by Scott Duff
Chapter 41
Moving further down the hall, we heard two sets of voices in two different rooms. Pushing my senses out, I could map out the two rooms partially and pegged six men. They were facing the same wall in the two rooms, trapping something between them. I couldn’t tell what, but I had an idea it was one of the three boys I was looking for. This, however, was a simple problem to solve. I stepped in, called the Crossbow, shot the three of them, went to the next room and did the same there. Jacob didn’t flinch once as he watched me do it.
“You doing okay, Jacob?” I asked him quietly. He looked so close to shutting down.
“No,” he answered me blankly.
“That’s a good answer, Jacob,” I said as I moved to the dead men. “Cuz there’s nothing ‘okay’ about this situation. For now though, as long as we can cope well enough to get out, you’ll be okay.” I looked into the wall, searching for whatever it was that the men had caught. There was something there, reverberating between the walls, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Something was interfering with the energy signatures, warping the waveforms.
Looking at the three dead men on the floor, I saw the answer to the problem fairly quickly: the gemstones they carried, the aura monitors. Just like over-sized woofers in a car, the bass line inside the car sounded fine, but outside the car, it rattled windows on houses for a block. I sent enough power directly into the gems to fry them and the echoes stopped quickly. I could see fairly easily into the façade in the wall.
“Martin, you can come out now,” I called. He was dazed from holding the spell for so long and being trapped in that echo chamber for however long the men toyed with them. He looked exhausted.
“Seth?” he asked in barely a whisper, still close to the wall in the tiny alcove next to the fireplace. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, Martin, it’s me,” I said calmly. “Gordon’s here, too, and Peter. We’ve come to get y’all out of here.”
Martin clamped me in a hug so tight I thought the Stone would throw him off at any time. Jacob was rummaging through the closets quietly so I held Martin for a few moments, comforting him. Then I saw the second aura in alcove, smaller than Martin’s.
“Martin, is there someone hiding with you?” I asked him.
“Oh, yes, Ian,” he said, wiping his eyes and pulling away, sniffling. “Ian, come on out. It’s safe. This is Seth.”
A short little blond kid poked his head around the wall of the alcove to look. He looked to be nine or ten years old. His clothes looked more worn than this excursion would explain. I mean, this was pretty much a rich kids’ school, after all. There was fire in his aura, though. He was going to be a strong mage when he grew up. While Martin coaxed Ian from their hole, I turned to see Jacob had changed clothes into what I’d told him earlier.
“This is your room?” I asked him. He nodded, mute. “Aw, bud, I am so sorry,” I said, glancing at the dead bodies bleeding out onto the carpet.
He shrugged it off. “You didn’t force them to attack us.”
I had to grow up quick, but not that quick. Damn, I hope they had enough therapists for these kids. Martin had managed to get Ian out finally and I got a better look at him. Bedraggled was a good word. So was rail-thin.
“Jacob, do you have some shoes that would fit Ian?” I asked, eyeing the sandals he wore. Good for the summer but not for running for your life. “And some pants and a shirt?”
“Don’t need no hand-outs,” snapped Ian hotly. His aura flared with pride that reminded me of someone.
I knelt down beside the boy and said, “Ian, this isn’t charity, it’s necessity. We’re not out of this yet and we still have to find your brother, Michael. There’re still a lot of bad people out there trying to hurt us and you will have to run. Sandals will trip you up. This shirt won’t protect you from brush and tree branches. I’ll do my best to keep you all safe, but you’ve got to work with me here, okay?”
“Okay,” he said weakly, accepting the clothes Jacob handed him.
I stood as he went to change hurriedly. “Do you know where his brother might be hiding?” I asked Martin.
“No, he set up the veil for us,” Martin answered, “then went to try to find out what was going on. He should have been back by now. You know him, you know. By his last name. That’s Ian Ferrin; his brother’s name is Michael Ferrin.”
That was a bit of a shock. It answered who Ian reminded me of, though.
