by L. S. Emory
In a split second, he beat me to her. He was a lot faster than he looked. He grabbed her from behind, his arm wrapped around her neck. She struggled a little bit, but he had her firmly under his control.
“Put the sword down girl, or I snap her neck.”
“Annabeth, don’t do it,” I could see her silently mouthing to me.
I couldn’t let him hurt her. But if I surrendered, it would mean game over. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, and go directly to jail.
Then Kyra winked at me.
She suddenly jerked her body forward, and then slammed her hips back into Travis. He creamed in pain before falling backward to the ground. His body quivered for a few seconds before going limp.
“What did you do?”
She pointed her nose toward her cuffs. “I heated these up. These cuffs were meant to dampen magic, but not stop it totally. And with people like you and me, well, these cuffs were meant for normal supernaturals, not people like us.”
“What do you mean, people like us?”
“No time to explain. See if there is a set of keys in his pockets.”
I ran over to his body. I gave him a little kick, just to make sure he wasn’t going to get up.
“Don’t do that!” Kyra cautioned me. “He’s not dead. I just kind of short circuited him a little bit, you could say. Keys!”
I knelt down and went through his pockets and found a key ring with several different keys on it. “Do you know which one it is?”
Kyra nodded. “It will be a silver one with an octagonal head.”
I quickly went through all of them. “Found it! Turn around.”
She turned around and I slid the key into the lock, freeing her from the cuffs. “How did you do that? I didn’t see you do a spell,” I asked.
She rubbed her wrists. “I didn’t need to do a spell, at least not one like your familiar with. Like I said, the cuffs just dampened my magic. I heated the outside surface up until they were hot enough to incapacitate him. It just took a long time.”
“What do you mean heat? How did…”
“I’m a Flame Guard,” Kyra replied.
That didn’t make sense. “There haven’t been any Flame Guards since the Werewolf Uprising of 1975. They were done away with the same time as Illusionists.”
“We don’t have time for this. Give me the keys. I need to get Kirby out.”
I tossed her the keys. My mind started racing. A Flame Guard? How was that even possible? Then it began to dawn on me. They were done away with the same time as Illusionists. Illusionists. Like Cody. Cody was an Illusionist.
Kyra was a rogue wizard.
“Watch him. Yell or something if starts moving. And run. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“Right,” I said.
I watched as she ran over to the cage where Kirby was. She was trying the keys but didn’t seem to be having any luck.
Then I heard something. I jerked back around and saw Travis sitting up.
“That hurt,” he mumbled.
“Kyra,” I said, slowly getting louder with each letter of her name.
Before I could even finish calling her, Travis had grabbed his machete and was on his feet, coming towards me.
“This ends now. They wanted you alive, but that’s not going to happen. I’ll just deliver you in pieces and they can get what they need from you that way.” He swung his machete at me. I was barely able to duck out of the way. The blade came so close to my head that I could hear the magic buzz coming from it.
He swung again, and I ducked down on the other side. He was getting angrier each time he missed. This might be our only chance to free Kirby. I had to buy Kyra some time to get him out.
“Is that all you got?” I said, mocking him. “Big tough bounty hunter can’t even hit a weak, untrained wizard? I think they might kick you out of the club if they found out about this.”
That enraged him even more. “That’s it. Now I’m going to shut you up for good,” he growled at me.
There was a good chance he was right. I really didn’t know much about actual hand to hand fighting, and even less with weapons. But I wasn’t scared. I felt oddly confident. “Well, come on, then.”
He charged directly at me. I wasn’t going to stand there and wait for him to hit me, so I moved toward him.
Stop, drop, and roll.
That voice again. I didn’t even stop to think this time. I just did it. Luckily, this voice was giving me the same advice that I had been given when I was kid. I’m glad I paid attention to those fire drills.
I waited until he was almost up on me, and dropped to the ground. As soon as I hit, I rolled right into his feet. He was moving so fast, he didn’t have time to get out of the way. His feet hit me, sending him face first into the grass. That was going to hurt.
I quickly jumped back to my feet. I glanced over to the cage. Kyra was knelt down, doing something to the lock. She needed more time. Since the only thing that I had been able to ever do to stop Travis was to trip him, I was running out of ideas. I doubt that he would fall for that a third time. Where was that voice when I needed it?
He rose back up to his feet. He didn’t have any threatening words this time. He swung the machete towards me. I instinctively raised my sword and deflected his blade. He swung again, but I was able to block him, locking our blades together. I guess the good thing about fighting against a machete is that the blade is so big that it not hard as hard to block as a sword.
I pushed him and his blade back with every ounce of strength that I could. I could feel my heart racing, the adrenaline pumping through my veins. This wasn’t just a fight. This was a fight for my life. My sword began to crackle with energy.
He swung again, aiming for my head. But I was in the fight now. I wasn’t going to lose. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. With his swing of the machete, it felt like everything was going in slow motion. I glided to the side, swinging my sword. It connected and sliced straight through his neck. His head fell to the ground.
