by Rose O'Brien
“If you are a journalist, where is your equipment? Your laptop? Your cameras?” One of the guards asked.
“We ran into some trouble on the road outside of Rutba,” she said, opting for the truth because it was easier. It might even gain them some sympathy. “I had to give the bandits my equipment in exchange for passage.”
“That’s what you get for traveling through Iraq. That place is a shit hole full of thieves and rapists,” the guard spat.
Syria wasn’t exactly Disney World these days either, but Jen wisely kept her mouth shut, just nodding respectfully at the guard. God, how many checkpoint guards had she talked her way around in the past five years? More than she could count and enough to have it down to a science by now.
She’d covered her hair with her scarf, put on a very small, closed-mouth smile, kept her eyes downcast, her voice small and polite. It galled her, but she made herself small and totally non-threatening, calling the guards sir, keeping her hands in plain sight, and doing her very best to appear less than she was.
No Pulitzer finalists here, no sir. Little ol’ me ain’t no threat to your horrible, corrupt, gas-your-own-people regime. Nothing to see here. Move along.
One of the men searching the SUV signaled to the guard, moving his index finger in a circle in the universal “all clear” sign.
The guard nodded, stamped something on a clipboard, and handed Theron a handful of papers.
Jen mentally sighed in relief, but didn’t let her body language change. This was the first piece of good luck they’d had this whole trip. Thank god for small miracles.
“The road from here to Damascus was clear of insurgent activity as of yesterday,” the guard told Theron, even though, as far as he knew, Theron didn’t speak Arabic. Jen valiantly kept her eye roll to herself.
“No doubt it is due to the brave efforts of soldiers like you,” she told the guard. Her voice was sweet, but the words tasted like tar in her mouth. The Syrian Army were a bunch of jackbooted thugs, in her opinion. If they only knew some of the things she’d written under her pen names about the atrocities committed by this man’s comrades, not only would they not let her into the country, they’d probably beat her to death.
She smiled again and bowed as she backed away toward the passenger side of the SUV. If what the guard had said was true, they might have a good shot at making it to Damascus safely. She tried to remember, were there three or four checkpoints between here and the capital?
A twinge in her side brought her attention to the still-healing gashes over her ribs. What had been an annoying, itching dull ache was suddenly ratcheting up the pain scale. She put her hand to her side and felt wetness. Looking down, she realized her shirt and the waistband of her khakis were soaked with blood.
***
Theron heard Jen’s boots stumble on the gravel and looked back in time to see her clutch her side, bright crimson blooming in the spot where she’d been scratched by the zombie. Fear clutched his chest for a moment at the panicked look in her eyes.
“Jen?” He was at her side in an instant, and good thing, too, as her knees chose that moment to give out.
As gently as he could, he caught her and lowered her to the ground. Ignoring the looks from the border guards, he wrenched her shirt up to examine the wounds.
Gashes that had been scabbed over and well on their way to healing were open, the skin peeled back, and blood was pouring in a steady stream. At their worst, those gashes should have been oozing wounds. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t right.
“Theron? What’s happening? I don’t feel right.” Her voice was weak and a little shaky. Her body trembled beneath his hands as he took the pulse in her wrist.
He concentrated, opening his mage senses as he examined the wound. A red, sparkling haze seemed to hover over her skin, flowing in and out of the gashes over her ribs. Damn it! Blood magick.
“It’s going to be okay.” His voice was surprisingly steady, but his heart was pounding, and cold sweat had broken out over his skin.
He hooked his arms under her knees and behind her shoulders, carrying her slight body toward the SUV. She was so light and delicate. Fragile.
Thoughts raced as he ran for the vehicle. She’d bled in the fight with the zombies. They’d gotten some of her flesh with those gashes. It didn’t take a genius to see they had used that material in a blood spell. How could he have overlooked that? Why hadn’t he warded them both?
Blood magick was incredibly dark magick, only one step up from human sacrifice. It was one of the reasons mages were so careful to keep their blood from falling into anyone else’s hands. Blood could be used to track you, but it could also be used to strike at you.
After they’d eliminated the sorceress in Ramadi, the cultists who were after them were probably wary of getting too close. They were too gutless to face Theron directly, so they were striking at them with blood magick like cowards.
This was bad.
Reaching the SUV, he fumbled and managed to get the back gate open without dropping Jen. She was still conscious, but extremely pale and very listless.
“Hang in there,” he told her as he shoved supplies out of the way and laid her flat in the cargo area. He climbed in after her and grabbed for the first aid kit. Hands slippery with her blood, he scrambled for the shears and quickly cut her shirt away.
As he did, something stung his left eye and he closed it. Wetness trickled down his cheek. Reaching up, his fingers came away with fresh blood. A wave of dizziness washed over him. He’d been hurt in that fight, too. They had his blood. And now the wound over his eye that had healed up was gushing just like Jen’s.
