In the City of the Nightmare King

by V. S. Santoni

  “I guess I feel the same way.”

  “Do you think they feel lost too—the Defectors, I mean?”

  Before responding, I spotted a blond man in a black turtleneck walking suspiciously through the cemetery. He immediately triggered my wizard senses. His aura popped and fizzled like faulty electrical wiring. “Ali, look out,” I said, pulling her behind a tombstone and ducking. We peeked around the corner and watched the guy. He continued scouting around, his eyes creeping toward us. No doubt his wizard senses had picked up on us too. “Ali, gloss your aura.”

  “What?”

  “Just—imagine you’re invisible. It’ll make it so he can’t see our auras.”

  A wizard’s powerful aura left traces on the vivit apparatus—it looked like gold paint on the clockwork. Wizards’ auras also emanated a strong emotional current, and other wizards easily sensed that energy. Linh once taught me a technique to hide my aura called glossing. A wizard need only imagine themselves going invisible to silence their aura’s emotional frequency. This made it harder to detect us using the wizard sense. Extra steps were needed to clean your aura’s residue off the vivit apparatus, but we only needed to make our auras undetectable.

  Alison and I squeezed our eyes shut, clenched our teeth, and huddled together tightly. In my mind, my skin grew translucent like water then slowly faded until I disappeared entirely. Certain the spell had worked, I peeked around the tombstone at the blond wizard again. Alison kept her eyes closed, too afraid to look. The blond wizard stopped walking and donned a curious look on his face. His senses no longer detected us and that confused him. He turned in a circle, giving the cemetery a wary scan. Then he pulled out a phone and started texting. I decided against sending Blake a psychic message because the glossing spell required my full attention. Reading the blond wizard’s thoughts was also tempting—uncovering his allies and their plans could save us later—but it risked exposing my identity and location when he inevitably sensed it. He lowered the phone and carefully read his environs once more, then tucked it away and resumed walking, face still drawn into an anxious pucker.

  Blake, I said with my mind, I think we found one of the witch-hunters. It’s a tall guy with blond curly hair, and he’s wearing a black turtleneck.

  Blake and Hunter didn’t know the glossing trick. If we didn’t act quickly, the witch-hunter would find them. Thanks for the head’s up, Blake said.

  “He’s going to find Hunter and Blake,” I said.

  “We’ve got to stop that guy.” We used the headstones for cover, creeping behind the witch-hunter as he made his way through the cemetery. “Can’t you just make one of those light sword things like when we fought the sandman?”

  “It’s not that easy in the real world. I’ll mess it up and blow us up or something.”

  We hurried behind a tombstone planted in shaky soil. Alison pressed her hands against the headstone as she ducked, but she exerted too much force and it toppled over loudly, scaring us to our feet. The fright broke my concentration. Having heard the commotion, and probably sensing our auras too, the witch-hunter turned and gave us a wild look.

  “Someone’s ghost grandma is going to drag me to hell,” Alison said, regarding the broken tombstone, not yet noticing the witch-hunter.

  “Ali,” I said, tugging her sleeve.

  Alison looked up and saw the witch-hunter. “Hey,” Ali said anxiously. “We’re just . . . lost . . . looking for our friends. Oh, friends,” Alison called sheepishly. “Friends?”

  “Run!” We darted in the opposite direction. But the witch-hunter disappeared into a shadowy cloud and reappeared in front of us. We staggered back as he widened his arms, ready to grapple us. Alison pushed me out of the way and swung her foot into his groin. His eyes crossed as he grabbed himself and groaned painfully.

  “Bet you don’t have any magic for that,” Alison said proudly.

  “Ali,” I said, prompting her to flee.

  We resumed our frantic dash, but dried vines sprouted out of the ground and ensnared our feet. I jerked my leg up and snapped one vine, but dozens more crawled out to replace it. Alison dropped to one knee and tore at the vines, even gnashing them apart with her teeth. Still more came, winding around our legs and dragging us to the ground. Our only choice was to lay there immobilized.

