Soul of the Swordsman Read online

  “Just Logan, Logan Gravari…his Brothers, Ethan and Paul were brutally murdered ten years back.”

  “Does he have one leg?” Warfell nodded yes to her own question when she saw the look in Brit’s eyes. Yeah he did.

  “That is a very well-kept secret. He had his surgery and recovery out of country. Nobody knows he wears a virtual.”

  “What’s a virtue?” Rob asked.

  “A new prosthetic limb, connected electronically to the CNS so the wearer can actually feel the leg.” Mishu answered for her Madam.

  “How do you know?” Warfell had to ask.

  “He and I go way back, he trusts me more than his wife.”

  “What’s a prosthet...”Bob again.

  “Fake leg,” Danica. “One last thing—is he a Little Person?”

  “Ask him yourself, Mishu?”

  “Yes Miss Faith,” the slender raven-haired woman left the table to make the call.

  “He lives below. Good man to have in a pinch,” Brit wiped her mouth with a napkin and got up. “Relax and rest for now. When Logan gets here, we’ll hash out something like a plan and then go take it to them,” she moved to her desk and tapped the keypad with an evil glint in her eye. An electric guitar heralded the approach of a Black Dahlia speed metal piece, filling the penthouse suite with loud abrasive sounds.

  “THAT’S MUSIC!” Faith shouted, closing her eyes, thrusting her head back and forth, whipping the long brown hair about like a fan-sail.

  Across the apartment, Mishu put small rubber plugs in her ears, smiled and began clearing the table…Danica helped her with a warm heart. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she were stuck here. Then she remembered what they were about to do…yahoo.

  Warfell nearly cried when she saw Logos—Logan. It was him all right, Dwarven stature, shorter than Faith, long blond and silver streaked hair, bright green eyes. She wanted to hug him, but not yet…

  Brit sat the little man down and de-briefed him of everything, including the fantastical stuff, which was pretty much everything she said. Afterwards, Logan surveyed Warfell with a calculating eye.

  “You do seem familiar, like I knew you once,” he was trying to assimilate the information, make it work in his mind somehow. He needed more, Danica could tell.

  “On my planet, you are a world-class Thief, brilliant, genius—tough as nails. When you were kidnapped and imprisoned, a brute named Arjuna or June, threw you into a stone wall over and over, breaking both legs. In your cell, there was another man. A soldier named Thomas Barrow Snow. He carried you out of there.”

  “He was a spy,” Logan affirmed. “The extraction team swore me to silence versus high treason and a firing squad—my days with the government ended soon after. Nobody knows that,” Logan sat down, now re-assimilating.

  “Any clue where Tom Snow is now?” Warfell asked, as Brit began clicking keys and mousing like mad at her huge desk. Seconds later…

  “I got a Lieutenant Thomas B. Snow, US Marines, highly decorated, retired young at twenty-five after a botched mission in the Afghan Mountains…oh my God, Danica, it was called the White Mountain Massacre!” Brit raised her browns from the screen. “He’s a Taekwondo Instructor in Destin, Florida now…nice website, oooh, he’s handsome.”

  Warfell leaped to a stand and swiftly approached the screen. “Yup, that’s my boy—he has a crush on me,” she sighed. “How far is Florida?”

  “Too far. But if we make it through this, let’s go…lay on the beach for a while, spend some damn money,” Brit met eyes and they both smiled.

  “That sounds good, are there murderers there?” Warfell asked.

  “Oh yeah, plenty, worst in the country, for some strange reason.”

  “Then we will have something to do at night.”

  “Alright, we have three Dons, or Great Fathers here in the war zone; Vanelli Robeto, Don Carmen, and Victor Frantz. Their Captains keep these men well guarded. We know Viggo. Also, we have Juno Gustav—a Russian juggernaut, Nicolai Kensington—a Little man with big skills, and Dyson Stone—a CIA Assassin turned bad girl for the money. Finally, look out for their head of Security, the man over the Captains—Danton Derulio.”

  Warfell collapsed in her chair with a vacant gaze. Not Danton…not him, a bad guy?

  “You know Derulio?” Faith asked.

