Gremlin Night

by Dale Ivan Smith

  Dara smiled thinly at me. “I think you’ll find I have all the authority I need.”

  Her muscle unceremoniously shoved me into the backseat. Before I could scramble out the other side, I was handcuffed, my arms behind me, and then buckled in. Dara sat in the front passenger seat, one of the men-in-black types took the wheel, and I was squeezed between the other two, while Riley sat behind me, still brandishing that silver rod.

  The SUV turned and headed into Portland.

  “Maybe you can take me to the local R.U.N.E. office,” I said, “since you’re headed that way.”

  Dara turned in her seat and regarded me with an icy stare. “Oh, I think your soon-to-be former masters won’t want you back, once they learn what you’ve been up to.”

  I cocked my head. “This arrest violates the inter-agency protocols.”

  “Not if the arrestee is guilty of criminal conduct. Which you are.” She looked down her nose at me.

  “Mana spew,” I swore.

  Dara’s eyes widened and then she laughed sharply. My muscle escort laughed on both sides.

  “Ah, yes, R.U.N.E. and its silly little coping mechanism. A ridiculous replacement for mundane swearing. What a waste of time and energy.”

  Words matter, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I remembered that the Arcane Security Agency’s operatives were simply trained not to swear, which explained why they were so tightly wound.

  “Very cute, having that manifestation snatch me off the Ducati,” I told Dara. I frowned. “That was a waste of an excellent bike. You’ll be paying for that.”

  Dara didn’t answer, just stared at me.

  “You know,” I continued, “you missed your chance to make the villain riff, ‘nice of you to drop in,’ when your manifestation set me down.”

  “You’re not funny,” Dara replied, then made silencing gesture at Riley behind me.

  Something hard and cold pressed against my neck.

  “Hey,” I blurted. Then the world tilted ninety degrees and smacked me in the head.

  When I came to I was sitting in a hard metal chair, my arms handcuffed behind me. My shoulders hurt like Hades. I opened my eyes, blinking against harsh overhead lighting. I was in an interrogation room, a battered wooden table in front of me, Dara sitting on the far side in what looked like a far more comfortable chair. Riley stood in a corner behind her. An obvious one-way mirror covered the upper half of the wall next to him, opposite me. I caught my reflection. I looked terrible.

  My muscles were sore, and my bones ached. I had no artifacts, I’d used up practically all my spells, I’d lost my chief suspect, and I was out of touch with my partner.

  Time to make a desperation play.

  “We have a problem,” I said.

  Dara arched an eyebrow. “I’d say you have a multiplicity of problems.”

  “And then some,” Riley chimed in.

  “Look, the gremlin outbreaks are being consciously coordinated.”

  “We agree,” Dara said. “By you.”

  My mouth dropped open. I must have looked like a fish right then, gaping at the world. Then I laughed. It echoed harshly off the walls. “That’s beyond ridiculous. What makes you think I coordinated the gremlin outbreaks?”

  “Simple,” Dara replied, voice cool. “You’ve been using proscribed magic.”

  If my hands were free I would have slapped the tabletop in protest. Instead, I settled for a glare. “Really. Now you’re just being idiotic. In case you didn’t notice, and I know you spy on us when you get the chance, we were investigating the gremlin outbreaks.”

  Dara’s eyebrow went up again. “We believe you used a trickster, in violation of the Compact, to experiment in creating chaos magic, and that that experiment went out of control. It caused repeated gremlin outbreaks, which you struggled to contain.”

  “And of which you neglected to notify us, violating the inter-agency protocols,” Riley added.

  “You jeopardized hundreds of lives, and created ripples in the Hidden, which led to a dragon incident in Seattle, which took away Director Farlance and his team, as well as R.U.N.E. assets from other cities.”

  I shook my head. That was nuts. “You’re crazy, why would we do that?”

  She leaned forward. “Because you are seeking advantage. R.U.N.E. resents the arcane technologies the A.S.A. has created, as well as the bargains which we’ve struck with ancient manifestations.”

