by Rena Rocford
He was gone forever. I’d never even said hello.
He’d known me though. At the end, he recognized me.
I sobbed harder.
“That arm will need looking at, Miss Takata,” Dr. Targyne said. He stood over me.
I’d missed his approach, and seeing him startled me. My hand brushed the hissing sword, and my finger caught on one of the many sharp places, slicing it open. Blood welled up.
“It is a moody blade, said to be a gift imparted from its donor.” He raised an eyebrow at me.
“Yeah, well, it’s effective.”
Targyne nodded, his lips forming a thin line. He looked at Felix and scowled. “Well, your cure is quite effective, Miss Whitlocke, if you would be so kind,” he said, indicating Felix. Beth sliced open the palm of her hand with a dagger John produced. Her blood fell into Felix’s open wound, and color returned to his cheeks. He groaned. I almost cried with relief. He would live.
Felix’s sky-blue eyes fluttered open, and his gaze met mine. “Did we win?”
What a question. I turned to find the body of my father, but green flames and a plume of greasy smoke rose over him. My father, who made the world’s biggest mistake, lay in a smoking pyre fueled by his own heart fire–at least, I assumed that’s why he was on fire.
Others would take this moment as a victory.
And if we could just get everyone off the boat, we could save a couple hundred lives.
Perspective, I guess. I forced a smile.
“Yeah, we won.”
He smiled back, but I couldn’t say anything else around the lump in my throat.
“Your turn, Miss Takata,” Dr. Targyne said, putting a hand on my shoulder. He looked at Beth, and she took my shoulders.
“Sorry,” she whispered, “but this part is going to hurt.”
Dr. Targyne held up a syringe filled with Beth’s blood and nodded. Beth’s grip tightened to bone crushing and Dr. Targyne took my arm in his hands and gave me the shot. Then he yanked my arm into place, manipulating the broken bones. Pain swarmed me and threatened to black me out. Fire and razor blades ran up my arm. Lightning seared through me as the bones ground together. Then, like magic, the pain dissolved into a cold drink of water on a hot day, relief at last.
I must have screamed because everyone stared at me. I panted like I’d run a marathon and shivered. “What are you looking at?” I stood up, trying to hide how much I still hurt. “We have to move these people. Hurry up!”
Everyone sprang into action. We carried people up the stairs in an endless train of weak and damaged Kin. Some were so thin they looked like skeletons with skin. Others looked to be more recent additions. Once we had everyone on deck, it was obvious there was a problem with our boat. Smoke rose in a plume over the derelict ship, and it developed a pronounced list.
When we finished moving people to the deck, the first hints of dawn colored the sky an abysmal grey. I wandered around trying to figure out what to do next. I stopped pacing when my aunt grabbed my shoulder. Without a word she wrapped me in a hug. Days as a prisoner and she still smelled of piñon. I tried to speak, but my throat clogged with everything I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit.
Steve stood on the deck, waiting for me. It was such a relief to see him in the flesh, walking around.
He gave me a sad half smile in return. “Beth told me,” he said. “Thank you for what you did.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sorry about your father.”
Fresh tears sprang to my eyes and slid down my cheeks. I looked away.
Dr. Targyne snapped his phone closed. “I’ve called Mr. June. He says he’ll drop the accusations at the hearing.”
Beth nodded like it was nothing more than she expected, but fire stirred in my belly, a welcome relief to the pain of grief.
“Wait, hearing? We just saved the day, solved the biggest missing person’s problem in the last century, and she still has to go through with a hearing?” My voice rose higher in pitch with each word. Felix, Aunt Agnes, and John stood beside Beth and I.
Beth put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, they do everything with pomp and circumstance.”
“They’ll not censure her, Miss Takata,” Dr. Targyne said.
“Damned right they won’t.”
“Could I borrow that?” Felix asked, pointing to the phone. Dr. Targyne handed it over, and Felix grabbed my hand and pulled me away. He led me to one of the rescued Kin, and I instantly recognized her as Hazel. Her hair had more grey than my father’s memories of her, but there was no mistaking her.