The wires and red lights sticking out of his head and his body sparked and glowed for a few seconds, then, went dark.
A robot. Travis was a freaking robot.
“Nice job, kid.”
Chapter 21
I knew that voice.
Cody.
I turned around. Cody stood there, arms crossed. Kyra and Kirby came jogging up behind him, going past him, until they were in front of me.
“Are you ok?” Kyra asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. A little perturbed, but fine.
“That was pretty impressive,” Kirby said with a nod.
“You know,” I started, “someone could have told me that Travis was a robot. That would have been a helpful piece of information.”
Kyra looked at each other, then back at me. “You didn’t know?”
“No, I didn’t know,” I responded, clearly not using my inside voice. “How was I supposed to know that?”
“Good question,” Cody said, joining the conversation. “These two,” he said pointing to Kyra and Kirby with his thumbs, “sometimes take for granted that they know things that most normal folks, even wizards, don’t.”
“Sorry,” Kyra and Kirby said simultaneously.
“I thought he was a human that was all enchanted up. What exactly was Travis?”
Kyra cleared her throat. “Well, like I told you before, he was an Alpha. Alphas are sentient androids that have been enchanted by Shadow and Shadow magic. We are not sure exactly where they come, just that we started crossing paths with them a few years ago. We don’t have much intel on them but do know that they are under control of someone named the Supreme Alpha. We don’t know anything about this Supreme Alpha, but but he rents these androids out to the highest bidder.”
“Even to the Wizarding Authority? Why would they use him? What do they want from me?”
“Well now, that is the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Kirby said, stroking his goatee.
Kirby looked up at Cody, who stood there like a statue.
“And what about that voice in my head? Was that one of you?” I asked.
Kyra and Kirby turned to each other, and then to Cody, with a confused look in their eyes.
“What voice?” Cody asked with a suspicious tone in his voice.
“The one that kept giving me advice, telling me what to do. Which, by the way, was actually helpful.”
Kyra’s eyes got big. “It couldn’t be…”
“That would certainly be an interesting…”
“It is,” Cody interrupted. “To both questions.”
“Would someone like to fill me in? If I am going crazy, I have a right to know.”
Cody turned and look behind him. “Not now. We need to get out of here.”
I wasn’t about to let that one go. “No! I’ve been hearing that all day. Answers, now!”
“Calm down, kid. I promise you, I’ll answer your questions. But we need to get out of here. We don’t know that Travis was alone, or if anyone else has been sent. Just come with us, and then we’ll debrief.”
Debrief? What was this, the military? “Fine. Where are we going?”
“Back to our headquarters. But that’s not the thing that you’ll find most interesting” Cody answered.
“What am I going to find most interesting then?” I asked.
“Look up in the sky, and tell me what you see,” Kirby said.
I looked up. The sun was starting to go down. “Um, I don’t know. It’s getting dark?”
“No...tell me what you see.”
I looked up again. “There’s a bird flying around. There are some clouds. One looks like a dog. That one over there is pretty big, like a mountain. There’s that bird again.”
“Forget the bird. That big cloud, the one that looks like a mountain?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s where we’re going,” Kirby said, smiling.
“We’re going to a cloud?”
“It’s not a cloud,” Cody said. “Keep watching.”
As he said that, I glanced over and saw him start to move his fingers around, and then gesture towards the sky. The cloud started fading away.
“Whoa,” I said, just barely above a whisper. What looked like a ship floating in the sky began to materialize. It was huge, bigger than anything I had ever seen. Like a battleship, except in the sky and not the ocean.
“What is that, a spaceship?” I asked.
“It’s named the Ghost. It’s capable of space travel, but we don’t use it for that. It stays in the sky, serves as our base of operations. Gives us the mobility to get to anywhere on earth, and much faster than conventional travel,” Cody replied. “And out of the reach of our enemies.”
“How did you make it look like a cloud?”
Cody mouth turned into a smirk. “I’m an Illusionist, kid.”
“Hence the name Ghost. As in ghost ship? A ship you can’t see? A ship that just appears out of thin air? That was my idea,” Kirby said with a big smile.
Kyra leaned over to me. “Pretty impressive, huh?”
“I’ll say,” I said, still staring at it.
“All right, enough lollygagging.” Cody turned and looked over his shoulder. “Kyra, why don’t you and Annabeth take Wonder up. It looks like he’s come to. Kirby and I will take the teleporter.”
“You have a teleporter?” I asked.
“On the ship. The receiver is built into my staff. As long as the ship is near, all I have to do is activate it. It’s not that complicated,” Kirby responded.
“Don’t let him fool you. It’s very complicated. But Kirbs is a magical engineer. In fact he’s the best Magi-Tech around,” Kyra said.
“Don’t call me Kirbs.”
“He gets embarrassed when I say that. And argumentative. It’s like a defensive thing, so he won’t start blushing.”
“And I thought that wizards and goblins didn’t get along,” I said.
“Propaganda!” Kirby blurted out.
