No Quest for the Wicked

by Shanna Swendson

  Granny joined me, already digging in her copious tote bag. “I’m sure I’ve got something in here,” she muttered to herself. To Owen, she said, “Pull up your pants leg, son, and let me get a look at it.” She pulled a vial out of the bag and poured a liquid on the wound as she said, “I’m not sure how well this will work on you without magic, but at the very least, it’ll kill germs.” I clutched Owen’s hand as he hissed in pain. Then she pulled a length of cloth out of the bag and said, “I’ll have to buy a new pair of support hose, but these’ll do for a bandage for now.” She wrapped the hose securely around his leg, tying them off and tucking in the ends before pressing her hands on the bandage and murmuring a few words. “There, that should hold back some of the bleeding. I don’t know if the spell will help, but it can’t hurt.”

  Owen started to get up, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “No, rest for a moment. They’re leaving us alone for now. I guess all the blood scared them away.”

  “There are things that are drawn by blood, and you don’t want to meet them,” he said, his voice shaky even though I could tell he was trying to sound strong and steady.

  “Let me guess, they’re power hungry, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “Look, maybe you should stay here,” I said. “I can go on. Granny can protect me. We shouldn’t have to hold out much longer.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone with that thing.”

  “What good will you do? You won’t be able to walk much, probably won’t be able to run, and you don’t have magic.”

  He shrugged his shoulder out from under my hand and pushed himself to his feet. “I can walk just fine. And I’m not leaving you alone, so don’t waste your breath arguing.”

  “I won’t be alone.”

  “No, because I’ll be with you.” He took a step toward me, demonstrating that he could walk. He barely limped, but I could see the pain on his face. I was about to argue some more, but his phone rang.

  “Hey, Sam,” he said. “What is it?” His eyes widened as he stared past me, and then he slowly said, “Uh, I think they’re already here.”

  I turned and saw a whole gang of puritans, including Mimi’s ex-minion, approaching us, and they looked like they meant business.

  “Get here as soon as you can,” Owen said into his phone. “It looks like we’ll need backup.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I counted at least ten puritans. Granny and Rod moved in to flank Owen and me, but we were still badly outnumbered. With Thor and Earl out of the picture, we were down to a skilled wizard who was one of the world’s greatest illusionists, a crafty old woman well-versed in folk magic and adept with a cane, and two magical immunes, one of them wounded. The only physical weapon among us was Granny’s cane. I wondered if I could get my hands on Thor’s tiny battleaxe.

  When Sam reached us, presumably with some allies, that would even the numbers somewhat. I had an army of followers, but I wasn’t sure if they cared who held the Eye. They’d defended me from Thor, but I suspected that if someone got past them to take the brooch, their allegiance would switch in a heartbeat. I glanced over my shoulder and found that we were nearly alone, most of the park denizens having melted into the darkness upon the outsiders’ arrival. So much for my loyal subjects, I thought.

  “Okay, now what?” I whispered. “Back into the park?”

  “They’d come after us,” Owen replied.

  “I could make us invisible,” Rod suggested.

  “They’ve already seen us,” Granny pointed out.

  Indeed, they were heading straight for us, and Thor’s battleaxe wouldn’t have helped much, even if I’d grabbed it, because these guys were armed with guns.

  The lampposts cast a sinister glow on the barrels pointed directly at us. “You’re right, they are hypocrites,” I whispered to Rod. “I thought they were opposed to modern technology. At the very least, shouldn’t they be using crossbows?”

  “You’re trying to apply logic to fanatics,” Owen said, sounding strangely calm. I would have worried that he’d gone into shock from blood loss, but he was always like that in a crisis. The worse things were, the calmer he got. His voice was at Minnesota winter levels of “cool.” Our situation was dire, indeed.

  “Hand over the brooch,” the ex-minion said, gesturing with his gun.

