Portals of Infinity: Book Five: Demigods and Deities Read online

  My folks were pleased to see me, of course, and it was nice catching up with my brothers when they came by as well.

  "What's your problem?" Nikki asked. We'd been here several days now and we were walking down to the local bar, it was a bit cool out, which was a little surprising for June in NY, at least it wasn't raining.

  "I'd rather be with Darlene," I sighed, "I hardly get to see her more than a couple of months here and there."

  "You know Mom misses us, hell, you didn't have to listen to all of those 'Where is Will? How come he never writes? Why doesn't he visit?' speeches."

  "She has Rob and Kev, both of whom are married, and have children," I said shaking my head, "you'd think that would be enough."

  "I've seen you with your own children, Bro, you should know better," Nikki laughed.

  "Do you know she was getting on my case before dinner for 'taking you away'?" I said and grinned at her.

  "She didn't!" Nikki laughed.

  We continued to make small talk all the way down to the bar. We could have driven, we had a rental car, but when you're used to walking everywhere, eventually you just need to go outside and stretch your legs.

  Plus it would give whoever was following us a chance to confront us. Something neither of us wanted to do at our parents' house.

  "Nikki! Will!" the bartender said as we walked in. "It's been ages! How have you been doing?"

  "Hi, Henry, set 'em up, shots for me and my brother with some Heineken chasers."

  "Sure thing, Nikki!" and I watched as he poured out two shots of Wild Turkey.

  "Cheers, Bro!" Nikki said and picking up the shots we clinked glasses and tossed them back.

  "So, where have you two been? I heard you got out of the Army, Nikki, that true?"

  Nikki nodded, "Bro and me are working a sweet deal over in southeast Asia."

  "Oh really?"

  "Yeah, he's got an inn there of all things! Can you believe it?"

  I was watching the door in the mirror behind the bar, two men entered wearing suits and ties, the usual stuff for government agents, no one else would be wearing a suit this late in the day in June.

  "You're kidding me!" Henry said looking at me.

  "Nope, and Sis here is working for the town, pulling security. She's quite the hard-ass too, how about a couple more shots?"

  Henry laughed and grabbed the bottle and set us up another round. "Guess all that Army stuff paid off then, huh?"

  "Sure did!" Nikki said and we clinked glasses again, and tossed off another round.

  Nikki and I each put a twenty on the bar, and sat down on a couple of stools to sip at our beers. I wasn't worried about the alcohol, there were cantrips to keep that from having an effect, but the people following us wouldn't know about those of course.

  "So, FBI?" I asked her softly when Henry wandered off to take care of some of the other customers after we'd chatted a few more minutes.

  "Well, everyone says that the CIA has more class, but they're not wearing hats." Nikki laughed and sipped her beer.

  "Well, this isn't 'The President's Analyst,' so I don't think we should count on that as our guide," I grinned teasing her about one of her favorite movies back when she was a kid.

  "We could go ask them," she suggested.

  "They really aren't being very discreet, are they?"

  "Eh, they're pressuring us. Want to see what we'll do. It's an old intelligence tactic. Means they don't have anything on us, but they have a lot of suspicions."

  I nodded and took another drink of my beer.

  "So which of us do you think they're after?" I asked after thinking about it for a minute.

  Nikki shrugged, "I'd think me, because I'm the one with all the training, but who knows?"

  "So, do we ask them now? Or wait until we go back outside?"

  "I say we duck out the back door and see what they do," Nikki said.

  I shrugged, "Sure, why not?"

  "Take your jacket," Nikki said as I got up.

  "What?"

  "So they think we're stupid," she grinned.

  I shrugged again, and grabbing my jacket I went past the bathrooms and out the back door with Nikki behind me.

  There were two more men out here, dressed the same as the two inside. "Hold it!" one of them said, putting his hand out.

  "Show us some ID, or we ain't stopping," Nikki said from behind me as I continued to walk forward.

  "FBI," he said and pulled out a badge.

