by Unknown
methods for sighting through the fog, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Impacts glanced off his shield, coming from every direction in an unrelenting stream of metal too fast for even his magesight to realy register.
If he had been alone, things might have gotten desperate quickly, but with Desacus to draw on, he only felt a growing contempt for the men trying to kil them. Let them see what it feels like! he thought as his rage grew.
Efficiency was no longer necessary—power was not an issue, and he could find the men hidden in his fog just as easily as they could see him.
Balancing Karen across his arms, he clenched and unclenched his fists as he sent his power forth, uttering a cruel string of words; “Ingak mai lathos , borok mai nemlen !” Force in my hands, break my foes!
The first soldier felt himself gripped by an invisible force as Matthew’s aythar fist clenched around him. The pressure was unrelenting and irresistible, and almost immediately the soldier’s metalic frame crumpled. Seconds after that, the reinforced titanium casing that protected his central processor colapsed, and he was dead.
A roar and more automatic gunfire announced Desacus’s emergence from his ilusory hiding place. Matthew’s senses showed him the dragon
approaching, but he paid little heed; his attention was focused entirely on his deadly work. Shifting targets rapidly, he crushed one after another of the cybernetic units firing on them. Two, three, four, he lost count as he destroyed the enemy and gradualy the weapons fire began to slacken.
At some point Karen recovered and worked her way free to stand beside him, silently watching his work with her arcane senses. If she felt any sympathy for the men he kiled, it did not show on her face. Her expression could only be described as cold satisfaction, tempered by regret that she lacked the strength to assist.
There’s something coming in from the air, warned Desacus.
“I’m not done yet,” said Matthew coldly, crushing another soldier as he spoke. At least thirty—men? machines? he wasn’t sure what to cal
them—were dead now. Another four remained, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until each of them had also learned his fatal lesson.
Those four turned and began to run, but he caught them and dragged them back into the fog.
“They’ve got air support,” said Karen, her voice devoid of feeling. “They’ve probably caled in an airstrike—that’s why they want to run.”
We should go, Desacus told them.
But there were stil two left , Matthew ignored him.
The military aircraft screamed by in the sky above, but Desacus felt the weapons they had deployed heading toward them. Opening his wings, he leapt skyward to intercept them. He roared, gaining altitude with mighty strokes, and then surged forward, sending plumes of fire ahead, hoping to destroy whatever weapon the enemy had fired.
Two missiles struck him dead on, and the explosion that erupted shook the ground and broke Matthew’s shield. Searing pain, like a knife thrust through his skul, made him scream and then oblivion claimed the young wizard’s awareness as he crumpled to the ground.
Karen tried to catch him, but only managed to break his fal. Blind and stil nearly senseless, she felt the dragon’s death, and it broke her free from the vision of her aunt’s brutal murder. Her shock and the desire for vengeance began to fade, replaced by sadness and desperation.
Desacus was dead. Aunt Roberta was dead, and soon enough, she and the young man she wanted to protect would be dead as wel. The shield was gone and her own power was nowhere near to being able to replace it, even if she had had the skil.
Sinking to her knees beside him, she murmured, “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t strong enough.” She wanted to cry, but her eyes were dry, though
whether it was because of injury or sheer numbness she couldn’t tel.
Lifting Matthew’s head up, she cradled it against her stomach. “This is my fault.” She wanted to be elsewhere. Anywhere. Squeezing her arms around his head, she felt her wish fil her being, until it was the only thing that mattered—to be somewhere else.
And then they were.
Chapter 22
Karen’s vision was starting to return, though she stil had a large purple spot hovering near the center of everything she saw. She could hear as wel, though everything was slightly muted; it left her with the impression of having her head wrapped in cotton batting.
She was sitting as before, and Matthew lay before her, a trickle of blood running from his nose. There were no obvious injuries she could see, and a quick once over with her magesight confirmed that he was whole and intact. She felt a certain relief to feel his heart beating steadily in his chest.
But he wasn’t lying on the lawn anymore. Beneath him was a smooth expanse of polished wood floor. Karen’s eyes and magesight revealed
they were inside a room. Briefly she thought it must be her aunt’s house, but she recognized it a second later—it was the floor of her bedroom. Not the room she had stayed in back in Ipswich; it was her apartment in Boulder, Colorado.
She wanted to disbelieve it, but there was no mistaking the place. She had wanted to be there, and she could stil remember the feeling as she had made it happen. In the fantasy novels she had read, the main character was usualy disoriented when they discovered their hidden ability, but this hadn’t been like that. It had felt entirely natural. Though she had never done it before, or had any idea how to, when the need had arisen, it had been as easy as breathing.
Karen also had little doubt she could return to whence she had left, though she was far too tired to contemplate trying it again at the moment .
Nor had she any good reason to do so. The image of her aunt’s brutal murder rose again in her mind, and her heart clenched in her chest.
It felt as if she were dying herself, as intense pain radiated outward from her heart and stomach. There were stil no tears, but it hurt when she forced her chest to relax enough to draw air again. For a little while, she’d had family again. Roberta had been everything Karen had imagined and hoped she would be when she was growing up.
