Dial H for Heroics

After lunch was done, the kitchen cleaned and the food stored for later in an

improvised ice box, Jack had the shutters closed on the windows and put a lock on the door. He fashioned four keys. He kept one and gave the other three to Josie, Elaine, and Beatrice.

He gave Elaine most of the silver he was carrying. He just needed enough to buy a couple of pints up at Accordly. She made a note of the amount in her notebook.

“All right,” said Jack. “I feel I should give some kind of pep talk, but I don’t know what I should say.”

“That’s a first,” said Josie. “Look out for each other, avoid trouble, don’t be afraid to stab someone if you have to. If you get into trouble, we’ll come looking for you.”

“Is this how a dad feels sending his ducklings out into the world for the first time?,” asked Jack.

Elaine said nothing, but Beatrice rolled her eyes. She shook her head.

“We’ll be back either later tonight, or tomorrow, depending on if we can track these lights down,” said Jack. “See if you guys can start teaching the others about letters and reading. They’re going to need it sometime. Basic mathematics too.”

“Is there anything else, milord?,” asked Beatrice. The sarcasm dripped in her voice.

“I would really like a good apple pie if you can find one,” said Jack. “I didn’t see any bakeries around.”

“We’ll keep an eye open, sir,” said Elaine.

“All right,” said Jack. “I can’t think of anything else.”

“Keep an eye out on things we might have to fix,” said Josie. “It doesn’t have to be another ongoing struggle, but we can look at smaller problems easily enough.”

“Yes, missus,” said Elaine.

“You can call us by our names,” said Josie. “We’re not lords of the land.”

“Not yet,” said Jack. He grinned. “See you tonight.”

He touched his watch and a bird started climbing. He turned and headed over the wall, heading north.

“Show off,” said Josie. She shook her head. “Be careful. We’ll see you tonight.”

She ran along the wall, touching her watch. She turned into a bird and flew after her companion.

“They are very strange,” said Beatrice.

“I know,” said Elaine. “Let’s get our ducklings marching. We have a lot of walking ahead of us unless we can hire a cart to take us around.”

Jack glided on the wind, vectoring in on Accordly. He enjoyed flying. It was the best ability the watch gave him.

He descended as the counter started down the last ten seconds. He dropped down just a few feet above the ground when he changed back. He smiled as Josie landed perfectly and expanded out of her bird form.

“Why did we fly up here?,” said Josie. “Didn’t you say you had a speedster form?”

“Makkari,” said Jack. “He’s an Eternal that impersonated two other heroes, Hurricane and Mercury. Marvel combined them into Makkari and put him on a team of monster hunters led by Bloodstone. I think Doctor Druid and the Black Panther’s aunt were also on the team.”

“The Black Panther has an aunt?,” said Josie.

“Yep,” said Jack. “She was retconned in as a character set in the fifties and sixties when Druid and Strange were starting their careers as masters of the mystic arts.”

“Sounds cool,” said Josie. “Why did we fly up here instead of using super speed?”

“Because I like to fly,” said Jack. “Let’s walk in and see if we can settle this one quest. The Arr Arr Ay Ess wants us to hurry things up.”

“The Arr Arr Ay Ess?,” asked Josie.

“The Robby Reed Appreciation Society,” said Jack. He headed for the rock that marked the border of the town. “They gave me a stern talking to in a dream last night. They said they would call back.”

“So you decided to avoid sleep,” said Josie.

“I would never do that,” lied Jack. “I love sleep more than most.”

“All right,” said Josie. “But you’re going to have to sleep sometime. The human body is not designed to go without it.”

“I’m good for another thirty hours,” said Jack. “There’s the town. What do you

think?”

“It looks innocent enough, but it could be something out of King country under the facade,” said Josie. “We’ll probably find a killer clown somewhere down there.”

“I hope not,” said Jack. “I’m afraid of clowns.”

“Really?,” asked Josie.

“Ever since that thing at the carnival,” said Jack.

“We were six,” said Josie.

“Some wounds never heal,” said Jack. He headed for town. He checked his watch as he went. It seemed to be charging faster as he passed the rock. He wondered why.

He led the way to the center of town. He turned in a circle. What was going on here? He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“I don’t see anything either,” said Josie. “We need to walk around, maybe spotcheck with special abilities.”

“I already used the Vision,” said Jack. “I didn’t see anything then.”

“It could be sporadic,” said Josie. “We might not see anything until whatever

happens, happens.”

“We might be too late if that happens,” said Jack. “There’s an inn over there. Maybe we can hang around and eavesdrop.”

“Do you mind if I try Zatanna?,” said Josie.

“No,” said Jack. “Go ahead.”

Josie touched her watch. She took on her hero form, raising her hands. A flame shaped like a bird took to the air. She started after it.

“That’s pretty neat,” said Jack. “What did you do?”

“I created a detection spell and told it to look for what we want to find,” said Josie. “We’re going to have to hurry if we want the spell to stay active long enough. It’s draining the watch slowly but surely.”

