by Ben Zackheim
“My family stepped aside for a couple of centuries. Until they were needed again.”
“What did they do for a couple of centuries?”
“They married well,” Lucas said. “When they could.”
Ronin shook her head. “They married poorly over and over again. Our family’s influence was next to nothing, which is why the demons grew in strength and numbers. It was only because of my great-grandfather’s sacrifice at the Battle of Wolves that we made our mark on the outcome. If he’d hidden like his ancestors, we’d all be walking around with wiggly demon noses right now.”
Lucas shot her a frown and didn’t take his eyes off of her as he said, “Archibald was a brave man. He did what he needed to do to save his race.”
“What did he do to draw them to the village?” I asked.
“It was a summoning. He sacrificed himself to pull the army into a trap that dispersed them across the globe. You know what separation does to demons, right?”
I nodded. “Strength in numbers. Sparseness, weakness…”
Lucas finished the old saying for me. “Death in isolation.”
He shrugged. “It rhymes in Latin. More impressive.”
“Effective trap.”
“We’re still trying to find each other,” Lucas said with a mix of smirk of amusement, and a sigh of sadness.
“Were you there, demon?” Ronin asked. I was glad she was the one to ask it. I was thinking it.
He hesitated. Demons aren’t like humans. Their lies were more natural. A pause meant nothing. A glance away could mean a million things. Still, I wondered if he was preparing a lie. “No.”
Ronin and I let the silence linger for a bit. It didn’t do any good. Lucas just climbed up on the chair opposite from me and waited for the next question.
“What had the power to disperse an army across the globe?” I asked. “We could do something wicked with that ability.”
Again, Lucas and Ronin glanced at each other. Their animosity gave way to a brief moment that can only be shared between two people with a secret.
A secret they were not excited to reveal.
Ronin exhaled and gave him a nod. They may hate each other but they made good co-conspirators.
“That’s what we’re going to retrieve from my home.”
“The spear,” I said.
That’s when we heard the footsteps outside the door.
Chapter 11
We held our breath.
We listened.
We heard someone on the other side of the door, listening for us.
I set my thumb on the safety of my weapon. Switching it off would make too much noise. I made eye contact with Ronin and waved my free hand to tamp down her intensity. She was ready to shoot through the door.
Her boots were rubber-soled. The carpet beneath our feet would let her move with the least amount of noise. I gestured for her to go to the door. Unfortunately, I used the signal that Rebel and I had used for years — a fist forward. It was instinct. Rebel would have known that the signal meant she should knock on the door with a sudden loud knock to throw them off their guard and buy me time to open it.
Apparently, Ronin thought I meant she should punch the door.
At first, she gave me a confused look. But she moved toward the door quietly and stood in front of it. She looked around the room for a second, darted toward a lamp and pointed it at herself. Her lithe form cast a long shadow across the room. I had no idea what she was doing. From the confused expression on Lucas’ face, he was equally flummoxed.
Then she did the last thing I expected.
She stood in front of the door, bent her knees and made a pose like a boxer. I stepped toward her to grab her shoulder and stop her, but it was too late. She lunged toward the door, fist-first.
Her hand slammed through the steel door like it was paper. Someone yelped on the other side and she yanked him toward her. The door swung open and a guard slid to the floor, out cold.
His partner stared at us from the ruined doorway, mouth open.
Ronin round-kicked him into the wall of the hallway.
In the silence that followed, I tried to figure out which question to ask first.
“How did you do that?” I asked her.
“I did it very well,” she said coyly as she checked the pulse of her first victim. “You asked me to punch through the door, so I thought you knew.”
“You thought I knew that you have super strength?” I checked the other guard to make sure he was still with us. He was. “How the hell did you get super strength?”
“I’ll explain later. We have better things to do right now.”
The sound of more footsteps filled the hall. All three of us got low and pointed in the same direction. At least we were all on the same page with where the next round of trouble was coming from.
“Let’s get the key to that room,” I whispered. “Where’s Lancelot’s office?”
“He’s using your old office.”
“Perfect. Follow me.” I had to work hard to stop myself from giving her any more hand signals. It was way too easy for me to picture Ronin standing over my headless body and telling Lucas, “I thought he signaled he wanted to be decapitated.”
She stepped ahead of me and whispered back, “You follow me.”
Lucas passed me with a shrug. I followed, but I didn’t like it. I knew that place well. Ronin was more likely to lead us to the mess hall at lunchtime than the scroll pieces.
To my relief she wove through the halls along the precise path I’d planned on taking. Every little sound made us stop, but we lucked out all the way to the stairwell.
I peeked through the window on the steel door and looked for anyone using the stairs. When I was sure it was clear, I pushed the door open and let Lucas and Ronin slip in before me.
Every sound we made in that stairwell sounded like a thunderstorm. It was our only option to get to the upper level, but that didn’t make the racket any more comforting as our feet slapped the steel steps. We had to stop a dozen times because the echoes made it sound like we had company.
When we landed on the top level, I crouched down. “Hold up,” I whispered. Ronin knelt down, but she looked put-out. She did not like to follow orders. This mission was going to be fun.
