So I'm re-releasing the prologue for Urban Fantasy. Maybe I'll catch you up by the time Chapter 5 comes out, maybe I wont. But the point is making my writing available to as many eyes as I can, and then maybe some people will decide to subscribe to my patreon, and that's all I can hope for. I'll try to update my Patreon with the new plan soon, but it may take a week or two. So without further ado, here's the prologue to the second book in my Teen Vampire series.
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Previously On A Suburban Fantasy ( On Amazon at http://a.co/e36GM4i or available to subscribers at www.patreon.com/99geek )
Rachel Lin Smith was just a quiet shy teenage girl, until a serial killing vampire turned her into a monster like him against her will. Getting away, she was able to cope with the changes in her life with the help of her geeky friends Ian, Andrew, Bilal, and Jason. They shared adventures pitted against time traveling mayors and toronto gangs before finally stopping Rachel's Ex from ever hurting anyone ever again.
Jon Mason had a headache again.
It would come and go, the pounding in his temple that
was keeping him from thinking straight or looking at bright lights. The pain
flared especially with every jerk of the car as his only friend manipulated the
wheel and merged onto the off-ramp. They were almost there.
Not that Jon had any actual clue where they were going.
They had been driving for days, and Jon’s friend wasn’t all that talkative. It
was mostly in silence that she sat beside him, foot on the pedal and lights
passing by. Her eyes were nervous and darting constantly to her mirrors,
peering out from under stringy black hair.
They passed a Tim Horton’s sign, a shop Jon supposed
served coffee by their logo, though he’d never heard of them. Seemed there were
a lot of them in these parts, but this one was different than others he’d seen.
For one thing it had been burned to the ground, cars lining up beside a trailer
they seemed to be serving from in the meanwhile.
Jon figured his friend must have been driving them
north for most the ride, probably more north than Jon had ever been. There was
snow on the ground, piled along the sidewalks they passed, and melting into
slush onto the roads that splashed high under passing tires. Jon had never seen
snow before, never even seen temperatures below twelve degrees.
He had been raised in Texas, his family still there
now: both his mother and father and likely newborn brother. He’d never get to
meet his brother, hadn’t seen his mom or dad in over six months now. Not since
they gave him to the government for help. Not since the experiments. Jon marked
that day on his mental calendar and watched over time as the days passed and
that date ever so slowly orbited him. His mental calendar surrounded him at all
times, one of the many perks of his abilities. He could always know what time
it was. What day. What year. He could even flip through his calendar like a
file folder, pulling out specific memories and viewing them like he was still
there.
But all his many abilities came with a price, mainly
the headaches like the one threatening to churn his stomach now. How long had
it been since he last swallowed the pills they used to give him? What would
happen when the drugs wore off?
“We’re there,” his female friend said, and Jon breathed
deeply trying to fight back his nausea. Pulling on the door handle as hard as
he could, Jon flopped out of the car, and threw up onto the curb. Hoping for
any relief from the throbbing in his head as he evacuated his stomach would
have been futile. His head pounded as he lifted it up and saw the two pills his
friend was handing to him. “Swallow these.”
Jon took the pills and stared at them nervously. “These
aren’t like the ones from the lab,” he observed, his brain imagining all kinds
of scary concoctions that could be within the pills she’d handed him.
“It’s Tylenol,” his friend told him. “I used to know
someone with your condition who would pop them with every meal.”
This wasn’t the first time Jon’s friend had mentioned
her friend, but she was consistently short on details. Like names. “Where is
your friend now?” Jon asked, tired of her restraint.
“Dead,” she said to him without seemingly any emotion,
and Jon suddenly didn’t want to swallow his pills. “Take them. They’ll help.”
He did so at last, his head hurting too much for him to
argue. “You know I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” he told her, “but
I’ve been on the road with you for nearly three days now and I don’t even know
your name.”
She shifted her weight, her eyes still darting all
about. There was something about her, from the moment Jon met her in that cell
he knew they had done something to her. Made her a little… feral. Fine. Let her have her secrets. Though why she’d saved him
in that cell, only to not trust him any step of the way, was beyond him.
“I don’t even know where you’ve taken me,” Jon said
quietly, quickly changing directions. She was rarely even this social, and once
she shut down again that would be it.
“We’re in Canada,” she told him, wrapping her puffy
jacket tightly against her. They’d been given their clothes by another friend
of hers. A woman who had actually given a name. What was it again? Melanie?
Talked about some sort of resistance, gave them a car and just sent them on
their way.
“I figured that part out for myself,” Jon said darkly, “when
we stopped and stashed your guns ten minutes before crossing the border.” Her
eyes centered on him, and it was strange how intimidating the shorter woman could
be, even as Jon had almost a foot on her.
“You’re frustrated,” His friend said, though Jon wasn’t
sure if she was asking a question or making a statement. “Until we’re sure
they’re not right on our tail, it’ll be better the less you know.” She nodded a
little as if assuring herself as much as him.
Jon was about to suggest all the ways that made no
sense but they were suddenly interrupted by a large portly woman with a big
smile. She was wearing a big fluffy Disney sweater and carrying a Tupperware
container of what looked like cookies.
“I heard you folks were moving in today,” she clamored
with a fake laugh as she tripped over something in the dark. “Whoopsy daisy.”
She mumbled something more in disdain, “The weeds on this lawn!” She looked at
them both through the dark and frowned. “Well you’re both pretty darn young now
arentcha. Where are your parents?”
Jon’s friend didn’t approach the woman, but stood very
still as if ready to pounce. “I’m his legal guardian,” she said coldly.
The new woman seemed a little unnerved, shifting the
container under her arm, she seemed about to ask the girl’s age when Jon
stepped in front. “My name’s J…”
Suddenly Jon’s friend interrupted him. “Mason.
Alexander.” Jon threw her a look, but her face was unreadable.
“Mason,” Jon told the woman. “Apparently. You heard we
were coming?”
The woman smiled a big scary smile. “Nothin’ happens in
this neighbourhood without my knowin’ about it,” She explained to them in such
a way that scared Jon a little. “I’m head of the neighbourhood watch here.
Carol Mendez.”
“You don’t look too Spanish,” Jon’s friend said
bluntly, still eyeing the older larger woman as a hunter would eye prey.
“It’s my husband’s name o’ course,” She said, reaching
out to hand Jon’s friend the Tupperware container. The girl didn’t want to grab
it. “His father was Mexican. I made these for you. Thought you’d get here a
little earlier.”
“It’s nearly two in the morning,” Jon’s friend said
suspiciously.
“One thirty eight,” Jon corrected her without looking
at a clock.
“Oh my,” Carol said, her warm smile permanently
plastered to her face. Even in the dark she seemed to glow. “I welcome every
new member to our neighbourhood. It’s my duty. Day or night.”
“Well thanks,” Jon’s friend said darkly, taking the
Tupperware container in a huff. “We feel very welcome. Hope you have a good night.”
“Oh of course,” Carol said with another disgustingly
warm smile. She turned to leave, but stopped suddenly. “I didn’t catch your
name, Miss?”
“Vicki Robinson,” Jon’s friend told Carol without a
thought.
“Beautiful name,” Carol told Vicki who seemed to smile
slightly (She never did that). Again Carol turned to leave (perhaps that had
been why) but again the woman stopped. “There is one other thing. How old did
you say you were?”
“Old enough,” Vicki said, her smile gone as if it had
never been there at all.
“I’m sixteen,” Jon told her. If nothing else, she
seemed harmless.
“You know,” Carol said, “I work in the office at the
local High School. Abbey Park, you might have heard of it.”
Vicki frowned, backing away from the woman and towards
the front door. “I haven’t,” she told the woman with disinterest.
The woman was determined. Most specifically, it seemed,
to not leave them alone. “I could start your application if you wish. Set
everything up to get you into classes and learning again as soon as possible.
My Pappi always said learn’n is half the battle. How’s that all sound to you?”
“Unnecessary,” Vicki said coldly to the large woman.
“Also your Pappi stole that from GI Joe.”
“I’ll do it,” Jon told Carol, it seemed to Vicki’s
disagreement. Unless he gave into this woman on something, Jon didn’t think
anything would get Carol’s nose out of their business.
“Splendid,” Carol told them, “Then I’ll see you Monday
morning.”
