“Acri ferrum.” Sami said as they got close to the back end of the man’s truck.
Knife blades of power shot from her fingertips like bolts of lightning and lanced forward at the driver’s side rear wheel of the white pickup. The tire shredded in a blinding flash of orange light. Nothing but the white and rust colored wheel remained. It drifted down toward the road and Sami imagined the crash would be spectacular, but she didn’t wait to find out. At this speed, it would’ve taken forever anyway.
Her mind was far ahead to The Farm. Change of plans. This time, mom, dad, RayRay and Matilde were coming along for the ride. She wasn’t sure how everyone would fit into her small convertible, but she’d work all that out once she got there. And then, the speed was gone, the world whooshed into motion, snow streamed past her windshield like star tracks. It was something like being underwater and coming up for air. She saw a distant splash of sparks in her rearview mirror and wondered if the man would survive the crash. She kind of hoped he’d be okay, but she wasn’t sure why.
RayRay finally picked up the phone.
“Hello, Sami,” his voice sounded odd.
“Bro, why haven’t you been answering your phone? The bad guy is on his way back to The Farm to steal the violin and we gotta get out of there fast. I think I took care of him, but where there’s one bad guy, there’s always more. Pack up all your stuff. Tell mom and dad that I’m taking everybody away with m—”
“Wait, Sami,” RayRay interrupted her. “The artifact, the violin, is gone. They must have stolen it before you…well, before you took the matter into your own hands.”
“Matilde is gone?”
“Yes, the case is empty. Someone stole it right out from under our noses.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. One of the black overcoat dudes is racing toward The Farm right now. It sure seems like he’s on his way to try and get it. Besides, I don’t remember when they could’ve taken the violin. We were all in there when they barged in and I didn’t see it on either of them when I dumped them.”
“This is true, but the fact still remains that I am holding an empty case right now and it is not here.”
“Then why was the dude heading back toward Summertown?”
“I am at a loss. I do not know.”
Sami’s mind raced. This didn’t make any sense. The bad guys had said they were after the artifact, but RayRay said it was gone. The two guys that were there hadn’t had time to steal it, Sami had, with Mikki’s magical speeding up effect, taken them out with the trash…literally. But here was the one guy, on a furious path back to The Farm—or at least he was until Sami and Mikki slowed the world down and incinerated his tire. But if he was trying to get to The Farm, that would mean the black overcoat guys didn’t have it. Someone else did.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m almost there. Get your things together; we’re not going to hang around to find out what this guy is coming back for. Tell mom and dad that—”
“You are on speaker, Sami. They are listening.”
“Hun, is that you?” Mary Proctor’s voice sounded like the old lady who doesn’t understand technology.
“Yes, mom, it’s me.”
“Look, your father and I have discussed this. We aren’t going anywhere. The Farm is our home, but it’s also more than that. I know you don’t know everything there is to know about Azuria, but we live on a Caulla. There’s a connection here to a world you’ve never known, but whose blood runs through your veins.”
Sami winced. She realized she’d been denying her magical heritage all her life. She knew who she was…a Solarian Elf of Azuria. Not truly human, but rather a creature of powerful magic. She looked over at the sleeping TikTuk next to her. She and Mikki were aliens in this world and it seemed that the humans around them were getting closer and closer to the truth. She remembered the old eighties movie, E.T. The Extraterrestrial and how the boy, Elliot, had been racing to save the alien from the scientists who threatened to cut him open and study him. Mikki was hugging an empty Milky Way wrapper and purring, worn out from exerting her magic on Sami again. Not happening on my watch, she thought and a burst of light flickered up her arm as the familiar magic sigils danced to life.
“Mom, I know what you’re saying, but they will attack The Farm again and again. We have to get away from there. You and dad are in danger.”
“Sami, baby,” Wilmot Proctor’s voice echoed in the background, “I appreciate what you’re saying, but your mother and I, we can take care of ourselves. The Farm is our home and we won’t let anyone take that away from us. We’re staying.”
Sami slowed her car down. She pulled off the side of the road. Her hands and arms were glowing in flares of yellow and orange. She let the magic fill her. She thought of the men in the black overcoats. Blowing out the guy’s tire had been one thing, but he would keep coming, she was sure of that. And where was his friend? He was even worse. No more running. She looked over at the snoozing Mikki and took a deep breath. Looks like I’m in it alone this time. She couldn’t help but feel the touch of a smile curl up one side of her mouth. Walls inside were crumbling. Walls she’d built between the human being she’d always thought she wanted to be and the Solarian Elf of Azuria she’d been born to be. The magic in her flooded past the broken barriers and she felt it lift her heart and soul. Her mind soared with possibilities and power. It was more than she’d ever felt before, and it felt good…really good.
She turned the wheel of her car and as they say in the South, busted a U-E. She headed back toward the pickup truck and the man in black.
“Tell RayRay I’ll be back soon. I have something to take care of. I…I love you, dad. I love you, mom. See you soon.”
“Hun, wait. What are you going to—?”
She clicked the phone off before she heard any more of her mother’s question.
