by Jason DeGray
“Let’s not speak of it. He is still close.” Tracy made a sign in the air as if to ward off evil.
Wolf noticed odd symbols scarred into her palms. “What happened to your hand?” he asked and motioned to her scars.
She smiled and unconsciously rubbed them. “Just my marks.”
“All tricksters get them,” Ragnar explained and, finishing his tea, poured three hefty glasses from a bottle of whiskey he fished from underneath his chair. “Once they’ve come far enough, once they’ve become masters, they…help us get our tricks better.”
“I see. I guess that makes me covered in marks.” Wolf smiled and accepted the glass offered him.
Ragnar laughed, a sound like a waterfall tumbling over a mountain. “So you are. So you are.”
Wolf sipped the whiskey and relished the warmth traveling down his chest. “So you think Jonas is working for these Purple Gates people again?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Wolf was trusting Jonas less and less. He decided to be honest with this out-of-place shaman and hoped he could offer deeper insight into the heart of the situation. “He offered to teach me magic to protect myself.”
Ragnar laughed. “He did, did he? That’s hilarious considering what happened to his last ‘students’.”
“No kidding. That’s why I’m reluctant.”
“I don’t blame you. Jonas isn’t a master and never will be. But I can see how it’d be useful given your circumstances.” He reverently picked a book up off the table and handed it to Wolf. “My Grimoire. Study it without Jonas’ knowledge. He’d steal the book from you in a heartbeat. And what’s inside isn’t for his eyes. Ever.”
The sound of the Challenger outside alerted them to Jonas’s return. Wolf fumed that Jonas had driven his car again. Driving it in an emergency was one (regrettable) thing, but joyriding it to the grocery store was a capital offense as far as he was concerned. He tucked the book into his coat hanging over a nearby chair as Jonas entered laden with grocery bags.
“Wolf! You’re awake! Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of you?”
“You were driving my car. I told you nobody drives my car.”
“Hey. Don’t blame me,” laughed Jonas nervously. “I had to go get dinner. So, who’s hungry?”
CHAPTER 11
“So, Jonas,” Ragnar said as they sat on the porch smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and drinking whiskey. “Wolf tells me you mean to instruct him in getting the trick.”
“Just a few things. The basics. What of it?”
“Basics, huh?” The hulking shaman sat the bottle down and leaned forward. “Then let’s get started, Master Jonas. Teach your would-be student. What are the three laws of the trick?”
“Alright then.” Jonas turned to Victor. “Pay attention because I’m about to pry open your third eye.”
“Should I be taking notes?”
“Yes.”
Wolf dug out his pen and notepad. “Ready.”
“Magic, like physics and society, has laws. These laws are indisputable and ever constant. There are three laws of the trick.”
“Three? That’s it?”
“Three is a sacred number. And the three laws open themselves up to a variety of rules.”
“Wait. Are there laws or rules?”
“Both. The difference is, rules can be bent or broken. Laws, never.”
“Got it. So what are the laws?”
“Law number one,” Jonas sketched a simple cross with a circle in the center. “As above,” he pointed to the vertical line. “So below.” He pointed to the horizontal. “The universe and all of creation is built with systems layered atop one another. These systems are redundant from the highest spiritual plane to the lowest physical world. Learn the systems and their patterns, or glyphs, and you control them.”
“What’s with the cross?”
“That’s the sigil for the first law. It reminds the Master to always have his eyes open to the workings of the divine patterns in nature. It symbolizes the intersecting of the two realms: the celestial and the mundane. As above, so below. Got it?”
“Yeah. As above, so below. Good to go.”
“Law number two: everything has an opposite.” Jonas drew a triangle. “And those opposites are constantly struggling to keep balance.”
“What happens when things get out of balance?”
“We call that getting the trick. You would call it magic. Magic is ultimately about imbalance. Tricksters use the imbalances they create to fulfill their wills. But a trickster’s will must be strong enough to hold the energy. Creating an imbalance is a volatile thing.”
“Because opposites seek balance,” Wolf guessed.
“Exactly. The universe was created using a balance of opposing forces. And these forces are always trying to reconcile themselves into one, higher form, the Godform. Hence the triangle.”
“Two lower points joining at a higher location,” mumbled Wolf as he wrote in his notebook.
“You are a fast student,” Ragnar remarked, impressed.
“Please,” Jonas said. “I’m trying to teach here. The third law is simple: everything is energy. We call that energy the trick.” Jonas drew a circle with a dot in the center. “And the trick cannot be created or destroyed. The circle symbolizes the eternal cycle of the energy that orbits the Source of All, or God the Creator.” Jonas pointed to the dot in the center. “Creation is always trying to reunite with God, but at the same time, it’s held back by forces out of its control. Like gravity or magnetic opposites. You see this pattern everywhere. As above, so below. Planets orbit suns in a solar system. Galaxies orbit their centers, electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom.”
“What’s all this have to do with magic?”
“Pay attention! This is magic! Look, everything in creation has a core—an essence of energy that can be broken down into a glyph. Know something’s glyph and you command whatever they are attached to.”
“What’s a glyph?”
