Alien Artifacts

by Seanan McGuire

  “Who the hell is this?” the man holding me growled.

  “That’s their mother, Kitty Reynolds,” Chrysta said. “So, why don’t you tell your little girl to give us what we want?”

  “Ah, why should I?”

  “Because then none of you will get hurt,” she said as if this were the obvious outcome.

  “Why don’t I trust you on that? Oh, because you lied to me. And you have my family all captured. I assume my husband’s nearby?”

  “Next door. You want us to kill him to make your daughter do what we want?”

  “Not really. But I’m not going to make her do what you want, either.”

  She shrugged. “Take the orb from her. Or you all die.”

  “Why don’t you try again instead?”

  “Because it repelled me. Obviously.”

  “Good work, that orb.”

  Chrysta laughed, one of those nasty villain laughs. Clearly she’d practiced. “Fine. Your husband shouldn’t have brought his family along on a mission. He’ll learn. The hard way.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said truthfully. Because I honestly had no idea what Charles and the others might be doing here, other than being held captive.

  Chrysta gave the man holding me a look that clearly said it was his turn in the spotlight.

  “So, Missus Reynolds, would you like to explain just what you’re doing here? Before we kill you and your children, I mean.”

  “Oh, call me Kitty. You know, since we’re friends and all that.”

  He stepped closer to me, squeezing my arm just a little harder, and ran the flat of the blade against my cheek. “Friends tell friends why they’re sneaking around in places they shouldn’t be.”

  “Field trip.”

  He blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “We’re here on a field trip.”

  “You’re here on a what?” He sounded flabbergasted.

  “A field trip. I homeschool my children, and we’re here for in-the-field study. A trip to see things you can’t in school or at home. A trip out to the field or, in this case, the creepy old ruins. A way to educate with hands-on experience. I’m running out of explanations for what a field trip is. My children catch on quicker than this, so I’m honestly not used to having to explain simple concepts repeatedly. My bad.”

  The man seemed honestly stunned. Nice to know I still had it. Of course, this was only a momentary reprieve. Tried to see what I could around him without letting on that I was doing so. Not that much, really. I could see the kids, the guy guarding them, the doorway near them, and the freaky yet pretty orb Jamie was holding. I saw Chrysta and Alfred, the Pedestal of Power, and the doorway I’d come through. Where, supposedly, I had someone waiting to help me out. Not that I could tell.

  The man who had my children cornered was less confused. “They don’t go to school. So no one’s going to be looking for them. Meaning we can kill them, take the orb, and then just get out of town.”

  “My daddy will hunt you down and kill you if you do,” Charlie said. “And he’ll kill you ugly, too.”

  “He’s not wrong about that. My husband is kind of touchy about people hurting his family.” And he wasn’t the only one. I, for one, was getting seriously pissed. Chose not to think about the fact that, clearly, Charles and the others were captives. I’d deal with that later.

  “So’s our Uncle James,” Max shared. “He’ll hurt you, too, if you hurt us or our mommy.”

  “You’re going to be very sorry,” Jamie said calmly. “But, if you apologize right now, it might be okay.” The orb sparkled purple and blue when she spoke. So far, the orb appeared to be protecting her and, by extension, her brothers. I just wasn’t sure if it would repel knives or bullets.

  Of course, it was going to take a lot more than a “gosh, so sorry” for me to forgive any of these people, but I wasn’t in a position to correct Jamie at this time.

  Saw a hand wave to me from the shadows—from the room where I was pretty sure Charles and the others were being held. Hoped this was the “go” signal and not the “we’re all dead” sign. No time like the present to find out. “Or, you know, it might not matter.”

  “You mean you’ll be dead?” the man with the long knife asked me. Clearly he wasn’t the brightest Crayola in the box.

  “No.” Managed not to react to what I was seeing, but it took effort. “You will be.”