Carter Cross felt the rough hands shaking him by the shoulders but his eyes refused to open. Pain exploded all over his body and he couldn’t quite remember where he was or what had happened to make him hurt so much. His ears were so muffled that sounds came through like they had cotton balls in them. A splash of cold water hit his face. He peeled his eyes open against the pain. Light flared into them and he was blind for a second. Sounds began to pierce the cloud and he could hear a distant car engine revving. He raised his arm to shield his sensitive eyes against the light.
A dark shape loomed over him and he could see it was his partner, still wearing the broken sunglasses. He wished he still had his sunglasses, but they were long gone. His colleague shook his shoulders again and he could finally begin to make out what the man was saying.
“— the hell were you thinking back there? You freakin’ rat, deserting me in a trash heap. Well, I’m back and now I’m the one in charge. Things are going to go my way from here on out. Agenda’s changed a bit, assface.”
Carter mentally shook his head. Assface, eh? Instinctively, he reached for his gun, but it was gone, still missing from the incident at The Farm.
“Yeah. I was gonna shoot you too, but I ain’t got no piece. The granola wench stole ‘em both.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
“Hitched with a trucker up to the last exit, that was as far as he could take me. Was lookin’ for another truck when I found you lyin’ in the ditch.”
Carter propped up on his elbows and found the source of the growling engine. The white pickup truck he’d borrowed from the man at the dump was sitting off the shoulder of the highway upside down. The rear tire was gone on the driver’s side and was spinning out of control. He’d had a blowout, he remembered that much. But there was that strange flash of orange light right before it had blown. The girl. Something odd was happening here and it was all centered on the girl. Before he could protest, his partner had hooked his hands under Carter’s arms and was hauling him to his feet.
“Get your butt up.” He grunted as Carter stretched the knots out of his back. “We’ve got work to do
. We need a car.”
“What’s wrong with that one?” He pointed at the upside down truck.
“Don’t freakin’ joke, assface. Or I’ll do you right after I put a cap in that hippy chick’s head.”
Well, Carter thought, good to see the crazy is still in full effect. He looked east down the interstate, nothing coming for miles. Turning to the west, he realized they were in for a bit of a storm. The sky was grey and the clouds were thick and low, filled with rain, or at this temperature…snow. He shivered in spite of himself. In the distance, he saw a pair of headlights twinkle over a far away hill.
“There,” he pointed, “that’s likely to be our only hope for a while.”
His partner jogged to the other side of the highway and walked into the road. Carter thought about how he wouldn’t be that disappointed if the car barreled over the guy and kept going.
“What the hell are you doin’, dude?” the man raised both his hands up over his head. “Get over here and help me flag ‘em down.”
Carter took a few careful steps and once he was sure his legs were functioning, he walked out into the road with his colleague. One quick push, a gentle shove into the path of the car. That’s all it would take. But that wasn’t important right now…he would deal with him after they got the car. A few minutes later, Carter began to make out the red car. It was moving fast…very fast. Hell, it wasn’t speeding…it was screaming toward them. Strangest thing too…the inside of the car seemed to be glowing. It almost looked like it was on fire. Everything in him yelled that this was not good.
Sami had the pedal mashed to the floorboard, willing the small Volkswagen to go faster when she saw them. They started as specks on the horizon, but began to grow larger until she could make out more detail. Like a pair of those inflatable sky dancer balloon guys you see at used car dealerships, they stood in the middle of the road flapping their arms. She gripped the steering wheel harder and leaned forward.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she planned to do, but she thought the first thing would be to scare the crap out of them. Then she was going to…blast them with her magic? No, that wouldn’t do. The White Cloaks, the pacifistic magician monks that they were, definitely wouldn't like that. She formed an idea in her mind of a prison cell, a trap, a box, somewhere she could put them that would hold them for longer than a day like the trash bin had. But what? As she got closer, she began to see that one of the men was easing his way off the road, sensing the danger, but the other was standing firm. If she didn’t veer off, she would hit him for sure. As she crossed over what she thought must be a couple of miles away, she realized that it was the demented one who was standing in the road and the…not-so-crazy one who was getting out of the way. She arched an eyebrow. Interesting. She thought she might want to talk to that guy, find out what the hell was going on.
Deep in the recesses of her mind, she began to find…words. Strange sounding words that she didn’t understand on a conscious level, but in a deeper, instinctive way she knew exactly what they meant. Spells. She was remembering spells. But when had she learned them? They came in cloudy bits of memory, like the time she’d been sitting at the breakfast table eating a vegan waffle and had tried homemade maple syrup for the first time. She couldn’t remember the exact details, but she could feel and taste the emotions. Inspiration hit as she swerved and screeched sideways to a stop looking straight out her driver’s side window at the broken sunglasses guy. He never flinched and began to march the three steps it would take for him to reach her. She pushed the button to lower her window and the word came out.
“Essesile.”
