The last wizard

by Simon Hawke

  She swallowed hard and bit her lower lip. “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “You’re the only one who can really answer that.”

  Kira looked down. “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked. “All of us?”

  “I don’t know, love. We’ve gone through things no other human being has ever experienced before. It’s no big surprise we’re having trouble coping. “ He paused. “You know, it’s funny… when I was a kid, reading comic books, I used to dream of being a superhero, just like every other kid, I guess. Except unlike other kids, I actually got to be one. And I found out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Superheroes have problems, too. But hey, at least we don’t have to worry about costumes.”

  She smiled. “I love you, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Aren’t you going to say it back?”

  “Well, you know, us men have trouble with that sort of thing. We’re just a bundle of conflicting emotions and testosterone.”

  “Up yours. “

  “I love you, too.”

  “I never doubted it. But it’s nice to hear it, just the same. Now be a good boy and leave me alone for a while. Go back to bed. I need to think about some things.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning. Which should be about a couple of hours from now. I think I’ll just go read or watch the boob tube for a while and put on a fresh pot of coffee.”

  He went back inside and closed the sliding door. And smelled fresh coffee already brewing.

  “Seems like the only one getting any sleep around here lately is the Broom,” Billy said from the kitchen. “I dunno, does the bloody thing sleep or just go dormant or something?”

  “Good question,” Wyrdrune said. “Damned if I know. I think it sleeps. Sort of. Did we wake you?”

  “Nah. Couldn’t sleep. Tired of having all them bloody voices in me head.”

  Wyrdrune grinned. “You’re sounding more like your old Cockney self.”

  “I am still me old Cockney self. I’ve just picked up a couple of extra selves along the way. Here you go, mate. “ He handed Wyrdrune a mug of coffee and then poured one for himself. “You want to take one out to Kira?”

  “No, it can wait a bit. Let’s leave her alone for a while. She needs a little space.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “Seems like nobody’s getting much sleep lately. Except for John, I guess.”

  “Nah, he’s awake as well. Went out for a walk about an hour ago.”

  Wyrdrune frowned. “He went out? Alone?”

  “Well, there’s not much chance of that, now, is there?” Billy said, tossing his long white hair out of the way. “There’s sure to be at least half a dozen bloody marines on his tail, all dressed in civilian clothes and armed to the bloomin’ teeth beneath their macks.”

  “Is he all right?” asked Wyrdrune.

  “Oh, Johnny’s okay. A bit wound tight, is all. He’s still having a hard time getting used to all this rot.”

  “Yeah, I know. I wish there was something we could do to make it easier on him.”

  “If you figure something out, let me know what it is. I’d kinda like to try it on meself.”

  “I thought if any of us had a chance at getting some answers, it would be you,” said Wyrdrune.

  Billy shook his head. “Gorlois never did any talking when he was a discrete entity. And now he’s just not there anymore. He gave me his life force and a few fragments of his memory—and some of his looks, besides—but if I know anything the Council did, I can’t seem to get at it. And believe me, I’ve tried so hard, it’s given me splitting headaches.”

  “I’m worried about Sebastian,” Wyrdrune said. “I sent him out to Tucson with that guy Simko, just in case. I don’t care what Wetterman says about him, if Simko runs into one of the Dark Ones, he won’t be able to handle it. I wanted to make sure Sebastian was there to keep him from blowing it, but now I’m worried about him, too. We should’ve gone ourselves.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” Billy said, “but Wetterman’s right, you know. If Tucson proves to be a wild goose chase and the real thing comes up while we’re gone, we could lose precious time. And we can’t go spreading ourselves thin. You three need to be together to form the Living Triangle, which leaves me as your backup just in case something should go wrong. Splitting up is out of the question.”

  “You’re right, of course,” said Wyrdrune with a sigh. “It’s just that I hate the thought that people have to die for us to get the go-ahead.”

  “You can’t hunt a murderer until you’ve got a murder,” Billy said. “But I know what you mean. It stinks.”

  “In some ways, it was better when we were on our own, without all this infrastructure to support us,” Wyrdrune said.

  “I just feel weighted down by it all. And half the time I wind up feeling like a prisoner in here.”

  “You can go out, you know.”

  Wyrdrune shook his head. “It’s not the same. I liked it better when we were calling our own shots.”

  “Yeah? And when was that? When did any of us get to call our own shots since we got involved in this?” Billy reached out and tapped the runestone in Wyrdrune’s forehead. “That’s been calling the shots ever since you boosted it from that auction at Christie’s.”

  “You’ve got a point,” said Wyrdrune wryly. He sipped his coffee. “You know, it occurs to me that the stress may not be the only reason why we’re all having trouble sleeping lately. What you said about the voices in your head… the dreams none of us can quite remember… we’ve all had that sort of thing before, but never to this extent. It’s as if something is slowly coming to a boil.”

  “What?”

  Wyrdrune shook his head. “I don’t know. I used to be a pretty sound sleeper, but now if Kira so much as burps quietly, I hear it, even if I’m not fully awake. No matter how quietly she moves, I can tell if she gets out of bed in the middle of the night. It’s as if I’m becoming hypersensitive to her, much more so than occurs normally in a relationship.”

