Matt Archer: Blade's Edge (12 page)

“I imagine,” I said.

“So,” Parker said, “you want to enlighten me? Are those stories rumors, or truth?”

I squirmed in my seat. Here we go. “My knife has a mind of her own.”

“
Her?
” Parker’s eyes popped open so wide I worried they’d drop out of his head.

“Um, yeah.” I sighed. I couldn’t wait for that little tidbit to make the rounds. Guys might start crossing the hall to keep their distance when I walked by.

“How can you tell?” Parker asked. “I mean, all mine does is buzz me every once in a while.”

“She talks to me. I don’t know why, but I’m hoping Jorge does.” Time to change the subject before he wrote me off as a nut job. “You were in China, right?”

“Yes. And I heard you cleaned out Montana without adult support, then went to Peru to help Jorge and Ramirez finish off their Gator infestation.”

That made me feel better. Maybe he didn’t think I was a freak after all. “Yes, sir.”

We rode in silence until we reached the Pentagon. The guard at the gate asked for photo ID, and Parker looked surprised when I pulled out my badge from Fort Carson.

I shrugged. “I didn’t think my Greenhill High student ID would be as impressive.”

The guard waved the SUV through the gate. The Pentagon building was huge; it seemed like we had to drive forever to get to our entry point. Once we stopped, I collected my stuff and followed the captain to the side door. Another spit-and-polish sergeant met us and escorted us inside. Security was a bit of a tussle, but our TSA passes worked the same magic on the screeners here, too, and we were allowed to keep our knives with us. For all the coolness of the outside, the inside of the Pentagon was just another industrial-type office building with tile floors, nondescript hallways and people walking fast with file folders in their hands.

Parker glanced at me over his shoulder. “So, what do you think? Are we up for a deployment?”

“Guess we’ll find out at the briefing,” I said. “But I’d bet we are.”

Our escort led us to a conference room bustling with soldiers dressed in BDUs or Class Bs. General Richardson sat at the head of a long, rectangular table, braying a laugh about something. Colonel Black sat next to him, riffling through a stack of papers. A screen was set up behind them, displaying a floating logo for the projector in the ceiling. Hooray for visual aids.

Parker went inside before me and a shout of welcome went up. I followed, and Jorge stood when he saw me in the doorway. He had on khakis and a button-down shirt like me, which seemed wrong on him. I was more used to the field pants and tunic. No bone necklace, either—his image as a medicine man was totally blown. Well, except for one thing. Dwarfed by Lieutenant Johnson, Jorge still radiated a kind of power that reached beyond even General Richardson’s brassy command of the room.

Jorge’s eyes, unnaturally bright and quick, took in everything in one sweep. A smile flickered across his face; he nudged Johnson, pointing my way. I waved and crossed the threshold. As soon as I set foot in the conference room, pain shot through my head, sending me to my knees. It felt like someone had fired a high-powered nail gun into the back of my skull. The room swam, blurring Johnson’s face with Colonel Black’s body. A flash of Uncle Mike moving fast around the conference table was the last thing I saw before I went blind.

I cried out in fear—I couldn’t see a thing. Bile scalded the back of my throat and my head pounded mercilessly. I curled up in a ball on the floor, writhing against the cheap carpet. Oh, God, what was happening to me?

A clamor of voices chattered in my mind, each one talking over the other. It sounded like they were trying to speak in unison, but couldn’t get in sync. My backpack dragged down on my shoulders and everything in my nervous system seemed to be rebooting. My arms jerked and my sense of smell went off the charts; the room was bathed in the scent of mildew and shoe polish.

“Quick,” Captain Parker said, his voice distorted. “Get his bag.”

Hands pried my backpack off and I curled up tighter, clutching my head. The pain in my temples thumped in time with my heart.

“Gentlemen, we need the wielders to leave the room at once,” Jorge commanded in his clipped, nasal voice. “Take your blades.”

“Hold on, Chief,” Mike said. He squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll fix it.”

Boots clomped across the floor. The pain lessened, then eased still more until I could open my eyes. I nearly cried in relief when the legs of the conference table came into focus. Most of the room had cleared. Just Colonel Black, Jorge, Uncle Mike, Johnson and I remained.

Jorge gave me a wry smile. “Better now?”

“Yeah,” I said as Mike helped me to my feet. “Anyone know what that was all about?”

