The Thief

by Aine Crabtree

  I have to do something before this gets really out of hand. I check on Destin’s progress but he hasn’t even made it to the dojo yet, caught in a cluster of families.

  Meredith marches up to Principal Umino, who’s preoccupied with conversation she’s having with a bored-looking man in a suit.

  “You can assure Ms. Sorvari,” Umino was saying, “that her son recieves the utmost consideration, and has been scoring some of the highest marks we’ve ever seen.”

  “And where is Rhys?” the man asked.

  “He was just here, I saw him only a moment ago - ”

  “Hallo, I’m Meredith,” the British woman interrupts with a grin. “Let’s have the Wolf, then, shall we?”

  “Excuse me?” Umino says, regarding her like a ripe bag of garbage.

  I check on Destin again. He’s with Camille, but Hayley seems to be arguing with them about something. When will my stupid sister get a clue and leave us alone?

  “Tell me where he is,” Meredith says in sing-song, “or I burn this school to the ground.”

  “Pardon me,” the man says, leaving swiftly. Now there’s someone with brain cells.

  The principal continues to look at her with disdain. “We have no...wolves...here,” she says. “And pretending to be the Ender is not amusing.”

  Meredith grins. “Everyone’s a critic.”

  She flings out her hand, and a fireball crashes into the banner overhead. People start screaming.

  “Am I amusing yet?” Meredith asks.

  Umino backs away from her, eyes wide. “You’re not...you can’t be...”

  Suddenly Hyde is here, dressed in his gi. Something catches fire and he goes looking for the source?

  “What’s your problem, lady?” he demands.

  “Hyde, remove her from the premises!” Umino commands, backing away, voice pitched a shade too high.

  “Get out of here!” I shout at him. “She’s insane!”

  Meredith is looking between me and the principal, interest piqued by my involvement. “Too late to help your buddy, munchkin,” she grins at me. “A little birdie told me all about it.”

  “He’s not my buddy,” Hyde snarls.

  He swings a punch at her and she ducks, whistling. She reaches up, grabbing his wrist. Hyde cries out, pulling away. A red handprint sizzles against his skin. He’s an ass, but I’m not going to stand here and watch him get torched.

  Distance. He needs distance. I skim around the edge of the room, heading for the weapons rack in the dojo. I snatch up a bo staff and turn back into the auditorium. Hyde is dodging her approach, shoving a table between them to delay her. People are pouring out of the gym in droves.

  “Here!” I shout at him, tossing the staff.

  He catches it, a brief look of surprise on his face before he returns his attention to Meredith, twirling the weapon.

  “Don’t let her touch you!” I tell him.

  “You think?” he snaps.

  He swings the staff at her. She backs up, dodging the metal-plated tip. “No fair tag-teaming,” she grins, chucking a fireball low. Hyde jumps clear, and it bursts to sparks across the floor, extinguishing. He swings again, and scores a hit across her shoulder. She stumbles, cursing.

  Camille is frozen in place on the far side of the room. The place is mostly empty now. She seems trapped, eyes wide and glued to Meredith, fingers curled in Destin’s sleeve. I can see him pleading with her from over here. What’s wrong with her? And what’s wrong with him? She’s tiny and he’s a giant, he should just pick her up and carry her out. Do I have to do everything myself?

  The sprinkler system kicks in, no doubt reacting to all the smoke. Everything is instantly soaked, but Hyde and Meredith battle on. She throws a fireball that ignites one table’s posterboard, and Hyde’s sleeve. He swears, smacking the fabric to smother the cinders.

  Avoiding the carnage they’re creating, I sprint over to Destin and Camille. “It’s time to go, gold ranger,” I tell her. She looks at me, and for the first time I see real fear in her eyes. True terror from someone I’d thought was immune. I hesitate, resolve shaken.

  I hear a cry from across the room. Turning to look, I see Hyde sprawled across the floor, staff knocked clear, Meredith hovering over him triumphant. I should feel some satisfaction, seeing him so completely outclassed - but despite his asshattery, he doesn’t deserve to die like this.

  Meredith’s hand curls around Hyde’s neck. Steam fizzles up from her grasp.