I turned the handle gently and pushed the door open. Two guards stood near the door to my old office. Their postures weren’t relaxed, but they also weren’t alert. I let the door slide back toward me, but stopped it from clicking shut.
Ronin and Lucas leaned toward me to get the status. “They’re at the end of their shift.”
“How can you tell?”
“They’re fidgety, bored. One of them looked at his watch and then down the hall, probably for his replacement. Here’s the plan.”
“Wait a minute, Arkwright. Who made you boss?”
“No one made me boss. I have an idea.”
“I have an idea, too.”
“Will you two please stop?” Lucas asked and then turned to Ronin. “What’s your plan?”
“Shoot them,” she said with a firm nod.
I think Lucas dropped his head in exasperation, but I couldn’t be sure because I’d dropped my head in exasperation.
“And your plan, sir?”
“There’s no way we can get past them. I need to swap in.”
“I thought you said your Swap Portal wasn’t working correctly.”
“It isn’t. But it’s worth a try. If it doesn’t work, we can try another idea.”
“Like shoot them,” Ronin said with another stern nod.
“Hm,” Lucas said, scratching his pointy chin. “I have something. You could act as our prisoner, sir. We’re taking you to see Lancelot for a little chat.”
I didn’t have to think about it. I handed the demon my pistol and put my hands behind my back. Ronin sighed, but she didn’t resist. She shoved her handgun into my back, probably relishing the feeling.
“Safety,” I whispered.
; “Oh,” she said before I heard the safety click on. Idiot.
“What if Lancelot is in there?” Lucas asked.
“You getting cold feet about your own plan?” Ronin asked. “That took about four seconds.”
“Then we take him out,” I said.
Ronin grunted. “Good. I’ve always wanted to shoot that pompous asshole.”
I turned to her and stuck a finger in Ronin’s face. “No shooting.”
She stuck her Ruger in my face.
She won.
Chapter 12
I turned back around and said, “You guys handle the guards. I’ll handle Lancelot if he shows his face.”
Ronin shoved the barrel into my back as Lucas opened the door. The guards turned their heads in perfect unison, and placed their hands on their weapons.
“Stop, please,” one of them said, unlatching his holster. “Hey! I thought Arkwright was dead!”
“As you can see, he’s not,” Ronin said, calmly. “The boss asked to see him in his office.”
“We haven’t heard anything about this,” the other guard said with a deep French accent. He had his hand on his weapon.
Ronin shoved me forward and continued our march down the hallway. “That’s not my problem. You going to let us in, or are we going to have a problem?”
“The commander is not here. You will have to come back later.”
Ronin sighed. “He’s expecting us to be here when he returns from his shift. You going to be the one to tell him his orders are optional?”
The guards shot each other nervous glances. I was impressed by Ronin’s skill, I’ll admit it. I didn’t think she had the ability to pull off something with any level of delicacy. But they were cracking under the pressure.
What she did next was much more like the Ronin I knew and wished I didn’t know.
As we got within a few feet of the guards, she lifted her hand up, revealing a Ruger.
She shot both guards in the left leg and roundhouse kicked them onto their backs as they crumpled to the floor.
“I said no shooting!” I yelled.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you I don’t take orders from a prisoner. They’ll be fine. I grazed their thighs.”
Lucas stepped over one of the unconscious guards and knelt down to inspect the keychain on his belt. “This one looks promising,” he mumbled. He slipped the key loose and inserted it into the door’s lock.
With a satisfying click, it swung open. Lucas grinned and gestured for us to go in as if he were seating us at a table for two.
My office was just as I’d left it. The only thing that made it feel different was the sword hanging from the wall. It was directly above the safe. Lancelot’s weapon was an unsettling thing. Its straight blade had drawn a lot of blood, human and otherwise. It gave me a creepy feeling, as if it were haunted, sad. I didn’t like it.
Lucas rummaged through the desk as I punched in the combination. Instead of the whir and click of an open safe, I got three short beeps.
“He changed the code,” I said. “I hope the keys are in the desk.”
“No such luck, sir.”
“Shit. Ideas?”
“Shoot it,” Ronin said, because of course she did.
“Is that your solution to everything?” Lucas asked.
“Only things that give me a hard time, cock shnoz.”
She pulled out her weapon and checked the chamber. She emptied it out, sorted through the bullets and reloaded.
I knew what she was doing. I knew all too well. She was sorting and loading her fucking magic bullets. Spirit had spent a lot of time and money in their labs mixing magic with science. Their advanced technology combined with ancient spells had yielded a treasure chest of advances.
Or a nightmare of them.
I guess it depends on your point of view.
I’d seen the results of their experiments first-hand in Colorado’s Spirit HQ. I’ll never forget walking through a room with a test subject who transformed effortlessly from male to female within seconds.
And then there were those magic bullets.
I’d used the special ammunition on the Grail mission. One of the bullets, laced with the the Sacrifice Spell, had made a murderer out of me. I’d shot Merlin but the spell killed his wife instead.
