by Dan Willis
“Clever,” Alex said with a grin. Spellbreakers could affect magic but once Sorsha’s ice was summoned, it was just ice. He took out his rune book and paged through until he found his flash runes. Tearing three of them out, he crumpled each page up into a ball. “Can you set fire to these if they’re inside a snowball?”
Sorsha looked at the crumpled pages, then grinned, catching his train of thought.
“Of course,” she said, snapping her fingers. The crumpled paper on Alex’s outstretched palm was instantly enveloped in a ball of fluffy white snow.
“Here,” he said, passing the remaining papers to Sorsha. “Light this as soon as I throw it, then wait ten seconds and throw the next one, then the next. I’m going to try to get around to the side of that nearest building and open my vault.”
Sorsha took the paper, then grabbed his wrist. She pulled him close and kissed him.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she admonished once they separated.
Alex chuckled and shook his head.
“Do I ever?”
“Remind me to give you a list,” Sorsha said, as he cocked his arm back and threw the snowball.
Alex covered his eyes, then heard Sorsha snap her fingers again. Blinding light erupted over the drive between the trucks and the Sheriff’s car, and Alex could hear shouts of alarm and cursing from the far end.
He waited a second for the light to dissipate, then ran forward in a crouch, around the side of the bullet-ridden car. He didn’t dare look at the gunmen, but he knew some of them were probably behind cover when the flash went off. That meant they would be looking out any moment. He still had his linking rune connecting him to the shield runes in his vault. He’d written two groups of five and put them on opposite sides of his vault to keep them from interfering with each other. The attack earlier had burned through six, leaving only four. As he ran along the trees toward the first building, he hoped it would be enough.
Just as he expected, shots began to ring out and bullets tore into the trees around him. Alex stopped crouching and ran flat out, just as another snowball flash went off. This time there was more cursing, but the bullets shredding the trees kept up. One slammed into Alex’s knee, making him stumble, but the shield rune kept it from crippling him.
After another few seconds of frantic running, Alex outdistanced the shots. The men firing were blind or mostly blind, and they couldn’t see where he’d gone. Huffing and puffing from running, Alex reached the building he’d been aiming for. There were windows in the front, and he could clearly see men inside, scrambling to drop armloads of books into wooden crates for transport. One of the men, a heavyset man with a thick, single eyebrow, looked up just as Alex passed. He raised his hand, pointing at Alex, and screamed a warning to his companions.
Alex kept running, past the windows, to where the wall of the building was plain brick. Fumbling his chalk from his pocket, he traced a line up from the ground as the third flash snowball went off. He’d forgotten about it and was dazzled for a moment before he continued drawing the door.
Reaching into the outside pocket of his suit coat, Alex pulled out the vault rune he’d prepared. As he licked it and stuck it to the brick wall, he could hear the shouts of men coming closer. Squeezing his lighter to life, he raised it to the paper just as a bullet slammed into his hand. The lighter spun away, and Alex cursed as he jerked his hand back. A second shot whizzed by him, impacting the brick to his right.
Dropping to his knee, Alex searched for the lighter as more shots whizzed by him. The little brass rectangle lay just a few feet away in the grass and he lunged for it as another shot hit him square in the back.
Lighting it as he surged to his feet, Alex touched the flame to the paper and the rune flared to life. Beyond the glowing rune, Alex could see three men standing by the corner of the building. They had been blinded by the flash rune, but they could clearly see enough to shoot.
As the heavy steel door of his vault melted out of the brick wall, the gunmen regained their vision. They poured lead toward Alex and bullets exploded against the brick all around him. A slug clipped him in the hip, and another grazed his side. With his shield runes gone, the second hit felt like someone seared his ribs with a branding iron, and he grunted in pain.
Hands trembling, Alex shoved his key into the vault lock and turned it. As he pulled for all he was worth, another bullet sank into the meaty portion of his thigh, and he fell.
“We got him now,” one of the men yelled as they closed in.