  “Yeah, we were lovers. I can’t kill him. I’d rather no one else did either,” Danica was still in shock over losing him on Aleutha—damned if she was gonna kill him on Earth!

  “Not a problem. I can work around that…’less he tries somethin’ stupid.” Brit acknowledged and continued. “They occupy three high rises on the Island. Catwalks at nine hundred feet connect two—the Tobruk Towers…my money is there. I’d like to enter from the roof.”

  “That’s at fifteen hundred feet, Brittany,” Logan interrupted.

  “Yeah, still it’s easier to work from higher ground than to try to muscle our way upwards, ya know?”

  “I can cut power to the building, even temporarily disable the emergency lighting,” Logan mused. I need my satellite for remote access and some of my other field stuff.

  “I like that,” Faith.

  “We can rappel down the side and enter through a window, avoiding the firepower waiting on the roof or on the top floor,” Danica offered and Brit nodded yes, lost in calculations.

  “I have an idea. Logan, I am thinking about the time we went out…to drink,” the pixie grinned and Logan grinned back.

  “Oh my God Brit, really?” he seemed to grow nervous.

  “Yeah,” she giggled. “Only this time I’m driving.”

  Rob, Danica, Mishu and Brittany leaned into Logan’s laptop screen, framing his lighted face as the computer master hacked away…

  “I’m connecting all of the security cameras for Tobruk Towers into the Federal District feed. On your signal, I’ll enact them, disrupting all programming just for us. No warning for the feds—we’ll see about Channel 4.”

  “They’ll do it,” Mishu added. “Who wouldn’t want that kind of scoop; it’s a career maker for somebody.”

  Faith nodded. “Yeah, I’m counting on it. Logan, stay here with Mishu. Seal the building as soon as we leave and wait for my call, here everyone,” the girl passed burner phones to all.

  “What’s this do.” Warfell.

  “If you ever need me, open it like so, and press the green button twice, wait and you will hear me. If it vibrates—shakes, open it and press the green button once, wait and you will hear me.” Seemed simple enough. “If you are in dire need of evac or rescue, open and press the red button once, emitting the beacon…Keep the device on your body at all times, within hours a helicopter will come for you, these work anywhere on the globe folks.”

  “And a helicopter—is?” Danica knew she was a dolt here.

  “Oh you’ll see my tall friend. C’mon, it’s time.”

  “No, no, no, you do not understand me Ma’am. Do you know who I am?” Out of reflex alone, Warfell placed an arm to Bigfoot, backing slowly away from Brit and the receptionist at Channel 4 News.

  “You are Detective Brittany Faith,” she pointed. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing—you know what I do then?”

  “Who doesn’t?” the young woman replied.

  “Cool, I’m famous for legal murder. Listen carefully—we are going to the elevator. You will call Tawnee Shadoweye and tell her to meet me on the roof. You will call flight dispatch and have the Cobra on that roof warmed and spinning in twenty minutes, right?”

  “Miss Faith, why am I gonna do all of that?”

  “Because Channel 4 is gonna scoop the Federal District Feed on a whole lot of legal murder…we are going for Tobruk Towers, right now, tonight.”

  “Holy Shit!” the receptionist unlocked the elevator, grabbed the phone and pointed to the double doors with her nose in front of two very wide eyes…

  Warfell heard the lift groan when Bigfoot stepped inside. “Shadoweye,” she whispered with ey
es closed as they began to rise.

  “You know her too?” Brit—British had to ask.

  “Don’t freak her out like everyone else you know ‘cept me,” Robert added and Warfell sadly looked up to meet his eyes—blues to browns.

  “You killed a friend by accident as a teenager, enlisted in the military by mandate of a Tribunal. Killed your drill instructor by accident…”

  “STOP! Stop…please. You know me too.” Robert was astounded, moved, in total awe of this tall elf-like woman. She placed a hand on his arm and his heart skipped a beat.

  “Sorry,” she said calmly. The lift bell chimed and Danica moved her considerable attention to the doors sliding open…

  It wasn’t her! Danica was surprised. She did a double take to see if it was in the absence of the tattoos. “You are not Shadoweye,” she stated.

  “Yeah, who’s this?” the beautiful Reporter asked Faith, pointing like the receptionist did below.

