It felt really good.
Really.
I lost track of time.
Then it was over.
“Lincoln,” she said, and at that point, I realized that she was no longer touching my head. The pounding came back. Everything came back.
“You’re fine,” she said. “No concussion. This is like a hangover.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I feel like shit.”
“You need sleep and Gatorade. I could fix you right up, you know.”
“I know. No thanks.”
“Whatever,” she said.
She sat beside Dan, their shoulders squished together.
It was getting light out. I willed myself to my feet.
“I’m out, nerds,” I said.
“Aw Lincoln, come on,” said Dan. He had his phone out. “Look, sunrise is in ten minutes. Live a little.”
I shook my head, and I thought that I laughed, but it probably only seemed like a sigh to anyone who wasn’t inside my brain. “You’re kidding, right?” I said.
“Ten more minutes,” he said. “Then go home and sleep for a week.”
At this point, what did ten more minutes matter? Plus, the car was the whole way over there. Walking to it would require effort, and postponing it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
“Okay,” I said and sat back down. I closed my eyes, forced my hands up behind my neck and kneaded. I was going to be so sore tomorrow. I already was.
“So what did you do to the two guys in the club?” I said. “What did you use on them?”
Dan snorted. “I put the big red-headed guy’s sense of balance into a blender and hit puree.”
“Nice.”
“And the other dude, I just hooked into something primal way down deep in his head and dragged it up where he could see it. That usually doesn’t turn out too well.”
“Ah,” I said. “How long does that take to prepare?”
“I don’t know. The barf one’s been around for a while. I just hadn’t used it. The other one took a good hour and a half to hang.”
The way Dan had explained it to me, you could do magic on the fly, and if you were just slinging power (which obviously didn’t work downtown) you’d be fine. If you were practiced, you could even do some basic effects in a short amount of time. But if you wanted any kind of subtlety or complexity, you had to approach things from a more ritual standpoint. Get in the right frame of mind and maybe incorporate some focus objects.
When you were done, the effect that you were going for would happen (you hoped) right then and there, i.e. the spell would be cast. However, you could omit certain phrases and gestures at key points during the process. If you did it right, the spell would be hanging there like potential energy, waiting to be unlocked when you executed those missing words and motions.
There was a limit to how much potential you could have hanging at any given time, and I’d gathered that like most things in life, your own personal limits were determined by a combination of genetics and practice. But it did require a certain amount of skill too. The words and phrases you chose to omit and use as a trigger affected how well the spell stuck around over time. This was one of five hundred things on my list to quantify about this whole business, but I hadn’t figured out a valid way to measure it so far.
“Boys,” said Brigit. “We have a visitor.”
She pointed over the ledge. Just past the bench, the hillside fell off quickly. A line of trees and brush grew a few feet down from where things got dangerously steep. In the growing light, we could see a set of animal eyes in the brush, clearly watching us.
They were too high up to be a raccoon or other pest.
“You see it?” I said. I put my hand in my jacket and gripped Fox.
“Yep,” said Dan.
We weren’t concerned that it would be a mountain lion or anything, even though Western Pennsylvania had its share. The real problem was that it could be something like the Zoro that had tracked me. According to the Praecants (which if I’m being honest basically means according to Dan), there are distinct species of animals that are magically sensitive and powered. You don’t want to run into them. And the best part about these things is that they are attracted to Praecants, hence the concern.
For Dan or Brigit to work any offensive magic this close to the city, they’d pretty much have to touch the thing, which was only good as a last resort. You didn’t want to be within hugging distance of any of them.
So I dragged my weary ass to my feet and drew Fox. I held him close, across the front of my thigh, so he could be brought up almost instantly if needed, but you couldn’t see him if you came by on the sidewalk behind us.
And then I stood there and waited.
After about half a minute, a snout and face came into the light, about four feet off the ground. If this thing was on all fours, it was really big.
Slowly, it walked out, watching us, and I relaxed. It wasn’t magical. It was, in fact, a huge Irish wolfhound. I’d seen several in the St. Patrick’s Day parade last year.
It studied us for a few seconds, then turned and disappeared back into the treeline. I could hear it tromping away down the steep hillside, crunching the fall leaves under its paws.
“Well,” said Dan, “That… didn’t escalate at all.”
“And good night,” I said, as I holstered Fox and walked past them back to the sidewalk.
“Five minutes!” said Dan.
“Forget him,” said Brigit.
Effort be damned. I shuffled down the street and unlocked my car. I heard footsteps behind me. Brigit.
“Hey,” she said, “Dan told me to grab his jacket before you take off.”
“Jacket?” I said. I looked in the back seat and saw the jacket we’d taken from Stoneface. “Oh.”
I grabbed it and handed it to her.
“You know what it does?” I said.
“Of course.”
I made my way home almost automatically. My brain was completely blasted, and now that Brigit had mentioned it, I indeed felt hungover.
