Relentless

by Michael Arches

  She stifled a snort and looked at Ian.

  He grinned like a cat who just caught a mouse.

  “That’s my guy,” she said. “I’m so proud of him. Yeah, he told it to you straight. Works beautifully for both of the great Holar masters. Katie doesn’t get it either.”

  All of my doubts disappeared. “Just checking. You know how messages can get garbled as they get passed along.”

  “Give it a go and let me know how it works out,” he said. “By the way, Dana told me you two have a lead on your mom. That’s fantastic.”

  Happiness and worry flowed through me at the same time. I was tumbling down a cascading waterfall without knowing what was at the bottom. “It is great news, fantastic, but I’m trying to keep from getting too happy. Things could still go wrong a hundred different ways.”

  WHEN WE MET with Thao, I felt much better prepared to talk about rescue plan. For the sake of privacy, we met him in our suite. I opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio and prepared a wine and cheese plate.

  As the three of us shared the wine and appetizers, I explained to Thao what Sue Wong had already told me. He listened in his usual calm and quiet way.

  I asked him, “Do you know anything about El Paso?”

  He nodded. “I’ve visited once. It’s a large city in the desert. on the north side of the Rio Grande River. An old farming and ranching town that turned into an oil town.”

  Because Suong had mentioned farming, I asked, “What do you know about agriculture in that part of Texas?”

  “Unfortunately, no, but I doubt that matters. Once Suong gives us a specific area to search, we can learn what we need. I’m busy tomorrow, but I can otherwise arrange my schedule to leave whenever Suong feels she’s close to locating our targets.”

  Then he said, “Of course, it’s always possible that your parents are south of the border. Do both of you have passports?”

  That was why I’d insisted on working with a professional detective. They asked good questions. “Oops. Didn’t think about that. I don’t have a passport, or even a birth certificate. Dana?”

  “Yep, I did an exhibition match in Mexico City.”

  “No matter, Moira,” he said. “Where were you born?”

  “Bakersfield.”

  He scribbled in his small notebook. “That’s Kern County. We’ll contact them in the morning and prepare the necessary forms to get a birth certificate. Obtaining a passport will take longer but isn’t necessary to travel to Mexico.”

  We talked over the logistics of the three of us going together. Normally, we would’ve sent Thao first, but I wanted to be able to grab Mom the instant he confirmed her location. And even though Dana wasn’t planning to fight, she insisted on going.

  Thao left, and my sister and I finished the bottle. I was so excited that my hands were shaking. “Damn, I haven’t seen Mom in six years. Hope she’s okay.”

  Dana swallowed hard. “Me, too.”

  Eventually, she headed off to meet with Lee, but Philippe returned from a teacher’s meeting, so I wasn’t alone. I brought him up to date. We chatted about whether he could come with us. That mainly depended on how soon we left. Sunday would be the earliest, but he had to be back by Monday morning for his classes.

  While he graded student papers, I remembered what Ian had told me about segregating my mind. The wine had calmed me down, and I sat on the sofa close to Philippe and meditated. Once I reached the first jhana, I visualized a bank vault in my head. There wasn’t any lizard inside, but I consciously thought about pushing my angry feelings into that space. That meant I had to bring up all my thoughts about Breaux and how he’d treated Cara and Henri.

  I also wanted to store away my anger against the sorcerer who owned Mom, but I didn’t know who he was yet. So, I stashed my fury at Dad into the vault and slammed the door shut. Much to my surprise, it seemed to work.

  That mixture of hope and dread inside me continued to grow, leaving me antsy. I already knew I wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep again for a while.

  -o-o-o-

  Saturday, March 20th

  AFTER OUR MORNING run, Ian pulled me aside in the lobby. “Tomorrow, I’m going to have to fly to LA for a couple of days for a Holar meeting. Bad ass craziness is brewing on the East Coast, and we need to come up with a coordinated response. Frank is my senior disciple, but I’ve already told him any big decisions have to be approved by a majority vote.”

