by Hondo Jinx
Some claimed the two were allies.
Others insisted the two mages were enemies locked in a struggle for complete control of the psionic community.
Still others believed Blackthorne had feigned his death and the Tiger Mage was none other than the deposed wizard having somehow evolved into a power mage.
Whatever the case, the Tiger Mage’s atrocities were legendary. Atlanta. Honolulu. Anchorage. San Diego. And Horseheads, New York.
Fucking Horseheads.
Before that horrifying April day, Jamaal had never even heard of Horseheads and still wished he never had.
All those families. All those kids. Nothing but scorched earth where once had sprawled a pleasant park.
To this day, whenever Jamaal saw a rogue balloon drifting off through the open sky from some kid’s birthday party, his blood turned to ice.
It was Horseheads that had brought Jamaal on board. Along with countless other agents who otherwise would never have complied with the nightmare directive of the Culling.
But the Tiger Mage had convinced them, at least for that one terrible night, that the Culling was necessary.
Because that same night, they received the chilling news that for the first time in a thousand years, two power mages had violated the prime directive and conceived a child.
It had to be the Tiger Mage, they agreed. And if a regular power mage could do what he had done in Horseheads, of what horrors would the offspring of mated power mages be capable?
So they had done it. They had all signed off on the darkly decisive plan of a young, impressive agent even then rising through the ranks of the Order.
Janusian had convinced them, and they had done it.
And since that dreadful night, when Jamaal woke screaming from nightmares that weren’t actually nightmares but rather memories returned like ghosts to haunt him in the paralysis of sleep, he would lie there telling himself, We had to do it. We had no choice. The prime directive. The Tiger Mage.
And if, despite these assertions, the voice of Sarah Heath continued to echo in his mind—He will come for you, he will come for you—Jamaal would tell himself, We had to stop the Tiger Mage. Had to. Otherwise, he and his offspring would have killed us all.
That was why Jamaal and his colleagues had, for one night only, agreed to become monsters.
Not to destroy, but to preserve. Not to kill, but to save.
At least that’s what Jamaal had been telling himself for twenty-three years.
But if the Tiger Mage still lived, if the Culling had failed to destroy him, what had Jamaal and his colleagues actually accomplished? More to the point, what had they done? How would he still those midnight demons now?
Sitting there in the strip mall parking lot, Jamaal felt like his car had been sucked into a tornado that was spinning him off toward Oz.
Where had the Tiger Mage been all these years? Hidden away, watching the world, biding his time as he gathered strength? And why had he returned? Why now?
But the answer was obvious.
The Tiger Mage had come for the new power mage.
But again… why?
Did the Tiger Mage wish to kill the new power mage? To render him for power? To eliminate a threat?
Or had the Tiger Mage killed all those Miamians to protect the new power mage?
Were the two power mages working together?
Then a truly terrifying thought rocked Jamaal.
Were they blood?
He will come for you.
“Fuck this,” Jamaal said, and popped his door. If he sat here stewing, he’d go nuts. He had to find the power mage. Now.
He scooted to the edge of the seat, grabbed the “oh shit” handle, and hauled himself into a standing position.
His leg locked up, burning from his ass cheek to the bottom of his foot. For half a minute, all he could do was stand there and growl.
The Third Eye, the colorful old sign atop the store announced. Curios sold. Fortunes told. Over recent years, Hazel had added Walk-ins welcome, and PSI MAGE DISCOUNTS.
Jamaal hobbled up to the store, ignoring the CLOSED sign. He knew the door was unlocked. And inside, oh so faintly, he sensed Hazel. Despite his proximity, however, he needed to push to verify her presence. It was like straining to identify a song playing on a neighbor’s radio turned down low.
Which explained why the previous day, while scanning from his office, he hadn’t detected Hazel at all.