“Think of it like the pattern of a circuit. It’s the way the trick moves in order to manifest something. But the real philosopher’s stone, the real power, lies in creating something from nothing. Reaching into the void and pulling the trick into existence. But then, you’d be the Almighty. And He won’t have that.”
“I don’t think I’d want it,” said Wolf. “Even people have glyphs?”
Jonas nodded. “People. Spirits. Even God. His physical manifestation does, anyway. If you want to drive yourself insane, you could try to figure it out. You’d have better luck finding an end to pi.”
“Or an end to Jonas’s lesson,” laughed Ragnar. “Seriously, boy. Shut it already. I lost track of you half an hour ago.”
“I agree.” Wolf closed his notebook and tucked it away, quickly following that up with refreshing his whiskey. “So how did you end up here?” he asked Ragnar.
“Married into the tribe. Soon after I came over.”
“Came over from where?”
“The Old World,” said the warrior-shaman cryptically.
“He means Sweden,” Jonas clarified.
“Sweden? Why did you come here?”
Ragnar was a good way into the bottle of whiskey, which loosened his tongue considerably. “Because it’s the Land of Enchantment, of course! Who wouldn’t want to be here?” He laughed boisterously and refilled his glass. “But honestly, I lost something and came here to find it. I told you I was the last warrior-shaman in an ancient order called the Holy Sons of Thor. Our roots go back thousands of years to the days in which the gods themselves walked the earth. Our order was charged with one thing: to make sure the enemy or his agents, should they ever be released into the world, would quickly be banished back to the prison of darkness and despair that housed them before they could wreak havoc.”
“Let me guess, this enemy got out?”
“Yes. Two hundred and twelve years ago. We began the search immediately. And all these years later, I’m the last Son of Thor
left standing. Hundreds of my brethren, thousands of years of history, all snuffed out by an enemy who hides where people don’t see and influences lives through dreams and subtle whispers. We never saw it coming. Not until the suicides started and by then it was too late.”
“Suicides?”
“Yes. That’s how the enemy got rid of most of my order. Murders made to look like suicides. The rest simply disappeared.”
“How do you know they weren’t just suicides?”
“You must understand my order to know that we would never commit suicide. It’s…not in our natures. Regardless, I followed the enemy of my order here.”
“Then what? You decided to stop and rest for a bit?”
“He’s a stubborn jackass,” Jonas blurted out. “He got distracted almost immediately after he got here. By his new life with his lovely wife, Tracy.”
“That’s not true!” Ragnar roared and leaped from his chair. He started screaming at Jonas in Swedish, a language Wolf didn’t understand, but that Jonas seemed to, even if he didn’t speak it.
“You calling me a liar?” Jonas rose to confront Ragnar. “Why do you think I left? You tell everybody it’s because ‘Jonas isn’t ready for this and that.’ Or, ‘Jonas is evil, blah blah, fucking blah’! The truth of it is, you refused to move. You wouldn’t finish your work, so you sent me to do it for you!”
“All you did was get people killed!” roared Ragnar. “He corrupted you just like everyone else and people suffered for it!”
“I knew you would see it like that. I did. That’s how your slow mind thinks.” Jonas tapped his finger against his temple for emphasis. “But face it. I stepped up. I flushed your enemy out. Me. I saved your life and your bitch of a wife’s life—”
Ragnar roared and sent Jonas sprawling into the wall with a heavy right hook. The trickster slumped down, unconscious. “He spoke out of place,” the shaman explained as he returned to his seat, struggling to reclaim his calm.
“Obviously,” Wolf said. “So what is the truth, then?”
“The truth is, I did send Ragnar to the Purple Gates group. I knew they acquired a book called Power. They had been scouring the esoteric community for weeks looking for a mentor that could read it. I felt my enemy’s presence involved. So I sent Jonas to them. He was supposed to mislead them, fill them full of false information, and get the book away from them before they could do any harm with it. He started out well enough, but by the end, my enemy had corrupted him too.”
“Who is your enemy, exactly? Someone I’m familiar with?” Wolf asked knowingly.
“You are a perceptive student. You are correct, Victor Wolf. We have the same enemy. Glasya-Labolas. The Lord of Murder.” Ragnar held up his right hand. Branded into it was a crude ouroboros, an ancient symbol of a serpent devouring its own tail. “The key to my work lies here, not in a crafting circle. It’s impossible to kill a demon. My order was meant to eliminate those the demon prince influenced. When I tracked the enemy here and disposed of his agents, I thought my work was done. Thought I’d get to return to Valhalla at last. But I was wrong.”
“How do you know you were wrong?”
“Easy. I’m still alive.” Ragnar poured himself and Wolf another glass of whiskey. “But you showing up is a good omen. I saw it in the runes. He sniffs after your trail and you will lead me to him like my ouroboros. And when you do,” he raised his glass in a toast, “May the All-Father have mercy on his soul.”
***
Wolf awoke the next morning sore but refreshed. His wound had miraculously healed into a tender spot that only gave him a slight limp.
“It’ll heal completely in a couple of days,” Ragnar said as he sent them on their way with a whispered message to Wolf to remember what they’d discussed about Jonas. His goodbye with his former pupil was cold and courteous. Wolf drove, refusing to let Jonas behind the wheel despite his injury.
