Courageous Read online

  Petra put a hand on my shoulder. “Put it aside, Vincent. Focus on what you can control, and what’s really important.”

  I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Right. Do we know what the plan entailed?”

  Gears nodded. “They were creating a synthetic being, not exactly a clone, but something close, that would be able to take you in a fight.”

  “Take me in a fight how, exactly?”

  “Similar powers to what you used to have, from what I can tell.”

  I rubbed my chin. “This day just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? All right, when we get back to Boston, tap back into the Caulborn network and see what the status is on that. I don’t need any more surprises. Meantime, we need to focus on Megan. Let’s go see if the necromancers need anything.” When we re-entered Professor Brymstone’s lab, we found Herb and his father frantically drawing symbols on legal pads.

  “—And then some sort of purification component,” Herb was saying. “That should prevent any subsequent compulsions.”

  “But what we’re describing would have to be a liquid medium for maximum effectiveness,” Albert said. “Normally, I’d say we use holy water, but that will burn her. We’ll need some other kind of liquid that’s so pure it will prevent future compulsion.”

  “Are things going well?” I asked.

  They turned to me. “Yes,” Herb said, smiling as he tapped his pad. “Dad and I have come up with a list of components that we think could break the hold Treggen has on her. A big chunk of this stuff is stock materials that we can pick up in the Undercity, but there’s one last component we need, the purification agent we were just talking about. I’m not sure what to use for that.”

  “Give me a sec,” Gears said, his eyes filling with silver static. “Hmm. There’s an old Caulborn storage facility out in the woods in Harvard. There used to be a group of people there called Shakers.”

  “Aren’t they the folks that made the really good furniture?” Herb asked.

  “Yep. But they also had a medicinal water business for a long time. This water of theirs was so pure, it was spun as a cure for whatever ailed you. The storage facility was originally the springhouse where the Shakers drew their water. When the Shaker community died out, the Caulborn took it over, used some caverns down there as artifact vaults, and then sealed it off completely in the late 1950s, but I’m not sure why… The archives aren’t classified or anything, just no data.”

  “Why’d they die out?” Herb asked. “I thought you said this water was some kind of a cure-all.”

  “Sure,” Gears replied, “but the Shakers were celibate, and the spring we’re talking about here isn’t the fountain of youth. Mortality plus no babies equals no more Shakers. It looks like they had some very limited access to magic, but it wasn’t anything significant, certainly not enough to grant immortality or anything like that.”

  “How are you getting all that information?” I asked. “I thought you couldn’t connect to the network out here.”

  “I can’t. The cyberium downloaded the entire Caulborn archives into my head before we left.”

  “Holy shit… How are you processing all that?”

  “Okay, well, I suppose they’re the ones holding all the data. I just tap into it, so it’s more like running a Google search inside my brain. Anyway, the springhouse and the spring are still there. Would that work?”

  Herb pursed his lips. “Maybe. I’d need to run a magical analysis, but if it’s just over in Harvard, it shouldn’t take too long to get there, right? We could get a sample and know for sure in an hour or so.”

  “We can get there even faster if I can portal us there. Come on,” I gestured for the group to follow me into the main chamber, where Alexis’s massive screen dominated the far wall. “Alexis,” I said, “please bring up a map of Harvard, Massachusetts. Gears, do you have coordinates for the springhouse?” Gears rattled them off, and a map appeared onscreen, a blinking blue dot at the desired point. “Highest possible magnification,” I said, feeling a bit like Jean Luc Picard. Alexis zoomed in to the tree line. “Is this a real-time image?”

  “Affirmative,” Alexis chirped.

  “Can you go any closer to the ground?”

  “Negative.”

  “Damn,” I breathed.

  “What’s the problem?” Herb asked.

  “I can make a portal at that point, but that’s still probably forty feet off the ground. I—” I slapped my face, amazed at my own idiocy. “Hang on.” I snapped Open a portal based on what I saw on Alexis’s map, putting the exit point facing down at the forest floor. Looking through, I created a second portal at ground level, and then dismissed the first. “Let’s go,” I said, and the group of us stepped through.

  I sank into the snow up to my knees, and while the trees gave us some shelter from the wind, my face was already stinging. The artifact vault would be climate-controlled, so I hadn’t even thought to outfit anyone with coats or boots. Part of me was regretting that. But just the same, we’d come out only a few feet from the springhouse, so now, all we needed to do was get inside and—

  I froze when I saw the springhouse up close, and it had nothing to do with the cold.

  “What’s wrong?” Petra asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  “I’ve seen this before,” I said, shuddering. “When I was in Hell, I was hit with some pretty intense psychotropics from a nasty critter called a cordling. I saw this place. Just for a second, but it was this place, I’m sure of it.” I walked forward, more pushing through the snow than walking on it. The springhouse itself wasn’t much to look at; it was basically a six-foot-tall structure that couldn’t have been more than eight feet across. Its rock walls formed a triangle, coming to a point covered in moss and snow. The door was a simple wooden affair, but didn’t have a knob; only a series of latches that were protected with padlocks. Getting closer, I noticed the padlocks didn’t have keyholes. The Caulborn insignia was prominent where the holes should have been. So, whoever had sealed this building off had done so with arcane locks. Which meant there were a bunch of wards on the other side.