“Does Ian know this?” I asked him, not really knowing where I was going with that question.
“I’m not exactly sure what Ian knows about his brother,” Martin said. “He’s very loyal to him, I know that. Michael’s raised him since he was three. Neither is exactly forthcoming on complete details on their lives, but the father never was and the mother was killed in an industrial accident, whatever that means. Ian’s been here a little less than a year and Ferrin has been a conscientious guardian the entire time, present for every meeting, visitation, you name it. But he struggles financially to meet the dues of the school. That’s why I pressed Gordon so hard to have you at least talk to him about a steady job.”
“I don’t think I’ll be doing job interviews today, unfortunately,” I said. “But I will definitely be glad to see Ferrin here right now. As long as he’s on our side anyway.”
“You know my brother?” asked Ian, standing to cinch his belt. The new clothes were too big on him, but would protect him better. The shoes were a close fit, though.
“Yeah, a bit,” I told him, nodding. “Let’s go. You three stay close to me. Be watchful. You see anything you don’t think I see, you speak out, but trouble starts and you all stay low. Okay?”
We left that room and checked the other rooms, shouting for Ferrin. The rest of the floor was empty. Same for the second floor. We headed back to get Jeff. He’d passed out from exhaustion, but the sleep seemed to help him some. He was able to stand and walk with Martin’s guidance. I paused at the door out, looking over the campus. It was still amazingly serene and quiet out there. Apparently, no soldiers had seen their fallen comrades on the ground fifteen feet from our door. That was suspicious.
I pulled the earpiece from my pocket and tapped the activator. “Peter?”
“Wait,” came the reply after a moment of static. I kept watching the three buildings that I could see from the door. No movement except for the wind in the trees. No auras were present anywhere. It looked like a nice, pretty autumn day.
“Seth, where are you?” asked Peter in my ear.
“Same building,” I answered. “I have four survivors and took out another fifteen attackers. You?”
“Just outside the Admin building. We’ve gone through three empty buildings and found nobody. A three-man sentry unit just passed near us and we’re going to follow it,” he said.
“Keep an eye out for Ferrin,” I told him. “I have his brother, Ian, and Martin. With me is the safest place I can think of. I guess I’ll keep playing Moses until something else presents itself. Yell if you need me. I’ll come running.”
“Good hunting.”
“Be safe, my friend,” I said. Looking back at my motley crew, I asked, “Does anybody have any idea what’s going on?” Four heads marginally younger than me shook in unison. “How many of us might still be here?”
“There couldn’t have been many here,” said Martin. “Most left Thursday night and the rest were trickling out this morning till about noon when something hit the wards. Hit ‘em hard, Seth. Wasn’t nothing like drills at home with Da. It hurt. None of us knew what was going on.”
“Jeff and me were in my room swapping charged crystals for a class,” said Jacob. “When the ward flared, so did the crystals. They hurt us, too, when they discharged. Dazed us. Then the men came rushing in with the guns. Michael and Ian rushed into the building ahead of them and Michael helped us hide. We couldn’t have done it without him, hiding from them.”
“Gunfire outside was scary as hell,” said Martin, taking up their story again. �
��At first they just ran through our dorms shouting and screaming for anybody and everybody to come out and give up. Then they left and the building was quiet for a while. Ferrin came out of hiding, but told us to stay put. Demanded it, yelled at us about it. But he was just scared for us, right Ian?” He looked at little Ian, so stoic standing beside him, and put his arm across Ian’s shoulders. It made me wonder how Felix had been able to instill that kind of character in his youngest so early in his life. Proud in them both for being able to do it, too. This was noblesse oblige at its best.
“You saw the results of them coming back,” finished Martin. “I don’t know what they were doing to me, but I couldn’t have kept Ferrin’s veil up much longer. We were lucky you came along when you did, Seth.”
