by DD Barant
We slip out of the thicket and over to the flap. Azura touches the knot securing the door and mutters something under her breath. The knot writhes and undoes itself.
Azura pulls on the flap; the lacing sliding out of its holes with a dry, rasping noise. She steps inside and vanishes.
I can’t see what’s in there, but it probably doesn’t matter—that’s not where I’m going, anyway. I take a deep breath, and follow her.
* * *
I try to prepare myself for anything, but what I step into catches me completely by surprise. I could have handled a vampire version of Hell, a werewolf Paradise, even a golem bikini car wash—but what I get hits me far harder than anything alien.
It’s my bedroom.
The very same one that Ahaseurus yanked me out of when he abducted me in the first place. That’s my pile of laundry on that chair. That’s my clock radio. That’s my unmade bed.
No Azura—but I hear voices in the next room.
I draw my gun out of reflex. The bedroom door is open, and I peer cautiously out into the hall. The light’s on in the living room.
“—yeah, her bed’s been slept in but there’s no sign of her.” I recognize the voice; it’s Rita Garcia, my supervisor at the St. Louis field office.
I holster my weapon and step into sight. “Rita,” I say. “It’s me, don’t shoot—”
Rita ignores me, still talking into her cell phone. “—no, I know she was a little wasted when she went home last night, but the girl hasn’t missed a day in four years—no way she’d just not show up.” Rita’s a tough little cookie, short wiry black hair cut with gray, no more than ninety pounds but mean as an alligator. Nothing wrong with her hearing as far as I know—
When I try to tap her on the shoulder, my hand goes right through her.
I freeze, then try again. Nothing. I’m a ghost, as insubstantial as a politician’s promise. Then I notice that Rita’s stopped moving, stopped talking; I’m a phantom and she’s a statue.
“Disconcerting, isn’t it?” a voice says from the kitchen. It’s a voice I’ve only heard once before, on the night I was ripped from my own reality and into a world of monsters.
He walks out of the kitchen, dressed nattily in the same dark suit he wore then, but now sporting a crimson turban as well.
Ahaseurus.
I yank my gun back out, but he just raises his eyebrows. “Please. You’re here because I want you here, Jace. That gun and its bullets are as ephemeral as you are at the moment.”
I consider shooting him anyway. What if he just drops dead at my feet, I turn solid, and Rita jumps a foot in the air? Wouldn’t that be great? And then I can call up Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and we can go hunting unicorns together with our lollipop guns.
I lower the Ruger. “This isn’t real, is it.”
“Oh, it’s real. When I noticed you had entered one of the other spell sites, I added a little detour to one of them. It brought you home, Jace.”
“Did it? Then why can’t I touch anything?”
He walks over to Rita, peers at her like an old man studying a piece of fruit. “Well, you’re not entirely here—just your spirit, actually. I’m here in the flesh, though I’m just as undetectable as you are. The difference is, I can affect the world and you can’t.”
“What do you want?”
He smiles at me with that long undertaker’s face. “I want to show you what you’re missing, Jace. How worried your friends and family are. How much effort they’re about to put into doing the impossible: finding you. Effort that really should be spent on more deserving cases, don’t you think? Missing children, killers on the loose?”
“Absolutely. If I was here in body as well as spirit I’d give you a high-five. So why don’t you arrange a little reunion between me and myself, and we’ll pretend none of this ever happened?”
He turns his attention from Rita to me and chuckles. “I wish I could, Jace. I really do. But that just wouldn’t fit into my plans right now. However, I might be persuaded to do so if you were willing to do something for me.”
“What?”
“I know it wasn’t you that tried to kill me. There’s only one person it could be, and I’m growing tired of her. Her name is Azura; I want you to find her, and bring her to me. Do so and I’ll bring you home for good.”
I keep my face neutral. Azura told me that an Astonisher that didn’t want to be found couldn’t be, and the fact that she’s inside one of Ahaseurus’ spells right now without him realizing it seems to support that claim. “Let’s say I do. What happens then? To her, to Vegas, to all the lems?”
“All just a dream, Jace. Your memories of that time will fade, and none of it will trouble you ever again.”
Sure. I can just abandon Charlie and Cassius and everybody else, because hey, it was all just a crazy dream, right? They did just fine before I came along, and they’ll do just fine afterward. This is what I’ve been working for, right here and right now, and all I have to do is give up an annoying spy-stripper that I just met and don’t even like. Pfffft.
“No,” I say. I’m a little surprised, myself.
“Don’t be so hasty. Maybe you need a little reminder of what your life used to be like…”
He points a finger at me. Suddenly I’m in the FBI field office, listening to the other end of the phone conversation Rita’s having with Zachary Tucker, my current partner. We’d only been working together a week when I was abducted, so I don’t exactly have any strong feelings about him—he’s a new agent, fresh from Quantico and so gung-ho he probably wears Eliot Ness Underoos. Nice kid—thin, nerdy, bulging eyes—but not exactly an anchor in my life.
