Myths and Gargoyles

by Jamie Hawke

  “That’s a conversation for another time,” Elisa said.

  “Either way, regarding this house? I want out.”

  “That can be accommodated,” Hekate interjected. “And actually, you can be of some assistance. Tracking spell, and be quick about it.”

  “There was a feather here, once, but it’s gone. We need to find out where it is now.”

  Toewi laughed.

  “Something funny?” Red asked.

  “Ironic, considering I’d heard about your recent visit overseas to a mutual friend’s house.” Toewi had a glimmer in her eyes as she turned to Hekate. “Didn’t think anyone was paying attention to your comings and goings, did you?”

  Hekate glared, then laughed. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What?”

  “Turns out we don’t even need a tracking spell.” Hekate glanced over at our new friend, sharing a knowing look. “We’re going to have to go back to visit an old friend. Ali Baba.”

  “Bingo,” Toewi said. “He stole it not so long ago, apparently in an attempt to find the Golden Goose herself.”

  “Great,” Sharon growled.

  “So, what?” Pucky asked. “We open a portal, go back and ask for it?”

  “Yes,” Mirna replied, nodding to the door. “But they won’t work in the house until we get the wards off. For now, we’d best be moving.”

  “And why do we need her?” Mirna said, eyeing Toewi with contempt.

  “I can open the portal, but we’re going to want to just send one of us through, the rest staying here, ready to make a break for it.”

  “One of us?” I asked.

  Elisa nodded. “That makes sense. We all show up there, we’re bound to trip alarms, or scare the hell out of him if he’s hanging around like last time.”

  “I guess that’ll be me, then.”

  Nobody argued.

  “And why we need Toewi,” Hekate said to Mirna, “is because nobody knows the wards here better than her. Seeing as I’d imagine we already triggered the signaling wards or she wouldn’t be here—”

  “Correct,” Toewi said, grinning wide.

  “—I’d say we need to get new ones up, ASAP, along with cloaking and whatever else we can to keep ourselves from being a target, at least until Jack can return with the feather.”

  “There you have it,” Toewi said, then nodded to me. “But you had better get going, because we’re only going to be able to hold it for so long.”

  My glance at Hekate told her I was ready, so she set up the portal. Having the witches on our side made all the difference. With a ‘here goes everything’ glance to my team and then Chris, I stepped through at the same moment as an explosion sounded, screams erupting from somewhere, and all of it cut out as chanting sounded louder, closer… then gone.

  I found myself back in Ali Baba’s living room, with the knowledge that the others were under attack. I had to find that feather, and find it fast.

  61

  Ali Baba’s living room, though clearly the same room we’d visited before, was changed beyond all recognition since last time I’d been there. For one, while before it had looked like a normal room but cluttered with odd artifacts, now it was empty except for several trip wires and clear traps set up for the defensive.

  “Ali Baba, please,” I started, knowing taking a shot here wouldn’t be good for me or the future of humanity. “I only have one request, something that…”

  The wall suddenly exploded, turning into a massive mouth that came at me, accompanied by a flight of arrows and waves of magic. Whatever this man was expecting, I hoped he hadn’t set this up for me. My only chance of escape here was the window behind me, as the expanding wall that had come to life had already covered the portal.

  So I thrust myself backwards, runes lighting up on my skin as I relied on their power to push me through. The last thing I needed was to slam against the glass and bounce back to be eaten by that wall. Luckily, the glass shattered and I went crashing through, and started to fall.

  Double luckily, I had a flying lion that burst forth from my chest, so that mid-fall I was able to grab hold and go soaring out over the streets lined with yellow-brick red-roofed houses.

  “I’m glad you’re with me,” I shouted to the lion, as we swept around to see the rest of the wall follow in the pattern of the window, exploding outward as if a bomb had gone off.

  Holy hell, if my team had come with me, I imagined half of them might be dead at this point. As for Ali Baba, I had no idea where to start.

