“But you don’t think that’s it, do you?”
“I think something did a number on the victims. Something that’s not human and not demonic. No glyphs I could see. If a demon were unleashed in Seattle, the league would be up to their neck in lawsuits.”
“Could be a changer. Could be worse. That’s why I plan to accompany you.”
“Ah Frank, you’re all heart. I’m just going to look around, not get into trouble. Don’t you have some female hawks to chase around or baby deer to terrorize?”
“Someone has to keep an eye on you since Glenda dumped your pale butt.”
“It wasn’t even a real relationship. Jeez, Frank,” I said, but it stung.
Christ, he has to go and bring up Glenda. He may as well punch me in the gut and piss on me while I was down. I stared at him for a moment until he looked away, then he smiled in that impish way of his and slapped me on the back.
“Just think, chief, maybe we can hook up with some girls in Belltown later on.”
“Right, Frank. I’m sure they will go for a tired warlock dressed from head to toe in black and a naked Indian.”
“Hey brother. I look good naked.” He strutted a few feet away. In the blink of an eye he jumped and formed in the air. His hawk shape beat at the night sky and he was away like a shot.
My take off wasn’t as clean.
I zipped up my black leather jacket, slid goggles over my eyes, and then strapped on the helmet. All that gear weighed me down but it was better than screaming around in wind that would feel fifteen degrees cooler than the actual temperature.
I threw my legs over the band of maple like it was a fence. The wood was still warm, the curious after-effect of using it the night before. It was just like a regular pitchfork, until I felt through the layers and found the edge of the cusp. I wrestled with the barrier for a half second before channeling a touch--just a tiny amount into the wood that responded with something like glee.
So you have read the books about the boy wizard (and I have always wondered where she got some of her info) and how he uses a broom to flit around. Sounds like fun, right?
Let me try and break down why it’s not.
Ever been in a small plane when the air is breaking through cracks and tiny holes in the fuselage or streaming in through the windows? Pretty loud, huh. Now, imagine you are plastered to the windshield.
First of all you can’t hear a thing because of the air rushing past your ears. Forget about talking to someone as you fly. It screams and whips by, creating a howling banshee cry. The air is also ice cold when it hits your body. The leather helps but it isn’t enough. But because you have to concentrate on staying aloft, forget about a spell to stay warm while you’re up there.
Take offs are the worst part.
I took a few awkward steps.
Running with a pitchfork between your legs isn’t the smartest thing a man can do. Hit a bump and you’re singing soprano for the evening. I forked my fingers and slowly raised them. The wood responded and even warmed as I funneled more energy. I was in the air in a half heartbeat and then roaring over the woods two beats later. Energy caressed the tines and made some kind of deal with the air that allowed me to stay aloft. As much as we have researched witchcraft, we don’t really understand half of it.
Back when we came out of the magic closet, a bunch of physicists tried to break our art into a science. They worked with the league, sequestered themselves in a lab with a couple of witches and warlocks. They came out with a huge volume of research papers but they still couldn’t explain jack.
My stomach was in my throat in another heartbeat and I wished I had thought to prepare some ginger tea because it really took the edge off motion sickness.
I passed houses and stores a moment later and kept heading north. I took to a respectable height to avoid the stares, but not high enough so as to run into air traffic. I buzzed to the east a bit so as to avoid Auburn’s tiny airport.
A shape came up behind me fast and I ducked involuntarily. There was a screech as Frank zipped overhead, his mighty wings beating at the sky in a display of precision that never ceased to send chills up and down my cynical old spine. The hawk beak turned, tiny eyes moving with them, and I swear he winked at me.
I gave him the finger in return.
I passed from cloud to cloud. Rain from one, and a mist from another.
We sailed over the landscape and I veered toward Interstate 5 and let it guide me into the city. Not that I could get lost up here. Landmarks were etched in my brain that hadn’t changed in many years. The lay of the land, the sweep of the hills. The northwest is not a flat area. It’s covered in green, which makes finding landing spots a pain at times. You can’t exactly land on a street, and a backyard is normally too short and apt to draw the ire of the homeowner. It’s best to find a small neighborhood and make sure there aren’t any cars about to back out of driveways.
I have a large plot of land and an area setup for landings, but it isn’t without its risks, like the molehill I tried to close up earlier. Landing on that could make problems, like a sprained ankle, broken wrist, or a thoroughly ruffed up sense of pride.
Frank swooped away from me and dove toward a pair of smaller birds below. He screamed past them and they took off in another direction.
Was that how he got his kicks?
It only took about ten minutes to reach the outer limits of the city. Traffic was clogged up as it led into Seattle but I peeled off, following Alaska way so as to bleed of speed and height with gentle dips and pulls at the stick.
My hands were sweaty around the old groove where the hangman’s noose used to lay. Can’t wear gloves on a fork. It breaks the contact with the cusp and the wood. Break the bond and break up on the ground.
The buildings came up fast, warehouses and shops, a luxury automobile dealer and a donut shop. People stopped and glanced up. Look Mom, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s a filthy witch up to no good.
