But Alex had no time to wonder how that was even possible. The fact that it had happened was enough for the time being.
Sliding past the pedestal, he yanked the axe off it. Then he grabbed hold of a ledge to stop his momentum, wheeled around, and flung the weapon at the monster as he leaped to his feet.
The throw was a risk—axes aren’t spears. But Alex’s luck was good that day, and it was the axe’s blade that hit the monster instead of its handle.
Sinking deep into the breastplate, right at the solar plexus, it crushed the ornamental goat skull and held the gorilla right where Alex wanted it.
Directly above the water pipe and electric cables.
How much money did they steal from the construction budget if that’s the kind of contracting work they had done? The workers had run the electricity next to the water.
But right then, all Alex wanted to do was find a church to pray a blessing for them. If he could get in the front door.
He held out his right hand and snapped his fingers to create a small ball of purple fire that swished through the air, leaving a barely discernible smoky trace as it pierced the water pipe and electric cable in quick succession.
“Here we go!” Alex crossed his arms in front of himself, then spread them abruptly.
His will blended with his magic to gush out from his source. They intertwined with the water and electricity, becoming a single scourge.
The demon had just removed the axe from the gash in its armor when that same gash was pierced by the sparkling water scourge.
It began to bellow, but its roar stopped as suddenly as it began. The demon convulsed terribly and collapsed to the floor. The strong smell of burning flesh assaulted Alex’s nostrils.
It wasn’t until that moment that he heard the cavalry arriving. He was even pretty sure he heard a familiar “pumpkin.”
“Timely as always,” Doom groaned.
Limping and wiping blood from the cut on the top of his head, he went over to the twitching monster. He held a cigarette against the red-hot armor to light it, inhaled deeply, and ran his palm over the dead body. With a nasty smacking sound, a small red crystal flew out of the flesh.
[Magic Core. Race: Demon. Rank: E. Estimated value: Sale and personal use prohibited. The authorized agencies have been informed. Await their arrival.]
“Oh, really? I’m tired of waiting.”
Alex dropped the crystal into his pocket before turning to the large stone with the kids crying behind it.
“Miss Perriot, you are full of surprises.”
Chapter 28
Among the crowd of SWAT teams hurrying into the hall, Lieutenant Gribovsky was conspicuous thanks to his height, pierced ear, and scarred face. Alex was surprisingly happy to see his shabby leather coat in with all the clowns in their enchanted Kevlar garb marching behind full-height adamantius shields.
At least, he was as happy as a dark wizard who’d just had to fight for his life could be.
Thanks to the battle that had ended just a few seconds before (why is the cavalry always late?), the guard grates were stuck, blocking the soldiers’ way. Techs armed with laser cutters set to work.
Where magic was of no help, Old World technology did the trick. The laser cutters sliced through adamantius as if it was plain steel. The magic of the enchanted metal gave in to the basic laws of physics, if that was what they were called.
Alex was never good at all that.
What he knew was how to judge people.
And he realized that the arrival of Gribovsky and the Asian boded poorly for him. Both were smart enough (Gribovsky was the key there, as Major Chon Sook’s intelligence had been beyond doubt from the beginning) to not show they knew Alex.
“Help!” a guy called. Miss Perriot was bleeding in his arms, her peach hair a tangled mess smeared with the red liquid running from her eyes, nose, and ears. Her coral lips were chapped.
The girl had apparently gotten in over her head when she stopped the giant flying rock.
“She needs help! Hurry!” the guy screamed at the top of his lungs.
Rushing to her aid had been a good move—girls need knights in shining armor. Alex was nothing like that; he looked more like a weary giant bat than a hero of old.
Rescuing damsels in distress wasn’t his cup of tea.
His flow of thought was interrupted by the sound of the grate falling to the floor followed by the tramping of steel-tipped boots. Dozens of pros rushed in, aiming their assault rifles at everything small enough to fit in their holographic sights, and formed a perimeter.