I was pulling Gatorade out of the fridge when I noticed that the front door was slightly ajar. I was so out of it that I hadn’t fully closed it. I closed the door and locked it. I chugged the Gatorade. For an instant, I debated whether I should even bother taking my clothes off or just fall onto the bed. I opted for the latter.
I laid there, past exhausted. And laid there. For a long time. The night’s events kept playing over and over, shining down through the top of my consciousness. My arms and legs twitched every now and then.
Twenty minutes turned into forty, and then into an hour.
I couldn’t sleep. Even though I was wrecked, I was too strung out on adrenaline for my brain to really shut down.
This wasn’t the first time it had happened.
Back in grad school, I joined a tough guys’ intramural football league. We played full tackle, seven-on-seven with no refs. It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done. There were a lot of injuries. But the night after our first game, I couldn’t sleep. Laying in bed, it felt like my body was replaying every move. I could feel the memories flying through my muscles.
There was only one thing I’d came up with to fight it and actually get me some sleep. I needed to drill down and focus. Get up, do something useful and intense to burn it out, and then I’d truly get to crash.
I got up, poured a big tumbler of water and turned on my monitor. I hooked Fox up to the custom cabling I’d built. The software I’d set to compile before I’d left with Dan the night before had successfully completed and landed without any failed tests. Of course, that didn’t mean it was perfect. It just meant that it passed the tests I’d written for it. If my tests were stupid or incomplete, they wouldn’t do much good.
But my tests weren’t stupid or incomplete.
This latest build of the Fox software contained a driver for the selective payload module of the gun. I’d actually be able to cycle through a bunch of cool things with a
thumb switch or choose them directly with a voice command. I started the installation.
I fired up the development environment for the Fox software and started digging. The misfires and unfocused behavior of the gun last night were a huge problem. He had to be 100 percent reliable. It was bug fixing time.
It took about an hour and a half of really focused work to track it down.
And how is this possible? Not the bug tracking but Fox itself?
Well, the first thing you might do once you’ve derived the actual nature of magic if you’re into, say, electrical engineering and materials science is that you start doing some tests and find that many of the naturally occurring elements and isotopes, not to mention compounds, alloys, etc., exhibit different properties when exposed to magic than when they are exposed to energy from the standard electromagnetic spectrum. You might even posit that magic is actually a fifth kind of fundamental force, almost like an anti-EM.
You map all of that out or at least a good deal of it.
And then, if you also happen to be into, say, computer science and circuit design, you might fabricate a microprocessor from these materials. One that’s designed to run on magic as opposed to electricity. And finally, you might learn that it lets you do things that you just can’t do with standard technology.
So if someone did all of this, they might over the course of a year and a half have developed a little operating system that runs on such technology and call it something silly like SparkleOS, or SOS. And then build a gun and some other stuff using similar tech, writing software for it in SOS.
All of these things might be possible.
I fixed the bug. I started the compilation. I got up to make a sandwich.
As I did, I felt the stress leave my veins. It was gone, and I was overcome with a wave of relieved exhaustion. I shambled to the kitchen and threw together some bread, cheese and turkey breast. I ate a bite. Chewed. Closed my eyes for a second because it felt good.
My head jerked, and I realized that I had just been asleep on my feet with a mouth full of food. Time to put the sandwich in the fridge. I don’t remember even walking over to my bed, but there I was.
I slept through the rest of the day and all night and not a soul bothered me.
* * *
When I woke, I was pretty sore. My head was fine though. In fact, other than my chin and forehead being tender and bruised, I felt remarkably good. It was sunny, which, well, it’s Pittsburgh so I’ll take it as a good sign any time that happens.
A quick check of my email showed nothing urgent on the personal front because there was no personal front. Two texts from Gwen asking if I was okay. Nothing from Dan. One work email asking if I’d be available at 1 p.m. today, to which I responded in the affirmative.
The bug fix was ready, so I set it to download to Fox.
I walked over to the kitchen and saw the sandwich I had made sitting on the counter. I remembered putting it in the fridge. I must have just dreamed that I did it.
Wow.
I threw it out and opened the cupboard for the coffee. Eh. The thought of my own brew didn’t excite me today. The thermometer in my window read just over fifty degrees. That plus sunshine on a fall morning in Western Pennsylvania is not an invitation that should be ignored. I’d walk the several blocks to Square Cafe up on Braddock.
I changed clothes and threw on a light jacket and (non-magical) ball cap. I’d shower after coffee.
The front door was indeed locked, so I’d at least managed to make that happen yesterday. I hadn’t been a complete wreck. I unlocked the door and found a surprise.
There is a small concrete stoop outside my front door covered by a roof. It’s a nice little entryway and protection from the elements for someone who might be coming to visit. Not that anyone except for magical assholes come to visit these days. Curled up on the stoop was a mid-sized dog. She ran about thirty pounds with a smooth, brindle coat. No collar. Obviously hungry. She looked at me.
