“If we let them die then what good does that do?” John had thought Conrad and Owen dreamed of better than this, of doing good for the world.
“How many people do you think starved to death while we've been talking? How many murders and rapes have occurred? You couldn't be in all those places at once. Even with the most powerful spells, we have limits. So how do you choose who lives and who dies? Do you have the right to choose and how far are you going to go with your responsible use of power? Will you prevent tyrants from coming to power and will you impose your ideas of right and wrong on others who disagree with you?”
John withered under Conrad's harsh gaze. “I . . . ” he stammered.
“You have ideals and want to change things for the better. You are a good person, but there are no easy moral choices here and it is only made more difficult because no one can hold us accountable unless we let them.” Conrad stood up slowly. “When was the last time you were in a fistfight, boy?”
“When I tackled Peter.”
“That doesn’t count; you were using magic.”
“Not since junior high then. I won though.”
Eric chuckled to himself and walked towards the door.
“Here.” Conrad handed John a business card. “Ask for Lopez and tell him I sent you. He'll help you get into shape and teach you a few tricks that might keep you alive. Consider it my Christmas gift.”
“Christmas?”
“Yes, Christmas. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
Chapter 55
It was strange. The holidays had never meant much to John but an inconvenience of shopping, the quest for that perfect gift for someone. He and his father had always kept Christmas simple: gag gifts and a small meal they fixed together. It provided a sense of togetherness and family without being suffocating and was a sharp contrast to Barb’s family. Not that they lacked intimacy or togetherness. The meals were extravagant and took all day to prepare, often involving rotating shifts. The process of giving gifts was turned into an elaborate game of stealing and trading that often involved alliances and deal making worthy of terrible reality shows, but there was always laughter and abundant humor. It was fun but alien to John.
Here in the warehouse, by himself, he missed it all. He was starting to see how people struggled with solitude and isolation. That it could be a terror to be forever alone, with nothing but your own momentary voice against the eternal voice of silence. He had brief fantasies of wandering around the city till he found some small corner of cheer that he could enjoy with other people. They were brief and collapsed under the weight of his fears and doubts.
There were more than just his fears and self-doubts out there. Somewhere, the FBI was quietly and persistently pursuing their agenda of “truth, justice and the American way,” by their standards and no one else’s. There was a woman who wanted John dead, revenge for her captured boyfriend. What was she doing for Christmas? Plotting his death by carefully sharpened candy canes, no doubt. Try as he might, he could not imagine Veronica surrounded by a warm and loving family. Owen had told him that she might have killed her father, hadn’t he? If not, he had implied it.
What kind of woman turns and kills here own father? John let the thought tumble through his mind and realized he was asking the wrong question. What makes a woman kill her own father for profit? That idea had motion. What had her father done to her? Was he the first or was he killed after some event? Questions just breed new questions and John knew he would never honestly know.
John understood her anger at him; he had pushed back and taunted, given her the opportunity to move against him. But he could not understand any part of her that was not anger and hatred. He found himself unable to imagine her laughing at something funny or expressing joy. Was that his shortcoming, an inability to imagine his enemy as a complete person? While the rest of the city celebrated, John spent a cruel night with self exploration and doubt.
Chapter 56
The gym that Conrad sent him to was not in a part of Chicago that John had never been to, but he had heard about on the news often enough. He got off the Green Line at Ashland and was shocked by the mixed realities around him. Even at this early hour of the morning, there were a few prostitutes leaning against the wall of a burger joint that proudly declared that it accepted food stamps in neon letters. Their pimp across the street eyed John with obvious distaste, as several BMW's edged through the tension. John tried to feel safe and secure in the fact of his growing magical prowess, but he was painfully aware of the fact that Owen had been a far better mage than he would ever be, and he had been killed with a simple handgun.
As John walked away from the L, he saw new condos standing next to boarded up warehouses and shady looking clubs. The area was struggling with a changing identity and there was no hiding it. There had been more than a few news reports about muggings on and around Green Line stops in this neighborhood, but that wouldn't stop people from buying property and pushing out those who couldn't afford the new improvements and raised rent. Those people weren't the less desirable element; they were just too poor to move away from the crime. John thought back to his debate with Conrad, and was angered by his inability to see a way that he could directly change things. Time and time again he was confronted by the very real limits of magic and what had once become a bright and incorruptible hope had become dingy and damaged, like so many parts of Chicago.
The address he was looking for was a couple of blocks away, and had he not known better, he would have thought the graffiti covered and boarded up store front only concealed another abandoned building. The door opened easily though, and he was immediately greeted with music that had a driving tempo and Spanish lyrics. At the top of the stairs, a very attractive woman with a heavy Mexican accent asked him whom he was looking for and smiled when he explained. She was dressed as if she were about to get in the boxing ring herself: shorts and a tight fitting top under a sleeveless t-shirt. She navigated the large gym filled with men lifting weights and sparring with a silent confidence that suggested she wasn't just dressing the part. She walked to a corner near a boxing ring, where several men were leaning against the ropes watching two men spar. She called out in Spanish that was sharp and clipped, and one of the men stepped away from the match.
