Distant Rumblings Read online

  Kane grabbed Hawk’s hand and held it tight. “I will be anything but fine if you leave.”

  Hawk squeezed the hand back and then slowly removed his own from the grip. “Possibly. But you’ll be alive.” He leaned down and kissed him on the forehead and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  Kane tried to hold on to him as he stood, but didn’t have the strength. “Please don’t….” he begged, but fell back onto the ground as his back began to throb.

  Hawk walked over to where Ruber floated above the woman and knelt down. “She’s alive?” he asked.

  “Alive and well,” Ruber answered. “This was not your fault.”

  Hawk looked at the dead man and shook his head. “This is very much my fault. What will happen if no one remembers the event? And they find the man dead and the two of them wounded?”

  Ruber considered it for a few moments. “Well, it would be unusual, but they would suspect the man burst in and attacked them for lack of any other logical explanation.”

  “Excellent. You belong to Kane now. Your job is to protect and keep him safe.” He looked at the gem. “You understand, correct?”

  Ruber bobbed in the air in lieu of a nod. “I do, your highness, but things are not as they….”

  “It’s done,” Spike said, leaping back to Hawk’s side. “They sleep now but will not remember you nor the attack.”

  “Good work,” Hawk said, standing. “We need to go. Ruber, you have your orders.”

  “Sire, if you will listen for a moment…,” the ruby started to say.

  “We are leaving, gemling.” Spike hissed angrily. “You can’t stop that.”

  Ruber’s glow intensified for a moment before Hawk put a hand on Spike’s shoulder. “He’s right, Ruber. We have to go. Stay with Kane.”

  “Of course, sir but…,” Ruber tried again.

  “We’ll use the back exit, Spike,” Hawk said, ignoring the words. “And go back to the house.”

  “I’ll cover our rear,” it said, as Hawk began to walk out, refusing to look back.

  Spike glanced at Kane and Ruber and smiled as they left them behind.

  WHEN I woke up he was gone.

  The police were covering Robin’s body with a sheet as the paramedics checked Gloria’s wounds. It took me a few seconds to realize that no one was paying any attention to me. “Ruber?” I asked quietly.

  His voice came from just over my shoulder. “We are invisible,” he explained. “I thought it best to remove ourselves from the situation.”

  I watched them load Gloria onto their paramedic gurney and push her out to the ambulance. “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “She will be,” Ruber assured me.

  “Good.” I tried to get up and felt a pain shoot up my back. “Oh crap!” I cried out loudly. I froze as I saw the two cops look over to where Ruber was hiding me.

  “Time to leave?” Ruber asked as they began to thread their way among tables toward us.

  “Definitely.”

  “Close your eyes,” Ruber warned as he flared into visibility and instantly flooded the room with a blinding light. I had covered my eyes and still I saw spots as I struggled to see again. “Keep your eyes shut.” I heard Ruber say, this time much closer to me than before. I clenched them shut as a strange whine filled the area. It felt as if we were in a wind tunnel all of a sudden as a gust of air hit my face and almost blew me back onto the floor.

  My ears popped and then I heard nothing.

  I’m not sure how much time passed, but the next thing I knew, I felt myself fall maybe half an inch onto my ass. “You can open them now,” Ruber advised in a calm voice.

  I cracked one eye open and was shocked to find myself sitting on my living room floor.

  I tried to get up again but the pain was too much for me to manage. I collapsed onto my back and stared at the ceiling in pain, despairing. “How long am I going to be like this?”

  “You were stabbed through your lower back less than thirty minutes ago. Assume that you will need more time than that to recover,” Ruber said, as he floated into my line of sight.

  “How long before I can stand again?” I snapped, trying to not shout at him.

  “The spell will require another thirty minutes before it heals you completely.”

  I sighed and laid my head down and tried not to think about how Hawk had left me.

  THEY MADE good time back to the house.