  “Oh, please. We have more important concerns than how much money and time you sink into pointless attempts at creating magic-tech hybrids.” I gave her a smug smile.

  She sighed. “We have you dead to rights.”

  “This isn’t a game!” I snapped. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. “Listen, there’s a wizard out there, someone we didn’t know about before tonight, a man named Rudy Gott. He’s responsible for the outbreaks. He bound an ancient trickster, forced it to aid him. He’s using some sort of super-artifact that possesses multiple capabilities.” I started to mention that he’d compromised the secret teleportal network, but caught myself in the nick of time.

  Dara actually tsk-tsked me. “You can surely come up with a more convincing story than that.”

  I leaned back in my chair, raising my chin. “Fine, ask my partner, John Tully.”

  “Tully, now that’s also interesting,” she said. “Where is your partner?”

  “We split up, to deal with separate issues.”

  Her eyebrow shot up. “Why?”

  I rolled my eyes. “We had a lead that needed to be investigated right away before we lost the trail, and we also needed to deal with an outbreak. Oddly enough, there wasn’t another arcane agency we could partner with. Something about paranoid refusal to cooperate in interagency operations.”

  She ignored my dig, gazing flatly at me. “That’s your story?”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “No, Ms. Marquez, that’s a lie.” She held up my blood amulet.

  I blinked. Of course, they’d found it. I could lie, say I’d found it, but no doubt they’d already spelled it and discovered my blood aura. My stomach had turned into a ball of lead.

  She dangled the blood amulet in front of me.

  “Nothing to say? The girl who is always running her mouth is quiet.”

  I stared past her head at the ceiling.

  She leaned over me, twirling the blood amulet. “Does your partner know you‘re using a banned artifact to fuel forbidden magic?”

  I kept silent.

  “I didn’t think so,” Dara said, her tone acidic. “For an obvious reason--you killed your partner because he learned about your using forbidden magic.”

  I laughed. “That’s absurd.”

  She cocked her head. “The penalty for using blood magic is severe. Imprisonment.”

  She was a hypocrite. “We know the A.S.A. has done blood magic, too,” I said.

  Her face hardened. “Not on my watch. And two wrongs don’t make a right,” she said. “That project was ended some time ago. Just like your career should have been. But you have a protector, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  She smiled at me coldly. “Oh, you can act like you don’t know. But we have detailed files on you.”

  No surprise there, the A.S.A. loved to squirrel away information, no doubt they had detailed files on all of R.U.N.E. Well, at least they thought they did. I suspect much of it was conjecture and ridiculous assumptions.

  Dara went on. “We know that you were reassigned to R.U.N.E.’s Silo prison complex in North Dakota, because you’d used blood magic. You were released six months later, and then given a field assignment. We strongly suspect you have a highly-placed backer in R.U.N.E., possibly your own mother.”

  I snorted. “Give me a break. My mother is the last person I’d work directly for.” This whole thing was absurd. “We’re wasting time. We only have--” I glanced at where my watch would be, “--how much longer until daylight?”

 
Dara glanced at Riley, who looked at his watch. “Ninety minutes.”

  I jumped up, or rather, I tried to, but the handcuffs restrained me. “Curses, don’t you get it? You must have sensed the mana building up, and all the chaos magic, as well.”

  “Of course, let loose by you.”

  “Did you find a mana siphon on me? For that matter, did you find any artifacts on me?”

  “No, but that’s because you’ve made bargains with criminal manifestations, which are storing the magic.”

  I sighed. “You’re just spinning absurdities, you realize that?”

  Dara started to answer, then a buzzer sounded. She got up, went to the door, and left the room. Riley stared at me, his eyes flat.

  “You are just a bundle of fun, you know that?” I told him. No reaction.

  No surprise.

  We stared at each other for a while, then I looked at the one-way mirror. The minutes crawled by. Riley watched me, his face expressionless.

  I fidgeted. Where had Dara gone?

  “Time’s wasting,” I said, finally.

  Riley kept staring.

