Relic: Shield

by Ben Zackheim

  “I was exhausted,” I lied. I hated lying to her. I never lied to her. It was our agreement. No lies. Ever. But I felt her slipping away. I could feel an anger that I had no defense against. She was right. But if I said that, she’d leave.

  If I didn’t say that, she’d leave.

  So I did the one thing I should never do when I feel trapped.

  I argued right back.

  “I can take care of myself,” I said. “I don’t need a supervisor. I’m not going to let a bloodsucker get to me.” My heart clenched after I said that, as if I’d betrayed Tabitha.

  That just made me mad.

  “Yeah, see?” she said. “She’s got you. It’s all over your face, Kane.”

  “Why are you lecturing me on this shit? You’re the one sucking face in the Metropolitan Museum with Sir fucking Lancelot.”

  “So what? You had fun with the queen and I had fun with the knight.”

  “I was your date!”

  “You’re my partner!”

  She caught herself and took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know what this bond is that I have with him. I hate Vampires. The museum thing was… something to do. Just for fun. But you and Tabitha have something else going on.” She hesitated. Like she wanted to think through her thoughts before she gave them words. Finally, she said, “We need to break that bond, fast.”

  “We’ve known each other most of our lives, Rebel,” I said. “You know you can trust me.”

  She stood up and and made sure our eyes met even when I tried to look away.

  “I know I can trust you,” she said before she walked down the steps. She put just enough emphasis on the “you” to make it clear that she thought I was vulnerable. She thought I was compromised.

  She thought I was Tabitha’s.

  Chapter 28

  I tried to put it out of my head.

  She was full of shit. Rebel was just as vulnerable to Fox’s charms as I was to Tabitha’s. Sure, his blood didn’t flow through her veins, but she flirted with the idea of getting to know him better.

  My ears burned and I realized I’d somehow entered the garage. I had no idea how I’d gotten there, though. I must have stormed down the stairs, lost in the heat of an argument still ringing in my head.

  Rebel wasn’t the one who should feel betrayed, I thought. I was the one who had to deal with a partner who jumped to conclusions.

  It was going to be a long drive to Santa Fe.

  I took a deep breath and looked around at my vehicle choices.

  It was an impressive line-up. Worthy of an international espionage operation with supernatural conditions.

  Spirit had saved enough countries from falling into ruin that they’d received a bunch of gifts from leaders and business people around the world. It had become a tradition for each country that built cars to send us the cream of the crop. The poor things usually just sat in the garage in the Rocky Mountains, tended to by a troll whose passion for planes was only outweighed by his passion for cars. He had a demon accomplice who would have been the boss of the shop if the troll didn’t keep him in his place.

  “Doug! How are you?” I asked the demon.

  “Fucking Tony is a pain in my ass but I can’t complain,” the little demon said.

  “Kane!” a booming troll voice rolled through me with the impact of an ocean wave. I found my feet and tried to smile at the humongous, obnoxious motherfucker. “Which of my ladies will you be wrecking next, you asshole?”

  “Such a mouth on you,” Rebel said, punching him in the nuts, as is custom when greeting a troll.

  Dino would have been jealous.

  Tony doubled over. He took fast, short breaths and passed out at our feet.

  “What the hell, Rebel?” I asked. “Did you use your nails?

  “No, I swear I…” The troll started to come to.

  With a big grin on his face.

  “Good one, Rebel,” he growled while sitting up.

  “You passed out, dude,” she said, helping him stand.

  “Yeah, I breathed fast to hyperventilate. Makes it feel amazing but it’s also easy to faint.”

  “You’re a fucking sicko,” she said, shoving him away and wiping her hands on her jeans.

  “So nice of you to say! So what’s it going to be? Snowy out there. I recommend a Subaru.” He winked at me.

  “Don’t think so, troll. Let’s get a set of mud grabbers on the Land Rover and see how she handles.”

  “I can tell you how she handles,” Tony said. “Like Rebel in a bad mood.”

