Gwen stared unseeing at Pey's face. It had been weeks since she saw anything but another geek when she looked at him. Lately, the only reason she kept his face on the screen was to allow him to get her attention when she was listening to something else. Right now, his chat window was the only thing vying for her attention, but he still wasn't getting through. Her whole screen flickered red at seizure inducing rates, a feedback shriek emitting from the speakers at the same time. This time, his words registered, barely.
"Gwen! Are you there? Are you all right?"
"I'm here. I’m not all right. My parents just left the house in body bags."
"Oh, Gwen. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"The bags weren't full."
"Gwen. Gwen, are you outside?"
"Yeah. The living room curtains are red. They're not supposed to be red."
"Gwen! Do you have someone you can go to? Someone who can make sure you're all right?"
"The paramedic is vomiting on the driveway."
A jolt of electricity ran through her fingers, through her lap. The pain of contraction drew her attention back to the screen.
"Gwen! Look at me! Are the authorities there?"
"Yeah. The paramedics, the cops, the coroner."
"Have you talked to them?"
"No."
"Have they talked to you?"
"No. They can't see me."
"You really ought to talk to them. They'll make sure you're safe."
"My parents were supposed to be safe. They weren't part of this."
Everyone you meet is part of this. Lane is part. Pey is part. Artemis is part.
"Do you have someone to go to? Somewhere you'll be safe?"
"Nowhere is safe."
"Yeah. I understand. Is there anyone you trust?"
Trust no one. Fear everyone. We are cursed. Those we love most will hate us worst for loving them.
Gwen's gaze wandered to her hands, to the small joystick expertly welded to the arm of her chair. She played with it, rolling her chair back and forth. Abruptly, some of what Pey said sank in past the shock, the pain, and the fear.
"Lane."
"Lane? Good, go to Lane's place."
"No! No. Lane's mom. I'll go to the garage."
"The garage? Ok, sure. Get out of the street, go to the garage. Can Lane meet you there?"
"Yeah. I'll call her."
A few key taps, a few mouse clicks, all done with the hand that wasn't rolling her chair back and forth. Gwen spoke the moment she heard Lane's voice through the phone.
"It's Gwen. Meet me at the garage. Now."
She disconnected with no ceremony, a single mouse click closing down the phone emulator. With her free hand, she secured the laptop then reached over to the 'gear box' Lane had worked up. A single toggle, and her chair lurched from a walking pace to faster than an athlete could sprint. Pey's voice wasn't yelling at her anymore, but she was all alone now. She kind of missed him. He'd been giving her direction, if not directions.
There is no right direction. One place is as good as another to die.
She rolled over the hill. Ahead of her, the garage beckoned, its squat solidity an anodyne against the fright and whimsy that ran rampant in her brain. She pulled up to the door and keyed in her code on the new panel. The door unlocked with a quiet clunk. More keystrokes, more of mouse clicks, and the door ratcheted open.
The last bay, the one beside Lane's precious Willys, was half filled with computer equipment. Most of it was junk, left over parts from upgrades done across the school since started working electronic security. Enough functioned that it would be criminal to get rid of all of them.
And so we should. We are criminals.
She needed to talk to someone. Lane wasn't here yet. Wouldn't be here for a bit, she didn't have a car. Lane jogged to school every day from the woods, miles and miles away. Mr. Josephs had returned to the hospital for more surgery. Mr. Stewart...
Her laptop snapped open, and her fingers danced across the keys, flickered the mouse. Pey started to speak but registered the ringing phone before more than a disjointed syllable got out. Mr. Stewart's voice, fuzzy with sleep, came over the speaker.
"No, Mr. Stewart, there's no emergency. My parents are dead. No, my foster parents. Murdered last night, torn apart. I'm at the garage now. Thanks."
When he heard the call disconnect, Pey lifted a fisted paw to his face and cleared his throat. Gwen's eyes met his, and after a long, searching moment, he nodded, as if he’d found whatever he was looking for.
"Hey Gwen. I have something for you. I kinda wanted to share this a while back, but I wasn't sure. So much of your time is spent delving into those essays about energy manipulation in low reality-strength locals, and he's kinda funny about that."
"Who?"
"There's a guy I know. He's in a local kind of like yours. He's one of the only other independent users I know of. He's some kind of mad genius, the only guy I know of who has compromised non-local internets."
"Oh."
"I think you'd like him, but he's very paranoid. Thing is, if your parents were just killed, that means whatever is going on there is getting serious. Paranoid sounds like a survival trait for you right now."
"How do I meet him?"
"I'm sending you the messaging contact information now. You'll need to call him yourself. He doesn't like non-humans much; he tolerates me 'cause I'm the only admin who doesn't auto-ban him. He's got a soft spot for girls and orphans, and a real hard on for killing anything unnatural."
"OK."
"You're safe now, right?"
"Yeah."
"People are coming to take care of you?"
"Yeah."
"OK. I'm going to drop off the line. Message him. He'll only accept text, it's a thing. Tell him Pey sent you, let him know monsters just ate your family. He'll take it from there."
"OK."
"Call me back if you need to talk. I'd stay on, but he'll know if I’m here. Gwen?"
