The red Yankee turned pale. Her shields glimmered, though they held.
But Alex and his chicklets didn’t actually need to destroy the shields. Once the snake army darted toward Jing, he vanished again.
…only to reappear right behind red nerd’s back. Before the Yankee could see that her shields had been penetrated, the edge of Jackie Chan’s hand hit her neck. Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed at the feet of Jing, who vanished once again—just in time to escape friendly fire.
The wave of gray magic energy coming from Mara’s hammer crashed down on stripper girl and Nazi boy, leaving the couple huddling together in a tall stone cage placed directly in the path of the approaching a fiery column.
When the referee raised his flag, the only people left standing on the podium were the four B-52 members. The Yankees, literally swept off the stage, were on the ground, moaning, cut and bruised all over, and slightly burned.
“Take that!” Alex exclaimed as he jumped to his feet. “Like sitting ducks!”
“You’re too emotional, Professor.” Lebenstein, not much better at concealing his joy than the chicklets were (laughing, embracing each other, and jumping on the podium, with Barbie even shedding happy tears), stood and shot a sudden glance at Alex’s jeans, rolled up so high they seemed too short for Doom when he stood. “Um…Professor? What’s that on your ankle?”
Looking down, Alex sighed. Gribovsky, you bitch.
“Professor! Professor!” Barbie jumped over to Alex and took him by the arm. “Please come with us to the Schooner! We need to celebrate!”
Never before had Alex so appreciated an invitation to grab a drink.
“Only if you’re paying,” he replied with a smile.
“Professor Dumsky!” Lebenstein screamed, but it was too late.
The B-52 group left the range at its full strength of four chicklets, Leo levitating on a stretcher and muttering something about a pedicure, and one full-fledged black wizard.
Chapter 59
The Schooner was closed to visitors despite the fact that late evening was usually when it was at its busiest. Doom had convinced Diglan that the Guards would compensate him for all revenue lost by closing the bar for a private party of five B-52 students at an hour when the university sent the most visitors over.
The only employee waiting on the small party was Cherry. She spent the whole evening hitting on Eleonora, who apparently took her attention as mere friendliness.
Jay, the pimple overlord, skipped out on overtime to leave early—for underground magic fighting, as Doom strongly suspected. The boy’s arms bore all-too-characteristic scars he desperately tried to hide. And his pimples looked like the consequence of a simple curse, persistent and not treated properly in time.
Of course, Alex wasn’t going to share his suspicions with anyone.
The party had passed its drinking-and-dancing climax, with Alex the only one still on his feet. It took all of his willpower not to touch any of the alcoholic drinks the overjoyed Diglan had put out on the bar shelves.
Damn him. Over the moon from hearing that all his losses are going to be compensated double. How could anyone in their right mind believe utter nonsense like that? Particularly when it’s coming from a black wizard.
Unsurprisingly, the bar owner had done twelve years for stealing a stolen Camaro right from…the police impound lot. Bravery and stupidity all at the same time.
The students and Cherry were all down and out. Literally. They were as good at having fun as the Tkils had been in their heyday, Alex had to admit. But far, far worse at drinking.
Travis was curled up in a ball under the bar counter, his face covered in highlighter doodles. He’d been the first to fall asleep.
Jing, who’d passed out right after the redhead, looked like he was about to deliver a speech on Confucian values. With his back straight, his arms crossed, and his eyes closed, he was leaning against the wall, his head right beneath the steering wheel and antlers. The other students had gotten some great pictures of him.
Leo’s arms were around the wooden bear, leaving him asleep in a strange position somewhere between standing and lying on the animal.
Mara, Eleonora, and Cherry, the best drinkers, were intertwined like snakes on the far table. Doom covered them with one of the blankets the employees used to keep warm while doing overtime.
It wasn’t that Alex had gone soft. The smell of the alcohol coming from them was too seductive, not to mention the smell of their fresh young bodies and the fact that some of their clothes were riding up and revealing parts that were too tempting a sight for a recent prisoner.
