Fight and Flight (Magic 2.0 Book 4) Read online

  “Hello, Madame President,” Phillip said without moving.

  “Hello, Phillip. Please call me Louiza.”

  “Thanks. Louiza, please take a good look at me, and try to help me remember what position I’m in later.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever forget.”

  Brit the Elder appeared, still holding her glass of Hi-C. “Hello, Phillip.”

  Phillip sat up, dusted himself off, and said, “Hello.” He avoided calling Brit the Elder by any name, because he was in a relationship with Brit the Younger, and she understandably didn’t like it when he called Brit the Elder Brit. Just as understandably, Brit the Elder didn’t really enjoy being addressed directly as Brit the Elder, so it was safer just to keep names out of it.

  Phillip asked, “How’d it go with the injured from the dragon attack?”

  Louiza said, “Mostly superficial wounds and minor—” She stopped midsentence when Martin appeared out of thin air.

  “What is it, Phillip? Oh, hi, Louiza.” Martin turned to Brit the Elder and said, “Hello . . . ma’am.”

  Louiza and Brit the Elder both said hello.

  “How’d it go with the injured?” Martin asked.

  Louiza said, “I was just telling Phillip. It was—”

  Gwen appeared. “What’s wrong, Phillip? Oh, hi, Louiza. Brit.”

  Louiza said, “Hello.”

  Brit the Younger appeared. “Yes, Phil? What can . . . Oh! Hello, Louiza.” She nodded at Brit the Elder, who nodded back.

  Gwen asked, “Say, how’d it go with—”

  Louiza blurted, “Mostly superficial wounds and minor—”

  Gary appeared. “What’s up? Oh! Hello ladies!” He bowed toward Louiza and Brit the Elder.

  Louiza let out a frustrated grunt, but Brit the Elder smiled and said, “Hello, Gary. Good to see you.” She always made a point of being extra friendly to Gary when Brit the Younger was around because she knew that Brit the Younger was horrified at the idea that her future self might be attracted to him.

  Gary asked, “How’d it go with the hurt?”

  Martin said, “He means the people who were hurt.”

  Gary said, “Yeah, the hurt.”

  Louiza started to speak, but Brit the Elder placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  Jeff appeared. “What do you want, Phillip? Oh, hello—”

  Brit the Elder held up a finger to silence him.

  Tyler appeared, partially covered with Gary’s webbing. “Okay, Phillip—”

  Brit the Elder said, “One moment please.”

  Roy materialized and immediately asked, “What is it, Phil?” He didn’t bother to look around to see who else was present.

  Brit the Elder nodded to Louiza.

  “Now that everyone’s here,” Louiza said, “the injuries to the men you sent us were mostly superficial wounds and minor burns. A few people needed stitches. Nothing I couldn’t handle. I just wish there hadn’t been so many of them at once.”

  Roy said, “Good. Thanks for handling the injured and all, but we have important business to discuss. Why’d you put the kibosh on my macro, Phil? We could have this whole thing done by now.”

  Phillip said, “Please tell me you didn’t trigger your macro before you came here.”

  “I didn’t. I wanted to. I’m still not sure I shouldn’t have. But you said not to do anything, and it seemed important to you. Now what’s the problem?”

  “Yes,” Louiza said. “Who’s hurt?”

  Phillip said, “Nobody. Sorry for the false alarm. We needed to go away and talk without anybody realizing we’d left, and this was the only way I could think of to do it on short notice.”

  Luckily for Phillip, Louiza was more relieved than irritated.

  Roy said, “Yeah, yeah, okay. What’s the problem?”

  Phillip said, “It’s about this fight we’re in the middle of.”

  Martin said, “If you want to call it that. It’s not really much of a fight.”

  Phillip said, “That’s the problem. We need to lose it.”

  Tyler said, “And by lose, you mean?”

  “Lose,” Phillip said. “The opposite of win. We need for the other side to defeat us.”