  Hawk didn’t feel anything magical or evil around him, but then, the entire point of being an assassin was not to be noticed. Spike trailed him in the trees by about half a block, hiding himself to make sure they weren’t being followed. If the Dark could find the two of them in a restaurant, it would take nothing to track them back to the house. His mind raced, wondering if Kane was okay and if Ruber was able to defend him, but he forced the thoughts away as he focused on what was in front of him. He paused at the front door as he waited for Spike to leap from the treetop across to the second floor of the house. He counted to ten in his mind and then charged into the house.

  Nothing.

  The house was exactly as he had left it earlier; there was no sign of anything that spelled danger. Spike came down the stairs, nodding to Hawk, indicating that the upstairs was safe as well. “We are alone.”

  Hawk walked around the room, gathering his belongings and tossing them into his pack. “We are leaving,” he said, as the magic of the bag absorbed more and more. “When is the next time we can cross over?”

  Spike was picking up things as well, making a pile of clothes and equipment next to Hawk’s bedroll. “Not until sunrise,” the Changeling answered after a moment’s thought. “Only in the blue hour is the wall thin enough.”

  Hawk nodded as he threw the last of his gear in and fastened the top. “Then we wait until morning,” he said, sitting in the chair, Truheart in hand.

  “I will stand watch,” Spike said, coming closer. “You should rest up before we leave.”

  Hawk shook his head. “I’m fine. The assassins can come at any moment.”

  “We’re safe for now,” Spike countered, his voice becoming deeper. “And you are so tired.”

  Hawk let out a huge yawn in response. “I am tired.”

  “You’re safe for now. I will stand watch,” Spike said in a softer voice.

  “… safe.” Hawk repeated, his eyes closing slowly.

  “And you don’t care for the boy,” Spike said, his voice almost a whisper.

  “No,” Hawk said, his eyes opening wide. “I do care! He’s in danger!” He started to rise groggily. Spike began talking quickly, his voice taking on the same husky tone he had started with.

  “The boy is safe, we are safe. You’re tired… you’re just so tired.”

  Hawk fell back into the chair, his eyes heavy again as he repeated, “So tired….”

  “You’d be more comfortable sleeping without your shirt, wouldn’t you?” Spike suggested.

  As if in a dream, Hawk pulled off his shirt and tossed it to the floor.

  “You’re safe,” Spike said as the prince fell asleep. “And the boy is too,” he said more to himself as he picked up the shirt. Without making a sound, he slipped on the shirt and began pulling a pair of jeans out of the pack. “But not for long.”

  TRUE TO Ruber’s estimate, forty minutes passed before I could stand up. Well, in a manner of speaking, I could stand.

  What had been a mortal wound had been reduced first to an agonizing pain and finally just a sore back. I raised my hands over my head and stretched, and instantly regretted it. “Okay, that hurt,” I said, sitting gingerly down in my dad’s chair.

  “May I suggest not doing that then?” Ruber said, oh so helpfully.

  I think I might have grunted a response, but honestly, I was too tired and too depressed to care. He’d left me. He had kissed my forehead and left me, and I didn’t know how to feel about that. I mean sure, I was pissed, but that was the easy reaction. I knew he was leaving for my own good, and that made me mad because I
wasn’t some lame-ass Disney princess waiting for my prince to come.

  Even though he was like an actual prince and all, and how freaking cool was that?

  I was worried about him; he was in danger, and I wanted to help him. How? Well, that part was fuzzy, but I knew I had to help him. He was… he was inside of me somehow, and I knew I was inside of him. There was something pulling us together, and I didn’t care anymore if I was in danger. Danger didn’t matter if I was with him.

  Oh God, I sounded like a Disney princess.

  “Ruber, how much trouble is he in?” I asked, trying to summon the strength to stand.

  “Far more than he knows,” the gem answered, floating back toward me. “He is under the belief he is under attack by the Dark when that is not the source of the conflict.”

  I understood maybe half of that. “Say again?”

  “He believes the attacker in the restaurant….”

  “Robin.”

