Smilodon, page 24
“That thought,” Karleen said. “What is it?”
“Vicki is Merlin’s great-great-granddaughter. I can’t help but think it would be so cool to have known him. The stories Grandma could tell.” I looked up just in time to see everyone else share a look. “Okay… so, what was that?”
“Wyatt…” Alistair began, looking for all the world like he tried to think of a way to tell me I had terminal cancer. “Merlin may not be dead. The rumors of his death have always been just that... rumors. The one location certain scholars knew was his grave isn’t a grave. If he isn’t dead and if he learns of this? It will be bad. No, not bad. Apocalyptic.”
“Seriously?” I asked, not quite believing the risk could be so great.
Alistair nodded. “Ask your grandmother sometime.”
Silence reigned for several moments.
“I don’t think we’ll make much progress right now,” Alistair said at last. “Gabrielle, Karleen… why don’t you take our new Alpha out for a run or something? It might help him clear his head.”
“But Grandma said she’d call…”
Gabrielle gave me a soft smile. “We have ways of carrying cell phones. Don’t worry; if we go for a run, you won’t miss her.”
Vicki returned to awareness at a snail’s pace. Her head felt like it was packed in wool or cotton or some other material meant to smother her thoughts. Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t sure what wasn’t right, but she knew it was important, whatever it was. If she could put her thoughts in order, that might help.
Water dripped somewhere close by, and each drop struck something metal. It was a steady ping… ping… ping… that brought a metronome to mind. But why was it there at all? The maintenance staff would never let a leak… oh, wait. She wasn’t home. She… well, she didn’t know precisely where she was. The last she remembered, she stood on a sidewalk in the city. She was taking a shopping and spa day for herself.
Her eyes shot wide as she realized what was wrong. She couldn’t feel her talent… at least not at its normal intensity. Now that she was back to her full awareness—at least mental awareness—she realized she wore a collar of some sort, too. Was the collar keeping her from accessing her talent? Was that it?
Well, one thing a time. She lay on the floor of a dingy storage-like room. A single bulb quasi-lit the room, and exposed piping ran along one corner. One of the pipes leaked, the source of the dripping water. It didn’t look like her abductors disturbed any of her clothes or jewelry, which was good for her on multiple levels. Firstly, they didn’t take her for a bit of ‘fun.’ Secondly, she still wore the emergency bracelet. It looked like a charm bracelet any college-age young woman might wear, and her grandmother drilled into her that she should never remove it, not even for a bath. Her grandmother wove the effects into the bracelet itself, and Vicki could activate any or all of them by breaking off individual ‘charms.’ Why would they put an anti-magic collar on her but leave the bracelet? Huh… maybe they didn’t know what the bracelet could do.
She pushed herself to her feet and started a slow examination of her surroundings, turning in place as she did so. She looked for cameras, but it wouldn’t hurt to know what she shared her space with, all the same. She spent upwards of ten minutes examining every part of the space she could see. Nothing leapt out at her as a camera—obvious or suspected—but that wasn’t necessarily a guarantee. The thought of activating the bracelet galled her. If she could just call her staff, she could damn well rescue herself, thank you very much.
Might as well try…
She closed her eyes, took several deep breaths, and touched the place in her mind where the connection to her staff should have been. It felt like a faint whisper at a party. Like she was just on the cusp of the conversation, but not truly close enough to hear. After several moments of no success, she stopped, afraid she might hurt herself somehow. Fine. What did the bracelet have that might help?
The obvious answer was the All-Seeing Eye charm. It was the Magi equivalent of a red SOS flare on the scale of a massive thermonuclear blast. Every Magi in North America would know she needed help if she activated that. Not quite her first choice.
Her eyes landed on the flame charms. She really should’ve paid more attention to the bracelet. One of the flame charms looked like a campfire. The other looked like an open flame. The campfire was a protection against fire or extreme heat; if she activated that one, she couldn’t be burned for something like an hour. The open flame charm would burn through whatever she placed it against after activation.