  Six Poofs bounded into the room, looking adorable as always. I managed not to ask how this was in any way helpful mostly because as everyone looked at them, including the guy holding me, I took the opportunity to use the kung fu I’d spent years training in and rammed my knee in up into his groin while I shoved the hand holding the knife away with my left hand and slammed my right elbow up to connect with his chin. He sort of crumpled, which was nice.

  Didn’t stop to check on him. Instead I ran across the room and body slammed the other man away from my children. I used the side my purse was on for the extra heft. Considering my purse slammed into his crotch, this was nicely effective. At least, I took the sound of pain, the pickax falling from his hand, and the expression of shock on his face to indicate effectiveness.

  He sort of bounced off of the wall, but away from me. I grabbed the pickax and was in a decent position, so I sent a high kick into his stomach. He flew into the pedestal. And disintegrated into a pile of purple dust. The pedestal was still there, looking as if nothing had happened.

  The man on the floor screamed and got to his feet, waving his knife around, while Chrysta shouted obscenities. “I’m going to kill him now and teach you all a lesson!” she shrieked.

  Harlie turned gigantic—taller than Charles and bigger than Malcolm—a fluffy monster with lots and lots of razor sharp teeth. The man with the knife screamed and dropped into a fetal position on the floor, as Harlie roared and bounded over to Chrysta, who stopped pointing the gun at Alfred so she could aim at the Poof.

  “NO!” As I screamed, Stripes bounded into the room, yowling what I was prepared to swear was a cat battle cry, and jumped on Chrysta, all claws out, and I was too pleased with this turn of events to continue screaming. Instead, as Harlie took Alfred gently into its mouth and moved him to where the kids were, and the other Poofs surrounded them, I ran over and wrested the gun away from Chrysta, who was thankfully not pulling the trigger. Possibly because she was screaming while fighting a seriously pissed off cat and losing.

  As much as I was enjoying this, we had the rest of the family to rescue, apparently. “Stripes, disengage. Come to Mommy.”

  Stripes leaped away from her and landed in my arms in one graceful move. “Who’s a good boy, den? You are.” Gave him a snuggle as I pointed the gun at Chrysta’s head. “Give me another reason.”

  “We want her alive, baby.” I was much less surprised to see Charles come into the room than I would have been thirty minutes prior. He looked around. “Kitty, are you all okay?” He sounded stressed, not that I could blame him.

  “I think we are. Kids, Alfred?”

  “We’re fine, Mommy,” Jamie said.

  “I’m good now,” Alfred said. Risked a look out of the corner of my eye. He was standing and Bill was untying his hands.

  “Nice of you to join the party, Bill.”

  “Figured you had things well in hand here, ma’am, and the Poofs came to show me how to get into the other room without being detected. Besides, I knew you had all the backup you’d need.”

  Nuzzled Stripes again. “Right you were, Captain Confidence. Stripes and Poofs rock. So, dearest darlingest men in my life—who’s going to tell me what the hell’s going on the quickest?”

  “Kitty, no need to sound snide,” my father said as he collected the scroll that was, somehow, still in the same place on the floor it had been earlier and wasn’t smudged or mussed in any way. Assumed it was made from the same stuff as either the walls or the pedestal. “None of you were supposed to be involved.”

  “Then why did you call Alfred in
to help you?” I asked as James slammed handcuffs onto Chrysta with much malice aforethought and Malcolm did the same to the man who was still on the floor weeping in terror.

  “You told her?” Charles asked Alfred.

  “Dude, seriously? No, he didn’t. He disappeared and we went after him. But it doesn’t take genius IQ to realize that if you were all here, reading a scroll that my dad couldn’t decipher, because it’s likely written in some ancient alien language, that you’d ask Alfred to zip on by. So, while I’m contemplating how insulted I need to be by your assuming I’m a moron, I’m waiting impatiently for more details that could mean I forgive you. Eventually.” I still had the gun trained on Chrysta because I still wanted to shoot her.

