by Scott Duff
Kieran had stopped, so I looked up. We were directly underneath the sign and they both stood there just looking around idly, waiting for me.
“All right,” I said, “This place is not a palace of quality and style. We’re just here for a few necessities. For you, Kieran, we just need some clothes better than a tank top and shorts. Shoes, pants, underwear, shirts, just enough to get us into other places. Try everything on. Just because it says it’s says it’s a thirty-six inch waist doesn’t mean it really is. Changing room is over there. I’ll be back for you in about twenty minutes. Okay?” Kieran nodded and pushed the cart deeper into the men’s wear department. I took the buggy I-not-I was pushing and shooed him after Kieran.
Orienting myself by the signs overhead, I headed towards the pharmaceuticals section and keyed the phone to call the first of the unknown numbers I hadn’t deleted. I really don’t know how people drive and talk on cells at the same time. I clipped a few displays as I explained to my local sheriff’s office who I was and why I was calling and I was lazily walking, not driving a ton of steel. The woman I talked to actually sounded relieved and happy that I was safe and sound. She actually made me feel a bit better. She said she’d take care of the other calls for me saying that I’d been through enough. She was really nice about it.
I started shopping in earnest. I rarely shopped in this kind of store since I didn’t need to buy in bulk before. Now I had to replenish for myself and buy completely new stuff for Kieran and possibly for I-not-I. He really needed a name. By the time I left that area, the buggy was three quarters full with enough to stock two bathrooms and have backups for just about everything. I could feel that plastic melting in my wallet already.
As I headed back to men’s wear, my phone rang. “Hello?”
“Seth McClure?” I didn’t know the man’s voice on the other end. It was kind of high and whiny.
“Yes,” I confirmed, then asked, “And you are?”
“This is Deputy Harris. We just received word from the Madison County Sheriff’s Office that you made it out of Bankhead Forest safely. I just needed to confirm that,” he said.
“Yes, sir, I’m quite all right,” I answered, spotting Kieran exactly where I left him with my double standing beside him. I headed for them, angling through the clothes racks. I caught Kieran’s eye and motioned for them to follow me to the front.
“Well, that is good news,” Deputy Harris said, “But if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to send another deputy out to stay with you for a while. Make sure nothing else untoward happens to you.”
Now that sounded odd. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” I said, “It’s not like I’ll be go out with those guys ever again.”
He chuckled and said, “I believe that, but you’re a teenager all alone and the circumstances around this situation were a little strange. It would make us all feel a lot better if someone was around to watch over you for a while.”
“My brother will be staying with me for a while, Deputy Harris,” I said, picking the shortest of the long lines I saw. “I doubt I’ll be alone for a long time.”
“Your brother? I thought you were an only child?” Curious, I wonder why he knew that? The line we were in progressed rapidly.
“No, I have a large extended family,” I said, not offering details. “So really Deputy, I am quite safe and I have enough to deal with without throwing another person into the mix.”
“If you’re sure,” he said, hesitantly. “You have my number if anything changes. Call me, day or night.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, unloading my buggy onto the conveyor. “Thank you, Deputy.”
I hung up and looked back down the line. There’s no way we got through that line that fast. Kieran just smiled. He’d done something, I knew it, but it was better than standing in line for half an hour. Nobody seemed angry with us either, so I went with it.
Four hundred dollars later and we were in the parking lot tearing off tags and opening packages for Kieran to change into more acceptable clothing. I just tossed the shorts he was wearing—the elastic was shot now and I wondered about the circulation in his legs from wearing them so long but he didn’t complain. He’d picked simple colors complimenting him nicely and not obviously cheap. He looked good. I was mildly impressed.
