by T. S. Mann
“Doc! Jesus Christ, man, what are you doing here?!?”
Doc sat down on the floor next to his old friend. “I should ask you the same question. Why now, of all times, are you reliving your Insight?”
Mickey, his fiction cloak now fully reasserted, grew defensive. “It’s a long plane trip. I’ve got to sleep, and I need to dream about something. I thought it might be good to review what happened last time I was in Boston. Especially if Luke and Matt really went strange in that damned church.”
“Is that it? I mean, it couldn’t possibly be because you wanted to punish yourself over what happened back then, could it?”
Mickey put the cap on and pulled it down over his now-shaggy hair. He ignored the question. “Like I said Doc, what are you doing here?”
Doc reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a St. Christopher’s medallion.
“Here. This is keyed to our base. When I leave here, I want you to wake up. You’ll find the medallion in your left coat pocket. At exactly 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, which is about fifteen minutes for you, I want you to go into the lavatory and use the medallion to teleport directly here. We’ll have the wards deactivated from 3:57 to 4:03. Do not be too late or too early.”
Mickey bit his lip. Doc was asking him to make a blind teleport nearly 300 miles from an airplane in flight to a heavily-protected magical facility. That was no easy feat, even for someone of Mickey’s skill and even with a talisman like the medallion.
“Doc, tell me what’s happened. Do you have any news about Luke?”
Doc rubbed his eyes as he thought to himself: “Why is it that no one ever just does what I ask? Is it really any wonder that I use a lot of mind control spells? I’d never get anything done without them.” He said none of that of course.
“We haven’t found Luke yet. We’re still searching. But there’s another problem. Matt ... well, Matt got away from us.”
Mickey nearly choked at the news. “He ... got away?!? What does that mean?!? You had him in one of the most heavily-warded buildings on the Eastern Seaboard!”
“Yes, I know. And he bypassed all our wards rather casually and then portaled to an unknown location.”
“He ... what?!? How is that even possible? It’s only been a day since he went strange!”
“I know, Mickey, I know. At first, I thought he was just some kind of prodigy, perhaps even more so than you were. Certainly, his initial progress seemed even more impressive than your own, and yours was among the fastest I’d ever seen.”
“At first?” Mickey repeated cautiously.
Doc hesitated. He hated delivering bad news, especially to friends.
“After we realized we couldn’t track him, I had my staff study the residue of the spell he used to unlock the portal.”
He looked down at the floor, unable for a moment to maintain eye contact. Then, he let it out.
“Mickey ... John, I’m sorry. Things are worse ... much, much worse, than we’d feared.”
CHAPTER 12:
MATT’S QUEST
St. Mark’s Catholic Church
“Well, I’ll be damned! You really do look like Mormon missionaries!” exclaimed Matt.
His outburst broke the spell of surprise that had (metaphorically) paralyzed the three Unity paladins. The two bigger ones moved to point their swords in his direction, while the third fumbled with his ivory wand.
Matt was a little bit quicker, though – he gestured towards the three in a throwing motion while yelling “Fire in the hole!” Another burst of golden fire shot out and exploded at their feet. It was a bit weaker than he’d intended, however, and Matt realized grimly that he’d just burned through most of his remaining juice. It was enough to knock down the black guy and the kid, but the biggest one jumped clear and charged at Matt with his sword, bellowing some arcane war cry as he ran.
Luckily for Matt, his jersey was still charged up, and while he had no spare juice for new spells, he was still supremely agile. The paladin slashed three times in quick succession, and each time, Matt danced out of the way of the blade.
The fourth time was a powerful horizontal cut at the level of Matt’s waist. Amazing even himself, Matt bent backwards as if he were some sort of limbo champion until his back was parallel to the ground and his shoulders were almost even with his knees. The sword passed over his face, cutting nothing but air.