  As fate would have it though, more attacks came my way a second later and provided me with more answers than I imagined my attackers would’ve meant to give up. For example, if they had simply left me to fly off, I never would’ve had the idea that the next building over housed the enemies who’d set the trap, or that Ali Baba wasn’t himself behind it.

  I dove down on my flying lion, easily avoiding crossbow bolts and even a barrage of bullets, and my mind starting to fill in the blanks. The enemy had some reason to want him, right? Had they been waiting to kill him, and I’d foiled it?

  Only way to find out would be to get one of them alive. I reminded myself that this had to be quick so that I could get back in time to help my team in the fight back at the witches’ mansion.

  “Can you get me in there?” I asked Roar, and he roared in response, diving toward one of the balconies below where the attacks were coming from.

  We stormed through, twisting and weaving, and then he dove and I jumped, landing on the balcony and slamming through the glass door. Yeah, that hurt, but my tattoos activated and gave me the boosts I needed. No recovery required, I was in and charging up the stairs. The first of the goons met me there, trying to shoot at me. I threw up my forearm so my shield formed, deflecting the shots and making me feel very much like Captain America, but then I was leaping up and maiming them with my blade, each strike making it glow more with blue energy, until the moment I charged into the room above and was able to slam it down and send a shock wave through a group of them.

  “Who the fuck are you?” a woman shouted in a thick accent, standing and aiming a pistol at me.

  That threw me for a loop, but I aimed my sword back at her, ready to bring up my shield. “I’m the Protector. Who the fuck are you?”

  “Shit, this isn’t even them,” she hissed to the bloodied guy pushing himself up next to her.

  “Son?” a shout came from the back room, and then a thud.

  I recognized that voice, so charged back, holding up my forearm and shield to block the shots as the woman fired on me. Flying through the door, I found two guards turning from Ali Baba, who was latched to a chair with a glowing chain—the type that, I imagined, stifled any sort of magic or charms he might have otherwise used to escape.

  “Ali Baba,” I said, sliding in to take out the first and hoping my glamour was gone. “It’s me. Jack.”

  The guard was—I had to figure—on the side of evil here. It was the only way I could think about the fact that I’d just sliced his gut open. I’d been hoping to go for some fancy move that would knock them unconscious, but honestly didn’t know much about that. What I knew was that all my upgrading in the mists of the Fae World had made me fast and strong. My next move was an attempt to use that to my advantage, kicking out the second guard’s legs and slamming in the back of the head with the pummel of my sword.

  It cracked against his skull and he fell, but cursed loudly, stumbling as he tried to stand again. So much for that idea. When I saw a gun, I knew it was either me or him, so removed head from body in an awesome display of instinct taking over.

  No prana or ichor. No leveling up.

  Just blood.

  A shiver ran up my spine watching it seep out like that,

  “Damn, boy…” Ali Baba said, then shouted to look out behind me.

  I spun, shield up and met the woman from before with my sword in her gut. Pushing her back, I thought I was going to puke.

  “What i
s this?” Ali Baba asked. “You’re here to save me?”

  Holding up a hand, I worked to keep the bile down, to not think about the blood around me and on my sword, likely on my clothes. The metallic smell of the blood made it worse.

  “Better move fast.” Ali Baba shifted his chair around. “Magical binds. Cut me loose, so I can help you.”

  Finally pulling myself together, I did so, then helped him to his feet. He was the old man we’d met before, but looked to have aged considerably more, long gray eyebrows hanging over the sides of his face, almost touching his white beard.

  “It wasn’t so long ago we met,” I said, perplexed. “How…?”

  He grunted, shaking his head. “Magic kept me young, but they raided the place, took it all.”

  “All?” I felt my stomach churning. “And… this?”

  “Bait. Not for you, though—for my son. Seems he’s pissed someone off, even before this little war started.”

