by A. J. Burnes
Whatever power I might have gained from this “revenance,” he begged, please help me now!
The fingers bent to lock Tanner inside a bony cage. Only for a flash of golden light to cascade off of Tanner’s coat. The flesh of the wight’s fingers steamed on contact with the light and bubbled as if it had been submerged in boiling water. Pained, the wight reared back and let out a screech that beat Tanner’s eardrums so violently, he was struck by intense dizziness and almost lost his footing.
Holding on to his balance by the skin of his teeth, Tanner dove forward, slamming his body into the bulk of the exit door. The door gave way to his weight, opening into the daylight, and Tanner spilled out into the gravel parking lot of the factory.
He had about half a second to celebrate his victory over the wight. Before the abrupt shift from smooth concrete to large-grade gravel sent him reeling. His feet lost purchase, and he landed in a rolling heap, coming to a stop several feet from the door.
“Shit,” he spit out as a wave of pain rolled through his body. “Get up, Reiz. Get up!”
Tanner turned over and rose to his knees, shaking chunks of gravel out of bloody divots in his skin. As he made to stand up, the door, which had swung closed after his swift exit, tore free from its hinges and careened straight toward him.
He ducked, and the bottom of the door passed over his head by no more than an inch, the edge ruffling his unruly hair. The door sailed on for almost the full width of the parking lot, then landed with an earsplitting metallic clang and kicked up hundreds of rocks.
The clattering rain of gravel distracted Tanner from the sound of movement inside the gaping hole where the door had been. Right up until the sable wight thrust one of its arms through the hole and wrapped its hand around Tanner’s ankle.
The wight tugged Tanner’s leg out from underneath him, and he hit the gravel with a thud, all the air wrenched from his lungs. Dazed, it took him a moment to realize the wight was dragging him back, closer and closer to the gaping maw of darkness inside the factory.
Tanner screamed at the top of his lungs. Fruitlessly grasped at the loose gravel. Kicked at the wight’s hand with his free leg. None of it deterred the sable wight, not one bit.
Tanner turned inward again, begging his strange new power, that golden light, to emerge and beat the wight away again. But this time, the light didn’t emerge. Instead, Tanner felt that same cold hollowness from earlier spread through his bones.
The wight was feeding off his soul again—to counteract the golden power.
“Naughty, nasty wizard, won’t let you fool me thrice,” said the wight with a trill of laughter resonating underneath the constant hum. “You hurt me a couple times, so now I won’t play nice.”
Something about the wight’s words, perhaps the way it framed this confrontation as if Tanner was the aggressor and the wight the wronged victim, struck a sharp chord. A white-hot spark of fury ignited in Tanner’s chest, overriding the empty sensation that threatened to swallow him whole.
“No,” he growled. “I’m not going to let you eat me. I’m not. I have a student to avenge. I have an asshole to seek vengeance against. And I have a class on Beowulf to teach.”
He scooped up some bigger pieces of gravel and hurled them at the wight’s face, one at a time, punctuating his words with each toss. “So get. The hell. Away. From me. You ugly. Fucking. Monster!”
The rocks were sharp enough to tear into the wight’s face, but not heavy enough to do substantial damage. They delayed the wight from yanking Tanner back into the factory for only a second or two. But ironically, that second or two was all Tanner needed.
As the wight was shaking off the last of the impacts, the afternoon sun peeked out from where it had been hiding behind a fluffy gray-white cloud. A bright beam of direct sunlight struck the sable wight’s outstretched arm.
The arm disintegrated…into a pile of live cockroaches.
Just like that, Tanner Reiz was free.
Chapter Ten
Saul
For the first half of their trip to Harrington Street, the atmosphere inside the car was subdued. Butting heads with another agent always put Jack in a foul mood, and no one was willing to poke the wolf when he might bare his teeth in response. So Saul rested his elbow on the window frame and idly peered out at the passing cityscape, Jill played a puzzle game on her cell phone, and Adeline examined her fingernails, which she’d once again painted black.
