Chapter #61Blackwells, Besieged by: Seuzz Aubrey Blackwell is standing only a few feet away, with a pinched look on his face. His eyes shift between you and Laurent. "You must be Mr. Bredon," he says, ambiguously.
"Rick," Laurent snaps. "My father was 'Mr. Bredon.' You the warlock?"
Blackwell nods. "The others are in my library," he says. "If you will come this way. It's probably not safe to stand in front of that door, considering whom you have brought with you."
"Hang on, Merlin," Laurent says. "How do we know it's safe to go with you?"
"For the same reason I know it's safe to let you come in," he retorts. He nods at Carson. "Your colleague, Mr. Carnes, has placed a device over my doorjamb that rips the masks off revenants. Tidier than my methods," he says, and shoots you a glance. You think you see jealousy in his eyes.
Laurent chucks you in the arm. "Come on, then."
The others--Frank, Joe, Nash, and James--are in the library, looking pale. But Laurent stops cold in the doorway, and his eyes travel all about the room, ceiling to floor. "Well, ain't this cozy," he mutters. "How much of this do you see, kid?" he asks Joe.
"Enough, I think," Joe replies guardedly. "Are you coming in, Rick?"
"Yeah. We're okay. But you underestimated Uncle Arthur over there." He strides into the middle of the room and squats, peering at the floor. Then, over his shoulder: "How much you pay for this pile?" he demands of Blackwell.
"Several hundred thousand, if it's any of your business," Blackwell says, and a look of loathing crosses his face.
"You were either rooked or you got the bargain of the century. Depends on how much you know about this stuff." Blackwell briefly starts at these words, and looks keenly at Laurent, but the latter just turns to Frank as he rises. "So, they got the twerp, and he tumbled them to the whole thing?"
Frank nods, and lays a mask aside. "There were some kids from Eastman High at the cemetery, picking up dirt. He panicked and ran, they caught him, and held him until they could get the Libra out there to deal with him." He sighs. "And then he gave them our names, our aliases, who we were going to hit." He bites his lip. "Everything Ioeger heard at our place is in their databanks now."
"Is that how they got Gordon," you blurt out.
"Was he--?"
"I think so. He was with the rest of the wrestling team when they tried grabbing us." You look at Laurent. "But Rick threw the swimming pool at them."
Joe bursts out laughing.
"Well, me and James got Hagerman, but got out before they could set a trap for us," Frank says, ignoring his brother. "So they tried using Carson. We picked him up and got him back here. We'd have checked him to be sure, but Nash had already--"
"Just a l'il variation on what the perfesser has with his pet monkey. Speakin' o' which, I can give yeh a leesh f'r 'at ting if yeh wahnt one," he says to Blackwell.
The magician folds his hands. "Very kind of you to offer, I'm sure, Mr. Carnes, but we may wish to leave it unhindered this evening."
"What do we do until then," you ask, nervously glancing at the French doors. "Aren't they going to try busting in here? There's a lot of cops."
"And they'll have a couple of SWAT teams here within the hour, and maybe some troops from that base," Laurent says. "But if they know what the twerp knew, they'll know better than to bust in. Frank, you showed him some of what you can do, right?" Frank nods, and Joe raises his hand too. "Right. And he knew we were doubled on numbers, and if he knew who Dr. Bombay over there is, they'll know enough to not even step through the gate. No," he says grimly. "They're just going to box us in, keep us from going anywhere, until they can in fly a bunker buster and flatten this place from the air."
* * * * *
You glance around only briefly at the sound of the bedroom door opening, and turn back to the window. The sun is below the horizon now, though the western sky is still bright. You wanted to watch it set. You have the dreadful feeling you'll never see it again.
The yard is dark, but the ground beyond the wall blazes with lights from the besiegers and all the other vehicles. A steady hum filters through the window. "You shouldn't watch it, dude," Joe says quietly.
"What difference does it make?" you reply. You're out of Rachel's mask, and are wearing some spare clothes that were up here: Perry's old things, you think.