Alex lost his grip on the vault door, but it didn’t matter; as soon as the door had begun to open, someone inside pushed it the rest of the way.
“Look out,” one of the gunmen yelled.
He started to say something else, but was cut off by the roar of a shotgun blast. More gunfire erupted from beyond the open door that was now shielding Alex from the conflict.
“You dead, son?” the Lt. Colonel said, limping around the door.
“Nope,” Alex said, trying to get his good leg under him. “They hit me in the leg.”
“Well, up and at ‘em,” the Army man said, limping past. “My boys and I are going around the back to catch them unaware, and you don’t want to be late for the party.”
As Alex struggled to his feet, the Lt. Colonel limped past him with a line of soldiers carrying rifles behind.
No wonder Andrew likes that guy, he’s nuts.
“You all right?” Barton himself asked as Alex limped around the door and into the vault. He was standing just inside the vestibule holding Alex’s Thompson submachine gun.
“Got me in the leg,” he reported. “Stings like the dickens, but it isn’t bleeding too much.”
Andrew handed him the Thompson and gave him a roguish grin.
“Well let’s get out there, then,” he said. “I don’t want to miss all the fun.”
Alex pulled the charge lever on the Thompson, then gripped it in both hands before nodding back to Andrew.
“I’ve had about all I can take of these Legion jackasses,” he growled, then limped back out into the evening light.
The three men who had been shooting at Alex were down, and two of them were obviously dead. Alex could hear gunfire coming from around the corner, and he could see one man up by the trucks who stood with his gun raised, but he was encased in a block of ice.
Clearly Sorsha had entered the fray.
Hurrying as best he could, Alex made his way to the corner of the building. A dozen FBI agents were engaged with about twenty gunmen. Agent Redhorn stood at the front, firing his shotgun with little concern for his own safety.
As Alex watched, one of the Legion men darted out from around the cover of one of the trucks and shot Redhorn in the chest. The man tried to fire again but his revolver clicked empty. Redhorn raised his shotgun, but it was empty as well. Snarling in defiance, the Legion man pulled a wicked-looking knife and rushed the FBI agent. Two more men appeared from around the truck and followed their companion.
Redhorn didn’t even blink. As the man with the knife came in, he lashed out with the butt of the shotgun, slamming it into the attacker’s face. Before the assailant could crumple to the ground, Redhorn dropped the shotgun, grabbed the knife out of the man’s hand, then stepped forward to slash the throat of the second man. The third assailant didn’t have time to halt his forward momentum, and Redhorn raised the bloody blade just in time for the man to impale himself on it.
As a fourth man stepped out from behind the truck and raised a rifle in the FBI man’s direction, Alex shouldered the Thompson and cut the gunman down with a short burst of fire. Startled by the sudden barrage, Redhorn turned, and Alex could see blood leaking form a wound in the right side of his chest. Ignoring the bleeding, Redhorn saluted Alex with his bloody knife, then dropped it and picked up the discarded shotgun.
Beside Alex, Barton raised his hand, and a bolt of raw, sorcerous lightning slammed into an armed group that had just emerged from one of the buildings.
“Can�
�t let you have all the fun,” he said.
Off to Alex’s left, Agent Mendes leaned around the cover of a truck and fired two shots from her service weapon. As she ducked back, she caught sight of a Legion man who rushed her with his rifle raised like a club. Mendes watched him come, then sidestepped the blow at the last second. As the man passed, she jammed her 1911 pistol up under his arm and pulled the trigger. He went down like a puppet whose strings had been cut and lay, kicking the dirt for a few seconds until he stopped moving.
Turning his attention back to the fight, Alex found the FBI men giving ground. Close to thirty Legion gunmen were pouring fire into their cover and already several of them were down. Alex leaned against the corner of the building, using it to steady his aim, and unloaded with the Thompson. Chattering and jumping, it cut down a half-dozen men before the drum ran empty.
