by Ben Zackheim
“My parents put their thumbs on the scale. Mother was a Magicist. Dad, a scholar. He studied the supernatural, celestial, and mortal planes. He studied them more than he parented us. I was always the quiet one, so… what are you smiling at?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, you don’t think I can be quiet. Funny.”
There was a method to my madness. If I could keep her annoyed at me, she’d tell me more. If I could feign just enough disinterest, she’d think her history would need to be more spectacular.
In other words, more truthful.
Rebel was hiding a whole life from me. She’d need fuel to get to the end of this discussion. I’d be deferential when my gut told me to be deferential. And I’d goad when the time was right.
I got ready to maneuver through the maze of Rebel’s past.
Chapter 23
“I was the kind of kid who went outside to blow off steam,” Rebel said. “Our house had a gym and training grounds. You could find me at a punching bag or climbing a wall in my spare time. Whenever the family wasn’t together. Which was basically just dinnertime.”
“Dinner was the only time you’d see them?”
“Yeah. We’d study with a teacher all day from morning to evening. Just the two of us.”
“All day with Ronin sounds tough.”
“Didn’t used to be. We used to be best friends.” Rebel’s shoulders dropped just a bit, but it was enough for me to notice. She’d come to the difficult part. It was time to shut up and listen. If she decided to continue. The shadows of the fire danced across her expressionless face. “She started to change when she realized our parents were prepping us to join Spirit.”
“She didn’t want that?” I found that hard to believe.
“No, she wanted to be in the field. She wanted to fight. She worked her ass off to keep up with me. And she did, too. She never beat me in hand-to-hand, but it didn’t come naturally to her. Then we’d get real Spirit agents visiting us to test our grasp of command. She kicked my ass in tactical battles. Even when she tried to fail, she’d do better than me.”
“So her dreams of being a fighter crashed into the reality of her talents as a tactician.”
“That’s when she started acting different. She wouldn’t talk to me about our parents like she used to. It was fun to get into these big bitch-fests about them. Let off steam. It was one of my favorite things to do. But then, one day, it just ended. Ronin didn’t want to talk about mother and father at all. She had a boyfriend in Spirit. An officer.”
“That’s naughty.”
“Yeah, she knew that. She was rebelling. Without me. I had to find my own way to stick it to the parental units, so I did these.” She held her fingernails up and then studied them with a pride that only weapon masters can understand. Delight, pride, completion.
“That’s my kind of rebellion, partner,” I said.
“That’s why we’re partners. But my parents didn’t think so. They even knocked me out with a potion one night. They planned to snip them off, and file them down. But I woke up, and used them for the first time on one of their stooges.”
“Felt good?”
She smiled. “Felt great. They didn’t want to make waves in the Spirit org, so they backed off.”
“Why? What were they afraid of?”
“You might not have noticed, but Spirit is a political organization.”
“Really?”
She smirked. “My parents had a lot of influence, but it wasn’t enough for them. Their heads were so obsessed with the past that they tried to apply meaning to everything. No one could make a move without them shooting down a fucking rabbit hole of historical context. They made connections that weren’t there, unless you knew way too much historical trivia.”
“Sounds like a fun place to grow up.”
“A fucking delight. It was like living in Hertz’s Circle. That’s the Magicist guild that…”
“That politicked their way to a circular firing squad. Yeah, I know them. Family?”
“A couple of them were great uncles, yeah.”
“You are connected. Fuckin’ Thor, Rebel.”
“Don’t Thor me. This is sensitive stuff.”
“Sensitive stuff that you should have shared with me.”
“That would have been stupid.”
“I could have had another level of understanding. We could have been an even better team. Why would you keep this shit from me?”
“Because you, of all people, could get caught up in their bullshit.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Kane. If you were fed a couple of well thought-out conspiracy theories, you’d be on the hook before you knew it. I would have been forced to keep an eye on you and your judgment in the field. Eventually, their theories, gossip, and attention to tiny details would have polluted your mind, too.”
“So you’re saying I’m like your parents.”
“Kind of, yeah. Except I like you. Don’t go changing that. Besides…”
“What? What were you going to say?”
“I wanted to put it in my past. I had faith in you. Have faith in you. If any of their doom-and-gloom fucking theories were right, then I knew you’d spot it in time.”
“Looks like you could have been wrong,” I said, waving a hand over the wall of abandoned vehicles in their final resting place on the highway.
“Maybe,” she said with a shrug. “But looping you into the loopiness earlier wouldn’t have helped anything. I know that.”
The silence felt like a break from the weight of the revelations. Finally, I said, “So Ronin was pushed into an officer’s role?”
“Long story short, yeah.”
“Sounds like the long story has more information in it.”
“I’m pretty sure you won’t like it.”
“My tastes always surprise you. Try me.”
“We fought. A lot. She got it in her head that she was going to take on demons hand-to-hand. If she’d been born in another family, she probably would have, too. She was amazing. But she saw how she was being manipulated. She was a leader. She had a natural knack for tactics. When she realized that was her future, she rebelled.”
