Prisoner, page 27
part #2 of The Contractors Series
“Please, you have to tell me what happened,” James said. “I don’t blame him for not telling me. Things have been difficult for us. Both of us.” His words started to come faster. “I need to see him, tell him a few things, especially if he’s going to be risking his life like this—I mean, it’s crazy. I can’t believe half of it. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to believe, but hasn’t answered any of my calls and—”
“I can explain everything,” Eleanor said, raising her hands slightly, “but I need to talk to you about the videos. We know you’re posting them.”
James’s eyes widened, but then, his expression settled. He fixed his glasses on his face. “I guess...it makes sense that I’d be the prime suspect. Daniel was going on about what seemed to be sensitive information.”
“So you admit it?” Tamara said.
“No,” James said. “I didn’t post them. Like I said, Daniel didn’t tell me anything—I only found out after the fact.”
“That’s a little bit of a stretch, given the circumstances,” Tamara said.
“We’re not here to cast any blame,” Eleanor said, giving Tamara a quick look. “We want to stop more information from leaking. What’s out there is already out there. The timing of some of that could have been better, and Daniel isn’t exactly the most politically correct messenger...”
James snorted. “That’s putting it lightly. Just like his mother, that way.”
Eleanor smiled. When it came right down to it, she didn’t know much about his family. It was nice to hear about him from another angle. “I see. I hope you can understand why it needs to stop.”
“I do,” James said. “But again, honestly, I’m not responsible.”
Tamara was incredulous. “Who could it possibly be if it wasn’t you?”
James shrugged. “I have no idea. One of his college friends? He mentioned a Jack a few times, his roommate.”
Tamara snorted. “Not likely, buddy. Try again.”
James paused at her tone. There was a certain tension in the air, now, and Eleanor wasn’t sure how to diffuse it. One of the soldiers stepped closer, closing a gap between himself and the edge of the tent. James suddenly seemed to realize he was surrounded by armed military personnel.
“Look,” James said, his eyes going between Tamara, the soldiers, and Eleanor, “I’m happy to cooperate. I’m sure you—mages?—have a way to tell if I’m being honest. I have nothing to hide.”
“I think you have a lot to hide,” Tamara said. “This all stinks, and the smell is coming from this tent.”
“Let’s not make unfounded accusations,” Eleanor said.
“Unfounded?” Tamara raised her eyebrows. “He’s the guy’s dad. You said it yourself—he’d only trust his family for something this important.”
“Stepfather, to be clear,” James said. “I honestly did not post the videos, and I don’t know who did.”
“I don’t believe you,” Tamara said firmly.
James shrugged helplessly. “I can’t force you to believe me. It’s the truth.”
“I did it,” came a small voice. Felix Fitzgerald—a young boy barely topping 3 feet—emerged from the tent. His hair was somewhere between blonde and brown, a much lighter shade than Daniel or his father. He clutched a tablet in his hands. “It wasn’t dad. I put the videos up.”
James turned on his son. “Felix,” he said, “you’re the one doing the videos? You didn’t tell me?!”
There were only two pleading words in response. “Daniel said.”
James removed his glasses and wiped his forehead with a hand. “What a mess.” He looked at Tamara and Eleanor. “Please, he’s just a boy. He doesn’t understand.”
Eleanor stepped forward and crouched to meet Felix at eye level. “Hello Felix. I’m Eleanor. I met Daniel at college.”
Felix looked up at that. “Really?”
Eleanor nodded. “I’m...I’m Rachel’s sister.”
“Oh,” Felix said. “I met her when Daniel called one time, and she was on his laptop camera, so I saw her. She was nice. Um...nice to meet you.”
Eleanor had to fight back a surge of emotion at hearing even that simple description of Rachel. “Yeah,” she croaked. “Nice to meet you, too.”
James was much faster to realize the implications. “You were both...magicians. Both of you.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, regaining herself. “I’m Eleanor Astor, the daughter of the president of the Ivory Dawn, Henry Astor.”