"Yeah?"
"I care about you. Stay safe."
"Yeah."
With that, Pey disconnected. Gwen looked at the information he'd sent her, her hands going through the motions of connecting even as her mind replayed the scene at her house over and over again. The connection information was convoluted, extensive. She realized with a start that she'd rerouted through three more of Pey's 'locals', which she thought of as parallel universes, before she connected to an electronic message drop and left her own contact information. She left the message and disconnected from the other locals, wondering why Pey thought he had to go before she left a message.
A moment later, a chat request pinged to life on her screen. At the same time, the main electronic defenses on her laptop failed. They were replaced moments later by backups pulled from other locals, backups that used what she still thought of as sorcery as much as they used technology. Telltales gone red flashed back to green, dropped to amber, then settled back to a steady green.
A chat window opened of its own accord. A strange combination of characters ran across the top: 1337 /\/\45t3r. It took her a moment to puzzle it out. A single line of text chat appeared in the window, with the same name marked next to it.
"5\/p, ch!xx0r?"
After another moment of ciphering, Gwen debated with herself. Part of her wanted to pull up one of her new translation packages. Part of her wanted to pour out her troubles to someone who would just listen.
Part of me wants to end this conversation.
Before she realized what she was doing, her fingers stroked the keys, characters appearing on the chat window.
"My foster parents just got killed. Messily. By something not human. I'm hiding out in a garage, 'cause I was never in their will, so I'm on the street now. Nobody sane believes the things that killed my parents exist. So, 5\/xx0rz. U?"
***
Lane ran the moment she cleared the front door. She hadn't had time to grab her nomex or welding mask. She had a set at school. Her pry bar never got further than a long reach from her. Its comforting, cold weight filled her hand; she gripped it loosely, letting the length of it slide back and forth across her shoulder.
None of that mattered. Gwen was in trouble; Lane had heard it in her voice. Just over three miles to school, Lane jogged that every day. Today she had to sprint. Lane hated sprinting. She wasn't built for it. Her ground-eating lope made the terrain blur as she rushed along the edge of the plowed area of the road.
The things appeared without warning. One shoved itself toward her on stubby, broken legs, ragged arms reaching for her. The thing was an obstacle, Gwen was in trouble, Lane acted without pause. Cold iron wrapped and edged in hardened steel lashed out, and the head above the arms flew backward, scrawny neck severed.
The rest lumbered toward her. They dragged themselves and pushed themselves, no two moving the same way. They seemed clumsy, but they were large, long limbed, and utterly without self-preservation. They kept coming, ignoring any pieces of themselves they left behind in their mad rush.
Lane passed most of them, they didn't matter. Gwen was in trouble, she had to get to Gwen. Two shoved themselves to barely intercept her. She ducked under the claws of the one on the left, brought her pry bar around in a two-handed swing at the one on the right. This the shock reverberated through her shoulders as the bar struck home in the ape thing's chest. The one behind grabbed again, but she leapt forward running, legs pumping like the pistons in the rebuilt Willys' engine.
Lane's lungs burned with the effort of running, with the cold of the air. Her hair broke free from its confining clip and streamed behind her like a banner. Her eyes watered with the force of the air across her face.
Her eyes still watered when she crested the hill. At first, she thought the garage was covered by a snow bank. When she paused and wiped her eyes, the illusion disappeared. Instead of snow, a solid mass of creatures limped, staggered, and crawled toward the garage. One reached it and hammered on the door. A bright flash, and the thing’s long, simian arm burned away to a smoldering stump. It left four thin gashes through the door. Before the first recovered from losing his arm, two more threw themselves bodily at the doors. They rolled back, horribly burned, but now two misshapen dents in the doors bracketed the gashes.
Lane didn't stop to consider the odds, or tactics, or anything save that Gwen was inside, and the ape things would eventually tear their way through. Instead she leapt at the nearest, her pry bar swinging at its scrawny neck. Much like the earlier ape thing in the forest, its neck flashed into steam at the touch of steel, and its head flew, a dying steam engine shriek coming from the severed neck.
The remaining ape things heard. As one, they turned to see what had dispatched one of their number. They saw Lane and stumbled toward her.
She charged them, her pry bar swinging. Heads, arms, and legs flew, but unlike her earlier victories over the ape-things, this did not come without cost. An ape-thing clawed at her, leaving a line of bleeding welts before she spun and dispatched it. Shortly after that first injury, another managed to get its fangs into her leg. She limped away from that one, the head still stuck to her thigh, but after that the wounds came as fast and furious as she dealt them.
She thought she was hallucinating from blood loss when a deep male voice rang through the crisp winter morning.
"Back! Get back! Get off her, you misshapen hunks of gristle!"
Lane finally fell, three ape-things clutching her arms and legs, pulling at her even as she tried to smack them away with her pry bar. A series of horrible crunching noises made her shudder. For a moment, she was confused; the wounds scattered across her body hurt, but nothing new ached enough to account for the sounds of breaking bone. Maybe she was in shock.
Then the ape-thing holding her legs let go. Reacting without thought, she pushed herself to her feet, shoving herself toward the garage. The thing on her arm dropped away, bits of skull raining across her, and her pry bar swung across to the last, skewering it through the eye. It dropped away, no longer making the sickening slobbery noise as it tried to chew on her arm through her coat.
