Gremlin Night

by Dale Ivan Smith

  I slashed the air before me with my fingers. A storm of yellow lighting shot from my fingers and into the trickster. It stood there for a long moment, dancing like a puppet.

  “Your name!” I demanded.

  “Rudy!” It said.

  Rudy? Sometimes manifestations took their name from an individual. Sometimes, though, they lied.

  I slashed again. “Tell me truly.” More golden lightning spun from my fingers and around the trickster, tightening around its scrawny neck.

  The mocking sneer vanished, replaced by panic. It clutched at its throat.

  A metaphorical attack was still real. That might seem crazy, but it’s true. A temporary supernatural like “Mister Trickster” didn’t breathe the air or feed like a permanent. They hadn’t become resident yet. But strangling them still had an effect, believe it or not.

  I eased up. “Name.”

  “Mister Trickster. Rudy.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Which is it?”

  “Mister Trickster. Rudy.”

  The golden lightning intensified. My hand hurt like Hades and I realized that my blood magic sacrifice still fueled the spell. The full force of the command spell convulsed Mister Trickster.

  “The truth.” My voice sounded like thunder in my own ears. It would be localized, but within six feet of us, my words boomed. Beyond six feet it would be a whisper.

  “Mister Trickster. Rudy.”

  “Release him,” a little voice said. I jumped, losing my grip on the spell, and the lightning spun off into space and vanished.

  “Begone,” the little voice commanded.

  I jerked around, trying to see who was speaking. There was no one there, just a stray dog, like a large yellow-red Pomeranian.

  I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. Mister Trickster ran, its long legs pumping, but as it did, it faded away. Tully’s wand lay on the sidewalk. I strode over and snatched at it. My fingers closed on the faintly thrumming wood. Real. I smiled.

  “Now, isn’t that better,” the little voice said. “Time to go.”

  I looked at the dog. It wasn’t actually a dog. It was a fox. Its tongue lolled, and it yawned.

  “What makes you think that’s me?” the little voice asked, from behind me. I whirled around again.

  Nothing there.

  I looked back at the fox. A fox, here in the industrial district? I suppose it was possible, the West Hills were nearby. But even so, a coyote was more likely.

  “What are you up to?” I asked the fox. I spied a faint purple glimmering around it. “Did you conjure the gremlins?” I put my hands on my hips for emphasis.

  “That would be telling,” the little voice whispered, again from behind me.

  I slapped my thigh. “Come on! Why can’t you just cut to the chase and tell me what you are up to?” This was why I hated tricksters. They never just cut to the chase.

  “Perhaps you should ask yourself why I cannot tell you. That would be the better question.” The little voice pointed out, still behind me. Its tone was grave.

  “Stop throwing your voice,” I told the fox.

  It licked a paw, then looked at me sideways. Very funny.

  “What do you know about the gremlin outbreaks?” I demanded, hands still on my hips.

  The little voice murmured in my ear. “You’re a sorcerer agent. Gremlins are loose in this fair city on the longest night of the year. Chaos is afoot. Someone is responsible. Shouldn’t you be finding them?”

  “Listen, buster, whoever you are, that’s what I’m doing.”

  Soft laughter that was far more mocking than Mister Trickster’s mad chortling had been. “Not from where I sit.”

  The fox chased its tail, then saw me looking at it, and trotted off.

  “Not so fast,” I muttered. I jogged after it.

  Spell, I needed a spell, but I used up all the ones I had on hand. Even switching languages wouldn’t let me cast a spell I’d already used, not without taking the time for a refocusing ritual.

  Taking the time, that was a laugh. That had been in short supply. If Tully were here with me—I cut off the thought. Pointless.

  Maybe I could catch the fox. It ran ahead, an easy lope, but somehow it kept well ahead of me. I ran faster, my breath ragged. The little devil just trotted ahead of me, not breaking a sweat.

  We passed the Ducati.

  I smiled. That would even the odds.

  12

  I jumped on the Ducati, turned the ignition. The engine rumbled. I leaned to the right and kicked the stand up. The fox was probably around the corner by now.

  I looked up. It waited for me twenty feet away.

  “Oh, you think?” I muttered.

