Bounty: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Solumancer Cycle Book 3)

by J. C. Staudt

  “No. We’re not staying. He’s with me. We’re here to talk to Alan Magyar.”

  “That’s me. What’s this about?”

  “My father. Glen Cadigan.”

  A pause.

  There’s a click, and the gates swing inward on squealing hinges.

  The porch stairs creak as we ascend to the front door, which opens before I can knock. The scrawny old man standing behind it defies every description of a celestial being. The feathered wings pinned behind his back are tattered and yellowed, knurled with arthritis like his bony fingers. He’s shirtless, wearing flannel pajama pants over bare feet, his sunken chest wiry with white hair and his bald head freckled with liver spots. His eyes are clear sky-blue, but his countenance speaks of fatigue.

  “You’re Glen’s son,” he says, not a question.

  I extend a hand. “Cade.”

  He shakes it. “Alan. Come in.”

  “Ersatz. Pleased to meet you,” says Ersatz.

  The door creaks closed. A hallway runs down the center of the house, staircase on the left and a small parlor on the right; couch, armchair, coffee table, end table, lamp. Everything is dark wood, from the worn floorboards to the staircase and its banister.

  “Ryovan told me you might drop by,” Alan says. “Didn’t expect you tonight, though.”

  “Sorry it’s so late. It couldn’t wait. I understand you were a friend of my father’s.”

  Alan’s cheek twitches. “I helped him through a rough patch. He brought others here every now and again, but he never stayed long after the first time.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Alan gestures toward the wilted corduroy armchair in the parlor. “You’ll want to be sitting down for this.”

  I sit down. Ersatz climbs out of my hoodie and perches on my shoulder.

  Alan takes a seat on the couch, splaying his gnarled wings across the cushions to accommodate their size. “How’s your mom?”

  “Dead.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Seven years ago now. It’s okay.”

  “Your dad said she was a lovely woman, though I never had the pleasure of meeting her.”

  My mom was a frigid and distant woman who nearly had me committed for trying to make her believe in the otherside, but there’s no point mentioning that. “Thank you.”

  He looks me in the eye. “You’re here for answers.”

  I nod.

  “Then I’ll give ‘em to you. I reckon Ryovan has told you they won’t please the punch out of you.”

  “I don’t care. I want to know.”

  Alan nods, takes a deep breath. There’s a tremor in his wings as he begins to speak. “Glen told me once his love for the two of you was like an ache that never went away. Blissful torture, he called it. Understanding how lucky he was, and knowing someday it would end. I reckon most mortals never get that. Or they get too busy living to see it.”

  “My mom saw it. She was never the same after he left. She never got over it.”

  Alan looks away, thinking. “He was a rarity, was Glen.”

  “Yeah. He was,” I agree.

  Nostalgia blooms inside me. It builds in my chest until there’s no room for it anymore. I remember my dad as a kind, loving man with a gentle touch and wisdom to spare. I remember him being pretty old for a first-time father. Thinking back on it, there was something regal about him. It’s a weird phenomenon, nostalgia. All at once, it’s the ecstasy of things remembered and the sorrow of things lost.

  “What you oughtta know, Cade, is I’ve done a lot of studying over the years on memory. How it works. How the mind stores it. I get all manner of folk coming through here, and while the process differs from species to species, one thing’s true no matter who you are. Memories lay a track behind us; they give us reference. Even bad memories put us in a time and place we can reconcile with. It’s an expanding mosaic in our heads, patterns and colors and connections filed away in order. But it’s fragile. Memory is our comfort, so to disrupt it is to upset our stability.

  “When you cross over, your memory fractures. All those little glued-together pieces come undone. If you’re lucky, you manage to hold onto a few. Most, you lose. That’s what happened to me. I’m sure it’s what happened to Ersatz, here. And it happened to your father worse than anyone I’ve seen before or since. Not just because of how few memories he retained, but because of the ones he lost.”

  “Which ones?”

  “His family,” Alan continues. “His family on the otherside.”

