Aetherial Annihilation (10 page)

"Yep." I didn't trust the man enough to go into details.

Thomas consulted a tablet. "The closest meteor is in Sweetwater Creek State Park. We haven't tried to access it because the National Guard cordoned off the site."

"What're we gonna officially call these things besides crystals and meteors?" Shelton asked.

"Crasteroids," I suggested. "Or how about meteocrysts?"

Elyssa groaned. "Awful. Just awful."

"Meteocryst sounds like fast food," Bella said.

"I vote for crystoids," Shelton said. "That has a nice ring to it."

Elyssa smiled. "Better."

"Fine, crystoids, whatever." I turned to Thomas. "Let's go to Sweetwater Creek and check out that crystoid."

Shelton pounded a fist into his palm. "Let's infiltrate that bad boy."

"We'll need to wait until dark." Thomas folded his arms. "Unfortunately camouflage armor and most functions of Nightingale armor won't work without aether. The built in charms should be okay, but there are no guarantees."

"A small team would be best," Elyssa said. "Justin and I can do it alone."

Shelton growled. "Why do you get to have all the fun?"

Bella put a hand on his arm. "I know something fun, Harry. We can go to the OTA and get the meteor recordings."

Shelton wasn't appeased. "Now I'm an errand boy."

Bella elbowed him. "You're the one who suggested going in the first place."

"Yeah, but busting a military perimeter sounds so much more fun." He threw up his hands. "Who am I kidding? I'm just a nom without magic. Might as well fetch those ASE files."

"Better than getting shot," Bella said brightly.

"We have a nom vehicle you can use," Thomas said. "Just ask the carpool attendant."

Shelton put a hand on my shoulder. "Don't do anything stupid, man. I have a bad feeling about this."

"Hey, you know me." I grinned. "I'm always careful."

"Yeah right." He gave me a dubious look. "We'll be back soon."

After he and Bella left, I checked the time. "We've got an hour before dark. Maybe we can head that way and recon the area."

"Do lancer darts still work?" Elyssa asked.

Thomas nodded. "You can get outfitted in the armory." He gave us a steady gaze. "No nom casualties. I want you in and out without them ever knowing you were there."

Elyssa saluted her father with a fist over her chest. "Yes, Commander."

I wasn't sure if she was being serious or not, since she didn't usually salute her father. Thomas simply nodded and handed her a paper map with a red X on it. "Here are the coordinates."

Elyssa's forehead wrinkled with confusion. "This looks archaic."

"Desperate times and all that," I said. I told Thomas about the call from Nightliss.

His eyes actually brightened and his shoulders straightened. "I wish I had the means to get her here faster."

"We hope she can reach an Obsidian Arch," Elyssa said.

A small smile curved the tips of Thomas's mouth. "I'll tell the troops. They could use the morale boost."

I nodded. "Well, we'd better get going."

"Good luck," Thomas said.

Victus put a hand on my shoulder. "I'm certain you'll do us all proud."

This dude is downright creepy.
I gave him an uneasy smile then turned and followed Elyssa out of the room.

After outfitting ourselves with lancers at the armory, Elyssa and I went back to the garage and took the car across town and about twenty miles outside the perimeter to Sweetwater Creek State Park.

"It's so inconvenient having to drive everywhere," Elyssa said as we cruised down the interstate.

"I remember the days when we could infiltrate any place with an omniarch portal." I was a little nervous about trying to sneak past the nom military without magical aid. The lancers would give us the option of incapacitating anyone who got in our way, but leaving a trail of unconscious people hardly fit Thomas's command to get in and out without detection.

 "This is so different than what we've faced before." Elyssa stared at the road ahead. "I just can't figure out what the endgame is here. Why would Serena destroy magic? She's an Arcane and needs magic as much as anyone else."

"Yeah, but if she's looking for revenge, she might not be thinking rationally." I thought about Serena's huge Gloom fortress and the insane experiments she'd conducted there. "Then again, she might be crazy enough not to care."

"Well, whoever it is certainly has Eden by the balls." Elyssa steered onto an exit. "Maybe she has political demands."

