Stand Your Ground Hero

by Paul Duffau

  “So everything is my fault, is that it?”

  Mercury snorted. “Only if you want to feel sorry for yourself.”

  Harold jumped to Kenzie’s defense. “That was unkind.”

  “We don’t have time for this”—Mercury made a circular gesture—“nonsense. Some unknown party is after MAGE, Mitch’s employer already has the plans for the prototype”—disbelief tinged his words; mostly, Kenzie thought, at Mitch stumbling across the plans against all odds—“and we have a budding wizard war against an undefined enemy.”

  Kenzie stood on wobbly knees and approached Mercury. She drew herself up and glared at him. “I don’t care if we have time or not. I need to know what happened to my parents. I need to know how that affects me,” she took a breath, “and Mitch.” She pivoted away from Mercury’s bemused expression and gave Harold what she hoped was a fierce scowl. “I’m not going to marry that Rubiera jerk, no matter what Sasha or the rest of the Family says. You can’t force me to until I’m older, and by then, I can learn control so that what happened to my mother doesn’t happen to me, too. And you’re going to teach me.”

  Harold rocked back in the chair, and looked to the floor.

  “What aren’t you telling us?” asked Mitch. He pointed at Harold. “He should have been in full agreement with that, he treats her like a favorite niece . . . or maybe granddaughter?”

  Mercury shook his head. “We are not directly related. Elowyn was a favorite student, both in our world and the mundane world. That’s all.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Kenzie saw a green glow of energy creep into Mercury’s eyes. Unconsciously, she sought a counterspell. “Stop it, both of you,” she said.

  Mitch moved away, to the window. “You know they’re keeping secrets from you. All this bluster about MAGE, yet it takes a wizard to activate it, according to them. Meanwhile, they still haven’t told you how the magic got powerful enough to kill your mother, have they?”

  Kenzie craned her neck to see what Mitch was staring at out in the Glade, but it looked quiet, peaceful. She glanced at her wrist, forgetting that she didn’t have a watch. Need to get back soon.

  “She lost control. I won’t. I can learn.”

  “She was an adult. They would have taught her control, too.”

  Kenzie opened her mouth to rebut him. She closed it again without speaking as Harold slumped deeper into the crease of leather, like he was trying to slip under the cushion and vanish. She narrowed her eyes, and the old wizard shifted his gaze to the floor.

  “You, boyo, are a major pain in my . . .” Mercury crossed his arms. “It would be nice if you would turn off your brain on occasion.”

  Kenzie looked to Mitch. “Okay, so what? What do you think they’re hiding?”

  “MAGE wasn’t the only device made to manipulate magic or quantum energy or whatever it is.”

  Thunderclouds clouded Mercury’s eyes, and his reply came swift as lightning. “Shut up, Mitch.”

  Harold, hearing this mention of a second device, leapt from the chair, emitting a terrible cry that cut into Kenzie’s soul. “NO!”

  Mercury strode across the space between them in two fast steps and grabbed his brother by the shoulders. “Stop it. The amulet is broken, Elowyn’s Star is lost.”

  He shot a meaningful look at Mitch as he spoke. Kenzie filed it away to discuss with Mitch later—but not too much later. She fixed her gaze on the wizards. “What was Elowyn’s Star?”

  “I’m betting a magical representation that worked like MAGE,” said Mitch. “That’s what an amulet is, right?”

  Kenzie faced him. “How did you learn that?”

  Mitch’s lips twisted into a cross between a smile and a grimace. “You fall for a cute wizard chick, you learn as much as you can.”

  Cute? A warm glow slipped down her spine to her belly. Then she thumped him. “I’m not some chick.”

  Mitch gulped air. Before he could apply a defense to his insult or apologize, Kenzie moved on to Harold.

  “What was Elowyn’s Star?”

  Miserable, Harold spoke, head bent to the floor. Kenzie strained to hear him. “Your mother understood Eddie’s ideas, even if the math was beyond her. She was able to use her considerable power—and she was at least as strong as you are, McKenzie—to craft an amulet of surpassing beauty and terrible power. She found the crossover from physics to metaphysics, saw how to apply them both.

