by Steve McHugh
“You need help out there?”
I shook my head. “It’s just going to be a nice little chat between adults.”
“And if they want to do more than chat? You can’t turn my car park into a war zone; there are families, kids in town.”
“A war implies that both sides will get a chance to fight. If it all goes to shit, I assure you, the only things they’re going to be doing is whimpering and bleeding.”
I stepped out into the cold night and breathed out, my breath condensing as I stood under a light attached to the front of the restaurant. Sarah and five other men—one of which I assumed was Robert—were standing together at the far side of the car park, next to two large four-wheeled drive behemoths of one kind or another.
The streetlight above Sarah and her friend’s heads didn’t work well; the only light that reached them was the overspill from those outside of the car park. A small amber tip occasionally lit up as a cigarette was pressed to one of the men’s lips; a second later a cloud of smoke was exhaled.
I strolled over to them, and they disbanded slightly, spreading out around me. “I assume you want to continue our little chat?” I asked.
Sarah smiled. “You weren’t taking me seriously. I wanted a chance to impart just how much you need to leave this town.” She placed a hand on the man beside her.
“And your man Robert and his friends are going to do that?” I glanced at one of the men nearby, the one still smoking a cigarette. “Is he going to be able to do anything before he coughs up a lung?”
“It’s regrettable that it’s come to this,” Sarah said, ignoring my taunt.
I laughed. “See, this is why I can’t take you seriously. You’re standing there, all menacing, while your friends circle me, and you’re expecting me to be scared. Unless one of them is a troll in the best disguise ever or something, it’s going to be a short fight.”
“This will make it longer,” she snapped and showed me her bloody hands before slamming them onto the cold pavement.
Waves of power rushed over me as runes of bright red lit up over the tarmac beneath my feet. I’ve had my magic removed before, through runes and sorcerers bands, but what Sarah had done felt like all of my power and energy evaporated into my surroundings. I dropped to one knee as I lost my breath and felt the world spin around me.
“You really are an arrogant little sorcerer,” Sarah said with contempt. She turned to Robert. “He can still take more punishment than a human, but don’t kill him. Just get him in the truck and take him away from here.”
I tried to create a ball of flame in my palm, but it was barely a few millimeters in size and disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Sarah was right: I’d been arrogant. I hadn’t expected her to use so much power.
Sarah staggered back slightly, placing a hand on the bonnet of the truck as the five men encircled closer around me.
Despite the lack of magic, and the tiredness I felt, I shook my head clear of any cobwebs and got back to my feet, albeit slowly. I stretched my back and arms as I readied myself for a fight. I could have tried to make a run for it until my magic returned, but there was no way of telling how much area Sarah had managed to put her spell onto.
“You sorcerers are always so preoccupied with your magic,” Sarah said with a snarl. “I wonder how well you’re going to do without it.”
“Okay then, ladies, who wants to get the shit kicked out of them first?” I asked.
The first person to move was the smoker, a huge barrel-chested man, who had removed his jacket, revealing dark tattoos over huge muscular arms. He flicked the cigarette toward me in an attempt to make me lose my concentration, and then darted forward. I stepped back directly into a blow to my kidney from someone behind me. It was hard enough to make me pause as pain rocked through my back, giving the smoker enough time to slam into me, lifting me from my feet. He kept running for a few steps before dumping me onto the nearest car’s bonnet. The air rushed out of me in one go, and he ensured it wasn’t going to get back in by punching me in the solar plexus and then pushing me off the bonnet and onto the cold ground, where I smacked my elbow as I landed roughly.
I rolled away, between the two parked cars, and got back to my feet, only to be kicked in the head by Robert, who vaulted over the boot of the nearest car, sending me sprawling back to the tarmac.
A hand reached down and grasped the back of my jacket, dragging me out from between the cars and throwing me back to the ground, where someone else kicked me in the ribs hard enough for me to lift up slightly. A second kick spun me onto my back. I was getting my ass kicked by humans. Humans, for fuck’s sake! If they beat me, I’d never live it down. The once mighty Nathan Garrett, beaten by a bunch of people who didn’t even know what magic really was, let alone know how to use it. Tommy would never shut up about it.
“This is pathetic,” Robert said from somewhere behind me. “Sarah said that sorcerers can’t fight for shit without their magic, but damn, boy, I figured you’d be able to put up a bit of a struggle.”
I rolled onto my front and got back to my knees without anyone trying to fight me. I was hoping that in their own small victory, they’d gained a measure of confidence that I wasn’t someone to be concerned about. One of my attackers, the larger smoker, grabbed my jacket again and pulled me upright, shoving me back against the nearest car and punching me in the stomach.
“This is fun,” the man said.
“You smell awful,” I informed him.
The man grabbed me by my hair and pulled my head back with enough force that I thought he was going to tear my hair out. “Not as big as you thought you were, are you?”
“One thing,” I said softly. “You need to know one thing.”
“And what’s that?” he asked, his tone mocking, as the stench of his breath filled my nostrils.
