Matt Archer: Blade's Edge (32 page)

Parker leapt on the thing’s back…

My skull cracked against the rocks and the knife flew out of my hand. I blacked out for a second, seeing neon flying saucers blinking on every surface. A howl rattled the very floor, followed by a heavy thud and I tried to open my eyes, but couldn’t…they were swelling shut.

“Matt?”

Will’s voice came from far away as the floor shook more. Someone hoisted me up, flinging me over his shoulder.

“Sir, I got him. He’s alive,” Will shouted.

Then he lurched, swore.

Everyone swore.

A sound like rain, or maybe pebbles?

“The ceiling is coming down!” Johnson yelled.

“Set the charges, then haul ass,” Parker shouted back.

Will started running, me flopping on his back. My arm burned so much it took my breath away and I could feel blood running from a cut in my forehead.

“You have to put me down,” I said, surprised at how weak my voice sounded. The burning had spread into my shoulder and back. “If we’re gonna blow the place, you can move faster without carrying me.”

“Hell, no,” Will grunted. “Your lips are turning blue. I don’t know what that thing did to you, but I’m not putting you down. You might keel over.”

Uncle Mike caught up with us. I could only see his shoulder as he jogged alongside. “Need me to take him?”

Will huffed a breath. “I got this. Now will someone set off some C-4 so we’re not followed out of the tunnels?”

I wanted to ask what was following us, but I was having a hard time thinking straight. My whole side was on fire now. And where was my knife?

“Knife?” I asked, but no one seemed to hear. I tried to ask again; the words wouldn’t come.

When the first charge blew, Will stumbled, but kept hold of me. The last thing I remembered was the second charge going off. Dust showered onto my head, and the boom rang between my ears, then it all went dark.

Chapter Thirty-Four

T
he dark pressing on my
eyelids gradually lightened. I was in bed, with the covers pulled up to my waist, but it didn’t feel like my own mattress. My head throbbed and I wondered vaguely if I’d been beaten with a baseball bat. My arm still burned, but mostly below the elbow rather than all the way up to my shoulder like before.

“He’s coming around.”

I forced my eyes open. My eyelids were still swollen, but I could see. Jorge stood over me, holding my right wrist in a tight grip. He smiled.

“We must not make this a habit, Mr. Archer. Next time I fear I may arrive too late to help, even with the Air Force’s assistance.”

I stirred, finding myself in a hospital bed in a white, sterile-looking room. Judging from the stiff neck, I must’ve been here a while. I tried to lift my left arm but couldn’t; it had gone to sleep and an IV pumped clear liquid into the back of my hand. Will stretched in a chair by my bed, wearing scrubs that were too short in the leg. A strip of white ankle showed between the pants and the top of his socks.

“You look like crap,” I said. And he did—there was a shiny burn on his right arm and another on the side of his neck, along with the usual assortment of cuts and bruises.

“Look who’s talking,” Will answered.

“What happened? Where are we?” I looked back to Jorge. “And where the heck did you come from?”

“Peru,” Jorge said.

I rolled my eyes; it made my head hurt. “How about a better question—why are you here?”

“You were not responding to treatment.” He laid a hand on my forehead and some of the pain subsided. “I was called to help.”

“They’re making you carry a satellite phone now?” I asked. “You’ve been pretty tough to get in touch with from what I’ve heard.”

He pierced me with one of his stares. “Not that kind of call.”

A gentle hum came from the little side table by my bed. My knife, resting in its sheath, flashed in greeting when I turned to look. Of course…the spirit had called her Maker for help.

I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful the blade hadn’t been lost in the caves. “I’m glad she called you.”

“As am I,” he said. He wrapped his hand around my wrist, squeezing hard enough to hurt.

“Jorge?” I said. “The knife-spirit told me something. About what happened when you created the blades.”

His dark eyes shone in the harsh fluorescent lights over my bed as he continued to stare me down. “The major has already spoken of it.”

“Did you know making the knives would open a door?”

Now he looked away. “No. I should have, but I did not.” When he looked at me again, he said, “That’s my burden to bear, and my error to fix.”