“What an asshole he is!” Jonas finally said after sitting in a moody silence for fifteen minutes, his face as bruised as his ego. “Can you believe he hit me?”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No.”
“Then you wouldn’t understand. You don’t talk about a man’s wife, no matter how you feel about her. I thought that was common sense. Not to mention, you were seriously pushing the dude’s buttons.”
“So you’re on his side?”
“That’s not what I said. I’m not taking sides. I’m just saying that if you would’ve called my wife a bitch, I’d have done the same thing.”
“I did save their lives, though. They had no idea what the Lord of Murder was capable of. No idea. But I knew. I read it in the book called Power. I spent hours scouring that cursed book and bringing to life the horrors it contained for those vainglorious assholes. And you know what I found out? I found out there was no stopping the Lord. He’s obliterated legions of angels just by thinking about it. Do you get that? Thousands of angels dead all because a demon prince thought them out of existence. If he could do that to angels, the soldiers of God Almighty, one washed up warrior-shaman certainly couldn’t handle him. I had to do what I did. I had to bind him. Restrict him in any way I could. It just so happens the easiest way to do that is to bind a demon to flesh.” Jonas stared out the window for a while longer before he said, “You remember what we talked about? Our discussion on glyphs?”
“Yeah.”
“With Albert Caine and his ilk after you, you need to know how to protect yourself. And you can’t really protect yourself from a trickster without knowing a few tricks. Pull over at this rest stop. It’ll only take a second.”
Wolf obliged and a few moments later the two men sat at the metal picnic table with a notebook between them. Jonas drew a series of interconnected lines and geometric shapes on paper. “This is the glyph for fire. When enough will is put behind it,” Jonas traced the glyph with his right hand and whispered something. The paper ignited and quickly burned to ash. “You get the trick.”
Wolf seized his hand and sniffed it for signs of gunpowder or flammable chemicals.
“What do you smell?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s the trick. Here,” Jonas sketched some glyphs and handed them to Wolf. “Practice writing these over and over. You have to be able to do them perfectly.”
“Why?”
“Because. One line out of place or forgotten and the energy won’t circuit properly. Bad things can happen. Practice. Meditate. And remember that the rules for magical application are mainly based on the second law.”
“Everything has an opposite.”
“Yes. So every sleight has a reveal, every summoning has a banishing, every curse has a lift, and so on. We know that getting the trick is about the manipulation of energy—essentially, creating an imbalance and forcing it to work for you. The energy you use must be isolated within its glyph or outside energy will rush in to balance it. And colliding energies can create some huge explosions or unleash some vicious entities.”
“How do I undo or banish or whatever?”
“Do the opposite of what you just did or said. The exception to that rule is in summonings. Summoning an entity works a bit differently because you’re working with a sentient being with its own personality, likes, and all that crap. Banishings are usually a ritual unto themselves and include some level of a literal battle of wills like our encounter with the Lord of Murder. Opening a door for an entity and then slamming it again after it’s done you a few favors really infuriates them.”
“No kidding.” He closed his notebook and tucked it inside his coat. “While we’re learning things, I’d like to know something, off the record.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d like to know why you lied to me and said that all the Purple Gates Group members that knew what you were up to were killed that night.”
“What do you mean? They were.”
“There you go lying again,” Wolf growled. “I’m not above leaving your ass stranded on the
side of the road. Who are you trying to protect? Are you working for them again?”
“No! Wolf, I’m not lying to you. They’re all dead. I swear.”
“Even the Violet Shadows?”
“Wolf, trust me. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Really now?” Wolf nodded, got up, and walked to his car. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Without even glancing twice at Jonas sitting dumbfounded at the table, he left him choking on a cloud of dust and gravel.
CHAPTER 12
Ragnar sat inside his sacred space deep in meditation. The visions came readily to him. It was the same as always—a great serpent writhing up the world tree, devouring it as it went, shaking the very foundations of the world with each swallow. He saw his astral self, a mighty Viking blazing with golden energy, rushing to meet the beast. Their clash was epic and it always ended the same: Ragnar defeating his enemy but taking grievous wounds as a result. He would then take nine steps and fall over dead.
But this time, the vision was different. Looming over the scene were the evil burning eyes carved into his enemy’s demonic tool, the book called Power. This was an unsettling development. His enemy had never been able to unleash the evil within that hideous tome. To do so would be disastrous. His order had made sure that the opportunity for that would never arise—could never arise. Even when Jonas tried, he failed. But why was that? Demons sought entrance into the physical world and would never deny themselves an open doorway. A thousand years of misinformed magical knowledge ensured that the inhuman denizens of the fade stayed where they belonged. The demon would only willingly deny a gateway if it had another way in—a better way.
Ragnar broke his meditation with a start. “Tracy!”
“What is it?” his wife answered, peeking into the adobe shed that served as Ragnar’s space.
“The enemy moves against us in new ways.”
“What do you mean?”
He explained his vision to her. “The Lord of Murder is waiting. He’s waiting for the final battle before he makes his move.”