I was riding in the back of a white brougham down the avenue toward the St. Regis when it collapsed. The hotel, that is.
It just dropped, like one of those demolition jobs you see on TV or during reruns of the Nine-eleven catastrophe...minus the explosions. I never liked the explanation they gave for the Twin Towers event. It didn't make sense. Not statistical sense. Terrorists are many things, but they are not good at what they do. If you look at past terrorist events they tend to go one for three, which is good if you are a baseball player, but not so good in the real world. I mean, can you imagine a baker getting one out of three cakes right? The Boston Marathon event makes this point. There were six devices. Two went off. Oklahoma City is another. There were three devices. One went off. I could go on, but you get the point. The Twin Towers was part of a bigger mission. A mission that went five for five...or four and a half for five if you don't want to count flight ninety-three since it crashed before getting to D.C.. Most people count the nine-eleven event as four attacks, but I count the collapse of building seven as part of the attack too. It wasn't hit by a plane, but it might as well have been. It dropped just as flat.
Five for five indicates a military operation conducted against a civilian target(s). It is as simple as that.
Anyway, the St. Regis reminded me of the demolition-style collapse of the Twin Towers. I know how Richard would have done it in a world where explosives do not work. He'd have used psionics to weaken the support beams in the basement and bottom three floors and then done the same thing on the top three floors simultaneously. Oddly enough, time travel is useful for things like that.
I was out of the cab before the driver could recover from the spectacle.
I was pretty sure that the Guardians were the target of the attack. A simple assassin (SnM, the form I had taken) was too inconsequential to be a target for such a major event. On the other hand, if I hadn't gone shopping I would probably have been in conference with the Guardians when the building collapsed...so now I ran, that is, walked into the first building in front of me. It was another hotel, so I turned around and went back outside and joined the throng of fleeing pedestrians.
Hmmm...
I didn't feel any psionic activity while in the cab, but we were still three blocks away when the hotel collapsed, so I am not sure that I would have.
Then someone grabbed my arm and dragged me into an alley, a feat under the best of conditions, but I was playing the part of a fleeing victim, so I didn't resist. Not yet.
My abductor turned out to be another woman. She was a big boned woman six feet tall and, ahem, nearly four hundred pounds, if the inertial I felt from of our movement was any indication. Of course, she looked slim and trim, curvy, sure, but athletic too, with long black hair pulled back off her face with a titanium hairband and diamond blue eyes topping off a red and blue Victorian day dress with white lace trim. I've gotten good at sizing up my opponents in a single glance and this was a dangerous woman. She moved WAY too well.
"Come with me," she whispered sotto voce and reached up to touch her hairpiece. Then the world fell away and we were plummeting into infinity.
I hate it when that happens.
Then we were standing in a great hall somewhen else. I know because I felt the time shift during the 'port. We materialized on a dais above the hall in front of a golden throne. Standing beside the throne was a mountain of a man clad in yellow chainmail emblazoned with a world tree (Yggdrasil?) on his chest. He had a red cape draped over his shoulders and a huge hammer hanging from his belt near his left hand.
Thor?
SnM knew him a Halleck, the Guardian of the Nine Realms and one time high priest of, yes, Thor...until he earned his own immortality and became a Knight of the Pinnacle and later a full Guardian.
The girl was Margaret (Peggy) Carter, high priestess of the Goddess of Truth. Her story was much the same as Halleck's and explained how a Guardian could re-manifest a physical form or avatar. Hell, I didn't even know that any of the Guardians had once been mortal. Will wonders never cease?
"Report," the big man commanded.
"The underelves are the brains behind the giant attacks," I said coming to attention without hesitation, "and the underelves are working with creatures whose very presence inflicts insanity."
Then I stepped back into an at-ease posture like a real professional mercenary.
Halleck eyed me closely for a long moment.
"Who are you and what have you done with our operative?" he demanded.
True sight. It had to be. Even shapeshifting will not hide your true nature from such powerful magics. Not magics backed by a god-like will. I should have anticipated this and brought my own version of the Heart of Arhiman, an artifact that...no wait. I did! It was part of his battledress.
I frowned and cocked my head at him.
"What do you mean?" I asked, stepping back into a defensive crouch.
"Do you think you can escape the god of thunder and lightning?" he demanded. "I will know the truth. Peggy, use the golden lie detector."
"No, milord," I said, tossing my hair back over my shoulder, "I think not. Of course, I could make the chase more interesting than you want it to be. This is supposed to be a secret meeting, oui? So can the tough guy routine or prepare for a catch me if you can scenario. Catch me quick enough and I'll make it worth your while. I am sure Miss Wonderpuss over there has never even heard of the tricks I can show you when we get naked."
Tall, blonde and muscular cocked an eyebrow at me and then smiled.
"Just testing, Shy," he said, relaxing. "We can't be too careful. Mordru is gone. It is just us now."
"Wonderpuss?" Peggy sighed. "Paleeze! Even the goddess herself was hardly a virgin!"
"You girls can compare slut notes later," Halleck interrupted. "Right now we need to decide on a course of action."
"Did you say the underelves were working with Chithulians?" Peggy asked.
I shrugged and noticed Halleck frowning.
"I didn't stick around long enough to get a good look," I said. "I felt them coming and bolted. I am no good to anyone with my brain scrambled."
"Let me see," Halleck said, focusing his will on me.
Not. Thunder god or not, I was NOT letting him into my mind. Her body, if he was nice...maybe. Richard was very comfortable in a female body and she, SnM, who they are calling Shy, was a natural shifter too, albeit with limited humanoid shapes, but Richard could adapt her body for a night as a cowgirl. Me? Less so. Sure, I was curious, but not THAT curious. Mr. Thundralls was a BIG man. If he thought I was going to let him put his hammer inside this coochie without days of foreplay and gallons of lube, he was just fooling himself.
I just cocked an eyebrow at him and rolled my eyes.
"Back to a neutral corner, Mr. Mann," I commanded. "You want inside this head, you need to take me to dinner first."
Peggy snorted and chuckled.
"Since when do you play hard to get?" she said. "Everyone knows what happened in Katmandu."
Huh?
Oh, the feline genetic experiment. Shy, that is, SnM had shifted into a genetic variation on the villainesses Tigris and Cheetah to enhance her stealth abilities...and went into heat during the extraction.
I felt my cheeks coloring. I instantly shunted the extra blood away from my face to my chest and felt my nipples harden into little diamond points.
Gods! Sensitive points...riding way up high...
"I guess I'm not the only one who can be catty," I shot back coolly. "I thought we had work to do."
"Now, girls," Halleck soothed. "No need to fight. I have enough hammer for both of you."
At least, he thought he was being soothing.
Men are so stupid.