Jorge stared through the open doorway. “My guess is that your sensitivity to the blades has increased. It’s hard enough for me to be close to all five, but it seems you’re far more integrated. The power quotient was too much for you.”

Power quotient? Why did Jorge always sound like a mad scientist? Oh, yeah, because he was one. What else would you call an Ivy League educated medicine man who forged magic knives in his spare time? I wasn’t convinced by his logic, though. “You, me and Ramirez sat next to each other last spring and it was fine.”

“Was it?” he asked.

He had me there. The knives had definitely acted weird, “singing” with each other. But they hadn’t hurt me, not in Peru. This had something to do with the constant contact from my knife and it’s increased control over me, I was sure of it.

“So, now what?” Uncle Mike asked.

“The general sent an aide to find an auditorium with an observation room in the back. We think Matt could hang out there and be okay,” Colonel Black said, looking concerned. His hair was more salt than pepper than just a month ago. “Once you’re feeling better, Lieutenant Johnson and Major Tannen can walk you down.”

“A moment, Colonel, if you please,” Jorge said. “Mr. Archer, what came over you as you crossed the threshold?”

That made me crack a smile. Like his clothes, his New England accent ruined the mystique. Besides, I figured he already knew the answer to his question and was just testing me. “Headache. Bad one. And…” I paused, shuddering. “I went blind.”

Uncle Mike’s face got that pinched look reserved for total meltdown in progress, so I hurried to say, “It hit me the moment I came into the room, but I’m fine now, I promise.”

Jorge nodded, giving me one of his piercing stares. “We’ll need to discuss this further, after the briefing. I’m most interested in why this is happening to you.”

He gathered up his bags, knife sheathed at his waist, and nodded to the colonel, who followed along. They gave me a wide berth as they strolled into the hallway.

Like usual, Jorge left me hanging on the big question: “Why me?” Why me for a lot of things—being the only teenager chosen, how the knives acted in concert whenever I showed up with mine, and now my reaction to being in close proximity with all five wielders.

I picked up my backpack, moving slow. It didn’t feel as heavy. “Why’d Parker ask you to take off my backpack?”

Mike cleared his throat and without looking at me, said, “It was glowing.”

“That’s not so strange. The knife glows all the—”

“Not so bright that it shines through its metal box,” Johnson said.

And somehow the knife had gotten heavier, too, pinning me against the floor. I shuddered again, well and truly freaked. For once, I wished the spirit would talk to me and tell me what was going on, but when I searched the back of my mind, she was nowhere to be found. Obviously she didn’t want to discuss things right now.

Johnson escorted me down the bland hallway, rubbing sweat off his bald head. “Kid, you okay?”

Trying to sound like I didn’t much care, I said, “Yeah. Fine.”

Uncle Mike caught up. “I was about to call an ambulance. You scared me to death.”

Crap. “Um, I…look, don’t tell Mom”

“I should,” he said. “That mini-stroke you just had seems like a really good reason to call her, but let’s see how you get through the briefing. If you don’t have another episode, or whatever that was, maybe we…just won’t tell her.”

My shoulders dropped in relief. I hadn’t realized how tensed up I was. “Yes, sir.”

We entered a room with a window overlooking an auditorium that reminded me of the assembly hall at school—cushy fold-down seats with metal armrests sat in rows along a sloping aisle that led down to a wood-floored stage. The general had set up camp in front of the lectern.

Mike led me to some metal folding chairs right by the observation glass. “We should be safe up here.”

Since it didn’t feel like my brain was coming out of my ears, I agreed. Each wielder had a bubble of twenty to thirty feet from the next one. Jorge stood on the stage with Colonel Black and General Richardson. Ramirez sat in the front left corner, Parker on the right. So that meant the guy sitting in the back right corner was…

“Yo, Parker,” a man yelled. “Think the kid will eff things up again?”

…Captain Brandt, the fifth wielder. He was a wiry, beady-eyed guy with a dark flattop and a curling smirk that wouldn’t look out of place on a comic book villain. Brandt turned and caught me looking at him from behind the window. Laughing, he stuck a toothpick in his mouth, propped his boots up on the chair in front of him and put his arms behind his head.

Yeah, this was a guy I could kind of hate.

I nudged Uncle Mike. “How’d
he
become a wielder?”

Uncle Mike cocked his head. “What makes you think being a nice guy is a requirement?”

A chuckle rumbled up from Johnson’s chest. “I’d say all of you have a touch of jackass. Captain Brandt just wears his with pride.”

