Chapter 36 – Declan

 

I picked Mack up at Penn Station early Friday afternoon. Actually, we picked him up as Mr. Deckert insisted on sending me in a company car with two of his men. The driver was Joe, the same guy overseeing the front desk the day I arrived. The one who walked into the station with me was Benson, who looked like an NFL lineman.

 

We found the Ethan Allen train from upstate just as it arrived, and Mack was like the tenth person to step off. Then we had to wait for him to collect two pieces of checked baggage.

 

“Dude, you’re only here for two nights. If Jetta was with you I’d understand, but I know you don’t even own that many clothes,” I said. He smiled as I went to pick up one of the bags and the answer was obvious when the weight hit my arm.

 

“You brought toys?” I asked. Mr. Benson hefted the other bag in his left hand; his right being free to employ whatever was making his jacket bulge over his right hip. He raised one eyebrow at my words.

 

“Mack is learning to make knives in a custom blade smithy,” I said.

 

“Blades? What kind?” he asked, interested even as his eyes scanned the people around us.

 

“This batch is mostly tactical. The railroad doesn’t normally let you even check knives but as long as they were sheathed and locked in these bags, they were okay. I had to explain that I was an apprentice knifesmith, on my way to a show,” Mack said. “Not exactly the full truth, but what the hell. I wanted you to see my work.”

 

“You sell them?” Benson asked.

 

“I will when I find buyers. This is the first batch that I feel good enough about to put on the sales table. Between you and me, Mr. Benson, I’m pretty sure I can sell a couple to this skinny beanpole here as Christmas presents for his step-aunt and martial arts instructor,” Mack said.

 

“The deputy and the Krav Maga guy?” Benson asked me. I had spent time with most of Deckert’s men during my warding time and he knew a little about my family life.

 

“Actually, if what you made is at all similar to Mr. Moore’s work, I bet the security team would be interested. They’re all ex-military,” I said to Mack. To Benson I said, “His mentor is Ian Moore of Bear Mountain Blades.” Benson didn’t reply but his eyes flicked over Mack with interest before continuing his scanning.

 

“You have a company car and driver?” Mack asked when we stepped outside and Joe opened the back of the Explorer for his luggage.

 

“Perks, baby. Perks,” I said.

 

Back at the tower, I had the pleasure of seeing Mack go wide-eyed at the inside of the Demidova Tower. Then we got to the security desk to give him his visitor’s pass, and nothing would do but that he broke out all his hardware. Within minutes, most of the on-duty team was clustered around his display, which, frankly was even better than I had imagined. About half were made from Bear Mountain’s proprietary Damascus steel with silver wire folded into the mix. Those all sold immediately, several in minor bidding wars among the ex-soldiers. The obvious utility of steel with anti-vamp and were properties combined with Mack’s talented workmanship was instantly valued by Deckert’s men.

 

The other half were split between utility blades and bushcraft blades made of high carbon steel and super tough tool steel.

 

“You just started making knives this year?” Deckert asked my buddy.

 

“I grew up on a horse farm and I was always fascinated when the farrier came to shoe the horses. My uncle did a little blacksmithing and we made a few knives together. I’ve always been mechanical and Mr. Moore is a really good teacher,” Mack explained, looking delighted and slightly shocked at how quickly his stuff had sold out.

 

“Alright guys, I’ve got more work for him to do. We’re okay to use the utility room, Mr. Deckert?” I asked.

 

“Standard conditions apply: don’t burn the place down, don’t blow the place up, and don’t crack the foundation of the building,” Deckert said. Nobody even smiled. They all knew he wasn’t joking with me and that any and all those outcomes were possibilities, as far as I was concerned. “That elevator is only just working again,” he said.

 

“See, there’s the example for you… if I break it, I fix it,” I said. He frowned but then waved us away.

 

A few minutes later, I showed Mack my rooms. “Holy shit, dude. This is a freaking palace. You live like a king while I’m slaving away like a peasant,” he said.

 

“Don’t give me your shit, Sutton. You and your sister have a whole farm with a massive forge and workshop, not to mention shooting range and hiking trails.”

 

“Well, yeah, it doesn’t suck, but this is the shit,” he said.

 

We stowed his stuff and went down to the gym, where I showed him the discarded tools and had Thing Two demonstrate the problem.

 

“Ya know what? You can keep all this fancy shit if that’s what you gotta fight to earn it,” he said, awed by the robotic death machine.

 

Then his analytical side kicked in and he started to get serious. “Okay, you say the weight isn’t a problem?”

