Portals of Infinity: Reprisal

  Portals of Infinity

  Book Six

  Reprisal

  Published by John Van Stry

  Copyright 2015 John Van Stry

  Copyright John Van Stry 2015

  Cover Credits: eBook Launch (http://ebooklaunch.com/)

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form without expressed, written consent from the author.

  Any resemblance between characters in this story and people living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction created by the author and the author retains all rights to the material in this story.

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Series Synopsis

  There are an infinite number of worlds, or realities if you prefer, and they are all interconnected in a vast network of portals often referred to as 'The Infinite.' No one knows exactly why the portals exist, but the gods claim it is to balance the power and energies between the different realities or 'spheres.' Worlds tend to be connected to ones that are similar, but not always.

  A few select people are able to perceive these portals, and travel through them. Traveling through a portal remakes you, if necessary, so that you fit in to the world you have entered. Because every world has its own rules, be they rules of physics, metaphysics, religion or magic, and every world has its own time, history, and politics. This means that even though some may appear similar, each is unique, and some can be very different than others.

  All worlds contain gods and goddesses, and they too are bound by the rules of both their realms and the Infinite, as they play their own games, for their own reasons, and seek to increase both their power, and their religions. Some of these gods have champions, people who have sworn themselves to them, and in exchange, have gained power and powers, for as long as they stay.

  When our hero William first became a champion, his god Feliogustus incurred a debt with another god, Aryanna, in another sphere. She had helped Feliogustus recruit Will, and helped him win a war in his greatest time of need. So Will, along with several other champions went on a quest, to search for a special item, located somewhere in the Infinite.

  One of the party members, Cenewyg, quit his god going rogue at the end, and tried to steal the item for himself. He nearly killed Will and Aryanna's champion Stephanie, who the item was intended for. Cenewyg was thwarted in the end however, and escaped.

  Many years later, Cenewyg came back unexpectedly and kidnapped one of Will's children, intending to sacrifice them to his new god in order to gain power against Stephanie (who had ascended to godhood). Things did not work out for Cenewyg, and in the process Will has learned that Cenewyg had been building temples on Earth, in his own bid for ascendance.

  If he is to defeat Cenewyg, one final time, Will must destroy those temples, and destroy them soon.

  And that is where we find Will today.

  One

  Garrison - Ireland

  9 Months

  It was raining outside, again. I took another sip of my beer and ate some more of my trout. I hadn't had much of a clue as to where to go when I started, Agent Addison's boss hadn't been too helpful before he'd suffered that fatal heart attack, really, who would have thought that a guy with a bad heart would be working a stressful job like that?

  Then again, knowing the way Cenewyg often thought, that might have been less of a flaw and more of a feature. Yeah, I could have healed him and saved him, but why bother? I would just have had to kill him all over again, and this way, my conscience, as well as my hands, were clean.

  All I had to go on were my memories of the pictures that I had seen, and fortunately for me, I now had near total recall thanks to Fel. One of those pictures had been of Cenewyg standing in front of the Melvin hotel, here in Garrison. A hotel, which I later learned, was blown up a week after the date on the back of the picture.

  Obviously Cenewyg had been running arms and explosives to the IRA in this town, so I figured it was as good as any place to start my search for his next batch of followers. I could have tried Texas, as the responses to my comments to Botha made it likely Cenewyg had followers there as well, but Northern Ireland was a lot smaller, both in size and in population.

  Also, with the Soviet Union's recent collapse, the IRA was definitely hurting for money. So any offers of assistance would undoubtedly bring a response.

  "Mister Gatwick?" an older man said approaching my table in the back of the bar.

  "Yes?" I said looking up, he was heavy set, and was wearing a dark green turtleneck sweater, as well as a dark jacket, which was wet from having been out in the rain. That made it hard for me to tell if he was wearing one of those necklaces. However his jacket did have a small bulge under his left arm, so the question I guess was, cop or terrorist?

  "Sean Gatwick?" He said and gave me a searching look.

  "No, William Gatwick. Sean is my uncle. Do you know him?"

  "May I?" he asked and indicated one of the chairs at my table.

  "By all means, be my guest!" I smiled and flagged down the bored looking waitress. "What do you want to drink?" I asked him as she came over.

  "Whiskey, Katherine knows what I like."

  I nodded to the waitress, "And another draft please," I told her and took a long pull off of my mug, nearly draining it.

  He watched the waitress, until she returned to the bar, and then leaned over a little closer.

  "What brings you here to Garrison, William?" he said in a lowered voice.

  "Business," I said and smiled, "my Uncle Sean asked me to come up here and take care of a few matters for him."

  "I see, and why aren't you staying at his house?"

  "Well, you see," I started, my own voice lowered, then I stopped and nodded to the waitress as she approached with our drinks. I gave her a twenty-pound note and waved her off when she asked if I wanted change.

