Broken

by Ryan Attard

  Fuck that.

  “Will you both stop talking about me?” I snarled.

  Amaymon’s eyes locked onto mine, while Abi’s gaze darted between me and the lamp.

  It was her expression that did it.

  I felt the same shame children feel when they've done something hurtful just to test the limits. For a second I felt like I was two inches tall, and wanted nothing more than for the ground to swallow me whole, or to spontaneously combust.

  Anything to stop her looking at me like that.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

  Her expression softened and I could breathe normally again. Abi reached for a supply closet where I kept brooms and mops.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  Picking out a broom, I started cleaning up my mess.

  “Clairvoyance,” I told the two of them. “That’s the new power. I keep having these visions at night. Everything is so real.”

  “You can’t sleep,” Abi said. “That’s why I heard you turn in your sleep.”

  I nodded. “And I think it’s also astral projection,” I said. “Sometimes I’m covered in dirt. Once it was blood.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Astral projection doesn’t work like that,” Amaymon said. Then he shrugged. “Then again, you were in Limbo for quite a while and managed some amazing feats there. Maybe you carried some of it over?”

  I nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  The relief must have shown on my face because Amaymon grinned. “Never seen anyone that happy about their new weird powers.”

  “Hey, I thought I was going crazy,” I said. I fished out an evidence baggie from my pocket. “And apparently my newfound powers have an interesting side effect: putting me at odds with detectives.”

  I tossed Abi the baggie.

  “March finally had enough of our shit?” Amaymon asked.

  “Nah, he’s cool. Some angry chick named Diaz.”

  “Diaz, huh?” He grinned in a way that made me want to take a shower. “Man, angry chicks are the best.”

  “Shut up, Amaymon,” Abi and I said in unison.

  I grinned at her, and dumped the remains of the broken lamp into a bin, whilst making a mental note to grab one of those fancy furniture catalogues I would never be caught dead with, and check out a new one.

  Meanwhile, Abi’s attention was on the baggie.

  “You got this from a crime scene?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  A raised eyebrow. “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But if we use it to solve a horrible gruesome murder, then it’s technically a grey area.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. I’m sure of it.”

  “How sure?”

  “Like, ninety percent.”

  Amaymon gave me a thumbs-up. “I taught you well.”

  Abi sighed at the two of us. Opening the bag, she deftly used a pair of tweezers to extract the shard and dumped it in a copper cup.

  “Since when do you have a potion cup handy?” I asked. It usually took a while to magically charge potion cups, and that was without all the prep time for all the other ingredients. That was why I didn’t mess with potions—I preferred a more direct method.

  The fireball-to-the-face method.

  “Since it’s not the first time you’ve asked me to do this,” she replied, lighting a small Bunsen burner that was sitting on a shelf against an adjacent wall.

  Abi set the cup on the fire, and I saw several sigils glow. Her chanting was soft and almost undertone, like the whisper of the wind.

  “Huh.”

  “What?” I asked.

  She removed the cup and turned off the burner. “Well, it’s not magic,” she said. “Or ectoplasm. Best I can tell, this is ichor. Black ichor.”

  I turned to Amaymon. “Um, I’m at a loss here.”

  To my surprise Amaymon didn’t come back with a jibe or an insult.

  Instead, he just looked worried.

  “Okay, Amaymon, say something, 'cause you’re starting to freak me out,” I said.

  He looked at me. “What do you know about ichor?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s that golden stuff that angels bleed. You know, like blood.”

  He nodded. “That’s one example, yes. Ichor is the lifeblood of any creature that’s based on physical DNA. That’s why angels have ichor, because they become physical things the moment they cross the threshold.”

  “Same as demons, then,” Abi said.

  He nodded. “Sort of. Depends on the demon. If we choose to embody a permanent physical form, then yes. But most demons only use the physical form as a placeholder.”

  I nodded.

  After Belial and I were resurrected at the same time, Amaymon had engaged the former Demon Emperor in a duel.

  In actual Hell.

  For the first time I had seen Amaymon’s actual form, and trust me, it was nowhere near human.

  “What about ectoplasm?” Abi asked.

  “Ectoplasm is spiritual energy manifested in reality,” Amaymon said. “Essentially, ectoplasm in a living thing becomes ichor, provided the living thing has purpose. An instinct if you will.”

  “So that’s what this black ichor is?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Ichor is ichor. The colors change depending on the amount of power the creature has. Angels usually bleed gold, demons either red or blue. Some other creatures vary. But never black. Black means corruption.”

  “So what are you saying, Amaymon?” I asked.

  “That something was alive, had either ichor or blood in it,” he said, “and came into contact with something else—a spell or spirit—that corrupted it to the point of changing its entire DNA.”

  We all fell silent for a minute.

  “I’m thinking of at least a dozen spells that can do just that,” I said. “My sister might know more.”

  “But think of the power that would be needed,” Abi said. “These aren’t easy or cheap spells. Not to mention the kind of corruption a practitioner needs to have in order to cast such a foul spell.”

