[Twenty-Sided Sorceress 01.0] Justice Calling

by Annie Bellet

  Now that I was saying it all aloud it made even more sense than it had in my head as I ran through my ideas on the drive back to my shop.

  “The full moon, the ley-line node, and a fresh, healthy shifter to power whatever he’s doing out there tonight… Well, put it together and you’ve got really bad news. He might be able to tap into the node from there and create some kind of permanent conduit. After that, and considering how he views your kind as walking batteries, you’ll have a serious problem.”

  “Yes,” Alek said. “But we can stop him tonight, before the moon rises. Make him undo what he has done. And then I’ll kill him.”

  “Wait, what’s this ‘we’, white man?” I said. “I am not going with you. And don’t you dare drag Levi and Harper along either. They nearly got caught in one of this guy’s traps today. You have training, experience. They don’t. Right now this guy is pretty much just a human. You should be able to handle that.” Though we had no idea how many minions he had left. Two were out of commission. Were there more? I shoved the thought into the not my problem file.

  “Why not come with me? You have power and you can help stop him—do your protection thing and tell me if he’s undoing his magic.”

  “No. I’m leaving town before I get us all killed.” He’d been right when he told me the night before that I would tell him the truth. He already knew what I was. What did it matter if he knew the rest? “I’m here in Wylde because I thought the ley lines and the abundance of shifters and other magic users would hide me. But it was only going to work as long as I didn’t use my own magic. All those horror stories you hear about sorcerers? They aren’t really about the rest of us, few as we are. They are about one man and he’s probably on his way here right now to destroy me and anyone I care about.”

  “Then I will fight him with you, in exchange for your help on this current matter.” Alek looked skeptical, and his shrug was overly casual.

  I laughed, the sound raw and ugly. I could have left it at that; he didn’t need to understand, after all. I didn’t need to change his mind. But I wanted him to know the truth—it was weirdly important to me that he see I was right, that I couldn’t stay, how badly I had to run. It wasn’t only terror making me go; it was the only way anyone would survive.

  “Wolf, show him,” I said softly, looking over at where my guardian was flopped on the floor by my dresser. Alek gave me a strange look, which was fair, since as far as he could see I was talking to an empty patch of carpet.

  Then he gasped and his hand slid to his gun as Wolf chose to become visible. She was all black, the size of a pony, with a wolf’s head and ears, a body like a tiger’s, giant paws with retractable claws like a lynx’s, and the long, thick tail of a snow leopard. Her eyes were the black of a perfect night sky with no moon, their depths endless and full of tiny stars.

  “Undying,” he murmured, and for a moment I thought he might bow or something. “She is with you?” He looked at me with something like awe on his face.

  Wolf was a spirit guardian, what some called the Undying. The legend went that they were the guards of the beings that had become the human’s gods. I don’t really know about that, since Wolf doesn’t talk to me and certainly doesn’t share any secrets of the universe with me.

  “I guess so. My cousins dropped me down a mine shaft as a bad joke when I was four. I was hurt and terrified, but then Wolf showed up. She stopped the pain and carried me out. Been with me ever since.” I stood up and went to her. “But that isn’t what I wanted you to see.” I touched her belly where a stark white line of scar tissue broke up the perfect darkness of her fur.

  “Samir, the sorcerer after me, he did that to her last time I ran from him.”

  “He scarred an Undying?” Alek gave a low whistle.

  “He’s been gathering power and eating the hearts of any rivals since back when a guy named Jesus told the meek they’d inherit the earth,” I said. “Now do you see? You want me to help you stop the magical equivalent of a drunk driver while I’m telling you I need to get the hell out of here before I bring down a world-ending meteor on our heads.”

  Wolf butted me with her head and then disappeared. No idea what she meant by that gesture, as usual. I chose to ignore the feeling of unhappiness I got from it.

  “So you will keep running from him.” Alek’s tone made it clear that wasn’t a question. “Until when?” That was probably rhetorical.

  I ignored his tone. “Until I’m strong enough to fight him.”