I sighed heavily. There wasn’t much information in the story. Mostly it was a timing issue. This event occurred last, starting at roughly noon. The attack on us, which honestly could be called our attack on them since we were preemptive, was before noon. The attack on the castle started before that. Were there other attacks we didn’t know about yet in other places? Something that might explain why? This one certainly wasn’t making any sense. I definitely needed more information. We needed more information. That seemed to be the consistent problem.
“Where do you suppose they are now?” I asked. “The soldiers, I mean. Where would they take anyone they found?”
“I think they were taking me to the auditorium,” said Jeff. “Couldn’t really say for sure, though. I wasn’t very… clear on what they were saying.”
“Good a place as any,” I said. “How do we get there?”
Ian got the job of guide while Jacob and Martin took either side of Jeff. He was walking on his own, but he was still awkward and needed a watch, if only for my peace of mind. We stayed within a few feet of one another as we followed the cobblestone path past the Upperclassmen’s dormitories and past the huge oak tree. The path branched there, going both up and down the hill. Up lead toward another intersection that led to two other buildings that were barely visible. Those should have been in Peter and Gordon’s path, but we’d make sure of that later. We took the downhill path.
Our horror waited over the crest of the next terrace. When the auditorium building came into view. This time I didn’t appreciate the changes to my perceptions. I could see the eleven shredded bodies in immaculate detail, along with the five beaten teenagers tied and staked to the ground nearby. Twenty men formed a loose perimeter around the boys, taunting them and laughing at them. What could possibly be funny about the carnage, I didn’t have a clue, but the boys were in shock beyond words at that point.
So was I. I just acted. “Stay close,” I said and started down the hill. I thought about just shooting them. For about a half second. But I just couldn’t let them get away that easily, not this group. They needed to fear, to hurt. It wouldn’t be enough, not by far, but I needed for them to have it. I needed the Stone to protect the boys, so I built the force fields around the twenty men myself. The first one contained the desecration and the shell-shocked kids to protect them. The second I put around the men to contain them, two rings forming a donut shape.
I shot spikes of power into their radios, frying them. Over half the men in the ring were wearing one in their ears. It was their first indication they had trouble as they spasmed and fought to get them out and off their persons. They bounced off the invisible force fields. One of the teenagers was aware enough to notice the change in volume and looked up, seeing the men start to struggle against the fields. He looked around blankly, still too shocked to know something useful was happening.
We walked down the hill without changing our pace. “Keep an eye out around us, guys. I need to pay attention to them. And please forgive me for what you’re about to see me do. You shouldn’t be witness to this.” None of them said a word but they fanned out around me, still close though. When we stopped at twenty feet away, most of the men had figured out the shape of the fields and had moved to face us along the ring, using knives to test where the field ran. There was a small group of three on the backside trying to dig their way out and another group of four trying to use their gemstone amulets to diminish the wall enough to break through it.
I reached up and tapped the radio. “Peter, where are you?” The man in the center of the collection of men seemed surprised that I used the radio.
“We’re coming up on the Auditorium,” Peter answered in a whisper. “We’re following three sentries in now.”
“Come to the other side of the Auditorium as soon as you can,” I said. “I’m about to get five more kids. Then I think I’m gonna just take the ward over and fry ‘em all like with the bugs.”
“You think you can do that?”
“Don’t really know, but I sure as hell am going to try, but I can’t leave these guys unprotected while I do that.”
“Be right there.” There was a bright flash of green light from the far side of the building followed by a short but loud scream. My boys jumped and turned in that direction.
“Don’t worry, guys,” I said with an evil grin on my face. “That’s our side.” I took a few steps forward and called the Day Sword forward, holding it high in front of me so that the thirteen gun-toting maniacs could see it shining brightly in the sun. Then I started shrinking the thickness of the donut, forcing the ones in back to give up their fruitless tasks and giving none of them room to move. I let three men in front out of the ring, waving my hand in the universal “Come Get Some” motion. They looked at each other conspiratorially. Two moved in with rather obvious attempts to disarm me while the third tried to move around to my back side, either for a second attack or to get to my boys.
