Without Foresight

by P. D. Workman

  Starlight hissed and spat. When Corvin moved forward anyway, Reg felt him attack their feet, nipping and clawing, trying to get them apart.

  “Ow! Ow! Starlight! Stop!” Reg reached her hand toward him and tried to impart calming feelings to him, to make him see what they were doing. “Let us go.”

  Corvin pushed his way past the cat and the door, carrying Reg along with him. Her feet barely touched the floor and she certainly wasn’t helping him in any way. Reg looked around, panicking.

  “Don’t let him outside. I don’t want him to get lost.”

  “He won’t get lost. Come on. We have to worry about you. About catching this… hitchhiker… before he grows in strength. Another possession and he may own you completely. We can’t take the chance.”

  “Starlight!”

  Corvin didn’t waste his breath arguing with her. Starlight continued to attack their legs all the way to the car. Reg’s feet and ankles felt like the skin had been stripped off. They stung and tingled, and she could feel blood running down. Corvin managed to shove her into the car’s passenger seat, then picked up her feet and pushed them in as well, pushing the door shut to secure her.

  He went around to his own side, and Reg could hear him fighting with Starlight again, cussing the cat out royally for continuing to cause him trouble. There was a yowling and hissing like a dozen male cats trying to establish their territory, and a ball of fur and claws landed in Reg’s lap.

  Corvin slid into his seat, shut his door, and started the engine, muttering to himself.

  “Starlight. Shh.” Reg tried to gather the fighting fur and fangs into a ball and to cuddle him close. “It’s okay. Settle down.”

  By the time they got to the cemetery, Starlight was starting to settle down. He wasn’t curled up into a ball purring, but he had stopped attacking, much to Reg’s relief.

  The cemetery was not yet closed. The gates stood open. Corvin drove in. He looked around for any visitors.

  “Do you know where he is? Can you show me where the body was found?”

  Reg looked around. It didn’t look the same as it did at night. She could see farther, and everything looked normal and natural, not creepy and supernatural like the night she had arrived to find the body. “I think… that way…”

  She heard something. A whispering. Snakeskin slithering through the grass and leaves? Hissing in her ear? Warning her what was going to happen if she let herself be caught. Corvin had said that if she were possessed again, he might own her completely. What did that mean? Would she be gone? Would she be dead? Worse than dead?

  “I memorized some of the markers. Slow down, let me see the headstones.”

  Corvin’s car crawled along. Reg tried to find the tombstones she had seen that night.

  “To the right. Up there.”

  She remembered holding the phone in her hand, trying to find something. Had she been looking for the victim or the snake?

  “Here, I think.”

  Corvin stopped the car. Reg slipped Starlight from her lap into the footwell and opened the door. “Is he here? I don’t see anyone. Maybe I was wrong.”

  Corvin was around the car to help her out in a few seconds. He took quick glances up and down all the nearby aisles.

  “Where exactly?”

  A yowl from Starlight. They turned toward him to quiet him again, and Reg saw the cloaked figure. Was it him? Was there one person who had been causing all her problems?

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Reg blinked and squinted, trying to bring him into focus. A cloaked man. A warlock.

  No, a wizard.

  A powerful wizard who had sworn on his powers to do her no harm.

  Jeffrey Wilson.

  “Why?” Reg asked, shaking her head.

  She was weak and disoriented, but that was no excuse for not realizing it was him or for not understanding why he had done what he had. But what had he done? And why?

  “I helped you. I made you the tea that helped you to remember. So why… why would you harm me like this when you said that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me?”

  “It was your own fault,” Wilson snarled. His face contorted when he spoke to her, taking on different expressions as if he couldn’t control it. “At first, I didn’t know why. Why I kept taking on your powers and memories and losing mine. You must have been aware of it. Entering my body as I entered yours.”

  Reg shook her head. She couldn’t remember anything other than some weird dreams. She hadn’t switched places with him. She had stayed in her own body while he tried to control her.

  “The troll said that the potion wouldn’t work because I was not pure. I had prepared myself. I prepared myself for years before I became lost. When you reawakened me, it was to continue my life’s mission. My pursuit of perfection. Of immortality. Advancing not just beyond what any other mortal has achieved, but beyond the immortals as well.”

  And that, maybe, was why the immortals had taken away his memory and dropped him in the Everglades, where he had remained lost for fifty years. Because he’d had the hubris to think that he could be better even than they were.

  “What does that have to do with me? You said you wouldn’t do anything to harm me or my friends. You swore it on your powers.”

  “I did nothing. It was you. You were the one who prepared the bitter cup.”

  Reg knew she had put too much lemon juice into his tea. She had apologized at the time.

  “How did you grind the leaves?” Wilson challenged.

  They had been tough. Reg had been surprised at how hard and sharp they had been. They had pricked her fingers when she had broken them up. She’d been too lazy to go to Sarah’s to ask for a mortar and pestle. It was too much work, and she had done well enough breaking up the leaves by hand.

  “Just…” Reg made a motion to demonstrate. “I just crushed them up by hand.”

