She smiled and grabbed his chin. “You’re growing on me, pretty boy. That silver tongue might be talented enough to do some good besides mouth off.”
“I guess we’ll never know until we try,” he said, smiling one of his impish, always-up-to-no-good smiles that hinted of traps yet to be sprung on her. He leaned in for a kiss, which she tolerated. When he was good and lost in it, she swiped her hand through his head. He must have felt something awry because he pulled away. “What did you just do?”
“Stole your secrets right out of your head.”
He swallowed hard. “That’s not very nice.” He held his poker face for as long as he could for fear of betraying more, but it soon collapsed. “Are you going to tell?”
“That depends on how persuasive you are.”
He smiled and leaned in for another kiss.
Stealy lost track of time in his arms; it turned out he was more artful in bed than his brown, monkish robes would suggest. Once out of them, his body proved remarkably well sculpted—almost statue-like; though it writhed over her as fluidly as any snake.
Another of his secrets revealed itself to her; he was once the subject of a nasty spell cast by an even nastier witch who turned him into a stone statue. She meant both to mock his beauty and pay homage to it at the same time, and of course, to punish him for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. It seemed Ramon and Stealy had more in common than she gave him credit for. She warmed to him with the realization, melting into his embraces further, her moaning growing louder.
To his credit, Ramon had turned his time as a stone statue to his advantage, observing all manner of court intrigue, recording any number of secrets whispered when no one was supposed to hear. This past life had gone on for thousands of years, until the fall of the Egyptian ruins only in recent times that had released him from his several thousand-year-long prison. But by then…he had answers to mysteries that many would kill for. And they were coming back to him now. He couldn’t access this past life memory until he was making love to her, until she yielded to him enough to share some of the information that had leaked out of the depths of his unconscious into her mind owing to her Stealy gift.
Their amorousness dialed up another notch as both lovers become even more infatuated with one another. Now they shared something else in common: they were both thieves in the night only happy to make off with the bounty of others. And he realized that her gifts could meld with his to give him the ability to act on all that information he’d collected up over the eons. They would be robbing ancient tombs and ancestral vaults and far more innocuous sites that held secrets not recorded by history—only by his ears. She was growing more excited as well by the heady possibilities of it all; her moaning increased, and their coming together and pulling part grew more furious.
When he finally rolled off her, gasping, they had a whole itinerary mapped out, how they were going to proceed, the order in which they were going to rob the world of its treasures. The more lost in each other they had become the freer they were from their apprehensions, and the more they were able to simultaneously plot with abandon.
They wanted to experience the excitement, of course, of simply pulling off the impossible; they wanted the magic and power that soon would be theirs; but most of all they wanted to right injustices, and make sure the bastards that committed these crimes in the first place, the real thieves robbing humanity blind, and their victims, got what was coming to them.
Ramon groaned. “God, I can’t believe we’re caught up in multiple end-of-world dramas that now thwart our aspirations as surely as that spell thwarted me all those millennia.”
Stealy smiled. “Stealing possessions isn’t my only gift; I’m pretty good with stealing time as well.”
He rolled over on his side to face her—as captivating as the stars were overhead; he’d made the penthouse recede into the floor, exposing the roof of the building, leaving just the magic carpet they were levitated on. “What do you mean?”
“Who’s to say we can’t pilfer the very things we need to aid in freeing this world from the alien queen, and keeping the planet from exploding, owing to the savant’s safety measures that were meant to thwart the queen if all else failed?
“We may as well take advantage of the savant’s warding magic to keep the alien queen out of our heads for as long as it lasts, during which time she won’t be able to track us or figure out what we’re up to.”
His smile conveyed the delight of a plan coming together. “Where to first?”
They both stirred as the medallion that he’d let go of in his infatuation with her, currently lying on the magic carpet between them, started moving. Its six dials started shifting their alignment with one another. “What do you think that means?” he asked.
“It must be responding to the spike in psychic energy between us. We’re both pretty excited about the heists we’ve chosen to pursue.”
“Victor’s psychic energy is through the roof,” Ramon said skeptically. “If that’s all it was, this medallion would have activated long ago.”
She took a deep breath and pondered his point. “Maybe the savant isn’t the only safeguard against onslaughts from far more advanced alien civilizations. Maybe others that came before her set up their own safeguards. Rather than risk the magic or the science on unprepared minds….”
Overexcited, as usual, Ramon sprung up to his feet, pulling Stealy up with him. The penthouse suite rematerialized about them, and they were now standing on the hardwood parquet floor with its complex geometries. He snatched up the medallion; held it out in front of his face watching the dials continuing to slowly slip into alignment, shifting directions, as if the proper combination to the lock first had to be struck, like opening a safe.
Ramon was trembling. “The last time we solved one of these medallion’s secrets….”
She threw his robe over him, and massaged his hands. “Relax.” She grabbed her undergarments, then her leathers, throwing them on with practiced hurriedness. “Honestly, could we or anyone on this planet right now possibly get into worse trouble?”
