Immortal Moon (19 page)

“Jarrett,” Farrah said, hiccupping. “I’m not
hurt. I don’t think I am. They drugged me. I’m crying because I’m
mad. They took her and I couldn’t stop them, and I’m really
angry.”

Jarrett looked down at the red, tear-stained
face and nearly laughed out loud. He could see the truth of her
words reflected in her eyes. She had definitely fallen in with the
right family. He didn’t know if she’d been like this before she’d
been abducted by Bokor, but after six months living with Pinky and
the Moon sisters, she couldn’t be more like them if she’d grown up
there.

“Okay, then. In that case, I’m going to run.
Can you hang on tight?”

“I’m a little weak, but I’ll do my
best.”

He gathered her a little tighter to him and
took off. Weaving in and out of the late afternoon crowds, they
made it to the headquarters building in just a few minutes. It
wasn’t until he was standing in front of the lift he realized he
was still in the cutoff shorts and old shirt he’d been painting in.
He’d left his ID crystal, along with his weapons and long pants,
back on The Minnow.

“Can you stand?” he asked Farrah.

She nodded. “I think so.”

He set her on her feet in the lift, close to
the wall so she could lean on it, and pulled his scry out.

“Sam,” he said when the other man answered.
“I’m in the lift, can you give me an override?”

“Be right there.”

Less than a minute after the crystal went
dark, the lift began to move upwards. Sam and a healer—Jarrett was
glad to see it wasn’t the one who had treated Anya—met them when
the lift doors opened.

“I’ve got her,” Jarrett said, and carried
Farrah into Sam’s office.

The healer was examining her when Fiona and
Pinky arrived. Pinky immediately rushed to her side. “Are you okay?
What happened?”

He didn’t ask about Anya, and Jarrett
assumed Sam hadn’t told them Anya was missing. Before Farrah could
answer, Jarrett asked the med-mage, “Is she okay to answer a few
questions?”

“Yes,” the healer said, “But I want to get
her across the street to the hospital soon. It will take a while to
completely remove the drug from her system, and she will need
rest.”

“Thank you, Healer Ramsey,” Sam said.
“Please wait outside for a few minutes, and then we’ll let you take
your patient.”

The healer nodded and left, shutting the
door behind him.

The four of them sat, listening intently, as
Farrah told them the story of how four men had ambushed them in the
slums.

“We were winning,” she said, a small note of
pride evident in her voice. “Anya was really fighting, and I was
using my power to throw rocks and dust in their faces. It wasn’t
much, but it was working until one of them threw a dart at me. It
was the weirdest feeling. I couldn’t feel anything, it was as if my
entire body had disappeared. I fell to the ground.”

“Where was Anya at that moment, Farrah? Do
you remember?” Fiona asked.

“Yeah. She had just knocked down both of her
guys and was coming towards me, and then she just fell to the
ground. That’s when one of them laid the scry on my stomach and
told me I’d get feeling back in my body in half an hour.” She
turned and looked at Jarrett. “He said I was to go directly to you,
and they would be watching to know if I went to the guards instead.
He told me to tell you that someone would contact you on that
porta-scry after sundown.”

“Did you see which way they went with Anya?”
Sam asked.

She shook her head. “No. I was lying on my
back and couldn’t move. I know they picked her up, and one of them
said to be careful with her or the boss wouldn’t be happy.”

“That bodes well,” Sam said.

Fiona walked over and put her hand on
Farrah’s shoulder. “You did a good job, sweetie. Come on, I’ll take
you out to wait with the healer for a moment, okay?”

Farrah nodded and let Fiona pull her out of
the chair and help her walk out to the hall.

“What do we do first?” Pinky asked when
Fiona was back in the office.

“You take Farrah to the hospital and wait
with her,” Fiona said. “This is her second trauma in six months,
she could really use a friendly face.”

Pinky glared. “No. Not till my little girl
is back home.”

Fiona returned his glare, not budging an
inch. “Please, I’m as worried as you are right now, so I don’t want
to fight with you. We can’t do much except theorize until Jarrett
receives the call. After that, it will all be about strategy. You
aren’t trained for this. I promise I’ll keep you updated, but the
most helpful thing you can do right now is help keep Farrah and
River calm.”

“River,” Pinky said, as if just realizing
she wasn’t there. “Where is she?”

“She’s on her way. I scryed the guard post
at the market after Jarrett called. A city guard officer is
escorting her here. I’ll have her taken to the hospital to meet
you,” Sam said.

“Please, Dad?” Fiona pleaded.

Jarrett swallowed a thick lump that had
formed in his throat. She never called Pinky ‘Dad’. It was a sign
of how worried she was.

Pinky sighed and pulled Fiona into a tight
hug. “Okay. Just keep me updated, please.”

As he was walking to the door to join
Farrah, Jarrett stopped him by saying, “I’m really sorry,
Pinky.”

Pinky turned to him. “For?”

“Anya was targeted because she is close to
me. It’s my fault.”

“It looks like whoever took her did it to
get to you. True. But every person in this room is close to Anya,
and every one of us has people who would like to hurt us in any way
possible. I’m sure Anya has a few of those herself. It’s a
dangerous world, and my girls are tough and know how to take care
of themselves.” He moved so that he was toe-to-toe with Jarrett,
and the difference in their sizes was painfully evident. Though not
short by any stretch of the imagination, Pinky was about four
inches shorter than Jarrett and at least seventy-five pounds
lighter. Yet there was something in his eyes that told Jarrett he
did not want to get on the man’s bad side. “You have nothing to be
sorry for, yet. If you don’t bring my girl home to me safe and
sound, then you can be sorry. I’ll make sure you are.” Then he
turned and walked out.

***

The next three hours felt like an eternity.
Jarrett thought he might go crazy before the call came in.