“Mr. Lopez?” John extended his hand. “Conrad sent me. He said you'd be willing to train me.”
“Yeah, the old guy called me and told me to get ya in shape. Call me Davy.” He took John’s hand in a crushing grip and smiled brightly in a sharp way. Davy wasn't much taller than John, but he was solidly built and if his grip was indication, very strong. “Let’s see what I gotta work with.” His soft accent lent him a friendly air. “Yeah, you bring gloves or do you need a pair?”
“Uh, I just brought some shorts and things.”
“The locker room is over there.” Davy pointed to the opposite corner. “When you're ready, I'll get you some gloves.”
John went into the small locker room and got changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. He felt out of place and intimidated, but couldn't walk away. He needed this to survive the duel with Veronica, and he kept reminding himself that it was better to embarrass himself now than to die later.
Once he was ready, he left the locker room and found Davy waiting for him with tape and gloves. They walked to an empty ring and Davy started taping up John’s hands without ceremony.
“You ever box before?”
“No.”
“Martial Arts?”
“No.”
“Hell, have you ever seen a Kung Fu movie?” Davy grinned, and John couldn't help but chuckle.
“Yeah.”
“Now, don't worry. We're gonna go easy on ya, since it's your first time. I just gotta know what you got.” Davy pulled the laces on the gloves tight. “How's that?”
“Good, I guess.” John felt silly and slightly trapped with the tape and the boxing gloves on his hands.
“Step into the ring then, man.” Davy lifted the ro
pe for John. John ducked under and stepped onto the canvas mat of the ring and came face to face with the young woman who had led him to Davy. She was wearing gloves and protective head gear with a look about her that told him she was going to enjoy kicking his ass. John started to complain, but Davy was pulling headgear onto John’s head. “Keep your hands up and block as best you can, and no matter what you do, don't just stand still.”
“But—”
“Yeah, here's a bit for ya.” Davy ripped open a package and pushed a mouth guard into John’s face, the plastic tasted cruel and antiseptic. And like that, John was alone in the ring with a beautiful woman who had every intention of kicking his ass.
Let’s be honest. More than a few gentlemen have said “I'll never hit a woman” and just as many men have uttered vulgarities as they slapped a woman. It is an interesting fact of life that the vast majority of women have no reservations about hitting men, or even landing a well placed kick to the family jewels. This is not to say that women have an undercurrent of violent feelings towards men, but it is not to deny it either. Let's look at facts, though, and accept that every woman knows one or two men that they feel need a solid ass kicking and just as many women that would love to provide it to those men. Elena, who stood in the ring facing John, knew more than her fair share of men in need of an ass kicking, most of them were there in the gym. She had also been inaccurately told that John had commented on her ass and what he wanted to do with it on Saturday night. This quickly added John to her ass kicking list.
The bell rang, and Elena came at John like a tigress.
John tried, he really did, but he had no idea what he was doing. Every punch landed like a stone, and he couldn't help but stumble backwards till he was against the ropes. He raised his head, determined to see where she was so he could at least take a swing and preserve his dignity. He shouldn't have. Elena saw her opening and landed a picture perfect left hook on his jaw, and as far as John was concerned, the lights went out.
He awoke to someone slapping him not so gently, and he heard a voice repeating; “Yo, Johnny-boy? You dead or not?” There was laughter in the background, and he could hear an undercurrent of music. He wanted to retreat back into the happy nothing of darkness and not face the humiliation that he had just been put through, but Davy slapped his face again.
“He's alive!” Davy laughed in a way that was good natured, as he helped John to a stool in the corner of the ring. “Yo, Johnny-boy, you suck at boxing!” There was laughter in the background.
Elena charged into his field of vision, her hair wild, and teeth bared. “Don't you ever talk about me that way again.” She switched to Spanish and insults splashed over John as she was half dragged away by a couple of guys twice her size trying not to laugh.
“What the fuck? I never said—”
“Don't worry about it, man. Some of the guys were just having some fun.”
“Fun? I just got my ass kicked by some really hot pissed off chick. That was not fun.”
“Yeah.” Davy laughed gently. “Yeah, it was.”
John groaned and tried to figure out how to get out of the gloves.
“Yo, you suck at this, bro.” Davy started unlacing one of the gloves. “Conrad said you were in some trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“I have another hot chick that wants to kick my ass.”
Davy chuckled. “We got a lot of work to do then. Like every day, all morning. Look at the bright side though. Conrad already paid your membership and everything.”
