by Harry Nix
“What do you Aryan race halfwits want?” Alex said. He had his claws out and tapped one on the bar.
From behind the bar, Zig had opened the door, and out of the corner of Alex's eye he saw the behind it was desert, somewhere remote and hot.
“No fighting in the bar, you know the rules,” Zig said.
“You're Alex Lowe,” the mage in front said.
“That's right. Alex Lowe—werewolf mage,” Alex said and then summoned a fireball into his hand. The three mages took a step back, and everyone else in the bar went quiet. “No wand. It's just me,” Alex said. He wasn't confident enough to juggle a fireball from one hand to the other as Juno did. As far as he could tell, if he moved the fireball to his other hand, he’d end up severely burning himself
The door to the bar opened, a stream of light bursting in, then he heard a familiar voice.
“Alex so good to see you. How are you? How is everyone?” Monroe said, walking over to where Alex was sitting. Monroe was in his police uniform, and he was breathing heavily, as though he’d come running. Alex glanced across at Zig and saw the small button recessed into the cabinet next to the box that Zig had been messing with.
“I'm good, Officer Monroe, how are you?” Alex said. He wasn't quite sure how long he could hold the fireball with his homebrew spell, so he canceled it, or at least tried to. When Juno did it, the fireball just evaporated in her hand but clearly Alex's spell didn't allow for that. With a shock, he realized that the fireball had only ever been thrown twice: at the back fence and Roma had dropped one in the sink covering it with water. Alex looked behind the bar and was relieved to see an enormous tub full of ice cubes and lemon wedges. Pretending it had been his plan all along, he reached over and dropped the fireball into the ice where it immediately melted its way down, sending up a cloud of lemon-scented steam into the room.
“Can I help you three gentlemen with something?” Monroe asked the three mages.
“No, thank you,” the first one said. Then they split up. Two went back to the table at the rear of the bar and the other walked out the front door, leaving Monroe and Alex alone at the bar. Zig had finally closed his escape door but was still standing close to it, ready to leap at any moment.
“Can you get him out of here now?” Zig asked Monroe.
“How about we have a beer first?” Monroe said. Zig let out a frustrated sigh, but then quickly filled two glasses, setting them on the bar.
“I got it,” Monroe said, putting some money on the bar.
Zig performed his snatch and grab maneuver again before dumping a handful of change back in front of Monroe. Alex and Monroe both took a gulp of their beers and Monroe held his up to Alex.
“Cheers to your good health,” he said.
“Cheers,” Alex said, clinking his glass against Monroe's. In his hybrid form. Alex was significantly larger than Monroe and also felt like he was hunching over the bar, but there was no way he was shifting back now, not with the two mages still in the room plus whoever else was there. The woman who had been fiddling with something in her lap was now just sitting, watching the pair of them with her hands below the table.
“I heard you had some trouble with the dead and some silver,” Monroe said, lowering his voice.
“Xavo. Six dead soldiers with silver bullets. Then ten teenagers, apprentices I guess, flying drones, dumping silver dust on my home.” Alex said. He tried to keep the tone out of his voice but now he was in hybrid form, the anger was so much closer to the surface. He had to concentrate on not flexing his hands and squeezing the glass lest it shatter.
“Silver drones are something Tradinium got into and now it’s spread out. New technology, new methods. If I were you are be getting some guns, learning to shoot moving targets out of the air,” Monroe said.
Alex gulped down his beer then tapped on the bar for Zig to get him another one. Zig took the payment from the pile of change Monroe had left on the bar.
“They killed one of my pack, Bish, and another one, Gem, she was in a coma last I saw her. You’re police. What can you do about it?”
Monroe sipped his beer and then let out a burp to the back of his hand. Now Alex was in hybrid form he could see more clearly in the dim bar. He saw Monroe had something sticky on his pants that looked like strawberry jam, probably from one of his grandchildren.
