“I’m trying to build up the aristocracy again and give this world a better government. Don’t let the current authorities know about the kids.”
The innkeeper looked shocked. “You should know better, sir.”
“I do know better,” he said as the innkeeper took the children by the hand. “I’ll see you sometime, Aneshka.”
The innkeeper smiled and gave him a rough curtsey. “My lord.”
“You never cease to amaze me, Maximilian,” Shy said as they stepped into the jar-lined pantry.
A long sprig of rosemary hanging from the ceiling brushed Max’s head. With a wave and a word, he opened a gateway. “Why? Because I saved a couple of kids from the cookpot?”
“No… because you care. You have money, you have power, and you have the love of a beautiful woman, and yet you take the time and effort to help a couple of orphans.”
Max snorted a laugh as he stepped through the gateway. “I have the money I was given by Oewaelle, and not a cent more. For power, I have a small band of misfits who enjoy foolhardy missions and what I can conjure up myself—so much power, in fact, that I nearly killed myself using it. I will admit to the love of a beautiful woman, although, for the life of me, I don’t know what she sees in me. I’ve been turned into a vampire when I was on death’s doorstep, and that’s pretty damned special in my book, but I don’t have a world or even a people to call my own. Locals call me an earl, and heir to the throne, but personally, I think it’s all a crock of shit.” He stared up into the blue sky of Jagitika province as the gateway winked closed behind him. “I helped the kids because I could, because someone else helped me and saved my life, simply because they could. I helped them because I’m human.”
Shy repeated the words “crock of shit, crock of shit,” as if trying them on for size.
Sir Filvendor, when Max glanced his way, was glaring at him with anger-filled eyes, probably imagining that he’d been off making it with Filvendor’s supposed fiancée. Doesn’t he have a rude awakening coming.
Casey stood up from the tug, stretching. “Kids all tucked away?”
“Yup. They should be good to go, and as safe as anyone on this insane-asylum world.”
“Saving common rabble,” Filvendor muttered darkly, “like they were important.”
Max turned to the elf, anger balling his hands into fists at his side. “Everyone is important, Almer, and those two have the genes for working magic.”
The elf sniffed in distain. “They aren’t elves, and their skin isn’t green. You might as well save a cow or a dog.”
Max was reaching for the Colt on his hip, but Xia caught his wrist.
“A leader doesn’t shoot his subordinates, no matter how much they piss him off,” she hissed into his ear.
“What does he do then?” Max growled. His jaws were so tightly clenched, his teeth hurt and his fangs… itched.
Xia smiled sweetly. “He delegates.”
“And who, exactly, would be willing to beat the living tar out of the elf?”
Xia put a finger on her cheek, as if pondering the answer. “Any one of us, including Wynn and Shyilia, would jump at the chance.”
Suddenly feeling much better, Max laughed, even as he opened the general com. “Prepare to move out. Same order as before. Set condition Dark Territory two.”
Xia gave him a playful smile as her helmet slid up to cover her head. She moved off at a lope to her position at the head of the column as he turned back to the rear.
Save the single finch sitting in the branches of a low bush, the seaport town of Bexley Landing stood deserted. A loose shutter banged disconsolately in the light breeze, its echoes ominous in the silent streets.
Retracting his helmet, Max sniffed the air and was relieved to smell neither smoke nor carrion but only the permeating odor of fish. “Pair off, people, and find us a boat,” he called out, not wanting to suffer the claustrophobia of his helmet any longer than necessary. “Shy with Sir Filvendor, and Casey with Wynn remain with the tug.” He knew Casey would keep the three elves out of serious trouble. “The rest of you meet back here in thirty minutes. You can lower your helmets, if you like, but keep coms on.”