“In six hours,” Jon corrected her.
“I mean it,” She told them before making it back across
the lawn, “You’re both so very welcome to Oakville. The safest town in Canada.”
Jon turned around to finally view their new house for
the first time. It was more of a townhouse really, with a tiny front yard and
no driveway. At least it was two floors, Jon supposed, taking in the brick
building with thinly veiled frustration. “What are we even doing here?”
“We’re supposed to be hiding,” Vicki scolded him
quietly from a distance. “You absolutely can’t enroll there. You shouldn’t even
be seen by people when you can help it.”
Jon gestured to their new townhouse. “Might be a little
tough when we’re rubbing elbows with our neighbours,” he argued.
“And with Snoopy Gonzalez breathing down our necks,”
Vicki added with annoyance. She was still watching their backs, as if expecting
the woman to return in numbers.
“She’s not coming back,” he tried to assure her.
“She’ll be seeing me in the morning tomorrow.” He was actually a little excited
to be going back to school. Like a normal kid. He hadn’t actually ever been to
school before. His parents had home schooled him, right up until giving him
over.
Vicki crossed her arms. “And how do you expect to
enroll without proper identification?” she asked him, a question Jon supposed
he hadn’t considered yet. “More importantly what happens when you have another
episode?”
“If,” Jon corrected. “Maybe without all those drugs my
headaches will subside.”
Vicki didn’t say anything.
“If this is where I’m gonna be jailed for the rest of
time, should we maybe see the inside?” Jon asked, but his friend still didn’t
respond. “Vicki?”
“My name isn’t Vicki Robinson,” she told him, finally
moving to unlock the front door; an act that Jon supposed meant a yes to his
question.
“Are you serious?” Jon exaggerated angrily. “Everything
I know is a lie.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic,” not Vicki told him. “It’s…”
She seemed to need to think for a moment before finally saying “Erika Sannik.”
The look on her face told Jon that she hadn’t said her name in a very long
time. Who was “Vicki Robinson” that the name came to Erika faster than her own.
“If that’s even the real one this time,” Jon groaned out
loud, as he followed Vicki inside. The inside of their hideout was far more
comfortable than Jon had been expecting. The weeds in the lawn had suggested to
Jon a state of unkempt that the inside didn’t match remotely. The hardwood floors
were elegant and warm, and though there was no furniture to be seen, there was
a fire lit in the fireplace. Stairs led up, and there was a small kitchen past
the living room barely a room of its own.
“I got the floor,” Jon said, discouraged at the lack of
furniture. “Where are you going to sleep?”
Vicki, or was that Erika (Jon was having a hard time
keeping up), ignored what he just said. Instead she assured him, “It’s my real
name.” She stepped close to him, then, close enough that Jon could see her eyes
even in the dim moonlight through the window. “You can’t tell anyone. As far as
everyone else is aware, I’m Vicki and you’re Mason and that’s how things have
to stay.”
“Why?” Jon asked, searching her eyes as if they might
hold the secret somewhere within, “Do you have a plan?”
“That was the plan,” Erika told him. “It’s why I
brought you here. They’re not going to stop looking for us. We had to leave the
country and, even then, I don’t know if that was enough.”
“As far as plans go, that one seems a little simple. Why
here?” Jon asked, looking past Erika’s shoulder to the sleepy suburb outside.
“Why’d you choose Oakville of all places?”
“Didn’t you hear what Paula Deen said?” Erika asked
Jon, finally putting some distance between them to check the water pressure in
the kitchen. “This is the safest town in Canada.”
* *
*
Somewhere in Oakville, in a dark alley deep in the old
downtown district, a door opened. Mr. Moore hadn’t expected that door to be on
the second floor of a building, opening out into nothing, and he fell from that
door, landing harshly in a pile of garbage. Who would build a door like that?
Mr. Moore groaned. He was getting too old for all this
running and falling. He’d done a lot more of it in his youth, but had since
left Her Majesty’s Secret Service to retire in the US. Now he was in Canada, in
a sleepy city called Oakville. He’d never heard of the place before, but he was
there now for a reason. He had a message for Mayor Dixon.
Was his hand in a diaper?
Mr. Moore forced his creaky bones to get out of the
mess he’d landed in, wiping the doody off his sleeve onto the brick of the
nearest building. Looking up at the door he’d fallen from, he supposed there
could have once been a fire escape leading up to it, but it had long since been
removed. Probably in anticipation for Mr. Moore’s arrival, he supposed darkly.
Pulling out his cellphone, the elder British man tried
calling the number of his friend again, but still it just kept ringing. Why
wouldn’t the dumbass answer his phone? Was it already too late? Moore had to
warn him; had to stop him from falling into their trap. And he had to move.
They would be coming through the door soon. They would be after him, and he’d
need to be long gone.
Or were they already there? There was a shuffle from
deeper in the alley, in the darkness Moore’s eyes couldn’t pierce. He drew his
gun, his trusty SIG Sauer P230, and pointed it at the darkness. There was no
way a full grown human was hiding there. The shape seemed smaller. And was it
crying?
“Hello there?” Moore said in his deep accent, turning
on the flashlight on his phone and raising it to just under his small pistol.
The light landed softly on the outline of a little boy, shivering against the
alley wall. It was cold that night. Cooler than where Mr. Moore had just been.
Cold enough that his hands were starting to ache. “Are you alright boy?”
“No,” the boy said in a strained voice. “I’m hungry.”
He couldn’t have been older than four years, a small little thing clinging to
life.
“Where are your parents?” Moore asked. He didn’t have
time for this. He had to deliver his warning before it was too late. The entire
world depended on it. Only HE knew the entire truth, the pieces that both sides
were missing. He had to tell Dixon or everything they’d been working towards
since he’d met the man a decade ago would all have been for nothing.
“I don’t know,” The boy said. “I’ve lost them. Would
you help me find them?”
Mr. Moore lowered his gun and started dialing on his
phone. “Alright, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll dial the authorities and they
will come take care of you. Then I’ll be on my way. I’m a very busy man.”
“No!” The boy hissed. “Stay with me. Please.” The boy
inched closer to Mr. Moore, keeping still only just enough distance so that
Moore couldn’t see his face. “I’m scared,” he whispered. “And so so
hungry."
“I have something here,” the elder man said, reaching
into his blazer for a granola bar he’d stashed there earlier. He knelt down and
held the bar out for the child. “There’s really no use to fear now boy, come
out here.”
The boy inched closer, the light illuminating his eyes
as he fixated on Mr. Moore’s hand.
“It’s alright my boy,” Moore said softly, “completely
safe to eat.”
“You promise?” The boy asked, coming a little further
from the shadows and grabbing not the granola bar but Moore’s outstretched
hand.
“What are you on about?” Mr. Moore asked, pulling the
boy out from the shadows and into the light. “Let me see you boy!”
In the light, the elder gentleman could see the boy was
pale, a skinny naked little thing. And his teeth, long and sharp, glistening
white in the moonlight.
“My god,” Mr. Moore said. “What are you?”
The boy pulled Moore’s hand towards him and screamed.
“I’m HUNGRY!” he said loudly biting down on Moore’s wrist. Mr. Moore screamed
as the shock gave way to pain. Was the boy drinking?
Still screaming, Mr. Moore tried to get to his feet and
pull the boy with him, but the boy held him in place with disproportionate
strength, ripping messily at the old man’s skin. Blood smeared down the boy’s
face, drenched his hair, as he drunk deeply.
Mr. Moore could feel his energy draining away, his
muscles turning to soup as his life juice sloshed around his knees. With one
desperate attempt he tried to pull his gun and point it at the kid – nay the
monster. He had to get away, had to tell Dixon what he knew. Dixon had to know
he was heading into a trap.
The boy grabbed Moore’s gun hand, and twisted it with a
mechanical like grip, breaking Moore’s hand clean at the wrist. Mr. Moore tried
to scream even louder than before, but he was getting ever so weaker. Drowning
down down into the darkness of the alley. He wasn’t going to be giving his
message to Dixon or to anyone.
He was going to die with doody on his sleeve.
* *
*
“There are legends as old as written history of a time
when another force on this planet was as plentiful as gravity,” Joseph Dixon
told Hana Lin though she couldn’t have given less of a shit. “This force could
be manipulated by certain talented individuals and they named their source of
power magic.”