  Which meant nothing to a guy with apertus energy at his disposal. I brushed my fingers against the locks, and they snapped open. Pulling them off and looping them onto my belt, I swung open the door. On instinct, I moved to snap on my kobold night vision. Then I sighed, conjured a quick portal into Commander Courageous’s equipment room, and snagged a flashlight for each of my friends. I snapped mine on, and its beam showed a small spring burbling cheerily in front of us.

  “How is it that this hasn’t frozen?” Petra asked.

  “The Shakers had some simple enchantments on the rocks,” Gears said, gesturing to the walls. “Nothing fancy, just enough magic to keep the water flowing.”

  Herb and Albert moved forward to the spring, quickly gathering up some of the water into a plastic bottle. As Herb sealed it, I caught sight of a stone just to the left of the spring, maybe three feet wide, with the Caulborn logo carved into it. I pressed my hand to it, and it popped open, revealing a set of iron rungs inside a narrow shaft.

  “Gears, do the archives say what’s stored down here?”

  Gears’s eyes filled with static. “Huh. No.” His tone was one of confusion.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know how sometimes there are pages torn out of books? This is like that.”

  “Someone deleted the data?”

  “I guess so. Though you’d have to have super-high clearance to…” Gears and I locked eyes. “Oh, crap. Do you think Treggen took something from here?”

  “It’s possible.” I shined my light down the shaft. “Treggen would’ve had access to all of the Caulborn’s data, and would’ve known where all the shiny toys were kept.”

  “But this place was supposed to be for
minor artifacts,” Gears said as I started down the ladder. “Nothing higher than power level three.”

  “How strong is power level three?” Herb asked.

  “Stuff less than four can’t be used to summon creatures from other dimensions,” I said, continuing down. “Wands, magic rings, the occasional simple golem, those all count as level three or lower.” The rungs of the ladder were freezing cold in my grip, and I bunched a bit of my sleeves around them. That made the rest of the climb awkward, but I was at the base of the ladder less than a minute later. The others followed behind me, Gears riding on Petra’s shoulder. I shined the flashlight around.

  “This is cleaner than I expected,” Herb said, looking around. “No dust or anything.”

  “Basic enchantments would’ve been cast on the area to ensure the artifacts themselves didn’t decay,” I said. “It has the added bonus of keeping the place tidy.” We walked down a narrow passage to a heavy steel door. I placed my hand against it and Opened it.

  “Whoa,” I said, as I sensed just how many wards, traps, and alarms my apertus energy was bypassing. If I were anyone else and had touched the door with anything other than apertus energy, I’d have been incinerated, frozen, hit with acid, and turned to stone, all at once. These weren’t standard Caulborn protective measures. Treggen had laid down some nastiness of his own. “Okay, everyone,” I said. “There were a bunch of traps on the door, which will stay inert until it shuts behind us, so let me open it on the way out. Albert, Herb, do you guys have any way to detect other magical traps?”

  “That’s not really what necromancy does,” Albert said.

  “And I can’t sense any spirits tethered to this place,” Herb added. “If someone had died here, I might be able to ask them questions, but there’s nothing.”

  “Well, that means we’ll have to be extra cautious,” I said, as we stepped into the artifact vault. I shined my flashlight beam around. “Well, this is anticlimactic.”

  “I know,” Petra said. “With all the wards you talked about, I was expecting something out of National Treasure.”

  The room was maybe twenty feet across, and only about seven high. A series of shelves ran along the walls, holding minor magical baubles. Two tables were in the middle of the room, small items and boxes atop them. Leather-bound books, enchanted so their pages wouldn’t decay, were on a rolling book cart, the kind of thing that belonged in a library.

  “Like I said, just level-three stuff or lower, guys,” Gears said, his flashlight beam illuminating the undersides of the tables. “I can’t imagine there’d be anything down here Treggen would want.”

  “I dunno, Gears. Sojin had a lightning wand that would count as level two.”

  “Good point.”

  “A magic wand hardly seems the kind of thing he’d delete from the Caulborn archives, though.” Petra said.

  “My thoughts exactly, love,” I said. “So, what else is down here? And why would Treggen beef up the wards?” I chewed my lip as I danced my beam around the room. I blinked as a couple of luminescent globes abruptly flared into being and bathed the room in an eerie blue light.

  “Found the light switch,” Gears called. “That should make this easier.”

  I snapped off my flashlight and tucked it into my pocket. “I’m going to try something.”

  “Something clever or something dangerous, Vincent?” Petra asked.

  “When is what I do not clever, darlin’?”

  “When it’s dangerous.”

