Aerin tapped her fingers on the table. “Let’s see how far she’s gotten.” Images popped in to the crystal ball, each showing only an individual. Many of them looked sick, and the environments around them generally didn’t look like Las Vegas. After two dozen or so, Aerin dismissed those images as well. “People wore them home from Vegas, but I can’t find any bulk supplies of unsold ones outside the city.”
Half a dozen guys from Josephine’s entourage joined us on the patio. I wasn’t sure if I’d met any of them before, as they all had nearly identical faces. I assumed the one who stepped forward was in charge, but I didn’t see any sign of rank or authority.
He inclined his head forward and tilted it to the left, leaving him staring at Angus’ feet. “Warmaster, the Houseguard awaits your command.”
Angus nodded. “Vigilance. Who saw those who attacked us?” Three hands went up. Angus nodded to them and said, “Prepare descriptions and circulate them. If you see them, do not confront. Alert hotel security. For now, abide by the law. Minimal force self-defense. Grandmother arrives before morning and will update you then.”
He paused, gazing around at them. “Send out the Red Branch. Heavy weapons but stay street legal. Understood?”
The Llewellyns nodded. “It shall be done.” They moved to the living room and started making phone calls.
I raised my eyebrow at Angus. “I thought the ladies had all the power in Dark Elven society.”
He shook his head. “Not when we’re at war. I’m in charge of both families now.” I could see him making an effort to keep his voice smooth and understandable. “You and Rose are not involved. You can go if you want.”
“Josephine was hurt when these guys attacked me,” I said. “We’re already involved.”
“Besides,” Rose added, “That one guy I took apart had a lot of gold fillings. I’d like to find a few more like him.”
“What’s our first step?” I asked.
Angus said, “
Ecophage.
Sign the contract now. We’ll work out the money later.”
I didn’t laugh. “Would you ever do that?”
Aerin patted the table and gestured to a seat. “I’ll guarantee the money, David. As Crom’s Emissary, I vow you will receive a fair contract, or I will pay the disputed balance. As ranking Eldest daughter, I have authority to negotiate with you on behalf of Llewellyn Industries. Geneva?”
Geneva set up her tablet and set the video to record. “David, all we are asking for is an agreement in principal. You agree to make the game, we agree to pay you for it and provide a pool of candidates to hire from. Separately, you agree to allow LI to develop the fusion battery you patented. We agree to pay you a great deal of money and a percentage of revenue for not less than ten years. Are these terms acceptable?”
“Fifty years. Nadia approves the tech side and Rose signs off on the financials before I agree to anything else.” I’d hired them and I was going to trust their input.
Aerin looked up and to the right, gazing somewhere past a wispy cloud struggling for life in the desert heat. “Hey, Boss! David agreed to make the game. Is there anything you want me to tell him?” She cocked her head to the side, listening to something only she heard. Her eyes narrowed and she jumped out of her seat. “He said, ‘Get your sword’. That bitch sent a hit squad after Lilah.”
Ambush
“I can’t see them. The whole area is warded against scrying.” Aerin pounded her fist on the table. “Nobody has enough power to do that! Not against this crystal and not against me!” She grabbed a pitcher of water off the sideboard and hurled it against the nearest window. Thankfully, no one was in the kitchen as the entire twelve by twenty window shattered and fell inward, covering the kitchen in snowdrifts of glass fragments.
Angus grasped Aerin’s hands, squeezing them together with one hand while wrapping his other arm around her shoulders. She fought, but he forced her into a chair and pinned her down, leaning over to whisper something Elvish into her ear. Aerin burst into tears, sobbing on his shoulder and beating her fist against his chest.
Rose sat down in front of the crystal. “They expect you to be looking, Aerin. They won’t be expecting me.”
Aerin shook her head. “You don’t have the magical training to use the crystal. Nobody here does.” She bit down on her finger and tried to hold back more sobs.
The corner of Rose’s mouth twitched. She flicked her fingers at the shattered window and mimed tossing something into the air. The glass flowed back together as though breaking in reverse. “I have done a little classroom study myself. Tell me about the person I’m looking for.”
Riki jumped off Aerin’s shoulder and burrowed into her purse. He emerged clutching a small crystal vial hooked to a ring of car keys. He passed it to Rose and zipped back on to Aerin’s shoulder.