Doom knew the procedure all too well. He took the only right course of action: staying seated on the floor, leaning his back up against a piece of ruble, and quietly watching what was going around him.
“Don’t touch me! I’m a victim!” the museum guide screamed when the soldiers pulled her out of the fountain. Their professionalism was praiseworthy—none of them stared at her enticing curves.
Doom was the only one doing that.
“Hey, get off!”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll go to the media! This is police brutality!”
The people in the hall were evacuated quickly, if somewhat roughly. Ten seconds later, no witnesses of the battle remained save for Alex, Miss Perriot, and Miss Perriot’s cavalier.
The hall itself was empty and ravaged.
“Don’t move her, young man!” Once the perimeter was established, the only civil servants Doom could tolerate burst into the room.
Emergency doctors and other first responders.
Dressed in red and white, they got to work on Miss Perriot. The medical trio consisted of a middle-aged man, a young girl, and a guy Doom’s age, the middle-aged man a middling healer. Carefully, he drew a single pentagram in the air with his finger. The magic seal flashed green; the blood trickling down Miss Perriot’s face slowed and then stopped.
“Get her on the stretcher!” the older doctor ordered. “Turn on the lights and rush her to the ward. Two cubes of adrenalin in her vein.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” the two youngsters replied in military fashion. They lifted the girl onto the stretcher and dashed for the exit.
“Hurry, young man! You need to go with her.”
The cavalier looked like he was about to salute, though he thought better of it and just hustled after the stretcher.
Good call.
“Let’s see what’s going on here.” The healer, who turned out to be much shorter than Doom and sporting a protruding beer belly and fat sausage fingers, came over to Alex. His palm had just started to move through the air over Doom’s body when he winced in pain. The grimace was passing and barely perceptible—he deserved credit for trying to conceal the sensation.
From what Alex had been told, it felt like an open wound being sprinkled with salt, doused in tequila, and subjected to the administrations of a dog’s rough tongue.
That was what all light wizards experienced when trying to apply magic to their dark counterparts.
Fortunately, it didn’t work the same the other way around.
“You—”
“Metamizole and hydrogen peroxide would be great,” Doom said, forcing a bleak smile. Running down his temple was a fairly thick stream of blood, and his hair a sticky mess.
“Maybe…?” The healer handed him a loaded syringe. “It’s an anesthetic, and a strong one. It’ll help restore your source.”
“I don’t do drugs,” Alex said as he pushed the doctor’s hand away and shook the ashes off onto the floor. “Only natural stuff.”
“Oh, young man, if you only knew how many chemicals there are in your natural stuff. The pesticides, the fertilizers…”
For the next several minutes (the time it took the doctor to dress the wound on his head), Alex was lectured on the harmful substances contained in tobacco products. They were apparently more hazardous than chemical waste from factories.
When the doctor finished and gave Alex a firm handshake in p
arting, Gribovsky and Chon Sook started toward him.
A brief glance was all anyone needed to tell they worked for the same department. It wasn’t even their tenacious eyes, a special gait, or the fact that they were obeyed by the seasoned operatives still holding the perimeter while they waited for the nerds to get there.
No.
Not at all.
It was as trivial as the fact that they were both wearing trench coats. Gribovsky preferred black leather; Chon Sook went with a brown reminiscent of sailcloth.
“What happened here?” roared a bass voice.
Alex looked over the shoulder of the major, who had yet to say a word. The appearance of the man in the doorway was in stark contrast to his voice. The deep, trumpeting bass belonged to a short, puny man with a head probably shaved to hide early balding. Or maybe he had just gotten tired of washing his hair.
The man started to run from one ruin to another, gasping and moaning.
“The vase of the dynasty… The spear of the… Oh goodness! The axe! The axe of Olaf the Northern! Do you even know how much it was worth?” The man, who was apparently the museum curator, picked the ancient artifact up with such affected tenderness the he looked like a mother taking her first baby in her arms.
