The Plane’s Children – Chapter Thirteen – Emersli1

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7 Minutes

Eager wasn’t certain quite where they were.

They were still in their otherself, so this definitely wasn’t the upper plane.  But wherever they were, it was dark and formless.  And somehow, some instinct warned them …

They were not alone.

As fear and dread crept up their spine, Eager listened to the sounds of someone or something moving in circles around them in the dark.

Now Eager was young.  And this was their first life with their spiritmate.  But they weren’t stupid.  Whatever was out there in the dark.  It had hunted Flicker.  It had hunted Hidden.  And now, it was hunting them.  But it had made a mistake.

Because Eager’s otherself?  It wasn’t a tiny hummingbird.   It wasn’t a small cat, even as venerable an opponent as the lynx could be.  

No, Eager was a giant golden.  They weighed in at one hundred thirty pounds, all of it muscle.  They had the teeth and claws of their long-ago wolf ancestor.  Just because they had the reputation of being friendly to everyone didn’t mean they couldn’t fight.

And Eager, at their heart, wasn’t a golden retriever.  They were a child of the Plane, and they would not go down easy.

They crouched, and waited.  They would not run.

And then they woke up.

Mick Brandon remembered feeling as though his body had been plugged into a high voltage outlet.  Then a prick at his neck, and then nothing.  For a long time.

He woke up in a small room with one tiny window about eight feet above his head.  There was a cot, a bucket, and a gallon jug of water.  Firmly controlling the fear that tried to rise, he looked at his spiritmate.

“Huh.  I guess good old Frank doesn’t know my favorite cookie.”

Sitting on the cot with his arm around Riley, Mick made a decision.  “You need to leave me.”

Riley looked at him like he was crazy.  “No, seriously.  You’re who this guy’s after.  You need to go back to your people on the upper plane and stay there.  If he tries to reach you there, well, you’ve got numbers, right?”

“They cannot do that.”

Mick nearly jumped out of his skin when Alone walked through the wall.

“Holy crap!  And what do you mean?  You went back.  Why couldn’t Riley?”  Mick was determined to get his mate out of danger any way he could.

Alone sighed.  “Well, for one thing, Eager says very firmly that they won’t go.  And for another thing, Eager could leave you for a brief time.  But they couldn’t leave and just stay gone.  Their self is tied to yours.  You live your life together until your life ends.  And before you get any crazy, self-sacrificing ideas … that’s not an answer either.  Ending your life.”

Mick sighed.  Then shook himself.  “OK, so I’m gonna assume Tony’s on the other side of this building?”

“Yes.  Frank Spaulding apparently followed us from the Center to your apartment building.  In retrospect, inviting us up for pizza was a bad idea.  Though I was looking forward to trying some.  He caught us in the parking garage waiting for the elevator.”  Alone looked at the rumpled young man.

“He had a device that shot electricity into you, and one that shot something through Tony’s leg.  Then he shot the electricity into Tony, and I don’t know what happened after that.”  Alone reported the sequence of events as they understood them.  “Tony has a hole in his leg.  He’s not happy about that, for obvious reasons.”

Alone looked at the pair on the bed, huddled protectively together.  “Tony sent me to find you as soon as he woke up.  My next stop is Blair.”

Mick looked up eagerly.  “Yes!  You’ll be able to lead them right to us.”

“I wish that were true Mick.  But I don’t know where we are.  And it’s not as though I’m going to walk the distance back to wherever Blair is.  All I can really do is provide the information that you are all still alive, and likely to remain so until nightfall.  But it’s a start.”  Alone gave each of the young ones a hug.

“I will be back.”  Turning they walked back through the wall.

Mick looked at Riley.  

“Well, at least they know how to make an exit.  But we’re definitely going to make them sit down and watch the Terminator movies with us after all this is over.”

Blair Sandberg was furious.  And terrified.  But mostly furious.

When 0700 had come and gone without a sign of either Mick Brandon or Tony DiNozzo, the team had known something was very wrong.  Finding Tony’s car parked in the garage at Mick’s apartment was a dead giveaway.  It took Jim and Parker less than a minute to find the crime scene in front of the stairwell.

