Chapter 36
They left the next morning, right after breakfast. The four adults seemed okay with me, and the wolf kid, Cody, pestered me with questions while we ate. Carmen, though, just watched me with distrustful eyes. Can’t win them all, right?
The following week saw us breaking out a couple of new glamours.
Mine was a thin, bespectacled ginger dude with a decidedly nerdy vibe.
Vesta went with auburn hair, brown eyes, and a girl-next-door look.
Both worked well and I found I liked the invisibility those identities gave us.
No one paid any attention to us, and we could have lunch together anywhere on campus without getting a second look.
Two weeks after the Suttons left, a monster of a storm formed out West, bearing down on Wyoming and Montana with dangerous temperatures, high winds, and enormous snowfall predicted.
I was walking back from my afternoon Korean class when Omega spoke directly into my auditory nerve.
“Craig, we have situation that needs immediate attention.”
“My attention?” I asked.
“Actually Vesta’s, but you will need to accompany her.”
“To protect her?”
“Yes, but also she just wants you with her.”
“Good enough. Where, when, and why?”
“Boatman, Montana. It’s a medium-sized town near the Wyoming border, not far from Yellowstone Park.
The town hosts the only hospital in the region and due to a number of factors, both the town itself and the hospital are currently without heat.
The storm has blocked evacuation and Declan is on the other side of the world. ”
“How are they without power? Don’t you have a power unit there?”
“No. The prevailing attitude in Boatman is very anti-Omega and somewhat anti-supernatural. The town leaders have long refused to house any technology that I provide. Even if I provide temporary power from a drone, the damage to the town complex and hospital heating systems is more than can be overcome before the situation becomes untenable. The hospital currently houses one hundred and fourteen patients. The town complex is acting as a community shelter for another two hundred and twelve residents.”
“Let me grab my go bag.”
“Vesta already has it,” he said. “Please step behind the facilities building on your left. I have a drone waiting for you.”
Around back of the building, I found a fifteen-foot-diameter Bludgeon-class drone waiting, complete with my pack and my Vesta, who I found reclining when I stepped inside. The drone took off and quickly ramped up to a ridiculous speed.
“I grabbed your heavy winter boots and parka,” she said. “Wind chill is forty-eight below in places and you are a winter survival neophyte. No frostbite for you.”
“Just Vesta bite.”
“Exactly.”
“Any idea what you want to do when we get there?”
“Well, I’m open to suggestions but I’m thinking that I use my own abilities first to warm up the hospital and community center, then see if a small fire elemental could provide a base of heat under the central part of the town where both the emergency shelter and hospital are.
We would need to use some specific matrixes to move the heat throughout the buildings, but I have all those patterns memorized.
Here; I’ve drawn up a couple for you to look at. ”
“I know this one,” I said, studying the little notebook she handed me. “Mom made me learn it for survival. Works for making a thermal bed in a shelter even on Greenacres. Something about low magical cost to creating thermal pathways.”
“She did a good job if she taught you that. Makes perfect sense for a magical desert like Greenacres. The other variations let you send heat in different or multiple directions and let you control output like a thermostat.”
“Okay, I’ll memorize these, but can I hang on to the notebook?”
“It’s for you. Now, as to medium, I’m thinking chalk might wear off or get brushed away even if we put it on the walls.”
“Omega, can you link a couple of minidrones into kind of a laser pen thing? We could etch the walls. They can plaster over it after the emergency is over.”
“That’s a great idea,” she said.
“And easily accomplished,” Omega said, two pens forming in midair.
“How common are fire elementals out there?” I asked.
“Very. The Yellowstone super volcano is nearby, and it both attracts and spawns smaller elementals.”
“Okay. So the elemental might be okay, but how hostile are the locals to us?”
“More to me than either of you,” Omega said. “Still, you will need to be on guard, Craig, although that statement is a bit redundant in your case.”
Vesta snorted, grinning at me.
“We are here,” Omega announced.