"If that's the case, why hasn't she given us a list?" I thought of other people that might want revenge, but the list was too long to visualize. "There are a lot of people out there who would do something like this."

"Who would benefit the most?" Elyssa asked.

"Obviously anyone who doesn't need magic."

"That includes vampires, Daemos, lycans—a lot of factions." She shook her head. "A better question would be who could actually pull this off?"

"Science Academy?" I said.

She glanced at me. "Did you get a bad feeling from Victus like I did?"

"He seems like a greasy politician, but he and his wife are Arcanes."

"True, but it would give the scientists a huge advantage." She quirked an eyebrow. "Like he said, he prefers science to magic."

"Yeah, but scientists use aether power for a lot of their inventions." I knew that from Shelton. "Of course, they could always switch to another power source."

"We might need to go to the academy and take a look around," she said. "The scientists weren't eager to help us during the war."

"Chancellor Frankenberg flat out refused." Just thinking about my meeting with him and the council made my face hot. I'd later learned that Frankenberg and his cronies held academy students hostage so they couldn't help our alliance. Underborn had resolved that situation and come through in the end.

Elyssa frowned. "I suppose we'll fit them on the list just below Serena. I can't think of many people or organizations capable of such a massive undertaking."

A cold feeling settled into my stomach. "What if it's not any of the usual suspects? What if a nom government got wind of the Overworld and this is their first strike?"

Her eyes widened. "I hadn't considered that."

"The U.S. government certainly has the resources to pull off an event like this." I shuddered. "Fighting a war against such a large, well-equipped military would be a nightmare."

Elyssa slowed and turned onto the road leading to Sweetwater Creek State Park. Troop transport trucks blocked the entrance to the park and soldiers lined the perimeter.

I frowned. "Looks like they mean business."

"It's a good thing they're keeping people out." Elyssa navigated past crowds of curious onlookers and finally reached the end of the long line of cars parked along the side of the road. She pulled off into the grass. "We might have an easier time getting in thanks to all the civilians around here."

I looked down at my black Templar uniform and wished I'd put on some street clothes over it. "I think we're gonna look out of place no matter what."

She wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, I suppose you're right."

We examined the map and determined the meteor had landed about a mile down the creek from the start of the hiking trails. We got out of the car and merged with a group of female hikers who were trying to figure out how to get into the park.

Soldiers held positions every twenty yards or so to prevent people from slipping into the woods, making the task of getting by them more difficult than it needed to be.

"Move along," one of the soldiers said in a bored voice. "Keep moving."

I looked at the gender composition of the group we walked with and came up with a brilliant idea that was oh-so wrong on many levels. I whispered into Elyssa's ear, "Get ready."

Before she could respond, I opened my incubus senses and latched onto the auras of the women. I didn't bother keeping my feelings neutral and let the sexual urges fly free. Using the women as anchors, I extended my senses into the male soldiers and let them have a taste of pure carnal lust.

The women moaned. The men groaned. Soldiers began tearing off their helmets and uniforms, tossing their gear on the ground in their haste to lock lips with the lady hikers. The women were equally eager to engage in unspeakable acts.

"God, I love men in uniform!" One of the women said, just before passionately kissing the nearest soldier.

Three more soldiers were sucked into the sexual maelstrom, leaving Elyssa and me plenty of room to slip through the perimeter and into the trees. Just as the kissing and touching started to get serious, I released the captive auras and let everyone come back to their senses.

Elyssa shuddered. "I hope none of them had cooties."

I paused behind a tree to make sure everyone recovered from their lust.

"Oh my god, I don't know what happened," one of the soldiers said as he helped a woman to her feet. "I'm sorry."

The dazed women stood up, uncertain looks on their faces.

"I don't know what came over me," one of them said. "But that guy is a pretty good kisser."

I turned and noticed Elyssa already scoping out the woods. "I think we're clear to proceed."

She nodded. "The trees aren't very thick so we'll have to be careful moving through them."

"Any sign of guards?"

"Not yet." She stepped lightly across the leaves, making almost no sound.

