Todd Works In Mysterious Ways

 

By William Travis

 

Book 4 of the Chronicles of Todd

 

This book is dedicated to my wife, Dominique Travis who had no idea that I was writing it.

 

I also wish to thank the following people who have inspired and advised me on my novels:

Megan & Ronnie Crafton, Glenn Jessup, Krysia & William Cathey,  Robert Willis and Seth Schnuit.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2019 by William Travis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, contact the author at this address: thepoweroftodd@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

“Thanks Todd,” E.R.I.K.A.’s voice said via my earpiece. I held my Smartt ™ phone so the electronic entity could view what was happening via the camera. “I can see it now. Bad news, the number two engine is on fire, annnnd so is the number one.”

“I can see that!” I hissed at her even as I racked my brain to figure out a way to extinguish a burning jumbo jet engine at thirty-thousand feet while we were moving at five hundred miles per hour.

“Just so you know, this isn’t an accident. I picked something up on one of the League’s satellites just before things went sideways up there. Based on the data, I think Raiden is the culprit and there’s a high probability he’s still up there with you.” the formerly human girl informed me in a voice that I felt was far too calm for the situation.

“Crap.” I muttered, “Why would a Japanese super villain want to attack a transatlantic flight on its way to Heathrow?”

“To kill you, duh.”  E.R.I.K.A. chided, “Someone must have discovered who you are, and they want you dead. Not that either of those parameters narrows the list down too much. I mean to be fair, you leave so many breadcrumbs to your identity that it’s a wonder you don’t have a flock of seagulls following you everywhere. You’re lucky I clean up after you as much as I can online.”

“This is not the time for criticism of my secrecy methods!” I whisper-yelled to her, my voice nearly drowned out by the panicky cries of the other passengers. Over the P.A. system, the pilot was trying to calm everyone down by telling them the plane could fly so long as one engine functioned and could still land safely even if all four failed. My rational brain noted that he was leaving out the part about how a safe landing required something flat and solid under us.

We were still over the Atlantic Ocean.

Someone on the other side of the aisle screamed, “There’s a man on the wing of the plane!”

I blinked and rushed to the other side of the cabin to see if  E.R.I.K.A. was correct. Sure enough, a demonic-looking man stood on the wing. His short pants flapped wildly in the high winds, and his pale skin was lit up by flashes of white lightning that crawled over his body. The electrical arcs slithered around his chest and crawled over his misshapen face with its too-wide mouth.

 Small tusk-like teeth poking out from behind the lower lip and glowed as the lightning arced between them before it flowed up to his unnaturally green eyes. From there, the charge crawled up his red hair, which stood on end, unmoving in defiance of the tempest.

The electricity controller looked over to the cabin windows as energy gathered at his fingertips above the outermost engine. The rictus grin on his square face grew impossibly wider and I knew needed to act fast or we’d lose engine number three - or maybe it was number four. They didn’t have giant numbers on them to tell me which was which.

“I don’t know much about this guy since he’s from Japan,” I whispered into my microphone, “what does the ‘net say about him? Does he have any known weaknesses?”

 E.R.I.K.A.’s voice responded almost as soon as I finished the question, “I’m not seeing much information on the web, he’s a hybrid descended from Raijin so he’s got the whole demigod thing going for him like Seraph did. According to super-pedia he’s got enhanced strength, resistance to physical injury, and he’s immune to electrical based assault. People have observed him flying by riding lightning bolts, although he’s nowhere near as fast as Varja. But that explains how he got up there… The only weakness I see listed is that you can ground him out, so loop a chain around him and stick it into the Earth or attach it to something else that can take the voltage and he’ll be a lot less dangerous.”

“How do you suggest I do that when he’s out there and I’m in here? I can’t just open the door and slap a set of cuffs on him and run a wire to the frame of the jet.” I pointed out.

“You could if you wanted to, I know you’ve got the magic for it these days.” she countered, “Besides, according to the passenger manifest, there are only about seventy non-crew on the plane so if you blow your cover it’s not like it will even double the number of people who know who you are.”

