by P. S. Power
"You would think that, but no, this was, according the information I was told to give you, Baron Jeffery Mathews. The man we witnessed die over the ocean. Intact and whole, living in the South."
"Oh. So this grinning you're doing is because you're losing your mind right now? Because I think I am. Not that I missed the careful wording there. What you were told to tell me? He was dead. His head was all the way off. How did he come back, if he did? I don't buy it. It wasn't an illusion or... Is that even a thing that could have happened?"
Gwen knew the answer to that one too. It hit her hard enough she gasped and grabbed her head. Beth knew what it meant, and took a step back, watching closely.
"Dear? Is there something?"
Gasping, breathing hard, Gwen didn't answer for a long time. Even when she could breathe again, ten minutes or more later, she didn't say anything. How could she? There was nothing in what she'd gotten that was right. It had to be a mistake, or a trick of her own mind. Maybe Katherine pulling a trick?
Finally, sitting there shaking, Gwen turned to her oldest friend in this world, and swallowed hard.
"It's... Beth, what that was..." She paused, not wanting to say it. Even as her friend picked up the idea from her anyway.
That probably wasn't hard, given that she was screaming inside.
The woman in front of her touched her upper arm gently.
"The Elder Gods?"
Gwen nodded. It couldn't be true, but that was what she'd picked up. It was prescient, which meant a lot though. It wasn't a thing that had happened yet. Not even if Beth was claiming she had instructions to tell her that Baron Mathews had been there. In the world, alive, when he should have been doing nothing except feeding a few fish. She not only didn't believe that, but it felt wrong still. Like a trick
Worse, now she had to wonder if he was going to be coming back again. Or if anyone else was going to. Like Erin Debussey. If that was the case, she was screwed.
So was Beth. Really, her more than Gwen, when it came down to it. The woman had wanted to sacrifice Gwen. She freaking hated Bethany, and thought of her as her mortal enemy. It wasn't wrong, either.
"Damn. Well, I want backup. We need to get down there and check it out, but we should... Fuck it, we need to bring everyone we can, if this is connected to the Elder Gods. Though honestly, that isn't what I got here. This seems like nothing much. Something being pulled to get me out of the way. The prescience was real though. What resources do we have for this?" Gwen figured that everyone, ever, would be in on it, since even random street kids freaking hated Debussey and her cronies now. No one sane, and most of the insane could be added to the list, wanted the ancient beings from beyond the void to be released.
What Beth said then shocked her to the core though.
"No one. As it stands this took place in Barony Tier. Baron Mathews' second home. The king could order us in, but the fact here is that even I can't go otherwise. Not unless his heirs invite me. You can go in however, of course. As Gwen Farris, no one can turn you away. It's one of the ways in which you're more valuable than I am."
She had to think about it for a minute, and nearly missed a few points along the way.
"Because I'm not a Westmorland? I'm Special Service though, isn't that a problem?"
Beth nodded, her face firm.
"If you were on duty, then yes. I've arranged, meaning Adam set it up for me, to take a vacation for several weeks. I still can't go in without an invitation. Not in an official capacity, or to break a law. Open travel is a right, however, even for a Westmorland. In this Kingdom anyway. So, I can lounge and assist you, in any way not directly related to an investigation, or direct law breaking. Even there, we might manage to get away with some minor things, if we're careful. You didn't hear that from me however."
She stopped breathing for a moment, and then let her head come up.
"I... See. Fine then. I'll handle the transportation portion of things? You don't mind working do you? I have some friends that work on an airship. We could teletransport, but..." She tried to imagine doing that, and knew she could, if it came down to it.
Yes, she'd pay for it, in pain, but that was just a thing to her now. As long as it was a choice, and not too bad, which it wouldn't be.
Beth smiled at her then.