  “Shame,” she grins. “I’m a little sorry I caught you before you turned sixteen. If you’d been at full power this might have been more fun.”

  Hyde coughs. I can smell his flesh burning from here. “I’m seventeen,” he says, lip curling.

  She frowns, pausing. “No,” she says, lines of doubt creasing her forehead. “No, that doesn’t work. The last Wolf died sixteen years ago, the new one can’t be more than fifteen, you must be lying...” She stares at him as if she could see through him. “Damn it,” she says softly, then yells, “damn it!” hurling him from her. He hits the side of a table and slides to the floor. “It’s not you. How could it not be you? You’re perfect. The strength, the speed, the temperament. On top of that, you’re Regenerative. Those wounds are almost gone. Do you have any idea how rare that is? How can you have all that and not be the Wolf?”

  “My secret is a balanced breakfast,” Hyde snaps hoarsely, his hand to his throat. The fresh scorch marks there are still visible, but already the burns on his arms have almost faded. I look at him, seeing him in an entirely new light. Holy crap, he’s practically Wolverine.

  Meredith lets out a shriek of frustration, turning on me. “You know where it is!” she declares hotly. “I saw its touch on you the moment I saw you outside the library. It’s so close. You know. You’ve been protecting it this whole time.” She grabs the front of my shirt. Steam rises from the wet fabric. “Tell me,” she says through her crooked English teeth, “or I’ll start searing off non-vital parts until you do.”

  My eyes go wide.

  “STOP!” Camille roars.

  I turn my head towards her, gaze pulling as if magnetic. Destin is backing away from her, slowly. The air around her seems to shimmer, like a pulse. Her right hand is on her bracer, white-knuckled, clutching at it like a lifeline.

  “Bloody hell,” Meredith murmurs. “Was that all it took? All this time, and all I had to do was - ”

  She slams my head against the wall and I slide to the floor, dazed.

  “Leave my friends alone,” Camille bellows, and I don’t know how it happens - maybe I’m hallucinating, but I swear that the bracer pours off her arm, then clatters against the floor. A solid iron sword.

  Meredith’s eyes widen, and she backs up. “That’s not...”

  Camille picks up the sword, a fine tremor in her limbs. Her left forearm, where the bracer had been, is even paler than the rest of her skin, and covered in tiny white scars. I don’t think she notices. She points the sword at Meredith.

  “Supposed to kill immortals,” she growls. “Want to find out?”

  A ball of fire forms in Meredith’s hand, and a manic grin on her face. “Why not?”

  She throws the fireball and Camille swings the sword, shearing it. Destin and I duck, expecting some sort of shrapnel, but the fire vanishes, seemingly swallowed by the blade.

  “That is a handy trick,” Meredith says appreciatively.

  Camille grins and lunges with a yell, Meredith twisting out of the way. The sword nicks her forearm and a few molten drops fall, searing holes in the floor.

  Meredith curses, fending off another advance with a blast of flame. “Who in their right mind would teach the Wolf how to swordfight? That’s like putting lasers on a shark!” She hurls another burst at Camille’s feet, but she catches that with the blade as well. Lightning-fast, Meredith steps in, her hand closing over Camille’s holding the sword. Camille cries out and drops the blade. It slides across the lacquer gym floor. I start to reach for it instincti
vely, but it skids to a rest at the feet of someone who’d been suspiciously absent all day.

  Kei reaches down and picks up the sword. “Let’s see you keep your cool without this,” he says, with a smirk at Camille.

  I can barely believe my eyes as he dissolves into dark whorls, not quite smoke - and vanishes, sword and all.

  Even Meredith looks baffled. But recovering quickly, she shrugs, grabbing the front of Camille’s gi. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth, I say.” Flames lick out from her hand, and with a cry Camille pushes away hard, the seared fabric flaking off her shoulders. Panic in her eyes, she runs with impossible speed out of the auditorium, in her undershirt and white karate pants, gold hair streaming behind her. Meredith swears and chases after her, with the speed of someone less supernatural.

