Necromancer Chronicles Pt. 10

These guys didn't lollygag, at all. My mouth dropped open when I saw the UN building through the port. Maybe it was a good thing they no longer had emotions, or all the delays from our world might have annoyed them, and it was quite clear to me they could squash our world like stepping on a bug.

I followed them out of the ship and into the U.N. There were some surprised expressions at their appearance, but no one could doubt the veracity of their words when given in person. In a surprisingly short time the U.N. was signing a document, one nation at a time.

I walked them back to the ship, but they didn't even say goodbye. I wondered how they would do it, how they would destroy the fae world, but a part of me hoped I never found out.

I surrounded myself in magic and teleported to our apartment, so Bree could collect her body. After which we shared a long kiss. It was easy to find the others with Callie tied to my soul. I just thought of her and the connection we shared, and let my magic take Bree and I home...

-Vinnie-

When we got back from dinner we only had a few minutes to wait before we were on a call with a number of people. We had a three star general at NORAD, a four star general at the Pentagon, the president, and some telemetry people from NASA.

When they all reported ready the President gave the order and I teleported close to a thousand missiles to orbit ten at a time. It took me a few seconds each batch, but I was able to keep ahead of them as they received the telemetry and fired off one missile after another in quick succession.

We had maybe a quarter of them in space on the way when the first one hit. A few seconds later we were looking at an expanding dust cloud instead of a meteor. There was some cheering from someone on the phone line, but I was focused on moving the missiles up there.

It took a little less than five minutes in total to get all the missiles in space, after that it was out of my hands. I didn't want to be rude, but as the asteroids were destroyed I wanted nothing more than to get out of here, and see the rest of my family.

I said a quick goodbye to Kate. Abby asked me to send her home, so I did. Then I called Kristi and asked where she was. Everyone was at my parents' house so I held Toni's hand and surrounded us with my magic and took us home.

Before I could even get my bearings, I was in a four way hug with all my mates. It seemed like all our plans had come together, and we would be able to wipe our hands of the fae forever. My sister wormed her way in and gave me a hug.

Hope said, "Hey little brother."

I lifted my eyebrow.

She shrugged, "Just saying, I have no idea which of us is first born."

We both turned to mom and said, "Well... prophecy is over... which of us is which?"

Anise got an impudent look on her face, "I promised I'd never tell..."

We glared, but she just laughed at us, and then Johnson's phone went off.

His face drained of color and he looked over at us.

"A gate opened in Yosemite Park, and thousands of fae coming through. So far that's the only one we know of."

I felt the touch of Kristi's magic and a teleport site showed in my mind.

My mother said loudly, "Let's go!"

I surrounded as many in my magic I could and teleported to Yosemite Park...

-Hope-

There were over a couple of hundred of us. Over the last five days while I'd been visiting the grays more of the coven as well as others from the various groups had joined to help. There were also quite a number of military who over the last week had gotten to the point they could shield and use telekinesis, none of them had rifles anymore.

My father had hundreds of zombie fae bound to his will as well. No one looked happy; we thought the nightmare of the fae had been finished. Now we were being flooded by them. The thought was depressing; I had been looking forward to a celebration and now this. I suppressed my emotions, we'd have plenty of time for that later and it wouldn't help me fight.

The target point Kristi gave me was to the East. Apparently they had a system worked out, because I could feel the fae to the west, but I also felt two other groups to the north-west and south-west. There was probably another farther west outside of my detection range.

Surrounding them wouldn't do any good though if their bridgehead got too large. I brought up my armor and sword and we moved swiftly to engage. With Rafe, Bree, and Callie around me, we ran into the first of them quickly. Scouts, or perimeter guards most likely.

They screamed and attacked us savagely, something they had never done before. But there weren't that many of them out here and they fell quickly. Still, there was something about this that bothered me. I felt as if I was missing something.

The ground shook as there was a large explosion of magic throwing most of us to the ground. I looked up and there was a brown pillar of magic shooting into the sky. It lasted for several moments, and then disappeared. I got up and we continued the charge. We cleared the tree line and the ground was littered with fae bodies. Some were groaning, others were still as if they were knocked out.

They were helpless, like a field of wheat ready to harvest. A few moved forward to finish them off when what I was seeing finally registered.

I yelled, "Hold!"

This wasn't an invasion force. There were thousands of fae here, but many were young, I even saw a few children being protected by the adults as they laid over them. The fae had tried to destroy us, had targeted me for assassination, and had manipulated my entire life and my family. But none of that mattered now, they were beaten, their world destroyed.

I couldn't imagine another reason the gate would have exploded so violently. We didn't do it.

These were... refugees. I wasn't sure, but we had the time to sort it out. They were the last of their kind. That said, I was wary when some of them started to stand up.

I called out, "Surrender now, and we can talk."

They surrendered.

I wasn't sure where this would lead, but it would be up to the world leaders to sort out, not me or my family. A number of helicopters showed up after a while and the military took over the quarantine. The fae had been instructed to stay in the area until things were sorted out.

My family and I left at that point, went home. It was hard to believe I was free of it all now, but it certainly looked that way. I was looking forward to the party...

Epilogue – Hope, Vinnie, and Anise

-Hope ten years later-

I cringed as sand was thrown up in the air next to me and fell onto my back. I looked up at Rafael, my grinning seven year old son. My five year old, Anise, who also gotten bombarded with sand was scowling up at him. She looked adorable, but I knew laughing would be a mistake. She was as stubborn as her mother.

I said with exasperation, "How many times have I told you not to fly at the beach, and to not land next to mommy and kick the sand."

He tried a pout but I wasn't going for it. It was also a miscarriage of justice. My parents had wings, my Rafe had wings, and so did my children... Where were mine at?