The major coughed; the hall fell silent. It hadn’t exactly been noisy before, but in that moment even the ghosts of sounds seemed to straighten up at attention and retreat into the corners.
“Mr. Svenstern, I think your axe is fine.”
“Fine? All right?!” The rich voice really did sound odd coming from such a wimpy figure. “Just look at these dents! All these scratches! I…I…you…”
“All museum displays are covered by insurance,” Chon Sook interrupted, steel eyes flashing. “Plus, none of these items are truly valuable. If they were, they wouldn’t be stored here. You know where they would be.”
The curator fell silent. The transparent hint made the tiny wheels in his head spin at triple their usual speed.
“Excuse me, but which department are you—”
“Besides, Mr. Svenstern,” the major interrupted again, “from what I remember, the most recent decree obligated you to reinforce not only the load-bearing internal walls, but also the ceiling. I don’t see a single piece of adamantius here in the rubble, though the funds for the reinforcement project were allocated to the museum in full.”
“Yes, Major, yes,” Gribovsky chimed in. “Let him have it. That pumpkin is over there waving his axe at us, and look at the watch on his wrist—it’s worth 18 months of my salary. Even 24 months, so long as I spent nothing on eating, drinking, and, worst of all, fucking. But I can’t live without any of that. Especially not fucking.”
Mr. Svenstern had apparently reached a decision. Without uttering a word, he swallowed and left to look over the rest of his devastated fiefdom.
The major coughed again as he turned to Alex.
“Mr. Dumsky?”
Alex threw up a hand vaguely.
“What happened? The short version.”
“I brought the kids here for a tour only to have a giant gorilla, the kind we discussed recently, mistake me for a banana.”
Gribovsky and Chon Sook exchanged glances.
Spies. Guard spies. They’re not the only ones who know how to talk in code.
“It was after you?” Gribovsky asked.
Alex just pointed at his bandaged head.
“Mr. Dumsky,” Chon Sook said, squinting, “are you sure the attempt was targe—”
“Where’s the orb?” came a panicked scream. “Where the hell is Poseidon’s Orb?!”
Alex, Gribovsky, and the mator slowly turned toward the demolished fountain. The ancient statue was holding…nothing. The shattered mashed artifact that had once cloven the world in two was missing, and Doom had a feeling the broken fragments weren’t going to be found among the debris.
“Get me all the camera records,” Chon Sook said in a flat voice that brooked no disobedience. “From the museum and everything in a three-block radius—ATMs, parking lots, shops, drones, phones. I need all video files recorded in this area over the past three hours. And I want them ten minutes ago.”
Alex cursed under his breath.
Chapter 29
It was Alex’s second visit to the major’s office, and he found the wall-sized window just as incredible as it had been the first time. Although the office was underground, it looked out over rainy Myers City in the evening. And somehow, he didn’t sense the least bit of magic. What else could it have been?
The group seated at the T-shaped table with Major Chon Sook, whose long, aristocratic fingers were intertwined in front of him, was almost as colorful.
Gribovsky, his feet on the table (the major didn’t look bothered), was popping his Skittles. To his right hand sat a creature Doom avoided looking at.
Lieutenant O’Hara, the immensely beautiful fae. Their kind rarely wore a disguise, which made her different—yes, her appearance was an illusion. When they took their disguises off, the fae looked more like upright animals, though she was there looking like a beautiful girl with long, flowing golden hair. Her plain business suit had her looking sexier than a female escort.
A bit farther sat three humans in white smocks. All male, and of various ages, they each had a similar expression on their face: a mix of arrogance and utter confusion.
Doom adjusted his glasses, twiddling with his pack of cigarettes. Strange as it may seem, it wasn’t that he felt the urge to smoke. Four years had turned his bad habit into a new way of breathing, one filtered by tobacco smoke.
“That’s all you found?”
Chon Sook, for probably the tenth time already, rewound the recording pulled from the video surveillance camera on the roof of the shopping center next to the museum. The 12X zoom clearly showed a human figure stepping purposefully into a black cloud.