“Mom,” Felix said, “I’d like you to meet Allyson.”
She looked up at me, shriveled and tiny compared to her previous self and smiled. “You look like your father.”
Again, tears welled in my eyes, and I couldn’t speak. I nodded. I wanted to say, he was trying to help hide you all. He didn’t mean to hurt so many people. He wasn’t the terrible person everyone thought. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
She nodded. “Your father was very brave. Even after Kurt, he risked much.”
Silence stretched between us, and Felix took my hand in a reassuring squeeze. “I need to call Dad,” he said, breaking the silence. He punched the numbers. “Hi Dad, it’s me, yeah, look, we’re somewhere in the North Bay Area–”
“The Ghost Fleet, in Suisun Bay. That’s 680.” I pointed at the bridge over the waters.
Felix repeated the landmarks to his father. “Mom’s here. She’s okay.” His voice went quiet. “We didn’t find Lucia or Jessie.” He paused again. “I’m okay, just–uh oh. I’ve gotta go, Dad. I’ll call as soon as I can.”
I turned to see what Felix was looking at: four motor boats on fast approach to our ship. Spotlights flared to life and drenched us in pools of light. I shaded my eyes with a hand.
“You are trespassing on federal property! You are under arrest! Put your hands in the air, and don’t make any sudden moves!” The loudspeaker crackled.
A hand touched my shoulder from behind. “I’ve gotta go,” my aunt said. “Don’t worry about those guys, kid. Just keep your teeth together. They have no right to question you without legal representation.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To get legal representation. I’ll take this.” She held up the plastic bag with Kurt’s severed hand. My aunt melted into the rusty deck, instantly camouflaged, and I lost sight of her. Her wings whispered on the breeze as she flew away.
Humorless men with guns swarmed the ship. A group with backpacks and reflective tape everywhere went through the door to the hold. By some unspoken pact, we stood with the unconscious Kin, leaving the other trolls to try to look innocent, but no matter what, we looked like something bad went down.
The men in camouflage and guns rounded us up. It wasn’t like the movies, and not once did someone read us our rights. Beth rolled her eyes as they put a zip tie around her wrists, but they proceeded to tie everyone’s hands that way. The man who pulled my zip-tie handcuffs on put them in front, but I stole a glance and saw that Dr. Targyne’s were cuffed behind his back. They searched us for weapons and took our phones and the Kornus Blade. One by one, they pulled everyone down onto barges; first the unconscious Kin, then us trespassing fugitives. By the time I stood on the deck of the barge, my shaking was uncontrollable. Someone gave me a scratchy wool blanket, and I wrapped myself in it as best as I could. They sailed us under the bridge, past a peninsula and to a pier with long, factory style brick buildings along the shore.
A fleet of ambulances waited, and the infirm were taken from the boats in an efficient stream of EMTs and firefighters. The rest of us got to watch from under armed guard. Once the ambulances left, the men with guns marched us into one of the brick factory buildings. Inside, it was empty except for train tracks on the floor. Armed guards stood at all the entrances, stony faced and rigid.
The trolls stood off to one side, struggling to look as human as possible. They did everything right, stood up straight, kept the
ir knuckles from scraping the ground as they walked, but their lopsided faces were impossible to disguise. The military people called us out one by one. No one called out returned.
Diffuse light spread into the building from high, grimy windows, but I couldn’t tell what time it was. I didn’t care anymore. I sat on the floor, back to back with Beth, John, Felix, and Steve. Dr. Targyne didn’t sit, but whenever he walked, he hobbled. He hadn’t had the benefit of someone setting his bones straight when Beth healed him.
After the last of the adults had been taken away for questioning, a short man in a military uniform walked into the room. He held a stack of papers in one hand and kept the other tucked at the small of his back. He stopped in front of Steve and passed a piece of paper to him. With both hands still in zip ties, Steve fumbled with the paper.
“Is that you?” the uniformed man asked.