As a child, she had often dreamed of having a mother—a mother who cared, who loved her. Whenever she had lain in bed, sad and lonely
from her mother’s rejection, she had often imagined what it would be like if her aunt had been her mother instead. It had always been a childish fantasy, but the past week had shown her the truth behind it. In a few brief trips during her childhood and the past week and a half, she had known more love and concern from her aunt than she had ever received from her ‘true’ mother, if that term even had any meaning anymore.
Looking down at Matthew, she remembered the dragon’s death, and she felt selfish. How would he feel when he awoke? Was it the dragon’s
death that had rendered him unconscious? He had told her they shared some mystical bond, but she had no idea how it worked. He might never wake up, she feared.
Her room was a mess, and not just the casual disorder she felt comfortable with. Someone had ransacked it. Probably a lot of someones , she corrected herself. The mattress had been upended and slashed open. The drawers of her dresser and nightstand lay scattered around the room, their contents distributed al over the room. Expanding her magesight, she could see similar amounts of wanton chaos and destruction throughout the rest of her home.
Her next thought was an uncomfortable one; They probably left surveillance devices here too. How long before they came bursting through the door? At this point they might not even bother with soldiers. They don’t seem to care about civilian casualties. They might just nuke the whole damned city. Her virtual father’s warnings were stil fresh in her mind.
They needed to leave.
Pushing her senses to their limit, she confirmed that her pert was stil parked in its covered spot outside. Assuming they hadn’t taken anything from it, her camping gear should stil be inside. Taking the pert itself was a tempting option, but it was probably tagged with a tracking device; plus, moving Matthew al the way there by herself was
a daunting task.
Teleportation was a possibility, of course, but she stil felt drained; she wasn’t sure how many more times she could do it, and the thought of running out of aythar in an exposed position was not attractive. She studied Matthew once more. He positively glowed to her magesight. During their desperate battle, he had been drawing heavily on Desacus’s power, so much so that he had been almost painful to look at with her new senses. Despite the shock of whatever had knocked him out, he stil retained the energy he had drawn. Karen wished there were some way to
borrow that power, but she stil had too little experience to know if that was even possible.
“Stick to what’s important, Karen,” she told herself. Closing her eyes, she imagined her apartment as it had been before it was rummaged
through. She let her memory range from one room to the next, thinking of what had been there, what items she might recover that would be useful in the future.
“Toothpaste, soap, blankets—clothes! Definitely clothes!” She had been surviving on borrowed items for so long that the thought of her own clothing was like a drink of cool water on a hot day. “God, yes!”
Karen stood up and reclaimed her backpack. She went to her closet and began gathering her hanging clothes up from the floor where they had been dumped. Since time was precious, she just bundled everything into piles and stuffed it into the pack. Then she began grabbing her socks and underthings from the floor near the dresser and added them into it as wel.
Next, she stuffed her tumbled bedding and pilows in before going to the bathroom and raiding it of everything remotely useful. Makeup, why not? Face cleanser, sure! She raked everything from the top of the sink counter into the pack and then emptied her medicine cabinet into it as wel.
In the kitchen, she took every utensil she could find; forks, knives, spoons, bowls, and even a few pots and pans. She spotted the can opener on the floor. “Hel, yes!” she said, stuffing it in the bag. That reminded her of something even more important. Ignoring the refrigerator, she opened the pantry and began puling the canned goods off the shelves. Tuna, beans, soup—she even took the vegetables she had been ignoring for the past year or two.
“Oh, my god,” she exclaimed when she spotted a package of cookies. She added that along with the box of crackers and several boxes of
cereal. “I can’t take the milk,” she lamented, “but fuck it, I want my goddamned Crunchy Puffs.”
Once she was done there, she made another pass through the apartment. In the living room, she stared at the remote for her television. Of course, it would be completely useless to her, but with a perverse sense of spite she took it anyway. “If someone wants my TV, they can fuck off,”
she said aloud, though she couldn’t bring herself to smash the television itself.
Al that was left now was to reclaim her camping gear from the pert. Examining it once more with her magesight, she verified that her bags were stil in the storage compartment. They had probably been searched, but whoever had done it had been careful to restore everything to its original position. They probably thought I’d go to the pert first and didn’t want to tip me off, she figured.
Searching the area around the pert, she didn’t find any guards or suspicious androids in the open nearby, but there was an android in a vehicle two spots over from her own. It might have been a neighbor, if one of them had had any logical reason for sitting in his pert rather than going into his apartment. The rifle laying across its lap dispeled even that possibility.
“Fuck.”
She thought about the problem for a minute before holding her hand up in front of her. The way she had kiled the cybernetic soldiers at her aunt’s house had been far too inefficient. She didn’t know much about magic yet, but she knew there were better ways. What’s the best way to disable a robot?
Crackling sparks of electricity arced between her fingers. “Yeah, that’d do it.”
Afraid she would lose her nerve if she hesitated, she acted without thinking her plan over further. With a surge of wil, she teleported, placing herself beside the pert that held the stranger.
