The last wizard

by Simon Hawke

  For some reason, he suddenly thought of the incident that resulted in his scholarship being yanked and him being kicked out of school. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, though it had only been a couple of years.

  He had taken a job doing special effects at a concert staged by the popular Boston band the Nazgul. He had needed the money, and besides, it was an opportunity to meet and work for his favorite band. There was, of course, the slight matter of its being illegal. They were looking for someone to handle special effects by magic and, as a graduate student of thaumaturgy, he still wasn’t certified. But since he came cheap, compared to what industry effects adepts usually charged, the management of the band hadn’t asked too many questions. They had told him what they wanted, then had him demonstrate in an empty warehouse by the waterfront some of the spells he planned to use. They seemed impressed and hired him. He never even got to meet the band.

  The night of the concert, the hall was packed. The Nazgul were one of the hottest bands in the country and they were playing on their home turf, where they had started out ten years earlier, playing in small clubs. It was a triumphant homecoming from their recent national tour and their Boston fans had turned out in force for the occasion.

  He had been ensconced next to the sound mixer, where he had brought up a fog that sparkled with electrical discharges, like tiny, jagged bolts of lightning dancing through it, and the audience went wild. It energized him and he thought, That’s me, I’m doing that.

  As the band launched into their opening number, “Riders of the Storm,” a cover of an old pre-Collapse classic by a group known as the Doors, he had manifested a thunderstorm above them, complete with swirling black clouds and lightning, thunder that crashed throughout the hall at appropriate moments, and then rain, cascading down onto the band and moving out in sheets over the audience, drenching them until they were all soaked to the skin. The crowd absolutely loved it and they screamed themselves hoarse. He could still recall how James Darkstar, the lead singer, had looked right at him and given him a thumbs-up sign. Yeah, he had thought. Yeah!

  He decided right then and there to make each succeeding effects spell even bigger than the one before it, deviating from the plan he had agreed on with the management, and between the Nazgul and himself, they whipped the crowd into an orgiastic frenzy until the band had reached the highlight of the show, their signature song, “Fire. “ As the guitars thrashed out a rapidly rising crescendo, Darkstar launched into his unearthly, screeching vocal:

  “Burn me with your cleansing fire,

  Feed the flame of my desire;

  Feel the heat between us rise,

  Sear me with your scorching eyes… Fiiiiire!”

  As Darkstar screamed out the word, Wyrdrune cast the spell and pillars of flame, twenty feet tall and as thick as Doric columns, erupted from the stage. The audience went berserk. And the curtains caught fire. It spread rapidly, sheeting around the stage and licking up the walls, and at first the audience, as well as the band, thought it was all part of the show, but the heat was so intense, and it rose so quickly, it melted the sprinklers and within moments the concert hall was in flames. The audience panicked. The band members threw down their instruments and fled the stage, triggering a mass surge toward the exits. Fortunately, security was right on top of things and the doors were all quickly thrown open, allowing the crowd to spill out into the streets. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt, although some people were taken to the hospital, suffering from minor injuries and smoke inhalation, but by the time the fire department had responded, the entire concert hall was engulfed in flame.

  The aftermath was anticlimactic by comparison. He was arrested, arraigned, and thrown in jail. There wasn’t anyone to bail him out, so he had time to sit and think about what he had done until the case came to trial. The band had a liability, as well, since they had knowingly hired an uncertified adept—and a mere student, at that—so their lawyers were brought into it and a deal was cut. He had been fined and the sentence was suspended. The Nazgul paid his fine in return for his agreement to indemnify them from any claims on his behalf arising from injuries or emotional distress or anything else anyone could think of and his written guarantee that he would not discuss any of it with the media, but it was the end of his career as an adept. The college pulled his scholarship and he was expelled. Everything that he had worked for had gone up, literally, in flames.

  He couldn’t blame anyone but himself. He knew he shouldn’t have taken that job, had no business taking it, and he had known he was breaking the law. He also should have known that he was overreaching himself when he discarded his plan at the concert and allowed his emotions and his ego to run away with him. In one fell swoop, he had destroyed all his hopes and dreams just as thoroughly as he had destroyed that concert hall—except the concert hall would be rebuilt.

  Perhaps, someday he’d be able to get back into a thaumaturgy school, but the odds of that weren’t good, especially after what he’d done, which was a matter of public record. And even if he found a school that would accept him, how would he pay for it? Four years of college and two years of grad school down the drain. He wound up back in New York, living in a tiny railroad flat on Fourth Street, grateful that his mother hadn’t lived to see how he had ruined his life.

  But it had taught him at least one thing… life could change on you suddenly and drastically. You either learned to roll with the punches or it beat you down. The difference between an adult and a child was not necessarily a matter of chronology. When the shit came down, a child would throw a tantrum, whine, scream, and complain and not want to play anymore. An adult would just sigh heavily, shrug his shoulders, and say, “Well, here comes some more shit. Guess I’ll just have to deal with it.”

  It was at that point, Wyrdrune realized, that his whole outlook on life had changed. The shit that came down, whatever it was, stopped getting to him. At least, it stopped getting to him in a way that would make him freak and freeze like a deer in the headlights.