James put a hand on his forehead. “Then Rachel and…Daniel. God.”
Eleanor took a long breath, sighed, and nodded. “Exactly. Things are complicated.” She looked back to Felix. “Felix, did Daniel tell you how to upload his videos?”
“Yeah,” Felix said. “I followed the instructions he sent me. He said to do it unless he told me not to, and that it was really important, and that I had to do it to help him fight the Vorid.” Felix looked down. “I couldn’t log into Youtube a few days ago, but one of his other friends helped me with some stuff so that they kept going. I just send them to him every day.”
Eleanor had to admit that Felix’s brotherly loyalty plucked a bit at her heartstrings. She put out a hand. “I need to stop the way the videos are going up. It’s important.”
Felix held the tablet closer to his chest and shook his head. “But this is really important! Xik told me so too!”
Xik? Eleanor felt herself frown. Why the in the world was the frog paying visits to a little boy?
“Felix,” James said, “Eleanor is a very important lady. You need to do as she says.”
Felix shook his head again. “I don’t want to.”
Eleanor considered lying. She could say she was going to bring it back to Daniel. Maybe cook up something about the magicians needing to see the videos sooner, in case there was important information. In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “Felix, I promise, that if none of the information is critical, I’ll keep uploading the videos. But I need to take a look at them first. I’m friends with Daniel. I wouldn’t do anything that would put him in danger, or that he really wouldn’t think was right. Please.”
Felix hesitated, but his grip on the tablet slackened. “I want Dan to be okay. That’s why I wanted to help him. Is he okay now? Is he going to come here?”
Eleanor was struggling to hold her emotion in check. She’d had one too many shocks today, and she could feel herself fraying at the edges. She drew in a shaky but steadying breath. “Daniel won’t be fighting out in the open for a little while, but he’s really busy. I’m going to do my best so you can see him. Okay?”
Felix nodded, then lifted the tablet. Eleanor gingerly took it from his hands, as if afraid he’d bolt with it, then handed it off to Tamara, who tucked it into her satchel. “This is my friend Tamara. She’s a magician too. She’ll help keep the tablet safe in her magic bag.”
Tamara couldn’t help a smile. She patted her bag. “See? Nice and secure. You can’t make a safer bag then the one a magician has.”
Felix’s eyes were like dinner plates. “Wow. Can I have one?”
Tamara’s smile turned into more of a smirk, and she gave the forever-fallback answer of adults to children. “We’ll see.”
“We can talk about a magic bag after we talk about how you lied to me,” James said.
“But Daniel said—”
“I don’t care what Daniel said, I’m your father. This isn’t a game, Felix. You can’t keep things like that to yourself in the future.” Felix kept his defiant expression, but he knew better than to keep protesting.
Eleanor cleared her throat. “Mr. Fitzgerald, I want to take you and Felix back home with me. I promised Daniel that I’d ensure your safety. There isn’t any place on the planet safer than our headquarters.”
“That’s very kind of you,” James said, “but are you sure that’s really...” He stopped, then reworded himself. “I absolutely appreciate the gesture, but we’re close to home here. As close as we can get, anyway.”
“Under ordinary circumstances, I’d assign you a security detail and consider it under control,” Eleanor said, “but these are anything but. You’ve seen the videos. Daniel really is what he claims to be. We really are fighting this war for our survival.”
James sighed and put hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Then maybe it’s for the best.”
“I’m worried you’ll be targeted by the Vorid,” Eleanor said. “They haven’t taken much interest in us as individuals, but that could change quickly. We won the last battle, but we don’t know how the next one will be fought.”
“I guess I can’t really argue with more safety at a time like this. You’d know better than I would, anyway.” He peered at her from behind his glasses. “Where is Daniel now, exactly? Will we meet him there? That young man has got a lot more explaining to do than Felix.”