  “Okay, okay, it won’t be dangerous.” I focused my Glimpse and looked back at the last few days in reverse at high speed. Nothing, nothing, nothing, burst of static, nothing. I zeroed in on that burst of static and concentrated. If Treggen and his pals had anti-divination wards on them, then that static must’ve been when Treggen entered the room. And as I inspected the vault just before the burst of static happened, I saw Sojin’s lightning wand sitting on the table, just a few feet from where I was now. Then the static, and then the wand was gone. I was reminded of the rune that Carmilla had tattooed on her arm, the one that prevented divination. Given how much runecraft Treggen had employed lately, and since he and Carmilla had been corresponding about how best to kill me, it wasn’t a surprise that he’d be using those runes too.

  But, since I could see what the room looked like before the static, and just after, it was only a matter of time and observation to figure out what had been taken. The wand missing from the table was obvious enough, now I just had to look at everything else. I double-checked the table, then moved on to the cart of books. That seemed undisturbed. Over the course of what felt like hours, I moved through the Glimpse, inspecting the other tables, and then moving on to the shelves. Nothing, nothing, noth— Hold on.

  A small black container, about the size of a cigar box, was about two inches to the right of where it’d been before the static. I glanced around a bit more, and not seeing anything else that had been moved, released the Glimpse. “Over here,” I said, walking to the box. “Treggen or someone who was with him handled this.”

  “What is it?” Petra asked.

  “Let’s find out.” I used apertus energy on the box to bypass any traps left behind. There weren’t any, and the lid snapped open immediately. The box was lined with red velvet and looked like the kind of thing you’d use to display medals. The blue light caught what was inside, and my eyes widened.

  “No way,” I heard Gears whisper from behind me.

  The box didn’t contain medals, but there was a golden disk on a thin chain resting in a depression on the left side. It was about the same diameter as a Pepsi can, and bore an intricate carving of a lone figure battling creatures from nightmares. Even if I hadn’t seen this amulet in that hallucinogenic nightmare the cordlings had given me, I’d have known it. I’d been seeing this amulet for as long as I could remember. It had been around the neck of Commander Courageous throughout almost every comic, cartoon, video game, and movie adaptation.

  I was holding the Anisa Amulet.

  Chapter 6

  I’d known for a while that I was going to find the Anisa Amulet someday. Wheatson had told me about it. Hell, I’d had a conversation with an alternate-future version of myself who’d been wearing it. I just hadn’t expected to find it here, now.

  “That looks familiar,” Albert said. “What was that old TV show, about the guy whose superpowers ran off the things people were afraid of? Captain Courageous?”

  “Commander Courageous,” Petra, Gears, and I said in unison.

  “But is that really the real thing, Vinnie?” Gears asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said, looping the amulet’s chain around my neck. Nothing happened. “Well, maybe…” I was still holding the box, and as I glanced back down, it registered that there was a second depression in the velvet on the right side. The depression was about the same size and shape as the Anisa Amulet, but it was empty. My eyes widened. “Gears, in the archives, does it say anything about amulets or medallions that ran on fear, or bestowed powers to their wearers based on the fears of the people around them?”

  Gears’s eyes filled with static before coming back with a “Yes. Nothing about this facility specifically, but there are notes that say Caulborn operatives found two amulets that match that description.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Treggen took the Mieso Amulet. The one that Señor Fear used.”

  Albert furrowed his brow. “Was he the skull-headed fella with the sombrero?”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s what Treggen came here for. I think the wand that Sojin took was just a bonus prize.”

  “But what would he want with that?” Petra asked. “He’s in Croatoan’s shell. That makes him effectively invulnerable and gives him minor control over undead, as well as a bunch of other powers. What use would that amulet be?”

  “
That’s what we’re going to have to find out,” I said. “And, if we can break Treggen’s hold over Megan, she might be able to tell us.” I looked to the necromancers. “Did you guys get what you need from here?”

  Herb held up the bottle of water. “Yes, we’ll run some tests and see if this will be an effective purification component.”

  “Perfect. Let’s head topside. I’d rather not create portals down here just in case any of the artifacts or trinkets are sensitive to extradimensional energy.” We climbed back up the ladder, and as we stepped out from the springhouse, and I stared up into the bright blue winter sky, I had a sudden urge to just soar up among the clouds.

  And then I was shooting up through the air like a rocket, past the treetops, the bitter cold wind scratching icy needles against my skin. I slowed, hovering in the air, hundreds of feet up. I’d “flown” before when astrally projected, so the basic mechanics of flight were familiar to me. If I thought about moving in a direction and I went that way, but my astral trips had lacked any physical sensation. The air smelled different up here, it was cleaner, and wickedly cold. Things were quieter, too. The sounds of the city were lost up here; it was peaceful. And of course, there was the thrill of two discoveries. One was that the amulet I’d found was the real deal. And two, holy shit, I could fly!

  I did a couple of loops in the air and let out a whoop as I shot through the sky. I could have done this for hours. The feeling of complete and total freedom was exhilarating. After a minute or two, I forced myself to drop down onto the ground in front of my friends. My cheeks might have stung from the cold, but all I could feel was the goofy grin that was plastered on my face. Then I noticed all of our teeth were chattering from the cold. Well, everyone’s except Petra’s.

  “Sorry,” I said, as I created a portal back to Courage Point. “Got carried away there.” We stepped through into the warmth of my kitchen, where I conjured hot chocolate for everyone.