  “And you’re mentioning this to me because?”

  “Because I’m thinking you might automatically vote against him, just to be contrary. Please don’t do that.”

  Was I that ornery? I nodded my consent. “Remember, if Suong tracks down my parents, Dana and I will fly to El Paso.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m not too worried about defending the clan. Jin is improving rapidly, thanks to Chen, and he’s learning Holar spells. The three of them should be fine.”

  It was a weekend, so Philippe was off duty. We headed to Big Sur for a hike and took Christina along. Once we got back deep in the redwoods, I found a big one to hug. Then I sat with my back against it and meditated. As long as there were no distractions, I could reach the third jhana. In that state, I sensed the spirits of Philippe and Christina off in the distance, but my sight was clouded. I imagined myself vanishing but had no way of knowing whether I really had.

  Slowly, I pulled out of the meditation, that’s when I heard my friends calling my name. My vision cleared and they ran up to me.

  “You disappeared,” Philippe said. “For the last five minutes, we’ve been looking for you. I even waved my hands across in front of the tree where you’re sitting, but no Moira.”

  I told them what I’d done and how easy it’d been. Everything was easy once I knew how. The most interesting part was that Philippe hadn’t been able to touch me even though I hadn’t moved. This was a different kind of vanishing, not just something that fooled the eye. I had to remember to ask Chen about that.

  Chapter 20

  IN THE AFTERNOON, I went all-out during my sparring match with Ian. This might be the last time we trained together before I had a chance to fight for my mom. I needed to make the most of it. He was stronger, as usual, but Leo had taught me a back kick that caught him by surprise and knocked him down.

  While I did my happy dance, he quickly rolled to his feet again. “Nice move, Moira. You’re keeping me on my toes.”

  Then he punched to my head, rapid-fire so I couldn’t see the individual blows. I barely slipped away in time. Still so much to learn to reach his level.

  -o-o-o-

  DURING DINNER, THAO called me. “We’ve hit a snag on obtaining your birth certificate. Moira Boyle wasn’t born in Bakersfield on the birth date you gave me. In fact, no Moira Boyle has ever been born there, as far as they know. The only Moira who entered this world on your birth date anywhere in California was born in San Diego. Could that be you?”

  “Maybe, it’s a very unusual name, but I can’t understand why Mom would’ve lied to me.”

  “Maybe it’s because the father named on the birth certificate isn’t Alan Boyle but Padrick Kennedy.”

  I had no idea what to make of Thao’s news. Moira was such an unusual name, and the birthdate was right, but who was Padrick Kennedy? “Did you find any other Moiras born in California?”

  “None who were born within five years of you. I really think your true last name is Kennedy. There is no record of a legal name change to Boyle.”

  “The main thing is, I need a birth certificate. Can you get that one? We’ll sort out the name once we’ve recovered Mom.”

  “Yes, but not until Monday morning. I’ll have to send someone to San Diego, and that will be expensive.”

  “Money’s not a problem. We need to find the truth at all costs.”

  “Of course. By the way, I spoke to Suong a few minutes ago. She just intercepted a message from Breaux offering to auction off a beautiful young woman who sounds
very much like Cara. He sent the email to a dozen sorcerers, most of whom have Hispanic names. The messages were received on servers located in Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia, and Peru. No other details yet, but Suong is working hard to find out more.”

  A thrill of happiness coursed through me. We were finally making progress again. But time was quickly running out. Breaux was carrying out his plan to sell Cara to some cartel boss, and that would put her out of reach.

  After I hung up, I pulled Dana aside and told her the news from Thao. We hugged each other and tried to share the excitement and the fear.

  “Moira, what I think happened is Alan Boyle fought Mom and beat her, back when you were a baby. He enslaved her and got you in the bargain. Then he forced Mom to lie to us about who your dad was. I’m pretty sure Alan is my father, though, because his name is on my birth certificate.”

  Her theory made sense to me, too. “Okay, what do you think about the auction? I’d love the chance to buy her, but I can’t believe we’d be able to trick them again. According to what Wang told us weeks ago, Breaux already knows the drug cartel bosses he’s inviting to the auction.”