Why did he choose to talk now? Hana had been watching
the rotors spinning for over an hour as their helicopter glided rather noisily
over the snowy landscape. She’d hoped they were just making a short jaunt to
Toronto and back again for dinner, but that was too optimistic. She should have
known better, really, once they’d met up with the armed military helicopter now
escorting them.
“Shut up,” Hana told her boss. She was furious now,
stirring in her silky soft and warm leather seat. “Seriously. Unless the next
words out of your mouth are where the hell we’re going, I don’t want to hear
it.”
The mayor opened his mouth to speak but Hana cut him
off, “I’m not done.” She unfastened her seatbelt so she could straighten and be
more menacing. Being a shorter Asian woman in her forties, Hana knew she wasn’t
the most intimidating person ever, but still she would have her say. “It’s been
three months since your weird experiment that swarmed our city with bees.”
She never did find out what happened. He’d done some
experiment in a tower that put the whole town at risk, and culminated with the
whole tower coming down on him. “Now I never said anything then,” she reminded
him. “I stuck with you as your assistant, and never asked questions.” She
raised her voice to repeat, “Three months. It’s felt like years. We got a new
Star Wars, it’s been so long.”
“Suddenly tonight,” Hana continued, and she could see
Joseph shrink in his seat, “you tell me to cancel my dinner plans with my
family to follow you god knows where for god knows why. It’s too late to start
explaining things to me Mr. Dixon. Just tell me where we’re going or let me off
here.” She realized, of course after she’d said it, that her threat was
somewhat emptier in a helicopter than it was in a car.
“I was trying to get to that,” Mr. Dixon told her,
clearing his throat. “It’s just a little complicated.”
“Complicated,” Hana said, her mind exploding in
disbelief. “What’s so complicated about a location? Washington DC? Argentina?”
She leaned close to him and added in a bemused whisper, “Is it Pandora?”
“That’s not a real place,” The mayor said, frowning
while tightening his tie against the collar of his suit. His dark brown eyes
behind that once boyish face were clearly getting frustrated with her. “It’s
less important where we’re going so much as what we’re looking for.”
“Unobtanium?” Hana interrupted. She’d been watching a
lot of science-fiction lately since her boss seemed to be living the genre.
“It’s nothing from Avatar,” he told her.
“Of course not,” Hana said. “You’d probably name it
after you. Like Dixonade. Or Dixonite.”
The mayor frowned deeper this time, something Hana
didn’t think possible, and he loosened the tie he had only just tightened. “Did
someone tell you about Dixonite?”
“Oh my god,” Hana said in faux realization. “That’s a
thing, isn’t it?”
“Nothing to do with where we’re going,” Mayor Dixon
insisted. “Now can I talk or is it still your turn?” Hana exhaled deeply but
sat back down and let the mayor continue. “Thank you. Now perhaps you should
know, before going forward, that I am a time traveller from the early nineteen
hundreds.”
“I figured that out for myself actually,” Hana said,
proud that she knew far more than he thought she did. “I’ve read Thomas
Edison’s journal.” The mayor of Oakville had once been friends with the famous
engineer. Well, ‘friends’ was pushing it. Dixon had used Edison’s friendship to
help him build a machine to time travel into the future. Dixon left Edison in
his dust, disappearing somewhere Edison’s anger would never catch up to him:
The 70s.
Though outrageous and unbelievable, Hana had given the
topic much thought over the months and come to the conclusion it would be much
easier and more believable to travel forward in time than it was to travel
back. Perhaps Dixon had himself frozen or something, that was a concept Hana
could wrap her head around. But why, when he tried again, did it almost destroy
the whole town?
Dixon continued on unfettered. “Well you’re not the
only person who knows I’m a time traveller. When I came out from the time
dilation there were people waiting for me. They’d calculated where I would show
up many years before my arrival.”
“Why?”
“You see,” Dixon explained, “their founder was once
told a prophecy long ago that a time traveler from the past would show up in
the middle of a modern urban district, and with his death the Tempus Cult would
bring magic back to the world. That man who gave that prophecy then went on to
found the very cult he prophesized, and they went from prophecy to history in
the blink of an eye.”
There was that word ‘Magic’ again. He’d said it
earlier, but she’d let it slide that time. Was this really what it was like
working in politics? Childish men chasing around childish pursuits? Meanwhile
his city was dealing with very real issues, concerns Mr. Dixon didn’t seem too
interested in discussing with her.
The mayor was staring at her intently now. “Say
something,” he said, breaking the short silence. “I can’t tell what you’re
thinking when you look at me like that.”
“I’m thinking this was a really dumb reason to miss
dinner with my family.”
The helicopter blades chopped the air angrily as the
craft tilted to the side, making a wide turn. Hana’s stomach lurched at the
motion. She wasn’t used to being on a helicopter. Only done it maybe twice in
her life. Certainly never for this long.
“We’re almost there,” the mayor told her, noticing her
nervous glance out the window. “And you wouldn’t think all this so dumb if
you’d seen what I’d seen.”
“Magic?” Hana repeated the word before he could. She
might have been more than a little skeptical.
“What do you think?” Hana asked the well-dressed
security agent sitting beside the mayor.
The security guard startled at her addressing him, and
she had to suspect that no one had ever done that before. “Uh, what?” he asked
in a deep voice. He had an onyx black tie similar to Joseph Dixon’s, and blonde
hair greased all the way back.
“What he just said,” Hana insisted of the guard
incredulously. “You’re just okay with it all? Magic I mean?”
“What?” The guard repeated. “I’m sorry I wasn’t paying
attention.”
Hana looked back to Mr. Dixon incredulously. “How much
do you pay this guy?”
“Enough not to pay attention,” the mayor told her. “All
my security staff is very well compensated.” As he spoke the words, the
helicopter started to drop. Another lurch in her stomach.
Out the window Hana could see a large crater in the
ground, it looked man made, and was littered with lights and equipment like the
dig site of a major excavation. She couldn’t make out much in the dark of
night, besides the little illumination provided by the few spotlights left on.
“That’s it there,” Joseph Dixon said, leaning in close
to look out the same window.
“Oh yippee,” Hana managed to say with no enthusiasm.
Joseph Dixon was watching Hana’s face, seemingly trying
to read her emotions. It was getting very annoying.
“You’re angry. And confused.”
“No fucking shit,” Hana told her boss.
“I felt the same way,” He said, leaning back in his
seat. “When I stepped from the early nineteen hundreds into the later, I had no
clue what to expect. But it certainly wasn’t a welcoming committee. It wasn’t a
hundred men armed with swords and axes and guns and weapons I couldn’t even
describe.” Dixon was looking at Hana but his eyes seemed to be looking more
past her.
“They had set up in the ruins of Edison’s building,”
Dixon explained to her, remembering back. “They arranged themselves in a
formation, trying to create some form of ritual.” He laughed quietly under his
breath. “I don’t even think they knew what they were doing. That became
abundantly clear when it didn’t work.”
“What didn’t work?” Hana asked, starting to kick
herself for letting him draw her into his tale.
“What they were trying to accomplish,” Dixon said, his
eyes seeming unfocused as he continued, “whatever it was they wanted to do
didn’t work. The spell. After all their planning and calculating. They said
their words and cut my skin until my blood flowed free. And yet nothing glowed.
No sparks shot out their ass. So disappointed were they, that I was able to
cause a big exploding distraction and run for my life.” He finished removing
the wrapper from a lozenge and popped it in his mouth to soothe a weary voice.
“To be honest, I’ve been running ever since.”
There was a jolt of the craft as the helicopter’s
treads touched down on the dirt beside the excavation. Dixon didn’t seem in a
hurry to open the door, even as the rotors slowed.
“Why run us here?” Hana asked him.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking these past number of
decades,” Dixon explained to her. Oh god, another long winded explanation. “And
I don’t think a real prophecy is something told only once. I think truly
influential events can ripple all over the past and future like waves,
influencing sensitive types into predicting things, or remembering the past. I
have been searching everywhere for more evidence of the prophecy that led the
Tempus cult to my whereabouts in the nineteen seventies.”
“Why does it matter?” Hana asked, having a hard time
keeping up with her boss’s admittedly tricky motivations.
It seemed Dixon was going to try a different tack. “Do
you know what the Pythagorean Theorem is?”
