Friends and Enemies (Gwen Farris Book 5) (2 page)

He seemed calm and like it was him holding the magical weapon, instead of the...

Gwen stared at it for a bit, trying to make it out in the dim light. Her mind didn't want to see it, not at first. It was almost too ridiculous to fathom.

"You fucking stabbed me with an
ice pick
? What the hell? No one does that. You'd have to have hit me fifty times to kill me. Well, unless you managed to hit me in the head. If that was your plan, you suck." She didn't take any of it back, but did move, slowly, behind Winslow. The handy super butler. She really needed to mention getting him a raise to the Vernors.

That, or find him a boyfriend. Either way. Something that he might like that wasn't furniture polish.

She sighed, or started to, and then thought better of it thanks to having a lot of experience with pain, and waved a little at the man.

"Drop the blade, and take the amulets off, or lose your feet." She was
planning
on having a bit of a chat about the idea, but the man lunged without hesitation. Directly at her, the thin knife moving toward her face. That meant he was capable of learning, which was great. For him.

If he'd only chosen a different profession, it would have probably paid off, being a quick study like that.

His feet evaporated, or at least got hit with the crin blast. It was a bit like being shot, she knew, having seen the effects on other people before. Charles re-aimed at the last man, the other two moaning already.

It was about that time that the others got there. It was a big place, but someone
had
been yelling about a fire. Explaining the water buckets several of them were carrying. Nice wooden ones with metal handles on them. The threat of burning got people moving most of the time, which was the purpose of screaming
that
, rather than going on about how she was being attacked again. Well, on the street. It was probably a bit unfair to Charles to assume he wouldn't come to help her, wasn't it? Even after what she'd called out, he'd come ready to fight.

To protect her.
Her
.

Gwen the crippled freak. The monster. The abomination in the eyes of the Lord.

Except she wasn't that anymore, was she? Now, here, in this new world, she was perfect. Pretty even, and symmetrical. Her right and left sides matched as well as anyone's ever did, which hadn't been the case before. That she wouldn't be that way was the strange thought to the people here. It took work to remind herself of that, but she did it, limping back out of the way as Carlisle, the large Native American looking footman, dashed in.

Showing that he was also a lot more than just the guy that served the salad, the man had a PC out. A power conduit, which was a magical weapon that took a good bit of mental force to make work. A small reddish metal square. That was a bit of a surprise, since you had to be a magic user in the top twenty percent or so in order to use one. If you were in that group you could learn to be a magician, if you wanted. This PC was, she guessed, probably more defensive than some of them could be. You weren't allowed to carry around tiny lethal weapons for the most part, unless you were law enforcement, or worked for the government.

So she could do it, since she was in the Special Service. That she hadn't was just stupid of her. So much for trying not to become paranoid.

Gwen waved at him, not able to catch her breath suddenly.

"Null radiatives... In play. It doesn't... Cover their feet. Bludgeons... Work." She didn't know if that was enough to explain things, but sat down on the clean throw rug at her feet. It was a nice thing, in blue and tan.

She landed with a thud, the world going dark. She wasn't
out
, thankfully, but heading that way.

"Being stabbed...
Blows
." Being on the floor meant she didn't have far to fall. She tipped over to her side, but muttered nonsensically at the men as she heard other people coming into the room. Who that was she didn't know, her head filling with a roar that almost certainly was just for her alone.

"Keep them alive. Questions." That probably didn't have to be said, but just in case, it would make her look better later if the attackers were beaten to death.

The primary one was going to be all about why the fuck these losers were trying to kill her. That was really
annoying
. It was bad enough that she lived in constant fear of the Elder Gods coming through a hole in space. With their creepy tentacles, and vast projections of never ending fear. Having morons try to kill her as well,
poorly
, as it turned out, was just about too freaking much to have to put up with.

Not that she wanted them to be
good
at it, but here was such thing as taking pride in your work.

Still, she was busily, and rather nobly, fighting not to throw up, or black out like a wimp, as the other people came in. They were doing something with the men, and a woman, Deidre the downstairs maid, pressed a bundle of cloth to Gwen's side for her, then held it in place which meant she might not bleed to death.

Then, she'd been stuck by a very narrow blade. Even if it had an edge, unlike a real ice pick, it wasn't going to be that bad of a wound, she didn't think. Not that she loved the way it felt, even now.

The nice woman that was holding the blood in had dark hair, a pure black that was wonderfully straight, and put back in a braid at the moment. She was in a long white night gown, and actually had a silly cap on the top of her hair, to go with it. It matched the fabric of the rest of her outfit. It was like something from an old movie. One that would have been in black and white. Probably played very late on a Sunday, when only stoners and Gwen would have seen it. All the woman was lacking was a candle or lantern. Instead someone had simply turned the glow lamps on the wall on. That lit the place up well enough.

Winslow barked something, which took her a minute to understand.

"Secure the prisoners. Move them to the locking pantry off the kitchen. We need a healer for Miss Farris. Call for a lorrie! Move! She's been stabbed. Hurry along!"

Gwen looked up at the man and rolled her eyes.

"I'm not
that
close to dying yet. It's just a flesh wound. I could use that healer though. I wonder if the Westmorlands would lend us one?" She blinked for a bit, and noticed that several people left the room in a time that she would have figured was just a flap of her eyelids. Meaning she'd blacked out for a moment.

Which indicated she was hurt a bit worse than she thought. Freaking assassins, always trying to kill people and shit.

Still, she was on the floor, the hard wood cool under her body, even though the air in the place was toasty enough. It was late spring, or early and even though she was roughly where Nebraska would have been in her own world, it wasn't exactly a desert. The exact opposite really. The city she was living in, Wessington, was only about thirty miles away from the Central forest of the Western Kingdom. They had that instead of the Great Plains. So far she'd never been able to figure out how that had happened.

