Erin had learned to be quick thinking from many moments of being thrust into new, unexpected situations. At those times, she had sometimes counted on her reputation to get by. People were often too intimidated to cross her or her companions, but this time no one seemed to recognize her. Taking her cue, she had played along, having mastered the art of asking questions to control the conversation’s flow, as one of her friends, who was infinitely wilier, had taught her. And so she came to understand that this place was different from any other she had visited.
Those elderly homeowners had been a stroke of good luck, she now knew. It was late afternoon when she knocked on their door and she accepted their invitation to dinner. Seeing an opportunity as the night wore on and she professed to not knowing who to contact to come get her, she had asked for a room and been given one.
Her hosts were forgetful but kind, and a little clueless about modern technology. They had a missing, and presumed dead, granddaughter Erin’s age, and whom she reminded them of. The result was treating her like family and doting on her, especially on learning that she was lost. They didn’t ask too many questions, to which they sometimes didn’t remember her awkward answers anyway, and that had allowed her to give a better response when they asked again. They didn’t begrudge the ignorance she struggled to hide, for there were so many things so alien to her, from the TV to phones, computers, and the internet, that pretending she had familiarity challenged her. With wide eyes had Erin taken it all in.
And so her month-long stay with them had begun, as she discreetly pumped them for information, gorged on TV news programs, and used the internet on their old computer once she figured out how from watching them struggle to do so themselves. Hour after hour had she immersed herself, slowly learning one important idea after another.
She was on the south island of New Zealand. She needed a passport to get on a plane to England to find Stonehenge, which was still standing since she’d last seen it. It had changed since then, but then it seemed like everything had and this place was no longer recognizable, not that she had seen much anyway. While people believed in a lone god, there were no confirmed reports of Him answering anyone. Magic didn’t seem to work, and no one believed in it. An internet search of her friend’s names turned up nothing, but two other names brought up a lot, and yet all of it was considered a myth from a thousand years past. Had she been flung into the future? All signs pointed to it. Ever since, a kind of grief had lurked in the back of her mind, that everyone and everything she had ever known was just gone.
Eventually she left behind the elderly couple who had given her a wad of cash and a suitcase of old clothes and other knickknacks as she set off for Christchurch, a nearby city with international flights. She promised to repay them, but they told her not to worry about, as they weren’t using any of it anyway. Getting the documentation she needed for international travel would have been impossible were it not for their missing granddaughter, whom they had been raising after their own daughter died. She bore just enough resemblance for Erin to get a nerdy young man she flirted with to issue her a new driver’s license in the girl’s name, which she adopted, becoming Erin Jennings. Similar machinations finally got her the passport, credit cards, and a new identity, all of it helped by those sweet grandparents having done little to formalize the girl’s death. They hadn’t had the heart to go through that again and hoped they might find the real Erin one day, but it had been years and they seemed resigned that it wouldn’t happen.
She finally stood before Stonehenge, which had weathered considerably since she last saw it a month earlier. A nearby visitor center looked decades old but hadn’t been here before. Something was clearly amiss. She stayed in Britain for a year, working as a server and making new friends to avoid suspicion, hoping for a sign of her true friends, but it never came. When it became apparent that she was in this brave new land for the rest of her life, she moved to America and married someone a few years older and with a promising future. Nearly twenty years had passed.
She spent those years preparing for today, acquiring supposed magic items from around the world, a few of which were upstairs in her hotel room. None had worked, but she had heard reports of random people being able to do one thing or another. And the Stonehenge disappearance could never have happened without magic. Some people could also heal others. Most dismissed that as nonsense, but Erin knew it had been possible in her old life, which was about to collide with her new one. She felt nervous. So much depended on this conversation with the Stonehenge Four. It was important to have this talk in person. Their expressions would tell her more than words ever could.
As she sipped her tea in a hotel dining area in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the loud, excited voices of two approaching teenage girls broke her thoughts. The first words she could make out got her undivided attention.