“I can do exactly nothing. The Great Barrier is everywhere and if a supernatural is involved in a crime, cameras stop working, backup tapes are lost, there are mysterious fires. The moment there is the chance of exposure, something goes wrong.”
“These mages marched six dead soldiers out of the forest. One of them pulled the trigger on a gun and shot Bish in the head. There would be ballistics. You’d be able to find who bought the gun, track them down maybe. We still have the gun.”
Alex had gulped down half his third beer by now and was starting to enjoy the relaxed sensation running through him. Despite that, he was getting frustrated.
“I agree, but I'm not sure you’re understanding what you're asking. The Great Barrier is everywhere. You deliver a dead body of a supernatural with a silver bullet in its head and a hundred things will happen. Somehow the coroner’s report will be lost. The person who does the dissection will see but not see. They’ll get sick. Somehow, things will suddenly get busy, There’ll be some unexplained emergency causing them to look away. They'll sign off on a death certificate with some nonsense and go on to the next job. I've seen normals step over a dead mermaid on the bench and when I asked one of them what they saw, they said it was a dead seal. What I saw was a half-naked woman spread out on the sand with a knife in her heart. What I felt was the Great Barrier pulling on me, urging me to cover it up, to hide it from the normals. What I saw as well were the other supernaturals in the area, pulled by the same force, and you know what we did? We pushed her back into the sea, letting the tide take her away just so the Great Barrier would stop hurting us,” Monroe said. He finished his beer and signaled for another. Alex gulped the last of his beer and then tapped on the bar again but Monroe waved Zig away.
“That’s probably enough for now, especially when there are mages and an assassin over there waiting for you to screw up so they can kill you and cut your head off.”
Alex couldn't help but look again at the mages staring daggers at him and the woman still with her hands in her lap.
“Let them try. I’ll rip their faces off,” Alex said in a low tone.
“Yeah, maybe. Except that mage who went out the front has gone to get his friends and eventually sheer weight of numbers will get you and then what will happen to your pack? What will your mates do then?”
Alex grumbled to himself. He understood the logic of it. The wolf inside him was yelling at him to stand up and hurl fireballs into the back of the bar right into the mages then dive at the woman and stab her through the heart before she even had a chance to move.
“It’s time for us to go now before those Ignis lads get back here,” Monroe said.
“Those mages are Ignis? Haven’t you heard they’re out to kill me?”
“That's what I hear, and this bar is not the time nor the place.”
Monroe stood and began heading for the door. For a moment Alex thought he would just sit there, let the cop walk out and let the chips fall where they may. Then he saw the frightened look on Zig's face, or on Zig’s illusion at least.
Sure he might win this fight but he would probably destroy the bar in the process. So, he stood up and headed for the door, walking backward, keeping an eye on the mages and the so-called assassin. It was only when he went outside that he shifted back to human form. Not fast enough though, the Great Barrier suddenly jolting him with a great lurch through his muscles and stinging pain in his neck. Alex stumbled for a moment, but Monroe helped right him quickly, pushing him out to the street and leading him down the road.
“Car’s down this way. Come on,” Monroe said, setting off at a trot. Alex followed along until they reached the patrol car
.
“I just had the back cleaned but sorry you're sitting there,” Monroe said. Alex got in the backseat while Monroe got in the front, a wire mesh separating them.
They took off with a lurch, a horn blaring at them as Monroe pulled into traffic. Alex had to grab onto the seat as Monroe went around a corner at high speed, changing lanes, and turning corners without warning.
Now Alex was in human form his clothes were back and so was his bag. Despite getting jolted around, he managed to get it open and pull out the card that Zig had given him. It looked like a baseball card. On one side was an image of Alex's face in human form. It looked to be his driver’s license photo, taken off a database. Underneath it had his name, height, weight and general description. On the other side was an image of him in werewolf form, roaring, with blood streaked down his jaws.
Alex had no idea how they'd gotten it. The image appeared to be taken from a high angle, someone up on a rooftop maybe? Alex saw there was an orange glow behind him. Was that a fire? Had someone been watching the Corvus outpost and managed to take a photograph of him?
