Reunion (2 page)

The would-be bank robber entered the bank, stopping to look up at the security camera long enough for his image to be captured clearly. He wanted no mistake made about his identity. It was important the authorities knew who he was, important there be no question of his guilt.

The wickedly sharp boning knife he'd stolen from a hardware store yesterday remained concealed by the long sleeve of his jacket, the hilt firmly in his grasp. The guard on the entrance - a young man in his thirties with a paunch and a neatly trimmed ginger beard - barely glanced at him as he walked through the door, assuming, like everybody else, he was just another customer.

A flicker of doubt made the robber pause for a moment, although to the casual observer he probably appeared to be deciding nothing more important than where he needed to go in order to take care of his banking business.

Is there another way?

Is this really what it has come to?

He had other options. He could return home, back to his own realm. He had a magic-infused talisman tucked in the pocket of his jacket that would allow him to scry out someone in his own reality and arrange for them to open a rift.

But he hadn't taken that option in more than three years.

What would he tell the
Tuatha Dé Danann
Brethren?

No, this is the better way.

Unfortunately, to be convicted of a crime serious enough to be sent to Portlaoise, a simple bank robbery would not be enough. There must be violence involved, although he balked at the idea of a cold-blooded killing just to serve his own ends, no matter how noble he believed those ends to be. He'd realized some time ago it would serve his purposes to maim a few people. There was no need for unnecessary death.

There was another quirk of this realm that he had often puzzled over - the bizarre concept of a war on terror. The phrase made no sense to him, but he soon figured out that while it was absurd to declare war on an idea or a feeling, the notion would serve his purpose well. When they arrested him for robbing the bank, he intended to inform the Gardaí that he was raising funds for Al Qaeda.

He only had the barest notion of what an Al Qaeda was, but it seemed to occupy the minds of many politicians and much of the news media in this realm, and - so he'd gathered from watching television - it was an insidious enough force that he would be roundly condemned for supporting it and, almost certainly, sent to prison if he was in any way associated with it.

But first, he had to rob this bank, something else he'd been researching on television.

He glanced around again, but nobody spared him as much as a glance. The people here were all intent on their own business. The tellers were busy serving their customers. The guard by the front door seemed to be counting the minutes until his lunch break. Near the counter a mother waited in line with a fussy toddler who was in no mood to wait for anything, and many of the bank's customers were glaring at the woman as if their silent disapproval would somehow spur her to greater efforts in controlling her unruly two-year-old. Others were ignoring the loud child, talking into cell phones or doing inexplicable things with their thumbs on the small devices. But one man did more than glare. As the robber studied the layout of the bank, the annoyed man lowered his cell phone, turned to the mother of the toddler and asked loudly, "Can't you keep that brat under control?"

The woman looked mortified. She gathered her child to her, but the youngster ignored her attempts to quiet him, squirming and crying even more loudly. With an angry glare, the man resumed his call, while others just looked away, embarrassed for the woman and her child.

The bank robber owned no cell phone nor saw the need for one. There was nobody in this realm he wanted to call.

Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed another guard had joined the first one by the door - it was lunchtime and for a short while there would be two guards on duty. This was what he needed. Two men were more likely than one to take him on once he declared his intention to rob the bank, and hopefully they would feel there was safety in numbers and be less inclined to shoot him. That was the theory, at any rate. If he was wrong and they shot him ... well, at least he would die while trying to protect those he was sworn to safeguard.

A warrior could ask for no better end than that.

He moved his arm, easing the eight-inch long boning knife from his sleeve. He focused on the mother and her toddler. He'd been hoping there would be a small child in the bank, gambling on the guards being even less inclined to shoot if they risked hurting a child. Not that there was much risk to any innocent bystander. He intended to surrender the moment he was called upon to do so.

He shook the knife down a little further and turned it so he had a sound grip on the yellow plastic hilt - a color he had chosen deliberately for high visibility. Let there be no mistaking that he was armed.

For a long moment, although he was standing in the middle of a busy bank at lunchtime holding a wicked-looking boning knife, nobody registered it. It was one of the guards on the door who noticed him first and alerted the second guard. He didn't even get time to call out his prepared speech:
Everybody put your hands up!
which seemed to be the traditional announcement of an armed robbery in this realm.

The two guards didn't call out to him either. They signaled to one another and split up, walking carefully toward him, loosening the clips on their holstered weapons as they approached from either side, making it difficult to keep both of them in his line of sight.

"Whoa there, big fella," the red-bearded guard said softly as he approached. "Whatcha got in mind, lad, that needs a carving knife?"

The bank robber frowned as his head swiveled between the approaching guards. This wouldn't do at all. If they arrested him before he had a chance to announce his intentions, he'd be charged with little more than a misdemeanor. He'd not get anywhere near Portlaoise Prison. Given he was carrying a weapon in a bank, he would no doubt get some jail time, but it would probably be in some other less secure prison and, far from being able to help those he was charged to protect, he would be incapable of doing anything at all to assist them.

The warrior from another reality had only a few seconds to make his decision. There was a scream from somewhere behind him as a bank patron noticed the knife and realized the security guards were closing in on a robber in an effort to disarm him.

"No need for a fuss," the bearded guard crooned. He still hadn't drawn his weapon, obviously convinced he could talk down this knife-wielding patron who had yet to do anything more threatening than produce a kitchen implement.

"I intend to rob this bank," he announced loudly, deciding it was important to establish that at the outset. He raised the knife, holding it out so everyone could see it. "I will kill anybody who tries to stop me."

"Not on my watch, sunshine," the guard replied, just as they did in the movies.
Is that something they train bank guards to say, or just something this one has been itching to utter if the opportunity ever arose
? There was no time to worry about it, though, because the young man was removing his gun from the holster at his waist. He raised the weapon, aiming it squarely at his chest. "Now be a good lad. Put the knife down and place your hands on your head. Slowly."