Many of the rickety slips were empty, but Max was pleased to see several well-kept fishing smacks tied up to the dock, sails neatly furled and ropes coiled on wooden decks. He stepped aboard an eight-meter-long boat and began to explore. Most of the rest of the team was standing on the dock when he finally decided on the older but ship-shape twenty-meter boat. The large lateen sail on the forward mast and the much smaller sail on the aft mast could be handled easily by two or three crewmen, but the boat also had a small aft cabin and significant cargo hold that smelled strongly of fish. Max stood on the deck, staring at the orange setting sun. Thin fingers of dark cloud were moving in from the west, hinting of rain the next day.
Max turned to Moses, who was studiously checking the rigging and sails. In his younger days, and long before he’d become a special operator, Moses Mackey had done a solo Atlantic crossing in his own fifteen-meter yacht. To the best of Max’s knowledge, Moses still had the yacht and spent his free time plying the oceans of the world, having the boat meticulously refitted each time he went on an extended operation.
“Do you think you can manage this tub in heavy weather?” Max asked.
Moses looked up and studied the clouds for a long moment. “Good call, boss, but the storm probably won’t hit until we’re anchored safely at the archipelago. We may have rain for the assault, however, and maybe for the escape. I’ll make sure we have fore and aft anchors.”
Max grunted a laugh. “We’ve been wet before, my friend, and this new armor should keep us a little drier, anyway. Is there anything we should do before we set sail? You’re the expert here.”
Moses bit his lip. “There’s a nice galley on this boat. We might see if we can rustle up some food from the abandoned houses. A hot meal cooked on a stove would be better than another dinner of MREs.”
Max shuddered. “I’ll get the others right on it.”
It was with some surprise that they all discovered the best cook among them was young Seiveril Yinwynn. The young elf explained, as he stirred a large pot of tangy fish chowder, that both his mother and father had encouraged his passion for cooking when he was younger, even going so far as to have him study with the head chef of the king’s kitchen.
At the end of the story, Filvendor barked an ugly laugh, his face showing profound disgust. “A cook? You are a relation to the king, and all you wish to do is cook?” He spat on the deck. “You make me ill.”
Wynn looked crushed until Shyilia touched his shoulder, whispering in his ear. The young elf’s face brightened, as he turned his back on the older elf. It was somewhat later, as the tug was being loaded aboard, that Max was able to get Shy alone and ask her what she had said.
Her green eyes were full of mischief. “I told Wynn not to let it bother him. I told him that as soon as we put out, Sir Filvendor will, strangely, be unable to eat a thing due to a sudden and debilitating bout of sea sickness.”
Max rolled his eyes. “I think that we’re a bad influence on you, Shyilia.”
She patted him on the cheek, smiling as she turned away.
The boat pulled away from the dock an hour later, and true enough, Filvendor became deathly ill, discovering the hard way that if he needed to vomit overboard, it was best to do so downwind. Groaning like a sick cow, the elf curled on his rude cot set in the cargo hold and did his best to ignore the miniscule pitching of the boat and the smells of fish chowder. No one bothered to tell him that the front of his fancy embroidered doublet was spattered with the results of his illness.
Sir Filvendor appeared on deck just as the anchors, one at the bow and one at the stern, dropped into the clear waters of the small sheltered bay. A rocky hill hid the
masts of the small boat from the sentries on the castle two kilometers away.
The elf stretched his arms and breathed deeply of the cool, salt-laden air. “I feel much better now,” he declared to the team who were milling about on deck. “Fetch me a bowl of that chowder, Seiveril.”
Max stopped the young elf as he was about to turn to do the older elf’s bidding. “I’m sorry, Almer. The galley is closed, and the chowder long gone,” Max lied smoothly.
Wynn went to open his mouth, but Max casually stepped on his toe and continued right on.
“If you’d like, I can have someone else heat up one of our MRE’s. I recommend menu number twenty-two, the Asian-style beef strips with vegetables. We discovered that when you’re feeling poorly, it tastes the same coming back up as it did going down.”
Sir Filvendor’s face went the color of chalk, and clamping his hand over his mouth, he bolted for the far side of the deck, where they could hear him being violently sick.