  I sit back in the corduroy chair.

  Ersatz slithers onto the padded backrest.

  “I’ve always wondered about them,” I admit. “Who his wife was… his queen… before my mother. His parents. His children. I didn’t know he had any children, but I guess I’ve always suspected it.”

  Alan nods. “In my studies I’ve found our memories form a hierarchy. We hold onto the ones that mean the most to us. Family. Vocation. Childhood. The rest can be harder to save. Some of us from the old world are like Alzheimer’s patients. We take a snapshot of a moment in time, a period of our lives when we were happiest, or felt most alive. Your father was different.”

  I’m on the edge of my seat. Without realizing it, I’ve gone from sitting back to leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and my fingers working at the horsehair bracelet around my wrist. Fidgeting. Waiting.

  “He forgot their faces. Their names. His wife, his children. There were only shadows in his mind where their memories should’ve been. He bore the memory of love—or of having loved. But not who. Can you imagine the horror of knowing you love someone you can’t remember? It started to drive him mad. He came to me begging for help. I used every method I’d developed over the years to try and jolt the memories loose. To dust them off so he could experience them again.”

  “And did you?”

  Alan pauses, choosing his words. “Sometimes the memories resurface. More often, they don’t. Glen could remember his kingdom. His youth. His parents. His coming of age. Nothing after that. He thought himself a monster for forgetting his wife and children. How could a man forget the family he professes to love? How could he hold the power of his kingly station in such esteem, yet fail to recognize the people who made life worth living? Even after he linked up with Ryovan, who told him everything he remembered about the royal family, it wasn’t ringing any bells.

  “Over time he started to experience an overwhelming guilt. I focused on calming those feelings the best I could. Most of our work toward the end was helping him move past it. Helping him cope. Helping him learn not to despise himself. I think he was ultimately successful in that, but there’s no doubt his guilt carried over into his work at the hospital. He felt like he had to make up for some shortcoming within himself. That’s why the ache never went away. His pain didn’t lessen his love for you and your mother. In fact, I think it made it stronger.”

  “These methods you use to help people remember things. What are they?”

  Alan doesn’t meet my gaze. “You heard Thorimil and Deelya in their rooms just earlier, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We start easy. If things don’t come loose, it becomes a matter of how much they want to take. How much they’re willing to endure. I never push a patient further than they want to go.”

  “So that’s what you do here. It isn’t just a boarding house for othersiders. It’s a funny farm.”

  “Sanatorium,” he corrects.

  “You torture people until they get back their memories.”

  The nephilim’s weary demeanor sharpens. “Half of what anyone knows about the old world is thanks to me. Thanks to my research.”

  “How do you know it isn’t all bullshit? Fake memories?”

  “There’s overlap. There’s coincidence. When you piece together the stories of hundreds of subjects, you get better at seeing what’s real and filtering out the rest. People’s memories of your father’s kingdom are the only thin
g that gives his rule any legitimacy in this world. They remember him. They remember serving him. They remember him being a damn good king. And there are just as many out there who hate your father for the same reasons the others love him.”

  I find it interesting how Alan referred to his guests as subjects, but I don’t point it out. Frankly, I don’t care. I’m not here to shut down his facility or stop anyone from undergoing voluntary treatment, even if it’s the unpalatable sort. I’ve never been in their shoes, and it isn’t my place to deny them the right to go to whatever lengths they choose. Especially since my father exercised that right. “What do you know about the king’s enemies?”

  “Some of their hatred is justified. A king can be good and still do harm.”

  “Anyone can be good and still do harm.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. Plenty of silver-tongued liars have promised to make the world a better place. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Most of the time, they have nothing to do with it. My advice to you, Cade, is don’t ignore the worst in people, but never be blind to their best. That way you’ll always know where you stand. Here, I have something for you.”

  Alan’s wings crease and ruffle as he stands and goes into the adjoining dining room. He opens a drawer in the hutch and grabs something, then brings it over to me. “Glen left this here the last time he came by. I found it on the floor. Near as I can tell, he dropped it.”