I was enjoying a day at the beach after enchanting my last healing ward. I had learned those seven glyphs, and used them to power a healing ward for the first time a little over five years ago. I'd spent the last few years setting them up in different cities around the world in my spare time. Now if someone was sick all they needed to do was get within the area of effect and the glyph would heal them.

There was some outcry from the pharmaceutical companies about overpopulation, but they are full of crap. The highest percentage of deaths is from old age, accidents, and violence. Not a child with cancer, or even a forty year old from a heart attack. The highest cause of overpopulation was the birth rate in any case. Regardless, it was a heartless argument for such a small contributor to the population question.

They just didn't want to lose money. Luckily they were mostly ignored, if only because my brother's inventions had been putting many other larger industries through troubled times, and those current and hot issues seemed to dominate the news in comparison to an issue that wouldn't blow up for a few generations. The oil based economy was going away, like it or not.

There were some overpopulation concerns, but not because I refused to let people waste away and die in pain when I could make a difference. Some medical scientists had determined that humanity's new life span was six hundred years or so. So instead of living three to five generations, a human could look forward to living close to thirty and contributing children for five or so.

My brother though, assured me he has plans to alleviate that problem.

As for my regular job? I work for the president, through Johnson mostly, on trying to integrate the communities into the general population. Society is changing, but slower than I had expected, probably because of simple human habit. There had been some major changes though.

The calls to nine one one have slowly been declining every year, as people realize they can just protect themselves and their neighbors. The courts have been thrown on their ears, and the lawyers who had lied for years to get their defendants off now find they have a jury that can't be tricked or manipulated.

Justice is a lot faster and surer as a result.

Life on Earth will adjust, in the meantime, I needed to get some revenge and get this sand off me.

I grabbed my son and ran toward the water with an evil laugh as he screamed in delight.

-Vinnie forty years later-

Kristi straddled my lap and rubbed her core lightly against me while she kissed me teasingly. It had been over forty years since I met her, and she still looked like a woman around thirty. She was incredible and more beautiful and sexier than ever. When I first heard the news that humans were not immortal through their magic, I'd been upset, but I came to the conclusion I needed to live my life with her in joy while she was here.

We still had a long time to spend together; there was no sense borrowing grief from the future.

My communicator went off and I ignored it as I grew hard from her touch. She knew it was time to go and was driving me crazy on purpose. That was Kristi, anything to earn a spanking later.

Still, it wasn't like they could leave without me... Fuck it...

An hour later we moved out into the corridors and slowly made our way to the bridge. There were a few smirks and shaking of heads as we walked past people, but it was a good natured thing. It made me wonder how many of them had looked to figure out what was holding up their captain and got an eyeful for their efforts.

We reached the bridge and I took in the view of outer space around us in the view screen that wrapped around the bridge. It was the first ship of its kind, able to carry over a quarter million people for short trips.

The real advancements came from mixing our magic with technology. We had the knowledge to create an FTL drive, but why bother when we could build technological controls around a gate enchantment, and cross light years in the blink of an eye. Our power systems used a shielded chamber that had a similar enchantment as a gate to connect directly to the power of the sun itself to power the ship.

I was the captain of the ship, and it was built with one purpose in mind when Toni, Abby, and I designed it in its first rough form thirty five years ago. To spread humanity out among the stars before life got too crowded on Earth in just a few more generations.

The grays had given us a database of all the worlds fit for settlement or that were in a good place for terra-forming in their universe. Since our universes were all similar, we had a good chance of most of those lining up with what we would find in ours. Even if only a half were accurate, it would lead us to thousands of habitable worlds and ten times that many worlds where we could make them habitable. And that was just in our galaxy alone.

Toni and Alicia were also with us, along with half our children, although we wouldn't be leaving Earth and the rest of our extended family. I liked to joke we were just the first inter-world taxi service, that would be taking settlers to new worlds.

As for the first born, my mother still refused to tell. The warning had been clear, tell no one ever. It seemed a moot point now to continue to hide it, but I suppose in the end it didn't matter. I don't think the fae would have lost if either my sister or I had died. We had both been necessary to correct things. Things had turned out, on balance, very well.

I gave the order to jump to the closest star that we suspected had a life bearing planet. Despite the database, our universe was truly unknown, and I wondered at what we might find out there in it...

Anise sixty six years ago...

As things went, the births were easy ones as my body had gone through it so many times before. I had cradled them in my magic as they were born, and used it to cut and tie off the umbilical cords. If I hadn't been able to suppress the pain and most of my emotions, it would have been much harder.

I cleaned them up and they were both beautiful to me, we had decided on names a while back, Hope and Vincent. I was concerned though, about the message I was sent in the augury. Everyone believed I would just keep it to myself and hold it in my heart. But I was worried about mind reading and things of that nature. In an unguarded moment, my granddaughter Amy could pick it right out of my head, or even worse, an enemy could.

So I kissed both my children and put them in the bassinet and walked over to the wall covered in runes. I looked back with a sad smile, I didn't want to do this, the memories of their birth were precious to me. But I would die to keep them safe, this seemed a small sacrifice.

I looked at Hope one last time, my new and already beloved daughter and wondered what life would bring her as my firstborn. I turned back toward the wall, tears in my eyes as I touched and activated the glyph that would steal the memories of the birth of my children. Now no one knew at all, and no one ever would.

I wouldn't tell anyone what I'd done or sacrificed to ensure the information stayed a secret. I turned back to my children and wondered which one of them was firstborn as I gathered them up in my arms and took down the ward shields.

My eyes were still filled with tears when my family came in to welcome the new additions to the family, but these newest were tears of joy...