  At last, the door opened, and Dara re-entered the room, followed by a familiar figure.

  Tully.

  15

  “Nice of you to show up,” I said, forcing a grin. Relief washed over me in a wave, and for a moment, my shoulders untensed.

  Tully didn’t smile back. “I needed to not die, first,” he said. His hands weren’t cuffed. He carried a slim leather-bound book.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Obviously you managed that feat,” I quipped, trying to keep my relief going in the face of his grim look.

  “It wasn’t easy,” he replied.

  Dara pointed at a chair and Tully sat, she beside him. I got a good look at him then as he sat down. A massive bruise covered one side of his face, from chin to jaw, and cuts and scrapes pockmarked his hands. His knuckles were bloody.

  My chest tightened. He looked like he’d gone three rounds with a troll. I should have been there.

  “Mister Tully informed me that we face a crisis that threatens the secrecy of the Hidden and the arcane world,” Dara said.

  “Oh, he shows up and you immediately believe him,” I mock-groused, trying and failing to shake the guilt over not being there.

  “We don’t have any time for your antics,” Dara retorted. “Tully’s words and his actions carry weight. Yours don’t.”

  “Fine,” I said. It killed me to admit it to myself, but she had a point. “Fine,” I repeated. “We need to act, now. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re running out of time.”

  She frowned at me. Sweat rolled down my arms. Was she going to bring up the blood magic?

  I raised my eyebrows. “Well?”

  She nodded stiffly at Tully. “Mister Tully has convinced me we face a crisis, but he couldn’t be more specific as to details.”

  “What happened?” I asked him. “You must have found Sylvas.”

  He nodded, face suddenly bleak. “I did. I found him in a hideout. One that had a ravager ensconced there, waiting to come out and attack.”

  Ensconced was a magical command. “But why did someone leave a ravager there? Why not just kill Sylvas?”

  Tully looked at his hands. “Sylvas had somehow summoned the ravager, I believe to protect himself.”

  I shook my head. After Therese’s sacrifice, he’d summoned a ravager. Then it hit me. “He turned it. One had been chasing him, and he turned it. That would be easier than summoning one. It would protect him.” The irony was bitter—to make the very sort of supernatural killer that had besieged Therese into a guardian of sorts.

  I looked at Tully. “Sylvas is dead, isn’t he?”

  Tully nodded. “He was in a state of almost-dissolved when I discovered him, after defeating the ravager.”

  Almost-dissolved, that was the edge of existence for a supernatural.

  “He’d taken a delay potion. He’d been poisoned. He pointed me to a spot on the wall before he dissolved.” Tully held up the book he carried. “I found this at Sylvas’s home.” It was one of those leather-bound journals you could buy at fairs and nerd craft expos. The image of a pine was worked into the cover.

  Magic gleamed faintly in a golden halo around the book.

  My heart rose. “What was inside?”

  He crossed his arms and looked down at the floor. “I can’t read it. I only know a little Draconic, and this isn’t Draconic. And it’s not like standard Elvish, either.”

  “I can read it,” I said. How about that, the excruciating set of classes on deciphering magical scripts at the Academy my mother insisted I take might actually come in handy. It still didn’t make up for all the extra work I’d had to put in, and I wasn’t about to thank mom, but this was a way to make myself more obviously useful to Dara and get out of these cuffs and back into action.

  “How can you be so sure?” demanded Dara. “You haven’t even seen the book.”

  “Call it an educated guess. Sylvas was a high elf, for one thing.”

  “But this isn’t high elvish script. Doesn’t seem to be even remotely connected.”

  I looked at her. “You haven’t had the training I’ve had.”

  Her lips tightened. “So you say.”

  I snorted. “Can’t you take my word, for once?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t trust you, Marquez.”

  My mouth fell open. “Come on, you need every asset,” I said.

  Dara raised her eyebrows. “Mister Tully is certainly an asset. I’ve known that for some time. You, on the other hand, are a liability.”

  I shot Tully a pleading look. “Come on, tell her I can help.”