The moment Lane touched the door to the garage, the strange compulsion driving her receded. She looked through the slits left by the ape-thing’s claws and saw Gwen sitting in the last bay, communing with her laptop. Lane turned, wondering how she had managed to escape her tormenters, and there he was.
She wasn't Gwen, who had been hung up on one person since freshman year. She wasn't Mary, who spent far too much time with her mother's romance novels. She was just Lane, and totally unprepared for her reaction to the man in front of her. Just standing there he made her want to be close to him, to pull him to her, to do things she didn't have the experience or education to name. Instead, she just stared.
He wasn't tall compared to her. Lane was used to that. He wasn't too short, at least; five ten if she had to guess. He looked short at first glance; he was heavyset. By the way he held a sledgehammer in one hand, ready to swing, little of it was fat. His face was masculine; features strong without being heavy. It was clear that his nose had been badly broken, but it had been set well, the only remaining evidence a scar across the bridge and a hint that it had once been aquiline rather than pug.
He met her eyes more frankly than anyone ever had. Most people looked away when they met her eyes. Gwen once said something about her predatory nature. This man just stared, meeting her gaze with a raptorish intensity of his own.
"Lane? How bad are you hurt?"
Mr. Joseph's voice cut through the fugue. He stood to one side of the stranger, a pistol in his off hand. He make it disappear behind his back while she stood silent, her voice still stolen by adrenaline and hormones. She shook her head, hoping he would understand. By his reaction, he did.
"Lane, this is Mr. Head. Mr. Head, this is Lane. She's been helping out with my classes while I've been laid up. Mr. Head is the new groundskeeper."
"I thought you were the groundskeeper."
Lane cursed her clumsy tongue. She'd never been good at talking to people. She somehow thought that when it was important, she'd be able to get her point across. Mr. Josephs' gentle voice tried to soothe her, but the coppery taste of leftover adrenaline filled her mouth, and her limbs twitched with the strain of the run and the residue of battle.
"I really haven't been able to keep up with it, with the arm and all. Ms. Williams tells me she's keeping me on until I'm on my feet, but in the meanwhile, we need someone to keep the grounds neat."
"I could do it."
No matter what she wanted to say, the wrong thing kept coming out.
"Lane, you're already doing too much. I'm worried about your grades."
"I don't mean to interrupt, but there might be more of these things out here."
Mr. Head's voice was as deep and strong as his chest implied. Lane lost herself in that voice, the meaning coming to her only after a moment's confusion. It had a soft accent, not quite English, not quite Irish, something like either. Mary or Gwen would know. She just closed her eyes, pretended fatigue, and listened.
"You're right. Let's get moving; I'll call for backup, the others can be here within an hour, but we need someplace secure to hole up."
"Gwen's inside, Mr. Josephs."
"Oh, for... Right. At least we can drag some bodies inside so the brass can send them on to be examined. What are these things, anyhow?"
"No idea. I was about to ask you the same thing. I figured maybe they were some kind of local bear."
"Right. Not relevant now. Let's get inside and see what we can do to reinforce the doors."
***
Mary looked across her room at the giant hawk balanced on the windowsill. He spoke, but the words didn't make any sense through the pounding in her head. The freezing cold in the room made it hurt less, but she suspected it was making things worse. She thought she had been running a fever. Going out with Lane had been a mistake. They should have gone into the garage or just talked in the foyer.
Her head felt like it was going to split open, and it hurt so much that sounded just fine. A waste basket sat by her bed, but nothing came up when she retched. Somehow, her head wasn't stuffed up. Instead, her sinuses remained painfully clear; every breath through her nose felt like sniffing fire. The big raptor in her window kept making noises at her. She knew they should be words, knew they were words, but nothing made sense.
The raptor tossed its head and hopped off the windowsill, gliding into the room to land by the head of her bed, knocking away the basket as it landed. She had to be hallucinating. Raptors didn't talk. Raptors didn't put themselves in enclosed spaces. Raptors didn't light up with an inner glow, glowing and growing until they were too bright to look at.
A moment later a young man stood at the side of her bed. He was lean, tall but not gangly, nicely put together. Right at eye level she could see that he wasn't clothed, circumcised, or modest. Her eyes shying away from that, she looked once more at his face. He had raptor eyes, yellow around an aquiline nose. His face might have been young, but his eyes were old. Upon lightheaded consideration, she thought she might like his face. It was young enough, gracile enough, that she felt attracted. She thought most of her classmates would agree; the latest trend in heartthrobs was toward ephemeral boy-men rather than fully formed adults.
The young man spoke, his voice a pleasant mix of accents from the British Isles. The thought raced across her mind that he must be a military brat, like so many of the kids she'd known growing up. It's the only thing that fit the accent, and the only way someone so young could have lived so many places.
The words still refused to gel into meaning. The young man's face creased in a sudden scowl, frustration writ plain. He reached for her, and she didn't have the strength to push him away, to keep him from pulling her covers down. Beneath them she wore only her thin shift, and for a moment his face showed his attraction to her as well as his nether regions did. After that long, frozen, panicked moment, he reached for her, and she gathered the strength to grab at his wrist.