This was one hell of a nasty spell and he was going to need one hell of a ward to block it. Wards were easily his weakest area of magick and one he rarely practiced. He was more of a kill-it-with-fire kind of guy. Wards were for mages that couldn’t handle a standup fight.
Still, he’d been drilled on protection wards like everyone at the Academy. Sifting through his memories, he came up with one that might work. He yanked Jen’s messenger bag over and riffled through the contents. Luckily, she had a permanent marker in there, thank the gods.
Pulling the cap off with his teeth because of slippery hands, he began to draw on the left side of Jen’s chest, just over her heart. The black ink was stark against her skin, pale from blood loss. The intricate and looping knots of the ward flowed from his mind, drawn out by some combination of adrenaline and fear.
Fat drops of his own blood dripped on her shoulder and arm and he tried to ignore it. In less than two minutes, he had the ward nearly complete. As he closed the last loop together, connecting the ward as one continuous line, he poured his own energy into the ward, powering it up. The magick snapped into place over her with a green flash of light.
A deep sigh escaped him as he saw the red glow fade around her wound and the bleeding slowed to a trickle. He worked quickly with the first aid kit, hauling hemostatic bandages and gauze pads out. He had her wounds taped up and bound with an elastic bandage in what had to be record time, fear for her making his movements quick and sure.
“You’re bleeding,” she murmured, her eyes half closed, but her breathing even.
He stripped off his own shirt and made quick work of drawing the same ward on his chest. His bleeding stopped, and the wound started to close on its own.
“What happened?” Jen asked, confusion knotting her brow.
“I’m so sorry, Jen.” Guilt tore through him, a physical pain in his chest. “I screwed up. They got your blood during the fight in Ramadi and used magick to attack you. And me. It didn’t occur to me that they would go for blood magick.”
“What’s with the fancy temporary tattoos?”
“Protective wards. I should have thought to put them on us a long time ago.”
She reached out and touched his hand.
“It’s okay. We’re safe now, right?” she whispered.
A sharp knocking sound at the back window brought his
attention around. It was one of the border guards.
He used his faster-than-sapien speed to get his shirt back on and Jen covered with a mylar blanket from the first aid kit, to hide the blood more than anything.
“Is everything all right?” the guard asked as Theron opened the back gate.
“Fainting spell,” Theron said in halting Arabic. “She’s a little dehydrated and hasn’t been eating as much as she should.”
“I thought I saw blood,” the guard said.
“It’s mine,” Theron said quickly. “She scratched me when she passed out.”
He indicated the closing gash above his eye.
“Head wounds bleed a lot,” the guard said, nodding.
“We’re fine,” Theron said. “We’ll be on our way in just a minute and get out of your hair.”
The guard nodded, clearly uninterested in getting involved.
***
It was nearly midnight when Theron pulled the SUV to a stop and killed the engine. While they hadn’t encountered any rebel or ISIS forces, each of the checkpoints (it turned out to be four) had been a lengthy ordeal nearly identical to the border checkpoint. Two thousand questions about who they were, where they were going, what they were doing and what had happened to her equipment.
And then they’d hit the traffic.
Before they’d even reached the city, traffic had slowed their progress to a crawl. Once inside the city, it had been even worse. What roads remained undamaged were gridlocked by other vehicles.
The blood loss had left Jen drained and she’d slept most of the way. Theron had fought the urge to constantly check her pulse.
Now, Jen looked around groggily, clearly confused about where they were. Her color was coming back fast now that she wasn’t being attacked by blood magick.
“Where are we?”
“We’re staying in a hotel tonight,” he told her. “We’ll get access to the Corps outpost here in Damascus in the morning.”
The portal to the Citadel was in a heavily fortified building near the heart of the city. The portal itself was a rarity in the magickal world. It was one of a dozen static access points scattered around the globe. Because mages couldn’t open portals, unlike the elven and fey races, they depended on these static portals to be able to operate effectively. Each of the portals remained open at all times, providing instant access to the Citadel. For that reason, they had to be carefully guarded.
Because of the long-running conflict in Syria, the Damascus team was shorthanded, so the portal was behind about seventeen layers of physical, electronic, and magickal security and located deep underground.
He’d notified Desic of his plans, and his trusty handler would let the Damascus team know they’d be there in the morning. They were almost home free.
“I’ll grab the bags,” he told Jen. “Cover your hair and face as much as you can.”
She didn’t question him, thank the gods, but just wound her scarf around her head and put on a huge pair of sunglasses.
As she looked up at him behind the shades, he said, “Good enough, let’s go.”
Moving through the parking garage, Theron was alert to movement, signs of danger, unusual scents, anything that might signal someone was coming for them.
They made it to a set of glass double doors without incident.
As they entered the lobby of the hotel, Jen froze in her tracks, and even with most of her face covered, he could read the shock running through her.
“You’re kidding!” she hissed at him. “We are not staying at the fucking Four Seasons.”
