by Harry Nix
Alex took his newly built contraption and managed to carry it to the edge of the village. By this time, Julius had reappeared from wherever he’d been and was watching over what Alex was doing.
“Are you about to get yourself shot by thousands of pieces of silver in front of my entire pack?” he asked Alex.
“Maybe, but the silver is small and the doors are strong, and if something like this works, then it’s just a matter of refining it. If I can build something that works, that means they can never silver werewolf land again,” Alex said.
Now that he was finally set up, everyone evacuated the immediate area. They didn’t want to be shot by passing pieces of silver. Alex took a glance around, seeing faces peering out of cabins nearby. He looked across at one and saw Juno there. She shook her finger at him and then drew it across her throat like a warning: don’t go too far. He just winked at her, which made the little witch roll her eyes. Alex then stepped into his small chamber and closed the door. There were no gaps that he could see, and he hoped if there were any tiny ones that the specks would find it difficult to get through.
He called up the spell, again, which still had a row of question marks for the name. Tapping on it, Alex renamed the spell Silver Cleanse Version One, and then, taking the hint from Juno, down in the description area wrote duh, it cleanses silver. Checking his mana, he saw what he had the most of was nature and natural, green and blue. He decided that for a proper test he would give it all he could, see how far the spell would stretch and how much power it would take. He brought up the spell and charged it with the green nature magic, powering it up and then adding the blue. Soon the ball of light appeared in his hands and then grew larger, first the size of an orange and then a basketball. When it was almost as big as his two hands could hold, he let it go, dropping it to the ground, where it immediately broke into pieces and shot outwards.
Alex was expecting a strong reaction, but nothing like this. The charged up spell split and multiplied, breaking down to tiny specks of light, almost no bigger than the pieces of silver themselves. He got the sudden sensation that he’d covered a mile diameter in under half a second before there was a lurch as the telekinesis kicked in, and then a howling roar as every piece of silver within a mile flew towards where he was standing. At first it sounded like rain hitting the outside of a house, as the tiny flecks the closest to him hit the door, but then the noise increased in volume and his temporary shelter began to shake as it was hit from all sides. Alex couldn’t keep his mind focused on every piece of light that had gone out. He had a vague sense of it around him. Some of the pieces of silver were as large as a fingernail and were pulled towards him at high speed. There was a sound of breaking glass somewhere in the distance as a piece of it smashed through a window and Alex realized it was all coming in straight lines. He could hear scraping noises, too, pieces of silver hitting buildings, scratching along the sides, desperately trying to get to him. There were a few larger thuds and then a crack appeared in the door when something large and heavy hit it. Alex put his hands against it, hoping to hold it in place, but soon the whole structure was shaking and the crack began to widen.
The doors, although they had felt heavy, weren’t entirely solid, but were a hollow-core material with an air gap inside them. Alex held on to the cracked door as more silver smashed into it from outside. It was when he was sure the entire thing was going to disintegrate and kill him that the sudden roar died away as the spell finished. Alex let go of the door and heard it creaking. He immediately pressed his hands up against it again.
“Alex, don’t move,” Juno called from outside.
“There’s a ridiculous amount of silver out here piled up like snow, just stay still,” April called out.
He heard crunching outside, his two mates slogging through the silver he presumed was built up, and then the sound of them both using shovels.
“Do you think it got all the silver?” Alex called out.
“Did it get all the silver? What do you think, Juno?” April said, grunting as she used her shovel.
“I think if we want to start a silver mining or collection business, we can now,” Juno said. It took about twenty minutes before April rapped on one of the doors. Alex reached over and unlocked it, allowing April to pull it outward. The door he was holding was beginning to creak alarmingly. The crack had split from the top and was running right down to the bottom.
“Okay, so we’ve made you a sort of clear path there. You need to jump as far as you can and land way down there, because on the other side of that door is about half a ton of silver, and the moment you let go, it’s going to smash through,” April said. Alex looked out to see that the two of them had carved a path through silver as though they had been digging up snow. The silver was still caked with mud and damp from the rain overnight. April and Juno walked back down the path they had scraped through the silver and stood at the end in a clear opening. Taking a deep breath, Alex let go of the door and leaped. Although he would have said he had good control of his strength, perhaps it was the fear of being crushed by a few tons of silver that overpowered him because he shot past his mates like a bullet, hitting a tree and then spinning to the ground, landing with a slop in some mud.
Alex got up to the sound of werewolves cheering as he staggered out of the mud, his two mates casting healing spells on him. Julius’s entire pack was out, walking about, and as Alex got to his feet, he saw that piled up around the structure he had made was an enormous amount of silver, every speck of it within a half-mile pulled from the ground and deposited in that one area. Although he was running low on magic, he walked to the middle of the village and cast the Find Silver spell. The small ball of light floated away from him, crossing half the village before landing on the side of the pile of silver.
“I did it!” Alex said, and then coughed as two of his teeth fell out of his mouth and landed on the ground. Nia hugged him, and heedless of the blood running down his face, kissed him.
“Thank you for saving my home,” she said, pressing her body up against his.