“Of course,” Hana said sarcastically. “He believed all
men were descendants from apes or elves or something, and magic stuff.” The
mayor smirked, and Hana supposed she’d take that as a victory.
“It’s not a theory or belief,” Dixon told her, though
she figured the title was therefore misleading. “It’s a universal constant.
That the square of the hypotenuse of a triangle is equal to the sum of the
squares of the other two sides.”
“Is that Algebra?” Hana asked.
Dixon nodded and then shook his head before saying, “It
can be. More geometry I suppose. But when Pythagoras came up with his theorem,
he didn’t know that it would be useful for something that had very little to do
with triangles. It would be used to calculate the distance of far away
astronomical bodies like stars and asteroids. And all you need is a protractor.”
Hana had to admit, the mayor was losing her.
“Sometimes the solution to a thing can be found not by
looking at the thing,” He told her, continuing to talk, “but at the surrounding
factors. That’s been my approach to figure out this prophecy. Instead of
studying just their prediction I’d rather try to calculate the sum of its other
two sides so to speak.”
It appeared they had taken too long, as the door of the
helicopter opened quite on its own. The spinning rotors had already come to a
stop. Dammit, Joseph had failed to get to his point in time. Namely specifics
on why they were there.
The man opening the door was hunched over, with reddish
skin and short gray hair. In the cold, his face almost looked like a tomato.
And when he spoke it was with a thick Cockney accent. “Mister Mayor,” he said
with a smile and his hand on offer.
Mayor Dixon looked at the man’s offered hand
suspiciously. “I don’t recognize you.” He told the man.
The man made a strange guttural noise under his breath.
“Oh, but aye recognize you, Mister Mayor.” He didn’t move his hand away. “Aye
was the one who contacted you about the foind. The name’s Christopher Dalish.”
When it didn’t seem like the mayor was going to take
his hand, Hana stepped in. Shaking it, she introduced herself. “My name is Hana
Lin, and I’m the mayor’s assistant.” He had a firm shake, his hand blistered.
Perhaps from digging?
“Aye’m the caretaker here,” he told her.
She smiled, letting go of his hand, and brushing hers
against her pants suit. “You said you contacted him about something?”
Dalish looked her over, seeming to judge her, but on
what she couldn’t tell. “You said you’re ‘es assistant?” the old man asked her
in his thick accent. “’ow much is it exactly that ‘es told you?”
Hana wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but she picked
her response very carefully. “He told me about the prophecy,” she told him.
He nodded, backing out of the helicopter. “You’ll
probably wan’ ta see it then,” he told her, beckoning for them to come with
him. “Along now, come come. It’s safe.”
Hana looked to Mayor Dixon who could only shrug, his
face a mix of emotion. “Ladies first,” He told her.
She stepped off the helicopter, the security man stepping
off behind her and confirming that the area was clear. They had landed close to
the lip of the crater, a path leading off nearby to wind around the side of the
crater all the way down to the large flat bottom. Crates of equipment and tents
and tables were all littered about somewhat without obvious organization.
“There’s no one else ‘ere now,” Christopher Dalish
called to her from the lip of the crater where he was grabbing something from a
table. “They’ve all gone ‘ome for the noight.”
A different voice surprised Hana from behind. “I have
had agents scouring the world looking for more prophecies like the Tempus one,”
Mayor Dixon told Hana in a whisper as he joined her outside the helicopter.
“We’re here because I think I’ve finally found one before they did.” He raised
an eyebrow to the caretaker Dalish, and they joined him at the lip of the
crater.
The crater went down for several stories below them,
the path winding multiple times. And carved into the walls of the crater
appeared to be numerous makeshift doors. “Where do those doors lead?” Hana
asked the caretaker.
“Merely deeper into the excavation,” the caretaker
Dalish told them. “But aye believe your real interest is in this here. Look.”
He raised a stone tablet from the table in front of them and handed it to Hana.
The tablet was only slightly larger than an iPad,
though considerably thicker. On it was painted a story, almost like a comic
book told with stick figures. “It’s art,” Hana told Dixon, letting him see the
tablet face. “Not even particularly good art. My daughter can draw better than
this.”
“Aye would ‘ope so, Missus Lin,” the caretaker said to
her dismissively. “Our specialists have come to believe this moight ‘ave been
drawn by a three ‘ear old. Somethin’ ta do with tha longer shallow cuts on the
stones. By a weaker, less experienced ‘and.”
“We’ve ‘ad some of tha smartest archaeological moinds
studyin’ these’n drawin’s day an’ noight for week’s now an’ they think they got
tha jist a it.” He pointed to the first picture with his fat blistered finger.
“Now they say this ‘ere was a great n’ powerful man, big head mean ‘es really
smart, roight.”
“And ‘es a toime traveler, come to a toime with big
stone tents. See the tents. Bu’ ‘e doesn’t come alone.” The man said, and his
voice seemed to darken. Was it just Hana, or did Christopher seem a little too invested
in this story. Almost as much as her boss, who seemed to be hanging on every
word. “‘e brings with em chaos and demons, roight, horrible monsters and
things.”
Dalish took the tablet back from Hana to point out the
last part. “And it’s only on e’s death, roight, that peace is finally found,
and magic is restored aw-ll throughout the land.”
There was that word again. “Magic,” Hana repeated.
“Yes,” Dalish said, “Do keep up.”
Hana didn’t like the attitude this old man was starting
to take with them. Even less did she like the new shade of pale white her boss
was turning. This story was realizing all his fears. But it was just a story
right? “It took your experts countless days and nights to translate all this?”
she asked the man rhetorically. “Because I’m no expert, but just by looking at
this thing I can guess there’s supposed to be another page before it. Look at
that jagged edge on the left while all the other edges are smooth.”
Dixon looked at her impressed, but the caretaker
frowned. She supposed he wasn’t used to being challenged by a woman. “Yes,” he
confirmed for them. “There ees another tablet.” Hana was starting to place the
man’s accent.
Excellent. Perhaps that would have something Hana could
use to convince her boss the story wasn’t about him. “Can we get our hands on
it?”
“Aye can take you to it,” Dalish told them, beckoning
again for them to follow him, this time down the path to the bottom of the
crater. They did as they were told, almost automatically especially as Hana
could see her boss was deep in thought. “It’s down ‘ere.”
They followed the winding path, passing from shadow to
shadow in the dimly lit crater. Their feet crunched noisily against the snow
with each step, and Hana only finally realized just how cold it had gotten. She
wrapped her jacket tightly against her, but it did little to keep out the cold.
A snowflake fell and landed on Hana’s cheek. It was starting to snow again.
There was a blizzard said to be coming north.
Dixon seemed oblivious to it all, barely putting one
foot in front of another. “You shouldn’t be so worried,” Hana told her boss. “Just
because somebody say’s something doesn’t necessarily make it true.” Dixon
didn’t respond, and his nodding didn’t do much to convince Hana he’d even heard
her.
Hana got a closer look at one of the doors as they
passed. It almost looked like a stage door, obviously erected by the
excavators, and Hana could barely make out the edges of the walls around each
door, old and sculpted. Definitely man made caves.
“How old is this settlement?” Hana asked the caretaker
as she stepped over a large wire that led power to a computer terminal set up
along the side of the canyon. They were still only half way through their descent.
The caretaker looked over his shoulder with a “Hmm?”
but clearly heard what she’d asked, for he then immediately answered, “We’ve
‘ad some preliminary carbon dating come back suggestin’ somethin’ upwards’a
fifty thousand ‘ears ago.”
“Fifty thousand?” Hana repeated. “That’s before
recorded history.”
Christopher chuckled in just such a way to put Hana on
edge. “These tablets we found ‘ould beg to differ.”
Christopher picked up his pace, and as the distance
between them greatened, Joseph tried to whisper a warning to Hana. “I know
every agent that works under me. Everyone who has clearance to know the truth
about me, that’s a very limited pool. And I know everyone in it.”
“You sure?” Hana asked. “You didn’t know the extent of
what I knew an hour ago.”
“I know I’ve never seen him before,” Joseph told his
assistant. She started to slow.
“So what are you saying?” Hana asked, so quietly she
might have mouthed it. Still Christopher Dalish seemed to hear everything,
something he made very clear as they reached the bottom.
