Vortex did not say anything dramatic like, “He did this!” or “It was him!”; nor did he point a bloody, accusing finger. He did not have to, because his eyes, and his sharp intake of a pained breath, said it all.
The Shining Star launched himself at The Gladius like a rocket.
THE GLADIUS AND PARANORMALS
After using the Subcinctinin spell to cross dimensions, John determined — in his expert, if rushed, opinion — that using the spell to simply shift somewhere across town, on the same world and maintaining the same time, would prove far less difficult.
He was wrong.
Even though he focused on the location he wanted to target — that being the area he had seen Steve (and the nebulous figure, who must be the Skygger, lurking near his brother) — unlike his old bedroom, he had never actually been there in person, had no “anchor” this time. Between that, and the inherent trans-dimensional nature of Subcinctinin, he felt himself not only being pulled back toward the world he had called home for nearly four hundred years, but he was also tugged and stretched in many other directions. And as for keeping himself in the same time as well? He was lucky he didn’t turn himself inside-out, with his bones landing in the far-flung future and his flesh plopping down in front of a dinosaur.
As it stood, John mustered the stamina, the determination, and the sheer focus and will necessary to keep his transition on track, mostly. He sensed some time slipping away from him — minutes, at least — but hoped that it would not be too much, that he would not arrive too late to save his brother from an unclear but surely dark fate.
Blinking and shaking his head, he found himself lying somewhere that was definitely not his old bedroom. He rolled from his side onto his stomach and attempted to push himself upright; it only took him two tries to succeed. During this, he took stock of his situation: The floor beneath him was cold, dirty, and concrete, as well as deep in shadow — though it was not the abnormal darkness of the Skygger, which he took as a positive sign. And his rucksack lay beside him, which was also a good thing. But he could hear people talking not too far to his left, so he needed to get his ass moving. And in the distance — were those ... sirens? Yes, he remembered they were called sirens.
Slinging his rucksack strap over his shoulder and climbing from his knees to his feet, he studied the people here in this big open ... warehouse? Yes, it was the warehouse where he had seen Steve through Sentietiam, about to be attacked by the hazy, blurred figure. As to the people here ...
First things first.
“Lisitalia ...” he whispered, rendering himself invisible before inching his way forward, toward them.
Taking stock, he saw that one muscular young man, wearing an open coat with no shirt, was sitting on the floor against the far wall. Another, more lean fellow — in a similar, if less tattered coat — knelt with his back to John. A third person, whom he could barely see, lay on the floor before him, his booted feet elevated on the kneeling man’s thighs and a disturbing pool of blood all around him; whoever he was, he was hurt, badly — the work of the Skygger?
But it was the last individual who really seized John’s attention, in that he was dressed in all white and silver, had an unusually narrow head ... and he was glowing, an argent envelope hugging his body that appeared vibrant even through the muted hues of John’s Lisitalia vision.
Obviously, the paranormals had not gone away in his two-year absence. Not that he had expected they would, but this glowing paranormal still made quite an impression.
The paranormal was, at the moment, also bent over the individual lying on the floor, his hands pressed upon the person’s shoulders, his silver cape ...
His cape? Like Steve was wearing?
... flowing forward to further block John’s view of whoever was bleeding so much. Then a chilling thought struck, and the fact that it had taken so long to arrive demonstrated his lingering disorientation:
Could that be Steve lying there? If the Skygger left him alive, probably for sadistic sport ...
Then the glowing paranormal straightened and shook his narrow head. “We can’t wait any longer.” He spoke with a strange accent John could no longer recognize after so many years away, but his angst was clear. “What if ... what if I pick him up and—”
The kneeling fellow said, “You can’t do that.”
“I’ll be very careful—”
“Callin, his internal organs are exposed.”
At that, the muscular young man turned to one side and retched, a loud dry-heave that called John’s attention to a mess on the floor next to the poor guy, which suggested he had already gotten sick once before.
Should he help these people? He was here to protect Steve ... but what if that was Steve?
Meanwhile, the kneeling fellow was saying to the glowing paranormal, “You’ll kill him.”
“He’s going to die anyway, damn it!”
That clenches it.
Leaving his rucksack on floor along the wall to his right, John raised his arms and kept his hands open, palms-forward, as he approached the group with a slow stride. Figuring that it would not be a good idea for him to either speak as a disembodied voice or to suddenly pop into sight while already in their midst, he willed his Lisitalia spell to drop, and remembered to use English at the last moment. “May I help?”
The group responded as though he had bellowed a war cry. The kneeling fellow managed an awkward pivot without rising, and he leveled some kind of weapon at John; from this new angle, John could see that the fellow appeared to be oblitatus (no, not oblitatus, “Asian;” here on Earth, he would be considered Asian) and that he was wearing some sort of metal headband. The glowing paranormal — whom the other had called “Callin” — stopped glowing, but stood and aimed his silver-gloved hands at John as though they, too, were weapons. The muscular young man rose to his feet, but kept a hand against the wall behind him, suggesting he wasn’t steady.
“Halt!” ordered the Asian man with the weapon.
“Who are you?!” demanded Callin.