  I turned the throttle, hit the shifter pedal with my left foot. The Ducati roared toward the fox. The creature turned and trotted away.

  Now I had it.

  The distance closed, but then, when I thought I’d be able to reach down and tap it with Tully’s wand, the fox trotted faster. It moved at what still seemed like an easy lope, but still just out of tapping distance. I accelerated faster. The Ducati’s speedometer passed thirty, forty, fifty, and yet the fox kept ahead of me. We turned onto Highway Thirty, heading toward the Fremont bridge, rising up ahead.

  Sixty miles an hour and the fox still ran ahead of me. Even for a manifestation in the form of a fox, that seemed impossible. We rounded the corner. The next intersection’s light was red. A line of cars slowly drove from Twenty Fifth street onto the highway, so I couldn’t just run the red. I braked, and lost sight of the fox in the cross-traffic. Had it been struck by a car? I sat at the light, fuming.

  A light drizzle began falling.

  The light finally went green. A gold-red form appeared twenty feet ahead of me and began running off at an easy lope. The fox. I accelerated until the Ducati was doing sixty again, but the fox was still just out of reach. We drove over the bridge, the fox in one of the northbound lanes, heading toward Interstate 5. A semi coming up from the 405 signaled, pushing its way in front of me.

  The fox disappeared beneath the wheels. I slowed down. The semi continued to signal, and went to the far right, onto the ramp for I-84.

  The fox appeared again, still trotting ahead.

  I gunned it, getting the Ducati up over seventy, far over the speed limit. But the fox remained just ahead. I slowed down. Just my luck Oregon’s finest would have a speed trap set up ahead. The last thing I needed was to be stopped.

  We reached I-5. The fox took the first exit immediately after we crossed the Fremont, running up the exit ramp. I followed. The fox turned and ran west on Alberta, on the overpass over I-5. Leading me on a merry goose chase if there ever was one.

  I was tired and hungry, but I wasn’t letting the trickster get away. A true trickster, a resident manifestation. Possibly even one of the old ones.

  The fox led me down the hill to Swan Island and the sea of cranes and trains, next to the big storage tanks. I’d just traveled in a big U, from the industrial district on the west side of the river to loading terminals on the east, north of downtown Portland.

  The fox turned into a terminal lot. Ahead of it a gate closed off the road. It could easily run under the gate, but I’d be out of luck.

  The gate opened, giving the fox and me plenty of room to enter. It wanted me to follow. But why?

  What was here? Storage tanks, cranes, freight cars, lots of stacked cargo boxes, trailers minus the trucks. The place looked deserted. Why come here?

  Maybe it wanted to get me into a more isolated area? But that didn’t make sense. Things hadn’t exactly been bustling in the industrial district.

  There was nothing here. No people, other than maybe a few security guards yet to be encountered. Why had the fox bothered to come here? There was a reason why few manifestations roamed the desert or any other trackless waste. No people meant nothing to pull from, to live from. Only the most ancient resident manifestations could survive in a wilderness. The fox clearly had been aroun
d. I had no idea how old it was.

  There was train parked at the tracks ahead. Not a freight train, but a passenger train. Amtrak? No, it was gold, not green and white, and the train cars appeared supremely old-timey, like they were from the 1940s.

  The lights were on and people milled about inside the cars. It had to be some sort of evening train ride. Something had caused it to stop.

  The fox and I both slowed down. This whole setup smelled to the high heavens.

  The passengers were in fancy dress, men in tuxedoes and women in old-style evening gowns, the kind that brushed the floor.

  The fox sat on its haunches and waited expectantly. The cool, wet night air began to crackle faintly. My hackles rose.

  Now was my chance, but something was up, and if I started the chase again, who knew what would happen here. I parked the Ducati and got off.

  “Refocus if you’re gonna,” the little voice said right behind me, in a sly tone. “You might have the time.” The fox laid down, and watched me.

  “Funny,” I mumbled, but the voice had a point.

  I closed my eyes, and inhaled deeply. Belly breathing helped me refocus. I did six, long, slow breaths, clearing my mind, ignoring the fact that I was a stone’s throw from a fox-manifestation that had led me on a merry chase across the river to here. Inhale, exhale. I stretched my arms, brought my hands together in prayer pose.

