by C. T. Adams
Tony’s eyebrows shot up and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Very interesting. He knows he can’t talk to me directly, so he’s writing what he wants me to know. Never had this happen before. But then, he’s a seer, and they’re just weird.”
Charles moved his pen down to the next line and Holly gasped as she read, “ ‘And welcome Eric and Holly. It is no accident I asked you to attend today.’ ”
Charles tapped the pen on his chin for a moment and then dipped the golden nib into the ink once more. The scratching of the pen was soothing, but he had a sure hand that let them read along quickly. “ ‘If you have not encountered Marduc yet, you soon will. She is not to be trifled with. Already she’s stolen my ability to foresee where and when she will appear, as she did last time when Lucas, Jack, and I encountered her. It’s important that you know that while she is newly born, she is by no means a child. Nor is she simply a reincarnation of the earlier being we fought around the time of the Mayan empire. She is one and the same, and has existed since the dawn of time.’ ”
“Whoa. We apparently have some new issues, guys.” Eric realized Tony wasn’t talking to them. He must be able to speak to the others in the room while he was in a hindsight trance. “Charles is narrating the hindsight. Seems this Marduc is the same Marduc they fought in the Mayan period.”
“ ‘She learns as she sleeps,’ ” Charles continued to write. “ ‘She has all the knowledge of the world as it passes her by, and with each day she grows, she becomes more powerful. All we were able to do last time was destroy her vessel, and that’s all we will be able to do this time as well, I fear. We found no way to destroy her completely.’ ”
“This is crazy,” Eric said to nobody in particular. “Why tell us we’re doomed? Why waste the time?”
“No commentary, please.” Tony turned to him with eyes that were narrowed in annoyance. “I have a hard enough time concentrating on what’s going on. I don’t care if Holly reads, because that actually helps me focus. I’m watching all sorts of things here, recording everything, in case people want to know whether he was smoking or the sun was shining.”
Eric shut up, and Holly picked up the narrative again. “ ‘Just last week, I had Lucas in my office to talk about this.’ ” Charles paused and tapped the pen on the paper, and suddenly the image changed. Charles was in a different part of the room, magically transported to a chair in front of the fire, and Lucas—wearing a flannel shirt and jeans—was in the chair across from him.
Tony laughed. “Oh, very cool. He’s bookmarked his own memories by writing them down. Man, I wish more people would do this—except I generally get stuck doing a hindsight on people who don’t want to remember.”
“Do you remember the last time we fought Marduc?” Charles tapped the pipe he was holding to empty the bowl into a waiting ashtray. The fragrant scent of cherry tobacco filled the room, strong enough to make Eric dizzy.
“How could I forget? We barely survived. We won’t be so lucky this time, I’m afraid. We fought her when you, Jack, and I were at our most powerful. And, while you’ve changed little, I’m not so fast anymore, and Jack is dead,” Lucas said.
“Oh, I’ve changed. I merely hide it well. But we weren’t Charles, Lucas, and Jack back then, were we?” Charles smiled and it took years off his face.
Lucas laughed. “No indeed. We were the bloodswords—Inteque, youngest son of the Great White Wolf, Colecos the jaguar god, and Sasha the bear who ruled the North. From gods to mere men in only a lifetime or two.”
Charles laughed as he tamped more moist, heavy tobacco into the pipe. “Or three or four. And only Jack could see the beast, which we considered good sport back then.”
“Lots of things that were ‘sport’ back then would make people pale today. I wish we had someone with third sight who could see Marduc this time around.”
Charles held a match to the bowl until it caught. “Actually, we do.”
Lucas leaned forward in his chair, his scent both excited and curious. “We do? Who? We need to prepare him.”
Charles shook his head. “Not him, her. And I fear I can’t tell you yet. You know her and you’ll try to protect her from the task.”
Of course, now everyone knew that person was Holly, and Charles was probably right that people were going to try to protect her. Eric knew he would certainly try.