The opaque walls of the Bludgeon went transparent all at once and I found out what a blizzard was. Nothing but snow-filled whipping winds howling around the perfect orb of our craft.
“Welcome to your first whiteout,” Vesta said. “Snow piling up at one to two inches an hour if not more, winds hitting fifty miles an hour, temperatures in the teens before windchill. I know Greenacres has killer rainstorms, but imagine if they got below freezing too.”
“It’s terrifying. Can you tame it?”
“Dad says we don’t even try. This is Mother Earth’s work. We don’t fight her; we work with her,” Vesta said. “Now zip up, pretty boy, and put on those mittens; we gotta walk to the roof door of this snowberg they’re trying to pass off as a hospital.”
“Wait. This is the roof?” I said, looking as hard as I could. I might feel a hostile intent at a mile, but I couldn’t see any better than a regular human.
“Follow me,” she said as the door irised open and frigid winds blew into the Bludgeon. The cold air tried to rip the oxygen from my lungs and froze the hairs in my nose while we walked ten feet before a snow-and-frost-encrusted door appeared in the whiteness.
“Locked?” I yelled into the howling gale.
She turned amused bright blue eyes on me and then touched the door.
It popped open and we found ourselves in a dark stairwell.
Pulling the door shut behind us, I followed her down the steps to the fourth floor, then down past third and second to the first. We exited into a cold, dark hallway where we almost ran into a nurse wearing two heavy sweaters and wool gloves. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“We need to find Administrator Thomas Orren,” Vesta said. “Do you know where we can find him?”
“Who is asking,” the nurse demanded, hands on her hips. She looked about forty, Black, tough as nails, and ready to repel all shit that came her way. Her name tag said M. Crandall, RN.
“Vesta Reynolds-O’Carroll,” Vee said, pulling down her hood. Her beauty is startling, at least the first thousand times you see it. Nurse Crandall stepped back, eyes going wide, and then the name hit her.
“You’re our help?” she said in a stunned voice.
“Yes. Dad’s busy on the other side of the planet. This place is freezing and I’d like to warm it up, but I need to check in with the administrator.”
I pulled my hood down and Nurse Crandall glanced at me, then turned back to Vesta. “Okay. Follow me.”
She led us through a warren of dark hallways whose only light was coming through the windows that were darkened by snow.
“No backup system?” I asked.
“You’re the boyfriend?” Crandall asked.
“Sure. What’s up with the electric? No one paid the bill?”
“They can’t get the backup solar battery system to come online, and the powerlines into town were ripped down by a small avalanche in the pass.
Here we are,” she added, leading us into a series of offices manned by bundled-up, red-cheeked office types.
In the back was a bigger office, with glass walls that housed a bookish-looking guy in corduroy pants, a wool sweater, and a down vest. He was talking to a stocky woman with salt and pepper hair wearing a uniform under a dark earth brown jacket that had SHERIFF printed at the top of the back.
A third man wearing insulated coveralls and a heavy watch cap stood differentially off to one side.
All three turned to look at us, all of their eyes getting wide at the sight of Vesta.
“Help has arrived, Mr. Orren,” Nurse Crandall said. “The Steward’s own daughter.”
“Hi, I’m Vesta and this is Craig. Listen, Omega can power up this building until you get your backup running and I’d like to get some heat going in this place.”
All three stood stock still but while the men were still staring at Vesta with stunned expressions, the sheriff was studying me with pale blue eyes that were narrowed to match the suspicion and anxiety in her intent.
“I called the Federal Emergency people and got a call back from a senior FBI agent instead,” the sheriff said.
Her nametag read M. Brower. “She said you all would be coming to aid us. Said to look out for a slip of a girl who looked like a runway model who would be accompanied by a young man who looked like a bodybuilder, made dad jokes, and would kill anything that threatened the girl. And here you are.”
“Sure. Can we take that as a yes on the electricity?” I asked. “Omega, hit the juice please.”
