“Well, do you have an object of great power lying around?” said Miles. “I think I left mine in my other pants.”
Calvin sent a massive gust of wind forth that blasted half a dozen undead out the windows they were climbing through. He whirled with an excited look on his face. “Blade! The ring!” he said.
Blade stared at him. “What?”
“Your ring, dude!” Calvin pointed. Blade held up the gold ring he wore on his right middle finger. It glowed slightly as though lit from within.
“Since when is this an object of great power?” he said. “It doesn’t do anything.”
“It belonged to one of the Six!” Calvin said. “You can’t do better than that.”
Meridia’s eyes had fixed on it. “It is perfect,” she said. “Give it to me.”
Blade growled as he set up a wall of flame in front of him. Then he yanked the ring off and placed it in Meridia’s outstretched palm.
Meridia closed her eyes as she clutched the ring, her fingers lightly brushing the red gemstone set in its mounting. Her eyes snapped open after a moment and fixed on Sarah.
“When I have transferred, you must escape,” she said.
“How are we supposed to do that?” Sarah asked through gritted teeth as she struggled to close the windows while holding off the undead warriors. Beside her, Cara leapt forward to engage one of the figures, her shield ringing hard with the impact of blows.
“You will find a way,” said Meridia. “And you will do it quickly.”
She closed her eyes again. Then, with a flash of light, she vanished. The ring hovered in midair for a moment before falling to the floor with a clink.
“Grab it, Blade!” said Sarah. “Now, who’s got an idea for getting out of here?”
Darren took his eyes from the undead for a second to look at her reluctantly. “Lady Sarah, Lord Calvin might have a way,” he said.
“I do?” asked Calvin, evidently surprised.
“Remember during the siege? The barrier gate?” said Darren.
“Oh, crud,” said Blade.
But Calvin grinned. “Oh, yeah. That. Heh, heh. Hehehe.”
My stomach flip-flopped. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Calvin with a grin. “But when it happens, I might need your help. You’ll know what to do.”
“How will I—” I began.
“Sarah, take down that wall!” Calvin interrupted, pointing.
“But they’ll be able to get in!” she protested.
“We won’t be here,” said Calvin. “Do it.”
Sarah growled and waved a hand. The wall came crumbling down, bricks spinning away into the empty space beyond. I saw a few undead tumble after them, silent as they spun like leaves in the air.
“Okay everyone,” said Calvin. “Here we go.”
Suddenly a massive gust of wind slammed into all of us. Before I knew what was happening, it had swept me from my feet, propelling me through the massive hole that had appeared in the wall. My stomach lurched, and I nearly vomited as my heart leapt into my throat. We were falling, falling through the empty air, the ground rushing up at us.
“Calviiin!” screamed Sarah.
“Yeee-hee-hee-heee!” cried Calvin, utterly joyous.
Then I felt something swell beneath me, like a cushion of air. It was a cushion of air. Calvin had summoned a column of nearly-solid air beneath us, slowing our descent just enough. It felt like falling into molasses—the deeper we sank into the column, the slower we went. Soon the air was almost too thick to breathe.
“Calvin!” I gasped. “Ease up! I can help!”
The air grew thinner, and I could breathe easier. I seized everyone with force, helping to slow our descent somewhat. It still felt a little like skydiving, but in the end we hit the ground with no more force than if we’d jumped from about eight feet up. We crashed to our knees into the grass.
“Calvin, what the crud was that?” said Sarah. She leapt to her feet, and the rest of us followed suit.
Calvin shrugged. “You said you wanted an exit strategy.” He pointed at the top of the tower. “Tower. Exited.”
I glanced around. A few of the undead warriors lay scattered on the grass around us—some of them cast down when Sarah had destroyed the wall, others flung out of the windows during the fight. All of their bodies were twisted and mangled, but most of their eyes still glowed with baleful fire. They reached for us with horribly distended limbs, but they couldn’t rise to attack us. The horses stood nearby, still tied to a nearby tree. The undead had left them alone, thinking them unimportant.
