by Carrow Brown
He had his house heavily protected against magical assaults but nothing physical?
Is this important? Silence grumbled. What does it matter how he protects his home?
David asked, “What’s the importance of the wards you mentioned?”
“He’s protecting his house from other magi and mythics from the looks of it. But Mr. Green isn’t worried about regular humans getting into his home. None of this makes sense.”
Going back to the side door, I flipped up the mat and lifted a potted plant to find the spare key. I held onto it while I pulled Silence free of his sheath and placed his hilt against the door.
“Not all of it. Just the door, please,” I told him, taking a quick look around the area. It was still dark, but there wasn’t a lot of cover from being seen by nosy neighbors.
The runes along Silence’s side lit up. With my magical sight I was able to watch as the magical protection around the door shuddered and then began to spiral into the hilt. It was slow at first but sped up as the first mark was consumed. Several more moments ticked by until he was done. A mental image of a kid patting his stomach and belching popped into my mind.
“Good eats?”
Silence burped. Very.
David reached inside his jacket, pulled out his Sig, and thumbed off the safety. Nodding to him, I unlocked the door and let it creak open. I shifted my vision to view things normally and stepped inside after David, bracing myself for push back from the house, but it didn’t happen. Instead, I sneezed as magic assaulted my senses. After the sixth sneeze in a row, I stepped back outside. The sensation dissipated as quickly as it had started.
David kept his attention and gun aimed forward. “What’s wrong?”
“Magic.” I blinked back tears and tried to clear my nose. “Really potent. Give me a moment to brace for it.”
It wasn’t better on the second attempt, but I managed not to sneeze. My eyes watered and my nose became stuffy, dulling my ability to take in the house’s scents. Frowning, I closed the door and locked it behind us.
I took in the modest kitchen with brown cabinets and a humming fridge next to the door. I took note of where the knife block rested as I walked past it into the dining room. There weren’t any pictures of family on the walls or sitting on any of the side tables.
Printed pictures of sunsets and a few wooden masks hung from the walls. Going upstairs, I looked for the master bedroom. Finding a likely candidate, I opened the door, noting the large bed with a fluffy duvet and comfortable pillows. But it lacked a lived-in feel. The laundry basket was empty, pristine in its newness, and the air was lacking any kind of odor left by human males. There were three other smaller rooms that were much the same, both in contents and lifelessness.
Silence spoke up in my mind, This isn’t matching what I felt outside.
I stood at the head of the stairs, looking down at the dull green carpet. There was more to this, and I needed to review the facts. The house was too big for Patrick to live in alone. And, with the exception of the plants he grew, the place was too dull. Too perfect. Too boring. It was the middle of the night and he wasn’t here. In some shape or form, he was involved with magi and with the Hunters. For someone who did a lot of herbalism, the house lacked anything… well, herbal. Even hedge witches dried herbs in the kitchen or grew lavender indoors. Not even the fragrant aroma of sage tickled my nose. I did another inspection of the house, but I didn’t find anything.
When I tried shifting my vision to see things magically, light exploded everywhere. Hissing, I rubbed my temples while blinking my eyes to make the dancing dots disappear.
I could consume the magic, Silence offered.
“You could, but I’d rather not. It would tip him off more than he needs to know. And when we leave, I don’t want him to have a full understanding of what I can do. He must have a shrine somewhere, or...” My words trailed off as I spied an oak bonsai tree by one of the windows. “Well, that answers that.” Turning, I saw two acorns by each window and atop the door frames and pointed them out to David. “So, there are two ways to ward. One is with magical energy and another is using the potent energy of an object. Seeds and trees are great for the latter.”
“Can you do that kind of stuff?”
“Magic? No. Sense it, sure. But I don’t have a knack for it at all. The only way I can get water to disappear from a cup is by drinking it.” I touched one of the seeds and received a small zap for my effort. “Heavy duty shit. What’s he got in here to hide?” Mentally I debated destroying the tree but decided against it. Taking the wards off the door was one thing, they were unstable and could drop by themselves, but completely messing up the magical composition inside the house would be too much of a giveaway.
Besides, it’d be easy to get Patrick to do it himself.
Breaking and Entering 101: relocate all weapons so your target can’t find them. I took the liberty of relocating the knife block and anything else looking sharp and pointy in the kitchen. After snooping through the upstairs, I found a Browning pocket pistol behind a cupboard full of toilet paper in the bathroom.
“No accounting for taste,” I muttered, turning the gun over in my hand. A faint coating of dust covered the side and I didn’t see any signs of wear and tear. I unloaded the magazine and removed the bullet from the chamber before returning it. Judging by appearances, he hadn’t taken it out or test shot it for a long time—if ever—and he wouldn’t notice the weight difference… if he managed to get to it. Sometimes it was fun to watch the false hope dissipate into realization. I didn’t do it often, but I did enjoy it on the faces I wanted to torment.
If he happened to get to it, I could have a good laugh when he pulled the trigger and nothing happened.