  “Stupid!” Wilson howled. He swallowed his other invectives, shaking his head at her, eyes blazing. “How could you be so stupid! You were the one who found me. You were the one who figured out how to restore my memory. How could you be stupid enough to mix a drop of your own blood into the tea?”

  “Is that… what happened? That was what I did?”

  “You stupid witch. No research. Not bothering to get proper equipment. No recipe or spell to follow. Just whatever you thought was right. You wrecked everything!”

  “I’m… sorry…?”

  She again heard scales slithering through the grass. Reg looked around, trying to pinpoint the noise.

  No one else seemed to be able to hear it. But Reg did see one thing. She saw a black tail with a white tip disappear behind a gravestone. Starlight stalking. She wanted to call out to him and warn him that it could be dangerous. A snake in this graveyard had killed the troll. A troll who was used to handling snakes. How was an inexperienced cat going to fare?

  Wilson was still going on about how Reg had ruined his life and destroyed any chance he had to achieve his goal of immortality. He started ranting to Corvin about how he had destroyed Wilson’s other chance by not letting him subsume Reg. If he couldn’t use his own body, then he could use hers. It was her blood. She had considerable powers, and if he added his own to the mix and finished the transition, he could try again.

  The basilisk was still there, after all. It hadn’t gone far. Wilson could try again. Could complete the spell without the troll’s help, now that he had seen how to handle the snake properly.

  Reg watched the white tip of tail as Starlight stalked between and around graves.

  Corvin was watching Reg thoughtfully. How much of what she was thinking could he read? He had been joined with her, the conduit between them open so that he could sense the difference between her consciousness and Wilson’s.

  “So it’s everyone’s fault but your own,” he said to Wilson. “You just can’t take responsibility for your own actions. You are the type who always has to find someone else to blame.”

  “It is her fault,�
�� Wilson shouted, furious. “I did not choose for her to contaminate the tea. That was her mistake. She should have known that blood would taint it. She should have known to use the proper equipment. What kind of a witch can’t even make tea?”

  “I’m just a psychic,” Reg said. “That’s all I’ve ever claimed to be.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Starlight pounced.

  Reg jumped, startled by his sudden movement. He struck as quickly as any snake could have, maybe faster. She could hear the body of the basilisk as it struggled to free itself, coiling and uncoiling and trying to wriggle away. Starlight growled, anger in his voice.

  “No!” Wilson realized that the cat had the snake and ran toward them. “What are you doing bringing a cat here? This is… you can’t do this!”

  He reached out to take the snake from Starlight and got his hand slashed for his trouble. Starlight let out another warning growl.

  “Let it go! Give it to me!” Wilson raged. “A dead basilisk is no good to me! It must be alive. It must be milked at midnight. You can’t…!”

  Starlight wrestled with the snake. Reg couldn’t see him very well and moved closer, going around the headstones, until she could see that he had the snake behind the neck, so it would be unable to strike. His muscular body braced against the ground and sometimes twisted and turned with the writhing of the snake but, eventually, the writhing stopped and the snake slowly uncoiled, its body limp on the ground.

  “No!”

  Wilson turned back toward Reg. “How could you do this to me? I had one more chance. You let the warlock drain my powers and the cat kill the snake! That isn’t a coincidence. You pretend to be innocent, but you know exactly what you’re doing! This will not be tolerated! I will not be satisfied until you are dead and your spirit banished to the void. To nothingness! Death alone will not do!”

  Reg looked over at Corvin to see what he thought of the wizard’s rantings. Corvin raised one eyebrow in amusement. Nothing for Reg to be worried about. Yes, he had been a powerful wizard at one time—perhaps the most powerful. But Reg and Corvin had broken him down. His threats were pointless. Toothless.

  Wilson bent down and picked up the basilisk’s body, furious. Starlight protested the removal of his prize, but didn’t attack Wilson. Wilson brandished it at Reg.

  “Do you know what I can do with this? Do you know how valuable basilisks are? How many uses there are for basilisk venom or parts? You think this is just garbage? You let your cat drag it around until he’s tired of it and then throw it in the trash?”

  Reg didn’t bother to tell him that she hadn’t said any of that. He was on another tear, again putting everybody else down to elevate himself.

  “You should be careful with that,” Corvin warned. “The head can—”

  “I should be careful? Do you know who I am? Do you not realize that for hundreds of years, I have—”

  Reg wasn’t sure what it was that Corvin had been about to say. That a basilisk could still bite after it was dead? That the venom was still deadly, even if it couldn’t be used to make Wilson immortal?

  It didn’t really matter what he had been about to say, because Wilson hadn’t listened. He had chosen to ignore everyone else’s advice, believing that he was the smartest and strongest.

  As he ranted, he waved the snake around, holding it by the middle, not the back of the head like Starlight had. He wasn’t even looking at it when the head end swung against his body, and the jaws suddenly snapped shut somewhere around his armpit.

  Wilson let out a yelp. He looked down in astonishment at the body of the basilisk.

  “You have to be careful of those,” Corvin said.

  Wilson stared back at him.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not quite midnight,” Corvin went on, looking down at his watch. Though he had no need to check the time; it was still light out and the cemetery still open.

