I expected him to argue back, but instead he looked…
Shocked.
“Seriously?” said Russell. “You would just…leave her here to die?”
I would. I would leave her to die without hesitation or remorse. I cared about Russell’s life. I did not care about some random girl who couldn’t even make coffee right. When I had been her age I had already been stealing things for Morvilind.
Yet Russell’s expression disturbed me. The way he was looking at me…he looked hurt. Like I had just slapped him or something.
Or if he had realized the truth about what kind of woman I was.
I could leave Lydia to die…just as I could have killed Alexandra Ross in the Shadowlands. I could have murdered Alexandra without a second thought. I had almost murdered her without a second thought, but I hadn’t. What would Russell think if he found out about that?
Maybe he would look at me with the same sort of appalled shock I saw on his face now.
Something twisted within me.
“Damn it,” I said, “damn it, damn it. I’m an idiot, and this is going to get both of us killed.”
“Then we’ll help Lydia?” said Russell.
“Yes,” I said, stepping over the dead orcs. “Watch the door. If more orcs show up, shoot them.”
I found poor Mr. Loman’s corpse and went through his pockets. His bowels had loosened in death, and the stench of it mixed with the odor of blood and charred flesh that filled the air.
“Why are you doing that?” said Russell.
“Because,” I said, “Lydia’s not old enough to drive. Which means she doesn’t have a car, and the three of us aren’t going to fit on my bike. We need a better vehicle.” I pulled out Loman’s wallet and a set of car keys. Inside his wallet I found his pass for the employee parking structure, complete with the make, model, and license plate of his car. “Come on.”
Russell hesitated. “Should I take more ammo?”
“Actually, yeah, that’s a good idea,” I said. I walked back to the dead orcs, pulled out some more magazines, and passed them to Russell, who stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. As he did, a thought occurred to me. The orcish soldiers had been well equipped with guns and grenades and ammunition. None of that stuff worked in the Shadowlands…and more importantly, the guns and grenades were human weapons, manufactured here on Earth. The Archons and the orcs hadn’t brought them along for the trip.
Which meant that someone here on Earth had armed them, and that in turn meant the Rebels were helping the Archons and their orcish soldiers. If the Rebels had smuggled that much weaponry into Milwaukee, then they had been planning this for a long time. Maybe the mall wasn’t the only building under attack.
Maybe the entire city was under attack.
I glanced at my phone’s screen again. The network was still jammed. The Rebels would have had the equipment to do that.
“What is it?” said Russell.
“I think,” I said, taking one last look at the mall concourse, “that we need to find your girlfriend and get the hell out of here.”
“She’s not my girlfriend yet,” said Russell.
“Yet? Yes, yes, I know, women like confidence,” I said, heading for the café. The cash register and the display case and the various coffee makers and presses had gone dark, and a single emergency light glowed over a service door behind the counter. “Let’s find your future girlfriend and get the hell out of here.”
I stepped around the counter and listened at the door for a moment, but heard nothing. I pushed it open and saw a gloomy kitchen and storage room, the steel door of a walk-in refrigerator on my right, and another door on the far wall. I opened the fridge door, wondering if Lydia had taken refuge within, but I saw only jugs of milk and cartons of pastries.
This would have been easier if the girl had stayed in one place.
“That Elf,” said Russell. “Why was he wearing a three-headed dragon symbol on his coat?”
“Because he was an Archon,” I said, crossing to the next door. “They’re sort of the Elf versions of Rebels, I guess. They conquered the Elven homeworld, and so the High Queen and her loyalists came here.”
“I knew that,” said Russell. “I mean, why did he have a three-headed dragon on his chest?”
“It’s the symbol of the Archons,” I said. I paused for a moment to listen at the next door. Nothing. “They don’t have nobles the way the Elves on Earth do. I think the three heads of the dragon represent liberty, equality, and solidarity. Like all Elves should be free and equal without bowing to the High Queen.”
“That…that just seems wrong,” said Russell.