“Do you think you can?” I asked. If he could close the rift somehow, while still keeping the knife-spirits here for the time being, then maybe we could get on top of things.

But his answer wasn’t all that hopeful. “I do not know.”

Will shifted uneasily in his chair, reminding me that I had an audience for this conversation. Time to change the subject. “So, um, what happened after my knife-spirit called?”

Jorge’s brisk manner returned and he tightened his grip on my wrist. “After you were injured, the team brought you to Bagram for medical treatment—you’d been poisoned. Do you remember any of this?”

“The monster bit my arm.”

“Correct.”

I remembered—Parker had made it just in time. “Was Parker able to kill it? Since I missed?”

Will came to stand next to Jorge. “You winged it pretty good before it knocked you out. It couldn’t fly and was bleeding all over the place from that gash in its neck. Parker was able to jump on its back and finish it off.”

I hadn’t realized I was tensed up in bed until he said that. I forced my muscles to relax. “What about the Takers? And the people?”

Will shook his head. “The whole place started crashing down. That blue fire stuff flared and it was like an earthquake hit. The ceiling was caving in, so those of us who could walk grabbed our wounded and ran for the exits. Johnson dropped a few charges and Murphy launched some grenades as we went, cooking whatever was left. Far as I know, nothing survived.”

“You owe this young man a thank you,” Jorge said, continuing to squeeze my wrist. “He carried you through the tunnels and down the mountainside.”

“I kind of remember that,” I said, flushing. How stupid; I had to be carried like a girl. That was something I’d never live down.

Will chuckled. “Dude, you’re heavy, though. I pulled eight muscles in my back hauling your sorry butt out of there.”

I tried to sit up and prove my manhood was still intact, but Jorge put his free hand on my shoulder. “I’m not quite finished here, so rest. You’ll need your strength when you test your knee the first time.”

“My knee?” I tried bending my legs. The left one bent just fine. The right one was held fast in some kind of brace.

“When you hit the wall, you came down wrong,” Will said. “I’ve seen enough knee injuries in football to know right away you’d hurt it. It’s only a bad sprain of a couple ligaments, so it’ll get better. You’ll just have to be careful for a while.”

“Any other injuries I need to know about?”

Jorge and Will exchanged a look, then Will said, “Other than the concussion, the black eyes, and the bruised ribs?”

Not really an answer, but I could tell I wouldn’t get anything else out of them just yet.

Someone knocked and Uncle Mike stuck his head in. “I thought I heard you talking. Good to see you awake, Chief. You had us worried for a few days.” He nodded to Jorge. “So, is it working?”

“Quite well, major.” Jorge released my arm and blood flowed back into my fingertips. My wrist was wrapped in several layers of gauze. When I raised my arm to take a peek at the damage, Jorge grabbed it again. “There’s something you need to know before you look.”

Everyone got very quiet. That scared me—was the skin melted off or something? I remembered the burning sensation all too well. Maybe the monster’s poison had charred my arm.

Jorge folded my arm over my chest, keeping his hand on top of my wrist. “Matt, the creature contaminated your blood with something Dark. Unlike the injury you received from the knife last year, this wasn’t going heal with just a little magic or conventional medicine.”

I tensed up again. “Are you telling me my hand’s gonna fall off?”

“No,” Jorge said. “I just want to prepare you. The spirits were doing all they could to keep you alive until I arrived, but it wasn’t enough. The poison had almost reached your heart by the time I got here, so I had to do something a little drastic. You needed to be marked to ward off the darkness before it took you.”

“Marked? With what?”

“Magical symbols have a great deal of power. Remember the pictures I drew on you with mud last year?” Jorge gave me a significant look. “In particular, do you remember the five dots representing the four elements and the spirits that guide us?”

My heart skipped a beat. “Yes.”

Jorge unwrapped my arm and I started to shake. A silver pentagram had been tattooed onto my wrist, just above an angry red puncture mark. My right wrist—my knife hand. The vision from the jungle last year, of me riding in a Humvee looking older than I was now…I had a pentagram tattooed on my right wrist there, too. I let my arm drop onto the bed.