Sudden fury lit his raptor eyes, and words slipped from his mouth with a hiss. After a confused moment, he pinned her wrists with one of his large, strong, warm hands. Strange, his hands should feel cold if she were running a fever that would make her hallucinate. He reached for her again, and she tried to twist away, but it was no use. After a day or more of her head pounding non-stop, she didn't have enough left to resist. His hand, nearly burning hot, brushed her cleavage as he reached down her shift.
When his hand pulled away, she felt cold, forlorn. She looked up into his golden, raptor eyes, and felt for a moment like an insignificant rodent about to be plucked from the earth by a stooping hawk. Again, she had a moment of panic, and she writhed against a grip like steel that kept her wrists pinned. The raptor gaze snapped down from her eyes to where she writhed, and she reacted to the sudden movement by falling still, freezing like a hunted hare.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
As if fighting against himself, the unnamed young man pulled her hands down, pressed something into them. He spoke, and one hand rose to stroke her mouth. She heard her own voice spout nonsensical doggerel. Light flared in the room, stabbed into her open eyes, piercing through her skull. Trumpets sounded and drums rolled, shattering her skull and curling her round her rebelling stomach. The world disappeared into light.
***
The Queen's Knight landed lightly in the branches of the old oak tree. The bare twigs lashed at her armor ineffectually as she surveyed the snowy ground below. A raptor's scream sounded from inside the dwelling, and her familiar appeared by her side.
"On the table by the window, Knight!"
She looked where the raptor indicated and saw what the raptor referred to. A large kite shield lay there, covering the surface of the table. Its front decorated with the image of a roaring lion, the metal beneath the enamel elaborately chased with shiny silver filigree. An appropriate shield for the Queen's Knight; she reached within the dwelling and pulled it to her by the point of the kite. She flipped it into the air end-for-end, catching the glittering shield by the straps on the back.
As it settled onto her arm, awareness suffused her. She became aware of the location of the gate that caused her mortal form such pain. She knew the location of each of the Trolls that had crept from that gate to hunt, to rend, to devour. A moment's thought, and awareness of the innocents in the area filled her; there were so many, it stunned her for a moment. When last she walked the land, there were scarce this many people in all of England. She knew her mortal form considered this region a quiet backwater.
Another thought and the awareness of innocents disappeared. A final twitch of the mind, and the location of the other beings like herself filtered through. Her familiar perched by her side. The Green Knight guarded the Black Queen, and both stood hard by the rift in space and time that let the Trolls enter reality. Another pair of entities rested near the Knight and Queen; one a construct of metal and glass, the other a terrapin of endless depth. Finally, one more had just left the gate. Even the awareness of that being sent a spike of unmanning fear through her gut. Power resonated through the ether, oddly familiar power.
No matter. She knew her duty; to strike down evil, to protect the innocent. The Green Knight and the Black Queen might not be the first, but by no means were the latter. They attracted the Trolls; the Queen's Knight would wait until the cunning, feral creatures gathered, assaulting them only when they had overwhelming numbers. When they felt safe in their horde, they would not run. Individually they would only attack if they felt their foe was weak, a mistake they would never make with the Queen's Knight.
They would only attack if their foe was weak, or if they were driven by something they feared more. As she leapt from the tree, beginning her deliberately sedate travel to the gateway, she pondered the final being to come through the gate. Pondered, and worried that the gift from her familiar might not have been well timed if it caused such doubts.
***
Reinforcements arrived while she chatted with the hacker she knew only as 'leet master'. Ordinarily, she wouldn't give someone with that moniker the time of day, but he'd shown her in their initial encounter that he was more than a simple script kiddie, then proved over the minutes that followed the breadth and depth of his knowledge in the electronic realm.
The first wave of reinforcements comforted her most. The men didn't matter, but Lane made her feel safe. That had always been the case, even from their first encounter on the track. She distrusted her own emotional reaction, but when Lane was around her nerves steadied, her hands ached a little less. Now that Lane was around, Gwen knew she would be safe so long as Lane could make her so.
Of course. She is our Knight.
Gwen shook her head to clear it of errant thoughts. Chatting with the Master was like walking on glass bottles. If she did nothing wrong, she was fine, and might even learn a thing or two. If she did something to make him think she was incompetent, he would leave in disgust. If she did something to anger him, he would make her wish she had seemed incompetent.
Currently he quizzed her on the algorithms behind the software Pey had introduced her to over the past few months. Some of it, most of it even, was routing software. More complex than she was used to by a few layers, but nothing horribly complex in concept. A smaller but still significant amount was system software. Data storage and retrieval. Hardware recognition and interface. Input and output devices. The care and feeding of processors. After a while she felt like she defended a thesis, only one she hadn't written; one he made up as he went along.
Not defending a thesis, defending your right to apprentice with him. He acts like one who holds the title Master. If you wish to become one yourself, you need one to train you.
At one point, ran a search to clarify a term he had used. He made two comments on her search parameters; one on how the clarity of her parameters greatly sped the search, another on how that same clarity had made it obvious to anyone monitoring her search parameters what she searched for.
