Book 3, Chapter Eight

Whisper

Whisper trudged through the underground tunnel they had dug many years ago, more tired than they could remember being in years. Being on the run was a special kind of exhaustion they had only experienced once before. A little over sixteen hours had passed since they had pressed the panic button, over thirty hours since they’d slept. They had the early stages of frostbite forming on their fingers and ankles, having driven a motorcycle at suicidal speeds to make it back home in Alberta, only stopping once they reached the area around Fort Vermilion.

There, they had ditched the motorcycle and found the entrance to their tunnel. Whisper’s magical talents leaned toward information gathering and possession, so when they had started the tunnel, they had only planned to dig for a quarter mile, creating a bolt-hole for them to escape an attack on their base. But Whisper discovered, almost by accident, that with the help of a few dozen badgers and a friendly moose, the tunnel progressed at a pace far exceeding their most hopeful projections. The only thing slowing progress was Whisper having to step in to clear the rock themself.

Now, Whisper had a ten mile tunnel with several fail-safes built into it. No one knew about the tunnel, and no one had been to their base besides Whisper in over a decade. Their home was self sufficient and completely off the grid, aside from some pirated satellites that civilian authorities had no hope of tracing with the magic Whisper had laid.

Whisper finally reached the end of the tunnel, setting reminders to run maintenance on it… Then, shaking their head, they snorted with amusement. Whisper would never see this place again after today.

They typed the ten digit code into the keypad beside the bulkhead style door that separated the tunnel from their basement. There was a beep and a loud click. Whisper reached out and cranked the wheel on the big steel door three times to the right, then once left before tugging it open.

The tension in their shoulders began to ease as they crossed the threshold. On the other side of the door was a small workroom with several alcoves, some filled with equipment ranging from mountaineering, others full of automatic weapons. The two closest to the door were empty. Whisper crossed over and began taking off their mask.

Whisper’s mask was a simple, black acrylic face plate mounted to an experimental helmet designed for special forces. It was designed to be comfortable with a substantial amount of equipment mounted on it, with the intention of low-light optics and a suite of electronic sensors being deployed. The designers were worried that all that extra weight on a soldier’s neck and spine would lead to unneeded strain and injuries. Whisper just knew they’d be wearing a helmet for the majority of their waking hours and wanted one that wouldn’t make them miserable.

Whisper took off their helmet, feeling their persona fall away, allowing Carrie Dogwood to exist again. She made a face, getting a smell of herself as she undid the neck seal that housed her voice changer. She quickly stripped out of the padded armor she used to hide her figure (as well as for protection), her expression dropping further seeing her underclothes soaked with sweat, despite having driven through the night at near freezing temps.

She put the costume in the alcove, making sure everything was right and in place by habit before stopping with a rueful laugh. All this would be ashes in a few hours. She leaned her head back and inhaled deeply through her nose, frustration—

That smell shouldn’t be here.

It was a smell most people were familiar with. The smell of grease and oil, of fast food. It was a smell she was intimately familiar with, having worked at McDonald’s for two summers during high school.

Her first instinct was to grab her go-bag, which was right by the door she had just entered, and run with all haste down the tunnel. As her analytical mind kicked in, she realized the futility of such an action. She was exhausted, physically and mentally. Still…

Carrie reached over and pulled an assault rifle from another alcove, checked to make sure it was loaded. It hadn’t been used or cleaned in two years, but it should still fire with minimal risk of jamming. She pulled the cocking lever and crossed the room to the door to the rest of the house, sliding up to it and listening.

She could hear… murmuring. Someone—likely him—was definitely here. She eased the door open, bracing the rifle against her shoulder, aiming through the crack and scanning the room like she’d seen mercenaries do. Carrie had practiced with weapons enough to know she could hit a target, but she’d never done any actual training. She was doing what she’d seen on TV, but it made sense.

In the living room, the murmuring became louder, as well as the smell of fast food. It was coming from the basement, her workroom. Carrie resisted the urge to curse and, as silently as she could, crossed the room toward the basement door and eased it open.

“...o’s a good boy?” The murmuring became distinct. “You are! Yes, you are! She’s coming down the stairs right now! Are you ready for dinner? You ready? Of course you are!”

Carrie descended into a bizarre yet familiar scene. Familiar because it was her work area, where she had gotten her start as an information broker, enchanting a few cases of thumb drives. The center of the room was taken up by a large shock-absorbing gym mat, six by six, which she had drawn her standard spell formations on. The far wall was her workstation, a suite of monitors and the best computers she could get her hands on three years ago.