  “She can,” he said after a pause. Not exactly eloquence in action, but he had to be feeling the effects of whatever had worked his face over. Another pang of guilt ran through me.

  I licked my lips. I needed to know what was in that book. There’d be plenty of time to feel guilty later. “Unshackle my hands and let me look at the book.”

  Dara pointed her finger at me. “What guarantee do I have that you won’t try to escape?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Dara. We’re nearly out of time. I want to stop whatever’s about to happen even worse than you do.”

  She threw up her hands. “Very well. I need to know what this is all about and how to stop it.”

  I swallowed. That was a tall order. “Fine. Let me handle the book and I’ll find it.”

  Dara’s eyes narrowed. “I could just have Riley here hold it up in front you, and turn the pages as you read.” The scorn was so thick in her voice you could use it to mortar a brick wall.

  I bit back a nasty retort. “Look, I need to be able to trace the characters with my fingers, feel them against my skin.”

  Her eyes narrowed to a squint. “You’ve got to be bull-shitting me.”

  “By the vault of the universe, I swear I speak the truth.” Magical scripts weren’t written in ink, they were written in the blood of the supernatural who spoke that language. Unlike human languages, supernaturals could only understand their own. Humans could understand supernatural languages, but it took a lot of work.

  “I just don’t believe she’s the type to be gifted with manifestation scripts,” Riley said.

  I glanced at Riley and sighed. “It speaks.” I looked back at Dara. “I’m a binder. Let me loose and I’ll find whatever answers are in that book. We’re still burning time here.”

  Dara glared at me for a long moment. “Fine,” she said, biting off the word. She motioned at Riley, who looked like he’d been asked to kiss a pig. He unlocked my cuffs.

  I stretched my arms. My joints cracked. My muscles burned. I winced, held the stretch. “Deciphering the book would be easier if I could actually feel my arms, and move my fingers.” I twiddled my fingers, then alternated bending back my left hand with my right, and my right with my left. Twiddled my fingers again.

  My muscles still burned but there wasn’t time for any
more.

  I took the book from Tully, and opened it. The Elvish script was a slender line of graceful, swooping characters, written in indigo. Written in Sylvas’s blood.

  “Let me see and understand,” I whispered, the spell building in my mind. I stroked the first character, shivered from the music that began in my mind, a flute playing a lonely tune. I traced the next character, and the next and on, until a symphony played something like a Bach concerto in my head. Images began flickering in my mind.

  Therese, smiling at Sylvas. Sylvas, smiling back. The two of them holding hands, walking in her garden. The air smelled of sweet spring, fresh rain and roses. A wood at twilight, the silver crescent of the moon high in the sky, as Therese and Sylvas kissed. The vision trembled, then changed. Therese lay in bed, skin bone white, cheekbones showing through.

  Sorrow filled me like a frozen sea.

  The vision changed. It was a very dark night. A visitor appeared outside Therese’s house. A cloaked figure, dripping with magical power, voice altered, loomed just beyond the front door and offered to help Therese. She only had to give over her logbooks, her teleportal map, and the living map she had of the mana contours.

  Therese refused.

  “Then I’ll take what I need,” The wizard threatened, the words low, like the sound of a knife cutting leather.

  “No,” Therese said. “You shall not have them.”

  The wizard retreated to beyond the gate, then mana gathered in a purple cloud, shot through not with the golden light of magic, but the red of a foul conjuration, something I’d only seen once before. Ravagers strode from the cloud, and watched the house, while the wizard began an elaborate ritual.

  Therese took Sylvas by the hand. Gave him a scroll, whispered to him what she knew. The wizard was unknown to her, but she saw the connection to another wizard.

  The vision shifted and I glimpsed Rudy’s face. Therese had identified him, was watching him. I saw Rudy in a basement someplace, conjuring a gremlin, which vanished before it could fully manifest.

  “They are connected, this enemy and the bitter man who wishes to conjure chaos,” Therese whispered to Sylvas. “You must take this with you, to the safe house, and write down all that I tell you, and deliver it to R.U.N.E.”