  “She wanted to use the amulet and all its power to help people, to show them how they could change their world to something better. With enough energy, she felt she could overcome the negative forces loose in the world, end the oppression by opening all their eyes. Elowyn believed that the human race was evolving into new beings that would be as advanced from modern humans as we are from Australopithecus, that the higher-order wizards would operate from a basis of love.”

  Kenzie’s heart swelled with the enormity of Elowyn’s vision. An unexpected, uncalled-for touch of magical energy lit scenes in her mind of possible futures in a golden glow.

  Harold’s next words shattered the images like a hammer on a snow globe.

  “Instead, it caused the Splintering.” Tears draped Harold’s cheeks again, and Kenzie thought he might be the crying-est man she’d ever met. “The Families rebelled, and forced a war. Magic was for us, only us, and we killed her to protect its privilege.”

  The library fell quiet. Sadness sat on Mercury’s face, guilt on Harold’s. Kenzie’s skin was numb, and her mouth worked without sound.

  Mitch broke the silence, anger in his voice. “Y’all are messed up, you know that?”

  Chapter 21

  “I feel old, brother,” said Mercury. The children had been dismissed: Kenzie to rejoin Raymond and Sasha in the Glade before they noticed her missing, Mitch back to the mundane world of angry uncles. Now the two wizards sat alone and contemplated the fire. Mugs of tea cooled in their hands.

  Harold did not answer, and Mercury did not press.

  “Do you ever feel guilty?”

  Harold grunted. “Constantly.” He shifted and glanced over to Mercury with red-rimmed eyes. “McKenzie deserves peace.”

  “That, I fear, she was never to have. Still, she is a wonderfully resilient young woman. She has been battered since spring by Family politics and the real world’s nastiness without folding into a ball or whimpering like a beaten dog. And she clearly cares for Mitch.”

  “As you do.” Harold yawned. “He’s not Eddie.”

  “She’s not Elowyn. Both of them have a harder edge. Mitch, in particular. A bleakness covers his heart and only Kenzie seems to reach him there.”

  “He seems fond of you.”

  “I challenge him and I’ve earned a small measure of trust. Only a small measure. I suspect Mr. Meriwether trusts exactly one person. McKenzie.”

  “Oh, I suspect that he trusts people more than that,” said Harold with a wry twist of his mouth. “He trusts them to let him down.”

  “Touché,” Mercury answered. He drained the last of the soothing liquid from his mug. “Mitch has Elowyn’s Star.”

  Harold spasmed as though hit with a galvanic shock. Wide-eyed, he stared at the flicker of the fire and quietly released a wide assortment of profanities that bordered on blasphemies. Mercury let him wind down, ignoring the personal attacks embedded in Harold’s torrent. When his brother had calmed, he said, “I tried to remove it from him.”

  “Why didn’t you? If he gives it to Kenzie . . .” Anguish splashed across his face. “She’s not ready.”

  “I said I tried.” Mercury weighed his next words. “The gytrash disagreed with my intent.”

  “What gytrash?”

  Mercury pointed with his empty cup. “That one.”

  Outside the window, the enormous head of a gytrash was framed by the silver orb of the Glade’s moon. The eyes maintained a steady red glow as they tracked from one wizard to the other in supernatural assessment.

  Harold cursed again, and Mercury laughed, a bi
tter sound filled with recrimination.

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “That, brother, is an excellent question. I think it arrived with you and McKenzie. Both of them could feel the stare on them—they kept checking the window. According to Mitch, it’s been following him around.”

  “They don’t do that.”

  “This one does.” Mercury stood up and walked to the cabinet with the kettle. Opening the door, he removed a bottle of brandy. He splashed some in the bottom of his mug. Silently, he offered a jot to Harold. His teetotaler brother refused the offer with a shake of his head.

  “Mitch apparently found the gem after the battle with Lassiter and has kept it since then. When I asked him to give it to me, the reaction was . . . violent.” He sipped the brandy, savored the heat as he rolled it around his mouth. “The beast was present when Kenzie sought the Fire spell.”

  “It moved away to let her have it, let her reach the Incantaraus.”