  She cringed. “This is our last chance to save Cara. Suong isn’t having much luck otherwise. Things are happening fast. We have to be prepared for anything.”

  By this point, I’d done almost everything I could to get stronger, but I still didn’t feel ready. Doubts were beginning to plague me night and day.

  -o-o-o-

  Monday, March 22nd

  FINALLY, RIGHT AFTER breakfast, the call Dana and I had been waiting for came. “I think I found your mother,” Suong said. “She sent happy birthday wishes in an email to an old friend in Bakersfield. The thing is, your mom used a cell phone registered to someone named Maria Lopez. I assume she’s a friend of your mothers. I know Lopez’s address, which is in a farming area southeast of El Paso, Texas. Hopefully, once you get there, you find your parents near Lopez.”

  It took all of my effort to keep from screaming with joy. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  She gave me what little information she had about Lopez from her cell phone account, and I wrote it all down carefully to make sure we didn’t go to the wrong place.

  Then I asked, “Not to pressure you, but have you had any luck getting more details about Breaux’s auction?”

  “That’s my next priority. We’ve known for weeks that he planned to sell her soon. Your sister must’ve been extra-charming to keep him interested as long as she did.”

  I’d thought about that, too, and cringed. “She probably figured out what he’d planned for her and knew how hard it would be to recover her from south of the border in some drug lord’s compound. Spare no expense to find her as soon as you can.”

  I hung up, grabbed Dana, and headed to a small room off of the main dining room. Together, we called Thao, and the three of us made arrangements to fly out in the early afternoon. That was the earliest flight we could find, and we had to make a connection in San Francisco. We wouldn’t arrive in El Paso until after 7 p.m.

  I gave him Lopez’s address, and he plugged it into a map program. “It’s definitely in the USA, but only a few miles from the border. Hopefully, you won’t need your birth certificate for a day or two. My daughter plans to obtain it in a few minutes, but you might not have it in your hands right away.”

  Hopefully, I wouldn’t need it at all. Either way, I was eager to ask mom who Padrick Kennedy is or was.

  -o-o-o-

  BY THE TIME we checked into our motel in El Paso, I was exhausted. Nevertheless, I wasn’t waiting until morning to search for Mom. Dana felt the same way.

  Thao drove us past the suburbs south of the city to a farming area along the Rio Grande River. We sat in the backseat together strategizing as he drove. I’d already checked out the area as much as I could online. Apparently, Lopez lived on or near a cotton farm.

  I didn’t know what cotton plants look like, but the fields we passed were filled with green plants a couple of feet high. None of the them contained those fluffy white balls I’d seen in pictures of the Old South, but maybe it was too early in the season.

  The sun set well before we arrived at Lopez’s address. It turned out to be a large farm with a two-story white farmhouse, a barn made of galvanized steel, and several other large buildings clustered near the house. One of them looked like a bunkhouse, and several old cars sat in front of it.

  Thao parked on the opposite side of the main road from the farm behind several tall trees with branches reaching almost to the ground.

  “What’s your plan, Moira?” he asked.

  “Could you sneak over there as your invisible self and check the place out? I assume the sorcerer who owns my parents lives in the farmhouse, but I’d hate to break in and confront him until we know for sure. And you probably ought to look around and see if you can find my parents.”

  “Of course,” he said. Then he left the car and disappeared. Dana and I sat in the dark talking over possibilities. My main worry was we’d arrived at the wrong place. This farm looked old and rundown. I wondered how the owner could afford two farm slaves.

  Our wait seemed endless, but Thao eventually returned, sat behind the driver’s seat again, and smiled. “Good news. A sorcerer does live in the main house, and it’s protected by a ward. I couldn’t get inside without triggering the alarm. The other buildings, however, are not protected. The bunkhouse contains nine people including three children. I believe they’re all slaves, and two of them have to be your parents. They are emaciated, but otherwise seem healthy.”

