Reawakened

by Dean C. Moore

  Aba smiled ruefully, her eyes fixated on the handsome young Chinese wizard. “You can’t deny Augustus’s brilliance. It’s a smart move strategically. If anything happens to me, he might well be the one to lead you.”

  The other blind huntresses sounded off like a gaggle of alarmed geese. Ironically, the barn’s glowing amber interior was made all the more safe and familiar by the smell of dragon dung; the creatures were feasting on werewolves they’d snatched off the streets of Shelley’s London. It was the best the blind huntresses could do to calm the sector’s populace—who couldn’t quite figure out what dragons had to do with Shelley’s London—until they got a load of the werewolf disposal process in action. One sighting of a dragon swooping down to pick one off, and word of mouth spread like wildfire, quelling any flapping mouths from skeptics. Of course, the downside was the grisly sight of werewolves half-turned or fully-turned to human form being eaten while still half alive before the meals were dispatched. Their howls filled the barn as if dogs had been added to the menagerie of creatures.

  Those sights and sounds weren’t what caught Aba’s attention presently. Nor was Augustus’s mumbling his words of power—using the cabbalistic language spoken only by him and the dragon morphs, and perhaps by Soren and the beast and the Fenquin queen—doing the trick. It was the smell of the dragon’s dung. It amplified the senses of the blind huntresses, as it was meant to do—one of many dimensions of their symbiotic relationship with the creatures—causing all of the women to tense.

  “We have visitors,” Makya said, after inhaling forcefully.

  In the next instant the pack of werewolves and vamps crashed through the walls and the roof of the barn. They should have looked before they leaped. They had all been drawn here by the dragon dung. The fire breathers’ excrement threw out a werewolf mating scent. No doubt that was on account of the dragons’ magic, engendered to ensure their next meal. It was working all too well. Eventually the creatures would learn to resist the urges; they’d evolve, like everything and everyone else around here. But for right now, the snarls of the werewolves were changing quickly to yelps as they tried to back their way out of here, and the vamps tried to gain elevation once again with their wings.

  The dragons jettisoned the thorny spines running along their spinal ridges and tails at the vamps and werewolves, pinning them to the barn wherever they could find planks that hadn’t been shattered by the rude entry of the predators. The vamp and werewolf bodies hung now like meat in a butcher’s shop waiting to be cut up or like the trophies in an abattoir—depending on which ones had already reverted to human forms and which had not.

  The huntresses merely grunted. The dragons forcefully exhaled an altered gas cooked up in their salivary glands on the barn, making it whole again. It was a trick the dragon morph had taught the rest of them; the dragon morphs were fairly adept at back-from-the-dead magic. The planks of wood regrew to fill the holes as if living trees captured in time-lapse photography. The dragons didn’t appreciate the unwelcomed drafts, or the dragon huntresses hammering up a storm with their sensitive hearing. And the huntresses didn’t mind one less task; they were usually pretty spent upon their return from their adventures.

  Savita approached Aba, her eyes on Augustus, lowering her voice. “If his subterfuge works, does it do anything for us, or just him, the greatest of all the self-serving lords of power?”

  Aba grunted. “If he wishes to wear weakness as a badge of courage, he’ll have to learn how to play us as well as he plays those dragon morphs. That means giving us something out of the deal if he doesn’t want to find himself at the core of some planet or at the center of some sun or black hole like the others.”

  Savita smiled. She, of all of them, wanted this whole affair to be over, so she could get back to Trinidad in time for carnival. God forbid she was late for that. There was a waiting list a mile long to be admitted to the coven of blind huntresses; every huntress worth their salts wanted in. Savita was the only one who wanted out; but Aba wouldn’t release her; she was too good at what she did. And now the fate of the world depended on them as much as on Soren and the rest of his entourage. Though how they’d gotten drafted into that retinue, Aba would be hard pressed to tell you. The last she remembered, they were trying to kill one another. Then again, that’s how most relationships among paranormals began; their kind was a bit testy.