  “She’s right,” Amaymon said. “That kind of evil would be hard to mask. You humans have shit senses, but even you’d be able to feel that much.”

  “Okay, so let’s rule out spells for now,” I said. “You mentioned creatures?”

  The demon shrugged.

  “Your garden variety eldritch beings all operate in the same way,” he said. “But again, the summoning process would definitely attract the attention of folks like your sister. Not to mention the Grigori—or what’s left of them.”

  The Grigori used to be a council of all-powerful magic users that ruled from the shadows, policing the use of magic among practitioners.

  And I use the past tense because Alan Greede had eliminated most of their heavy hitters in one fell swoop. The images of my ex-girlfriend being slaughtered in front of me flashed in my mind and I forcibly willed it away.

  “Then you got one or two types of lich,” Amaymon continued, “couple of demonic spirits, a subtype of mind flayers known as cacodaemons…” He shrugged. “Could also be a deity. The Greek ones in particular were dicks.”

  I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “Well, that gives us squat,” I said. “Our perp can be anything from a god to a whacked-up psycho-wizard. Just outta curiosity, do any of the creatures you mentioned use a big-ass sword?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why?” Abi asked.

  “That was likely the murder weapon,” I said. “You should have seen this place. Cuts and grooves all over the walls. Victim was hacked to pieces. Yeah, he was a piece of shit but this was just…” I shivered involuntarily.

  Amaymon chuckled. We shot him a look.

  “What?” he said. “Erik just narrowed it down.”

  “I did?” I asked with a frown.

  “Oh, Erik, sometimes you can be so
simple,” he said, grinning. “What you just described is classic revenge. And only one creature is capable of such monstrous acts of righteous vengeance: good, old-fashioned humans.” He licked his lips, exposing shark-like teeth. “Our bad guy is a mortal.”

  Chapter 5

  Following Amaymon’s revelation (the guy did love his drama), Abi and I set to investigating every magic-user we knew who could pull off something like this.

  And we came up with exactly diddly-squat.

  Roland was also taking his sweet time coming up with a lead on his end, which meant that, for once, Erik got the afternoon off.

  So what does an overworked wizard do with his spare time? Well, apparently, takes a nap, and then goes to therapy.

  Me and therapy go way back. In the movies, all those superheroes can just up and walk away from any trauma. Reality is different. Magic or not, I was still human—that meant a human mind and human emotions. This is why you find wizards who are powerful but utterly cracked upstairs.

  The human part of them broke.

  I should know. My dad was one such case.

  So after I got trapped on an island in a pocket dimension that later collapsed when I killed the creature sustaining it (the Sin of Envy), I began spotting signs of PTSD. It affected my work and my relationships, and I don’t have much to spare in either department.

  Since coming back to life and starting to piece my life back together, I had stopped going to group therapy and instead substituted war vets for a pretty young doctor with dyed blonde hair and sharp dark eyes named Annalise Tompkins.

  I know what you’re thinking, and, no, it wasn’t about that. The pretty packaging was just a really nice bonus. Doctor Tompkins was intelligent, highly professional and, more importantly, she had no expectations from me.

  She didn’t expect me to save the world, or protect the innocent, or any of that other crap. All she demanded was that I showed up at her office every Tuesday at four-thirty with an open mind.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Ashendale.”

  She always kept things formal, which suited me just fine.

  “Afternoon, Doc.”

  I made my way into her office, claiming my usual spot on the couch, and watched her sit down with all the grace of a member of the royal family. She was wearing a pencil skirt today that showed quite a bit of leg and a lot of muscle tone.

  Yeah, I noticed—I’m a guy after all.

  That was not to say I was interested. My past relationships, in chronological order, consisted of getting to second base with Lilith, the Sin of Lust (or maybe we went all the way. I don’t know, she glamored me and then tried to eat me. Literally); a centuries-old Hedge Witch I bumped into on that weird island (in my defense, she didn’t look a day older than thirty); and Akasha, former second-most-powerful member of the Grigori, with whom I had had a very physical relationship.

  The last one was also the woman I had held in my arms as she died because of my hubris.

  So yeah, I noticed my doctor’s legs but I had several square tons of baggage to sift through before I could feel comfortable doing anything about it.

  “I can see there are several things on your mind today,” she said. Her pen tapped gently against her notepad, nowhere-near annoying, but distracting enough to wake me from my stupor.

  I grinned. “Did someone write ‘basket case’ on me today?”

  She frowned.

  “Now, now, Mr. Ashendale,” she said sternly. “You know there is absolutely nothing wrong with people seeking help. You would know that.”

  I nodded. Everyone in town knew what I did for a living. Sure, they never believed me—at least not until they had several ghouls come after them, or they tried messing around with a Ouija board and accidentally summoned something.

  Doctor Tompkins shifted in her seat, slouching slightly. “How have you been coping since our last meeting?”