Fire began coming at Alex, and he had to duck behind the corner. Andrew just stood in the open, bullets deflecting around him as tiny bolts of electricity leapt from his body, intercepting them. He raised his hand and blasted the line of gunmen. Many went down, but they kept coming.
“Fall back,” Redhorn yelled, scrambling to take cover.
The Legion men heard the call as a sign of victory, and they charged forward. The thunder of long guns dwarfed the sound of the handguns and a chunk of the Legion men went down. Thunder roared again and more fell.
Several dropped their weapons and attempted to flee down the road, only to be frozen to the ground by Sorsha. Others continued charging the FBI men, who cut them down with withering fire. The rest turned to face the new threat: George and his soldiers had taken up positions behind them, and were cutting them down in the crossfire.
Alex sighed as his leg throbbed. They had managed to neutralize the Legion’s manpower advantage, but it had been a narrow thing, and there were losses on both sides. A shot broke the glass window on the back side of the building and Alex realized the people inside were shooting out at him. He ducked back, but caught sight of several men going through the crate full of books. One of them gathered up as much as he could carry, then stood up, touched his hand to his heart…and vanished.
Alex swore.
The Legion members were using escape runes to get out with whatever they could carry.
Dropping the Thompson, Alex pulled out his rune book. In the back, where he kept the more expensive, less-used runes, was one he hadn’t written. This one was one of Iggy’s creations. Complicated beyond what Alex could currently manage, it was made of multiple layers of overlapping lines, and carefully created symbols. To Alex it resembled a bouquet of flowers.
No matter what it looked like, the rune had one basic function: it blocked linking runes from working. Since Alex worked with linking runes all the time, it was the most dangerous rune he carried.
Sticking it to the brick wall beside him, Alex touched the paper with his lighter, and the rune flared to life. Unlike standard runes that would burn in place and then fade, this rune jumped off the wall, then began to swirl. The text appeared to unravel, sending out a ring of crimson light that grew bigger and bigger until it encompassed an area about fifty yards around.
Through the window, Alex watched as the next man to stand touched his heart, then glanced around as nothing happened.
“Throw down your weapons,” Alex yelled. “We’ve got you surrounded, and your escape runes have been neutralized.”
It was very handy that escape runes were just a fancy kind of linking rune.
A few of the men inside started shooting, but Alex just retreated behind the brick. A moment later the Army long rifles boomed and several of the men inside crumpled to the floor. After that, everyone else raised their hands in surrender.
The battle for the rune lab was over.
Alex stood outside the little room where Sorsha was interrogating the ringleaders of the Legion raid. Medical personnel had arrived outside, but Alex’s leg wound was superficial comparatively speaking, so he waited inside.
“What are you here looking for?” Sorsha asked the man handcuffed to the metal chair. He was an older man, perhaps in his late fifties, with gray hair and a goatee. Alex had pointed him out as one of the men telling the others what books to take.
As Sorsha glared at him, the man stubbornly refused to answer.
Alex felt a ripple of power as the Sorceress summoned her power.
“What were you looking for?” she asked again, although this time her voice was unnaturally deep and echoed as if she were in a vast cave.
“Th…” the gray-haired man stuttered. “The rune book of F-Felix Markel.” He gasped and slumped forward as if that answer had cost him his strength.
“Why?” Sorsha pressed, throwing the weight of her truth spell into the question.
“Goridan rune,” he gasped, then his body trembled, and he sat up straight as if he felt no strain at all.
“I think that’s enough of that, Miss Kincaid,” a new voice said, emerging from the man’s lips.
The voice and the posture were easy, but Alex could see the gray-haired man’s eyes, open wide and filled with terror.
“Mind rune,” he whispered to no one in particular. It couldn’t have functioned while the link blocker was active. but that rune only lasted five minutes. Once it was gone, the links would reconnect, just as this one had.
“Who are you?” Sorsha asked, her voice was back to normal.