She wasn’t exactly sure how the spell worked, but she knew the person she aimed it toward would, for lack of a better way of putting it, be still. Immobilized. The man’s arms were reaching toward her and froze in mid air. His eyebrows went up in shock and his face became a mask of outrage. Muscles tensed in his neck as he strained to move, but he was frozen in place. Something red, blood maybe, began to trickle down from one of his eyes under his sunglasses. He growled against the invisible bonds wrapped around him. White flecks of spit formed in the corners of his mouth as his rage frothed over. This guy was insane. What she needed was for the man to completely forget who she was…
“Praetereo.” Her voice, which had taken on a quality not unlike singing, didn’t seem to be her own as she spoke the incantation. “Aeternum.”
She could feel the long-forgotten teaching from her mother filling her soul. The dam was breaking between her mundane, Earthly conscience and a life of magic and wonder. She was a Solarian Elf of Azuria and she had power that was unimaginable to a human being. She looked at her hands as the glow began to fade. This is who I am, she thought.
The man’s face fell slack. His expression went blank. It was as if a light switch had been turned off inside his brain. He seemed not to even see her anymore. She wasn’t going to wait around until he remembered what he was doing here. She wasn’t sure if he ever would. She thought the effect wasn’t permanent, but at this point, she didn’t care as long as he was incapacitated. She eased her car around his statue-like figure and scanned the road, left and right. There was no sign of his partner, the agent she didn’t think was insane. He had disappeared.
Holy hell was the only thing Carter Cross could get his mind to think as he watched his partner frozen in place by the girl. She had said something to him, but Carter couldn’t hear it from the ditch he’d jumped into. And her hands, were they on fire? No, he must’ve been seeing things.
Peering over the muddy edge of the shoulder, he watched her pull away. When she was gone, he walked up to his partner, who stood in the middle of the road, hands still frozen in place, with a completely blank expression on his face. He was a zombie. Drool leaked down the corners of his mouth and he hardly even blinked. Carter squinted down the highway at the escaping red car. He started jogging the opposite direction toward The Farm. Something crazy was going on here. Hell, if he hadn’t known better, he’d think that girl was using magic or casting spells or some voodoo like that. He shook his head as he ran. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that his partner was still standing in the same pose.
“Guess I better call that in.” He clicked the number on his phone.
It took less time than he thought to get straight to Elke.
“Yes, ma’am,” he started describing the scene he’d witnessed and the…well, the magic the girl had used.
“Interesting.” Elke said, her odd accent ending the word with a hard K. “Very interesting.”
Carter waited as he ran for her to give him further instructions.
“Agent Cross,” she finally broke the silence, “you have done well. Report to the Nashville office for debriefing.”
“Debriefing? But ma’am, we haven’t recovered the—”
“No matter,” she interrupted him, “the mission has changed and I will no longer need your services for this endeavor. You will receive instructions upon your arrival.”
He stared at the phone in disbelief.
“But ma’am—”
“Thank you, Agent Cross, for a job well done. Leave your partner where he is. I have sent a message to the recovery team. He will be back to normal by tomorrow morning.”
The line went dead. He stopped running and panted a few times to catch his breath.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Snowflakes began to pile up on his hair and his shoulders. Looking around, he saw that the snow was beginning to accumulate on the grass. It wouldn’t be long before the roads became a mess and the temperature was dropping fast. He needed answers and he needed warmth. A rumbling sound behind him announced a vehicle of some kind coming up fast. He turned around and saw headlights in the distance. Why not? He thought. Sticking his thumb out, he hoped the driver would see him and pick him up.
Luckily, the small box truck did slow and pulled over in front of him. The back of the truck announced it as Hungry Root All Natural Organic Non-GMO Gluten Free C
ertified Vegan Food Delivery Service. He opened the passenger door and looked up at the driver.
A man wearing a tie-dyed shirt big enough to be classified as a muumuu grinned at him from behind a shaggy beard and long hair tucked under a straw cowboy hat. A garishly large peacock feather stuck out from the hat and the man’s wrists were jangly with sterling silver and turquoise bracelets and rings. He looked familiar, but Carter could not place where he knew him from.
“Howdy partner,” the man extended his hand, “where ya headed? S’gonna storm somethin’ fierce out here, ya know?”
His voice was pure Fargo through and through but his getup was all San Francisco.
“Heading west, sir.”
The man leaned back and guffawed until he began to cough.
“Sir? That’s a good one there. I ain’t never been called a sir, but I do appreciate the manners, young man. Hop on in. I’m headin’ down Summertown Way, so I can get ya as far as Nashville or the like.”
“Summertown?”
“Ya. Got a load for the hippy-folk in the commune down there. Stockin’ up for winter, ya know?”
“The Farm?”
“That’s the one. Guess they’re stockin’ up on food for the winter. You know the place?”
“That’s actually where I’m headed.”
“Well, isn’t that the most serendipitous thing ya ever heard? Yer welcome to ride along as long as you don’t like the Eagles and ya don’t call me sir, eh?”
“Deal,” Carter pulled himself into the cab, “what should I call you?”
Spell Song: An Enchanting Urban Fantasy Page 10