“Got you covered,” said Jack. He touched his watch. Makkari appeared. He grabbed Josie and sped after the flame. The bird landed in a circle of stones outside the town. They let their hero forms fade away as they looked around.

“Got a half charge still,” said Josie.

“Barely used mine at all,” said Jack. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Josie. “Some kind of magic circle?”

“Reminds me of Stonehenge,” said Jack. “Let’s say that’s what we got here. Does magic other than us work here?”

“Snidely didn’t seem to think so, but he could be wrong,” said Josie. “Wizards might just want to stay away from people while they experiment on poor helpless owlbears.”

Jack considered the circle. He looked back at the town. He could barely see it through the trees.

“Could this be something natural?,” said Jack.

“Sure,” said Josie. “It could be a volcano. It’s sitting here, pointed at the town.

Something happens. Town is wiped.”

“I wish we had an expert so if we start tearing this up, we’d have some idea on what would happen,” said Jack. “I don’t want to trigger the thing we’re trying not to trigger.”

“Give me a second, and I’ll call Zatanna back and see if I can pick up anything,” said Josie. “Should be a snap.”

“All right,” said Jack. “It would be okay to get this done. I don’t like that Princess Lorelei and the Dark Rider are both up north. It’s too big a coincidence if you ask me.”

“Someone using her to get him somehow?,” asked Josie.

“Don’t know,” said Jack. “But the Society said he hadn’t been called from his crypt yet. Something like that usually involves a sacrifice.”

“I can do another scrying spell, but it will totally crap out before we get close enough to see the end,” said Josie. “And I can’t just take us there since I don’t know where we’re supposed to go.”

“It’s the same with Makkari,” said Jack. “I can run up there, but where would I get started looking. Elaine has to come through for us.”

“She will,” said Josie. “She seems a lot more suited to save the world than us.”

“I’m not giving up my watch,” said Jack. “The Society did say that Mister Warner was supposed to use the watches, and not us.”

“He’s older than dirt,” said Josie. She checked her watch. “Would he even know what to do?”

“Apparently they have been using him for a while,” said Jack. “He refused the call this time.”

“He may have wanted to retire from fixing their problems for them,” said Josie.

“Everyone gets tired of bad jobs eventually.”

“That’s true,” said Jack. “I wonder if one of my guys could help. Doctor Druid might give us something.”

“Let me try mine first,” said Josie. “We might need yours if something bad happens.”

“Something bad?,” asked Jack.

“Like me setting this off,” said Josie. She waved her hands at the ruins around them.

“All right,” said Jack. “Don’t take any risks. I’m not explaining anything to your

mom.”

“You better,” said Josie. “You owe me.”

Jack waved his arms at the forest surrounding them instead of the small city they lived in. He made a face like are you kidding me.

“This doesn’t count and you know it,” said Josie. “This has nothing to do with me.”

“Okay,” said Jack. “But I refuse to talk to your mom.”

“You still owe me,” said Josie. “I invoke the debt.”

“You owe me more,” said Jack. “Bathroom with plumbing.”

“That wasn’t for me,” said Josie. “And I could have made my own bathroom as soon as I found a place to move in.”

“I am not talking to your mom,” said Jack. “I refuse on the grounds that it isn’t my problem.”

“Jack, so help me,” said Josie. “I will punch you in the noggin.”

“Your mom hates me, Jo,” said Jack. He looked at the ground. “I would rather you just wrote her a letter I can deliver if I make it back home.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Josie said. She tried on a smile that didn’t last. “She just blames you for how I turned out.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” said Jack.

“She wanted a Pollyanna, she got Joan Jett,” said Josie. “See, I could be a bard here if I had a guitar.”

“Okay,” said Jack. “I doubt rock and roll will ever be popular here.”

“You never know,” said Josie. She checked her watch. “Let’s see if I can figure out what’s going on here so we can sort this out and get back to Hawk Ridge.”

She called on her main magician form. She summoned a book of knowledge and let it do the work, reading between the lines as it went. She frowned as she dismissed the book, and switched the hero off for later use.

“This is a summoning circle,” she said. “It looks like Snidely was wrong about magic not being around.”

“Break it down for me,” said Jack. He looked out at the lake, thinking about fishing and boating, and how the lake was keeping the towns around it alive.

“This ruin is part of a network,” said Josie. She looked around. “Magic energy is being fed into that network by natural collection. Eventually it will summon

something to attack the town. I just don’t know what. And I don’t know if we can deal with it. My spell indicates it will be something big.”

“The people I talked to down the road don’t know anything about this,” said Jack. “I expect they would be more excited if they knew that something was coming out of the lake that might reach into their towns.”

“They might not know,” said Josie. “The network is old. And the flow is low. The only reason it’s a problem for us now is because the bowl is almost full.”

“How do we empty it?,” asked Jack.

“We would have to rewrite the circle into doing something else,” said Josie. “Maybe we could burn off what it’s collected if we had another spell handy.”

“Maybe some kind of weather spell, or something,” said Jack. “Either way, it’s going to be bad on the people on the lake.”