Absolute Heart Read online

  “This is remarkable,” Head Instructor Levithan said in wonder. The robot took a few unsteady steps forward until it was squarely under the doorframe and began to rise.

  “Oh no. Oh no,” Landa whispered to herself as the entire class watched her invention stand to full height, cracking the doorframe and splintering the wood and plaster away from the walls. Chunks of ceiling collapsed around the robot. Boys ran from one end of the room to the other, some grabbing oversized wrenches to use as bats, others throwing themselves under workstations.

  The dust stirred up by the catastrophe in front of them billowed out in concentric circles, covering Landa’s black boots and putting a fine coating on her pants. She shrugged and then sagged deeply toward the ground.

  “Landa!” Levithan called, and Landa jumped back up.

  “I… I think the cards may have been placed in the wrong order? My calculations were checked and rechecked.” A large section of wall collapsed at that moment, knocking into her robot and taking it and most of the wall to the floor with a thunderous boom. Landa was pretty sure she heard the floor crack.

  “Landa!”

  “I’m going to go get a dustpan, maybe.”

  “Uh-huh,” Levithan said.

  Landa slinked away and left the room before her instructor could catch his wits. She had nearly made it through the next room to the maintenance closet, lost in calculations in her head, trying to figure out what went wrong with her plans, when someone tall crashed into her. They were, she and her assailant, sent sprawling across the hallway floor. And the wood floor hit hard.

  “Oof.”

  “Oh my, I am… I am so sorry. I’ve been trying to find you,” he said, pushing his glasses, which had been knocked askew by the impact, back into place.

  “Hello, old boy,” Landa said, motioning for him to get off her. “Lucas, right? Do you mind? I’m on the floor here spread-eagle and awfully unladylike.”

  He pushed himself up, but before he could regain balance, fell and landed against her shoulder. Lucas was ungraceful, with long legs that seemed to have grown into their full length while the rest of him struggled to catch up. He was handsome, all right, just uncoordinated.

  “Unh. We have to stop meeting like this,” Landa said. Lucas’s face, already pale, blotched quickly in unsightly red spots. “Relax, kid.”

  “What was that crash I just heard?”

  “What crash?” She smirked and looked around her at the wreckage.

  “Um….” Lucas pointed at the piles of smoking rubble.

  “I know you. You’re always following Gavin. We haven’t…. Have we spoken before?”

  “Yes. Once, when I tried to ask you if—never mind that now. I’m…. Listen, it’s… Gav… your friend, Gavin.” Landa thought him quite odd and the entire conversation outlandish.

  “My friend Gavin?” When Lucas stared blankly at her, she grew impatient. “Well, do you know something?”

  “Do I what? Hey, listen, right? Something terrible has happened,” Lucas said.

  Landa straightened immediately, pulling Lucas and herself totally upright and steady with the strength of a much larger person. Concern fueled her. Lucas looked like his whole body would shake itself apart like an out-of-tune flywheel.

  “Calm down and tell me everything,” Landa instructed.

  Lucas informed Landa about what had happened in class, all the way up to the dramatic classroom exit. She took note at how resentful he looked when going over the parts where the professor had manhandled Gavin by his tie.

  “I keep telling him that his tie would catch in something sometime. I never thought it’d be caught by someone,” she said.

  “Not important,” Lucas chastised.

  “If you don’t mind my saying, it sounded important to you just then.”

  “Gavin needs help.”

  “Agreed.” Landa started drawing blueprints in her head, trying to analyze the situation and map out a clear plan of action. Her friend needed her, but if what this Lucas character had said was true, Gavin had run from the building, and no one knew to where.

  “All right, I need to go. Thank you for letting me know what is going on,” Landa said with a dismissive finality. He frowned at her, forehead creased.

  Lucas watched her grab her top hat from her worktable.

  “Wuh… wait. I’m going with you,” Lucas declared.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “No. Listen, I don’t even know who you are. Why haven’t you talked to us before now? What is your story here?”

  “I’m not a child. He needs our help. And I have talked to you before, like I said.”