Returning to the living room, I noticed that David had been busy. He had pressed the two sofas up against the wall to make space for a blue tarp he had spread out over the floor. In the middle of the tarp David set a wooden chair from the dining room and was adjusting it to the left and then right.
“Do I want to know why you keep a tarp in your bag?”
He gave the chair another tweak. “Badb said it would be useful. Along with this.” He pulled out a Yellow Pages book from his bag and tossed it to the floor by a second chair at the edge of the tarp. I watched as he fished out a small rolled-up bag and spread it out on the ledge in front of the fireplace. Within the loops, three petite hammers with brass heads sat, varying in size between the size of my pinky finger and my little toe. After the hammers came thin spikes, fixed blades, and several small saws.
“Do you like hurting people? Or do you always carry around variously sized hammers?”
David rose to his feet. “Depends on the person. Sometimes drawing out the pain is its own reward when you know the person deserves it.”
Okay, he’s growing on me again.
He jutted his chin to me. “And you, Ms. Enforcer? You get any pleasure out of what you do?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Senseless murder isn’t my thing. If I have a reason and a cause for it, then I’m motivated. But it’s not something I that I lust after these days.” Glancing around the room, I asked, “What else do we need?”
David smiled. “Just the guest of honor.”
* * *
Patrick’s car rolled over the gravel driveway a few hours before dawn. David and I moved toward our respective spots, David in the doorway outside the kitchen and me in the hallway.
A whistling tune sounded outside the kitchen door, followed by the clicking of a key turning in a lock.
“Honey, I’m home,” he called into the house. “And what a day. I can’t wait to tell you all about it.”
A moment passed where I worried I’d missed someone in the house, as Patrick walked into the hallway.
His eyes widened at the sight of me, and I gave a cheery grin. “Hi!”
“Wha—”
I punched him in the face and caught him before he fell to the ground. Patrick didn’t weigh much as I carried him
into the living room. A quick search of his person revealed a cell phone and wallet. I worked off two rings from his fingers and an earring on the chance they were magical conduits or enhancements. David moved in to tie him to the chair, binding his arms behind him and his feet to the legs of the chair.
With everything in place, I grabbed Patrick by the hair and lifted his head up to inspect his face. His appearance did not match the photos; his face had a hollowness to it, particularly around the cheeks, and he had dark, heavy bags under his eyes. His appearance didn’t match the cheery disposition he showed when he came in. I tried to look at him magically, but the glamour of the house was still too bright, blinding me.
I moved to stand behind Patrick and sighed. “Let’s do this.”
“You don’t seem keen to.”
“I have reservations about the situation, not the person.”
Grunting, David pulled out a vial and held it under Patrick’s nose.
Seconds passed before his head jerked away with a hiss. His hands pulled and twisted against the ropes, and he looked down toward his bindings. “What is this? Who are you? Do you know who I am?”
David lowered himself into the chair across from Patrick and leaned back. “Are you comfortable, Mr. Green?”
“How did you get in here?”
I grinned. “Through the chimney. Ho, ho, ho.”
The man jerked. “You’re not welcome here. Get out of my house.”
A pressure danced over my flesh, and I waited to see if another push would come. When it didn’t, I tapped his chair. “That only works if this is a home,” I told Patrick. “As it is, this is anything but. And we aren’t the sort who need invitations to enter.”
He swallowed loudly. “Why are you here?”
“You’re on the naughty list, duh.” I gestured my head to David.
David leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “We have some concerns, which we think you can lay to rest.”
Patrick sneered. “So, you break into my home, knock me out, tie me up? And then want me to answer your questions?”
David nodded, his expression grave. “Our concerns involving you require that, yes.”
“And what’s to stop me from simply setting you two aflame?”
I pressed the barrel of my gun against his head. “The hole in the middle of your skull by the time you utter the second syllable of an incantation.”
He pulled in a breath. “Fine. You’ve got me. What do you want?”
David spread his hands “We’re concerned individuals looking for answers.” He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out the photo of Patrick and Samuel Henry standing together. David flipped it so Patrick could see it. “You see this man?”
Patrick’s shoulders tensed. “I do.”
“Word on the street is you two are into some shenanigans. Tell us about it.”
“I don’t know much about—”
David laughed, a low and raspy sound. “No. No, no, no. That’s the response high schoolers give when asked if they know who’s smoking in the bathroom.” He flicked the picture at Patrick. “And we’re not teachers here, though we have been known to teach a few lessons. This is serious shit, so stop fucking around.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me? You won’t get anything from me then.”
David leaned back with a smile. “You’re right. We wouldn’t.” He looked around, his eyes resting on a phone book by his feet. In one fluid movement, he picked it up and backhanded Patrick across the head with it.
The blonde’s head snapped to the side with a grunt.
“That’s just a love tap, Mr. Green. If we have to kill you, then we will. Just know there will be a long and painful road to travel before you beg to die, and I am a very patient man.”
Man, I am so turned on, Silence moaned in my brain. That indifferent expression and callousness gives me the happy tingles.
I snorted but kept quiet as Patrick collected himself.
“Fine. His name is Samuel Henry, and he leads the Hunter’s Order.”