Lucas stood abruptly and walked the few steps to the fireplace. His scent bordered on anger, with a healthy dose of frustration. “You know, I get really tired of you hiding everything from everyone. Why can’t you just let things play out as they will?” He poked at the fire viciously, taking out his annoyance on the chunks of glowing wood.
Charles’s responding chuckle was maddening to Eric. It was secretive and amused and patronizing. “Josette said the same thing to me just last week. She’s grown tired of letting me rule, I’m afraid. Thinks I’ve saved the lives of too many, and have ruined any chance we have as a species.”
Lucas turned, poker in hand. “Who does she think should have died?”
“Who doesn’t she? She thinks Raphael should have been allowed to confront Jack. Of course, Jack would have killed him and we’d never have known about his . . . carnal tastes. She believes I was wrong for saving my goddaughter. And,” he admitted with a sigh, “she might have been right about that. If Catherine hadn’t been turned, she wouldn’t have mated with Raphael, and Michael wouldn’t have gone insane.”
“That’s not true,” Holly said.
Tony shook his head. “He can’t hear you, kid. Just listen quietly. He’s still talking and we’re missing it.”
“—and the others wouldn’t have attacked Holly Sanchez . . . another person, I’ll add, that Aspen thinks should have been left to die.”
Eric felt a growl rise in his chest, and it widened Holly’s eyes. She moved a step away from him and turned back to the image. Now, why would it bother her that he’d growled? Unless . . . surely she didn’t want to die? She had said she was dealing with it. Had she lied to him?
“She was quite upset,” Charles continued. “Josette said if I got to play God with people’s lives, then she could too. I fear she’ll do something rash.” Charles shook his head and took another puff of the pipe. “But she’s saved enough lives of her own, and she knows the risks—possibly better than I. There are times I envy her ability to see all threads of time. It’s a wonder she’s not mad as a hatter, though. But I’m still in charge and I’ll keep watch over her. For now.”
Lucas smirked as he sat back down. He picked up a glass half-filled with a rich amber liquid and took a sip. “It’s a lifelong appointment. That was the deal when you signed on. You can’t hand it over to someone else.”
Charles met his eyes for a long moment. “Precisely. I’ll serve for the rest of my life.” He paused, and then closed his eyes and sank back into the chair. “She’s awake, Lucas. Marduc has been invading my thoughts for nearly a month now. She’s blocking my sight as well. I fear if I’m not removed from the equation, by force if necessary, she’ll be able to use me as a weapon.”
The glass slipped from Lucas’s suddenly limp grasp and bounced on the thick Persian rug, spilling its contents across the colored patterns. “Who have you told?”
He sighed. “Just you, just now. I hope to think of a way to get the proper information to those who need it in a way that won’t alert her. And, it might be that I have to die to manage it.”
“What do you see in my future? Is my time also about to end?”
Charles shook his head and offered a warm smile. “You’ll live out a happy lifetime and grow old with your family.”
It was a skillful lie—or rather, a masterful avoidance of the events to come. Eric was impressed, but then Charles had lived for millennia, more than long enough to learn how to manipulate words without lying. As a human, Lucas would grow old with his family. He’d die in the span of a normal lifetime unless they could find a way to bring him back to his old power.
“Eno
ugh of this talk of a nebulous future. Indulge me for a moment, old friend,” Charles said with another smile. “Walk with me again in the past, when we defeated a great monster and saved the world, so that I might remember the details to pass along.”
“Not a bad idea,” Lucas agreed with a nod. “Maybe together we’ll remember something that can help. If she can block you, she’s probably blocking all of the seers.”
“She’s very subtle. It was only when I heard a whisper in my mind making an oh-so reasonable suggestion to leave a door open that I caught on to her. But now I don’t trust myself to do anything but listen to old stories about a different time.” He leaned back and put the pipe between his lips. “Tell me a story of swords and dragons.”
Lucas laughed, but there was a tightness around his eyes now. “There once was a fierce dragon who brought the rains and amused herself by eating the citizens—”
Holly screamed as the ground under them suddenly dropped away. Tony quickly spoke to those in the room. “It’s okay, people. Just a scene shift. We’re all fine. I should have warned you that this sort of thing can happen.”