The next step was the mall. There, I went from mildly to massively impressed. Shopping with Kieran was like shopping with my mom on a double dose of Speed. He rifled through racks at the speed of sound and everything he picked up looked good and fit when he tried it on. Midway through the first store he started handing me shirts to try on, mumbling, “I’ve seen your closet.” I started to protest, but I had left most of my dress clothes in Savannah and the shirts he’d handed me looked really good. My attitude melted a bit, then, and I started having a better time. We made one trip out to the car and half filled the trunk. It was getting late in the day and we still had groceries to get so the second trip had to be more targeted. Kieran did pretty well at spreading purchases out across various social needs: dress, casual, athletic. Shoes were the only obvious necessity missing and I hated shoe shopping. The three of us went back in.
Two hours later, we came back out laden with bags and boxes, heading for the car. It was early evening and the sun was just starting to set in the sky when we entered the parking garage. We were chatting idly about how things worked, like credit cards and cell phones and such. Small talk about things he’d missed and I took for granted. I-not-I followed robotically behind us the whole time, silent.
When we got to the first concrete traffic barrier in the garage, Kieran slowed, then stopped, peering into the darkened parking garage oddly. I stopped too and looked. It did look gloomier than it should, even after dusk. The section of the parking lot was fairly empty compared to earlier when we walked through it, only five cars now. My car was on the other side of a load-bearing wall, out of sight from here but not far. I-not-I came up on the other side of Kieran, tossing its bags against the barrier. Kieran tossed his there, too.
“I count four,” said Kieran softly.
“I see five,” said I-not-I, just as softly.
I was confused. “There are five cars,” I said, “We can get the Count from Sesame Street here, if you want.” I-not-I actually grinned for a brief second. Score one for me.
Kieran took a half step over and stood behind me, putting both arms over my shoulders, pointing at the white Toyota straight ahead of us. “Time for a little magic,” he whispered in my right ear. “Focus on the white car there.” I saw it. It was an early model Toyota. Nothing special about it.
Then Kieran said something else. I don’t know what it was but it was just two words. I know what it meant, somehow: see in truth. As soon as he said the words, the world went haywire for me, like it was projected on a sheet of tin and somebody hit it with a ball peen hammer several times in several places. It took around three seconds for the ripples to die down.
When they did, I saw what they were talking about. On top of the Toyota, there was a fuzziness. Kind of like you could tell when someone had doctored a picture but you had to look really close to see it. Looking around there were two more on either side of the roadway to the car near the wall and one big one near the stairs to the upper level. There was a fifth one. It was smaller and moved a lot around the one on the Toyota.
“I see five, too,” I whispered softly. “What are they?”
“Hmm. I thought that one an echo,” he muttered. He straightened and moved to the front of the group. “Let’s find out what they are, shall we? You two stay here.”
I watched him as he strode deeper into the garage. I wasn’t sure what he’d done to my sight but everything was brighter, clearer, even in the magic-enforced gloom. I could even see that it was magically enforced gloom. He walked past the largest blob but not directly in the center of the trap and stopped. He stood there for about three seconds then raised his hands to show a pale blue ball of solid energy the size of a basketball. Kieran tosse
d it lightly at the center and took two steps back. It floated slowly to the ground.
When it hit the ground, everything started moving very fast. It exploded in shades of blue throughout the garage, coating the fuzzy shapes in a miasma of light that destroyed whatever magic was hiding them. The first to attack was the biggest and closest of fuzzies. I guess it was a troll since it was almost as big as a car. Kieran jumped over the sweep of its club, almost hitting his head on the ceiling. He reared back to punch the troll with a sphere of deep burgundy surrounding his fist. The troll roared when he connected with its chin, but the roar cut off, barely heard as the burgundy magic engulfed it. Then ate it. Like a squirrel with a pinecone, just ate it right up, outside in. A rock the size of my fist dropped to the ground as I watched.