  Landa stared into Lucas’s face, seeing resolution. She also saw something else. He seemed somewhat like a lost puppy. People weren’t always as easy as machines to figure out, but now the proverbial governor wheels were starting to spin in time and tune to move the gauges into the “Ah-ha” range for her to see. She needed to find Gavin, and however weird this fellow was, or whatever purpose he really had, he was another set of eyes that clearly wanted to help her friend.

  “You can come. Let’s go. But if you are taking the piss out of me in any way….” She let her threat hang there. When he did not respond, they both walked up the steps toward the ground floor of the school, where they could take the exit and begin their search.

  BEHIND THEM, the soft click of a well-heeled dress shoe mirrored every step they took up the stairs. An oxford, to be exact. Wish Jeter had followed Lucas down to Landa and listened in. He knew something was afoot with Gavin and suspected Lucas’s involvement somehow, so he tailed him. After Landa had the effrontery to ridicule him, he would find out whatever they were up to and get even. He was intrigued by what he’d heard and a little disgusted at the new poof he thought he had discovered.

  As Old As Stepfathers and Sons

  DECLAN BURST into Rory’s rooms.

  “It’s time to send your young ward on his way, Rory.” Declan’s powerful voice boomed over the large kitchen table where Rory sat drinking whiskey alone.

  “What do you mean?” Rory feigned ignorance. He knew well what the Brotherhood had in store for his stepson. Ever since the faeries had talked about the prophecy, he knew.

  “Our timetable is accelerated. The boy knows more than he should.”

  “He might have suspected less if your hooligans hadn’t attacked him.”

  Declan fumed. “That boy is… resilient. He defeated three of my lads tonight. I sent them to send a message after Orion dared to argue with Lord Blaylock, in public, no less.”

  “And they failed again. I told you they would,” Rory said, almost proud.

  “Eh, how would you know?” Declan said. He grabbed the whiskey from the table and threw back the full glass. He raised one eyebrow. “Nice drink. Marrying into royalty has served you well.”

  “I knew they’d fail,” Rory said, ignoring the bait, “because I have raised the whelp since his meddling father…. He’s very… dangerous.”

  “That is precisely why it is time to send him on his way. He is ready. If today’s trials showed us anything, it’s that.”

  “Agreed, so why the spectacle about his red cloak?” Rory asked but was met with a cold stare. “What would you have me do?”

  “Go to him. Tell him that he must travel to find the stone and deliver it to you in order to defeat us and to save his precious queen. Say whatever you need. But be careful not to believe your own lies.” Declan stood over Rory’s table and said, “Convince him. Convince him of whose side you are on. Channel everything that this boy will believe. Use his fears. Use his dreams.”

  RORY WASN’T sure he could manipulate Orion as easily as Declan suggested but knew better than to tarry too long contemplating next steps. He bowed his head in acquiescence and left the room to find his stepson.

  Rory walked a little unsteadily down the corridor toward the queen’s chamber. He paused next to a tapestry when he noticed the edges had been
smeared with blood. Rory looked around to see if anything else was amiss but could find nothing.

  The guards moved aside and allowed Rory entrance, where he found Orion. His head had begun to loll in slumber, his hand clutching Siobhán’s.

  “MY SON, awake. Come now, Orion.” Rory gently shook his stepson’s shoulder.

  “Bah,” Orion exclaimed, jerking his hand toward his dagger sheathed under his robes.

  “Stay your hand. It is me,” Rory explained. “What is all this blood?”

  “I am fine, Rory,” Orion said. The way his tongue dripped the name of his stepfather, like acid dripping on steel, made clear his feelings. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have come to get you. To tell you that it is time.” Rory said, his hands and voice shaking a little.

  “Time for what, pray tell?”

  Rory looked over his shoulder at the thick wooden door to the chambers, closed behind him, its iron crossbars an imposing barrier. “Listen, son—”

  “I am not your son,” Orion said through gritted teeth.