The office is, though. And Ahaseurus, that bastard, has made sure that even though I can’t touch anything, my other senses work just fine: burned-coffee smell that comes out of the break room because nobody ever cleans the burner; wood shavings and graphite from Crenshaw’s desk because he uses that electric pencil sharpener whenever he’s bored; sweet pastry aroma from an empty, icing-stained box on top of Yumio’s workstation, from Angelo’s down the street.
It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes, blatantly manipulative though it is. Olfactory memories are some of the strongest ones we have, wired directly into our emotions; talk to any reasonably lucid ninety-year-old and I guarantee she’ll still be able to remember smells from her childhood.
“You can have it all back,” says Ahaseurus from behind me. “No more vampires. No more werewolves. No more monsters at all.”
“Except the human ones,” I say.
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Of course, once you return there’s nothing to stop you from going into another field. You need never face another monster again … not unless you find yourself dwelling on the past.”
The office vanishes, replaced by darkness. There’s a damp, earthy smell in my nose, undercut with something foul and rotting. I know exactly where I am; I had nightmares about this place for years afterward.
“No,” I whisper. I’m in a root cellar, beneath an old farmhouse twenty miles outside Augusta, Georgia. I’m waiting for the forensics team to get here so they can start digging, but I already know what they’re going to find.
I know Ahaseurus is in here with me, but it still makes me jump when I hear his voice. “Not a happy place, is it?”
“Okay, we’ve seen the Ghost of Valchek Present and the Ghost of Valchek Past. What’s your point?”
“My point is that I can bring you back here anytime I want, Jace. You think the nightmares were bad? Imagine experiencing this in the middle of lunch with your colleagues.”
Everything changes again, and—
I don’t want to talk about what I see next. Not unless you’re a licensed therapist.
* * *
When it’s over, I try to get myself under control. I force my breathing back to normal, wipe my eyes, cross my arms to keep them from shaking. Funny how I can still feel my own body even though nothing else seems solid.
> We’re back in my apartment. Rita’s still frozen, phone to her ear.
“That’s what you can expect if you turn down my very generous offer,” Ahaseurus says. I can’t believe he’s smiling. “Scenes from the very worst of your past, vivid as the first time you experienced them. They’ll occur at random, without warning and without respite. Is that how you want to live the rest of your life?”
Turn the most mind-boggling experience of my life into a bad dream, or suffer horrible flashbacks with no rhyme or reason for the rest of it. Great, I’m either the lead in The Wizard of Oz or a character from an episode of Family Guy.
I stare at Ahaseurus, standing just behind Rita, take a deep breath—
And then Rita winks at me.
“Gonna have to go with option number three,” I say. “Do my job, bring you down, and get takeout to celebrate afterward. It’s kind of a ritual with me.”
“I’m afraid the only ritual you’ll be performing,” he says, “is urrk—”
Pretty sure he meant to say something else, but urrk is what comes out. That’s because Rita’s slammed her elbow into his throat, and is now following through with a mule-kick to his midsection. He goes crashing backward into my bookshelf, knocking it over and strewing paperbacks all over the floor. I never liked that bookshelf.
He doesn’t try to get up. He points at me with one hand and croaks out a few barely audible syllables—guess she didn’t hit him hard enough to completely disable his windpipe, though she was obviously trying to. I feel a shimmer in the air around me—
“Jace!” Rita shouts in Azura’s voice—no surprise there—and dives toward me. I can’t feel the impact when she hits, but her momentum pushes me backward and through a hole I didn’t know was there; we’re falling through a place that feels familiar and completely alien at the same time, and then I land on my butt on very hard, very solid ground with someone on top of me.
“Oof,” I say. That’s me, always witty in a crisis.
Rita rolls off and springs to her feet, shifting back to Azura in an instant. “We’ve got to go,” she says.
I don’t bother arguing.
We run. Again.
TEN
We’ve landed in the same spot we entered, just outside the tent flap, and now we sprint for the vacant lot next door and the cover of trees. I’m always surprised by just how green Vegas is—though if fields full of blue mushrooms keep popping into existence, that’ll eventually be more like teal …
Shut up, brain.
I’m really getting sick of running, and have no desire to hide in another swimming pool. We round a corner and I stop, leaning in close against a wall and drawing my gun. Azura skids to a halt a few feet away.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“The unexpected,” I hiss back. “He comes around this corner, he’s going to find out just how solid these bullets are.”
“That’s—” She stops, and I can see her actually considering the idea. She darts over and flattens herself next to me. “Worth a shot,” she whispers.
“Worth a clip,” I say grimly.
We wait. I wonder if he’s going to be floating a few feet up, all scary-wizard style, or riding some kind of demonic beast, or maybe just striding along with a really pissed-off expression on his face.
Nothing happens.
Well, my nerves fray to the approximate thickness of a supermodel’s diet, but that’s it. And I have a few centuries or so to think about whether or not I should have taken Ahaseurus up on his offer, and how shooting him is going to strand me here forever.
“I don’t think he’s coming after us,” Azura says at last.
“Maybe you hurt him worse than I thought.”
“I doubt it. I think the opposite may be true.”
I glance at her. “I don’t follow.”
“He released a spell before we left. It seemed to be—well, just reinforcing something that was already there. Did he do anything to you while you were in there?”