I suppose he would have a hard time with the concept. He had been raised to revere the High Queen and respect the Elves. I had been raised to steal things without detection, so I took a more cynical view of…well, everything.
“I wish you hadn’t had to kill the Elf,” said Russell.
“What?” I said, looking back at him. “He would have killed me, and then killed you, and anyone else he caught.”
“It just seems so…elfophobic,” said Russell. “Killing an Elf.”
It was too dark for him to see me grimace. “Right.” It had been programmed into him by school. Criticize the High Queen and her nobles, and you would get accused of elfophobia, and someone would make an anonymous call to Homeland Security and the Inquisition. Killing orcs was one thing, but I wondered if some of the people in the Ducal Mall would be paralyzed when the Archons arrived, too conditioned to avoid elfophobia to even fight back.
Not that bullets would have worked on an Archon.
“If it makes you feel better,” I said, “I don’t think it counts as elfophobia when it’s an Archon.”
I opened the door. Beyond I saw the stockroom for the bookstore itself, with boxes stacked in wire shelves, and other shelves holding loose hardbacks and paperbacks. There were no emergency lights, but my AK-47 had a tactical flashlight mounted to it, so I flipped the light on. A harsh white LED light shone from the gun. I swept it back and forth, looking for any sign of the girl.
“Lydia?” said Russell. “Lydia, it’s Russell Moran. “We’re going to get you out here.”
Only silence answered him. I stepped further into the stockroom, moving my flashlight over the walls and floor. I wondered if Russell had been mistaken, if Lydia had fled in another direction. But the only way in and out of the bookstore was the entrance to the mall concourse and the door to the stockroom. She wasn’t in the stockroom and she hadn’t gone to the concourse, which meant…
A gleam of pale white light caught my eye. I swung the gun around, pointing it at a steel security door in the far wall. It stood open a crack, and beyond I glimpsed a wide, gloomy concrete corridor. We had found the service entrance. A mall the size of the Ducal Mall had a maze of service corridors running behind the shops, letting the employees come and go and deliveries to arrive without disrupting the flow of customer traffic. I pushed the door open a few more inches and peered into the corridor. Rows of metal doors stretched away in either direction, leading to more shops, and the corridor turned a corner perhaps twenty yards away.
“She went this way,” I said. “Russell, we’re not going to be able to find her. She could have gone anywhere from here. She probably got out of the mall and is running like hell right now. We should follow her example.”
Russell wanted to argue, but he knew that I was right. He couldn’t call Lydia’s phone, not with the jamming still in operation. We couldn’t wander around the maze of service corridors behind the stores. Sooner or later we would run into another band of orcish soldiers and get killed, or we would be caught in the inevitable counterattack when Homeland Security or Duke Tamirlas came to fight the Archons. Lydia had probably run from the stockroom and to the nearest fire exit the moment the shooting started, which meant that she was smarter than we were.
“Right,” I said. “We’ll head back to the concourse and take the emergency exit. And then…”<
br />
A scream rang out from the corridor, loud and shrill. It was a scream of raw, undiluted panic, the scream of a girl encountering mortal danger for the first time in her life.
Russell’s eyes widened, and his mouth opened to shout Lydia’s name.
I clapped my hand over his mouth. Russell flinched, blinked, and nodded. I removed my hand and pressed a finger to my lips, and he nodded again. I switched off my flashlight, and Russell followed suit. Only then did I beckon, and I moved forward in silence, Russell following after me with admirable quiet. The scream rang out again, and Russell flinched, but he didn’t shout or run. I also heard the rough, grating voices of orcish soldiers speaking in the Elven tongue. There were two or three orcs, I thought.
“No!” shouted a girl’s voice, and this time I recognized Lydia. “Please, don’t, just let me go, I…”
There was a growl, the sound of a fist striking flesh, and Lydia wailed and fell silent. Russell tensed, but he didn’t say anything. I headed towards the sound, moving to the corner at the end of the corridor. As we reached the corner, I pushed Russell against the wall and whispered into his ear.
