Dragonsword Page 16

  Kelly bowed slightly.

  “May I have permission to borrow a shirt to replace this one?” he asked. Samantha laughed.

  “Doris is going to take you shopping. Then you’ll have your own shirts to get bloody.” She turned back to her list. “Go get changed.”

  Kelly was gone a few minutes. Tanner came in and sat in a recliner.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  “No worse than it had to,” Samantha said.

  “Jason got in a fight,” Sam said.

  “Tell me something that surprises me,” Tanner said. Samantha smiled.

  “You guys are back,” Carson said. “Can we train this afternoon?”

  Samantha felt like she was carrying more than she could bear, but she couldn’t turn him down.

  “Not today,” Sam said. Samantha sent him a resentful gratitude, and he send her warmth in reply. “Actually,” he said after a second. “Maybe I can work with you some. I don’t have any magic in me, but I know a lot about it.”

  Samantha looked at Carson, who gave her a sincere smile.

  “That sounds great,” he said. His eyes said ‘I get it’. She returned his smile and turned back to her list.

  “You kids want lunch?” Doris called from the kitchen.

  “What’s on the menu?” Carson called back.

  “Krista and I just got back from the store,” Doris said. “Come take a look.”

  Carson rolled in a tangle of limbs out of his chair and went into the kitchen. Samantha frowned, glancing after him. Sam tugged at her. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what it was, either, but the sense of foreboding wasn’t just her.

  Then it hit her. She sat up, looking around.

  “Where’s Jason?”

  <><><>

  She’d seen him an hour ago. She and Sam had gone to the living room to sit, Jason had gone… upstairs? out onto the back porch? She couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t any of those places. Gwen was in the driveway, and Jason wasn’t in the house. The sheer panic threatened to destroy her. It couldn’t happen. Not again. Echoes of dark days came rebounding back at her, and she felt sick. How long had he been gone? She jumped planes. He was gone. She put her hand over her mouth and collapsed to her knees, sitting and scanning the range for minutes before her mind finally fractured into action and reaction and forced her back across the boundary.

  “He’s close,” she said, action mind speaking while reaction mind reeled. “They’ve already got him out of sight. I can’t see him.”

  “What is she talking about?” Carson asked.

  “Hellplane,” Sam said. He was as fragmented as she was. This wasn’t possible.

  “Who took him?” Kelly asked.

  “Brandt,” Samantha said. “Or another demon like him.”

  Why did they want him? What was so important?

  Sam put his arms around her from behind.

  “We need a minute,” he said, soft enough for only her to hear it. She nodded and took a breath, grabbing hold of Sam as she jumped across to the Paradise plane.

  The air there was crisp, clean. It shook some of the frenzy out of her mind, and she turned to face Sam.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Can Carter help?”

  “I think he’s willing, but if Brandt took him again…”

  “So we check if there’s a hellsgate open, and then go find it,” Sam said. “If we can’t look for Jason, can we find a gate instead?”

  Brute force would work. She shivered at the idea of leaving Jason in another gate while she came looking for it. At least she wouldn’t be searching the vast hellplane this time; she could narrow it down to the range.

  “I can try,” she said.

  “Unless they just killed him this time,” Sam said. It hadn’t even occurred to her. She looked to the green crest of grass across the valley.

  “Anu’dd,” she called, sprinting away from Sam. “O’na Anu’dd.”

  The angel came into view almost immediately. She dove into his arms and held tight for several minutes, letting herself be afraid.

  “Anadidd’na Anu’dd,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  She looked up at him.

  “Is he dead?”

  There was a look of confusion, then shock, then cleverness that evolved slowly across the angel’s face.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Samantha felt Sam’s temper spike, and she pushed back at it. Think about it.

  “Thank you for closing the gate,” O’na Anu’dd said. “It had made my job much harder.”

