropped the bomb on the roof. All bedrooms and the labs and the part of the armory that houses th
e family armor are in that core. All the apartments on the lower public floors of the Rook are in the core too. Since a nuclear explosion also causes an EMP, shielding from the pulse weapon turned out to be a happy side effect.”

  “Happy, indeed,” I whispered.

  Arthur shrugged and went back to taking the stairs two at a time. “But I didn’t shield the entire building because I couldn’t afford it. Even I have monetary constraints, Princess, and a nuclear bomb proof eighty-five story building in the middle of Manhattan is one of them.”

  I followed, my head reeling. Not for the first time, I wished I’d never been introduced to a world where Will worried about his employers trying to kill him off and Arthur had legitimate concerns that someone would try to blow his home up with a nuke. Life had been so much simpler when my biggest worry was a history test.

  Patrick left us at the door to the labs muttering something about preliminary reconnaissance. Arthur didn’t seem to notice he’d gone.

  Arthur had been right about the shielding protecting labs from the blast. Everything in Arthur’s personal workspace still hummed along as if the pulse weapon had never happened. I’d only ventured into this room once before, but the place seemed the same. Robotic arms fitted complicated electronics and circuits onto the various pieces that would become one of Arthur’s knights. The place hummed with the background noise of whirling gears and the clicks of pieces being snapped into place. We passed knights in various states of assembly and Arthur’s all-purpose work table. Twelve screens filled with schematics hovered around the table while the actual surface was so littered with miscellaneous amounts of junk, it was a miracle Arthur ever managed to invent anything at all.

  What the room didn’t seem to have was my armor.

  I stopped next to Arthur’s work table. “I don’t see it.”

  Arthur paused and turned to me. “See what?”

  “My armor.” I crossed my arms and glared. “This had better not be a trick to get me down here so you can lock me away in your Keep Tower and go after Will without me.”

  Arthur held up his hands in mock surrender. “When I said I’d lock you in here if your armor wasn’t ready, I meant I’d lock you in here with me. The thought of you alone in here and the amount of damage you could do?” Arthur shuddered. “You don’t see your armor because it’s in a diagnostic chamber. In another room.” He gestured at the back wall lined with huge shelves filled with spare parts for the knights.

  “You have to be kidding,” I said. “There’s no door. You want me to believe you have a secret room on the other side? That seems unlikely.”

  Arthur shrugged. He turned and walked over to one of the shelves. Shifting over a metal glove, he revealed a keypad underneath. He typed in a code, and half of the wall swung on silent hinges into the lab. “You don’t have to believe, Princess. But if you want your armor, I would suggest taking a leap of faith into my unlikely secret room.” Arthur gave me a smirk and stepped through the doorway.

  I followed Arthur into a giant room, twice the size of the one we had just left. Pods filled with armor in various states of repair lined the far wall while weapons lined another wall. They looked like weapons from a gun enthusiast’s magazine from the future.

  “Those are a few prototypes,” said Arthur when he caught me staring at them. “Those are definitely things I don’t want LANCE getting their hands on.”

  “You have a secret lab. Will and I have secret tracking chips. Anything else you’re keeping from me?”

  Arthur gave me his most brilliant smile. “Oh, I’m sure I’ve still got one or two surprises up my sleeve. What fun would it be if I shared everything about me all at once?”

  I glared unsure if my father was inspiring waves of exasperation or unmitigated hatred. I was having trouble distinguishing between the two feelings.

  “Is there anyone you trust?”

  There was a long pause. Arthur’s face turned serious, his smile sliding away. “Ginny,” he finally said. “I trust Ginny.” He touched my arm. “But I’m trying with you and maybe someday Will. I think at this point you know more about me, the real me, than anyone other than Ginny. But it takes time, Princess. The counselor says I have trust issues.”

  I snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

  Arthur grinned. “Yes, well. The constant attacks on my life have made me a little wary.” He pointed to one of the diagnostic chambers on the wall. “Now, do you want to go save your boyfriend or not?”

  I nodded and all but ran over to my armor not willing to waste another second of Will’s captivity. The armor stepped out of the chamber and made an odd bow followed by shooting into the air and after a somersault landing in a curtsy.

  “Percy,” I hissed.

  “Very funny, Percival,” said Arthur from behind me. I turned to find him fiddling with one of the mid-air screens. Arthur rolled his eyes at me. “I believe Percival is trying to tell us that the robot is in full working order.”