  Doug the demon waddled up and shoved the troll in the shin. “Take that back, Tony!” Doug had a crush on Rebel and made a hobby out of defending her honor.

  The troll kicked Doug across the loading bay. I flinched at the sound he made when he slammed into the cargo crates. Tony laughed, glanced at me and sighed.

  “Fine,” he said. “Hold on.”

  He lumbered off to the wall of keys, flicked a set off and swung it on his long, sharp claws. He flung it at me and I grabbed it. Hurt like hell, but I didn’t flinch.

  “You okay, Doug?” I called out. My voice echoed in the huge space. The small demon waved and rubbed his head. Poor guy. Cursed with a love of cars that stuck him with a troll. I figured it was some kind of punishment from his daddy.

  I slipped into the driver’s seat and revved the engine until Tony told me to cut the shit. For a moment, I forgot that I was pissed at my partner and about to set out on a roadtrip through Hell.

  Rebel got in the passenger seat. She looked straight ahead and didn’t say a thing.

  Tony opened the garage door, which was more like a hangar door, and the sun flooded us. Once my eyes adjusted I slammed on the gas and left the troll and demon in a cloud of rubber mist.

  Rebel and I drove down the secret road in silence. Neither one of us would be the one to try and patch things up. I got the sense that she didn’t think there was anything to talk about until I got Tabitha out of my system. Literally and figuratively, I guess.

  We pulled into the gas station where we’d left Fox with a very nervous attendant. The Vampire was locked in the bathroom. We’d rented it for a few hours so Fox would be safe from a sunburn.

  I opened the large umbrella. The attendant snatched the cash from my hand, fumbled with the keys, tore off the “Out of Order” sign on the bathroom door and opened it.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” Fox said.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said.

  “Dead Kane Arkwrights can’t be annoying,” he said.

  “You’d find out different if you killed me.”

  I thought that was funny. When I was younger I thought it would be fun to be a ghost and go haunt all those people I despised.

  That was before I had several run-ins with ghosts.

  I escorted Fox to the Land Rover. He’d be safe behind the tinted window and under a sheet. He slid into the back seat.

  He buckled up.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You’re using a seat belt?”

  He glanced down at the belt and then at me. “Yeah? So?”

  “I don’t know, man. Just never thought Vampires used seat belts.”

  “Not sure which Vampires you’ve been hanging out with but I don’t like flying through windshields for a hobby.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said.

  “You ready?” I asked Rebel.

  “No.”

  Yeah. It was going to be a fun ride.

  Chapter 29

  We were two hours out of Santa Fe on Highway 84 when things went nuts.

  After some stupid small talk about trolls we’d known and hated, the conversation died down to nothing for hours. Rebel practiced the spell she’d been given. She muttered to herself a lot, cursing even more than usual.

  I had driving duties so I got to listen to my music. But by the four hundredth song on my “Music To Fight To” playlist, Rebel was about to push me into the backseat
and take over.

  Or push me out the door.

  I could tell that she was trying to keep things civil, but the tension could be cut with a knife.

  Somewhere in the middle of the trip, I pondered all the things that could go wrong on this mission, most of which were borderline apocalyptic. I assumed Fox and Rebel were in the same frame of mind. But when I took a minute to look around the SUV, I realized there was another kind of tension in the air. Fox stared at the back of Rebel’s head until she turned to look at him with a wooden smile. She sat facing forward but with 100% of her attention on the Vampire behind her.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a road trip with two people who have some shit to get off their chest, but it’s about as fun as barfing.

  Having three people with something to get off their chests is like barfing on a fan.

  “You never finished your story about meeting Baldr,” I said to Fox. He blinked and crawled out of his deep thoughts.

