“Well, if you meet one then you should ask them,” Dawn said. “No, really, we both need to get to bed before the sun rises this time.”
“So be it,” Barry said. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow at the shelter.”
“Oh, right,” Dawn replied. “See you there.”
Barry and the others stood and left. Once they were gone, I asked, “Barry volunteers at the animal shelter now?”
“Yeah,” Dawn said, gathering up her things. “Started last week. The dogs love him, the cats not so much.”
“Smart cats,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. So, you guys sure seem to have a lot in common.”
Dawn arched an eyebrow at me. “You have no reason to be jealous of Barry.”
“Of course not.”
“You know I’d love for you to work at the shelter with me. I’ve asked you before.”
“I know. Okay. How about tomorrow?”
“Wow.” Dawn grinned. “If jealousy gets you this competitive, maybe I should have Barry take me on a weekend cruise, really up the stakes.”
“Hilarious. And I’m not jealous. I really do want to volunteer with you.”
“Uh huh.” We headed for the door. “Okay,” Dawn said. “But not tomorrow, they aren’t interviewing until the day after. And if you flake out on me again—”
“I won’t flake. I promise to go with you on Monday.”
“Come on, Romeo,” Dawn said, holding the door open for me. “Let’s go home and you can rub my ears if you want. For starters.”
We left the Undertown and climbed the uphill slope of Washington Street, holding hands in silence. The storefronts fell behind us, replaced by houses and ivy-covered walls.
Dawn smiled. “Remember Mister Gibson?”
“Algebra teacher who completely abused his power in class?”
“That’s the one.” She pointed at the small white church that sat on the bluff. “You don’t remember, probably, but you and I, we crashed his wedding there, and hinted to the guests that we were his secret illegitimate children.”
I burst out laughing. “No! Really?”
“Yup. It was all your idea.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Oh, fine, maybe it was mine. But you were always willing to get into trouble with me.”
“Well, if you were anything then like you are now, I don’t know if I had much choice. You’re like a force of nature. Like, you know, a really beautiful hurricane. A tsexami?”
“Aw, you say the sweetest things.” Dawn grabbed my arm, bringing us both to a stop, and stepped in close. “I think even back then, I wanted to do this.”
She leaned in for a kiss.
I caught the flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.
I shoved Dawn back just as a charging black bear crashed into me, slamming me to the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of me, and concrete and gravel scraped painfully into my elbows and palms.
The bear pinned me to the sidewalk with its paws on my shoulders. It had a white V of fur on its chest, and eyes that looked too human.
“Good-bye, meddling magus,” it said with a roughened female voice. Her mouth gaped wide, and she leaned in for my neck with fangs that would give a vampire compensation issues.
9
Bad
I dug my hands into the waerbear’s fur, and tried to focus my will enough to summon her spirit.
I was not going to be fast enough.
A rock the size of my fist hit the bear in the cheek, jerking her head to the side, but not knocking her off of me.
“Hey, Sexual Harassment Panda!” Dawn shouted. “Nobody eats him but me.”
The distraction, and the surge of fear for Dawn, gave me the time and push I needed. My will snapped into focus, I pulled from the locus of magical energy just below my chest, and summoned the bear’s spirit.
Summoning the spirit of someone still alive would not actually rip out the person’s “soul”—not unless the necromancer was insanely powerful, or used dark necromancy—but it hurt like hell for both the victim and the summoner. It’s like placing your ear against the speaker at a Spinal Tap concert during the guitar feedback. Even knowing what was coming, I hadn’t fully prepared myself. The explosion of sharp pain in my head, like I’d shotgunned a dozen milkshakes and then stabbed myself between the eyes with a screaming baby, caused the summoning to disintegrate. But it was enough. The bear roared in pain, and fell to the side.
The bear shimmered, and shifted into the form of a beautiful Japanese woman with eight spider legs growing out of her back.
A jorōgumo, a shapeshifting spider feyblood. Not good.
Creepy as hell, yes, but definitely not good.
“Run,” I shouted at Dawn as I struggled to my feet. “The post office.”
Dawn instead helped me to my feet, then we made a run for it together.
I glanced back. The jorōgumo still lay on her back, twitching. It would take longer for her to recover as the victim of the spirit yanking, but not long enough for us to reach any warded home in the neighborhood I knew of.
The post office loomed above the street like a four-story Romanesque castle made of carved sandstone bricks, complete with tower and arched windows. It hadn’t changed much, on the outside at least, since it had been built as a U.S. Customs office over a hundred years earlier.
“It’s closed,” Dawn said between panting breaths.
“Lucky for us,” I replied, and led her around to the back entrance by the loading dock. I turned my persona ring around on my finger and placed the black stone into a small indent in the archway.
A click, and the metal door swung open. “Come on,” I said, and pushed my way inside. I heard a skittering sound behind me that caused the hairs on my arms to stand up. I slammed the door shut behind us.
The jorōgumo, or perhaps a small rhinoceros, crashed into the door, causing a hellish squealing noise as brick dust sifted down from the wall above.
“Ah crap, follow me.”