"Exactly the plan. The airship travel, that is. For one thing we do want to keep you busy and away from here. If not for that, I don't think we'd have even been notified of this. Other teams can investigate this one as well as we might. Adam said that, and he isn't wrong. I love you like a sister, Gwen, but your knowledge of this world is far from complete. There are things that you simply don't know, which can lead to problems. You didn't even know who the Men in Black were. On the good side, that rather means you didn't hire them, not that it was ever in doubt. How can you be expected to notice things like that however? How do you know if you don't know something?"
It was a point, though not one she wanted to focus on. The simple fact was that the longer Gwen was there, in her new world, the more obvious it became to her that she just didn't know squat.
"Adam does love me. Really, I'm almost surprised he didn't ask me to marry him instead of getting hitched to Christophe. I take it that's just about the whole thing where he's a Duke?" Gwen knew she was being a snotty little brat about it all, but she wasn't wrong about how Adam felt either.
The man would have killed her, if he thought he could get away with it. Maybe. She wasn't totally certain of that part. Then the opposite was just as possible.
Beth waved the snark away, her face looking pleasant suddenly, if worried at the edges. That would be down to whatever the plot against Gwen was.
"It's a lot less than ideal, going in this way. This will let us get close, just in case she's back, too. If this is... You know, from over there, then we need to be on top of it as soon as possible. It's probably nothing. I'll admit that part. Can we afford to take the chance though?"
Gwen nodded, because it wasn't wrong to think that.
Really, they needed to get onto it all as fast as humanly possible. Doing anything else was stupid.
"Right. Um, let me go, and get a bag set up? Could you start calling the airfield? Uncle Thomas would be a good person to connect with on the issue." He was the fleet admiral of the Vernor industries shipping line. It made sense to get him in on it. Plus, he hated Debussey as much as anyone did.
Bethany seemed a bit too pleased about the whole thing. Smug, nearly, which was out of character for her.
"Good plan. I'll do that. Don't you have a bag ready to go? That's surprising. You normally do."
Gwen shrugged, and lied, holding her mind as still as possible, since Beth might have been reading her, just to make certain she wasn't going to freak out. It was clear to her that the whole Baron thing was meant to keep her off her game, mentally. It was working too. The hit from the future about the Elder Gods...
It was different, but not clear enough to let her understand it. Somehow what she was doing was related to a giant problem, coming from the future.
"I unpacked it about a week ago, to do a gear check, and have everything laundered. Perfect timing, right? Here I figured I was being clever, since I knew I wasn't planning to go anywhere for a while." There had been training going on, and while it hadn't been what she'd actually done, it sounded about right to her.
She started toward the stairs up to her room, moving at a trot. She was a bit sore from the running earlier, but it wasn't too bad. An ache in her left knee, that was all.
At the top of the stairs, after checking behind herself to make sure no one was watching, Gwen stopped dead in her tracks. After all, if things were as serious as she feared, then Gwen kind of needed to be right on top of things, and not walk into them slowly, from a quarter of the way across the world.
So, focusing like she'd been taught, under pain of torture, Gwen tried to find the face of the man she was looking for. It wasn't hard, since the kindly old face and light blue eyes w
ere pretty much burned into place. When a person stabbed you in the heart, it made them memorable. Even more so when you had them beheaded later. If he were still alive, then all those dreams of his ghost coming to ask her forgiveness were a bit out of place.
After that image was well fixed in place, she moved, through space, the information that made up her very being traveling to where the man was.
Meaning she was falling from about twenty feet up, and taken by surprise as she splashed into the cold, and salty, water below.
Chapter seven
Salt water burned horribly when it rammed up your nose, Gwen discovered. Her first impulse was to take a big breath, but that didn't happen. Thankfully, even though she didn't know why, she locked her lungs down, holding her breath. It kept her alive, as she flailed, not even splashing, since the liquid death covered her fully.
Panic spread through her as she slowly bobbed back toward the surface. At least she hoped that was the case. The truth was she couldn't tell which direction was up anymore. If that wasn't happening, she was going to die soon. The truth ripped through her mind, leaving her feeling stupid.
