Urban Enemies

by Jim Butcher

  The first circle of characters was an anchoring to drive the spell deep underground, hundreds of feet, to the molten fissures that fueled the mountain. The next ring of symbols built potential, stoked fires that already existed within the mountain. The third ring directed those energies outward. Then the next, and the next. Thirteen layers of spells on top of the work he’d already sealed within the lamp. The casting took all night. He would barely have time before the sun rose and destroyed him. He didn’t think so much of the time that passed, only of the work that needed to be done, methodically and precisely. The good work of a Roman engineer.

  The thirteenth circle, the outermost ring, was for containment, protection. The power he raised here would not dissipate, but would instead burst out at once, and only at his signal. As great a show of power as any god could produce.

  A deep irony: magic provided him with the knowledge that gods did not operate the Earth and Heavens. A volcano’s fury was not the anger of Vulcan making itself known. No, it was a natural process, pieces of the world crashing together and breaking apart. The resulting energies caused disasters. Sparks from the striking of flint and steel, writ large. The fires of the Earth bursting forth under pressure.

  Magic didn’t create. It manipulated what was already there. Placed the power of the gods in human hands. Or vampire hands.

  At last the text was done. The moon reached its apex; dawn approached. He had finished in time, but only just. He went to the center of his great canvas and placed the lamp.

  The object served as a focus and a fuse. A battle of primal elements and energies, a physical poetry. Words only captured a shadow of the true forces. Many languages, symbolic conventions, all of them together were still an imperfect representation and only approached the sublime. Magic was the art of trying.

  In the middle of it all remained a need for brute force. The inchoate power of the Earth itself. He lit the lamp and waited a moment. Another moment. The lamp burned with a single buttery flame. The terra-cotta orange of the clay seemed to glow, and he couldn’t tell if this was the natural light or burgeoning magic. The slight, rounded shadow of the lamp on the ground shuddered, then vanished as a circle of illumination spread out, stretching along the pasture and up the side of Vesuvius. The scrub-covered ground seemed to glow with the same light. People in the town would think the hillside had caught on fire.

  Gaius waited, the nails of his hands digging welts into his palms. He didn’t know what would happen, what signal he should wait for. He knew only what he wanted to happen, and waiting for that was agonizing. To the east the sky faded with a hint of the gray of dawn. He had to get out of the open, but he wanted to see the spell ignite.

  The faint glow on the hillside disappeared. It didn’t fade, didn’t dissipate. Gaius swore he saw the light itself sink into the ground. Then the earth rumbled. Just an earthquake. Tiny, inconsequential. The kind anyone living near a volcano must sense from time to time.

  But this—he had triggered it. He was sure of it. And he was sure this was just the start. He laughed. Put up his arms in triumph and brayed like a fool.

  The lamp in the middle of his circle had burned out. The clay was cold. Its power had all gone into the mountain. It was working!

  He scooped up the lamp, the charcoal, the candles, knife, wicks, and other tools and shoved them into the bag. Then, before the sun rose, he raced back to Herculaneum, and from there to safety.

  He had arranged for a boat to wait for him. He had given careful instructions to the captain: however strange and chaotic the world became, they should not leave until Gaius Albinus was on board, or they would forfeit their very large fee. The galley had a cabin belowdecks, a cupboard that Gaius sealed up with waxed leather and blankets until the place was perfectly dark. He paid enough that the captain asked no questions.

  In the middle of that day, Vesuvius exploded. While he was sorry he’d missed the main of the eruption, asleep in his sealed cabin, that night from the safety of the boat at sea he watched the fires light up the darkness. It was glorious.

  In the centuries after, he collected eyewitness testimonies. Pliny the Younger and other historians gave a great accounting of the disaster that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Some eighteen hundred years later, the first excavations of the cities revealed grotesqueries, shapes of despair frozen in ash and preserved in plaster by archaeologists. Gray husks of mothers bent over children, of dogs chained helplessly to walls. They had known they were going to die. They’d had moments to prepare, to wait. Squeeze shut their eyes, hold their breath, and hope that they would survive the flood of ash. Seeing photographs of those cast figures so many years later, Gaius felt that stab of triumph all over again. That thrill of realization: he had done it, he had caused this terrible thing to happen, this explosion of the Earth.

  And he could do it again.

  Gaius Albinus emerged from the basement of Diocletian’s palace with the lamp, which he had named the Manus Herculei, safely in hand.

  He had heard and read the speculation of philosophers on the topic of immortality. Did humankind need the challenge of mortality? A limited span of time in order to feel the drive of ambition? Would ambition even exist without the need to leave one’s mark on the world before one died? If granted immortality, would a person become bored? Would they long for death? Would they cease to even remember all the time they had experienced? Would they become little more than ghosts?

  Gaius held the two-thousand-year-old clay lamp in his hand and could declare that immortality did not cause forgetfulness, did not dampen ambition. He remembered everything. He could smell the musk of goat and the tang of dried grass of that field; he remembered the fires of Vesuvius lighting up the night, the last of the screams that came from the town as the ash flow settled. The satisfaction, knowing that hideous old vampire was likely burned to nothing and buried under a ton of ash. The touch of clay against his skin was like a spark that transported him through time.

