Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (11 page)

      “Whatever for?” Tony asked him. “They'll just follow us!”

      “Exactly,” Bolswaithe told him, and it suddenly dawned on Thomas. The plan was to have Grandpa and the Guards follow them aimlessly throughout the world until they were ready to go to their final destination. With any luck, the Guards would either be completely tired or decide to give up the chase.

      “Can it be Australia?” Thomas asked as Bolswaithe lifted his sunglasses to look at him.

      “Sidney was later on the schedule,” he said, “but I’m sure we can alter it a little bit. You want to visit Sidney?”

      “Sidney it is,” Thomas said with a smile.

***

      Their visit to Sidney played out exactly as Monaco. They drove for a while, and then parked outside the Opera House. Morgan and the Azure Guards showed up, and Thomas and friends waited for the thunder-flash, then drove out again.

      Thomas was half-tempted to leave the car and just walk up to Gramps and try to say hello. He was sure that once they saw there was no sign to fight over, Gramps would stay and maybe just talk things over. He thought about it from Sidney to the Mansion, and then again as they parked outside Kiev’s Council Chambers in Ukraine, but decided against it.

      As much as it saddened him, and as much as he trusted his grandfather, he knew that he couldn’t trust his Azure Guards and that a confrontation would surely happen.

      Five cities and three continents later, Tony began to nominate places for them to visit, but Bolswaithe told him that he had a strict list of cities they could go. Cities where Guardian teams, the police, and Grotesques were already securing a specific site.

      Before going to Manaus, Bolswaithe asked Thomas to wait in the Mansion for them. Twenty minutes later, they came back. The Azure Guard hadn’t followed them, so now they knew that Thomas was the only one they could track.

      Six cities later, Elise asked for a bathroom break, which Thomas and Tony also took. She came back with a book and ceded her space in the front to Bolswaithe.

      Two cities later in Beijing, China, Tony demanded to make an unscheduled stop to get some Jiang Bing from a street vendor. He hastily picked up the crepes as a thunder-flash exploded inside the store behind him.

      They stopped again five minutes later outside the Temple of Heaven. The beautiful, three-tiered building was closed to the public, and Chinese soldiers and Guardian techs were keeping all traffic from it. As soon as they parked, a grotesque, who looked completely out of place, gave them the signal that the Azure Guards had arrived inside.

      They drove on.

      In Detroit, some seven cities later, Thomas realized that Bolswaithe had done a little more to the car than just the roof, because the gas gauge still showed a full tank. He meant to talk about it, but decided to wait until they had finished the mission.

      “Can we go to England?” Thomas asked before leaving the Mansion gates. “Or Ireland?”

      “We can’t,” Bolswaithe told him. “We don’t have Visas.”

      “Visas?” Thomas asked. They had traveled throughout the whole world already. “Why do we need Visas for England?”

      “Mashcrit central,” Tony said from behind. “Ireland is basically their home turf.”

      “But I’ve been to London already,” Thomas said, “and Dublin too.” He had toured most of the major Guardians Inc. office buildings before as part of his training about the company.

      “We were inside our buildings, not on the streets,” Bolswaithe offered. “Our buildings are considered embassies.”

      “I don’t get it,” Thomas said.

      “Let me put it this way…” Elise leaned forward. “You know how some human writers are also biographers, and even if they are not in-tune with Magical creatures they can sense them?”

      “Yes.” Thomas knew that many writers, Verne, among his favorites, had been a Guardian at some point and had not only created stories, but also wrote about real events and people as historians and biographers.

      Many more authors wrote about creatures and monsters that they had never seen, but they somehow
sensed
them. Their stories mixed real Fae or Methos creatures and their imagination to create wonderful novels. Kipling had been a Guardian and friend to many Faun clans, and his stories were an amalgamation of Faun legends, Faun history, and his marvelous imagination.

      When Mrs. Pianova had explained the relationship of writers and Fauns, she had told Thomas that while Herman Melville had never been in contact with the Guardians or Fauns, there had been an ongoing war between a group of whalers led by a Magic-attuned human who hunted whale fauns and the elder of the Faun clan.