  Brit the Younger asked, “Why on earth would we need that?”

  Phillip said, “Because we have a much more serious image problem than I thought.”

  Tyler said, “And that’s why we’re making a show out of beating Kludge and his boys.”

  “Yes,” Phillip said, “but publicly defeating some locals, even the Bastards, won’t help the problem we have. We’ve been thinking that we look incompetent, but the real problem is that we look too competent.”

  Gwen said, “I’m sorry, but have they been watching us? Have they not seen the mess we’ve made?”

  “They saw it, but to them all magic is impressive, even when it’s done badly. When something we do turns out wrong, they assume that was our plan, because we’re wizards and we must know what we’re doing.”

  Martin said, “They give us the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Yes,” Phillip agreed. “In the most negative sense possible. The locals see us as invincible, infallible, and, probably insufferable.”

  Roy said, “So after all the crap we’ve all put up with, you want to throw a fight so that everyone can see us get our butts handed to us?”

  “I feel we have to. Roy, we know that we’re all borderline incompetent, but nobody else knows it. They think we’re almost unbeatable, and that we think we’re totally unbeatable. In order to demonstrate to everyone else that we’re fallible, we need to have it demonstrated to us, in as public a manner as possible.”

  Roy said, “That’s nonsense.”

  “No,” Brit the Elder said. “Phillip’s right. I usually wouldn’t say anything. I make a point of not interfering in your lives.”

  Brit the Younger said, “Since when?”

  Brit the Elder said, “I wasn’t speaking to you, dear. You’re me. Your life is my life. Everything I do interferes with it.”

  “So it would seem,” Brit the Younger said.

  Brit the Elder said, “Roy, everyone: I know that what Phillip is saying sounds crazy to you, but I remember the situation well, and he is exactly right. There are people who suspect that you created the dragons. People don’t just forget that sort of thing. They need to see you suffer or they’ll never rest until they make it happen themselves.”

  Tyler said, “But that’s just a few people. What about the hundreds we’ve helped?”

  “You’ve made a lasting impression on them, too, and not an entirely positive one.” Brit the Elder pointed at Roy and Jeff. “You’ve caused rampant inflation in London. The merchants have fewer goods to sell, and more money in their pockets thanks to the settlements you all gave them, so they’re less inclined to haggle. It takes months for prices to come back down to normal, and by the time they do, most people are poorer than when they started.”

  She looked to Martin and Phillip. “And you two are even worse. Your actions destabilize the price of gold throughout Europe for generations to come. The entire economy of the known world has been thrown off.”

  Roy said, “Lord. This is terrible. Who knows what kind of effect this will have on the future?”

  “None,” Martin said. “You know that. It’ll have no effect on the future. We know that because every time we’ve done anything, we’ve gone back to the future to check, and nothing’s ever different, which just raises more questions, and that’s why we don’t talk about it, okay?”

  Roy said, “Yeah. But still.”

  “NO,” Martin said. “No but still.”

  Brit the Elder said, “Martin’s right that it has no effect on the distant future, but it ha
s a huge effect on the near future. Tyler, Gary: that little girl you encountered grows up to be a mean, unpleasant, angry woman who nobody likes and who likes nobody but her pets.”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “I’m not so sure that’s anything we did.”

  “And Gwen,” Brit the Elder said, “while the Scottish dragons never attacked any populated areas, I can tell you for a fact that our interference destabilized at least one marriage.”

  “How do you know this?” Brit the Younger asked.

  Brit the Elder shrugged. “I remember it happening.”

  Brit the Younger asked, “Which marriage?”

  Phillip asked, “And when do you remember this happening?”

  Brit the Elder smiled at Phillip, then said, “The point is that hundreds of people have seen you meddle to some degree in the affairs of man, but none of them have seen you suffer for it. If we wizards don’t get taken down a peg, there’s a good chance they’ll turn against us.”

  Phillip nodded. “We need some humility knocked into us, but nobody else can do it, so we’ll have to knock it into ourselves.”