  “I’m sorry it took us so long to figure it out,” Samantha asked. Jason wasn’t in a gate, either. It was welcome news, insofar as it was the truth and it eliminated a possibility, but it had destroyed her best guess and left a numberless host of other ways to hide a person on the earth plane. The angel hugged her again.

  “I’m sorry I was so short-tempered with you,” Samantha said. “Before.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Sometimes even I forget how important life is, when it’s dear.”

  He straightened.

  “I noticed that you flushed that sorcerer. If it were within my power, I’d tell you where to find him. Please don’t let him get away. Again.”

  “I’m trying,” Samantha said. “I know.”

  Again was intended to tell her that other people had hunted the thirsty man before, and failed. Rules. No one bent them like the angel of death. He took her chin in his hand.

  “Don’t waste it doing everything,” he said. She nodded.

  “Thank you, my friend.”

  O’na Anu’dd looked up at Sam.

  “You’ve come a long way, psychic. I appreciate what you’ve done to watch over Anadidd’na Anu’dd.”

  Sam looked confused, but the calming effect the angel had on Samantha passed on to him. O’na Anu’dd dropped his arms to the side.

  “I’m afraid I have work I must do. And you have things you must do. God’s blessings and God’s speed.”

  “Thank you,” Samantha said. The angel turned and spread his wings, gliding across the bright green grass as he half-walked, half-flew out of sight.

  “Don’t waste what?” Sam asked as they turned and walked back toward the orchard. Samantha looked up at the hillside at the foot of the cliff where God stood, watching. He gave her an expression of empathy; she needed to come and sit with him, but she couldn’t sit still for that long, right now. She needed action.

  “Life,” Samantha said.

  “Doing everything?”

  “It’s my nature to chase too many things, and enjoy nothing,” Samantha said. “It’s human nature, actually. Never enjoying now.”

  “He was telling you to take a break now that Jason is missing and really appreciate it?”

  “He’s reminding me to enjoy the things that are good,” she said. “Jason isn’t dead, and he isn’t in a gate.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked around, taking in the light and the warmth and the hope. “I think I can think straight enough to work, now.”

  Sam nodded.

  “I just needed a minute.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  She took his hand and drew breath, dropping back across the boundary. The sour chemicals of panic and fear jolted her, but she kept them from swamping her this time.

  “I guess we start like we did last time,” Samantha said. “I go to the hellplane and try to track him from there.”

  “Renouch?” a voice asked. The living room turned to find Maryann standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. “They’ve taken Kha’Shing.”

  “This is about the sword?” Sam asked.

  “Demons sometimes refer to the first man to wield a blade like her by the name of the sword,” Samantha said. “We know.” She frowned. “How do you know?”

  “Demons talk,” Maryann said. “I was listening.” She paused,
eyes becoming distant for a moment. “I know where he is.”

  “Where?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Samantha understood.

  “You can go to him,” Samantha said.

  “He’s nearby.”

  “You don’t know where he is, but you know he’s nearby?” Sam asked. Maryann nodded helplessly.

  “Yes.”

  “Go to him now,” Samantha said. “Sam, you’re going to follow her.”

  Maryann nodded, and Samantha held up a hand.

  “Be close enough that it’s clear where he is, but as far away as you can get otherwise,” Samantha said.

  “You’re concerned for my safety?” Maryann asked.

  “Sam’s, actually,” Samantha said. She looked over at the demon. Kelly snarled, and Maryann glared at him. “Not now, you two. Maryann, if you accomplish this, you will have fulfilled your original contract. You will be completely free of me.”

  Maryann bowed slightly and looked at Sam.

  “He can follow me?”

  “Come back here in a minute and I’ll let you know,” Samantha said. Maryann nodded and vanished. Samantha looked at Sam, then put her thumbs in her mouth and reached up for his face.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Take it slow.”