 

“No, she’s not as big as Dellwood, but she’s strong as hell and fast,” I said.

 

“Then I think we want to go for more of a Chinese sword breaker design rather than your pick ax thing. It’ll be similar, just straighter lines and squared off to give hard, sharp edges backed by a diamond design for strength,” he said. “We’ll lengthen this pry bar to give her reach, we’ll draw out this hammerhead and make two long, squared spikes to block or break these things’ blades, we’ll square the pointy end, also for blade breaking, and we’ll beef up the handle for a big wolfy fist to hold. We’re going to have a big chunk of that twelve-pound hammerhead left over, so we’ll weld it to the end for balance and bug bashing. Now, where do we take this shit?”

 

Mr. Deckert had given me permission to use the building’s huge utility room for a makeshift forge and I took Mack there with the tools.

 

The utility room was on the lowest level, through one of the doors right off the elevator, and it sat on bedrock. Perfect, especially when Mack pointed out a potential flaw in my plan.

 

“Even though I know you can heat the shit out of this metal, drawing out that hammerhead is gonna suck. We really need a power hammer,” he said.

 

I grinned and placed a mental call to my ace in the hole. Actually, ace in the ground.

 

Mack almost shit himself when a really big section of the floor stood up and formed the ten-foot-tall shape of Robbie the golem.

 

“What the fuck is he doing here?”

 

“I called him.”

 

“How’d he get here?”

 

“Well, it seems I pretty much screwed up when I made him. In my defense, I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to make a golem, so I just made it up. It started with Draco and was only more of the same when I made Robbie,” I said. He looked thoroughly confused, so I explained. “See, they’re not really golems. Instead, they were kinda, sorta baby elementals. Draco is quickly becoming a full-fledged Air elemental, which is why he gets along with Aunt Ash so well. Robbie is not far behind him as a fledgling Earth elemental. So to answer your question, he travels though the ground.”

 

“Dude, I don’t know what an elemental is but somehow I don’t think it’s normal for witches to make them,” Mack said, walking around Robbie and examining his features.

 

In many ways, of all the kids at Arcane, Mack and his sister Jetta are far and away the most miraculous. Born completely mundane without any supernatural powers, talents, or abilities, they nonetheless are so thoroughly steeped in the supernatural world as to be completely comfortable with, well, everything.

 

And they are both disgustingly competent at living, fighting and getting along with people who have superhuman abilities and powers. Excellent athletes, with high hand-to-eye coordination and great reflexes, they both adapt and learn with ease. Maybe it had something to do with being teenagers when they tracked and killed off the better part of a pack of rogue werewolves by themselves.

 

Mack had met Robbie before and the monstrous entity was scary enough to frighten old vampires, yet Mack had such faith in me and my abilities that he had no thought that Robbie was a danger to him. Frankly, if I wasn’t so flattered by my buddy’s trust, I’d question his sanity.

 

Ten feet tall and over five feet wide, Robbie had formed himself from the concrete and bedrock of the floor and was even bigger then last semester. His face had only rudimentary features, craggy blunt nose, and cavernous black eyes. Yet I knew him and could feel his… thoughts? Feelings? I’m not sure either of those fit the bill, yet Robbie, for all his fearsome size and shape, was basically placid and patient. Like rock. He preferred resting in the woods around Rowan West to doing almost anything else.

 

“Okay, so how are we going to employ our friend here,” Mack said, absently patting Robbie’s rocky leg. My creation was aware of and considering the soft squishy human with almost fond thoughts.

 

“Chris seems to have a thing for manhole covers. Somehow, he ended up dragging a few home from various fights. So I lugged two down here and thought Robbie could use them like an anvil. This chunk of I-beam was at a construction site. I sorta borrowed it,” I said, mentally asking the young elemental to hold the big pieces of steel in his hands.

 

“Gonna be loud, but let’s get started,” Mack said, looking thoroughly excited.

 

First, I drew a huge circle on the floor with blue chalk from my bag. A straight line of yellow chalk bisected it exactly in the middle. A red line bisected that one from the other direction. On one side of the yellow line, I drew the rune of fire; on the other side, the rune for ice. I did the same with the red line, drawing spear in one quadrant, bow in the other. In the very center, I wrote the rune ear for Earth.

 

Then I brought Robbie into the circle, positioning him in the middle. Mack brought the two pieces of metal in and I closed the circle, invoking it with a thought and a touch of my right index finger.

 

“What now?” I asked.

 

“Well, let’s start with the hammerhead,” Mack said.

