by Frank Morin
Alter yelped and rolled off, hands clutching his bleeding nose. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I thought you wanted me to hit you,” Sarah said as she rolled to her feet. “Remember, don’t let your opponent distract you.”
Alter grabbed up a towel and pressed it to his face. His voice took on a distinct nasal tone when he spoke. “Good move.”
“Thank you,” she said, but her smile faded. “Did I hurt you bad?”
“I’ll be fine,” he insisted. “Just give me a minute.”
The two of them moved to a pair of simple wooden chairs situated near the windows overlooking the pool. Sarah really needed to find a suit so she could test the water.
“Where did you learn to fight?” she asked him.
Alter shrugged. “We train all our lives to destroy the kashaph.”
“Didn’t you do anything fun?” She imagined little Alter pummeling a practice dummy at age six.
“Training is fun.”
He had so much to learn.
“What do you do for fun now that you’re an adult?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, when you’re not training and not studying runes or whatever other work you do. What do you do to relax?”
“I go shooting.”
He couldn’t be real. “Don’t you ever go out on dates or just do things not connected with hunting?”
Alter looked a little unsure of himself for the first time. “Not really.”
“Well after we’re done with all this fighting and saving the stupid council, we’ll do something fun to celebrate.”
He actually blushed. “Are you asking me on a date?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Nothing like that. I just think you should try something fun.”
His look of disappointment almost made her laugh. Time to change the subject. “I know your family doesn’t like what the facetakers do, but you seem to hate Gregorios especially.”
“I’ve sworn a blood oath to destroy that demon for what he’s done to our family.”
“But didn’t he just restore your brother?”
“For that I am grateful,” Alter admitted reluctantly. “But his torment of my brother was just the most recent of his crimes.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t think you’ll believe me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve fallen under their influence.” He took one of her hands in his. “I worry for your safety.”
“That’s why you’re training me,” she reminded him, slipping out of his grasp. His earnestness was sweet, but she couldn’t encourage his interest.
“Not just that,” he insisted, his expression intent. “You’re a good person. I see that. But you’ve fallen in with some of the most dangerous people on the planet.”
“No,” she disagreed. “I’ve seen enough of the real dangers to know. That’s why you fight the heka just like they do. That’s why everyone agrees Mai Luan is the worst danger. Don’t let your hatred for them blind you. They’re not as bad as you think.”
“And they’re not as good as you hope,” he growled.
“You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
“Just try to keep an open mind. You’ll see the lies eventually. Then we’ll talk.”
The door opened and Quentin came in. He nodded toward the bloody towel. “Having fun, I see.”
“Alter was teaching me some fighting moves,” Sarah said as she rose and donned her jacket.
“Good. Looks like you learned a few things.” He joined them by the window. “I verified Tomas made it into the headquarters without any major issues.”
“Were there minor issues?” Sarah asked quickly.
“Perhaps.” His expression gave nothing away.
“What?” she pleaded. “Is he going to be all right?”
“I believe he will be fine,” Quentin said.
“Shouldn’t you have stayed there to help, just in case?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I felt it better to keep my distance. He should be back by this evening. If your training session here is concluded, may I step in?”
“What do you have in mind?” Sarah asked, reluctant to leave the topic of Tomas’ safety.
“Have you ever fired a fully automatic rifle before?”
“I knew I liked you for a reason,” Sarah said, linking arms with him. “Show me the way.”
Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Reports that General Lee has employed and, in fact, aggressively recruited channellers and enchanters, is at every level disconcerting. Enslaving a man’s body is morally wrong and, by the clear edicts of our eternal God, enslaving his soul cannot be tolerated. Let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts. We must abolish all practitioners of this evil and preserve this commitment throughout all time. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.
~Abraham Lincoln
Chapter Forty-Three
“Elevate the barrel a little more, my dear.” Quentin’s voice was soft but commanding.
Sarah angled the M4A1 rifle up into the air. The compact assault rifle fit her extremely well, and she’d just finished firing several magazines of 5.56 ammo with the firing selector set to full automatic. The recoil was very manageable, and with the suppressor screwed onto the barrel, she almost didn’t need the advanced ear protection Quentin had provided.
“Are you sure no one will call the police when we start shooting grenades?” Sarah asked.
The ear protection blocked all sounds above dangerous decibels, but didn’t impede regular conversation. She was eager to fire the M203 grenade launcher attached under the barrel of the rifle, but worried that neighbors would notice the explosions.
Mature stands of trees shielded the shooting range situated behind Quentin’s mansion from observation. A series of earthen mounds held pop-up targets at fifty yard intervals, and a massive berm blocked off the end of the range at over four hundred yards. With suppressors attached to the various handguns and rifles Quentin had guided her in shooting, she hadn’t worried about the sound causing an issue, but they were still pretty close to the city.
“Not to worry, my dear,” Quentin said, hefting a fat, blue projectile. “We can only shoot practice rounds at this range.”
Sarah had already loaded one of the 40 millimeter rounds into the launch tube. She’d really hoped to see it explode big, but wasn’t surprised by the answer.
