“And then she used the other half for the name of one of these gangs in her story,” Cat realised. “The Twin Tigers.”
“The names of her main character and the other gang ain’t exactly subtle, either, are they, love?” Jessica put in. “E. Melanda: Mandalee, Red: Redfletching, Cats: Catriona.” Then she paused, stunned as the implications hit her. “Hang on – these books were written long before any of us were even born, Daelen excepted. How could she have known your names?”
“Wait,” Sara put in, “you mentioned something about Time magic. Is that what this is?”
“Must be,” Cat replied, nodding absently while flicking through the pages of The Assassin Peacemaker. Nothing leapt out, so she decided the most sensible plan was to do what the back cover said: go back to the beginning, to Training School. Opening that first book, then, she read the dedication inside:
To Cat,
Dig deep in your training, and you will find the keys to success.
Aye, ever yours,
Rose
~x~
“What does that mean?” Daelen wondered.
Cat gave him a wry smile. “I guess it means I’m going to be training with you, after all.”
Chapter 24
“Is this how your staff research always works, then?” Daelen wondered.
“Mostly,” Cat nodded. “It’s about learning specific magical keys to unlock one layer of protection at a time.”
“Magical keys?” Mandalee wondered.
“Think of it this way,” Cat encouraged her. “Your mark is being sheltered by your enemies in the deepest room of a house like this one. Between you and your quarry are many guards and many doors that are locked and booby-trapped. If you miss one or make one small slip, your enemies will capture you. As a trained assassin, what would you do?”
Mandalee smirked, “Knowing me, I’d probably just have a couple of drinks, get armed to the teeth and go for it.”
Her friend laughed, “Not quite the analogy I was hoping for. OK, you can’t launch a full-scale assault because before killing your mark, you must make him reveal information that is vital to your sponsors. His death alone will not fulfil your contract. On the plus side, your mark and his friends are not going anywhere so you can afford to wait.”
“In that case, I would need to plan it to the letter, know the location and detail of every trap, every lock, every guard. It would be futile and probably fatal to attempt a move without all the information. I would probably also need help from others, but not too many, if only to gather the…” she hesitated, “…intel – is that the right phrase, Jess?”
Jessica nodded.
“Well, that’s how I gain access to this power,” Catriona explained. “I don’t know yet whether the power within this staff is friend or foe, but I have to find out. I need to understand every barrier between me and its release before attempting to use it, or even deciding whether I should. This isn’t a solo effort; I need help from others, but only from the right people, not too many. Pretty much just you guys.”
Plus Dreya, of course, but she couldn’t mention that.
“It sounds pretty complex,” Daelen commented, with a newfound appreciation for Catriona’s hard work.
“It’s certainly a serious challenge – that’s why I’m enjoying it so much.”
She paused for a moment to determine if there were any more questions or comments – there were none.
It was getting late. She had already seen a few stifled yawns, and she took her own as a firm agreement that it was time for bed.
In the morning, she would, at last, begin her training.
*****
The next few mornings, they enjoyed breakfast together before dividing the day up into chunks. Mandalee would do physical exercise and workouts with Daelen, while Cat spent her time studying. Then Mandalee would train and spar with either Sara or Jessica – they were pretty evenly matched as long as Mandalee didn’t use her super-speed. Meanwhile, Catriona would suffer through physical training with Daelen. She wasn’t the physical fighter that Mandalee was, and it quickly became apparent that it was never going to be her forte.
By now, the shadow warrior had learned that trying to push Catriona into doing something she didn’t want to do was futile, but he could help her to push herself. Cat appreciated the value of improving her physical conditioning, which she had to admit wasn’t quite back to where it had been before her illness. Within a few days, though, Daelen had managed to help her push herself even further, so she was in the best condition of her life.
At range, her archery was a match for anyone. Up close, it made more sense for her to shift to leopard, wolf or even bear form. Apart from anything else, in a real battle, her attackers were unlikely to expect that, so that would put surprise on her side.
Away from the training centre, Cat and Mandalee worked on their different forms of magic. Both young women were reminded of the time they had spent hunting demons together, a few years ago. This was really just an extension of the skills they had developed back then.
Their evenings were kept free of work – even Cat put her books away – in favour of going out into the city, soaking up the sights, the culture and shopping. Cat still didn’t buy anything and simply used a perception filter. Sometimes, Daelen accompanied them. Other times, he left the four young ladies to their own devices in the name of not cramping their style. The more time they spent together, the less they would want to part later. That meant it was more likely Jessica and Sara would choose Tempestria to be their new home when the moment came.
The pattern held until one day, just into the second half of their planned stay on Earth, when Cat and Mandalee heard a commotion coming from Daelen’s training centre. Powerful cannon blasts followed by explosions mingled with shouts and screams from the Chetsuan girls. Racing to the scene, the two friends found Sara and Jessica standing outside the training centre. Jessica was pounding on the door begging for Daelen to let her in and help.
“It’s no good, Jess!” Sara implored her, reaching out to her sister. “He won’t listen. He never does when he’s like this, you know that.”
Jessica snarled and swore at her sister.