  “When is he coming out of that trance? The world will not wait for him to get his pharaoh hounds in a row.” Asim was feeling as antsy as the rest of the huntresses. Soon the dragons would be worked up as well, keying off of the excited women. Restlessness among her crew was often more disconcerting than facing an enemy dead on; at least then they were focused on one goal; channeling their energy collectively; right now the same explosive energy threatened to tear them apart.

  Aba glared at Augustus wondering if it was time to intervene. It didn’t help that the huntresses were being haunted by images of their oversoul selves—an idealization of who they were in this and all lifetimes. Since Soren ignited the Zone Magic as a workaround to accessing the oversoul ahead of their time—the black magic was causing increasing unease in her people. It might well have been what was behind Augustus’s bold move as well—not even trying to hide what he was up to before the blind huntresses—who he knew did not take well to cowardice.

  Looking to snooker champion turncoats like the older dragon morphs was no less dangerous a move for Augustus—that either took foolhardiness or it took the empowerment of the Zone Magic to take his snookering to the next level to get around the hibernating dragon morphs who couldn’t access the Zone Magic.

  “Stop tormenting me, woman!” Tomoe shouted in Japanese, half drawing her sword from her sheathe, to do what exactly? She could hardly slice her oversoul through and through; even if it were possible, she’d hardly be the beneficiary of good fortune with a crazy stunt like that.

  The other women empathized, sharing her sentiments, but gave her her space. They were giving one another plenty of space, lest one of them lose it and in lashing out at the oversoul lurking at the edges of their peripheral vision, they unwittingly did harm to one another.

  Aba had had enough. Whatever this Zone Magic was, the sooner they used it, the sooner they could divorce themselves from it. It might be a nasty means to a venerable ends, but Aba didn’t want any part of it for a second longer than necessary.

  “Now, Augustus,” was all she said.

  Augustus stopped his chanting and slowly opened his eyes. His eyes! They were glowing like the blind huntresses now, only they were rainbow colored; each band of the rainbow represented in their proper order from the black of the pupils on out.

  Only Vima had those eyes, indicating when she was drawing on the Zone Magic; the rest of the time her black pupils were distorted in the shape of the aborted fetus, surrounded by golden irises—much as she had been trapped in amber for all those eons. None of the huntresses had yet laid eyes on Vima—except in their dream journeys—connected via the dragon’s potion they drank. That potion drew their minds to any major psychic disturbance taking place on the planet. Though, there were quite a few of those; as before, Aba suspected Soren and the beast had their hands in focusing their attention on the developments of greatest import.

  Did Vima have some connection with Zone Magic that even Soren and the beast were unaware of? And what were the deeper implications? Access to oversoul abilities without the commensurate composure to use those abilities responsibility—well, such things were the basis of all forms of black magic. Again, Aba’s stern expression must have been all too easy for Augustus to read.

  But that drama for later. The blind huntresses were no newcomers to hunting superior adversaries if Augustus decided he wanted to take them on.

  He must have read her mind. “We make our move now,” he said, rising from his lotus position without uncrossing his legs until he was standing.

  He unfolded his dragon’s wings from his back; they grew out of his exposed t
orso as if they were merely invisible when folded down. The other dragons keyed to him immediately—forgetting their allegiance to the huntresses.

  The huntresses were going along for the ride whether they wanted to or not—that or risk losing their dragons.

  Grabbing the last of their gear, the huntresses mounted up. Aba took a second to put her head up to her dragon morph. He had yet to give her his name, because to do that would mean making himself vulnerable. She could sense his love for her; maybe when he could sense hers for him, she’d receive his name then, not before. “You ready?”

  “Dragon morphs are seldom employed to save humanity, far less sentient beings everywhere. So, no, I’m not. I feel even more at unease than you huntresses.” His voice telecasted into her head by way of the psychic link they shared; it was deep, nasal, wise, ancient sounding.