  But Kira did not remember.

  Ever since he’d met her, Kira had been a control freak. She had lived life on her terms and her terms alone. They weren’t very socially acceptable terms, but they were hers. And ever since he’d met her, when the runestones had brought them together, Kira had nothing resembling control. Being bonded with the runestone in her palm had frightened her right from the first. Being drafted into a war that had started at the dawn of time had changed her entire life. Being aware of the spirits of the runestone at the edges of her consciousness had always been a source of acute anxiety for her. And she had always worried about the transformations he and Billy had gone through. Would it happen to her? When? And how?

  Now it had finally happened and it had thrown her for a loop. The more so because she could not remember. One of the runestone’s spirit entities had taken control of her body, transmogrified it, used it, and she had no memory of it whatsoever. And that was what probably bothered her more than anything else.

  “You okay?” he asked her quietly.

  For a moment she did not respond. Then, without turning from the window, she said softly, “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t go falling apart on me now,” he said. “We need you. We can’t do this without you.”

  “Why don’t you just have Alura or whatever her name is do it?”

  “Alira,” he corrected her.

  “Whatever.”

  “Kira… just because you may not be completely in control of things doesn’t mean you’re not still you. None of us is completely in control. Of anything. And I don’t just mean us; I mean everybody. You’ve just got to go with the flow, roll with the punches.”

  “I’m tired of rolling with the punches. Besides, wasn’t it you I heard complaining about how he didn’t have a life of his own anymore?”

  “Yes, it was,” he admitted. “I wish that we could have our old lives back. Well, maybe not exactly our old lives. I wouldn’t want to go back to being broke and living
on Fourth Street anymore. You’ve got to admit at least our lifestyle has improved considerably.”

  “Yeah, but is it our lifestyle or someone else’s?”

  “Think of it as a cooperative group effort,” he replied, trying to inject some levity into the discussion, without very much success.

  “I just want it to be over,” she replied wearily. “However the hell it turns out, I just want the whole thing to be over.”

  “So do I,” he said, “and so do John and Billy. And Sebastian. And Wetterman and Simko and McClellan and everybody else involved, including the President. But we’re the only ones who can really do anything about it. You’ve got to pull it together and snap out of it. It’s not just about us, you know. If we lose, everybody loses.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s what really scares me. I never was all that hot on issues of responsibility. And suddenly I’ve got more of it than about ninety-nine point nine percent of the entire human race. Maybe it would be just as well if Alira came out again and just took over the whole thing for a while. I could sure use a vacation. Only trouble is, how do I know if I’d be coming back?”

  He reached over and took her hand. “Don’t worry. You’re not going anywhere. I won’t let you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay.”

  The plane started to descend.

  “Well, my old friends, it shall not be long now,” Talon said as he stood before the massive crystalline formation surmounting the altar in the cavern. The incandescent glow flooded the entire cavern with brilliant light that reflected off the surface of the pool behind him and the veins of quartz and amethyst running through the walls. Inside the towering crystals, the figures of Beladon and the others were trapped like flies in amber, their features frozen into grimaces of horror. Alive, yet powerless, suspended in a limbo where they remained completely conscious, aware of one another, yet unable to communicate… but Talon heard their thoughts. And they heard his.

  They will kill you, Talon, Beladon sent. They will kill you without us.

  “But I have you,” Talon replied with a smile. “I have all of you. I have all your power, without the added complications of your arrogance and your ambition and your condescension. I can depend on getting what I need from you without having to worry about trusting you, which I could no more do than you could trust me. Truly, it is the best of all possible arrangements. Maybe not for you, but it suits me admirably.”

  And what if you should lose? Adreia sent to him. What will happen to us?

  “If I should lose, frankly, I don’t care,” Talon replied aloud. “But I doubt there is much chance that I shall lose. My acolytes channel more power to me every day. I can feel it flowing through me with each life that they snuff out. And you remain as my reserve. When the time comes, and it shall be soon now, the avatars shall face more power than they have ever encountered before. And we shall see if the Council can withstand it. For when they arrive, I shall unleash my acolytes in an unbridled killing frenzy, so that with each death my strength shall increase by the second, even as the avatars face me with all the power at their command. Doubtless, I shall lose many of my acolytes in the process, probably all of them, but there are many more where they came from. You see, my friends, that was your biggest mistake. You did not utilize the human resource. You saw only to exploit and consume it. But had you nurtured your acolytes instead of merely possessing them, had you empowered them without destroying their will, had you made them dependent upon you, sharing with them some of your strength and engendering within them a craving for the power that you so jealously hoarded, you could have sent them out to kill for you, and feed you, and protect you. You could have created predators to prey on their own kind with a hunger to match even yours. But you lacked the imagination. You were too superior, and too confident in your superiority, even to each other. That was why the Council had prevailed all those years ago. And that was why I prevailed now.”

  He received unarticulated thoughts of rage, loathing, and frustration. And he laughed.