  “I know,” he said, dipping his head. She wiped her thumbs across his eyes and felt him leave. He was cautious, easing his way toward Maryann, but he seemed to have no problem finding her. If the woman was telling the truth, Jason was less than fifty miles away, more than one. Samantha had a decent sense of distance, but a very exact sense of bearing. Jason was that way. Sam stopped moving away, and she felt him roving, looking for a landmark that would be searchable. He hit on something, then opened his eyes.

  “It’s a workshop behind an old house,” he said. “I couldn’t get in, but I’ve got an address.”

  Samantha looked at Carson.

  “Can we borrow your car?”

  He tossed her his keys.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  Maryann reappeared.

  “We’ve got it,” Samantha said.

  “I can follow her,” Kelly said. “We’ll keep watch and meet you there.”

  Samantha looked at the kid with newfound respect.

  “Thank you, Kelly.”

  “If you can do what Parroah’na Anan’ae asks of you, I can help you with your other concerns,” he said. His eyes said that he didn’t like being involved with a demon, but he didn’t appear to be afraid of Maryann. He wanted to go ahead of them and check for ambushes, Samantha realized. She nodded.

  “Thank you. We’ll see you soon.”

  <><><>

  Sam rode shotgun.

  Samantha was driving in the right direction even as he started pulling up the address on his phone. He didn’t need to give her directions until the last couple of turns, as they got close. She just went toward Jason until Sam told her to stop. This was their system. There hadn’t been many innocents involved in their demon raids in New York, but other than that, this was what they had spent months getting good at. The frenzy was gone. They were working.

  Samantha parked Carson’s car down the street from the house and Sam scouted for demons, just stepping out of his body and spreading his awareness. Three of the houses were occupied, a housewife, a man who worked from home, and a teenager playing hooky. The shed behind the house down the street was warded. Hard. He was still learning how to avoid the snares and spikes that protected specific areas, and a couple of times Samantha jerked him back just before something hit him, but he was moving slow enough that he didn’t impale himself again.

  “If she says that’s where he is, I’m sold,” Sam said. Samantha nodded.

  “Scouts?”

  He shook his head.

  “None I can find, unless the kid rocking out in his room is under deep cover.”

  Her head was up, tongue playing along her teeth.

  “I’d say that we need to be extra careful, but…”

  There weren’t a lot of demons around who were more powerful than the ones they’d come across in New York.

  “I’ve got what I need,” Sam said. Samantha ran a mental checklist, like running her finger over the edge of a stack of papers, and nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  He stepped out again, watching around them as they made their way down the street. Kelly appeared in front of them and Samantha hissed at him.

  “Not in public, angel.”

  “Sorry. There’s a demon in there, and Jason. I saw him. Don’t see anything else.”

  “Is he okay?” Samantha asked.

  “He’s asleep,” Kelly said.

  “Unconscious,” Maryann corrected from behind them. Samantha had known she was there when Sam did. Kelly sneered at the demon and Maryann glitched again, probably somewhere inside the range Sam couldn’t see. Kelly walked with them.

  “Why don’t you yell at her?” he asked.

  Samantha discarded several answers to that, most of them sarcastic.

  “You need to be careful in there,” Samantha said. “You haven’t fought a demon who knows what he’s doing yet.”

  “Give him credit for this morning,” Sam said.

  “The dogpile? Not a chance,” Samantha answered.

  “I’m not going to be able to cover you like I normally do from in there,” Sam said. “Not like this. I can’t see.”

  “When you’re physically inside, it should help,” Samantha said. “You won’t be able to see outside, at that point. They’re walls, not poison gas. I’ve also got a few things I want to do before we go in to kill off some of it.”

  Sam nodded. She glanced once more at him and nodded back. They were getting Jason back.