“The guy vanished right on camera!” said the blonde one as they swept into the dining area, moving around the small tables and chairs, the afternoon sun streaming across the floor.
The brunette asked, “Do you think that’s what happened at Stonehenge, but no one was there to see it?”
“Could be. Damn, the TV isn’t on. Where’s the remote?”
Erin’s eyes went to it on the counter, from where one girl grabbed the TV control and furiously pushed buttons to no avail. “Damn thing is busted!”
“Grab a cookie and let’s go. Come on!”
They ran from the room and Erin strode right behind them, her long skirt snapping as she marched to the nearest stairs. She ascended three flights, taking two steps at a time. She finally burst into the hall and swiftly unlocked her room door, then headed straight for the TV, which came on, already set to the news from her viewing it earlier today. Words gushed from an excited black reporter as Erin read the chryon across the screen’s button, “Man Magically Vanishes on Camera.”
“Lisa,” the reporter continued, addressing a news anchor on the split screen, “as you can see from the footage, I was right in the middle of our interview when he disappeared.”
Lisa replied, “I know some people are speculating that this is just a special effect, added afterward.”
“Yeah, and I’m here to tell you this is absolutely not the truth. I saw it right in front of me and there are a dozen witnesses to this, some of whom caught it on their cellphones.”
As the two women talked, a silent replay of the moment began repeating, sometimes in slow motion. The techie, Matt, stood shyly talking into the microphone held toward him, green eyes on the reporter as he only rarely glanced at the camera as if uncomfortable before it. A light breeze touched his shoulder-length, wavy brown hair. And suddenly the smile left his face as he stopped talking mid-sentence, one hand going to his stomach, those eyes widening in a clear look of alarm, and a soft white glow surrounding him. A murmur slowly began from those near, and the camera tilted a moment as if the holder was startled out of position before recovering just in time. A glow enveloped Matt and then disappeared along with him.
The anchor interrupted the reporter, “Hey listen, we’re going to have to switch to another story, possibly related, that is just coming in. There are reports of a very serious, multi-car accident on I-270 near Gaithersburg. Initial reports suggest that a bright flash of light, similar to the one that occurred nearby during the interview of Matt Sorenson, happened just moments before the collision, which has involved several cars, one of which has overturned. We currently don’t know if this is related to Matt Sorenson’s previous disappearance with Anna Sumner, Ryan LaRue, and Eric Foster.”
The screen switched from showing Lisa to a helicopter view of wrecked cars along a four-lane highway, traffic snarled in both directions. Several people outside vehicles were frantically trying to help one person thrown from a car and others who appeared trapped inside. A white sheet covered a body that lay a considerable distance from the wreckage.
The anchor added, “There are initial reports of serious injuries and one fatality. All lanes of I-270 s
outh are blocked. Police and ambulances are approaching the scene now and we will keep you updated on this breaking story.”
Erin hit the mute button and flopped heavily on the bed’s edge, an awful realization going through her. She had been wondering if it was possible for a week and now had her answer. Anna, Matt, Ryan, and Eric had somehow become a kind of new Ellorian Champions, replacing the real ones. The stakes had risen. Questions swirled. She had to help them.
Now it was absolutely critical that she find them the moment they returned.
Daniel knew something wasn’t right, but then it didn’t take a genius. It wasn’t easy to control a drone with one hand, but he did well enough. He just had to give up performing elaborate tricks. And tricks were on his mind when the display camera showed his brother’s car in front of the guest house, the trunk and passenger door open. He had first felt relieved and buzzed around the building for signs of what Ryan was doing, but there was no sight of him, so Daniel landed out of the way with the camera aimed at the house and the motion sensor on. He’d see when his brother reappeared. If he did.
