Gremlin Night

by Dale Ivan Smith

  “Why not tell R.U.N.E.?” Sylvas had asked her,

  It was a sensible question. Why not, I wondered.

  “Because I can’t, not now,” she told Sylvas. “The enemy has sealed me in this house. You must leave.”

  “I cannot desert you,” he’d said.

  “You must,” she had insisted.

  I trembled as I deciphered the story.

  He did as she asked. She tapped a reservoir of mana she had accumulated to open the teleportal in her house, despite the seal, and send Sylvas through. She reminded him she couldn’t leave, since she needed to remain in order to keep the teleportal open. He’d gone not to the garage, but to their safe house.

  He wept a storm of tears once he was inside, and the teleportal closed.

  He opened the map, and began inscribing it.

  Information filled my mind. Too much for me to hold, but centered on a point in downtown Portland, a luxurious hotel. Mana swirled about it in a huge purple cloud. More than that, the feeling of great potential loomed, juxtaposed over another image, that of a woman so beautiful it hurt to look at her. She was too beautiful to be human-- she was a nymph. Darkness swallowed me.

  I woke up, sprawled on the floor, with Tully looking down at me, concern filling his face. Beside him, Dara glared at me, suspiciously.

  I struggled to sit up. Tully squatted beside me, his strong hands helping me.

  “You okay?” He asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “There was so much emotion in that book.”

  “Really?” Dara asked, voice filled with sarcasm. “There wasn’t any time for you to read that book. It had been just seconds since you opened it. You barely moved your finger on the page.”

  I sighed. “That’s not how deciphering works, not this kind,” I said. “It runs at a greatly accelerated time, like faerie, because I’m not reading, I’m binding the script to me. It’s alive, like any other manifestation.”

  “But how can you possibly process all of whatever is in there, in virtually no time?” she asked.

  “Not easily.” I massaged my temples. “No easy at all.” I staggered up, Tully quickly bracing me as I stood.

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  I took a breath. “Sylvas wrote a record of what had happened to him and Therese, and what she’d discovered.” I paused, thinking about what I’d seen in my vision.

  “Therese was dying of cancer, one that couldn’t be cured,” I said. “She’d been battling it for months. A few days ago, a cloaked wizard came to her doorstep and offered to help, if Therese would turn over her logbooks and the living map of the local mana contours.” I told them the rest of the vision, as quickly as I could, finishing with the connection to a fancy downtown hotel and the stunningly beautiful nymph.

  “Let me see if I understand,” Dara said. “This mysterious super-wizard wanted Therese to turn over intel, which revealed the wizard’s connection to someone called Rudy Gott?”

  “That’s about right.”

  Dara glowered at me. “And I’m expected to take your word?”

  “Look, check with your own sentinels, if you have them, or the equivalent. But, it’s obvious to me now that Rudy Gott must have had help. That’s the only explanation.” I took a deep breath. “And Sylvas’s book spelled that out, for me.” I shrugged. “You’re just going to have to decide to trust me, for once,” I told Dara. “We don’t have time for anything else.”

  Her glower became an icy glare. Her jaw tightened, then she looked way, and drummed her fingers on the tabletop.

  “This does seem to match intel we’ve obtained tonight,” she said, her voice thoughtful. She turned to Riley. “The sylph apparitions.”

  He nodded.

  “How many do you have info on?” I asked.

  “Seven.”

  My eyes widened. “Bones of the earth,” I swore. “That many?”

  “That may or may not include the ones you and Mister Tully encountered. Our information comes from an augur daemon.”

  Augur daemons were forecasters that didn’t last long. R.U.N.E. didn’t use them because we found the practice to be skirting the law. I was surprised that the A.S.A. felt differently. Their hypocrisy was obvious to anyone who wasn’t them.

  I put my loathing aside. We had bigger things to deal with.

  “Gott’s trying to summon a nymph,” I said. The man was a creep—he’d played me for a fool, but had also behaved in a very leery and creepy fashion. He wanted a girlfriend, the magical kind. Sheesh. “This all comes down to creepy lone wizard who wants a true magical girlfriend.” I mimed gagging.

  Tully ignored my gesture. “Well, from what you just told us that seems likely. He certainly is collecting a massive amount of mana, as well as chaos magic.”

  “He must be sweating out a big ritual to create his perfect magical girlfriend,” I said. “It must be connected to a hotel, somehow.”

  I more than half-expected Dara to laugh in my face.

  She didn’t. Instead, her brows furrowed. “I know where. There’s a big Solstice charity ball going on at the new hotel by the Oregon Convention Center, following a multi-day business conference. Bigwigs, movers and shakers, and plutocrats galore will be there to mingle and look like they care.”