Aside from the mat and workstation, the rest of the room was an old carpentry workroom. An old, hand-built bench was on the left wall, a bat she had given up trying to enchant wedged in the vise. The right wall was taken up with large tools she had never touched and never bothered to move.

And sitting on the mat, rubbing the belly of the most gorgeous golden retriever she’d ever seen… was Colm Avery, AKA Liam Hayes. The room was hard to look at, because the defenses she’d laid into the floor, ceiling, and four corners were trying their damnedest to kill the man, only for him to not react to the pink lightning that was supposed to liquefy his insides. He was also doing something to prevent the lightning from touching the dog.

“And there she is!” He said, reaching behind him and producing a large bag of McDonald’s. “You ready, boy?”

“Boof!”

The dog was on his feet in an instant, doing a funny little walk backward as Colm got ready to throw. Throw? Is he going to hit the dog with the food? Carrie thought.

Colm made a big show of it, throwing the bag in an arch that almost hit the ceiling before falling right toward the dog—

The dog opened up and swallowed the bag.

The gun fell from Carrie’s shocked hands, her first instinct was to flee from the room, but she found herself locked in place. The dog rippled and flapped—which is when Carrie realized it was fucking chewing—before releasing a belch and doing a quiet bark.

“Boof!”

Colm crossed over to the monster and rubbed his ears with both hands. “You did a wonderful job, Bogo,” he said, kissing the monster on the forehead that Carrie had just seen open up into a horrifying field of teeth that’d give the monster from The Thing a run for its money. “You tell your dad you were excellent and that I’m very happy.”

“Boof!”

The monster disguised as a golden retriever turned, glanced at a frozen Carrie, then trotted off to a corner of the room and simply disappeared.

“I was really irritated when you bolted, but it gave me an excuse to see Bogo again,” Colm said as he pulled her work chair out. Whatever force was keeping her from moving suddenly lifted her off the ground, floated her across the room (and through the lightning that was still going and doing nothing), and placed her in the chair. “So I guess it’s a wash. Though, it did waste an entire fucking day when kids are dying, so I guess I’m still pretty irritated.”

Carrie found that she could talk. “What? Kids?”

“If you had bothered to wait around or even ask a follow up question, you would have learned I’m looking for Keeper because he’s the only one who can lock down the motherfucker causing all the stillbirths,” Colm said, pushing a keyboard aside and sitting on her desk. “It’s called the Nursemaid, and it exists in a space between the material and astral that’s a real pain in the ass.”

Carrie’s mind was running a million miles an hour. Three years ago, the cases of stillbirths and SIDS leapt, and continued to rise to the present day, to the point that one in four children died before their first birthday. “You’re saying someone is doing that?”

Colm snorted. “They ain’t a someone,” he said. “It’s a thing. A personification of a single aspect of a being so great and alien that if it dipped a toe into our universe, all life would cease. It and two others are paving the way for Daddy to make his entrance, and it’s imperative they are stopped as soon as possible or you and everyone you’ve ever even HEARD of are fucking dead.”

Colm raised two clawed fingers. “There are two—“ he paused, cocked his head in thought, then raised a third. “Okay, three ways this could go. The first option is the one you should take: You tell me how to find Keeper and I give you a thumb drive that has the location to half a bil’s worth of gold saved on it. Everyone’s happy, except maybe Keeper, but if he’s the kind of man that doesn’t wanna save children then he can get fucked. I’ll get what I want from him, use him up like a dirty rag, and throw him away.

“Two: You refuse, and I go digging in your head. I don’t have the time or patience to do it nice or slow, so you’d be a different person afterward, or perhaps an amnesiac or brain-dead. You don’t want that.”

The lightning from her defenses was finally winding down, and it was getting hard for Carrie to see without the light it provided. Colm gestured, and a flame appeared above his head, casting light and long shadows across the room.

“Three: You pull some shit and try to kill me and/or run away, which is when option two happens, and then I kill you.”

Carrie’s lip was trembling, and tears were falling from her eyes. Even if she wanted to make a run for it—she couldn’t move. She might be able to reach into the nearby woods and possess some wildlife, but it’d take time for them to get here and, and besides, the house’s entries were all fortified with steel doors. Even a moose would need some time to get through them.

“You aren’t going to kill him?” She asked, hating the quaver in her voice.