11
“No one will sell to us and no one will buy from us and in about four days we’ll run out of money,” Jeremiah said, glancing at the werewolf next to him, Will, one of the new additions who in human form had a gigantic beard just like Jeremiah. Alex hadn’t inquired exactly, but understood that Jeremiah had taken on Will as a sort of second in command. Will had a clipboard and a pen. He looked down at it and then back to Jeremiah before nodding, confirming their money situation.
Despite the bad news, Alex was still feeling good. They’d finally arrived home twenty minutes ago after spending an extra day with Julius so they could help with any injuries arising from the silver cleanup.
Alex’s spell had captured almost every piece of silver within a mile. A few fragments had wedged against buildings but they were easy to find, Alex casting Find Silver over and over again. There was so much silver that Julius had mentioned setting up a forge to smelt it back into blocks and ship it back to Baxter to sell for profit. Although Julius hadn’t quite kept his distance Alex had sensed a certain reserve in the alpha werewolf, and despite everything appearing friendly on the surface after another day there, Alex and his pack had left to return home, trekking back to Boris.
Alex let Jeremiah’s news wash over him. Sure, it was bad they would run out of money soon, but Alex had killed the Abcartros, been given a Rune Rosetta Stone by some kind of weird magical projection, and worked out how to reverse the silvering of a village in under a week.
His silver cleanse spell was incredibly bloated and took a lot of magic and was definitely not safe for the caster, but Alex was a programmer at heart. If he could work on it longer, there’d be a way to make it safe or to cast it onto something. Alex had spent much of the drive dreaming up weapons that he could use the spell on. If he could get it small enough he could shoot a werewolf and then have every bit of silver within half a mile fly towards him all at once. Aware that the spell was qui
te dangerous in that regard Alex had only shared it with April and Juno, telling them not to share it with anyone.
“There have to be more people to sell to, right?” Alex said. Jeremiah shook his head.
“Not in the volume we want. There are a few little places that will take maybe one or two rings at a time but that’s not going to keep up with our burn rate,” he said.
“Whiskey?” Lydia said, holding up a silver flask and tipping it towards Alex.
“Sure,” he said, pushing forward his cup of coffee. It was still damn hot, but River made good coffee and so he was drinking it. They were gathered in the kitchen, him and his mates with River in the background checking a double row of slow cookers, making an enormous batch of stew. Alex saw that a deep freezer had appeared in recent days. It looked to be second- or possibly even thirdhand from the wear and tear on it. It seemed to be working well, half full of frozen meat. Lydia and Esme were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee after adding whiskey to it.
Jacob was in one doorway with Yvonne glued to him, her hands wrapped around his waist, occasionally nibbling on the back of his neck. The teenagers were an annoying distraction and Alex had also heard they’d broken one of the beds in one of the various abandoned houses. Alex was quite looking forward to getting Jacob alone so he could give the teenager copious amounts of shit about it.
Behind Jacob and Yvonne, Alex could see a shadow on the wall. It was Roma standing a little ways down the corridor. He’d barely seen her since she’d come to live with them. She kept to herself and only came out at night. It was surprising that she had come to this impromptu meeting. Juno had gone to talk with her briefly and then returned with a puzzled look on her face, whispering to Alex that Roma didn’t feel like talking right now.
Alex still wasn’t quite sure of the situation with his mates and Roma, whether they were jealous of her or expected she would become his next wife. He had enough going on that he wasn’t worrying about it. If she wanted to talk to him, he figured she would do so.
“But… it’s capitalism. It goes everywhere, even into the worst places ruined by terrorism and war and all kinds of horrible stuff going on. Someone’s coming and threatening these people, maybe the mages, maybe the vampires, but even so, there must be others who just don’t care who will happily do business with us,” Alex said, looking around the room.
“There’s always the black market,” Lydia said, taking a sip of her coffee. Alex clapped his hands together.
“There we go—the black market. Where is it? How do we sell to it?” Alex asked. Lydia shrugged and put her coffee down before unscrewing the flask lid and topping it up.
“I don’t know where the black market is, does anyone?” she asked. No one answered. Alex’s gaze came to rest on Juno.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at me. I don’t know where it is,” she said.
“Yeah, but you’re a sneaky witch, so if you don’t know someone in your family might,” Alex said.
“Sure, if you feel like handing out favors like candy,” Juno said.
“I know where it is,” Roma said from down the corridor. Jacob and Yvonne moved to the side as Roma came to stand in the doorway. She had her face down and was looking at her fingers. Despite the weather, she was wearing long sleeves and black yoga pants. She wasn’t completely covered up though. Around her neck she wore a necklace with a small green gem on it that sat in the top of her cleavage.
“How do you know where the black market is?” April said gently.
Roma seemed to shrink in on herself.
“It doesn’t matter how she knows. She can take us there and we can find some new buyers solve our money problem,” Alex said, stepping in.
“I can only take one of you. It should be Alex,” Roma said, her voice hardly above a whisper.
Alex glanced at Juno.
“The black market is kind of an invite only situation, people vouch for others as they go in. So if you go in, when you come out you can vouch for someone else,” Juno said.