Following that came a fast and brutal lesson in creating search parameters both effective and occluded. As she worked to create parameters that met his standards for results and inscrutability, an odd sense of warmth suffused her. More than the triumph she felt when she mastered something new, she had no idea what it was.
Masters only teach students they have accepted.
When she sent over a set of parameters that she knew, with the certainty that came from inspiration coupled with hard won skill, would pass his critique, a sudden thought struck her. He grilled her on an enormous variety of skills, tested her knowledge of a wide variety of hardware, software, and programming techniques, but not once had he tested her knowledge of the various methods she'd researched of using her connection to other realities to manipulate reality itself. She filed that tidbit away for later, if she needed a separate source of knowledge for that, she would find out soon enough.
As Mr. Josephs passed another few armed guards through the emergency door, a single line of text on the screen interrupted her musing.
"j00 \/\/!11 d0. \/\/4tc00 /\/33d?"
Her fingers flew across the keys, laying out her problems. All the processing power she could beg, borrow or steal was barely sufficient for searching the commonly used portions of the Nets. To find the nooks and crannies where the information she sought hid, she needed more power, more storage, more of just about everything. She also had an inkling that her use of what she had could be made an order of magnitude more efficient, if only the Master could show her how.
A hand, placed lightly on her shoulder, interrupted her typing. Startled, she looked up to see Mr. Stewart's cherubic face looking down on her with kind concern. Surprising herself, she realized that while genuine, that concern also masked a deep and abiding anger, anger that went well with the sidearm that hung loosely from his hand, that made the body armor he wore seem more ominous.
On the screen, another line of text blinked for her attention.
"g0. 3y3 \/\/!11 4b!d3."
Grateful, she turned her full attention to Mr. Stewart. When he confirmed recognition in her eyes, he spoke, his gentle tones those of someone unsure of the sanity of the one to whom they spoke.
"Gwen, are you going to be OK?"
"No, Mr. Stewart. I'm going to die."
Mr. Stewart didn't respond, but his look spoke volumes.
That was ill done.
She relented, sighing a bit as she spoke. "We all are. The only question is when. For me, it's never been far away. I never thought I'd be burying another set of parents. I have no idea where I'm going to live."
"I'd forgotten this isn't the first time for you. You need to pull it together. I need you to check the motion detectors and cameras. You can stay in one of the lounges tonight, or in Mr. Josephs' office, if you prefer."
"Just a moment. Done. A few are out completely north of here, into that little band of wood. The rest are showing a swarm of those things coming."
"Can you give me firmer numbers than 'a swarm'?"
Without thought, Gwen slipped into her role as Mr. Stewart's electronics specialist. With a few keystrokes, her screen filled with tracking algorithms she'd been tinkering with.
"Already on it, Mr. Stewart. Almost none coming past the outer edges now, at least six hundred inside the perimeter."
"At least?"
"The software can't always identify individuals by visuals, we don't have one hundred percent visual spectrum or motion detection coverage, and the infrared isn't picking them up."
"So how are you tracking them?"
"A combination of all three. There are a few times when multiple individuals came across in a clump and I can't be certain how many were in the clump. I'd say a max of six hundred twenty-five."
"Six hundred of those things."
"Yep."
"Any good news?"
"They appear to have some kind of allergy to steel or iron."
"What kind?"
"One Lane hit with her crowbar had an obvious burn at the wound site, and the ones that impacted the steel garage doors burned on contact."
Mr. Stewart pulled out the knife strapped to his lower leg, glared at the composite blade in frustrated disgust, and slapped it back in place.
"Josephs! Do you have a spare KA-BAR?"
As the two men talked, Gwen searched through the error reports in her tracking algorithm, looking to see if she could refine it. What she found made her hiss in frustration and fear.
"Mr. Stewart, we have another problem."
Three of the four men in the room returned to her side in an instant. Gwen glanced up to spot the fourth, and realized he was tending to Lane's injuries with a quick, professional manner that bespoke some first aid experience. Satisfied, Gwen returned to Stewart, Josephs, and Roberts.
"Something out there is scamming the cameras somehow. Before you ask, I can't tell what it is, but I can tell roughly where it is by which cameras aren't responding properly to my sort algorithms."
"Coming closer or leaving?"
"Closer, slowly. The bulk of the things are nearly here."
"All right, gents. They can get through the doors, but it will cost them if they do. The walls are two foot of concrete and rebar reinforced cinder block. They won't be coming in, but we won't be going out. Josephs, Armory."
Gwen's head snapped up, gaze tracking Mr. Josephs as he walked across the floor to the back of the third bay. Cursing her own inattentiveness, Gwen's fingers danced over the keyboard while Mr. Josephs pulled the climate controls away from the wall, exposing a simple keypad. A glance at her screen for the results of her impromptu divination showed her the real blueprints of the building just before the sound of electric motors straining to open a heavy vault door filled the room.
Gwen’s laptop screen flashed, grabbing her attention. A single line of text flashed in her chat window with her new Master.
“g!7 0\/\/7, ch!xx0r. 3\/!1 c0/\/\3z d!s \/\/4y.”