'You can't swim? That's unexpected. I thought you could do anything physical.' Katherine didn't sound snotty about it this time, or even like she was laughing at her. The words were eerily calm and focused, compared to what Gwen could manage at the moment.
Then her arms and legs started moving, swimming, like what Gwen had seen people doing on television. She didn't know what kind of stroke it was, but a few moments later her head went above the surface, and Kat, in control of the body, took a breath.
Gasping, a single word came from her own lips.
"Fly." It took a couple of repetitions for the meaning to get through to her.
Rolling her eyes, or trying to, Gwen imagined a game controller being held in her right hand. She had to pump magic into the action, and generate the right instructions to allow herself to do it, but as soon as she pushed the mental button on the black mental device she rose into the air. It was chilly, but not the ocean below, which was a lot better.
Gwen glanced down at the slightly green waves of the Atlantic. She knew what it meant. There was a Baron down there, somewhere. Just about where she'd left him, give or take a few hundred miles. It wasn't going to be literally true, given how long it had been, but that was, magically speaking, about the right idea.
"There. Now, can you get us back from here?" The slightly British words sounded much more relaxed than Gwen felt at the moment, so she took a moment to collect herself.
Just hovering, trying to get back to her normal, non-dying, self, Gwen gasped for a while. It was just fear though. Kat had gotten them to air fast enough.
"Why the fuck are we here? This is..." She looked around, but they were just over the water. It was mainly green, the waves just below her feet filled with algae. It was what a healthy ocean looked like, she didn't doubt.
The scent of life, salt, and rot also hovered around her. A slight breeze cooled Gwen as she floated in the air, her dress dripping, being heavy and soaked all the way to her skin. It wasn't pleasant.
"I guess it's about where we dumped Baron Mathew's body. It's hard to tell, it just looks like the ocean to me. But if that guy in the South is him, or even just looks like him, I should have gone there, right?"
There was no instant answer from Katherine. Then, she wasn't exactly a rocket scientist, it might take her a moment or two to figure things out at times. She could swim though, which was lucky. Otherwise Gwen probably would have died just about then. Shaking her head, she realized, now, that she could have just flown out of the water. Maybe even in the water, if it ever came up again. Drowning didn't have to be a thing for her.
After a while she spoke again, Katherine sounding chilly, but not freaked out.
"I don't know why. In truth, it makes no sense. I've seen enough of the way those monsters trained you to know that you should have gone to him, if it was him. Perhaps he's a look alike? A different person taking the place of the man, to gain riches, or even to draw in you and Bethany? Or..." There was a pause then, as the arms crossed, trying to hold in warmth. "It might be the Westmorlands just trying to get you out of the way. I could see them doing that right now. I know that I'm shocked that you haven't gone on a killing spree yet, over this thing with the butler, and his pervert man friend."
Gwen wished she had a mirror, so she could glare at the girl.
"What the fuck? Isn't that a bit rich, you calling them perverts?"
"What? I don't mean anything by it. It's what they're called. How do your people refer to such individuals?"
Gwen shrugged, and flew upward a bit, so that they were about fifty feet above the waves.
"Gay. Homosexual. Things like that. Married, if they lived in the right state."
"Gay? That sounds pleasant. I do like that better than some of the other things such people are called. Happy and light sounding, isn't it? My point though is that your friends might be trying to remove you from the hard situation here. That's as good a guess as anything. You fly off down to the Southern Sector, only to find that this man isn't who you were told. They claim some messages got confused, and before you know it, a month has passed. Or it could be the Elder Gods, making good on what Erin told me they would, but if that's the case we should throw in with her spirit, don't you think?"
She really didn't think that. Even if that was actually happening, there was no way they could win, playing games with those creatures. She was about to mention that when Kat shivered.
"I don't suppose we could go home now?"
Gwen shook her head, surprised when it moved. It was like they were sharing control at the moment.
