Matt Archer: Legend (23 page)

The flight to D.C. seemed to take forever. I still wasn’t
speaking to Tink. She wasn’t speaking to me, either, except for the occasional
mental slap-upside-the-head or groans of annoyance when I kissed Ella goodbye.

None of this boded well for the mission to Australia. Eventually
one of us would have to back down, and I was certain it would be me. Like
usual.

Will, on the other hand, wouldn’t stop talking about his
knife-spirit. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping because it, um,
he
likes to do fly-bys. Not that I mind; it’s kind of cool, actually.”

“Are you getting along with him okay, though?” I prodded
Tink to see if she’d chime in. Nothing.

Will shrugged. “It’s like having an assistant football coach
in my head. ‘We’ll whip you into a fine wielder!’ Or ‘give me all you’ve got,
William!’ All he needs is a whistle and a pair of ugly gym shorts and he’d be
Coach Shaw.”

I laughed at the mental image of a tiny Coach Shaw stomping
around in Will’s skull, ordering him to run his forties faster. “That sounds
annoying. Then again, has he popped you in the forehead yet?”

“Nah.” Will’s grin was pure evil. “He doesn’t get jealous
when I’m with Penn. In fact, he seems kind of proud of me.”

“Lucky you.” And my knife-spirit used the most meaningful
night of my life as a bargaining chip. How was that fair?

Tink huffed a breath in the back of my head, and I had this
image of an angry fairy pouting in a corner of my head, her little gossamer
wings quivering with annoyance.

Wow…maybe I was finally going crazy.

Will and I arrived at the Pentagon late Monday afternoon, in
a rush to find out about our next deployment. In the last two days, the
Australian military had reported four more suspicious deaths, including a
report from an American hiker who said her husband had been killed by a “mutant
pin cushion.”

Badass Aunt Julie, dressed in her class B uniform, was
waiting for us just inside the security checkpoint. Will stared at her, looking
faintly scared, as we waited in line. After watching her head-butt a monster in
Australia, he’d developed a mild case of hero worship.

Once we made it through the metal detector and the heavily
armed marines standing guard, Aunt Julie barked. “Cruessan!”

Will snapped to attention. “Yes, sir! Ma’am! I mean, yes,
ma’am!”

She let him stew a moment before smiling gently. “Relax.
It’s just a meeting, okay?”

Will went limp. “Yes, ma’am.” He shook his head at me. “The
colonel said I’d get a team of my own. How do I handle that?”

I hadn’t realized how nervous he was about the meeting,
thinking his constant fidgeting on the plane was because he was keyed up about
the op. “You have nothing to prove. They have to prove themselves to you. Any
of them act like it’s a big joke when they find out you’re only seventeen, fire
them.”

“Just…fire them?” Will ran a hand over his dark hair. Now
that he was going on an operation as a true wielder, he’d followed my example
and shaved it down in a military buzz-cut. Penn had been really pissed at me
about that.

“Yeah. You need to be comfortable with the guys who will
have your back,” I said, thinking about crazy-man Tyson. Would he still be
alive if I’d told the colonel I didn’t want him on my team? Too late for that,
but maybe I could prevent Will from making the same mistake.

“Cruessan, you don’t have to worry about the commander on
your team,” Aunt Julie said, leading us down the hall at a brisk trot. “He’s
familiar with the program and will do everything to keep you safe.”

“Yeah?” Will said, eagerly. “Perfect! Is he a good
commander, too? He must be to get selected for the Pentagram Squadron, right?”

“The captain’s pretty good. I’d trust him to have my back,”
Aunt Julie said. “He’s the right choice for you, Cruessan. You’ll see.”

Will’s shoulder’s relaxed a fraction. “That’s a relief,
ma’am.”

“And there’s more,” Aunt Julie said, “The general added some
additional staff to this trip to help out.”

Something about her tone worried me. “Who?”

Julie sighed. “General Richardson wants intel on the ground
this time. So he’s sending his best out to Australia.”

His best? What did that…oh, crap.

I exhaled slowly, shocked that the general would do this
now. “He assigned you to our op? What about Kate?” I asked. “What’s going to
happen to her?”

“My parents are going to take her while we’re in Australia,”
Aunt Julie said. “She’ll be fine with them for a few months.”

“Couldn’t he send someone else?” I asked, unable to push
down the dread this mission was starting to conjure up. Both my aunt and uncle
were going over? Plus Will, not just as backup, but as a wielder? The risk to
my family had gotten too high. “Katie’s just a baby.”