  39.

  The wizards spent two hours plotting, planning, comparing notes, writing macros, and raiding Louiza’s beer fridge. When they were ready, Phillip assumed the position, Louiza triggered the medevac macro’s now-modified return protocol, and the wizards teleported back to their exact former locations, milliseconds after they’d left.

  Phillip squirmed and cringed beneath Honor, but the cringing was now an acting exercise. He had taken the time to create a force field that would prevent anything, including the doll, or any detritus that might fall off of the doll, from touching his face.

  Phillip looked up at Honor, and in a voice dripping with fear and contempt in equal measure, said, “Foolish child! Where did you get the Mego Demon Figure?”

  “From a friend.”

  “You have no clue as to the powers you are meddling with.”

  Honor said, “Good.”

  Phillip said, “Just, for your own safety, do not repeat the phrase Detroit rokenrolo vilaĝon while you hold the Mego Demon Figure.”

  Honor gave Phillip a shrewd look, but said nothing.

  “Yes, the consequences would be quite dire, if you were to say Detroit rokenrolo vilaĝon at this time.”

  Honor continued to stare, but her mouth moved silently, as if working through how to create unfamiliar sounds.

  Phillip pushed himself up on his elbows, looked her in the eye, and in a slow, deliberate voice, said, “Indeed, I, your enemy, would be particularly displeased if you were to say the words Detroit rokenrolo vilaĝon now. Right now.”

  Honor said, “Detroit rokenrolo vilaĝon?”

  For an instant, Phillip smiled before remembering himself and contorting his face into a cartoonish approximation of utter horror. “You said it! Oh no! You were clever to see through my ruse! This is terrible!”

  The Gene Simmons doll pulsed red with arcane energy and rose free of Honor’s hand. The doll stopped when it reached an altitude of ten feet and started spewing waves of blood-red radiation.

  Phillip let out a high, unearthly scream. Then the doll seemed to burst with a tremendous amount of energy, but instead of the energy distributing evenly in every direction, it flew with great precision in eight directions, striking each of the wizards, no matter how far away they were, or how fast they were moving. Phillip instantly collapsed into unconsciousness, as did all of the others. Phillip slumped back onto the ground, but the others, who were all airborne, went limp, and started slowly descending to the ground. A red mist rose from all of the wizards, coalesced into a vaguely humanoid form, then dissolved, except for Phillip’s, which solidified into Louiza in her she-devil costume. The area around Louiza suddenly seemed filled with a thin white smoke. Behind her, a line of six pyrotechnic fountains spewed multicolored sparks ten feet into the air.

  They had considered having both Louiza and Brit the Elder participate, but they chose not to for three reasons: It would have seemed odd to have two demons come from one wizard; someone would probably have recognized her as being physically identical to Brit the Younger; and the most compelling reason—Brit the Elder said she didn’t want to.

  Honor asked, “Who are you?”

  Louiza said, “I am the demon.”

  “What are you?”

  “I am a demon.”

  Honor had gone through a lot, and the stress showed. Louiza led her through the rest of the conversation, in much the same way a pediatrician has to talk a frightened child through a procedure.

  Louiza asked, “How did you know that the Mego Demon Figure could break my control over these wizards?”

  Honor said, “Your control? So it wasn’t them, it was you all along?”

  Louiza looked around and noted with satisfaction that she had the undivided attention of everyone present. Even the men riding the dragons had circled in close, since the wizards they’d been intent on fighting had seemingly fallen of their own accord.

  “Yes, of course it was me. You don’t think these so-called wizards could have done any of this? They’re fools! Foolish fools who behave foolishly. They’re far too foolish to ever . . .” Louiza trailed off, seeing that Phillip had cracked an eye open and was using it to glare at her.

  “They’re far too decent to have done any of this, not unless someone evil pulled their strings. They have no vision, no drive. These wizards only want to live in peace and occasionally help people. They never would have created the dragons on their own, and certainly wouldn’t have unleashed them on your miserable little town.”