In the moment Gwen took translating the warning, the master disconnected. Gwen wished she could join him. As she closed the chat window, she saw a small file dropped on her desktop. The title, scrambled as always, translated to ‘evil detector’. With the sounds of men gearing for war in the background, she carefully scanned the file for any booby traps. Her new mentor seemed just the sort to test her that way.
Her scans flagged nothing, but as she read through the file, she realized her caution had been misplaced. The convoluted contents of the text file hid a bit of malicious code. After excising that bit, she dumped the rest into her filtering software, swearing at how long it took to compile. When it finally ran, her swearing stopped immediately. Fear stole away profanity, even speech itself.
“What’s wrong?”
Gwen looked up. Lane hovered protectively behind her. A new jumpsuit covered her and a new welding mask perched atop her head. Neither covered the bruises on her face nor the bandage on one side of her head. The unreality of the situation warred briefly with the reality of Lane’s injuries. Finally, reluctantly, the evidence of her senses won out over her lingering sense of disbelief.
***
“Something evil is coming. If it gets here, we’re all going to die.”
The moment Gwen’s words reached Lane’s ears, the compulsion returned. Gwen was in danger. If the evil reached the garage, Gwen would die. That couldn’t happen. The solution was simple. Walking purposefully toward the back door, Lane grabbed up her gooseneck pry bar and, after thinking a moment, a small steel sledgehammer.
“Which way?”
“From the woods. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Gwen was asking the air. Five steps and Lane lined up on the fire door. She heard one of them outside, throwing something against the door over and over. Others did the same to the big garage doors, slowly beating them in. Lane lined up on the smaller door, heard the thing hit, counted two frenzied heart beats.
"What the hell are you doing, Lane? Mr. Stewart! Mr. Roberts! Stop her!"
They had just left the vault when she hit the fire door. Behind her a garage door gave way and guns thundered. In front of her the burned and broken remains of one ape thing lined up to charge the door again. She backhanded it with the crowbar in passing. As she sprinted toward the tree line, she the fire door slammed against the building, then rebounded to slam closed again.
She hated sprinting. She wasn't built for it. She had to get to the tree line before the thing arrived, or Gwen would die. She sprinted.
Ten paces away a wave of ape things boiled out of the woods as if driven. They headed for the garage. They headed away from whatever drove them. They didn't expect Lane where she was. They didn’t expect anyone to charge them. She had to make the tree line before the thing in the woods arrived. Evading the ape things was just like field hockey, only with no ball and no rules. She saw an opening and charged for it. When an ape thing cut her off, she flung the hammer underhand. It slumped, skull shattered and smoking. Another grabbed at her. She swung her pry bar two handed, and the thing's arm flew away in a sizzling arc.
She was past the ape things and into the trees. Ahead of her, shadowed by trees, a figure limped toward her. Smaller than the ape-things, smaller than Lane. Lane wasn't sneaky. She was strong, and this thing, whatever it was, was small. Lane charged. Her pry bar came around from behind her, powered by all the strength in her body.
The moment before impact, her arms came to a crashing halt as a hand cold as ice and hard as steel stopped her like a child. Frozen in place, her arms aching like they hadn't in years, she looked down at her captor.
The woman that looked back ought to have been dead. One half of her was beautiful. Tall, though not as tall as Lane. Long black hair cascading down her back. Skin tanned to perfection, without any of the telltale wrinkles of age. No wrinkles, or fat, or lack of curves, Lane noted absently. Half of the woman in front of her was perfectly beautiful in every way.
The other half was a skeleton.
A hand of bone gripped Lane's forearm, and where it did Lane’s bones strained to keep her muscles from breaking them. After a moment, she heard more than felt one snap, then the other. Blood poured from between the bones of the woman's hand, staining Lane’s green Nomex black, staining the white bone black and red and green. Lane's nerveless hand dropped away from the pry bar, and her other arm flew back as if of its own accord. Again her pry bar whistled through the air, aimed this time at the half-woman's skull, and again she stopped it as easily as Lane could have stopped Gwen.
As the woman spoke, pain hit. It blinded her, deafened her, but still she pushed at the woman before her, trying to keep her from the tree line.
"You would strike me? My minions, I understand, but me? I think not, mortal."
Lane clenched her jaw on a scream and tried once more to push against the woman holding her. Her other arm snapped. Blood flowed, black and green and red. Pain and compulsion blinded her, but she couldn't stop until this thing stopped trying to get to the garage. Another cry forced its way from her mouth. The thing holding her just smiled. The woman half smiled. The skeleton half couldn't help it. Lane swung her head forward to shatter those teeth, but couldn't reach.
"It seems you won't stop unless I kill you. I was supposed to kill the Daughter of Sarai, but I think I'd rather take you back to Anni as a present. If Greatfather doesn't like it, he can tell me so next time I see him."
Lane looked up as the skeleton woman dragged her to her feet. She didn't remember falling to her knees. She didn't remember the woman being taller than she was either, but suddenly the woman's head brushed the branches above Lane's head. Her giant bone claw wrapped itself around Lane's forearms, and another scream rang through the forest as she lifted Lane fully from the ground by her broken arms.
"Let's go see what she can do with you, shall we?"