The police had shown up last night, looking for him. Neither Daniel nor his parents had been surprised, having seen footage of Matt vanishing on camera and confirmed reports about Anna’s car on I-270. Those first moments with the cops had been awful. Daniel wasn’t the only one who had feared the worst, his mother nearly collapsing at the possibility that the police had arrived to tell them their oldest son was dead. But the fatality had been a female, as were the other passengers, though no one had been publicly identified, pending the families being informed. They hadn’t even been willing to say whether the bodies came from Anna’s car or the dozen other vehicles involved.
They had been calling Ryan all night and trying to track his phone with no luck, which didn’t surprise Daniel. Their parents had installed GPS trackers on Ryan’s car and phone after the Stonehenge Four had returned from three weeks of being missing. It had led to some arguments with Ryan complaining that he felt like a prisoner. He had finally disabled them.
Daniel had assumed that his brother was gone, like Matt and Anna. Eric hadn’t been found either, his last known whereabouts being his job, where he had finished for the day and was apparently planning to leave, according to his boss. And then suddenly he was gone, with no sign of actually walking out. His disappearance had not been witnessed or reported until the police noticed that two of the Stonehenge Four had gone missing and they tried tracking down the other two, leading to Ryan and Eric. The police found the latter’s car at work, his boss showing the officers the abandoned belongings, as Eric had just finished teaching a class in his karate clothes and not changed yet. He was now presumed missing. So was Ryan.
Now Daniel called to his nurse, Susan, a young brunette he enjoyed flirting with. He wanted help and a witness for their excursion down to the guest house. It was time to see what his brother was up to down there. He hadn’t believed anything Ryan and Eric had said the other day due to their joking tone. His older brother was hiding something but had never lied to him. Or he didn’t think so anyway. The big guy could be irritating like any sibling, but Daniel trusted him. He wasn’t hard to get a read on, really, unlike Eric.
“What do you need, hon?” Susan asked as she arrived from another room. He never grew tired of the East Baltimore accent and predilection for calling him that.
“Keep this between us, but I just found Ryan’s car at the guest house. We need to head down there.”
“Um. Okay. Are we expecting trouble of any kind?”
They had discussed the situation. “Pretty sure no. I don’t think he’s there, but I want to see what’s going on and I can only get to the first floor.”
“Sure. I’ll get my purse, by which I mean gun.”
“I love it when you’re sexy,” he called as she walked away.
Within minutes, they were beside Ryan’s black Dodge Charger, where his car and house keys lay on the pavement beside it. Exchanging a wary look with the nurse, Daniel had her tell him what was inside the backseat. He could already see that the trunk was empty.
“Just a couple boxes.” She pulled a long, rectangular one out. On the side were pictured arrows with red fletching.
“What the hell does he need with those?”
“Taking up archery?”
Daniel put his hands on the drone’s remote and made it start up again, piloting it into the open front door of the guest house. That Ryan had not meant to leave was clear, but Daniel still didn’t expect foul play. Even so, sending in the drone with its camera was better than going in personally. He saw more boxes inside but no people, including the second floor as he moved it around everywhere but the basement, as the door was closed. He landed the drone there.
“Okay, let’s go in.”
He had wondered if he’d been seeing right through the camera, but there was no denying it now. Someone had stacked books on medieval customs and warfare on a table. A dozen swords of varying lengths lay atop the Persian rugs. Several round and rectangular steel or wooden shields leaned against a wall. Three Western-style horseback riding saddles were in one corner where helmets, crops, horse blankets and more were stacked. Four boxes held what looked like long bows, and another four were crossbows, each of slightly different styles and none of them looking modern. That contrasted with a big screen TV hanging on the wall, a make-shift entertainment center filled with electronics that weren’t plugged in, the boxes everything had come in still here. The tables for a living room set were haphazardly placed, possibly because they were waiting on missing couches.
“Is this all for RenFest?” Susan asked, picking up a sword by the hilt.
Scowling, Daniel replied, “I doubt it. I mean, he’s been doing it for years and never needed all of this stuff here.”