 

With Robbie holding the steel in his rocky hands, I began to pull heat from the building and the ground. With thousands of tons of mass to draw from, the sledge quickly started to glow, waves of heat radiating off it. At this point, I activated the rune Ice to pull the excess heat and countersink it back into the ground.

 

“See that cherry red color? That’s called critical temperature,” Mack said. “Now we can work the metal, and all the carbon and other non iron elements in the alloy are in solution.”

 

I had no idea what he really meant, but I had Robbie pound out the metal, drawing it out while I kept it heated. Mack cut off the excess with the edge of the prybar.

 

With Mack directing, we formed two square spikes around the hole in the head that previously held the handle. A rectangular rock was shoved into the empty space to keep it from collapsing.

 

When we were done, we had what looked like a short, straight-limbed pick ax. Two ten-inch-long, inch-thick rectangles with pyramidal points jutted out from the handle collar, positioned so that they presented a diamond shape rather than square. A seven-pound lump of steel sat unused on the ground beside us. Mack had us set the spikes aside to cool in the quadrant of the bow while we heated the pry bar and had Robbie pound it out to seven and a half feet long. We next fit the side spikes to the prybar, sliding the collar down two feet from the pointed end. Mack pulled a plastic coffee container out of his gear.

 

“This is Borax. It’ll pull the impurities out of the metal so we can weld it together,” he said, proceeding to dust the whole deal with white powder.

 

“You brought white dust on the train in a coffee can?” I asked. “Lucky you’re not in prison.”

 

“Hmmm. Maybe I should leave it here when I go back, huh?” he asked.

 

“Ya think?”

 

I heated the whole thing up to critical and Robbie pounded the collar with a corner of the I-beam until it was essentially welded in place. The next hour was spent straightening the spear and making the edges really square. The point was deviated like a bird’s beak to keep it from sliding off bug armor if the weapon was jabbed. Then we welded the lump of unused steel to the end, squaring it off like a medieval mace head. Finally, we had the elemental golem hold the manhole covers and pound one into another while I telekinetically moved the spear through the pounding hammers to give it sharp corners. Lastly, I used an old screwdriver I found on a shelf and engraved more runes directly into the metal, pushing power into the weapon with every scratch.

 

“Now we have to heat it back to critical and then quench it somehow. We want to cool it superfast to lock the carbon molecules inside the iron’s crystal structure,” Mack said.

 

So we heated it past critical and then I pulled all the heat at once, dumping it into the ground and the building. The weapon went from cherry red to frost-covered in two seconds.

 

“Wow, I think you just cryo-quenched it!” Mack said.

 

“Is that bad?”

 

“It’s super hard to do. Supposedly it’s good. We’ll have to see. Next, we have to temper it. We need to heat it to about four hundred degrees for about an hour minutes, then let it cool on its own. We have to do that three times to relieve all the internal stresses,” Mack said.

 

The weapon stood on its flattened counterweight butt, looking like a seven-and-a-half-foot cross whose arms were too short. Held in one’s hands for use, the weapon’s square edges were up, down, and side to side. Same with the cross bars. That way, any strike by an opponent’s blade would have the best chance of hitting a reinforced edge and breaking.

 

“It’s like a Chinese sword breaker crossed with a boar spear and hopped up on steroids,” Mack said. “About thirty-five pounds of steel.”

 

I thanked Robbie and released him back to the Earth. He was reluctant. The city bothered him, so we looked up Central Park on Google Maps and figured which direction it lay from the Tower. Then I sent him there to rest under the trees and grass of the park. Not exactly the same as our forest back home, but much better than city streets and apartment buildings. The floor smoothed back to normal under my feet and looked pretty much undisturbed, except for the chalk lines, which we left in place for tempering. When I glanced up, Mack was shaking his head.

 

“What?”

 

“We just completed a major weapon in less than two hours without a forge, without a hammer, or even tongs. You’re a piece of work, O’Carroll.”

 

“A dirty, sweaty, hungry piece of work. Let’s get cleaned up and get some dinner,” I said.

 

“Cleaned up, then we’ll reheat this to cool while we eat. Then once more.”

 

“Deal.”

 

We showered and changed in record time, both motivated by our stomachs. After reheating the blade breaker a second time, we headed up to the dining room. The sun was down, or at least had set enough that Remy was up. When I introduced him to Mack, he relentlessly pressed my friend for his most desired dinner. Reluctantly, Mack admitted that he wanted surf and turf, obviously worried about the cost. Remy just nodded and thirty minutes, a basket of rolls, and a salad each later, we both were scarfing down lobster tail, scallops, and filet mignon.