He had spent hours going over every possible
suspect with Sam and Fiona. They kept landing back on Python.

“You tried to kill him, isn’t that motive
enough?” Fiona said, for probably the fifth time.

“Yes, that is very true. But I’m telling
you, Python is a born lackey, hired muscle. He looks big and bad,
but when it comes to brains to cook up schemes and plans, he
doesn’t have them. Nor does he have the motivation. He doesn’t do
anything unless he’s paid, or ordered to. But he’s never been loyal
enough to anyone to take orders, except Dread.”

Sam leaned back in his chair. “I don’t want
to believe it’s true, but I’m inclined to agree with you, brother.
Cora must be pulling his strings. If he survived, she could have as
well. And she always had a vindictive streak.”

Before Jarrett could respond, the
scry-crystal Farrah had given him buzzed in his pocket. He pulled
it out and activated it.

His heart lurched when the image of Anya
tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth came on screen. She was
glaring at the person holding the scry and wiggling so that her
chair hopped.

“You picked a little ball of fire this time,
Jarrett.”

The familiar voice nearly stopped Jarrett’s
heart.

“Cora.”

The scry turned, revealing a glimpse of an
empty warehouse, before settling on Cora’s face. “Surprised to see
me?”

“No,” Jarrett half lied. “I knew you were
alive.”

“No thanks to you. Ahh, but that is a
discussion for another time. I guess you want your girlfriend back.
You know, I never pegged you for sticking to a type, but really
Jarrett, a redheaded barmaid? Were you feeling nostalgic?”

Jarrett ignored the bait. “Cora, I’ll trade
myself for Anya. When and where?”

Cora’s face screwed up into a childlike
pout. “Straight to business, huh? No reminiscing over the good old
times? Fine. Meet me at the airfield in an hour. I won’t waste my
breath telling you to come alone, but I will tell you that if I see
anyone but you, I’ll kill the girl. So you make sure Sam’s agents
are like shadows.”

There was a muffled voice off to the side,
then Cora said, “Oh, yes, the little dark-haired Blade you were at
the bar with last week. She’s this one’s sister?” She jerked her
head towards Anya.

Fiona grabbed the crystal out of Jarrett’s
grasp and looked into it. “Damn right I am.”

“You can come, too, honey.” Cora said,
giving a nasty smile before the scry-crystal went dark.

The three stood in silence for a long moment
before Sam said, “Gear up, you two. Meet me in the prep room in
fifteen.”

Jarrett looked down at his cutoffs. “I have
some clothes in my room, but I’ll need some weapons.”

“Not a problem,” Sam said.

Jarrett went to his room and changed into
his regular uniform of heavy, black denim pants, black shirt, and
black leather vest. When he walked into the op-prep room fifteen
minutes later, there were ten agents besides Sam and Fiona. Eight
were equipped with either a crossbow or compound bow, and the other
two carried med packs. They were arranged around a table with a
large, hand-drawn map in the center.

“We don’t know which platform she will be
at, if she will even be on a platform. It’s too risky for you to be
inside the airfield. I want you spread around the perimeter here.”
He pointed to the map to indicate where. “Medics, I want you here
and here. No one fires unless I give the order.”

“Not even if we have a clear shot?” One of
the agents asked.

“No,” Jarrett answered, his voice hard. “The
suspect and the victim have similar hair colors. It’s too
risky.”

Sam cleared his throat. “Okay, people. Make
sure you have plenty of bolts and arrows and let’s move out.”

Jarrett and Fiona hung back until the other
agents had left the room.

“I have a feeling you have more of a history
with this Cora chick than you told me the other night. I don’t know
what it is, and I don’t care,” Fiona said, giving Jarrett an
assessing stare. “If I get a chance, I’ll kill her.”

Jarrett returned her gaze unwaveringly.
“Unless I do it first.”

Despite
the fear and anxiety that rolled through him, Jarrett was struck
with the same sense of awe and irony that he had every time he was
at an airfield or saw an airship. When he was a child, a hot air
balloon was a novelty. Something most people never even glimpsed.
And over the span of his long life, he’d seen so much come and go.
He remembered the one shining century of astronomical technological
advancements, one after another. He’d lived through the era of the
Wright brothers’ first flight, Amelia Earhart, zeppelins, jets, and
space shuttles. In a time where people flew around the world in
huge metal machines, air balloons were once again, or perhaps
still, a novelty used only for amusement and recreation. Then the
cataclysm came along and washed away all the technology. So much
knowledge had been lost.

Now, it was a time for hot air balloons
again, but while some in the world might not ever see one, and many
would never ride in one, they were not used for recreation anymore.
They were the only mode of air travel. The smaller hot air balloons
were usually owned by a rich family, or by a company to transport a
few individuals at a time from a large city like Nash City to a
smaller community, sometimes as far as Atlanta. The larger airships
were basically a wooden cabin that held fifteen to twenty
passengers attached to three or four hot air balloons, each with a
copilot that answered to the ship’s navigator, usually a mage with
power to navigate wind currents.

The full circle society had taken never
ceased to amaze him. But now wasn’t the time to think about
that.

The three agents walking behind him split
away to take up positions around the airfield. He forced himself to
concentrate as he stalked towards his destination. Fiona kept
stride next to him, Sam on the other side of her. She stopped,
tapped his arm, and pointed. There were six two-story-high
platforms with balloons docked at four of them, and two three-story
airship platforms, both of which were empty. Each balloon glowed
against the dark sky, the fire used to heat the air illuminating
them. By that glow, he could see three figures, one in a balloon
and two on the platform next to it.

Sam motioned that he was going to circle
around. Jarrett and Fiona nodded, and he slipped off into the
darkness while they continued forward towards the docking
platform.