  She was the last to take to the sky on her mount; the others were already beating a path on their dragons’ wings toward the stars.

  Augustus was throwing a protective bubble around them all so they could leave the Earth’s upper atmosphere, utilizing magic not unlike Vima’s womb magic. What was the connection between rebirthing magic and the oversoul, and how had the Zone Magic given them access to both? Aba had a thousand questions that would have to wait for later.

  The flapping dragons’ wings were warping space. The stars about them kept shifting, suggesting each beat of the wings amounted to another jump across space and time.

  Within moments, they were where Augustus was taking them. One of the clusters of worlds infiltrated by the Fenquin queen. It was the one with the Orcs that the huntresses all had to fight off earlier; the one where they had all learned how to advance their powers with the Fenquin queen’s tutelage.

  Aba understood at once what Augustus was up to. He was linked with her dragon morph and her dragon morph was linked with her.

  Augustus meant to pierce the protective barrier formed by the warding magic thrown around the grouping of worlds to keep the Feqnuin queen out. Magic that instead served to lure her; the warding magic all too easily hacked by her supersentient mind.

  For right now the warding magic was keeping the dragon huntresses and their dragons out well enough though. They had bumped up against it, as if the grouping of worlds had a hard, impenetrable, but invisible shield protecting it.

  Augustus fired up those rainbow eyes and shot a hole in the shield big enough for all of them to fly through. It was the womb magic he had access to that allowed him to do it; for the various warding magics about these worlds combined to form a womb-like enclosure, and Vima’s womb magic was the perfect match for it. The fact that Augustus now wielded this magic just made it all the clearer that it had to do with the Zone Magic—one of its many facets.

  Again, it didn’t matter now.

  The dragons flew down, they and their riders each taking to a different world. Augustus had opened a channel now to all the dragons that in turn were relaying their thoughts to the huntresses. The jobs of the dragons and riders alike would be simple: to harass the locals on each planet just enough to break the spell of the Fenquin queen. It would be analogous to slapping a sleepwalking patient hard enough in the face often enough until they awoke.

  There was no reason to believe the ploy would work. And every reason to believe the Fenquin queen would simply work this drama into her larger spell to uplift her subjects.

  Augustus assured Aba that the Zone Magic would do the trick—breaking the spell that enclosed the Fenquin queen’s subjugated races as if it were any other embryonic sac to break upon birth. What was he not telling her about the Zone Magic?

  That question, too, could wait until later. For right now she understood the urgency and the importance of a coordinated attack. Right now, though she didn’t know how, Soren and the beast and the other members of his entourage would be making their move—all of them coordinating their efforts with the aid of the Zone Magic that only Augustus in their party could feel directly.

  The rebel forces from Earth, led by Soren and the beast, were fighting a war on many fronts, but what were those fronts? Were they simply other interstellar civilizations cloaked by the various warding magics to keep the Fenquin queen out that had instead lured her? Knowing Soren, he would not be content to free the Earth alone from her influence; he would need to free all the subjugated alien races from the menace of the Fenquin queen.

  Cosmos; she was another key, another facet of this thing. Aba had encountered her also in her dream journeys. Soren and the beast had drawn her in. What was her role in things?

  Ah! Aba let go of the exercise of understanding the big picture. It was her role on the team, but right now the team needed her in another capacity.

  She let the first outburst of her dragon’s flames spewing over the crowds below shock them out of their stupor at the same time it broke her attachment from discerning the hidden patterns in things.

  But the notion did occur to Aba: if they were shaking the Fenquin queen’s subjects free of her dream, were they not also risking awakening the Fenquin queen from the dream she shared with them? Talk about cage-rattling.

  FORTY-TWO

  “What are we doing here? Come to think of it, where is here?” Naomi detected rising panic within herself as she took in her surroundings, but at the same time felt detached from it. The oversoul magic was giving her the sense of control she needed to marshal her mousey feelings.

