Dusk Knight, page 30
“Fairly sure he meant we should be in close proximity, Tom,” she commented while I hefted the shooting bags into the back. “You might be thinking of the wrong implementation of stick.”
“Odd, it doesn’t feel wrong to me. Both of us in the same room has benefits if things go south. Some complications, too, but certainly some benefits,” I retorted and gave her the best shit-eating grin I had when I turned around. She just shook her head and rolled her eyes at me. As if I were the one being unreasonable, even. “Hey, I’m just thinking about your personal safety here.”
“Right,” she said, drawing the word out. “How can you be my bodyguard without access to my body?”
“Don’t forget you’re supposed to be my bodyguard, too. That’s just as true the other way around, you know.”
She was still grinning when we walked back inside. Turns out that Scooter has some medication he needs daily to help him deal with his issues, and leaving him here without someone to keep an eye on him wasn’t going to be an option. He was less than thrilled about going back into the carrier, but the tuna Colleen plied him with minimized his complaints. Her apologies about how she knew he’d been cooped up for too long and needed a chance to get out and stretch his legs may have helped a little.
Who knows? Maybe he actually understood her. She was Cat Sidhe after all. What good is being king if your subjects can’t understand you? Good Idea pointed out that based on Scooter being a cat, it was more likely he saw us as his subjects instead of the other way around. NCO corrected him, pointing out that long-lost drinking buddies who’d forgotten who he was seemed more apt. I couldn’t help but agree. Scooter did seem more like someone was running dog software on cat hardware.
The three of us piled into the truck and pulled out of my driveway a few minutes later. I would’ve taken my car, which had been sitting here since getting delivered during my time in a hospital bed, but according to Brian the damn thing wouldn’t start. Seeing as it didn’t even click, the battery was probably dead. That made a bit of sense, given how long it had taken the Army to ship it back. I’d have to get that taken care of when we get back. It occurred to me that the dead battery would give me the perfect excuse to interact with Brian openly, depending on his cover identity. It also would’ve made more sense to take her car, I guess, but the gas mileage difference hadn’t occurred to me until we were on the road. Old habits and being rushed for time make for odd choices. At least the truck wouldn’t care about how rough the trail back to the cabin was.
Per what Colleen worked out with Victor over the messenger app, everyone would stagger out at their own pace. Since we were the first out, we were clear to proceed directly if we felt it was safe, otherwise everyone would meet up in the parking lot of the Super Walmart in Farmington. In the day of everyone having GPS on their phones, all anyone needed was an address and a description of the last turn-off in case Google Maps decided that the last turn was a few hundred meters in the wrong direction.
Other than Colleen seeming a bit on edge, the drive down was as uneventful as could be. Traffic through the city sucked, as usual. Our stop in Crystal City to get gas at the QT off the highway was as uninteresting as the drive had been so far.
We were passing Bonne Terre when I looked over to Colleen and said, “You’ve been awful quiet. Do you mind sharing what’s got you jumpy? Besides the obvious?”
She sighed and looked contemplative a moment. “Mostly the obvious, I think. That, and I’m still a little shaken by almost killing you. Victor was right, I should’ve known better.”
I laid a hand on her leg, mulling over what to say. “Look, you’re going to have to find a way to get over that. Some things, you can’t take back no matter how much you want to. Tearing yourself up more than it takes to learn the lesson is counterproductive. The way you’re reacting, it’s obvious to me you’ve learned it. Hell, if I knew you better, I’d say you’re tearing your own ass up because mistakes are something you don’t make, or at least haven’t in so long you don’t remember what it’s like. I half wonder if you’ve come to terms with how and why it happened, but you’re tripping up on accepting that it happened at all.”
When no response was forthcoming, I glanced over to find her looking out her window. Her reflection in the passenger side mirror showed a pensive frown. I squeezed her leg before turning my attention back to the road. Getting stuck in your head over flubbing something was a pretty shitty way to be. Been there, done that. Too many times. Either way, I figured she’d talk when she was ready. Forcing this kinda thing seldom worked out any way positive. Until then, I’d enjoy the fact that Dad’s truck was an automatic and I didn’t have to move my hand to shift every time some jackass decided ten under was perfectly acceptable.
A few miles had passed when I felt her hand on mine.
“You’re probably right, Tom. Living for centuries gives one a lot of time to perfect a lot of things. After a while, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to make rookie mistakes. Especially when so much is on the line. I’d given up on everything to do with my old life and then suddenly all this happens. It’s a lot to take in.”
“You good then?”
“I guess. I still have this feeling that something is either watching or waiting for us, but it’s probably just nerves.”
“You want to wait for everyone else?”
“Nah, it’s probably in my head.”
“You sure?” I asked. She nodded. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”
We passed the exit for the Walmart without her asking to stop. Before long we were cresting the last major hill before we got off the state highway.
“So, Robert’s like every other teenaged boy?” I asked, eyeballing the little shop I bought most of my food at when I was down here as we approached.
“Eh, I guess? Like how?”
“Eats like he’s got two assholes?”
That elicited a chuckle. “Yeah, why?”
