*La! I look forward to the battle.*
I frowned. I know I’m going to regret this, but why, exactly?
*Because fighting always seems to get your lady rather … excited.*
I sighed. Thanks for not disappointing me there, Aly.
* * *
A Gedai knight was waiting for us when we arrived back at Merlin’s trailer.
He stood leaning against an old Volkswagen Rabbit, wearing a black duster and Aussie-style cowboy hat, reading a comic book in the morning sun.
Merlin gave an introductory wave of his hand and said, “This is Jay. He’s the only knight who lives close by.”
Jay grunted without looking up from his comic. “Don’t go pumping me up too much now, Merl.”
I stepped up beside Merlin. “Uh, hello, Jay. Thanks for helping us out.”
“It’s just J,” he replied, still not looking up. “No a or y.”
“How can you tell the difference?” I asked. “Don’t they sound the same?”
He looked up at me with one eyebrow arched, then looked at Merlin. “So what’s the deal? Some punks planning a party around the stones again?”
“No,” Merlin said. “It’s a bit more serious than that. Some, uh, cultists are planning some dangerous rites. They may even be the real deal.”
J lowered the comic and raised both eyebrows. “Well well, seems like it’s a g’day to be in the Order.”
Merlin sighed. “I appreciate your tenacity, but we are not changing the official pronunciation to G’Day Knights.”
J harrumphed sharply through his nose, and said, “It’s better than sounding like we’re a bunch of Star Wars fanboys and girls. And when they make movies about how we broke wide the whole magic thing—”
Merlin put a hand on J’s shoulder. “I tell you this as your friend, J: give it up. This isn’t one of your lawsuits.”
“Lawsuits?” Sammy said, looking up from her phone. “You’re not the druid who tried to sue Marvel Comics for portraying Doctor Strange as a fictional character, are you?”
J’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right.”
“Wait,” I said to Sammy. “He what?”
J tossed the comic into his car, making me wince at the poor treatment of a sacred text, and said, “There’s more than one way to fight the powers that hide the magical world with their lies and illusions.”
“Sure,” Sammy replied. “But you filed, what, two thousand lawsuits last year? Against everyone and everything. Julian Assange, Paul the Octopus, the Clash of the Titans remake, even the Old Spice guy I think, right? How exactly is that fighting the powers?”
“It isn’t,” Merlin said.
J ignored him, and said, “The conspiracy to hide the magical world is as wide as it is deep. Assange withheld any leaked files on the government’s Magical Investigations squad. The ‘octopus’ clearly had predictive powers, was probably even a mer-creature of some kind, but then suddenly dies of ‘natural causes’? Right. And the Titans remake was just so people wouldn’t watch the original and find the clues hidden within it about the truth of magic.”
I frowned. “I’ve seen the original a hundred times, and I didn’t notice any clues.”
J gave a dismissive snort. “It takes a trained eye familiar with the world of magic to spot them. And how else can you explain such a crappy remake when the original was so perfect?”
“I haven’t seen the remake yet,” I said.
“Smart man,” J replied.
“Yeah,” Sammy said in her trademark deadpan. “And magnets, how do they work?”
J glowered at Sammy, but Dawn said, “And the Old Spice guy?”
J blushed. “He’s clearly some kind of siren or succubus, out to make it harder for human men to get girlfriends.”
“Uh—” Dawn began, then obviously thought better than to try and come up with a response.
Merlin moved beside J and put a massive hand on his shoulder. “J is a good man, and a good fighter. He can help.”
“Damn straight,” J said, sweeping open his duster to reveal what looked like Boy Scout Batman’s utility belt covered in pouches, canisters, and at least one Taser.
He also wore a collection of necklaces that would have made Mr. T jealous, each holding an amulet of some kind. I spotted silver mirrors, crosses, a David’s star, even an Eye of Agamotto.
Held in cloth loops inside the jacket itself hung two silver sais, the three-pronged weapons flashing in the sunlight.