  I’d had plenty of experience confronting sorcerers, but I didn’t plan to use my usual Jailbait persona this time. Nobody would expect a young girl to be out in the dark collecting signatures for anything, and my anger boiled over inside me. I kept stuffing it away into the vault Ian had convinced me to create, but each step closer to success seemed to make me madder.

  “You’re red in the face,” Dana told me. “This is not the time to do anything rash.”

  “Good tip,” I said and packed more fury into the vault. “We still don’t know for sure that the sorcerer who owns my parents is in that house, do we? I’d hate to blow up the wrong asshole.”

  “No, we don’t know,” Thao said, “but someone is. The lights are on, and so is a television.”

  It seemed worth the risk to attack right away. “Wait here,” I said. “If not back within fifteen minutes, take off. Don’t try to save me.”

  Dana threw her arms around me, hugged me tight, and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her back, hoping it wasn’t for the last time.

  Then I changed to my fighting form and grabbed my staff. “Wish me luck.”

  They did, and I dashed across the road to the farm. The gravel driveway passed through a rusted open gate and continued for a hundred feet before it branched in a Y. One arm headed toward the farmhouse, and I followed it. An old white pickup with a canopy on the back was parked in front next to a rusted Oldsmobile sedan. I tried to walk past them, but the ward held me back. Just to be sure it was intact all the way around, I circled the white farmhouse. The paint was peeling on the clapboards, and one of the windows was covered with plywood. Definitely not a prosperous place.

  But whoever had created a ward was no slouch. It was surprisingly strong. Before I attacked it, I snuck over to the bunkhouse and peeked in a window. As Thao had said, a bunch of people were sitting inside watching a basketball game on TV and talking with each other.

  My heart skipped a beat when I saw my mother, looking thinner than before and grayer. But she smiled as she chatted with another woman and knitted. My fury boiled over as I saw her trapped so far away from everyone she loved.

  Without trying to calm down, I ran toward the front entrance to the farmhouse. Before I reached the ward, I blasted it with a lightning spell. Holarthon, elbo choque!

  The boom echoed in my ears along with a piercing scream from the ward as it exploded into
bits. The element of surprise was gone, but I wasn’t going to give the sorcerer any more chance to prepare. Without breaking my stride, I ran up the front steps to the covered porch and slammed my left shoulder into the door.

  That made it ache, but I ignored it. The latch tore through the wooden frame, and the door burst open. Thankfully, he hadn’t set the deadbolt. I passed through a short hallway that led to a living room. A tall, gangly, man with salt-and-pepper hair glared at me, standing in front of his TV. It showed the same game they were watching in the bunkhouse.

  “I challenge you for magical power,” I said and froze.

  He bolted for the kitchen, which was visible through an open doorway. A couple of seconds later, a door slammed. I was going to have to run this son of a bitch down. But I couldn’t until the ten seconds ran down.

  When the buzzing began in my ears, I tore out after him through the back door onto a covered cement slab. Then I scanned the backyard. No scumbag. I held my breath and stopped, staying as quiet as possible. Couldn’t hear him.

  I ran toward an old storage shed to check it first. He could’ve headed for the barn or the bunkhouse, but the shed was closer. I remembered at the last second to create a protective ward. Because most of my anger was locked away, the barrier formed beautifully.

  Just in time. A bright light flashed, and a boom echoed. A lightning bolt headed straight for me from behind the shed. The ward took it all, vibrating and stopping me, but little electricity got through.

  Thank the gods, I’d remembered. It’d saved me from a terrible hit, although it’d cracked in several places.

  Before I could steady it and get off my own shot, he dashed in the darkness toward the barn. I chased him, starting about fifty feet behind. All the running I’d done with the Garda paid off. I gained on him until he vanished into the building.

  I stopped at the edge of the large doorway. Running in headlong into whatever could get me killed. At best, I’d probably stumble over something and hurt myself. He knew his way around inside, and I didn’t. So, I stood with my back against the wall next to the opening and listened.