Hero's Curse

by Jack J. Lee

  None of the Swensons looked worried. Ben said, “That’s what I’m talking about!” as he high-fived Andi who looked just as excited as he did.

  I turned to Drew. “The handguns you bought, they’re CO2 powered and have slides that move, right?”

  Drew had never been much of a morning person; he grunted back at me between bites. “We have three hand guns that look like 1911s and one that looks like a Glock 17. All four have the blow back feature powered by a twelve gram CO2 cartridge that’s good for sixty shots. The shotguns have adjustable stocks, are spring powered, and shoot three pellets at a time. Some of the shotguns come with telescopic sights; we got the ones that didn’t. Oh yeah, the extra bag of pellets we bought aren’t blue; they’re gray.”

  Mina’s eyes were glazing over as she tried to make sense of Drew’s response to my simple yes or no question. I smiled as I continued with my explanation. “The pistols are powered by small CO2 cylinders and shoot out one BB at a time. The slides actually move back and forth, so it mimics the recoil of a real pistol.”

  Andi pushed her brother on the shoulder, “Get ready to be spanked, punk.”

  Ben pushed back. The kitchen became filled with a flurry of young arms and cursing and shrieks of pain and laughter as the two got into a slap fight. Tim ducked in a corner and laughed as he watched. Drew methodically kept on eating.

  Mina belted out, “House rules, brats! No fighting in the kitchen.” When they turned to her she grinned, “Save it for the gun fight.”

  Ben and Andi spent at least five minutes arguing which was better, Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon or Frosted Strawberry and then ate a Pop Tart each while insulting each other. Mina took the last banana on the counter top, peeled and sliced it. She generously threw the slices into my oatmeal so it’d taste better. She then proceeded to steal bites out of my oatmeal, taking almost all of the banana slices while telling me that the banana was kind of old and she wanted to make sure it hadn’t gone bad. I looked at Drew. He looked at me. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing, ‘What the hell were we doing here?’

  Our family breakfast eventually ended and we all headed out to the shed. Tim and Drew wanted to watch the fight. Mina and Andi got their shotguns. Each shotgun had three barrels that shot three pellets at the same time. It took a bit of upper body strength to cock them, but Mina and Andi didn’t have a problem. Ben picked up the handgun that looked like a Glock.

  Drew had bought four safety goggles held on by elastic straps. I had the Swensons put on their goggles, lined them up, and instructed them to take practice shots at empty aluminum cans from ten feet away. The pellets from the airsoft shotguns and handguns went completely through the cans. When the sisters saw that their faces got serious. Ben whooped, “This is going to be fun!”

  Mina turned to me, “You can heal us if a pellet goes through our goggles?”

  I looked at Tim to confirm, he nodded. “Sure. The goggles are designed to protect the eyes but if they fail,” he beamed, “I’ll be happy to heal any injuries.”

  Ben swaggered, “You scared, little Big Sis?”

  When I saw the look she gave him, I knew he was in trouble. The idiot gave Mina a cocky smile in return.

  While they were practicing, Tim stuffed paper bags full of scrunched up newspapers. I had the Swensons shoot at the bags from thirty feet. At that distance the plastic pellets penetrated one side of the bag but not the other. Ben was able to get a three inch group with five shots at that distance. The shotguns weren’t as accurate but every time Mina and Andi shot at the bag, they got at least two out of three pellets into it.

  I waved everyone out to the center of the yard. “Okay, Mina and Ben are up first. They’re going to start back to back with their weapons pointing down. Ben, you have twenty-five pellets in your magazine. Mina, you have thirty. Mina can shoot three pellets at a time but she has to cock the shotgun every time she shoots while Ben can just pull the trigger.

  “When I call out, ‘Start’ you guys start walking away from each other. When I say, ‘Shoot” you guys turn and start shooting, the game stops when both of you run out of pellets or sixty seconds pass, whichever comes first. I’ll call, ‘Time’ after sixty seconds. Then we’ll count how many red marks are on you. The one who’s been hit the most loses. You guys good with that?

  Both of them said, “Yes’ at the same time.