  The power of the lamp had not diminished. No, by hiding it he had allowed it to sleep as its power grew. The next disaster he triggered with this artifact would make Vesuvius seem like a candle.

  He was securing the gates as the archaeologist had instructed when he sensed a presence, an eddy of power in the night. Several of them. Enemies.

  A call echoed on stone and through shadow. “Dux Bellorum! Your time is done!” Arrogant laughter followed.

  Gaius knew the voice, though he had not heard it in decades. Not every vampire chose to follow Gaius, to join his army. Some rebelled. This man was an upstart, Master of the city of Barcelona with centuries of power pressing from him. Still a child, really. Nothing to worry about for Gaius Albinus, known as Dux Bellorum, also called Roman. Last of his people.

  Gaius slapped the crowbar against his hand and waited, mindful of the precious artifact wrapped in cloth and tucked in his pocket.

  Early on, there had been those who recognized what he was doing and opposed his quest. Even if they didn’t entirely understand the nature of his quest and its origins. That he was merely a general, following orders from his Caesar. Everyone who had opposed him, mortal or monster, full of power or merely earnest and naive, had failed. They would fail now, and he would enjoy putting them down.

  One more hurdle, then, before leaving Split. Then he could begin his journey to the park called Yellowstone, in North America.

  ALTAR BOY

  JONATHAN MABERRY

  “Altar Boy” is set in the world of the Joe Ledger weird science thrillers. The series began with Patient Zero, and the more recent Dogs of War is the ninth volume. Joe Ledger is a former Baltimore cop recruited into a covert Special Ops group tasked with confronting terrorists who have cutting-edge science weapons. This story, however, does not feature Ledger but instead focuses on Toys, a character introduced in the first volume as a villain and who continues in the series as a “recovering bad guy,” fighting for his soul every step along the rocky path to redemption. Toys is no one’s idea of
a hero, but he isn’t quite the villain he used to be. Maybe . . .

  1.

  Saint John of Patmos Catholic Church

  Pacific Beach, California

  It was a small church, which was good because he felt small. It was old, and that was also good because the young man felt old. Used up, spent, wasted, overdrawn, weathered, and past his sell-by date.

  It was a Catholic church, and that was good. Not only because he was Catholic—or had been, once upon a time—but because the Catholics kept the doors open all day. Anyone could come in and sit. Anyone.

  Even someone like him.

  Even one of the damned.

  2.

  His name was Alexander Chismer, though everyone called him Toys.

  He hated the nickname because it belonged to another man, to another life. But like a bad smell, the name stuck to him. He wore it without complaint. Toys complained about very little these days. It wasn’t that everything satisfied him or that he was too timid to speak his mind. No; it was that he felt he no longer had any right to complain. If he hated his nickname but other, better people wanted to use it, then that was fine. It was a small thread in the cloak of punishment that he wore. That’s how he saw it. Any unkind word, any unfortunate accident, any bit of physical damage that came his way was, in some overarching way, his due.

  The damned don’t have the right to complain. Not about anything.

  And Toys did believe that he was damned. His Catholicism, long absent from his life, had come flooding back with irresistible force, bringing with it all of the guilt, the weight of sins, the visions of the Pit, the certainty of his own fall into hell. Things he had scoffed at only a few years ago, things he jeered and made jokes about, were now burning lights in his inner darkness.

  He preferred to be alone as often as possible. When he went to work, he spent most of his time in his office with the door shut. Most of the people who worked for him at FreeTech didn’t. They were happy in one another’s company, and the whole building was alive with their chatter and laughter. To them he was a moody, eccentric, misanthropic loner who seldom smiled, though he never spoke harshly to anyone. Ever.

  If they only knew, he often thought. If they knew who they worked for, that happy crowd would transform into a mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks.

  A few did know, of course, and an even smaller handful knew all of it.

  Junie Flynn was aware. She was Toys’s partner in the FreeTech venture. He was the money, the logistics, the big-picture planning. Junie was the one who actually oversaw all of the projects. The company was built around the deliberate and specific repurposing of radical, cutting-edge technologies obtained by the Department of Military Sciences. In short, the DMS took very nasty toys away from terrorist groups, teams of rogue scientists, and utter madmen and then gave the science to FreeTech. It was amazing how much of that deadly science could be realigned to do measurable good. FreeTech deployed teams all over the world to help with water purification, sustainable farming, renewable energy, education, health, and more. They did it very efficiently and they did it very quietly.

  That was another part of Toys’s job—to keep his company out of the press and to let groups like Doctors Without Borders, Habitat for Humanity, and scores of others take the credit. It would actually have killed Toys if his name somehow wound up on a short list for a Nobel Prize. There was no amount of good he could accomplish that would wash his soul clean. He knew that with absolute certainty.