“And I’m the expert on Australia,” Aunt Julie said. “I’ll
see things no one else would. You were in Afghanistan…you saw what I could do,
and I’m part of the reason you were successful there. You need me.” She turned
and gave me a look that would send a serial killer running if he met her in a
dark alley. “Let’s be clear. If you think I’m going to leave my baby’s
future—and the future every other baby on the planet, for that matter—in
someone else’s hands, then you need to think again. I’m necessary to the
mission, and that’s more important to Kate than me being home right now.”

Will and I exchanged shocked looks. I got what Julie was
saying, but if Will or I messed up, my baby cousin might end up two parents
short. I shot Will a look and said in a low voice, “Listen…we bring the two of
them back alive, understand? Baby Kate doesn’t get orphaned on our watch.”

Will nodded. “If I have to die trying, man. I’m completely
serious.”

After a ten mile stroll through a warren of hallways, we
found Colonel Black, Uncle Mike, Johnson, and another lieutenant I didn’t know.

“Well, look at that! Captain Johnson,” Julie said, going to
give Johnson a hug. “Good to see you.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait…
Captain
Johnson?”

“That promotion I’ve been pushing for finally came through,”
Uncle Mike said, smiling.

I went to shake Johnson’s hand. “You totally deserve it,
Captain.”

Johnson nodded. “I do; I’m not going to lie. Got my nose
broken, nearly got blown up a few times, almost became monster food once or
twice. I’d say that’s enough for a promotion.” He smiled at Will. “But it has
more to do with me leading a wielder team now.”

Will’s jaw fell open. “You’re my CO?” He grabbed my arm and
gave me a shake. “You hear that? Johnson’s my CO. Johnson’s my CO!”

Laughing, I pulled my arm out his grasp. It wasn’t easy;
Will could give a boa constrictor a run for its money. “I heard you the first
time, dude. Congrats, though. You won the lottery on that one.”

Colonel Black cleared his throat loudly. “Okay, meet and
greet’s over. Find a chair.”

We all scurried to sit. Will didn’t take the seat next to
mine; instead he sat between Johnson and the new guy. He was getting the hang
of this pretty quickly.

The colonel took his place at the head of the table. “First,
I’d like to introduce Lieutenant Nguyen. He’s transferred into the program on
Captain Parker’s recommendation, and requested to be part of Captain Johnson’s
team.”

Nguyen waved to the crowd, then settled back in his seat. I
decided I liked him. He looked at ease, but focused. His almond-shaped eyes
stayed fixed on the colonel, but I had the feeling he could tell me what was on
the wall behind him, because he’d already memorized the room. This was a guy
who had an idea of what he was signing up for and did it anyway.

 “Captain Tannen,” the colonel, looking uneasy (which had me
kind of worried), nodded at Aunt Julie, “Has received some interesting intel
over the last few days, and it seems to have a direct bearing on our operation,
so we need to brief you before you head over.”

Aunt Julie nodded. She’d assumed her
ultra-serious-don’t-mess-with-me expression. “I’ve been continuing my research
into that coven of witches, Nocturna Maura—”

The door to the conference room banged open. “Sorry I’m late!”

Will and I leapt to our feet as Dr. Longtree, the lady professor
from Canada, came bustling into the room. This time, instead of wacky,
mismatched clothing, she had on a beige pantsuit and heels. I did a quick check
on her eyes—brown, not jade-green. Good.

“Dr. Longtree?” Will asked. “Where’d you come from?”

“I’m here at the behest of Captain Tannen. Matt put us in
touch.” She smiled at us. “And I promise I’m not possessed this time.”

Lieutenant Nguyen’s eyebrows shot up. “Did she say
possessed?”

Aunt Julie stood to shake Dr. Longtree’s hand and glanced
over her shoulder at Nguyen. “Lieutenant, that might be the least weird thing
you hear for the next hour.”

Once everyone was settled again, Aunt Julie said, “So you
all know I’ve been working with the CIA to find out more about Nocturna Maura’s
alleged participation in a human trafficking ring. Dr. Longtree, we discovered,
has been studying modern witchcraft and knew about the organization.”

“Yes,” Dr. Longtree said, looking eager to lecture everyone.
“Unlike modern Wiccans, who practice ‘white magic,’ this group of covens
practice the black arts and worships some kind of Dark God—”

“Here we go,” I muttered.

“—and their goal is to bring him into the corporeal world.”
Dr. Longtree pulled some file folders out of a bulging briefcase. “I’ve had trouble
locating details, but they operate out of Australia.”

“How did you find out about all this?” Uncle Mike asked,
shooting Julie a suspicious look.

But Dr. Longtree was nodding. “Of course, how would a
professor have inside details the CIA wouldn’t know? That’s actually the
easiest question to answer, Major. The coven’s leader used to be an
anthropology professor, like me, and we met at a few conferences.”