Wynn looked from the retching Filvendor, back to Max. “I don’t understand. We have half a pot of chowder left on the stove, and it’s still hot. Why did you tell him that the galley was closed?”
Max slapped Wynn on the shoulder. “Your chowder was too good, my young elf. He didn’t deserve it, and certainly not in that tone. I’m the supposed leader of this group, and I don’t treat people like that.”
Wynn nodded slowly. “If we survive this, can I join your team?” he asked in a very small voice.
“We’ll see,” was all he could say.
Max, Shy, and Wynn led the team slowly around the rocky hill in the dead of a black cloud-filled night, stumbling on stones and listening to the muffled curses of the team that followed them blindly. Surprisingly, the tug seemed to manage the best of all, easily traveling over holes as it shifted weight on its eight fat tires and rising on hydraulic lifts to traverse steep crannies.
An hour later, lightning lit the air, and he looked up on a looming castle wall fifty meters in front of him. Max touched Mérilla’s shoulder, pointing to a tall tower at the rear of the castle. He chinned the private com. “That’s where I want you to take overwatch,” he said softly. “We’ll be going over the castle wall just below the tower.”
“Fine. I’ll take the long gun with one hundred rounds, and the mag-lev as backup.” The armored head turned in his direction. “Sure you can handle the demolition?”
Max sniffed.
“Fine,” she snapped. “I just had to ask, eh?” Turning, she began to unstrap her equipment from the tug. “Be careful.” He turned away. “Casey, are you ready with the grapple?”
A shadowy shape materialized from the dark, something like a short, stumpy shotgun raised to its shoulder. “Ready. You have the climbers?”
“Yes,” Xia hissed from the dark.
“Wait for it… Wait for it…” Lightning ripped the sky and thunder boomed at nearly the same instant, drowning out the thump-clank of the grapnel firing and landing on the castle wall thirty meters above their heads. Xia was on her feet, connecting her electric climber before he even asked, and he keyed the private channel. “Be very careful. It will be a very long lifetime alone if you should die.”
“What?” Her voice rang in his helmet. “What did you mean?”
“Time to go, Xia,” he pointed out glibly.
“I am so going to kick your ass when we’re finished here,” she said as the electrically powered climber pulled her up into the dark.
There was another boom of thunder and another thump-clank as a second grapnel soared up to lock on the top of the tower. Mérilla wasted no time and was soon disappearing up the tall tower, her long .50 caliber Barrett strapped to her back. Casey followed Xia up her line with practiced precision, while Moses and Max assisted the three elves up the dark wall. The last one up, Max felt a cold chill go up his back as he attached the clip from the climber to his belt. The tug, with its depleted pile of equipment, he left concealed in the nearby rocks, a tarp of the same material as the chameleon suits spread on top so that it vanished among the scattered rocks.
“In position,” Mérilla’s voice said in his ear. “Overwatch on duty.”
“Copy.” Max looked over the far edge of the wall and into the dark courtyard below. He could make out the vague shapes of Xia and Casey, with Shy rapidly descending the wall into their waiting arms. After policing the top of the castle wall, Max did a rapid rappelling descent, touching the ground an instant after Moses. With a flick of his wrist, the spider line came free of the wall as it was supposed to, slithering to the ground at his feet. Rolled and tucked into his pocket, it took up almost no room at all.
“Where to now?” he asked a silent Shy.
An armored figure pointed to an open archway. “There, I think. I was only here once, and heard the guards speak of the dungeons. They went that way and never returned.”
Max groaned as he realized how thin their margin was—not of success, but of survival. He took a breath and pointed to the archway as he chinned the general com. “That way should be the way to the dungeon. Keep your eyes open.”
As the group moved out in single file, Max heard a dull clank from the back of the line. Filvendor had adamantly refused to leave his armor, sword, or spear behind, more to cover his vomit-stained doublet, Max guessed, than anything else. Wynn, on the other hand, wore a dark-green cloak over which he’d belted his sword, becoming nearly as invisible as the chameleon suits as they moved from shadow to shadow.
