by Tim Waggoner
"Unfortunately, I am. I don't know if you're strong enough to do this, but focus an eye on each one of them and make with the magic. Oh, and try to avoid shrinking me while you're at it."
Livingstone grumbled something about how I'd need to take him to see an ophthalmologist after this, but he did as I asked. Beams of light shot forth from his eyes, one for each monster, and struck them both right between their own eyes. I gave Livingstone bonus points for good aim and style.
Kongar and Reptilikan stiffened as Livingstone's magic suffused their bodies. At first, nothing more happened and I feared Livingstone simply didn't have enough mystic energy for the job. But then both Kongar and Reptilikan began to shrink. Slowly at first, but with increasing speed. Livingstone didn't let up; he continued blasting both monsters with his eyebeams, but the strain took a toll on him. I could feel him trembling in my hand, and I wondered how much longer he could keep it up.
Kongar held on to me while he shrank, more because he'd forgotten he was holding me than for any other reason, I think. When he was down to about fifteen feet, he could no longer keep hold of me and let go. I hit the ground and felt my body parts threaten to lose cohesion, but I'd anticipated the impact and managed to maintain enough concentration to keep myself together. I also managed not to drop Livingstone. He'd ceased blasting the two monsters with optical rays by this point, but it didn't matter. The job was done. Kongar dwindled in size until he was no larger than a chimpanzee, and Reptilikan shrank down to the size of a juvenile alligator.
I got to my feet, gave the diminished monsters a stern look, and said, "Shoo!"
They yelped, turned, and fled.
I looked down at Livingstone, intending to thank him, but I realized that the shrunken head was, in fact, beginning to shrink even further.
"I used too much power, and some of it backfired on me," he said. "I managed to keep any of it from spilling on you, though."
As he shrank, his voice rose in pitch, and he soon sounded like a bodiless chipmunk.
"I'm sorry," I said. "If I'd known this would happen…"
Livingstone was now the size of a raisin in my palm, and still shrinking. "It's all right. To God there is no zero. I still exist!"
And with that, he was gone.
"Hurry it up, Matt! I can't keep the hole in the force field open much longer!"
I felt bad for Livingstone, but I didn't have time to mourn his loss. I turned to see Varney standing at the main entrance, holding his eye-cable out before him. No longer did bright energy flashes erupt in midair. Only a faint shower of sparks, like a Fourth of July sparkler on the verge of sputtering out. Opening a hole in the force field hadn't done Varney any good. White smoke curled forth from his eye socket and blood trickled from his nostrils and ears.
I hurried through the main gate, feeling a slight resistance for a moment as if I were moving through water. Devona and Shamika were waiting for me on the other side, and my love gave me a big hug before pulling back and wrinkling her nose.
"Nothing personal, but you reek! Reptilikan vomit is strong stuff!"
I smiled. "I'll shower after the war is over." Then I turned back to Varney. He remained standing there, smoking and bleeding as the sparks from his eye-cable grew weaker.
"What are you waiting for?" I said. "Come on!"
Varney grimaced as the blood trickles became gushes.
"I can't. In order to keep the portal open, I have to stay on this side of it. You three go on without me!"
I turned to Shamika. "Can you use your magic to get him across before the portal snaps shut?"
She looked uncomfortable. "I, uh… I don't know. I've never done anything like that before."
Devona stepped past us without a word, went through the gate, grabbed hold of the waistband of Varney's pants, and leaped backward, pulling the cyber-vampire with her. There was a final flash of light and then the two of them landed in a heap before Shamika and me. I reached down to help Devona stand.
"Sometimes simple solutions are best," she said, grinning.
Shamika helped Varney to his feet. The vampire looked quite a bit the worse for wear. He was pale from blood-loss and the socket of his cyber-eye was a melted, blackened ruin. He snapped off the eyecable and dropped it to the ground. As we watched, the blood covering his shirt began to flow upwards, back into his nose and ears. It was an effective, if disgusting, way for vampires to heal themselves, and within moment's Varney's clothes were blood-free and he was no longer pale. Well, no paler than a normal vampire, that is.
