by Dan Willis
As Alex moved down the aisle, he noticed that many of the occupied beds had sheets pulled all the way up, obscuring the occupant.
“Is your partner all right?” he asked Mendes.
She grinned at him and nodded.
“He took a slug in the chest, just above his lung, according to the doctors,” she said. “But he’s too stubborn for that to slow him down. Since it’s not life threatening, he’s in the waiting room reading a magazine until there’s a doctor free to dig the bullet out.”
Alex remembered seeing Agent Redhorn get shot and taking out three of the Legion’s men in the immediate aftermath.
“Sounds about right,” he said.
Aissa led him through a set of double doors at the end of the hall and into a smaller room with a nurse at a desk. Standing next to her was Barton, along with his Army friend. The Lt. Colonel was on the phone and looked to be speaking very quickly.
“The situation required decisive action, sir,” he said. “You know I’d have run it up the flagpole if I thought there was time, but the situation was exigent. As it was, we arrived just in time to prevent the wholesale theft of top-secret government research.”
“Alex,” Andrew said, catching sight of them. “They said you likely have a concussion. You need to lie down.”
“I’m fine,” Alex growled. “How’s Sorsha?”
“Well, no, sir,” George’s voice broke in. “We got here thanks to Andrew Barton, the Sorcerer.”
Andrew held up a finger to ward off further comments from Alex.
“Yes, sir,” George went on. “I’ll have a complete report for you in the morning.”
Andrew turned back to Alex as George wrapped up his call with his superior.
“Sorsha will be fine,” Andrew said. “She managed to shield herself from much of the blast and the doctors took a few chunks of table out of her, but they say she’ll make a full recovery.”
“Where is she?” Alex persisted.
“The doctors have her in an observation room,” Andrew said, keeping his tone even. “Her body has started healing itself, but it’s going slower than expected.”
Alex ground his teeth as a wave of anger flowed through him, hiding the guilt he felt for not catching on to the Legion’s booby-trap sooner.
“I need you to do something for me, Andrew,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Go to Dr. Bell’s brownstone and tell him what happened, then get him back here as quickly as possible.”
Andrew thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
“I think I’ve got enough energy left for that,” he said with an encouraging smile. “Sit tight.” He drew himself up to his full height of nearly six feet, then took a deep breath and vanished with a soft popping noise.
“That was good work you did, Alex,” George said once Andrew was gone. “I’m glad we could help.”
“That book they were after,” Alex said. “The rune book of Felix Markel. Did anyone manage to find it?”
“They’re looking now,” the lieutenant colonel said. “I don’t imagine they’ll have much luck until the explosion is cleaned up, but you never know.”
Alex didn’t like that answer, but it wasn’t the lieutenant colonel’s fault, so he excused himself and headed through the doors on the far side of the nurse’s desk with Agent Mendes in tow.
“Where are we going?” she asked with a smirk.
“Sign above the door said treatment,” Alex muttered, not really in the mood to make conversation. “That means the observation rooms are this way.”
“Let me get you back to bed and you can visit when the doctors are sure you’re not bleeding into your brain,” Mendes said. “They’re not going to let you see her anyway.”
Alex still ached everywhere, but Aissa’s comment brought a fierce grin to his face.
“I’d like to see them try to stop me,” he said.
“Alex, honey,” Mendes said in a patronizing voice. “Right now a stiff breeze could stop you.”
Alex’s grin grew wider, and he took a deep breath.
“Sorsha!” he called, his voice echoing down the hallway. “Where are you?”
Mendes opened her mouth to shush him, but suddenly the air in the hallway dropped a few degrees.
“I said, out of my way,” Sorsha’s voice came from farther down the hall. A moment later a door burst open and a large, muscular orderly was thrown out into the hall. Following shortly, Sorsha appeared. She was dressed in a hospital robe and her hands and arms were bandaged. A sizable chunk of her lovely platinum hair was missing, and Alex could see a bandage on the bare part of her head.