  It’s a key fob, like for a car, plastic and teardrop-shaped, except there’s only one concave ovular button in the center. There’s no brand logo, no serial number, and no distinguishing marks aside from the hole at the top for hooking it to a key ring. “This was his? I wish I’d had it sixteen years ago. Its ties to him are probably all but broken.”

  “It’s yours now.”

  I click the button. Nothing happens.

  “Careful,” says Alan.

  “Why? It’s a key thingy.”

  “It was Glen’s.”

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  “He’s right,” Ersatz chimes in. “Nothing was ever plain or simple where your father was concerned.”

  I raise the fob and click three times. The device utters a shallow teeka-teeka-teeka. “Relax, Ersatz. Nothing’s happening. It’s so old the battery’s probably dead anyway.”

  Alan wrinkles his mouth. “I oughtta be getting back to Thorimil and Deelya. I’d introduce you, but—”

  “That’s fine,” I say, standing up. “Sounds like Thorimil and Deelya are going through some stuff.”

  He nods. “May the Waywatcher find you fit to pass.”

  I stop. “What does that mean?”

  “If the Waywatcher Tree has decided you belong in Misthaven, you’ll remain here.”

  “I thought the treatment was voluntary.”

  “It is. My little pocket of the Between stretches far beyond this compound. Visitors are allowed to go where they wish, but they can only leave if the Tree deems them to be of sound mind.”

  Now I understand. When the tree extracted my thoughts, it wasn’t deciding if I was sane enough to enter. It was deciding if I was too crazy to leave. “You’d better hope to hell the Tree thinks I’m of sound mind. I’m busting out of here one way or another.”

  A smirk. “You may try, if you wish.”

  “What about you? Don’t you ever leave?”

  “I’ve seen too much. Learned too much. My mind can never be unburdened. It is the price I pay.”

  Alan doesn’t seem insane. But just because he isn’t in the midst of a cackling mania doesn’t mean his mind isn’t troubled beyond what’s apparent. His solemn mood and slumped posture hint of a heavy heart, but his eyes carry a steady self-assurance.

  “What’s your real name?” I ask. “Most othersiders have a fake one. A blend-in. Alan is yours.”

  “In the old world I was called Alamagyiarel.”

  “I’ll let you get back to it, Alamagyiarel. I guess I’ll go find out whether I’m insane.”

  He reaches back, wincing as he plucks a feather from his left wing. The feather is frayed and yellowed, like curtains in the house of a long-time smoker. “Use this if you ever want to come back.”

  I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d want to come back here, but I take the feather.

  A scream from upstairs freezes my blood. That’s my cue to get the hell out of here. We bid the half-angel a fast farewell and take our leave. Tortured cries follow us into the nighttime woods, where I begin to realize the vastness of this realm. Misthaven is more than just the house standing behind that high stone wall. An area of Between typically fades to black at the edges, but here the forest extends as far as I can see in every direction.

  What creatures must lurk in the shadows of those trees. Alan’s failed experiments, forced to remain in Misthaven but no longer willing to undergo his treatments. Thinking about them is enough to make me quicken my pace down the narrow path to the Waywatcher Tree.

  I size it up as if it’s my adversary in a coming fight. I’m terrified to touch it; to find out there’s something wrong with me. Has being someone else for the past nine months birthed a clinical split in my personality? Am I as crazy as a sack of hamsters without knowing it?

  “What are you waiting for?” Ersatz asks.

  “Some balls. This is seriously freaking me out.”

  “Well don’t just stand there and talk yourself out of it. I’m to be judged as well.”

  “Did the tree look into your mind before, too?”

  “I am attached to you, and was therefore viewed by extension.”

  “If you get me stuck here because of your neurotic paranoia—”

  “I’m not paranoid. I’m cautious. You’d do well to exercise some caution yourself every now and then. Touch the damned tree before you send us both to the madhouse.”