  So he did his job and went home. On the way home, he often stopped at the church. Sometimes for mass. Sometimes to light candles for the souls of everyone that he had killed—directly or by enabling the actions of his former employers. Sometimes he sat in a quiet pew in the most remote corner of the church and wept. He never prayed for forgiveness, because he did not believe he deserved any and because he did not think God was that tolerant. He lived alone, except for a battered old stray cat he’d named Job. He did not have friends. He did not date. He ate alone and he lived his life and he waited for the day he would grow old and die. Toys was a young man, he was fit and healthy, and he understood that the purgatory of being alive was likely to last a long, long time.

  So it was in that church, in that pew, on a random Tuesday on another of San Diego’s relentlessly sunny days, that he met the woman.

  3.

  She came and sat down in the next pew up and a little apart. Not next to him, but close enough so that her presence there had to draw his eye.

  It did.

  He looked at her, assessed her, instinctively ticked off the pertinent details, then looked away. She was in her early thirties. Very thin, very pale, with coal-black hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. Minimal makeup. Middle Eastern features. She looked vaguely familiar, but in the way someone is when they look a little bit like a famous person. A borrowed familiarity.

  Toys did not react to her as a woman, merely as a person. She was pretty enough, and fell into the category of the kind he used to go for. Women and men of the subgenre that had once been called heroin chic: borderline emaciated but actually filled with a raw and intense sexual energy. Like him. Or, like he had been once upon a time. That was all past-tense now, and Toys hadn’t been with anyone in more than four years. Not that he couldn’t have found willing partners, but he was equally aware that he exuded a toxic vibe. Hands off. Or, maybe, unclean. People who began to make passes at him quickly changed their minds and moved off with looks of uncertain disapproval twisting their mouths. That was fine with him. The last thing on earth he wanted was a girlfriend or boyfriend, or even a fling. Living like a monk was more appropriate somehow.

  He caught the woman looking at him. He glanced at her and then away, but the memory of dark eyes made him cut another look. This time she smiled. A small, sad little smile.

  He nodded to her. She nodded back, her smile fragile. And again there was the flicker of almost-but-not-quite recognition. He’d known so many people in so many places around the world, and he’d spent an enormous amount of time in the Middle East with his former employer, Sebastian Gault. This woman could not have been part of that crowd. Most of them were dead, and the rest were of a life Toys had stepped away from. They called themselves either warriors of God or freedom fighters; the rest of the world called them terrorists. The woman’s face touched an old memory, but not in a way that set off his alarm bells.

  Toys bent to read from his Bible. Something about someone doing something to someone else. He couldn’t concentrate, though. He could feel the woman looking at him, but when he glanced up, she was focused on the pages of a hymnal. Toys tried to read more of the passage but realized that he’d repeated the same verses three times and still had no idea what they said. It was one of Paul’s epistles. Dense, pedantic stuff.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  He jerked in surprise to find that the woman was no longer sitting in the next pew but was now standing but a few feet away. He could smell her. Some kind of inexpensive perfume. Roses. And soap. She smelled clean. She wore floral shorts and the kind of sandals that were good for walking.

  “Sorry, love, did I make too much noise, or—?”

  She smiled. “You’re English?”

  He nodded.

  “I was in England for a while. In college.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve seen you in here a few times.”

  “Oh?” He had not noticed her before, though he had not been trying to notice anyone.

  “I moved to San Diego a few months ago,” she said. “Got a place in Pacific Beach, near that restaurant? You know the one right on the boardwalk? World Famous? I see you in there almost every morning.” Her accent was definitely Middle Eastern. Iraqi, he thought, but with a heavy veneer of London English and generic TV American.

  “Oh?” he said again, trying not to feed the conversation.

  Undeterred, she came and sat down in his pew. He almost flinched, almost slid away from her.

  Almost.<
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  4.

  Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa

  3999 Mission Boulevard

  Her name was Aayun.

  “It means ‘eyes,’ ” she said.

  “I know,” said Toys.

  She was surprised. “You speak Arabic?”

  “A bit. Traveler’s Arabic. I don’t know much.”

  It was a lie, but it was enough. They were sitting at World Famous. It was the third time they’d talked since meeting in the church. Toys had tried very hard not to be interested, but she was interesting. Smart, filled with energy and life, but also a little sad. It was the sadness that drew him to her. He understood sadness in all of its many shapes and flavors. Their conversations were never personal, which seemed to be by mutual consent. She was as intensely private as he was, except for her desire to talk. So they talked. They talked about art and music, about movies and places they’d been. He was careful not to talk too much about his travels in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and other troubled places. She spoke of growing up in a small village near Baghdad, and of moving away with her family in the early days of the war. They did not talk politics. They did talk religion, though, and it became clear that she was not a Catholic. He asked her why she’d been in the church.

  Aayun blushed. “I . . . I followed you in.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know why. I just did.”

  Toys felt enormously uncomfortable about that, but he let it go. Aayun was interesting, articulate, amusing, and insightful. He could talk to her about things that had no connection at all to who, and what, he had been or who, and what, he was now. She called him Alexander because she had no idea that the world called him Toys. One day she touched his hand at the table and he didn’t pull away. It surprised him. And he liked it.