I think about where he took me and what he made me relive. “No,” I say. “Not directly, anyway. He threatened to, though.”
She looks worried. “How do you feel?”
“Angry. Tense. Sweaty. How about you?”
“Let me know if you feel anything … odd, all right? Sudden urges, itchy body parts, cravings for—well, let’s just say cravings. Okay?”
Great, just great. “Hey, that angry/tense thing? Totally gone. You’ve managed to replace it with a carefree feeling of dread and a lighthearted sensation of gibbering panic. Good job.”
She doesn’t reply, just pushes off the wall and walks away. After a second I join her.
“I need to make a stop before we rejoin Cassius,” I say. “At my motel room.”
“What for?”
“Something in my luggage. It’s a mystic item, and I think it might be charged with this myth-magic Asher’s using. I don’t know how to use it … but maybe you do.”
“What is it?”
“A comic book.” I tell her about the Kamic cult, and how they committed murders that were then vividly re-created as comic books—including adding the blood of their victims to the ink. The book I have is one the government created detailing the cult’s defeat; it’s one of the last copies in existence, and presumably quite powerful.
“I’ll take a look at it,” Azura says. “But don’t get your hopes up. If it was created specifically to counter another enchantment, chances are we can’t use it for anything else.”
“That’s just it—it was printed after the cult was already beaten. That’s never made sense to me; I mean, what’s the point in countering something when it’s already gone down?”
Azura shakes her head. “Magic bends natural laws, Jace—that includes cause-and-effect. In this case, it sounds as if they were borrowing from the future—essentially, drawing on power that didn’t exist yet, then creating that power after the fact.”
I stare at her for a second. “I hate that.”
“It’s just the way magic works—”
“You call that working? It’s … it’s contradictory. And unreliable.”
She shrugs. “I know. But magic is an expression of universal principles that are also contradictory—besides, if it were reliable, it’d be science. But it’s not.”
If I were the type to sputter, I’d be sputtering right about now. But I’m not, so I settle for muttering instead. “Stupid magic. Can’t even follow a proper sequence of events … I’ll bet this world’s Einstein died in a mental hospital drooling in his soup…”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
We decide to retrieve the comic anyway—even if it isn’t the battery of magic energy I thought it was, it could still be very useful as a focus. Besides, the motel isn’t that far out of our way.
We approach cautiously, cutting through yards and keeping to alleys instead of streets. I don’t know if Caleb Epsilon is still keeping an eye on the place, but the last thing I want to do is run into a javelin-chucking lem.
Azura does a careful reconnoiter first—I figure her Astonisher skills probably make her a pro at detecting anything hidden—and when she comes back to the Dumpster I’m crouching behind she reports that nobody’s watching the motel.
I get in, find the comic, and get out fast. I don’t go into my former ops center—Wilson’s body is probably still in there, and I don’t need a reminder of how badly I’ve screwed things up.
When I show Azura the comic, she asks me if she can touch it. I hesitate, then offer it to her. She doesn’t take it, just reaches out a single finger that she holds about an inch away. After a second, she touches it lightly.
“Hmmm,” she says.
“Well?”
“I’m not getting anything.”
“Nothing at all?”
“A very slight residue of magic, like it had some kind of masking spell on it. Nothing major—definitely nothing as powerful as mythic magic.”
“So it’s
what—empty? A dead battery no one bothered to throw away?”
“I don’t think so. It’s probably a fake.”
That’s a possibility I never considered. People will counterfeit just about anything that’s worth money, including rare collectibles—why not magic comic books? Dr. Pete never claimed it had any special abilities; that was my own conclusion.
“Thanks,” I say, sticking the book in my bag. “Guess it’s nothing but a keepsake now.” If Azura’s telling the truth …
I ask her if she learned anything from the site.
“A little. The myth was about the Lyrastoi, and how they were created. They’re essentially were-bats, but they figured out something no one else ever had, a way to fuse two different kinds of mystic energy together: zombie magic and were magic. The result was a were that had many of the attributes of a bat, but lost the ability to change shape; in return, they gained the immortality of the underdead.”
“An undead were-bat,” I say. “In other words, a vampire.”
“Yes. There are a few minor differences, but the Lyrastoi are basically pires. They need to drink blood, they can’t stand sunlight, they’re vulnerable to silver or wood.”
“How much of the myth did you experience?”
“Only the beginning, but that was enough to recognize it. As soon as I realized you weren’t with me I focused on analyzing the spell. It took some doing, but I was able to follow the same channel that diverted you. I took a chance and gambled that Asher would bring you back to where you first appeared; most spells are naturally circular in nature.”
“Sure. Except when they aren’t.”
“I think you’ll find that being angry at the nature of reality tends to be counterproductive.”
“Everybody needs a hobby, Tinker Bell. Besides, my rage-aholic group would miss my brownies.” I pause. “So how does the myth end?”
“With the Lyrastoi becoming the rulers of Nightshadow, as I remember. It was a long, gradual process, but that’s the nice thing about immortality: You can take the long view.”
“Creation, sacrifice, immortality—those are the mythic themes so far. What does that say to you?”