  “Alright, the rest of you get out of the way.” Ben and Mina got back to back. “Start!” When they were about twenty-five feet away from each other, I yelled, “Shoot!”

  Mina was a split second faster than Ben. As I expected, my love was vicious. She aimed for his head. I saw Ben flinch as he pulled his own trigger. His pellet didn’t get anywhere close to his sister. Mina methodically pumped the shotgun and fired nine more times at her brother’s head. I think a couple pellets actually entered his open mouth as he screamed in frustration—that had to hurt.

  Airsoft pellets really do feel like wasp stings. If Ben had been hit in the face with a hornet’s nest, he wouldn’t have been any worse off. He was so angry and in so much pain, he didn’t think. He should have run at Mina until he was within arm’s length of her and emptied his gun into her body. Instead, he stood in his ground and jerked the trigger as fast as he could, yanking his gun off target every time he fired. At the twenty-seven second mark, both of them were out of pellets.

  Drew was bent over laughing; Tim was actually rolling on the ground.

  Ben looked like he had a massive outbreak of chickenpox. His face began to swell as we watched. The goggles had protected the area around Ben’s eyes, but all of his exposed skin from the collar of his t-shirt up was a mass of angry red welts. He pulled his t-shirt up to check, and he had a fair number on his chest, too. Mina looked untouched until she pulled up her shirt, revealing one red mark on her stomach.

  Andi had been jumping up and down with excitement and cheering her sister on. She suddenly froze. “Ben, oh my God!” She ran to her brother. “Your poor face!”

  I studied my love as she pulled off her goggles and walked to her brother. There was no regret on her face. It’s not the stuff you know you don’t know that’s dangerous; it’s the stuff that you don’t know you don’t know—the facts of life you refuse to believe—that will kill you. Until Mina crushed him in an airsoft duel, Ben had no idea how much he had to learn; how useless he was with a handgun. Mina was clearly fine with dealing her brother a painful, humiliating defeat if it helped keep him alive. The more I learned about her, the more I loved her.

  Andi peered up at Ben’s face and then announced, “I’m going inside to get some ice” and took off for the kitchen, not hearing Tim tell her she didn’t need to. Mina got to Ben a few steps before I did. I watched to see how Ben reacted. I knew him the least of all the Swensons. I was curious how he’d respond to being totally outclassed by his big sister.

  Ben forced his swollen lips into a chagrined smile. “Mina, you kicked my ass. Next time I’ll use a shotgun.” He turned and met my gaze as he took his goggles off. He looked embarrassed, not resentful. He didn’t say anything as he pulled out his wallet. He handed me a twenty. I got the sense that in the future if I told him he had more to learn, he’d believe me.

  Andi ran back with a towel and a Ziploc bag full of ice. Before she got to him, I heard Tim murmur in Latin. I recognized maybe one word out of five. He used a lot more words than I would have, and I remembered him saying that being as specific as possible used less power.

  Andi wrapped the bag of ice in the towel, but the welts and swelling had already started to fade. She paused and then giggled, “Amazing, Bro. Hey Tim, one of these days, you have to teach me how to do that.”

  Ben’s next smile wasn’t forced. “Hey Tiny Tot, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to call a rain check on our bet. I’m going to need a lot more practice before I use a handgun against a shotgun again.”

  Andi faked a frown. “Call me Tiny Tot again and I’ll make what Mina gave you seem like kisses fro
m your imaginary girlfriend.”

  Mina chuckled as she shook her head at Andi’s comment. She put her hand on her brother’s shoulder and showed the first twinge of regret since she’d hammered him.

  Ben said, “I’m fine, Sis.” He burst out laughing. “Magic healing is great! Oh man, I needed it, you really nailed me!” Andi and Mina joined him. Ben motioned over at me, “Vic, let’s go to the range and shoot real guns. Playing with toys is killing me.”

  It was good that Ben had learned that he was nowhere as good as he thought he was with a pistol. One of these days, he needed to learn that only biased people thought he was all that funny. After he and his sisters stopped laughing, I replied, “We may have to take a break from the range today…Tim, that thing we need to do with Drew—do both you and Aidan need to be there?”