“You turn your back on him if you want, but I won’t!” she insisted. “I’m staying here,” she continued, her voice becoming a scream, “until he opens this bloody door!” She resumed her pounding and demanding to be let in.
Catriona was shocked. She’d never heard them say a cross word to each other in the admittedly short time she’d known them.
She shared a worried look with Mandalee, who asked, “Sara, what’s going on?”
There came a rumbling sound, as the house shook to its very foundations. The girls had to hold onto each other to keep their balance.
“Oh, hey, you two,” Sara greeted them. “It’s Daelen. He’s having another one of his moods. He gets like this from time to time. Go on, have a look through the glass.”
Jessica moved aside, close to Sara, and nuzzled her sister’s neck in a Chetsuan apology. Sara licked Jessica’s forehead, and all was forgiven.
Inside the training centre, Daelen was pushing himself like nothing they’d seen before. The reinforced and shielded walls strained under the assault of his cannon blasts. He had conjured a copy for the purposes of sparring, but it was like he thought he was fighting Aden in there. Fighting for real. Their attacks were a flurry of movement, each blow strong enough to flatten a mountain and he was accelerating, hitting harder and faster, using ever more powerful cannon blasts, all the time screaming and yelling unintelligibly.
Cat spotted some technology standing in the far corner. In one of their recent trips into the city, Sara had taken them to something called a ‘rock and roll bar’ which had a music player called a jukebox. The device in the corner looked a bit like that, but it didn’t seem to be designed to play music.
“It’s a gravity generator,” Jessica explained. “It’s why we can’t get in. It’s ten times Earth normal, we
’d be killed instantly. Of course, Daelen’s not like us so he can take it.”
Cat noticed Jessica’s usual affectations of speech disappeared when she was upset. She missed hearing them, and she wanted her to be happy again so she could go back to using them.
There came another mini earthquake. It felt as though the whole world shook that time.
“What the hell is he trying to do? Break this world in two or just flatten his own house?” Mandalee wondered.
As she spoke, Daelen’s frenzied attack on himself grew in intensity, until he finally managed to knock himself out. At least, they hoped he was just unconscious. His copy vanished. A stray bit of power from his last volley had hit the gravity generator, and the pitch of the hum it was emitting began to rise.
“Oh, no!” Sara gasped. “The gravity’s being turned up higher!”
It was already up to twelve G and climbing.
“How much can Daelen take?” Mandalee wondered. Then, when the house shook again, she revised her question. “Actually, never mind Daelen. How much can this house take?” she worried.
The gravity well was already too strong for them to attempt to step into even if they could get through the door, but Catriona had a ridiculous radical plan. Daelen had shielded the room but had made the mistake people always made: he forgot to shield the floor. She used her stoneshaper magic, weakening the floor until it gave way and the device fell through. Cat encouraged the process still further so that the Earth itself swallowed the machine whole. Then she changed the magic to squeeze the gap closed, crushing the machine within. The gravity returned to normal.
The next challenge was getting inside.
“If you can make a small gap,” Sara volunteered, “I could get in and shut down the shields from the inside to let the rest of you in.”
Jessica backed her up. “My sister’s got a pretty good head for tech skills.”
Cat agreed and reshaped the floor to create a crawlspace underneath the door.
Borrowing a knife from Mandalee that she said looked ideal, Sara crawled inside, prised off the control panel and set to fiddling with its inner workings. After a minute, she got annoyed and kicked the door. Giving up on the technical approach, she reached for a gun that she had strapped to her leg under her skirt.
“We both have them for security,” Jessica explained. “So far, no-one’s ever tried to break in from another world, at least as long as we’ve been here. Still, you never know.”
Sara shot the control panel with what Jessica called a laser, but it was shielded against that sort of attack. Moving on to Plan C, she undid the holster strap from around her leg and used it to strap the gun to the knife instead. It took a couple of goes, but she managed to get the knife wedged into the frame of the control panel, preventing the gun from falling down.
“Guys,” Jessica fretted, “if she’s doing what I think she’s doing, I think we’d best stand well back, just in case.”
Sara fiddled with something inside the gun’s workings and ran away from the door, getting down on the floor to shield Daelen’s body with hers. There was a deafening, high-pitched whine, followed by a massive explosion as the gun blew itself up, taking the control panel, the door and half the wall down with it.
It took a moment for the smoke and dust to settle enough to be able to see again, but Jessica was immediately on her feet, calling out for her sister.
“I’m here, Jess,” came her reply as the air cleared. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
Jessica ran to her and embraced her tightly, then she pulled away, looked at the gaping hole in the wall and quipped, “Hey, Sara, love. You were only supposed to blow the bloody door off.”
The two Tempestrians didn’t get the reference, but Sara obviously did, because they did another of their tail-high-fives.
Cat was in there in a flash, holding Daelen in her arms, Mandalee by her side. When Mandalee’s healing proved unsuccessful, Catriona tried her way, but that also failed.
“It’s not you guys,” Sara reassured them, shaking her head. “There’s nothing physically wrong with him. He’s just drained. Once we get him charging up again, he’ll be fine.”
She volunteered to go and fetch a trolley so they could wheel him to the sickbay.