They were in a dark jungle. A massive white wolf padded among the sea of green ahead of them. A flash of color off to his left caught Eric’s eye and he looked over to see a spotted cat, nearly double the size of any regular jungle cat, leaping lightly from branch to branch. The cat looked down on the wolf with glowing gold eyes and shook his massive yellow head.
“You glow like torches in the dark. If we have any hope of sneaking up on the creature who eats the souls of my people, we must arrive in secrecy. Cover that white fur with mud, or at least turn human so you’ll blend in and not betray our location to her eight-legged warriors.” The language wasn’t English to Eric’s ears, but for some reason it was translating into words his mind could understand.
Tony’s voice interrupted the scene, making Eric blink to bring his mind back to the present. “Hey, looks like we get a front-row seat for the actual battle. Shame we’re not in the cat’s mind, though. Then we could see what this thing looks like.”
The wolf shook his head, and his voice was Lucas’s. “You worry too much, Colecos. I think your bright pelt would make a better target for warriors who live in trees than mine. The spiders don’t see in the dark the same way cats do.”
The cat looked taken aback. He sniffed the air a few times and then nodded. He leapt to the ground and shimmered briefly before turning into a short man with a bowl-shaped haircut and nut-colored skin. “No reason to risk you being right . . . for once.”
Lucas—or more precisely, Inteque—laughed lightly and also changed form. Taking the appearance of the man on the cot in the next room. “Speak nonsense to the ears of the gods if you like. They already know the truth. Now, let us unload our beast of burden and continue.”
Tony spoke again to those out in the room. “Yep, that’s Lucas all right. He’s Inteque, the white wolf.”
“Beast of burden?” The words were as thickly accented as Ivan on his best day. Apparently, they weren’t going to get to see the massive polar bear. The only way Eric even knew they were in Charles’s head was the angle of the image. They were looking far down at Lucas, as though standing on a roof. “If you are not very careful, young wolf, the she-devil will be the least of your worries. It will be Sasha you will see in your nightmares.”
All three men chuckled quietly as hands helped relieve him of a leather pouch the size of a suitcase. When he changed forms, he was taller than either of the others. He reached for a stack of clothing, brightly patterned with red and green dye. His hands were massive. Charles must hide his appearance even now, the way Lucas had until he turned human. The amount of power it would take to hold an illusion at all times—sleeping, making love, even while injured and unconscious. It was almost too much for Eric to wrap his head around.
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said after a moment. “Bonding moment, bonding moment. Now tough guy wrestling. Don’t care.” He moved his hand forward and the image blurred. Eric realized it was fast-forwarding as easily as a movie. Tony paused the image to see them still walking through the dark. “Don’t care.” Another flip of his hand, and another pause. “Still don’t care.” Another blur and another stop. Now they were eating dinner. “C’mon, you guys. Get to the action. This is as bad as a porno movie with a plot.” Holly snorted but kept any comments to herself, and Tony smiled as he stared at the images.
“How do you do that?” Eric couldn’t help but ask. Hindsight must be a really strange gift to have.
“No talking, please. Seer concentration zone. I don’t know how I do it. Seems to come with the package.”
Holly leaned in close. “Healing’s like that too. You just do things, without a clue as to why or how they work.”
A diagonal flash of red cut across the image and the scream that followed made them all jump. Holly grabbed for Eric’s hand without thinking. He didn’t mind.
“Whoops. Time to back up. I think we’re here.” Tony spun the image backward more slowly. People who died reanimated, blood sailed through the air to tuck back into bodies, and spiders shot up into the trees like yo-yos. “This looks a lot like an ambush. I think it’s about to get ugly.”
It had been Charles screaming, as something unseen cut at him from above. He could apparently hear it and feel it, but there was nothing but air and trees to see. Then came the spiders, dropping down and shooting webs to surround them. But the men had their swords now. Charles swatted away a spider without raising a hand—using the sheer power of his magic. He used his sword to cut through the cocoon the spider had spun around Lucas. But even with the weight of his muscles behind it, it was like hacking through a tree with a pocketknife.