“What’s with the TV? It’s like he’s setting up to hang out here or something. Is he moving down here?”
“No. I don’t think so. He didn’t say anything. And I doubt he would start with all of this these things. I mean you don’t furnish a house with weapons, then go furniture shopping.”
“True, but your brother is weird.”
Daniel saw light from under the basement door. “Can you open it? I’ll send the drone.”
Wordlessly, Susan did, and he piloted the device down the stairs to the wide cellar. His first priority was again verifying that no one was here, which he did. He was dying to go down himself but had her go without him, as she confirmed what the camera showed him. A punching bag hung in one corner, as did another, maybe for kicking. They had set two treadmills and a stair climber up. Several gym mats were stacked in one corner, but nearly half the floor had been covered with them. Someone had stacked several archery targets along with their stands. The biggest surprise was two armor stands, one holding the suit of plate mail that Ryan wore at the Renaissance Festival, the other empty.
Now Daniel knew his brother was lying. The last 24 hours had proven it, but he’d been certain all along that they weren’t telling the truth about what happened at Stonehenge. “We don’t remember” is such a lame excuse and exactly what he might have said if something odd had happened. But what he really wanted to know now was why it looked like they were preparing to train in using these weapons? Where had they gone? And why?
He couldn’t help saying it aloud as Susan returned to his side. “What the hell are they doing?”
Chapter 4 – The Orbs of Dominion
Thoughts rushed through Anna’s head with the same chaotic intensity as the roaring of sound and light that accompanied a summoning. Her friends. The car. The highway. Speed. And no one at the helm. She still clenched her hands before her on a steering wheel that wasn’t there anymore. Her right foot wasn’t placed against an accelerator, but beneath her as she stood, yelling “no” over and over. The concerned faces of Eric, Ryan, and Matt before her made another round of thoughts tear through her. A quest. Danger. People watching. Their expectations. The ruse of being the Elloria
n Champions. Their startled reaction to her arriving screaming. She stopped herself just as the summoning ended.
Her breath came hard, eyes darting around for peril like the last time. The Quest Ring stood with its light fading. A dozen calm people outside it. No weapons drawn. A gray partly cloudy sky above, the sun nearly overhead. A castle in the distance. Mountains behind it, dramatic hills and a river between. A hill beneath their feet. No more people. No creatures. No danger. Not yet.
Anna twisted her back to those who had summoned them, trying to slow her breathing, calm her face, and wipe the panic from her eyes. Eric came around to her, one firm hand on her arm through the now familiar white robe of Eriana.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“I was driving.”
“What?”
“70 miles an hour, the highway.” She heard Ryan step closer in the golden armor, his boot scraping the smooth stones beneath their feet.
“Were you alone?”
She shook her head, too afraid of what was happening back on Earth to say it aloud.
“Oh shit,” muttered Ryan.
“Okay,” started Eric, “we can talk about that in a minute. There are people looking at us. We need to act like heroes and–”
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head.
“You don’t have to say anything. Ryan.”
“Right.” The big guy turned away, his voice regal and cheerful as he said, “I apologize. We needed a moment to discuss something urgent that was happening before your summons.”
A gravelly voice replied, “Of course. We understand that we have pulled you from your lives and you may time to adjust. We are deeply sorry for any inconvenience, but our matter is most urgent.”
“The quests always are!” Ryan said heartily, and Anna thought his time playing a knight at the Renaissance Festival had prepared him well for what he was doing. He sounded convincing. The thought made her pull herself together, and she turned to face their summoners, forcing a smile. There was nothing she could do about her friends now anyway, but she felt sick. Only now did she notice Ryan didn’t have Lord ’s lance with him, so at least they wouldn’t be facing dragons. From what they knew, the Quest Rings supplied them with likely weapons from whatever stash of them the real Ellorian Champions had somewhere, presumably on their own world of Elloria.
The Light Bringer: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Novel (The Dragon Gate Series Book 2) Page 5