“Against you.”
“Yeah. It makes no sense. Except maybe I had what she wanted. Her anger at me got so bad that I thought she might be willing to get me out of the way.”
“I can’t see her going that far.”
“No? You don’t know her, Kane. Not like I do. She’s not evil. But she’s driven. Anything that gets in her way will get out of the way, or be dealt with. She wouldn’t have killed me. She would have taken me out of the running, though. Somehow. She’s creative that way.”
“It got to the point where waking up in the morning felt like torture. I dreaded seeing her. Dinner was the worst part of the day. It was when they tested us.”
“You took tests with dinner?”
“Father would test us on our historical knowledge, and mother jabbed at the Magicist topics. Spells, history, politics. I dreaded dinner. I’m sure she felt the same way. Mother pushed some of her buttons that night on the test. She tore into her for not knowing the name of an illness that struck a small French village in 1243. I tried to step in and get her to back off.”
“Ronin didn’t like that,” I said. I knew how Ronin acted when you tried to help her. It was never healthy for anyone in the immediate vicinity.
“Ronin attacked me.”
“Shit.”
“Threw a dinner knife at my throat.”
“So that’s where that scar came from.”
“I fought back, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And I kicked her ass all over the china and silverware.”
“With a knife in your neck.”
“You know how I get when I have a knife in my neck,” she said, smirking. “My parents were scholars. They were nuts. But they were powerful. I’m not even sure what spell they used to sepa
rate us, but it worked. I was on one side of the room before I knew it. Ronin was on the other. My mother tended to my wounds while father tended to hers. And they told us that it was over. Ronin was going to HQ. I was going to train with Skyler. Dad told us later that he’d still been open to the idea of Ronin being a soldier or agent. But her temper tantrum closed that door. I think it’s the reason she still feels so raw about the whole thing.”
I let the silence linger. I had a hundred questions, but I could tell Rebel needed a rest. “Thanks for telling me all of this, Rebel. I know it isn’t easy. But you said I wouldn’t like what I heard. I didn’t hear anything in that story to piss me off.”
My partner suddenly found it tough to look me in the eye again.
“They told her she’d be reporting to Chicago HQ for duty the next day.”
“And what about you?”
“They told me I was headed to China to meet Skyler and my future partner, Kane Arkwright.”
Chapter 24
I tried to process what that meant.
So much of our meeting, training, and feeling each other out was lost to my fading memory. But I could recall flashes. Our relationship had been messy, contentious, with long times away from each other. I remember her returning to the dojo, and the feeling of relief and exciting discomfort her presence brought to my miserable existence.
I thought it had all been by chance. Two talented agents, searching for their place in Spirit. Apparently, I was wrong. Instead, I’d been plugged into a machine and, like a lab mouse, manipulated into a fate that was written by someone else. Maybe by my own partner’s parents.
Rebel’s voice broke the trance I was under. “Are you pissed?”
I stood up and paced. “I guess I should be, but I don’t remember enough to put the pieces together. I guess that means you lied to me a lot.”
“Yeah, that’s what it means.”
“Are we done lying to each other?”
“I’m game if you are.”
She studied my face. I studied hers. The smiles we managed to give each other meant something, but I didn’t have time to measure what, exactly.
Because that’s when the night became day, in an instant.
It wasn’t a sunrise light that flooded our eyes. It was a harsh, searing white flash that lit half of Colorado. I squinted in time to avoid the worst of it, and opened my eyes in time to see an afterglow illuminate the horizon. The mountains in the distance, silhouettes just seconds before, stood clear, as if covered in the silver streak of a lightning bolt.
Then the glow faded, and I could make out where the source of the light came from.
It was my own portal.
My Swap Portal.
It hovered at my side. But it was different now. The edges of it were an orange web of crackling power, like electricity captured in a circular glass tube. And in it, I saw a destination I didn’t recognize. It was the top of a hill, and a mountain range in the distance that was unfamiliar. I knew my mountains. I should have been familiar with a range that impressive.
I didn’t have too much time to think about it. Someone grabbed my shoulder. My Glock was in Rebel’s face before she could say a word.
“Why did you open the portal?” my partner asked.
“It wasn’t me.”
“That’s the Swap, right? You’re the only one in the world who has that.” She realized as she said it that the myth of the lone Swap Portal had already been busted by Hakkar’s Swap Portal, which he’d used in our arena battle to beat me.
“It is my portal, but I didn’t open it. And before you ask me, I don’t know who did.”
As the glow faded, I could make out a small figure in the distance. It was running toward us. Was it Ronin? It didn’t look like her gait. The darkness embraced the figure before I could get a bead on whoever it was.
I tried to close the portal but it didn’t budge. My frustration was mixed with another sensation. I didn’t feel my connection to the portal anymore. It left a longing feeling in its wake, as if someone close to me had decided to move on without me.
