by Baen Books
Still, staring up at the security cameras, I thought I saw a faint hint of golden yellow glimmering on the gray metal. I looked down at my shirt to the spot where Tommy’s spell had hit me. The magic I saw there wasn’t the same color. Not even close. The residue of Tommy’s spell gleamed like fresh, wet paint: a cool, pale blue, the color of a winter sky.
Meaning it was possible that Tommy had nothing to do with the car thefts. But then why had he been so spooked by the sight of another weremyste that he fled the garage and attacked me with a spell?
I returned to the Z-ster and steered her back onto the freeway. From there, I made my way south to the Gila River Indian Community, a reservation on the southern border of the metropolitan area that was first founded in the mid-nineteenth century. Like so many reservations, particularly those in this part of the country, the community dealt with a host of problems, all of them rooted in poverty: health care issues, crime, drug use, gang activity. The folks in Gila River were working hard to overcome those problems, and, in an effort to bring in some tourist money, had managed to open up a couple of golf courses and a few casinos. But I was headed to Komatke, a dusty desert town with little going for it.
Tommy Strong lived on Tashquinth Drive, in a small, one story ranch house. A stunted palo verde tree grew in the middle of the yard, which otherwise consisted of little more than dirt, sand and a few clumps of dried grass. The door was closed and there were no cars in the driveway. I parked by the road in front of the house and knocked on the door. A dog barked from inside, but otherwise I heard nothing, and no one answered my knock.
I walked next door. The yard and house were practically clones of the Strong place; the two homes were even painted the same shade of pale beige. But a beat-up old land rover sat in the shade of the neighbor’s car port, and the front door stood ajar. Inside, someone was blasting country music.
I had to ring the doorbell several times before the volume on the music finally went down. A young woman appeared at the door. She had dark hair and eyes, and nut brown skin. She was heavyset, with round cheeks and a friendly face, though she eyed me warily before peering past me toward my car.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I hope so. I’m looking for Tommy Strong, and I’m wondering if you’ve seen him recently.”
“You a cop? You look like a cop.”
I hadn’t been on the job for more than a year, but I guess the look never really goes away.
“I used to be a cop. I’m not anymore.”
She just stared at me, her eyebrows raised as if she were waiting for me to say more.
“I’m a private detective,” I told her. “I was hired by Tommy’s boss to look into a problem he’s having, and I need to ask Tommy some questions.”
“I don’t think I believe you,” she said, the words shaded subtly with the soft lilt I often noticed in the speech of Arizona’s native people.
“It’s true.” I pulled out my PI’s license and showed it to her. “I was at Sullivan Toyota just a short while ago. Tommy took off in a hurry when he saw me, and I thought maybe he’d come back here.”
She frowned, twisting her mouth like a little kid, and watching me.
“Do you know that Tommy’s a weremyste?” I asked. It was a bit of a risk, since it led inevitably to the question of how I knew this. But I had long heard that American Indian culture was far more accepting of my kind than was white society.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “He doesn’t try to hide it. That’s probably more than you can say, isn’t it?”
She was smart as hell.
“Yeah, way more.”
She smiled, and her face glowed like the full moon.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I don’t think I want to tell you that.”
“Okay. Then what can you tell me about Tommy?”
The frown returned and I thought for certain that she’d ask me to leave. But instead she leaned against the doorframe, her gaze roaming the empty street.
“I’ve known Tommy since we were kids, you know? I like him. He’s a good guy.”
“But?”
“But he’s got these ideas . . .” She shook her head. “Being a weremyste in Indian culture, that’s big, you know? Shamans have a proud tradition in our world, and Tommy takes that seriously.” She wouldn’t look at me, and I sensed that she regretted answering the question. “There’s a few of them, boys from Gila River and Salt River -- they call themselves the Piranhas. They’re all weremystes. They have people around here scared.”
The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community was located in the northeastern part of the Phoenix area, near Scottsdale. It was far smaller in size than the Gila River community, though its population was roughly comparable. Together they couldn’t have had more than twenty or twenty-five thousand residents, which begged the question, how many young weremystes could there be in the two communities?
“There a lot of them, these Piranhas?”
She shrugged. “No. Maybe five boys. But they’re strong because they have magic. People here are afraid of them, even some of the gangs, who aren’t afraid of anything. But they stay away from Tommy and his friends.”
“Yeah,” I said, more to myself than to her, “I’ll bet they do.” A gang of weremystes. That might have explained why the magic from Tommy’s spell differed from the residue on the security cameras. “Have you seen Tommy driving around the neighborhood in something other than his little blue truck?”
I saw her close down on me. Without intending to, without even thinking about it, I’d gone back into cop mode. Her expression flattened, and the look in her eyes turned hard.
“I think you’d better go now,” she said, the lilt sounding less friendly than it had seconds before.
I didn’t argue. “Right. Thanks for your help,” I said. “Have a merry Christmas.”
I started down the path back to the street, and I heard the door shut behind me. A moment later, the music started up again, louder than before.