After spending several minutes grunting in disgust at a few chips in the nail polish she’d acquired during a run-in with a wyvern yesterday morning, Adeline grew tired of the thick silence in the car. She stuck her head between the front seats and batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes at Saul.
“So…” she said, drawing out the sound.
Saul groaned. “Oh, don’t start with that again.”
“I haven’t even asked you a question yet.”
“But I already know what you’re going to ask.”
“Come on, Reiz.” She prodded his arm. “You can’t keep the beef between you and Frasier a secret forever. It’s eventually going to work its way to the surface, whether through you or through somebody snooping around in the restricted section of your PTAD personnel file. So you might as well just rip off the band-aid before someone else decides to slowly peel it off, one excruciating inch at a time.”
Saul looked to Jack for help, but the man only raised an eyebrow. Jack was well aware of the history that had sparked the ongoing rivalry between Saul and Frasier, and the only reason he’d never spoken about it to Jill or Adeline was because Saul had begged him not to.
Only a handful of people knew the shameful truth behind the story of how Saul got recruited by the PTAD, and Saul had done his best to keep that circle as small as possible. It was ten years gone, that terrible night, but it still hurt his heart every time he thought about it.
He didn’t want others discussing it offhandedly in his presence. Every errant mention of that night made Saul hate himself that much more. But at the same time, he was aware that the secrecy wasn’t fair.
Unlike Saul’s history of conflict with the PTAD, Adeline’s wasn’t restricted to top-level access only, so everyone knew about her shady background. Saul himself had read the case file accounts of all the terrible things she’d done before the PTAD scooped her up and reformed her into something akin to a respectable human being.
Saul’s history was not as easy to dig up, because the brass had suppressed the events surrounding his introduction to the PTAD. Therefore, it was up to Saul to decide, as the team’s car zigzagged through the city streets whose traffic grew ever denser as afternoon rush hour approached, whether or not to finally let his teammates know what had spurred his own transformation from criminal wizard to FBI agent.
If Frasier hadn’t been in the picture, Saul would’ve kept his mouth shut. But now that Frasier was based in Weatherford, and Jill and Adeline had to put up with his antics as well, Saul knew it was no longer reasonable to keep his lips zipped about the issue.
These people were his teammates. He relied on them. They relied on him.
The least he owed them was the truth.
“Fine,” he sighed out. “I’ll tell you.”
Adeline’s dour face brightened. “Really?”
“Under one condition,” he said. “After I finish the story, you never bring it up again.”
She tilted her head from side to side, considering. “All right, yeah. That’s a fair trade.”
“Then listen up. Because I’m only going to tell you this once.”
Jill, who’d been pretending she wasn’t listening up until now, exited her game and scooted closer to Saul’s seat. Like an eight-year-old excited for story time in the children’s corner of a public library. “Is it a scary story?” she asked.
“Depends on how you look at it, I guess.” Saul rubbed at the sore spot on his jaw. “Anyway, let’s start with the basics. You guys know what I was up to before I joined the PTAD, yeah?”
“I know a little bit about it,” Adeline said.
Jill tacked on, “You ran with the Ricci family in Cincinnati, right?”
“Right.” Saul slunk down in his seat as he recalled those dark days of his misguided youth. “The members of the Ricci family all have the Sight, but only a few of them possess enough life energy to perform strong magic. So they often recruit young witches and wizards to be their muscle in their dealings with the preternatural community. I unfortunately caught the eye of Marco Ricci during a bar fight one night, and he made me a job offer I couldn’t afford to refuse.
“I was new in town, with no friends or family. I was homeless. I was broke. I had hitchhiked from Salt Lake City to Cincinnati and spent the last of my cash on lunch at a shitty diner. So when Ricci gave me his business card and said he had a job that fit a man with my particular talents, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I mean, I knew the guy was in the mob. But I was naïve back then. I figured I could spend a few months working for the guy and make enough dough to get on my feet, and then I’d be able to gradually pull away from the seedy underbelly of the city and get some gainful employment.”