  “I think it did so only because she did not have the Star with her. If she had it in her possession, it would have blocked her and found a way to alert the rest of us.”

  “You put a lot of faith into a”—Harold stared at the gaping jaws—“mythical beast.”

  “Almost none,” admitted Mercury. “But Elowyn set all these events in motion to protect Kenzie, perhaps even to the creation of Mitch as a hero.” He swallowed another mouthful of amber fluid. “I worry about that.”

  “The blackness you mentioned?”

  “Not blackness. He’s not evil. No, it’s a bleakness, a loss of hope and faith. Without those, I don’t know how he sustains himself through the trials that are coming. Someone is after MAGE for a reason, and they’ve already demonstrated a definite penchant for violence. Someone will follow in Lassiter’s footsteps.” He swirled the brandy. “Or do we have it wrong. Is someone, perhaps the hechiceros, after Elowyn’s amulet? With that, they would be unassailable. Their stated intention to reduce the planet to their playground with just enough Meat left to serve the lords would dominate and the rest of us would either acquiesce or perish.”

  “McKenzie has nothing but hope and anger. If Mitch lets her use the amulet, he brings out the latter, and she will fall.” Harold emitted a heavy sigh. “I feel more like the court jester than the wise counselor.”

  “The irony is delicious. Two wise old men play the fools and the two teenagers are supposed to save us.” With a long draw at the mug, Mercury finished the brandy. “Damned if I see how, though.”

  Chapter 22

  Mitch had his head buried in the guts of the Camaro. The activity soothed him after the tensions of the confrontation with Mercury, and meeting Harold. His uncle had waited up to chew his ass about scaring Mrs. McFurkin, blasting him with a diatribe the second he walked through the door. Mitch surrendered, agreed that he’d screwed up, and, sucking up, offered to apologize. His uncle, used to a battle, greeted this approach with suspicion and a beer-scented belch.

  Mitch inserted the screwdriver and made a minuscule adjustment to the air and fuel flow for the Holley 770 carburetor. He’d slipped out of work early, okayed by Warnicke after Mitch worked through his lunch break to finish up a rush job, and hit the auto parts store, using some of his scarce money from 3rdGen to get the top-of-the-line carb. Even with his attention focused on the delicate setup work for his car, the events and data from last night rattled in the back of his mind, seeking order. The only thing that he settled on was that the two old wizards were still holding out on him.

  And on Kenzie, he thought. The ever-present pressure of eyes itched at the nape of his neck. Wuffie creeped him out even when he stayed out of Mitch’s sight. It was like having someone reading over your shoulder constantly but vanishing every time you looked up.

  Dogs can’t spy.

  Wuffie is no dog, he answered himself. The apparition, or whatever the gytrash was, carried a raw and uncomfortable intelligence.

  Footfalls, meant to be silent, betrayed someone approaching, acting stealthily. He unfolded his lankiness from under the propped hood, taking care to avoid whacking his head.

  A hand grabbed his upper arm at the right tricep and squeezed.

  Mitch reacted on instinct honed by lessons from Jackson. He pulled the arm forward slightly to unbalance his attacker, dropping low to his left in a hard pivot, both to gain leverage and get his head clear of the metal of the car. The hand followed him down but the sudden turn broke his arm free from his attacker’s grip. Thrusting up from his right leg, he cleared, leading with his left elbow in a vicious sweep that connected with air. His right hand traced a lower trajectory, heel of the palm extended to strike.

  Too late he realized that Hunter was the target. The impact of his attack caught Hunter in the solar plexus and drove him backwards to the ground. Winded, Hunter rotated his hand in a semicircle and clenched his fingers into a claw.

  Instantly, pressure compressed Mitch’s chest, squeezing like a heel crushing a grape. Mitch identified the spell, a variation of what Mercury had shown him. “Asshole,” he managed to croak out, and flipped Hunter off.

  Hunter left the spell in place for another couple of seconds before releasing the magic. Mitch sagged, hands to knees, to catch his breath.

  Dark rage compressed Rubiera’s lips into a rigid line, matched by the black, scowling brows. “You don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t go sneaking in, and maybe you don’t get what you deserve.”