“Right,” I said. “Okay. So what’s our plan?”
“First, we eat,” Merlin said. “Then, we rest.”
“And then?” J asked, clearly not thrilled at the first two.
“Then,” I said, “we save the world.”
* * *
I held on for dear life as Dawn careened down the road in her wood-paneled station wagon. We crashed through two wooden sawhorses with closed to public signs that the Arcanites must have placed on the road, the broken boards clattering behind us on the pavement.
Unfortunately, there was no good way to sneak up on Maryhill Stonehenge, especially with the sun still floating above the distant line of hills. The monument sat on an open plateau, with low hills on one side and a slope dropping off on the other, both entirely lacking in thick forest or secret tunnels or anything actually useful in a sneak attack. And the road that led to the monument’s parking lot was certain to be watched and guarded. Which meant daylight or not, we would be spotted well before reaching the monument.
So Dawn simply drove as fast as she could to make us a difficult target.
And a target is exactly what we wanted to be. So we towed some pans and cans on a rope to make a nice, loud, clattering cacophony.
Because there was a road that ran below the monument as well. Merlin, J, and Sammy were in theory marching up that right now. They, too, would be easily spotted, unless everyone’s attention was elsewhere, like on a crazed couple barreling at the monument in a station wagon making one hell of a racket.
It was vital the others not be detected. Apparently, Sam Hill had requested his public grave be down-slope of the monument, with a gravestone of his own design that, Merlin insisted, had some connection to the monument via the ley lines. Though the ARC had replaced Hill’s original gravestone with one of their design, Merlin still felt confident he could use it to shut down whatever portal or other magics the Arcanites attempted with the monument.
Merlin would not be happy to know our own plan—smash into the monoliths and damage as many as we could in hopes of disrupting the ability to easily create a portal. There would be hell to pay afterwards with both the ARC and the mundy authorities—and I would feel as guilty as hell about damaging a public monument to peace—but that was a problem for tomorrow. With luck, the ARC would cover it up and repair the damage.
J believed Merlin was simply there to help ferry away any hostages they rescued. He thought he was going to be doing the bulk of the work, protecting Sammy as she freed Fatima, while Dawn and I would hopefully distract the Arcanites long enough for them to get away.
I had tried multiple times to get Dawn to join Merlin’s team, arguably to protect him, but really to protect her. She had of course refused.
It was all a terrible plan. My inner gamer craved some clever, multilayered plan involving feints and fake-outs and flanking, and maybe some other f-words besides fatalities.
What we had instead was a deranged druid, a paranoid mundy knight, and a rattling Dodge Colt.
We turned off the paved road onto the gravel drive of the monument’s parking lot, skidding around a small maintenance building. The sky grew fiery orange over Stonehenge as the stones came into view, the surrounding landscape growing golden in the last light of the day.
Stonehenge looked much as you would expect it to, except fully intact and clean-edged, a circle of upright gray monoliths supporting lintel stones, with additional free-standing monoliths and a stone altar inside the ring.
But blocking our way to the m
onument stood an imposing figure in the kind of fitted black suit favored by the FBI, Mormon missionaries, and Hollywood hipsters. I saw the eye-bending swirl of darkness around his throat, like a band of interstellar space torn from the sky and made into a dickey—an enforcer wizard with a tattoo primed and ready.
White flickering energy began to dance around the man’s outstretched hand.
“Lights!” I shouted.
Dawn threw on her high beams.
The enforcer threw up one hand to shield his eyes and turned slightly away, and the lightning bolt that leaped from the other hand narrowly missed our car.
“Hit him!” I said, blinking against the after-image of the lightning bolt.
“I know!” Dawn replied, her irritated tone failing to mask the edge of panic beneath. She must have floored the gas pedal, because the engine revved and the car leaped forward, plowing into the enforcer.
There was a neon blue flash of light around the enforcer like an awesome 80s music video effect as he bounced off the front of our car and went spinning off to the side, tumbling into the dirt and gravel.
