Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Read online

  Still, the Oni was faster and on guard.

  If only Paul had X-ray vision, then he could see the Oni through the wall and hit him through it.

  An idea came to him. Ah, maybe there was a way! An article he had read in Wikipedia a few weeks ago.

  “In the name of Wilhelm Röntgen, Superman, and Geordi La Forge, may a display appear in front of me showing the Wi-Fi reflections in the corridor on the other side of this wall.”

  Like most public buildings these days, Paul knew that the hospital had Wi-Fi capability and, from Wikipedia, that the IEEE 802.11ac standard operated at 5 GHz. That put it above most radar operating frequencies.

  The display appeared, showing a purplish background hue, quite a bit brighter off to the right. There was obviously a Wi-Fi repeater somewhere off in that general direction.

  There was also a clear outline of the major features of the corridor: the doorways, the beams in the walls, the plumbing, and wiring and girders.

  And one Oni striding toward an open doorway across the corridor. It dashed in, searching the office on that side of the corridor then emerging again.

  Paul turned, aiming his rifle at the right spot on the wall over the top of the desk.

  And fired a five round burst.

  The first two BBs blew a huge hole through the wall, the shockwave pulverizing the sheet rock and hurling debris both back at Paul and into the corridor on the other side. The detonation from the other three BBs destroyed not only a greater portion of the wall, but took out parts of the corridor’s concrete floor and ceiling, creating huge clouds of smoke and flying detritus.

  The shockwave was appalling, smashing the desk against Paul, pressing him against the wall behind him. And the noise!

  As the blast subsided and the dust started to clear, Paul pushed the desk away using a spell. Another one helped to clear the air even faster and let him survey the results of his attack.

  The devastation was fantastic, with huge holes now in the walls, floor, and ceiling, the edges cut to ribbons like tissue paper in a shredder. The Oni had been thrust through the opposite wall of the corridor, and now lay in a heap inside the office it had just searched. Moreover, it wasn’t moving.

  Rising into the air on a magic spell, Paul flew out into the corridor, fully intent on going to Capie’s aid.

  • • • •

  Capie was in full flight, heading outward along the deserted southwest wing, dodging the occasional plasma blast. Twice, she aimed the rifle back over her shoulder and successfully fired, the blast from the BBs blowing holes in walls, destroying light fixtures and a water cooler. It also slowed the Oni chasing her but not stopping it.

  Up ahead, she was running out of corridor.

  Aiming the rifle forward, she fired a short burst.

  The explosions tore at the wall. But this was an outside wall and it was rebar reinforced concrete, several inches thick, and while the blasts damaged it, there were no large holes created. Certainly nothing large enough for her to fly through.

  The back blast was enough to smack her out of the air and up against a wall. Dazed, it took a few seconds for her to recover her wits and look around.

  The Oni was standing several feet away, looking at her and making a strange strangling noise.

  It was laughing at her.

  Her rifle was nearby and she seized it, aiming it at the monster and firing.

  But the BBs hit an invisible wall less than halfway to the creature. She kept firing until the gun was empty, the cylinder clicking but nothing coming out.

  The Oni laughed again.

  And then, suddenly, it was engulfed in a dozen streams of white spray from as many fire extinguishers cavorting in midair around the Oni. It roared in anger, turning to fire bolts of plasma, knocking the offending devices from the air.

  But Capie reached out, levitating a handful of fallen BBs from the floor and hurled them past the Oni, around the sides of its invisible barrier and closer to their target.

  She triggered them.

  This explosion was much larger than before, as eight BBs, each the equal of a stick of dynamite, exploded. The shockwave completely took out the walls on both sides of the corridor and the windows in all the adjacent rooms. The floor under the center of the blast shattered, the concrete falling to the level below. Ceiling tile for fifty feet down the corridor was ripped clean off and hurled all the way to the far end of the passageway.