  I heard the door behind us open again and the other two agents came out behind us, guns drawn.

  "I would put those away," I said nodding towards the guns and then turned back to look at the badge, "That look real to you, Sis?" I asked.

  "Beats me, never seen one before. You guys got more than a badge? Say an actual ID?"

  "We need you to come with us," the one holding out the badge said.

  "Uh-huh," I said. "Sure you do. What could the FBI possibly want with two law abiding citizens, out for a drink?"

  "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way," he growled out.

  "I don't think you get to make that choice," Nikki laughed.

  I sighed, "Show us your ID, tell us what this is all about, and we'll consider it."

  "Okay, the hard way it is!"

  I clicked into high speed as soon as he reached back into his jacket. I didn't hesitate and just jumped forward. I grabbed his arm, spinning him around as I went past him and grabbed his partner's gun as he started to draw it out. Using my speed and enhanced strength I snatched it away from him, then turned back to his partner, who was starting to look rather shocked and did the same. I looked back at Nikki; she had already field stripped one pistol and was starting in on the second one.

  I followed suit, and dropped the pieces on the ground, and everything returned to normal speed, the agents still looking shocked.

  "ID's," Nikki said and held her hand out.

  "How the hell did you do that?" One of them babbled.

  "Your tax dollars at work," Nikki growled. "ID's! Now!"

  They fumbled and pulled out their ID's and we both looked at them.

  I shrugged, "Seems legit."

  "How long is this going to take?" Nikki asked one of the agents.

  "I ... I don't know, they just told us to bring you in for questioning."

  I looked at my watch, it was only a little after eight pm.

  "I don't know, it's kinda late," I said. "Couldn't this wait until tomorrow?"

  One of them started to say something, but the one standing next to him put his hand on his arm. "Would you please come with us," he asked.

  I smiled, "Well, since you asked nicely," I looked at Nikki.

  "Sure, why not?" She said.

  I nodded to the parts on the ground, "So pick 'em up and let's go."

  "And we won't tell anyone about it, if you don't," Nikki said grinning.

  They gathered up their parts, and quickly put their pistols back together and then holstered them and led us to a car.

  "So where did you learn how to do that?" One of the agents asked me.

  "My sis taught me, obviously," I said smiling.

  "Yeah, sure," he grumbled.

  The drive wasn't a very long one, maybe twenty minutes, and we pulled into a fairly nondescript building, with a small 'FBI' logo on the front.

  "Huh, I don't remember this place."

  "Most don't," the agent driving said, "Most of the agents here are just accountants really. So no police cars, no swat teams, nothing to make the place standout."

  "Accountants?" Nikki asked surprised.

  "White collar crime. Wall Street and organized crime are what we focus on the most in this office."

  They parked and escorted us inside. I wasn't surprised to see the place mostly empty, it was getting late, and they escorted us down a hallway and into an interrogation room.

  "We need you to go to a separate room," they said to me when I started to follow Nikki.

  "Oh, that's okay,"
I smiled back, "this one will do just fine."

  "We want to talk to you separately."

  "You can either talk to the both of us together, or you can talk to our lawyers," I shrugged and smiled again.

  "It's okay, Agent Jones," said an older man who walked up and joined us at that point. He was wearing a badge on his suit jacket and was holding a folder in his left hand.

  He walked up to us and shook hands with me and then Nikki, "I'm Agent Addison," he said and motioned through the door to the seats by the table in the room, "have a seat."

  We nodded and both went inside, he sat down on the far side of the table and dropped the folder.

  "I was wondering what you could tell me about this," he said and flipped open the folder. There was a picture of Stephanie, Cenewyg, Joseph, Dezba, and myself. We were getting on a boat, and each of us was carrying a couple of large bags.

  I recognized the scene; it was back when we were getting ready for another attempt at the portal to Ithaca. If I had to guess, it was the last attempt, the one that was successful. The picture wasn't that high of a quality, I'd guess it was taken with a telephoto lens from quite a distance, and then enlarged.

