James reached toward his leg. The armor opened and a tendril extended, portal stone in hand, taken from his pocket. “One-way portal stone.”
Harper’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“You’re gonna have to leave behind all the crap you talked about, but at least you’ll be alive. I figure that’s a good trade-off. Just ask yourself how much your life is worth.”
“Why?” Harper asked, her voice barely a whisper.
James grinned. “Because when the choice finally came, you chose to be a human being and not a selfish little shit.”
Harper laughed. “Thanks, pseudo-Dad.” She sniffled and dropped her backpack on the ground before stripping off most of her rings. She then yanked several yellowed pieces of paper out of pockets, tossed them to the ground, and finished by pulling off her sweater. “I really liked that sweater, too. It was part of my signature look.”
“Buy a new one.” James walked toward the dais. “Once I open the portal, it’ll only hold for ten seconds. This might take careful timing.”
“You’re sure?” Harper asked. “I wouldn’t save my ass if I were you.”
“I’ve known a lot of people who have turned their lives around. You’ve still got your money, right? You can go hide on your island for a while until the Southguards forget about all of it. Or fake your own death. I know people with experience in that kind of thing.”
“I bet you do.” Harper managed a playful grin as she lowered the crystal toward a slot in the dais. “Congratulations, pseudo-Dad. We defeated an Oriceran death factory as part of our road-trip bonding experience.” She winked, her cheek still pinks from her tears, and shoved the crystal into the dais.
The entire cavern shook.
“How long do you have to stay?” James asked, regretting not having asked that question earlier.
Recommend immediate evacuation, Whispy sent.
Just wait a second.
“The dais will turn to smoke,” Harper shouted over the roar of the quake. She licked her lips, her eyes darting around. “That’s when I’ll know the sequence is irreversible.”
The tremors intensified, and portions of the chamber roof fell, leaving large piles of dirt and rock on the floor.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered. “Just disappear.”
James raised the portal stone. He opened his mouth and prepared to swallow.
Extreme danger, Whispy reported. Again recommend immediate evacuation.
Jagged cracks of light shot through the pyramids in the center of the room. The artifacts collapsed and shattered into multiple pieces with loud booms.
Harper closed her eyes. “I guess this is what they call karma.”
The bottom of the dais darkened and drifted upward as smoke. A few seconds later, the rest of it finished the transformation. James plopped the stone into this mouth and swallowed, concentrating on the Toyota outside. A few seconds later, a portal with a bright, juddering edge opened in front of him. He grabbed Harper, who still had her eyes closed, and leapt through.
They appeared beside the parked vehicle. Even at this distance from the tunnels, the violent shaking of the ground almost knocked them off their feet. A few seconds later, six columns of colored light blasted through the ground and shot into the sky, leaving behind a twinkling trail as they faded over the next ten seconds.
“Woah.” Harper tapped one of her few remaining rings and summoned a new light orb. She threw her arms around James and gave him a tight hug. “We did it, and you saved me. Thanks, pseudo-Dad.”
James extricated himself from the woman. “You really need to stop calling me that. It’s annoying as shit.”
She frowned. “Why did you portal us back here instead of LA?”
“I figure you’re gonna need to go to Austin to get a new start on your life. I’m gonna drive back and grab some barbeque at a bunch of places we missed.” James shrugged. “And not bringing you back to LA decreases the chance my wife will slit your throat once she finds out you planned to betray me.”
“You don’t think she’ll forgive me for telling the truth?” Harper sounded hopeful.
“I think you don’t fuck with anyone important to Shay and live long,” James explained.
“She’s not just a college professor, is she?” Harper’s grin consumed her face.
“Everyone has a past. Some people just bury theirs better than others.”
Harper laced her fingers together and stretched her arms above her head. “I just left behind millions of dollars’ worth of artifacts because I decided to save a bunch of random Texans. How messed up is that? I’m a vegan. I’m like the natural enemy of Texans.”
James turned toward the car. “Then we should get—”
Bright portals opened, and four men in dark clothing stepped out, wands in hand and light orbs hovering over them. Twenty other men rushed out of the portals, all holding rifles, shimmering layers of light covering their bodies. Shield spells.
New enemies identified, Whispy reported. Engage and kill.
A helmet slid closed around James’ head. It was just one of those nights.
Chapter Nineteen
Even though James had a good idea as to the answer, he still needed to ask the obvious question. He had no problem killing people, but he liked to know who he was killing.
“Who the fuck are you?” he bellowed.
One of the wizards smiled; his bearing suggested he was the leader of the group. “We’re private collection agents.” He lifted his wand and murmured a spell. A huge light orb appeared and illuminated the entire area. “Right now, we represent the Southguard family.”
“They’re a bunch of worthless shits.”
The wizard smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Sure, but that’s not really my problem, is it? They rather generously paid a certain courier to deliver an item, and said courier disappeared with the item. We need to collect the item and deliver it to our employers, along with the courier. She’s been real hard to track until just now. I guess it’s our lucky night.”
“The item? You mean the Seasons of Rage?”