  While Owen got cool under pressure, I got mouthy. It was a failing that had gotten me in trouble more than a few times. “I thought you were trying to stop people from using technology instead of magic,” I said. “Obviously, you don’t practice what you preach.”

  “All tools are acceptable for purifying the world,” he said stiffly.

  “That’s a very clever justification,” I said. “I bet you can rationalize just about anything.”

  “You have no use for the brooch, so there’s no point in you losing your life over it,” another one of the puritans said, sounding perfectly reasonable, almost friendly.

  “I have plans for it,” Owen said, sounding equally friendly and reasonable.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Palmer,” the friendly puritan said, nodding. ”I can see why you might desire the Eye. You’ve certainly been persistent in seeking it. But I understand that it would do you no good now. Or do you hope to use it to restore your powers?”

  “I may not be able to use it, but I know people who can, and, quite frankly, I think they’ll do a much better job of stirring up the kind of chaos you want than that woman would have,” Owen said.

  I was sure he was bluffing. We’d been through too much together for him to have fooled me about the kind of person he was. Taking it on faith, I chimed in. “Yeah, I used to work for her, and you’d have only had a petty charity circuit power struggle. What we have planned is much, much more spectacular. You’ll get a lot more attention for saving the world this way.”

  “That is, if you can defeat us,” Owen said mildly with a slight shrug. I really, really hoped he was bluffing and that the stone wasn’t working on some tiny residual trace of magic in him.

  While I knew we were just trying to convince the puritans that we weren’t a threat to their plans, not everyone in what remained of the crowd did. There were a few gasps, and while some people stepped forward, ready to challenge us, others slipped away into the darkness. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rod giving Owen a worried stare. He’d known Owen since they were kids, so surely he didn’t believe Owen could possibly go bad—or did he have a better understanding of Owen’s background than I did?

  The puritan acted less convinced that Owen posed a danger than Rod did. “I would have expected you to try to destroy it,” he said. He reminded me of Merlin—a professorial type who might have been a mentor or a favorite uncle. Ideological differences aside, he, Merlin, and Owen might have gotten along pretty well. They could have geeked out over the same medieval magical texts.

  “Merlin tried to destroy it soon after it was created, but nothing he tried worked,” Owen said. “There’s no magical way to destroy it, and no way to defend against it.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, my boy. Do you see us lusting for power and grabbing for the Eye?”

  “You’re holding guns on us and demanding it,” I said. “So, yeah.”

  “We do not desire the Eye for what it is, only for what it will allow us to do.”

  “And I have my own plans for it, which don’t directly contradict yours,” Owen said. “Maybe we could work together and plan this a little better.”

  The man laughed, but his laugh had a patronizing tone. It reminded me of the way I reacted when my nieces and nephews made up silly jokes they thought were hilarious but that made no sense whatsoever. It was a laugh calculated to appease a child. “You, work with us? You are the very people we oppose.”

  “Do you think I’m on the same side as the people who put me on trial for being born?” Owen asked, and either he was a better actor than I could have imagined or there was a germ of truth in what he said because he spat out the words with an uncha
racteristic bitterness that I found disturbingly convincing.

  Not sure I liked the way the conversation was going, I jumped in with a question. “I’m curious, how will turning the Eye loose on the world purify magical society?”

  “Katie!” Rod protested, sounding truly concerned.

  “Well, we’re either going to hand it over to them or team up with them, and I need more information to make that decision.” Besides, as long as the puritan was talking, his people weren’t shooting.

  “Ah, a very conscientious young lady you have there, Mr. Palmer,” the puritan said with a genial smile. “One must think of the consequences of one’s actions. We merely mean to demonstrate the superiority of pure magic over magic that’s been bastardized over the centuries. Then people will see what they’ve lost by forgetting the old ways. They’ll turn to us to learn how they should live.”