He’d meant to check on her again sooner, but he’d crashed hard, slept for fourteen hours, and burned his morning analyzing the Miami event and trolling the Latticework for any sign of the power mage, Remi, the Mack girl, or the missing librarian.
Hopefully, Hazel would shed some light on her mentee.
The old girl was cloaking hard. It would’ve been easier for her to go completely dark, but she had left a sliver of perceptibility. Just enough for a strong Seeker to detect if he got off his bony ass and crossed town to check on her.
Jamaal knocked. Waited.
Nothing. And no surprise.
Formalities like these were a pain in the ass to a Seeker. And that went double for a Seeker on a mission.
He rapped again and opened the door and called out. Still nothing.
Hazel’s aura persisted, faintly, beckoning from deeper inside the store.
Jamaal hadn’t visited for years. And yet so little had changed.
The Third Eye still wore its clever disguise, a dim and dumpy shop with all the trappings of a snake oil fortune teller in costume jewelry and a mail order turban. The murky crystal ball, the dream catchers, the glow-in-the-dark crescent moon and stars clinging to the ceiling, glowing faintly and peeling away with age. The only thing new was an additional layer of dust.
Once again, Jamaal was thankful that he had joined the force, saving him from a life of a pantomimed absurdity. Of course, Hazel likely didn’t wake screaming from nightmare memories, so maybe she’d been the smart one after all.
Following her tenuous aura, Jamaal passed through a rattling curtain of beads, down a short hallway, and through a door that opened onto a circular courtyard paved in cobblestones carpeted in moss. The air was cool and sweet with the aroma of the tropical flowers lining the walls.
Hazel lay motionless upon a hammock stretched between two palms. Her eyes were shut. Her glasses were pushed back in her frizzy white hair. Her gnarled hands were folded atop the tie-dyed smock covering her emaciated body. Her face was smooth with the terrible serenity of the dead.
But even as this terrible thought occurred to Jamaal, a grin split the ancient Seeker’s face, and her rheumy eyes shot open.
“I’m not dead yet,” Hazel laughed, “so don’t you go trying to look up my skirt, Jamaal Whittaker.”
Sliding her glasses onto her eyes, Hazel lifted her head to smile at him. “Unless you mean business, that is. I haven’t gotten lucky in thirty-three years, four months, eighteen days, six hours, four minutes and… well, you get the point.”
Jamaal laughed, suddenly regretting having not visited sooner. And not on business. Hazel was good people. Old and mostly alone, a person who appreciated a visit.
Jamaal lifted his left hand and tapped his wedding ring. “No dice, Hazel,” he joked back. “Still haven’t sold Shawna on the whole mistress thing.”
“Lucky for you, sonny. You couldn’t handle this.” Hazel sat up with a groan that sent a chill down Jamaal’s spine.
He had dodged arthritis so far, but it was only a matter of time now before his body’s rebellion skipped merrily into that inflammatory briar patch.
“I cracked my strand at Woodstock,” Hazel said. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“You did,” he said.
Hazel shook her head. “Never grow old, Jamaal.”
“Too late.”
She snorted derisively. “When you were forty, you felt old. Then you turned fifty and realized you’d been stupid to think forty was old. Fifty was old. Then you turned sixty, and—”
/> “All right,” Jamaal said. “I get it. Age is all in your head. But aren’t you being hypocritical calling yourself old?”
“No,” Hazel said with a grin, “because I really am old!”
They both had a laugh at that.
“It’s good to see you,” Jamaal said. “I stopped to ask if you—”
“I know why you’re here,” she said. “It’s why I let just a bit of aura shine.”
“Thank you,” Jamaal said. “I wanted to ask—”
“Like I said,” Hazel interrupted, “I know why you’re here. And please excuse my interruptions. Perhaps even a whippersnapper like you can appreciate that an old Seeker like me grows weary of predictable conversation.”
“I’m no stranger to those notions,” Jamaal confessed.