Unfortunately, while the paladin couldn’t seem to hit Matt, he was doing a great job of cutting off his escape attempts. The fifth and sixth strokes pushed Matt back into a small alcove. He felt the wall behind him and realized he had only a few feet to move in any direction.
Pressing his advantage, the paladin thrust forward, confident Matt had no room to dodge. But with a mighty grunt, Matt jumped nearly four feet straight up and tucked his feet up under him. The sword embedded two inches into the wall, and Matt came down to balance perfectly on the edge of the blade.
This amazed even the paladin, who hesitated for a second. Matt looked down at his position and then up at the paladin before giving a delighted “Hee!” as he realized what he’d done. Then, he fell back to brace himself against the wall, planted his feet on the paladin’s chest, and “jumped.” A flash of kinetic energy burst from his feet, knocking the paladin explosively to the far side of the room.
Matt dropped lightly to the ground and then looked around. The big guy was stunned, but the other two were starting to rise. Across the room, he could see the door of the church standing wide open some forty feet away. Matt dropped into a scrimmage crouch and then leapt for the door as hard as he could. He almost made it.
Four feet from the doorway, he suddenly stopped, floating horizontally in mid-air. He bent his head down to look behind him, and while his view was upside-down, he could see well enough. The black guy was pointing a sword at him and held him fast with a telekinetic grip.
He looked decidedly angry.
With an audible growl, the paladin twisted around and swung the sword over his head like a tennis player making an ace serve. Matt’s stomach practically flew into his mouth as he was jerked back hard and flung the length of the room to smash painfully into a wall just above the choir loft. He coughed a bit and realized rather unhappily that in his haste to leave the Invisible College, he had neglected to renew his kinetic shield. It was now very close to failure.
“Shrike, I got him held. Now will you kindly get off your ass and stun him already?” demanded the black guy.
“Just a second, Falcon,” stammered the younger man. “I dropped the wand somewhere.”
The black guy fumed.
“Goddammit, Shrike. You are worthless, you know that?”
Tensing his muscles, he twisted in place to point the sword towards the wall up and to his left. Matt’s body followed along with his motion, flying across the room with a frightened yell to crash into the wall where the sword now pointed.
“Completely.”
Falcon twisted again to point the sword to his right, and Matt flew towards the opposite wall, hitting it face first.
“Fucking.”
With a flourish, he arced the sword up in front of him, and Matt flew up to hit the ceiling, causing plaster to rain down below.
“Worthless.”
Finally, the paladin whipped the sword straight down, and Matt slammed to the hard floor with tremendous force. Along the way, he felt a flicker of juice as his kinetic shield finally died, and when he hit the ground, he felt four of his ribs break. He would have screamed in pain had the force of impact not taken his breath away.
Barely able to move, Matt could only watch as the paladin advanced, flipping the sword by the hilt as he walked to hold it upside-down. He looked down at Matt as if commiserating.
“Squires. None of ‘em worth a damn today, am I right?”
Then, he gripped the sword hilt by both hands and raised it to stab Matt through the chest. At the last second, however, the paladin was enveloped in a flash of light. His eyes widened, and he turned un
steadily to look back towards the younger man, who was nervously pointing the wand at him.
“Like I said,” he croaked in disbelief. “Squires!”
Then, the man’s knees buckled, and he collapsed in a heap.
There was movement from twenty feet away, as the red-head started to rise. He looked back and forth between the kid and the fallen paladin.
“Shrike! What the hell do you think you’re ...”
“Dormi bene,” said the kid, interrupting. There was another flash of light, and the older paladin slumped into unconsciousness like his partner. Brother Shrike took a deep, shaky breath and then moved over to where Matt was lying in pain, pulling his simple black necktie loose as he walked.
Once he was standing over Matt, he looked down at the unconscious paladins and then the tie clutched in his hand. With a distasteful expression, he held it out and released it. Before the tie even hit the floor, his attire shimmered and then suddenly changed from the plain black suit of a Unity Blade squire into a purple T-shirt, tight jeans and Docksiders. A gold stud suddenly appeared in his right ear.