John stopped and said, “My name is ...”
Shit, he thought, how dynamic was the attack on my family, the family of the owner of Davison Electronics? Did it make the news? Will they recognize my name, remember it? The one with the weapon — is he with the PCA? I already wore my mask to avoid shocking Steve too much on first sight; what’s the point if I announce who I am in advance?
All of which shot through his mind in an instant, and he settled on answering, “... is The Gladius.”
He cringed beneath his mask. Dryal would get such a kick out of my using that title.
“I honestly don’t care what you call yourself, mister” said the Asian man. “I’m far more concerned about the fact that our friend here had his guts sliced open ... and you’re carrying two swords.”
John resisted the urge to glance down at his sheathed weapons, but noted the explanation for all the blood on the floor. “I give you my word, I just got here—”
Callin shook his hands for emphasis as he snapped, “Not good enough.”
John ignored the interruption, focusing on the more level-headed kneeling man. “—but I’m sorry to say, I’m not surprised that something like this has happened. I’m here, now, because I had reason to believe someone I care about was in danger, grave danger, somewhere in this vicinity. I haven’t found him, but if your friend has been ‘sliced open,’ I believe I know what did it. And I can help him, if you’ll let me.”
Again, Callin challenged him. “What can you do?”
Thinking it best not to bring “magic” into the conversation — he still remembered the resistance he met on the topic here on Earth — he explained, “I have power over ... certain forces...”
The kneeling man concluded, “You’re a paranormal.” It was a leap John was more than happy to embrace, so he did not contradict him. “Explains your wardrobe, but it doesn’t explain your swords and our friend’s wound.”
“As I said,” John repeated,
“I had nothing to do with that. I just arrived. But I can help your friend.” He craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the victim, but he could make out little more than the black boots and shiny gold-clad legs. But he could see all the blood just fine, and he had heard the Asian man comment that the victim’s organs were exposed. “The wound looks bad, but I can stabilize him, maybe more. I have experience in dealing with this type of trauma.”
At last, he seemed to be making some headway. Callin, rather than barking at him, asked, “How?”
“I’ll have to get closer to him,” he explained, “so that I can use my— my paranormal power.”
Then the muscular young man spoke up for the first time. “How’re we supposed to trust you? We don’t know you.”
But before John could address this, Callin brought the conversation back a few steps. “You said about ‘what’ attacked him, not who.”
John nodded. “Yes.”
Then the Asian man took over again. “That’s not important right now. What matters is getting Vortex medical aid.”
With that declaration, the tension in the open room dropped. Not a lot, but Callin relaxed his arms a bit, which allowed John to lower his open hands a touch ...
... and then John heard a particular voice for the first time in nearly four centuries.
And it spoke his name.
“J-John ...?”
When the person on the floor spoke in Steve’s voice, John could not help but retreat a step. It shifted his angle, and he could better see the wounded person. He saw more blood, but he also saw the black-and-gold outfit with its crumpled black cape — a cape he had glimpsed, briefly, in his vision.
My God ... that is Steve.
In the meantime, the muscular young man stumbled over and knelt down by the bleeding person. “Vortex?” he said. “Don’t move, okay?”
“Vortex” held still, for the most part, his black, bloody gloves clutching at the mess that was his belly wound, but he rolled his head around, his eyes dancing about until they finally fell on John ... and it was all John could do not to gasp when he saw those striking blue eyes. The same blue eyes he had seen in his vision back at the church.
... and then he absorbed that “Vortex” wasn’t just looking at him, he was gaping at him, gasping a pained breath even as those vivid blue eyes widened to show the white all around, practically trembling in sheer and accusing horror.
Callin, who had looked back at his friend as he spoke, whipped back toward John, reignited that silvery glow of his, and launched at John as though fired from a cannon. His feet left the ground as he flew — flew! — forward with his fists outstretched and rage on his narrow face.
Only centuries of combat experience allowed John to react in time with a snapped, “Cipimon!”
His magical sphere erected around him ... and was shattered in a flash of blue and silver light when the paranormal collided with it — Callin smashed through almost as though it weren’t there, but the impact did at least manage to deflect his course, just enough, so that John could throw himself to one side and avoid getting plastered against the far wall.
It was a learning experience: A paranormal who glows and flies and possesses supernormal strength and at least partial invulnerability? The odds were not in John’s favor.
Before he could dwell on that further, he felt something strike his chest — three somethings, actually, in rapid succession. Two of them hit and bounced away from his enhanced leather-chainmail, but the third lingered, and John experienced a mild but unpleasant tingle in that pectoral. Glancing over, he saw the Asian man lowering his weapon, a look of frustration on his face.
Brushing the third pellet-thing off his armored chest, he turned back to face—
Callin had already banked and was coming at him again, glowing brighter than before. Rather than project another insufficient shield, John twisted his torso and ducked while he drew a sword into his right hand, pointed it at the oncoming paranormal, and blurted, “Petiedum!”
The narrow blue-green beam hit its target, and Callin’s glow faltered. His forward momentum carried him past John, sending him tumbling and crashing into the wall beyond. John was confident that meant he was out of commission, but to his surprise, the paranormal was not fully paralyzed, but, moving as though intoxicated, made a sluggish effort to climb back to his feet.