“At last.” Doom wiped the sweat off his forehead, stood his mop up in the corner, and appraised his work.
The Schooner’s floor was as shiny as a virgin’s pocket mirror, having seen nothing more offensive in its whole life than lipstick a few shades too bright. All the plastic cups, pizza boxes, bottles, unfinished snacks, and other trash were heaped in a single giant pile ready to be cleaned up…
…by Cherry. It didn’t matter that she was as yet unsuspecting of that, smiling blissfully in her sleep as she squeezed the blonde’s prominent breasts.
Alex wasn’t envious of her.
They. Are. Kids.
It didn’t matter that they were just a bit more than three years younger than himself, nor that his bed had seen girls who were actually below the legal age despite looking much, much older before his arrest.
Those days were long gone.
Retrieving a cigarette from the same crumpled but immortal and eternal pack, Alex lit a cancer stick with his thumb and smoked away.
His train of thought was interrupted by the doorbell ringing.
“We’re clo—”
There was no point finishing the phrase.
Pyotr looked just like he had at their first meeting, only his three-piece suit had been replaced by a two-piece number, his blue coat by a black one, and his dress shoes by brogues.
The only things that remained exactly the same about the Syndicate cleaner’s appearance were his gloves and the army of tingles his arrival sent marching over Alex’s fingertips. Each item of clothing the Adept had on was a top-class artifact.
Tossing the ashes into the sexist tray shaped like a port wench spreading her legs (in keeping with the Schooner’s pirate theme), Alex furtively touched the ring on his finger.
“I hope you can make an exception for me, Mr. Dumsky,” Pyotr said with the same thick Russian accent that made him sound so threatening despite his polite tone, correct phrasing, and amicable words.
“Sure, Pyotr.” Smiling as welcomingly as a black wizard possibly could, Doom pointed at the chair next to his.
“May I?” Pyotr asked and, without waiting for a response, took his coat off and hung it on the rack.
It was the first time Alex was seeing the cleaner without his coat on. The collar of his dress shirt wasn’t high enough to hide the thin stripe around the Adept’s neck, apparently the top edge of the tattoos covering the muscular body of a seasoned fighter.
Stepping over to Alex’s table, Pyotr pulled a chair out with a neat and gentlemanly move and sat down with his back as straight as a sword swallower’s. He placed his interlocked fingers on the table, gloves still on.
“Mr. Dumsky.” The Russian man’s eyes flashed with malice that faded at once. “I’ll admit that I’m happy with my job overall. Good pay. Good medical. Plenty of time off. Compared to what I used to make as a public servant in my home country, I’m a wealthy man now.”
“I’m happy for you, Pyotr,” Alex replied, inhaling again. “Welcome to Atlantis, the island where dreams come true.”
“But my job has downsides, too,” Pyotr continued, pretending not to hear. “For instance, I recently had to work overtime scouring High Garden for a guy who owes my employer money. I barely slept, and I had to spend time dealing with some rather unpleasant characters instead of relaxing at home sipping tea and reading Bulgakov.”
Alex inhaled again. A few magic signs flashed on his ring. What chance did he stand against the Adept? He had a shot if the fight was a brief exchange of two or three spells. But if it lasted longer than that—and it was going to if the artifacts Pyotr had hanging on him like ornaments on a Christmas tree meant anything—things looked much worse.
“…and now, there I was, already resigned to missing out on my quarterly bonus, in the dead of the night, with my sleep mask on and the radio off…”
The radio? Seriously? People still use those things?
“…I get a call on my private line from the Myers City division head and have to hear all the unpleasant things he wants to tell me.”
“Comes with the job, Pyotr.” Alex knocked his ashes off again, keeping his eyes on Pyotr’s hands and, more importantly, his eyes. Skilled wizards are always betrayed by their eyes rather than their hands. Only very young or undereducated wizards cast spells using their fingers. “Mine has some unpleasantries, too. Sometimes I have to throw out drunks, though the silver lining is that I find it to be good practice.”