“Nope,” Colm said simply. “I mean, I don’t plan to. If he shoots me we’re going to have words, but I need his ass alive to deal with the Nursemaid. I have to hope he’s the kind of guy who’ll jump at a chance to save all the world’s children, but I’ve met some real douche bags in my life so I’ll wait and see.”

Colm’s head shot to the side. “No, I don’t want to know,” he hissed. “Keep that shit to yourself.”

Carrie’s eyes widened with a new kind of fear. The man in front of her had been calm and in control the entire time she’d been aware of him, but that behavior was startling. Colm relaxed and saw her expression. “Shit,” he said, shoulders slumping. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

Unsure if the question was rhetorical or not, she nodded anyway.

“Balls,” he muttered, rubbing his eyebrow with the heel of his palm. “Look, just give the crazy man what he wants so he stops bugging you, okay? And to be clear: I am being facetious. The crazy man is me, not some imaginary new person I added to the conversation.”

Carrie wrestled with herself for all of thirty seconds before she settled on a fact about herself: She wanted to live. Keeper had saved her life, and she doubted he wanted her to waste it on his secrets.

“Mexico City,” she said, deflating in the chair. "Hotel Rio Bravo. Tell them Poncho recommended you and ask for the Presidential suite. He’ll make contact in an hour.”

“Jesus,” Colm said, running his hand through his hair. Carrie noted that the ends were all burnt, some fused in clumps. He had to shake his hand as the clumps got caught on two large rings he wore. “Guy likes his privacy.”

He sat, watching her, looking like he was having an internal debate. “Sorry,” he said as he reached out for her. “Gotta be sure.”

Carrie screamed.

*

Colm

I winced as she screamed just before I touched her wrist. I viewed her recent memories, and what do you know, she told the truth. I leaned back and stuck a knuckle in my ear, wiggling it around.

“Helluva set of pipes you got,” I muttered.

“What did you do?!” She demanded, more tears falling. It made me feel pretty shitty. She was a lot younger than I thought she’d be from what I had sensed over the cameras.

“Verified you were telling the truth,” I said, lowering my hand. “I can’t read minds, but I can read memories, which is just as good in most cases. Thank you for your help,” I pulled a small thumb drive from my pocket and placed it on her desk. “And here’s payment.”

“Also,” I began, gesturing at the wall behind me. I put more power into the fire above my head, lighting up the room as I etched a new spell into the wall with telekinesis. “Start implementing this methodology into your spell work. It’ll reduce the trace magics you leave behind and give you more bang for your buck. I didn’t track you, I tracked the biggest concentration of your magic.” I gestured at the room around us.

I stood and stretched my back, my spine popping in that “hurts so good” way. “Also, gunna have to knock you out for a day or two, just in case you have a way to warn Keeper. Water and food will be ready for you when you wake up.”

Her eyes went wide, then rolled up into her head as I finished subvocalizing the spell that removed the salt from her blood. The spell would wait two seconds and then add it back in. Doing that to someone multiple times was incredibly bad, but once was minimal stress to the body. I brought down a few bottles of water from the pantry, as well as some Graham Crackers and an MRE I found with my senses. They all floated around me as I moved Whisper to the mat in the center of the room and put her in the recovery position. I waited a minute or two to make sure she didn't go into shock before leaving the room.

I closed the door behind me as my magic set the water and food next to her for when Whisper woke up. I climbed the stairs, planning how I was going to get to Mexico from Canada. I could probably risk using an attention ward and flying across, but borders are usually more heavily monitored, and I didn’t want to risk another run-in with Elysium.

It is good you treated her kindly, Other Me chimed in. She will be one of the Great—

“I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!” I shouted, the noise shattering the windows in the kitchen.

STOP TELLING ME ABOUT THE FUTURE, I screamed in my head. I CAN’T KNOW!

Other Me quieted down, but it was only a matter of time before he started to chatter again.

I snarled, snatched a bottle of water, and walked outside throughthe hole in the wall I had made when the door had turned out to be stronger than the walls around it. I had accidentally pulled it and its frame right out of the house.

I pounded the water, not really feeling thirsty but knowing I needed to at least act human if I wanted to stick around. I tossed the empty bottle back into the house and grew my wings.

They weren’t actual wings. They were made mostly of flat, fused tentacles that I then manipulated with two additional arms grown from my back, with a few extra joints to help facilitate flight. It’d taken a few days to figure out, but that, coupled with my telekinesis, and I could fly faster than a single-engine Cessna.

I decided to risk flying over the borders. Every second I wasted was a life lost. With a final glance back at another life I’ve bullied into and ruined, I bent my knees and leapt into the sky.