The android didn’t register her presence at first, so she tapped on the side window to get his attention, hoping he might open the window for her. His startled reaction and immediate grab for the rifle dismissed that optimistic vision.
“Dammit,” she swore. Wrapping her hand in what she hoped would be a solid bal of force, she drove it into the window. Years of martial arts training paid off, and the window shattered. Unfortunately, her experience with magic was more lacking. Her hand was unharmed, but a long piece of glass tore through her sleeve and gashed her forearm.
She ignored the pain and blood and before the android could move, she caught his head in her hand and sent a powerful arc of electricity
through it. Smoke rose from her hand, and the machine jerked, but almost immediately it began struggling to escape her.
Military androids are probably built with shielded electronics, she realized. Karen sent another powerful discharge through the soldier’s body. It jerked again and slumped in the seat, but within seconds it began to slowly move again. It was stunned but not defeated.
She discarded her tactic, since she needed to conserve her aythar. Instead she reached down and jerked the rifle out of its lap. Seconds
seemed to stretch into hours as she fumbled with the weapon, trying to find the safety and release it. The android was already clambering across the seat, trying to reach the door on the opposite side of the car, when the gun finaly went off.
The first burst of rounds went wide, tearing through the interior of the vehicle without hitting her target, but the folowing shots found their mark.
The butt of the rifle shuddered against her shoulder as she emptied most of the magazine into the android.
The silence that folowed was filed only with the pounding of her own heart as adrenaline and shock left her swaying on her feet. I really did it, she thought.
She was wasting time, but she couldn’t seem to force herself to rush. Repeated bouts of fear, adrenaline, and stress had left her numb and sluggish. Idly she noted the blood dripping from her right arm onto the pavement. I should probably do something about that.
Karen walked to her pert. It was locked, and without her PM it wouldn’t open automaticaly. With trembling fingers she keyed the door code
into it and got the storage compartment open. It felt like an eternity passed as she clumsily unloaded her camping gear and shoved it into her backpack. With every breath, she felt the place between her shoulders itching. There could be a sniper taking aim at her even now.
The tent was the worst. Due to its size, it barely fit through the opening of her pack even lengthwise, but eventualy she got it in.
She hadn’t been shot yet, but she sensed figures running from the other side of the building. Her time was up. Holding onto the pack, she
envisioned her bedroom once more; and with a rushing sensation, she was there.
The two teleports in rapid succession, combined with her brief fight in the parking lot, left her feeling even more fatigued. Wearily she sank to her knees beside Matthew, but she couldn’t afford to relax yet. They needed to go—but where?
She didn’t think she could afford to teleport more than one more time. Hell, I’m not even sure I have enough strength left to teleport now.
Someplace isolated would be best, like South America, or perhaps Canada—to her knowledge there were no people living in those places at al anymore. But she had never been to either.
The area she had originaly met Matthew in would have been ideal, if it weren’t for the fact that the military had already attacked them there. It was highly likely they would stil be observing the area, plus she had no idea whether they had bombed it or released other toxic agents in the region. It could even be a radioactive wasteland, now for al she knew.
Karen’s magesight spotted figures moving up the stairs outside. She puled Matthew’s head and upper torso onto
her lap and put her pack on
his chest. She had made her decision. Closing her eyes, she concentrated, and then put her wil into it.
Nothing happened. She felt something , as though she had tried to push against an invisible barrier, but her strength hadn’t been enough to break through. Is it because of the extra mass? she wondered, thinking of Matt. No, she had been able to move them both before. Maybe I’m just too tired.
“That’s just too damn bad!” she swore. “We have to go now.” She pushed again, straining against the inertia that seemed to be keeping them in place. No luck. “No, no, no…,” she muttered desperately. “This has to work!”
She heard the door to her living room burst open, folowed by a ‘ whoomph’ sound that was so loud she felt it as much as heard it. Smal holes
appeared in her bedroom wal as pieces of shrapnel tore through the sheetrock, and a sharp pain in her neck told her that at least one of the pieces had found her.
That wasn’t a flashbang, she thought with strange clarity. That must’ve been a regular grenade. With her magesight she saw heavy military assault units storming through the door.
A vibration rose in her throat as she began to growl. Grinding her teeth, she pushed again, putting everything she had into the effort. Again, she felt the resistance, as though she were trying to push a boulder uphil, but she refused to give up. Pressing harder, she heard a primal scream leave her throat. The barrier broke, and she felt a searing pain in her chest.
And then they were through.
Weak as a kitten, she colapsed backward, squinting her eyes against the harsh sunlight beating down on her face. Towering red cliffs stretched toward the sky above her, and a river made its way quietly between them, close to where she and Matthew lay.
Slowly, she puled and tugged until she had gotten her legs out from under Matthew. It would have been easier to sit up and move him, but she didn’t have the energy for it. When she was finaly free, she lay next to him, staring at his unconscious face.
“We made it,” she told him with satisfaction, patting his cheek with one hand. It left a wet red handprint on his face. “Oh, yeah, the glass—