“Stairwell leading down.” Xia’s voice from her position on point sounded calm and unruffled.
Max matched her tone. “We’re right behind you.”
In the shadowy world of covert operations, where tensions ran high, he’d found that appearances were everything, and he was trying his best to appear calm and unruffled.
Globes set in small sconces along the dripping stairway provided cold spectral light. Studying one for a moment, Max decided a simple runespell created the heatless light. So much for incandescent electric light.
“Locked door,” Xia hissed.
Max moved to the front of the team and looked down at the ancient rusty lock set in the thick oak door, wondering what spell would work best.
Shyilia touched his arm. “Let me,” she said, her finger already tracing out a complex runespell. Max frowned at the word she uttered, until he realized that it was the word for both air and earth. She frowned when nothing happened, then she tried it again, getting the same results. Finally, she passed her hand over the lock and hissed in frustration. “The locks are warded against magic. I don’t know what we’re going to do now.”
Max crooked a finger to Casey. “Open the lock, Casey.” One of the armored figures stepped forward and bent to the lock. “Quietly, if you please.”
Casey sighed, then with a shrug, he retracted his helmet and pulled off his suit gloves, which he tucked under his belt. From a top pocket, he pulled a set of thin lock picks and then stopped, glaring at the old rusty lock. Mumbling a soft curse, Casey put away the thin picks, retrieving instead a set that looked the same diameter as a ten-penny nail. He stuck two in the lock and wiggled them around a bit. After a rusty click, the door swung open with a low groan of unoiled hinges.
Max gave Shy a slow smile. “We make our own magic here.”
The elfin woman moved a little closer. “I’ve noticed that before, Maximilian,” she said in a warm voice, meant for his ears only. Unfortunately, her com was set to general, and Max caught Filvendor’s look of unconcealed loathing.
Max pushed into the dungeon and stopped, staring at the two rows of occupied cages. At the nearer end, the cages were only forty-five centimeters high and wide and were stacked head high.
“You bloody well took your time getting here,” the voice from the first cage muttered angrily, in what Max finally decided was a lilti
ng brogue. He turned to stare at a perfectly formed female only a little shorter than the forty-five-centimeter-high cage she was in. The small creature had waist-length blue hair and two sets of iridescent wings, like a dragonfly. The uppermost forewings brushed the top of the cage, while the hindwings touched the floor. A bloody bandage wrapped her right thigh. Her skin was the color of a walnut shell, and the dark-brown tunic she wore was ragged. Her eyes were extraordinarily large, looking very much like the eyes of traditional Japanese anime drawings, and the same color as her hair. With the sole exception of her over-large eyes, her face was heart-stoppingly beautiful. According to ancient folklore, pixies were small magical beings no more than fifteen centimeters high. Traditional fairies, however, were winged creatures approximately the same size as a human or elf. Trying to decide what to call her, Max flipped a mental coin, and the translation runespell came up with nixie… kind of.
There were a hundred things he could have said when meeting his first nixie, or whatever they called themselves, but he finally settled on, “Good afternoon, miss. You rang for room service?”
The nixie’s eyes literally bugged from her head as she stared at Max, then she began to laugh, a high tinkling sound that Max suspected went off into the supersonic frequencies. As she laughed, Shy came up to stand at his side.
“Is that you, Lenora Mosswood?” Shy asked in an amazed voice.
The laughing creature wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and looked up. “Princess Shyilia Iangwyn. If you were giving these idiots directions, no wonder they got lost.”
Max bit his lip to keep from laughing as he turned to Casey. “Start opening the cells, as fast as you can.” He shot a glance at the blue-haired nixie. “Leave this one locked.”
She gripped the bars, a look of fright on her face. “Now, wait a damn minute…”
“Okay, wiseass,” Max growled. “Where is the back door to this place?”
Destiny of the Vampire (Adventures of the Vampire Book 1) Page 17