There were more screams behind him as the rest of the bank's patrons realized what was happening and a strident alarm began to sound, triggered by one of the tellers, probably. People began dropping to the floor. The noise was deafening and distracting and he'd lost sight of the other guard, but he couldn't risk taking his eyes off the younger one who was doing all the talking in order to find out how close the other guard was.

The 'not on my watch' comment had alarmed him. The young man no doubt watched far too much television, a trap he'd fallen into himself since arriving in this realm. He was reluctant to give him an opportunity to act out any other fantasies he might be harboring, but still, this had to be a convincing robbery.

"I want all the cash here!" he shouted, mostly to be heard over the alarm. In the distance, he could hear sirens, as the Gardaí sped to the aid of the two security guards, who had no doubt come to work this morning assuming this day would be as uneventful as any other. "Have someone load the money into two bags and nobody will be hurt!"

"Only one getting hurt today is you, matey. Drop the knife."

He knew the smart thing to do was comply with the order, but he wasn't convinced he'd done enough. There had been no violence. Nothing but a shouted demand and a lot of noise.

He glanced around. The other guard was close behind, certainly close enough to shoot and not miss if he chose. The mother with the toddler was squatting on the floor, behind a stand of brochures offering excellent mortgage rates and interest-free transfers on credit card balances, holding her child close. There were others peeking around the bank's stately marble columns, taking pictures of him with their cell phones.

The man who had spoken so harshly to the mother about her noisy child was paying no attention to the whole affair, talking on his cell phone as if nothing was awry.

That offended him.
How dare you play down the severity of my crime by ignoring it?

The man's arrogance decided him. There was no escape, but there had been no blood, either. He needed to hurt someone, and this fool standing in the middle of an armed robbery talking on his cell phone as if the events around him were unimportant, seemed as good a candidate as any.

The robber hurled the knife before anyone could stop him. There were more screams and a deafening noise as he was slammed in the chest and knocked to the ground.

Damn
, he thought as he fell.
That wasn't supposed to happen
.

As he collapsed to the floor and the world exploded in chaos around him, he reached up to feel his life force leaking from his chest ... but his hand came away dry.

Amazed, he realized there was no blood seeping from an open wound. The bullet hadn't missed; it had hit the iron triskalion pendant he had stowed in his jacket pocket, the magical talisman he had brought with him to contact home.

He could feel that it was bent and twisted out of shape. Likely the mundane lead from this world had leeched the last remaining magic from the pendant - and with it, any chance he had of connecting with his own realm. He could barely breathe and his chest would be black and blue within a day, he knew, but as the guards and the newly arrived Gardaí swarmed over him, shouting so excitedly he could barely make out their words, he smiled.

The talisman had done its job. It had protected him. He'd been shot trying to rob a bank. He'd wounded an innocent bystander, but he certainly hadn't hit anything vital if the man's outraged howling was any gauge of his condition. And he'd survived in one piece.

Soon, he would be where he was meant to be.

Soon he could resume his role as protector of the Undivided.

All he had to do then was wait for rescue to come for them and he could go home.

Trása stepped through the rift into a thunderstorm. The forecourt of the
hommaru
- the inner palace of the vast Edo fortress - glistened in the darkness, the rain pelting down as thunder rent the air. A few of the lesser
Youkai
who lived in and around the palace clustered near her for protection as imperial attendants hurried forward, holding a wide, oiled-silk canopy aloft by the gilded poles at each corner to keep the rain off their honored guest.

As the rift's lightning faded, mundane lightning from the storm bathed the forecourt in bright light, followed a few seconds later by another crash of thunder. Several of the pixies who had followed her through the rift giggled at the noise. Toyoda Mulrayn, the ginger-bearded
Leipreachán
who fancied himself a ninja, let out an involuntary squawk of fright. It made his little black
shinobi shozoko
, which hid all his flesh except for his hands and a small slit around the eyes, and his
tabi
boots with their slit between his ungainly big toe and the second toe - making it easier for climbing ropes and scaling walls, apparently - all the more ridiculous.

The welcoming committee was small. Understandable, Trása supposed, given the inclement weather. Under another oiled canopy on the edge of the
rifuto
stones stood Wakiko, the blonde and very Nordic mother of the Empresses, whose betrayal of the
Matrarchaí
had saved the girls from the Lady Delphine and her plans to eliminate all the Faerie from this reality more than three years ago.

Wakiko - her real name was Ingrid - hadn't changed much in the years since Delphine had died by Ren's hand. She was still dressing like a geisha and still wore that perpetually worried expression that Trása figured would not go away anytime soon, given her twin daughters, the Empresses, had just turned thirteen.

"Welcome to Edo Palace, Trása," Wakiko said with a very Japanese bow, and a weary smile that spoke volumes about the strain of the upcoming birthday celebrations.

Another clap of thunder rent the air before Trása could return the greeting but there was no lightning accompanying the sound, which struck her as odd. She stepped forward, trusting Toyoda and the pixies to stay close. They'd been very brave to follow her here into what had, until a few years ago, been ruled the
Konketsu,
who'd spent years trying to eliminate their kind. It wasn't often the lesser
Youkai
left
Tír Na nÓg
and they were still wary of the
Konketsu
. It was three years since Delphine was killed and the
Matrarchaí
banished from this realm, but it was still proving difficult to convince them the days of pogroms and purges were done and that the Empresses had ordered the
Konketsu
to protect the Faerie rather than exterminate them.

"I'm honored to be invited," Trása said, glancing around. "Not every day the empresses turn thirteen."