“Hold it steady there,” Quentin said, helping her sight through the raised flip-up sight. “For some deployments, we can attach a better sighting system, but for today’s purposes close is all we need.”
When all looked right, he nodded to her. He was as genteel as always, but while acting as range master, he spoke in crisp commands, a voice that demanded exact obedience and strict adherence to his range rules.
Sarah pulled the trigger situated just beyond the long magazine. The gun bucked in her hands, the kick less than a .20 gauge shotgun. The grenade shot from the gun with its characteristic whumping sound.
A couple seconds later, an orange cloud exploded a little short and to the right of the target she’d been aiming for.
“That was awesome!” Sarah laughed. She used to think she knew how to shoot, but Quentin had taught her a lot in this first training session. She’d never fired military weapons like these, and she was enjoying herself.
“Not bad,” Quentin said. “The grenade launcher is a powerful weapon. Sometimes it’s preferable to destroy targets from a distance.”
“Too bad you can’t shoot things close-up with these,” Sarah muttered, thinking about Mai Luan. She’d love to wipe the terrifying woman’s smile off her face with one of the high explosive rounds Quentin had shown her.
“Sometimes we can,” Quentin said, hefting an olive drab r
ound with black markings. “This is a buckshot round. Like a giant shotgun. Great for room clearing or slowing down a pesky Cui Dashi.”
Sarah hefted the fat projectile. He hadn’t said it would kill Mai Luan, but it’d do more than regular bullets. “Can I keep this one?”
“Of course, my dear,” Quentin said. “In fact, I’ll have a properly cleaned rifle sent to your rooms, along with a selection of ammunition if that would help you feel more comfortable.”
Sarah kissed his cheek. “You’re a rare gentleman.”
She fired off several more practice grenades and got the hang of the crude sights. The last two rounds concealed the targets she aimed at with billowing clouds of orange smoke.
Eirene joined them as Sarah ejected the last spent shell.
Sarah stripped off her ear protection and gave Eirene a hug. The facetaker provided a source of steadying strength for Sarah in the frightening world of soul powers and superhuman threats she’d become a part of.
“How’s the training going?” Eirene asked.
“Great,” Sarah said. “Quentin’s got a lot of cool toys.”
“You haven’t seen the good stuff yet,” Quentin said with a smile.
“I can’t wait.”
“Perhaps later,” Eirene said. “It’s almost dinner time.”
Quentin sent the women ahead, promising to join them as soon as he saw to his weapons. Sarah fell in with Eirene and the two of them returned to the mansion.
“Eirene, tell me what it’s like,” Sarah said, voicing curiosity that had been building within her since she learned about the vast age the facetakers lived.
“What is what like?” Eirene asked.
“Everything?” Sarah laughed. “History. You’ve seen it all. Kings and queens, the Middle Ages, Rome. Tell me about famous people you’ve met.”
Eirene settled onto a couch in a nearby salon and motioned Sarah to join her. “Every life is unique,” she said. “At least, that’s the way I approach it.”
“How can it be?” Sarah asked. “You’ve lived for centuries. Doesn’t it get boring sometimes?”
“Any life can be boring,” Eirene said. “But that’s often a choice of the individual. Not all facetakers look at their lives as Gregorios and I do. For them, the lives just run together and they begin to stagnate. I believe that leads to rapid progression of mental dissipation. To me, each life is a new adventure, and each of the lives I’ve led leaves a different mark.”
Sarah found that hard to believe. Her own parents, who she saw only rarely, looked bored with their lives except when they were accusing her of consorting with the devil. She shuddered to think what they’d say if they knew the truth. “Which life was the most fun?”
Eirene settled back and her eyes drifted toward the ornate ceiling, a little smile flickering across her lips. “Gregorios would insist it has to be the one in which he finally convinced me to marry him. That was a very good life, probably the one I’d consider the most romantic, but perhaps not the most pure fun.”
Sarah wanted to ask her about that romantic life, but Eirene was already continuing.
“I think the most fun I had was the life I spent as a privateer, sailing the Caribbean in the sixteen nineties.”
“You were a pirate?” Sarah exclaimed, thinking of Blackbeard and Henry Morgan, and the Pirates movies.
“Not a pirate,” Eirene explained with a chuckle. “A privateer. I carried a letter of marque from the Dutch crown to hunt enemy ships.”
“That’s amazing,” Sarah said, trying to picture Eirene on the deck of an ancient sailing ship, cutlass in hand, tropical wind blowing her hair.
“It was a lot of fun,” Eirene said. “The council assigned me to scope out the New World, investigate potential investment opportunities, and hunt down renegade heka operating as pirates.”
“Let me guess,” Sarah said. “Blackbeard was an occultist.”
“No, he was a channeller,” Eirene said. “That’s why he was so hard to kill. Gregorios finally put him down during the assault by Lieutenant Robert Maynard’s squadron.”
“So did you and Gregorios sail together?” Sarah asked. The thought of facing the two facetakers as pirates scared her more than a little.