I heard a sound from behind us. Rebel was flying over my head and racing at the source of the noise before I even had a chance to turn around. I aimed at the darkness and a loud crack broke the air around us. My partner arched back over my head.
I aimed into the night and tried to spot any movement or pick up the smallest sound.
Nothing.
“Ronin?” I asked the stillness.
After a pause, a small cough answered me. It was a woman’s cough. At least that was my best guess.
I kept my weapon ready. “Rebel? Talk to me.”
The first half of my answer was a faint flame erupting behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Rebel cast a simple Fire Spell. It lit our surroundings. She stood facing me, her bloody nose flowing.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You don’t look fine.”
“You always did know the right thing to say to a girl. “
She marched past me and threw the small balls of fire ahead of her to light her way. They were snuffed out in an instant.
“Shooting blanks?” I asked.
“Someone’s casting a counter-spell,” she whispered. Then she yelled, “Come out where we can kick your ass, fucker!”
“We’re skipping the diplomatic stuff, then?” I asked.
“My bloody nose doesn’t do diplomacy.”
“I don’t think they’re going to answer you.”
“That’s because they don’t want to get their asses kicked!” she hollered.
“I don’t like this,” I said, aiming everywhere, and seeing nothing.
“Yeah? What, exactly? The fact we can’t see anything, and we’re being stalked by something, and we have no idea what?”
“That about sums it up.”
Rebel raised a sharp finger. “Shush. Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, it’s the sound of me wetting my shorts.”
“Wait a…”
“Something moved. From over there.”
I stood still and cocked my head to pick up a sound. It was eerily silent. I couldn’t even hear my own breath and then I realized I was holding it.
A faint tapping sound skipped from the black, like a pebble dropping on stone.
I raised a Glock. I took in another breath, nice and slow.
It attacked from above.
The rush of wind, light, and sheer pressure overwhelmed my senses. I was lucky to not fire off a few shots by accident. I was shoved to the ground and pushed into it with such ferocity that I could feel the anger behind it. I could feel the sense of purpose.
Almost like revenge.
Magic can carry its intent with it. That’s the myth anyway. Deadly spells can sometimes tell the victim why they’re about to die, right before they do. It’s a special kind of spell. One that’s bred into human nature. Ingrained in the fluctuations of the heart. The real and the emotional.
I knew the spell was cast at us to hurt us.
But I knew it was cast at me to kill.
My brain went over the possible suspects. Who would want to kill me? My brain stopped at the 17th person.
I managed to point my Glock upward. I squinted through the strong wind. I tried to get a bead on something. But darkness filled my vision. Whatever was attacking us was staying out of sight.
The stone ground shook.
Dirt and rocks rolled over our inert bodies from the strength of the rumbling earth.
Great. Our enemy was stealthy and huge.
“Kane!” Rebel yelled from behind me. She shoved me out of the way and a massive fist slammed the ground. I scrambled back, and gripped the Glocks tight. I felt a large hand wrap around my foot.
The next thing I knew, I was seeing the world through the eyes of a plane propeller. Round and round I went, until my eyes were filled with streaks of color. I kept my hold on the Glocks, but I didn’t want to shoot until I could pull my arm free of the intense g-for
ces. I tried to find the strength to bend my elbow and bring my shoulder down. I almost had my weapon aimed down at my feet. If I could get off a shot I might hit my foot, but I also might hit our attacker.
I didn’t get the chance to shoot.
I was soaring high through the mists of Colorado. The harsh grunting of the beast far below faded away, along with Rebel’s scream. I found myself surrounded by a beautiful night sky. The moon cast its silver glow on the treetops. A confused bird swerved around me. Its beating wings somehow made the whole scene beautiful.
I reached the top of the monster-induced arc, and started to fall.
Maybe it was the feeling of the cool breeze against my skin. For some reason I thought about waterfalls.
I’d miss waterfalls.
And chocolate.
Chapter 25
The top of the trees rushed up to me.
My best read of my trajectory put me smack dab on top of a tree. I’d probably impale myself there. My life flashed in front of my eyes, but only the dirty parts.
Rebel’s claws dug into my heel and yanked me off-course. My fall pulled us both down through the tree’s wet leaves and thick branches. The branches hurt like hell, but they slowed our fall. We both hit the ground at the same time, right next to each other.
We gasped for air in some kind of syncopated rap. Finally, my lungs found their balance, and the oxygen flowed back in. I sensed a brand new injury with every breath. The pain flowed through my body in every direction, and collided in my right hand.
“That sucked,” Rebel said. “You okay?”
“I broke my hand. You?”
“Broke a nail.”
She took my hand, and closed her eyes. She wasn’t a healer but she could dig deep for a spell to make me feel better.
“Rebel, don’t,” I whispered. I didn’t want to give the enemy our location. The thing might have thrown me a mile, or he might have thrown me a couple hundred feet. I didn’t want to find out. “If he sniffs out a spell, he’ll come running. We’re in no shape to fight it.”
“Speak for yourself, Arkwright. I could take him.”
“Not without me, you couldn’t.”