I had to get on my tiptoes to do it. God, but it was annoying that everyone was taller than me.
“Wait here,” I whispered. “I’m going to take a look. Don’t do anything unless I tell you.”
He nodded. I dropped to my stomach and crawled forward the last few steps, peering around the corner. There was one advantage to being short. Most people did not look at things below their eye level, and the orcs were a lot taller than I was. So I didn’t think they would notice me peering around the base of the corner.
They didn’t.
A row of pallets ran along one wall, holding stacked cardboard cartons of toilet paper. Further down the corridor I saw three orcish soldiers, wearing similar harnesses and armor as the ones I had killed in the bookstore. One of the orcs held Lydia by the arms, blood dripping from her nose and mouth. She was struggling, her face white with terror and shock, but she might have been a puppy for all the effect she had on the orc’s iron grip.
“We should kill it,” said the orc holding her in the Elven language. “Its cries will draw the attention of the foe.”
A second orcish soldier shook his head. “The masters commanded that we take captive any females of childbearing age that we encounter.”
I blinked. Why would the Archons want human women? It wasn’t unheard of for an Elven noble to have a human concubine, but the vast majority of Elves considered the practice a grotesque perversion.
“It is too small and weak to be useful for labor,” said the first orc.
“All the humans are small and weak,” said the third orc.
The second orc shook his head. I suspected he was the sergeant or the corporal or whatever. “The human females are to be given to the masters’ human allies. Evidently the human allies frequently reward their soldiers with females.”
The first orc growled. “The humans are in mating season now?”
“No,” said the second orc. “The humans are always in heat. It is one of the many ways they are a barbarous and uncouth race.”
I eased back around the corner. The Archons’ “human allies” were probably Rebels, which meant my suspicions were correct. The Rebels were indeed in the mall, and they had probably opened whatever rift way the Archons had used to get here. And though I had never seen it happen, I knew the Rebels sometimes kidnapped women, pumped them full of drugs to make them compliant, and gave them to their soldiers as slaves. Evidently they had adapted the practice from the wars of the Caliphate and the Imamate in Asia.
Sick bastards.
I wasn’t going to let the orcs hand Lydia over to the Rebels like some kind of toy. A dark little voice in the back of my head pointed out that if Russell hadn’t liked Lydia, I would have been perfectly content to leave the girl to her fate. I pushed the voice aside. I could indulge in moralizing self-doubt once I had gotten away from the orcs that wanted to kill me and my brother.
Assuming I could do it.
I thought I could, but I needed to use magic, and I didn’t want either Lydia or Russell to know that I could use illusion magic. Lydia would probably report me to the Inquisition like the good empty-headed little girl that she was. And Russell…I didn’t think he would report me to the Inquisition. I hoped he wouldn’t report me to the Inquisition.
I thought of what he had said about elfophobia.
Well. Better not put him in that position.
I scooted next to Russell and whispered in his ear.
“Listen,” I said. “Three orcs. They’ve got Lydia. I think we can take them. But you have to do exactly as I say. Do you understand?”
He nodded, gripping the AK-47 tight.
“I’m going to go around the corner,” I said. “I’ll do something to distract them, something that will make them turn around. Then I’ll start shooting. Don’t come around the corner until I call.” I thought for an instant. “When you hear me shout ‘bookstore’, come around the corner and shoot at any orcs you can see, but don’t hit Lydia and for God’s sake don’t hit me. Don’t come around the corner until you hear me shout ‘bookstore’. Do you understand?”
He nodded once more.
I patted him on the shoulder and crawled back to the corner, peering around the edge. The orcs continued their argument on the imbecility of humans, but they had bound Lydia’s wrists behind her back, stuffed a gag into her mouth, and wound a rope around her neck as a leash. She had stopped struggling, but instead cried in silence, her entire body trembling with it.
If she lived through this, she was going to have some nasty nightmares.