I would have bet every dollar I had that Tommy and his friends had shown up in a brand new Lexus sometime in the last couple of weeks. I also had a feeling that Tommy wouldn’t be coming near his house tonight. He’d seen me at the car dealership and he’d figure that Sullivan had given me his address. He could be anywhere in the Gila River or Salt River communities. That was over six hundred square miles, and I had no idea where to begin looking. There wasn’t anything more I could do today.
Tomorrow, though, was Christmas Eve, and I had a feeling his family would expect him to be here then.
The problem was, the phasing started tomorrow night.
#
I returned to the dealership, and got the security code for the gates from Sullivan, figuring that if I staked out the lot, I might get lucky. But I think my appearance in the garage had spooked Tommy pretty seriously. Nothing unusual happened during the night. At one point Namid showed up, and since I was doing nothing else, I allowed him to drill me in some rudimentary defensive spells. But I was on a stakeout and I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself, which meant there were only so many spells we could practice. After a while, the myste grew frustrated and left. With the first light of dawn I went home and got a few hours of sleep.
I woke up late in the morning feeling dazed and muddled. The moon wouldn’t be up until close to dusk, but already I could feel its weight pressing down on my mind, as unwelcome as woolen blankets in an Arizona summer.
I dressed quickly, strapped on my shoulder holster, and holstered my Glock 22 .40 caliber pistol. I didn’t want to use it, but I would have been a fool not to bring it with me, given what I had in mind to do. I also had a brief conversation with Namid; I needed him to do a small favor for me. It took some coaxing, but eventually he agreed, although not before wringing from me a promise to practice my spells in earnest after the phasing ended.
With all my plans for the day in place,
I grabbed my keys and crossed to the door.
The moment I stepped out of the house, I felt the tug of the moon even more intensely. For a moment I merely stood there by my front door, trying to remember where I was going and why.
Then it came back to me: the idea I’d thought up in the wee hours of the morning as I tried to stay awake in a dark corner of Sullivan Toyota’s vast lot. I’d started with the obvious question: How was I, a lone weremyste, supposed to stop five of my kind? Sure, they were kids; they probably didn’t have as much knowledge of the craft as I did. But the spell Tommy had used to knock me over had been nothing to sneeze at. If his friends were as strong, I couldn’t take on all of them at once.
Maybe, though, I didn’t need to.
I didn’t want to hurt them if I didn’t have to, and Sullivan wanted this dealt with quietly, without any police involvement. He had hired me to stop the thefts and, if possible, recover the stolen cars.
No problem. Right.
I drove back out to Gila River. A few wispy clouds feathered the sky, but the air was clear and an overnight snow had dusted the rugged peaks of the Estrellas to the west. A Swainson’s Hawk, neatly decked out in white and brown, circled over the desert, while three ravens, glossy and black, hopped by the highway, eyeing a road-killed jack rabbit.
I parked outside Tommy’s house with my windows down. I didn’t see his truck, or any late model Lexus sedans, but other cars sat in the drive. Two little kids played in the dirt yard, and I could hear lots of people inside.
I pulled out my old cell phone and that slip of paper I’d gotten from Mitch Sullivan, and dialed Tommy’s number. He answered on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Merry Christmas, Tommy.”
“Who’s this?”
“You don’t know who I am, and yet you threw an attack spell at me without even thinking. That’s not too smart.”
This was met with a silence so long, I started to wonder if he’d broken the connection.
“Who are you?” he asked at last. It seemed like he was trying to sound menacing; he only succeeded in sounding young and beyond his depth.
“What did you do with all those cars you stole, Tommy?”
Another long pause. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? Should I ask your family if they’ve seen you driving any Lexus sedans recently? I’m sitting right outside your house. I could probably shout to them from here. Or maybe I should bring the police over and let them do the questioning. What would you prefer?”
I heard an odd noise on his end and then muffled voices. I realized that he had his hand covering the microphone, and was talking to his buddies. Good, they were with him already.
“How about it, Tommy?” I asked after a few minutes of this.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, his voice shaking. “We’re coming now, and if you aren’t gone by the time we get there, you’re a dead man. You hear me?”
“Not smart, Tommy. Runecrafting 101: never threaten a weremyste you don’t know.”
I snapped my phone shut -- yes, I still use a flip phone. Get over it -- knowing that would infuriate him more than anything. He and his friends would show. It was just a matter of when.
As it turned out, they must have already been in the Gila River Community, because barely ten minutes had passed before I heard the growl of Tommy’s truck. I climbed out of my car and saw that the little blue pickup was trailed by a second car, a metallic blue Chevy lowrider. I had been hoping to see a shiny new Lexus, but these guys weren’t going to make this quite that easy for me.
I cast a warding, felt the magic settle over me like a cool mist. I knew I would need to cast again once our battle began in earnest, but I didn’t want to go into this unprotected.
The two cars veered toward Tommy’s yard and skidded to a stop, raising a cloud of brown dust. Tommy and another guy got out of the truck; three more boys clambered out of the lowrider.
I did nothing more than watch them, the Z-ster at my back.
The two little kids ran over to Tommy, shouting his name. He eyed them, looking nervous.
“Send them inside, Tommy,” I said.