First the Skygger resists, and now this paranormal? I need to work on my Petiedum spell.
Backing away from Callin, he drew his second sword and glanced over toward the others, trying to think of some way to bring this to an end.
Still kneeling with Vortex’s feet on his legs, the Asian man tossed something at him — a metallic sphere of some kind, and when it touched down, it rolled toward him.
“Cipimon,” he stated again, and a split-second later, he was glad he did.
A hellish shriek surrounded John, vibrating through his magical shield almost as effectively as Callin had smashed it. He felt like his ears were going to bleed — hell, maybe his eyes and nose, too! It took tremendous discipline not to drop his swords and cover the sides of his head. Instead, he lurched forward and willed his shield to lower the instant he brought his right sword down onto the sphere, splicing it in half with a shower of sparks, and bringing a blessed end to the racket.
Shaking his head, he saw the Asian man rifling through the pockets of his coat, while the muscular young man squared off (still looking unsteady on his feet) between John and his wounded comrade. John’s ears were ringing like a gong; the sirens, which seemed closer than before, sounded especially distorted. He wished he could slip into a healing trance, even for just a few seconds, but that was a mere flight of fancy in the midst of this unwanted battle.
“You wanna hurt him,” the muscular man said through clenched teeth, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward Vortex, “you go through me.”
“I don’t want to hurt him,” John implored, his own voice sounded even stranger than the other’s; he really hoped the Asian man had no more of those spheres. “I only want to help.”
The silver light from his left pulled his attention back to the paranormal, who was glowing brighter again as he settled for crouching on one knee and raised a hand toward John. “Your actions speak louder than your words, ‘Gladius’.”
“I am only defending myself,” John insisted, “and will continue to do so.”
The sirens outside peaked, then shut off. John saw pulsing lights — red, then white, then red again — coming through the hole in the wall beyond the bleeding Vortex.
“Lieutenant Takayasu?!” called a new voice, female.
“Remain outside!” shouted the Asian man (“Takayasu,” apparently). “We have an active combat situation in here!”
All right, this has gone far enough.
Taking a calculated risk, John lowered his gladius swords — he did not sheathe them, but he aimed them toward the floor. Hoping that Callin wouldn’t seize that moment to fly at him again, he said under his breath, “Loetium.”
When forced to use his emotional manipulation spell, he preferred to apply it to one individual at a time — such as Aidan when he first arrived — as it gave him finer control. But he would take what he could get.
As the spell oozed outward, he focused another single command: Calm.
To John’s great relief, the tension in the room eased once more. Callin continued to glow, but he lowered his hand; Takayasu stopped rifling through his pockets; the muscular young man released a breath and allowed himself to also drop to one knee.
Callin shook his narrow head, and John could feel him resisting. “How ... how can you explain Vortex’s reaction to you, then?”
John chose his next words with care. “As I told you, I came here to protect someone I care about, someone threatened by a creature I know as the Skygger. In my experience, the Skygger has the ability to pluck things from—”
“Who the hell is this now?”
John looked from Callin to the new sp
eaker. A man, closer to John’s (physical) age and dressed in a crimson body suit, was ducking through the remnants of the window. Once in the room, he swaggered over to join Takayasu and the muscular man, avoiding Vortex’s pool of blood by inches.
When his presumed friends did not answer right away, he raised his fists toward John, much like Callin had done with his hands.
“Hey!” he barked. “Sword master! You wanna tell me who you are and what the hell’s goin’ on?”
John sighed, wishing this red-clad fellow had been present for his Loetium spell. “I am The Gladius. I arrived here just minutes ago, and offered to use my paranormal powers to help Vortex. But my swords ...” Moving slowly, carefully, he sheathed his blades. “... and Vortex’s gut wound caused some understandable confusion and concern.”
“Wasn’t just that,” the muscular man said. “Vortex woke up and was obviously scared of him. That right, Vortex? Vortex?”
He and Takayasu looked back to their bleeding companion. He was no longer conscious — in fact, he was no longer holding his hands to his wound. He did not even appear to be breathing.
“Oh, shit,” Takayasu said, twisting back around to face him, still doing his best to keep his booted feet elevated on his thighs. “Vortex? Vortex? Can you hear me?”
Nothing. No response at all.
Callin struggled toward the group; John concentrated and dropped the Petiedum spell, which freed his semi-paralyzed limbs. The paranormal glanced at him, though his expression betrayed nothing, and then he ran the rest of the way.
The man in red stole his own look at Vortex, then shouted, “Walker! Get in here, now!”
John did not know who Walker was, but he knew that if he did not attempt a healing spell very soon, Vortex (Steve?) was going to die — it might already be too late. He took a step forward to join the group, but the man in red snapped his head back around.
“Ah-ah-ah,” he said with a wag of his finger. “You hold it right there until we figure this out, you know what I’m sayin’?” For emphasis, a rippling wave distorted both hands, causing them to waver and pulse from John’s perspective.
Paranormals | Book 3 | Darkness Reigns Page 24