Eleanor had to bite back the smirk she felt at the way James said it. Here Daniel was, a powerful contractor fighting for the human race, but come heaven or earth his father was going to have the last word about it. She was looking forward to the argument, if only to see Daniel on the back foot for once—if it ever came to pass. Hopefully, maybe, it would. Eleanor found herself searching for a response to James’s question that didn’t involve blurting out that his son was locked in Hell.
The ground rumbled under their feet. Eleanor met Tamara’s eyes as they felt a wave of magic wash over them, the residue from a distant but powerful spell.
A series of pops snapped in the distance. From so far away, it almost sounded like firecrackers. At least, that’s how Eleanor would have described it, before she heard it a thousand times echoing through the streets of New York.
“Gunfire,” Tamara said.
And then they heard the screams.
Chapter 11
Smith and Wesson
Eleanor and Tamara broke into a run. The soldiers were right behind them, unslinging their rifles as they went.
“Stay here!” Eleanor shouted over her shoulder. She didn’t check to see if the Fitzgeralds followed her instructions, but she hoped James had enough sense to keep himself and Felix in their tent.
The shouts grew louder as they sprinted through the campground. A swarm of people was on them in moments, all running the opposite way. Eleanor fought to push past the wave of civilians until Tamara sent the soldiers forward. They recognized the military fatigues a lot better than her casual clothing, and most went around the long way.
Another wave of magic pulsed in Eleanor’s senses. A small gout of what looked like black fire flashed in the sky. A clap of thunder struck her ears. The crowd screamed at the sound. Everyone confused or hesitating at their tents took the hint and joined the retreating panic.
“Out of the way!” Tamara shouted, having taken point in front of the soldiers. She raised a hand, gesturing a few times to channel her mana. The simple spell created an alternating flash of blue and red light in her palm, a rough mimic of police lights. “Clear the way! We need to get through!”
The closer they got, the thicker the shoving match with the crowds became. “We don’t have time for this!” Eleanor said. She pushed between the soldiers and stepped up past Tamara while drawing up her power. She thrust her arms forward, then parted them, relying on instinct to guide the force rather than a constructed sigil.
Without strict form, the spell was rough, all power and no finesse. A freezing blast of wind forcibly parted the crowd, sending people tumbling to the left and the right. Eleanor led the charge up the center of a cleared path between the tents. She didn’t like using magic that way, but she had a feeling they’d trade a sprained ankle for their lives.
A flicker of black fire passed them on the left, and in its wake was...nothing. Nothing remained, not even ashes. There was no heat. Everything the fire touched was wiped away, like someone took an eraser to the world and rubbed it out of existence. Tents, the grass, and the ground—and a person. Eleanor tore her eyes away as what remained of the body collapsed behind a tent.
Eleanor had only seen that kind of magic from one source. Vorid.
A split second later, the air whumped together to fill the space left behind, the same thunderous sound as before. This close, Eleanor heard it more in her chest than her ears, but she still clapped her hands to her head on reflex. People closer to where the flame had traveled winced away in pain.
More gunshots pulled Eleanor’s attention from the aftermath of the spell. She gripped her magic and channeled the disgust into anger, forcing her mana—the purified energy—out hard into her fingertips. She started drawing neon-blue lines of light in the air as she ran.
The sigil activated as soon as she drew the last line in place. A barrier of ice two feet thick was created in front of their group. It floated in front of them as they went, a shield designed to divert any incoming spell as they closed the gap to the enemy. The crowds were thinning out—they were getting close to the epicenter of the disaster.
As they cleared another line of tents, they reached a battle-scarred clearing filled with half-annihilated dwellings and strips of grass mixed with striped pockmarks of dust and mud. More bodies ringed the clearing—some eaten away by the dark magic, others blasted away by force.
An 8-foot tall humanoid figure stood in the center of the devastation. It was armored from head-to-toe in interlocking steel plates that glowed with black sigils. Eleanor wasn’t sure if it was a Vorid, or one of their machines, but it didn’t look like any extractor she’d seen before.