  I looked up at him and shrugged, "What do you want to know?"

  "What was in those bags? Where were you going?"

  "Supplies, I was helping a friend who needed help with a problem and I owed them for helping me with one of mine."

  "Uh-huh, sure you were, just what was in those bags?" Agent Addison asked.

  "Supplies, like I said." I said and motioned to the folder, "Mind if I take a look?"

  "Knock yourself out," he said.

  I grabbed the folder and started paging through it; there were quite a few pictures, several of each of us, though there were about twenty of Cenewyg. The pictures of Stephanie, Joseph, Dezba and me were all from that last trip, they seemed to have picked us up when we hired the boat. Then there were the pictures of Cenewyg, the dates on those were pretty varied, going back to nineteen sixty-eight.

  I set those in front of Nikki, who picked them up and looked at them.

  I looked up at Agent Addison who was watching Nikki with interest.

  "This is about Cen, isn't it?"

  He looked back at me, "Cen?"

  I picked up one of the pictures of Cenewyg that Nikki was done with and slid it over to him. "This guy. I know him as 'Cen' short for 'Cenewyg'. No idea if that's his real name or not. Just the name I knew him by."

  "Where is he now?" Addison asked leaning forward.

  "No idea."

  "Really now? Are you completely sure about that?"

  I paused a moment, and thought about how I wanted to say just what I wanted to say. I suspected that they recorded these interviews, and that there were probably people behind the mirror on the wall.

  "If I knew where he was," I said slowly, "I believe it would be fair to say, that he wouldn't be there for long." I looked at Addison, "Or anywhere else."

  "Oh? What did he do?"

  "Tried to kill me, almost succeeded too." I said and rubbed the back of my head where he'd hit me with that rock, thinking about it.

  "Oh? And just why did he try to do that?" Addison asked leaning back in his chair.

  I thought about that a moment, trying to think of exactly what I wanted to tell him, and again, just how. I glanced over at Nikki and I could see she was paying rapt attention, I guess she was doing the 'eyes and ears' bit for Aryanna.

  I sighed and grabbed the picture of Stephanie. "This is Stephanie; she was a very good friend of mine."

  "Was?"

  "She's not with us anymore," I sighed again, "she passed on. Anyway, she did me a favor a while ago, I won't go into the details, but she helped me out, so I owed her."

  "I see, and just what did Stephanie do?"

  "She worked for a government...."

  "Which one?" Addison interrupted me.

  "Never asked, thought it was ours or England or something like that. I can just tell you it isn't one we're at odds with because the few times I saw her deal with any government types they all treated her well. Do a records search; I'm sure you'll turn her up if you look.

  "So, anyway, she was working on recovering some sort of artifact or item, ancient history crap."

  "So what happened?"

  "Cen tried to steal it, apparently it was worth something. He tried to ambush us, we fought, he got away, end of story."

  "What about everyone else?" Addison motioned to the picture of all of us.

  "As far as I know, they all went home."

  "So, tell me about this artifact."

  I shook my head, "Sorry, it just looked like an ugly piece of a third grade student's effort at pottery to me. Beyond that, I don't know anything." I leaned forward, "Now how about you tell me about this asshole," And I tapped the picture of Cenewyg. "Has he been seen lately? Has be been seen around here?" I asked.

  "I'm not done asking questions yet," Addison said.

  "Well, you're not getting anything more, until you tell me what you know about him," I said. "So unless you want me to get my lawyer in here, which will put an end to all of your questions, I suggest you talk!" I pushed a little using one of the champion's voice cantrips when I said that.

  Addison stopped, and looked at me, then at Nikki, then back at me.

  "Okay, you have been helpful, and as far as we can tell you haven't broken any laws. We know him by the name of Sean Gatwick; he's supposed to be from Scotland. I suspect you already know he's an arms dealer."

  I sat back, "Uh, actually, no. I didn't know that."

  Addison looked at me surprised. "Wasn't that the reason he was there? To supply you with weapons?"