 

“Who are those girls that keep staring this way?” Mack asked.

 

“Computer science interns who think I’m scum,” I said after looking over at Jodi, Aleesha, and Grace four tables away.

 

“Oh this sounds good. Let’s hear it,” he demanded.

 

Between bites of buttery lobster and melt-in-your-mouth beef, I told him about my first several weeks of summer work.

 

“That’s pretty shitty, dude. I kinda understand why they’d be upset, but on the other hand, you were just working for your boss. And that douche that poisoned you deserved to get fired.”

 

“It is what it is. I kinda liked the brunette but she’s normal and I’m so very not,” I said.

 

“Yeah, I get it. Still, she is pretty hot,” he said, then laughed at the expression on my face.

 

We finished dinner, reheated the breaker, and then played video games in my room for an hour. Then we grabbed the breaker and headed to the gym. It barely fit on the elevator, it was so long.

 

As I went to open the gym door, I heard noises on the other side. Pausing, I realized it was Tanya and the others training, and with a sinking feeling, I realized that I was probably supposed to be there as well. Hand frozen in front of the door, I hesitated. The doors opened themselves and Nika stood there in workout gear.

 

“I knew I heard someone out here lurking about. You better get in here,” she said with a curious glance at Mack.

 

The sinking feeling turned to plummeting lead as we followed her inside. Tanya stopped beating on Chris and turned to look at me, eyes going head to toe and brows rising at my lack of gym clothes. Lydia, Stacia, and Arkady all stood nearby, staring.

 

“You’re late, but you brought us a snack,” Tanya said, glancing at Mack, who went white in the face.

 

“She’s kidding. Ah, I forgot, Tanya. We were making this,” I said, holding up the breaker in both hands, “—and time slipped.”

 

“You made a cross? To repel vampires?” Lydia asked.

 

“No it’s like a butterfly pin for pesky, fluttery little pixie vamps,” I said. “Actually, we call it Blade Breaker.”

 

“What exactly is it for?” Chris asked, curious and amused.

 

“It’s for her,” I said, pointing at Stacia, “in her beast form. We based it on a sword breaker from China.”

 

Suddenly, Tanya was right in front of us, taking the breaker from my hands and flipping it around as though it were a reed.

 

“The cross bars do what?” she asked.

 

“Thing Two, rise and present three blades. Freeze,” I commanded the bug in the corner. “See, if the point is shoved against the carapace, the cross pieces are just at blade length. The force of the bug’s own motors will bend or break the blades against the edges. At least in theory.”

 

“Spin it up, bug. Let’s move past theory,” she said.

 

The were whacker was running, and the steel blades hummed at high revolutions. Tanya stepped forward and jabbed the breaker against Thing Two’s armor. There was a loud clang, a snap, crack, and a zing, but I was ready. Two blades had bent, but the top one snapped off and was flung toward Lydia, stopped by the hasty shield I had thrown across the audience. The shard hung suspended about stomach level, point-six inches from Lydia’s body.

 

“Nice catch, kid. Almost made that butterfly pin thing become reality,” she said.

 

“It gets yanked hard when the blades hit, but if you’re ready for it, it’s not bad,” Tanya said to the others. Then she flipped the bar like a bo staff. The weighted end rang off the pede’s head, knocking the heavy bug backward.

 

“Hmmm. It’s not as unwieldy as it looks. Hits hard. Why doesn’t it jar my hands?” she asked us.

 

“I put some mojo in it. That might settle it out,” I said, pointing at the runes.

 

“What’s the pattern in the steel?” Chris asked.

 

“NYC DPW,” I said. “We used some of your manhole covers,” I said.

 

“Where did you get the tools to do this?” Lydia asked.

 

“We, ah, improvised,” I said, keeping my shield around my head, which caused Nika to frown.

 

“You’ll need your beast form,” Tanya said and after a moment of contemplating the breaker, she threw the heavy weapon to Stacia, who so far hadn’t said a word. The blonde girl hefted the weapon for a moment, eyed myself and Mack, then set it upright on its end while she pulled her clothes off.

 

Mack’s eyes widened at the brief glimpse of perfection she offered before Changing into her other form. From centerfold to horror movie in seconds flat. Her massive beast form is, in its own way, just as impressive as her human one. My buddy’s face had changed from shocked awe to stricken awe as he was reminded of what she was.

 

With a low growl, she plucked the blade breaker off the floor, its length no longer looking outsized. Taking a few moments to get used to it, she twirled it around her big paws smoothly.