***
The world started to swirl about Stealy and Ramon as he continued to dangle the mandala between them. When the whirling stopped, they were back inside one of the Antarctic pyramids that Lar had explored in their last adventure.
On one of the walls was embossed an image of Bingwen—a Chinese wizard.
“How did this guy end up here? I know him; he’s from Chinatown, alive and well in our day,” Ramon protested. “I went to him once hoping he’d share some of his secrets. Of course he denied having any.” Ramon was running his hand over the fresco.
Stealy grimaced. “Soren, would be my guess.” She took him by the arm and brushed him aside. “Let me try.”
Ramon didn’t like his sense of awe and wonder being interrupted. He gave her a dirty look, but ultimately relented, stepping further back.
She passed her hand over the image, then rapidly pulled it back. “Shiiiit!”
“What!”
She was too caught up in what her Stealy sense was relaying to her brain to take in Ramon right now. So, she took another deep breath and placed her hand back on the glyph. “He’s a dragon morph, as ancient as time itself. Well, maybe not quite so ancient as the savant and the alien queen, but as close as we can get for anyone originating on this planet, I reckon.” She withdrew her hand again, shook it out; it was burning her. A result of the dragon magic? Or something else?
“We’ve got to set him free,” Ramon exclaimed with a “right now!” sense of urgency to his voice.
“Are you crazy?” She sighed. “Do you know what kind of power this guy wields? And he’s not going to take kindly to us knowing he’s a dragon morph. They guard their secrets by killing those who know about them.”
“We’ve got to chance it.”
She glared at him as if he were crazy. “You’ll need more than a death wish to convince me.”
“Don’t you get it? If he goes
back that far, he’s a practitioner of cabbalistic magic. That’s probably why Soren went after him, to pull what he had in his head out of it. How long before the alien queen hits on the same idea?”
She did a double take his direction, glowering at him, not wanting him to make sense right now.
“By now, the savant will have dialed up the warding on the pyramids that store her secret language designed to keep the queen at bay. A direct assault on the savant therefore would be out of the question. But going after the dragon morphs—one and all—now that could get the alien queen somewhere. We’ve got to elicit Bingwen’s help to get to the other dragon morphs ahead of her. Warn them. Find out how best to protect ourselves.”
“They can’t tell us anything we can’t find out directly from the savant.”
“Only how to adapt what of her teachings can possibly fit inside human brains.”
Stealy was shaking her head; the more she agreed with him as she pondered his point, the fast it shook. “This is out of our weight class. It’s a job for Victor and Soren and the beast, for sure. Together they can bleed the savant’s mind, give us what we need better than these dragon morphs—who have survived too long by guarding their secrets, not giving them away.”
“Maybe. You willing to take that chance? We’re on a ticking clock here.” He studied her expression, must have felt she was holding something back. “What’s your real deal here?”
He gave her a second to come clean and when she didn’t, he did what most men do, forced the point. “I had something buried in my past, too, remember? Buried so far down I couldn’t find it, couldn’t confront it, and couldn’t get on with my life. Are you sensing a theme here? I am.”
She growled. Her stare shifted from the ground to Bingwen’s fresco. A moment later, she sighed out the last of her resistance. “I was raised by a pair of dragon morphs.”
Ramon gulped. “Shit.”
“They recognized my gift long before I did, took me in off the streets, taught me how to steal for them, what to steal. That’s part of how they stay alive so long, knowing everything on everyone worth knowing, every possible rival. I would discover the vulnerabilities of other wizards for them so they could dispatch them before they became a threat to the dragon morphs.
“The dragon morphs are cunning and beguiling beyond measure. Calculated and plotting. As powerful as they are, they’ll do anything not to morph, because then they are no longer cloaked. And before they’ll release that much power on the world, they have to know it’s enough to win the battle. They won’t risk shifting otherwise.”
“Is it them you’re afraid of, or that being near one again will remind you of all the wizards who died on account of you?”
She backhanded him. He took her in his arms and held her as the ice melted and she sobbed against his chest.
When he sensed the moment was right, he pulled away from her, held up her chin and gazed into her eyes. “You’ve never stopped doing what they trained you to do, have you?”
“Only I’m not interested in killing off wizards whose magic I steal, only in better protecting myself from….”
“From what? The dragon morphs?”
“From anyone who might find some way to manipulate me into doing their bidding against my will. I’ll never let anyone, least of all the dragon morphs, do to me again what they did. I don’t care about being the most powerful wizard on the block, only about remaining a free agent.”
“You realize what you’re saying? Aside from the dragon morphs, locked away inside your head is likely the best chance we have of shaking off the influence of the alien queen.”
She startled, her eyes going wide and finding their way back to him again. “Unlikely.”
“But not out of the question. So, first we go after the dragon morphs. If they won’t share their secrets with us, then at least they might use their magic to thwart the alien queen. If they don’t share that warding magic with the rest of the world, but keep it to themselves, I bet Victor and his science geeks can still find a way to track what they’re up to. And then we go after what’s lost in your memories, buried down so deep not even you remember.”