Really, she thought it might have been that the natives that had lived there had used more magic than in her world and hadn't cut them all down in the first place. Not that Gwen had any way to check and see if that was the truth.

Even after suggesting that they ask the Westmorland super soldiers for a healer, since they had some of the best in the world, and liked her pretty well, she was a bit shocked to notice one running into the room not five minutes later. Followed by a young boy. You couldn't really ask for better service than that.

The blonde woman that she recognized as a healer was wearing only an undershirt, a man's at that, which wasn't long enough to cover the fact that she had on nothing else. The kid was Peter though, who'd been working on learning some basic healing himself.

From the very same thirty year old looking half naked lady. He had clothing on however, his Westmorland basic blue outfit. So Gwen didn't let her imagine that the older woman had been with him when she'd been called to duty. Plus the shirt was too large for that. His outfit made him seem a little like a Cub Scout. Only without the silly kerchief around the neck. His hands were warm, she noticed, since he shoved in, and moved Deidre out of the way bodily. Then he pulled the bloody red rag away.

That let some of the red out, in a thin river.

His voice was pleased when he spoke. "Oh? This isn't so bad then. Just a single tiny puncture? It looks like it lines up to hit mainly muscle?" He was actually asking, but
she
didn't know the answer to that. Gwen was familiar with a lot of anatomical terms, and even knew where things were located on her body, if roughly, but laying flat on her back like she was, it was impossible to see the damage, and how things had lined up.

The Healer nodded, her face considering.

"That's right. Normally we'd just stop the bleeding, and then set up a resonator to aid in wound closure. I think, just this once, we might want to speed that along however. Miss Farris might be under attack again soon. It seems to be a pattern with her. If you can do it safely, without harm to yourself
or
Gwen, I'll let you have ten minutes of reward time. Can you do it in three minutes?" There was a hesitancy to what she was saying, and Peter, looking sad, shook his head.

"Not if we have to do it without pain. I don't have the pattern down well enough yet. Four minutes might work. Can I get a reward for doing that?" There was a bit of hope to his face, but only a little, as if he suspected that answer would be no.

That got a smile, and the Healer nodded at the kid.

"Good thinking. Do it. Full reward time, if you can, inside four minutes."

Gwen kept her mouth shut, in case it hurt, but didn't need to scream or anything. The next few minutes felt no more than like having a soft and warm cloth placed over the wound. It stung a bit, but no worse than having peroxide on a deep paper-cut would. By the time it was all done, and Pete pulled back, the pain was gone. She moved to sit up, only to have the Healer wave her back down.

"I wouldn't, if it were me. The blood loss wasn't horrible, but you do have some. That lack will reduce the internal volume, and
that
can lead to fainting, if you move too fast." A hand moved out to touch her shoulder, so Gwen did what was suggested. She was kind of used to doing whatever medical professionals told her to. A lifetime of experience had taught her that one.

"Ah. That's fine. I'll just hang out here for a while. Say, um, Deidre? Could you find something for..." It took her a few seconds to remember the healing woman's name.
That
was down to the attack, Gwen decided. That, or she was being a snob and not recalling the name of the woman training her buddy Peter. "Rhonda, to wear? We seem to have pulled her from bed for this."

She didn't really care.

Okay, Gwen
was
a prude, and knew it, but she was only worried about clothing for later, when the constabulary came. The poor guys would be forced to look away, and that would distract them from figuring out how to best get information from the assholes that had attacked her.

Even Peter was doing better than they would, glancing over at the woman's crotch no more than casually. It wasn't even enough that she had to snap her fingers at him, to get his attention. All she did was clear her throat a little.

"Pete? Can you check the rest of the house, and grounds for us? The men that were here had null-radiatives, or something similar. So, get a stick, or if you use a crin remember that the devices don't seem to cover their feet. That's how Winslow took care of them." She pretended to aim that kind of a thing downward.

The boy got the idea, and then helped himself to one of the weapons held in her wardrobe. They'd been right there the whole time, not fifteen feet away, but she wouldn't have made it there alive, if she'd tried for them. The big oak thing was all the way against the far wall. Gwen had been surrounded, and stuck once already. That meant her true failure had been in not being armed while she slept.

Not that it should have really happened in the first place. The men had cheated, wearing amulets that had messed up her ability to fight using magic. She
wanted
to pout, but it was literally what she would have done if it had been her coming to attack almost anyone in that world in the night like that. Really, having that kind of a thing was a bit like owning body armor, in this place. The big problem was that no one had figured out how to make an on-off switch for that kind of thing. They could build them, making the magical instruction that told magic in the surrounding environment not to do anything, but no one had figured out that the trick was really in the power supply. If you could take that part out of the equation the things would have to shut down. Then again, they grabbed the incoming power to use, so maybe that wasn't the answer.

Gwen knew enough about that now, thanks to her studies into the topic, to get why that was. Most magical items needed
two
things to work. A power source, which could be either a person or a crystal pack, charged by an individual. Both of those could be engaged freely, for most applications. The other part was a set of instructions. Given the nature of nulls, they simply told any magical energy they encountered to hold still, more or less. That gave them a limited range, but inside that space, magic just didn't work.

A month and a half before that night, almost to a day, a group of evil magicians had tried to kill a woman to use her energy in an effort to make a giant version of that field that would have shut the magic off for the entire planet. That was Carla, her old maid, who wasn't in the room, Gwen noticed. She still lived at Park Street, but was planning a new business, along with Ethyl Vernors' help. Teaching the kids of the wealthy and powerful how to get it on before marriage.

Given that she was an ex-hooker, a whore, as the polite people referred to them in this place, she'd probably locked her door and was busily hiding under the bed. Hoping that the fight wouldn't spill over to her room.