Author's Note: All the factual errors and irreverent comments Amy makes when she talks about history or literature are completely intentional. This is what happens when people don't like to learn. Let me know in the reviews if you get the "sitting on a park bench/eying girls with bad intent" reference. If you don't, I'll explain it in the next chapter. ~GwF

XX. The Most Powerful Warlock in Brooklyn.

"What about Mom?" I demanded. "What about George? What about the house? Say someone breaks in—"

"Take a deep breath before you hyperventilate, Amy," Sarah cut in. How could she be so calm? "I wouldn't worry too much. I think everyone in the neighborhood save the two of us and apparently my brother (wherever he went) is out cold and not likely to wake anytime soon. Break-ins are therefore highly improbable."

"Stop talking like a book," I grumbled.

She carried on as if she hadn't heard me. "Just in case, why don't you stop by the Gaunts and see if they can keep an eye on the place while we're gone."

The Gaunts' house was even bigger and fancier than George's.

All the curtains of the windows were apparently drawn. I could see no movement from inside as I approached.

The wrought-iron gate was locked, so I ambled over to the short stone wall separating George's yard from theirs and vaulted over it, just as I had a million times before.

I don't know what made Sarah think the Gaunts might be awake despite the rest of the neighborhood snoozing away. As I learned more, it would make more sense to me. But I'm still not sure what exactly tipped her off about them.

See, cousin dear? I thought. They're asleep too.

But when I turned around to go back, I felt this weird tugging feeling at the back of my head, almost as if…as if a younger sibling were pulling my hair and whispering in my ear, "Finish the job, Amy."

"Fine then, Jenny," I muttered. I walked up to the front steps of the Gaunt mansion.

A little square of bright orange on the fine Arabian doormat caught my eye. Bending down, I could see it was a Post-It with a note scratched on it. I recognized the sloppy handwriting (even sloppier than mine) as John's:

Mom and Phil and I are out battling the forces of evil. BRB. ~John G.

On most days I would've been like "Dude, you're not one for practical jokes. Did Eric put you up to this?"

But I only had to look around at all the sleeping people to know he wasn't kidding.

Sarah, meantime, had been packing, busy as a beaver (but don't say that to her).

I pawed through the backpack she handed to me. "A change of clothes? Flashlight? Vitamin water? Energy bars? What're we doing, looking for the Polar Express like Lewis and Bart?"

"Their names were Lewis and Clark and they were looking for the Northwest Passage." She straightened up. "Amy, we have no idea what's out there. We need to be prepared for…anything. Scary as what we saw this morning was, we might see worse before the day is done."

"Scary as in 'what everyone thinks is scary' or scary as in 'what Sarah Blackwood thinks is scary'?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

"A lot of things you think are scary are considered 'hot' by the general population."

"I'd never deny that volcanos are hot, but most people think they're scary too."

"That wasn't what I meant by 'hot'."

Sarah groaned as she grabbed some cold cuts and veggies from the fridge and started dropping them into Ziploc bags. "I know where your mind is."

"Do you think Itex had anything to do with this?" I asked, gesturing at the window and the scene outside.

"They're a research company, right?" Her voice was deliberately flat.

"They're not just any research company…they're the evil research company that created the Flock of Bird Kids."

"You shouldn't put stock in urban legends and media hype. No such creatures exist."

I stood on my tiptoes and got right in her face. "How can you say that? And they're not 'creatures'. They're people. You met one. You looked in his eyes and talked with him."

"Amy, how is this relevant to the current problem?"

"Try to contact Fang. Write something on his blog. I know he'll help you."

Sarah sighed deeply like she was trying hard to control her temper. "If you think it'll do any good, you go do that. But I've got better things to do than calling on the aid of an imaginary character. God only knows what's happening to my brother right now. You have a jackknife?"

While she gathered any last minute first aid supplies, I went into George's study.

There it hung on the wall, between two bookshelves and behind his desk and chair: the honorary samurai sword that Blackwood's dad had picked up in his days as a Marine during World War II.

I stood on the chair and gingerly lifted the sword from the pegs it rested on.

The thing was covered in dust. Nobody had touched it in years. Sarah told me later it was a ceremonial possession and old James Blackwood wouldn't have even used it in combat, which was pretty lame, because it was a good-looking weapon.

I unsheathed it, super-slow so I wouldn't slice off my arm or anything. The blade was all rusted, as you'd expect.

The sword made me feel unexplainably great. I held it up dramatically to admire it. I felt like I could be a warrior, the next Noah of Arc or something.

"Can we take this?" I asked Sarah when she came in, well aware that I sounded like a little kid begging her mom for a puppy.

She frowned. "An unfortunate side effect of carrying conspicuous weapons around is that everyone who meets you assumes you know how to use them—"

"Stop talking like a book," I cut in. People tell me I'm kind of rude that way. "Won't we need it?"

"I hope we won't. I hope we won't have to use any of the weapon-like items I packed."

"But why? If we're going into mortal danger, we might as well have some fun and kick some butt while we're at it."

"Have you never heard of Gandhi?"

"I read about him in school. He was this bald guy from India who walked a lot."

"To think this generation will run the world someday," she grumbled. "Amy, Gandhi forced the English and their corruption out of India using peace and nonviolence. He changed the world without ever raising a hand to strike his enemies."

I laid the sword on George's desk and studied the patterns in its rust. "Peace and nonviolence sounds really boring."

"You're hopeless."

"Well, it was your bright idea that we arm ourselves, remember? Make up your mind! Either we're ready to face anything, or we just sit around making daisy chains and singing 'All We Are Saying Is Give Peace A Chance' while the city collapses around us. Take your pick."

