Standing, I moved to pull Nitro into a quick bro hug. He flinched away from me when I got closer. I stepped back, not wanting to make him any more uncomfortable. Instead, I held out my hand in the universal sign of asking for a fist bump. He gave me a bump, and I saw a quick smile crease his features before it disappeared. The healer moved forward and took Nitro by the arm and started to lead him away.
Nitro stopped and turned back toward me. “Thanks for coming for me, Jackson.”
“You would have done the same for me.”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Never leave a man behind.”
“True that.” Another small flash of the old Nitro worked across his face before disappearing behind the mask of depression that hung over him.
The healer started to lead him forward again, and this time, he let her. Adam had watched the entire interaction, and a small smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “That was the most he said in the last hour.”
“He just needs to be around more people who won’t treat him like he’s broken.”
“Well, the demon did break him, Jackson. Not to the point where he learned anything valuable, but if his friends had come to save him, he would have cut all of them down. That is what he is dealing with now. Trying to reconcile what is true with what he lived for that day.”
“How many times do you think the demon had him kill them?”
“Hundreds.”
Ouch. I couldn’t imagine taking up a sword against any of my friends. I would much rather let them cut me down. To be forced to kill them again and again, thinking that they turned on you, must have been horrible. I couldn’t even imagine what Nitro must have been feeling. “He will get better, right?”
“I would have said no until I saw that smile rush across his face a moment ago. Now I think there is a chance. Come on in. I’m ready for you.”
Adam stepped to the side and waited for me to enter the room. He closed the door behind me and motioned for me to take a seat on the couch. He took a seat in the comfy chair across from me and tapped something into his pipe. He took a long pull from the pipe and then relaxed back into his chair. It must have been hard for him, seeing one of his people in such a condition. But there was hope, and for now, that had to be enough.
“Did you get a chance to finish reading the book I gave you?”
Well, that was interesting. I thought we were going to talk about our mission to save Nitro and the run-in we had with the archfiend. Instead, it was book report time. “I did. I loved it, but I almost felt as if it ended on a cliffhanger. What happened to Bristow? Did he succeed in hiding the stone?”
“Well, this is where fantasy meets reality, Jackson. He did succeed in hiding the stone, and he left clues so the right person could find it.”
“You have to be shitting me. Like National Treasure?”
“I’m not sure what that is.”
“It’s a human world thing. Basically it’s a movie where a guy follows a set of historical clues to find a treasure.”
“So a rip-off of Indiana Jones?”
Wait, what? Adam had actually seen a movie. Well, that was news to me. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who got out much, but hey, maybe it had been different for him forty years ago. “Maybe in pure theory, but both films are totally different, and they are both pretty good.”
“I guess the answer to your question then is yes, kind of like that.”
“Awesome.”
“While I love your enthusiasm, let’s not forget terrifying. This is old magic, and maybe one of the most closely guarded secrets that we have.”
“And I get to hunt it down.”
“Maybe. You have to pass a test first.”
Oh, great. A test in our world could mean just about anything, and I doubted one for a secret artifact was a good one. Just once I’d like for something to be straightforward. Here is where the thing is. Go and get it and come back. Why was it never like that in real life? “What kind of test?”
“All you have to do is tell me if you can read this.” Adam unrolled a piece of parchment and passed it to me.
I took the paper into my hands gently. It looked old and brittle. The last thing I wanted to have happen was to not be able to read it and somehow unknowingly destroy it. I held the unrolled scroll out and looked over the surface. At first, I couldn’t see anything, and then words started to appear, almost as if they were being burned into the parchment.
You must find the heart of cinders and be swallowed by the earth. Only then will your faith be tested.
Well, none of that sounded very appealing. I’d prefer not to be swallowed by anything if I could help it. The scroll lit up again. There were coordinates. You had to be shitting me. Actual coordinates. Like a start here sign on a game board. I had a feeling whatever we found there would not be friendly, but would hopefully lead us toward the next clue. I looked up, and Adam was watching me expectantly.
“Well?” he asked.
“You mean you can’t see it?”
“I can’t, or I would have gone for the stone long ago. The good news is that you can see it, and that means you have a job to do. Take whatever and whoever you need. Except for Britta. She and I need to have a little chat.”
“Don’t be too hard on her, Adam. She was just trying to protect her family.”
“And how do you know that?”
“We talked about it.”
His face grew red, but he managed to hold back his anger. “So she knows that you know?”
“She does, and I think she would be willing to help us.”
Adam sat back, thinking about it for a moment. He took another long pull from his pipe, and it seemed to calm him. “If there isn’t anything else, assemble your team and track down the stone.”
“There is one other thing.” He made a motion for me to continue. “I need to know about the archfiend and the best way to defeat one if we run into one again. If my father’s swords hadn’t been able to harm him, we would have died out there.”