  “We’re already here, Ersatz. We’re already here.”

  Chapter 12

  The Waywatcher Tree’s purple haze swirls up my arm to probe my mind.

  This time there are no cataracts. There’s no blindness. Instead there is sight; a deeper, fuller sight than I’ve ever known, even under the influence of a darkvision spell. The termite trails blaze with purple light, pulsing, spreading out before me like a chart of the cosmos. Synapses burst with color and zigzag across the expanse, a forked and twisting map of the soul. Seeing the whole of my consciousness laid out in three dimensions makes me realize how distant I am from eternity. How temporal my being. Though mankind has long sought to reconcile himself with death—to explain, to rationalize, to construct a means of elusion—there will be no deliverance for me. I will be the ghost who haunts my own forever.

  When the Tree is done with me, the forest has changed.

  Apparently I’m not a psycho. Good to know.

  As I start back down the path toward the steelyard with Ersatz keeping watch from within my hoodie, the howls of nighttime creatures draw nearer. The world is welcoming me back. That, or the creatures of the night are hungry.

  Where the forest spits me out at the chain link fence, I stop to survey the fog-shrouded steelyard. Thick banks drift across piles of steel and iron girders, masking the distant fenceline where I first entered. Nothing moves, but I’m not fooled. I pop another pill and clamber over the fence.

  This sort of thing was easier when I was a teenager. I brush myself off and start across the yard before finding I can’t see two feet in front of my face. I hesitate to waken a ball light and broadcast my position, but I’m walking blind otherwise. The light spreads from my hand but doesn’t get very far. It’s enough to put one foot in front of the other, which is the important thing.

  Gravel crunches to my right.

  I stop.

  It stops, too.

  When I start moving again, footsteps echo mine. Not the four-legged canter of a canine, but the shambling scrape of a limping biped. A gust of river-stench washes over me, green and damp. My first instinct is to assume there are trolls hunting me, but I know the smell of tro
ll, and this isn’t it. One thing I know for certain. Something is hunting me.

  The dangers of living in a city full of supernatural creatures are nothing compared to the dangers outside the city. Here in the lonely places, creatures too wild to assimilate into human culture lurk in great number, often with ill intent. I’m torn between keeping a measured pace and breaking into a run through dense fog toward what could be either a trip hazard or a predator. These won’t be the kind of creatures I can talk my way past.

  A second pair of footsteps encroaches from my left. Then a third from far ahead. I unzip my hoodie and grab the Glock in my shoulder holster. Something stops me. The coyote howls I’ve been hearing undergo a metamorphosis, turning from animalistic sounds to human voices. Rough and feminine, so close they’re like theater surround in my ears. I discern three separate voices, one for each approaching creature. They whisper to me in a strange language I can somehow understand.

  Fraud, one whispers. Failure, another. Coward, the third.

  That’s when I know what they are.

  “Swamp hags,” Ersatz whispers.

  “Uh huh,” I mutter.

  Most often grouped in covens of three, swamp hags wander secluded shorelines and eddies, mimicking the sounds of animals to corral unsuspecting travelers into their midst. Once lured, a target is subjected to the powerful web of enchantment lying over the hags’ territory. The hags use this spellweb to exploit the deepest weaknesses of their prey, demoralizing them and stealing their resolve.

  Knowing this, you’d think I could resist the trappings of the spellweb through logical thought. When you know someone is trying to get your goat, dismissing their insults is easy. Isn’t it? Not so much, in my experience. Words can cut deeper than any blade, especially when they pinpoint the things we’re most insecure about. That’s how the hags operate. You can’t rob an insult of its power just by knowing the motive behind it. In fact, sometimes knowing is what makes it hurt the most.

  Know the fear which consumes you, one of the hags whispers into my mind. Know weakness, and despair. Your fate is collapse and decline and defeat.

  The kings who came before you shall never see an equal, says the second. Your existence is baseless and without purpose. Your disgrace shall follow you to the grave.