“We already know that,” I said. “What you are doing for him is what we want to know.”
“I’m an inventor. I develop tools and devices to track Dusters.”
“Stop.” I tapped my gun against the side of his head. “Dusters? Please don’t tell me that’s what you call us.”
Patrick let out an impatient sigh. “Dusters is the term we use when we refer to your kind.”
“Really? Dusters? We are talking about the divine here. Unicorns, dragons, vampires, and you name us after feathery sticks? I should shoot you on principle.”
His jaw clenched. “What does it matter what you are called?”
“There is respect and power in names. Given the option, I’d call us,” I thought for a moment, “Super-Amazing-Fun-Time People.”
David shot me a look. “Getting back on track. You mentioned devices. Explain how this work.”
“You’re not human or animals, which share a lot more when it comes to genetics than people like to believe. That’s not the case with you lot. Do you know about dark matter?”
I grunted. “Scientific theory on matter to rationalize unexplained scientific observations in astronomy and physics. You’re not telling me anything that I can’t find on Wikipedia so far.”
“Yes, well, following that idea, Dusters have something similar about them. An energy that can’t be seen or measured. But we’d been looking at it the wrong way.”
David frowned. “How has it been wrong?”
“It’s either been through magical or scientific methods that we’ve tried to study your kind. Both on their own don’t work, but together they do. By integrating them, we’ve discovered a way to track the energy given off by Dusters. The closer to the Duster, the more abundant it becomes.”
David’s eyes met mine and we stared at one another for several seconds.
I asked, “And what do the Hunters do with these devices?”
“I would’ve thought that was obvious. They hunt the more violent of your kind and eradicate them.” His head tilted up and his voice became smug. “Helping them is a pleasure and an honor.”
Great, he’s one of those. I’ll bet you some mythic either slaughtered his family or touched him in a no-no spot.
I kicked the back of his chair. “What are you getting out of this? They paying you good money or is it because your master told you to do it?”
Patrick twisted his head in my direction, but I remained out of his line of sight. “What do you know about my master?”
“Other than he’s a psychopath and deranged, not much. Though I heard he’s decided to dabble in Outermancy. You know that’s the shit crazy people don’t come back from, right?”
“My master is a great man! He has a vision and seeks to make the world into what it should be.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right.” I pressed my gun against the back of his head once more to help him concentrate. “Take the glamour off the house.”
He grunted. “What makes you think there’s a glamour?”
“Don’t give me that.” I pressed the gun harder against his skull until his head bent forward. “You didn’t just glamour the inside, you’re covering scents as well. Probably to keep the humans from poking their nose into your business. You went through a lot of effort to hide something and I wanna to see it.” I paused. “Or smell it.”
He let out a grunt. “I need my hands.”
I slapped the gun against the side of his head. “No, you don’t. Do we look like we were born yesterday?”
Let me do it. It’s not like you need him to remain sane, is it?
My lips pressed into a thin line. “I can’t risk letting you have him. You’d only addle his brain and who knows what else he might know.”
I’ll take a quick look and retain what I can. Come on. You’re going to kill him anyway. Why not let me have some fun beforehand?
David leaned forward in his chair. “What’s he saying?”
; “Silence wants to play with Patrick for a bit. I’m hesitant because the host’s mental state deteriorates in the process. Otherwise I would’ve put Silence on him from the start.” I stared at the back of Patrick’s head for a long moment while Silence egged me on. He was going to die one way or another, so what did it matter what state his mind was in when it happened?
I pulled Silence free. “Don’t fry his gray matter too much.”
Patrick twisted in his seat, hands squirming against his bonds. “Wait, what are you doing? Who is Silence?”
I placed the blade in Patrick’s bound hands and the man’s struggles halted. His body shivered and shook as Silence took over.
“Oh my.” Silence giggled. “You’re not going to like what’s in here.”
I leaned forward to inspect the bound man’s expression and noted the solid red color his eyes had become. “Can you remove the enchantment on the house?”
“I can make him, but you won’t like it.”
“Do it.”
Silence muttered softly and the room rippled and swelled around us, a similar effect to the trick mirrors at carnivals. My ears popped as the glamour disappeared with a flash of light. I expected changes, but the smell... gods, the smell. Something sour and foul brought tears to my eyes. I pressed my hand to my nose and forced myself to take slow breaths as I deciphered the smells—urine, vomit, rot, and something bittersweet. It made the chicken farm down the road smell wonderful in comparison.
Silence gagged and thrashed in the chair. “I don’t like having a nose!”
“Holy Hell,” David grunted, as he placed a hand over the lower half of his face. I wanted to be him. He didn’t have to deal with heightened senses overwhelmed by the stench.
We both did a slow turn, taking in the new appearance of the room. The traditional wallpaper and vacant family photos became an abundant collection of jars resting on rows of crude shelves. They held various human organs—hearts, eyes, and others I didn’t want to identify—which floated harmlessly in the jar’s fluid. Writing covered the un-shelved walls. Neat rows from ceiling to floor with some lines overlapping across each other.