“The answer you seek was already in the question. Your swords will be your best defense against him, that and the stone, if you can find it. Your magic might be able to slow one down or deflect their power, but that’s about it.”
“How do I get swords like mine for April?”
“I’m afraid you don’t. Those were made for your father as a gift by the Brotherhood. He did them a great service a long time ago. Your mother has a sword as well. We have tried to track down others over the years but haven’t been successful. I couldn’t tell you if the Brotherhood exists today. If they do, they have grown better at hiding themselves. It seems their blade work might have died with them.”
Well, that was about the last thing I wanted to hear. So the answer was to try and stay alive as long as possible and hope you could bring one of the strongest demons on earth down with your magical swords. No biggie, I got this.
“I might even suggest that if you do run into one in the future that you stick with the old adage discretion is the better part of valor.”
Run away? Not very fucking likely. Especially not if he was coming after my friends. Hopefully that would be a one-time encounter, but once we had the stone, we would be closing portals. If Ryan was guarding those portals, then we would have to deal with him eventually. I could honestly say that was one fight I wasn’t looking forward to.
“Thanks for your time, Adam. I’ll keep you updated.” I stood and made my way toward the door. Adam was already smoking his pipe and buried in thought. I wondered just how many things he had going on at one time, and how could he ever keep them all straight? Henry probably helped him with a lot of it, but it still had to be hard.
I stopped worrying about Adam and thought about what we were about to do. We were going on a treasure hunt. How impossibly cool was that? Did I have time to get a cool hat? Every adventurer had to have a hat, right? It was built into the tropes. Plus, I didn’t want to have the Nicholas Cage thing going on with my
hair.
CHAPTER 12
JACKSON
The door slid silently closed behind me, and I started down the hall. Henry stopped me with a call.
“Too good to say goodbye, I see.”
“Sorry, Henry. I’m just excited.”
“Well, maybe this will calm you down. April stopped by and asked if you could meet her at your mom’s.”
“What?”
“Seriously Jackson, what did you do this time?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Well, if she is at your mom’s, that can’t be good.”
“Stop being a drama llama, Henry. I’m sure it’s nothing to get worked up over.” I started to walk away. I needed to find out what they were talking about, and then we had to get going.
“Fine, but at least consider dressing a little better,” Henry shouted as I rounded the corner.
I still didn’t get it. What was wrong with my sweats and a hoodie? They were comfortable and warm, and that’s all I needed. I mean, I had cooler-looking gear for missions, and sometimes I still fell back on my T-shirts and jeans. It wasn’t like I had to try and impress anyone. I already got the girl, and she got to see me without my clothes on.
One thought kept rushing through my mind on the way to my mom’s quarters. I didn’t have time for this. We needed to go. If we couldn’t track down the stone, then I was sure we were needed elsewhere. The Ascendancy was losing the battle right now. The supernaturals were pressing their advantage, and we were too tied up with the demons to give them much resistance.
We could only fight the war on one side, and even then, we were short on manpower. So if this quest took too long, I was going to call it early. That meant we needed to be suited up and out of here within the hour, if not sooner. Whatever they were talking about had better be worth it.
When I got to my mom’s room, I didn’t even bother to knock. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I just burst right into the room. Both of them looked up at me in shock, shaking their heads in unison. Ok, I get it. It was rude just to burst into someone’s house, but ticking clock, ladies. The niceties could wait.
“By all means, let yourself in,” my mom said. Her icy glare washed over me. The predator in her crept out just a little bit, and I had to say it was slightly intimidating. I couldn’t imagine growing up with her as a teenager. I would have been terrified to step out of line.
“Sorry, Mom. We have to leave soon, and I was just busy thinking about the job.”
“Well, next time show a little more respect.”
“You got it.” Jesus, what was her deal. I already said I was sorry. Why was she piling an extra load of crap on me? “So what’s going on?”
“April came to see me. She told me about an issue you had with your strength.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it an issue.”
“So being able to throw her across the room is normal for you?”
“Ah, not exactly.” Was it just me or was she trying to piss me off?
“So if it’s not normal, it would be an issue, correct?”
“Jesus, Mom, it’s a fucking issue, then, ok?”
She was on her feet and in my face faster than I could blink. “What did you just say?”
Something inside of me was fighting to burst free, but I held it back. I wasn’t sure what that feeling was, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I had better control of my magic now than ever before, but I had still killed someone with it accidently. I didn’t want that to happen again. Still, whatever it was that was trying to get out wouldn’t let me back down completely. “You heard me. Since I walked in the door, you’ve been giving me the third degree.”
April got up and placed her hand on my arm. Instantly I felt calm. The anger that had been boiling just under the surface washed away.
“Now maybe we can talk,” she said, and led me to a seat on the couch. “I was just talking to your mom about a few things, because I think we might have a problem.”