“Occasionally,” Eirene said. “I captained my own ship for a decade, helped bring in the notorious pirates Anny Bonny and Mary Read, who were occultists, and accumulated a fantastic amount of Inca gold from plundered Spanish gold ships.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a pirate?” Sarah asked.
Eirene pulled from her pocket a gold coin whose faces were so worn that Sarah couldn’t distinguish the symbols on the faces. “I’ve carried this doubloon ever since, as a reminder to enjoy life.”
“I thought we can’t take anything out of our lives?” Sarah joked as she inspected the coin.
Eirene laughed. “Always memories are the most precious baggage we bring, but bank accounts that have been growing for several hundred years are pretty helpful too.”
Sarah handed the coin back, and Eirene extracted another coin, this one silver, from her pocket. “This is one of the famous Spanish silver pieces of eight. I took this one from a heka enchanter in Nassau at the end of my privateer life.”
A maid appeared to announce dinner would be served shortly.
Eirene handed the piece of eight to Sarah. “Hold onto this for me, my dear. We’ll talk again soon.”
“Thank you!”
Sarah gave Eirene another hug and rushed upstairs for a quick shower before dinner. She considered the glimpse she’d gained into a piece of Eirene’s history, and the sense of wonder helped her hold at bay the constant fear of facing Mai Luan again soon.
She met Gregorios outside the art gallery dining room. He was dressed casually in a leather jacket and jeans.
“Good timing,” he said with a smile. “Tomas is back.”
Of course I deserve victory. I am a better general, my troops are better disciplined, and we possess superior runes. Let them come with their facetakers and their hunters and I will defeat them.
~Napoleon Bonaparte
Chapter Forty-Four
The art gallery dining room had become their central meeting place and as usual, the table held more of its inexhaustible supply of food. This time, formal place settings were prepared on one side of the long table, and the mouth-watering aromas would normally have drawn Sarah in like a tractor beam.
She paused in the doorway and breathed deep, but when she glanced around the room, she forgot all about the delicious-smelling dinner. In the middle of the room, not far from the table, stood a gleaming machine so similar to the ones she had seen at Alterego that she instantly realized it had to be Mai Luan’s machine.
“How did you get your hands on that?” Sarah cried, advancing toward it. From what she’d heard from Tomas and Eirene, the machine was the key to Mai Luan’s plan and was certainly well guarded after Eirene’s escape.
Tomas was crouched on the far side, mostly hidden by the bulk of the machine as he fiddled with some cables. Gregorios stood to one side. His face already looked better, the bruises almost gone, and his grin lacked any hint of pain.
“Tomas proved more resourceful than even we expected,” Eirene said from the far side of the machine.
“It was actually easier than I expected,” Tomas said, rising to his feet.
“Whoa!”
Sarah stared. He wasn’t the Tomas she knew. Gone was the average, unremarkable guy. He rounded the machine and approached as a tall, muscular young man. His face, which had always looked rather plain, fit the new body perfectly and somehow looked a lot more handsome even though the features were the same.
Alter growled, “Demon handler. Whose life did you sacrifice?”
“No one’s,” Tomas replied, but his eyes stayed glued on Sarah. He lifted his arms a little. “This is me. The form you saw before was a loaner.”
“How is it possible?” Sarah asked as she slowly advanced. “I can usually te
ll when someone’s having an out-of-body transfer.”
Gregorios spoke. “With a little extra effort, we can smooth most of those telltale wrinkles away. I made sure Tomas looked genuine so no one would realize what he was.”
Tomas took her hands. “Do you like it?”
“You look great.”
He did. He really did, and part of her was thrilled with the change. It all made sense finally. This was the reason he hadn’t wanted to get physical. The shock would have been far worse had they really begun exploring a closer relationship while he lived a lie.
But that was only part of how she felt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I planned to.”
Alter passed close behind them, scowling. He muttered, “First of the lies.”
Sarah ignored him. He was wrong about Tomas. He had to be.
The young hunter wandered over to the table. “Unholy demons.”
“That’s why you wanted to come to Rome,” Sarah said to Tomas.
“Yes.”
“You could have warned me,” she snapped.
He looked down, for the first time unsure. The expression didn’t fit those sculpted good looks very well, but it helped erase the flash of mistrust Alter’s words had triggered. “I wasn’t sure how you ...”
She touched his face and drew his gaze back to hers. “You were worried I wouldn’t come?”
He shrugged. “You just went through so much, fought so hard to regain yourself. I knew you wanted to get away from soul transfers and everything to do with Alterego, so yes, I was nervous.”
“Next time, trust me,” she said softly.
“I will,” he promised, looking relieved.
She let her hand trail down to his muscled shoulders and chest, then slide down one iron-hard arm. He really was in amazing shape.
“Enjoy him later, dear,” Eirene said kindly. “We have work to do.”
“Sorry,” Sarah said, but didn’t take her eyes off Tomas’ face.
He gave her a quick kiss, and if the others hadn’t been watching, she would’ve insisted they take more time getting it right. He touched her face with one strong hand and she leaned her cheek into it. It felt good.