Marked…Jorge had no idea just how much.

“Hey, it’s not a big deal,” Will said. “I bet everyone at school will think it looks cool.”

“No,” I whispered, “it is a big deal.”

“Yes, it is. Pentagrams are powerful, Matthew,” Jorge said. “It’s only in the last few centuries that people perverted their meaning into something dark. Five knives, five wielders, five points. This symbol will heal your injury and protect you from further infection. I’ve also inscribed myself and Captain Parker.” He held out his arm—the silver tattoo sparkled on his brown skin. “I’ll stop in D.C. on my way back to take care of Major Ramirez.”

“We’ll see if we can’t bring Captain Brandt in at the same time,” Uncle Mike said. “You know what? If all of you will be marked this way, it kind of makes me wonder if we shouldn’t align our unit with the symbol. We could design a team insignia with a pentagram on the patch.”

“Not a bad idea,” Jorge murmured. He patted my arm. “It may seem extreme, Matt, but this will be good for you. In time, you’ll see it was the right thing to do.”

He was right, sure, but he didn’t know what the pentagram really meant to me. While Uncle Mike joked about telling Mom I’d gone out for a wild night on the town and come home with a tat, I sank into the reality of my future. Last year in Peru, when I’d seen a vision of my older self with this exact tattoo, I’d wondered if maybe it was just a dream. But this mark, etched permanently into my skin…I now knew I’d been shown things that would come true in the not too distant future.

It meant that somewhere, sometime, I would lead men into a battle that could very well end the world.

“Never thought I’d say this…but I’m glad to be coming home,” Will said. “Three weeks isn’t all that long, but it feels like an eternity with everything that happened. I even miss my old man.”

“Yeah, I missed home, too.” I leaned back in my seat, wriggling so my knee was more comfortable. The private jet was a nice touch. General Richardson had requested one since I was still feeling wobbly from the poison, rather than making us fly commercial. I grinned; the general had finally managed to come up with a mode of transportation that impressed me.

Uncle Mike chuckled. “Comfy there, Chief?”

“Think I can get used to it.” I sighed, relaxing under the influence of pain pills and the knowledge I’d see Billings soon. “Hey, are you sure Aunt Julie doesn’t mind you stopping by before going home?”

“She doesn’t mind as long as I fly back to D.C. tomorrow. Apparently the baby has her own ideas of when to sleep and when to party, so I’ve been told I’m taking the night shift as soon as I get home.” Mike grinned. “But I’ve been approved for a short side-trip, first.”

“Good,” I said. “Brent’s home and he’ll be really glad to see you.”

The jet landed twenty minutes later. We taxied to the general aviation section of the airport and parked near a beige metal hanger. When the flight attendant opened the exit hatch, the doors unfolded and fresh air blew inside, smelling of summer. Will hoisted me to my feet, and Mike came over to help me down the stairs to the sedan waiting to chauffeur us home. We all stared out the windows eagerly. It was so good to be back.

When we pulled into my driveway fifteen minutes later, Will gasped. Pointing at my house, he choked out, “What’s
she
doing here!”

My heart shot into my throat—Millicent stood on my front porch next to my three favorite women. My mom kept looking between Millicent and our car, and Mamie and Ella stood slightly apart, like they wanted minimum safe distance from the carnage that would ensue. Will’s housekeeper was wearing her usual shapeless dress and sensible shoes, but without the apron she looked more like a prison matron than a master baker and Will’s surrogate mother. Maybe it was the crossed arms, the tight bun and her almost cartoony scowl.

I let out a low whistle. “I’m not positive, but I think you’re in trouble, dude.”

We clambered out of the car and Will took shuffling steps toward his housekeeper. Millicent drew herself up tall—an amazing feat since she was barely five-three—and came down the driveway to meet him.

“Young man,” she snapped, “you have some explaining to do. Thank goodness Mrs. Archer had the sense to call me after Mr. Matthew was injured. What if you’d been killed?”