She could always activate the campfire charm and then use the flame charm to burn through the collar. But… imbued items sometimes went BOOM if something damaged them sufficiently to destroy them. If only she could see it... Vicki dithered for several moments while she examined her surroundings for anything she could use as a mirror. Nothing.
Fine. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
She knelt, closed her eyes, and whispered a prayer. Then, she broke the campfire charm free from the bracelet. Less than a heartbeat later, a red aura suffused her entire form. She broke the flame charm free from the bracelet and bent forward so that she was on her hands—well, one hand—and knees. She slapped the already-hot flame charm against the collar and put that hand flat on the floor. After all, if the charm melted the metal, she wanted gravity to pull it away from her, heat protection or no. It was one thing to trust the magic. It was something else entirely to be stupid about it.
Mere moments later, the sound of sizzling metal reached her ears. She wanted to know what was happening, but she didn’t dare touch the collar to find out.
SPLAT! A drop of molten metal struck the concrete between her hands, and she fought the urge to cheer. Both her natural impatience and concern that the flame charm might just melt a hole through the collar without completely severing it prompted her to lift her hands and grasp the collar under each ear. Then, she pulled. And pulled. And pulled some more. At long last, after what felt like hours of effort to no avail (but was really little more than a few minutes), the weakened metal of the collar broke free of itself.
Sparks erupted from the collar as it died, and the sole light overhead flickered in time with the sparks. Vicki lifted the remains away from her neck and tossed it away just in time for it to erupt in a massive fan of lightning that shorted out the electrical system and plunged her room into darkness.
But Vicki didn’t care. Oh, no. She did not care one whit that she now knelt in total darkness. Access to her talents was back… and just as strong as it ever was.
She held out her right hand and touched the part of her mind that housed the connection to her staff, and it answered. In the wink of an eye, she held a battle-staff passed down across centuries and generations. Not even Merlin knew the origin of the staff, at least not according to his journals. It was a dark and almost evil thing, made for one purpose and one purpose only: unbridled warfare and the mass slaughter of one’s enemies. It wasn’t quite sapient, but something lurked within the strands of power woven into wood smoothed and oiled by countless hands across countless years. And there had been far too little carnage lately for its liking.
Vicki used the staff to steady herself as she stood. Her first reflex was to conjure a ball of light, but no one should ever follow the first reflex. The ball of light would illuminate her surroundings, sure. But if the collar shorted out the electricity across the entire building, that ball of light would also advertise her location to anyone with working eyes. Instead, Vicki sifted through her memories for a spell that would grant her dark-sight; it was no good for color differentiation at all, but with it, she could see in total darkness without giving away her position.
She drew on her talent and recited the spell and watched it take hold in a series of gradients until she stood in a world of black and white. Well, maybe not black and white, per se. Black and not-black? Just as she acclimatized herself to the strange vision presented by dark-sight, light appeared under the door. Keys jangled as someone unlocked it.
25
My cell phone blared the alert klaxon of a popular TV show I watched in my teens. It was the ringtone I set for Grandma’s and Grandpa’s contacts until we brought Vicki home safe. A few of the people at nearby tables shot looks my way, and I made eye contact with one soul who looked particularly belligerent and mouthed, “Bring it.”
He chose to go back to his meal. Odd, that.
By then, I thumbed the accept slider to take the call and held the phone to my ear. “Yes, Grandma?”
“We have her,” she said, and I felt like jumping to my feet and cheering. “Well, at least we have her location. She used her charm bracelet, Wyatt.”
I blinked. Her charm bracelet? “Uhh… Grandma, I don’t understand why that’s significant.”
“Oh, dearie me, of course not. The charm bracelet is something I developed across many years. Your father hated to wear one. It’s a series of useful effects embedded in a bracelet, and you activate them by breaking off the appropriate charm. I also built the bracelet to inform me and your grandfather when it’s used, plus location, health status, and other things like that. Her adrenaline is up, but her pain response is off, so she’s relatively okay for the moment. She used the heat charms, both the protection and the damage.”
