Zero Sight (40 page)

Rei’s nose flared in response. She took one step forward, and my knees buckled, dropping me to the floor.

“
I apologize, Dieter, but under no circumstances will you cast magic with me nearby. Is your memory that short?” She looked down upon me with disapproval, and then turned her attention to Dante. “Now lieutenant, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Dante wasn’t under Rei’s compulsion, but he was so scared he was shaking. Fighting through the terror, he began prepping another shroud. My own body had locked into an uncontrollable spasm. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t move a muscle, as I couldn’t
stop
them from moving. Every last strand burned in protest as they contracted far beyond their normal limits. This was beyond glamour. This was beyond anything I had read about. Rei wasn’t trying to pervert my will. She had circumvented it entirely.

What the hell was had she done to me?

Furious, I lifted my head off the floor. She was going to try and handle the crisis on her own. She was going to put herself between the danger and me again. My mind flashed back to that first heavy blow. That wet smack. How she had slid across the ground, her cheekbone crushed, her face a mess of red. I trembled in frustration. This was unacceptable. I would not be
told
like this. My father told. ‘She’s never coming back, Dieter.’ ‘You’ll never get into college, Dieter.’ ‘She never loved you, Dieter.’ ‘An invitation to a summer insti-what? A bunch of eggheads and not a dime in sight, forget it, Dieter’ No. Not again. Not again. What if Rei died? A flash of rage pulsed from my gut. Deep inside me, something tore. Things were breaking, maybe important things, but I didn’t give a flying fuck. I wouldn’t be
told
. I wouldn’t stand aside. Not again. Not ever again. I forced the air out of my seizing lungs.

“
Rreeehh,” I growled.

She turned to look at me. For a second, something flickered behind that icy mask. An ounce of Rei, the Rei I cared about, looked back at me. But it was gone in an instant. I Saw the blow before it came. I strained, demanding my muscles to release, but it was too late. Her elbow was already finished with my temple. My head exploded in a burst of stars. My useless body bounced onto then off of the bed. The blow shook my will, and in that moment of weakness, the spasms grappling my body strengthened ten-fold. I could do nothing but lie on my side and seize.

“
Continue, lieutenant,” Rei urged. “That ruckus will have alerted them.” I stared at her from the floor, my jaw clamped shut like a vice, but Rei wouldn’t match my gaze. My heart sank. It was totally humiliating. Dante finished the cast, and Rei’s form dissolved into nothingness. The door opened and closed and away she went. I looked down at the floor, the steady thud of railroad tracks beating in my ears…

Indeed. Magic can strengthen bodies, harden resolve, and keen senses; however, such work is not easy. Humans are complex beings, Dieter. They have many moving parts. Toying with them can have…unanticipated consequences.

Down the hallway a barrage of gunfire erupted. The firing sounded wild. Dante dove on top of me as bullets tore through the wall. He whispered a fortification as the bullets flew by. Then came a strange sound—a thwap—as though someone had struck a melon with a bat. A man’s scream followed, then the snap of a twig, a tearing sound, and fluids splattering on the hardwood.

“
One!” Rei announced from outside our door.

Another set of heavy footsteps came from the other end of the hall and halted near our door. “Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos,” the man mumbled as he stepped backwards. “Santificado sea tu nombre, venga tu reino, sea hecha tu voluntad, como en el cielo así también en la tierra. El pan nuestro de cada Día, dánoslo hoy. Perdónanos nuestras deud—” The man’s feet vanished with a crunch. I listened in silence to the sound of air wheezing in and out through a broken straw.

Rei finished the prayer. “Así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores, y no nos dejes caer en la tentación, mas líbranos del mal…” Another twig snapped. “Amén,” she cooed. There was another tearing sound, and it was suddenly raining in the hallway.

“
Dos!” she announced as the corpse thudded to the ground.