  “It’s not little,” I countered. “And I need your help—I need a feather. A golden feather.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Even if you had it, it won’t do you any good. Only works on spirits, but this one’s a dud.”

  “Except we’re using it for a different purpose.”

  “You… have a witch?” He laughed. “A tracking spell, with the hopes of finding the real golden goose? You’re mad.”

  “Well, they can’t have gotten far with it, right?” I glanced around. “Based on this setup, it might even still be nearby.”

  He nodded. “Top floor—penthouse. They have a small army, so I don’t know how you expect to get up there.”

  “I have a lion,” I replied with a wink, and then picked up the guards’ pistols. “Any idea what we’re dealing with up there?”

  Ali Baba was still watching me, skeptically. “Yeah, enough to take me down. Though to be fair, I was in the middle of a bath.”

  “At least they gave you clothes before tying you up.”

  He nodded in conceit. “Party that did it, their leader—you might know him as the Dragon of the North.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” I admitted.

  He shrugged. “Not one of the more popular stories in the States, but suffice it to say he’s not someone to easily dismiss.” A pounding sounded, then doors opening and shouting followed. “And he’s definitely the type to be sending troops down to check on this situation, so…”

  “Got it, move. Come on.”

  I took off running for the window, shooting it this time to avoid hurting myself as much when I went crashing through. Shouts of “What the fuck?” came from behind, but before any of the goons had a chance to make a move, Ali Baba and I were out through the window.

  He screamed, turning to me in panic as we started to fall, but I reached out my hand and caught him by the forearm. Just then, Roar came swinging around. I landed on the lion and pulled Ali Baba around behind me, and then we were up, soaring past the stupid faces of the goons, up and up until we were level with the penthouse. Here we could see the windows that led in, along with a large balcony with a hot tub.

  A guard was fucking a woman in the hot tub, both startled to see us land and hop off Roar.

  “They’re all bad people?” I asked.

  Ali Baba tilted his head, and said, “They’re all people. Some have children.”

  “Fuck.” I held up my new pistol, nodding toward the building. “You two, go find your master, tell him I’m here for a golden feather.”

  They scampered off. The woman slipped as she went, the man not even bothering to turn back to help her up.

  “Would’ve been easier if you just let me kill them,” I said.

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t, just pointed out a fact.” He eyed me. “You know, for the Protector, you sure think about things a bit too much.”

  I scoffed, starting to walk toward the building and calling after the man, “Tell them, as long as they don’t shoot at or attack us, they won’t die. None of the people in there need to die today, but they better leave, pronto.”

  The man paused at the door, looked back, and then gestured for the woman to hurry.

  “You know they’ll come out shooting,” Ali Baba said.

  “And then I won’t feel bad about killing them,” I replied, adrenaline taking over so that I genuinely wasn’t worried. All I could think of at the moment was getting that damn feather and returning to my team as fast as possible. “Where do you think it would be?”

  He frowned, ran a hand along his beard, and then said, “Most of it, probably in the main room of the suite. Maybe they’ve started carting some of it out, but I had a lot of good stuff. They’re probably still trying to inventory it.”

  “And… how much can you leave behind?”

  He frowned. “I’m not leaving it in their hands.”

  “I don’t see how you have much of a choice. We’re going to get what we can, including that feather, and then get out of here as fast as possible. If I can get away with as few deaths as possible, that would be great.”

  He clucked his tongue, breathed heavily. “Then we blow it.”

  “As in…?”

  “I’ll get what I need, then light a fuse. I have plenty of magic that will result in an explosion. But you see two gold wrist cuffs, you give them to me.”

  I frowned, nodded, and said, “Here goes,” indicating the line of men and women now visible through the window, guns aimed at us. “Stay behind me.”

  He chuckled, kneeling and scratching with something on the cement under our feet. “Don’t you worry about me.”