There are no coincidences, I thought. “And this professor is
from Australia?”

“Yes,” Dr. Longtree said.

“Matt, you asked me once if this could be related to Dr.
Hughes-Burton’s disappearance,” Aunt Julie said. “Dr. Ann Smythe, the woman we
believe to be the leader of Nocturna Maura, started teaching at the University
of Western Australia a few years ago. Not long after, Dr. Hughes-Burton
transferred to Canada.”

“And I was doing significant research into Nocturna Maura at
the same time,” Dr. Longtree added. “It took me months to locate primary
sources but eventually I made contact with a few women and a man who used to be
devotees but had left the organization. We were supposed to meet for coffee,
but they backed out.”

“Wait,” Captain Johnson asked. “I didn’t know men could be
witches. Aren’t they wizards?”

“You read too much
Harry Potter
, Captain,” Dr.
Longtree said, smiling. “Men and women can be practicing witches in certain
religions.”

“Why did your contacts back out of the meeting?” I asked,
sensing this was important somehow.

“I think…well, I think maybe I rattled a few cages, so to
speak. They seemed frightened and told me they couldn’t talk to me anymore.”
Dr. Longtree gave me a significant look. “That was a few days before Dr.
Hughes-Burton disappeared from her lab at Carlton and a few weeks before I was
possessed. I must’ve stumbled too close to something they really didn’t want me
to know.”

I let out a slow breath. The man who killed Zenka had been
possessed, too. There had to be some connection there. Were these witches
involved in the war somehow? Were they helping the enemy take out the shamans
before we got to them?

Were they the ones who called the monsters in Africa?

“Matt?” Uncle Mike asked.

“Do we know where any of these witches are?” I asked.

Aunt Julie and Colonel Black exchanged tense glances and Aunt
Julie said, “Dr. Longtree, could you wait in my office, please? I’d like to
meet with you after the briefing.”

“Certainly.”

Once she left, I asked, “What’s going on? Something happen?”

Aunt Julie nodded. “The CIA has an operative in Australia.
He thinks he has a line on the main coven, so we’ve asked to meet with him.
They were reluctant to let him break his cover, but ultimately they realized
this situation was beyond their control, so they’re allowing me to meet him in
Perth while the rest of the team is investigating the attacks.”

“I want to caution all of you not to
jump to conclusions.” The colonel gave us a stern look. “We’re not sure this
Nocturna Maura has anything to do with the monsters or not. It might be
unrelated.”

I tapped on my fingers on the table, thinking. “Or it might
be everything we’ve been searching for the last two years.”

There was a long pause, and the silence grew so loud, it
rang over the ticking of the ancient clock on the wall behind Lieutenant
Nguyen.

Finally the colonel said, “Let’s face one problem at a time.
You’ll fly out in two days, at fourteen-hundred.”

“But we’ll stay focused on the witches, right? Every time we
go into fire-fighter mode, we lose the thread on this stuff,” I said.

“That’s why Captain Tannen is taking this trip,” Colonel
Black said. “Even the general agrees we need to dig into this.”

It was a small victory, but I’d take it. “Thank you, sir.”

“Let’s hold our thanks until the end, Mr. Archer,” Colonel
Black said. “You might want to take them back before this whole thing is over.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I might.”

Multi-time zone travel always made me feel like a used sock
that had been wadded up and forgotten in the corner of a gym bag. I cracked a
giant yawn while Uncle Mike met with the Australian military contacts as a
courtesy before we invaded their territory. Lucky for us, the Australians were
totally on board with our mission and had allowed us to use an abandoned
airstrip fifty miles away from a huge mining town as a staging point. They had
reason to be helpful; two more “alien” sightings had been reported during our
flight over, and one involved a casualty.

With this new information, Mike moved up our deployment
timetable, while Aunt Julie took her team into Perth to meet the CIA contact. Instead
of spending a few days there, though, Julie was going to bring him to base camp
for a full debrief because the situation was too critical for us to wait around.
The Australian Army was nice enough to give her a lift by helicopter, because
Perth was five hundred miles west of the our base camp.

All along, I’d thought the monsters in the Outback had been
close to Perth, lending some weight to my theory about that missing physicist.
I’d come to find out, though, that
nothing’s
close to Perth. Now I
wondered if that theory had more holes than my oldest pair of gym shorts.
Still, my gut told me it was important. I just had to figure out how Dr.
Burton-Hughes disappearance fit in with everything else. And I had to do it
while breaking in a new team.