How did the Great Barrier work then? A supernatural could take a photograph and that was fine, but if they lost it, the camera suddenly malfunctioned or disintegrated thanks to the Great Barrier?
Printed in large black letters the card said there was a one-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty for Alex dead.
“A hundred-thousand-dollar bounty. I must be doing something right,” Alex said as they heaved around another corner.
Monroe finally slowed and Alex saw they'd made it over to the far side of the city, practically out at the dying industrial zone again.
“A hundred thousand dollars can bring you a lot of problems,” Monroe said. He was still checking his rearview mirror and turning seemingly at random, but it appeared whomever he'd been trying to evade was gone.
“You know, there’s a Xavo address over here. How about you dropping me off out the front and I’ll go in and murder everyone. You can wait in the car,” Alex said, putting the card back in his bag.
“That’s not a good idea. Xavo isn’t Corvus. That place you and Juno tore apart? I think it was a honey trap. They wanted you to tear it apart. They wanted you to kill those mages. I know you think you're strong but that many mages against just one werewolf and one witch? Just the law of averages says you should have taken a few more bullets,” Monroe said.
Although the alcohol was still working on Alex, he understood Monroe had touched on something he had thought himself. Some of the attacks had been… weak? Or perhaps half-hearted. Even the little old lady had ripped his hand off. It had been her against him and his three mates. If someone had sprinkled some silver dust in that alleyway they could have taken him and Nia straight out.
But it was too many layers, too many twists. Alex was ceasing to care whether he been set up in one way or the other, or whether the attacks were intended to set him against a particular enclave or were a series of false flags designed to start a war. All he knew was that there was a dead werewolf buried at his home and another who may never wake up. There was silver contaminating everything and even years later werewolves would suddenly be getting injured when a speck of it was pushed to the surface once more.
“How about you take me to where Ignis is then?” Alex said, his mood growing darker.
“No one knows where Ignis is. They have a lot more money which means they have wards on practically everything… good ones too. If you’re hoping to catch an Ignis mage you have to wait around the city and hope to see one driving by.”
“What the hell is up with that, by the way? I saw one doing laps, casting the same spell over and over.”
“That's what they do. But you should know that if you saw one Ignis mage in a car, there would be five others watching that you didn't see. They never travel alone, like those three in the bar.”
Alex saw they were vaguely heading back to the city now, passing quite close to the factory where he'd fought mages a few times. Alex leaned against the door and looked out the window, idly glancing at the various for-sale signs that they passed. This part of the industrial area was well and truly dead and felt absolutely deserted.
“You wanna be thankful Zig buzzed me otherwise—” Monroe didn't get to finish the sentence. Alex's head hit the window, smashing it as something exploded under the car, flipping it into the air. Alex instinctively changed to hybrid form as the car spun and then crashed to the ground, miraculously landing on four wheels. Apart from the broken glass, the blood running down the side of his face, and the ringing in his ears, Alex was reasonably okay. He blinked a few times, stars shooting in his vision and then realized they weren’t stars but magic coming from Monroe in the front seat. He had blood down the side of his neck and bits of glass in the side of his face. He was waving his hand, a stream of golden dust drifting out, sinking into the car. Maybe it was the alcohol, but Alex couldn't really sense what he was doing.
“What the hell was that?” Alex groaned.
“A goddamn assassin,” Monroe swore. Alex looked behind them but there was no one to be seen, the area deserted.
“She’s hiding. You won't see her until her claw is in your heart,” Monroe said. He tried to start the engine, but it just coughed and died.
“Let me out, and I’ll kill her,” Alex said, looking around and sniffing. All he could smell was fuel and car and the faint scent of pizza Monroe must've eaten in the front seat at some point.
“No, she's deadly and far stronger than me right now and probably you too,” Monroe said. He tried the engine again and this time it started before suddenly dying.