  The Oni was hurled upward, impacting on the concrete ceiling, then falling heavily through the huge hole in the floor down to the floor below. There it lay face-down on top of the rubble, critically injured, with a dozen broken bones, several serious cuts, and a massive blow to its head from the impacts.

  Capie herself lay unconscious and unmoving, covered with concrete dust, and bleeding from several cuts, her body squeezed up against the building’s outer wall.

  • • • •

  There were now two Oni chasing him! Blast it, where were they all coming from? Geez, the building seemed to be positively crawling with them!

  Paul hurled himself down the corridor as fast as possible, firing BBs at the two Oni in an effort to slow them down, at least.

  The hospital suddenly shook itself violently, the hallways visibly rolling as if from an earthquake, an enormous clap of thunder striking a physical blow at him.

  What was that?

  “Capie?!” he screamed. “Are you okay?”

  There was no answer.

  He needed to get to her! How was he going to get rid of these monsters chasing him?

  It was past time to think outside the box.

  He burst into an unoccupied patient’s room and, on the fly, he aimed and fired a single BB at the window. The explosion totally disintegrated the glass as he punched through the center of the blast and out into the warm night air.

  Turning sharply upward, he leveled off twenty feet above the smashed window, spun around and counted off two seconds…

  …And then held down the trigger on his rifle, spraying the windows of the room he had just flown through.

  A rapid series of explosions tore at and then pulverized the entire outside wall of concrete, not only for the fifth floor but the fourth and sixth as well, blowing smoke and bits of concrete shrapnel in all directions.

  The blast pushed at him, threatening to dislodge him from his position, but he used a spell to hold himself in place and protect him from the flying debris.

  He took his finger off the trigger, and used a spell to clear the air. He waited a moment, to see if anything would emerge through the huge gaping hole in the hospital, but there was nothing now but the sound of sirens and loudspeakers near the hospital entrance in the background. Nothing moved.

  Until the shattering of glass off to his far left and the roar of another Oni.

  A blast of plasma tore past him, grazing his left leg and burning his jeans. He cut the spell that was holding him in midair and dropped out of the path of the next plasma blast.

  He fell forty feet before he re-engaged the flying spell, angling around the southwest wing of the hospital. With surprise, he saw the shattered windows there and the outward bulge in one wall. That was probably where Capie was and where the explosion that had shaken the whole hospital had been. He cried out in pain and anguish, and his whole soul screamed at him to go to her aid.

  But another plasma bolt howled through the air, barely missing him yet again. As much as he wanted to go to her, he could not, at least not until the Oni behind him had been dealt with.

  He flew up, doubling back over the roof, crossing over to the space between the north and south wings, then through the hole in the fifth floor that he had created only a minute earlier, through to the other side and out the window missing its glass there. And then he went back up, over to the southeast wing, to the east of the helipad.

  There was an Airbus AS365 N3+ Dauphin helicopter sitting on the pad. Paul angled behind it, using it for a screen.

  And then two plasma blast
s hit the helicopter dead square on, the blasts gutting the fuselage like a sardine can. Worse, it touched off the three hundred gallon fuel bladders under the passenger cabin. The fireball of explosion lit up the night sky for miles, hurling Paul through the air and throwing him onto the roof of the Arthur Rubloff Intensive Care Tower.

  Stunned and bleeding from several small cuts, Paul slowly rose to his feet.

  Boiling mad, he was!

  He lifted up into the night air, looking for and seeing the Oni that was skirting the site of the raging fire of what used to be the helicopter. And he saw it spot him. Turning, he looped around the utility mechanical room of the building’s roof, waited two seconds and then opened a small portal only a few inches in diameter. He aimed the airsoft rifle and fired through it…

  The BBs emerged through the other end of the small portal, not far behind the flying Oni.

  It turned, roaring in anger as it tried to intercept the BBs.

  But they exploded first. All ten of them.

  The explosions swept the Oni from the sky, like a swatted house fly, knocking it all the way to the Midway Plaisance Park and into the branches of the top of a tall tree, where it came to rest, unconscious and critically injured.