Maybe I could keep them from getting any worse.
I scooted forward, ducking behind one of the pallets of toilet paper. Neither the orcs nor Lydia noticed the movement, and the cardboard cartons blocked Russell’s view of me.
Which meant I was free to cast a spell. I gathered power, focusing my will and mind, and silvery light flashed from my free hand. I cast the Masking spell around myself, and I Masked myself as a duplicate of the Archon I had killed in the bookstore, with the same black uniform, the same Elven features, the same hair and eyes.
Then I took a deep breath and got to my feet, the Masking spell converting the tap of my running shoes against the polished concrete to the click of heavy boots. The orcs spun, leveling their weapons at me, and I put all the hauteur into my disguised voice that I could manage.
“What is the meaning of this?” I snapped in the Elven tongue. “You dare to point your weapons at an Archon? Lower them immediately.”
“Master,” rumbled the orcish soldier in charge as they lowered their weapons. “You startled us.”
His dark eyes strayed to the AK-47 in my hands. I suspected the Archons did not sully themselves by carrying weapons of human design.
“Why are you wasting time with human females?” I snapped, stopping a dozen paces away. I glanced further down the corridor, one part of my mind holding the Mask in place, the other calculating distances. I didn’t see any other orcish soldiers or Archons in the service corridor, and I took a step to the left, moving closer to one of the pallets of toilet paper. That should give Russell a clear line of sight to the orcs, and I could take cover behind the pallet if this went bad.
The orcish soldier looked confused. “You…commanded it of us, master.”
“What nonsense is this?” I said. Lydia’s bloodshot eyes turned towards me, full of fresh fear. “This negligence is…beware!” I pointed the AK-47 in their direction. “The foe comes! Prepare to fight!”
The orcs had been well-trained, and they spun to face the other direction, raising their AK-47s to cover the corridor. Lydia looked in that direction as well. It was absolutely perfect.
“Bookstore!” I shouted, letting my Mask dissolve, and I raised my gun and started shooting.
I caught the orc on the left first, and the back of his head exploded. The orc in the center start
ed to turn, and I put two rounds into his temple. The orc on the right roared in fury, taking aim, but by then Russell had come around the corner. His first shot caught the orcish soldier in the chest, and the orc staggered with a grunt, the ballistic armor in his harness deflecting the bullet. I started to turn my gun towards him, but by then Russell corrected his own aim. His second shot ripped through the orc’s neck, and the third bullet blew away the top of his head.
Damn. Whoever taught rifle club at Russell’s school knew his business.
Lydia stood frozen in the midst of the dead orcs, blinking in astonishment. Some of the blue blood from the dead soldiers had spattered on her green apron.
“Good shot,” I said as Russell hurried up next to me.
“They were focused on you,” said Russell, turning his gun’s safety on and slinging it over his shoulder with its strap. “How did you do that? I heard an Archon talking.”
“Recorded it on my phone,” I lied. I stooped over one of the dead orcs and helped myself to his tactical knife. Lydia squeaked a little as I approached her, but I cut off the ropes. “Right. Let’s get out of here.” I pulled the gag away. “We…”
Lydia blinked at me, shivered, and started to cry. It wasn’t graceful weeping, either, but the full-throated sobbing of someone in desperate fear.
I stared at her in disgust. For God’s sake! We didn’t have time for this nonsense. My first impulse was to slap some sense into her.
A flicker of shame stopped me. The girl had probably never seen anyone die. Certainly she had never seen anyone shot to death in front of her, and she had never seen an orc before today. When this was all over, I would probably go home and cry for a while in my shower, but I couldn’t fall apart right now. Neither could Lydia.
Before I could say anything, Russell gripped Lydia’s shoulders. She looked at him, blinking.
“Lydia,” said Russell. “We’re going to get you out of here. But you have to do exactly what we say, okay?”
“Russell?” croaked Lydia. “What’s…what’s happening? Those monsters…”
Cloak Games: Omnibus One Page 37