I led Dawn up the stairs to the main hall. We ran down the worn marble floor past a row of teller windows held in an ornate wooden structure. It looked like the kind of place where Bonnie and Clyde might have tried to rob George Bailey, and smelled of damp wood and paper. Another loud crash boomed from the back door as we rounded the corner into the room of post office boxes.
Hand-sized rectangles of tarnished brass with multi-hued number plates covered one entire wall, matching the honey-colored wood surrounding them. I hurried over to the wall, searching for the correct two boxes.
Dawn raised her eyebrows. “I assume you have something magical up your sleeve and aren’t just checking your mail?”
“Actually,” I said, “I forgot I’d ordered an Oingo Boingo tape before exile and want to see if it’s still here.”
“So, let you concentrate, then?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.” I found the numbers I needed—the dates of two major Fey-Arcana wars. I touched the two plates, summoned up more magical energy, and said, “Aperire Ostium!”
A series of soft clanks and clicks vibrated the floor beneath me, and several rows of floor tiles began sinking at the floor’s center, slowly forming a staircase.
Too slowly.
A loud crash echoed through the post office, followed by the clanging of the door bouncing across the floor, and a screech of triumph. I pointed to the stairs. “As soon as those stop moving, run down them and touch the metal plate on the wall at the bottom.”
“But—”
“Dawn, just do it! Please!”
I ran back into the main hall. The jorōgumo skittered toward me, her spider legs carrying her human form suspended above the floor.
Dawn wouldn’t escape if we fled together. I had to stop the creature so she had time to get away.
I placed my hand on the nearby wall, and summoned the building’s spirit.
This was going to leave me with a Tetsuo-sized headache.
The building’s presence manifested, rolling over me like the heat wave from an opened oven, if what was being baked in that oven was a triple-layer emotion cake. Impatience, anticipation, dread, hope, frustration—I nearly staggered beneath the weight of it all.
“Spirit!” I said, Talking to the post office. Life and magic both drained from me, a sensation like spiritual peeing, except it was not very relieving to have my life trickling away bit by bit. Such was the cost of Talking to spirits.
There was no response. I’d feared as much. It was too much to hope that the building would understand human speech.
I took my fear for Dawn and myself and projected it at the spirit. And I focused that fear around the jorōgumo, and then imagined fire, and earthquake, and rats, and wild children with hammers, and real estate developers—anything I thought a building might fear.
The spirit rolled over me, past me, and I could sense it descending on the jorōgumo, concentrating its overwhelming presence on that creature.
The jorōgumo stumbled and fell, its eight legs entangling and curling inward. She put her hands to her head, and screamed.
“Come on!” Dawn said behind me.
I spun around. “Dawn! Damn it! Run!”
Dawn held a brass pole normally used to support a rope barrier, wielding it like a club. “We leave together.”
“Fine! Go, I’m—”
The weight of the building’s fear slammed back into me, knocking me to the ground. It was not just Dawn’s distraction. I realized I’d been a fool to think I could control it. I was no master necromancer, just a half-trained idiot, and the building’s spirit lashed out wildly now.
I released the summoning, and the ghost dissipated.
The jorōgumo rose and skittered toward me drunkenly, her woman’s body swaying back and forth as her spider legs held it suspended in air. Dawn grabbed my arm, pulled up. I struggled to my feet and tried to push her back toward the escape.
Too late. The jorōgumo reached us. Dawn swung hard at the nearest spider leg, a black shell-like scythe thick as my thigh and covered in a scattering of wiry hairs. The jorōgumo moved swifter still, jerking the leg back.
And then the jorōgumo plunged her spear-like foot through Dawn’s shoulder, slamming Dawn back to the ground.
“NO!”
I lunged for the jorōgumo’s nearest leg. The hairs felt like steel wire as my hand pressed against them, and I could feel them cutting into my palm and fingers as I pressed past them to the hard shell of the leg.
A huge surge of anger and fear poured through me and mixed with my magic and will, like napalm mixing with a pissed-off biker gang.
I ripped the bitch’s soul out. Or at least, I tried.
The jorōgumo screamed, and the scream cut off like someone had pulled her plug. She fell back, her foot ripping free of Dawn’s body. I could feel her spirit, stretched, still screaming, like steel cord being pulled past its endurance.
But I was not strong enough. Not even close. The spirit rebounded, nearly pulled my spirit free in return.
I released the summoning and collapsed to my knees, fighting the urge to vomit as the jorōgumo twitched.
Dawn moaned.
“Dawn!” I scrambled over to her. Blood pooled on the floor behind her.
I pressed my hand to the wound, but there was nothing I could do to stop the blood seeping between my fingers. I had no skill with magical healing.
“Ow.” She winced, then said in a dreamy, detached voice, “Help, I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”
The jorōgumo jerked, and sucked in air with a hiss.
“Dawn, come on, I’m sorry, we have to move.”
I lifted her, as she had lifted me just a moment ago. She cried out in pain, but struggled to her feet, and together we stumbled over to the hidden stairwell and down it. When we reached the tunnel at its bottom I slammed my hand against the metal plate on the wall, and the stairs rose on pillars of stone. I saw the jorōgumo’s furious face just before the entrance to the stairwell sealed closed, and her scream of frustration could be heard over the grinding of stone settling back into place.