  “No!” Wilson said. He yanked the body of the snake, jerking it away from himself. Reg winced at the thought of the needle-sharp teeth ripping through his flesh. That had to hurt. But Wilson didn’t show any sign of pain. Maybe it had already been numbed by the basilisk venom. “No, this can’t be happening!”

  The head of the basilisk drooped down to the same level as the tail. The jaw snapped again, fastening onto the end of the tail. And then, bizarrely, dead though it was, the basilisk began to swallow itself, shrinking into a smaller and smaller loop until there was nothing left of it.

  “I am a powerful wizard!” Wilson protested. He felt the area that the snake had bitten, trying to discern how seriously he was wounded. Reg had no idea how fast basilisk venom worked, but she suspected it was too late to do anything about it. They were a mythical creature, so even if they were to get Wilson to the hospital, the doctors wouldn’t know what to do for him. They could treat him for snakebite if he were still alive, but they wouldn’t have the antivenin, if there even was one.

  “Help me!”

  Wilson’s knees buckled and he held on to one of the headstones to keep himself on his feet. Corvin moved closer to help him. Reg didn’t have any desire to help. And she didn’t want her fingerprints or any kind of evidence on this man when the police found him in the cemetery.

  Corvin held Wilson’s arm as he slowly sank to the ground, breaking his fall. He slid his hand under Wilson’s jaw to feel for a pulse, keeping it there as if he were counting. Reg realized too late that Corvin didn’t have any interest in helping Wilson either. He wasn’t trying to stop the flow of the poison. He didn’t call for an ambulance or start CPR. He was taking what he could of Wilson’s powers before he died. Like a carrion bird watching a sick animal circle the drain. Her stomach turned at the thought of what he was doing.

  “Corvin, you shouldn’t—”

  “I shouldn’t?” Corvin demanded. “I should just let his power dissipate? Waste it?”

  “Well… I don’t know. I thought the rule was that you had to have his permission.”

  “You heard him ask for my help.”

  “That’s not what he meant. He meant… save him. Take him to a doctor or something.”

  “He knew that it was a mortal wound. There is no treatment for a basilisk bite. No chance at recovery.”

  * * *

  Reg watched Corvin’s face take on a flush, his eyes bright. She could feel the growth of his power through their always-on connection. Maybe she ought to get out of there before he decided to turn on her.

  And someone should probably call the police and tell them there was another dead body in the cemetery. Reg didn’t want to be the one to do that. She didn’t want to be called back in to testify about what she had seen there. What would she say? This time she had seen the snake bite, but who was going to believe the details? A sanitized version wouldn’t sound much more believable. She’d already found one snakebite victim. The body of the snake had disappeared. She didn’t know if a basilisk was one of those mythical animals that could regenerate itself after death, like a phoenix. If it could consume itself after it was dead, anything was possible. How was she even going to explain her presence at the cemetery?

  Reg turned and started to walk back toward the car. She was halfway there when she remembered that she hadn’t brought her own car, Corvin had driven her there. And not just her, but Starlight.

  She turned back. “Starlight? Where are you? Let’s go home.”

  With all the headstones, there were a million places to hide. She tried to see if he were lurking behind one of them. Or was he still hunting? Maybe there was another snake, or the basilisk had regenerated. She didn’t want him to push his luck and get bitten. She remembered how awful it had been when he had been sick. And cats faced lots of other dangers outside too, with traffic and bigger animals. She didn’t even know if Starlight would be able to find his way home when they had driven to the cemetery in the car.

  “Starlight?” She reached out with all her senses, trying to feel him. He was still close by, so it shouldn’t be too hard t
o find him. Unless he didn’t want to be found.

  There was a meow nearby. Reg looked around and saw him sitting on top of a flat headstone, washing.

  “There are you are. You’re okay, right? It didn’t bite you?”

  Starlight stopped washing for a moment to look at her. She knew that he hadn’t been bitten. If he had, he would have been in worse shape than Wilson. He had gotten rid of a dangerous predator and had prevented Wilson from being able to finish his spell. Reg wasn’t sure how Wilson had planned to purify himself of her blood, but it probably wasn’t something she would have appreciated.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” she told Starlight. She made a kissy noise to call him after her and took a few steps away. He stayed where he was, washing.

  “We need to go. I don’t want to stay around here.”

  He was not to be deterred. Reg imagined she would probably want a bath after wrestling a basilisk too. In fact, a bath sounded like a pretty great idea right about then.

  There was a movement among the graves, and Reg saw Corvin coming toward her. She was tired, but quickly wove a protection spell around herself. He would be stronger than ever. Wilson had been a powerful wizard, and if Corvin had been able to absorb any of his powers before he died, he would be stronger than ever.

  “Regina.” His eyes were glassy like he was high. “We should go.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was just thinking. You want me to drive?”

  He gave a vague smile. “Why would I want you to drive?”

  “You look… intoxicated. If we get pulled over, they’re going to think you’re DUI.”

  Corvin considered this as they walked toward the car. Reg looked back at Starlight, who finally decided he’d better move his furry butt and followed them. Corvin wove a little as he walked toward the car.

  “I’m driving,” Reg insisted when they reached it.