The new presence must have distracted her enough to lose the spell.
“Where is the Archimedean Monograph, Miss Kincaid?” the voice asked.
Sorsha’s eyes went wide, and she gasped.
“Don’t know,” she said, her voice stilted.
“Get her out of there,” Alex hissed to Andrew’s Army friend.
“Why?” George asked.
Alex didn’t know how to explain that in the aftermath of a truth spell, sorcerers were susceptible to the same truth compulsion for a few moments. It was clear, however, that whoever the voice belonged to knew it.
“Who has it, Sorsha?” the voice pressed.
This time Sorsha just smiled, and Alex heaved a sigh of relief. The after-effects of the truth spell had passed for her.
“If I knew,” she said, “I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”
The gray-haired man’s expression changed to a sneer. Paradoxically, he also began to sweat. Alex could see that his eyes were still wide with terror.
“I guess in that case, we really don’t have anything more to discuss,” the voice said.
“Who are you?” Sorsha asked.
“I am Legion,” he said. “For we are many. Was there anything else you wanted to know before I go?”
“Why is he asking for questions he’s not going to answer?” George asked. “It’s just a waste of time.”
Alex felt a cold chill go down his spine.
“He’s stalling,” he said, looking hard at the sweating man. His body had begun to tremble.
“Sorsha!” Alex yelled. “Get out of there!”
Just as she looked up at Alex, the gray-haired man exploded.
33
Medical Attention
Alex’s eyes slid open amid a haze of pain. Everything hurt, including his eyelids. As his vision swam in circles, he became aware of someone standing over him with a weapon of some kind.
He gave out a war cry and forced himself up, only to have his hands intercepted.
“Whoa there, champ,” a familiar voice said.
Alex jerked his hands, trying to get them free, but his assailant had too firm a grip.
“Easy, Alex,” the feminine voice said. “It’s okay.”
“Agent Mendes?”
“Welcome back, killer,” the Latin woman said with her lopsided grin. A bloodstained bandage was wrapped around her head, but she seemed none the worse for wear. She released her hold on his wrists, and Alex noticed a timid looking nurse standing over him with a clipboard in hand.
“Where—” he began but then he remembered.
“Sorsha!”
He tried to lurch up again, but the pain in his body hampered him so much that all Aissa Mendes had to do was lay her hand on his chest to force Alex back down.
“She’s alive,” Mendes said. “There are doctors with her right now.”
“Iggy,” Alex gasped. “Got to get Dr. Bell.”
“Lay down, Mr. Lockerby,” the nurse said. “You have a concussion.”
“They found you buried under what was left of that building,” Mendes said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
Alex ignored both of them, and pushed himself up to a sitting position.
“What happened?” he growled through teeth clenched in pain. Everything seemed to hurt, even breathing.
“You yelled something,” Mendes explained, “and then a bomb went off in the room the Ice Queen was using to interrogate the bad guys. It blew a hole in the side of the building.”
Alex struggled to pat his pockets, and found both his rune book and his chalk.
“Where are we,” he insisted, bracing himself for the push to a standing position. “And how long have we been here?”
“This is the hospital in Oak Ridge,” the nurse said, “and you were brought in about half an hour ago.”
“Is Andrew Barton okay?”
Mendes nodded, and grabbed Alex’s arm to study him as he forced himself to stand.
“Where is he?”
Mendes sighed and looped Alex’s arm inside hers as if he were a girl on a date.
“Come on,” she said, giving the nurse a knowing look. “I’ll take care of him.”
The nurse just shrugged and turned to the next bed. As Alex allowed himself to be led unsteadily to the aisle, he became aware of the room around him. This was obviously an emergency ward and at least two dozen men were laid out in beds. Some of them wore green Army uniforms white others had white shirts, most likely the FBI men. Others wearing workmen’s clothes were scattered about as well, the Legion’s men. All of those patients had handcuffs on one of their wrists, locking them to the metal frame of the hospital bed.