“We should retreat while we may,” said Cara. I followed her gaze up to see the undead figures swarming down the tower’s exterior, once again crawling like ants.
“Let’s do,” said Sarah. “To the horses, quickly!”
But seeing the undead had remind me of something, and I spun to the keyhole cleft. There was nothing there.
“The hooded lady!” I said. “Where did she go?”
Cara shot the entrance a look. “She has fled.”
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. Now there was no way Terrence wouldn’t find out. She was going to take this straight to him.
We leapt on our horses and fled through the cleft. Sarah stopped at the last second, turning back to the tower. She made a sharp chopping motion with her hand. As I watched, the stones that formed the tower’s base disintegrated all at once. With a long, thundering rumble, the tower began to collapse as it slammed into the ground, cracks spreading up it like spiderwebs. Dozens of undead figures swathed in black tumbled through the air, some of them lost in the cloud of dust that erupted behind us.
“That’s how you make an exit!” said Calvin, cackling madly as he led the escape through the keyhole.
What was that sound? came a voice in my head. With a shock I realized it was Meridia. She was speaking to me from within Blade’s ring.
Um, that was the tower, I said. Sarah kind of…destroyed it.
Meridia growled. I was afraid she would do that. She didn’t have to.
Yeah, well…sorry, I thought lamely.
Honestly, of all the Realm Keepers throughout existence, I have to get you six, she thought angrily. Aurora should have warned me.
We rode hard for the south, away from the tower and toward the mountain range that we could now see on the distant horizon. Somewhere in that mountain range lay Wyrmspire. Somewhere close, we would find the dragons. Very soon now, our quest would meet its end. One way or another.
I turned for a moment to look at the keyhole entrance as we sped away. And standing within it, I caught one last glimpse of her. She stood tall and straight within the gap in the rock, her cloak obscuring her form. The hooded lady.
Her eyes followed us as we vanished into the distance, Wyrmspire ahead and, now, Chaos on our heels.
TO BE CONTINUED IN…
MEDICORP
BLADE
MY NAME IS BLADE FREDERICKSON, and I’m living a double life.
If you’d known me before my second life started, you wouldn’t have thought I was anything special. Tough-looking, maybe. Not somebody you wanted to mess with unless you had a good reason. Devilishly handsome, that was for sure. But I was under no illusions. The world didn’t give any more of a pigeon squirt about me than you, or anybody else I’d known all my life.
Then all of a sudden the world started to care. Unfortunately it only seemed to care about making my life miserable.
I became a Realm Keeper, a wizard in another world called Midrealm. There I was some kind of crazy fire lord. My powers were incredible, and my life was awesome. I had bodyguards, I lived in a castle, I had servants. Totally great, right?
Except for all the people trying to kill me. Terrence and the forces of Chaos wanted to bring us down, to collapse the barrier so that they could invade Athorn and find a way to break into True Earth. If they did that, humanity was doomed. Everything I’d ever seen, everybody I’d ever known, wa
s toast.
Not that most of them didn’t deserve it, but still. I wasn’t going to let my world go down without a fight.
Unfortunately, the stress of my new double life proved to be a little bit too much to the already-tense home life I had. My dad kicked me out, or I left. I supposed the truth depended on who you asked. So I was what some would call a drifter. Others would have called me homeless.
The others I was with, the other Realm Keepers, were great. They let me stay with them whenever they could, sleeping on bedroom floors and couches.
That’s why I was with them the day they took their parents to visit the fake Medicorp facility. Anna, an ex-Association member, had set the place up and given us a tour. Then Sarah had broken the news to her parents that she wanted to check the place out. The others had followed suit. I’d thought it would be at least a week before we did the whole “bring your parents to work” thing, but it turned out to be less than a day. Apparently all of their folks were super stoked about getting their kids the medical treatment they “needed.”
As annoying as the others seemed to find it, I only wished I still had parents that acted like that.