  Tim nodded eagerly, like he wanted to get started right away, “I think it’d be best if both of us were present.”

  I turned back to the Swensons, “I’m going to be busy for awhile. We’ll go to the range tomorrow.”

  Mina looked a little curious about what I needed to do with Drew, but got my hint to not ask about it. “Vic, we’ll go to the range by ourselves. We’ll come back for lunch.”

  Shit! I really didn’t want them out and about without me. Now, how did I give her an order without sounding like an over-controlling prick?

  I was still trying to come up with the right words when she walked up and put her hand on my chest. “Victor, it’s just for a few hours. We’ll have our shotguns; I think I’ve proved I can use one effectively.” She threw a quick grin at her brother who grimaced. “We’ll bring all five shotguns and we’ll keep two of them loaded with Jotunn-killing rounds.”

  I was about to say, ‘No’ regardless of the consequences when she gripped my shoulders, shaking me slightly. “Hey, you said yourself yesterday that it was okay for us to go out in groups. Has something changed since then?”

  It was nothing I could put my finger on or put into words, but yeah, something had changed; I had a bad feeling about them going out without me that I hadn’t had yesterday. I didn’t take my eyes off of her. “Tim, the Jotunn are a lot less powerful in their human forms. Can they turn into their troll shapes during the day?”

  “Only if they’re indoors away from sunlight. If they’re exposed to sunlight, they’ll turn to stone.”

  I squeezed Mina’s waist in return. “You’ll go to the outdoor range, right?”

  She was serious as she nodded, “Yes, definitely.”

  I pulled her in close and hugged her. I didn’t bother telling her to be careful. No love of mine would tolerate being smothered, even if it was for her own good. Love was a gift that kept on giving—not only had I become sensitive to Mina’s emotions, but I was now hostage to her decisions.

  I watched the Swenson’s grab their gear, load it into Andi’s BMW Mini, and drive away. As we stood there in the yard, I expected Drew to give me shit about being whipped. He surprised me when he didn’t.

  Aidan was brewing a pot of tea when we walked back into the kitchen. “Good morning lads, I’ve been down in the basement studying how a Jotunn heals. No magic is involved—fascinating.”

  “Aidan, I was thinking I should heal Drew’s lower back and knees. What’s that going to take?”

  He smiled, “The traditional answer is that you must learn how to read his aura.”

  Tim broke in excitedly. “Twenty years ago, Professor Markus Harris discovered that reading auras was actually an inefficient method of reading an individual’s DNA. An aura is influenced by a person’s DNA, general health, and emotions. When you heal someone, it’s more effective and efficient to just read the information in the DNA. The quick and dirty way to heal someone is to use an image of them in good health as a model. If you access a person’s genetic information, you’ll get a perfect reference image direct from the source code.”

  Aidan was used to Tim. He genially ignored being interrupted and explained further. “Human science has affected magical theory to a most remarkable degree. Had I not defected, but instead remained in the Sidhe Universe, I’d never have known about genes and DNA, and how much more efficient that knowledge makes the healing spell. You’ll need to cast a spell that enables you to read DNA before you can heal Drew, and that spell will consume a considerable amount of your energy. You’ll want to load up on calories before you cast the spell, and will probably sleep for hours afterwards.”

  “So why is it such a major spell? What’s the difference between spells that take a miniscule amount of energy versus those that take a lot?”

  Aidan gave a quick laugh, “If I truly knew the answers to those questions, I wouldn’t be just an armorer. To tell you the truth, Victor my boy, I’m not all that interested in magical theory per se. I prefer to focus on what I know works. Tim here is much more the magic researcher and theoretician. Tim, can you address these questions?”

  Tim answered, “Most of what we know about magic is empirical—knowledge gained by observation. I belong to a forum of magic practitioners, and we exchange ideas and theories about how magic works.

  “Professor Markus Harris is the founder of our group. He started off as an experimental physicist. He was born with almost as many angel genes as a paladin. His experiments accidentally became magical spells and he became an Oath Brother.” Tim grinned. “He’s actually much happier as an Oath Brother than as a physicist. His inadvertent use of magic totally screwed up his experiments; no-one else could ever reproduce his results. A couple times he was actually accused of fabricating his findings.”

