“Life,” Gribovsky cut in. “All five of the magic elements.”
“Yes,” Alex nodded. “Plants are some of the most easily available ingredients with a connection to all the elements at once. Sure, it would’ve been better to use a virgin’s blood, but—”
“Where would you even find a virgin these days?” Gribovsky snorted, allowing his alter ego to slip out for a second.
“And the saliva is just used to smear the ashes better.”
Gribovsky stood still for a moment, then stretched out his palm.
“I’ll shoot you if it stinks.”
Alex dipped his finger into the mixture and started to draw magic symbols.
“This is ancient magic, Gribovsky.” Alex was very careful to draw the sigils precisely. Making even a minor error as he was creating the channels that conducted the magic might have resulted in the redhead ending up dead. And Alex had a feeling he wouldn’t survive much longer after that, so he was doing his utmost to keep the officer alive. “Far more ancient than you can even imagine. It existed before the First Races came to be. Before the First Light started its struggle against the Dark, giving birth to the Nameless Mist and the Gate.”
“Are you quoting Lovecraft?”
“Lovecraft. Mysteries of the Worm. The Key of Solomon,” Alex listed as he completed the protective seal. “Those books, along with many others, describe the same thing, just in different ways. Okay, now stand there and, no matter what happens, stay still. And be quiet. Don’t listen to anything. Try not to even think if you’re able to. Actually, that shouldn’t be a problem for you.”
“I will shoot you.” Despite his threat, Gribovsky stood in the bedroom corner, his large frame stiller than a Rodin statue.
Alex was right next to him. Bringing his heels and toes together, he held his left arm down at his side and lifted his right arm up straight ahead and a bit above his shoulder.
“Are you a Nazi?”
“From the heart to the sun. Using the Light, I’m going to breach the illusion left here to deceive us and show you the truth.”
“Fancy,” Gribovsky snorted. “But you’re a dark wizard. How are you going to use the Light?”
“That’s just a figure of speech,” Alex explained. He put his right hand to his shoulder before suddenly jerking it back to its original position.
The bedroom and everything in it, even the air, was enveloped in a black, darkly shimmering fire. The whole space burned with a flame darker than a moonless night.
Chapter 17
The cops that hadn’t yet left the ninth floor recoiled from the tongues of black fire slithering out from beneath the door.
“What the hell?” The closest one, dropping his cigarette in surprise and fright, shrunk away. A message appeared in front of his eyes.
[Object: ERROR. ERROR. That object should not exist. It is impossible.]
“What the fuck do you mean? It’s right there!”
The guy definitely had no idea what was going on inside the apartment where, biting his lower lip from the strain, Alex was controlling the Black Fire of Truth. It was a magic so ancient and dangerous that any knowledge of it should’ve been consigned to the dustbin of history long before. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the world still had a few people skilled at using it.
One of those was the Old Man, may his rotten entrails be ripped out by demons.
The magic was fighting like a crazed mustang, desperate to break free from Doom’s control. Nothing but his willpower and mental fortitude kept the black fire from consuming every single thing within a five-block radius, stopping only at the running water of the High Garden waste channel.
Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw Gribovsky’s pale face. There was no doubt he enjoyed the sight, not to mention the stoic officer’s trembling hand. It featured a violet protective seal made of saliva and ashes.
Closing his eyes, Alex started to immerse himself in his magic. He wasn’t going to be able to hold it in check any longer than twenty seconds, so the spell had to be dismissed before that. He could only hope that would prove long enough to reveal the secrets the room held.
Doom could feel the fire resisting him as he mentally pushed deeper and deeper into it. The fire-life element perverted by the darkness had no desire to be approached even by a practitioner of the dark arts—it was an element capable of nothing but destruction and consuming all things. The truth was alien to it.
But extremes can meet and even produce excellent results.
“Show me,” Alex said imperiously and coldly, with unwavering confidence. “Show me what happened here.”
Had he allowed himself even a shred of weakness, a grain of hesitation, he’d have been instantly consumed by one of the darkest spells in existence.
Alex opened his eyes. The fire gradually ordered itself, converging from all corners of the apartment into the middle of the room until it was so dense it looked more like stone.
And from that stone, a silhouette appeared. Almost shapeless, it stood over a barely discernible seal. The seal wasn’t painted in blood on the bed; it hung in the air.
Not far from it, trembling in fear by the window, were two more figures.
“Not enough,” Alex whispered. Exerting all the willpower he could muster, he condensed the fire still further.
Blood spurted from his eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears, running down his face to mix with the bitter, pungent sweat already there. But Alex had achieved his goal: for a few moments, the fire was so dense that he could even see the lips of the tall figure moving as they uttered several words.
Then everything vanished.
Alex and Gribovsky were standing in the middle of a burned-out apartment, the destruction having reached all the way to the outer walls. The window glazing had burst. The radiators had warped, almost melted by the heat. Ashes drifted in the breeze.
Doom stumbled, the lieutenant grabbing him to keep him from falling.
