Guardians of the Portals

by Nya Rawlyns

  “You have to protect her.”

  “Who?” Trey recognized the glaze forming over her eyes. He gripped her hands, willing energy into her but knowing it was far too late. All he could offer now was comfort.

  On her last breath she sighed, “You will know her as your own...”

  Trey sat back on his heels pondering the enigmatic words. He gently closed the woman’s eyes and said a silent prayer of benediction. She had laid a debt on him, one he wasn’t sure he was prepared to carry.

  He reached inside the hollows of his soul and felt unfamiliar stirrings. With his stiletto, he worked at the soft earth, stabbing and scooping, lost to all but his aching heart. He wished he could give this brave woman a proper tribute—a pyre and a song of triumph as befitting her sacrifice. All he could do was offer his pledge.

  As he laid the last stones atop the shallow grave he intoned, “I so avow.”

  ****

  Trey felt in his jeans pocket for his cell phone and quickly scanned the text message. He’d been on the road for over a week, riding shotgun with long-haulers willing to take on a hitcher. He’d developed a real fondness for TA truck stops with their showers and mini-rec rooms where he could relax, watch TV and catch up on the news; however, he grew weary of fast food and slugging back energy drinks to stay awake.

  Avoiding the Portals, he decided to mask his return to headquarters, at least for a time. The memory of Kathleen O’Brien and her bravery lingered; and he could not shake the feeling that he could have, should have, done something more to salvage the situation. He seldom bothered with “what ifs” but this one bothered him. He needed time to sort out his feelings. Caring was for the child he’d been, not the man he’d become: cold-hearted, soul-less—no longer his mother’s son.

  He enjoyed the vagabond existence, using it to gather his thoughts and conserve his energies. He assumed Greyfalcon had infiltrated their organization to such an extent that the location of the more ubiquitous Portals might have been compromised. So he steered clear of the major pathways and devoted his time to fashioning new algorithms for traversing the dimensions. He chuckled to himself. He had no conscious control over the process. For all he knew, it was magic, pure and simple, instead of an accident of nature that gifted him with the genetic encoding to create and discover new jump points.

  Their scientists believed that the co-ordinates pre-existed and that he, Trey, simply intuited their time-space equations. More likely it was guesswork and a bit of luck on his part. In any case, the gothi had summoned him home.

  “Yo, buddy. Ya ready?”

  Trey nodded and lunged off the ratty sofa. His chauffeur was a three hundred pound bulldog of a man with a fondness for ribald jokes and the voice of a saint. He owned an impressive playlist of operas that he cranked to full volume, often accompanying the chorus.

  “Yeah, thanks. Say, Dan, where are we?”

  “Harrisburg. Be forty-five minutes to Interstate 78, then it’s home free after that. We’ll make Newark before dark. I can drop you close to the ferry and you can get across from there.”

  “That’s great. Do you want me to drive for a while?”

  Dan snorted, “Fuck no, I wanna live to see my old lady tonight.” He gave Trey a good-natured shove and climbed into the cab.

  Trey settled onto the comfortable bench seat and pawed through the stack of CDs. He’d taken a fancy to the opera Manon Lescaut so he slid that in and set the volume to reasonable. He closed his eyes just to rest them against the bright afternoon light and drifted into a half-sleep. He did not relish the upcoming meeting with his uncle.

  ****

  Trey approached the park bench and sat next to Eirik. They’d agreed to a follow-up meeting near the Museum of Natural History after their technicians and researchers had detected interesting chatter at GFI headquarters. He’d spent the better part of a week holed up in their archives room researching, cementing his suspicions that Kathleen O’Brien’s bloodlines held the clues to what Eirik so desperately sought. He had a fair idea who would be the next target, and a bad feeling about it. He avoided looking at his uncle as he laid out what he knew and what he guessed.

  “The O’Brien woman had a daughter ... has,” Trey corrected quickly, “and I think she is a candidate for your shifter properties.” Explaining what he’d found in their extensive historical records, the references to certain abilities carried through the female line, he informed Eirik, “So I’ll drive down and reconnoiter, see what there is to see.”