I drove my cupped palms onto his head, one over each ear, with enormous force, possibly bursting an eardrum. Smoker released me and yelled out in pain. I whipped my head forward with speed and ferocity, driving my forehead into his nose with everything I had. The bridge of his nose crunched under the blow, and he staggered back as blood streamed down his face. I stepped forward, smashing my forearm into his face and then pushing him roughly onto the ground.
I took a deep breath and then breathed out as one of the four remaining men rushed toward me. I deflected his punch, slamming my palm into his throat. He dropped to his knees like he’d been shot, gasping for breath. I grabbed his long dark hair and drove his face into the headlight of the nearest car. I sensed movement behind me and spun round, catching the third man in the jaw with a kick, and then whipped the same leg down onto the choking man, using my knee to bury his face into the remains of the headlight. His face was now a mass of tiny shards of safety glass and plastic.
If you’re going to fight a group, you go in hard and fast. The same can be true for any fight, to be honest, but when you’re outnumbered, you want to drop those against you to a manageable level as quickly as possible. Of course, a big rule is also not to get taken off your feet, but I’d managed to fail that in the first ten seconds.
After my initial weariness from Sarah’s spell, my energy had started to increase, and apart from the lack of magic, I felt okay. I was pretty sure the three injured men on the tarmac around me couldn’t say the same.
“Are we done here?” I asked no one in particular.
Their answer was immediate: the fourth man rushed forward and jabbed at my face, which I blocked, but he’d forced me to step back, directly into the path of another of Robert’s dangerous kicks. I moved to block the blow, but Robert saw it coming, and instead of catching me in the side of the head, he shifted his stance mid-kick and hit me in the chest.
The power behind the kick was immense, and I was forced to take several steps back as my chest screamed in pain. Robert grinned and started bouncing from foot to foot, shifting his stance with every few bounces so I couldn’t tell which leg he was going to kick with.
His
friend decided my plan for me. He moved forward while my attention was on Robert and threw a vicious hook to my jaw. He knew that I would either dodge back, right into a waiting Robert’s path, or I’d block the blow, which would open me up to a second punch, this time to the gut. I stepped back, gaining Robert’s attention, his foot leaving the tarmac. I darted forward and grabbed the fourth man’s arm, immediately turning and dragging him off balance, forcing him to stagger into Robert’s line of fire. Robert’s leg was already moving faster than it had before—the trick of changing stances mid-kick was impossible—and his foot quickly found a home on the side of the fourth attacker’s head.
The man’s eyes rolled back up into his head, and he flopped forward toward me. I caught him and shoved him toward Robert, who darted aside and let his friend crash to the ground.
I didn’t wait around to give Robert a chance to recover, and rushed him, throwing an uppercut to his jaw, which he avoided, stepping right into the path of a punch to his gut. He stepped away, but not fast enough to avoid a swift kick to the side of his knee, which caused him to shout out in pain as he dropped to his one good leg.
Robert threw a punch, which I pushed aside and clasped my hands around the back of his neck, bringing my knee up as I pulled his face down. He managed to block the first two knee strikes, so I released my hands and kicked out, catching him on the chest and sending him sprawling to the ground.
I walked over to him, and he kicked out with both legs, but I managed to grab one ankle, and a quick kick to the side of his knee dislocated the joint. He yelled in pain as I applied more pressure to the injured limb.
“Now, what are you doing here?” I asked, managing to remain calm, despite his howls of protest.
“P-paid—paid to,” he eventually managed.
I released the pressure a little. “By whom?”
Robert shook his head, and I was about to say something when someone smashed into the side of me, taking me from my feet and driving me to the side. I twisted in his grip, to discover that Smoker had found his feet and wanted some payback.
I slammed my palm into his broken nose. He immediately released me and yelled in pain.
I drove my forearm into his face once more. This time there was no lack of energy on my part, and his head snapped to one side as if hit by a truck. He spun once and then fell to the ground, probably with a broken jaw in addition to his nose.
“Right,” I said with a slight cough. Smoker had managed to hurt my already bruised ribs. “Where were we, Robert?” I took a step toward him as Sarah appeared at the end of the car park.
“You are done here,” she raged.
“Girl, if you test me, you won’t find me in the mood to play nicely.”
She brandished a dagger in one hand, which she drew across the palm of the other before dropping it to the ground. A second later, she pressed her palms together and closed her eyes as I began to run toward her, determined to stop whatever she was about to cast. Unfortunately, I was too slow, and as she exhaled, she pushed her hands out, palms toward me, and snapped one word: “Effete.”
The effect was instantaneous. I crashed to my knees as if the weight of the world were suddenly pressing down on me. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe as my body just stopped working. Every ounce of energy I had left me in a moment, and a second later I was lying on the cold car park trying to make my brain work enough so that I could figure out what was happening to me. Unfortunately, my brain had gone the same way as the rest of my body, and a deep fog had settled in my head, clouding any rational thoughts and ideas.
I watched in silent horror as Sarah picked up the dagger and stalked toward me, a set purpose on her face. She crouched beside me. “I tried to help you, but you just couldn’t stop, could you?”
I glanced up at her and saw blood trickle from her nose. She’d used a lot of magic, and her body was violently protesting.
