by JD Cole
Kelli stared ahead with a blank expression, the evidence of tears still fresh on her face. “There is more,” Sorvir said, “to Arii’s tale where we left off, if you were still interested. I myself am curious to witness it firsthand.” Kelli ignored him for several moments, but then turned, blinked, and nodded with a forced smile, but then the world shimmered and went black around them.
---
Kelli fell forward into Sorvir’s arms, breathing hard. They were back in her room, seated facing each other. “What happened?” she asked.
“It seems you overextended yourself,” Sorvir replied. “I warned you.”
“Yeah, you did. We didn’t get to finish the story, though. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry. That just means we have something to finish up together the next time you’re up for practicing shi’un.”
“Yeah. I guess so.” She pressed her palm to her forehead. “I need to rest now, though.”
“Of course, my Queen.” Sorvir helped her to the bed, tucking her in.
“Thanks, Sorvir. You know, for earlier, the talk we had. You were right, I know, it’s just-”
“It is nothing, my Queen. I truly am sorry for the grief you feel. If I knew how to ease it, rest assured I would.” With a faint smile she fell asleep heartbeats later, and he shook his head, wondering why he cared so much about her beyond the fact that she was his queen. He barely knew her.
Sorvir stepped into the hall, and was heading to one of the dining halls on a lower level when he heard his name being called. His aunt, Brevha, was strolling with his brother Trennh across an intersecting hallway. Sorvir and Trennh lightly slapped each other’s shoulders, the typical greeting among male sprites. Also following custom, Sorvir pressed his palm into Brevha’s.
“How is our Queen?” Trennh asked.
“Asleep. She has been practicing her magic a bit too much, I’m afraid.”
“Sorvir,” Brevha scolded, “she should be resting. Her strength will return quicker if she holds off on spellcasting for at least a few more days.”
“Yes, I explained this to her, several times in fact, but-”
“But that smile of hers overpowers him, Aunt,” Trennh interrupted flatly.
“This is serious,” Brevha told them both as they appeared ready to trade playful blows. “House Jennir is still very much opposed to Kelli taking the crown. House Endevizhi supports them-”
“It is not for them to decide,” Sorvir argued. “The Birthright chose Kelli Ingram. She is the rightful Queen.”
“She is jimani,” Brevha replied in a soft voice. “I am fond of her, as well, Sorvir, but the Birthright was never meant to be passed to anyone but a sprite. For all intents and purposes, she is a human, and the families have every right to be concerned. Humans are not known for wisdom when it comes to wielding power, and no human has ever possessed as much power as the Queen now does.”
“The only way,” Sorvir breathed, “to wrest the crown from her is to execute her. She has done nothing to warrant such an action.”
“No one is suggesting this. The Houses are loyal to the Queen, but they are watching her closely. She will not have much room for error before they find a reason to try her in court. We must steer her on this narrow path, my nephews. Her romance with a Dragon, her demand to bring her parents here; none of this does anything to calm anyone’s fears. And what if the Paladins seek to establish an alliance with her? At the moment, they are more her people than we are.”
Trennh added his thoughts. “The Birthright manifests itself in us randomly. If Queen Kelli, stars forbid, is deemed unfit and removed, is no one considering that the Goblin King will remain free to terrorize the borderlands and our elf allies? More than a century passed between King Eorn’s death and Kelli’s birth. We do not know how long it would be before another monarch would arise to keep Ercianodhon in check.”
“Sadly,” Brevha said, “an angry human with the Birthright would be more deadly than the Goblin King himself.”
“How could you think such a thing?” Sorvir asked, shocked. “The Goblin King is evil!”
“He is perpetually evil, yes, but he cannot breach our defenses, not without costs he is unwilling to pay. The Queen, however, is already inside our castle. As Grenem Jennir points out, all it would take is one moment of evil, one slip of her human temper and lusts, to cause us irreparable harm. I have faith in her, but not everyone has had the opportunity to judge the Queen closely yet. Only time will ease the tension that some are feeling toward her rule.”
Sorvir shook his head. “Kelli will never harm us. We will be inviting the royal Ingram family and Derek Hawkins here soon. The families will all see that their fears are unfounded. A capacity for evil does not make it inevitable.”
---
The shriveled elf carcasses were carelessly dumped into a wheelbarrow, carted off by a perfectly preserved minotaur goblin. The thing about ritual sacrifice, Ercianodhon lamented, was that it left bodies unable to be manipulated by necromancy. The tradeoff, of course, was the power such sacrifices could infuse into the Goblin King.
Vyzen in particular made splendid sacrifices. They were by far the closest in nature to sprites, and something about a wood elf’s magic simply tasted sweet to a necromancer. A Vyzen could be tortured ceaselessly for days, building up an enormous charge of blood magic that could then be released by their sudden murder. Torture was an art form, and Ercianodhon was an unparalleled artist. He could keep a subject alive for decades, right on the brink of death but never crossing that line. For sacrifices, however, the trick lay in knowing exactly when to kill the subject. Too soon, and you lost some of the potential strength that could be fed on. Too late, and the energy would begin to break down immediately, again losing potency before it could be properly consumed.