A problem? What kind of problem could we possibly have? Everything was fine between us. That was until my meddlesome and angry mother got involved. Now we had a problem. Couldn’t I just wake up in the morning, save the world, kiss my girl, and go to bed? No, of course not. There had to be a fucking problem.
April patted my arm again, calming me. What in the heck was going on with me? My emotions were all over the place. I had always been the kind of quiet, nerdy kid. I definitely didn’t talk back to my parents, and I didn’t pick fights. I had done two of those in the last three minutes. It was like I came in looking for a fight. I wouldn’t tell someone what to do, but walking into a werewolf’s house unannounced and challenging them wasn’t strictly speaking a very good idea. Not unless you wanted to leave missing several parts.
“So you said there was a problem?”
“Yeah, I think you might be a shifter.”
“Wait. Pump the brakes for a second. I can’t be. I have magic.”
“You do, but there also aren’t many kids out there with parents like you had,” my mom said, patting my leg. “We never knew what would happen when you were born. When I was pregnant, I was frantic about it, but your father always found a way to calm me down.”
“So what are you saying? That I might be able to shift? What will happen to my magic?”
“We don’t know.”
I looked between them; they had to be pulling my leg. Right? Not that it wouldn’t be cool to be able to turn into a werewolf, but not at the cost of losing my magic. That and I’d have to learn to get a lot more comfortable with nudity. Something I wasn’t quite ready to do just yet.
“All I want you to do now is be aware of what is happening. Your emotions are going to spike; everything is going to feel like life or death for a while. After your first shift, that should start to subside, but you’re always going to be a little different.”
I looked over at April, not sure what I was looking for, but I knew that I needed something. Some kind of confirmation that she still loved me. That this wasn’t too much for her to handle. I needed to know that she still loved me despite the fact that I would be some kind of hybrid. Something new. A freak. This must have been horrible for her. She had just found the guy she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, and he was going to give her puppies.
April just leaned in to me and gave me a kiss. Then she kept her body firmly planted against mine. “Nothing will change between us, Jackson. I love you.”
“And so do I,” my mom said. “Just make sure to be careful. Your strength even while in human form is going to be substantial.”
“It’s just something we will have to train with. Then you will always know what kind of force to apply in each situation.”
That was my lady, always super practical. It looked as if I had skated out of this one without any kind of fallout. At least for now. I started to breathe a little bit easier knowing that for the moment, nothing was going to change. “So am I going to change on the full moon or something?”
“Don’t you pay attention in class?” April said, hitting me.
“I do.”
“Obviously not as much as you should. That only applies to bitten werewolves. You were born with the ability.”
“So, what? One day I’m just going to randomly hulk out?”
“Well, we should be able to control it. Ideally, we should force it on you before you leave for your mission, but you would have to rest for several days after your first change.”
“Well, that can’t happen.”
“Then you’re just going to have to be careful. There is no telling what could cause the full shift, and without a pack around to stabilize you, you could end up being a danger to your friends.”
Well, if that wasn’t just fucking perfect. “We have to go.”
“I know, just be careful.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Thanks, Sarah,” April said with a smile. She tucked her arm into mine and led me to the door. “So what’s this big
mission?”
I spent the entire way back to my place filling her in on all the details. By the end, she looked just as excited about it as I felt. Now we just had to round up Marcus, change, and get the hell out of here. Now that Marcus learned how to create a gate, life would be that much easier.
An hour later, the three of us were ready to go. I gave Marcus the coordinates, and he smiled. “What?”
“This can’t be right.”
“Well, a magical scroll told us where to start. Could it really be wrong?”
“It’s just that this is in Oregon. Not exactly where I expected to start a journey to find a long-hidden magical item. Shouldn’t those be somewhere more exotic, like China or the Bahamas? Oh, I don’t know, Cape Town or something.”
“Well, think about it. Back then, America would have been considered off the map. Here there be monsters, and all that. Not to mention we are going to the West Coast. Back then the East Coast was considered to almost not exist. People didn’t even think of sailing the other way around the world.”
“We are going to drop in about twenty-five miles from the coordinates, so I hope you don’t mind a walk.”
“You can’t get us any closer?”
“Nope.”
“Well, then, I guess I don’t mind a walk.”
The familiar pull of Marcus’s magic rolled across me. The portal in the doorway shimmered to life. April and I went through, and Marcus followed. He closed the portal behind us and the door he had used to transport us. I looked back at the old wooden building and started to laugh. We had just walked out of an outhouse. Classy.
“Well, we may as well get started,” April said. She sounded excited, like tromping through the forest for twenty miles was going to be awesome.
I figured that we could cover most of the distance today, maybe camp out a mile or two from the destination, and then spend the next day searching for our first clue. It wasn’t as fast as I wanted it to be, but it would work. At least out here we should be demon-free for the time being. So we could focus wholly on the task in front of us.
Demon Stone (Ascendancy Legacy 4) Page 10