  “Yes, hate me!” he shouted at them. “Just as, for all those years we were confined, I hated you! Hated you for your arrogant superiority, for your blind stupidity, for your shortsightedness which had brought me down along with you! But now the wheel has turned. And now you will know how I felt for all those centuries. And you will have all eternity to rage in helpless silence. That is, if you do not first go mad. It makes no difference to me. Sane or insane, your life force shall serve and sustain me. As it does even now.”

  He threw out his arms and shouted out the activating command of the spell. The crystals flared with blinding brightness and a concerted beam of energy came shooting out of each, uniting into one and bathing Talon where he stood, his head thrown back, his mouth open as he gulped in air, his body trembling as the life energy coursed through him. And as he felt their minds screaming in anguish, his laughter filled the cavern.

  BOT Field Agent Peter Manly did not look like an adept. He was of average height, slim almost to the point of frailty, with graying hair, blue eyes, a handlebar mustache, and an alert, bright gaze that didn’t miss a thing. He spoke in an easygoing, clipped, articulate manner and was very methodical and businesslike in his approach. Detective Marty Massoglia liked him and thought he’d make a good cop. Which, in a sense, is what he was, Massoglia realized. Except he was a very special sort of cop. A federal investigator who worked on major magic crime.

  “Damn, there are enough T-emanations in this room to power an SR-71A Blackbird,” Manly said as he looked around the murder scene.

  “You guys can pick that up without a scanner?” asked Massoglia’s partner, Detective Barry Bard. Around the precinct, the wits called them the BMs. They weren’t wild about the appellation. Bard had no idea what an “SR-71A Blackbird” was, but he was not about to admit it. For all he knew, it could be some sort of airplane or maybe an exotic sports car.

  “Most adepts beyond sixth level can sense T-emanations,” said Manly. “You develop a sensitivity… it makes your brain itch.”

  “No kiddin’,” said Bard. “So how do you scratch it?”

  Manly gave him a look. “I was speaking metaphorically, Detective. Let’s have a look at the body.”

  “Same ritual marks as all the others,” Massoglia said, pulling back the bloody sheet on the bed.

  “She’s been a busy girl,” Bard added.

  “How do you know it’s a she?” asked Manly.

  “Well… they were obviously about to have sex. Or at least he thought so. Same MO as all the others.”

  Manly raised his eyebrows. “I repeat, how do you know it’s a she?”

  “We have a witness this time,” said Massoglia. “Well, not an actual witness to the murder, but he saw her come and go. Places her on the scene at exactly the right time. It was the doorman. We took his statement before he went off shift. He didn’t get a good look at her face, though.”

  “Well, what did he see?”

  “He said she looked young, late teens to early twenties maybe, good legs, nice body, dark-complected, long black hair. She was sort of cradling her head on his shoulder as they came in, all lovey-dovey, and she had her coat collar up as she left. He said she seemed in no particular hurry. He called her a cab.”

  “And he just stood there while she waited for it and he didn’t get a better look?”

  “No, she called down to the lobby and asked for it, then he buzzed the apartment when it arrived. She had time to make herself a cup of coffee before she came down, got in, and took off.”

  “A cup of coffee?”

  “We found a cup with a faint trace of lipstick on the rim. She tired to wipe it, but missed a tiny smudge. No prints. Not even a partial. She must’ve been wearing gloves. Or else she handled the cup with a tissue or a paper towel or something. We sent it down to the lab anyway. We might be able to type the lipstick—that could give us something.”

  “So she kills the gu
y, then calmly calls down for a cab and just hangs around drinking coffee till it arrives,” said Manly. “That’s cold. And you say it’s a similar pattern with the others?”

  “The ritual marks, yeah,” said Bard. “And killing ‘em just as they thought they were about to get lucky. But it doesn’t look as if she hung around with the others. She just stayed up here until the cab came because she didn’t want the doorman getting a good look at her. Probably had the coffee to steady her nerves.”

  “Why not a drink?” said Manly. “There’s plenty of booze in this place.”

  Bard shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t drink.”

  “Or maybe she just wasn’t nervous,” Manly said. “She had enough presence of mind not to get prints on the cup, and to wipe the lipstick off it. Or most of it, anyway. “ He shook his head. “I don’t know. Most serial killers have been men. Female serial killers are pretty rare.”

  “You thinking it was a transvestite?” said Massoglia.

  Manly wasn’t sure what he was thinking yet. But what he’d been told during the briefing at HQ before he came on the case had him thinking that he had better not miss anything on this one.

  “Well, if it’s a drag queen, then it’s a pretty good act,” said Bard. “The doorman said she had great legs, a sexy voice, and a hell of a body. And the previous victims were all apparently heterosexual, so far as we can tell.”

  “That still doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been fooled,” said Manly.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Massoglia replied. “But it seems like a stretch to me.”

  “The victims were all male, all upper income, right?” said Manly.

  “A successful businessman, two attorneys, a lobbyist, a congressional aide,” Bard said. “Young to middle-aged, all movers and shakers. Some single, some married. No pattern as far as physical appearance is concerned. Looks as if they were picked at random. Or maybe she let them do the picking. Like a black widow spider, sitting there and waiting to see who comes around. She mates and then she feeds. Except this one doesn’t wait for the mating.”