  Phillip smiled at her, faintly.

  Louiza shouted, “The weak-minded fools! They tried to resist. They even tried to use the Mego Demon Figure against me themselves. They said the incantation once, which drove me from the host I had inhabited and gave me physical form, but I stopped them before they could say the incantation a second time, banishing me for all eternity. I cast the Mego Demon Figure away, where I thought nobody would ever look for it, lest someone else say the incantation twice, and banish me themselves.”

  Honor’s eyes grew wide with realization, then even wider with fear, then she looked up and to the right, screwing up her face as if trying desperately to remember something. Louiza looked down at Phillip, who had cracked both eyes, and very slightly shrugged.

  Louiza said, “But now I will destroy the Mego Demon Figure before anyone can say the incantation: Detroit rokenrolo vilaĝon.”

  Honor laughed triumphantly, and shouted, “Detroit rokenrolo vilaĝon!”

  Louiza screamed. A deafening screech, which only time travelers could identify as an electric guitar, played throughout the town. The Gene Simmons doll disappeared in a pulsating mass of pitch-black energy that exploded outward, enveloping Leadchurch and a several-hundred-yard radius of the woods and farmland outside town.

  The black energy hid another force bubble, this one made to deform and wobble according to a complex algorithm. Matter could get through its boundary with no resistance, but light could not. Since night had not quite fallen, precious few fires were burning in Leadchurch, and even where there was a light source, the sudden plunge into darkness prevented anyone’s eyes from adjusting until just before the darkness field disappeared on its own. Light came flooding back in, seeming that much brighter in relation to the blackness they had just experienced.

  Darkness only enveloped the town for a short time, but it was long enough for Roy’s macro to remove Kludge and the Bastards from their dragons, and for each dragon to find itself surrounded by a crystalline cube with a single, sliding wall that forced them through a goal and out of existence.

  When the darkness dissipated, the doll, the demon, and the dragons were all gone. Honor, Runt, and Phillip’s supine form were all in a round section of discolored ground. Klu
dge and the Bastards descended slowly, safely ensconced in glowing spheres that popped like soap bubbles when they touched the ground.

  All of the wizards got up groggily from the places where they had landed. Most were on the ground. A few were on top of buildings. Gary hadn’t been paying attention to his descent and had landed draped over a fence. He had to lie there, all of his weight resting painfully on his belly. Now that he could extricate himself, he teetered awkwardly for a moment, then cartwheeled headfirst to the ground.

  Phillip sat up. He made a show of rubbing his eyes and looking disoriented. He saw Honor, who still stood where she’d been before the darkness, looking both overwhelmed and weary. Runt stood beside and behind her. The dog bared her teeth, but tucked her tail between her legs.

  Phillip rose to his feet, staggered forward, knelt in front of Honor, took her hand, and said, “Thank you, Honor. Thank you for saving us. All of us.” As he kissed her hand, he did a frantic mental check to see if he had any memory of her having held the Gene Simmons doll with that hand.

  He looked up, alarmed at having remembered something. “Your brother! Your brother and the other injured. Where are they?”

  Honor said, “In the church.”

  Phillip walked back to where he’d fallen and picked up his staff. He pointed it at the church and said, “Tempo veki!” A beam of blue light extended from the head of his staff to the point of the church’s steeple, the only part of it visible from where they stood. The entire church glowed with blue light for several seconds before Phillip ended the spell. He turned to Honor, smiled, and said, “You should probably go talk to your brother. He’s going to be very interested in what you’ve been up to.”

  Honor was too grateful to be bothered with thanking him. She sprinted toward the church, using stores of energy she hadn’t known she possessed.

  * * *

  Before, the church had been bathed in the eerie quiet of more than two-dozen people lying unconscious. Now it hummed with the dull murmur and lethargic motion of more than two-dozen people moaning, sitting up, and asking for a glass of water.