  Ignoring the pain in his leg, Paul quickly flew back to the hospital, smashing though a window on the fourth floor on the southwest wing and into the corridor.

  And was instantly frozen by a magical spell.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” a sadistic sarcastic voice said.

  Open eyed, Paul stared at the man. There was little else he could do since none of his muscles would move.

  Of medium height, the newcomer was young, blond, and of muscular build. And the face! Far more handsome than any movie star that Paul had ever heard of. The man was wearing tight fitting pants, a very loose open necked white shirt and a midnight blue cloak that reached down to mid-calf. On top of his head the curly locks of his blonde hair poked out from under a black Bowler hat with a conical crown.

  He looked so totally out of place in the hospital that Paul knew instantly that the man was a wizard of Errabêlu.

  The wizard slowly strolled up the corridor to get a closer look at Paul, eyeing him closely.

  “Yes, you match the description and the photo,” the individual said. “Paul Thomas Armstead. Well, it is indeed a pleasure to meet a myth. At least, I thought you were one, but Ruggiero and Celeste were so insistent and Clarke…well, he thought it was best to check it out. After all, there was the unexplained talisman in the Karakoram Mountains and the disappearance of several Oni. All of which is why I am here.”

  Paul noted that there was another Oni standing nearby, occasionally growling softly at Paul.

  The wizard waved a nonchalant hand. “In a minute, Kenzo, and I’ll let you go see after your brethren.”

  Turning back to Paul, he said, “My name is Kenneth William McDougall. I am the one who set the trap for you here at the hospital.” McDougall smiled cruelly. “I hadn’t realized it might be such a challenge. I was in the process of investigating that rather large explosion, the one that rattled the entire hospital,” and he turned to point to the huge hole in the floor and at the Oni lying sprawled on top of a pile of rubble below them and then at the other devastation around them, “when you showed up. This is going to take a bit of effort to explain to the Normies, all this damage, but I’m sure Clarke can manage.”

  The wizard waved a hand and the Oni talisman that Paul had taken earlier was forcibly seized from him, flying through the air into McDougall’s hand.

  “I see that you’ve been hard on at least one other of my Oni. Shame on you, Paul. Now, as soon as you tell me where your handicapped wife is located, I can gather up my Oni and we can leave.”

  • • • •

  A general sense of pain and discomfort kept nattering away at the edges of the darkness encompassing her. Plus, there was a buzzing sound around her, like that of ten thousand angry bees.

  She opened her eyes, blinking in surprise at the bits of concrete lying only inches away.

  On her side. Yes. She was definitely lying on her side. And on the floor too, of all places. And there was more debris visible too. Why was that? Where was she?

  Voices. Well, one voice anyway, chattering like a conceited magpie several yards away. Not Paul. Oh, yeah, Paul, right. She knew that name. He was her husband, the sexy, lucky man. But the voice wasn’t his.

  Slowly, she raised her head slightly.

  In front of her were the backs of two people. Oh, wrong again. One was an Oni. The other…

  Her vision wasn’t quite clear. The other was wearing a cloak. Humph. And in this weather too. And it was that person that was doing all the talking. His words weren’t making any sense, because of all the bees still buzzing around…she wished they would quit and go home for the night like all good little bees should…

  The memories of the events in the hospital started coming back to her then, in fits and starts.

  And some of the bees did quit and go home. She knew that because she could suddenly hear what the man was saying.

  “…when you showed up. This is going to take a bit of effort to explain to the Normies, all this damage, but I’m sure Clarke can manage.”

  A wizard. The man was a wizard. Nobody used the word Normie except a wizard of Errabêlu.

  She raised her head a little higher and that was when she saw Paul floating in midair in front of the man who was doing all of the talking. And her husband wasn’t moving. And then she saw an object float through the air, from Paul to the wizard.

  Okay, Paul, the clod, had gotten himself captured. It was a good thing that she was here. Why was it that even good men seemed to be so helpless these days?