“Don’t get him started,” Kyra said as she winked at me. “And don’t believe everything you’ve heard.”
“All right, enough yimmer yammering. Come on, goblin. Let’s go get that staff of yours. I saw that Travis had it stashed in that tent.”
“Right, boss.” They began walking back toward the tent, but then Kirby turned back around. “I almost forgot. Here’s the watch back.”
“Um, thanks, I guess.”
“You need to wear it. It has a beacon, so we can track you down if anything happens. That’s why Cody gave it to you in the first place,” Kyra said.
“Oh, ok.” I strapped it on my wrist. “Then why did you make a deal with me to get it?”
“I was with you. I didn’t need to keep track of you,” Kirby responded.
“And, he doesn’t like people handling his tech,” Kyra whispered.
“I heard that,” Kirby said indignantly. “Although, it is true.” With that he turned around and ran over to the tent, where Cody was standing, tapping his foot impatiently.
“We better get going too. Have ever ridden a pegasus?”
“No. I didn’t even know that they were real.”
“Oh, then you are in for a treat.” We started walking over to where Wonder was, as he started getting up. “Incidentally, Pegasus is the name of the first one of the creatures like Wonder. But people will call them a pegasus, like it’s a species, since that’s easier that saying ‘horse with wings.’ Now it’s no point in trying to correct people, it’s part of popular culture now.”
That was interesting. We made our way over to Wonder. It was a very appropriate name, since he was a really magnificent creature. Kyra reached up and rubbed his face.
“How are you feeling? You think you can take us up to the ship?”
Wonder whinnied, and then nodded his head up and down. Kyra climbed up on his back, and then reached her hand down to me. I was a little apprehensive, since I had never ridden a horse before, much less one with wings. She pulled me up, and I got situated as best I could, with my arms tightly around her waist.
She looked back at me with a smile. “Really, it’s going to be ok. Wonder hasn’t dropped anyone yet. Although there was that one time...but never mind. Let’s go, Wonder!”
We took off from the ground far more quickly than I expected. But a few seconds later, we flying up, up, up. It felt amazing, with the wind rushing through my hair and the feeling of floating through the air.
“Just don’t look down,” Kyra said over her shoulder.
But I did anyway. And I immediately understood why she said not to.
In didn’t take long to make it to the ship and set down on a large square circle. We got down from Wonder’s back and made our way in front of him.
“Thank you, good sir, for the ride,” Kyra said as she scratched Wonder’s ears. He snorted affirmatively in reply.
I wasn’t sure of the protocol, so I did the same. “Thank you, Wonder. That was very, uh, nice for my first time.” He silently nodded, and then winked at me.
“Follow me,” Kyra said, walking through a door near where we had landed.
“Hey, I think Wonder winked at me,”
“That’s a good sign,” Kyra replied. “It means he likes you. It’s also a good sign that he didn’t toss you mid-flight.”
I was pretty sure that was a joke. At least, I hoped that it was.
We walked down a hallway and took a right into a room that was large, with a humongous table in the middle. It was like something I imagined you would find in a corporate boardroom. Cody and Kirby were standing at the end of the room, talking about something.
“About time you two got here. So, what do you think?” Cody asked.
Well, I kind of thought that I was still trying to find my stomach after that ride, but I wasn’t going to say that. Anyway, I
wasn’t really concerned with how everything looked, although I did have to admit it was incredible. “It’s fine. Now, back to my questions.”
Chapter 22
“All right, kid. It’s been a tough day for you, and probably nothing makes sense. I get that. But let me say a few things first. None of what’s happened since Linda brought you to me went like I thought it would. So, I’m sorry you had to go through all of that. This was supposed to be a simple test. But what’s going on is a lot more complicated than that. I know you just wanted to finish school, become a licensed wizard, and go about your life. But that’s not going to happen anymore. But let me say this. You did good today. And today was real. You didn’t get to complete the test because of all of these others things. You did far better than I thought you would. You not only survived, but you rescued two of my best operatives and beat an Alpha. That’s pretty impressive. Especially for someone who is not a wizard.”
“What do you mean, I'm not a wizard? I asked.
“What I mean, is that you're not a wizard. Dang it girl, you got a hearing problem?”
I could feel my face getting hot. “I heard you the first time. I just don't understand why you're saying that. I've just been through this whole day of everyone trying to test me, trick, me capture me, and kill me. I've done magic. My magic saved my life. So what about that does not make me a wizard?” I asked. “And none of those cryptic answers that you always give. I'm tired of hearing those. I want the truth. I want you to speak in plain language, using ordinary words that make sense. Can you do that please?”
Cody looked around for a second, then crossed his arms, leaning up against the wall. “All right, kid, I'll be straight with you. But let me ask you a few questions first.”
“Sure, why not,” I answered.
“What is it that makes you a wizard? What I mean is, what makes a person a wizard, rather than a human.”
“Well, I can do magic because of the MU chromosome in my DNA, just like every wizard. That's the thing that gives us the ability to do magic. Everyone learns that at school on the first day.”