“I’m so going to jail,” Dawn said.
“He’ll survive,” I replied as we fishtailed then continued speeding toward the circle of concrete monoliths. Enforcer uniforms were enchanted to protect against physical and magical strikes. Suits by Armorni. I just hoped the force of a driving car was enough to leave him stunned for a bit at least. “He won’t be reporting this to the police, trust me.”
The sun touched the hills to the west, spreading like liquid fire along their tops, spilling along the brown rolling landscape and reflecting sharply off the rearview mirror into my eyes.
“Damn it.” The Arcanites would open the portal at any moment.
Another enforcer stood guard in front of the monument, a neckless barrel of a guy who looked like a grim Fred Flintstone stuffed into a suit. Beyond the upright monoliths I could see movement, a group of people gathered within the central altar area. They began to scramble back as we careened toward them.
Dread Flintstone raised his hand, the stellar darkness of wizard ink sworling up around where his neck should have been.
“Dawn—”
“I see him, damn it!” She leaned slightly forward, her elbows splayed and hands twisting on the steering wheel as if trying to push the car into just a bit more speed.
The hairs on my arm stood straight up a second before lightning leaped from the enforcer’s hand and flew at us. Dawn tried to swerve to avoid it, but the forks of dancing light struck the car squarely.
I squeezed my eyes closed against the blinding light. The radio squealed, and my hair danced around my head as if in a wind. My butt cheeks twitched as Alynon’s Fey tattoo stirred at the presence of arcana energy being directed toward me. Dawn cried out and I peeked over as she jerked her hands off of the steering wheel, shuddering, but neither of us burst into flames or began smoking. The lightning faded, flickering away over and around the car and into the ground.
“Woo hoo!” Dawn shouted.
The engine died as we skidded sideways through the gravel and came to a stop. We’d missed the enforcer and the monument entirely. Damn it.
The enforcer began marching cautiously toward us, approaching from Dawn’s side of the car.
Dawn turned the key, but the engine didn’t respond. She looked from the enforcer to me.
We were somewhat protected from lightning in the car, but there were a lot of other ways the enforcer could kill us.
“Come on!” I said, and opened my door on the far side of the car from the enforcer. Better to have some maneuvering room, and at least some hope of fighting back.
I scrambled out of the car, and Dawn scooted across the seat and followed me out, then paused to grab her guitar case out of the back.
“Dawn!” I shouted at her.
“I’m not leaving Cotten! What if the car blows up?”
I decided it would be foolish to argue further with her. She would, as always, do whatever she wanted anyway. And if the car did blow up, I wasn’t going to be held responsible for Cotten’s destruction.
The enforcer had nearly reached the car by the time we’d both climbed out onto the gravel. And a second enforcer had emerged from the stone circle and marched toward us as well.
Great.
The sky turned that eye-bending gray-blue of twilight. As I fumbled to pull out both my Taser and baton at the same time, I felt a hum, a keening barely on the edge of my normal senses, similar to what I sometimes felt when I walked into a room with an old television set on.
The portal had opened. We were out of time.
16
THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE
The Flintstone enforcer marched at us around the smoking obstacle of Dawn’s car. The paint of the old Dodge wagon was scorched black in spots, and the vinyl wood paneling had bubbled and melted. I owed Dawn big time. Again.
Hopefully Rattley Wood would be the only victim today.
Dawn had her Taser out, but looked a little shaky. I whipped the baton into full extension, and it lit up with a phosphorescent blue glow.
*Dorks are near!* Alynon said.
Not the time, I replied.
I handed Dawn my Taser, and pulled out the wand taken from the arcade sorcerer.
“I’ll distract the nearest one,” I said. “Aim for their heads.”
If we could come at the enforcer from two directions, then we might have a shot.
Dread Flintstone made a whipping motion, and his own baton extended, lighting up. I motioned for Dawn to wait and stay low as I straightened, and marched defiantly around the back of the car. Flintstone followed my movement, and the second enforcer changed his trajectory to back up his partner. I felt pretty certain Grandfather had told them all about me and Dawn, and they would consider a necromancer who’d battled a jorõgumo a greater threat than a woman without magic.