Almost immediately, she sagged against the door frame, but she smiled when she saw Alex limping down the hall toward her. He’d forgotten the bullet wound in his leg, but now that the rest of his body was starting to hurt less, he could feel it again.
“You’re all right,” Sorsha gasped, throwing herself into his arms as he reached her.
“Me?” Alex said, incredulously. “You’re the one who got the explosion in the kisser.”
“I’m all right,” she said, pressing her cheek to his chest. “I’m not back to one hundred percent yet, but that’s only a matter of time. I’d be a lot worse if you hadn’t warned me,” she went on. “I managed to get a rudimentary shield up just in time. It deflected the worst of the blast.”
Alex didn’t respond; he just held her while she held him back. He’d been worried about her from the moment he woke up, but he’d never allowed himself to consider that Sorsha Kincaid, the all-powerful Ice Queen, might have actually died. A sickening dread accompanied the thought, and he had to will himself not to tremble as it washed over him.
“Sorsha…” he began, not really knowing what to say.
“Idiots!” a familiar voice hollered from down the hall. “Both of you, get back into the room and sit down.”
Alex turned to find Iggy marching down the hall toward them with his doctor’s bag in hand. Andrew Barton was coming behind him, but the sorcerer looked spent and was moving fairly slowly. Clearly he had been more tired than he let on before he went to get Iggy.
Something else you owe the Lightning Lord, Alex thought, though he didn’t really mind this one.
“Iggy,” Alex said, relief finally flooding his system. It had only been a few minutes since Andrew had left, and he expected it would be at least half an hour before he returned. “What brings you all the way out here?”
“Don’t give me that,” he growled. “Now do as I say, or I’ll have the nurses give you an eight-hour enema.”
“Yes, Dad,” Alex grumbled under his breath, then he helped Sorsha stand on her own again before helping her back to her room. He led her to her bed and made sure she didn’t fall as she sat down, then he shuffled to a chair by the door and fell heavily onto it.
He growled as he was forcibly reminded of the bullet in his leg. The pain felt like the only thing keeping him conscious.
“Is that your blood?” Iggy asked, standing over him and pointing to his leg.
“Take care of Sorsha,” Alex mumbled.
“According to the doctors, she’s stable and healing,” Iggy said, “so she can wait. You take off your pants.”
Alex fumbled with his belt while the orderly from the hall tugged on his trouser legs.
“Just as I thought,” Iggy growled when he saw the wound. A moment later a vial of some nasty fluid was shoved into Alex’s mouth. “Drink,” Iggy commanded.
Alex didn’t remember much of the following hours. At some point, he’d been moved to Sorsha’s bed so Iggy could dig the bullet out of his leg and examine him properly. After that, he’d dozed in the wooden chair while Iggy worked on Sorsha. Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, Alex’s mind began to focus again.
When the world around him stopped being a fuzzy blur, Alex found himself seated by Sorsha’s bed as the Sorceress slept. He’d only just tried to stand when the room door opened, and Iggy came in.<
br />
“How is she?” Alex croaked, his voice not fully working yet.
“You’re fine,” Iggy said, his voice cross. “The bullet missed the bone and your femoral artery. Of course, if it hadn’t, you’d have been dead long before I could have helped.”
“Sorry,” Alex slurred. “My vault door to the brownstone disappeared.”
“Oh,” Iggy said, looking somewhat abashed. “After that Randolph fellow tried to explode his way into the place I figured I’d better increase the potency of our wards. It must have cut the link to your vault. Sorry, lad.”
“No problem,” Alex said. “I’ll open a new one once we get back. Now, how is Sorsha?”
Iggy sighed and jerked his head toward the door. A wave of fear washed over Alex and he was suddenly and painfully awake. Rising as best he could on his still throbbing leg, he limped after his mentor.
“The doctors said her sorcerer’s healing isn’t working right,” Alex began once the door was closed.