“Wow, thanks!” I said. “So nice to hear I’m a jackass after my near death experience.”

“Let’s come to order,” the general called. “Supernatural activity is escalating globally and it’s getting difficult to keep these incidents out of the public eye.” He paused to rub his wide forehead. “Something or someone is letting these things ‘in’ so to speak, but until we find a way to stop the dark spirits from crossing into our realm, we can only stem the tide. And it’s a damn big tide.”

He was right about that, and once again I wished the military would spend more time looking for the shamans in China, Botswana and Australia. But since the military was in “contain and terminate” mode, finding them always got pushed to the back burner. I didn’t understand it—those shamans, or whatever they were—might have the answers we needed.

“We’re getting new reports of activity from Africa, so Captain Brandt’s team will be redeployed there soon,” the general continued. “And Jorge wishes to remain in Peru…so that leaves the other three wielders available for assignment. Based on intelligence reports, it looks like Afghanistan is our biggest threat. As of now, you’re all on alert. We’re still trying to nail down exactly what we’re facing, however. I’ll turn the floor over to Captain Tannen for more details.”

Badass Aunt Julie rose from the front row. Hard to believe I’d missed her; probably because I’d never seen her in uniform. Even with her dark hair back in a severe bun, her class Bs looked more right on her than civvies, giving her an air of seriousness that promised you pain if you didn’t listen to every word she said.

Julie gave us a curt nod as she adjusted the microphone. “Thank you, General. We’ve intercepted reports of suspicious kidnappings across Afghanistan. So far, global news media haven’t caught onto the issue because of the unrest in the country.”

The colonel started up the slide show. A map of Afghanistan filled the screen. Random yellow dots, more than a dozen of them, were scattered across the northeast quadrant of the country.

“The incidents have occurred over a wide geographical span,” Aunt Julie said, “but primarily in remote, mountainous areas. The only correlating feature is that every witness describes a similar scene. Mists roll in, followed by ‘devils,’ then people disappear…sometimes whole villages. Search parties haven’t recovered any of the missing, but there have been a few claims of possessed people roaming among the caves.”

The next picture popped up on screen. I swallowed hard; three mean lay dead on the ground outside a stone building. Each one’s skin had blistered like they’d fallen into boiling water. Feeling sick to my stomach, I forced myself to look at the rest of the picture. Two other houses stood in the background with their doors hanging open; one had been half-ripped from its hinges. Aunt Julie aimed her laser pointer at the men. “Each one had a firearm of some kind. All rounds had been expelled—from the photos, our forensics team counted forty-seven bullet holes in the buildings alone. This village was home to eighteen people. These three men were all that remained.”

Parker raised a hand. “Did those, um, burns kill them?”

Aunt Julie glanced at the general. He nodded and she said, “No—the autopsy showed they died of sudden heart failure. It’s like their hearts just stopped, but we have no idea how. Other than the lesions you see in the picture, they were unharmed.”

“But there have been survivors, right?” Ramirez asked. “In other villages?”

“A few,” Julie said. “Primarily elderly people. Many are very confused when questioned, so we’ve had a hard time getting an accurate picture of what’s going on. When there are bodies left behind, like in this photo, they’re almost always men between the ages of eighteen and fifty.”

As Julie continued her report, I could feel the blade buzzing at the back of my mind. Whatever was attacking Afghanistan, the intel alone had my knife-spirit worked up. Something tugged at me, begging me to draw and fight. She spoke of pain and justice, whispering that we were almost too late. Something Evil, Dark and Angry was out in the field, daring us to come after it.

A movement to my left caught my eye. Ramirez kept shaking his head, like he had water in his ears. Jorge was murmuring to himself on the stage. When I turned to look, I caught Parker rubbing the back of his neck and Brandt’s hands twitched in his lap.

“What’s up?” I whispered.

“Shhh,” Uncle Mike said, intent on his wife’s report.

But I wasn’t asking him.

We must destroy it.
The spirit’s voice was urgent, demanding.

“Afghanistan?” I asked, ignoring Mike’s tap on my arm.

We must go. To send it back.

I left the observation room, Johnson hot on my heels, demanding to know where I was going. I ignored him and pushed through the heavy doors at the back of the auditorium, hoping I was far enough away from the others to keep from passing out. I started to get a headache almost immediately. It wasn’t too bad yet, but I knew I had to be quick.