by John Conroe
“Declan? Aren’t you going to help her?” Gina asked.
“Hell no,” I said.
“What?” Gina scowled at me.
“She’s already really pissed at me. How mad do you think she’d be if I broke up her fight?” I said. “When was the last time you let her beat anyone up, Agent Krupp?” I asked.
“Never, other than training,” Krupp said, gun barrel moving in a little circle as she tried to keep tabs on the fight.
“See, Gina? Hasn’t had a real fight in months. And you want me to be the one to stop it?” I asked, shaking my head.
There was a flurry of blurry blows and Reddy went flying into the wall, his face really bloody now. Caeco was on him in a split second, arm cocked back, fist ready to crush his skull in. She stopped herself as the attacker slid down the wall, eyes trying to focus.
Krupp started toward them but stopped when Caeco’s hand came up. “Handcuffs won’t hold him, ma’am. He’s too strong.” She turned toward me and raised an eyebrow.
“See, now it’s okay to lend a hand,” I said aside to Gina, flicking one hand. Reddy shot up to the ceiling and splayed out like a flattened bug, pressed into place by my kinetic shove.
“Can you hold that until Agent Jensen retrieves reinforced restraints?” Krupp asked me.
“Please. He could probably take a nap and still hold that one in place,” Caeco said, straightening her now torn and disheveled suit. She had a bruise on her cheekbone that was fading as I watched and her short hair was mussed but she looked relatively pleased with herself.
“Gotta let her beat people up more often, Agent. She’s got a lot of pent-up anger inside,” I said to Krupp.
Caeco flashed me a middle finger as she headed out of the emergency room. A small cluster of cops and a hospital security guard came in, eyes wide, looking around for the enemy.
Officer Andreas was among them and she looked at Krupp with raised eyebrows. Krupp just pointed up at the ceiling. Andreas followed her gaze, then took a step back when she spotted Reddy. The other cops looked up too. “What the fu—” one of them said.
Andreas looked at Krupp, then my way. I gave her a little wave. “You need any help with the, ah, suspect, Agent?” Andreas asked, her fellow cops still just staring up.
“Thank you, Officer. My partner is collecting special restraints for this one. Mr. O’Carroll seems to have the situation in hand for the moment.”
Now all of them were studying me. “So, I wonder where this one’s pals are?” I asked.
Nobody seemed to have an answer.
Chapter 4
“So where did we leave off?” I asked.
More than a dozen female faces stared back at me from the rows of seats. “You had them set up the power sharing circle and run it for a minute each,” Mack said, looking at his iPad. He was sitting a bit away from the girls, set up to take notes and generally help me run portal class. Part of his fascination with magic.
“So far, after two weeks, that’s all you’ve taught us,” a fairly new witch said. Alice Morloft, big sister to Elise and major pain in my ass.
“I’m sorry, Alice, did your last teacher in portal creation do things differently?” I asked.
She frowned at me but stayed silent. This one was always busting my ass, stopping class to complain or question every damned thing I said. I waited. “Well?”
“I’ve never had a class in portals before,” she finally said with exasperation.
“Oh? Why is that?” I asked.
She frowned as my point sank home. She mumbled something. “What was that?” I asked.
“Nobody teaches it,” she finally said.
“Oh? Except here. By me,” I said.
“How do we know you can even do it?” she asked, unwilling to just shut the hell up.
That one stopped me. I stared at her for a second, then turned my attention to the others. “Is that something you all wonder? If I can actually do it? That I made it all up when I gated Mack, his sister, Ashley, and her dad all back to Earth from Fairie? Anyone else have doubts?” I asked.
The witches’ expressions ranged from bored, on Erika, to wide-eyed, on Michelle, to blank, on Tami. Ryanne looked at her fellow witches and then back to me. “We don’t doubt ya, Dec. We know ya did it. We just don’t get this whole bloody circle business,” she said.
“Oh. Didn’t I explain that portals take a huge butt load of power to open?” I asked.
Most of the faces nodded, but I didn’t see understanding. “Maybe it’s a question of reference, Dec,” Mack said. “When you say butt load it means something to you that’s different from what they think. Maybe you gotta show them how much power you’re talking about? You know, how much power a butt can have,” he said, grinning at his own joke.
“Why is he here again? He can’t Craft,” Alice said.
“Alice, shut the hell up for a second and let some of the air in your lungs stay there long enough for your brain to get oxygen,” Erika said. “Mack’s here because he’s obviously twenty times more useful to the class than you are.”
Alice glared at the tall blonde witch but the others around Erika were nodding, so she wisely kept her mouth shut. “But a demonstration might help us understand,” Erika said, glancing my way.
“Who are you and what did you do with Erika?” I asked.