She was exaggerating. Yes, back home the members of my super team, the Samaritans, and their immediate family members all knew about me, and then there were several members of the League of Champions who knew that the hero Aeon was actually a sixteen-year-old goth kid named Todd Sutherland… and there were a dozen members of the hybrid hero group The Protectors who knew who I was… But that only came out to about, umm forty or forty-five people that knew my secret identity for sure. Then there was Animus. He knew who I was and he was a super villain by most people’s accounts. But beyond all those people, no one else knew who I was. Keeping your identity secret wasn’t easy in the modern world, so I counted that number as a good one.

My rational brain cleared his metaphorical throat and pointed out that engine number whatever-it-was was a few seconds away from a big ka-boom, and I still wasn’t in a good position to do anything about it. Without my enchanted items, I’d need time to draw runes to make my magic work, unless I conjured a shield or used my spell blast. The blast could probably knock Raiden off the wing, but I’d have to break a window in order to hit him. That would be bad since the cabin would decompress. My shields would be useless too, since the plane was moving so fast any shield I created would get left behind as the plane shot past it….

I could feel a light bulb going off over my head as I turned and ran toward the front of the plane, leaving the Club World area and moving into the business class section. It was like swimming against the tide since most of the other passengers were moving toward the middle of the aircraft to get a better look. Once I was past them, the exodus made it easy to find an unoccupied forward window to look through.

At my current angle, I could barely make out Raiden as he was pumping lightning into the engine and I felt the plane vibrate as it began to malfunction. I was running out of time and had to hope no one was watching as I began drawing a simple set of runes to create a round shield made of magical power. Normally I could conjure shields around me with a thought but I needed this one to appear outside the fuselage and parallel to my position. As soon as the runes were complete, I pushed power into them to activate the spell.

The glowing green shield popped into existence outside, and a fraction of a second later it vanished from sight as the plane zipped past it.

My aim wasn’t great since I had to eyeball the shot, but the shield construct caught Raiden’s right arm at the shoulder as it tore by him at two-thirds of the speed of sound, shearing it off his body. The whole thing took place so fast that it took the villain a moment to realize what had happened to him. From my restricted viewpoint, I watched as he began screaming while a stream of blood squirted from his shoulder-stump. The vital fluid froze almost immediately in the frigid high altitude air, forming a crude bandage over the wound.

Within a handful of seconds the shock hit him and he tumbled backward off the wing,

I must have interrupted his sabotage before it was complete since the affected engine’s vibrations stabilized and returned to normal a few moments later.

“Nice shot, maybe you aren’t completely inept.” E.R.I.K.A. snarked in my ear. Then she added, “You better rejoin the rest of the rubberneckers, I’ll see if I can track Raiden’s fall and get someone to collect him or his body.”

I fast-walked back into the Club World section and did my best to blend into the rear of the crowd.

Kismet saw that I was back and called out in her posh English accent, “What’s happening out there?” I took her hint and added my voice to the murmuring, “Yeah, not all of us can see. Are we gonna die?” I asked the crowd.

A voice called back, “It was the damnedest thing, there was a flash of green and his arm fell off!”

“Whaaaat?” Kismet asked in false amazement.

Muttering to each other, the crowd began to drift away from the windows close to the wing. Many of the passengers began tapping away at their phones as they headed back to their respective seats, no doubt uploading recordings or comments on the event to Facetube.

My wife and I returned to our seats even as the pilot informed us that the automated fire suppression systems had cycled and the number one and two engines had safely shut down. He reiterated that there was no danger of crashing, although our arrival time would be delayed by a few minutes.

E.R.I.K.A. snorted in my ear, and told me, “I give him credit, he’s talking a good game, but he wasn’t nearly that calm when he was screaming into his mic at Heathrow flight control. There’s some good news though, the airport is already clearing a runway for an emergency landing.”