  “It’s an airport,” Cosmos’s voice inside her head informed her. Naomi would have appreciated a less exasperated of a tone and a more elaborate explanation.

  She quickly put two and two together. “The entire planet is serving as a hub for this sector of the galaxy. The ships I see arriving here…they’re arriving all over the planet—just from different worlds. I can see it in my mind’s eye. You don’t need to condescend to me.”

  “It’s time you grew into yourself, Naomi. That means less hand-holding from me.”

  Naomi grunted. “You were never the type to handhold.”

  “Fair enough. But one thing access to the oversoul by way of the Zone Magic is doing for me is helping me to realize that the more empowered you feel, the easier it will be for the two of us to engage one another’s help. If we play off one another’s strengths…”

  “We can give Soren’s plan a fighting chance.” Naomi sighed. “I get it, but it doesn’t stop every nerve in my body from twitching.” Every time one of the aliens passed Naomi, on his way to some other destination, she flinched. The last time she saw creatures like these, they were trying to kill her. Granted, at the time, she had been but an avatar Soren had conjured to lend his team moral support when they, too, felt vulnerable; but it didn’t mean she wasn’t also connected to the thought projection.

  “I still need to know what we’re doing here,” Naomi said.

  “We’re going to blow up the entire planet.”

  “What?!” Naomi realized she was drawing attention, like a crazy person talking to herself. It wasn’t that she was conversing with invisible people—lots of travelers were doing that on the breezeway miles above the planet’s surface. They had com devices planted in their heads, or group personas—not unlike Cosmos’s and Naomi’s mind-sharing—or real invisible friends they were traveling with. No, what was drawing attention was the fact that she clearly looked distressed. People as empowered as these people were who looked distressed might well be one step away from creating an intergalactic incident. She would soon draw security if she didn’t pull herself together.

  “I most definitely will not…”

  “Look Princess Righteous, here’s the deal.” Cosmos’s voice sounded strained inside Naomi’s head; she was clearly struggling to keep the condescension out of her tone. “None of these worlds and civilizations meeting at this crossroads is under the Fenquin queen’s influence. But once they trace this attack to her…”

  “What do you mean to her? Don’t you mean to us?”

  “We’re connected to her via the Zone Ma
gic that Soren has used to get us inside her head in a way not even she can influence. Not without access to the oversoul—and as evolved as she is, not even she has full access to it. They will track her and not us because they will not suspect minds as small as ours could have had anything to do with this subterfuge. They will be looking for a master race species—which typically alone can pull off a stunt like we’re discussing.”

  “No way. I refuse.”

  Cosmos’s sigh rattled the walkway she was standing on hard enough to jar the airships docked against it, like a rogue tide bashing the ships against the dock. Naomi had no idea how she did that, but she was a long way from being aware of many of Cosmos’s abilities, far less understanding how they worked. Now, security really was approaching them. Maybe Cosmos meant to force Naomi’s hand, pressure her to act impulsively rather than rationally. Well, Naomi was not having it. If Cosmos wanted to share the stage of her mind with a more empowered Naomi she’d better get used to this kind of resistance.

  “Remember all that we’ve learned about the Fenquin queen,” Cosmos coached. “In her loneliness, she can no longer abide not being loved. The sheer animosity of so many intergalactic civilizations focused on her, the exercising of their wrath her way, will wound her mortally. She has the mind power to fend off all of their counterattacks, but she will be looking for a way to win them over instead. And to do that…”

  “She’ll need access to Zone Magic. She’ll have no choice but to negotiate with Soren and the beast.”

  “I doubt they’ll give her access. More likely they’ll suggest a counter proposal; elevating the savant’s child to serve as its new mate. Together they can regrow the Fenquin queen’s civilization; and without fear of reprisal and unending coups which she has to spend more and more mind power over time to put down.”

  Naomi sighed. “Soren promised he wouldn’t do that.”

  “Because he knew you couldn’t handle it, you frigging’ bleeding heart!”