 

“The weight at the butt end kind of ruins the lines but we needed to balance it out,” I said. “And it could use some paracord wrapping at the hand points.”

 

Stacia glanced at me, then strode toward Thing Two. While we had been talking, the metal bug had lowered its damaged blades and turned, lifting the unmarked portion of its body and snapping open four or five blades. Now they spun up to full speed as the wolf beast prowled forward.

 

Instead of jabbing like Tanya had done, Stacia chopped down at the pede, the pick-like cross-piece hitting the bug just in back of its head. The blow had tremendous force and it knocked Thing Two downward, leaving the same spot open to the follow-up from the hardened, squared-off butt of the weapon. Thing Two’s spinning blades slammed into the floor, clanging to a halt and definitely damaging more sharp edges.

 

“Interesting. More than one way to cut hide from pussycat,” Arkady said.

 

As the pede started to lift its front, Stacia pinned it down with the point and one of the cross-arms. Instantly, Thing Two flipped its damaged back end forward, arching its whole body like a scorpion’s tail. Stacia replaced the blade breaker with her foot on the pede’s closest head, smoothly rotating her weapon forward and jabbing the split point right at the junction of the head and first segment. The hardened tips slid up the stainless steel of the joint and under the armor of the head. Now she had full control of the creature, her body weight holding it down and her powerful arms easily holding off the tail. She paused then yanked her weapon free, standing back and letting the pede scuttle away.

 

“Hmm, lots of control techniques possible,” Tanya mused.

 

“A sharp stamp on the middle segment would likely let her paralyze it,” Chris said. “Then she’d have time to smash it with that nasty big bludgeon.”

 

“Let me try,” Arkady said, striding forward, hand out. Normally, he looks the part of a giant, but next to a werewolf beast form, he looked like a regular guy.

 

Stacia growled at him, reluctantly letting him take the breaker.

 

“What did you make it out of? It’s as hard or maybe harder then the bug’s armor,” Tanya said.

 

“We used the prybar and the head from the broken sledge,” I said.

 

“And where exactly did you get a forge and tools to process this much steel?” she pressed. Behind her, Arkady was smacking at the bug with the breaker, pausing to tell Stacia his thoughts on possible technique.

 

“Mr. Deckert said we could use the utility room, and I used magic,” I said.

 

“You turned my utility room, the one that provides life to my multi-million-dollar building, into a forge?” she asked.

 

“And didn’t even disturb the dust,” I said.

 

“If you don’t need him, I’ll take him back to the blade smithy and put him to work. We could quadruple the output. Plus, I think we got lucky with the heat treatment because we winged the hell out of it,” Mack said. “Possibly the first time anyone used magic to cryo-treat steel.”

 

“You quenched it with magic?” Tanya asked, her interest sharpening.

 

“Yeah, this guy can heat almost forty pounds of steel to critical with a thought and then drop it to way below zero in an instant,” Mack answered.

 

“So a high percentage conversion of austenite to martensite?” she asked him.

 

His eyebrows went up at her technical knowledge, but the rest of his head nodded. “Yeah, damn near a hundred percent, I think.”

 

“Declan, on Monday, I would like you to work with Dr. Susskins on the quantum project. Mack, you never heard me say that,” Tanya said.

 

“Okay, but you know my thoughts, right?” I asked.

 

“Nika will keep close watch,” Tanya said, glancing at her blonde friend.

 

“You bet, Declan. As distasteful as it may be,” Nika said.

 

“Now, I suspect you are thinking of turning Mack loose in my nightclub, correct?” Tanya asked.

 

“Katrina thought it might be okay. Actually, her words were of course, you moron.”

 

“She’s right. About the okay part, not the moron part. You will take a car and driver. Enjoy yourselves, but no alcohol,” she said, turning to Mack for the last part.

 

“I don’t like to lose my senses in an unknown city,” Mack said.

 

“Particularly in a nightclub populated with vampires, right?” Chris asked with a wink.

 

“There is that,” Mack agreed. “And you probably know that this guy doesn’t drink at all,” he said with a thumb in my direction.

 

“Be like a five-year old with a flamethrower,” Lydia said.

 

I just looked at her while I spoke to Mack. “Come on, buddy. I want to show you my plans for a butterfly-slash-pixy collection.”

 

“Like you could organize a collection of anything,” she snarked.

 

“It might only need one specimen,” I said, turning and pushing Mack toward the door.

 

“Take the driver, Declan, and stay in the club. Mack, you will be completely safe in Plasma,” Tanya said. As I went out the door, I saw the white werewolf turn and look at me. She might have been grinning… or snarling. Hard to tell.