"Nope. I'm going to go and see a man about a body. This isn't Baron Mathews and claiming that it even might be is too much. I think I'll ask him a few questions about it." Ask Adam Westmorland, to be exact. The man was either setting her up, of would have more information about the whole thing. Possibly both.
"Why? If he's lying to you, then he'll just keep doing it. Are you going to beat the truth from him? He's a Westmorland, so I doubt that would work. If he isn't telling you what he thinks is real. I know you think he dislikes you, but he hasn't acted against you as far as I know. True, he hasn't clapped and hurrahed your name at every turn either, but you need that, just to keep you humble. Should you go and push him, just because things are different than you thought they were?"
Her lips moved, and this time it wasn't Katherine saying the reasonable words. She was just talking to herself. Like a crazy person. Now she just needed to get a couple dozen pet cats and she'd be set. Gwen had always kind of wanted a pet of some kind to love. She'd just never felt like she could keep them safe. Given everything, she still didn't.
She didn't want to imagine what the minions of the Elder Gods would do to Mr. Fluffikins.
Going directly home, and changing out of her wet clothing suddenly seemed like a great idea. After all, being paranoid wasn't going to help anything. Even Katherine had kind of mentioned that the worst her friends were probably doing was trying to make sure she didn't get weird, and simply kill someone when it wasn't needed.
"What were they going to do though, to help out Charles and Will? Bribe someone?" She spoke, lofting slightly higher upward, but not going too high yet, knowing Kate didn't like that kind of thing.
Katherine laughed out loud.
"It is a time honored tradition. Now, if you don't mind, magic us homeward? Go. Get us back... Go on. Home girl, and don't spare the engines!"
It was a bit of a problem though, given where they were. Gwen could teletransport, and it didn't take her long to manage, but she didn't think she could do it while putting most of her power into staying in the air like she was. While it was possible that she could do it from in the water, she could also drown trying. Looking at the green waves below she shuddered a little. That idea was about the worst possible thing. Breathing had always been enough of an issue for her, before, th
at she kind of feared not being able to, now.
There were other rules to the whole thing as well. But it wasn't a huge thing. She just went up as high as she could, which was about a thousand feet, and got ready, ignoring the gibbering terror from inside herself. That was Katherine. She was well and fully afraid of heights. Gwen had no problem that way, in particular.
That was good, since she had to move herself across the world while they fell, traveling from where they were, over the Atlantic, to about the same level up in the air, over Park Street. Then it was just a matter of flying again, catching herself with her mind, and floating to the ground in the back yard. Honestly, it was kind of fun. Teletransport was more useful, but flying just kicked ass. It was freedom.
No one noticed, since she made a point of coming down on the jogging trail, behind the thick tree line, but on the dirt path.
From there, once firmly on the ground and steady, she moved back to her room, since her body was still that way. The bathing chamber, actually, since she was still very damp. Cold, too.
What she needed to do was catch a quick shower to get the salt and sea scent off, without looking like a paranoid goof in front of everyone else. She felt both stupid, and like someone was trying to screw with her.
Someone named Adam, forcing her friend Beth to help him, she didn't doubt.
Twenty minutes later she came out of her room, carrying a full bag, a military style duffle that Charles had gotten her about a year before. Ten months, she thought. Moving at a brisk pace, she went to find Bethany. Her buddy was sitting in the front room, a packed bag with her. She smiled as soon as Gwen set her sack down.
Being a scamp, or trying her best to manage it, Gwen winked.
"There you are. I was just about to think about going to find you." She grinned about it though, as if they weren't on a time schedule.
Which they weren't, as it turned out.
"Admiral Welk is working out transportation for us. He has a ship loading in the morning, The Falcon? We'll have to travel to the port they're at however. It's currently in the airfield at Lexington. I took the liberty of calling James, to take us to the airfield here first, where we can get a ride in a few hours on The Wren." She looked blank, as if trying very hard not to point out how convoluted that really was.
