Nine Swords

The sun pressed a blanket of heat distortion over the Land Rover with its three good tires and its one missing one and over the girl who sat in the shade next to it, her back resting against the door as she wrote in a journal.

Just beyond the shadow cast by the non-operational vehicle, the excavation pit lay open to the sunlight with its own shadows darkening the bottom levels. The makeshift stairway that the girl had cobbled together from deconstructed packing crates led down into the archaeological dig at a lopsided angle. A few tarps were secured lower down in the pit, covering her current work areas.

There were no workers on this dig. No one was screening sand and soil or cataloging artifacts. The only worker was resting against the car door and writing in her journal. It wasn't even a working journal.

Jenn pushed her hair up out of her eyes and tucked it back under the military cap she was wearing. It was windy today and the cap kept most of her hair and some of the sand out of her eyes. She wasn't wearing a fedora. For all Dida had given her hell about being 'Illinois Edwards', Jenn didn't think a fedora was a really good working solution... and anyway, she couldn't lean back on the car door with one on.

Waiting on the GAZ and Frank Calhoun's Marya friends to arrive. Don't know the man, but he's gotten me transport to Al-Mer today. Really should meet him one of these days.

She lifted her eyes from the page and peered out into the desert. There was a sand cloud in the distance, weaving back and forth like a drunken cobra. Could be freak weather, or it could be her ride. She glanced back down and jotted a few more notes.

So many people I've met. Seems like just yesterday that everything changed. A whole new life. Like a soul trapped in darkness and then Going Forth By Day. I should write it down before I forget, in case it turns out it's all just a soul's dream of daylight and I wake up trapped in ancient walls.

The GAZ-66 came skidding into the dig and sent a spray of sand fanning down over the tarps in the excavation. Jenn closed the book and tucked it in her bag before climbing to her feet. She took a hand up from the smiling, weathered man sitting in the back and set her bag on the floor where it wouldn't interfere with the Lee-Enfield leaning against the bench next to him. She nodded to the rest of the Marya in the back with a shy smile, then offered, "You know, Edwards has one less likely to jam in the sand..."

The GAZ left ruts in the sand as it hurtled off into the desert, propelled by a wildly shouting teenager driving with all the ecstasy of youth, when you think you're immortal. Jenn tried to remember what that felt like. She was only twenty-one. It shouldn't be that hard to remember. Now she knew she was immortal... and everything had changed.

The wind swirled over the tracks, depositing the fine grit scoured from millenia of civilization and covering all trace of the vehicle's fleeting presence.

[6 Years Ago]

The basement smelled like mildew and burnt garbage. It was an improvement from the stairwell leading down to it. That had smelled like ammonia and fresh garbage. Jennison's idea of seances came entirely from romance novels, so it was safe to say that her idea did not included a rancid cellar underneath a greengrocer's shop a few blocks from her expensive boarding school.

The shop had been empty for a while, since the family that ran it had moved off to London to take over a Mini Market. A blowsy blonde steered Jennison down the stairs and into the dark, moist underbelly of the place. "Cor, Chess, really? Down here? What self-respecting ghost..."

"Oh, Jenn, you can be such a total loss sometimes!" The blonde cut her more diminutive friend off in mid-sentence and stood her in the corner like a mannequin. "Just stay here and stay out of the way while we set it up."

Jennison was good at that. Staying out of the way. It was what she did most of the time. Chelsea Powell, the blonde, and her big, well-meaning boyfriend James Roberts, were the first friends Jenn had ever really made. They were at the same school, and they'd taken the nervous, timid-looking little newcomer under their wing. They dragged her along all the time now on their outings, looking for ghosts, exploring haunted castles, and trying to get into goth clubs. At fifteen, they were all hopelessly naive about the whole lot of it.

Jenn didn't really mind that they didn't get into the goth clubs. She loved the music, and the clothes, and the fascinating people, but it was all more than a little overwhelming. She preferred to watch it all from the sidewalk outside, where she could hear the low wail of the music and see the beautiful people coming and going without having to do anything as frightening as talk to them.