“Trying to gauge how big a chunk out of my wallet this is going to tear out,” I said as I hit my blinker and started to slow down. Two big packs of bacon, two family sized packages of hotdogs, five pounds of ground beef, two packages of eggs, some canned soup and chili, a pack of Velveeta, some fresh veggies, and assorted condiments and buns later, we were pulling back out on the road. Colleen adjusted the Styrofoam ice chest we’d bought to haul it all in after things bounced around a bit during the turn onto the gravel access road. Scooter, of course, made a hell of a lot of noise when she did. He sounded like he expected a tithe from our newly obtained bounty. Of course he did.
The place looked every bit of what I expected when we paused to unlock the gate. Colleen sighed as we crawled up the trail toward the cabins. Something in the way she did it warranted a quick glance.
“It’s the ley lines,” she answered.
“Really? I don’t feel anything different from normal. The place feels like home, that’s it.”
She smiled. “Maybe twenty yards past the gate all your stress just melts away?”
“Yeah? Been that way as long as I can remember.” I gave her some side eye and the smile got wider. “That’s just being out in the woods for me, though.”
“Maybe you’re more sensitive to that sort of thing than you think.”
I made some doubtful noises as I pulled up outside my cabin.
“I’ll carry the stuff in if you want to do the rest of your checks,” Colleen said as she opened her door.
“Sure,” I said and detached the d-ring I kept that cabin’s keys on. She looked at me askance when I offered it. “Most people use keys to open doors?”
She smirked as she took my keys. I shook my head, and wondered what that was about. Crazy-ass woman. The other cabin checked out, and as I stepped up to the utility box, Colleen yelled from my place that everything inside was good to go. I flipped the switches and wrenched open the water valve. On the way back to the cabin, I pulled out my phone and utilized my one bar of signal to message Victor to let him know we’d arrived, and everything checked out.
“Got everything put away,” Colleen told me as I walked in the door. I spotted the empty cat carrier and looked around. “He’s off exploring. Don’t worry, I made sure he knows where I put the litter box. Also, I checked out your ammo, uh, cupboard? Are you sure that’s enough for a few days for all of us?”
I frowned as I turned to the cabinet and opened it. No, nothing was missing.
“There’s a few thousand rounds of just about everything in here,” I commented.
“We’ll go through a good chunk of most of that. If Victor’s looking at this as a potential fallback location, you’ll want more. At the very least, to replace what we’re likely to use. Stockpile, otherwise.”
“Good point. I’ll have to order more, or go get some I guess.”
“No worries. I messaged Victor when I came out to let you know the place was okay. I may have bought some business-grade ammo from the guy in Independence, too. Should be here day after tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks, I guess?” She replied with a smile. “So what was up with the keys thing?”
Her eyes lit up. She came around out of the kitchen and had me follow her outside. Scooter showed up at the sound of the door opening, but he plopped down next to the cabinet to supervise. Part of said supervision evidently involved looking at the open space where the door should have been and meowing like its absence was an affront to cat-kind. Evidently he was not fond of the outdoors. Good to know he’s not an escape hazard like some of my former girlfriends’ cats were.
“So,” Colleen began as she locked the door with my keys. Inside, Scooter meowed like he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see us again. Colleen shook her head with a grin, then looked over to me. “Locked, yes?”
I humored her and tested the door. “Yeah, and?”
She handed me the keys. “Clear your mind and watch.”
So I did. She grabbed the door handle and after a heartbeat I felt more than heard a faint buzzing followed by a click. She grinned at me as she pushed the door open.
“Huh. No shit? How?”
She looked over at me with a mischievous smirk. “Would you believe magic?”
I closed my eyes as I sighed. Walked right into that one.
She giggled at me and motioned for me to follow. She paused in the living room a moment to sooth Scooter with some skritches before continuing on into the bedroom. “Too noisy out there. You really need to get that window unit looked at. Sit.”
I did as she asked while she picked up one of Mom’s old jewelry boxes, the musical one with a lock. She sat next to me and set it in my lap. Naturally, Scooter had to climb up to investigate what his stupid humans were doing. We could hurt ourselves, you know.
Colleen rolled her eyes as she picked him up. Once he was suitably occupied, and by that I mean sprawled out belly-up and incapacitated with purrs due to belly rubs, she told me, “Put your finger against the lock.”
I did as asked, and she put her hand over mine.
“It took me a while to figure this trick out on my own,” she said. A faint buzzing filled my ears, and the hair on my forearm stood on end. Suddenly my vision blurred to the point I felt a migraine coming on.
“Ugh, shit,” I grunted, wincing as I pulled my hand back. The moment her hand left mine everything snapped back to normal, leaving me feeling dizzy and more than a little nauseous.
Concerned, Colleen asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah? No? Fuck,” I muttered, suddenly over-hot. Sound filled my ears briefly, the fluttering of wings and a multitude of distant crows. I needed to get up, move or something. Right now. I managed to half walk, half stagger over to the door before the worst of it passed. “What the hell was that?”
“Not something I planned for,” she said behind me in a distinctly worried tone. Scooter had stopped purring. “Tom, look at your hand.”