He glared at me, but then squatted down and talked to them. They cast looks my way before running to the front door and slipping into the house.
“You should have left when you had the chance,” Tommy said to me, straightening.
His buddies closed ranks beside him, which was foolish: they should have spread out. That’s not to say they didn’t look pretty impressive. They were good-looking kids, all of them with long dark hair that they wore loose to their shoulders. One of them was heavier than the others, and another was short and slight. But all of them looked reasonably fit. If this came to a physical fight, I was in trouble.
I cast a second warding, this one a deflection spell that would redirect the attack I knew was coming.
I saw Tommy’s mouth moving, and guessed that he was casting. When he released the magic, I was ready. It hit me with enough force to make me brace a hand against the Z-ster, but my warding did just what it was supposed to. His spell bounced off of my defenses and hit the rear of the lowrider. The bumper buckled.
“Shit!” It came from the heavy-set boy, whose eyes had gone wide. “Tommy, what’d you do, man?”
I cast again. Three elements. A rock that sat nearby, the rear windshield of Tommy’s pickup, and the distance in between. The rock soared at the truck, smashed through the rear glass, and exited the truck through the front windshield.
Tommy gaped at his pickup. Before the boys could recover, I used the same spell to put a stone through a side window of the lowrider.
This last spell knocked them out of their stupor. They charged me, again en masse. They might have had some skill as weremystes, and they might have been big and strong, but they were still just kids playing with powers they didn’t yet understand.
My next crafting I aimed at them. Magic for me is an act of will and of visualization. So I visualized all five of them being knocked back by a giant two-by-four: the kids, me, and that imaginary piece of lumber. Three elements, as simple as you please.
They were slammed back about ten feet, all of them landing hard on their backs. Dust billowed from the ground where they hit, and for a few moments none of them moved.
I chanced a glance at Tommy’s house and saw that two men and three women were watching me from the front walkway. The little kids were with them, hiding behind their legs. For now, the adults had done nothing to intervene, and I took that as a good sign. Maybe they’d been waiting for someone to teach these guys a lesson.
Tommy was the first to stir. By the time he sat up, I had my Glock out. I didn’t aim it at him or his friends, but I made sure all of them could see it.
The boys struggled to their feet, but they didn’t charge me again.
“I can go on kicking your asses all day long,” I said. “You guys look like hell, and I haven’t even broken a sweat yet.” I gestured with the weapon. “Or I can use this if I have to, but I’d rather not.”
“What is it you want?” Tommy asked.
“Your boss, Mister Sullivan, wants his cars back. By his count you’ve stolen six Lexus sedans from his lot. He called me because he doesn’t want to go to the police. But that’s where he’s headed next if you’re too dumb to listen to me.”
I made sure I said all of this loud enough for Tommy’s family to hear.
“We’re not afraid of the police, or of you,” said one of the other boys.
Tommy cast a fierce look his way. “Shut up, Cody.” To me, he said, “We don’t have the cars anymore.”
“Where are they?”
He hesitated, but only for a second. “A chop shop in Glendale.”
“I’ll need that address.”
“You’re going to get us killed!” Cody said. “I’m out of here.”
He started walking away.
Three elements: his foot, my hand, and a firm tug.
His leg went out from under him and he went down in a heap.
“No one leaves until I say so.”
I heard snorts of laughter from the other boys. But Cody was pissed. He scrambled to his feet and ran at me. He was about my size and probably could take me. I didn’t give him the chance. All these spells were beginning to tire me out, but I was nowhere near done.
My fist, his face, and a good hard punch.
He was still ten feet away from me when he went down again, blood spouting from his nose. This time he didn’t get up.
A hush fell over his friends.
“Magic isn’t something you screw around with,” I said, walking to where Cody lay. I could see he was still breathing, and after a moment he stirred and let out a low groan. “It can be a powerful tool and a dangerous weapon. You all know that it can mess with your minds; it will tonight. You need to learn to control it, and you need to find something better to do with it than disabling security systems. In other words, you need a teacher.”
“Are you going to teach us?” Tommy asked.
There was no challenge in the question. After all I’d done to him, to his friends, to his car, I think he might have been willing to have me as a mentor.
But I shook my head. “No, it won’t be me. Namid,” I called, raising my voice. “I think we’re ready for you now.”
The runemyste materialized beside me, his pale, clear waters sparkling in the desert sun.
“Whoa!” Tommy whispered.
Two of his friends took a step back.
“What is that?”
“I am Namid’Skemu,” Namid said, his voice rolling like distant thunder. “I am a runemyste, a spirit created by the runeclave centuries ago so that I might guide fools like you through the mastery of magic.”
What a charmer.
“A runemyste?” Tommy said.
“They are not very clever, are they, Ohanko?”
I grinned. “Not very, no. But I think they’re willing to learn, and that’s something.”
Namid approached the boys, gliding over the road like a sailboat on a mountain lake, and began to speak to them, his voice low. I glanced toward Tommy’s house. Most of the adults had gone back inside, but one man remained by the door, watching me. When our eyes met, he nodded once and let himself into the house.