Realizing that he’d just been helped by a public servant, Doom shrank back, almost hitting the wall…or what was once a wall. Now it was just some brickwork demarcating the boundaries of the empty stone shell of an apartment. Everything that had once been inside the shell had been devoured by the fire.
Doom staggered toward the window and the chilled wind that was blowing in, retrieving a cigarette with a shaking hand.
He was cold.
Not because of the wind, but because, after exhausting his mana reserves, he’d been fueling his magic with his own life energy. From an apparently unimportant but rather vital source.
His body heat.
“What was that?” Gribovsky asked after a moment’s pause.
He wandered around the ashes, examining what had so recently been a decent-looking apartment with disbelieving eyes. It looked like it had burned down several years before.
“Black magic,” Doom answered. “Not dark, but black, like the void itself. Though you wouldn’t feel the difference.”
“That fire…I’ve heard about it. Is it true that it keeps burning until it completely destroys its target?”
“That’s an understatement.”
“How so?”
“Have you heard about Pompeii? As far as I can remember, they summoned the fire just to burn an unfaithful wife…after finding out who her lover was. You probably know what ended up happening.”
“Pompeii,” Gribovsky repeated. His face showed the urge to kick something, but the floor, burned down to its cement base, gave him nothing to vent his anger on. There wasn’t even a single bit of burnt flooring left.
He settled for just cursing.
In fact, his language was so foul that Alex grimaced in respect mixed with revulsion.
“His face.” Gribovsky stopped abruptly. “His face was…”
“Masked,” Doom confirmed.
Gribovsky shuffled over to the window to stand by Doom’s side. Together, they looked out across the street. The windows in the apartment blocks still had lights on inside
. People were gathering for family dinner or watching TV, surfing the internet, or whatever else dulled the existential pain in their lives.
Occasionally, people strolled by on the sidewalk below. However safe and affluent the neighborhood was, three cop cars sitting in the street were, just like in the rest of High Garden, a sure sign of something going down around the corner.
Not the worst possible thing, though.
If it had been really bad, there would have been special forces vehicles parked nearby.
“Damn you. Why do you have to make smoking look so good, pumpkin? I just gave it up a month ago.”
Alex’s guess had been right on the money.
Just to rub salt in the wound, Doom inhaled deeply and blew out a fine ring of smoke.
“You scumbag,” Gribovsky said.
“I even have an official document to confirm it.” Alex shrugged. “No, wait, dark wizards don’t get IDs. We’re not supposed to exist, although we definitely do.”
“Oh, feeling a touch discriminated against, are you?”
“Yeah. You know, where’s my justice? All of that.”
“Poor baby. Want me to get you a bottle of milk?”
Doom turned to Gribovsky, eyes flashing behind his glasses.
“I would break your nose, but I feel too crummy to bother.” Alex sighed with regret and kept smoking.
They stood silently for a while.
“He said something, didn’t he?” Gribovsky looked thoughtful. The wind was ruffling his red hair, making it look like there was an actual fire raging atop the officer’s head. “Hell, if only I could’ve read his—”
“Forbear to judge.”
Gribovsky turned toward Doom abruptly.
“Can you read lips, pumpkin?”
“It’s a useful skill in jail,” Doom replied calmly. “The guards talk to each other while they’re carrying food around, and you can pick up the latest news and other useful stuff.”
Gribovsky nodded and resumed his contemplation of the calm street, unaware as it was of what was happening on that block.
It must be nice to just be an ordinary person living a simple, normal life. Doom was determined to try that lifestyle out when he reached old age. But not before.
Although…they did say that no dark wizard had ever died of old age.
So poetic.
“Was that a spell or…”
“It was Shakespeare,” Alex explained. “Henry VI, Part II. Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”
Alex blew another ring of smoke, put the cigarette out on the bit of windowsill that remained, and tossed the butt down onto the street. Its graceful arc ended inside the collar of a cop trudging toward the bus.
At first, nothing happened. Then the cop started squealing like a little girl as he tried to get the smoking cigarette butt out of his shirt.
Hilarious.
“Did you read a lot of Shakespeare in jail?” Gribovsky asked as he smirked coldly.
Alex didn’t reply.
“Whatever,” the redhead said with a dismissive wave. “A villain who loves old English poetry—so cliché. So, our culprit didn’t give away any details of his plan to take over the world?”
“Sadly, no.” Doom shrugged sadly. He was gradually recovering, no longer trembling, and reality had stopped dancing a drunken jig in front of him. As for magic, he was going to have to forget doing any of it except for his thumb lighter for the next few days. “With the creature he summoned, he’d barely be able to take over even a couple blocks in High Garden, let alone the world. But that’s fine. No judgment here. Being supportive of other evil overlords is rule one from Dark Wizards for Dummies.”
“Very funny, pumpkin. How do you know what he summoned? I didn’t see anything.”
“Of course you didn’t. The mirrors had all burned up already.”
That time, it was Gribovsky’s turn to have his eyes flash menacingly.
“You didn’t break my nose because you felt sick, but I’m a healthy young man in his prime. You’d better behave.”
Alex said nothing.
“Hey, pumpkin, I get that you don’t like me. I’m not a big fan of yours, either. But the sooner we finish this, the sooner we’ll get rid of each other, so fire away.”