  Charles sighed and gently took the gun away from me. “They’re an international team of artifact smugglers. They’ve been hitting different sites all over the world. We had a tip that they’d targeted something in Cairo. The general thinking was that it was the Islamic Art Museum, since that place is still devastated.”

  “But, it turns out, what they were looking for was in the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities,” Malcolm said. “They stole an ancient scroll that has never been on display and wasn’t listed in any recent registries.”

  “Let me guess—it describes how an orb of great power was hidden under the Tomb of the Birds.”

  “Got it in one,” James said with a grin. “Well, it insinuated that the orb was hidden somewhere near the Great Pyramid. As were a lot of other treasures. The scroll listed a variety of goodies everyone would want to find. So we were too late to stop that theft, but we tracked them to this area and began searching for them.”

  “And found them without issue, apparently.”

  “Yeah, we got jumped,” Chuckie said. “It was as if they knew we were coming.”

  “They did.” Looked at Chrysta. Happily, she was bleeding from a lot of different places. She might even need reconstructive surgery. Go Stripes. “So did you kill my original guide?”

  “Of course.”

  “Shocker. Why would you even assume that we’d know anything?”

  She rolled her eyes. Well, eye. One eye was swollen shut. “We monitor all CIA activity. Some friends of ours were after your family a month or so ago. They’re all dead, you’re all still alive. You do the math. Besides, even if you were as clueless as you seemed, you were six really great hostage options.”

  “Can I shoot her? Please?”

  Charles put his arm around me. “No. But I’ll let you watch us interrogate her if it’ll make you happy.”

  “As long as you’re using trained rats and Zippo lighters.”

  More people arrived. These looked like they worked in clandestine ops in some way. “Take all of them into the severest custody,” Charles said, as the men took Chrysta from James. “Black bag them, dark hole, no phone calls. We’ll handle the rest of the situation here.”

  “What’s in the other room?” I asked, once Chrysta and her considerable number of cronies in the other room were taken away.

  “Another room, but not like this one,” Bill said. “Mostly like the inside of the rest of the tombs and ruins around here. I think the Egyptians were trying to get to this room.”

  “They were probably drawn to the orb,” Alfred said. “Just as Stripes was able to follow the homing device in his harness to find me.” Stripes purred. He’d have found them without the harness, but whatever made his humans happy.

  “What do we do with the orb?” Malcolm asked. “Something that can only be handled by a child shouldn’t be left lying around anywhere.”

  “It’s not because she’s a child, actually,” Alfred said. “The orb can only be handled by a being of great intellectual power who also has the ability to see the multiverse. It’s not a Z’porrah power cube and this room is not a Z’porrah construct, either. I’m not sure what planet put this here, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was the Ancients. Due to what we know, the orb might have been put here for Jamie to find. Certainly for her to wield.”

  Looked at my little girl. She didn’t look like someone who should be wielding anything more dangerous than an iPad. She smiled sweetly and held the orb out towards Gershom. “You know what to do,” she said. The Poof purred and took the orb out of her hand by eating it. At least that’s what it looked like. Then Gershom and all the rest of the Poofs went back to small and adorable and hopped onto their owners’ shoulders.

  “Do we want to know?” Charles asked Alfred.

  “Probably not,” he said cheerfully.

  Cosmic Moi had mentioned something about this. “The Poofs will give Jamie the orb if she needs it.” Gershom purred—yes, they would.

  “Exactly,” Alfred said, rubbing his hands together. “Now, let’s get the rest of those items you boys just saved catalogued and put into safekeeping.”

  “You mean into the Poofs’ stomachs?” I asked.

  Alfred shrugged. “Kitty, as I know you know, whatever works.”

  Went and gave Alfred a big hug. “You’re the best.” Then I went back to my husband. “I want a job.”

  He blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “A job. With all of you. And before you freak out, let me just say that if I’d been involved in this operation from the get-go, Chrysta wouldn’t have been able to intercept us, kill an innocent guide, and take any of us hostage. Besides, I think I’m at least as good at this as the rest of you are.”