Sarah sank into George's armchair.

"You have a point," she said at last. "We have no clue what we're dealing with. It is probably malicious. Some things cannot be reasoned with, and resisting them nonviolently will only get us turned into remarkably large, charred pieces of toast. We're of no use to Ron or anyone else that way." She got up and walked restlessly out of the room. "Take the sword, Amy, but put it in your backpack so…sentient life-forms can't see it."

….

The walk from the house to Central Park was obviously one of the most eerie experiences of my life up to that point—and I'd seen some strange things before, let me tell you.

Sarah and I didn't say anything on the walk. Each was lost in her own thoughts.

She'd told me earlier going to Central Park was God's idea that had slipped into her head as she prayed. From there maybe we could figure out where Ron had gone.

I wasn't sure how safe it was to pin our survival on a prayer, but I didn't have any better ideas, so for now I went along with it.

….

Sarah sat Buddha-style under a tree in Central Park, eyes closed, hands palms up on her knees. I guess she was looking for more divine guidance. I sat facing her, tearing blades of grass. At every sound I twitched.

The back of my neck prickled, and I knew we were being watched.

On a bench sat a long human figure, dressed in black, sitting up alert.

"Sarah? Someone else is awake too."

"What sort of 'someone else'?"

"Looks human. I think it's a guy."

"What's he doing?"

"Sitting on a park bench."

"Eying us girls with bad intent?"

"I…don't…think…so…" I started to shiver.

She dared one of those weird smiles of hers. "It was a joke, Amy."

"This is no time for jokes!"

"Sometimes you need to joke in a stressful situation. It might be what keeps you sane."

"Whatever. I don't get it."

She opened her eyes and stood up, brushing the grass and dirt off her long cargo shorts. "Should we go investigate?"

"Why are you awake, children of Adam?" asked someone behind her—a smooth male voice with a golden tone and a snarky delivery.

I jumped about thirty feet in the air. Sarah's eyes nearly leapt out of her skull, but she regained her composure by the time she turned to face him.

"How kind of you, sir," she said flatly. "We were just about to go find you, but you've spared us the trouble."

He stood over six feet high and probably weighed about 115 pounds. He wore glittery black skinny jeans and a bright purple v-neck t-shirt. The t-shirt had a picture of a pale boy with combed-over dark hair in a business suit and the caption was in silver letters: FOWL 2012.

I had to crane my neck to look upon the stranger's face. He had a golden glow to his skin, and longish jagged black hair with rainbow highlights. His features were quite lovely, but his kohl-lined eyes were weird—huge, round but slanted, yellow-green, with rectangular pupils and no whites. These were cat eyes, not human eyes. He looked about eighteen or nineteen years old.

Sarah told me later that she thought he looked like a freak. However I'm the type who likes Bill Kaulitz, Andy Biersack, Pete Wentz, Adam Lambert, and thought Freddie Mercury looked great back when he had long hair and no mustache—so of course I considered this mystery guy incredibly hot.

"Um, hi," I stammered. "Why did you call us 'children of Adam'?"

He leaned against the tree, dragging his fingers through his hair. His nails were painted metallic green-gold to match his eyes and he wore a lot of rings that glittered in the early morning sun.

"Don't distress yourself over it. It's just a fancy word for 'humans.'"

Sarah studied him. Next to him even she looked short. "What would we be if not human?"

"Any number of things." He waved his hand dismissively. "You could be djinn, faeries, naiads, dryads, vampires, demigods, Nephilim, werewolves…"

"Then how can you tell we're human?" I interrupted.

"Let's say I see things like that clearly. Sometimes—once in a century or two—I'm wrong."

"What are you?" She'd made her voice even deeper again. I'd noticed she did that whenever she felt threatened.

He smirked. "I am the most powerful warlock in Brooklyn."

"Whatcha doin' in Manhattan, then?" I asked.

"None of your business," he shot back, not looking at me.

He'd been studying Sarah, the way that people often looked at her when they were trying to figure out if she was a boy or a girl. Now his eyes turned to me and they began to glow. I wondered what that meant.

"Where are my manners?" he mused. He outstretched a hand toward me. "My name is Magnus Bane. What do they call you?"

"Uh…I'm Amy Porter, and this is my cousin, Sarah." We shook hands. I could feel his energy running faster than human blood under the skin of his palm.

He looked at her, perplexed. "Sarah? That isn't the first name that came to mind…ah, I'm no one to talk."

She ignored the insult. "If you're the most powerful warlock in Brooklyn, can you tell us what happened to the city during the night?"

Magnus' eyes slid toward the Empire State Building. "Morpheus sent the whole mortal population to sleep on the orders of Kronos."

At the word "Kronos" the air around us got a bit colder, and the shadows seemed longer.

"They've been waiting eons for this," he continued. "Demons, monsters, Titans, giants…their revenge will destroy them too, but they don't know that yet."

"Who's Kronos?" I asked.

Magnus eased his long frame to the ground. "Sit down, girls. I suppose I must tell you the long, sad tale of Tartarus rising, and it might take a few hours."

Please review! And while you're at it, check out this Fiction Press story: Saving Discandor by Ninja Pirate from the Future, known here on FF as girlreadsalot. Here's the link: s/3031278/1/Saving_Discandor. It's a medieval fantasy with a modern protagonist, so check it out if you like Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, The Pendragon Adventure, or the Inheritance Cycle. Check it out even if you don't like those books; I think it's very good. ~GwF