      A great white whale.

      The whole affair didn’t end well for the human Mage.

      “Most of the great fantasy stories come from England,” Elise continued. “From
King Arthur
to
Harry Potter.”

      
“
Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Discworld…
” Tony droned. “All of them are required reading to all Guardians who begin at level green clearance. You jumped level green, of course.”

      
And blue and yellow and orange and all others…
Thomas thought. His official clearance level was black, but only because he was a Cypher. In reality he still knew less than many recruits, and way less than Elise or even Tony, who had been on the brink of becoming level red before joining his team.

      He was the Cypher, but in reality he was still a green recruit, or as Oscar had told him, a
noob.

      “So their stories are true?” Thomas asked. He hadn’t read all those books, but he had seen some of the movies.

      “Some are; some aren’t. Those men and women are great writers, and knowing about us or Fauns doesn't take away their accomplishments. I'm sure I could write a ten-thousand-page story about us and it would only take shelf space. Their greatness was no Magic, and their talent is their own,” Elise told him.

      “But the stories are true?” Thomas asked again. He was thinking about the swords in the stone, immortal evil lords, and schools of Magic.

      Bolswaithe took over the conversation. “There is a Parliament in England that governs Magic-attuned humans, and regulates Fae, Faun, and Methos relations, their interaction with the non-magical world and with us,” he said. “There are whole communities of witches and wizards, and yes…” he said, “there are schools that teach the arcane arts, and flying brooms.”

      “And the Visas?”

      “The last strong Guardian presence in the British Islands was Richard the Lionheart. After him, the Magical Parliament began to take control of the islands with the support of the Fae and Faun clans. When the first of the Tudor line, Henry VII, became King with their help, he made sure that the British Islands remained separate from Guardians involvement.”

      “Okay,” Tony said. “Enough with the history lessons.” He grabbed Thomas by the shoulder. “The main point is that the British Islands are Magic territory. The U.S. has two strong Pillars in its territory and another five around it; we have like thirty flux wells. England and Ireland have more than a thousand. They have their own laws, they are chock full of wizards, witches, and Mashcrits, and they don’t always play ball with the Guardians. So apart from our embassies and a handful of red tag operatives, all other Guardians need Visas to visit. Got it?”

      Thomas sighed. He had skipped so much of the Guardians’ regular training that sometimes he felt useless.

      “England and Maine.” Tony sat back. “Two places I'd rather not visit.”

      “What's wrong with Maine?” Thomas asked.

      “Horror stories, Thomas. When you reach blue level you can ask Uncle Stevie yourself.” Tony crouched against the side of his seat.

      Thomas decided not to ask any more questions that would lead to even more questions and concentrated on the road.

      Three cities later in Morocco, with Tony and Elise sound asleep in the back seat, he gave Bolswaithe the wheel and prepared to doze off himself.

      Bolswaithe told him that they had done about half of the scheduled stops he had planned, and that Morgan and the Azure Guards still kept pace with them. When they stopped at the Mansion again, Bolswaithe made a quick visit inside to get them some pillows and blankets.

      Thomas fell asleep thinking that having too much of a good thing could become bad.

***

      “Good afternoon.” Bolswaithe woke him up, and Thomas scratched his head and yawned. The sky was dark, and they were driving through a two-lane highway ringed with trees. He checked his watch; it was 3:33 a.m. local time.

      “Where are we?” he asked. Behind him Tony and Elise were just waking up too.

      “We are just leaving a town called Zitacuaro in Mexico.”

      “No more city jumping?” Tony asked.

      “Yes and no,” Bolswaithe said. “We’ve mixed it up a little, and we are now very close to the Monarch butterfly sanctuaries, a Magical place by any definition.”

      “What have we missed?” Elise took a sip from a bottle of water Bolswaithe had placed for them on the back seat.

      “Seventy-nine cities, twenty-three archeological sites. Nine known locations of flux wells and the same number of thunder-flashes.”

      “So Gramps is still keeping up?” Thomas took a sip from his water bottle.