  “Hm? Oh, yeah. So we, uh, we were in Iceland. Well, what we call Iceland now. It was known as Thule back then by many people. Baldr told me he was a seaman who saw me go under. I didn’t believe him. There was something different about him. Arthur’s subjects would act a certain way around me. Deferential. My reputation was a mask I wore. It made people act stupid around me. Baldr had the same effect on me. I didn’t know anything about him, but I could tell he was no seaman. The more I studied the grail, the more convinced I was that he’d handed me the cup of Christ. I didn’t know what to do with it. Years of searching. Years of dreaming of the moment when I’d hold the treasure in my hand and take it to my king to earn his eternal gratitude and love. And there it was. In my bag.”

  “Did you drink from it?” I asked. I glanced over at Rebel who was slouched in the front seat, an unreadable expression on her face.

  “That has a long answer,” he said.

  “We’ve got a long drive.”

  “When I was strong enough, I set out to explore the land. Baldr told me that the grail was mine if I wanted it. Of course, I did. But I also wanted to be able to tell of Thule and its wonders. If they would allow me to speak, I needed my king and friends to believe me. But none of it made any sense. It was as if the grail dropped into my lap from the sky. I needed to know more about how he’d found it.

  “He said he would tell me everything if I told him more about the cup and how it got the power to heal. I told him what my opinion was.”

  “Which is what?”

  “God gave the grail to man to worship or to lose. To iconize or to abandon. Man chose both and the result, for whatever reason, is that the grail has retained the power we want from it. Health, immortality, a connection to the eternal.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” I said.

  “You were one deep knight,” Rebel said, smirking, not unkindly.

  “Most knights spent their lives thinking about powers bigger than them. That was our way.”

  “Sounds like a good gig for you, Arkwright,” Rebel said.

  “Keep going, Lancelot.”

  “Please don’t call me that,” he said. “Lancelot died many years ago.”

  “If you say so.”

  He thought for a moment before he spoke. “Baldr told me that he got the cup as a gift from a Viking who was dying on the battlefield. The Viking called Baldr’s name and so he came. The warrior pulled the cup from his bag and handed it to him. He told Baldr it was the cup of a powerful man. That it could make one immortal and heal wounds. When Baldr offered to let him drink from it the man refused. He wanted a death worthy of Hel.

  “The story wasn’t satisfying to me, but I accepted it as the truth. He and I wandered the land for a fortnight. It was not a cold season and game was plenty back then. We ate well. We became friends. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing in such an isolated place with no family or friends. I felt as if he were sent as a guardian of some kind. At one point, it snowed and the white of the land drove me half mad and I asked him if this was the afterlife. He laughed at that and said that if it were the afterlife it would be a hell of a lot more fun.

  “So one morning we hit the top of a hill. I sensed danger. Baldr did as well. It was another day of snow. White sky, white ground, white everywhere. I chanced to look up and I saw a pair of black eyes standing over us. It was a creature covered in white fur. Only his eyes betrayed his presence. If I hadn’t seen his pupils I would have been shorn in two. I ducked under the blow but still had the crown of my head torn off. I watched my scalp slide across the snow and heard Baldr yell my name. He leapt over me and defeated the monster while I was dying. I went back and forth between darkness and light. Joy and despair. I thought about the cup. If I could drink from it I could live. But such thoughts were a betrayal of the grail’s purpose. That was my last thought as the darkness took over.

  “I awoke to Baldr sitting beside me on a makeshift cot, constructed from body parts of the giant beast. I sat up. I was angry. I knew the only way I could be alive was if he’d made me drink from the grail. I felt my head and it was whole. But Baldr just laughed at my anger. He told me I’d had no trouble drinking from it the first time. I was confused until I realized that he’d used the grail to save me from death when the ocean had taken me weeks before.

  “I was furious. I marched back in the direction we’d come. I was determined to go back to my king and give him his prize.” But Baldr didn’t want me to go off angry and alone. He followed me the entire trek back, singing songs of family and friends and drinking and love. It was his way. Always jolly. Always strong and funny and kind. I hated him even more for that.