Shrike looked down at Matt and smiled.
“It’s a good thing for you that I’ve gotten really tired of taking all their shit!”
He knelt and looked Matt over. Then, he gently put a hand on Matt’s chest, closed his eyes, and said: “Be healed.”
A soft green glow enveloped Matt's body, and he felt a brief euphoria, followed by a slight tickling sensation as his ribs knitted themselves back together almost instantly. Then, Shrike stood up, grabbed Matt by a forearm, and helped him to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said.
“My pleasure. The name’s Brother Shrike ... no, wait, screw that. The name’s Ethan.”
“Matt, Matt Sullivan.”
“I know. I mean, I know your name is Matt. You probably shouldn’t tell people your last name. There’s bad ju-ju that some Strangers can do with your pre-Insight name.”
With that, Brother Shrike (aka Ethan) darted quickly over to the red-head, flipped over his body, and started rifling through his pockets. After a second, he fished out a set of car keys.
“Aha!”
“Right. Listen, thanks for helping me and all, but, um, why?”
Ethan stood up, stuffing the keys into his left pocket and the wand into the back of his jeans.
“Well, I sort of got drafted into the Unity Blade last year, but I’m pretty sure I’m not a good fit for a fundamentalist magical cult, and I’ve been looking to jump ship for weeks. This looked like my best chance. The wand lets me knock anybody out, even if they’re shielded, but the paladins are trained to defend against it, so I needed a distraction. You’re pretty distracting. “
He looked Matt up and down.
“In more ways than one. Anyway, I’m getting out of Dodge. The other paladins described New York as a ‘decadent Gomorrah where lawless Strangers do what they will without care or dignity.’ That sounds like my kind of place. Wanna come?”
Matt thought for a second.
“No. Well, not yet, anyway. I know where my brother is, and I need to get him before I can think about running away. But it’s good to know there actually is some place to go after I get him. Do you think you could drop me off somewhere? I’m pretty sure it’s on your way out-of-town.”
Ethan thought for a second. “Yeah, okay. I can do that much for you. But we need to go now before these guys wake up.”
Matt nodded and followed Ethan out of the church, but once outside he stopped short, his mouth hanging open. It was pitch dark outside.
“Ethan," he said slowly, "what time is it? It was around 3:30 when I got away from the Invisible College.”
Ethan glanced at his watch. “It’s 10:30. Still November 1st, so you didn’t drift that far.”
“Drift?”
“Yeah. You came by portal, right? When you portal somewhere and don’t do it exactly right, it’s not instantaneous. Screw up bad enough and it can take longer to get where you're going than it would have been for you to just walk.”
Matt cursed under his breath. If it was 10:30, that meant he had about an hour-and-a-half before midnight. Then, it would be November 2nd, which Doc said was the Day of the Dead and was auspicious for Lindsay’s chaos magic. Of course, right now, he wasn’t sure he believed anything Doc had told him, but that sounded freaky enough to be true. He needed to hurry.
“Okay, let’s go. I need to get to Fisher College, as fast as possible.”
Twenty minutes later…
The black SUV rolled onto the campus of Fisher College, and Matt jumped out. “Thanks, Ethan. I, uh, don't suppose I can convince you to come back me up, huh?”
“Sorry, Matt. I just betrayed my order, so even if this weren't a suicide mission in general, it would still be one for me. My next stop is the I-95.”
“Well, can't blame a guy for asking. Drive safe. Maybe I'll find you in New York.”
“Yeah, good luck!”
Matt started to close the door, but Ethan stopped him.
“Matt, I know you don't trust the Invisible College, and from what you said, this Doc guy sounds like an asshole. But they didn't sacrifice you to kill the nephilim, which is what the Blade was planning. If you really think this is the place, are you sure you don't want to call them for back-up?”
Matt thought for a second. “No. Thanks, but no. They'd probably just come in and mind-rape everybody into submission. I'm just gonna sneak in, get Luke, and get the hell out of here.”