  “And you grow stronger while you run away?” Alek said in a tone I was starting to really hate.

  “I don’t know. He’s evil, Alek, and he hates me with an obsessive rage. He hunted me down after I failed to kill him the first time, used my family to lure me out. He would have killed all of us if I hadn’t run.” Tears sprang to my eyes and I curled my hands into fists. “He killed them. Because of me.”

  Technically, they’d killed themselves after he’d captured and tortured them and then hooked them up to a bomb. I could still hear Ji-hoon’s last words telling me not to come, telling me to flee as far and as fast as I could. Could hear the sound of the bomb as the four of them decided they would rather give their lives by setting the device off than let Samir take me as well.

  “You tried to kill him?”

  “Dammit. Yes. I found out he wasn’t really my lover or my friend. He was using me, fattening up my magic by training me and helping me be more powerful so he could make a tastier meal of me later. So yeah, I tried to kill him. I failed, okay? Twice. And now, this is my life. I run away so that I can live. So that my friends here can live.”

  “I understand,” he said. His voice had gone cold and quiet. “I will go stop this warlock myself.”

  He turned and walked to the door, throwing it open as he dropped his soundproofing ward. Then he hesitated and looked back at me.

  “You survive,” he said. “Not live. You are not living, Jade Crow.”

  “Fuck you,” I yelled after him. I didn’t need his judgment. Anger would have been better than the disappointment in his face. Better than those words, words so close to the ones my own heart whispered to me in the dead hours of the night sometimes.

  I stumbled into the bathroom and saw the medallion sitting on the counter where I’d apparently forgotten it the night before. I shoved it into a drawer. I turned the water on as hot as I could stand and scrubbed at my hands until no more blood stained them. Then I splashed water on my face until I could look into the mirror and pretend I didn’t look like a mess.

  Levi and Harper were still in the shop, alone. I let out my breath with a huff of relief. At least Alek had made them stay here.

  “That guy told us the truth,” Levi said. “His name really is Bernard Barnes and he’s a professor of Religious Studies at Juniper.”

  “Well, I guess that’s good,” I said. My brain was already inventorying the place, trying to decide what I would take with me and what I would leave. I’d have to leave most of it.

  “He said you weren’t going to help,” Harper said. She came around from behind the counter and stood, hands on her hips, looking at me with accusing green eyes.

  “I’d get in the way,” I said.

  “That’s what he said about us.” Harper shook her head.

  “He’s right, Harper. He’s a Justice. They are like super-shifters, right? That’s what you guys told me. Your Council of Nine sent him here to fix things. So let him do his job.”

  “She’s right,” Levi said, his voice rough but soft. “Let’s go, Harper.”

  I was glad to have support from his quarter, but it surprised me. I squinted at him. “Where are you going?”

  “To see Mom at Dr. Lake’s. Max is with her. If that’s okay with you?” She said the last part with an exaggerated sneer.

  Fuck. My last conversation with my best friend was going to be a fight. Totally awesomesauce. Not.

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. I went to her and tried to give her a hug.

&
nbsp; She stepped back. “See you later,” she said. Levi was already half out the door.

  “Bye, guys,” I whispered as the door chimes rang.

  How do you leave a home? If the third time was supposed to be the charm, one would think I’d have this down by now.

  I locked up my shop and went back upstairs. A couple pairs of jeans, the few teeshirts I hadn’t bled on and destroyed in the last couple days, socks, underclothes, my Pikachu footie pajamas. I didn’t take any of my posters or figurines, but I did pack my dice bag. I knew wherever I went, I could probably find gamers. We are legion, after all.

  I did my dishes and vacuumed all the floors. I was walking out on my lease, so I figured the least I could do was clean up the place a bit. I looked around. This was my life. And now it was over. Again.