“I want to be with the team that goes to get her,” I said, almost growling it out.
“You darling boy, I’m so glad you said that. She’s at an abandoned mining facility. We can tell roughly where she is; she’s not inside the mine. But there’s some kind of teleportation block in place. We can’t just bop over there and grab her. We also can’t tell anything about the place. We have no way of telling you whether you’re walking into five guys or five hundred.”
Now, I did growl. “I have a war party just waiting for me to say ‘go.’ Three hundred shifters ought to be sufficient for whatever we find.”
At the mention of ‘three hundred shifters,’ Gabrielle stood from the table and stepped across to the table where Buddy and his crew sat. She leaned close and whispered for a moment, then returned. Buddy nodded and dropped some bills on the table before he and his crew left the diner.
“Yes, I’d say so, dear. We’ll send Magi with you, too, of course… but I doubt they will keep up with you. Two legs are never a match for four.”
I nodded, even though Grandma couldn’t see it. “I promise we might leave some for them, Grandma, but they shouldn’t dawdle.”
“Of course not, dear. When do you want the Magi?”
“If I had Vicki’s location,” I replied, “I’d already be on my way.”
Grandma chuckled. “Your grandfather and I have always loved how the two of you hang together. Even with such a fundamental change to your life, Wyatt, or perhaps I should say especially with such a fundamental change. Arabella is creating the portal now; she can raise an assault rift. Now, do be careful, Wyatt. I don’t know what we’d do if something happened to you, too.”
“I will, Grandma, and I’ll have Vicki home soon.”
We ended the call, and I looked up to see the street outside the diner filled with shifters. Several shifters inside the diner stood as if waiting as well.
The belligerent guy said, “The call went out for a war party to rescue your sister, Alpha.”
I looked over the faces of everyone standing and smiled as I nodded. “Thank you all. As soon as the Magi arrive, we’ll head out. Let’s get our fur on.”
* * *
We had enough time to go to our homes to leave our clothes and shift. Then, we all regrouped on Main Street. The expression of utter shock when a woman who looked to be in her mid-30s led a group of fifty Magi through a portal was priceless. I guessed she’d never seen a street full of wolves, bears, various breeds of large cats, and a few predator breeds of birds in a column five abreast and a hundred deep. Fortunately, the person who stepped around her was Shelly from the orphanage operation.
“Ah, there you are, Wyatt,” Shelly said, walking right up to me. “Is this everyone?”
I bobbed my massive head in a nod.
Shelly turned. “Arabella, we’re ready here. Are you ready to raise the assault rift?”
The thirty-something woman jerked a quick nod. “I just need a couple moments.”
Just then, a car turned onto Main Street behind the Magi. The driver stopped, honked his horn, and leaned out the window to shout something about clearing the street. I stood and padded over to the edge of the Magi where I could see the driver, and his heated expression vanished at the sight of me. I snarled at him and waved my left forepaw in a shooing gesture. He bobbed a quick nod and almost peeled out after throwing the car in reverse. By the time I returned to my position in the center of the front rank, Arabella began the incantation to create the assault rift.
As Arabella chanted, a circular section of reality as wide as Main Street began swirling like a kaleidoscopic, two-dimensional whirlpool. The swirling increased in rate and intensity over the course of the incantation, and just as Arabella’s voice reached its crescendo, the whirlpool bent outward toward us before it snapped back and bowed out away from us. In a flash of kaleidoscopic light and crackling energy, the whirlpool became an assault rift, an archway that spanned Main Street and became a gateway to another place.
I started to move, but Shelly lifted her hand. She said, “The abandoned mine is in the southern Cascades. We haven’t been able to determine what sensors or alarms they may have, and this is as close as we could raise a rift… about two miles out.”