I realized that I was thinking too much and not paying enough attention. That was a habit I tried to avoid.
I focused on the conversation as we waited in the reception area, when I got a nagging feeling that I was being watched. I glanced to my left to see Calvin’s mom looking at me out of the corner of her eye. She seemed to be looking around me, as though searching for something. What was she looking for?
Oh. Right. My complete lack of parents present.
Calvin’s mom was super cool. I was always polite to her when Calvin let me come over. I had tremendous respect for what it took to be a good mom. For that reason, I never told her about my home life. I could tell she was interested. Curious, even. But when I thought the conversation was drifting in that direction, I gripped the wheel and yanked it hard. It wasn’t her business, but that wasn’t the main reason. I just didn’t want other people to think they had to worry about me. And I definitely didn’t want to be judged.
So I turned away from her, pretending I hadn’t seen her scoping me out.
My attention went to Jason, the dopey guy sitting behind the big reception desk. He had that glassy, too-polite smile of the professional liar. That’s what actors were, after all. And Jason and almost every other member of this building’s “staff” was just an actor, someone hired to play a role for a day.
The other parents were murmuring to each other, pointing out how clean and professional the place looked. They were right. Anna and Briggs had done a fantastic job. The place was a dead ringer for a professional doctor’s office. I even saw some people moving back and forth in the hallways behind the reception area. I knew they weren’t really doing anything. They, too, were actors, hired to create the right atmosphere.
Then one of the waiting area’s doors flew open. Out stepped one of the few people in this building who was not an actor.
A lot of Anna’s look could have passed as normal. She was about five foot six, a pretty but unremarkable face, and she wore decently regular clothes. But I was used to seeing her with dyed pink streaks in her hair and gauges in her ears. Which is why it was such a shock to see her hair up in a tight bun, no trace of pink, and wide gold hoops hanging from her earlobes. She looked like a professional secretary.
“Well, hello everyone,” she said. Her voice was nasally, obviously fake. Or was it only obvious to me because I knew what she sounded like normally? I hoped the trickery was lost on the parents, or we were toast.
“Hello there,” said Miles’ mom, stepping forward without a smile and offering her hand. “I’m Mrs. Grave.”
“I’m Claudia Richards,” said Anna, taking the hand and shaking it firmly. “I’m the manager of this facility.” I saw Miles’ mom relax a bit. In the time I’d spent at his place, I knew she liked people who were direct. She also clearly liked speaking to the person in charge. No underlings for her, thank you very much.
“The manager?” said Calvin’s mom. “Well, thank you for taking the time to meet with us.”
“Oh, but you all are such unique cases. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Anna. I smirked. She didn’t want anyone else running this show in case one of her two-bit failed drama students screwed up their lines.
Miles’ mom spoke up again, her mouth set in a firm line. “Do you just handle the administrative affairs, Miss Richards? Or do you have a medical background of your own?” Her voice had taken on a different tone than I’d ever heard her use. I knew she was a lawyer. She sounded like she was grilling a witness on the stand.
Anna didn’t miss a beat. “None whatsoever,” she said. “At Medicorp we believe in specialization. We trust our doctors enough to let them do their work. We try not to get in the way. My purpose is to keep the wheels running smoothly behind the scenes so that the true professionals can do their jobs — which, in this case, is making sure we take the best possible care of your kids.”
Miles’ mom’s nod was brief, but I could see the approval in her eyes.
Raven’s mom stepped up next. “This place is simply lovely, Miss Richards,” she said. “I must say, I’m quite impressed. What’s your staff count here? It must be large.”
“It’s expanding,” said Anna. “We’ve only recently had to move into these new quarters. There’s just a dozen staff on duty at all times. But there are three shifts, so in total we keep almost forty people gainfully employed.” She gave a light, easy laugh that spread a smile across the faces of every adult in the room.