  My witch grandmother would be proud. She was always trying to get me to do more yoga. I forced myself to ignore the danger I was in. Standing there, with the air crackling more loudly with each passing second. After a minute of this, I released my hands. I felt lighter, just a bit more restored.

  I fished around in my memory for a pair of spells I could use. If only I had another magic item, or a bound manifestation in service to R.U.N.E. But no, I wasn’t allowed anything extra tonight, because the front office didn’t trust me.

  The air around the fox glowed blue, and then, the fox disappeared.

  The crackling became a steady drumbeat of noise. Now I could see silver flashes around the train cars.

  I drew my binding knife.

  A familiar-looking figure appeared from behind the train, the bystander from the strip mall. What was he doing here?

  He stumbled toward me, looking confused, holding himself up with that tall walking staff of his.

  I held the knife loosely. He looked as ordinary as the first two times I’d seen him. For an instant, I thought I glimpsed a glow around him, but it vanished when I looked hard.

  “Say hello to Rudy,” the little voice whispered in my ear.

  Hello to Rudy? “What are you on about?” I hissed back.

  The man’s long hair was disheveled, covering one eye. His other eye stared at me, wide. The poor guy was always in a panic.

  “It’s Rudy,” the voice insisted.

  “Okay, so what?” I asked, in a low hiss.

  “I can’t do everything for you. You must provoke the truth.”

  Skies above, I hated Tricksters, and all the trickiness that went with them. Fine, I’d bite.

  “Hi, Rudy,” I said brightly to the man. “Are you lost?”

  The drumbeat of arcane crackling grew, the flashes of silver around the train cars growing brighter.

  He glanced back at it, his expression suddenly calculating.

  “There’s no time for this,” he said. He turned back to face me. His expression shifted again, to a look of naked arrogance.

  “Took you long enough,” Rudy said. “I can’t say I’m surprised.” Smugness filled his voice. “Figures a piece like you would take your sweet time blundering to reality.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but you played a clueless putz well.”

  “That was easy.” His voice dripped with scorn. It was obvious now, the scent of sorcery was strong on him, stronger than Tully or even Farlance. A purple aura outlined him. He stood taller, and his eyes flashed.

  “Despite how easy you were to fool, I’m happy to have you join me,” he said, smirking. “Power can be shared.”

  “Yeah, no thanks.” I shifted my binding knife to my left hand.

  His gaze followed. “Tsk-tsk, woman. You think that will stop me?” He chuckled. He flexed his arms, assumed what must have been a martial arts stance.

  I rolled my eyes. “You really are a piece of work after all. Pretty good act you had going on.” Okay, I was repeating myself, but I needed to stall, see if he had a manifestation on him. It was a long shot, but if he did, I could, maybe, just maybe, bind it. I’d say longshots were my specialty, but honestly, you grab at what you can when you’re backed into a corner. No sign of one. That left only one option, but I’d never get the chance to pull it off, not with him watching me closely.

  “Almost worthy of me,” the small voice said. The fox suddenly reappeared a dozen feet away from Rudy and me, in the direction of the train.

  Rudy’s expression hardened. “Supernaturals are not equal to men.” He raised his hand. A tornado of golden light exploded from his fingers and engulfed the fox. The old trickster stiffened, and yowled silently, convulsing in agony.

  “You will obey me,” he told the fox. The fox yowled louder.

  Despite my roiling guts, I drew my pistol and aimed it at Rudy’s chest. “Stop the spell or I put three rounds into you.”

  Rudy regarded me coldly.

  I tightened my finger on the trigger. I’d never killed a human, and I didn’t want to start now, but I had no choice.

  Time seemed to stand still for a moment. At the edge of my vision the fox writhed in agony. Beyond it the air around the passenger train crackled with silver lightning that reflected in the windows. The building magic was an impending hurricane of arcane energy. The people inside stared out, wide-eyed.

  “Stop it now,” I shouted.

  Rudy laughed sharply. “You don’t get it, do you, girl? You could hang with me. Who knows, we could have some fun, all kinds.” When he said all kinds, my stomach churned. The implication was blindingly obvious. He undressed me with his eyes.