I glanced down to find a black threefold-curled sigil with a growing wreath of Celtic knotwork on the back of my hand. Calling it black was an understatement, like calling the sun bright. Good Idea commented that we’d watched a YouTube video once about a new pigment that looked just like that, vantablack. Except vantablack wasn’t a tattoo ink and didn’t swim across your skin with a faint, tingling chill.
“What the fuck, Colleen?” I asked right as the knotwork completed encircling the sigil. Scooter complained when she sat him on the bed and stood. While she crossed the room to my side, sheaves of feathers grew out of the knotwork’s edges, periodically interrupted with fangs, and then the whole thing faded away in less than a second.
“I’m not sure?” she said, examining my hand. “I’ve never seen that happen before, Tom. Part of that looked like one of the Morrigan’s signs, I think. Maybe it was the Mark interacting with the magic?” She looked closer. “I can sense something there that wasn’t there before, but I have no idea what it is. We can try again or wait until Victor gets here and see what he says.”
I gave a non-committal grunt. On one hand, that was less than pleasant, and Victor seemed to have an abnormal amount of clues when it came to how this worked compared to everyone else. On the other, well, one way of looking at it was that I was still a grunt at heart. Sit a weapon in front of me, especially one that looked bad ass, and I’d compulsively try to figure it out. You can’t get much cooler than magic.
To be fair, I might’ve been bringing some preconceptions to the table. My many hours of playing D&D as a kid demanded things like chucking fireballs or tossing lightning around like a party favor. So far all I’ve managed to do was feel some odd chills, see through some shit I wasn’t supposed to, and somehow manage to not completely die from a banshee wail. None of it was even the least bit deliberate. My childhood lied. Magic sucks.
I worked my way over to the bed and sat down. “How about we give me a few minutes to shake what’s left of the nausea before trying that again. Got anything else you might be able to show me?”
She chewed on her lip a moment and stood up as she pulled out her phone. She fiddled with it while she walked to the other side of the room. A few seconds later the shitty speakers on her Samsung started belting out AC/DC’s Back in Black.
“Okay, so, now you hear it,” she said with a grin and suddenly the phone went quiet. She gave me an expectant look.
Oh, golf clap, you can turn off the sound. Now, if you could silence the goddamn random ads on web pages that just start playing on their own, that would be impressive. She started forward and it wasn’t until the second step that I realized I wasn’t hearing her feet on the crappy carpeting either. In fact, it wasn’t until she was almost inside arm’s reach that I started to hear the music, but it was faint, like I was listening from the far side of an extremely deep well.
“Okay, now that’s neat,” I said, or rather tried to say. It’s surprisingly difficult to speak when your voice sounds like it’s coming from the other end of a well. Not that you can’t say anything, but the disconnect between what it actually sounds like versus what it should sound like yanks the e-brake in your brain.
Colleen grinned. She turned off her phone and killed the effect as she sat down. “So?”
“Yeah, okay, that was cool.”
“Eh, sadly, most of the other things I can do probably won’t work on you.”
“Why? And like what?”
“Well, do you read Douglas Adams at all?” she asked.
“I may know where my towel is, yes.”
She grinned. “Do you remember what an SEP field is?”
“Anything in it is interpreted as being somebody else’s problem so your brain automatically fucks off and ignores it,” I answered. Halfway through the sentence the hair on my neck stood on end as something faintly brushed against my mind. I managed to finish my statement without skipping a beat. “Next best thing to invisibility.”
“Right. Well, like I figured, it doesn’t work on you. The sound trick works on the air itself, but the SEP bit targets the observer. We’ve already established quite a bit of things targeting you directly simply fizzle.”
I frowned. “That sucks— Eh, no, that’s good, but it sounds like it’d be neat to see.”
“Or not see?” she asked with another grin.
I returned the grin as I shrugged. “Sounds like somebody else’s problem to me.”
She groaned.
“Speaking of which, it kinda bugs me that I see through your glamours.”
“Because they’re hot?” she asked with a knowing smile.
“Well, yeah, but that’s not the point. What happens if we get separated and I have to ask someone if they’ve seen you? Or, hell, since damn near everyone on the team but Alicia lives under a glamour, this applies to everyone. Not being able to describe one of you to someone who can’t see through the glamour could have some unfortunate results in the right situation.”
“Huh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Colleen said after a few seconds of thought. “Yeah, or if someone’s hidden something with a glamour noticing it will probably give you away. Like my tattoo.”
“Right.”
“Well, I know Winter’s Knight could actively see glamours, both the illusion and what was behind it. How, exactly, I don’t know though. There’s a good chance you might be able to as well.”
“True.”
“Oh, by the way, you’re wrong. Brian doesn’t glamour at all as far as I know.”
“Really? Doesn’t or can’t?”
“I have no idea. Never felt the need to pry, I just know he’s always looked like the same person and I don’t remember ever sensing anything that felt like a glamour on him.”
Huh. No new questions came to mind, and it looked like Colleen was out of things to show me. Well, I guess that’s that then. Time to suck it up.
I grabbed the box as I said, “Okay, so let’s try this again.”