“Sure, Mr. Dumsky. Sure,” Pyotr nodded. “Everything has a silver lining. When I was told you were spotted on channel one as a First Magic University professor, there was a positive side. I was able to find you. But I don’t really like this new role of yours, so I had a couple rather…barbaric ideas on the ride over here. You’ll have to forgive me for enjoying them as much as I did.”
“Really? What sorts of ideas?”
“Well, Mr. Dumsky, if you insist… One was to stun you, take you to the port, and torture you there with electricity for a while until you told me why you haven’t gotten in touch with the Syndicate for so long.”
Alex made a helpless gesture.
“I don’t have a phone. Plus, my debt is due by Christmas, and it isn’t even Halloween yet.”
“That’s what stopped me from giving in to my baser instincts. Please take a look at this.” Pyotr thrust his hand into his inner pocket. Alex tensed, the runes on his ring flaring up. A few small magic seals appeared where the Russian man couldn’t see them.
“Easy, Mr. Dumsky,” Pyotr said as he retrieved a small badge looking like the kind worn by anonymous support groups—alcoholics, gamblers, sex addicts…violent psychos working as hitmen for organized crime.
There was a number on the badge: 12.
“Twelve years violence-free?” Doom asked with some hope in his voice.
“Twelve weeks, Mr. Dumsky. For twelve weeks I’ve stayed ahead of my inner beast.” Pyotr dropped the badge back into his pocket.
Alex cursed filthily. To himself, of course. He had to keep playing the part.
“But there is, as you so eloquently put it, a silver lining to every cloud. And my employer found one in your mysterious yet…spectacular transformation.”
Doom stopped smoking. Instead, he tensed back up as he asked his question.
“What do you mean?”
For the first time ever, he saw Pyotr smile.
“Oh, I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Alex turned around, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and looked over at his students, still fast asleep thanks to all the alcohol they’d had. And some light black-magic curses.
Yes. That would be better for everyone.
I get rid of the Syndicate debt. No harm comes to the chicklets in the finale. Miss Perriot stays away from me.
Definitely better.
Maybe…
“You’re having second thoughts, Mr. Dumsky.” Pyotr stood up, signaling an end to the conversation, and went to get his coat. “You’ll get further instructions in a letter. And, please, for the sake of your own peace of mind and my badge, don’t forget what you owe the Syndicate and who saved your life down there. I hope this is the last time we meet…Professor.”
Pyotr walked out, leaving Alex alone with his memories.
***
It happened during Alex’s second week at the underground prison’s “extra” level. As a wizard at the 12th Mystic level, he actually shouldn’t have been placed in the living hell that was the bottom floor of the prison. But some high-ranking officer was apparently dead set on burying Alex as deep as possible despite the fact that he was still a minor.
His first week was fairly peaceful. At least, if peaceful is the right word for sitting alone in a cement cell with no windows, so small that each of the walls is about as wide as the door. There was a tin toilet bowl barely fitting between the two walls, and a bed too narrow for anyone but a skinny kid to fit on was carved into the cement above it.
That was the living hell’s quarantine zone where newcomers were locked for a week.
Quarantine was followed by baptism: the first visit to the communal shower.
Alex was standing right in the middle.
He was stark naked, armed with a sharpened toothbrush he’d stolen from a prison guard on the way there, and pressing his back against a wall. A dozen inmates stood facing him, short and tall, muscular and boney.
“Fresh meat.” One man cracked his neck.
“Grade-A meat,” another replied with a nod.
“Should’ve gone to the women’s wing.”
“Yeah. Just look at her ass.”
“Motherfuckers,” Alex said, spitting and gripping his weapon tightly. “Come on. Let’s go, bitches. I’ll poke holes in every last one of you.”
The inmates laughed.