Kieran was still moving. This was good because all three fuzzies had decided to attack instead of going one on one. They were elves, I guess, tall and arrogant-looking, dressed in black tight-fitting clothing. Their pale skin shone in deep contrast to their clothing, but their most striking feature was their eyes: in the dark, their eyes almost glowed with double serpentine irises of color, two a fiery red and the other a deep, icy blue. The three of them exuded deadliness. The two by the road were advancing with swords drawn, held out before them as they went. One held a sword of ebony and white, the other silver and gold. Ornate scabbards hung at their waists. The one on the car held a crossbow to his shoulder casually. Kieran said something to them that made Mister Crossbow cock an eyebrow and answer back. They went back and forth a few times speaking in this singsong language. Then Kieran laughed loudly and said something. All three of them stiffened.
Mister Crossbow fired so casually it looked like it never occurred to him that he could miss. Technically, I guess he didn’t. Kieran caught the bolt with his bare hand, inches from his chest, and tossed it to the ground, still laughing. The swordsmen started running then. They had another fifteen feet or so to go. I jumped forward, wanting to help him and not knowing how, but I-not-I held his arm out against my chest, saying calmly, “He can do this.”
Mister Crossbow was a blur of motion after the shock of Kieran catching his first bolt, firing and reloading from the quiver on his back. I’d see movies that weren’t this hard to believe as Kieran danced around the flying bolts and directed them down into the asphalt. A tiny forest of short dark green bolts erupted at his feet as he moved in impossible ways with unimaginable quickness. The rain stopped but Kieran continued bending backward to avoid a perfectly timed sweep by the swordsmen intent on scissoring him in half while his attention was elsewhere. He was upright again before either elf had time to adjust for the unexpected follow through. He grabbed the left elf’s sword hilt, the gold sword, with one hand and with the other, struck the elf in the jaw with the heel of his open palm. The burgundy energy that got the troll engulfed the elf, too, but ate him much faster. I guess size does matter. The scabbard clattered to the ground. Kieran dropped the sword and turned to the other elf.
I thought the elf took an odd stance, his sword too low to the ground. It seemed to me that he would have to go upward to do damage, making a more difficult swing. But what did I know. I could see Kieran’s face from this position—he was grinning. He was in a fight for his life and he was having fun. I was too scared for him and for me to think about that, though. I’d read about adrenaline rushes and endorphin releases so I suppose this was what was going on here. Otherwise I had a nut-job for a brother. Would be just my luck this week.
The elf grinned, too, and dropped the sword point to the ground. Green and red sparks shot out from the sword and arcs of power in red, like lightning, flew out around the garage. It hit everything within fifty feet, except a six-foot circle around I-not-I, for which I was thankful since I stood in that circle. I didn’t want to know what the energy felt like. Kieran didn’t seem to notice it at all. Apparently, whatever the elf was doing took concentration because he didn’t notice Kieran step within reach. When the elf raised the sword and looked up, Kieran grasped the naked blade between thumb and forefinger and backhanded the elf. The sword stayed with Kieran but the elf flew. And flew until he hit the back concrete wall, sliding down the wall, leaving a long, bloody smear.
Mister Crossbow snarled, jerking our attention back to him. He’d dropped the bow and was standing twenty feet off in front of Kieran with his hands out in front of him, one on top of the other with palms facing about a foot apart. A dark green ball of energy was forming between his hands. With hate in his eyes, the elf spoke a word and the ball exploded from his hands and shot towards Kieran.
Then it turned. Halfway to Kieran, it turned and headed straight at me. I saw the shock in the elf’s eyes before it registered in me that this big piece of honking deadly magic was heading my way. I heard Kieran shout, “No!” and saw I-not-I step directly in the path of the growing green ball of fire, intercepting it. He just stepped right in front of it. With my newly installed sight, I saw the magic eat him, or rather try to eat him. It was more like he ate it. When I looked back to Kieran, he was looking back at us, smiling. The forest of bolts had moved up the roadway a little and packed more densely. In the shape of the elf, actually.
I’d just watched four people killed, I realized. I ran for a corner and puked, grateful that breakfast was long ago. The dry heaves weren’t pleasant either, though. My double stayed with me, patting my back gently. Most human thing it’d done. Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I rejoined Kieran who was on all fours beside the white Toyota, peering underneath it.