  I walked down into the shop and flicked on a light. My orc miniatures sat on the counter, primed and ready for paint to bring them to life. I could almost hear the echo of my friends’ laughter from the back room where the game table stood empty, could smell the traces of a hundred pizza deliveries and spilled soda pop. The concrete floors were scuffed around the counter where Harper’s combat boots always left marks when she stood there for hours on end chatting away with me while playing Hearthstone on her laptop.

  I walked behind the counter and took a single framed picture off the wall. It was the only thing I still had from my last real home, twenty years ago.

  It was just a pen sketch. Four figures done up comic-book style and a small Korean signature in red ink at the bottom. Ji-hoon, one of my surrogate parents, had been an illustrator for Marvel back in the Comics Bronze Age of the late seventies and eighties. He’d done a family portrait for me as a high school graduation present.

  There was Kayla with her usual side ponytail and giant smile. Sophie with her 1980s punk band Mohawk and one hand flipping off the artist. Todd with his hair over his forehead, his oversized glasses, and his favorite Pi teeshirt on. Ji-hoon with his carefully cut black hair, and slight stature that he always exaggerated in self-portraits. And an awkward girl named Jessica Carter with waist-length black hair, big cheekbones, and a huge glowing D20 pendant around her neck.

  That had been me. I’d been Jade Crow when I was born. Then Jessica Carter to my second family. Jade Crow again to my third.

  I didn’t know who I would be next. I just wanted to be myself, whoever that was. But I’d chosen the wrong boyfriend in college, and any normal life after that was game over for me. Alek had been right about that. I had to be in survival mode, always. I’d forgotten that truth these last few years, making a home here in Wylde.

  I’d been stupid.

  “And this, kids, is why we can’t have nice things,” I said to the picture before tucking it into my duffle bag.

  I looked around again. Dammit. I didn’t want to leave. Maybe my car wouldn’t start and I’d be stuck. Maybe Samir had given up on me. The last time he’d gotten anywhere near me that I knew of was over a decade ago. Maybe he wasn’t still looking for my magical signature, waiting to trap me. Maybe he was dead.

  Fat fucking chance.

  I had to leave. Tonight. Putting it off would make leaving tougher. My friends were pissed at me. I was pissed at me. Would using more magic to help Alek have been so awful?

  I wasn’t sure. I didn’t trust what I might do if faced with a choice between saving Rose and Ezee and letting them die.

  Alek had said his vision showed me standing at a crossroads between shifters dying and living. I’d killed one shifter, a man whose name I might never know. It didn’t matter that it was a mercy killing. I didn’t want to kill anyone.

  Lies. I wanted to kill Samir. Sometimes I dreamed terrible and explicit revenge fantasies when I couldn’t sleep on the worst nights. I wanted to rain hell upon him in the worst way. And yet. He had a couple thousand years of practice on me and only in my deepest nightmares did I even speculate how many sorcerers and human mages he’d eaten over the millennia. There was no way I’d ever be strong enough to face him.

  And you grow stronger while you run away? Alek’s words ran through my mind.

  I hadn’t grown stronger. The magic I had used in the last two days felt pretty weak to me. My power was still there, but I’d grown out of shape, out of practice. I was getting weaker.

  “All the more reason you can’t stay,” I said aloud to the accusing silence. Maybe I was a coward, but I’d be an alive coward. And my friends would be safe. I was doing the right thing.

  I sighed and wondered whom I was trying to convince, standing here arguing with myself in my head about a decision that only had one good answer where everyone got to go on living.

  Survive. You are not living, Jade Crow. Alek’s words in my head again.

  Footsteps raced up the street outside, distracting me from my stupid inner turmoil, and I was already turning toward the door when Max, Harper’s little brother, ran into it and started yelling my name.

  I unlocked the door and Max nearly fell into my arms as he burst through, talking rapidly.

  “Woah there, buddy. Slow down. Who took Rose?” I tried to parse his rushed sentences.

  “Harper and Levi,” he said. “They came by a while ago, said I should go get some coffee. I went out and when I got back nobody was there. They took Mom. I thought I should run to you cause your phone just goes to voicemail and no one is picking up and I don’t know where they are.”