I looked over his shoulder, and there was Steve smiling out from the paper. Beneath his picture, bold print read Have You Seen This Child?
Steve frowned at the paper. “It is.”
The man in the uniform passed out similar papers to Beth, Felix, and me. My mom must have used a picture from when we lived in Vermont. In the picture, I had my guitar, and I was smiling. I scowled at the paper. When I looked up, the uniformed man watched me.
He nodded towards the paper. “If that’s not you, I need to know.”
“It’s me,” I said.
He moved his lip so his mustache pointed more to the sides. Then he knelt in the dirt next to me. He pulled out a knife and cut my zip ties before moving on to Steve and the others. I rubbed my wrist, but that only made them ache more. When he was finished he stood in front of us.
“My name is Erik Matherson.” He took us in individually, and we sat like mice waiting for the cat to pick which of us would be its dinner. He jabbed a finger at me. “I’d like to talk to you first, Miss Takata.”
I pointed at my chest, and he gave a curt nod. When I stood up, I brushed at the sticky dust, but only succeeded at getting my hands dirty. My clothes were clammy but almost dry.
Matherson walked over to the wall of armed men, and they parted to let us pass. I should have felt near panic. I was being held under armed guards on military property, but I just couldn’t muster the effort. Everything had already been drained from me. I might be able to feel things like panic later, but exhaustion and loss blotted out the world.
I followed the short man to a room in the next brick building. It was another warehouse, but a desk and two chairs sat in the center of the echoing room. The Kornus Blade sat on the desktop wrapped in a giant plastic bag.
He took a seat and gestured to the other chair. I sat with a thump, like a puppet with my strings cut.
Matherson folded his hands together and rested his chin on top. “Would you like to tell me what happened?”
The laugh that escaped my teeth rang with hysteria, bouncing off the walls. Explain how I chased kidnappers across the southwest, got shot at, hunted down my father only to kill him with the bloodthirsty sword on the table and still failed to actually stop the man responsible? “No,” I said. The word squeaked out, escaping my throat before the sob close on its heels.
My father was dead.
The pit where my heart used to live wrenched open, and I tried not to fall into the reality of what I’d done. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Matherson’s eyes narrowed at me. “I was hoping you might help me out. There’s a battleship in the bay, and from what I can piece together, one of the biggest human trafficking rings this decade was based there. What happened? Who attacked you? Why did you have that?” He pointed his pencil at the Kornus Blade. “Is it even yours?”
An excellent question.
He leaned forward. “Are there more places like this? Places where we might find other missing children?”
His eyes bored into me.
Like images through a fog, memories of other facilities drifted past my mind’s eye. They weren’t places I’d seen before. They were my father’s memories. There were other places where Kin slept, their lifeblood fueling the youth and power of Kurt Stein. But what could I say? What could I tell this military man? ‘There’s a mad man with magic–stolen from my family!–and he is running this crazy trafficking ring.’ It was too crazy.
And worse, Kurt could be a very powerful man in the human world, too. What if he’d bought off the Army, or whoever these guys were? Who could be trusted?
“I don’t know.” I stuttered, tripping over the truth, and his glower deepened until his eyebrows nearly touched the tops of his cheeks. I stumbled on. “I had nothing to do with that ship or the people there.”
“Who were they? Any information you have could help us find people; other children are in danger.” He folded his hands on the table as if patiently listening.
Reggie’s words haunted me. Like when my boy disappeared.
“I–I don’t know if you can help.”
“Try me.”
I looked down at the gleaming blade between us. Despite cutting off a hand and tasting the chest cavity of Kurt, there was no blood on it. Every nook and cranny gleamed a brilliant silver white. It pulsed as if it could sense me. It wanted more blood.
A guard held the door open, and a man in a business suit entered the room. “Stop!” His words echoed in the large room. Despite the suit and glasses, I knew he was Kin. There was no mistaking it now. The glasses were a fake to make him look more normal. He smelled like blackberries and mint, but that wasn’t enough to tell what kind of mythical creature he was. “I am her legal representation,” he said, turning to me. “Miss Takata, say nothing.”