She paused her criticism of the pilot and switched to her focus to me, “You know Todd, if things like this keep happening every time you take a vacation we might classify you as a trouble magnet and put you on the no-fly lists. Oh, and just so you know - I lost track of Raiden when his electromagnetic distortion vanished at about twenty-five thousand feet. Maybe he died, maybe someone swooped in and caught him. No way to be sure right now. With your luck, he’ll undoubtedly show up again at an inopportune time in the future to seek his revenge. But don’t let the possibility of a vengeful electrocutioner stalking you ruin your vacation or anything.”

Kismet put her head on my shoulder, making it look like she wanted me to comfort her and asked in a low voice, “What happened?”

I whispered back, “A lightning controller tried to destroy the plane, E.R.I.K.A. thinks it was someone trying to kill me, but he’s not a threat now, I disarmed him.”

 

The remaining hour of flight time had an air of solemnity as people posted their near-death experiences and at least a few threatened the airline with a lawsuit. I knew that wouldn’t go anywhere since super villain attacks weren’t something customers could hold a business liable for, at least not in most countries.

 

Sadly, the journey for us didn’t end at Heathrow, as Kismet and I had to catch a connecting flight to Inverness airport and then take a car to Dornoch Castle. Lucky for me, E.R.I.K.A. had made all the arrangements when she gifted us this vacation at our wedding six weeks ago so we just had to show up and let people tell us where to go next.

Case in point, as we exited the airport at Inverness, I saw a young woman in a smart black suit standing beside a limousine holding a placard that read ‘Sutherland - Double-E Enterprises’.

Glancing at Kismet, I shrugged and approached the young woman, before I could inform her we were her clients, she said in a Scottish accent that was subtle enough to be mistaken for an English one, “Ahh you must be mister and missus Sutherland.”

I nodded, asking, “How did you know?”

The young lady who wore a name tag identifying her as ‘Abigail,’ looked between me and Kismet before answering, “The pick-up note said to look for a short teen dressed for a funeral and a tall woman who didn’t look like she should be in the same postal code as him.” She flipped the placard around and showed me the note. “I’m just quoting here, dinnae hold it against me.”

I sighed. E.R.I.K.A.had gotten me again.

Abigail took our bags and loaded them into the trunk and then helped us into the spacious limo, pointing out the amenities before she slid herself into the driver’s seat. “This trip will take aboot an hour, so the sun’ll be setting when we reach Dornoch, if ye need me to pull off to let you use the loo just push the intercom button and let me know.” She checked a note card and added, “I’m supposed to tell ye that you’ll have full privacy back there, but cleaning the seats will cost extra; again I’m just quoting here.”

I rolled my eyes and thanked our driver, who raised the privacy barrier before pulling the car out into traffic.

“I should have known E.R.I.K.A. couldn’t just hire a car, she had to send along a heckler as well.” I griped.

“She only insults you because you react to her jibes so predictably.” Kismet informed me. “Should you ignore her antics I am sure she would find another target for her pranks… in time”

 

The ride was pleasant and comfortable, so much in fact that I fell asleep and only awoke when Kismet shook me, saying, “We have arrived, husband.”

Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I stretched and allowed Abigail to help me out of the car.

“Got the jet lag, I see.” the driver said confidently, “Seen it plenty a’ times, it’ll pass in a day or so.”

She helped Kismet out of the car as well and showed us to the front desk, leaving me to check in while she summoned a bellhop with a cart to collect our luggage.

Once we were signed in, the desk clerk gave us a pair of actual metal keys instead of the more common keycards and told the bellhop to take us to the Old Court Room. It surprised me that there was no elevator and I asked the bellhop about it.

He told me, “Aye, we’ve got one for them what’s in wheelchairs, but it’s a tiny thing and the stairs work fine for most folk.”

If our helper expected us to be out of shape Americans who would complain about climbing a few flights of stairs, he was mistaken. Coach Jayaya’s gym classes had me in the best shape of my short life. Kismet attended the classes now as well, although she only stayed for the warm-up exercises, she didn’t stick around for the hero training part of each session.

The Old Court Room turned out to be a huge space and it was impressive, at least to me, it had stone walls, a small nook with a window overlooking the castle grounds. There was a centuries-old stone fireplace and a hand carved king-size bed but there were modern amenities as well, such as the sixty-inch flat-screen TV on one wall and a whirlpool tub in the modern bathroom.