“And suddenly we find ourselves adrift once more within exciting times,” Hazel said. “A new power mage, the return of the Tiger Mage—”
“You know about that?” Jamaal said.
Hazel nodded.
Which was confusing. “How? The Latticework?”
Hazel shook her head. “I haven’t been on the Latticework for days,” she said, and a wistful smile came onto her face. “How long has it been since you unplugged? For a day or more, I mean.”
“A long time,” Jamaal said. “Never, I guess. Not since I first plugged in.”
“It’s strange,” Hazel said. “Like being blind, I suppose, or maybe that analogy occurs to me only because of the cataracts spreading like polar ice caps across my eyes. But the comparison holds, I suppose.
“Unplugging from the Latticework is a shock,” she said. “All that information just shears away. You feel like you’re falling. But then you start picking up on other stimuli. Hints and portents. Notions. The blind person learns to trust her hearing, her sense of touch and smell. The old ways return.”
Hazel tapped a twisted finger to her forehead. “And then, the third eye reopens. I’d say mine is just peeking now. But over the coming days, I suspect it will open wide. Do you remember what it’s like, Seeking without the Latticework?”
“Yes,” Jamaal said.
“Really?”
“No,” he said. “Not really. I mean, kind of. But it’s like a false memory. It’s been so long. Sometimes, I think using the Latticework makes us forget and leaves us with that false memory so that we won’t get curious enough to unplug.”
Hazel nodded. “I suspect that you may be correct. And I think you will enjoy unplugging more than you remember.”
Jamaal laughed. “Enjoy it? I’m not unplugging.”
“Yes, you are,” Hazel said. “Now be a gentleman and hand me my cane. Must’ve dropped it while dreaming. That’s one thing I had forgotten. Dreams are so vivid when you’re unplugged. But you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
Jamaal started to protest but didn’t bother. Hazel was slipping a little. If she wanted to think he was unplugging, so be it. He was here to ask questions. She would be resistant, of course, to surrender information about the fugitive who had been her mentee, but he would press. He needed a lead, needed to find this power mage.
“I was hoping to ask you some questions,” he said. “You might be reluctant to answer, because they concern—”
“Sage,” Hazel said, surprising him. “Sonny, didn’t I just tell you I’m too old to waste time with predictable prattling? Let’s cut to the chase. Unplug.”
He paused to consider her demand and the only possible rationale. For one reason or another, the old woman wanted privacy. She was basically checking him for a wire. “And if I unplug, you’ll share what you know?”
Hazel sighed. “Such tiresome interplay. You disappoint me. I remembered you as a more interesting man. But yes, I will. Unplug.”
Jamaal disconnected from the Latticework. It was jarring, but his mind still teemed with information, so the sensation was almost pleasant, like the silence of a house after the power goes out but before the heat of the world destroys the cooling effects of the air conditioner.
“Set up a passive doppelganger node,” Hazel said, “in case anyone checks to make sure that you’re logged in.”
“It’ll be all right.”
The old woman shook her head. “No, it won’t. Activate a construct. They’re watching you.”
“Who’s watching me?”
“You know who,” she said. “Now do it.”
Jamaal nodded, suspecting that Hazel was correct, and wondered briefly why he had resisted her assertion at all. Of course Central was keeping tabs on him.
It took a minute to set things up. But it was time well spent because if the Order was monitoring its agents, the doppelganger node would keep anyone from noticing that he had unplugged.
But the dummy was passive. And that meant until he plugged in again, there would be no data collection or information caching for later use. Because that sort of active proxy node would require a tendril of connection to the Latticework, and he knew Hazel wanted total separation.
“All right,” Hazel said, once he had finished. “I met the power mage and helped him, and I aim to help him again.”
For a second, Jamaal just stared at her.
Hazel split the air with what would’ve been a cackle in a less kindly woman. “What’s the matter, officer? Cat got your tongue? You thought I was going to play it tight-lipped, huh? Well, if you had come to see me a day ago, you would’ve been right. But things have changed. You have changed.”