"It's bad for the spirit. I know it looks dark. And dawn's a long way off." Joe draws up next to you, and you do a little double take at the glow that seems to come off him. The mat of blonde hair glints in the dark; his eyes shine; and even his teeth seem to gleam. He stares out into the gloom, and something like joy seems to dance over his features. "But when it's darkest, that's when you can see the stars." He turns toward you, and you do feel a tiny rush of confidence.
But it's not enough. "Well, I'd rather be up here than down there, listening to them calling us terrorists on TV."
"Yeah," Joe laughs. "Well, we turned it off. It was vicious, and it was getting worse. They're preparing."
"For what?"
"For what Rick said. But so are we, so don't shit yourself. As for what they're up to--" He jerks his chin at the window. "There's a camper out there. You can't see it, it's too far away. We're not certain, but we think they've got the Libra in it. They keep taking people into it. Cops. Agents. Mostly TV personalities and the support personnel, though. The coverage has gotten really nasty in the last hour. Yeah, they're converting everyone who comes on the scene, and they're going to use the media to manufacture an air-tight cover story for when they turn this place into a crater. It'll be our fault, they'll make sure that's the story that gets told."
"If the book's out there, why don't we bust out and grab it?" you demand.
"What do you mean 'we', pale face," Joe laughs. "We're not bulletproof, and they got snipers. Actually, though, I have been out," he continues. "The Great and Powerful Oz-- Oh, you should see the colors Rick's got Blackwell turning. Anyway, he has a back door, and I snuck out before they locked us down too tight. Got us one more reinforcement. We'll make it out. Don't worry."
"If you could sneak out," you demand, "how come the rest of us couldn't?"
"'Cos it has to do with me," Joe says. "I can move fast. Fast enough that I got out to a little town on the back of nowhere yesterday afternoon, and got back here the day before yesterday. Slipped back in while I was slipping out."
"What are you talking about?"
"Just babbling," Joe says. "But I spied out a lot while waiting to get back in." He grins, but his cheeks are tight. "Watched from a distance as a lot of poor assholes got turned into golems. I know where to find a whole lot of them. Oh, and I saw what Rick did to the wrestling team." He laughs.
"Why didn't you--"
"Shut up. I shouldn't've even bothered explaining. Suffice it to say I could get reinforcements in here--he's a few miles away--before any of this shit started, but thanks to temporal paradoxes we couldn't actually do anything to stop it. Anyway, come downstairs. We gotta talk."
* * * * *
The others are in the living room: Rick and Frank on the sofa; James perched on its edge; Nash leaning against the TV; and Blackwell pacing nervously. They turn at your entrance. You stop in the doorway, and Joe prods you through. "What did you tell him," Rick asks. Joe just looks at Frank.
"Will," his brother says, leaning forward. "Rick told you about yourself. We should have told you earlier, and we would have told you now if he hadn't. But you remember what he said?"
"That I'm--" you start.
"That you're a kind of magician," he says. "A real one." You notice Blackwell giving you a sidelong look. "You're like the rest of us. In a better world, you'd be one of us, working with us, doing the kinds of things we do. Fighting shit like this." He smiles. "Of course, you are, already. Fighting them. But--"
"Upstairs, you asked me why we didn't go out and grab the book," Joe interrupts. "Would you go out and grab it?"
"Sure," you blurt out. You're not going to let them show you up.
"Even if you knew the chances were against you?"
You do have to pause over that. "Well, how good are the chances?"
"How good do they have to be?" Frank asks. You have no answer. "Because you do have a chance. The rest of us don't."
You blink at him.
"We're each of us unique," Frank says. "And you're unique, in that you have a special connection to the Libra. Joe and Nash--and the professor--figured that out this afternoon, after looking some more at those sigils and at this old thing." From behind he takes out a mask, and even at a distance you can see your name in it. "They studied you through this. You have a connection to the Libra. And though we don't have a number, we know there's a chance that they can't do anything to you if they catch you."
"They can't?" you echo, startled.
"Sure they could," Rick says. "They could turn you into a golem. But maybe not one of theirs."
"It's probably a suicide mission," Frank says. "But there's a chance that if they turned you into a golem, you'd still be yourself. You could operate undercover, so far undercover that they'd never suspect you weren't one of them." indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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