Doom clicked his tongue and spat out the window. To his regret, he didn’t hit any of the cops. He would have loved that.
“The seal he used,” Alex finally said. “It was designed to summon a weak soldier demon from a bottom legion.”
“How weak, exactly?”
Doom thought it over for a moment. Things like that were tricky to explain to people without the right background.
“Strong enough to defeat three or four average combat wizards at the level of a Practitioner.”
“So…is that where you’d place yourself?” Gribovsky asked, squinting.
Again, Alex said nothing. He was allergic to stupid questions and, for the sake of his own sanity, avoided answering them whenever possible.
“Okay then.” The officer slapped the windowsill and turned toward the door. “Let’s go.”
Before he could take a single step, a scream of pain rang out from below. A piece of brick, first loosened by the fire and then dislodged by Gribovsky’s slap, had broken off and fallen on the head of a helpful cop who’d come to the aid of the officer struggling with the cigar butt in his shirt.
Surreal.
“We’re going home now, I hope?” Putting his hands in the pockets of his expensive pants, Alex followed the lieutenant.
“You could say that,” Gribovsky replied evasively. “Headquarters is definitely home sweet home for some people.”
“Headquarters? What do you mean, headquarters? I have my first lecture tomorrow, and I haven’t even started working on it!”
Chapter 18
They reached the port rather quickly thanks to Gribovsky’s unique style behind the wheel. On the way from High Garden in the south of the city to the docks on the western bay, they ran thirteen red lights, almost slammed into other vehicles four times, and nearly knocked down several scores of pedestrians.
After the first dozen, Alex stopped counting the poor Myers City residents screaming and jumping out of the way of the car. There were just too many of them.
But the sight of a giant ogre nearly ten feet tall wearing name brand sweat pants jumping back onto the sidewalk and shouting something at them as they sped away… He’d never seen anything like that in High Garden.
“What… the… hell.” Puffing and groaning, Gribovsky barely got himself out of the car. In the process, he kept dragging his cowboy boots across the expensive leather upholstery. Doom was disgusted—he knew the value of the finer things in life.
“Where are we?” Retrieving another cigarette, Alex lit it. How many had he smoked that evening? Just like with the pedestrians, he’d long since stopped counting.
“At the port,” the redhead replied briefly.
Adjusting his glasses, Doom flashed the lieutenant his tattoo, a testimony to just how much he disliked fairies. Truth be told, the animosity was often mutual.
The Myers City port probably looked like every other big city port. Rows of berths with round platforms and loading cranes towering above them. Endless piles of containers bearing the logos of a dozen different companies. A few office buildings covered in corrugated aluminum sheets.
But despite what the books of old might have said, the port didn’t smell like fish, oil, or diesel. No, in this age of magic engines and crystal energy storage, the place smelled like money.
“You said we were going to headquarters.” Alex squinted and made a subtle gesture.
[Mana reserve: 178 points. Recovery rate: 15points/30min.]
Not enough mana for a serious fight. But…
Alex stole a quick glance at the black ring on his finger.
“Calm down, pumpkin.” Gribovsky clapped Alex on the shoulder. Leaving the car in the parking lot at the port entrance, he walked boldly towar
d the fifth berth. “Gangsters aren’t the only ones who hide their warehouses.”
Trudging after him and gazing up at the bright, star-studded sky, Alex didn’t get what he meant at first.
Then he almost did something very stupid.
Only the wisdom he’d picked up in prison kept him from inflicting a rather vile dark magic curse on the officer.
“Of course, we knew about your small rainy-day reserve,” Gribovsky continued. That was when Alex spotted the officer’s hand on his gun. “Depriving a dark wizard of all his wealth… We needed a temporary ally, pumpkin. Not a nutjob villain just quoting Shakespeare.”
Doom cursed.
It had been stupid to assume that an organization like the one that employed Gribovsky and others like him would miss the secret warehouse frequented by High Garden’s gangsters.
That meant that he, however ugly and insulting it may have sounded, had been permitted to keep a relatively small amount of money, his bike, and…
Alex rolled the black ring around his finger again.
“That’s a funny little thingy you’re wearing,” Gribovsky said, stopping at a glass vending machine full of snacks. After moving his fingers in front of the scanner, he waited a while before kicking the old machine forcefully with the tip of his boot. The dispenser yielded several packs of Skittles. “Bingo! Three for the price of one. I love this place.”
He immediately used his teeth to open a red pack. Tossing several pieces of candy into his mouth, he closed his eyes and mumbled something unintelligible in apparent bliss.
“Our nerds tried to scan it, but none of their equipment worked. And our black magic researchers couldn’t figure out a single symbol on it. Maybe you can tell me what it is?”
“Ask your impotent techies,” Doom said through gritted teeth, hiding his right hand in his pocket.
“Impotent? I think some of them have kids, but yeah, they’re definitely jackasses. Any time I ruin something, they make sure I get fined on the spot. But your ring… We can see that it’s some kind of mana storage. But it’s really unusual.”
Dark Wizard's Case Page 10