Titans of Chaos

"Amelia Windrose, how do you do?" "Vanity Fair." "Victor Invictus Triumph, sir." "Call meNemo." "Randy Johnson Willie Joystick, but friends call me Dick."

He looked up. "Vanity Fair? Like the magazine?"

Vanity smiled brightly. "They named a magazine after me? This is a wonderful country!"

The expression in his eyes was hidden. "You kids make those names up?"

Quentin said, "Actually, we did. The North Wind sent us. We're here to see Archer."

The guy looked back down at his checklist. "I'm sorry, your names, made up or not, are not on mylist. The Bull's-Eye Club is invitation only. Next!"

Vanity said, "But we have an invitation! Boreas said he sent word ahead."

"Next!"

I said in my best Headmaster Boggin voice, "See here, young man! We are here to see Mr. Archer,and we have no intention of leaving without seeing him!"

The two guys behind us (one of whom had a ring both in his nostril and in his lip) started toshoulder forward, but Victor stood in the way. They made the mistake of deciding to manhandlehim, grabbing at his shoulder and elbow. There was a loud snap of noise and a smell of ozone, andthe two men jumped back, yowling and swearing.

Colin turned toward them, gritting his teeth, and his hair started to stand up, and his face to growdark. Quentin tapped his walking stick on the ground, and a dark shadow began to stream fromhis feet and swell across the sidewalk and up the building.

"Troops!" I said sharply. "Stand down! The Dark Mistress has not given the word yet!"

This drew some hoots and murmurs from the crowd around us. We were suddenly the center ofattention.

The guy with the rings in his nose and lip said, "Hey! He's got a stun gun! He shocked us! I'mcalling the cops!"

A voice from the crowd called out, "The cops'll just kick your ass, man. This is L. A."

I did not see the fast-moving molecular packages leave Victor's body and enter the nervoussystems of the two men behind us, but I noticed the sudden snarl of moral forces in the area as theangry young men behind us suddenly looked sleepy and forgetful.

To Victor I hissed, "I said stand down! Or you'll see a court-martial, I swear to you, VictorTriumph!"

"Yes, Leader," said Victor.

The Merry Man with the clipboard asked me carefully, "Did he just call you 'Leader' ?"

At that moment, another man came over, stepping briskly. I assume from the way the Merry Manwordlessly deferred to him that he was a member of the staff, or maybe he just got out of the waybecause the guy was huge and heavily armed.