The armored Vorid held a sword in one hand; the other hand held an old man suspended in the air. The man was red-faced and struggling wildly, scraping at the arm keeping him trapped while he kicked at the iron-plated torso of his assailant.
The sword was raised to the man’s throat.
Eleanor twisted her hands sideways; her fingers twitched in a precise sequence of gestures. The sigils embedded in the wall of ice twisted along with her movements, as if it were a puppet and her fingers had pulled the strings. The wall shimmered, then split into dozens of long, razor-sharp icicles. A final twitch of her index finger sent the barrage flying forward.
The Vorid turned and threw its victim into the path of the oncoming icicles. Eleanor didn’t panic; she simply gestured once again, deftly manipulating her spell. The spikes separated around the man, halted in place, and reformed once more into a wall. The wall scooped the man up and drew him to safety while keeping a firm barrier between them and the Vorid.
While Eleanor operated her spell, the soldiers split apart at Tamara’s command, some to the left and right. They raised their weapons and fired at the creature. Its armor sparked and rattled as the bullets struck home, but the thing didn’t even flinch.
The Vorid pointed its sword at the soldiers on the left. Dark light gathered at the tip. A sigil climbed and twisted along the length of the blade. “Move!” Tamara shouted.
The sword fired before the soldiers could react. A pillar-sized gout of black fire washed over them, leaving not even ash in its trace. Bits and pieces of what remained—parts of a gun, helmet, and severed fingers—fell to the ground. A crack of wind snapped through the air as the vacuum left behind by the spell collapsed.
Tamara stepped out from behind Eleanor’s shield, firing a machine-gun like stream of violet bolts from her hands. The first few shots slammed into the Vorid’s armor, and this time, the plates near its hip buckled inward with a satisfying crunch. A few of its protective sigils flickered and died.
The Vorid spun to face her and raised its sword again. A shield of black light sprang up around the pommel, deflecting the violet energy away and into the ground. Dust swirled up into the air as Tamara maintained suppressive fire, keeping the Vorid busy.
Eleanor checked the old man. He was heaving his breaths and squinting hard up at the sky, dazed, but alive. She had her spell set him down a safe distance away, then started to make a new set of gestures. The shield emanating from the pommel of the sword was strong, but it didn’t seem to cover its whole body. If she could flank it with another attack on the other side, they might be able to take it down.
A deep hum came from Eleanor’s immediate left. She glanced over.
The armored Vorid was standing directly in front of her, its sword charged and pointed in her face.
Eleanor dove back and whipped as much ice as possible between herself and the Vorid. Black fire flickered over her. A searing pain raked across her left arm. She hit the dirt hard.
“Miss Astor!” Tamara redirected her magic. A flurry of violet light flashed over her, but the Vorid let its armor take the blows and raised its sword for a direct strike. Eleanor rolled to the side as the blade came down and buried itself in the ground next to her head.
She channeled her magic, no gestures or sigils; cold air blasted her off the ground and thirty feet straight up. Her back would hurt in the morning, but it bought her a precious second of focus. She gestured as she flew up, and a platform of ice coalesced under her feet. She landed in a crouch and peered down.
The Vorid knight was taking hits left and right from Tamara’s pulsed shots; its body shook under the blasts. Despite the beating, the Vorid ignored its mounting injuries. Eleanor could feel its gaze boring into her.
Black light gathered on the tip of its sword again, but a new sigil was forming under its feet. The armor around its shins was resonating with a familiar hum.
Eleanor gathered her magic as the Vorid vanished.
She let out a shout as she activated another sigil hidden in her platform. Her magic channeled into it and amplified. Blades of ice exploded out around her in every direction like a porcupine raising its spines. She could feel the resistance directly above her as the Vorid’s armor was punctured by her attack.
Eleanor smirked to herself. Its spell was useful, but the sound was a dead giveaway.
There was a crash of steel on ice. A hand reached down, seized Eleanor under her arm, and hauled her out from the center of her defenses.