  “You’re going to what?” Gothi Eirik nearly screamed at his enforcer.

  “Drive.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, let’s count the reasons shall we, Nephew. First off, you don’t know how. Second, you don’t have a license. Third, you can jump there in ... oh, how about NO time and it’s going to take how long to get there?” Eirik rubbed his eyes, jaw clenched in brittle dissatisfaction, a look Trey knew well. Normally immune to the posturing, he felt a growing annoyance, a subtle displeasure that was a marked change from his habitual acquiescence. Since the debacle with the asset he’d leaned toward being more independent and assertive—even downright surly.

  Trey gave his gothi a smug look and then counted off, “I learned, Rolf made me a fake license, and it takes maybe, what, three hours? Actually, I’m not sure but it can’t be that far.”

  “You don’t own a car,” Eirik stated with finality.

  “I bought one.”

  “Sweet Freyja, you didn’t!” Eirik put his head in his hands, swearing softly.

  Trey realized he’d pushed the situation so far out-of-hand that he’d risked being banished back home to his own dimension for an attitude adjustment. He could concede the battle and hope he didn’t lose the war, but that wasn’t his way. They needed his skills, especially now with their primary facilities gone and too many of their people scattered to the four corners of this world. They, the Althings and Eirik, needed him to create a new series of interlinking jump points on their Portal network and they were doing that flying blind, not knowing fully what he was capable of. He preferred keeping it that way.

  Eirik stared at the high rises, his face impenetrable. Trey shifted on the uncomfortable seat, anxious to be on his way.

  Finally, his gothi reached a conclusion and in a halting voice said, “I, uh, we can’t have you going off half-cocked. If you insist on doing this, then you’ll do it my way.” He scowled, the old resolve returning, brooking no argument. “You can use whatever conveyance suits your fancy, but I choose the target.” He emphasized the ‘I’ with a closed fist pressed against his chest and a hard stare at his nephew.

  Since he was getting his way, it was easier to agree than to argue. Careful to keep the smugness out of his tone of voice, Trey asked, “Exactly where is this new target?”

  “Greyfalcon headquarters in Maryland, somewhere north of the city. Here are the co-ordinates.” Gothi handed Trey a card with latitude and longitude imprinted in Old Norse. Trey was tempted to ask if Eirik had planned this all along but the thought was interrupted as Eirik hastened to attach his interminable stipulations. “And it’s to observe only. Stay below their radar. Find us a jump point nearby, but undetectable.”

  “This isn’t going to help,” Trey complained as he scanned the writing on the card.

  “Then buy a damned map. Go and find this ‘other’ you are so convinced is out there. Now. Before I change my mind.”

  Trey smirked and rose off the park bench. He headed for a sleek black machine parked at the curb and chirped it open.

  “Boy!” Trey turned to look quizzically at his uncle. “What is that?”

  “A Porsche 911GT2 RS.” Trey touched a forefinger to his nose and wriggled his solid bulk into the vehicle.

  In the rear view mirror he watched Eirik’s pinched stare as he drove off. He knew his uncle was pondering what he was going to do to stave off what he considered reckless and unnecessary action. As he turned the corner, he glimpsed
Eirik walking solemnly toward the bus stop.

  His uncle and the Jarls would argue for days, weeks and decades—he did not have that luxury. He’d made mistakes and incurred debts. It was time to make restitution.

  Chapter Four

  “Stand back, Caty.” Jake swung the doors open on a decrepit tractor-trailer box. He pushed at the stand of sumac providing a natural dense cover in front of the storage unit.

  “You haven’t been here in a while.” Caitlin pulled at the branches but made little headway in clearing the noxious bush out of the way of the metal door.

  “Not since last year. When I saw what was going down, we moved this thing from below Chesapeake City to here. It seemed safer.”

  “I didn’t know you could drive a rig, Dad.”

  “Uh, I can’t. Augie did it, before...” His voice trailed off as he gave a vicious yank on the door. “Gimme that branch, I’ll need something to brace it. Damn bushes.” Caitlin handed him a sturdy log.

