In Plain Sight

Alex looked back at Sorsha. “He’s hiding behind the big purple spell,” he said. “If I try to shoot him through it, my spell breakers could destroy it.”

“Why doesn’t he just shoot it?” Sorsha said. “Doesn’t he have a spell breaker rune on his gun?”

“He must have used them up,” Alex said. “Remember, runes disappear after they’re used.”

“I still have enough bullets to keep you at bay,” Davis said. “My only regret… is that I shall miss the glorious… rise of the Third Reich.”

Alex carefully pulled his left arm out of the sling, then struggled out of his suit jacket. He only had a few runes left in his book and one of them was something he hoped he’d never have to try. He’d give a significant amount of his own skin for a flash rune, but he simply didn’t have one, or the three hours and piles of equipment it would take to write one. Even if he had one, there was no guarantee that Sorsha could fix the damaged levitation spell in her condition.

“How on earth are you a Nazi spy, Davis?” Alex asked, gently rolling up his left shirt sleeve.

“I was sent here as a spy during the Great War,” he said. “By the time I’d established my cover… the war was over. I was ordered to stay… in case the day came that I was needed.”

“What are you doing?” Sorsha whispered as Alex exposed the escape rune tattooed into the flesh of his arm.

Alex winked at her. He wasn’t sure himself, and he didn’t have time for long explanations.

“Must have been quite a coup when you got into the FBI,” he said. Davis chuckled.

“You have no idea how happy my superiors in Berlin were.”

Alex paged through his book until he found the rune he sought. It had taken him five hours to write it, mostly with silver ink, and it glowed softly in the dim light.

“My real mission was to bring you back to the Fatherland, Sorsha,” Davis said. “What a boon your mind would have been… to the Fuhrer.”

“I don’t think I would have fit into your new Germany,” Sorsha said.

Alex found a blank paper and pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket. Most runes required time and exotic materials to write, but there were a few, like the minor restoration rune he’d drawn so Mary could mend her stockings, that could be done with just a pencil and a few moments. He laid the paper on the stone floor, then leaned over and began drawing a joining rune on the bit of flash paper.

“Of course you would fit in,” Davis said. “You are the perfect Aryan.”

Sorsha’s eyebrows dropped into a scowl. “So was Agent Warner,” she shot back. “I saw how much that counted for.”

“I am sorry about that,” Davis said. “But I couldn’t have you discovering my plans… until it was too late for you to stop me.”

As if on cue, the castle shook and dipped. It reminded Alex of being on the roller coaster at Coney Island. Sorsha cried out in pain as the castle stopped falling suddenly and her wounded hip slammed into the floor.

“It won’t… be long now,” Davis said, his voice thick with pain. “You’ve both been exceptional adversaries. Especially you, scribbler. My only regret is that you didn’t find the Archimedean Monograph for me. What a triumph… that would have been.”

Alex finished the joining rune, then licked it and stuck it to his arm. He lit a cigarette, then licked the silver rune and stuck it on top of the joining rune. Sorsha reached out and grabbed his leg.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I won’t leave while we still have a chance to save New York.”

A sound like glass breaking inside a bell suddenly filled the vault and the floor dropped out from under them.

“I win,” Davis shouted as the castle began to fall.

“Like hell you do,” Alex shouted back and touched the cigarette to the flash paper on his arm. Light blazed from the tattoo etched into his flesh and the world suddenly appeared transparent. He could see Davis suspended in the air over the failing levitation spell, and Sorsha clutching at his leg as the castle fell away from under her. Alex reached down and pulled her tightly to him, then everything collapsed inward, and he felt as if his body were made of rubber, being forced through a long tube.

A moment later he felt his body re-expand, but the castle was still falling, and he was falling with it.

25 The Landing

The castle fell around Alex and Sorsha. He didn’t know how long he had until it ran out of sky, but it couldn’t be long.

“What have you done?” Sorsha screamed at him, but her words were cut off by another blinding flash of light.

Alex felt his body going shapeless again, then being rolled and folded in on himself while being pushed through another narrow tube. The sensation went on for what seemed like a long time, until finally he felt himself falling again. He landed heavily on a hard surface and felt the air crushed out of his lungs as Sorsha came down on top of him.

He hoped the scream he heard echoing off the walls was hers and not his, but all he could really be sure of were the purple dots swimming in his vision and incredible pain in his left side.