  “I do,” I muttered, thinking hard. Levi had definitely given in too easily. “Idiot.”

  “Me?”

  “No, not you. Me. I should have known they’d go after Alek. They’re going to try to fight the guy who did that to your mom and force him to undo it.”

  “Good,” Max said.

  “What? No. Not good.” They were going to go get in the way at best, and at worst get Alek killed if he was distracted trying to protect them. They’d get everyone killed, or enslaved and paralyzed, and universe knew what else. Fucking toast on a stick.

  I had to stop them. Or save them. I couldn’t just leave now.

  Besides, I really did want to fight something. Bernard Barnes wasn’t Samir, but he was a start.

  Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling me it was time to stop running.

  “All right, Universe,” I said, glaring up at the ceiling. “Message received.”

  “What are you going to do?” Max said as he followed me up the steps and into my apartment.

  “I know sort of where they were going, but we don’t have the map. So I have to cast a spell on this medallion I took off one of the evil minions so we can track the person who made it, who I bet is the guy your sister and Levi went after, and so we can stop him from killing everyone before the moon hits zenith.”

  “Cool,” Max said.

  Oh, to be fifteen again.

  The medallion was still in the bathroom drawer. I looked it over, finding little imperfections and dents in the clay that I hoped meant it was handmade. The stain on it reminded me of dried blood, and I tried not to think about that too hard as I held it in both hands and called on my magic.

  It was a variation of the spell I’d done for Alek, only I needed no compass this time. The medallion would act as my guide. I felt it pulling northwest.

  “You have your permit, right?” I asked Max as we descended the stairs to my car. The moon was already peaking up over the buildings.

  “Yeah?”

  “Good.” I tossed him my keys. “I need to focus on this spell. You’re driving. Try not to kill us.”

  For the record, my car started up just fine.

  “Pull over here,” I told Max after about half an hour of driving on the narrow highway along the border of the River of No Return Wilderness. “This is where I have to go on foot.”

  “The moon is over the trees,” he said as we got out of the car. “How far is it? How long do we have?”

  I almost said, “Who is this ‘we,’ white man,” but I’d used that line once today and I figured there
was some kind of cosmic limit.

  “Me. I’m going. You are staying here with my car and making sure it doesn’t get stolen.”

  “Stolen. Right.” His shoulders slumped.

  “I mean it, Max. Please?” I softened my tone and gave him my best desperate female gaze.

  “Okay,” he muttered.

  I followed the medallion’s pull into the trees, shoving my way through the undergrowth. It was goddamned dark in here. I used more magic, feeding it into my talisman until the D20 glowed enough that I could see a few feet ahead. The ferns and weeds grew fewer as I moved into the more mature forest away from the road, but I was still moving too slowly. My lungs hurt and my leg muscles burned as I half stumbled, half ran through the dark woods.

  This wasn’t working. At this rate, I’d get there about dawn if they were really deep into the wilderness. There might have been an access road or old logging path that provided a better way, but my tracking spell wasn’t Google Maps. It could only tell me direction, not the best route by car.

  How long had it been since Alek and company stormed out of my store? Two hours? Three? Maybe they’d won and were on their way back to rub in my face how I’d missed all the action.

  “Stop talking yourself out of doing shit,” I said aloud as I stopped moving for a moment and leaned against a tree. I wasn’t sure about lovely, but the woods were dark and deep. Robert Frost had gotten that part right. I guess two of three ain’t bad. Wind rustled in the branches high over my head as I gasped in the cool, damp air.

  Wolf materialized beside me and cocked her head at me.

  “You going to help?” I asked her, not expecting an answer.

  She bent low and twisted her head toward her back.

  “Guess that’s a yes,” I said, smiling at her. “Thank you.” I jumped up onto her back, digging my free hand into her thick, warm fur and clinging with my sore legs. I hadn’t ridden on Wolf’s back since she’d dragged us both bleeding and half dead out of the burning rubble where my family had chosen death and where I’d made my second and most disastrous stand against Samir.