The Sword slid me forward, lazily removing me from the first man’s poorly angled attack from the left and turned me slightly to the right while swooping the Sword around and up in a circle clipping the second man behind the knee. He fell over, screaming and holding his leg as it fell off, cauterized rather neatly. The Sword continued its circle, twisting me backward and around to the second man again. It was a high arc and if I had been against a real swordsman, I don’t think it would have worked, but the man was already off balance and he presented his back to me. The Sword took advantage of the position in the swing and took his head off. Just thunk and his head fell to the ground. His broad-shouldered body took a moment to realize nobody was in control.
I was facing the back-stabber as he watched the headless man fall. He started backing away from me, still staring at the corpse as it fell. Until he ran into the shield around the boys. He dropped his eight-inch black metal knife and turned to run. Again, he ran right into the Stone’s shield around the boys, my boys, slamming back onto the ground. The man started pleading for his life, begging on his knees, tears streaming down his face. I glanced at the boys then back at the ring of soldiers in camouflage clothing. Half of them were shocked at what I’d done so quickly. The other half was disgusted at the begging man.
I was just disgusted by all of them. “Did they beg, too?” I asked him. I let power rush through my body, amplified by my emotions. First, the field needed adjustment to let sounds in. Then it needed to be resized, so I picked the man up in one hand, gripping his shirt tightly, and heaved him hard back over my shoulders into the group of men, bowling several over. I heard bones breaking in the collision. Realizing they suddenly had room to move, several raised their guns, only to find themselves suddenly facing the barrels of their own weapons inches from their faces. They froze in shock, just like before.
“Did these little boys beg for the big men to stop beating them?” I yelled causing several to cringe at the amplified volume. A thought occurred to me and I turned back to my boys and asked, “Is this a boys’ only school?” They all shook their heads, solemnly. When I turned back to see the soldiers, there were at least three men leering at me, two more with auras showing spikes of guilt without conscience.
I truly don’t remember exactly what I did, but those five men we
re suddenly ablaze with white lightning. Anyone standing nearby was thrown violently aside, forcing the five to be the center of attention. They all lay on the ground and against the walls of their invisible cell while energy cooked the five from the inside. I forced them to feel every possible second of it. Maybe I was deluding myself on that one. I released the energy loops that held the bodies as they turned to ash.
Gordon and Peter walked into view behind the soldier, going for the tied up boys. Gordon thought I’d lost my mind. He showed it clearly as he built up the resolve in his mind to try and take me on. And he was afraid of me. Not that I blamed him. I’d just flash-fried five men without thinking about it. And the side effect of it was that I tied myself directly into the wards at the same time. I could feel more now and my awareness of the grounds grew as I thought about what I was looking at. It wasn’t as strong or as comprehensive as mine at home or the Cahills’ castle. There were more points of control, too, but at the moment, I had them all.
When Peter and Gordon came up on the carnage still in front of the boys, their shock and awe drew me back to myself. Peter continued on without a pause, the scene affecting him but the boys needed him. Gordon, though, stumbled, looking at me and Martin. Peter was still afraid, but for Martin, not of me. He was happy to have me around. Gordon was coming back around slowly.
“Come on, guys, let’s go help out,” I said and started leading a trail around the bodies and the cell of soldiers to where Gordon and Peter were gently untying the five totally shell-shocked boys. Once clear of those obstacles, the three able-bodied boys ran ahead, leaving me with the slower Jeff. We were still reasonably safe from any soldiers but they had noticed something amiss. Martin ran straight for Gordon and the only emotions I could read for certain through their tight embrace were fear and love. Everything else was too tumultuous.
I’d finally managed to map the entire campus by the time Jeff and I had walked the distance. There weren’t many more survivors—only two, a teacher and Ferrin. There were another thirty-eight soldiers left other than the thirteen penned in behind us. They were beginning to get agitated, having lost contact with some forty-three of their comrades in arms.