"I'm impressed," I said. "I thought only truly powerful vampires could do stunts like that. I didn't realize you were so high up in the Bloodborn hierarchy."
Devona frowned. "He's right, Varney. Who and what are you, really?"
Varney looked at us without expression for a moment. Finally, he said, "Let's just say that I wasn't always a cameraman and leave it at that, all right? We still need to get out of here before–"
The Grotesquerie's alarms had continued to sound the entire time we were trying to escape, but now their tones rose in pitch and intensity.
"The force field fails entirely," Varney finished.
No more time for talk. We ran out into the street where Lazlo was still waiting for us in his cab. We were about to jump in when there was a pop! of displaced air and suddenly Varvara was standing on the sidewalk next to us. The Demon Queen gave me an irritated look.
"This is quite a bit of trouble – even for you," she said.
We could hear the sounds of giant monsters roaring and shrieking as they lumbered toward the main gate. I pictured creatures throughout the Grotesquerie preparing to climb over or batter through the wall as soon as the force field finished collapsing.
"I tried calling," I said lamely, "but I couldn't get a signal."
"Good thing I don't have to rely on you for my intel," she said. She pointed skyward and I saw a half-dozen flying demons overhead. No doubt they'd spotted the trouble in the Grotesquerie and had reported it to their queen.
"Now if you don't mind," Varvara said, "Mommy's got some work to do."
She stepped closer to the main gate, planted her feet apart as if to steady herself, and raised her hands high. She began chanting in a language I'd never heard before. The words were rough and guttural, and they blistered the air with unholy power. Just hearing them felt like my spirit was being violated. Filaments of glowing green energy streamed forth from Varvara's fingers, lengthening and picking up speed as they went. They flowed over the walls, completely covering them, and continued upward, rising into the air and curving inward from all directions until they formed a green dome over the Grotesquerie. The process took several minutes, and Varvara had a grim look of determination on her face the entire time. But when she was finished, the entire Grotesquerie was sealed in a dome of mystic power. We could still hear monsters roaring inside and more than a few began pounding at the newly erected barrier, but their cries were muted now, their blows muffled.
Varvara stopped chanting and lowered her arms. She staggered backward, and I was so shocked to see a sign of weakness in her that for an instant I hesitated. Then I stepped forward and took hold of her elbow to steady her.
"Thanks," she whispered. "That took a bit more out of me than I expected. But it should do the trick until the keepers can repair the force-field generators."
I was about to ask her who was going to help the keepers – those who were still alive, that is – subdue the giant monsters running wild within the Grotesquerie. But just then a long red truck came roaring around the corner, sirens wailing and flames trailing behind it.
"Right on time," Varvara said.
The vehicle pulled up to the curb not far from Lazlo's cab, which growled beneath its hood and rolled back several feet to give it room. Considering that the entire truck was wreathed in flame, I didn't blame the cab one bit. Emblazoned on the side of the truck was a stylized SFD: Sprawl Fire Department. They aren't firefighters, though; they're fire bringers.
The doors opened and a horde of fire demons armed with pitchforks poured out into the street.
Varvara pointed to the Grotesquerie's entrance. "Get in there and help the keepers put the monsters back in their enclosures. And try not to burn them too badly. They're one of our best tourist attractions."
The demons inclined their heads to acknowledge their queen's command, and then formed two ranks and began running toward the Grotesquerie's entrance, leaving a trail of black and smoldering footprints behind them as they went.
"How can they get inside?" I asked. "You just sealed the place off."
"Give me a little credit. The barrier is impassable to everything but demons," Varvara said. She waited until the fire demons were all inside and then said, "There. That should take care of that. Now, if you don't mind, I have a war to win." She made a mystic gesture then, but nothing happened. She scowled and tried again, with the same result. Finally, she furrowed her brow in concentration, made the gesture more slowly, and this time she vanished with a whoosh of inrushing air.