  I shook my head, "He was an old friend of Stephanie's. The rest of us thought that he was on loan from another agency or something, never really thought to ask."

  "So why was he there?"

  "To help, why else?" I shrugged, "Oh, he was supposed to have been some kind of expert at dealing with this sort of thing. Seemed nice enough at first, but after a while we all kind of realized that he was a pretty self-centered prick."

  "So was he from another agency?" Addison pressed.

  I shrugged, "No idea. I doubt it though; the only interest Cen ever represented that I saw was his own. So, he was a gun dealer?"

  "Arms dealer," Addison corrected me. "We've had sightings of him dozens of times over the years, only a few interactions though. But there hadn't been any sign of him since nineteen seventy-nine until he turned up in Greece with you seven years ago. You were the first solid lead we've had on him in almost a decade."

  "And just how did you find me?" I asked curious.

  "Rental car records. You know, we searched Ithaca, except for a few people at the inn you all stayed at, no one there knew anything about any of you. Where'd you go?"

  "South," I said, "By boat. Cen had some connections that could get us into northern Africa without any questions being asked." I paused a moment and then shrugged, "Maybe that was why Stephanie had him there, to get us in quietly.

  "So, you haven't seen him since then?" I asked.

  "No, that's why we brought you in here, we were hoping you might know something. We've been keeping an eye on his estate, but he hasn't been seen there in years either."

  I sat up a little straighter, "He has an estate?"

  Addison nodded, "Big one down in South Africa, just east of Johannesburg, he's a big supporter of the apartheid government there, inherited it from his father in the sixties they told us."

  "Why are you guys involved in this?" Nikki said, surprising me, as she'd been silent up until now. "This isn't an FBI job, this is all foreign stuff. Except for my brother, they're all foreign nationals."

  Addison nodded, "That's true, Interpol asked us to help when the link to your brother was discovered. Also, there are believed to be some links between Mister Gatwick and several terrorist groups in Ireland, Germany, and even here in the U.S. We suspect that he has been selling them
weapons and possibly even getting involved in some of their operations."

  I was pretty surprised by that, why would he want to help terrorists back here? That seemed pretty pointless, plus I'd think the god he was a champion for wouldn't want him wasting his time.

  I shook my head and stood up, "I think we're done here, I really don't know much of anything about Cen ... err Gatwick, but you obviously do, and I want nothing further to do with the guy. Do you have a card, Agent Addison?" I asked holding out my hand.

  He looked at me surprised. "I still have more questions."

  "I told you all I know about him, he didn't like me much, and we weren't very friendly. If I see him, I'll let you know."

  "I could have you detained."

  "And I could call my lawyer, come on, Nikki, let's go."

  They wanted us to stay longer of course, but Nikki apparently knew the law a lot better than I did, and was a lot better at making legal threats, so we finally walked out of there about thirty minutes later. They wouldn't drive us home, but at least they called us a cab.

  "So, why did they pick you up now?" Nikki asked after we'd gotten back to our parents' house.

  I shrugged, "You heard him, they got my info off a receipt."

  "So why didn't they pick you up when you were here one of the previous times?"

  I stopped and thought about that. "Good question."

  "My guess is that someone either put them on you, or he was supposed to contact somebody, and now that he hasn't, they're worried about what happened to him. Notice that they asked several times about where he is now?"

  I nodded.

  "And then there is that whole bit about his estate. If they've known where he's been living for all of these years, they haven't been trying to bring him in; they already knew where to find him." Nikki shook her head, "No, this is someone wondering where he disappeared to."

  "Well, it's only been what, five years since I saw him last?" I said. "And whatever exactly happened to him, Aryanna seems to think it will be a while before he'll be back, so they're going to have some waiting to do before he shows up again."

  "Still, it probably would be best for you to leave tomorrow," Nikki said. "If they think you killed him, they're going to be looking to talk to you again. And depending on who is behind this, they might decide to take you in for a few days regardless."