  “Dad, what about the other matter? Are we going to look for information on that scam? They had to have left a paper trail of some sort. There was too much money involved.”

  Jake shrugged and continued pulling branches out of the way. Stomping on the last branch, he turned to his daughter, his face a mask, revealing nothing. “One thing at a time, girl. I tried going to the newspapers. You saw where that got me, got us. Now help me up into the box. I ain’t as young as I used to be.”

  Caitlin peered into the dim interior. Other than a few boxes stacked near the front, she couldn’t see anything of interest. His buddy had backed the semi into a stand of trees and brush off abandoned farmland along the Susquehanna River. She’d not been able to tell it was there until they’d driven right up to it. Her teeth still rattled from the bumpy ride over the farm lane.

  She tried to forget about her dad’s friends and his role in trapping them into that sick scheme. He’d managed to raise enough of a stink that the organization had closed down operations. That didn’t help in locating the vanished, laundered funds from his friends’ meagre savings, nor had it gone much past a brief flurry of interest by the local press until more lurid news caught the public’s fancy. What it had done was set into motion the disintegration of her family. For that alone, she would do whatever was necessary to take Greyfalcon down.

  Jake interrupted her reverie, “Do you have the Maglite?”

  Caitlin handed over the flashlight and switched on her own. They’d come near dusk, the sun already sinking below the tree line. Shadows reached across the weed-filled pasture. Mosquitoes buzzed about her ears and she swiped them away, wishing she’d known they were heading into the country. She’d assumed, when Jake told her ‘storage unit’, he’d meant some commercial place on the outskirts of Havre de Grace. She should have known better.

  “Do we have any repellent, Dad?”

  “Yeah hon, rear seat. You go get it. And I’ll start in the back.” He disappeared into the bowels of the semi, keeping his light on the floor of the box, minimizing its footprint.

  Caitlin hurried back to her minivan and browsed through the mess on the back seat. She found the spray can under a pile of magazines and discarded fast food wrappers. She smiled. No one in the O’Brien clan could lay claim to housekeeper of the month. She closed the door and looked to the southwest. The two-lane macadam road was invisible from her vantage point. She hoped it would be the same for anyone driving by that evening, though traffic should be almost non-existent in this back-of-beyond.

  On the drive over to Pennsylvania, her dad had been less than forthcoming about the details, but he had sketched a broad outline of the game plan. She’d been appalled to learn that he’d been the one to induct Kieran into Jake’s former role of purveyor of weapons to Baltimore’s crime lords. It wasn’t exactly a surprise as her brother had a solid background, having served a stint in the Marines, following in his father’s footsteps despite years of aggravated tension between them.

  Kieran had decided college was irrelevant. Bored with the ease with which he traversed the narrow confines of their rural life, he opted to put his special talents to the test in a more ‘structured environment’ on his terms, not theirs. He and the military fit hand-in-glove. As her mother was fond of saying—the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  Jake came to the doorway cradling an odd-looking rifle. “M40A3 sniper rifle, girl. Redesigned, built from the ground up to be rugged and accurate.” He held it out to Caitlin and she took it, admiring the balance. Jake jumped down to the ground, grunting as his knees buckled with the impact.

  “It’s slick,” was all Caitlin could manage as she sensed the power of the weapon. Though her talents skewed in a direction different from her father and brother, she was not immune to the special affinity they held for machinery and weapons.

  She understood Kieran’s unique gift. It had accompanied him to every godforsaken corner of the world where he’d put his passion and talents to the test as the ultimate killing machine. Her brother had mustered out as one of the most decorated marksmen in Marine history. That he’d come away with a certain “moral flexibility” had made him a natural fit in his new role as civilian consultant.

  Jake sighed with pleasure. “Uses a Remington 700 short action. See the stock here?” He ran a finger over the burnished metal. “McMillan A4. Has an adjustable cheek ’n length of pull.”

  Caitlin murmured, “Sweet!” and found she meant it. “But, Dad, this isn’t going to help much when we go in for the meet. I can’t exactly walk into Greyfalcon central looking like Ellen Ripley on crack.”