  I leaned in again, with my voice lowered after she had returned to the bar.

  "Uncle Sean is currently a guest of the Central Intelligence Agency, and it was rather difficult for him to get his instructions out to me. He wouldn't have time to tell them his nephew would be coming by, now would he?"

  "We hadn't heard anything about that," the man said.

  "Who would we be?" I asked, "And for that matter, before this conversation goes any farther, just who would you be?"

  "Thomas Brennan, as for who we are, just some old business associates of your uncle's. We've been wondering what became of him, we've had some need of his, ah, services, but he hasn't been responding to our inquiries."

  I nodded, "They've been holding him for some time now. Took my uncle Gerry a year to find out where they had him, now we're trying to get things back in order for him."

  "I didn't think that the Yank's went in for secret prisons?"

  I shrugged, "He's not an American citizen, so I guess they figured they could get away with it."

  Thomas took another sip of his whiskey, and set the glass down. "So just why are you here then, William?"

  I took a sip of my beer and set it down as well, "Like I said, business. Now if you have need of any of my uncle's services, well as his nephew, I'm sure I could provide you with whatever it is you just might be needing."

  I watched as Thomas considered that for a few minutes. Finally he finished off his drink with a gulp and then
stood.

  "Come along with me, I think I have some people who might want to talk with you."

  I nodded and stood up; at least things were getting interesting, though I still had no idea at all who I was really dealing with.

  "Lead on," I said and I followed him out the back door of the Melvin Bar.

  There were a couple of cheap tin-sided buildings out in the back, and there were two other men waiting, both of whom pointed handguns at me.

  "Hold it right there, Mister Gatwick," one of them said.

  I nodded and slowly raised my arms as Thomas moved around behind me and patted me down rather thoroughly and carefully.

  "He's clean, no weapons, and I don't see any wires."

  "Carrying a gun tends to make people nervous," I said with a smile. "So I leave mine at home."

  Thomas relieved me of my wallet then, I only had one piece of ID, it was a fake driver's license for New York, I wasn't worried that they'd spot it, even if they were police, they'd probably not know what a real one looked like.

  "Where's your passport?"

  "In my luggage, where it can't get stolen," I said and smiled.

  "My, you're a cool one," one of the men holding his pistol on me commented.

  I shrugged, with my arms still up. "It's a rough business, you get used to it. Is there anyway we can move this conversation to a more comfortable place? Preferably one inside and out of the rain?" I asked.

  "Now why would we want to do that?"

  "Why wouldn't you?" I asked and smiled again.

  "He's got a point, boys, let's go someplace a bit less public," Thomas said to them and then turned to me, "and you can put your arms down, but don't cause any problems, or my boys here will shoot you."

  "Wouldn't think of it," I said. "Which way?"

  "This way," Thomas said and taking my arm he led me around the side to a parked car. I got into the passenger seat, he got into the driver's seat, and his two men sat in the back, behind me, guns still drawn.

  Obviously they didn't trust me.

  "So, where to, Thomas?" I asked as he pulled us out onto the street and started driving.

  "Well, I think the folks down at the station house might like to have a word or two with you."

  I turned to look at him, "If you're the police, why didn't you handcuff me?"

  "Oh, we'll do that once we're out of town a ways. If the local's saw me do that, they'd know who I was."

  I shrugged, "I'd think my being carted off to the police station would tell them that."

  "Oh, I wouldn't be worrying about that none!" one of the men in the back laughed.

  "Oh? Why's that?"

  "Because we do have secret prisons and the like, and I suspect you're going to be heading to one of those rather quickly."

  "And here I thought the English were civilized," I chuckled. "By the way, does Sean really have a residence here?"

  "What, don't you know?"

  "Said I didn't. Wasn't sure there was one even, until you mentioned it."

  "Well," He pulled over to the side of the road, we were out in the countryside now, Garrison was a fairly small town. "Let's get the cuffs on him, boys."

  "So you don't know?" I asked as the one behind me got out of the car, and then grabbed the handle to my door, gun still in hand.

  "Oh, I know, but it's not like the knowledge will do you any good."

  I smiled, "Oh, I don't know about that," I said and I kicked the door hard, hitting the outside man and sending him flying as I shifted into high gear. I turned quickly and reaching into the backseat, I grabbed the gun out of the hand of the other man, just as it went off, the bullet passing through the seat just behind me.

  I slapped Thomas on the side of the head to stun him, and then punched the man in the backseat, stunning him as well. I then dragged the man in the back bodily over the seat and threw him out the now open door, giving him a good toss, so he'd hit the other man, who was trying to get up, with some force.

  Then I grabbed Thomas by the collar and dragged him out of the car as I got out. I had to slap him again, I was a bit rougher with the other two, knocking each out with a clip to the back of the head, though I had to be careful, I didn't want to kill anybody.