I glanced around at the others. Each of them was staring at Anna with fascination. I was probably doing the same thing, I realized. Normally Anna was slightly sarcastic, more than a little biting and scary obsessed with computers. This new, professional Anna was something we’d never seen before.
“If you’d all come this way, I’ll be happy to show you the different sections of the facility,” she continued. She waved toward the door she’d entered through. Like a herd of expertly wrangled cattle, the parents went through it en masse, dragging us along in their wake.
“We’ve got two main wings,” Anna continued. “First we’ve got the testing facilities. That’s where we’re going to try and isolate exactly what kind of condition your kids have. Believe it or not, we’ve documented over twenty brand-new sleep disorders since this project started. Your kids might have something we’ve seen before, or it might be something completely new.”
“And what if it is?” said Miles’ mom. “What do you do then?”
“Then we try to find what’s causing it,” said Anna. “We have a very comprehensive battery of tests that we run on everyone who comes through our doors. We don’t want to take any chances, and we don’t want to make any assumptions. Disorders can be caused by anything. Some people are born with them. Others can develop during puberty. Still others are caused by exposure to chemicals that sink into the body’s fat tissue.”
I saw Sarah’s hands fly unconsciously to her middle. I rolled my eyes.
“Are any of them contagious?” said Raven’s mom nervously. “There’s no need for a quarantine, is there?”
I looked at her in disapproval. Was she actually bringing up the subject of quarantining her own daughter, not to mention five other kids?
Raven’s dad put a hand on her arm. She flinched a little, but didn’t withdraw it. “Laura, the other doctors already told us there’s nothing contagious,” he said. He gave Raven a reassuring look. “It’s not something to worry about.”
Raven’s mom looked like she might answer him, but Anna stepped in smoothly. “He’s one hundred percent correct. We’ve seen all kinds of things around here, but not once have we detected a legitimate disorder that was communicable in any way.”
I rolled my eyes. If our disorder was contagious, didn’t Raven’s mom think that someone else would have caught it by now?
“That’s too bad,” I qu
ipped from the back of the group. “I guess I can stop trying to infect other people by sneezing on their lunches at school.”
The hallway went deathly silent. Slowly, every pair of eyes turned to stare at me. The moms wore various expressions of disbelief. All except Calvin’s mom. She had a half-hidden smile twisting the corners of her lips, and she was trying to fight it. The dads, though, were all giving me ugly looks. In particular, I was getting a harsh stare from Sarah’s dad. Didn’t need too much imagination to guess what he was thinking.
Anna tried to pass it off with an easy laugh, but while the parents’ heads were turned I caught her staring daggers at me. I could practically hear her screaming in her mind, Keep your mouth shut, Blade, and let me handle this. I gave her another smirk and a discreet wink. Her lips curled as she made a face.
All of the parents turned back around, and Anna’s face resumed a neutral expression. “Well, why don’t I introduce you to our diagnostics officer?” she said. “Right this way.”
She led us through one of the hallway’s doors into a wide room with more than a dozen beds lining the walls. Every bed had a battery of impressive-looking equipment next to it, though all of it was switched off. Probably to conserve electricity. I didn’t know what the power bill was in a place like this, but I couldn’t imagine it was small.
In the room was a little old Asian woman with curly black hair. Despite her age, though, her eyes were bright and intelligent. She was wearing just a little too much makeup, and her smile was as fake as all the staff in this place. But she was one of the more decent ones. We’d met her once, when we toured the facility with Anna the first time. The lady’s name was Mildred, though I had to pretend not to know that.
“This is Mildred,” said Anna.
There were a chorus of hello’s from the group, both parents and kids.
“So, diagnostics officer?” said Miles’ mom. “Isn’t that a bit of a…I don’t know, military term?”
“Medicorp prides itself on its internal discipline,” said Anna earnestly. “We like to run a very tight ship. Everyone is held to a high standard of responsibility. We’ve borrowed many terms from classical military organizations in the hopes of borrowing some of their dedication, as well. There’s quite an elegant article about it on the organization’s website.”
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 42