  He seemed a bit perturbed by the interruption but acknowledged the man had a name. “…he believes that Robin was enchanted by beserker weed and sent to attack you by the Dark.”

  That made more sense. “Then who did?”

  Before he could answer there was a knock on the door. “Hide yourself,” I said to him, in case it was an actual human who didn’t know things like floating British-speaking gems existed. I limped over to the door. The pain had mellowed to a manageable dull ache. I opened the door and tried not to react to Hawk standing there.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  I stepped back and allowed Hawk to enter.

  “You came back,” I said, shocked. I honestly thought he had left for good.

  “Of course I came back. You have to know how I feel about you,” Hawk said, turning back to me and smiling.

  I froze in place as a different set of words spoke over his voice. “Of course I came back to kill you.”

  “What?” I asked, my mouth growing dry.

  His smile was devastating, his eyes were alive with emotion, but there was something missing as he looked at me. I no longer felt the warmth, the connection I normally sensed being this close to him; instead it seemed to me he was almost… hungry? “I can’t keep this up,” he said, taking a step toward me. The words were the same, but this time the tone of his voice was angry, seething, and not with want. He reached up to stroke my cheek, and I felt myself flinch back. “I just have to have you.”

  “I just have to kill you.”

  I edged away from his hand and ducked around him, back-stepping into the living room. “Are you okay?” I asked hesitantly. “You don’t seem to be yourself,” I added, wondering how far I could make it toward the stairs before he reached me.

  “Who else would I be?” he asked, trying to close the distance between us.

  “There is no way you could know who I really am.”

  Now I had passed scared and found myself quickly moving into terrified.

  “Um, I’m not feeling really well,” I managed, putting the coffee table between him and me. “Maybe we can do this tomorrow?”

  “But I need to talk to you now,” he said, rounding the table.

  “You need to be dead before he wakes up.”

  “Spike!” I exclaimed realizing what the two different voices were.

  Hawk’s face distorted, shifting into something alien. The only thing I saw, however, was its expression of inhuman anger. Spike’s body shrank and thinned, his skin morphing into a jaundiced-yellow hide. He sprang across the table at me, Hawk’s clothes falling off as he leapt. His hands elongated into what looked all too much like razor sharp talons as he flew.

  I stood, frozen, stunned at the transformation. Something inside my head screamed “Move, move, move!” And I did.

  My impulse was to jerk back, but the couch blocked me. The edge of it hit my knees, and I crumpled and flopped backward like some lame Matrix move. Our old couch saved my life. Spike’s jump took him well over my new position, and he collided with the wall, his head crashing into the sheetrock. I rolled to the floor, pushing the coffee table over as I scrabbled toward the door. That same “Move, move, move” pounded through my head. The Changeling pulled its head out of the hole it had made, plaster dust falling off his face as he glared at me.

  “I will end you!” he vowed. This time his words matched his intention exactly.

  I tried to scramble to my feet, but I felt like I was stuck in that fucking dream where you are running and running yet getting nowhere. The rug bunched up under me, and I fell to my hands and knees, my forward momentum destroyed. I turned over, not wanting to have this thing plunge its claws into my back. Instead, I evidently preferred watching him slice me up.

  Sure enough, Spike leapt off the couch and landed on the coffee table before he came at me, arms outward, claws spread, his oversized mouth turned into a horrifying grimace complete with fangs. In less than a second, the image of Jewel slapping my head and being thrown back flashed in front of my eyes, and I called out. “Ruber, help!”

  “Protection,” the ruby announced casually, and Spike stopped falling. Instead, startled and furious, it floated a foot above me.

  I saw a shimmer in the air between us, the same way that air moves above a flame. Spike’s mouth returned to something normal as he began to mumble under his breath. The words vanished from my memory the instant they were spoken. What I had heard made no sense at all, which meant they had to be magic. “What’s he doing?” I asked, too terrified to move.

  “Dispelling the barrier,” Ruber answered dispassionately.

  “Stop him!” I called out.