I nodded my understanding and waved my paw in an ‘out of our way’ gesture. The Magi quickly complied, especially those who were at the fake orphanage, and I lunged into a distance-devouring lope.
The door eased open on silent hinges, and Vicki readied herself. As soon as she saw enough of the guy coming to check on her, she whispered the lightning-fast incantation of the charm spell. The guy stopped and weaved on his feet for a moment, then brought his hands to his face… flashlight and all. When he pulled his hands away, he turned to look directly at her and started to speak.
Vicki held up her hand in a gesture to stop him and crossed the short distance to stand close. “Only speak at a whisper. Where are we?”
“An abandoned mine in the southern Cascades, Mistress. It’s the Gamma-Eight site for this region.”
“Gamma-Eight? Explain that.”
“We have a whole host of sites. Alpha is the primary list, and they run up through Epsilon. Then, under each letter, there are ten groups of sites. So… Gamma-Eight.”
Well, damn. Neither her Magi nor the shifter intel people had even a hint these people were so organized. If they hadn’t abducted her, the Magi and shifters probably would never have learned about all this.
“Are we in the actual mine?” Vicki asked.
“No, Mistress. The mine collapsed decades ago. We use the buildings surrounding the old entrance.”
“How many people do you have here?”
The guy scratched his chin. “Uhh… something like eight hundred, I think? But most of them are kids. Someone attacked the orphanage and ruined our ambush, and Hector had all the kids from all the regional sites in the surrounding states moved here.”
“Define ‘most.’”
“Uhh… five to six hundred? Maybe? I know we bring in trucks full of food every week, just to feed them. Can’t sell malnourished kids for as much as well-fed ones, ya know?”
Just then, another voice carried over in a shout. “Well, Red? What’s the deal? Is she still out?”
“Do you smoke?” Vicki whispered.
The guy—Red, apparently—nodded.
“Shout back that I’m still unconscious and you’re going to get a smoke.”
“Yeah, she’s still out, Frank,” Red shouted back. “I’m grabbing a smoke.”
Vicki gestured deeper into the room. “Get inside and lay down.”
Red did as she bade, but fear dominated his expression. “Are you going to kill me, Mistress?”
“I probably should, but no.” Then, Vicki recited the incantation for a sleep spell, and Red’s head lolled to one side. As Vicki retrieved his keys, Red started snoring softly. Vicki turned off the guy’s flashlight and slipped out of the storage room, locking it behind her.
Six hundred kids? How am I supposed to rescue them and myself? I need help. Damn. I should’ve checked Red for a cell phone, but this far out, there probably isn’t service anyhow.
Still, she couldn’t pass up the chance. She turned and slipped back into the room, closing the door behind her. She didn’t really like the idea of searching the guy for a cell phone, but breaking the sleep spell to ask him might break the charm spell, too.
He didn’t make it easy on her, either. In the spell-induced sleep, he was little more than dead weight, and he wasn’t small. Vicki finally found a cell phone in a pocket of his vest, and it was locked with a key code. It was one of the models with a fingerprint reader, so she took a gamble and pressed his right index finger against it. Thank goodness, it unlocked.
The first thing she did was set all sounds and tones to silent. No chirping cell phone to give her away, oh no. Huh… the signal meter indicated one bar. Was that enough? It would have to be. She opened the text app and created a new group message, putting in both her grandfather’s and her grandmother’s cell numbers. She lifted her head to focus on the sounds around her, but she didn’t hear anyone moving close. She returned her focus to the phone and tapped out her message.
Hey, it’s Vicki. Stole a cell phone. At an abandoned mine. Southern Cascades. Six hundred kids. Two hundred bad guys. Need help to rescue the kids.
The wait gnawed at her soul. Was there enough signal to get her text out? Were they even watching their phones? While she waited, she turned off the screen lock setting, so even if the screen shut off, it wouldn’t lock on her. That took swiping Red’s finger again, but no biggie.