  Bill grinned. “You can’t argue with that logic, Chuck.”

  I could see the wheels in Charles’ head turning, as he ran every possible way this would end up in his mind. “Fine,” he sighed finally. “But you’re going to be communications, not field, because I don’t want you involving the kids.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t send them to Spy Kids school.” I’d train them in that myself, after all. “And I’m fine with you making me be Oracle.” Because, when push came to shove, Bill was right—I was Batgirl. And Batgirl—with an assist from three exceptional Robins, Stripes the Wonder Cat, and the Super Poofs—always got the perps and saved Batman and the rest of the Justice League when she had to.

  “I know that look,” Charles said. “That’s your ‘I know something you don’t’ look.”

  Leaned up and kissed him. “Stop worrying. I’ll tell you all about it back at the Batcave.”

  THE HAINT OF SWEETWATER RIVER

  Anthony Lowe

  “Sad and dismal is the tale

  I now relate to you,

  ‘Tis all about the cattlemen,

  Them and their murderous crew...”

  — “The Invasion Song,” Anonymous

  Carbon County, Wyoming Territory

  July of 1889

  They sent Loretta Vaine away into the prairie with a Colt’s revolver, seven cartridges, and the insistence that the seventh of those bullets had better find its way into her own skull if the others failed to find their mark. She was nineteen at the time, possessed of the good sense to know her only worldly recourse was to acquiesce when in the presence of superior firepower.

  “Reckon I like killin’ better’n dyin’,” she said.

  The man from Cheyenne walked with her for about a mile out of Rawlins, never going more than a few steps without a cigarette between his teeth. “That’s a fine attitude to have, young lady. Can you shoot?”

  Loretta pulled the Colt’s revolver from the belt of her pants and leveled it eastward as if to dare the rising sun. “Kin take the neck off a bottle at twenty paces.”

  “Bottles ain’t people.”

  “Right. People are bigger.”

  “People move ‘round.”

  “Mostly just forward,” said Loretta. “Don’t take maths to kill folks. Ask that boy Ford. Me, I bet I coulda shot Jesse James with his hand on a pistol instead of a picture frame.”

  The man from Cheyenne slowed up to roll himself another cigarette. “You seem about damn sure of that, too.”

  “Reckon you gotta be sure. Gotta act like you alrea
dy killed ‘em. Bein’ unsure don’t get nobody but yerself done fer.”

  “All this talk seems like the consequence of a lot of deep thought. You ever shot someone before?”

  “Up at the Gem some guy started beatin’ on me during. Left his pants and gun belt on the headboard, so I reached over and shot him once in the gut. He cussed at me and run outside in the streets nekked tryin’ to find the doc and died ‘fore he could.”

  Loretta shoved the revolver back into her belt. “Didn’t feel bad er nothin’. And they say it only gets easier.”

  “Easier is the wrong word.” The man from Cheyenne struck a match on his pants and brought the tiny flame to his freshly-rolled cigarette. Smoke poured out of his nose and obscured his eyes. “Killing never gets easier,” he said. “The act don’t ever stoop to you. You’re just better fitted to the diabolical mold, young lady. The one first broke by Cain.”

  Loretta thought about that. “Same thing.”

  “Maybe,” said the man, smiling. “I sure hope it ain’t.”

  At the next bend in the trail, he took Loretta by the shoulder. “You know what you have to do.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And you have the proper tools.”

  “Yessir.”

  “If you don’t follow through with your task, ain’t nothing short of Hell itself can hide you. We’ll string you up and you won’t come down.”

  Loretta unconsciously scratched her neck. “Sure, I get it.”

  “Convince them to sign over the land to us or kill them on sight. We don’t rightly care which. Wire me when you’re done. If you tell the operator who the message is for, they won’t charge you nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Until then, your trespasses ain’t forgiven.” The man dropped the cigarette, stomped it out with his boot. “Good hunting, young lady.” He gave a little salute and turned away.