The moment the woman took the first step away from the garage, the compulsion fell away from Lane. Pain took over, and she howled. The thunder of guns receded in the distance. Through a haze of pain she glimpsed a circular shimmer in the air before her, barely large enough for the giant skeleton woman to walk through. A bullet ricocheted off a giant rib, and Lane felt like she'd been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. Voices called out in the distance.
"Dammit! Check fire! It's not slowing that thing, and you just hit the hostage!"
The giant skeleton woman stepped into the shimmer in the air. Lane forgot all about her arms and her gut. The woman carrying her embodied beauty and terror and awe. Lane was a worm for touching her, for trying to harm her. Her whole body went slack in submissive worship. A laugh rang out, echoing through the forest and Lane's skull. It shook snow from the trees, shook Lane like a leaf in the wind.
"Welcome to my realm, mortal. Welcome to my home."
The bony fist pulled her up to the giant woman's face in a parody of intimacy, pulling her toward the shimmer in the air. Light flared in the forest behind her.
"Welcome to Hel."
***
The Queen's Knight leapt forward. The Black Queen sent the Green Knight to stop a god, and the predictable happened. Hel carried the The Green Knight back to Hel, her shattered self likely to be the feast at Hel's table tonight. Her sacrifice would be remembered as a noble one, but now she was no longer capable of desecrating the grounds with the bodies of evil.
Her shield told her all this, as well as telling her the Black Queen still sat in the outbuilding, cowering from the Trolls. As she cowered, she drew them to her fear. The remaining Trolls clumped close enough together now, despite the few the Green Knight felled. The Queen's Knight leapt again, surging toward them.
Suddenly, a wedge of the Trolls disappeared from her awareness. Someone, somehow, was killing them, spilling their polluted blood on the soil of this realm. The Queen's Knight redoubled her speed, her legs taking her the length of a tilting field with each leap. In the distance, thunder rolled and roiled and battled. The Knight raced toward the sound of the guns, eager to prevent the fools from spilling yet more Troll blood on the ground.
She leapt the final distance, the outbuilding coming in sight. The side doors leaned, dented and shattered, the center no more than a smoking hole. Behind it lay the Green Knight's carriage, before it stood the groundskeeper, his weapon sweeping back and forth looking for targets. His companions swept around the building in pursuit of the god and the Green Knight.
The Queen's Knight swept past them, the Sword of Light leaping to her hand. Her shield deflected the soldier's bullets, her Sword dispatched Troll after Troll. In a matter of seconds she swept the remainder from the field and reached the portal. Past the Green Knight and the Lady Hel, another wave of Trolls stood ready to attack. Lady Hel stepped through the portal. Taunting her latest victim, she pulled the Green Knight through.
The moment Lady Hel stepped through the portal, awe flowed outward from her in a palpable wave. The soldiers dropped to their knees, and The Queen’s Knight silently thanked the gods. They would no longer defile the ground with Troll blood. A moment later, gratitude, awe, and even sense of self disappeared from the Queen’s Knight’s world.
A burst of energy radiated from the portal, filling the world with the green of moss on old tree bark, the sound of old oaks creaking in the wind, the warmth of blood freshly spilled, the smell of earth warmed by the sun in the spring.
The Queen’s Knight blinked, and synesthesia overcame her. She smelled the trees burst from their blanket of snow. She felt them creak their way upward toward the wan winter light. She heard the green of the new shoots shattering the ice coating their branches. She smelled roots seeking ground water, seeking a stream, seeking a pond.
Seeking her.
That final sensation of being hunted broke her free of her scrambled senses. For a moment the Queen's Knight...
For a moment Mary lost herself in memories not her own.
***
Looking down the shaft of the spear, he wondered at the lack of pain. He glanced around; bodies carpeted the battlefield about Camlann. Knights from both sides lay dead or dying, but all four of his banners stood. Of the score his son had brought to the field, only one remained, tied haphazardly to the spear piercing him. His son's hands clutched at it. His son’s eyes, glazed with the pain of a mortal wound, stared balefully.
"This isn't over, father. This is only the beginning."
"For you, maybe. With you gone, my part is done."
"So be it!"
The spear twisted, and the world went black.
***
He fell into the outer darkness. He had travelled here before in his endless crusade, but this time was the last. At his best he could barely survive the chaos here. With the Liesmith's dagger through him and poison racing through his veins, all that he was would soon depart from the world.
He felt no sorrow for himself. Soon he would not be. He sorrowed instead for those left behind. Without his protection, the weak would be helpless before the strong. Without his guidance, his followers would have to take up his crusade or they would drown in their own endless retaliations. Without his guiding hand, Vengeance would be unleashed on the world.
He looked down, through the chaos, at the stump where his hand had been. A beatific smile wreathed his face, and he was no more.
***
The chains she bore without comment. Like her sisters, she knew her own enslavement meant freedom for their youngest children. That price she was ever willing to pay.
The offal she swallowed without complaint. Like her sisters, she knew it was as nourishing as it was foul. Too much might choke her, but that was true of any sustenance.
The poison was more than she could stand. She tried to cry out, tried to make her sisters see, but her mouth was clogged with offal and her chest bound tight with chains. Without her memory, her sisters forgot.