Someone cat-called to me. A long low whistle. Frank flew over the man and deposited a load of white that splattered at his feet, sending the hapless guy jumping back in shock. I burst out laughing.
We flew over the baseball stadium and then the football stadium, which for some inexplicable reason couldn’t have been combined. Taxpayers would be paying those things off for decades. They were beautiful, though. Especially the baseball field with its moving roof. Best thing in Seattle is a roof.
I wanted to get close to the crime scenes so I dropped low, passed over a Starbucks at about thirty feet, and flared a bit of power into the tip, pulled up sharply, and made a running landing.
There was a canopy of trees over the birthplace of Seattle called Pioneer Square. A pair of passersby saw me come in and dashed out of the way. The man had his Mariner ball cap on backwards and gave me a look that was pure hostility. Some tourist snapped pictures and then exclaimed as Frank landed on a huge tree branch.
Buildings rose on either side, casting this part of Seattle in perpetual shadow. Night was approaching so streetlights popped on all over the place. I moved to the sidewalk as quickly as I could because I didn’t want to stand around and answer questions from tourists. Cars whipped by from light to light, barely stopping for the timed necessities. There was a huge pothole and a city bus blasted over it, bouncing hard and causing the riders to leave their seats, and then look surprised as they came down even harder.
This part of the city was built, in pieces, over old Seattle. A fire was set off by a carpenter and thirty three blocks burned to the ground. The truth was that a band of witch hunters were in town and got wind of a local coven. They were hiding among the ‘seamstresses,’ what the ladies of the evening called their profession when the city was a booming frontier town, and were caught off guard. The fight was fast and furious, with men drawing guns and shooting indiscriminately. I was holed up with a honey haired banker’s daughter at the time and came out to see fireballs ripping across the road.
A pair of witc
hes went down first. I’d worked from the shadows to draw glyphs as quickly as I could. At first it slowed the men with guns. Then a very angry Meredith Jones, mistress of the coven, strode onto the street in a black dress that swept the ground. She turned her gaze on the men, whispered words that broiled in the air, and tossed shaved brass upward. She accelerated the shards and the men went down with their bodies ripped to shreds.
It was a hell of a sight.
Then she unleashed brimstone and left smoldering corpses. That’s when a lucky shot from one of the men hiding in a general store caught her across the shoulder. She spun around and the fire swept from her fingertips and splashed across a carpenter’s shop. It didn’t take long for the wooden structure to catch. We fled the scene a moment later, me struggling, still drunk, into my trousers and a shirt of wool. Damned scratchy old things that always seemed to smell of animals no matter how much they were washed. The banker’s daughter barely got into the first layer of her dress, and we fled because the flames were already leaping into the night.
The smell was terrible, cloying. It stole our breath and we pounded up the street and away as fast as we could. Her bodice was undone, and every time I glanced over her breasts, which were full and milk white, threatened to spill out. I think her name was Ellen or maybe Elaine. She’d later grow up to be a prominent figure in the city, having gotten the wild side out in her youth.
I was no use. We started drinking a foul brew they claimed was beer and then moved onto the old standby, whiskey. I remembered the night as a haze, me unable to concentrate enough to get off any spells to help contain the blaze.
Meredith died that night, and just like that another of our kind was gone. She was a powerful witch in her day, and narrowly escaped the trials and certain death at the stake, but not a date with a fiery end.
I set my fork in a dark corner, leaned it against a wall, and then added my goggles and helmet. A quick pass and the imbued glyphs camouflaged the gear. It was still there and anyone looking closely would see it. The spell was more of a way of making someone’s eyes slip past. As if to say: Hey, look at that terribly interesting but featureless wall.
“Are you a witch?” a little voice asked. I looked down and a boy about seven or eight was standing there with a tiny yellow umbrella in one hand.
Kids. So cute I want to eat them up.
“No.”
“Cause you look like one.”
“I’m a warlock, and I can change you into a toad with a flick of my fingers.” I snapped my hand out and waggled my fingers at the kid because I am a jerk like that.
The kid looked at me without fear.
“Cool. Can you change my mom into a lollipop factory?”
“That’s just weird. Why don’t you go throw stuff at the seagulls?” I frowned.
Then his parents rushed over, concern etched on their faces over their child consorting with a madman on the street. I guess I did look a bit strange in my robe, but the covenants required us to go around in public dressed so. No racial profiling necessary. We were forced to wear our raiments. Some treated it like a uniform, as if we were about the work of the authorities.
I ignored the stares and took out the envelope. The pictures were still in order so I extracted the first one and looked at the address scrawled at the bottom. I followed the street to First Avenue and then located the cross street. I walked back and forth, passing an alley that reeked of piss and shit and decided that was probably where the first murder had taken place.
I explored the oft-traveled back way until I located a chunk of wall that more or less matched the background in the photo. There were a couple of large black bags here with green labels on them. That couldn’t be good. I shifted them to the side and half expected to feel body parts shifting around in them, but it was just clean up gear. Probably forgotten by the forensics units. I made a mental note to let Andrews know her department wasn’t picking up after themselves.