A memory of this man surfaced in my mind. He took the Kornus Blade in its protected form and placed the blade in a padded suitcase. I recognized it as my father’s memory, but now I knew his name.
“Mr. Jordan,” I said in way of greeting.
He blinked before carrying on. “I have documentation from her family that she is to be released into my care immediately.” Mr. Jordan backed up his words with papers and slid a stack across the table. The piece on top was a pristine copy of my birth certificate complete with the embossed seal. I’d never even seen the copy my mother had.
Matherson took a deep breath, but his jaw didn’t relax. He riffled through the stack of papers and turned back to me. “What’s the story behind the sword?”
Jordan held up a hand towards me. “It is a family heirloom that recently went missing. The Takata family thanks you for recovering such an important artifact.”
One side of Matherson’s mustache twitched to the side, and he held my gaze. “I’m trying to save people. I can help. If you change your mind, give me a call.” He pulled a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to me. As Mr. Jordan reached for it, Matherson produced a second just for the lawyer.
Jordan traded him, one card for another piece of paper. Clearly, lawyers fought a paper war.
“What’s this?” Matherson asked.
“It’s an injunction for the return of my client’s property.”
Matherson’s eyes darted to the Kornus Blade and back again. He raised an eye in question, but Jordan’s stone mask didn’t crack.
“Is that all?” Matherson asked.
Jordan produced another stack of documents. “No, I am also here representing Mr. Smith, Mr. Giovanni, Mr. June, Dr. Targyne, and Miss Whitlocke. If you would be so kind as to bring them out, I would appreciate it.” Mr. Jordan passed over a business card. “Also, if you wish to speak with Miss Takata in the future, you can arrange it through me.”
“We’ll be in contact,” Matherson said.
Jordan ushered me through the door, holding it open. On the opposite side, an armed guard waited. He watched us, but made no move to intercept us. Matherson slipped through the door just behind us, and headed off towards a different brick building.
“What is this place?” I asked Mr. Jordan as we waited.
“Mare Island. They
used to refurbish nuclear submarines here.”
“Now what do they do with it? Keep it for interrogating kidnapping victims?”
A wan smile cracked his lips. “Mostly, they sell the rights to use some of the buildings to entrepreneurs.”
I watched the clouds streak by in thin wisps. The scent of the sea permeated everything, and the hollow breeze hissed through the loose bricks as we waited.
The others rounded the corner. “Well?” Beth asked.
I looked up at Mr. Jordan, and he shook his head.
“Not here,” I said.
Mr. Jordan pointed away from the sea, and we walked along the road with rail tracks sunk into the pavement. The others fell in behind me. The road went between two modern looking buildings, cinderblock instead of brick, before turning a corner around a cinderblock building.
When we rounded the corner, a hastily constructed fence marked the edge of the gun-toting men’s reign. Four guards stood at the gate. They didn’t move to stop us, but one talked into his radio as we approached and waved us through with a sharp gesture.
Beyond the gate, news vans waited. Cameramen hastily jumped to catch a better view of us. Great, I was soaked in mud, blood and seawater, and I was going to be on the news.
Nearly two-dozen motorcycles roared to life. In a pack, they swarmed us creating a barrier between the cameras and us. The burly gryphons riding the bikes looked every inch a motorcycle gang with their leathers and vests. Instead of skulls and flames, their embroidered gear had claws and wings. Some of their vests had bulges suspiciously shaped like guns.
They escorted us to a limousine parked across several spaces. My aunt stepped out of the limo. Her teal business suit gave her the air of a CEO, but I knew it was an act. The menacing corporate executive look was designed to intimidate people.
Joe waited next to the limo, smiling. He wrapped Felix in a bear hug. I turned my head so I wouldn’t see. The scent of piñon engulfed me, and my aunt caught my gaze in her deep brown eyes.
Her hands on my shoulders, she looked into my eyes. “You did better than I could have.”