With that, he closed the door. Ethan gave a resigned look and a head nod. Then, he pulled back out onto the street and left Matt behind. Matt looked around at the center of Fisher College. He knew little about the place. It was a private college, and by the end of his Junior year, he already knew he'd be lucky to get into community college, so he never even considered it as an option. The campus looked small, but it was situated in Back Bay, so he assumed it was absurdly overpriced.
Up ahead, he noticed a campus security vehicle gliding his way. He looked around for some place to hide when, perhaps in response to some unspoken wish, some of the juice he’d recovered on the ride over flowed into his brother’s coat. As the cop car drove by, its driver looked right at Matt but gave no sign of noticing him. Matt let out a relieved sigh and started down the sidewalk.
A few minutes later, he found a dorm and decided it was a good place to start. Just inside the door was a desk with a bored RA sitting behind it. She gave him a condescending look; this appeared to be a women-only dorm, and he felt distinctly out-of-place. He walked up to the desk, coughed nervously, and spoke to the RA.
“Hi there. I was, um, wondering if you could help me? I have this, ah, cousin who goes here and I wanted to visit her, but I, um, lost my phone, and I can't remember what dorm she's in. Is there, like, some way you can look her up for me?”
Even Matt himself was amazed at how lame his story sounded, and he cursed inwardly for not having thought of something before coming in.
The RA looked at him suspiciously. “Well, I can't give out information on students to just anyone who comes in. Can you tell me anything more about your … cousin?”
It was obvious that she didn't believe him, and for all Matt knew, she might just be stringing him along until she could whip out a can of mace and start screaming for the cops.
“Well, her name is Lindsay Forrester, and she's a Women's Studies major.”
“We don't have a Women's Studies program at Fisher,” said the RA coolly.
“Ah, my bad,” he stammered. “I must have misremembered. Well, she's definitely in grad school here.”
“We don't have any graduate programs at Fisher, either,” said the RA, whose voice was now overtly cold. “Just associate and bachelor’s degrees.”
“Oh, well, that's … that's too bad. Because they should, I mean. Offer graduate degrees. In … Women's Studies, and … stuff.”
Matt put his head down and took a deep breath. When he lifted again, he looked
at the young woman with what a former girlfriend had called his “puppy dog eyes.” He smiled at the RA as warmly as he could, and through his smiling teeth, he softly whispered two words.
“Ryan Gosling.”
The reaction was instantaneous, as the young woman sat up in her chair and her face began to flush.
“Oh, that's okay. I mean, anyone can make a mistake.” She brushed her hair back behind her ear and smiled warmly back at Matt. “My name's Teri, by the way. Teri Coleman.”
“Matt, Matt ...” He stopped, still smiling his winning smile, as he struggled to come up with a fake name. “Damon. Matt … Damon. Not that one, of course. We're not related, just have the same last name. And first name, I guess.”
“Idiot!!!” screamed his internal voice.
Teri, however, seemed completely charmed, in every sense of the word. “Oh, that's funny. I bet you must get a lot of jokes about that.”
“Oh, yeah, tons of them. So, anyway, about my cousin?”
“Sure,” Teri turned to her computer screen. As she pulled up the relevant listings, she tried to remain nonchalant. “So, Lindsay Forrester is your cousin, right? Not your girlfriend or anything?”
“No, no. Just a cousin. I don't have a girlfriend right now. Haven't found the right girl.”
Teri batted her eyes at him. “Well, you never know when the right girl will come along.”
“No, you never do,” he said.
He gave her a wolfish grin, even as he tried to ignore his guilty conscience. In the back of his head, Matt could only think of how angry he'd been just an hour before (or seven hours before, depending on how one looked at it) over Doc's manipulations.
“Yeah, Doc must be a complete and total asshole to use magic to control another person's mind,” he said to himself sarcastically as Teri turned back to her screen.