“
My God,” Dante whispered. “So it’s true. The born ones
are
on a different level than the Turned.” I ignored Dante. I could hear her breathing. It came fast and thready. It was almost like when I was watching…

A magus can circumvent these challenges by binding themselves to another. This harmonizes the flows. In the European tradition, the other was traditionally a knight. The binding forms a conduit between them in which mana can flow safely.

A metallic device bounced down the corridor. Rei picked it up. “An M-67?” she asked casually. “That won’t work at all. You’ll need at least an MON-200.” Her voice went cold. “Did daddy pack one of those with your lunch, little boy?”

“
A grenade?” Dante stammered. In a matter of instants, he stood, tore the mattress from the bed, fortified it, threw it against the door, and jumped back on top of me covering us both with his robe. I could only lay there, bound by the spasms, as the door to our room blew off its hinges. Debris cut my face and clouded my vision. My ears rang from the blast. My body dumped adrenalin like it was going out of style. The surge of energy broke the binding. My fatigued muscles sagged from exhaustion.

“
I’ll give you a minute to figure something out,” Rei called out to the gunman. Through the smoke and dust, Rei skipped into our room. She was covered head-to-toe in blood and plaster. Her clothing was torn. Her face was flushed. Hard nipples pressed out against her saturated tank top. “Pardon me, gentlemen,” she said, climbing over us and out the window. Her feet vanished as she flipped herself up onto the roof. I listened to the light pitter-patter of footfalls as she dashed across shingles.

The last man standing screamed and fired blindly into the air…

Our weft-link is of a temporary nature. It is incomplete, and as I have already told you twice, it will wear off with time and distance. The inconvenience will be over soon. You have nothing to worry about.

Rei laughed as the bullets tore through the roof.

I swallowed. It was there if I had wanted to see it. It was the same as in the office when she was interrogating the tall man. The glee, the giddiness…Rei didn’t care. It was fun. It was playtime. And when she was around—and only when she was around—I felt the same thrill. No wonder I had barely seen her since opening day. She had been avoiding me. The night we arrived, when she told me about her living arrangements, I’d gotten so mad that rage had overwhelmed my reason. She must have realized it then. I slammed my fist into the ground. I was such an idiot. That night, it wasn’t Rei’s pride that had been wounded. No, Rei had realized that I was at risk and acted decisively to stem the damage. My eyes welled up. Rei had extracted herself from my life like she was a tumor.

Dante rolled off me. His forehead had been gashed in the blast. He lay on his back, dazed. Amidst the chaos, I crawled over to put pressure on the wound. A crashing noise tore through the roof, and the pitter-patter of her footsteps intensified. Rei was in the attic now. The gunman responded by screaming even louder. He switched clips and launched another volley. One clip. Two clips. Three clips. Four. He was still screaming when his gun clicked empty. The poor guy was out of ammo…but that wasn’t the point.

Against my will, my heart rate was speeding up. The room was too bright; my eyes had dilated. I tried to focus on Dante’s wound, but we heard the rifle drop to the ground and shivered. We heard him drop to his knees. We felt the beat of his fists against the floorboards. Again and again he beat at the splintering wood. He knew we were coming. He knew it was over. He cried out a horrid lament. He surrendered his will to our own.
That
was the point. We trembled in excitement. Such a vibrant display of despair.

“
My God, Dieter,” Dante said as he stared up at the ceiling. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

There was a moment of silence before the screams began.

“
I don’t know, Dante,” I said, my body shivering from the thrill. “They’re hitting students and they’re hitting faculty. You don’t do that to make a point. You do that to cripple an organization long-term. I don’t know the games you guys are playing, but it smells like a war to me.”

“
Bud, pray you are wrong. They didn’t call them the Dark Ages for nothing.”

A dull thud reached our ears. Rei let out a hiccup.

“
Well, at least she’s on our side,” I said.

Dante turned to me, confused.

“
Sure,
she
is, but Rei’s the only one.”

I helped Dante sit up.

“
What do you mean, the only one?”

“
Her kind, man. The prin—sorry—Rei is the only one of her kind to ever join up with the Department. The rest of the drainers are rogue, bud. We’re just edibles to them. I should know. I come from a border state.”