Kismet seemed pleased with the accommodations, and I tipped the bellhop after he got done with his two-minute tour of the room in which he pointed out all the conveniences.

Once he had departed, I flopped onto the bed. An eight-hour flight with an unscheduled murder attempt, then another two hours for the layover and commuter flight plus the hour ride to the hotel made for a long day of traveling.

Kismet removed the necklace she had been wearing and set it on the bedside table. I had been worried someone in customs would become interested in the red gem than hung from the chain and had planned to claim it was a family heirloom. The stone looked like a large dark ruby but in actuality was a sheathe stone, specifically it was the stone that accessed Taloka, the manse I had claimed after cultists of the Black Veil had tried to murder me.

 Was it sad that people tried to kill me so often that I had to differentiate between the attempts? For most people ‘that time someone tried to murder me’ would be a singular event in their lives, for me such an act was just a bookmark.

With the stone we could access the pocket dimension that the manse occupied, which is how I had smuggled all my magic gear and costume into the country. I didn’t expect to need them here, but I also hadn’t expected an Asian hybrid to sabotage my plane.

I should have known better. I was a superhero on vacation, so the forces of coincidence were probably snickering as a conga line of super villains checked into the hotel while I lay here resting. As soon as my eyes tried to close, and they were doing their best, someone would smash through the door to attack me.

There was a pounding on the thick oak door of the room, startling me back to full wakefulness and putting me on edge.

I groaned and sat up as Kismet went to answer it. A small man stood on the other side holding a covered silver tray in front of him. He bowed ever so slightly, “Room service.”

“We didn’t order room service.” I protested, becoming suspicious.

The man moved into the room unbidden and set the tray on the nook table, informing me, “The order was placed before you arrived, sir. Perhaps the card might offer an explanation.”

He didn’t sound like he was calling me a moron, but the British were good at polite insults so it was hard to tell.

“Oookay.” I said, figuring it was more of E.R.I.K.A.’s handiwork. I handed him a tip for his efforts and hustled him out the door. Turning back to the covered tray I told Kismet, “You might want to take a step back, honey.”

Pulling away the silver cloche revealed a bottle of champagne on ice, a small bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries and a trio of miniature apple pastries. A folded card sat on the tray with ‘Todd’ inscribed on the front. Picking it up, I opened the card and was shocked to find a message written in Luneri script.

I read over the card and showed it to Kismet who confirmed that it read, ‘Congratulations on getting this far, but the ghost that haunts this hotel can give you no answers, Todd. Avoid her touch and ward your room against non-physical entry as her madness can be infectious to one such as yourself. Dunrobin is the next step upon the path you are following.’

At the bottom of the card was a small embossed Utopian state seal.

That mark meant the note was from Animus. He had some kind of connection to the Book of Autumn, the magical artifact that had come to me nearly a year ago. The last time we met, Animus had tricked me into summoning a demon that had demolished part of my school before my friends and I put a stop to it.

“Does this mean we will not be staying?” Kismet asked as she sampled the strawberries.

I set the card down and picked up a pastry; I wasn’t worried that someone might have tampered with the food, if Animus wanted to kill us he was powerful enough that he wouldn’t need to resort to poison.

As I swallowed a bite I said, “Nope we’ll stay here as planned, I read up on Dunrobin before we came here, it’s only about ten or twelve kilometers up the coast and I was already planning to take the tour.” I moved over to the phone and found a menu. I was too tired to hunt for food outside the hotel, so I ordered for both of us.

During the forty minutes it took for the food to arrive, I used a grease pen to set wards on the walls, ceiling and floor as well as the door and window frames. I had just finished charging them all when there was a knock at the door and room service delivered two meals. Kismet and I sat at the window nook and sampled the foods. Macaroni and crab for me, which was much better than it sounded, and gin-soaked salmon for her. The food was delicious and after the meal we nibbled on the snacks Animus had sent as we sipped the champagne before calling it a night.