  “I have always had your best interests at heart. You are the only thing I have left of your mother.” He reeked of drink and desperation, both odors offensive to Orion’s nose. “You want to save your aunt from their duplicitous ways, to bring down the Brotherhood?”

  Orion sat in silence to let this melodrama play out. Regardless of his personal feelings about his pathetic stepparent’s shortcomings, he had felt a coming storm for some time. He had begun to study sacred magick texts in the library long into the night to prepare himself for what he felt was an upcoming war. He had always assumed the war would be across the Irish Sea.

  “I have heard them talking, heard the faeries and Blaylock. They speak of you.” At this, Orion tilted his head toward Rory, his ears maybe more open than a moment ago.

  “You don’t think I know they sent you? What kind of mind games are these that you are playing?” Orion was skeptical of anything Rory ever said.

  “I know of the attack on you tonight. I know that those idiots were sent to bully you into working for him. The problem is that they now are assured you are splintered from them and their Brotherhood. Once they had grand plans to bring you in, to use your power for their ends. Now they plan to force you to fulfill the prophecy, or kill you.”

  “Force me how?” Orion was shocked to witness Rory glance to Siobhán, her frail form in a restless sleep. “Oh. What should I do?”

  “I will smuggle you out of the castle tonight to avoid any spies reporting to either side. I have arranged for safe passage through the city. You’ll then slip aboard a galleon across the sea.”

  “Across the sea? To England? How can I protect her if I am to be thousands of leagues away? No. No, I won’t.”

  “You don’t know, do you? Blaylock saw the prophecy. Orion, it shows you…. You will find the stone—”

  “What? Have you lost your senses? That legend? If it is even more than talk, those pieces have been spread to the winds for hundreds of years. Where would I even begin to look?” He felt powerless to do anything of value.

  “The Brotherhood knows where one stone has been hidden. In the heart of enemy lands.”

  “London?” Orion figured.

  “Yes, London. We have friends along the way, but be careful, as England is a country obsessed with fear of us and all things magickal.”

  “Your precious Brotherhood saw to that,” Orion spat.

  The queen grumbled and stirred slightly.

  “If you want to save the queen, you must do this,” Rory pleaded. “Get the piece and give it to me.”

  “Where are the other stones?”

  “I… do not know.” Rory dropped his head in well-practiced sorrow. He had played his part well in wooing Orion’s mother, and in mourning her murder. Orion knew better than to trust anything he said.

  “Great. That’s just great. You want me to leave her, sneak aboard a ship to leave here, to go into the belly of the beast, to steal a powerful magick stone and give it to you? Simple.” Orion’s hazel eyes locked on Rory’s. “And why would I hand over this powerful weapon to you?”

  “Because I know what it once was. I know what it can become again,” Rory said to Orion. Rory shifted his gaze slowly, deliberately away from Orion and the queen, traveling upward toward the old portrait of the powerful ruler Queen Siobhán used to be. “We can give it to her, and she can again rule. She can fight the evil poisons they have given her and bring Éire back from the brink of destruction.”

  “Poison….”

  “Surely you knew?”

  He did know. He had suspected. It was the only way Blaylock and his cronies could have done all the things they’d done and have her not fight back these many years. “Yes, I knew,” he replied meekly. Orion could not help his feelings as they washed over him. He swelled with anger. “What of the Brotherhood?” he said through clenched teeth.

  “They will fall,” Rory declared.

  “And the Mage returning?”

  Again, at the mention of the mysterious mage, Siobhán awakened. This time she barely moved. Her blue eyes opened, saw Rory in the room, and turned purple again.

  My great-nephew, you and you alone hear my words now. Siobhán’s voice blasted into his head. Orion nearly jolted out of the chair, if not for the gentle arms, her invisible arms, holding him steady.

  They have your stepfather…. I know you, son. Your father is not…. I know you know this. Ung…. Her face faltered slightly. Rory continued to stare blankly.

  Aunt! Orion cried in concern within his head, for she had also stifled his lips from moving.