“Before you pull the trigger, you might want to tell us what the bullet does,” I said.
Ronin aimed at the safe. “Acid Spell.”
“Ronin, I don’t think that’s such a…” She shot the safe.
It didn’t make much noise. Her silencer made sure of that. But it did make one hell of a cloud of poisonous gas.
The safe would probably melt. Eventually. Too bad we didn’t have an hour to wait around in the poisoned room.
I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt and threw Lucas out of the office with one heave. I grabbed Ronin to pull her out with me, but she jerked her arm out of my grip.
“We have to get out of here, woman!”
“Not yet.” Instead of using her jacket to cover her face, she wrapped it around a fist and took a swing at the smoking steel.
Her punch cracked right through the melting safe.
She felt around inside for what seemed like forever until her jacketed hand emerged with something. A ring of keys fell to the floor.
Ronin fell to the floor next. She’d passed out. Or worse.
Lucas helped me drag her to safety. Both of us coughed violently. It felt like my tonsils were on fire and roasting my frontal cortex.
I slammed the office door behind me and leaned against the hall wall to try and catch my breath.
“Step… one… done…” I managed to croak between coughing fits. I lifted up the keychain so the demon could see.
“We need to leave her here, sir,” Lucas said. He was recovering faster than I was, which I chalked up to the fact he was a demon. Demons tend to enjoy the things that kill us mortals.
I agreed with him, but I also knew I’d never live it down if I abandoned Ronin in that hallway. I didn’t know how it would come back to haunt me, but I’d bet my balls it would.
“Sir?” Lucas asked, pleadingly. “We need to move. Now. If someone trips the alarm, we’re done for.”
I knelt over Ronin and turned her over. Her body settled on one of the unconscious guards. She was propped up perfectly for me to have a little heart-to-heart.
“Okay, Ronin, here’s the deal. If any part of you can hear me, this is your last chance to wake the fuck up and join us. Otherwise, we’re leaving you here with your two new friends who you shot, and all of their friends, and you can pay the piper for us. Lucas and I sure do appreciate the sacrifice. You should know that we’re totally worth it.”
She showed no signs of movement.
I had to dig into her blacked out brain a little deeper.
“Let’s head out, Lucas. It’s a good thing it’s just the two of us. She’d just weigh us down.”
Her eyes opened and she coughed so hard she curled up and shook on the ground. Lucas and I eyed each other, worried.
I began to think it was a mistake to wake her up. If we had to carry Ronin around, we were all going to be paying the piper.
“Did we get the keys?” she asked in a rough voice.
“You did, yup,” I said, holding them up and jingling them for her. “Can you walk? We need to get moving.”
“I can fucking walk, boy billionaire.” She stood up and leaned on the wall. She pushed her raven black hair out of her eyes and glared at me.
“What?” I asked, innocently.
“I just have a feeling I should tear your head off. But I don’t know why.”
“Is that like a mating ritual in your family maybe?”
“You wish.” She held out her hand. I didn’t know if it was a good idea, but I gave her the keys. “Now. Follow me, boys.”
She walked down the hall, stepped over one of the guards, and wobbled enough to need the wall for support. But after a few steps she got herself
upright. Her shoulders bent back. Her poise returned. Nose up at the world, as per usual.
Tough broad.
She’d have made a good leader if she had more sense.
Chapter 13
We prowled through the highest of high security areas.
It was where the arsenal, food, and supplies were kept safe.
The fact that we hadn’t run into anyone yet was a testament to the limited access. But it was going to feel like a long hike to the broom closet. Every corner we turned could mean the end of our little mission.
At one point, we spotted someone turning a corner ahead of us. My best guess was that he was a wandering guard doing the rounds. He was headed in the same direction we were, so we followed him. I took the lead, peeking around corners and waiting for him to turn out of sight.
Finally, we reached the last bend in the road. I could hear the muffled chatter of the guard as he spoke to the guys on relic duty.
I didn’t like what I heard.
“How many of them are there?” Ronin whispered. She gestured for me to glimpse around the corner.
I took a deep breath and edged out one eye just far enough to spot a group of six or seven guards.
Someone said something funny and they all laughed.
“Too many,” Lucas mumbled.
“Seven, max,” I said. “We can handle them.” Ronin reached for her gun and I held her hand firmly. “No shooting. Got it?” She tried to kill me with her glare, but only managed to make me mad. She snatched her hand away.
“We’ll see,” she mumbled, barely audible.
Lucas looked at me, hopefully. “What’s the plan, sir?”
Which is when I heard Lancelot yell from around the corner, “Settle down, people! We’re not alone!”
Ronin reached for her gun again. I tried to stop her but she was too fast.
We waited for Lancelot and his guards to make their move. If the knight had seen us, we had to hold our ground and hope for an opening.
I closed my eyes. I tried to relax. I felt the air around me charge up.
The Swap Portal opened behind me.
“No, Kane,” Ronin whispered. I heard the guards’ footsteps come closer. “We need those scroll pieces, damn it. We can’t swap.”