Alex checked the time. It was only approaching ten in the morning.
“Let’s go now,” he said. April held up her hand.
“You might have the wrong idea about what the black market is. Usually it just refers to some illicit underground trade but in the supernatural world black could best be described as… evil,” April said.
“A massive amount of very morally dubious stuff goes on there,” Juno added. Alex looked to Roma who caught his eye and then nodded.
“It’s definitely past ethically gray but they don’t bow to anyone. If we want to sell and make money and buy, there will always be a buyer and seller at the black market,” she said.
Alex was feeling too good to worry too much about the warnings. He’d solved two massive problems recently. Why not go for three? Make it a trifecta.
“Roma, you come with me and tell me where to go,” he said.
“I’m coming too,” Juno immediately said. She cleared her throat. “I mean, I would like to go with you as well,” she said in a more normal tone of voice.
“Let’s make it happen,” Alex said. He collected a box of rings from Jeremiah, ones intended for sale and not distribution. When he got outside, Juno was already sitting behind Boris’s wheel with Roma in the passenger seat. Alex wasn’t sure if it was deliberate to keep them apart. He kept his thoughts to himself as he got into the back seat, putting the box of rings on the floor. They set off, driving out of the industrial district. As they went, the sense of Alex’s pack around him faded away as well as the tendrils of werewolf power. His pack had spread throughout many of the abandoned houses, claiming it much like territory out in the country. Upon their return Alex had been surprised to find he could sense that power easily and been able to grasp it on the first try.
He hadn’t done anything with it, just felt that it was there. He was still hesitant to exert his will but he could definitely feel his control over it was growing stronger.
They drove into Baxter with Roma giving directions in a quiet voice. It seemed to Alex that the woman he’d seen in her shop had been cowed or possibly even destroyed. She had been far more confident standing in her own space with her furniture around her and now she was whispering, quiet as a mouse.
To pass the time as they drove Alex brought up the spell screen, going over his silver cleanse spell. It was still far more bloated than he wanted, but he wasn’t quite sure how to compress it further unless it miraculously happened by itself. He sometimes spent a bit of time concentrating on the four thousand-ish digit number that represented silver, hoping it would compress perhaps down to the image of a nugget, but it stubbornly refused to change.
Alex had realized the ability to attract something was incredibly valuable. Not that there was just gold littered everywhere or jewels, but perhaps such a spell could be used if they ever needed to rob someone again.
Alex suddenly remembered the vampires’ ball and the wealthy supernaturals covered in jewels. He imagined a single spike of iron stabbed into the ground with multiple overlapping spells active at once, tearing necklaces off and pulling rings from fingers and collecting them all and then somehow making their escape. Perhaps if they mounted the spike in the back of a truck? That mansion had large windows and a lot of the jewelry would be able to shoot right through it. Would a bar of gold be able to smash its way through a building?
When they came to a stop, they were parked to the south of Baxter in the lower half of the city. As a lifelong resident, Alex knew there was a sports stadium over here, two swimming pools, and a mixture of residential and business areas.
“It’s just here but you won’t be able to see it until I take you in,” Roma said.
“Well I guess I’ll wait in the car,” Juno said. Roma got out and as soon as she did Juno reached over to grab Alex by the wrist. “Just… be careful. You remember with the witches and the favors. Don’t make any binding agreements you don’t understand or aren’t certain of,” she said.
>
“You mean like with witches who want a favor just for doing a cleanse?” Alex said.
Juno pinched his wrist.
“Yes, exactly like that,” she said. Alex gave her a quick kiss and then got out of the car with the box of rings under his arm. He walked over to Roma who was like a black splotch of ink in human form standing with her hands clasped in front of her. She looked up at Alex as he approached, but then quickly away, before holding out her hand.
“You need to hold my hand,” she said. Knowing her apparent aversion to physical contact, Alex just nodded and held his hand out, allowing her to take his rather than the other way around. Despite the temperature her fingers were cool and Alex briefly wondered if the semi-snakelike nature of a Medusa meant that she was coldblooded or whether it was just coincidence.
Taking hold of his hand, Roma pulled him towards the brick wall of what looked like an apartment building. There was a brief wash of cold and suddenly they were through it. Roma quickly let go of his hand and took a step away, fixing that permanent distance between them.
On the other side was a chaotic market stretching down a long alleyway and then opening into a square. There were stands that looked haphazard as though they had only been assembled that morning, and others that had a more permanent feel to them, almost looking like shops with enclosed walls or fabrics to make partitions. Alex could smell meat cooking, and although his stomach rumbled at it, some other part of him didn’t feel good, as though it would be disgusting to eat that meat.
“Shift to hybrid,” Roma murmured. Alex put down the box of rings and shifted. The shift brought new smells and new sensations. The meat cooking wasn’t anything he’d had before and now that he was in werewolf form, he was definitely sure he didn’t want to eat it. It wasn’t quite spoiled, but more wrong. With the box in his claws, he let Roma take the lead, passing by a few stands and glancing at their contents as he went by. The first two had spread out cloths and were selling rings, but Roma passed by them without a glance.