“It’s a peculiar thing, not remembering me. Especially
when aye remember you Miista Mayor,” Christopher said to them. “Aye remember
chasin’ after me own tail for decades while you just disappeared. Of course it
hasn’t taken this entire time to find you. We did that sometime afore the
millennium.”
The circumstances were starting to become alarmingly
real for Hana, as she pieced certain things together in her head. “You’re a
member of the Tempus Cult,” she said out loud, wondering if they had just
wandered into a trap. She was starting to feel cold, and she didn’t think it
was from the wind that had picked up.
“No,” Christopher said, lying to their faces.
“Yes you are,” Dixon said, and he nodded to his
security agent who pulled his gun from inside his jacket.
“No,” Christopher repeated, “I’m not. I’m the founder.”
Dixon’s security agent raised his gun on Christopher, who suddenly had two
daggers in his hand. Where he’d just pulled them from, Hana didn’t see, but he threw
them effortlessly through the air. One struck the agent in the hand, knocking
his gun free, while the other slid neatly into his chest.
Hana screamed, and looked back to Christopher Dalish to
see a sword suddenly in his hands. Again, where he pulled it from was a mystery
to Hana, but he spun into a flurry of motion slicing the agent’s head clean
from his body in one swift move.
Hana screamed again. Her time working at a hospital
couldn’t have prepared her for watching someone die in violence right in front
of her. Frozen, Hana could feel Dixon’s hand pressing against her shoulder. He
was trying to keep himself between her and Dalish, but what good would it do?
She could see the doors all around the excavation. They were all opening, and
Dalish’s men were pouring out to surround the two Oakville politicians.
Christopher Dalish, founder of the Tempus cult, pointed
his sword at the two of them. “Becoming Mayor. Now tha’ was smart,” he said,
chuckling a little as if all his struggles were coming to an end. “Making
yourself a public figure, of course we couldn’t attack you in tha open.
Couldn’t risk being outted before we were ready. Not when we’d been operating
in tha shadows for nearly a ‘undred years.”
“So we gave you your day,” Dalish continued, “but now
the day is moine. Ay’m afraid you’ll ‘ave ta be comin with us.”
Hana watched the mayor look around the site. “I’d ask ‘You
and what army?’” Dixon said to Dalish, “but I think you’ve already made that
abundantly clear.” Hana Lin could try to count how many men had poured out from
all the doors to surround them, but she couldn’t imagine they had enough time
for her to finish. They weren’t all necessarily male, but they WERE all armed
with the same black club-like stun batons, each flaring to life with a spark as
the mayor talked. There was more than a hundred. Maybe as many as a thousand.
Hana was starting to wonder if she would ever see her
family again. It seemed her survival now depended on her being able to keep
everyone talking. “Did the other piece of the tablet even exist?” she asked
Dalish. “Or has this whole thing been for nothing.”
“Oh, it’s awll been for nothin’ Missus Lin,” Christopher
Dalish told her, his voice reaching a new gravelly low. “Everythin’ is ay’m
afraid. But yea’ tha tablets real. Aye can tell you want ta see it, and ay’m
gonna take great pleasure in keeping it from your boss, as he’s kept me from
what aye want for awll this toime.” Hana noticed, as Dalish talked about the
tablet, he glanced to a nearby table set up under a tarp. She could tell Joseph
Dixon had noticed it as well.
“I haven't taken anything from you that wasn't mine to
begin with,” Dixon spoke sternly to the cult leader who found nothing but glee
in the mayor’s defence. He reached into his jacket with both hands and pulled
out something. Multiple things, were those guns of his own? Dixon came armed?
Why didn’t Hana get a gun?
Wait. Hana didn’t want a gun.
“Don’t do somethin’ stupid now,” the cult founder said
to Dixon, a dumb smirk still wide on his lips. “You’re out numbered.”
“And you brought clubs and swords to a gunfight,” the
mayor told them, turning slowly to sweep his pistols in every direction. The
men Christopher Dalish had brought with him were all dressed in thick black
robes that billowed menacingly in the dark. Not one of them flinched.
“Who do you plan to shoot first, Miista Mayor. Is it
him?” Dalish pointed to one of his men. “Or her?” Hana wasn’t sure how he could
tell which was a girl, they all looked like androgynous robes to her.
“I was thinking that whole row,” Dixon said, waving his
guns to their right.
Dalish took a step toward Dixon. They were only maybe
ten feet apart. “If you think you’re getting out a here not belongin’ ta me,”
Dalish said to Dixon softly with what seemed to be the limits of his patience, “means
yer more delusional than Donald Trump.”
Dixon cleared his throat before saying with conviction,
“It’s my life, and I’m not done with it yet.” There was a soft click from the
walkie talkie at the mayor’s belt. Was Hana the only one that heard that? What
did it mean? Dixon pointed his pistols to the right and said “Bang.” He didn’t
pull the trigger.
He didn’t have to, for the sound of thunder exploded
above them and the whole row was sweeped off their feet by explosive machine
gun fire. Hana screamed, quite against her will, and quite at the top of her
lungs. But the chopping sounds of the military helicopter was louder as it
soared over the lip of the canyon, and the machine gunner opened fire on the
circle of cultists. The helicopter had only one major gun, attached to the
side. Hana could just make out other men with smaller arms around the gunner,
backing him up.
The machine gunner made swiss cheese of the surrounding
men, bloody mists spraying up where once people stood. Beside Hana, Joseph
Dixon was shooting too. A robed cultist was getting close, and Dixon picked him
off square between the eyes. The man dropped in front of Hana, oh god was that
a woman?
“Get them!” Hana heard Dalish yell at his men over the
sound of her own screams. “Take the mayor alive at all costs!” It seemed he
gave up at that point, and began to move in on Dixon himself. Joseph Dixon
turned both pistols on the cult leader and began to let loose. Dalish’s sword
was a flurry of motion, swinging it back and forth across his chest, and just
like that Dixon’s pistols were empty and Dalish was still standing there. Did
he just block every shot with his sword?
“You’re pretty good with that,” Dixon said, stating the
obvious. He didn’t have time to reload.
Dalish was almost on top of them and yelled at them with
glee, “I’m going to enjoy this.”
Suddenly Hana heard gunfire from above them, and Dalish
had to flail around with his sword again, this time holding off the sustained
fire from an automatic weapon. It seemed a little harder for him, thank god,
and he started to pull back.
Dixon quickly reloaded both his guns, slipping his
pistols into one hand to place the other on Hana’s mouth. She only just
realized she was still screaming. He let go of her mouth and Hana took a large
breath. Behind them one of the cultists was shooting up at the helicopter with
a pistol, and suddenly his leg was taken clear off by machine gun fire.
Hana screamed again.
“We have to get that tablet!” Dixon yelled at Hana over
the excitement happening around them. He fired shots around her and Hana’s ears
rang.
“What?” She yelled at him, surprised a little that she
wasn’t already dead.
“Come on,” he seemed to say, though Hana could only see
his lips forming the words. Her mind couldn’t comprehend. Her legs were moving
but she didn’t quite know how, and each step was like a labourous attempt not
to trip and fall on her face.
Was she ever going to see her family again? Hana
started to cry.
“Oh don’t do that,” Dixon told her. “I need you to
carry the tablet.”
“Why?” she begged him, keeping up if only to hear his
answer.
“Because I’m busy shooting people!” Dixon yelled back, opening
fire on three cultists charging them. Hana could hear Christopher yelling at
his men to “Ignore the helicopter!” but most of them didn’t seem to be paying
him much mind.
One cultist got close enough to hit Dixon with his
club, and Dixon spasmed from the electricity. His gun was pointed at the
cultist’s head but he couldn’t seem able to pull the trigger. He was shaking
violently, pain very evident on his face. Hana couldn’t take seeing him like
that.
She hit the cultist in the arm, slapping the club away.
“Stop that,” she told him, sounding more like a scolding mom than she’d
intended. Joseph Dixon pulled the trigger on his gun and Hana was sprayed with
the man’s viscera as he dropped. She whimpered.
“He’s all over me,” she raved to Dixon, starting to
peel off her clothes. “My husband can’t see me like this.”
“Thank you, Misses Lin.” Dixon annunciated clearly,
grabbing her by the collar and stopping her in her tracks. “You saved my life.”
