Jack and Jill: Broken Crown: Jack and Jill, #2

JACK AND JILL

Broken Crown

A JACK LANTERN Story

VANCE SMITH

and

AARON MICHAEL SMITH

Copyright 2018 Vance Smith.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Jack and Jill: Broken Crown is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

All Characters and Situations Copyright Vance Smith 2018

Ravania Entertainment and the Ravania Entertainment logo are Copyright 2018 Aaron Michael Smith.

Cover art by Patrick W.E. Smith

Dedication

For the Huggers.

Preface

Happily Ever After

High in the French Alps, a train chugged dutifully on, two dozen passenger cars trailed behind, like glimmering gems in the waning light of evening. Steady and quick the train covered ground, forest and deep drops whizzing by.

Jill Wright sat in one of the passenger cars, dressed in a red jumper over a white shirt. She was wearing blue jeans and red and white runners. Jill’s dark hair hung loose and shoulder length. As she gazed out through the trees the rust-red sunset reflecting in her dark eyes, she played absently with a golden locket that hung from a delicate chain around her neck.

Jill heard the squeak of a trolley wheel and she glanced up the aisle, watching a plump, white-haired woman moving along the way with her cart heavily laden with drinks and snacks.

Jill smiled as the woman reached her.

‘Will you have anything, dear?’ she asked in French.

‘Thank you, no,’ Jill responded in the same language.

The woman with the trolley smiled, nodded, and continued on her way.

Jill looked back out at the sunset.

She sighed. ‘So, pretty,’ she said to herself.

‘English?’ a voice asked behind her.

Jill turned to look and found a youngish man – maybe in his early twenties – looking over the back of the seat at her.

‘Irish,’ Jill responded, smiling at the man.

‘Ah... I’m Canadian,’ the man said, reaching forward to shake Jill’s hand. ‘Lucas Lucas,’ he said as introduction.

‘Lucas Lucas?’ Jill asked, arching an eyebrow. ‘That’s really your name?’

‘Great handle, right?’ Lucas grinned. ‘How about you?’

‘I’m Jill Wright.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Jill Wright,’ Lucas Lucas said, beaming, and then, added, glancing around, ‘I feel a little out of place here... I don’t know French.’

‘I thought all Canadians knew French.’

Lucas laughed. Then he moved around to sit in the empty seat beside Jill. ‘No, no, I’m from the West.’

‘There’s a big divide between East and West?’ Jill wondered.

‘It’s a huge country,’ Lucas said.

‘So?’ Jill asked. ‘If you can’t speak French, what are you doing in France?’

Lucas smirked. Then he leaned closer to Jill. ‘I’m on a mission,’ he said.

Then he winked.

Jill raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘A mission?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, a mission,’ Lucas agreed. Then he chuckled and leaned his head back. ‘You probably wouldn’t believe it if I told you.’

‘Probably not,’ Jill agreed, glancing back to the window. She let out a gasp as she watched a man in a suit tumble by, arms flailing.

He crashed down into some trees as the train hurried along.

Jill looked back to make sure Lucas hadn’t seen it. The young man had his head back, looking forward, grinning.

‘Harmony Grace says there are different rules for different parts of the world. I don’t know how much I can even say, but... oh, if you knew how crazy my life has been over the last two months...’

‘I’ve had quite an interesting two years, myself,’ Jill said, and she glanced out the window again as two more men went tumbling. Then she looked back at Lucas and winced. ‘Erm... do you mind?’

‘Mind?’ Lucas asked.

‘I need to... use the toilet.’

‘Oh, right,’ Lucas said, standing up and letting Jill out. Then he sat back down. ‘I’ll be right here.’

‘All right,’ Jill said, and her eyes flicked to the window as four men went tumbling this time.

She turned and hurried up the aisle.

She knew it, without any doubt... this was her cue.

She hoped he didn’t grump at her for taking too long. Jill left the first car, and broke into a run. She hurried along, on and on, and stopped in the third car down – a deserted car. It was rocking back and forth. There was a cold rush of air. Jill looked up and saw a hole in the roof. There was shouting, grunting, fighting.

Jill grinned.

Barely brushing her powers, she gave herself a boost and jumped up onto the roof of the train, into a battle, and Jack Lantern commanded the stage. Some three dozens of men were attacking the pumpkin-headed man, who was dressed in a dark suit, a white shirt and green tie. Jack was punching and hitting, and throwing fire, sending his assailants flying.

Seemingly, lead amongst the attackers was tall man in a long coat. Not fully Human, the creature had grey-green, scaly skin, a lizard-like face, and golden eyes with a narrow, black pupils. He was a Swampman, one of the many peoples that the wider world didn’t know about. The huge man moved against Jack, his minions stumbling to get out of his way, and swung a massive fist at Jack’s pumpkin-head. Jack let out a groan and his head lolled a little as he dropped to one knee.

Clenching her fists, Jill surged forward with unnatural speed. Forming purple magic around her fists, like supernatural, translucent gloves, she let out with a wave of tremendous power that sent more than a dozen of the attackers flying off the top of the train.

In a moment, Jill was behind the Swampman, who was looming over Jack. Without hesitation, Jill buried a fist into the Swampman’s kidney. With a roar, he reared back, and spun around – flailing, really – Jill moved behind him again, and leapt up, hitting him in the back of the head. The Swampman stumbled forward, and spun again, swinging his fists at Jill. She ducked, but the Swampman moved, kicking her in the stomach, driving her backward.

There was a growl, and Jill watched a seeming blur of movement as Jack threw himself at the Swampman, tackling him to the roof of the train, and burying punches in his lizard face.

Some of the Swampman’s minions made to attack Jill, but she spun, with her hands out, sending waves of energy, and the last of the minions, flying off the train in every direction.