  Yuck.

  I hesitated for another instant, then started, finally to pull the trigger.

  So, of course, that’s when the gremlins showed up.

  A dozen of them popped into existence around us.

  I fired three rounds at Rudy. Well, I tried to. But the pistol jammed.

  Curses. I cleared the jam. Lifted the pistol. It jammed again.

  Rudy watched me with amusement. “See? I told you. Give up now. My offer still stands.”

  I wanted to throw up at his words. “You are a nasty man,” I said, clearing the jam again. The gremlins ran around us in a circle, singing hee-hee to the tune of Ring Around the Rosy.

  I pointed the pistol at him once more, but this time the pistol fell apart in my hand.

  Fine, then I’d have to do things the hard way. I jammed my right hand into my jacket, finding my blood magic amulet, and slashing my fingers on it. One more time at the well wouldn’t matter. I was already out of R.U.N.E. if Farlance or Wu learned I’d been doing blood magic.

  I pointed the binding knife at the nearest dancing gremlin. “My command is your obedience,” I chanted. A silver beam shot from the tip of my binding knife and stabbed the little pointy-headed nuisance. The gremlin jerked and stopped dancing. The others continued. I pointed the knife at the spell Rudy held on the trickster fox. “Break the link,” I commanded.

  “You can’t do that!” Desperation shivered suddenly in Rudy’s voice. He was stuck. Holding the trickster took a lot of concentration. With a resident manifestation like the fox, probably at least a level 4, a simple sorcerer couldn’t banish him. That took a ritual, and Rudy hadn’t had the time.

  “Buddy, you are in a ton of trouble,” I said. The gremlin I’d spelled squirmed. “Slippery dude, aren’t you?” I twisted the knife in the air, trying to get the spell centered on the gremlin’s essence.

  That was when I noticed a faint trail of golden light splitting off from the to
rrent of magic surging from Rudy to the ancient trickster. The faint off-shoot snaked over to the squirming gremlin. I bit my lip. Rudy had a lot of power if he could maintain two spells at once. Why hadn’t we heard of him? This wasn’t sorcery, it was wizard-level stuff. Wizards could do more than one kind of magic at once. They could also potentially cast more than one spell at the same time. R.U.N.E. kept lists of sorcerers and wizards, just like Dara Kind’s A.S.A. did.

  Rudy’s little side spell had to be a Sever. A simple spell, but I couldn’t do it, because, you guessed it, I was a binder.

  My only counter to it was to double down on the binding I cast on the gremlin.

  That I could do. With a twist.

  Faint tendrils of gold spread from his magic cascade to the dancing gremlins.

  My shoulders tightened. He was running three spells at once. Panic rose in me. Controlling gremlins and a trickster with two different spells, a passel of gremlins at that, was mind-boggling. Where did he get the power?

  The air around him flickered for an instant, like racking the focus on binoculars. His walking staff looked different, taller, covered in carven sigils of magic. The sigils glowed silver. The staff was topped with a silver snake’s head. The sculpted body ran in a spiral down the length of the staff until reaching a silver cap at the bottom of the staff. A torrent of purple and blue mana flowed into the spaces around the sigils on the staff’s body, like rivulets of water running into grooves in a table.

  Rudy’s clothing had changed, too. He wore a tall, stove pipe hat, with a band that glowed silver with magical light, and a frock coat the color of raven’s wings, like the skeletal trickster form. Each of his fingers wore silver rings studded with rubies. His face was filled with leering, triumphant arrogance. He radiated incredible magical power. That staff wasn’t only dragon forged, it was serpent magic as well, combining two ancient arcane traditions.

  My breath caught. The staff was the siphon. It was also a magical cloak; the cloak Tully and I had speculated about. I sliced the ring finger of my left hand against the blood magic amulet I held. I needed more mana to fully reveal the arcane.

  Spider web-like structures appeared in the air around us, glowing bright purple, connecting to the train cars, to the gremlins, intertwining with the golden threads from the super-magic staff. The purple spider-webs were mana lines. Above us a huge cloud of mana had gathered. The staff was a siphon, a mana well, and cloak. An impossible artifact, yet he wielded it.