  Then it was a simple matter of finding their handcuffs, cuffing their hands behind their backs, and searching them for weapons, ID's, and any other items of interest.

  I checked the two men, both were unconscious at this point, but it didn't look like I'd done any serious damage to either of them. I then turned back to Thomas who was glaring at me.

  "You won't get away with this of course, Gatwick."

  "Yes well, apparently I already have. Also, my name isn't Gatwick, Sean is not my uncle, and no, he's not in a CIA prison. Now, with that out of the way, have you seen this symbol before?" I pulled out a piece of paper with a sketch of Cen's holy symbol.

  "It's on the gate to his estate here."

  "Huh, so I could have just spent my time driving around and looking for it?" I sighed and shook my head. I should have thought about that!

  "Well, what's done is done. Let me get your men in the car, out of the rain, and you can tell me how to get there."

  "I'm not telling you anything," he grumbled, still glaring at me.

  I shook my head and put the other two men in the backseat, and belted them both in. I then did the same with Thomas. There weren't a lot of roads around here and I figured a place by the nearby lake would probably be the best spot to smuggle things from Ireland into Northern Ireland, which was the only reason I could see Cenewyg setting up shop here in the first place.

  "Look, Thomas," I said as I turned us back towards town, "you were about to send me off to the kind of place where people do some really nasty things to get information." I looked at him briefly and smiled, "Or at least you thought you were." I turned right and started heading back towards town, it was raining still, so odds were good no one would notice the state of the car's occupants.

  "So, you should be feeling rather charitable that I'm not doing any of that to you, and that I let your two men back there live, even though I don't need them at all."

  "Why are you here?"

  "Ah, that is a good question. Well, you see, good old Sean has been putting himself together something of a death cult. Typical sociopathic delusions of grandeur and all that kind of thing."

  "Oh really now?"

  "Hey, he sold arms to the IRA, and about twenty other terrorist organizations. Please don't tell me you think he's a nice sweet man," I said giving him a scowl for a moment.

  "Okay, fine, he's a right bastard. But why would he want to start a religion?"

  "Because he's a self-centered ass with a huge ego and an inferiority complex."

  "You sound like you know him," Thomas said looking at me.

  "All too well," I sighed, "and one of these days I'm going to kill him. But that's not why I'm here today."

  "Alllll righty then. Why are you here today?" Thomas said, now giving me a worried look.

  "I'm here to see if he's got one of those little 'temples' of his set up here. If he does, I'm going to burn it down and kill everyone in it." I looked at him, "When this is over, call Interpol and ask them about what happened at his estate outside of Johannesburg."

  "What happened?"

  "It was pretty nasty. They sacrificed a policeman."

  "Were you there?"

  I shook my head, "No. But it's my job now to find all of these places he had built up, and destroy them before anyone else gets hurt."

  "And just who do you work for?"

  "What, you think I'd tell you that?" I laughed, we were driving though town now, so I made a right and started to follow the road around by the lake.

  "If I get caught, I'll just disappear in the middle of the night, and everyone will just pretend that they have no idea what happened. It's called 'deniability.'"

  "Doesn't sound healthy for you there, does it?"

  I grinned at him, "I always come back. S
o I wouldn't worry yourself much about it. Now, where is Sean's place?"

  "That driveway on the left," he said and nodded up ahead.

  "See, wasn't that easy?"

  "My sister was at the wedding when his bastard friends blew the hotel up. She's in a wheelchair now."

  I winced, "Sorry to hear that."

  I turned into the driveway, and about thirty feet down it, there was a gate with the Gatwick symbol on it. I stopped the car, and got out.

  "Well, here is where we part ways," I said to him. "After you free yourself, you can either go back to town and call for help, or you can wait until the shooting stops and come inside and take a look."

  I checked the three guns, and the extra magazines of ammo I now had as well.

  "Just don't come inside before then, I'd hate for you to get caught in the crossfire," I said.

  "You're just going to go in there, and kill them all in cold blood?" He asked looking at me surprised.

  I shrugged, "It's what they pay me for, and to be honest, it's not all that cold, I just hide it well."

  I walked away from the car then, and let myself through the gate and walked up to the house.

  By the time I got to the front door, there was a man there, with a shotgun.

  "Who are you and what are you doing here?" He growled at me.

  "William Gatwick," I said and I pulled the chain up around my neck and held out the ring that was dangling from it for his inspection. Aryanna had one of her finest craftsmen make it for me; it was Cenewyg's 'Gatwick' crest. I figured he probably had a ring; most religions had them for their leaders and such, especially here on Earth.

  "Look," I said and held it up.

  He looked at it carefully, and then lowered the shotgun. "Where is Mister Gatwick?"

  "My uncle is dealing with some very serious issues in South America," I told him. "I'm not at liberty to discuss them."

  "In other words, you don't know," He growled again, but the shotgun stayed down.

  "Have you ever known my uncle to share anything with anybody?" I laughed.