“She was naughty so I locked her away in my bedroom. Wanna come check on her?” she asked with a sly look.
“Ah, there you are. Okay, so none of you really get the amount of power I’m talking about, huh?” I asked. A few head shakes and a couple of shrugs.
“Mack, is it time to use up the other capacitors?” I asked.
“Might as well. I’ve been worried that they’re leaking away power anyway,” he said, rummaging in his book bag. The ladies looked interested as he pulled out a black silk bag from which he produced three wooden thingies. None of the three were alike, but each was made from some type of wood. One was a circle of wild grapevine mixed with small branches of maple. Another was constructed of birch bark and birch twigs, and the last was the white inner bark of a pine tree, coated liberally with pine pitch that had miniature seed cones stuck in it.
“Hey, those look like that bleeding thing ya zapped me with in China,” Ryanne said, leaning closer.
“Mack? You been zapping Ryanne without telling us?” Erika asked, one brow arched.
“Wait, those look like something you or Britta would make?” Tami asked, ignoring her roommate’s innuendo.
“I did make them,” Britta said. “Traded them for a sweet little ritual knife he made. They were unpowered though.”
“Key word is were,” I said. “We took them to Fairie and let them soak up the ambient magic while we were there. Ryanne, how powerful was the one Mack, ah, zapped you with?”
“Like a bolt of fecking lecky it was,” she said.
“Mack, you dog,” Erika said.
Ignoring the chuckles she got with that one, I pressed Ryanne. “Like a jolt from a full circle?”
She nodded.
“Pass them around, Mack,” I said. “Ladies, please just feel for their potential without taking any of it.”
Mack handed them out to different people and each time a witch would touch one, you could see their surprise at how much magic energy the wooden capacitors held.
While they were making the rounds, I drew a circle on the floor at my feet and wrote up a set of destination coordinates around its edge using the elvish glyphs I’d been taught. When I was done, I collected the three objects of power.
“You’re right, Mack. They each have a little less power. They were stronger even just yesterday,” I said. Then I reached over and snagged Alice’s phone off her desktop.
“Hey, what the F?” she demanded.
“Hold your hands out over your desk, palms up,” I said. She frowned, looking like she was going to argue.
“Just do it, Alice,” Zuzanna said. “He doesn’t care about your phone or what’s on i
t. If he wanted that stuff, he’d just pull it off with his computer.”
Alice looked at her, then back my way. Finally, she put both hands out on her desktop.
“Forward just a bit,” I said. She sighed and rolled her eyes but pushed her hands forward.
“Perfect,” I said, heading back to my circle. One after another, I touched each wooden artifact, sucking the stored magic out of them. By the third one, my hair was starting to stand up on its own.
“Shite, I can feel it from here,” Ryanne said.
“Me too,” Michelle agreed.
I knelt down and touched the circle with my right index finger, powering up the gateway.
Excited chatter broke out as the girls saw the plate-sized opening appear in the air five feet above the circle, hovering perpendicular to the ground.
“Where is that?” Paige asked, squinting at the image in the portal. Before they had time to figure it out, I tossed Alice’s phone through the gate.
“Hey,” was all Alice could say before her phone dropped out of the air over her head and right into her open hands.
There was a second’s pause, then they all started talking at once. “Holy shit, that’s cool! Where’s the other opening? Oh, I see it—up there by the light fixture. Hey, can I throw something through it?”
The last one was Alice. “Yeah, but hurry. It’s gonna close in less than three minutes,” I said.
Suddenly, there was a mad rush of leggings, perfume, and Birkenstock sandals as two-thirds of the girls ran over and started tossing pencils, books, and at least one lipstick through the mini gate. The other third of the class was busy catching the stuff that started falling through from above.
My estimate was off by a full minute, the circle snapping shut after only two minutes. Luckily it was only a pencil that was in mid-transit as the portal closed. The pointed part fell on the floor by my feet and the end with the eraser bounced off Alice’s desktop.
The class went dead silent as Zuzanna picked up the cleanly cut pieces.
“So what did you all learn?” I asked.
“Portals don’t last long,” Britta said.
“You don’t want to be in one when they close,” Paige said.
“They take a butt load of power to open and run,” Alice said, frowning.
“So what good are they if you have to use two full circles’ power to open a gate that travels ten feet for a couple of minutes?” Erika asked.
“Good question. But first, it doesn’t matter whether it’s ten feet or ten miles. There isn’t an additional cost to travel greater distance, at least on the same planet. Breaching the gap between worlds is different,” I said. “But this is why I’m teaching you how to share power and harvest some of it.”
“You want to store it, like you did with Britta’s craft catchers?” Erika asked.
“Exactly, although the craft catchers were more like capacitors and I want something more like a battery,” I said.
“What the bleeding ‘ell is a capacitor?” Ryanne asked.