“Yes, we are.” His voice was calm, his smile in place and he didn’t look at her, his eyes roaming the sumptuous lobby. “They have a high security wing.”
He didn’t want to tell her that after all he’d put her through, he wanted her to have one night of safety and luxury. It might very well be the last night they had together. He was going to make sure she took a long, hot bath, pigged out on room service and slept like the dead while he watched over her.
Theron gently took her arm and led her to the desk while she looked around the lobby. He was pretty sure she didn’t realize her mouth was hanging open a little. It had probably been a while since she’d seen anything like this.
The floor was inlaid marble in a rich cream color. Giant marble pillars in a soft tan rose to the ceiling and the curving grand staircase was done in marble and glass.
As they approached the desk, a clerk spoke in English, “Checking in, sir?”
“Yes. The reservation is under Steve Rogers.”
Jen snorted as she tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. He’d hoped she might catch the Captain America reference. He might as well embrace the inside joke that had sprung up between them, especially if he could use it to make her laugh.
Everything had already been taken care of, thanks to Desic, and the door to their suite was shutting behind them in a matter of minutes.
On the way up, he’d observed enough of the touted security measures to make him feel slightly more at ease. Their room was well positioned, not directly next to the emergency stairwell, but close enough that they could make a quick escape to the parking garage if they needed to.
He moved through the room, scanning for anything out of the ordinary, and gave Jen the all clear. She was still standing by the door to the hall, her bag on her shoulder, her big sunglasses still hiding her eyes.
Theron moved to her side, careful to move slow so as not to spook her.
“You okay, princess?”
She nodded silently, looking around the two bedroom suite. He had to admit, the place was pretty swank. Everything was done in tones of cream, tan, and gold. The carpet was so plush his combat boots left impressions of the treads behind in the pile. There was even a fireplace against one wall, done in white marble veined with gold.
If anything screamed decadence, it was a fireplace in the desert.
The bathroom was all white marble, with gold plated fixtures. When Jen turned on the lights, it was almost blinding.
“Which bedroom do you want?” he asked.
The bedrooms were on opposite ends of the suite, with doors facing each other across the vast sitting room. Without saying a word, Jen wandered over to the one on the right, tossing her bag on the white duvet that covered the bed.
A frown drew his brows down. She was being far too quiet. Her shoulders were slumped just a little and a deep exhaustion seemed to drag at her arms. He didn’t like it.
Striding into the bathroom, he turned on the taps in the lavish marble tub, with a heavy emphasis on the hot water. There were bottles of various potions along the rim of the tub, but the labels were in Arabic.
Opening one, he sniffed. It smelled like flowers and had the consistency of liquid soap. He upended it beneath the rushing tap and was satisfied when bubbles began to froth on the surface of the water.
Leaving the water on, he turned on his heel and marched back to where Jen was sitting on the bed. Those glasses were still in place, making her face hard to read. Her arms were crossed and her spine was curled slightly, like a weight was pressing down on her shoulders. She looked so tired, like she hadn’t slept in a month.
The lines around her mouth looked deeper than they had when he’d first pulled her out of that hotel in Baghdad.
Not knowing what to do, he stood in front of her and said, “Your bath is running.”
She didn’t even nod. He’d put her through hell the last few days, he couldn’t really blame her if she didn’t want to talk to him.
Moving very slowly, he knelt and reached up to gingerly pull her shades off. She didn’t meet his eyes at first, but was just staring straight ahead.
Theron snapped his fingers in front of her nose and she focused on him, but those normally laser-like dark eyes looked dull.
“What’s up?” he said softly. “How are you feeling?”
She took a deep breath and looked away, turning her shoulders away, folding her arms more tightly ac
ross her stomach. One hand rested against her injured ribs.
“It’s over,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper.
Her hand was cold as he took it in his own. She didn’t seem to notice that he was touching her.
“What’s over?”
“This. Everything. My life. My old life, I mean. I don’t know. I just don’t know.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, her gaze locked on the wall, seeing something he couldn’t. “I’m not making any sense.”
Theron had seen this before. More than a few times after a difficult mission, operatives went a little wonky. During the mission they were rock steady. It was only when they got someplace safe that they got the shakes. It was like they could only really process what had happened when they were in total safety. And, in his experience, it could hit the person like a ton of bricks.
Shit, that’s what was happening to Jen. For the first time in days, she could stop long enough to process everything and she was vapor locked.
“Come on,” he said, rising and tugging on her hand. “A bath will make you feel better.”
Her eyes locked on his face and she finally looked at him.
“What’s it like?” she asked.
“What’s what like?”
“This place you’re taking me. The Citadel.”
“It’s about what you’d expect from an underground military installation. It’s pretty sterile. But it’s not as crowded or as claustrophobic as you’d think. We had a lot of help from the Svarturans and the gnomes to build the place. They’re both subterranean civilizations, for the most part, and they know what they’re doing.”