The wizard sighed. “I need the six pyramids. I assume since you two are here that they’re around here somewhere. Where are they?”
I’m so not in the mood for this shit.
Kill the enemy, Whispy suggested.
You’d say that if I was in the mood for this shit too.
Always a sound tactical suggestion.
James looked at the surrounding men. “The Southguards don’t need a portable war factory. This planet doesn’t. It’d be annoying as fuck for a lot of people with better things to do with their time.” He nodded in the direction of the former tunnel complex. “And it doesn’t matter since it’s gone anyway.”
The wizard frowned. “Gone? Where is it? Who has it?” Desperation and irritation mixed in his voice.
“No one has it,” James explained. “It blew up. The core and the pyramids are all gone.” He pantomimed an explosion. “Turns out the thing has a self-destruct system. We set it off, and so now the Seasons of Rage have gone onto messed-up artifact heaven. Your employers will need to time-travel if they want a new one.”
“Why should I believe you?” the wizard demanded.
James shrugged. “Don’t believe me. I don’t give a shit. It’s the truth. You said yourself you were having trouble tracking Harper, and suddenly you could. Think about why that might be.”
The wizard’s jaw clenched. “That’s very unfortunate since it means, among other things, we’re not going to get a bonus from our employers, but we still can complete our secondary task.” He smiled at Harper. “That woman’s coming with us. She owes an explanation to our mutual employers.”
Harper waggled her fingers with a mocking smile on her face. “There’s no way I’m going with you guys. That would be the stupidest thing I could do, and I’ve done a lot of stupid things tonight.” She gestured at James with both hands. “And I’m with him right now. After what I’ve just
seen him do, it’s hard to be afraid of you guys. It’d be hard to be afraid of twice as many guys. You honestly think you can win against the James Brownstone?”
The wizard kept his wand up as he looked at James and Harper. “Yeah, it’s not like anyone else uses that kind of armor. I thought it was you, but I was hoping it wasn’t.”
James retracted his helmet for a few seconds before closing it again. “That help?”
“Shit,” one of the men with rifles murmured. “It is him.”
The wizard nodded. “That changes nothing. You’re no bodyguard, and we’ve got no beef with you, Brownstone, but we need that woman. So you took down the Seasons. Not my problem. That’s the Southguards’ problem. But she needs to come with us.”
“So the Southguards can kill her?” James asked. “That’s how this ends. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Did she give you some sob story?” The wizard sneered. “Trust me. If you think my employers are such pieces of shit, you need to ask yourself why she was working for them to begin with. She’d slit your throat if she thought she could make a profit off it.”
That’s what this is, James thought. She’s like a younger Shay and a younger Alison. Fuck it. I’ve got nothing better to do.
James extended a blade. The men all stepped back and pointed their weapons and wands at him.
“Give me one good reason I should turn her over to you assholes,” he growled. “And don’t tell me it’s so you can make money. I don’t give two fucks whether or not you make money. Let’s get that clear right here and now.”
“She’s not a good person, Brownstone,” the wizard insisted. “Isn’t that a good enough reason? She’s garbage. Trash.”
“That’s okay. I’m not a good person either, but like you said, I’ve got no beef with you.”
The wizard nodded, giving him a hungry grin. “Exactly. I don’t know how you got roped into this, and honestly, given what that thing is, it’s probably best that you took it down, but it’s time to punish the woman responsible.”
Harper sighed and stepped forward, defeat written on her face.
“The people responsible are dust on Oriceran.” James put up his arm to block Harper. “You’re all fancy with your portals. That makes this easy. I’ll give you thirty seconds to portal on out of here before I get more irritated than I already am.”
“Are you shitting me?” The wizard glared at him. “You’re making a mistake. Every man here who isn’t using a wand has anti-magic bullets. We don’t want to fight you, but it’s not like we can’t. You don’t want to make an enemy like the Southguards.”
“I think you’ve got this backward,” he replied.
“Oh?” The wizard smirked. “How do you figure?”
James raised his blade. “They don’t want to make an enemy like me.”
“Fuck this.” The wizard shouted an incantation. A fireball streaked from his wand toward James. It exploded against his chest, the sensation barely noticeable.
Maximum adaptation already achieved against attack type, Whispy reported. Kill and terminate all enemies rapidly to minimize inefficiency.
Harper dropped behind the car, covering her head. The other three wizards fired blue-white stun bolts. The attacks slammed into James, the energy arcing along the armor for a few seconds before dissipating.
“That was a big mistake.” He took a single step forward.
The wizard leader gritted his teeth. “Fire, you idiots. Weaken his defenses so we can finish him off already.”
A hail of bullets filled the air. The expensive rounds bounced off James, not even stinging. Several bullets struck the car, ripping through the body or the windows. Two of the tires popped, and the car sank on one side. James continued walking forward at a slow, methodical pace, a constant plink of rounds colliding with him.
They must be getting a shitload of money to not have run once they realized it was me.
The wizard leader pointed his wand at the car, muttering quickly under his breath. The vehicle rose into the air and floated over James. Harper scurried along the ground, low-crawling through the shrubs as bullets flew over her, her cover gone.