Okay universe, what’s with the dogs?
And I wondered.
And thought.
It hadn’t been that long. Just a handful of years.
Even though so many people close to me had died that day, for some reason the only thing that could flip my switch was thinking about May. I read a study recently that when it comes to empathy, humans have a clear hierarchy. They feel the least protective toward other adult humans, and the most protective toward baby humans. But only slightly behind baby humans are dogs. We feel more protective and attached to them than we do to other people.
I’m not going to go on about what kind of dog May was because if you’ve loved a dog, I don’t need to, and if you haven’t, it would just sound stupid.
But yeah.
What’s with the dogs?
I knew that feeding a stray was a good way to keep it coming back, which I didn’t want. I didn’t want a dog. It was too rough.
But I couldn’t walk past this little one that for some stupid reason had decided to sleep on my doorstep last night.
I went back inside to get a couple of chunks of cheese. Dogs love cheese.
She followed me inside.
“No!” I said, but she just trotted into the kitchen and sat down on the floor. She smiled at me.
“Come on, girl,” I said. “You’re killing me.”
She just sat.
I grabbed two pieces of string cheese and opened one of them. Her ears perked and her tail started wagging hard enough to move her whole backside.
I’d take the cheese back outside, and she’d follow.
Except that she didn’t.
I stood in the open front door, wiggling the cheese.
“Come on, girl!” I said. “I’ve got cheese!”
The dog looked me square in the eyes.
“Lincoln,” she said, “I don’t want cheese.”
Chapter 4
“Uh, what?” I said.
“Okay, I do want cheese. But that’s not why I’m here.”
She came across the kitchen, into the entryway and ate up the string cheese I had apparently just dropped on the floor.
Several things ran through my mind. I didn’t have enough context or knowledge to choose between them. These:
1. I had serious neurological damage.
2. This animal was under some kind of spell.
3. This was something other than a dog, even though it looked like a dog.
4. Dan was messing with me.
“So, you are…?” I said.
“I’m Babd,” she said. Her voice was high and strangely accented. Probably because dog anatomy isn’t ideal for forming human speech patterns. If she was a dog. “I’m not from around here.” And at that she laughed. It was a halfway woof/howl, and after it, her tongue lolled out for a moment.
“You seem intelligent,” I said.
“I am.”
“Can you tell me what you are?”
“What a strange question.”
“Is it?”
She laughed again.
“I am not this dog,” she said. “But I am. It’s hard to explain. Biology drives behavior which drives biology. I’m an interrupt.”
“Well that clears things up,” I said. “You thirsty?”
I came back in and shut the door. Faced with extreme weirdness of the non-hostile variety, I guess the best thing to do is to at least try to be polite.
“Yes,” she said.
I grabbed a plastic container from the cupboard and filled it with tap water. She drank for a while.
I found myself lowering down on my haunches as she did so, bringing myself closer to her level.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not out for vengeance.”
Slightly disturbing.
“Is there a reason that you should be out for vengeance?”
“Well,” she said, “I’m assuming that you’re the one who killed Vasily.”
“Stoneface?”
“Some people called him that.”
<
br /> “Why would you think I killed Stoneface?”
“I was there,” she said. “You and the other one brought him in, and he was alive. I tried to follow you into the basement, but the stairs were too steep for that body. I thought you were interesting.”
“Are you saying you are the puppy?”
“I was.”
“Okay.”
She leaned her head down and scratched the back of her neck with her hind paw.
“You are far more interesting than Vasily was, so I decided to follow you after you left. I checked back on Vasily yesterday, and only his body was there. I assumed that you and the other one killed him.”
“We did not,” I said.
“It is fine,” she said. “I had only been watching him for a couple of days and had not become attached. You’ll find no reprisals from this quarter.”
“That’s good to know. Was that you up on Mt. Washington?”
“It was.”
This narrowed things down, I guess. I wished that I could ask Dan. He’d probably know what was what. I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase my next question, as it probably held a lot of unknown unknowns.
“Why do you look different each time I see you? I mean, are you changing shape or...”
“No,” she said. “I borrow these bodies. I have tried to interrupt other species here, but it seems I am only compatible with these.”
“So, what do you want?” I said.
She turned her head to the side, as though thinking.
“Nothing really,” she said. “To follow you. To observe and understand.”
“That’s not weird at all,” I said.
So according to this talking, body-hopping dog whose veracity I had no way to ascertain, Stoneface was dead. That was bad, and I wasn’t sure how bad it was.
I mean, it was straight up bad, because regardless of what had happened to him, if people really started digging, they could probably place Dan and me at his house that night. We had been careful, but I had obviously been really out of it. Maybe I had written “Lincoln wuz here” on the wall and not remembered. So from a legal perspective, this was bad. And from a moral perspective, things were even worse.
Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog Page 4