“Where the hell is she?” Alex said. He kept whipping around, hoping he’d see something, sniffing at the air, but it was no sign of any attacker.
“She is a fae just like me, and right now she's almost at full strength,” Monroe said.
Alex whipped his head around just in time for something to blur past his face and embed itself in the seat. It was a dart, the tip of which was covered in a green liquid.
“She’s throwing poisoned darts!” Alex said, and tried to push on the door, but it was locked. The only way he was going to get out was if he ripped it off its hinges.
“Yeah, they do that,” Monroe said, more golden dust falling from his hands. Abruptly, Alex felt a jolt and the entire back of the car rising. He realized it was the two rear tires re-inflating and then the front of the car went up. Monroe turned the ignition, the car started, and then he squealed out of there.
Alex thought the initial drive was crazy, but this was insanity. Monroe hurtled towards the city like a bat out of hell, screaming around corners and bends, narrowly missing oncoming cars. It was only when they got close to Juno's that Alex realized where they were.
“Call your mate. Get them to have the door open,” Monroe said. But Alex had shifted and his charm had taken his bag. He ducked down, shifted to human form, and grabbed his phone out—the burner. It had only one number programmed into it. He dialed it and Juno answered.
“Juno's house of snooze. How can we snooze you?” she said in a chirpy tone. Alex heard Ruby say something snarky behind her.
“Open the door. It’s Monroe and me. We’re coming right now, and we're being chased,” Alex blurted out.
“On it,” Juno said. The phone went dead, and Alex shoved it back in the bag then shifted to hybrid again. Barely a minute later, they screeched to a stop in front of the house. Monroe leaped out and then pulled the door open.
Alex stumbled out and the sudden stabbing pain of the Great Barrier forced him to shift to human form. The pain of it drove him to his knees.
Monroe grabbed his arm and hauled him up the step to where Juno was waiting. Ruby was standing behind her, hands out crackling with electricity that was zapping from one fingertip to the other.
Together, they crashed through the front door, and Juno slammed it shut. The feeling of the Great Barrier pulling on him evaporated, and Alex managed to stand up straight, taki
ng deep breaths of air.
“Hello Erasmus,” Ruby said, letting electricity die away from her fingertips.
“Ruby. Always good to see you,” Monroe said. A piece of glass fell out of his hair and landed on the floor. Alex turned to him.
“Your first name is Erasmus?” he said.
17
By the time Monroe left, Alex was shaking his head at what he learned about the weird world of the fae and also how wards on houses worked. After cleaning themselves up, and Juno casting a healing spell on the pair of them, Monroe had explained that over the course of about a month, following the cycles of the moon rather than the calendar, female fae grew stronger while the males grew weaker in equal measure.
Finally, on their peak day of strength, the males would be at their weakest before it reversed, and over the next month the males would head for their peak of speed and physical power while the magic of the females grew weaker. They were currently about three days away from the female peak.
Monroe had recognized the woman as soon as he'd seen her, so that explained his driving when they'd fled the bar. He'd been hoping to evade her but it had obviously been unsuccessful, and she’d cast a spell that exploded under the car, hoping to flip it over and crush the pair of them. Luckily it had landed upright. Monroe had a similar spell on his car to the one on Boris that meant if he poured magic into it, he could repair the damage so they could make their escape.
This led to the next point about the house wards. Alex learned that there was a kind of look away on them, similar to the Great Barrier, that extended out from the house to the sidewalk surrounding it. With Monroe's police car parked within it, the attacking fairy wouldn't be able to see it, nor him, Alex, or the house. They would look, but look away. It still wasn't a perfect system of course. Although the spells were subtle, convincing you to look away, some supernaturals were able to overcome them or notice that they'd been sent off track. The fairy had likely found herself a few streets away before realizing what had happened but would then be able to pinpoint a vague location at least. Ruby had explained that with enough magic users approaching a concealed target, you could use the moment they lost focus to triangulate a hidden property to some degree. Again, it all depended on the strength of the wards and how they worked.