  Billy nodded. “I knew when John went out, even though I was in bed with the door closed and he was quiet leaving his own room. I knew you two were awake, as well.”

  “You haven’t got a runestone,” Wyrdrune said, “but Gorlois became a part of you and Gorlois was a member of the Council. Something’s going on. It feels as if we’re building up to something. Only what? Why don’t the damn stones ever tell us anything?”

  He suddenly noticed that Billy was staring past him intently, his mouth slightly open, his hand frozen in the act of bringing the coffee mug up to his lips. Wyrdrune followed his gaze toward the sliding glass doors and saw Kira standing outside on the roof patio, looking out over the city. Only it wasn’t Kira.

  In Kira’s place stood a woman with long, thick, waist-length coppery red hair held in place by a thin circlet of hammered gold. She was barefoot and dressed in a long, flowing white robe that billowed slightly in the evening breeze.

  “What the bloody hell?” said Billy softly.

  As if she heard him, the woman turned, but suddenly it was Kira once again, the transformation occurring so quickly that they didn’t even see it. She saw them looking at her and smiled.

  “Oh, boy…” said Wyrdrune.

  It was hard for four men to follow someone down an almost deserted city street at night without being noticed, especially when the man they were tailing was a New York City cop. Angelo knew they were there, of course. They weren’t trying to hide the fact that they were tailing him, but at the same time, they were doing their best not to be too obvious about it. Two of them were walking about half a block behind him while the other two were roughly parallel with him on the opposite side of the street. They were all approximately the same height and build, they all had very short haircuts, and they were all wearing identical dark raincoats. Even the most inept mugger would have spotted them. But it wasn’t muggers they were worried about.

  Angelo
wasn’t annoyed at his escort. He knew they were only doing their jobs and he felt a little guilty about making them leave their comfortable security post to follow him out into the streets at night, but he just had to get out. He felt a pressure building up inside and he had to walk it off, feel some open space around him, get away where he could think.

  As a cop, he’d always thought best walking around the city. He knew Manhattan like the back of his hand. He’d walked it all, the whole damn island. And parts of Brooklyn, too. For the average citizen, it wasn’t exactly the safest thing to do, particularly at night, when Angelo thought best, but then the average citizen didn’t vent steam by going out and looking for trouble. Angelo did. Or at least, he used to.

  He had made a number of high-profile felony arrests while off duty. Twice he had prevented rapes this way. A number of times he had caught muggers, armed robbers, and once even a cop killer, all without any backup. He didn’t do it for the glory. He had done it to stay sane. He had been a cop twenty-four hours a day, unable to turn it off. He came from a long line of cops; he had grown up in the profession. Ever since he was a little boy growing up in Brooklyn, he’d wanted to catch the bad guys. He had worked some of the toughest jobs in the department. Vice. Narcotics. Undercover for the Organized Crime Task Force. He saw the worst parts of human nature every day. And somehow it had never made him callous, although he affected the manner.

  He still recalled one incident on the subway that always reminded him of why he had become a cop. There was a young kid obviously stoned, sick from whatever it was he had taken. It wasn’t an overdose, it was just bad shit. The kid was in bad shape, puking all over himself, collapsing on the floor of the subway car. Angelo tried to help him. He was in civilian clothes. The other people on the car were either ignoring the whole thing or looking on with distaste. One middle-aged woman watched with open disgust as he knelt over the kid, looking as if she were about to puke herself. Finally she said, “How can you bear to touch that disgusting animal?” He had looked up at her, met her gaze, and said, “Lady, I’m a New York City cop, and this ‘disgusting animal’ could easily be your son.”

  She had grimaced and looked away, but then a moment later, he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see an elderly man, not terribly well-dressed, somebody just struggling to get by on social security and maybe a small pension. And the man said, “How can I help, Officer?”

  That one old man made everything worthwhile. That one old man was hope for the city. And who knew, maybe even that middle-aged lady thought twice about the whole thing later. Then again, maybe not.

  It was all different now. He was still after the bad guys, but this time the bad guys weren’t even human. And they gave “bad” a whole new meaning. But now he wasn’t a cop anymore. Not exactly. He was officially “on leave” from the department and attached to the ITC, but for all the resources and manpower on “the project,” as the support staff tended to refer to it, there was nothing official about it whatsoever. Officially, it didn’t exist. And neither did he.

  That last point was one to ponder. In a very real sense, the John Angelo he was before didn’t exist anymore, either. There was a blood-red ruby magically embedded in his chest and it had dumped another person, or whatever had remained of him, into his psyche and he was still trying to sort the whole thing out. John Angelo, working-class cop. Modred Pendragon, multibillionaire hit man. Make sense of that, why dontcha? The shrink was helping, even though he never did like shrinks. This one was different. She looked like someone’s grandmother, but she was one sharp lady. Tough. Smart. Opened him up like a can of tomatoes and proceeded to make sauce. Not like the other shrinks at all, with all their “well, how does that make you feel?” crap. This one zeroed in and started boring like an auger.