***
The sound of shattering bone brought Mary back to her senses. Ahead of her, the new groundskeeper stood protectively over Lane, the head of his sledge still lodged in the ground amongst the fragments of Hel's skull. The portal gone, the legion of trolls no longer a threat.
Her head felt crowded. Conflicting impulses warred within her. Her right hand reached to her waist, checking for a sword she didn't carry. Her left hand reached over her right shoulder for the same. Even more disturbing, she felt the groundwater, so recently frozen by the unnatural cold of the portal, thawing once more.
Behind and around it all, the voice of crystal and thunder shouted for her to get up, to be gone before her power faded completely. With reluctance, she forced her left hand down to her breast. The moment her palm found her pendant...
***
The Queen's Knight distanced herself from the scene of the battle. Hel lay dead behind her, deific foulness deconsecrating the grove where she fell. If the Queen's Knight's eyes hadn't deceived her, she hadn't been felled by the Green Knight. That left only the Black Queen, who once again dabbled with powers not meant to be hers. The urge to smite the wickedness from her grew strong.
Something deep within the Queen's Knight rebelled at the thought. The Black Queen was not unnatural, after all. Cursed and unwise, but not otherworldly. Her presence did not lend the Queen's Knight power, and without that power the Queen's Knight was ill equipped to face a sorceress.
With that in mind, she continued to withdraw. Perhaps another time in another place, she would confront the Queen. The Truth would come out, and the Truth would, as always, win the day. With every fiber of her being she longed for that day.
***
The nothing beyond the conference room crackled with rage. Surtr and Annan stood on opposite sides of the table shouting at one another. Morgan had stared at them since her arrival, pursed lips her only sign of disapproval. Loki enflamed the argument with carefully placed comments, ignoring the chairman’s silent direction to stop. Mort stood quietly at the end of the table, trying to avoid the notice of angry demigods. Galahad looked about the table, awaiting his moment.
Finally Aeric arrived, clearly faintly startled by the commotion. The chairman, patience obviously exhausted, stood and slammed his hands on the table, palms down. When he did, thunder rolled and lightning struck, briefly illuminating rank upon serried rank of winged figures hovering in the endless nothing.
“That is enough! You will both sit, now, or I will have you removed!”
Surtr and Annan turned to him, fear warring with anger in their faces. Annan noticed the shadows of the hovering Valkyrie legions first. When she did her knees failed her, and she fell into her chair. Surtr, deprived of his opponent, threw himself back in his own chair. Glowering at the chairman, he continued to speak.
Surtr never possessed overly much wisdom.
“Hel is dead, Greatfather. One of the worms slew her. What are you going to do about it?”
“What we are not going to do is panic. One mortal did this. We knew she might be a problem. If you recall, steps had already been taken.”
The heads of everyone in the room swiveled like turrets. They came to rest staring at Galahad with expressions ranging from barely suppressed fury to distasteful curiosity. When certain he had the full attention of the room, he spoke.
“I’ve observed her. She’s a danger to the plan.”
He paused, cocking his head as if in consideration. It was all an act; he’d carefully rehearsed this speech long before now. He let the silence stretch, the odor of Surtr’s chair smoldering and the faint sounds of Annan’s razor sharp claws shredding the arms of her chair both filling the silence. Annan finally broke, and Galahad had to hide a smile when she did.
“So, what are you going to do about it, worm?”
Galahad shrugged; he didn’t have to feign indifference to the council’s plight.
“I can break what makes her strong.”
“So why haven’t you? You’re betraying us already!”
Galahad recognized his scathing look as unwise with Annan in her current state, but that he couldn’t suppress.
“Don’t be stupid. If I did, I would already be dust, and you know it. As I was going to say, I can break what makes her strong, but I need complete freedom of action.”
“That does sound suspicious, Galahad.”
The chairman’s tone contemplative, not challenging, Galahad treated it as such, giving him a considered answer.
“I’ve got to gain her trust to get close enough to her to do the job. Otherwise, in my professional estimation, she’s going to put a serious crimp in the plan. She’ll kill at least three more of you before you stop her, and I’m not sure which three.”
The chairman’s roar for quiet sent lightning echoing through the nothing again. The hovering Valkyrie looked eager, barely refraining from stooping on the council. Aeric and Morgan both flickered; Galahad assumed their connections to their projections thinned in case the chairman lost control of his rage. The others reacted according to their nature; Mort cowered, the Liesmith grinned condescendingly, and Surtr and Annan both bristled, but quieted.
“So, Knight. What else do you need from us?”
“Nothing. I need complete freedom of action. No one spying, no one barging in. I advise you to get out of her way until I’m done with her, too.”
“No spying? You want us to trust you without oversight?”
“No offense intended, but most of the council aren’t as subtle as you, Morgan. If she catches one of you spying, what I’m planning won’t work, and I’ll not get another chance.”
“How do we know you won’t betray us?”
“The same way you’ve always known. I gave my word; I will be faithful to the chairman and his cause until the day I die. Do you doubt my word now, after all these centuries?”
“Of course not.”
The chairman’s voice cut off further conversation. “It's settled then. I’ll thank you all to take your spats out of my office.”