“Me?” Jamaal said, surprised again.
Surprised but not contrary. Because Hazel’s statement had the unmistakable ring of truth.
“You know you have,” Hazel said, “though maybe you don’t know how you’ve changed or what that means. We can talk about those things. We have much to discuss. First and foremost, you need to understand the things I understand. You need to know the truth about Sage and Nina and Brawley.”
Jamaal felt a spike of excitement. He hadn’t expected Hazel to cooperate at all. This was huge. Hazel really was slipping. If she wanted to help this guy, why give his name to the investigating officer? “The power mage’s name is Brawley?”
“Yes,” she said, and even unplugged, Jamaal knew she was speaking the truth. “Brawley Peckinpah Hayes.”
Jamaal’s heart was pounding now. “Tell me about him.”
“Oh, I’ll do better than that,” Hazel said. “I’ll show you. And then you and I are leaving town.”
Jamaal was happily bewildered. The dread that had accompanied the news of the Tiger Mage’s return lifted away like fog in the rain, replaced by fresh hope.
Maybe he could still save his retirement after all.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To meet Brawley, of course,” Hazel said. “But first, we have to stop and get someone.”
Jamaal laughed, unable to contain his excitement. And, he realized, his relief. “Who?”
“Someone who needs our help,” Hazel said. “Someone who will help Brawley.”
“All right,” Jamaal said, and started to say more, but then Hazel took his hand, and a flash flood of information roared out of her and into him, filling his mind with images and memories, gleanings and suspicions, all of it shot through with glittering splinters of irrefutable prophecy.
8
A bull rope, Brawley thought, heading back to the cabin from his lakeside training spot. That’s what I need. A damn bull rope.
He had pushed harder this time but had nothing to show for it except a bass drum headache thumping at the center of his skull.
He had tried different splicing combinations. Carnal and Unbound. Unbound and Seeker. Carnal and Seeker.
The braided force of each combination had a different feel. None was easier or harder to harness than the others.
Pulling and weaving force was a cinch now, as was hauling himself onto the braid. Most of the time, he could hold tight while the thing shook and whipped, but every time the pulsing cordage spun into tornado mode and slammed to a
stop, it snapped his grip and tossed him.
He’d get it, though. He’d ride that son of a bitch yet.
Not now, though. If he kept pushing without a break, he’d blow a head gasket.
Besides, he needed to learn how to use his individual powers and had to help the girls prepare for whatever was coming their way.
They were cautiously excited by his experiences in the graveyard.
His mother’s voice lingered in his ears, a sweet song he dearly wished he’d heard more clearly.
But he’d heard enough. Now they had a destination. And in a stroke of remarkable luck, Louisiana just happened to be on their way to Texas. Stopping would cost them nothing.
Unless, of course, the vague misgivings he and Sage both felt when discussing the second item proved to be warranted. Then stopping might cost them dearly. Might cost them everything.
It was a risk he would take. He was determined to unlock the book, and apparently, he needed all three items to do so.
Few good things were acquired without risk.
When he got back to the cabin, the Caddy was gone, and the girls had left a note saying they’d taken him up on his offer and gone shopping for clothes.
Good. He hoped Callie had gone with them.
The faster that girl got some clothes, the better.
Opening his Carnal strand had changed him. He was hornier than ever, all the time. During his calmer moments, this made him extra cautious about any leanings he might feel toward bonding with the cat girl. With eternity on the line, he couldn’t afford to let his dick do his thinking for him, especially if his dick was pulsing with Carnal juice.
Beyond that constant and sometimes befuddling arousal, however, being a Carnal rocked.
He felt powerful and super energized. Nothing hurt. Every injury, large and small, even his neck, was completely healed. He hadn’t even realized how much pain he’d been in until it was gone. After years of hurting 24/7/365 and constantly sucking it up, the absence of pain was a blessing like none other.