“
Oh,” I said swallowing. Not good. “Seriously, I need to enroll in
History of Magic
and
Bestiary
next semester. I can’t tell ass from mouth, Dante. This is getting ridiculous.”

“
Hey man, ignorance is bliss. Don’t even get me started on dragons.”

“
Dragons? They’re real too?”

“
You poor grub,” Dante said, smirking. “Naw, dragons aren’t real.” Dante didn’t smirk much. Heck, Dante didn’t joke much. Maybe his change in humor had to do with the huge gash on his forehead.

Rei frolicked down the hallway and into our room. Her hair was tangled, and her clothes were in tatters. A huge blood smear covered most of her face. She looked like she had survived some sort of bloody baking disaster, and her fingers were playing over a bundle of brown candle sticks connected to a bunch of wires. “Heya, lieutenant. Watcha want me ta do with this?” she asked, tossing the explosive charge from one hand to the other.

Dante just sat there with a neutral expression on his face.

“
You know what, lieutenant? ‘Do’ is a funny word. Dooo. Daaaaa. Deeeee. Dooooo. Daaaa…”

Rei sniffed the air and went rigid. Her dilated pupils latched onto Dante forehead.

“
Ohhh!!! Lieutenant! You’re bleeding! Do you mind? I mean it’s cool if not, but I could totally go for a little Southern right now. It has to have been like five years. Sister tricked me, and he was soooo hot, and oh-my-God, he must have tasted like ice cream, or chocolate, or what else do beater chicks like? Caramel? No, that’s not right. I have observed that they do not enjoy caramel as much as chocolate but—”

“
Um, yea,” Dante blurted, “I would be totally cool with that except I ate like a bucket load of garlic for lunch so it’s probably not the greatest idea.”

Rei crinkled her nose. “Gross, lieutenant.”

“
Hey, Rei?” I said, watching the bundle of explosives exchange hands once again.

“
Garlic is gross,” she said matter-of-factly.

“
Hey!” I screamed, waving my hands in front of her. “Focus, Count Chocula, focus!”

Rei suppressed a hiccup.

“
Ohhh! Because I am a vampire it is funny. Good one, Dieter!”

She jumped into the air and applauded.

It occurred to me that to applaud—my Sight imploded in an avalanche of color. I dove toward the bundle of death. Dante dove out the second-story window. (At least one of us had some sense.) Rolling onto my back, I slid to a stop under Rei’s legs and caught the bomb with my gut. Thankfully, my washboard abs were still a work in progress. The bomb continued to tick-tock pleasantly.

“
Oh! Dieter! Naughty,” Rei said looking down at me. “No peeking unless I say so—then you can peek. Okay, I say so! Wait, now I say not so!”

“
Women,” I grumbled.

Rei covered her mouth and started giggling. She seemed capable of amusing herself, so I made busy examining the bomb. Their number thirty appeared on the display—now twenty-nine—now twenty-eight.

“
Dieter,” Rei asked. “I know he’s sneaky, but can the lieutenant fly?”

“
He’s practicing,” I replied. “Hey, Rei? You know what would be like totally awesome?”

“
Oh! What? Tell me. Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

“
We should
totally
go on top of the roof. Can you give me a hand?”

“
You are so right, Dieter. The roof would be totally A, W, E, awesome. We could watch the sunrise!”

I let that that one slide and rushed to the window. Rei hopped out onto the sill, grabbed my hand, and yanked. As I flew through the air, it felt like my whole right arm was coming out of its socket. (Nope, check that, it
was
out of its socket.) I flopped onto the roof cradling the bundle with my left. My right side screamed in protest. I’d worry about the pain later—fifteen seconds later to be precise.

Rei was skipping about next to me singing “Good Morning, Good Morning,” from
Singin’ in the Rain
. What the heck was up with Rei and show tunes? I searched the landscape frantically. Auditorium? Negative. Lawn full of students pointing? Negative. Albright’s red Corvette? Probative. Elliot Pond? Perfect.