The ground was clean under them and I dropped to my knees and extracted some tools from a pouch. I drew a glyph in white so I had a guide, then I etched over it in charcoal. I added a drop of my blood, pricked with the little bone knife.
I pressed it to the ground in the center of a mark that looked like a three-year-old tried to write his name. A little puff of smoke rose and I waited for the feeling. I stayed, head bowed for a few minutes, but the residue was gone.
“You praying, chief?” Frank interrupted me.
I half pounced to my feet with a spell on my lips, words of power forming for a strike, but it would have been against a brown skinned naked man.
“God, Frank, you scared the shit out of me.”
“Is it my manhood?”
“Would you get dressed? You’re gonna bring the cops over.”
“They are already here.” He looked pointedly to the end of the alley where a black sedan was sitting. I couldn’t make out the shape at the wheel but I was betting it was Detective Andrews. I wondered how long she’d been there. The car motored away as I stood up.
“Frank, don’t you have any shame?”
“Are you afraid the women will see me and want to go for a ride?”
I made a point of looking anywhere but there.
“We Makah are not shy and never have been. I have hunted without clothes, fought without clothes. Of course, only in the summer. This weather is too cold even for me,” he leaned over to whisper. “Shrinkage.”
“Then get some pants!” I said.
And with that, he took to the air once again. A pair of women dressed as goths walked past when he veered.
“Too cool,” one said to the other.
“He’s just showing off.” I watched him take wing, screech, and then depart.
“Yeah. Showing off. So what do you turn into?” the one with a pink bob asked.
“I’m a warlock,” I said, a tad defensively. I might not be able to change into a feathered animal, but I still had a few tricks at my command. “I don’t change into anything except grumpy in the morning.”
“Really? Will Ricky Parson fall in love with me?”
“He’s in love with a vampire.”
“I knew that jerk had the hots for that chick in 4th period. What’s her name?”
“Natalia, I think,” her friend responded.
I ducked out of their conversation.
I took out the second photo and tracked down the address. It was also in an alley near a big green dumpster that reeked of refuse. I repeated the process, wishing I had some of that crap the cops put on their nose to cover the smell.
There was no residue at this location either. I stood up with creaking knees and walked out of the alley. It was now full dark and I needed a little energy, so I strolled into a Starbucks, of which there are just about one on every corner.
The place was quiet. Music piped in that sounded like some Diana Kroll. It’s always a good idea to keep the caffeine addicts sated while they sip. Play some Metallica and there might be a riot.
Figures sat behind laptops, faces obscured while they surfed the free wi-fi or worked on the next great American novel. I have a friend named Jonathan that writes books. He said he camps out at a coffee shop four to six hours a day. I wonder what they would say if I came in here with my parchment paged books and drew in charcoal and blood for a few hours.
There were three people in line so I joined them. The person in front of me turned, looked me up and down, glanced at his watch and then strolled out. Warlocks, chasing people out of coffee shops since 1993.
The woman asked what the guy ahead of me was interested in. He rattled off a complicated drink and she made marks on the side of the cup that would make an arcanist proud. I took in the muffins and donuts in the glass enclosure.
When I stepped up to the counter, I already had a couple of bucks in hand. The barista’s nametag said Ashley but the last three letters were struck out with a ballpoint pen. She tried not to stare but her eyes failed that little challenge and they drifted over the bel
t of potions, pouches, and instruments of witchcraft that adorned my robe under the unzipped leather jacket.
I had watched a documentary a few months ago about people that dressed up like superheroes and patrolled the street. They had complicated outfits complete with masks and tools. I looked at my gear and choked back a laugh.
“Um. Can I help you?” She continued to look my gear up and down. I sure knew how to impress the ladies.
“Thanks. I’m trying to get into a fraternity.”
“You look a little bit old to be in college.” She smirked.
“Okay. I’m a sofa repairman. I make house calls.”
“That I almost believe.” Ashley’s hair was a shade of auburn that bordered on red. She had a dash of sprinkles across her nose. No face rings to speak off, no tattoos. What was a girl like this doing working at a Starbucks?
She continued to stare with the most amazing emerald eyes I had ever seen.
“Right. Tall Americano, but put it in a big cup. I’m flying tonight.”
“So you make house calls in other states?” she asked as she wrote on the side of a cup.
She gently swayed to the music. It was customary to enter any coffee shop in Seattle and be greeted by either surly hipsters or college students with noses studiously buried in books. Ashley wasn’t eighteen. She looked young but her cool confidence had to put her closer to thirty.
I handed over a few bucks and she handed back some change. I didn’t want to look like a cheap ass so I dropped a dollar in the tip box.
“That’s right. There’s an emergency in Denver. A chaise lounge is in danger of being left in a previous decade.”
“Sounds thrilling. Do you have your own jet?”
Ashley bumped the male barista out of the way and arched her eyes at the cash register. He sighed and rubbed at his quarter inch of facial stubble. His hair looked like he’s spent half an hour making it appear as if he had just woken up.
“I do as a matter of fact. But it barely seats two.”
“Worst pickup line ever.” She looked up from under her auburn curls.
My face flushed.
At the Behest of the Dead Page 5