Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha (2 page)

‘Would you object, Conor, if we had a little conversation in private?'

‘Why?'

Agent Murano leaned in so close I could smell his heavy cologne. ‘I have a lot of experience with unusual events,' he said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Let's just say I would prefer to talk about your situation without prying eyes.' Then he winked at me.

‘What, are you like an X-File guy?'

He smiled. ‘When we are alone.'

‘OK,' I said.

The FBI man dismissed the guard and then lowered the Venetian blinds that were in front of what I assumed was a two-way mirror.

I started to get excited. When you tell a story as crazy as mine, to as many people as I had and none of them believe you – you start to doubt your sanity. Could it be that I had finally met someone who truly believed me?

‘Have you met people from The Land before?'

The agent shushed me, took off his jacket and covered the security camera that was mounted on the corner of the wall.

‘So you have a file on Tir na Nog, right?'

Once again he raised his finger in front of his lips, picked the intercom off the table and unplugged it. Then after looking around to see that no one or nothing could overhear us, he covertly gestured for me to come close. I stood and looked around myself. It was very cloak and dagger. I just got within striking distance of him when – that is exactly what he did – he struck. He slammed the intercom into my stomach just below my ribs. Whether he had been trained or had lots of practice in using office equipment to cause pain, I don't know, but he was certainly good at it. Every molecule of air flew out of my body and the agonising spasms in my solar plexus made it so I was having a hard time replacing any of them. I was on the ground, doing a convincing impression of a fish out of water, when he bent down and slammed the intercom into my right shin.

I once heard that the only good thing about pain is that you can only experience it in one place – let me tell you now: that's not true. Getting slammed in the shin just meant that I hurt from my chest to my toes. Then he slammed the damn thing into my head and I hurt all over. I tried to ask why but my breathing still wasn't working and then I had a thought that terrified me so much I didn't even care about the pain.

‘Did Cialtie send you?' I said as loud as I could.

Apparently it wasn't very loud at all because Agent Murano leaned over and said: ‘What did you say?'

‘Were you sent by my Uncle Cialtie to kill me?'

He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me back into a chair where he handcuffed my hands behind my back.

‘Still with the Faerieland stories. Do you want me to kick the crap out of you again?'

‘No,' I answered honestly.

‘Then enough with the dragons and the Pixies.'

‘There are no Pixies in Tir na Nog.'

That line earned me a backhand across the face that made my vision swim for a second. ‘What do you want?'

‘I want you to knock it off with the insanity talk. The last four federal crimes I have investigated in this state have all gotten off with insanity pleas. My nickname in the office is The Shrink. I refuse to lose another case to the nuthouse.'

Relief washed over me; he was not an assassin hired by my uncle, he was a plain old ordinary Real World jerk. I smiled.

‘What, O'Neil, is so funny?'

‘The Shrink,' I said laughing.

Murano flew into a rage, he re-hit me in the stomach and overturned the chair I was cuffed to, my head bounced off the floor and I thought I was going to throw up. I really didn't want to get hit again but I couldn't help it, I was still laughing.

‘OK, OK,' I said, my face pressed against the linoleum. ‘What do you want me to do?'

The agent picked me off the floor – the cuffs cut in to my wrists. He put his face inches from mine. For a horrible second I thought he was going to kiss me. ‘You are going to confess to being a terrorist.'

‘What?'

‘You're going to admit that you are a terrorist. You don't have to name names. You can claim that you never met your masters but you kidnapped Detective Fallon because you hate your country.'

‘You're crazy.'

‘Maybe I am,' Murano said, ‘but I'm going to make sure you are
not
crazy.'

‘So let me get this straight – you are punching a man who is tied to a chair and I'm the terrorist?'

The crazy G-man tipped my chair over once again. This time I think I did black out for a short time. The next thing I remember there was drool on the floor and I finally had a pain in my head that hurt enough to block out all of the other pains in my body.

‘OK, OK, I said, ‘I'll say anything you want. Let's just try and keep my grey matter inside my skull.'

You know all that talk about how advanced interrogation techniques are no good because a tortured prisoner will tell you anything? Well, it's all true. I talked about how Tir na Nog was really a code word for a bunch of anarchists that wanted to overthrow the United States of America and then the world. When I started to get too outlandish, Agent Murano shook his head until eventually I just let him write my confession. We started getting along so well I even persuaded him to get me a burger and a shake. Don't get me wrong, I still loathed the man. Anyone who would use their power to beat a shackled insane person (I know I'm not really insane but he didn't know that) is just below snakes – and that's giving snakes a bad name. I was slurping at the last of my shake when Murano came in holding my ‘confession'.

I hesitated before signing. I had been called a lot of nasty things in my day. Once I had even been called ‘unfunny' (can you believe that?). But ‘terrorist' was not something I wanted people saying about me. I imagined that in prison hierarchy, a terrorist would be just a tiny step above a guy who cooks puppies for supper.

‘I don't think I can sign this,' I said.

‘You want we go through all this again, O'Neil?' Agent Murano said, rubbing his knuckles.

‘Well the way I figure it, either I get a beating from you today or I get one every day from my white supremacist flag-loving cell-mate. Sorry, Andy, but I'm sticking with the fire-breathing dragon story.'

‘Sign it,' the FBI man said as he stepped menacingly towards me.

‘No.'

‘SIGN IT!'

‘Sign what?' Brendan said as he entered the room. The so-called kidnap victim was flanked by a local cop in uniform and an old, grey-haired lady that I at first thought was his mother. Brendan picked up my confession and scanned it. I kept staring at the wrinkled face of the old lady – something about her intrigued me.