She nodded deliriously. “The table,” he said slowly, leading her attention to
where the other piece of the tablet lay. So close now. “Come on.”
Hana didn’t hear him but followed him dutifully. “I
don’t want to die like this,” she muttered under her breath. What if in heaven
you were stuck in the clothes you died in? What was she thinking? A man had
just died. On her.
They made it to the table and Dixon put one of his guns
down to reach for the tablet when a sword got in the way.
“You can’t have that,” Christopher Dalish spoke to
Dixon angrily. Dixon tried to bring his remaining pistol on the cult leader,
but Dalish easily slapped the gun away. “I need you alive,” he told the mayor,
“But I can still cut off a few limbs.” Christopher started to spin his sword
violently, swinging it in circles around him, and slicing so close to Dixon’s
arm that he cut free part of the mayor’s sleeve.
Hana’s eyes dropped to the table, and seeing her chance
she grabbed the tablet off the makeshift surface and with all her might she
smashed the stone into the back of Christopher’s head. The cult founder dropped
like a sack of bricks.
“Hey!” Dixon yelled, spinning around and putting his
finger in her face. “Careful with that.”
She hugged it tightly to her body, whimpering again.
“This is your fault,” she accused him, as an explosion went off somewhere
behind her. “Get us out of here!” She was shrieking, and not sure if Joseph
could understand her, but she didn’t care. “And when this is all over I QUIT.”
Joseph Dixon either understood her, or he’d had a
similar idea, for he pulled his walkie talkie from his belt and pushed the
button. “I need an evac,” he said into the black brick. It looked like
something out of the nineties.
A voice immediately came back through. “LZ is too hot,”
said a female voice. “Can you get to the top of the excavation?” Hana’s gaze
traced its way back up the winding path to the top of the excavation. There was
no way.
“We’ll see you there in five minutes,” Dixon told them,
putting away the walkie.
“Are you insane,” she shrieked again, tears streaming
down her face. “We can’t make it all the way back up there. They’re going to
kill us.”
“No, Misses Lin. They want me alive,” Dixon told her,
though it wasn’t very reassuring. “Just hold onto that and stay close to me.”
He dropped one of his pistols, reloading the other and grabbing a stun baton
off a nearby body. “Lets go!”
Hana Lin took one last look at Dalish on the ground,
and noticed him stir. Dixon was right. It would probably be best if she stuck
close to him. Taking off after him across the clearing, she tripped over the
robes of a body, and fell face first. Dixon didn’t even notice, too busy
struggling with a cult member. His stun baton slapped against the man’s, and
Dixon was able to bring up his gun high enough to shoot two other cultists over
the first guy’s shoulder.
Surprised, the first cultist tried to grab Dixon’s gun,
but the mayor jabbed his stun baton into the man’s chest and electrocuted him.
Already shaken, Dixon smacked the man across the face with the thing, and the
man dropped.
Hana managed to catch up, and they started up the path
that wrapped around the excavation. The helicopter was still covering them
above, circling and firing down on the cultists many of whom now had guns and
were shooting back.
Hana was never going to make it to the top. She was
already out of breath.
“I understand you’re mad,” Mayor Dixon called back to
Hana as she forced her legs to keep up with him. “I should be paying you hazard
pay. I’m going to pay you hazard pay. And a big Christmas bonus next December.”
He smacked a cultist away from him, and the man fell off the path to the
clearing below. “What I’m saying is I really hope you decide against quitting.
I really value you as my assistant.”
Hana noticed a door near them open and more men started
piling out onto the path. “You’re telling me this now?” she screamed at her
boss. The helicopter opened up on the side of the excavation, taking out the
doorway and all the guys coming through. “You assume we’re going to live
through this?” she argued with him, her anger towards him giving her some
inexplicable strength to go on.
Dixon pulled her after him and muttered, “I thought
that went without saying.”
Hana couldn’t think straight with all the dying around
her. The tablet was heavy in her hands, and she clutched it tightly as if it
were the only thing keeping her alive. She had to get back to her husband. He
couldn’t raise their kids on his own. “Life insurance!” she screamed to the
mayor.
A shot ricocheted nearby, and Hana quickly ducked her
head. “That’s what it’s going to take. I need to know my family will be well
looked after.”
Joseph Dixon pointed to the tablet. “You literally have
my salvation in your hands,” he told her. “My list of friends is getting
shorter every day, and all the while my enemies grow. Help me not die, and I’ll
do the same for you. And I’ll make sure your family are very well taken care
of.”
A door they passed opened, and a number of men inside
started to pile out carrying weapons. Hana thought she could see behind them
into what looked like an armory room. Mayor Dixon electrocuted the closest
person to him, and pushed the cultists back through the doorway. He closed the
door and they started off again for the top. A strange quiet behind caused Hana
to turn, and out of some bizarre curiosity she opened the door. The armory was
gone, and inside was just an empty cave.
“Leave that door open,” the mayor called down to her,
watching from above at what she’d just seen. “Open as many doors on the way as
you can so they can’t get through.”
“I don’t understand,” Hana yelled at her boss,
following dutifully behind him as he opened a nearby door and kept going.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he assured back at
her. “It’s magic. It’s un-understandable.”
“What?” Hana shrieked, as the mayor pushed for the top.
A soldier from the helicopter circling over the mayor’s shoulder was shot, and
he fell out down into the clearing below. She could only imagine that being
her, falling and falling away from ever seeing her family again. She closed her
eyes, allowing herself to be led.
When she opened her eyes once more, the two of them had
made it to the top.
“Great,” Hana said, looking around at the ruins of the
helicopter they’d come in on. “Where do we go now?” As she spoke she felt
stupid, for a rope ladder dropped almost perfectly beside Mayor Dixon. He
pointed up and she frowned. “Right.”
“Shit,” he said, noticing something below and raising
his gun. “They’ve got a rocket launcher.” Sure enough, someone on the path just
below them was aiming some kind of missile launching weapon at the attack
helicopter over Hana’s head. Dixon fired a shot at the man but the shot missed.
“How many more of those have you got?” Hana asked the
mayor but he ignored her.
He took a deep breath and aimed a second time, firing a
shot that missed yet again. “Dammit,” he said, in a calm voice. “Start climbing
without me.” He started for the edge.
“Where are you going?” Hana yelled after him but it was
in vain as he jumped off the edge to the path below, shooting down at the
cultist with the launcher before hitting the ground seemingly hard. He was
obviously winded, but motioned for Hana to keep going. She was about to comply
when a hand grabbed the stone tablet still firmly in her grasp.
It was Dalish.
“That’s not yours to take Missus Lin,” the cult leader
said, his voice rough like sand paper. His grip might as well have been
mechanical, as Hana Lin’s struggles were in vain. All she could do was hold on tightly
herself. He tried wrenching it from her hands but she wouldn’t let go. He
frowned. “Stop.”
Hana didn't immediately notice the fluttering of the
rope ladder beside her, but she did notice the large man land beside from the
helicopter above. It was one of the military escorts, carrying a very large gun
that he quickly pointed at Dalish.
“Let go of the mission critical,” the soldier ordered
the cultist with a firm voice. Above him, the helicopter gunner continued to
unload on the onslaughting masses. Bullet casings fell like rain.
“That's not ‘ow this is gonna play out,” Dalish said
slowly. The soldier didn't hesitate to pull the trigger, but Dalish was faster.
He knocked the gun aside so that the shot ricocheted harmlessly away, while
keeping his other hand firmly on Hana’s tablet. The soldier took one hand off
his rifle to punch at Dalish, but Dalish
was fast enough to slap the soldier’s fist aside and kick him back.
This was her chance. While Dalish was distracted Hana
pulled on the stone tablet as hard as she could, but still he wouldn’t let go. Out
of frustration she began wailing on his chest with one hand. “Let go!” she
insisted of him. “Let go let go!”
The soldier
raised his gun to shoot, now beyond reach for Dalish to hit. That wasn’t about
to stop the cult leader, however, as he slapped Hana across the face so hard
she saw stars, and stumbled. She’d never been hit that hard by anyone in her
life, and she could even swear she heard her brain rattle in its skull. Still
she didn’t let go.
The slack was enough, however, for Dalish to stretch
out, grab the soldier’s gun, and yank it straight from his hands. Dalish hit
the soldier with the butt of his own gun, then threw the rifle aside. Hana was still
hitting the man in the chest, but it didn’t seem to be doing her any good. The
soldier charged at Dalish looking for a fist fight and Dalish with one hand
held his ground.