Like a portal or flying ship from Old Earth’s fairy tales, the cloud was moored to the museum’s devastated roof. And the tall figure, looking like it was the most normal thing in the world, entered the cloud. He was wearing a steel mask and a gray trench coat held closed with a wide belt. And in his hands was Poseidon’s Orb, instantly recognizable and apparently heavy.
Several moments after engulfing the figure, the cloud accelerated to a scary speed, vanishing into the blue among the skyscrapers of downtown Myers City.
“All the other cameras are either damaged or don’t have an angle,” one of the white smocks reported.
“They’re not the only source of video in the city,” Chon Sook hinted.
“The Central Office hasn’t yet signed the note permitting us to retrieve data from private smartphones and other civil video recorders,” the same expert replied.
Alex slapped the table, pointing his cigarette pack at the group.
“I knew it! I knew you were watching us all! Fucking politicians. Soon you won’t be able to take a shit without being spied on.”
“You may rest assured that your defecation will remain confidential, young man.” The oldest of the besmocked trio adjusted his glasses, exactly mirroring Doom’s gesture.
“Look at Mr. Dictionary,” Alex hissed, leaning back in his chair. He’d always been on the fence about getting a smartphone, but that was enough to make up his mind. Never.
It was essentially the same as slapping a label on his chest with all his personal info, letting anyone find him with a snap of their fingers once the Central Office signed whatever that new decree was.
Damn bureaucrats. They’re going to save the world if they don’t destroy it first.
“You know, boss—”
“Lieutenant Gribovsky, how many times have I told you not to call me that?”
The giant glanced over at Alex, who returned a pointedly blank stare.
“Major, sir,” the lieutenant continued, “doesn’t it seem weird to you that only one of the thousand cameras there survived the incident with its recording undamaged? And that it’s the one with such a clear shot
of the spot, the way the guy left, and the fact that he was holding the orb? And that thing can’t be easy to carry. Our little pumpkin friend got to the spot awfully fast for what wasn’t a short distance.”
Despite Gribovsky’s weird manner of speaking, Alex had to admit that he was right. Whoever the Mask was, he was…
“Baiting a trap to lure us in,” the major said, finishing Alex’s thought. Turning to the window, he watched the city through his intertwined fingers like a black falcon searching the stone, chromium, and steel jungle for its prey.
A dangerous man.
“A question, in that case,” O’Hara drawled in the melodious way the bloody fairies talked. “What are we going to do with the bait? We’ve been chasing the Mask around the city for two full months, and this is the first time he’s done something to really stand out. Stealing the cultural heritage of all the different civilizations is a big step up.”
“Excellent question, O’Hara.”
Everyone turned toward the door. There, leaning on a cane that looked both too long and too thick, and in a light-green shirt with a jacket thrown over his shoulders, stood a man Alex wouldn’t have wanted to meet on a narrow road.
He looked as tough as a tanned leather vest after a full cycle in a concrete mixer packed with gravel. Like someone who’d fought in two world wars and one magic war, who was used to staying in hostels, eating instant noodles, and using newspapers to wipe his ass.
Average height. Average stature. Eyes that could hammer nails; a face that would have shattered a flying brick. A sharp, aquiline nose. A strong jaw. Narrow, protruding cheekbones. A prominent forehead.
His hands were gloved, his throat concealed by his shirt’s tall collar.
But the wide, creepy scar winding up his neck so vividly that it was visible through the fabric hinted that his concrete mixer metaphor had been even more accurate than Alex meant it to be.
“Major Summerfall,” Chon Sook said without turning. He remained looking out the window. But while his voice was as calm as ever, only someone with an atrophied sense of self-preservation wouldn’t have felt the urge to run away and hide in the darkest and deepest hole they could find when they heard it. “I don’t remember inviting you sit in on my department’s internal meeting.”
Dark Wizard's Case Page 16