Tony spoke quietly, so they didn’t miss anything that might be said in the image. “I can testify to the strength of those webs. I remember Lucas telling me that they didn’t have any silver back then. Remind me to hit up a coin shop and pick up some old silver dollars to melt down into blades. Burns through that silk like butter.” Now that was useful knowledge. Maybe this hindsight wasn’t such a waste of time after all.
With Jack and Lucas working together, it didn’t take long to dispatch the spiders. They were as good with a blade as anyone Eric had ever known. He’d never seen a sword like the one Colecos carried. It looked like a canoe paddle with a short handle. The edges were lined with flakes of obsidian. And boy, was it effective. Spider legs were severed with barely any fuss and when humans attacked, the blade made short work of limbs and heads. From looking at the hilts, he was pretty sure those exact weapons were here in the armory.
Sasha alone was fighting Marduc, because the others were busy. He changed to bear form to fight and Eric realized why. He had nearly foot-long claws to rake along the creature’s sides when she passed by to attack. But it was like watching a fight filmed in front of a green screen. There was just nothing to see.
But then Colecos did something interesting. He changed forms, leapt onto the creature’s back and dug in with all four feet. The creature screamed and tried to unseat him, but he held on. He bounced in the air like a marionette on strings and Eric could see the intense concentration in his glowing eyes. “The head is about two feet in front of me. If you cut off my nose or hands, I’ll eat the hearts of your children.” Then an unearthly noise filled the air. It was a sound that chilled Eric to the bone. He wondered how many of their “best” warriors would be able to stand up to it.
“Crap. I won’t be able to do that.” Holly’s voice grew very quiet and worried. “I’m not a cat like him. How am I going to be able to hold on and tell you guys where to cut?”
Eric let out a noise that didn’t quite convey his disbelief. “Don’t worry. You’re not getting anywhere near that thing.”
She stared at him quizzically. “Of course I am. Why do you think I’m here watching this? You heard Charles. He kept me alive just for this moment.”
Eric shook his head. He wasn’t going to argue with her
now, but there was no way in hell he was letting Holly get any closer.
He watched Charles grab the tail of the beast to keep it from flying away. Inteque cut at it again and again with one heavily muscled arm, while the other stabbed at where the heart should be. Without even realizing it, Tony had started to creep the image forward faster. They clawed and sliced ever faster, with Charles kicking away any spiders that came too near.
“There aren’t any snakes. Did you notice that?”
Tony paused the image, with Jack hanging upside down in midair and Lucas burying one of the blades into Marduc’s body. “What?”
Eric gestured toward the frozen image. “No snakes. No raptors. Just spiders to defend her back then. She’s upped the ante.”
“How did she manage that?” Holly asked with interest.
“I don’t think it’s Nasil controlling the snakes. You heard Charles say Marduc’s been trying to control even him. There aren’t many spiders left, but there are tons of snakes in the world. What if she’s some sort of supreme pack leader? I know my brother can make the wolves in our pack attack on his command, why couldn’t she?”
“And who are huddling outside at this very moment?” Holly added thoughtfully. “Cats, wolves, and bears. Might as well attack the families of those that defeated you last time. No raptor families. Hardly any snakes—only those who are really tough alphas that she probably couldn’t control. I think you’re onto something here, Eric.”
“But why include me in this group? I’m okay with a sword, but nothing like these guys. It’s pretty clear they did this on a daily basis. I haven’t picked up a sword since college.”
“Actually,” Tony said with a smile. “I think I know the answer to that. Let’s make sure there’s nothing else to see here and we’ll get back to real life.” He spun the image forward to see the eventual death of Marduc and the destruction of . . . a batch of eggs. Very interesting. Tony froze the image and stared at the pile of white orbs. “Yep. Looks just like the one we saw in Atlantic City. Leathery with those strange pinkish spots. And I remember Ahmad saying Marduc was born pregnant. So we’ll need to destroy the eggs, or we’ll have to go through this again. Provided, of course,” he said wryly, “that we survive this time.”