  <><><>

  They stole around the side of the house, Sam’s range of vision getting dangerously short, and Kelly glitched away. Samantha drew Lahn and Sam drew Wrath and the hatchet, instinctively slowing time just to be ready in case anything happened. He had a lot of slack to gather if it did; this would just give him a little extra time. Samantha was in the clear zone in her head where all she did was kill things. That’s where part of him lived, now, too. She knew that he had a hard time hearing, so she used hand signals to move forward. They got to the edge of the region where Sam’s vision ended, and he uncomfortably transitioned back to watching out his own eyes as Samantha pulled a bag out of her back pocket and laid it on a stone. She made a sharp downward motion with Lahn, explaining to Sam what was going to happen, and then sending him an impulse to move fast. He nodded. Strike and run. He pulled her attention to the door. He’d manage that. She nodded. Three seconds, maybe, for the exchange.

  She slammed the butt of the short sword into the pile of powders and there was a mind-numbing silent explosion. The world around him snapped like clams shutting, and Sam was running. He cautiously tested his vision as he marked the door to keep demons from glitching out, and found that everything was blurry, like Samantha had hit him in the head. Everything was uniformly blurry, though, and clearing. He could see into the shed, see Jason tied to the floor and a dark figure, mostly just black smoke, reeling into a wall. Sam threw the door open and Samantha charged past him, Lahn cutting the air. Kelly was already there, and Maryann followed Sam through the door.

  His vision cleared completely as the demon lunged at Samantha. For a moment, he thought that they had stumbled across a new demon who still had an instinct to physically overpower his adversaries, but this was a different motion. He was fast. Faster than he should have been.

  He was still able to glitch.

  Sam had seen micro-glitch before. Samantha had tried to explain the physics of it to him, about momentum and how it didn’t matter how fast they could move as they glitched, they still had to generate momentum with their actual mass in order to hit effectively, but the gist of it was that there was an art to micro-glitch. It involved covering some fraction of the distance between oneself and a target in glitch, and the other
portion with real motion, usually with many small glitches in the middle, so that you were harder to catch or block. If there was an art to it, the demon holding Jason was a master artist. Sam bent time as hard as he dared, fearing that he would break it if he pushed it any further. Samantha kept up with the demon, but only just. Sam used every reflex he had to help keep her on her feet and with Lahn in between herself and the demon. He heard Jason groan, but he couldn’t spare any attention, even as the fight moved at tree growth rate, Samantha was so precariously balanced against the demon.

  His breath came in slow rushes, turning in or out like a tide, and he stopped blinking. Kelly glitched into the fray, drawing his sword and engaging the demon from behind. The demon held them both off. Sam didn’t get any extra room to check on Jason. Maybe forty-five seconds into the fight, the demon drew a short, sleek blade, putting Samantha on the defensive again. Sam realized that the sound he heard over that of his own breath was her casting magic at the demon, but it didn’t appear to knock him back at all.

  At the one-minute point, with evident annoyance, the demon turned and raised a hand, throwing Kelly into a wall. He turned to face Sam and put up his other hand, and Sam felt a hard tug at his collarbones, but stayed on his feet. The demon frowned and pushed again, but the pendant Sam wore kept him away from the demon’s magic. The dark creature fought Samantha a moment longer, three hard swipes with the knife enough to back her off, and he turned to fully face Kelly. He put out both hands, and Sam lost his grip on time at the scream the angel gave. Kelly’s shirt sprung up with long streaks of bright red, and he dropped his sword, clutching at his chest. The demon closed his hands, and the angel screamed again, higher, with an anguish that nearly dropped Sam to his knees. It was like the world was crying. Jason groaned again, and Sam’s focus within his vision jumped to his brother. Samantha felt the shift and sent him a question. The obvious one was: how is he? As best as Sam could tell, pulling in close to look at his brother, there was nothing wrong with him. He was chained to metal rings in the floor, his arms drawn tight, but he didn’t appear to be anything other than unconscious.

  Kelly screamed again, and something inside of Samantha popped. Sam’s focus jerked involuntarily to her, feeling the warm growth of power that exploded in her chest. Everything about her relaxed around that power. He recognized it from once before, and he sheathed Wrath and dropped the hatchet into its loop, waiting for her to let him know what she wanted him to do.