For over a week, elf captives, wretches caught in a cycle of torture for the last several years for purposes such as this, had been dragged into the blood chamber, twenty at a time, to be restrained and carved into with Incerra, the sprite dagger enchanted with blood element. To make the anguish even more delicious, the Goblin King used several ellh, wives and daughters to his captives, as goblins to perform the sacrifices. However, even after all of this, he was still not ready to attack the Queen. Incerra glowed with power, but there was another ingredient yet needed to begin the Queen’s long, agonizing journey into death. Incerra had been given all the blood this week. Now it was his turn to feed.
Ercianodhon enjoyed the same cuisines as any sprite —that was the purpose for Matari, after all, where the slaves farmed most of his produce, not to mention refining metal for his kingdom— but blood was the fuel for his magic.
There was a troll in the lower dungeons, a spy for the dwarves. That foolish creature would be the entrée for this evening’s supper, his life force drawn into Ercianodhon’s blood even as the Goblin King ate a proper meal prepared in the royal kitchens. Perhaps that would be followed by a fusava cake and several butchered elves for dessert. Occasionally he ate people live, but such behavior was improper for a royal at the dinner table. He was no less civilized than any sprite king had ever been, their tales and accusations notwithstanding. He frowned then, realizing he would need to send raiding parties into the borderlands to replenish the prison population after all of the recent sacrifices. That could take weeks; those wood elves were agile little things. But the young Sprite Queen was in no position to protect them or anyone else yet, and if he could help it, she never would be.
While several goblins counseled with the irenak chefs to prepare his meal and retrieve the troll spy, he summoned several more goblins to accompany him to the King’s Dining Hall. These cold, soulless corpses were the only company he had ever known in his long, lonely, angry life. But he’d come to appreciate their silent, reverent obedience, having long forgotten that their worship of him was really his worship of himself.
« CHAPTER 9 »
Secret Identity
Colonel Marc Tritt sat near the entrance to the bus
station, his partner positioned near the east side of the building where their vehicle was parked. They were dressed in civvies, but the haircut and battle-weary eyes most definitely marked them both as military. There were lots of that type around here these days, Guardsmen rotating in and out of Boston, making him and his partner fairly inconspicuous to this crowd.
So far this operation was going smooth as sandpaper. The directive was straightforward: detain the target —a vigilante known as the Hood— and find out what he knew about the alien that attacked Boston. The execution left much to be desired: a six-man team disarmed and temporarily neutralized, with the acting team leader kidnapped. The Hood had been grossly underestimated. This mission was going to require some extra talent, which is why he was here. He chuckled at the temptation to think that he was that talent, rather than simply here to pick her up. Speaking of which…
There she was, all six foot and one inch of her. Major Samantha Vox was an interesting blend of British and Indian heritage. Colonel Tritt would not classify her face as belonging to a looker; her brow was a bit too strong for his taste, her nose and mouth a little too far apart. Her lips looked too thin for a proper kiss, and her jaw and chin were just narrow enough to make you wonder if she wasn’t completely human. She had sharp intelligence behind her almond eyes, however, and her light brown skin was flawless. And yet, these were not her most distinguishing features.
Two-thirds of her height was made up in her legs; her torso was inhumanly small. She was wearing a loose sun dress, but underneath he knew she wore complicated prosthetic shorts to hide where her hips really were, which made her stride much shorter than it should have been. She held a small suitcase, and Colonel Tritt gave her knuckles a good look. Concealed between each of them were short claws, like a cat’s, and her fingernails each extended into inch-long talons when she needed them to. Her feet shared these feline weapons, though even with sandals on this was not evident. She kept her razor sharp parts comfortably concealed while in public. Behind her thin, boring lips were fangs that could, and did, tear into meat without the aid of a steak knife. And yet, even these were not Major Vox’s most tactically important traits. Colonel Tritt waved to her when she was close enough.
“Stacy! Stace, over here!”
She turned to the sound of his voice, her odd, feathery hair hidden beneath a fashionably wide hat. She smiled, studiously keeping her mouth closed, and angled toward him while waving back. She trotted over and the two of them embraced like old friends.
“Peter!” she laughed as she hugged him. “Oh, it’s so good to see you!”
“How was the trip?” Colonel Tritt asked, smiling while taking her luggage like any gentleman would. There was nothing of consequence in it since her gear, like his, had already arrived two days ago. He held her by her waist, or where the dress made it look like her waist was, and led her to the car. The wingman saw them coming and got the car ready.
“Oh, it was too long, and too boring,” Major Vox replied. She was not a trained spy; there was no disguising her foreign accent. Luckily, having grown up in Bangladesh, she didn’t sound anything like an Eastern European, all of whom were suspicious to Americans in this climate. Most of the crowd likely wrote her off as a snobby British tart.