“Hear that, bro? The wench has teeth. She’s going to poke us full of holes. Hasn’t realized that she’s the one that’s going to get holed. No need for a line, I guess—she’ll take two at once.”
“Let’s just take her teeth out first. She’ll suck better that way.”
Doom glanced over at the guard, whose back was turned to what was going on in the shower. He was pretending to hear nothing.
The surveillance cameras, judging by the faded lights, were off, too.
Damn cops.
But Doom wasn’t going to let them have it easy. He would die to keep his anus as virgin as Mary!
Wincing from the burning pain, Doom prepared for his last fight.
Chapter 60
“Alex! Hey, Alex! Alex! Damn it.”
Something wet slapped Alex on the back of his head. Wheeling around, he caught his opponent’s arm, grabbed the first thing his groping hand found, and pressed it to his attacker’s throat.
“Are you c-c-crazy?”
Alex blinked a few times before putting down the toothpick someone had forgotten on the bar counter.
He was holding Cherry. Her hair was bright orange, her lower lip was pierced, and her feet were sheathed in punk boots. Why the drastic change?
Suddenly, Alex remembered her saying something about that two weeks before. Or three? However much time had passed since the tournament’s first tour. Damn the redundancy.
She’d met some high-school girl on Tinder who played in a post-magic-punk-heavy-apocalypse-rock garage band. Just the description of their genre made Alex feel old, almost like he was twenty-nine instead of his actual twenty-one.
“Sorry,” Alex mumbled before turning toward the bar hall.
The Schooner was as crowded as it was every Friday evening. All sorts of people came by to drink, play pool or darts, flirt, and just have fun.
But what made that evening special was that Alex was trying his hand as a bouncer. Once a month, the Schooner turned into a shelter for lost souls wearing blue uniforms with silver stars on their chests.
The cops gathered there to celebrate birthdays and promotions. The Schooner was a convenient choice, located just two blocks away from the central police office. That evening, they were occupying half the bar, everyone congratulating a lean guy in his forties on his promotion to lieutenant and appointment to department head.
Sure, the people on the other side of the line, whose world was black and white, had gray souls. And Doom had to pull them apart every once in a while. Staying sober, he had no trouble with a couple drunken men
whose reaction time lagged considerably behind their tempers.
Actually, that was his favorite part of the job. He loved it so much that he accepted it as decent compensation for all the inconveniences of being a bar hand at the Schooner and living in the attic.
“Hey, Alex?” Cherry waved the wet towel she’d brought down on the neck of her distracted colleague a couple of seconds before. “Are you high or what?”
“Nope,” Doom sighed sadly. “Drinking is more my thing. Right now, I swear by the Abyss, I’d kill for a drink and—”
“…and a fuck,” Cherry finished for him while pushing a glass of beer over the bar counter. It was caught by an officer at the far end. “I’ve heard that once or twice. How long has it been?”
Considering that the sky outside had been completely engulfed by heavy clouds, with a low mist creeping along the streets and passers-by shivering in their warm coats, Myers City’s early spring wasn’t giving place to a warmer season any time soon. The weather actually looked and smelled more like late autumn.
There were very few tourists around. Some brave souls would be arriving closer to Samhain (known to non-magic people as Halloween) to watch the regular dark parade along Merlin Avenue, the city’s main street. It ran from the pompous Empire-style City Council building to Central Park (very similar to the one in the Big Apple).
Once, in his early years, Alex took part in the parade, riding on Robin’s shoulders and waving a flag emblazoned with Baba Yaga’s symbol.
Real ghosts flew by over his head.
October 31st is the day when the border between the realms of the living and dead becomes the thinnest. In the whole world. But it’s only thin enough to pass through in Atlantis.
And that was why the whole island accepted martial law for the day. Not all of its inhabitants were in Myers City—many lived in small towns, on farms, and even in villages. Atlantis had lots of those.
If it weren’t for the Dark Parade headed by the Shadow Council’s ambassador…
Dark Wizard's Case Page 32