  “A good friend, Warfell…from Nepal,” Brit answered, and then.

  “Warfell? Daniella Warfell? It’s me Jaime—Jaime Waters? Oh my god, you look good.”

  Now Danica saw it, this was Jaime Weathers, AKA Soulless. “She…said you were Shadoweye.” Danica said, growing more confused by the second.

  “That’s my stage name, are you aging at all?”

  “Where do you know me?” Danica was to the point, realizing suddenly that she also existed there on Earth!

  Jaime dropped the smile. “Afghanistan in the last days before the bomb? You don’t remember. You were leading an evacuation SEAL team after the White Mountain Massacre—I was your War Reporter…we screwed that guy in the hotel? Damn good-looking guy, a Marine. What was his name? You called him Snowman. How could you forget something like that? I mean, what the Hell?”

  Warfell leaned against a wall, about to pass out.

  “Don’t lose it now, partner,” Brit said ‘partner’ and Warfell found the mental strength she needed, pushing her act together, regaining her wits.

  “I’m on task,” she stated as the small group moved for the stairwells leading to the roof. “I am not a lesbian,” she whispered to herself amid the clatter of shoes on steps.

  Brit shot the tall beauty a smile. “None of us are until we want to be,” she whispered back.

  “I’m not one either…but I do like women,” Robert added at a whisper louder than most people’s voices and Warfell slapped a palm over her face in embarrassment.

  Danica watched in horror, frozen in place. The mechanical beast perched on the roof was loud, whining, screaming, casting wind like a tempest gale.

  They crouched as they approached—Bigfoot nearly crawled.

  “UP FRONT WITH ME!” Faith screamed above the roar of the propellers, motioning a totally numb Warfell forward. She did it…she climbed aboard, put the headphones on as Brit was showing her, and closed her eyes tight as the chopper doubled the intensity and abruptly lifted from deck, leaving her breath behind.

  “It’s okay Danica, we are at altitude now, relax…open the eyes.”

  She complied, the voice in her ears assuring her, and gazed out over the lights of New York City. Danica Warfell lost her breath—again. “Never think you have seen it all,” she said and faced Brit with an incredible ear to ear smile.

  “I heard that. Okay listen up everybody. We are making a pass to clean the tops of the buildings, then we drop to the deck in less than ten minutes. Cameras on?” Brittany Faith looked quickly back to see Jaime raising a thumb, eyes glued to a panel-screen mounted on the wall of the fuselage.

  Brit flew the Cobra once at full speed past the top, barnstorming the roof and garnishing immediate gunfire as they shot past.

  “Yeah, the Dons are in there. North Tower everyone,” Brittany took the helicopter into a climb, the engines responding with a high-pitched scream…

  At two thousand feet, Faith hovered as still as she could, while pilfering through one of many rucksacks they brought. “There you are,” she sparked an evil grin. “Tawnee, wind speed,” she added.

  “South at five,” the quick response.

  “Here we go. By the pricking of my thumbs, baby,” Faith slid back the window and dropped a dozen grenades. Warfell moved her sight down just in time to see the incredible fireball effect, scouring the roof with fire. She saw men aflame, leaping to their deaths, and the flashes of orange emanating from the top of the adjoining building like fireflies. She felt Brit moving the incredible aircraft over the other building and let loose another flurry of explosions below.

  Then they fell from the sky. Danica’s heart stayed in the clouds as Faith dropped altitude dangerously fast.

  “North Tower, get to the steel doors and hold them no matter what Warfell,” Brit said calmly as Danica tore the headphones away and leaped for the still smoking deck, followed by Bigfoot Bob. The little pixie pilot looked coldly at Tawnee Shadoweye, handing the end of a tether to her.

  “Hold this, get out, and give it to the big guy. Tell him to not let go. NOW, NOW, NOW!”

  She jumped, handing the rope to Robert, repeating what she said.

  Warfell bounded to the metal doors, shotgun high. She heard men on the other side amassing. She desperately waived a startled Jaime over, hoping they could find a way to bar the doors. The Reporter ran towards her as Brit raised the helicopter into the air again. Robert faithfully held the end of the tether, now spooling out from the Cobra.

  “What is she doing?” Warfell asked Jaime, when they saw Brittany leap from the craft.