  The blond witch-hunter calmly strode toward us. Scruff peppered his young jawline—he looked no older than twenty-two or twenty-three. A risky job like witch-hunting required an athletic build—combat with other wizards being implied in the job title—but his gangly body didn’t lend itself to heavy physical exertion. His long, dirty nails and wrinkly clothes said he spent more time behind a computer barking orders at his Fortnite raid group than at a gym. Then again, the studiousness needed to understand magic’s intricacies made nerds perfect wizards.

  I balled my fists and tried to yank my arms free. “Stop moving,” he said. The vines tightened around my wrists. He controlled them without having to move even a cog in the vivit apparatus. As expected, his magical knowledge easily surpassed ours. Two shadowy clouds burst into the air behind him and two more witch-hunters emerged: a surly looking, middle-aged woman with wavy black hair that fell in tresses around her shoulders, and a bald man around the same age with a black cross painted on his face that stretched from his forehead to his chin.

  “Who the hell’re these kids?” the woman said in a husky, gruff voice. The old nicks and cuts on her skin told an allegory, each surely tied to a different wizard. The lesson they conveyed: Those who spend their lives destroying others wreck their own lives in the process.

  “I don’t know,” the blond witch-hunter said. “They were following me around. They’re wizards. Do you think they’re with those Defectors?”

  “I didn’t see them in Menominee,” said the man with the cross on his face. A man with his imposing physical stature was what I imagined when I heard the term witch-hunter. The crusty paint on his face chipped off in flakes. His air-starved pores rejected the marking—he’d paint it back on if needed. Maybe he used it to scare his quarries, or maybe he wore it because his fanatical nature demanded it. Either way, he scared the hell out of me.

  The three witch-hunters trained their eyes on us. A creeping feeling on my nape warned me to guard my mind.

  “These runts won’t let me read their thoughts,” the gruff woman said.

  “Throw them in the trunk,” the man with the cross on his face said. “We’ll contact Žižek and see what he wants to do with them.” Žižek? That name sounded familiar.

  The man with the cross on his face swung his hand down and materialized a light sword in his grasp. He pointed it at my face. “We’re going to tie you up. Don’t make us kill you.”

  They ripped off the vines then placed Alison and I back to back and tied us together with hemp rope. “You fixing to throw us on a train track?” Alison said.

  The gruff woman got in Alison’s face. “Don’t tempt us.” Then she picked us up by our feet, and the man with the cross on his face lifted us by our shoulders. They lugged us through the cemetery until they reached a black Impala parked in the gravel just outside the front gate. The blond witch-hunter popped open the trunk and the other two lowered us onto a wet spot that smelled faintly like gasoline then shut the lid. Their feet crunched on the gravel, audibly at first then disappearing as they moved away from the vehicle. Alison and I squirmed, hoping to loosen the rope.

  “Who the hell is Žižek?” I asked.

  “Probably the Smith that hired them.”

  The rope tethered us like a chain. If we started slinging around spells, we risked drawing the Institute to our location. Plus, I only knew the light sword spell, and casting that—or even just harnessing aspects of that spell to burn away the rope—while lying on a gas stain in a confined space sounded like a galaxy-brained idea. Blake, I said with my mind, the witch-hunters have us. They’ve locked us in
the trunk of an old, black Impala parked outside the cemetery.

  Sounds like you two needed Hunter and me after all, Blake said, his thoughts smug and self-satisfied. We’ll come and try to get you out.

  Shouldn’t we contact Aquila or something?

  I don’t think that’s a great idea. It might only complicate things. Just hang in there until we show up.

  “Blake and Hunter are on their way,” I said.

  “No way! You told them we got captured?”

  “What else was I supposed to do?”

  “Certainly not give those two wannabe-alphas an ego boost. Ugh. We’re never going to hear the end of it.”

  The trunk opened and the same menacing Smith who had masked himself as my dad in the Dreamhaven loomed over us, the man with the cross on his face and the gruff woman standing to either side of him. Then it dawned on me: Žižek, the name the witch-hunters mentioned earlier. It was the name on that Smith’s tag. I had glimpsed it before he vanished, after Alison hit him with the fire poker.