  “Caty, darlin’, that’s exactly how you’re gonna look.” Jake grinned evilly at her. “I want those SOBs to be thinking about nothing but my badass bodyguard.” He looked her over critically.

  “What? I can do this. You had me at the practice range enough. I’ve still got muscle memory.”

  “Um, that’s not what’s worrying me.”

  “Spill.”

  Jake’s face flamed crimson as he stuttered, “I, uh, need for you to use that thing you do.”

  Caitlin narrowed her eyes and glared at her father, fairly sure she knew what he was angling for. “My glamour.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “And?”

  “You, uh, you need bigger...” his voice trailed off as he cupped his hands over his chest.

  Caitlin snorted and set the rifle down carefully. She hadn’t practiced much lately. It would require intense concentration, not something easy to come by when all she could do was giggle at her father’s obvious discomfort. She turned away from him and stared off in the direction of the river, the sky purpling as dusk blanketed the near horizon. After a few minutes she spun around and did a ‘tah-dah’ gesture.

  Jake’s eyes bugged out of his head, and it was clear he desperately wanted to look anywhere but at her and the transformation. Like a train wreck, they commanded his undivided attention. He visibly steadied himself and glared at her.

  He gulped, “Nice. But aren’t the boots a little...?”

  “Four inch fuck-me heels, thigh-high black patent leather, net stockings,” she flipped the leather miniskirt up, “with garter belt and matching thong.” Caitlin bent over, delighting at the gagging noise from her father. She’d seldom had the chance to rattle his cage.

  “The, uh, the...” Jake pointed to the bits of leather crisscrossing her very bodacious bosom. She couldn’t help the feeling of delight that her imposing father was finally outgunned and outclassed. With a wolf whistle, he bent and retrieved the sniper rifle and handed it over. She took the weapon and slung the strap over her shoulder.

  “Whatdya think, Gunny?”

  “That’ll do, girl. I could stand you outside Fort Knox and waltz right in without anybody taking notice of little ole me. One question, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you walk in those things?” Jake pointed at the boots and smirked.

  “Watch me.” Caitlin staggered off over the rough ground
, swaying her hips, feeling slightly foolish and a whole lot of what her mother was fond of calling ‘empowered’.

  “Okay, hot shot, you go on over there and practice while I get the rest of what we need. This op has to be pitch-perfect or none of us will walk out of there alive. Capisce?”

  Caitlin gave him the finger and wandered off as Jake grabbed a selection of handguns and ammunition. She wondered if he’d consider the hand-held missile launchers she’d glimpsed in the long boxes as he’d pawed through the stockpile. She hoped he might include bringing at least one—the thought of taking out the side of a building having some appeal—but knew he’d decide against it, needing to go in light and lethal.

  “All right, Lieutenant, lock ’n load. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Sir.”

  Caitlin eased into the driver’s seat as her dad shut and latched the semi box. Jake pushed the sumac branches roughly back into position. He flicked the Maglite over the ground, satisfied that the hiding spot looked relatively undisturbed. Whether or not they’d live to return was problematic, but her father liked things neat.

  “You’re all right with this, then.” He looked at her, transformed back into her old self, and reached over to pat her arm. “I like this better.”

  Caitlin’s mouth twitched in a slight smile as she started the vehicle and slowly did a three-point turn to head back onto the county road. At the macadam she turned left, keeping to the speed limit.

  Jake flicked her a quick glance of approval—they needed to be sure they weren’t stopped for any reason. So far she could only glamour herself. Dealing with an entire vehicle and its contents wasn’t yet part of her bag of tricks—that she, or her dad, knew of.

  Caitlin roundly cursed the slow moving traffic on Interstate 95 as they approached the Baltimore Beltway. An accident had traffic snarled in every direction and even her trusty GPS had no alternative routes mapped out. They jerked along, a few yards at a time until, inexplicably, it picked up with every vehicle hitting cruising speed as if nothing had happened. She found the ramp for Interstate 795 and headed north toward Reistertown and the corporate headquarters of Greyfalcon.