“Time to come out, little one,” he said in a commanding voice, standing up.
A fluttering ball of leaf green slowly drifted out from under the car. It flew up timidly to Kieran’s head height, leaving a small trail of glittering dust behind it and taking a more solid form. It was a pixie, just a couple of inches high with bright multicolored wings. He looked frightened out of his mind. I couldn’t blame him one bit about that. His wings hummed slightly as he hovered just out of Kieran’s reach.
Kieran asked him, “What were you here for?” The pixie started answering him in another language, but Kieran stopped him. “In English.”
“We were here to take the boy,” the pixie squeaked. He knew English. Huh. I wondered if all the Fae knew my language. Kieran cocked an eyebrow at the pixie. I wished I could do that.
“This was an assassin team,” said Kieran, trying to lead the pixie.
“Yes,” squealed the pixie in agreement, brightening his glow to red. “A powerful one, too.” He didn’t take the bait Kieran had offered.
“What was your job in this?” Kieran asked.
“Fascinate the boy until the swap,” said the pixie, squelching his colors into the blue ranges. “See to his needs until the delivery.”
“Delivery where?” Kieran kept probing.
“I don’t know,” the pixie squeaked. His eyes were huge compared to his body and had the deer-in-the-headlights quality to them. “I’m the hired hand, not part of their group. They told me nothing more than what I had to know to do the job. I swear. And you don’t ask questions of the Black Hand.”
“The Black Hand?” asked Kieran. “Are they of Winter or of Summer?”
“No one knows for sure. They both take credit,” answered the pixie. “At least the rumors at the lower levels do. The Royals never acknowledge them. That would be uncouth.” He rolled in place then returned to hover quite steadily. I guess that was his equivalent to rolling his eyes.
“Was this the first of your attacks on Seth?” Kieran asked.
“This was the first contact,” the pixie said in a high tremor. “We set out two nights ago to a lovely forest to the west but something fouled the tracking and we came back empty handed.”
“Back to where?” Kieran asked, eyes narrowing on the pixie searching for misdirection.
“A cabin in the woods. I don’t know where it is,” he squeaked and flew slightly away and pointed at the elf-shaped forest of bolts. “That one could pierce the v
eil at times. The cabin had a gem in it that he could sense. And there was a man here tonight that had a similar stone, but he left before you came out of the bazaar. He pierced the veil and we walked here.” Bazaar, good word for a mall. There were definitely some bizarre things going on in and around it. Especially tonight.
“What did the man look like?” I asked him. He buzzed down to my height, keeping the same distance from me before answering.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said, deferentially, “I didn’t see him, but I felt the gem’s song. It was very close to that of the cabin’s gem.” He flitted back up to face Kieran, waiting for more questions.
“Leave,” Kieran said, sighing. The pixie flew past me at breakneck speed trailing gold and silver dust in his wake. I followed him for a short way to pick up the bags we’d dropped.
“You did well, Eth’anok’avel,” I heard Kieran say to my duplicate. Reality shuddered a little at the phrase, not as bad like the first time when Kieran showed me how to see the Elves. Just like before, though, I knew what it meant: Brother to the Fires of Creation. How did I know this? What language was this? I glanced up at the entrance of the garage and saw the pixie darting back and forth indecisively. He drooped down on the sidewalk after a moment and stopped, his glow dimmed near nothingness. I passed the bags and quietly approached him. The sidewalk and street in front of the mall had an oppressive “Go Away” feel to them I hadn’t felt before. I guess the elves had done something to the garage to keep people out.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the pixie, sitting down on the sidewalk a few feet away, trying not to invoke his flight instinct.
He shot into the air on a red column of dust. Apparently he hadn’t heard me approach. “I’m sorry!” he squeaked. “I’m just trying to decide where to go. I’ll leave now.” He looked totally heartbroken, but started to turn and leave again.