She noticed my gaze and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and nose, noticing the blood for the first time. She stood, full of urgency and panic. “You can die here,” she said to me and then went to each of her five friends, placing a hand on their bodies and healing them slightly before helping her dazed and aching comrades into one of the trucks and speeding out of the car park.
I shook my head and tried to clear the mental cobwebs that Sarah’s magic had placed there. Effete—the word was familiar. I knew what it meant, I knew what had happened, but I couldn’t make my brain wake up enough to actually form the words.
I moved slowly toward the restaurant, forcing myself forward an inch at a time. I wasn’t going to die without a fight, I was damn sure of that. As I slowly dragged myself along the tarmac, my head began to clear; I must have been reaching the edge of the magic that Sarah had used.
The word effete burned into my consciousness. Sarah had used a blood magic curse on me. I pushed myself up to my knees and crawled forward until I saw rune marks that had been drawn on the ground in what appeared to be black chalk, making them almost invisible unless you were right on top of them.
My brain cleared further. You were marked, it told me. The knowledge slammed into the front of my thoughts; curses don’t work unless you’re marked first. The memory of Sarah placing her hand on the back of my shoulder tore into me, and I immediately ripped at my jacket, throwing it aside and then doing the same with my hoodie.
Only a fraction of my magic had actually been drained from me, but it rushed back into me like a freight train. If I hadn’t already been on my knees, I would have been knocked over, as the power crashed over me in one huge wave. Tarmac cracked and broke around me, and my white and orange glyphs burned brightly over my arms and chest, despite the fact that I wasn’t consciously using any magic at all.
It forced me onto all fours, my magic breaking the tarmac under my hands, destroying part of the runes, and releasing the contained energy.
My mind cleared in a heartbeat, bringing with it terrible news. If I’d stayed inside the affected area, I would have been weak for a few hours, maybe a day, but then my strength would have returned. The power collected by the runes would have returned to me until I’d regained my strength.
Breaking the runes had changed that. On the plus side, it meant getting my missing energy back much more quickly; on the minus side, it turned the car park into a damn bomb.
The remaining magic exploded outward like a nuclear shockwave. Windscreens and headlights shattered, tires blew from the pressure, and the lights and windows at the front of the restaurant rained down glass over the ground. The blast picked me up like I was made of paper and threw me aside. I felt a crunch as I collided, back first, with something hard. Pain rocked through me, and then, just as quickly as the magical energy had rushed outward, it stopped and all rushed back into me as if it were attached on an elastic band.
The final thing I remembered before passing out was that I cried out in pain.
CHAPTER 5
Berlin, Germany. 1936.
For the better part of a week, I scoured the city of Berlin, looking for any signs of Pandora or information on where she might have fled. Usually, a trail of dead bodies—like a trail of breadcrumbs—provided a pretty good indication of where she was, but on this occasion it led to nothing. She had simply escaped on the back of a motorbike, an image that seemed more romantic than the reality of all the murdered Nazis she’d left behind in the Gestapo building.
I decided the only course of action was to wait around until Pandora did something spectacular. She always did, but sometimes she liked to relax for a while first. In all likelihood, she was sitting in a hotel room somewhere in Berlin, drinking champagne and eating expensive food while plotting whatever scheme she wanted to carry out.
I spent a few days reading and watching the other occupants go about their business in a hotel lobby. I’d picked the place especially because of the number of foreigners who were staying there, hoping to overhear one of them slip up and discuss something inadvertently. Occasionally, Nazi of
ficers would enter the hotel and wander around, asking people for their papers or generally being a pain. There was no overt threat, but it was clear from their tone and body language that they were begging for someone to aggravate them. They were just thugs—thugs with power, certainly, but the only difference between most Nazis and the common thugs you’d meet if you walked down the wrong street at night, was that the Nazis had shinier boots.
So, I found myself sitting in a comfortable green leather armchair in the lobby. I placed a German newspaper on a nearby table. I’d hoped it would give me a clue to something that might have sounded like business Pandora was involved in, but it was so pro Nazi, it should have come with its own flag.
Instead of reading what passed for journalism, I picked up a book from a local store and set about reacquainting myself with Lovecraft’s dark tales. I’d known a few people in my life that I could easily have described as Cthulhu-esque, and I wondered for a moment whether Lovecraft had actually met any of them or if these tales were really just a product of his imagination. I wasn’t sure which one of those two options concerned me more.
I was midway through a particularly good story, when someone sat in the chair opposite me. “Hello, Nathan.” She spoke in what was almost a Southern drawl.
I lowered the book and glanced over at Pandora, who smiled. “Interesting accent,” I said and carefully placed the book on the table beside me, as if moving quickly might spook her, and she’d run off.
“We’re trying it out,” she explained and raised a glass of champagne to her lips, taking a sip. “You weren’t looking for an American, and we’ve spent so long in Tartarus that our once Greek accent has been sort of lost in the annals of time. Much like our ability to care about the human race or their petty conflicts.”
“Have you fanned the flames of another war?” I asked. Pandora hadn’t started the Napoleonic Wars the last time she’d escaped, but she sure as hell had managed to keep that particular fire well and truly stoked.