  I knelt and held up my forearm as the glass shattered, bullets coming in our direction. Many of them hit my shield, but the majority seemed to hit some sort of wind tunnel and be swept aside, and into the cement behind us, so that the area around the hot tub was peppered.

  A glance over revealed Ali Baba grinning, the lines he’d drawn in the ground glowing. Seeing this, and realizing that’s where the change in direction of the bullets came from, I completely understood how lucky the enemy had been to catch him in the bath.

  The first round of shots stopped, the enemy staring in confusion, and I charged, returning fire with the pistol and, when I was close enough, hitting them with a group strike from my sword. Already a handful or more were down, Ali Baba taking up the rear and pausing to scratch two new marks in the walls as he passed. More guards turned on us, but started firing wildly. I glanced back and stifled a laugh—whatever he’d just done must’ve been some sort of illusion ward, because it looked like there were fifty of us charging in there.

  “We’re being overrun!” one of the men said into his comms, a moment before my sword cut him open. I spun and shot another who was about to shoot in Ali Baba’s direction, and the old man gave me a nod of gratitude.

  “Make for the stash,” I said, and Ali Baba nodded, leaving me to take down three more guards on my way.

  I did my thing with them and was halfway to the door he’d just opened, when he leaped back and a burst of flames exploded outward. Walls caught fire, corpses of fallen goons catching too, while Ali Baba rolled to put out a flame on his sleeve and then was quickly sketching more wards into the wall at his side.

  My advance had come to a stop just short of the range of the fire, and now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to keep going. There had to be another way about this.

  A heavy step sounded, a moment later this massive beast of a woman stepping through the doorway. While mostly human in her look, she wore flowing robes over her scaled, muscular body, and had the face of a yellow dragon.

  Huh, the Dragon of the North was female. There was no doubt this was her. I don’t know why I thought otherwise, and wondered if Ali Baba had referred to her as a he.

  When her eyes landed on me, she cocked her head, knelt, and prepared for another attack. Since something about the wards were letting Ali Baba sneak behind her in that moment, I figured me taking the attack, as long as I could survive it, made a lot of sense. At leas
t until he could get what he needed.

  But first, I thought I’d try another tactic.

  “The legendary Dragon of the North,” I said, sounding very impressed.

  She eyed me, closed her mouth, and then waited.

  “I mean, to finally meet you in person, oh great Dragon. This is an honor.” I bowed, holding my sword out to the side as if it were more of a ceremonial piece. Meanwhile, flames rose up along the walls of the room, but I had to try and ignore that little fact.

  “Protector,” she said in a raspy voice, smoke trailing out from her nostrils. “Will it stink when you burn? Being full of shit, and all.”

  I laughed. “It’s not every day a sexy, beautiful fairy tale such as yourself has a sense of humor to boot.”

  This time she laughed—a laugh that brought a small burst of flame. “Now you’re mocking me?”

  “Not mocking. Hell, do you know how many ways I’d bend you backwards?”

  “Isn’t there only one way to bend backwards?”

  “See,” I said, stepping forward, putting on my best cool-guy look. It was a stretch, but I was feeling pretty confident with how buff I’d gotten lately. “That shows you how much you have to learn, and I’m here to teach you.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but I could’ve sworn her cheeks had turned orange—was she blushing?

  With a sigh, she shook her head. “A shame I have to kill you, instead.”

  “You’re… positive?”

  She looked me up and down, her reptilian tongue darting out briefly, and then she nodded. “Maybe I’ll at least eat your flesh afterward. We can still join as one, just not in the way you had in mind.”

  At that moment, I saw Ali Baba behind her give me a wave, two gold bracers on his wrists. It was time. Also, she’d just grossed me out.

  “I hate to be a party pooper, but fuck that,” I said, and then charged. As her flames burst forth, I knew the shield wouldn’t be enough so pulled on another strength—my Tempest powers. The glass was down, water out there from the hot tub, and I thrust, pulling on it with everything I had.