“Classic hero behaviour, I’m afraid, dears,” Jessica remarked.
Cat and Mandalee shared a smile at hearing her old speech pattern re-emerging, now that the immediate danger was past.
“Every now and then, Daelen gets all het up about his battles, starts to think he’s a monster and pushes himself to the edge to try and get even stronger, so he can ‘make up’ for whatever he reckons he’s done that probably wasn’t his fault in the first place. Then he comes in here and takes a chunk out of himself, his training centre or, in this case, both.”
Cat nodded, pensively. “He told me he doesn’t like to think of himself as a hero, but it’s a bit difficult to avoid labelling him that way when he plays the part so well.”
“This fight you’re preparing for on your world, fighting this Kullos bloke. It’s a pretty big deal, right?”
“We think Daelen’s going to save our world, or possibly destroy it, or both,” Mandalee replied. “The jury’s still out, as you say here.”
“Hey, you’re getting pretty good at those,” Jessica grinned, then she grew serious. “Anyway, yeah, I get that. Really, I do, but I think it’s more than that this time. I reckon, this time, he’s not planning on coming back. Sara says not to worry, that I’m imagining it, but I don’t think I am. He hasn’t said anything – he wouldn’t – but I’ve noticed things. Little things.”
“Like what?” Cat asked.
“Well, like throwing us together, for a start. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great having you here, like proper mates. Sara’s not looked that shade of purple for years.” She broke off and explained that basically meant she was looking healthy and happy. “Look, all I’m saying is, I think Daelen’s thinking about what we’re gonna do if he’s not around anymore.”
“Well, whether that’s true or not,” Mandalee reassured, “you and your sister are welcome on Tempestria anytime.”
“Definitely,” Cat agreed. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I was hoping you’d say that. Cheers, loves. You go sort out Kullos, and me and my sister are coming over for a visit. For sure.”
As they were speaking, they heard the sound of a trolley being wheeled down the corridor, getting closer. From the doorway, Sara called out for Cat to smooth out the floor where the doorway used to be, so she could get the trolley in and out. Cat obliged her.
“Your voices were drifting down the corridor,” Sara told Cat. “and I think you should know, there’s another thing that drives Daelen to do this, from time to time. I think he’s pining for his lost loves.”
“Loves?” Cat asked. “Plural?”
“He slipped up once,” Sara nodded. “Tried to cover it up quickly, but I wasn’t convinced. No idea who the other one was, but I do know he loved Rose with all his heart, and I think your research into your staff in the library the other day brought it all back.”
“Thought so,” Cat grimaced. “If I’d known where it was going to lead, I would have found another way.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Sara admonished her as she and the others lifted Daelen onto the trolley. “It would have happened sooner or later, anyway. Especially since you remind him of her so much.”
“I know,” Cat sighed. “Still, it’s pretty tough, competing with a ghost,” she remarked, dryly. Three pairs of wide eyes turned towards her, and a blushing druidess, realising what she’d said, tried to cover it. “That is, I would be competing with a ghost if I had any intention of returning his feelings, which I don’t, which is fine since his feelings aren’t really directed at me at all, but that other girl, not that it bothers me, you understand, I mean…” she trailed off. “I’m really not convincing anybody, am I?”
Three heads shook as one.
> “Fair enough.”
They began wheeling the trolley, continuing their conversation.
“Thing is, you’re wrong,” Sara insisted. “He does love you, not just the memory of Rose. Believe it or not, I think what Daelen did today was his idea of therapy. Trying to get over Rose finally, after so long, so he can focus on his feelings for you without them being tainted. I think he was trying to finally bury his lost love deep underground. Underneath his training centre.”
Abruptly, Cat stopped wheeling. “What did you say?” she gasped.
“I just said—”
“—No!” she cried quickly, holding up a restraining hand. “That was just rhetorical. Now is really not the time for another one of those, thank you.”
“Another one of—” Sara began, confused.
Jessica whispered something in her sister’s ear and Sara’s eyes widened.
“Oh!” she gasped, understanding. “Another one of those.”
“What are you planning, Cat?” Mandalee asked.
Catriona grinned. “Well, you know me. I’m always one for study, brain over brawn, and all that. Sometimes, though, I will admit there’s something to be said for Daelen’s brute force.”
Mandalee shook her head, not getting it. “Not with you,” she admitted. Then with a wry smile, she added, “No change there, then.”
“‘The Red Cat and Twin Tiger gangs have to unite’ and ‘go back to Training School,’” she paraphrased from The Assassin Peacemaker. “I have to use my druid magic but also use Daelen’s approach of brute force and power. Not careful, controlled shaping like I’d normally do, but really rip the place apart like he would,” Cat explained. “And in case that’s too cryptic for you, the dedication gives it to me straight: ‘Dig deep in your training, and you will find the keys to success.’ Literally, dig deep underneath the training centre, and I’ll find something I need. You three sort out Daelen. I think this house needs a new garden.”
Explaining no further, she shifted to her falcon form and flew back to Daelen’s training centre.
Gathering Storm (The Salvation of Tempestria Book 2) Page 21