All the lights came on at once, computers whirring up to speed, machines and monitors beeping like crazy out in the wider hospital.
“Word is your heating system is shot,” Vesta said. “Can I see it?”
“You an expert on thirty-year-old boiler systems, young lady?” the coverall man asked.
“Goddess no. I’m just going to pump a massive amount of heat into your boiler while my pretty assistant Craig draws out a calling spell to pull in a small thermal entity,” Vesta said.
“Thermal entity?” the administrator asked.
“A baby fire elemental,” I said. “It can heat up most of the town.”
“You’re going to call a miniature volcano into my hospital?” Administrator Orren asked.
“More like a mini-magma monster,” I said. “But a nice one.”
“Craig, not helping,” Vesta said. “Although he’s not actually wrong. Look let’s go see the boiler and get some heat going, then we can talk about my longer-term plan.”
“Where are you getting this heat?” Sheriff Brower asked.
“The storm itself,” Vesta said.
“What?”
“Listen, we can talk on the way, but do you want heat or did we waste a trip out here?”
“Lead the way, Charlie,” Orren said to the coverall guy.
We earned a lot of looks as we trooped to the stairwell, but it got much quieter down in the basement.
Charlie showed us the massive industrial-sized boiler and Vesta walked right up and put both hands on the main heat chamber. Within seconds, waves of heat were rising from her fingers and the gauge on the tank began to climb.
“How is she doing that?” Sheriff Brower asked me.
“She’s pulling energy, kinetic energy, from the storm, from the wind itself, and converting it to thermal energy. Advanced witch stuff.”
“Can you do that?”
“Me? No way. Way beyond my pay grade.”
“So what do you do?”
“I help her with anything she needs and I kill stuff.”
“Craig!”
“Just following my New Year’s resolution to speak more directly, Vee.”
“You didn’t make any resolutions… I was with you.”
“I considered it… briefly.”
“If you’re done yanking the sheriff’s chain, maybe you could chalk the matrix? I’ll check it before we use Omega’s pens.”
“Yes dear.”
“You weren’t joking, though,” the sheriff pressed.
“No. Listen, you spoke to Agent Jensen, right?”
“She said to make sure no one did anything threatening. I asked if the Steward’s daughter was volatile. She said no, but her boy toy was deadly dangerous to anything that looks sideways at the girl.”
“Way to make me out to be a raving maniac, Agent Jensen,” I muttered, pulling out sidewalk chalk.
“Wait. We were supposed to talk about this,” Mr. Orren said.
“I can heat this place, and I can dump some heat into the community building, but this storm is supposed to be parked here for a bunch more days, and then you get a high front and ultra frigid conditions,” Vesta said. “I can’t keep everything warm without help—a lot of help.”
“But a volcano?” he questioned.
“No, a much smaller precursor to a volcano. Think hot springs.”
“Oh, like the Black Peak resort,” Charlie said.
“Is that west of here?” Vesta asked.
“Yes, about thirty miles or so,” Charlie answered.
“I’m feeling a curious thermal out that way. How you coming, Craig?”
“Well, I’m done. Omega’s minidrones set the circle for me and the matrix isn’t all that complex. We just need to add in an identifier. Come check it.”
“Hmm. Not bad, space cowboy. Good penmanship on the runes. Alright, let’s see if I can figure out a moniker for this little elemental.”
She dropped down, sitting cross-legged, and closed her eyes. I held up a hand and Omega obligingly zoomed a conjoined set of minidrones into it. Then I started etching the floor.
“Wait! How permanent is that?” Orren asked.
“You can paint over it with garage floor paint, like the kind with sparkles,” I said, continuing to etch the chalk lines.
“Hmm, curious,” Vesta said, opening her eyes.
“What’s curious?” I asked.
“The elemental. It’s curious—about us. Use this,” she said, writing runes onto paper.
“Flint,” I read. “That’s its name?”
“That’s her nickname.”