“They’re correct,” Iggy said. He reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out the pair of green spectacles Moriarty had given him a few months previously. “Go have a look at Miss Kincaid.”
Alex stepped back into the observation room and slipped the spectacles on. The great thing about these glasses was that they could see magical residue without the necessity of ghostlight. As of yet, Alex hadn’t been able to figure out how they worked, but that was only a matter of time.
He hoped.
As he looked through the green lenses, a massive magical ring appeared over Sorsha’s chest. It looked like a rune, but no rune Alex had ever seen before. It was rounded, like a doughnut, and magic symbols seemed to swirl and move inside the shape. There was runic text that spiraled around the outside of the doughnut shape, while power symbols swirled inside. The whole thing was both alien and familiar.
As Alex watched, blue lines of force rose up from Sorsha’s chest, like steam. When the lines touched the stage construct, they glowed brightly and vanished. Alex had no idea what was happening, but it certainly didn’t look good.
Stepping back outside, Alex handed the spectacles back to Iggy.
“What is that thing?” he asked.
“It’s a rune,” Iggy said. “That much is certain, though it’s not like any rune I’ve ever seen before.”
“What is it doing to her?”
Iggy sighed and stroked his mustache.
“As near as I can tell, it’s siphoning off her magic,” he said. “That’s why she’s not healing normally, some of her power is being drained by the rune.”
Alex’s fists clenched involuntarily.
“Well, then let’s get her inside my vault and we’ll shut all the doors,” he said. “That’ll break whatever connection it has to whoever cast it.”
“Maybe,” Iggy said.
“Definitely,” Alex replied. “You know links can’t survive being separated from this plane of existence.”
“You’re assuming it’s a purposeful rune,” Iggy said. “From what Andrew told me, someone high up in the Legion was speaking through the man who exploded. That means he had a mind rune on him in addition to the blasting rune.”
“He might have had any number of runes tattooed on him or maybe linked if they know how to do that,” Alex said.
“Which is my point,” Iggy said. “What if that isn’t an intentional rune, but rather an accidental one?”
Alex processed what Iggy said for a moment, not sure he understood.
“You mean it’s some kind of magical residue?” he guessed. “Something made up of random runes that were mashed together by the explosion?”
Iggy nodded.
“It’s a possibility,” he said. “It would explain why it looks the way it does.”
“So what do we do?” Alex asked. “Just wait for it to dissipate? What if it kills her?”
Iggy put a restraining hand on Alex’s arm.
“So far, her magic is stronger than that thing’s ability to drain her power,” Iggy said. “It will take her longer to heal, but eventually, she’ll be fine.”
“What if that Frankenstein’s Monster of a rune absorbs so much power it explodes?” Alex demanded.
“I’m not suggesting we give up,” Iggy said. “Just that we don’t run off half-cocked. So far, it doesn’t seem to be absorbing power so much as diffusing it. We’ll need to keep a close eye on Sorsha in case that changes, but for now, let’s proceed with caution.”
“So what do we do?” Alex asked, trying not to scream in frustration.
“For now, we let her heal,” Iggy said, putting his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “When she’s feeling better, we’ll try and get a better look at that mess of a rune and figure out how to untangle the gordian knot.”
“Didn’t that have to be cut?” Alex asked.
“I’m hoping that between the two of us, we can do better,” Iggy said. He picked up his doctor’s bag and turned toward the nurse’s station. “Now if you don’t mind, my boy, I’m told they’re a bit short-handed here, so I thought I’d pitch in and help.”
“I’ve got to get back to Washington tonight,” Alex said, his mind working overtime. “Will you check in on Sorsha for me?”
Iggy promised that he would, and headed off to find out where he could best be utilized. Alex waited until he was gone before following. Instead of heading into the emergency ward, however, he turned and headed out into the waiting area. There he found Andrew chatting with George.
“I need to get back to Washington,” Alex said as he joined them.