      “They’ve slowed down, but not by much,” Bolswaithe said. “All this jumping has taken its toll on them. The on-site teams report that a new Mage has taken over opening and closing the portals.”

      “But Gramps is still with them?” Thomas asked.

      “He has to be,” Bolswaithe told him. “He’s their Cypher.”

      It had to be rough for his grandfather to be keeping up with them. Even with his new twenty-something body, Thomas was sure that all that jumping from place to place had to be taking its toll. They had all fallen asleep after seven hours of traveling, and Bolswaithe had driven by himself another six at least.

      “You want me to drive, Bolswaithe?” Tony asked from behind, a small hint of suspicion in his tone. “Take over a little bit?”

      “No, thank, you,” Bolswaithe answered back. “I did have a restful night while you were sleeping.”

      “Really?” Tony leaned over the seat. “And how did you do that while driving?”

      “Cuthbert took over for me while you slept,” Bolswaithe said without a hitch. “And I took over for him just thirty minutes ago.”

      “I woke up a couple of times and I didn’t see him,” Tony said.

      “He didn’t tell me; did you chat with him?” Bolswaithe smirked at Thomas.

      “Well, no,” Tony said.

      “Did you totally wake up, or did you just open your eyes a little bit?” Bolswaithe asked innocently.

      “I woke up,” Tony said. “Checked what was going on and fell back to sleep.”

      “Ahh…” Bolswaithe said. “I’m pretty sure that all butlers look the same from behind, and he dressed like me, so any Azure Guard scouts would see that the team was the same.”

      Tony brooded for a couple of seconds. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said, then leaned back in his seat.

      Elise exchanged a look with Thomas; they had made a bet about how much longer Bolswaithe would be able to keep the secret from Tony that he was a robot. Thomas guessed a couple of months, but Elise thought that Tony was so dumb it would be more than a year.

      “All right,” Bolswaithe said aloud a couple of minutes later. “This is new, get ready.” He pressed on his armor harness and the armor reformed around his chest. All three of them did the same.

      “What’s new?” Thomas asked as the car's roof began to reform.

      “Duck!” Bolswaithe grabbed him and pushed him down on the seat while stepping on the gas. A tree swung down from above them, hitting the car on the hood. As it went through the glass, it stopped the roof from reforming, and shards and scales flew in all directions. If Bolswaithe hadn’t accelerated, the log would have hit them in the front of the car instead of on the hood, and it probably would have totaled them instead of just taking half the windshield and the roof.

      “Azure Guard?” Thomas yelled. He was sure that Gramps would have never tried to total the car, much less try to kill him while doing it.

      “No,” Bolswaithe responded. “I don’t even think they’re Fauns.”

      “Where are they?” Tony emerged from the back seat, dart gun at the ready.

      “All around us. In the trees.” Bolswaithe swerved the car as a spray of rocks and sticks peppered them.

      “It’s Fae.” Elise rose from the seat, her hair covered with shards from the roof. She spoke a spell and breathed into her cupped hands—yellow, mist-like strands shot out from her palms toward the forest. Dozens of small creatures were bathed by the mists, and a couple tried to shake it off, but most of them already knew that the spell was harmless; it just lit them up. They jumped from tree branch to tree branch and ran alongside the road. “See them now?”

      “Thank you!” Tony yelled and began to shoot at the creatures closest to them.

      Thomas pulled out his gun too and began to shoot at the creatures.

      “Jumpers ahead!” Bolswaithe said.

Thomas looked forward; four or five of the creatures were lining up against a fallen tree on his side. He did the first thing that came to mind—he rolled up the window as quickly as he could, and then he immediately felt stupid because he had no roof.

      The creatures jumped at the car, but they had aimed at Thomas, not at the roof. They smacked one after the other on the window Thomas had rolled up, their open mouths leaving trails of slobber on the glass.

      “Good idea, Thomas.” Bolswaithe rolled up his own window, and three of the little beasts smacked against the glass. The last one managed to grasp the top of the glass with a small, four-fingered hand and hung precariously on the other side.