‘Took you long enough!’ Jack howled over the wind and noise, putting more punches into the Swampman’s face.

‘Your signal was terrible! Besides that, you’re not going to give me trouble about that. Do you know how long I’ve been sitting on this train waiting for you? It took you long enough!’

‘Says the girl who left me up here surrounded by one hundred men,’ Jack grumbled, hitting the Swampman in the face with his elbow as the creature tried to get up, with Jack on top of him.

‘There wasn’t one hundred!’ Jill exclaimed.

‘You’re going to argue with me? Right now?’

The Swampman snarled and shifted, grappling with Jack. Jill heard shouts from further along the train, she twisted and saw dozens more goons hurrying toward them. ‘This can’t be good,’ she grumbled as Jack was thrown off the Swampman. He stumbled beside her as the beastly lizard-like humanoid growled, and struggled to stand.

‘Did you find it?’ Jill asked, helping Jack straighten.

The Swampman leapt forward. Jack hit him in the guts twice with enhanced punches and then clobbered him in the head with his elbows, dropping him to a knee.

‘Last car. Jill… you need to hurry,’ Jack urged. ‘He’s already activated it.’

‘Why do I have to go?’ Jill frowned, looking past the Swampman, toward the oncoming horde of bad-guys.

‘You want to trade jobs?’

Jill looked to the Swampman, who was struggling to get up, his left eye becoming puffy, blood running from his slit-like nostrils.

Jill shrugged and then asked, ‘How long do I have?’

‘Five minutes,’ Jack said, his pumpkin face forming into a wide smile. ‘Plenty of time.’

The Swampman was on his feet again, and Jack punched him full in the face, making him stagger back.

‘Don’t have too much fun without me,’ Jill called as she hurried down the top of the train, toward the last car. When she got there, she let energy crackle from her fingertips and blasted a hole in the roof, dropping down into the car. Inside, it was empty, save a large crate in the middle that seemed to be filled with explosives, and strapped to it, was a ticking clock, red with gold bells as the alarm.

‘Classy,’ Jill smiled.

Suddenly, a pair of thugs jumped out from behind the crate and surged forward. One had a crowbar, the other a board with a nail in it. Jill’s mind moved quick and she twisted away from the man with the crowbar, bringing her right arm up and batting the board with the nail in it to the side, as she kicked out at that thug’s knee, snapping his leg the wrong direction. As he fell screaming to the floor, Jill grabbed his board and hit the man with the crow-bar across the face.

He yelped as he dropped like a sack of hammers.

‘Nice,’ Jill said, and she dropped the board.

She looked at the bomb.

Then her eyes widened a little. ‘Oh, Jack!’ she complained.

She moved quick, grabbing the thugs she’d dropped, by their wrists. She held on tight as she leapt, and flew toward one end of the train. Energy crackled form her eyes and the door exploded outward. Jill threw the thugs into the second to last car on the train, and they landed hard. Then she let herself drop to the connections holding the train cars together.

She held a hand to it and let out a little roar as torrents of crackling, purple energy flowed from her hand, melting the metal, and separating the cars.

Jill jumped, drawing magic to herself and pushing it out, toward the last car. She pressed against the magic, holding herself aloft in the air, and pushing the bomb further away from the rest of the train. She didn’t know how much damage that box of explosives would do, and so it was hard to judge just how far away the train had to be before it was safe. When she dared not wait another moment, Jill flung herself to the side, pushing at the air around her and flinging herself higher into the air as the train-car exploded in a tremendous wash of fire and debris.

Something struck Jill and she went tumbling to her right. She tried to stay flying, but got caught up in some evergreen branches and she pitched down further. She slammed into a snowy slope and screamed as she continued down at speed, head over heels.

Flailing in a very undignified way, she hurtled through a snow-bank and the bottom of the slope, and then landed on her stomach, sliding – starfish style – across frosty pavement, before she came to a stop.

‘Ow,’ Jill groaned, as she rolled onto her back and looked into the ever dimming sky. She sat up as headlights washed over her. A stunning green Rolls Royce drove up to her and stopped. The driver’s door opened and a tall, thin man, in a black suit with long tails stepped out.

Jill saw Orson Pride’s pale face, the two points of light glowing in dark eye sockets. A little smile formed on Orson’s lipless mouth. He looked up at the flaming wreck far above on the train tracks. Jill joined his gaze and winced. She saw Orson’s attention turn, and she followed it, noticing a snow-crawler with an orange cab and wide tracks, thundering down the snowy mountainside.

Jill couldn’t help smiling when she noticed Jack behind the controls of the crawler, the Swampman he’d been fighting lashed to the front of the vehicle.

‘He must have had the timing perfect if he had that contraption waiting for him,’ Orson said to himself, impressed. Then he turned to Jill, who was sitting on the road, her hands behind her, bracing her.

Orson’s pale head canted to one side. ‘I see you’ve already handled everything, Jill Wright.’

‘I just helped Jack,’ Jill beamed.

‘And… in the nick of time, too,’ Orson added.

Jill grinned at the Poltergeist. ‘Orson… You sound surprised,’ she said with a note of humour.

Orson Pride shook his head, and his pale, white, silk-like skin seemed to ripple a little, like it had caught the breeze. ‘Oh no,’ he told Jill, a broad smile forming on his lipless mouth. ‘There was never any doubt.’

Chapter One

The Council Calls

The flight back to Dublin didn’t take long. The Council of Eternals had provided Orson with a jet. Jack had seethed for most of the trip, keeping an eye on their unconscious captive. Jill had chatted with Orson, who seemed invested in telling her of his latest adventure he’d gone on for the government.

It was as exciting and daring as Jill had come to expect from the man.

‘So, in the end, it turned out they were living underground, and because of that...