  “NO!” Warfell was frantic, leaving the doors, finding a steel pipe and lodging the bar between the handles. It would have to do. They ran as fast as they could to the edge and then recoiled from the heat as an incredible shockwave struck from below. The Cobra plummeted into South Tower at full speed, carrying with it, enough hydrogen fuel and explosives to…

  Robert came to the edge and watched with the girls. Danica was already furiously unpacking the rappelling gear, strapping a harness to Jaime and then herself. She stopped and stared at Bigfoot. “How much do you weigh?” Men were banging on the steel doors fifty feet away.

  “Six hundred pounds,” he answered. She doubled the tether line for him. “She went into the building through a window—I heard the glass breaking before the chopper hit the other building,” he added.

  “Figured that,” Danica bound the three tethers tight to a weld-bar fixture and hoisted the shotgun, tossing it to Jaime.

  “I don’t shoot,” she said.

  “Yeah you do,” Danica replied. “Jump or die,” she added as the top floor doors burst wide and gunfire erupted on deck.

  Danica, Jaime and Robert leaped, damn the odds, they did it.

  They crashed through the already broken windows, three flights down, unclipped the harnesses, and looked around them to a scene from the pixie-devil’s surprise party. Red splotches adorned the walls, bodies lie everywhere—strewn about at random…

  “Move,” Warfell instructed, peeking around the door to a hallway littered with corpses—an easy trail to follow. They heard distant gunfire and Danica took off, clinging to the walls, desperately scanning, searching the hallway splashed in red emergency lighting and black blood.

  When they walked through the threshold of Victor Frantz’s office, it was already done. Brittany Faith stood alone in the center, face covered in bright spackles of crimson, her own blood joining that of her victims in several places as the wounds poured forth through her clothes.

  She was breathing heavily, face enraged, eyes steely and cold.

  Warfell closed the distance and caught her small body as it went limp, falling to her knees with Brit in her lap.

  “It’s okay partner, I got you honey, British? Look at me,” Danica suddenly flushed with fear as Faith smiled and whispered in a deep rasp.

  “We would…have been…a good tea...”

  “No, NO, NO! Stay with me! Don’t you do it!” Danica’s face contorted in pain as Jaime and Rob leaned in, pla
cing hands on her shoulders, pushing, squeezing…

  “She’s already gone Sweetie,” Jaime whispered.

  “But…you are British Fey…you can’t die…You can’t die…”

  Warfell’s sight blurred from the tears as she held her friend in her trembling arms, sobbing, rocking violently back and forth. She closed her eyes tight and succumbed to the welcomed blackness.

  *

  Never Forgive

  “INMATE!” A MAN’S voice boomed from behind. “Inmate Warren, step forward to the line.”

  She looked down; Danica was naked, standing at the front of a line of prisoners. A white stripe was painted on the concrete three paces ahead.

  “WARREN! Step to that line or I will PUT you on it, GO!” She complied, and a guard came forward, pushing his enraged Drill Sergeant face into hers.

  Really? Please, Warfell’s thoughts.

  “I’ll tell you right now Inmate, your brother and sister shit-bags down there are not going to rape you—we aint gonna let that happen to this gorgeous body…I am watching you, get your shit and go through this hallway, keep that gator shut, do you understand me Inmate?”

  “Sir, yes Sir!” Warfell belted out to the air.

  “Go—Inmate Johnstone, step forward, WELL SHIT BISCUITS IN DOO-DOO GRAVY! You’re a big son of a bitch—hit that line Bigfoot!”

  Danica looked over her shoulder at Bigfoot Bob stepping forward. She grinned and a Guard shoved her shoulder hard.

  “Through here,” the woman followed. In the next chamber, Danica was given pants and shirt, no underwear, everything too small. She slinked into britches made for a short girl, donned the meager, sleeveless shirt and faced the female Guard, now staring at her like a hungry wolf.

  “Your lawyer is here Inmate Warren. You get to see him once before we put you in open population. You WILL sign the yellow release forms he gives you. I am required to tell you that if there is anyone you love in the free world, this will be the only opportunity to give those names and addresses to him. There are no Coms down there Inmate…do you understand me?”