  A sledgehammer crashed into Mitch’s chest at the flick of fingers from the young wizard. His back hit the concrete as Mitch strained the muscles of his neck to keep his head from smashing into the hard surface like a rotten apple thrown against a boulder.

  Hunter gathered his feet under him and rose, brushing dust off the seat of his slacks. “Enough.” He threw a glare at Mitch as he massaged the center of his chest. “When did you start doing the jujitsu thing?”

  Mitch shook his head hard one time, exacerbating the pain in his shoulders. “What do you want?”

  Hunter turned on the charm and spread his hands wide while Mitch eyed him warily. “Just visiting a friend for some help.” The keenness in his expression belied the casualness of the tone.

  “So you came here?”

  Anger slashed across Hunter’s features again. He composed himself. He lifted his chin to indicate the car. “How’s it coming along?”

  Mitch regarded him for a moment. The Camaro represented neutral ground, and Hunter didn’t give a rat’s behind about it, so the diversion must be part of a con job. “Almost there. Only thing really left is a little tweaking on the carb and some interior work.” He took a breath. “Why are you really here?”

  “I told you, looking for advice. Like the gig at 3rdGen?”

  Devoid of emotion, Mitch nodded. “3rdGen is a pretty cool deal, right on the edge of robotics and pushing.”

  The other boy nodded. “When I heard you got in with them, I was kinda surprised. They only grab the best for interns.”

  Mitch bristled with resentment. Hunter had made himself perfectly clear about the pecking order, and Mitch wasn’t at the top, not by a long shot. Hunter’s friendliness was an act, one that assumed Mitch was stupid. Mitch had earned the spot at 3rdGen on a personal recommendation from a teacher and by impressing the hiring engineer during a brutal interview. He didn’t get everything handed to him on silver spoons, or delivered to the door of a big-ass mansion.

  Mitch squared up and faced Hunter. He had a no idea why the dude was here, but his first instinct was to say, Screw you. “What do you really want?” he asked. “You didn’t come here to talk about my job.” Mitch stopped as if a sudden thought occurred to him, and he smiled. “Wait, do you need to borrow some cash?”

  Flick!

  A steel bowling ball slammed into his chest a fraction of a second later, and this time, it felt like the cartilage of his rib cage give. He landed with his torso on the beaten-up couch pushed against the far wall. His talent for finding weaknesses in other
s was going to get him killed. He fought to keep his eyes from rolling back into his skull. Coughing, he rolled to his hands and knees, half expecting another blow. A quick check confirmed nothing was broken. He leveraged himself back to his feet one inch at a time. Only when he was erect did he turn to face Hunter.

  “Drinking from the fire hose again?” asked Mitch.

  Hunter stood, perplexed. Then, he turned cautiously, remembering the confession he’d made to Mitch about his magic after the fun and games with the stun gun. Eyes glinting, he said, “It’s manageable.” He wiped his hands on his trousers. “And none of your business.”

  Mitch detected an undercurrent of worry, and the admonitions that Harold had delivered to Kenzie about the dangers of immersing herself in energy revisited him. While he ruminated, Hunter pulled an SD card from his breast pocket. Holding it pinched between his fingernails, he offered it to Mitch.

  “Take this,” he ordered. “When you go to work tomorrow, insert it into your workstation. An autorun program will come up. Just hit Enter. Once the program runs through the setup, remove the card and destroy it.”

  “What’s on it?”

  “You’re going to steal 3rdGen’s secrets for me.”

  The basilisk stare from Hunter sent a tremor of apprehension to dig into Mitch’s guts. It was clear what he wanted, and it wasn’t just industrial secrets. He wanted Mitch destroyed, caught by 3rdGen, jailed probably. There was no way he’d get away with it, and they both knew it. Mitch stared at the doom in Hunter’s hand. He could refuse. Hunter would tell his father and, with no useful purpose to serve, Mitch would be eliminated. It would cost Hunter a few reputation points and call his judgment into question, but that was survivable.

  Kenzie’s refusal to have anything to do with the Rubieras replayed in his mind. Somehow, Hunter had made the connection between them, even if he couldn’t prove anything.