Colonel Tritt offered Major Vox the front seat and climbed in the rear-passenger section of the large Suburban, and his partner drove. When they were clear of the parking lot, the phony cover names went out the window. “Okay, we’re secure. The wifi and mics and everything have been removed from this vehicle. Glad to have you, Major,” Colonel Tritt began. “This is Sergeant Major Elliot Chen.” The new acquaintances shook hands briefly as Chen kept his attention mostly focused on driving. The Colonel continued. “We didn’t think you’d be available for another week.”
“My brother… oh, pardon me, the General, pulled me off the other case, and gave your mission priority. Mr. Nichols wasn’t happy, but he didn’t complain too much.”
“How is the General holding up?” the Colonel asked.
“Oh, Sean’s fine. The rank won’t go to his head, what with all of us technically being civilians now.”
“Any leads on General Burke?”
Samantha shook her head. “We’ve had several solid leads, but every single one dead-ends. It’s like the evidence and people tied to his kidnapping all just vanished.”
Marc frowned. “That isn’t reassuring.”
“The good thing is, our new allies appear to be as competent in covert operations as Strategic Sciences ever was.”
“Those vampire hunters? What are they called again, knights of something?”
“The Silver Knights. I thought they were full of biṣṭhā when I first heard about them, but their intel is hard to deny. There are whole societies of vampire and werewolf feralmen hiding right under our nose. Even Gemlorry knows about them, she wasn’t surprised at all when we showed her images of these things.”
“Speaking of Gemlorry, how’s our little friend doing?”
“She’s sharp, and she’s well-trained, except when it comes to firearms and tech. But she’s catching on pretty quick and Sean’s having her give us details about where she’s from, her culture, all that. Right then, that’s my life up to now sorted. How soon are we getting started?”
“They started a week ago, actually. I just got here last night, but Dr. Valentine’s been running her own ops inside Boston the last several days.”
“I’m guessing no joy, then?”
“Oh, they got joy. You’ll get the full brief at base camp, but basically, they lured our target out into the open, tried to tag him with some Julie Green-”
“Julie Green?”
“Nobody knows how to pronounce the nomenclature, but it sounds close enough like Julie Green, so that’s what we call it. Radioactive isotope used for long distance tracking.”
“They tried to dose him?”
“It’s non-hazardous, been in use for years is what I was told.”
“So, he got away, then.”
“No, they marked him, and got their asses handed to them for their trouble. He’s wearing something like our MIRK armor, and he knows how to fight. The Hood took off with Valentine, and the team spent the morning tracking him.”
“And?”
“They chased several pigeons spread out all over the city. Somehow he got the Green off himself and slapped it on the birds. More than that, though, it looks like he doesn’t operate alone anymore. We’ve got a second costumed looney to deal with, brand spanking new according to intelligence, also wearing a MIRK, or something with strength augmentation. Nobody’s ever seen her before. It’s always just been the Hood before last night.”
“Her? Is it Kelli Ingram?”
“We’re not sure. Could be.”
“So, where do we start?”
“We know he’s a kid, or at least looks like one. We’ve canvassed the local school records, got nineteen people in the county in his age range named Derek. None of them match the boy I saw in Nanortalik, though. That’s why Valentine was trying to flush him out.”
“Maybe a metahuman like me, then, this Derek. Some metahumans age a bit slower than normal.”
“Likely that, or his presence and activity is being ghosted. Remember, Dr. Valentine’s working on the assumption that he had nation-state backing during that alien mess. There’s way too much counter-intel going on for one person to be doing this on his own, no matter how old he is or isn’t. Anyway, our first priority is to find Valentine. Likely we’ll find the Hood when we find her. Other teams are poring over police records, hospital, anything that was unusual from last night.”
“Where does that leave me, then?”
“You’re on my team. Again.”
“Recon or assault?”
“Both. And you’ve got something a lot more sneaky than Julie Green up your sleeve.”
“We’re not supposed to hurt him, right?”
“No. He’s not our enemy, at least not yet. That might cha
nge if he’s hurt the Doctor, but after reading his file, I don’t think that’s likely.”
“Can’t wait to meet him.” Major Vox smiled, her white fangs gleaming in the sunlight shining through the windshield.
~
Derek slowed his bike on his way to his lab, seeing a friendly face who was waving him down. He steered his multi-speed bicycle over to the outdoor pavilion in front of the Burger King and halted where his friend sat with a few girlfriends. “Hey, stranger!” she laughed.
“Hey, Laura,” Derek replied, smiling. He nodded at the other girls, all of whom he only knew by name and appearance from school. They were all nerds. Nice nerds, couple of cute nerds, but nerds. Laura was wearing her heavy trademark smartglasses, making her stand out in a crowd. In an age when Lasik surgery cost the same as prescription eyewear, eyeglasses were worn mainly for fashion and augmented reality, and the pair on Laura’s face were decidedly un-fashionable. They were an old model so ugly and unpopular they’d long ago been discontinued, but Derek had hacked them for her so they were usable with modern smartwatches. He had asked her back in eighth grade why she wore them instead of current, nicer products. Her reply was that they made her look smart. She was odd like that. But after all these years, it was more odd to see Laura without those ugly glasses than not, and they actually fit her now that she’d grown into them.