  I had to fight to keep from grinning. I couldn’t believe my gambit had worked. I’d always thought it was a movie cliché when the villain felt the need to expound on his entire evil scheme while he had the hero in his clutches, but when you get a fanatic to talk about his object of fanaticism, it’s hard to get him to shut up. “But you’ve got something up your sleeve, right?” I said. “It’s not like any old medieval magic is any better at dealing with this thing than newer magic is.”

  I must have pushed it too far because his face lost all traces of friendliness. “What is it to you?” he asked, his lips twisting into a snarl. “You aren’t magical at all. You’re an abomination. Back in the days of true magic, when a child like you was born, it was left to die rather than pollute the magical race.”

  I wheeled on Owen. “Seriously? That wasn’t in any of the magical history books you gave me to read.”

  “It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” he replied.

  “That’s because you’ve lost touch with your own history!” the man shouted. This was better than asking questions to stall. He was on an even bigger rant now, sputtering with rage as he outlined, in great detail, the true history of the magical race and how that history was being covered up by today’s corrupt magical leaders. It was a boring lecture, but staying focused wasn’t a problem. The mad professor’s gun-toting buddies were enough to keep me awake and alert.

  I thought I saw something approaching in the sky and hoped it was Sam—and about time. I forced myself not to look up as I squeezed Owen’s arm slightly to alert him, then nudged Granny on my other side. The moment the gargoyles dove, Granny struck her cane on the ground, and vines stretched out of the bushes to tangle around the gun-toting puritans. “Too bad this park doesn’t seem to have any poison ivy,” she muttered as she guided the plants with her cane.

  “Quick, this way,” Rod said, tugging on Owen, who tugged on me. “I’ve got you veiled, and I’ve got a dummy illusion working for cover. That is, assuming you really want to get away.”

  “Don’t tell me you believed that!” Owen said, sounding truly wounded.

  “Just checking. Now, go!” We ran, Owen leaning heavily on me, while the gargoyles, Rod, and Granny engaged the puritans.

  So far, none of them had fired their guns. I didn’t know if that meant they were less comfortable with the technology than they acted, or if they knew that shooting at magical people would be a waste of ammunition. There had to be a spell for blocking bullets. Unfortunately, Owen and I had no such protection. Immune to spells, yes, bullets, no.

  The Eye allowed the puritans to track us in spite of Rod’s illusion. They didn’t know who had the brooch, but they knew where it was. One of them grabbed me. I shouted a warning and then put up a fight. With three older brothers, I knew a thing or two about scratching, clawing, hitting, and kicking. I kicked my captor in the shin with the hard heel of my shoe, then stomped on his instep while driving my head up under his chin. That left me with a headache, but the shout he gave and my sudden freedom made me suspect he hurt worse.

  A quick glance showed Owen tussling with another puritan, but before I could get to him, someone else grabbed me. I was really getting tired of this, I thought as I lashed out with an elbow to my captor’s ribs, then twisted around to jab my knee into a sensitive portion of the male anatomy. “Hands off me!” I ordered.

  I winced when a familiar voice said, “Sorry, Katie!”

  “Rod! What is your problem?”

  “You should give it to me,” he said urgently. “Then it would make me invulnerable so I could fight off these guys and save us all.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “It told you to tell me that, didn’t it?”

  He grimaced and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Well, nice try, but I’m not falling for it.”

  He cried out a warning and shoved me aside. At first, I thought it was another ruse, but then I heard the bang of a gunshot and something whizzed past my ear as he knocked me to the ground.

  “They’re shooting!” I gasped. “They’re really shooting at us.”

  “On the bright side, they’re not very good shots,” Rod said as he shielded me with his body. I started to shove him aside and get up, but I heard another gunshot and ducked again.

  Then I felt something on my side and said, “Rod, do you want to keep that hand?”

  “Huh? Yeah. Why?”

  “Then get it away from my pocket.”

  “Oh, sorry!”

  We crawled to a nearby tree to take cover. I searched for Owen in the mob of puritans and gargoyles. As if reading my mind, Rod said, “I’ll go get him.”