Saul massaged his temples. “That wasn’t how it worked out, of course. Once the Riccis realized they had a revenant wizard with a lot of raw magic strength under their thumb, they did everything in their power to keep me under their control. Up to and including threatening anyone who tried to poach me, whether it was another mob family or a mundane employer.
“I knew they were doing it too, but I couldn’t figure out how to stop them without bringing their wrath down on me. The only thing I could think to do was leave Cincinnati, but in order to do that and not end up in a vulnerable position in some other city, I needed more money.
“So I decided to pretend to fall in line with the Ricci family’s game plan for me and took on more jobs, dirtier jobs, to make money faster. A decision I regret to this very day.”
Jill and Adeline stared at Saul with rapt attention, and the former whispered, “What happened?”
Saul took a shuddering breath, then asked, “Have you guys ever heard of Abigail Richter?”
“Of course,” Adeline said. “She’s only one of the biggest legends of the PTAD.”
“Yeah, well, I’m the reason that legend had to retire ten years early.”
Adeline reared back. “What?”
Jill almost dropped her phone. “Agent Richter’s leg injury. That was you?”
“It was an accident.” Saul pressed his cheek against the cool window as the memories of that terrible night assaulted him again. “Marco hired me to work security at one of his clubs on a night where he and the leader of a local drug cartel were meeting to discuss the potential distribution of those magic-infused synthetic hallucinogens that have become popular in recent years.
“Unfortunately, for everyone involved, the PTAD caught wind of the negotiation and decided to raid the place. Abigail Richter’s team, which included her long-time protégé, Braxton Frasier, burst into the club with three heavily armed SWAT teams and tried to arrest practically everyone.”
“Let me guess,” Adeline said. “All hell broke loose?”
“That’s an understatement.” Saul cast his gaze toward the glove box, but that wasn’t what he saw. Instead, images of carnage and chaos flashed before his eyes. “Half the people in the club were preternaturals, and the other half were humans with the Sight. In seconds, the entire club devolved into panic. Guns went off. Spells went off. People stampeded every which way.
“Most of the club patrons were allowed to flee without being accosted. The PTAD agents only had eyes for Ricci, the cartel leader, and their associates.”
“But you were counted among that number,” Jill murmured.
“I was, much to Richter’s detriment. Despite working for the Riccis on and off for more than a year, I’d never been involved in a serious altercation between the mob and any of their enemies. So when the bullets and spells started flying, I realized I was in way over my head.
“I panicked, peeled away from Ricci’s crew, and made a break for the exit. But Richter spotted me trying to run and turned her gun on me. I looked over my shoulder, saw that gun pointed at my back, and I just…lost it. I blindly lashed out at her with magic.”
“She didn’t block it?” Adeline asked, confused.
“She tried,” he said, “but she didn’t know how much brute magic strength I possessed. The shield she raised to counter my energy blast imploded. The blowback threw her halfway across the room, and when she landed on top of an overturned table, her right leg was partially folded underneath her.
“It broke. Badly. Femur cracked right down the middle. Tibia and fibula shattered into enough pieces to make a puzzle. Knee dislocated and tendons snapped.”
Saul had to pause here and take a shaky breath. “She screamed, you know? The damage was so painful that a woman who’d been injured over forty times in the course of her career just lay on the floor, screaming at the top of her lungs. It was the most awful sound I’d ever heard in my life. And I was the one who caused it.”
“Oh, Saul…” Jill said.
He held up a hand. “No pity parties, please. It’s ten years too late for that.”
“You didn’t hurt her on purpose though,” Adeline countered.
“Doesn’t make me feel less guilty.” He tapped his fingers against his knee. “Doesn’t make Frasier hate me less either.”
Adeline frowned. “So it’s a vendetta then. Frasier wants to make your life hell because you ended his mentor’s career?”