"She wasn't kidding when she said creating the dome took a lot out of her," Devona said. "I've never seen a Darklord have trouble performing a simple teleportation spell before."
I was just as surprised as Devona by what we'd just witnessed, and more than a little disturbed, but we didn't have time to consider the implications right then. We needed to get Tavi medical attention, and we needed to do it fast. We hopped in Lazlo's cab, and he hit the gas and roared away from the curb.
As he drove, something hit me.
"Hey, Lazlo, why didn't you get out of your cab and kneel before Varvara? I mean, she is the queen of all the Demonkin, and that includes you."
Lazlo let out a raucous honk of a laugh. "You're funny, Matt! Why would I kneel to my own sister?"
THIRTEEN
During all the excitement in the Grotesquerie, I'd forgotten about the destruction of the Bridge of Nine Sorrows. With the bridge out, we couldn't get from the Sprawl to Gothtown, and that meant we couldn't get to the Fever House. Klamm had said that crews had been dispatched to repair the bridges, but Lazlo said both of them were still a long way from being rebuilt. I considered having Lazlo drive us to the broken bridge and then asking Varney to assume his travel form and fly Tavi over to Gothtown, but the vampire still looked pretty wiped out, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get halfway across and be unable to hold on to his travel form. If that happened, he'd resume his humanoid shape and plunge into Phlegethon, taking Tavi down with him. And to be honest, though Varney had helped us out of a couple tight spots, I didn't entirely trust him.
If Papa Chatha had been home, I'd have had Lazlo take us there, but of course, Papa was missing. Instead, I told Lazlo to take us to the Midnight Watch, and then I called Bogdan on my vox and told the warlock to meet us there.
When we arrived, I couldn't resist asking Lazlo if he'd been serious when he'd said Varvara was his sister. All he did was laugh, and give me a parting wave as he drove off.
Bogdan had beaten us back and was waiting inside for us. The Midnight Watch building is fairly large, and though all of the employees have their own homes, they each have a room there as well. We went into Tavi's quarters, which, aside from a couple paintings depicting jungle scenes, was decorated as sparsely as any hotel room. Devona pulled back the covers of his bed, and I removed him from my pocket and laid him gently on the mattress. Varney and Shamika stood off to the side, watching.
Bogdan took one look at our miniature friend and then turned to me. "I take it there's a story behind his condition," the warlock said.
"He got bit in half by a dinosaur and I shrank him to make him easier to carry," I said.
"Of course you did." Bogdan looked at Tavi once more. "How did you shrink him? Wait – you used that shrunken head of yours, right?"
"Yeah, but Livingstone didn't make it, so I can't use him to unshrink Tavi."
"So not only do you want me to try to heal Tavi, you need me to restore him to his normal size as well," Bogdan said.
"Not to make a joke, but that's about the size of it," I said.
Devona gave me a look that let me know I wasn't funny.
"Like anyone else, we Arcane have our individual talents and strengths," Bogdan said. "We're all born with the ability to generate, focus, and channel magical energy, but the specific form that magic takes can vary quite a bit from person to person. My own specialty is the conjuring of objects, not making alterations in another's body. Changing someone's size and healing injuries are both outside my realm of expertise."
"Tavi's a lyke, and his body stands a good chance of healing itself," Devona said. "We just need to give him a little help."
Bogdan smiled at Devona. "All right, boss. I'll give it my best shot."
I didn't particularly appreciate the way Bogdan smiled at Devona, but I decided now wasn't the time to act petty. There'd be plenty of time for that after Bogdan did what he could to help Tavi.
Bogdan's specialty wasn't just conjuring objects. In a way I didn't understand, his talent lies in conjuring useful objects, ones he needs at any given moment. Sometimes I wonder if Bogdan himself fully understands it. He kept his gaze fixed on Tavi's miniaturized form, gestured, and a magnifying glass appeared in his hand. He held it over Tavi and a beam of light shone through and down onto the lyke. As we watched, Tavi's body slowly grew until he was once again normal size. When Tavi was finished growing, the light from the magnifying glass winked out, and a second later the glass itself disappeared. It's too bad that Bogdan's objects never stick around long once they've fulfilled their purpose. He'd make a fortune if he could conjure up permanent magical items.