John did not feel better.
Chapter 57
School had fallen by the wayside, and it upset John. At first, he thought it was just because that was the one place he could see Radha without looking like he was stalking her, but there was more. He missed the stimulation and the feeling that he was making progress with something that was real and that the rest of the world could know about. Not like magic, where he had to hide and puzzle through a dangerous world of knowledge by himself, with little or no guidance.
The boxing lessons were going to help him stay alive if the duel turned physical, which Conrad had told him they often do. In the afternoons, he hid out in the warehouse with The Book and slowly deciphered what he could.
His last encounter with it had left him with the ability to read the cryptic symbols etched into the metal plates. The meanings were also hidden in the patterns attached to them so only a mage who had been exposed to the final troubling message could read them. John knew he couldn't ignore that message or the story of Moloch forever, but he had to survive first. That meant making sense of the book and the knowledge it contained so that he had something to use, but it was never easy.
The Book literally contained thousands of pages. The key turned and opened new pages every time it was pushed a bit deeper. Like a screw slowly turning, it sank into the tiny space of the book’s pattern. There was a history of mages, but no explanation where magic came from or how it worked, but one line troubled him: “We are slaves freed to suffering and to be hunted by those we protect.” Was this more of the Moloch story, the message to protect against what he found, or something more?
There were also vast chapters on theory that John had a hard time following. They spoke in allegories that he didn't understand and had no frame of reference for: they were written from the standpoint of a society that had long ago vanished. The few bits he did grasp did nothing to expand what he knew or help him.
The last half of The Book was a collection of spells and the complicated explanations of them. The patterns were not themselves complicated at first, but they grew. There was a simple one on how to freeze water to ice in a flash and John had learned it from Owen, but it could be adjusted to get colder. So cold that it could condense vapor to liquid out of the air, but the colder it got the more complex the pattern got. Once the pattern was released, things started returning to normal so the ice would melt, and liquids evaporate again, unless another pattern was attached to keep them from warming again. This all had to be done in a specific way so to prevent explosions or broken patterns. The writer of The Book had been terrified of broken patterns, and the description matched exactly what John had discovered by accident. It amused him and at the same time terrified him because the writer indicated that once a pattern was broken that the chaos it created never really vanished.
Was there anything that wouldn't come back and haunt him at some point?
In the evening, he shadow boxed in the warehouse, tying in the patterns he had learned and experimenting with tricks and moves that he thought might keep him alive. There was a background thought, an undercurrent, to all that he did that kept him from submitting to the fear. It was like music from another room; he couldn't understand the words and heard only enough to tap his foot and keep time, but that was enough. He had not given up on Radha yet and as irrational as it seemed, he felt he still had a chance.
Chapter 58
He sat in the back of the sandwich shop across from Truman College; he wasn't wearing a disguise or dark sunglasses. There was no point. An FBI agent was parked across the street pretending to be playing with his cell phone while his partner was off running an “errand” in case John tried to evade them on foot. John had run through a number of emotions with them tailing him over the past couple of weeks, annoyance and amusement had faded to steady irritation. He turned his attention back to the school and the small courtyard filling with students. Radha walked out the front door with a small group of her friends. Again and again, he saw her and he was left feeling incomplete and empty without her. Was he turning into a stalker or just being sad and pathetic? Maybe he should ask one of the agents what they thought.
The pattern of one of Radha's friends had changed, and it took John a moment to realize she was pregnant. He doubted that she knew because she was holding a lighter to a cigarette. Radha looked disgusted and moved away from the small group, smiling and waving to them. She was walking towards the sandwich sh
op. Somehow, John wasn't surprised and couldn't even bring himself to think of a lie to tell her.
Radha came in, and either didn't see him or was better at pretending not to than John could have been. She ordered, paid, and waited for her sandwich. John tried to finish his own half-eaten sub and felt awkward looking out the window. He saw her reflection as she got her sandwich and watched her towards him.
“So are you stalking me now?” Her dark eyes were cool and he heard anger in her voice.
“No.”
“I suppose it would be hard to do while you were being followed.” She sat down across from him but made no move towards her sandwich. “John . . .”
“Can I try to explain?”
“No. I like you. I think you are nice enough, but I don't want to be involved with anything illegal.”
“I'm not a criminal.” John felt hurt and tried not to get defensive.
“Can you tell me what is going on?”
“No, not yet . . .”
“Are you in danger?”
“Yes.”
“Would you be able to protect me?”
“I already have.” John’s words shocked her and visibly set her back. “The day you broke up with me. Not more than five minutes later.”
“Someone was going to hurt me? Because we were dating?”
“Yes.” John had been proud of protecting her and now felt ashamed that he dragged her into it in the first place.
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