  “Apologies, my lady,” said Percy, doing his best to imitate Percival. “I had hoped to add a whimsical element to the proceedings.”

  “I’ll have Ginny check his code, especially his ability to contextualize situations,” said Arthur, sending her a quick email. “Some of the lines in here don’t look right.”

  I held my breath, hoping Arthur wouldn’t examine it too closely and realize that I wasn’t running an authorized Percival.

  “If the EMP has scrambled him,” Arthur continued, “it would be nice to know before we’re in the middle of a Dreki stronghold fighting for our lives.”

  “I’m sure Percival is fine, Dad. We don’t have time for Ginny to debug him.”

  Arthur gave me a long look before shrugging. “There’s no glaring cause for concern.” He handed me two headsets. The first I stuck on my head before sliding the one for Will in a small storage compartment on my armor. Arthur’s aesthetic taste when it came to female armor might be lacking, but at least he gave a girl pockets.

  “Pendragon, Morgause,” called Arthur. He snapped his fingers and the two knights dissolved into their individual pieces and reformed around us.

  “Initializing,” said Percy into the darkness. I’d never been happier to hear the AI in my life. The familiar screens around me lit up, and I scanned all the readouts to make sure everything was checking out. When it came to the knights, I trusted Arthur with my life, but it would have been beyond foolish not to have inspected the displays myself.

  I muted my headset so Arthur wouldn’t hear me. “How’re we doing in here?” I asked.

  “Peachy,” said Percy. “Repairs are flawless since I supervised them myself.”

  I double-checked the readouts.

  “I even hooked back up with our favorite uptight AI,” Percy added in a smug voice.

  “Indeed.” The original Percival’s tone made it clear he’d noticed the insult. “I once again can direct your activities.”

  “Percival, I want what’s left of the knights from here in the air in thirty seconds, converging on Will’s tracker,” Arthur said over the comms.

  I unmuted mine. “Do we have any left?” I asked.

  “The six I brought back with me and Galahad and Leodegrance,” Arthur said, his voice grim. “The whole family’s coming out to play. And Percival,” he added, “except for the thirty joining Ginny and the jet, I want all reinforcements headed to Will too. The Rook will just have to stay undefended for now.”

  “Reinforcements?”

  “You didn’t think I kept every knight here at the Rook, did you, Princess?”

  I had thought that very thing.

  “I’ve got at least one knight stashed at every Keep property, facility, office, and storage space on the planet. And all those knights will now show that floating Dreki castle thing I mean business.”

  “Great. Let’s get Will.” I turned to head out the door back into Arthur’s public lab and the nearest exit from the building.

  “Not so fast, Princess.” Arthur tapped
on something and my knight froze mid-stride. I almost fell flat on my well-armored face.

  I swore, but otherwise Percy and I didn’t react. Right now was not the time to let Arthur know he didn’t control my armor.

  “We aren’t igniting a single rocket pack on a single knight,” Arthur continued, “until we go over this asinine plan one more time.”

  “Arthur, there’s not a whole lot to it. You, Patrick, and the knights attack the flying fortress thing using the plans I gave you to make the most noise and create the biggest distraction possible. I then sort of sneak in and go get Will. The tracker will tell me his precise location, and I’m going in a suit of armor.”

  “With Galahad and a three knight escort.”

  I rolled my eyes, but Arthur’s tone didn’t leave room for argument. “That’ll be subtle,” I muttered. “Fine,” I said louder even though Arthur had heard me over our comms. “With four additional knights. We grab Will, I throw him in Galahad, and then he and I take off out of there. Once we’re clear you and the knights mop up, or whatever it is you do, striking a fatal blow to the Dreki cause.” I managed to not sound sarcastic on that last part.

  Arthur nodded, satisfied with my answer.

  I wasn’t satisfied though. Muting my headset again, I also enacted the firewall that would keep Percival from being able to hear me. I didn’t think for a minute that Arthur freezing my armor was anything other than a direct reminder that he could. If Arthur decided this was too dangerous, he’d shut me out in a heartbeat and put Percival in full control.

  “Percy, are we good? If we need to kick Percival out, are you up for it?”

  “Please. That little suck-up has nothing on me.”

  I had to hope that was the case. This maneuver would only work once. It wasn’t something we could practice in advance.

  “Elaine,” Arthur’s voice broke through. Percival must have gotten through the firewall I’d put up and reinstated communication. “What is going on over there?” he sounded exasperated.