  “Well, well, well,” Žižek said with a pleased look on his face, “we meet again.”

  “You know these two?” The gruff woman asked.

  Žižek smiled. “We’re acquainted.”

  “Didn’t I kill you?” Alison said.

  He didn’t look too happy with that response. “We’ll need to take them to a secure location.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a canister and sprayed us.

  Chapter 13

  Light glared in my eyes as the eirineftis haze slowly lifted. The bright afternoon sun beamed down through missing patches in the vaulted ceiling overhead. A finch chirped unseen among the decaying rafters. Damaged stained-glass windows bordered the long room’s perimeter and a few broken-down pews lay piled in the northeastern corner. They’d left us tied up in a shambling, old church, lying on the unsteady, rain-brined floors, and I was stuck facing a wall.

  The gruff woman’s voice cut through the silence. “Are we getting paid for those kids too?”

  Alison squirmed behind me, fighting to disentangle us, but her noisy efforts threatened to draw our captors. “Don’t make so much noise,” I whispered. She stopped moving.

  Johnny, Alison said in my head, close your eyes and let me try something. That suggestion didn’t inspire much confidence, especially since I couldn’t see Žižek or the witch-hunters. Regardless, I did as she said, and Alison showed me the world through her eyes. The man with the black turtleneck leaned against a column, playing on his phone, while the gruff woman and the man with the cross on his face spoke to Žižek.

  “I don’t have the money. You’ll have to wait until my boss shows up,” Žižek said, raising his shoulders innocently.

  “You mean you didn’t even bring the money to pay us,” said the gruff woman.

  “No.”

  The man with the cross on his face snatched Žižek’s lapels and reeled him in. “You mean you want us to wait here until your boss shows up to pay us?”

  “I can’t pay you if I don’t have any money.”

  “Can’t you guys just teleport those vans wherever you want?” the gruff woman asked.

  “No. The big ups don’t like when we fling magic around like that. It confuses the sensors.”

  “The sensors?”

  “The magical sensors the Institute uses. That’s why I asked you to refrain from using a lot of magic.” If the Institute required that Smiths investigate everything that triggered their sensors, it made sense minimizing magical outbursts helped conserve their manpower; after all, like Blake told us, the Institute lacked unlimited resources. Even their magic failed to make them invincible. Alison and I learned that when we found a rat infestation in Dedi Hall—the adult housing unit on campus.

  “How long until your boss gets here?” the woman asked.

  “Not long,” Žižek assured them, but he was lying. We were all the way in Michigan, and the Institute was somewhere in northern Missouri, in the Ozarks. It would take hours for one of those extraction vans to get here.

  “Why don’t you keep looking for those Defectors I hired you to find?” Žižek said.

  Alison stopped showing me her thoughts. Everything got quiet, then an engine revved, and wheels softly grumbled as they treaded out over dirt.

  Those witch-hunters are gone, Alison said.

  Blake, I called, we’re in some old, abandoned church. It’s missing part of the roof. Those witch-hunters left and now there’s only one Smith here.

  Got it.

  I’m not waiting around for Blake to come save us, J, Alison said. Come on. There’s a piece of glass near us, help me get to it. Alison bumped me with her shoulder and started wriggling across the floor. I followed her lead. With constant exposure to the savage Lake Superior storms, the church’s miraculous survival testified to its sturdy construction. Still, the moldering floors creaked every inch she crawled. Alison stopped moving.

  That Smith is coming toward us.

  “You two really dinged me up back in the Dreamhaven,” Žižek said. With my back turned, I couldn’t see Žižek, but I heard the rickety floor groaning under his footsteps. His shadow swallowed us, its shape suggesting that he’d crouched. Alison shrank against me. “Imagine how excited my boss is going to be when he finds out I have you two. I might even get a paid vacation.”

  “You’re telling me you guys don’t even get paid vacations?” Alison said sarcastically. “Some benefits package.”