Hana didn’t know how he did it all without letting go of
the tablet, but Dalish blocked multiple punches from the soldier, striking out
with an elbow to crack the soldier across the jaw, before continuing with his
momentum to backhand both Hana and the soldier in one swing. It stung hard
again, but Hana was braced for it. Dalish tried to pull the stone tablet free,
but Hana still wouldn’t let go.
He yanked hard and she stumbled forward but held tight.
Grabbing the tablet with both hands she yanked back with all her might, and
Dalish used the extra momentum to hit the soldier with a well-placed punch.
Clearly disoriented, the soldier swung for a heavy hit of his own, but Dalish
pulled Hana between them and the soldier caught her hard in the ribs. She could
hear a crack and immediately the pain was like fire.
Hana screamed until the pain in her chest made her stop.
Beside her, Dalish had a dagger in his hand, and he
threw it past Hana to dig it deep in the soldier’s neck. Hana saw the look in
the soldier’s eyes. It was like surprise, as if the soldier hadn’t really ever
thought it could be him. Hana could feel her eyes widening, as his went dead.
She could feel the tear drops streaming down her face, could hear herself
whimper uncontrollably. But still she didn’t let go.
Before the soldier’s body even fell, Dalish grabbed his
dagger, and pulled it clean. Blood fountained out to splash Hana and Dalish as
the body dropped, but Hana knew his attention was on her. He was twirling the
knife in his hand, blood still glistening on the blade.
“Killin’s dir’y work,” Dalish told Hana, pointing the dagger
at her face, the sharpened tip almost touching her nose. He could clearly tell
she didn’t belong there. Everyone knew she was the odd one out. She couldn’t
fight, couldn’t even aim a gun straight if she tried. “You’re an interestin’
woman, Missus Lin. I’d hate ta ‘ave to kill you too.”
Hana’s heart had stopped, and all the sounds of the
battlefield around her seemed to drain away. This was it. Either let go and
live, or hold on and die. What was she even still holding on for? It was good
that she’d zoned out, cause otherwise she might not have heard that sound from
above her. Was it her imagination? Or was the gunner from the helicopter
yelling something at her?
What was he saying? Hold on? She was holding on? But
was it worth her life?
“All you have to do,” Dalish reasoned with her, “Is let
go of my stone tablet.”
Then something hit her face. What was that? The ladder?
Hana looked up at the helicopter to see that it was
swinging out over the clearing. Did they want her to hold on? She didn’t even
really think about it, but discreetly wrapped her arm around one of the rungs,
and raised one foot casually onto the ladder.
“You let go,” Hana finally said after a moment of
Dalish studying her closely. “Let go or we both go over the edge.” At that
moment the ladder went taut, and Hana was startlingly yanked from the ground
into the air. Her breath was expelled forcefully and she was left breathless as
she rose over the clearing.
“No!” Dalish yelled, “We’re not done!” he lifted the
dagger over his head and stabbed it into her hand. More pain, this time even
more intense than being punched in the ribs. She could feel the blade go right
through, feel the fire spread through her nerves.
Dalish was lifted off his feet, holding tightly now to
both the dagger and the tablet, his entire weight seemingly pulling Hana’s arm
out of her socket. Her hand was screaming in silent agony, a shriek of agony
only Hana could hear. Her fingers were spasming, the dagger ripping into her
muscles.
She let go and Dalish fell many stories to the bottom
of the clearing, embracing the stone tablet to his chest as he sneered up at
her his entire descent. She looked away as he hit the ground, seeing quite
enough death for one day.
Her hand hurt. Her ribs hurt; she was in pain all over
in fact. And she had no actual clue how to climb a rope ladder. She was tired,
and didn’t want to have to hold on anymore.
“Stay where you are!” the gunner yelled down to Hana,
saying something else she didn’t hear over gunfire and the spinning rotors. But
she didn’t need to, she had a feeling she knew what they wanted. They were
descending towards the winding path where Joseph Dixon was fighting back against
mobs of cultists pushing in at him.
“Mister Dixon!” Hana called to him, only dozens of
meters away now. “We’re coming for you, hold on!” He didn’t seem to hear what
she’d said, but he’d heard her yell, and looked up to see her coming. Grabbing
the rocket launcher that was close to him, Dixon pointed it towards the chasing
cultists and fired it at the path, causing an avalanche of destruction. The
cultists flinched back collectively, and the helicopter swung desperately to
control it’s descent in the shockwave and chaos of debris.
They were only a few meters now, and coming in fast.
“Grab on tight,” the mayor told Hana, and they were close enough she could hear
him. She wrapped her arms around the ladder tightly, and swung into him at an
alarming speed. He wrapped his arms around her and held on, but he was clearly
winded with a “Woomph.”
Hana reached out with her damaged hand to hold Dixon
tightly, counting her blessings that they made it out alive even as the
helicopter ascended away from the excavation.
“Now for the hard part,” Dixon said loudly into Hana’s
ear. He had to be loud to be heard over the freezing winter winds. Hana’s heart
skipped a beat. What could be harder than that?
‘”We need to climb,” he told her, pointing up. She
shook her head. She’d only just figured out how not to fall off, after all.
“Come now, my dear. It’s simply one foot in front of another.” He started up,
and reluctantly she joined him after paying attention to his technique. They
weren’t even halfway up the ladder before the gunner was helping to pull them
in.
Someone grabbed Hana’s bad hand, and she tried to
stifle her pain-induced scream, thankful to be pulled into the safety of the
helicopter. She was placed gently in a seat against the wall, and she gripped
her hand gingerly. She could almost see right through, or was that her
imagination?
“We need E-M-Ts waiting for us in Oakville,” Hana could
hear the mayor tell a soldier as he was pulled in. Hana couldn’t look up at
him, couldn’t even keep from shaking. “Call ahead.”
“Yes sir.”
Mayor Dixon sat down in the seat and reached over. “They’ll
be able to look at your hand once we land,” he told her, trying to pull her
good hand away. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t touch me,” she said harshly, getting up to sit
across from him. She was hurt, bruised, and covered in dirt.
All those people.
“What the hell wazzat back there?” Hana asked the mayor,
struggling just to get the words out. Her jaw didn’t want to stop chattering.
Her whole body shivering. She was freezing, and based on her time working in a
hospital, she figured she was probably in shock too. “What the hell were you
thinking? I have a family.”
“If anything had happened to you, I swear your family
would have been well looked after,” The mayor tried to assure her, though it
wasn’t very effective.
“I was thinking of immortality,” Joseph Dixon
continued, answering her question. “I was kind of obsessed with it. You have to
understand, I was afraid to die.”
“Well now I’m VERY afraid to die,” Hana interrupted him
angrily.
“I believe the day will come when we’ll never die,” the
mayor continued, a smile forming on his lips. “Already science is toying with
the idea of being able to stop aging with genetic therapy. Even reverse it. One
day doctors will be able to replace limbs like we replace a video card in a
computer.”
“I thought I’d wake up in a future world with flying
cars and no war. Instead I woke up to Vietnam, a dependence on oil, and worst
of all I had a price on my head.” His smile was long gone. “They know who I am,
where I’ve been hiding. They could come after my daughter.”
Hana’s eyes widened. She hadn’t even considered that
she might not be the only person there with family.
“I had given up on immortality. To blend in and really
play my role, I took a trophy wife and settled down for a mundane life. After a
while I thought I’d be okay with it. I could make do with what I had, I thought
I could give up eternity. I was wrong, eventually I couldn’t help but yearn for
more.
“If only I had succeeded the second time. If I had left
this world for the future I wanted so bad, maybe I could have taken all my
troubles with me, and given my Shawna a decent life.” Joseph Dixon leaned back
and closed his eyes.
“We’ll protect both our families,” Hana heard herself
saying, before she had honestly really made up her mind. “Together. No one is
going to get to them. Your family or mine.”
Joseph opened his eyes, looking at her as if confirming
that she wasn’t quitting. His clothes were as torn as hers. When she reached
out to touch his knee, she did so through a hole in his pant leg. “We’re going
to make sure no one again is ever hurt because of you.”