Tonight wasn't a goth club night, though. Chessie... that was what they all called Chelsea... had declared it seance night. They were going to try some spell from one of the old "spell books" Chessie had dug up in someone's great aunt's attic or someplace equally unlikely. Chessie had promised Jenn that it would let her talk to her mother's spirit. That alone was enough to have Jenn standing expectantly in the corner of a miserable cellar, blinking mascara-thick lashes over kohl-smudged blue eyes to try to see in the gloom. She was re-thinking having worn the little frilly black skirt and the satin corset. She'd have been a lot happier down here with a pair of ratty old jeans and a stained t-shirt. At least the Gripfast boots worked well in the damp.

If Jenn's father had any idea where she was, he would have thrown eight sorts of fits. Roderick Edwards had put his precious little girl in a boarding school to keep her safe. It was bad enough she was doing anything silly like this, but the part where she'd slipped her bodyguard... again... and left him sitting in the dormitory waiting room reading Soldier of Fortune mags... that part was really going to get under her father's skin. He was unreasonably protective. That was Jenn's take on it anyway.

Jenn watched Chessie and Jimmy, along with a handful of people who she couldn't put names to, as they drew chalk circles and pentagrams and set out candles. When they lit the candles, the cellar filled with an odor of chemically reproduced honeysuckle and cinnamon. Leave it to Chessie to use mix-and-match candles from some boutique's clearance bin. At least the scents cut Jenn's nose a little slack in the mold-rich cellar.

The others put on their homemade black robes and shuffled around the circle looking important for a bit. Finally, Jimmy dodged off up the stairs and killed the lights, leaving the cellar lit by the flickering flames of dozens of cut-rate scented candles. He rejoined the group, his huge frame easily picked out from the smaller robed figures. They stood around and began to chant, swaying. Chessie went to set down the book with the spell at the front of the circle, and then she cursed.

"Really? You've forgotten Jenn, you bloody idiot." Chessie shot an affectionate kick at her boyfriend's large, robed shins. He coughed something like, "Sorry, Pudding!" and looked up. Jimmy had to blink a few times and peer into the darkness around the edge of the cellar before he spotted the paler sheen of Jenn's bare arms and her face peering back.

"Jenn, get your scrawny arse out here. We need you to do this right." They did. Their little experiments had been working a lot more reliably since they'd absorbed Jennison Edwards into their little club. Sometimes it seemed like the spells might even work.

Jenn shuffled quietly out of the corner. "Sorry... thought maybe I was just watching this time." She smiled weakly and apologized to various dark robes as she wandered around the circle. "Where, Chess?"

Jimmy gently placed Jenn by the book where Chelsea had set it on the floor. "There." He practically just picked her up and put her where he wanted her. He was big enough for it. Jenn was slight for a fifteen-year-old anyway. She was doing the gawky teenage thing with a vengeance, and Jimmy could've put her on his shoulders like a little sister without much effort. He was on the rugby team, to boot... hells, he made up most of their little school's rugby team by himself.

Jenn flopped down cross-legged on the floor just outside the circle and pulled the book into her lap. Chessie had marked the spot in the old manuscript with a post-it note. The book was hand-written, which was strange. Jenn had seen old journals like this around home... her father's estate, where she'd grown up... but she had never paid much attention to them.

She started reading out loud where Chessie had marked. The words were Latin, but Jenn hadn't studied Latin yet, so she just fumbled her way through how she thought it should sound. It wasn't like any of this would work anyway. She was really only doing it to humor Chessie... and for the miniscule chance that her mother's spirit could contact them somehow and tell Jenn why she'd left her alone at two years old. Jenn wanted to know what had happened. No one would tell her, and even thirteen years later, she missed a gentle touch and a soft, bright voice she could barely remember.

The words were hard to read in the uncertain light of the candles. Jenn stumbled over a few words as the candles flickered. She looked up apologetically as Chessie cleared her throat somewhere around the circle. All the black-robed blobs looked more-or-less the same at this point, not counting the larger Jimmy-blob.