‘So you're a terrorist now?' Brendan said to me.

‘Special Agent Murano thinks so.'

‘Did he coerce you?'

‘I'd say he counselled me,' I replied. ‘Agent Andy is like a shrink.'

Murano bristled and pulled Fallon into the corner. I'm sure the special agent meant to whisper but he was worked up and not doing it very well. I could hear every word.

‘What do you care if I rough him up a bit? According to the report he had you locked up in a closet for a couple of months.'

‘It wasn't that bad.'

‘Come on,' Murano said, ‘you probably want to take a few pops yourself.'

‘I'm not sure his attorney would approve,' Fallon said, pointing to the old woman.

‘No,' the grey-haired woman said, ‘I'd be fine with that.'

At the sound of her voice all the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight out.

‘No you are not,' Fallon said to her. ‘You were about to tell your client not to sign anything.'

‘My what?'

‘Your client, Mr O'Neil?' Brendan said pointing to me. ‘You were about to tell him not to say or sign anything.'

‘Oh yes, I was.' A look of confusion crossed her face – it was maddeningly familiar. ‘Yes, what Brendan said – do. Or don't do.'

The old woman tilted her head down and with inordinate interest began inspecting the bulb on the desk lamp.

‘She was also about to say that she would like some time alone with her client.' Brendan stared at the woman again. ‘Wasn't she?'

The woman straightened up and hurriedly said, ‘Yes, I'd like to be alone with Master On-el.'

‘O'Neil,' Brendan corrected.

‘Yes, Prin— Mr O'Neil.'

Agent Murano finally took notice of the woman. ‘Can I see some identification please?'

‘Some what?'

‘Identification.'

The old woman looked like she didn't know what he was talking about. She looked over to Brendan and said, ‘Can we get on with this?'

‘Yeah,' Brendan said with a sigh, ‘go for it.'

The woman reached up to her ears and pulled off the marble-sized gold earrings that were hanging from her lobes. She held the two shiny spheres in her palm and incanted under her breath. The gold balls glowed then rose from her palm and encircled each other like tiny binary stars.

The uniformed cop stepped in to get a better look but Murano backed up and said, ‘What the—' He didn't get to finish before the two balls shot through the air and exploded into the chests of the two officers. They were thrown against the wall in a shower of light. When I could see again it looked like they weren't getting up any time soon.

Brendan went through the FBI man's pockets for the handcuff key while the old woman checked on the health of the cop.

‘'Bout time you got here,' I said to Brendan. ‘That Fed is a nutcase. It was only a matter of time before he dropped a starving rodent down my trousers.'

I stood up and went over to where the old woman was holding the policeman's head. I leaned in and took a close-up look at the old woman.

‘Essa?'

She smiled – it wrinkled up her whole face. ‘Miss me?'

‘E
ssa, you're so …'

‘I'm so what?' she said in a tone that sent warning bells exploding in my brain. ‘How do I look, Conor? Tell me.'

‘Well, you look …'

‘If you say “wrinkled” I'm going to chain you back to that chair. For you, I got off my horse and set foot on the ground in the Real World. Because you and Brendan don't know how to hide, I am what an eighty-year-old woman looks like in this gods forsaken land. So once again, how do I look?'

‘I was just about to say that you don't look a day over seventy.'

‘Can we get out of here please,' Brendan said, ‘I've just assaulted a federal agent. I'd like to be gone before that appears on my permanent record.'

Essa opened her briefcase and took out a jar of Vaseline.

‘Are we going to slide out of here?'

Essa didn't even bother with a dirty look.

‘Oak tree sap,' Brendan said. ‘It was my mother's idea to put it in a Vaseline jar to get it past security.'

Essa smeared the sap in a circle on the windowless wall. Then she placed her hand on the sticky circle and incanted. When she removed her hand a gold handprint glowed in the brown circle. She straightened up, groaned and rubbed her back.

‘Ready to leave?'

‘I sure am, grandma.' That got me a dirty look.

She shouted a single word that sounded like a sneeze and the circle silently blew out of the wall. Daylight poured in among the dust and I could see parked cars through what moments earlier had been a wall.

Brendan crouched down and pointed. ‘We have to get past that gate. My car is parked on the other side.'

I walked over to the unconscious Agent Murano. He was starting to come round and if I was honest, I'd have to admit that I was toying with the idea of kicking him in the ribs so he would have something to remember me by. That's when I saw it. Brendan had emptied the FBI man's pockets looking for the handcuff key. In a pile on the floor, was scattered change and car keys attached to a keychain that said Porsche.

‘I've got a better idea.'

In the parking lot I pressed the fob attached to the keychain and lights on Agent Andy's white sports car blinked. It was almost like his car was saying ‘Steal me.' The car, like the special agent's shoes, was meticulously cleaned and waxed. It wasn't new but he tried to make it look like it was – right up to the new-car smell air freshener. It was obvious that my torturer loved this vehicle and I was looking forward to smashing it through the front gate. I didn't get a chance. Brendan wouldn't let me behind the wheel. He pointed out that he'd been trained in high-speed driving and I had only been driving for a year. I wouldn't have gotten to smash it into the gate anyway because it was open. We zoomed past a surprised (and soon-to-be unemployed) guard without even a scratch.

It was a tight fit in the car. I got stuffed in to the back and we broke all Pennsylvania speeding laws. After my incarceration I needed some air, so I reached into the front and pulled the latch for the convertible top. The wind took the roof and ripped it right off the car.