They’d obviously never seen Dawn pissed off.
I squared off against the Bedrock Bouncer, and raised the wand. “I’m going to assume you guys know you’re working for Gavriel Gramaraye, Arcanite asshole and wannabe Bond villain?”
To his credit, the enforcer didn’t engage in pointless banter. He just raised his hand and shouted something.
Are you sure about this? I thought.
A lightning bolt leaped at my head.
*Hold fast!*
My butt cheeks twitched, and a ghostly shape like Pac-Man with a tribal tattoo appeared floating in front of me, mouth open.
The Pac-Man shield swallowed the lightning, and transformed the energy. I felt it coursing into me, overloading my senses. I swung my baton like a second wand, pointing it at the enforcer, and the energy channeled out along my arm to spew in a stream of purple-tinged darkness at the enforcer.
The enforcer scrambled back, throwing up his arms in a cross before him and shouting something.
The blackness struck the enforcer, and his suit began to melt right off of him like body paint in a rainstorm.
“Now!” I shouted.
Dawn stood up from behind her car, and fired her Taser at the enforcer. The darts glinted in the black-light glow of twilight as they sped through the air, thin silvery lines uncoiling behind them, and punched into the enforcer’s now unprotected flesh.
The thick-bodied enforcer fell to the ground, spasming, and a song from The Flintstones ran through my head, “Twitch, twitch,” I said.
The second enforcer paused just beyond his partner, looking more cautious and less cocky now. I pointed the real wand at him, and shouted, “Dormio!”
A globe of light shot from the wand like a photon torpedo. The magical missile hit the enforcer’s suit, and burst into fragments and sparks that floated harmlessly down to the gravel.
Smeg.
The enforcer regained his aggressive demeanor. New black lines sworled up around his throat, and he shouted something. Nothing obvious happened, except he appeared to drop slightly into the gravel as if landing from a jum
p.
Dawn came around the front of her car, guitar case in one hand and the second Taser now in the other, and fired the Taser at the enforcer’s head.
One of the silver darts struck him in the neck—and bounced off with a flash of sparks as if ricocheting off of stone.
“He increased his density!” I told Dawn. “Stay back.” He wouldn’t be able to maintain it for long—it wreaked havoc on the body’s organs and systems. And he would be slow and inflexible. At least, that’s what I assumed based on my reading of comics—general arcana training was purposefully vague on the weaknesses of enforcer magics for obvious reasons.
I raced to meet Dawn on the far side of her car, placing its smoking bulk between us and the heavy hitter.
He must have felt confident that I couldn’t strike him from a distance, not without him first firing at me. He would expect me to close in, to try to use my necromancy or the baton. And if I did, he’d Hulk Smash me.
“What now?” Dawn asked, looking down at the expended Tasers in her hand and holster. They could still be used as contact Tasers, but it would be suicide for either of us to get within striking distance of the enforcer now.
“We run for Stonehenge,” I said in a low voice as we moved slowly toward the front of the car, matching the enforcer’s pace toward the rear, keeping maximum distance. “He won’t risk damaging the stones, and they’ll give us—”
The enforcer kicked at Dawn’s car, and the tail end swung around, the rear tires sending up a cloud of dust. Dawn managed to scramble out of the way, but the station wagon caught me square on the hip, sending me skidding across the gravel. The small sharp stones bit into my palms, elbows, and side as I ground to a halt, coughing and blinking against the dust.
The enforcer took ponderous steps toward me, each stomp sending shivers through the earth.
“Run!” I shouted at Dawn, and struggled to regain my feet before the enforcer reached me.
And of course, Dawn ignored me.
“Hey! Density’s Child!” she shouted.
The enforcer glanced at Dawn—and got a stream of pepper spray in the eyes.
Smells Like Finn Spirit Page 16