  Tailor stumbles through the back door, looking ill and clutching a roll of parchment. He takes in the charred ruin of the gymnasium and Destin and I standing in the middle. I wonder if we look as stunned as he does.

  “Meredith,” he says.

  Hyde climbs to his feet, brushing the ash from his clothes. “Too bad about Teague,” he says. “Now I’ll never get a decent rematch.”

  “She’s not dead!” I snap at him.

  Tailor reacts. “Camille! Where is she?”

  “They just ran off,” I say, “and she’s lost the sword - or the bracer - or whatever it is - ”

  “And Meredith knows she’s the Wolf,” he says grimly, and swears.

  “Can’t you do something?” I plead. “Aren’t you Mr. Magicbreaker or something? Put her on ice, man!”

  “It doesn’t work like that - ” he starts to protest, then glances down at the paper clutched in his hand. “But there is something. Come on, I think I know where she’s gone.”

  Destin and I hurry after him, out the front doors.

  “And what am I supposed to tell Umino?” Hyde snaps after us, left in the charred mess of upturned tables and glowing impact craters in the walls.

  Jul, wherever you are, please be okay.

  Jul

  Gabriel and I stood before the orchard mirror, moonlight trickling through the branches overhead.

  “It’s been an age since I’ve seen it,” he said, fingers brushing over the silver scrollwork around the edges. The surface shimmered and went transparent, showing the stone steps inside. “It remembers me, how charming,” he smiled slightly. He stepped through the surface, into the Tower. He glanced up the stairwell as I climbed in behind him, leaving the orchard behind for the cool stone interior of the Tower.

  I started to climb the stairs, then paused as I realized he was still standing in the entryway. “Are you coming?” I asked.

  “No, what we want is right here,” he said, running a hand over the iron wall at the base of the steps. A light frost spread across the metal from his touch and he jerked his hand back, as if burned. “I thought as much,” he muttered to himself. “Here’s where you’re needed, Juliet dear. Open the door to the cellar.”

  I looked up at the solid sheet of iron, twenty feet high and ten feet across. “I - I don’t see a door,” I said.

  “It’s there, love. Close your eyes and focus. I know you can do this - you’re the only one who can.”

  I closed my eyes, brows knitting together in concentration.

  “Think about seams and hinges,” Gabriel coaxed. “Imagine them in your mind’s eye. Think about handles and knobs and passing from one place to the next. Imagine that you see it.”

  “What does it look like?” I asked.

  “You tell me.”

  Attention still turned inward, I invented a door. An outline appeared in my mind - a tall, thin aperture. Instead of a handle, a hideous iron-sculpted face protruded from the door, scowling and trollish, with large, knobby teeth and wide, unblinking eyes. “It doesn’t look like a normal door...” I murmured. “Where’s the handle?”

  “Where indeed?” Gabriel asked.

  Something in his tone made me open my eyes - there was the tall door with the statue staring back at me.

  I took a step back reflexively. “The weapon is in there?”

  “Iron is the only thing that I can’t breach, even when I was at my prime. They thought I could never regain myself this way. Now tell me, dear, how do we open it?”

  There was a metallic groaning sound. I jumped as the monstrous metal face began to move, creaking as it spoke. “I open for no man but Gohei Katsura.” The voice rumbled through the hallway.

  “Well that’s convenient,” Gabriel said. “That’s me. So open up.”

  “You speak the truth and yet also you lie,” the sculpture said, its voice a metallic whine. “You are Gohei Katsura, but you are not Gohei Katsura.”

  “Does any of us really know who we are?” Gabriel said offhand. “The mystery of identity and existence and all that. Come on now, we’re on a schedule here.”

  “I cannot open for half of Gohei Katsura.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, of course he’s - ” I started to explain, but Gabriel slapped a hand over my mouth.

  “Do you have a riddle or something we can solve?” he asked the sculpture instead. “That’s more traditional, yes?” He looked at me. “Why did you invent something with a mouth? This is tedious.”

  “I didn’t...I don’t...” I stammered. If only Rhys was here. He could fix this.

  No, Rhys wasn’t going to help me anymore. My bravado burned. That crazy woman could find Camille at any moment. My dad could be here any moment. I didn’t have time for this. “Just open already!” I snapped, my voice echoing loudly off the metal barrier.