  “I am unable to harm him. He is on the list of entities I am not allowed to take offensive actions toward.”

  I forced myself not to curse at the rock and instead just screamed, “Do something!”

  The ruby began to pulse with light and floated off the ground about two feet, spinning slowly at first and then faster. Ruber began to speak, in the same fleeting language Spike had used, Ruber recited something and then promptly vanished.

  “What the—?” I grunted as the barrier the elemental had created disintegrated, and Spike plummeted out of the air.

  Spike crashed down on top of me, slamming into me so hard I felt the breath fly out of me. I cringed when my ribs and aching back complained about the weight of his body and the force of his impact. Spike seemed as surprised as I was and scrambled to get off of me. I didn’t know a thing about Changelings. Spike was my first experience with the race, and I had to admit, so far, I was not a fan. In my complete and absolute terror, every single scrap of information I had ever heard about monsters and things that go bump in the night flashed before my eyes; the memory of one of my dad’s old movies came rushing up through the haze of fear.

  “Wolfmen have nads.” Those three words came through clear as a bell.

  My knee came up and slammed between Spike’s legs. I saw his eyes bulge outward as he stopped moving and breathing. He toppled over to the left as I rolled out from under him. I still couldn’t draw a full breath and clutched my chest as I staggered drunkenly to my feet. My back was on fire as whatever pain I’d moved past came flaring back a thousand fold. Spike rocked back and forth, curled in a fetal position, something like a whistling moan leaving his mouth on every breath.

  I leaned against my dad’s chair and tried to get my lungs to start working again before he got up.

  He recovered faster than I did.

  Using his index claw as a grappling hook, he punched the tip through the wallboard above him and pulled himself to his feet. If I thought he hated me before, I’d been wrong. His previous emotion had only been slight dislike compared to what he felt right now. “I was just going to kill you,” he said, taking a halting step at me. “You got between him and me, and that isn’t allowed. But it was nothing personal then,” he wheezed at me. He dislocated his jaw and opened his mouth to roar at me, and I saw that there were more teeth in his mouth than I’d seen in a dozen people. “Now it
’s personal.”

  I shoved the chair between him and me. All I could do was draw maybe a quarter breath before my diaphragm threatened to knot up, cramping.

  He crouched down. Still winded and hurting from my shot to his nads, he readied himself to spring. I felt the chill go down my spine as I realized I was about to die.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and wished I had had time to say good-bye to my dad.

  Suddenly, a flash of light pulsed against my eyelids. I opened them quickly, wondering if I was already dead. Were these the last confused thoughts shooting through my brain while I bled out on the floor? Had I seen a flash of lightning from outside?

  Hawk stood between Spike and me, with Ruber floating off his right shoulder. He was wearing only his jeans and had his sword gripped in his right hand.

  They glared at each other for a moment as time slowed between them.

  Then they both roared and charged at each other.

  HAWK WAS sleeping deeply when he sensed the magic change in the room.

  Waking, especially since he had no memory of falling asleep, was disorienting. He went from leaning back, deep in slumber, to crouching, brandishing his sword in less than a second. He wasn’t even aware what he was looking at until he felt the cold floor under his bare feet, and his mind begin to un-fog.

  Then he saw that chatterbox of an elemental floating in midair and was suddenly reminded why he had avoided it with a vengeance back in Arcadia. Hawk’s eyes narrowed against the bright light. “Why are you not with Ka… the human?” he asked, knowing the answer could in no way be good.

  “He is under attack by your Changeling,” the gem replied, its attitude subtle but very present. Hawk wondered if the jewel had resented being given as a gift yet again. He saw the pack open and clothes scattered about, and he began to piece the situation together.

  Spike’s jealousy had gotten the worst of him.

  “Take me to them now,” he commanded, stepping toward the floating artifact.

  “As you wish, your majesty.” The last word was said so scornfully Hawk knew for certain that the ruby still held a grudge. He had no time to apologize for his poor manners; that would have to wait for later. If there was a later.