"That's step one," Bogdan said. "Now let's see if I can do anything to help him start healing."
I was used to the warlock sounding supremely confident, so the doubt in his voice took me by surprise. I felt Devona reach out to me through our psychic link.
Why are you surprised? she thought. Tavi is Bogdan's friend, and he doesn't want to let him down.
Nothing against Bogdan, but I didn't think he was especially fond of any of us – with the exception of you, that is.
Jealous: table for one, Devona thought, with more than a trace of amusement. But seriously, you should take the time to get to know Bogdan better – and Scorch and Tavi too.
This wasn't the first time that Devona had gently chided me for keeping to myself too much. I'd been something of a loner when I was human. Dale had been my only real friend back then, and after we came to Nekropolis and he died, I'd been on my own for the most part. Oh, I'd made a number of acquaintances, but I never got close to anyone. I didn't let myself. That changed when I met Devona. She's more than my lover; she's the best friend I've ever had. But she encourages me to "expand my emotional palette," as she puts it, and establish deeper friendships. I'm working on it. Slowly.
Once more Bogdan fixed his gaze on Tavi, concentrated, and gestured. This time nothing appeared in his hand, and he frowned. He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, and allowed his features to relax. When his expression was one of serene calm, he gestured once again, and this time an oldfashioned glass thermometer appeared in his hand.
He opened his eyes and looked at it.
"Please tell me it's not a rectal thermometer," I said. "Because if it is, I'm afraid Tavi's out of luck."
Devona gave me a look that said I was even less funny than the last time she had given me the look. Bogdan ignored me and gently placed the thermometer between Tavi's lips. There were no obvious signs of any magic at work – no glowing light, no strange sound – but the lyke stirred and gently sighed. He settled back into the bed, and a peaceful expression came over his face.
"I'd say that's a good sign," Devona said.
"I hope so," Bogdan said. "Like I told you, healing's not my specialty."
"Once Tavi regains consciousness, he's going to be ravenous," I said. "He lost a lot of mass, and he's going to need help replacing it."
"Yo
u're right," Devona said. "We should lay in a supply of raw meat and blood."
That wouldn't be a problem. One of the nice things about Nekropolis is that you never have any trouble finding a butcher's.
A slight breeze ruffled my hair, and I knew Rover was in the room with us.
"Keep watch over Tavi," I told the guardian spirit. "And let us know if there's any change in his condition."
Rover blew gently on my face one time, a signal for yes. We left Tavi's quarters and adjourned to the great room. Devona, Shamika, and Bogdan sat on the couch, I took up my usual position near the fireplace, and Varney stood on the opposite side of the room and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, an unreadable expression on his face. He'd been awfully quiet since we'd escaped the Grotesquerie, but at least he was no longer making any pretense of wanting to make a documentary about me. I still didn't know what his game was, and that needed to change. First things first, though. I told Bogdan what we'd been up to since we'd seen him last. When I was finished catching him up, I asked if he'd learned anything of interest from his Arcane contacts.
"I stopped by Overhexed, only to discover that you'd been there before me and broken up a street riot before it even got started," Bogdan said. "As you might imagine, not many of the patrons were inclined to chat with me after that, seeing as how I work with you. The Sea Hag was sharing a table with Dr Bombay, and they'd both had more enough than enough drinks to put them in a talkative mood, though. They told me they'd heard rumors that Talaith had solid evidence that Varvara was behind our people's disappearances, though neither could tell me what precisely that evidence might be. Dr Bombay is something of a gossip, and once he started talking, it was hard to shut him up. He told me the names of the Arcane who disappeared. A dozen in all, men and women who specialize in different facets of magic." Bogdan grimaced in distaste. "He also told me more about their vices and sexual proclivities than I wanted to know. Beyond the fact that they all happen to be Arcane, there doesn't seem to be any connection between them."