“Damn you and your stubbornness,” I said to Dawn, and pulled off my shirt, pressing it to her wound.
Dawn began to shiver, and said with chattering teeth, “If I w-weren’t stubborn, I w-wouldn’t still b-be with you.”
*That’s certain true.*
“Ha ha. How about you use it for something good and don’t die on me then,” I said, and helped her as we marched down the tunnel. “Because if you do, you know I’ll summon you up and chew you out.”
We hurried as well as Dawn could manage. The feybloods used the tunnels heavily, but I doubted the jorōgumo could open the wizard door we’d used. Still, best not to linger, especially with Dawn leaking blood. Her steps grew increasingly heavy and sluggish, her eyes drooping.
I shook her. “Hey. Talk to me.”
“What was that thing?” Dawn asked finally, her words slurred.
“A jorōgumo. A true shapeshifter, able to take any shape she wishes whenever she wishes. Rare, and very dangerous.”
“Gee, really? I’ll be careful then.” After several steps, she asked, “Why the hell was a jorōgumby thingy attacking you?”
“Good question.”
*She called you a meddler,* Alynon said.
Yeah, I caught that. I thought about it a minute. “Maybe … it’s because I agreed to help Silene and her feybloods, and somebody doesn’t want that. The Arcanites maybe, if they’re behind the addictions. Or the alchemist, if he’s got something to hide. Or maybe some group in the ARC or Fey who wants to keep the feybloods from getting ideas of equality. Or—crap, I don’t know.”
“Don’t sound so unhappy,” Dawn said. “Looks like you’re finally popular!”
“Oh, yeah, it’s awesome. I love the ‘who’s trying to kill Finn’ game.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Dawn replied in a sleepy voice. “Clowns. Trust me, you dig deep enough, you’re going to find out it’s clowns.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You do tha—” Her voice faded out, and she slumped against me.
“Hey!” I said, panic rising in my chest. “Stay with me!” I summoned up my magic, and gave her a slight jolt of my own life energy.
Her head jerked back up, and she blinked. “Did you just ask me to live with you?” she asked, and we continued to stumble forward together.
“Sure. You can share my twin bed.”
“I’m the luckiest,” Dawn mumbled.
There was no way we were going to make it to the hospital. I took the next exit from the tunnel, a sloping ramp that ended at a wall behind the old theater, and half-carried Dawn to the nearby house of a local thaumaturge.
Jared had a questionable reputation among the arcana community, and looked like Christopher Walken’s creepier brother, but I didn’t care about the rumors of how he’d learned his skills just then, only that he had them and was close by. After a quick negotiation, he worked on a little wax “voodoo” doll, forming a wound to match Dawn’s then closing it again. Dawn’s flesh knit together, like a reversed film of taffy being pulled apart, and she screamed so loud and so long I worried about her voice. But in the end she slumped down on Jared’s couch, covered in sweat, her wound and eyes both closed, and her breathing steady.
* * *
We reached Dawn’s home two hours later. She’d slept over an hour on Jared’s couch, then drunk a pint of orange juice before leaving. Exhaustion showed clear and heavy in her face and movements, but she was able to w
alk. I called home on the way to warn my family that, once again, they might be in danger because of me. I also reported the attack to the ARC, who said they’d send people to the post office to clean up and investigate.
I helped Dawn get her pants and shirt off, and she crawled into bed.
“My hero,” she murmured, her eyes closed, her breathing already growing slow and heavy.
“Hardly,” I said. “You’re the hero.”
“Fine. My princess. You’d so better put out after—” Her voice trailed off, and within a minute she was snoring.
I ran my fingers lightly over the scar where the jorōgumo’s wound had closed, a line of pale pink knotwork across her smooth brown skin.
I was a fool. Despite all I’d learned in those years of reliving memories, despite the lessons of battling my grandfather, I was still acting like a stupid teenager, running off and getting involved in feyblood troubles like it was some adventure. I was no wizard knight. I was a half-trained necromancer with one foot out the door of the magical world.
And Dawn had nearly died for it. She’d carry that scar for life.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and kissed the scar.
I needed to grow the hell up.
And I would find whoever was behind the jorōgumo’s attack, and make certain they never came after me, or anyone I loved, again.
Um, in a totally mature and safe way, of course.
10
New Sensation
I woke to Dawn looking down at me, smiling.
“So what are we doing today?” she asked. “Riding the Loch Ness Monster?”
“You’re resting,” I replied, wiping sleep from my eyes. I turned away slightly so I didn’t hit her straight on with my morning breath. “I’m going to go question a dead feyblood.”
“Sounds fun. I’ll drive,” Dawn said, and slid out of bed. She moved gingerly, but seemed otherwise okay. “You might need me to save you again.”
I sat up. “Uh, I think you have that backwards.”
“Really? If I hadn’t let you carry me out of the post office, you’d be dead now.”
I stared at her a second. “Dawn, this isn’t a joke. You almost died last night.”
Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free Page 11