“Whether or not the prophecy is true,” he told her,
cupping her hand in his own, “they will never stop coming after me.”
Hana smirked at her boss. “It’s not true,” she said
with certainty.
He only shook his head. “You saw the doors,” he tried
to convince her. They would open to an empty cave one moment, and an army of
cultists the next.
“I don’t know what I saw,” Hana Lin admitted. “But I
can promise you that there is no time travelling wizard coming to bring magic
back to the world.”
* *
*
In a totally different alley than that last one, T-Boat
was unbuttoning his pants to rock a piss. It’s not that there was anything
wrong with the last alley, T-Boat was just pretty sure he’d pee’d there before,
and he tried to make it a habit not to pee in the same place twice. Like a dog.
By marking their territory in as many different places as they can, they
minimize damage to the vegetation. Prolong the cycle of life.
As a radio DJ living in Toronto, it was T-Boat’s job to
know random things like that. They called his segments ‘T-Boat’s Ark of Truth’ and
he came on every hour at the fifteen. He knew that global warming was a myth,
after all the climate of the Earth had changed a hundred different ways in a
million years. He knew Donald Trump was the best thing to happen to the US
Republican candidacy. And Trudeau was the worst thing to happen to Canada.
And T-Boat knew his girlfriend was cheating on him. It
was the perfume he smelled on her when she left, the same one she would wear
when she cheated on her last boyfriend with him. He was pretty sure she assumed
him in the dark, but he could point to the very day on a calendar when she
started. And before that he knew the day he lost her. When his shit piled up to
the point when she stopped looking at him that certain way anymore. Stopped
being patient with the things that annoyed her.
Just that night she’d accused him of being an Oreo,
black on the outside but white in the middle. Whatever that meant. He knew he’d
have to break up with her, but it was an act easier said than done. And right
now T-Boat was having a hard enough time pulling his fly down on his two
thousand dollar dark purple suit. This was going to feel so good.
T-Boat was so distracted by his streaming release of
pressure, and thoughts of his girlfriend, that he didn’t even notice the
crackling in the air. And the wind that had picked up just felt like more
Canadian winter. As for the explosion of lightning that created an orb of
mystical energy that spit forth a body from seemingly nothingness? Well… T-Boat
was really drunk.
The body stirred in a puddle, thriving and kicking out
with his limbs. The man was older, with dark black skin, gray hair and unshaven
stubble. He was seemingly testing his limbs, flexing the fingers in his hands
and then rotating his wrists and so on, as if making sure they were all there.
A can he kicked made a noise that finally snapped T-Boat out of his trance.
“You okay over there?” T-Boat asked, shaking himself
clean. He chuckled. “What are you wearing, brother?” Looked like some kind of
bath robe.
“Ich na Blaka bu Tachnuu,” The elder man said
unintelligibly.
“Cool story bro,” T-Boat told the man, zipping up his
pants. “Well I’m done here. You want me to call you a cab?”
The man seemed pained, and leaned against the wall of
the alley. His eyebrows were furrowed (T-Boat could finally say he knew what
that looked like) and his mouth opened but at first no sound came out. Then,
“You --- are --- brother?”
T-Boat snorted, raising his hand in front of his face
as if to check. “At least on the outside,” he told the man, finally
scrutinizing him more closely. “Did some white dudes take your clothes or
something?”
“Something,” the man muttered, shivering in his robe.
“I’m --- cool.”
“Well yeah,” T-Boat said, pointing to the ground. “You
were just lying in that puddle. You got a name?”
The man asked, “What --- name --- are --- here ---
outside?” waving his arms wildly and turning in a circle. What was wrong with
this man?
“Do you mean where are you?” T-Boat asked. “Man, I know
I’ve had a lot to drink but you must be trashed. You’re in Toronto, man.”
The elder repeated the word. “Toronto.”
“Wait,” T-Boat said as his heart skipped a beat. He
thought the guy looked familiar, and his voice was almost dead on. “Are you
Morgan Freeman?” Maybe he was doing some kind of research for a role. No, that
would be dumb.
“What --- are --- Morgan Freeman?”
“Who is?” T-Boat corrected the man’s grammar. “He’s an
actor. I dunno. Looks like you, kinda sounds like you too. Has a better grasp
of words.”
“Cool story, bro.” The old man seemed to be repeating
things that T-Boat was saying. “Who, what, where,” the man said repeating the
words to himself.
“When, why, and how,” T-Boat finished the man’s
sentence. “Why do you keep talking like that?”
The man simply smiled. “Keep --- talking,” he said to
T-Boat. “I want you to keep talking. I want a better grasp of words.”
Maybe it was the alcohol slowly leaving his system, but
T-Boat was starting to think there was something weird about this old man.
“Actually I think I’m gonna go,” he excused himself. “I’m done with the alley
now. It’s all yours.”
“I want your clothes,” the Morgan Freeman look alike
said more forcefully in tone than he’d been before. “I want --- looks like
you.”
This guy wanted his suit? “That’s absolutely not going
to happen,” he told the man, slowly stepping away. The man looked at him, and
T-Boat could almost see his eyes in the dark. What he saw scared him. The man
raised an arm, pointing his finger at T-Boat as if sicking a dog on him.
Suddenly his belt buckle undid itself.
“What the fuck?” T-Boat said, looking down at his belt.
Screw this whole scene. T-Boat grabbed his belt and turned tail to run. As he
turned, his jacket pulled against him and slipped free of his right arm. It
pulled against his left and finally he let it go to run as fast as he could
from the alley. His jacket soared across the length of the alley to land
lightly in the strange old man’s hands.
As T-Boat ran, his pants pulled at his legs, throwing
them out from under him and smacking his face into the pavement. “No!” T-Boat
screamed, scratching and struggling to crawl free. His pants were pulling down
his legs, and popped off with his shoes.
Reaching into his pant’s pocket, the old man pulled
T-Boat’s wallet free and started sifting through it.
“What are you doing over there?” T-Boat yelled at the
man from the ground, trying to see. Suddenly a force grabbed him by his ankles
and lifted him into the air to dangle upside down. His tie was unweaving even
as his shirt unbuttoned. “Come on man.”
The man seemed to have found T-Boat’s driver’s license,
and read it aloud. “Eighty seven Queen street. Room 6407.” He felt a bulge in
the jacket pocket, and grasped T-Boat’s apartment key. That was IT!
“Stay the fuck away from my place nigga or I swear to
god I’ll kill you,” T-Boat screamed angrily at the man who seemed to pay him no
mind. It was a completely empty threat, of course, with T-Boat hanging
helplessly upside down. It was all he could do to struggle vainly against his
invisible captor, watching as the scary stranger slipped into his clothes.
“I’m gonna kill you!” T-Boat repeated, throwing fists
at the man. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” He kept throwing fists until he
tired himself out, and then began gasping for breath. His approach changed.
“Come on man,” he said, trying to reason with the
stranger. “You don’t have to do this man.” The man finished putting on his
clothes, and tying his tie. “Come on man. Don’t do this.” The man stepped out
from the shadows, stopping face to upside down face with T-Boat.
“Don’t do this.” T-Boat whispered.
The stranger’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Did
some white dudes take your clothes or something?” he said with what seemed like
earnest confusion. T-Boat went silent, confused himself. T-Boat tried to look
deeper into the stranger’s eyes. What was his problem? How was he doing all
this?
The old man raised his hand, fingers angled as if
screwing a lightbulb into a socket. Then, like screwing in a lightbulb, the old
man turned his hand. T-Boat watched with little comprehension. His head
suddenly and ever so slowly began to turn.
T-Boat screamed, and his scream got louder and louder
until abruptly cutting short.
Next time on Urban Fantasy
Months have past since Rachel defeated her sire, and she's been training non-stop every night since, training for a fight she wasn't convinced was coming. But she's caught the eye and affection of someone, someone who has been watching her for a long time. Andrew and Ian meet a goth girl who ends up being more than they bargained for, and Erika seeks out money for her fake IDs, by any means possible.
Next time on Urban Fantasy
Months have past since Rachel defeated her sire, and she's been training non-stop every night since, training for a fight she wasn't convinced was coming. But she's caught the eye and affection of someone, someone who has been watching her for a long time. Andrew and Ian meet a goth girl who ends up being more than they bargained for, and Erika seeks out money for her fake IDs, by any means possible.