James whipped up his blade as the Toyota dropped. He sliced through the vehicle, sparks flying, before the two halves fell on either side of him with a loud crunch.
The gunmen continued to pepper him with bullets. The other wizards cycled through different attacks. An ice lance cracked as it smashed into his side. A glob of acid sizzled as it dripped off his arm and ate away at the forest floor. A pulsating and spiraling orange lance erupted from one wand and exploded in a shower of sparks against his shoulder, leaving a slight scorch mark and stinging but not accomplishing anything else. One dark beam tickled.
Whispy repeated the same report. Maximum adaptation already achieved against attack types.
“He’s got to be reaching his limit,” the wizard leader shouted. “Keep going. We can win this. He can’t even attack.”
James grinned underneath his helmet. Harper had been right. There were few regular enemies on Earth who had a chance of breaching his defenses in extended advanced mode after years of adaptation, including purposeful and directed training of the symbiont. It’d taken an ancient Oriceran war machine to hurt him a little, and now the Seasons of Rage were destroyed—just like his current opponents would soon be if they didn’t surrender. He stopped walking forward.
“See?” the wizard leader commented. “I told he was reaching his limit.”
He jerked his wand to the side, not to attack Harper, but to slice a tree through the base and drop it on top of James. The modest trunk bounced off his armor with a dull thud, the wood cracking. The gunmen stopped firing and took the chance to reload. They had just ejected their magazines when a tiny stone flew past James.
Wait. Is that a bean?
The bean arced toward the back of the group, and they either ignored it or didn’t see it. Disregarding the massive explosion afterward proved more difficult. Screams filled the night. Bodies, rifles, and wands flew through the air, and when the flames and smoke cleared, a massive smoldering crater marred the forest floor. Half the attack force lay on the ground, either dead or wounded. James looked behind him. Harper was crouching behind a tree with a smirk on her face.
James pointed his blade at the wizard leader, who now lay on the ground groaning, blood matting his hair to his forehead. “You haven’t even scratched me, and it looks like the woman you were supposed to capture could have taken you out easily even without my help. Do you really want to continue this? Is a paycheck worth dying for? I could cut you fuckers down like nothing, but I’m tired, and I just want to get a goodnight’s sleep before heading back home.”
The wizard leader lifted his head and gritted his teeth. “If I don’t come back with something for my employers, they’ll be unhappy. No one likes the Southguards when they’re unhappy.”
“You keep trying to fight me, I won’t be unhappy, but you’ll be dead.” James shrugged. “However, I’ve got something you can give to the Southguards that will still make them unhappy, but it’ll focus that on someone other than you.”
The wizard leader stood and started swaying, burns on his body. He half-closed his eyes as he cast a healing spell, running his wand over his body. He sighed in relief before asking, “What’s that, Brownstone?”
“A message,” James rumbled. “You tell them James Brownstone blew up their toy, and if they know what’s good for them, they’ll just chalk this up to a sad, expensive loss and move on. If they think they can take me on, they need to study recent criminal history more thoroughly. It’s been a while since I personally took down an entire organization or family, but maybe I’m due. You think you could do that for me?”
The other man offered a shallow nod. “It was nothing personal, Brownstone. It was just business. You would have done the same if our positions had been reversed.”
“Nothing personal. I just kill people who try to kill me.” James growled. “Now, get th
e fuck out of here before I decide I only need one guy to deliver the message.”
The wizard leader lifted his wand and slowly chanted a spell. A moment later, a swirling portal appeared. He gestured toward it. The survivors filed through, a few pulling wounded or dead comrades. A couple of minutes later, the leader was the last to step toward the portal.
He stopped a foot away from the magical passage and looked over his shoulder. “I always wondered if it was true, but now I get it. I guess it’s a good thing you opened a restaurant, so guys like me have the occasional chance of winning a fight.” He snorted and stepped through the portal. It closed.
Harper staggered toward James, her smile tight. Blood soaked her shirt, and she clutched her stomach.
“You’re hit?” James asked, retracting his helmet.
“Yes,” she replied weakly. “Sorry it took so long. I forgot I had a few toys I didn’t abandon in the tunnels.”
“I could have handled those guys,” James replied. “But not complaining about you taking a few down.” He frowned at her wound. “I thought you had a defensive artifact? The pink force field thing?”
“It was kind of a combo defensive-slash-dampener deal, and it went up with the Seasons when I dumped all the stuff. I lost a lot of good potential backups when I left the backpack in there because it had some stuff in it that was dampening and we didn’t have time to mess around.” Harper sucked in a breath, shuddering. “Just so you know, I thought about giving you a big dramatic speech about what it’s like to die and fake a death scene, but that would have been a pretty bitchy thing to do after you helped scare off a bunch of guys for me.” Her shaking fingers slipped into her pocket and she pulled out a small vial, then removed the stopper and downed the contents. A half-minute later, her wounds had closed. “That’s better. Much better. Whew. Fun, fun. I’m surprised you didn’t kill all those guys.”
Road Trip: BBQ Delivered with Attitude (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Book 20) Page 15