Jenn went back to reading. The floor was cold and damp and her skirt had settled in an uncomfortable lump underneath her bottom. She shifted and went back to reading, then stopped again when there was another post-it in her way. She peered at Chessie's scrawled writing, "Bloof here? How the feck do I bloof...oh...blood. Cor, Chess, learn to write." There was a snicker from somewhere around the circle.

Jenn looked around for a blade. There wasn't one. Jenn wasn't the only thing Jimmy'd forgotten apparently. Jenn rolled her eyes and bit her lip quickly. She dabbed one finger on the drop of blood she drew there and then pressed her finger down onto the edge of the circle. It was all symbolic anyway. Their 'athame' had been a cheap, folding pocket knife.

The candles all snuffed out at once.

Jenn blinked hard, as if that would help her eyes adapt to the sudden lack of light. She began to be able to focus on the figures nearest her around the circle. She couldn't make out the ones across the way, though. The darkness seemed thicker inside the circle. There was something there, though. Something her eyes could almost catch, if she looked at it sidelong. A pair of small glimmering red lights close to the ceiling.

Several voices came at once. The first was Chessie, shuffling and muttering, "Feck, what happened to the candles? Bloody draft." The second was a low, rumbling laughter from somewhere in front of Jenn. It was like a chuckle bubbling up from deep inside a volcano. The third was a boy's voice screaming in piercing terror.

Jenn froze in place, sitting and staring into the darkness as chaos broke loose around her. Her hands were braced on the damp cement next to her, but she drew one hand back in disgust as something wet and warm thumped into her wrist. She still couldn't see, but there was a warm wet patch where whatever it was had hit her, and the smell of copper mixed with the sudden scent of ammonia and acrid, sweaty terror.

Chessie was screaming for Jimmy, and something huge was moving fast in the darkness. There were wet tearing sounds, screams, and whimpers. Someone stumbled into her, and from the massive size of the leg that plowed into her shoulder, it was Jimmy, stumbling along in the darkness.

None of the pandemonium seemed to break through Jenn's confusion. She sat there on the floor in the dark, wrapping her arms around her midsection. Some little voice in her mind was telling her she had to run, but she felt attached somehow to everything that was going on... like she was just part of the scenery... part of the chalk circle that had vanished in darkness.

The sound of a door slamming hard into a wall joined the cacophony of screams and terrifying ripping sounds. Behind it all, the laughter rolled, like some sort of delusional soundtrack. A rectangle of murky grey light filtered down the stairs, and then there were more figures moving in the darkness.

Leather boots clattered over the floor around Jenn, and she was surrounded suddenly by a forest of legs, composite body armor and what looked like sword sheaths in the gloom. She could see what was on her arm now. Blood. So much blood. It was everywhere. That was enough finally to force her into motion.

Her hands slipped across the blood-slicked concrete as she tried to shove herself to her feet. When she did finally reach her feet, she was standing inside where the circle had been, and she looked up to see a wall of darkness looking back. The darkness was reaching for her, and she took a half-step toward it as her mind curled up and drew her into its own darkness, where it wouldn't have to explain what it was seeing.

Two figures plowed past Jenn, one on either side. Blades flashed and the darkness fell back. Strong arms closed around her waist, and she felt herself being scooped up and cradled like a baby as she lost the last fleeting shreds of consciousness. She didn't wake up as the man in the red and black uniform carried her out of the building, or when he put her carefully in the back of the black sedan with the diplomatic plates. She did not wake up as he climbed in next to her and they drove off toward London through the night. She didn't even wake up as she was carried into a building large enough to be a palace and brought to a medical ward to be checked out.

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"Roderick, I'm sorry. It's out of your hands now. I had a team bring her in and the paperwork declaring her our ward has already been signed. The Lewises insisted. No, of course you can. Once she's settled, we'll arrange visits. I'm sorry, Roderick. I trust this won't mean any disruption in our business contracts. Edwards' is a trusted and necessary supplier." The phone had gone dead at this point, so he just hung it up. As he set down the phone, he studied the cross on the back of his glove, then shook his head to clear his thoughts and moved on to the next order of business.