I moved just as noiselessly, but it wasn't because I was a stealth ninja. The noise-dampening charms on the nightingale armor were still functional. I hoped the bulletproofing worked just as well. We hiked up a steep rise and paused at the crest. Squads of soldiers patrolled the hiking trails, but none of them left the path.

"There's a bridge crossing the river here." Elyssa pointed to the paper map. "Because of the patrols, I think we should ford the river further downstream and cut inland."

"Exactly what I was going to say," I lied. Elyssa was the planner, not me.

"I figured." She pecked a kiss on my lips. "I know how much you hate to think though."

"Ha, ha." I folded the map and handed it to her.

We continued onward.

Darkness fell about twenty minutes later and I extended the armor over my face to use the HUD—heads up display. Unfortunately, neither the night vision nor HUD worked. I removed the mask and relied on my blue-tinted incubus night vision to make my way through the forest. Elyssa's eyes glowed as she engaged her own dhampyr night vision.

Thanks to the rocky terrain, we had to move slowly and carefully. Wobbling flashlights indicated another patrol passing below. We waited them out and then scaled down the rocky cliff next to the trail. We paused, listened. Singing insects and the rush of water over rocks drowned out almost everything else. I heard voices to our left as the patrol moved away.

Elyssa flicked a hand forward and we dashed across the trail. Even with my night vision, the turbulent river water looked black and uninviting. I took a careful step into the water. The armor kept me dry and protected from the chill. I took another step and almost lost my balance when my foot found loose, jumbled stone. Elyssa stumbled as we waded forward.

"I didn't realize it was so rocky," she whispered.

I winced as my foot found a crevice in deep water. A couple of tugs pulled my foot loose, but it highlighted the dangers of trying to make it across the river quickly. We soon resorted to using our hands to aid our balance as we navigated the rocky riverbed. Even so, it took us a good thirty minutes to make it across. Once there, we had to climb another steep grade.

Judging from the bright lights, a blackened crater, and dozens of soldiers in the woods below, we were just up the hill from the impact site.

"Let me take a peek from here," I said, and switched to demon vision. The area all around us was almost pitch black thanks to the lack of aether. The meteor shone quite literally like a spotlight, casting a beam of energy back into the night sky until it vanished in the distance.

"What do you see?" Elyssa asked.

I described the sight. "It looks like it's shooting the aether into space."

These things were leeching Eden dry.

Chapter 9

"Into space?" Elyssa peered up into the sky. "That's not good."

"Understatement of the year." I stared at the beacon until the glare began to hurt my eyes, and switched back to normal vision. "I've reached the conclusion that whoever is doing this is a real jackass."

"Well, we have what we came for." Elyssa turned to head back.

I grabbed her arm. "I want to get closer. There's got to be something more we can learn." Frustration tied my stomach into a knot. "If we let this continue much longer, it may permanently crippled Eden."

"There must be at least twenty soldiers down there." She shook her head. "There's no way we can get close enough." Her eyes narrowed. "Besides, remember what I told you about touching that thing."

"What if I tossed a squirrel at it?"

"Then I'd slap you silly." Elyssa jabbed a finger back the way we'd come. "We're going."

I stabbed a finger toward the meteor. "I'm going down there for a closer look."

She grabbed my arm. "Justin, don't be a stubborn idiot."

"I'm not being stubborn." I gripped her hand. "We have a duty to Eden to take necessary risks to keep her safe. Maybe fighting through twenty soldiers isn't the ideal way to do this, but I don't see an alternative."

She was just about to speak when I heard a faint cough-cough-cough. The soldiers below toppled like puppets with cut strings. By the time they realized what was happening, it was over. I magnified my vision and saw bloody head wounds on most of the fallen.

My stomach twisted with nausea. "What in the hell is going on?"

"Get down," Elyssa hissed.

I flopped to my stomach just as a tall figure in bulky black armor marched stiffly into view. I quickly realized from the way it moved that it wasn't human—was it a robot? People in black uniforms swarmed from the woods behind the robot, checking downed soldiers for signs of life. Two of them lowered a square metal device into the crater then stood and gave a thumbs-up to the others.