  I was worried. Maybe the second gunshot hadn’t been aimed at me, and maybe it had hit its target. Owen didn’t have magic, was hurt, and wasn’t his usual agile self. I couldn’t see him, but he was shorter than most of the puritans, so I prayed that he was simply hidden among the fighters.

  Granny’s voice rose over the din of the scuffle, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. And then I realized that she wasn’t speaking English. I didn’t know she spoke any other language, and this wasn’t one I recognized. It sounded wild and ancient.

  Soon, a soft glow appeared in the nearby hedges. The creatures Granny called the wee ones had returned, but they’d come at her command this time. I knew she’d claimed to commune with these kinds of creatures back home, but I hadn’t realized she spoke their language. They swarmed up the legs of the puritans, hampering their movements and making them easy prey for the gargoyles attacking from above.

  Out of this tangle of people, creatures, and plants came Rod, supporting Owen. Rushing to meet them, I let out a little sob of relief at seeing Owen without any bullet holes. I draped Owen’s arm around my shoulder to support him.

  “You two should get out of here while we’ve got them distracted,” Rod said. He called over one of the gargoyles to escort us, and we hurried toward the edge of the park, away from the fighting. We didn’t get very far, though, because even in the middle of a magical battle, our enemies sensed the departure of the Eye and came after us.

  “Persistent, aren’t they?” Owen remarked. He sounded beyond his usual crisis cool, and I wondered if maybe he was growing giddy from pain and loss of blood.

  “Well, they are fanatics. They’re not known for giving up easily,” I replied.

  MSI gargoyles swooped in to shield us, and we dove for cover as bullets ricocheted off stone. I hoped the gunshots didn’t hurt the gargoyles. If bullets chipped them, did the wounds heal?

  Granny and Rod joined us, Granny still directing plants and magical creatures to do what they could against the puritans. “I hate to say this, sweetie,” she said to me, “but I’m not sure you’re up to this.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked indignantly.

  “You’re helpless against these people, with no magic to protect you. You may not be the best bearer of the brooch.”

  I placed a protective hand in my pocket, feeling the reassuring presence of the knotted gold with the smooth stone in the middle. “But I can’t do anything with it other
than keep it safe. I can’t say the same about you.”

  “It’s not talking to me,” she said, her voice sharp with exasperation. “I wouldn’t use it. I’d just be able to protect it because there’d be nothing they could do to me to take it. You’d be able to get it back when you needed to.”

  I shook my head. “Granny, no. A magical immune needs to keep it because we’re the only ones who can be trusted with it.”

  “Are you saying you don’t trust your own grandmother?”

  “I’m saying I don’t trust anyone where this thing is involved.”

  “It sounds to me like it’s working on you,” she said, frowning in concern at me. “Why are you so reluctant to hand it over to me, even though that would save your life and keep it out of the hands of the enemy?”

  “It can’t work on me,” I protested. “It’s telling you to say these things, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s not affecting me.” But her eyes glittered with desire as she approached me, and I knew she’d succumbed, too.

  She was so focused on the stone that she wasn’t fighting the puritans. Two of them slipped past her and headed toward me. Rod and Owen scuffled with them, but one of the puritans grabbed me.

  I struggled against him, but he must have had a younger sister because he knew all my tricks. Then an ice-cold voice said, “Let her go.”

  I looked up and found myself looking down the barrel of a gun, but the gun was pointed just above my head at my captor, and it was held by Owen, who must have won his scuffle and come out with a prize.

  He held the gun steadily, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Even when he’d been an extraordinarily powerful wizard, Owen had been one of the most gentle people I’d ever known. He was the kind of guy who took in stray kittens, for crying out loud. I wasn’t sure I could imagine him pulling the trigger, but if I didn’t know him and if I’d seen that look in his eyes, I’d have taken him seriously.

  My captor did. He released me, and I hurried to Owen’s side. “Now, back away,” Owen ordered. The man hesitated, and Owen’s voice sharpened. “I said, move!”