  I shrugged. “Same as usual. Those headaches became annoying enough for me to go see a doctor this morning. He said there was nothing wrong with me.”

  “That’s very good news,” she replied. “That means your ailment is psychological, rather than physical.” She smiled. It was a very nice, distracting smile. “Which is where I come in. Have you considered going back to group?”

  I shook my head. “Nah. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good guys. But it didn’t help me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I've told you already.”

  Her lips were a thin line. “Tell me again.”

  I paused a beat. This was always tricky. If I wanted this to work I had to be honest, but what was I going to say?

  Hey, Doc, the reason that war vet shit didn’t help me was because I actually got killed by some supernatural entity that cracked the fabric of space and time, robbed me of my magical healing powers—oh, did I tell you I’m a wizard? Yeah, exactly, just like Harry Potter—anyway, so I get killed and I go splat at a million miles per hour from a helicopter smack in the middle of a demonic infestation.

  Then I spent the following year running from the Grim Reaper and was brought back as a ghost, but no, wait, that’s not the good part. The good part came later when my arch-nemesis brought back a demon lord using my body and resurrected me along with it.

  What’s that? Do I have a history of mental illness in the family? Well, my father had delusions of grandeur and tried to sacrifice his children in order not to die from our family curse—yeah, we got one of them too—and my sister now runs a magic special forces unit, and oh, I see what you did there.

  “I was never in a war,” I told my doctor. “Those guys have their world in common. I…” I sighed again. “I’m different.”

  Doctor Tompkins put down her pen. “Because of your job?”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes, Doctor,” I said as sweetly as possible. “Because of my job.”

  “You’re getting defensive, Mr. Ashendale.”

  “And you don’t believe me.”

  Tompkins shrugged. “We all manifest our trauma in different ways,” she said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that, real or not, your reality is slowly killing you.”

  Oh, Doc, you have no idea.

  “When was the last time you did something nice for yourself?” she asked.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Define ‘nice’.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Something you like to do. Like a hobby. Something that relaxes you.”

  That was a very good point. Since I had been eleven my life had consisted of one continuous fight, monster after monster, enemy after enemy. I had never really had time for hobbies.

  Doctor Tompkins seemed to pick up on that.

  “You could always start something,” she said. “In fact, maybe taking a bit more control of your time would be beneficial.”

  I grinned. “What, set a nine-to-five?”

  “Why not? It’s your time and your life, Mr. Ashendale. Once it’s over, you don’t get it back.”

  That hit me harder than anything she had said. Having actually been dead, I had seen ghosts. Worse, I had seen people through Limbo, a dimension where emotions are unfiltered. I had seen everything from the joy born out of saying “I love you” to someone and knowing they felt the same way, to the despair of losing everything and knowing there was no way back. As a ghost I had felt each range of the spectrum as if I had been the one having those emotions.

  Stuff like that was supposed to give you perspective, but it had eluded me until Tompkins had framed it the way she had.

  I had a shot at a second chance. And I was wasting it by doing the same shit over and over again.

  I smiled at her.

  “Thank you. I think I got it.”

  “I hope you do, Mr. Ashendale,” she replied kindly. I saw the sincerity in her eyes.

  She’s one of the good ones, my shrink.

  ***

  Abi was still surprised when we entered the jazz club. Well, I called it a jazz club, but really the only similarities w
ere a guy playing sax and bartenders in black vests.

  In reality, it was just an upscale dive bar, one of those hipster places that had found their way down from Portland, Oregon. The kind of place I could never bring myself to frequent on account of wanting to shoot the majority of patrons inside.

  Still, I supposed now was the time to embrace change—a point I was trying to get across to Abi, who still rudely refused to believe me.

  “You weren’t kidding,” she said as we sat down. “Next thing I know, you’re gonna order a craft beer.”

  Apparently that was the magic word around here because a fresh-faced bartender with a moustache that would have looked better on Inigo Montoya popped into existence.

  He flashed a big smile inches from my face.

  “What can I get you lovely folks?”

  The entire time his focus was on Abi. I couldn’t blame him. Succubi tend to have that effect on a room.

  When I first met Abi, she was this skinny, wimpy-looking girl being chased by Lilith. Since using her powers, she’d become the kind of woman that would have an easy career as an Instagram model, with curves in all the right places and a sassy attitude to match.

  That, and the amazing mental magic she could pull off on account of Lilith messing with her basic DNA structure.

  Don’t get me wrong, Abi is hot. Beyond hot. But I also live with the woman.

  Nothing breaks the illusion like knowing someone’s bathroom schedule.

  She grinned at me and told the bartender, “Two craft beers.”

  He nodded, grinning. “Any preference?”

  “Surprise me.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for his smile to widen but it did. I rolled my eyes at her.

  “That was cruel.”

  “What?” she said. “Just some harmless flirting. We might even get the drinks for free.”

  “You might get the drinks for free,” I told her. “And I was referring to the fact you’re making me drink fucking craft beer.”

  She patted me on the arm. “You’ll like it.”