Will’s team had gelled pretty quickly on the way over,
bonding over the box of cookies Millicent had provided for the trip, which Will
shared with everyone. He quickly became the favorite guy on the plane, and I
was glad he’d gotten comfortable with his guys so fast.

I didn’t have any cookies to smooth things over with my guys.
Dorland was back on ordinance, and Lieutenant Lanningham had been promoted to
Uncle Mike’s second-in-command since Johnson was now Will’s CO, but that left
two holes to fill. I watched the newbies load gear into one of the Humvees the
C-130 had dropped off for us. I hadn’t spent much time getting to know them. So
far, three men had been killed backing me up. This time, I thought I’d keep my
distance for a while, rather than get too attached. Just in case.

When I joined the group, Sergeant Greene nodded gravely and
that was it. Sergeant Blakeney, on the other hand, gave me a fist bump and
looked around the airstrip wide-eyed.

“I never been to Australia,” he said, his accent thicker
than the dust covering the lead Humvee’s windshield. “It looks…kind of like west
Texas.”

“Doesn’t
all
of Texas look like this?” Lanningham
asked and Dorland let out a chuckle.

“No, sir.” Blakeney pointed out at the scrubby plain
stretching toward the horizon. “Sure, a lot of the state is flat, but it ain’t
barren like this. West Texas is nothing but miles and miles of dusty prairie,
though. My middle brother, Jimmy, used to say Midland wasn’t the end of the
earth, but you could see it from there.”

“I hate to tell you, man,” I said, “but until you see where
we’re going, you don’t know the true meaning of the ‘end of the earth.’”

Mike waved me over, so I turned to go just as Blakeney
asked, “Is it really that bad? Or is he just punking the new guy?”

“If it’s anything like Africa, it’s that bad,” Dorland
muttered at my back.

Uncle Mike was poring over a large paper map spread across
his Humvee’s hood and he didn’t look up when I stood quietly at his right
elbow. “Chief, this is going to be another bumpy ride.”

“I guess it was too much to hope that they’d paved the whole
Outback in the last eighteen months,” I said. “We should get on the road soon.
It’s going to be hot out there this afternoon.”

He nodded. “No doubt.”

There was a whine, then a rush of wind as the helicopter’s
rotors started spinning at the edge of the airstrip, Aunt Julie came jogging
over to us—no easy thing in a skirted suit and heels, but she didn’t miss a
step. She and her men were wearing civvies today, thinking it would be better
to pretend to be journalists rather than U.S. Army Intelligence specialists. I
couldn’t tell where Julie had concealed her sidearms—plural—but I had little
doubt she could reach them fast.

“Permission to leave, Major.” Julie said.

Mike had his back to her, so she missed how he closed his
eyes a second before saying, “Granted, Captain.” He turned to her. “Be
careful.”

“Always.” Julie’s smile, while just for Uncle Mike, could’ve
melted sand into glass and I felt kind of awkward for intruding on their
moment.

A grin spread across Mike’s face. “Uh huh. I seem to
remember you getting into trouble the last time we were in Australia.”

She touched his arm. “Not this time.”

He was still smiling as she and her team took off, but when
Uncle Mike continued to watch the helicopter grow smaller and smaller in the
sky, I smacked him on the shoulder. “Sir, we’re packed up and ready to go.”

“Okay.” It seemed to take him some effort to refocus on me.
“Let’s go hunt some monsters.”

“I thought that was my line,” I said.

“I think at this point, Chief, it’s
everyone’s
line.”

I followed Mike to the small metal building where we’d
parked our vehicles and gear. Calling this place an airstrip was an
exaggeration: two old metal hangers, a dirt runway and a windsock didn’t give
me much confidence that a plane could actually land here without losing its
landing gear. Thank God I hadn’t seen it from inside the C-130 when we touched
down. I probably would’ve had my head between my knees, praying that we didn’t
die.

Although we were barely on the very edge of the Great
Victoria desert, the landscape had started to give way to scrub brush and
reddish sand, and the sun beat down on our heads. It was hard to believe that a
mid-sized town full of people who worked at a ginormous open gold mine was only
fifty miles from here—or that the town had trees and grass and old historic
buildings—because “here” looked like Mars and felt about as desolate.

Hundreds of miles to the west lay Perth and to the east lay
the Outback, but we still had a two-hundred mile drive to our primary camp
site. The problem was, except for the coordinates for the “alien sightings,” we
had zero direction to go by once we were out there. If the hikers’ stories didn’t
pan out, we’d have to canvass an area twice the size of Kansas to find any real
leads. Now, a normal person wouldn’t like those odds, but trouble would
probably find
me
wherever I ended up.

The big eclipse wasn’t for three weeks. Maybe Tink would be
talking to me by then.