  “You’re funny.” Žižek’s shadow grew tall and rigid again. He rattled something, sounded like a can. “I’d keep you guys asleep until the boss gets here, but I’m running low, and I need to save the rest just in case.”

  Žižek walked away. I listened until he stopped moving. Alison went back to slithering us across the floor. My shirt’s hem snagged on a piece of rotted flooring and a splinter tore into the fabric. She inched a little farther and the material ripped loudly. There was no way Žižek hadn’t heard that. He cleared his throat and my mind went into overdrive: This is it. He’s going to come over here and finish the job he started in the Dreamhaven. We’re screwed!

  Calm down, J, Alison said in my head.

  Get out of there!

  Sorry.

  As if getting my ass dragged across this splintery floor hadn’t been bad enough. Žižek stayed motionless, though, but if we kept moving, he was going to catch us. Alison stretched her fingers toward a sizeable shard, but it was too far away. She kept trying for it until the piece wobbled in place and scooted across the floor. She was moving it with her mind. It slowly found its way into her hand, then she set about cutting us free.

  Nice trick, I said.

  I’ve been practicing.

  I lifted my upper body and peeked over her. It didn’t give me a perfect view, but at least Žižek came in sight. He faced the church’s ramshackle entrance, his back against the corner of a broken-down pew. His cold disinterest reminded me that catching us held no personal value to him. It paid the bills, nothing more. But something in his voice said it thrilled him, gave him a twisted rush. The ropes slackened and fell.

  Let’s take him out, Alison said, crouching. We shrouded our auras and completely blocked our thoughts. Žižek kept his back to us, still looking into space.

  How? I asked.

  I don’t know. Can’t you just make one of those light sword things?

  I told you, Ali. Not in the real world. Let’s just knock him down and steal his can of eirineftis.

  Good plan.

  We scurried up behind him like a couple of mice. I rammed my shoulder into the hollow behind his knee, forcing him to clutch the pew for balance, but the corner snapped off and he fell to the floor. Alison leaped on him, flung open his blazer, and snatched out the can. She depressed the valve in his face, but it only hissed—the can was empty. Žižek smacked her aside. I ran to help b
ut the floorboards under us collapsed and dropped us into the crawl space beneath the church. The fall left me on my back, dazed.

  Johnny! Alison’s psychic prod snapped me back to reality. She waved for me to duckwalk beside her. Together, we hastily crept across the gently sloping ground. The roomy crawl space’s ceiling stretched almost a foot above our heads, making movement easy. Look there, she said, pointing to a crevice in the back. Wherever that hole led, it beat staying here.

  Žižek stomped his foot, and a rock spike shot up from the ground in front of us. We scampered around the spike and took cover behind it. Žižek dropped his head through the hole in the church floor. “Come on, you two. You can’t hide forever.” We stayed hidden until Žižek pulled his head back through the hole. Then we resumed speeding toward the fissure in the back. Using the slits in the floorboards, I tracked Žižek’s movements, but he skipped about wildly and erratically, making him difficult to follow. I switched my focus to ahead of us to check my footing, but when I set my sights back again, looking for him, I didn’t see him. He’d vanished.

  A handful of feet away from the cleft, his shadow fell over us. Fear froze me in place. He looked down at me through the crack, donning a sinister grin. His face moved around like shifting clay and turned into my dad’s. “What’s the matter, Juanito”—his smile widened—“you scared?” Another spike lanced out of the ground and sliced my leg. I screamed and pulled my knee to my chest. The gash was shallow, but long and bloody. Several more earthy lances speared up in a procession, crisscrossing one another on their way to skewer me. I rolled toward the crevice and kept rolling until I fell into the cranny and tumbled downward.

  “Johnny!” Alison called after me.

  The world spun around like a clothes dryer. Then the sun came in view and I felt grass under me—the hole led outside the church. Like a speeding barrel, I tumbled until I lost momentum and crashed at the bottom of the hill, landing in some bushes near a tree line. I lay there, head spinning, body ravaged with pain.