  “I only...open...for....” the sculpture tried to repeat, but the metallic voice dropped pitch and faded out. The sculpture began to twist and melt, somehow becoming even more grotesque. A more echoing groan began, that of gears turning deep within the door.

  The iron door cracked open, and I beheld a stairway leading down, walls, steps, and ceiling all of iron.

  “Excellent!” Gabriel said, patting my head. “Well done.” He paused at the top of the steps, looking down. “Well done,” he echoed, subdued. Then he shook his head, and began the descent.

  We followed the stairs down, our footsteps ringing metallic in the near-darkness. Oil lamps hung overhead, flickering lowly.

  “You should know,” he said abruptly, “now that you’ve broken the seal, that what we’re looking for is my body.”

  I hesitated on the steps behind him. “What?”

  “This form is...on loan,” he said, glancing back at me. “The best of a bad situation.” At the base of the stairs he paused with his hand on the latch of another iron door, with a barred window. “I’ve lived a century with a face I despise, waiting for you.” He smiled at me, but there was no warmth in it. “Once I have my real body back, and I’m fully myself again, that’s when things will get interesting for you and I. The important thing - the only thing you need to remember - is that this is the best chance she has,” he said, “I wanted to do it differently, but I ran out of time. That’s the problem with mortals,” his lips quirked. “Time. It’s not ideal, but this is the only way I could think of.”

  Gabriel lifted the latch and pushed. The door swung open with a grating creak.

  The soft sounds of someone stirring came from inside. “Who’s there?” a weak voice called.

  My eyes widened. “There’s someone in there?” I whispered to Gabriel.

  “How would the door have put it...it’s me, but it’s not me,” he said, mouth twisting, and pushed me through the thin opening.

  The cellar was as large as one of the science labs at school, and every inch was made of solid iron. In the center was a cage about twenty feet square. Inside it stood a pale, haggard man with emerald green eyes and long, scraggly pine-green hair. I’d seen him before somewhere...Where had I seen him...

  The look on the man’s face was pure horror as he stared at Gabriel.

  “What a hell this would have been,” Gabriel said, looking a
round at the dark metal room. “No sun. No earth. Not a thing green or growing. I do believe I would have gone slowly insane, and withered to nothing. Maybe even died. That was your plan, wasn’t it?” he asked the other man.

  The emerald eyes of the man behind the bars burned.

  “I see you’ve fared a bit better than I would have,” Gabriel commented. “Found yourself a little minion, have you? Has he been bringing you little presents?” He looked at the books, magazines, and comics in neat stacks around the cell.

  The man remained silent, expression guarded.

  Gabriel shrugged. “Details. You know what the really disappointing thing in all this has been? Not being able to use your powers. I kept hoping I’d figure them out, but it appears that’s part of the spell. I mean, I hadn’t had time to work out all the kinks of the body switch. I’d only just discovered the spell when you sprung this stupid trap on me. It really was the back-up plan’s back-up plan. But you should be grateful the body switch represses powers. If I could use yours, well, I wouldn’t be here right now. And you probably would have gone insane if you had access to mine, trapped in this hole for a hundred years...from a certain perspective, it’s like I did you a favor.”

  The man’s mouth pressed into a hard line.

  “Perhaps not, you’re right,” Gabriel said with an exaggerated sigh. “The world has changed, hunter. It’s not the place it was when I left you here, if you haven’t already gathered that from your imp book club,” he said, glancing at the stacks of reading material. “The humans have forgotten us completely. They don’t believe in anything but their own ingenuity anymore. Except for a few. Your own students, in fact. The Uminos have gone far, far beyond their original purpose in your absence. I might have egged them on.” Gabriel shrugged. “Meanwhile...in the Afterlands, the Ryans are in Angwar preparing for a final war. They’ve almost closed their grip on the other kingdoms. The ferals of Farpeak are all that stand between them and total dominance. You know how those Ryans are, they just can’t ever be satisfied with what they have. But with no more traveling mirrors, we’ll be safe until another Mirrormaker gets their act together.”