  She stirred carefully, not wanting to attract the attention of the wizard or the Oni. Especially not the Oni.

  Her rifle. Where was that? Oh, too far away, on the other side of that chunk of concrete. Ah, yeah, it didn’t have any BBs left anyway. Too bad. But there was still her pistol. Reaching slowly, she confirmed that it was still in her shoulder holster.

  She unclipped it and slipped it out as quietly as possible. Then pushing herself up on one elbow, she unsteadily took the safety off and aimed the gun at the Oni. With that creature’s speed, it would be best to take the Oni beast out first. Then the wizard.

  Oh, and with Paul this close, it was best not to use full power on the fusion spell. She would dial it back some, maybe halfway. She wished she had done that with the Oni here in this corridor. Well, hindsight and all that.

  Squeezing the trigger, she fired twice at the Oni, at its head and then its waist. Then she swung the gun, firing one shot at the wizard that was turning in her direction.

  The three explosions took out both the Oni and McDougall, bowling them over and laying them out on the floor, cold. Both were bleeding. McDougall’s right arm was twisted at an impossible angle.

  The wizard’s spell released, Paul fell to the floor, but part of the shockwave caught him too.

  After the echoes of the blast faded away, he managed to get to his feet, shaking his head to clear out the cobwebs. There, just on the other side of the huge hole in the floor was his wife, propped up on one elbow, smiling at him.

  She raised her pistol to a vertical position and blew a quick puff of air across the end of the barrel.

  “‘This is where I start to have fun!’” he heard her enthusiastically say, quoting from Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.

  SIX

  Bernard A. Mitchell Hospital

  5841 S Maryland Ave.

  Chicago, IL

  June

  Monday 9:45 p.m. CDT

  In one of the treatment rooms, Paul cleaned Capie’s cuts and abrasions with soap and water, then applied Neosporin and bandages. Then it was Capie’s turn, and she treated the second degree burn on Paul’s left leg with hydrocortisone cream. Since both Paul and Capie were using magical spells to reduce the level of pain they felt from their injuri
es, neither one of them was suffering very much.

  “Okay, I admit that it didn’t exactly go according to plan,” Paul noted with a wry smile. “But we do have eight Oni and one wizard we can now question about your father’s location.”

  “We need to round them up first,” Capie added, smirking. “They’re scattered all over the hospital.” She looked downward with a frown. “We did a lot of damage to the hospital. I feel bad about that.”

  “I’ll make sure that a few million dollars is donated by anonymous contributors to compensate for all the damages,” Paul told her with a reassuring smile. “Assuming, that is, if we live long enough. And, speaking of which, if it hadn’t been for you…thanks, dear.” He leaned forward and gathered her in his arms, hugging her tightly. “You saved my bacon and I love you dearly for it, CB.”

  She smiled. “I’ll just add it what you owe me, big boy.” And she snuggled up against him, embracing him tightly and French kissed him so passionately that the world around him faded away and all there was in that moment was her.

  As they each returned to Earth, Capie sighed, touching her forehead to his. “I married the best kisser ever.”

  Reaching out tenderly, Paul caressed her cheek and pulled back a little. “No good deed goes unpunished. Now we get to go interview our prisoners.”

  • • • •

  “Come on, wake up,” the sarcastic voice of Kenneth McDougall ordered. “You’ve had enough sleep.”

  The Oni opened its eyes and struggled to a sitting position in the soft chair it found itself in. It blinked, looking around without comprehension. Its head hurt miserably.

  “Where am I?” it said, slurring the words badly.

  The image of McDougall stood over it, staring down with disapproval. Something about the wizard didn’t look quite right. He seemed sort of insubstantial somehow. But the light in the room was hurting the Oni’s eyes!

  “You’ve had too much to drink, remember? As a reward for capturing those two wizards, I let you and the others drink as much as you wanted. And you downed five bottles! All by yourself. The good stuff too.”