  I am fighting the wicked poisons but can only do so a moment longer. Go on this journey. Find the Dragon Stone of immense power. It will reveal itself to you and to another. Your fate is tied. Do not let Morgun Blaylock and his ilk find it. One is already too dangerously close to them. But you will see to that one as well.

  Great-Aunt Siobhán, I miss you so much. Tears streamed down Orion’s face. He saw her in his mind’s eye like the image of her portrait as he carried on their mental conversation.

  Go now, my love. Find the one you trust. I….

  “Dragons. Bring my castles to me!” the weary, aged queen shouted aloud as she ended their conversation and returned to her madness.

  Rory visibly startled and turned to the queen. This gave Orion time to wipe the real tears from his eyes.

  “I will go.”

  A Hero’s Journey

  THE ECHO of the Parliament building’s heavy wooden double doors reverberated in the Grand Hall when they slammed behind Gavin. He was on a mission, a mission to confront his father. It was time he started living his own dreams.

  The green-painted benches in the main hearing chambers, so famous across the empire for their remarkable color, were empty. Court had not been scheduled for the morning. The halls were also mostly barren. A few clerks carried files to magistrate offices, most of whom had also left for the day. Tall glass ceilings towered above Gavin’s head as he stormed, full of righteous anger, across the building. He powered to the spiraling staircase that led to the private offices of the councilmen who led the nation.

  Gavin took the stairs two by two, huffing a little with his strides. His hands squeaked as they slid up the banister. At the end of the hall, his father’s empty corner office sat in darkness. Gavin looked around but couldn’t think of where he might have gone. There was no way his father, self-proclaimed leader of the empire and savior of the world, would have ever left early to go home. Gavin felt deflated. He had been completely ready to change the course of his life. Now he would have to search for the man he aimed to confront.

  Gavin ran past his father’s office down the stairs. When he reached the bottom floor, before he turned the knob that would open the door to the main hall, he heard an odd sound. Faint crying drifted up from the basement.

  Gavin slipped behind the iron bar that crossed over the entryway to keep people from accidentally fallin
g down the basement stairs. He slowed his pace, clutching his goggles to stop them rattling, and tried his best to set his big boots down as gently as possible without making noise. He wondered who might be crying in the basement of the Parliament building. He wondered how many people even knew there was a lower floor under the Parliament building.

  He held his ear to the door at the bottom of the stairs, and the sounds seemed faint. He chanced opening the door a smidgen. The room was bathed in radiant light, a red glow from the boilers that pushed steam power throughout the entire building. When he suddenly heard a deep man’s voice, he crouched close to the floor and slipped inside behind a table.

  “Who is it?” the familiar voice asked.

  The answer came from something Gavin had never heard before. It was ethereal or animalistic; he wasn’t sure which. The thing sounded like two different animal sounds and the wind mixed together. It also appeared to be in pain. He crawled his way closer to where the sounds emanated from.

  The red glow of the room and the gleaming copper pipes that carried steam pressure out into the mammoth building gave way to a blue glimmer. Gavin peeked in the room to see something that looked like a tiny demon trapped in a blue lightning field, surrounded by four members of the Council and his father. The room reverberated with hissing and popping sounds.

  “What is the queen working on? You said someone is to bring grand change, fiendish creature. Tell me, or I’ll pull this lever again and make your pathetic life one of unbelievable agony,” Jacobson threatened. Gavin couldn’t see the lever or what it might connect to.

  “The queen, the queen, what is she working on? Cities and towns, ruined and burned down, burned down,” the creature said, a panicked rhythm to its voice.

  Gavin edged closer to where a few members of the Council stood transfixed by their prisoner, careful to remain hidden. From there he could see that the poor being trapped in the circle of light looked mostly like a normal man, slim, attractive, and naked. Or had it been a trick of the eerie light? Its clothing, which looked like armor of some kind, lay piled on the floor near the machine. His… its… nudity left nothing to imagination. His stomach muscles rippled as it twisted and drifted around, held in place by some steam-powered machine Gavin did not understand. As blue electricity coursed through the being, its large phallus flopped in the unearthly light, but Gavin did not have time to think of that.