“We need to get George and his men back to Fort Riley first,” Andrew protested.
“No need,” George said. “My CO wants me to stay here until everyone’s healthy enough to return, then we’ll catch a train.”
Alex looked expectancy at Andrew, who groaned.
“I don’t know if I’ve got another teleport in me today,” he said. “I’ve been all over the place. Tell you what, if I can sleep in my own bed tonight, I’ll take you to Washington first thing in the morning. Deal?”
“Fine.” In all honesty he was exhausted and a night in his comfortable apartment bed sounded good. “Come on.”
Alex led the way back to the treatment wing and into an empty room. A few minutes later, he pulled his vault door closed behind him and left Oak Ridge, Tennessee behind.
34
The Black Chamber
True to his word, Andrew knocked on the door to Alex’s Empire Tower apartment bright and early the next morning, and whisked them off to D.C. . Alex left him to finish his packing in the hotel and went to see Tiffany Young.
“You’re lucky you caught me,” she said, once she’d answered the door. “I just got back from church, and I catch a train in an hour. I assume you have something more to report after you and the pretty Sorceress ran out of here so suddenly yesterday.”
Alex sighed, then launched into the explanation of the Legion and what they were really after.
“I suspect their original plan was to be the winning bid to move everything from the facility in Oak Ridge,” he finished. “Then they’d just load up their trucks and drive away, never to be seen again. The only thing I don’t understand is why they resorted to murder. I’m sure your husband would have been amenable to a…a different arrangement.”
“You mean a bribe,” Tiffany said with no trace of self-consciousness. She sighed and shook her head, dabbing a tear from the corner of her eye. “Paul has a cousin with a fleet of trucks,” she said. “He was going to give him the job of moving the files from the research facilities. Believe it or not, that would have made more for us than any bribe.”
That was the last piece of the puzzle, and Alex felt a wave of relief wash over him as he understood. The Legion had probably tried to bribe Senator Young, but he wouldn’t budge on the moving contract. When that happened, the Legion simply had him killed.
“These Legion people,” Tiffany said. “You disrupted their plans?”
&n
bsp; Alex nodded.
“They did manage to get away with some rune books,” he said, “but a force from the Army and the FBI stopped them.”
“Were any Legion people killed?” she asked, intensity creeping into her voice.
“Yes, quite a few.”
“Good,” Tiffany said with bleak, vengeful satisfaction. She took in a deep breath and let it out again. “Thank you, Alex,” she said. “At least I know what really happened.”
She gave Alex a check for his work just as a cab arrived to take her to the train station. Once she was gone, Alex returned to the cab he’d left idling at the curb, and headed into the city proper.
Three-quarters of an hour and one stop later, Alex paid the cabbie and headed inside the front doors of Providence Hospital. He rode the elevator up to the third floor, then down to room three fifty-eight. Pulling the door open, he found Connie sitting up having a conversation with Lucky Tony, who sat in a chair beside the bed. Tony’s two bodyguards stood over by the window, and they had both moved toward the door the moment it opened.
“Alex,” Connie exclaimed as the bodyguard hesitated. “I was wondering if you’d come to see me. The boss,” he nodded toward Tony, “tells me you found Colton.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, stepping inside the room.
“See,” Connie said, his voice going back to its gruff timbre. “Told you he didn’t run out on the boss.”
Alex chuckled and nodded.
“You were right,” he said. “I wanted to say thanks for helping me, and I’m sorry you got caught up in something that wasn’t your problem.”
“Did you find the man who shot Connie?” Tony asked in a manner far too casual.
“No,” Alex said with a sigh. “I expect that it was a professional, so he’s long gone.”
That was only a guess, but it was the answer most likely to get Lucky Tony off the idea of looking for a little payback. Before anyone could ask more, Alex placed a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper on the table next to Connie’s bed.
“What’s this?” the gangster asked.
“I figured after all your hard work, you could use some nice single-malt Scotch,” Alex said.