  He liked that. He appreciated somebody who didn’t waste time with any bullshit. And she helped. She helped a lot. Helped with lots of things. Helped him understand why he’d never been able to maintain a relationship. Why he took the kind of chances he did. Why he got such a charge out of “working the edge,” as he called it. And why it bugged him so much to have Modred in there somewhere. It wasn’t so much that it bothered him to have a professional killer suddenly become a part of him. It was that a part of him liked it. He just wasn’t sure which part. And that was what really bothered him.

  He felt the reassuring weight of the 10mm semiauto in his shoulder holster. He had always carried a high-capacity nine in a belt slide and a. 380 in an ankle rig. He had never carried a 10mm before. It was a fucking cannon. It was Modred’s gun. Serious ass hardware, with custom bullets designed for maximum expansion. He’d test fired the thing into ballistic gelatin and the expended rounds came out looking like fucking ashtrays. He’d gotten a compact 9mm for the ankle rig. Scarcely bigger than the old. 380, but it seemed redundant now. That big stainless semiauto would stop a charging elephant. And he was filled with confidence that he wouldn’t miss. That part was Modred. He’d never been much of a marksman before. He’d always qualified, but he wouldn’t win any department sharpshooting matches. Now, he felt… no, he knew… he could take on world champions and win. Strange. Very, very strange.

  He felt like a cocked pistol, ready to go off. Except there was no one to shoot at. The stress was building up. And the dreams, the goddamn dreams… Why couldn’t he ever remember any of them? He’d wake up suddenly, shaking, feeling like he’d been off in some other world, and for a fraction of a second, he’d almost grasp it… and then it would be gone. It was making him crazy.

  Crazy. Yeah. Like it was normal to walk around with an enchanted runestone in your chest, one that was alive and contained the souls of several immortal sorcerers, not to mention King fucking Arthur’s son, whom they’d dumped into his head for safekeeping. Sure. That was real sane. Jesus. He should’ve put on his running shoes. He was walking so fast, he was practically jogging. He felt like he could go all night, work some of this crap off. He hoped none of the marines had new shoes on.

  He slowed his pace and glanced over across the street at his escort moving roughly even with him on the other side, and that was when it happened. The runestone in his chest suddenly tingled, sending what felt like a small electric current through him. There was a flash of brilliant blue light and the side of the building just in front of him exploded in a shower of concrete dust and chips. He was down and rolling, without thinking, smoothly drawing the 10mm from its holster as he came up in a crouch.

  The marines were already firing. The ones behind him were coming up fast, their coats open and flapping, their short-barreled, caseless assault rifles in their hands. The ones across the street were shooting, their weapons on full auto making a sound like pneumatic wrenches going full bore. More flashes of blue light, like a laser show, crisscrossing the street. The two marines on the other side were briefly wreathed in a blue halo and then they disappeared. Angelo swung his weapon around, looking for targets. And then he saw them.

  They were wearing black coats with hoods. Three of them. No, four. The big semiauto cracked sharply and one of them went down across the street, hurled right off his feet by the impact of the bullet. He changed his point of aim and fired again and another one went down, and then anther flash of blue light lanced out toward him from another direction and he was tackled by one of the marines as it passed over his head and slammed into the building behind am.

  “Get down!”

  There was a scream and the other marine bought it, leavng only the one who’d tackled him. They scrambled to take shelter behind parked cars.

  “Stay down, for Chrissake!” the last marine said, firing his weapon with one hand while clawing for his radio with the other.

  Several bolts of energy slammed into the car they were hiding behind and it rocked as it exploded into flame, throwing them backward.

  “Fuck that,” said Angelo, coming up and firing as he ran. He saw another black-clad figure running across the street and dropped him, then plunged down a subway entrance, flyi
ng down the stairs. A wino huddled up against the wall didn’t even flinch as he ran past with his gun drawn, sprinting underneath the street to get to the stairs leading up to the other side. Fortunately, it was very late and there weren’t any people. It was a residential neighborhood. He reached the stairs on the other side and ran up, keeping close to the wall, listening intently. Silence.

  He peeked around the wall. The street was empty. No lights were on in any windows. New Yorkers had sense enough to keep their windows dark and closed when they heard gunfire in the streets, especially automatic weapons. Angelo came out cautiously and looked around, holding his weapon ready. Nothing. He heard the distant sound of sirens approaching fast. No sign of the remaining marine.

  “Shit,” he said through gritted teeth.

  He ran across the street. The last marine was lying on the sidewalk, alive but bleeding badly from several lacerations he’d sustained when the car exploded. He looked shaky, but had managed to hold on to his gun. The radio was lying beside him on the sidewalk, broken.

  “You okay?” said Angelo, crouching beside him.

  “Yeah,” the marine replied. “You?”

  Angelo nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  The marine grimaced. “Man, what a mess. We really blew it.”

  “You didn’t know anything, soldier. I did. I got three of your guys killed.”