  “He watched me build my tiny boat on the coast for days. I gathered the wood and made the rope. But every day I woke up and there would be more wood, better wood, stronger knots. He sat on a hill overlooking the sea on one side and Thule on the other. It was then that I knew he was sitting with a view of two worlds and he was a man of two worlds. I didn’t forgive him, but my awe kept my temper in check. When the ship was ready I didn’t plan on saying goodbye. I got in and pushed off. I saw him stand. He waved a big, happy wave. Maybe it was the time that had passed. Maybe I’d forgiven him. I waved back.”

  “Doesn’t drinking from the cup make you immortal?” Rebel asked, sitting up and turning to face him.

  He hesitated. I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed how uncomfortable he was with the question.

  “I’m undead now,” he said.

  “Yeah, we noticed,” she said and put her feet on the dashboard.

  I looked away from the road for a second to push her legs off.

  “Shit!” she yelled.

  I slammed on the brakes before I saw him.

  A motorcycle was in our lane, headed right for us.

  Chapter 30

  The bike popped a wheelie and landed its front wheel on my hood.

  He rode over our windshield, leaving a dusty line across my vision.

  I waited for him to land behind me, but he didn’t.

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  “Up!” Rebel said, poking her head out her window.

  “Shit!” Fox said.

  “What shit?” I yelled at him.

  “He’s just floating up there,” Rebel said. “He’s riding on nothing but air. Stop the car!”

  “Don’t stop the car! Not yet!” Fox said, firmly.

  “What’s going on, Lancelot?” I asked, gripping the steering wheel tight.

  “It’s Bonehead,” Rebel said, with a slight growl to her voice. “On the bike.”

  “He’s fighting an Auoi,” Fox said. He’d told us about Auois at the Metropolitan Museum ball during the Mjölnir mission. He claimed they’re supernatural leeches, or symbiotes of some kind. He said they were harmless and that everyone pulls a few around their whole lives.

  The Vamps can see them. Humans can’t.

  “This Auoi is attached to me,” Fox said. “I haven’t looked behind me for awhile. I guess I should have. It’s gr
own huge.”

  “You think the Ley Lines are the reason?” Rebel asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s possible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “I’m stopping,” I said. I pulled to the side of the road.

  “I said don’t stop!” Fox hollered. He leaped from the back door, rolled on the pavement and ran into the desert. He was about thirty yards away from us when he was suddenly knocked off his feet by something we couldn’t see.

  “I think things are about to suck,” Rebel said as Bonehead landed on the desert floor on his rear wheel and sped off after Fox.

  The Vampire was getting thrown around like a doll. He’d be close to landing on the ground when he’d be violently slapped into the air again.

  Rebel jumped from the SUV and sprinted toward Fox, her fists glowing bright. It was a new color. I’d never seen it before. It was some kind of beige. The kind of color you’d find all over the place in a Sears catalog in the 1970s. The kind of color you hadn’t seen since.

  She spread her arms wide and then slapped her palms together. A beam shot from her fingertips and spread a deep purple cloud over the horizon.

  And in that cloud was a shape.

  And in that shape was every fucking nightmare I’d ever had.

  The giant thing shifted around like a jellyfish. Parts of it spiked off while other parts curled up into gelatinous tendrils. It was about a hundred feet across and fifty feet high. The part of it that looked like a mouth had a long, wavy string hanging off of it.

  The string was attached to Fox’s neck.

  The Vamp found a moment to run a few steps before the Auoi crushed him with one of his tendrils.

  I got out of the Land Rover, steadied my arm on its hood and fired at the tendril that was about to come down hard on our friend.

  I hit it dead center but nothing happened.

  “Try the holy bullets!” Rebel shouted.

  “It’s not a demon!”

  “You have a better idea?”

  I stopped and loaded in the holy cartridge, took aim and fired. Twice. Just to be sure.

  Nothing.

  So there I was. No portals, no effective weapons. No plan. I didn’t even have anything to say if you can believe it.