“Yup.”
“But it happened a decade ago,” Jill said, “and he’s been going out of his way to make your life hell since he transferred to Weatherford last year. When’s it going to be enough?”
“Never,” Saul replied. “Frasier beat me to a pulp that night, after he saw Richter screaming on the floor, holding her broken leg. He chased me into the alley behind the club and laid into me until I was a quivering, bloody mess, lying helpless on the piss-covered concrete and begging for mercy. He would’ve killed me too, I’m sure, if his teammates hadn’t pulled him off me.”
Adeline leaned back in her seat, perturbed. “PTAD agents aren’t allowed to brutalize suspects, any more than mundane FBI agents. He should’ve been fired.”
“He almost was,” Jack said as he pulled the car to a stop at a red light. “He wiggled out of it by claiming he had a mental breakdown at seeing his mentor so badly injured, and because his teammates vouched for him, Professional Responsibility let him off with a six-month suspension and a year of mandatory therapy with periodic evaluations.”
“What happened to you after the beating, Saul?” Jill asked.
“Hospital, for three weeks,” Saul said. “Followed by jail, for another three weeks, before the PTAD discovered they had a revenant wizard in their custody who they might be able to mold into someone of value. So they gave me the same choice they gave Adeline: Join the PTAD and make up for my past sins by working for the forces of justice, or go to prison for permanently disabling a universally respected veteran agent.
“I was an eighteen-year-old boy locked in a dingy jail cell with four FBI agents staring daggers into me. Obviously, I signed on the dotted line after five seconds of consideration, and that was that.”
Adeline huffed. “But Frasier never let it go.”
Saul lifted his hands in exasperation. “And he never will.”
Jill’s brow drew together. “Did he transfer from Cincinnati to Weatherford just so he could torment you?”
Saul glanced at her over the corner of his seat. “What do you think?”
“I never realized your ‘rivalry’ was so serious,” Adeline said. “If he doesn’t let go of his vendetta sooner rather than later, one or both of you might end up on a slab.”
“So I am all too aware.”
“Can’t we slap him with a misconduct complaint and get him transferred somewhere else?” Jill
asked.
“I’ve tried that already,” Jack said, turning the wheel to bring the car onto Harrington Street. “Thing is, now that Braxton’s conflict with Saul has been documented in his personnel file, the special agents-in-charge of the various PTAD branches are aware that he’s a loose cannon. No one wants to be holding him when he finally goes off again. Roland’s made numerous transfer requests, and they’ve all been declined. We’re stuck with him for the time being.”
“So our only recourse,” Adeline asked, “is to wait for him to screw up badly enough to get fired, and pray we’re not in his presence when it inevitably happens?”
Jack eyed her through the rearview mirror. “Indeed.”
Jill pouted. “That sucks.”
“Yes,” Jack agreed, “it sucks a lot. But we have to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt, and we will do so with the utmost care and caution, because we’re a strong and highly skilled team of PTAD agents.”
He slowed the car and expertly parallel parked in a tight street-side space. “Right now, we’ve been dealt the body of a murdered person who was unceremoniously tossed into a dumpster by a criminal or criminals unknown. So let’s pack away the moping over ancient history and focus on the task at hand, shall we?”
A long silence filled the car, before Saul, Adeline, and Jill murmured in tandem, “Yes, sir.”
Chapter Eleven
Tanner
Tanner hobbled alongside the chain-link fence that marked the perimeter of the factory site. Every ten steps or so, he had to stop to shake his foot and dislodge a wriggling cockroach from his pants leg. Besides that, however, he kept a steady pace, taking him farther and farther from the doorway in which the sable wight still lurked.
The creature was unwilling to cross into the direct light of the afternoon sun, lest it completely disintegrate into a giant skittering mound of cockroaches. But Tanner knew that the sun wouldn’t hold it off forever—there was a storm gathering on the horizon—nor would the light kill the wight.