I looked at Mack for help. He looked back blankly for a second, then his face lit up. “You know those hand-crank survival flashlights? No batteries, you just wind the hell out of them for a few minutes and you get a few minutes of light?”
Ryanne and most of the witches nodded. “My favorites were the shake-up ones,” Erika said, making a suggestive hand motion that made some of the witches laugh.
“Aaanyway, those use capacitors to store the power, but it’s very temporary because the electricity leaks away over a short time,” Mack said.
“As opposed to a battery that stores it for years,” Britta said.
“Nice analogy, Mack. See, girls, he’s not just a pretty face,” I said.
“I’m that too,” he said with a wink at our audience.
“So I want to create a battery and we think we might have something,” I said. Mack pulled a roundish object from his bookbag. It was grapevine wound around a two-inch diameter disc of Rowan wood with a crystal in the center.
“The Rowan disc is scribed with both elvish and runic glyphs. The quartz was a little expensive because it’s very pure, and the grapevine was wrapped widdershins around the whole thing,” I explained.
“And you want to charge these with a circle?” Michelle asked. “That’s gonna take a whole bunch of time.”
“That’s one method, but it’s funny you should say it that way,” I said. Just then, the door opened and Chris Gordon walked in, followed by Wade Pitcairn.
“Excuse the interruption, everyone. It’s just that I had orders to set eyes on your professor and make sure he’s okay,” Chris said.
“You can tell Tanya that I’m fine, Chris. Just a scratch,” I said as he came closer, his eyes locked on the bandage on my head.
“Yeah, so that’s one, but she’s not the only one I have to answer to,” he said.
“I already Skyped Stacia,” I said, frowning slightly.
“Yeah, well she knows you can alter technology, so that was my second charge. Lots of others, though,” he said. “Plus I need to talk to you when class is over. We’ll just sit in back.”
I looked from him to Wade, who smiled an evil grin. “I just want to see how you teach,” he said, following Chris. The girls were all smiling and watching the two newcomers, heads swiveling, fingers twirling hair.
“Bullshit. Both of you come up here, please,” I said. “My whole class will be shot to hell and the witch pack will develop neck issues if you sit back there.”
I pulled two chairs out in front, turning them to face the class. “In fact, I’m gonna put you both to work. Chris, please sit here and Wade, let’s have you over here.”
They both came back up front and sat in the chairs I offered them, exchanging amused glances.
“Now, before we were blessed with such august visitors, we were talking about charging our batteries. Chris, would you hold up your God Tear necklace, please?” I asked. “So this is like the ultimate magic battery—literally powered by God. But it’s still just a storage device of sorts. Happens that it was charged by God’s feelings when he was betrayed. Which leads me to answering your question, Michelle.”
She instantly blushed when I brought all the attention to her but nodded for me to go on.
“So we know that strong feelings convey power. Here’s the very proof of that. What other nonconventional ways do we have to generate spell power? Tami?” I asked, singling her out. A couple of hands went up, but I focused on Tami.
She locked serious eyes on mine, frowning a little, but then she spoke. “There is always death magic. The power of sacrifice,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Bingo! Exactly. And that brings us to Wade, er, Dr. Pitcairn,” I said, intoning his title with mock seriousness.
“Ya want to sacrifice the Prof, do ya?” Ryanne asked, frowning.
“Exactly,” I said. Both Chris and Wade frowned at that. “Notice he’s sitting in a circle that I chalked out before class started. Notice I’ve used a mixture of elvish and runic forms as well.”
“Ah, Declan, what exactly are you doing?” Chris asked, looking just slightly concerned.
I held my expression for a second. “Sacrificing Wade,” I said, then a couple of seconds later, I smiled.
“When a human or animal sacrifice is made, what are we really giving up?” I asked the class.
“Duh… our lives,” Erika said.
“Yes, but aren’t we all going to die sometime anyway?” I asked.
“But hopefully not today,” Wade said, joking but still mildly concerned.
“Exactly. Not today. Sometime in the future. So what do we actually sacrifice?” I asked.
“The time we have left in this life?” Britta guessed.
“Give the witch a chocolate, Mack,” I said. He reached in his bag and tossed her a Lake Champlain chocolate.
“Hey, you never said you were awarding chocolates!” Zuzanna said. The others looked mildly rebellious.
I
nodded at Mack, and he started to toss them all over the room. Some stopped in midair and floated down to individual witches and some were caught the old-fashioned way. I always brought chocolate to class and always enough for everyone. I’d like to say I thought of it myself but a certain lady werewolf suggested it was a worthwhile investment.
“So a death witch harvests the time that someone or some animal has left. Basically their leftover potential. What if we harvest time that was just flat-out wasted?” I asked.