The amount of blood was concerning.  As was the complete lack of interest shown in the proceedings by the residents.   Maybe they’d heard something and maybe they hadn’t.  Wasn’t their business, after all.

Blair was finding Mick Brandon a new apartment before he left town, or he was taking the young man back to Cascade with him.  This was ridiculous.

But in the meantime, Tony and Mick were gone.  And Alone.  No trace of anything to give them an idea and no cameras in the parking garage.  Of course not.

“Well, there are definitely cameras on the streets outside.  Maybe even in a business nearby.  We’ll get the warrants started in case the managers don’t want to hand them over.  And Chief, the kid needs to move.  Or we’ll be the ones kidnapping him next.  I’m sure Simon could use another sergeant.”  Jim dusted his hands off as he stood, only to nearly jump out of his skin when Alone walked through the wall into the stairwell.

“Holy shit!  Don’t do that, dammit!  I almost shot you!”  Sure enough, Jim had his gun drawn and halfway up.

Alone tilted their head.  “That is a device like the one that shot something through Tony’s leg.  You all carry them.  I’ve seen them, but I didn’t understand what they did.”

Bethany Parker was practically growling.  “So he shot Tony?  And Mick?”

“No.”  Alone looked at the sentinel, with her spiritmate rumbling right along with her.  “Calm, control yourself.  You’re much too large in this form to get agitated.”

Parker blinked in astonishment, then looked at her elephant spiritmate.  “So your real name is Calm?  Who in the world came up with that?”  If ever a pachyderm could look sheepish … well, Calm gave it their best shot with the face they currently had.

Alone laughed.  “The elder who Named them was perhaps engaging in a bit of wishful thinking.”

Seeing the pleading look on Emmet Jackson’s face, Alone laughed again.  “Busy.  Your spiritmate’s Name is Busy.”  Jackson looked at his beaver and nodded firmly.  “That fits.”

Dr. Saxon’s egret flew over and rubbed its cheek against Alone’s.  “And this is Focus.”

“Of course they are.”  Dr. Saxon didn’t seem at all surprised.

“But getting back on track … The device used on Mick Brandon was something that threw electricity.  Not metal balls.  He used it on Tony too, after he shot him.”  Alone was of course familiar with projectile weapons.  The people hunted, after all.  But the people didn’t have anything at all like what had taken Mick down.  Bows and arrows, slings and stones.  Nothing like the weapons of the lower plane, that were developed to hunt people.

“Where are they?  You were obviously taken along with Tony, so where do we go?”  Jim, cutting through to the heart of the matter.

“I wish I could tell you, but as I explained to Mick, I don’t know where they are.  And I didn’t walk from there to here.  I just came to find Blair and here I was.  I can confirm that all of them are alive.  They have water.  Spaulding even bandaged Tony’s leg.  You have a little time.”  Alone thought about what they had felt in the dark.

“But not much.  He’s excited.  And he’s after Eager.”

The team felt as though they’d been spinning their wheels all day.

They’d slogged through hundreds of property records.  Gotten camera data from several businesses along the street.  Followed dozens of vehicles through the streets of DC on the traffic feeds.  Gotten a warrant to investigate Frank Spaulding’s finances.

But now the sun was going down, and they were running out of time.

No one wanted to go home.  With two of their own missing, no one was leaving the Center tonight.  They’d work until they fell asleep.  

Blair was almost asleep in his chair when Emmet Jackson jumped up from his desk with a victorious howl.  “Gotcha, you son of a bitch!”

Everyone in the room jerked back to full wakefulness and turned towards Emmet.

“The warrant finally came through for the phone records.  I’ve been analyzing them.  He spent a lot of time over a couple of weeks travelling to the silo where we found Caulfield.  Same with Little Rock.  I’ve got two other sites, one in the LA area and one in Colorado.  But here in the DC area, I’ve got a site.  It’s only been over the past four days or so.  So it’s probably a hasty build, but I’m betting they’re there.”

“Then let’s go get them.”  Jim checked his weapon and his back-up, then nodded to Tony’s team.  “C’mon Chief.  Let’s go get our boys back.”

Blair was right behind him as he started down the hall and out to the cars.