The vial contained a lock of honey-blonde hair. Aerin scooped Riki up and stroked his back, eyes fixed on the hair in Rose’s hand. Rose cupped her hands around the crystal and an image appeared, floating above the table.
I don’t know what part of the Mojave we were looking at, but it had a lot more greenery than I expected, as well as an actual creek within easy walking distance. Six lashed-together A-frame shelters covered with layers of cut brush surrounded a stone-ringed fire pit. I expected to see a group of Scouts learning to whittle or tie knots; instead, a dozen women bound with zip ties crowded together under a shade pavilion. A blonde woman in her mid to late forties lay staked out next to the fire pit, far from any shade. Dried blood caked her mouth, nose and one eye. Parts of her face and upper chest were already blistered and burned dark red.
Aerin grabbed for one of her rings but Angus was faster. He caught her hand and held it in place. “No! They’re expecting us. They want you to come in angry.” Aerin struggled again, shouting in Gaelic and reaching for her rings, but she couldn’t break Angus’s grip.
Rose looked up from the crystal. “Stop that! Now! You both have to see this if you want her back alive.” The scene zoomed in on the inside of one of the survival shelters and focused on three plastic boxes placed against the back wall of the shelter. Whoever put them there had tossed some spare clothes over them in an effort at concealment, and it might well have worked if not for wind and gravity. The box on the right was exposed, and so were the words, ‘This Side Toward Enemy.’
Angus said something venomous in Dark Elven and let Aerin go. He came to the table and leaned into the image, looking for minute details.
Aerin wrapped her arms around her chest and asked, “What are those?”
“Claymore mines,” I said. “They’re designed to blast shrapnel into everything in front of them. At short range, one is pretty damn lethal.” I caught the look in Aerin’s eye and shrugged. “I learned about them playing
Glory of War
. Sue me for paying attention to the power-ups.”
Angus pointed to something I couldn’t see. “Trigger wire, right there. Follow it.” Rose obliged. The wire ran straight to three deadman switches buried under Lilah’s unconscious form. “Those are a problem. If we move her too much, the mines go off.”
Rose pulled the view out and up, showing us miles of surrounding countryside. “They’re going to be watching,” she said. “They’ll want someplace elevated, shady, and easy to conceal.”
Aerin snorted. “You’ll never spot anything from this altitude.”
Without looking away, Rose said, “I can see mice from this altitude. Be quiet.” As she said it, Rose zoomed in on a group clustered in the shade of a rock overhang a quarter mile from the camp site.
Some of them were scarecrows, but the others could still pass for Human. Two were watching the area with binoculars, while two more napped, leaning against the rock face. Number five was prone under a camouflaged tarp, watching the camp through the scope on a high-caliber rifle. The sixth sat cross-legged next to a small camp stove, making meticulous cuts around her eye socket with the broken tip of a hobby knife blade. More blood oozed from numerous welts and gouges on her back and sides, soaking her already filthy tank top.
Angus circled her with his finger. “She’s the leader. We need her alive.”
“You take them,” Aerin said. “Once they’re down, I’ll get Lilah.” She took a sword belt with a matching pair of not-quite katanas off her charm bracelet and handed them to Angus.
Angus nodded and donned the sword belt. He looked at the image of the scarecrow’s campsite, touched one of his rings, and vanished.
The guy with the rifle lost hand, head, and one arm in a single stroke. Both sentries lost their heads at the same moment, one to each sword. A bare trickle of blood between the shoulders marked the cut that severed the leader’s spine. Angus stabbed both sleepers through the heart and flicked the blood off his blades as the first sentry’s head hit the ground.
I’d never seen anyone move that fast, not even the elders at Stonewall. Just watching him, I felt like twice as much of a noob as I had been. I shook my head and asked, “Can he cut those trigger wires fast enough to keep the mines from blowing?”
Geneva shook her head. “Cutting those wires will set the mines off.” She pulled out her phone. “Explosive ordnance disposal, Las Vegas immediate.” She looked at Aerin and said, “Gilead says two minutes.”
Aerin shook her head. “Screw that.” She tapped her ring and vanished.
“Shit!” Geneva dropped her phone. “Focus on Lilah, focus on Lilah!”