  Tim mimed tipping his hat toward the leprechaun. “Master Aidan was kind enough to not mention why he’s not that particularly interested in theory. With the rare exception of discovering the relationship between auras and DNA, all we have are theories. We haven’t been able to come up with experiments to prove if our theories are correct.” He giggled; for once he signaled he was telling a joke. “Science that can’t be objectively confirmed has to be taken on faith, and we all know how accurate faith is or how faithful modern scientists are.”

  Drew spoke for the first time, “I’m interested in hearing about the theories anyway.”

  Tim’s cheeks grew flushed with happiness. “I’d love to tell you more about our theories, Drew.” He must have sensed my impatience because he hurried on, “Human scientists have theorized that up to seventy-three percent of the total mass-energy in our universe is dark. ‘Dark’ means scientists don’t know how to observe or measure it. Ironically, their calculations are based on completely wrong assumptions of fact, but by happy accident their conclusions for the most part are actually correct.

  “Our Universe is permeated with dark energy—it’s everywhere. The proper magical term is aether. Our souls are localized, concentrated, biologically formed constructs made out of a combination of dark energy and dark matter. Since scientists can’t observe or measure dark energy and dark matter, it’s not surprising that they haven’t been able to find any quantifiable evidence of souls.

  “We use our souls to directly manipulate aether, which can in turn manipulate normal matter and normal energy. It’s our belief that dark energy and dark matter interact with normal energy, matter, and time at the quantum level. At the macro level normal energy and matter for the most part follow simple rules like E=mc² and F=MA. At the micro or quantum level, simple rules don’t work. There is no certainty, only probabilities.

  “Light is both a particle and a wave, and it’s impossible to know both the exact position and exact momentum of an electron at the same time. Einstein’s theory of general relativity shows that time can be slowed, accelerated, and even traveled. Almost anything is possible at the quantum level which is why we think magic starts there. The further the normal macro rules are twisted by magic, the more soul energy is required. When we cast a healing spell, the theory is that we’re actually using dark energy to accelerate time, decreasing healing time from days or weeks to just a few seconds. Ene
rgy requirements are a matter of scale; minor wounds and injuries take less power than massive trauma or mortal wounds. Obtaining a sense beyond the normal five—like the ability to read DNA—requires considerable power.”

  Drew frowned in thought. “How does healing and aging interact? If you’re accelerating time when you heal someone, aren’t you also aging them in the process?”

  Tim began smiling and nodding before Drew even finished, “Excellent question. Aging is the result of genes imperfectly replicating themselves. The cells in a normal human body have to constantly regenerate. At the end of every chromosome is a region of repetitive DNA sequences called a telomere that protects the chromosome from damage. Every time a cell divides, some of the telomere is lost. Losing telomeres damages the chromosome which results in aging. When magic is used to heal, there is no loss of telomeres.”

  I knew Drew. Give him a chance and we’d spend all day talking about magical theory. “Let’s get started. I want to be fully recovered by the time the Mina and the kids come back.”

  Tim said, “Vic, I’d like to start an IV for you before you cast your DNA reading spell. This way we’ll avoid your automatic defenses, we’ll decrease your need to sleep and eliminate the post-casting headache. I suggest you cast the spell in the living room and then recover on the, couch, or cast it in your room and recover on your own bed.”

  “Let’s go into the living room.”

  Aidan handed me two sheets of paper. One was covered with handwriting; the other was printed. “My boy, I’ve written out the DNA reading spell in English on the first sheet, and then had Tim print a Pig Latin version. Please look it over carefully before you cast the spell.”

  I walked into the living room and studied the spell. It was extremely detailed. It used words like polymer, nucleotides, base pairs, adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, 2-dexoyribose, and phosphodiester bonds. It specified that my ability to read DNA should be linked to my ability to see how much magical power a person possessed. It went into a lot of detail about how the spell would be powered. I was glad to have the cheat sheet.