“I thought we decided the secrets you were privy to in that other life all those thousands of years was a richer trove to mine.”
“We’ll need some way to ascertain which of these treasures is most important to setting us all free, and so to plunder first. I suggest we meditate and center ourselves before each mission. I imagine the answer will change each time based on evolving circumstances in the here and now, and what we can glean of what the other players are up to.”
She nodded.
He prompted. “No time like the present,” he said, pointing to Bingwen.
She hesitated, took a deep breath, then thrust her hand into the stone, as if it just wasn’t solid, and yanked out the wizard trapped inside. He landed on the floor beside them on his backside, gasping, preparing to tear off, even before he could get fully oriented.
“Wait!” Ramon held out his hand placatingly. “We’re the ones that rescued you from that eternal prison Soren and the beast put you in. We have important information pertaining to your survival.”
Bingwen regarded them guardedly before relaxing out of his state of panic and bringing himself to his feet with Ramon’s help.
Before Ramon could get out the explanation, Bingwen’s eyes lost their point of convergence. “The alien queen is here. The savant is awakened. She can buy us only so much time against the queen, time that is rapidly running out.” As he said the last words, his eyes focused back on Ramon and Stealy. “You’re going after the dragon morphs. Don’t waste your time. Their familiarity with cabbalistic magic means they will already have figured out what I’ve concluded.”
“We know you guys don’t like to share your secrets, but considering what the stakes are…”
Bingwen hesitated, thinking about it, but also rubbing the beads on a bracelet on his right hand, mumbling words of power. He might have just been looking for clarity, or gearing up to turn them into ash.
“The only chance any of us has right now is to absorb more of the savant’s teachings. Now that she’s awakened and cooperating…. But we’ll need Soren and the beast for that. Only they can translate enough of the savant’s language in time. The rest of us had thousands of years to make sense of the symbols. Look how far we’ve gotten?”
“Just far enough to know when to run, apparently,” Ramon said mockingly.
“I suggest you do the same.” And with that Bingwen was gone; he disappeared right in front of them like a fading phantasm. It was Stealy’s guess that wherever he was headed, it was some place that would mask any sign of cabbalistic magic on his person. At the same time, it would be some place that would allow him to amplify his connection to Soren and the beast, so he could master more of the cabbalistic language, apply more of the magic and power of the spirit science to shoring up his defenses.
“There goes our one chance to be major players on this gaming board.” Ramon sighed. “Now we’re back to being pawns again.”
“Not quite. We know what criteria Bingwen’s hiding place must meet, while simultaneously allowing him greater access to Soren and the beast. Something tells me between the secrets buried in your mind and in mine, we can figure out where that is.”
“So what?”
“So these dragon morph safe houses—as the queen starts to knock off the dragon morphs, there are going to be vacancies. There’s nothing stopping us from using them to buy us some time to become major players once again. I don’t much like being demoted to minor ensemble status either. Kind of ironic considering we’re both coming into our own for once.”
He smiled ruefully. “It’s still not much of an edge. We’re trying to beat the dragon morphs and Soren and the beast at their own game.”
“You forget—my childhood spent getting around dragon morphs…. Well, what was that, Nietzsche said? The slave must know the master better than the master must
know the slave.”
This time Ramon smiled; the impish delight had returned to his face. She knew what he was thinking. Maybe they could beat the dragon morphs at their own game. As for Soren and the beast—they might well have enough fires to put out, might well be working at capacity just to absorb what of the savant’s teachings they could, to need all the help they could get. Ramon was more right than he knew; it wasn’t much of an edge, but it was something.
TEN
The barn was full of the blind huntresses and their dragons licking their wounds. Though the focus remained on the segmented body of Tomoe, separated at the waist. She was still dead and hopes remained high that Aba’s magic would bring her back from the dead—if only for self-serving purposes. After the thrashing the alien queen had given them, they were wondering how long before they, too, might need Aba to bring them back to the land of the living. If Aba didn’t feel protected before, Augustus could just imagine what would happen to anyone who even made the mistake of stepping up to her too quickly—even for a cup of water. They’d have five huntresses zapping them with magic at once, which might well create a tangle of cosmic forces only the alien queen could crawl out of. Pity the fool.
Augustus couldn’t say he cared for the way the other huntresses were eying him now. No doubt Aba’s magic required a sacrifice—having seen her in action before. And he didn’t much care to get on that short list.
“You stood there and did nothing?” Heshima snarled, the one for whom honor was forever of utmost importance.
“I tried,” Augustus replied, his tone convincing to no one, because he himself felt he should have done more, “but Soren and the beast forbade it. They said, the first sign of cabbalistic magic, and the alien queen would awaken.”
Heshima hissed in the same manner as her pet rattlesnake slithering about the floor. He could probably take that to mean she was only half convinced.
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