Aerin might have issues with impulse control, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d appeared twenty yards from the camp site, standing on a table-sized slab of rock. Riki jumped off her shoulder, then another Riki followed, and another, and another. Thirteen identical mongooses spread out, racing across the camp site. They looked at, burrowed under, searched, sniffed, and climbed on top of every object in the area, squealing and chittering as they cleared the place.
Aerin levitated herself a good ten feet off the ground so she had a good view of the shelters. As soon as the last Riki got clear, she waved her hand and the shelters vanished, along with the gear, the mines, and a foot of the rock and soil everything had been sitting on.
I felt a little faint. “Huh. I guess that’s one way to disarm the mines.”
“I hate it when she does this shit,” Geneva muttered. “Nadia, can you give us a ride out there?”
“I can take two,” Nadia said. “Three would be risky.”
“I can take one, if you’ll give me a few minutes.” Danya leaned over Rose’s shoulder to get a good look at the area.
Nadia snorted. “A little behind on your studies, I see.”
“I have a career,” Danya snapped. “And a full-time relationship which I know I’ve been neglecting…”
“I managed to keep in practice, even when I was working and going to school full time. And since I’m only Human, I did it while having to sleep at night.” Nadia put her hand on her hip with a
so there
flourish and an
I win
smirk.
Danya’s brow furrowed and lightning arced across her eyes. “You were the one running around convinced you could cast the
Charm of Endless Dance
by shouting ‘Do the Hustle’!”
Nadia turned dark red. “That was Natasha!”
“Shut it, both of you. Good grief! Can we please leave your mother as the only full-time teenager I’m stuck babysitting?” Geneva tapped Rose on the shoulder without waiting for an answer. “Come on. You can search the bodies all you want while we clean up.”
I kissed Rose goodbye and Nadia teleported the three of them away. Danya retreated to her room to prepare for the spell, leaving me alone in the kitchen with Josephine—and Aerin’s crystal ball. I sat down, looked into it, and asked, “What can I do to bring this whole mess to an end?”
Well, what would you have done?
I couldn’t close my eyes, or get up, or let go of the table. Then the table, the patio, and the hotel dropped away and the world rushed toward me at incontinence-inducing speed. I went past the Grand Canyon and across northern Arizona, dodging cars and people and buildings and dogs and cactus before coming to an instant stop inches from the front grill of a rusted-out Atomic-age land barge with giant tail fins and a bubble-top, the kind that opens by sliding the middle section back on rails, like the canopy on a jet fighter. It sat behind a building, next to a maze of vintage junkers and modern wrecks, all caked with red dust and baking in the sun. A sign on the office building read,
Kayenta Auto Salvage
.
“Find this car and return to the casino at seven fifteen tomorrow night.” The voice was all around me, but I couldn’t see anyone.
I couldn’t help it—I said, “Only a madman talks to thin air, and I am not mad. Show yourself.”
Then I was in a great hall, carved into the heart of a mountain peak. Behind me, a set of steep narrow stairs cut into the dark stone led down and down until they vanished in the dark, fog, and snow. The air was thin and cut my lungs as I tried to breathe. The wind whipped whorls of snow around my feet and out into emptiness, to fall on jagged ice-covered peaks far below me. Above, green, gold, red, and blue auroras danced under billions of stars as hard and bright as diamonds.
The only object in the hall was a throne, featureless and grey and rimed with frost, looming above me. It was… Imagine the Lincoln Memorial, but without Lincoln sitting there, just his shadow. The shadow glared down at me and said, “I have answered.”
I took a step back. Ice-covered stone gave way. I fell, staggering backward, away from the table in the kitchen and away from Aerin’s crystal ball. I found a dish towel and threw it over the crystal before staggering into the bathroom.
My phone told me Kayenta was a small town on Navajo land near Four Corners. Did I want to navigate to this location? I was still trying to decide when Danya knocked on the bathroom door to tell me she was ready. I put the phone away, washed up, and let Danya teleport us out to the campsite.
None of these scarecrows had gold teeth, much to Rose’s annoyance, but the guy with the sniper rifle had a gold-plated .50 caliber Desert Eagle semi-automatic pistol in his gear bag. The thing looked like it would have a starring role on Pimp My Arsenal. At least Rose is strong enough to shoot it without getting klonked in the forehead due to the recoil.