  Well, what do you know? Dara had my kind of sarcasm in her. It boggled my mind to think we might be a little alike. I refused to believe it.

  “There will be a lot of people there,” I said, nodding. “A lot of well-dressed, powerful people, with a lot of good-looking hangers on.” Lots of little black dresses, low cut gowns, and jewelry. The perfect template for a nymph or sylph. That had to be Gott’s objective. But so close to dawn, it would bleed over to daylight.

  “Does Gott know what he’s doing?” I asked.

  Tully shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

  “Rudy Gott is a moron,” Riley said.

  “Well, what do you know,” I said. “We actually agree on something.” He shot me a sour look.

  Heaven help me, but I did agree with Riley. Gott was an idiot. He was a tool. A tool for someone else. We didn’t know who that was.

  “So, we head over to the convention center and stop Gott,” I said. “Should be a cinch.”

  Dara gave me a hard look. “Something like that. All right, we don’t have much time.”

  “Hold on,” I said. I hated to ask Dara for anything, but needs must. “I’m out of spells. Any chance you have a Restore potion lying around here.” I glanced at Tully. “He could probably use one, too. Oh, and if you have a spare wand, I need one.” Tully’s eyes widened. I mouthed sorry. “Oh, and so does Tully. I drained his wand.” I paused. “Please.”

  “I can’t believe you drained my wand,” Tully said.

  Amusement lit up Dara’s face. “Certainly.” She nodded at Riley, smiled. “Please get Mister Tully equipped. I’ll see that Ms. Marquez is taken care of.” Riley and Tully left.

  Dara waited until the door closed, then her smile turned cold. “We’ll need something special for you.”

  She held up the blood amulet and my heart sank.

  “Listen, I’m done with that,” I said.

  “Oh, I’d say you are. You could be finished because of it. But we don’t have time for that. I’ll bring you something that will replace it, but you’ll have to give me something in return.” She looked down at my hip. “A shadow slug, I see. You must have picked it up after our first encounter, tonight.”

  Encounter, that was a laugh. “Yes.”

  “I’ll take that,” Dara said.

  Please don’t let her, the shadow slug wailed.

  “No,” I said. “I won’t.”

  She made a show of pursing her lips, thinking. “Well, then you’ll need to give me something else.”

  I got the distinct impression she was toying with me, like the proverbial cat with the proverbial mouse. My eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “You, in a manner of speaking.”

  I laughed. “You’ve got t
o be kidding.”

  Dara glanced at her watch. “We have fifty-three minutes until dawn. We need to leave in ten. My people tell me that Gott will cast his spell within thirty minutes of dawn. It’s likely the final component of the ritual he’s been casting all night. I never joke when time is this short.”

  I couldn’t imagine her ever joking, but she had a point about time running out.

  “I’m not giving you me. That’s final.”

  She shrugged. “Fine, then you sit this one out.”

  “The hell I won’t,” I growled.

  Her eyebrow shot up. “So, you can swear.”

  “Listen, you need me.”

  She laughed. “We agree. I’m not asking for your soul. I’m asking for access to you.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’m not going to be an informant.”

  She laughed again. “You wouldn’t have much value as one.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “We have other means of gathering intelligence on R.U.N.E. No, I need access to your person.”

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “For someone who finally appreciates how short we are on time, you are certainly beating around the bush.”

  “I need to implant a manifestation in you.”

  My skin went cold at this. “What? No way. I refuse.”

  “Then I’ll take our chances without you at the hotel. You can sit this one out.” She paused. “Oh, and I’ll also notify your superiors at R.U.N.E. about your use of blood magic.”

  That would finish things right there.

  “I should add that the mana snake will give you advantages.”

  A mana snake? “Never heard of such a thing.”

  “You wouldn’t have. It’s fresh from one of our workshops.”

  My eyes narrowed. That sounded ominous. “Why give it to me?”

  “An experiment. We haven’t tried it in an independent volunteer yet.”

  “Gee, thanks, but no thanks.” My skin crawled at the thought.

  “You already have one manifestation riding you, what’s one more?”

  Of all the times for Dara to show she actually did have a sense of humor, it had to be now. I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Thought about my future with R.U.N.E.

  “Fine. I’ll do it. We’d better get to whatever facility you have to get this snake thing into me.” I shuddered.

  Dara reached into a pocket, brought out what looked like a solid gold compact, opened it, and lifted out an oval-shaped purple-blue pill. “Swallow this.”

  She handed me the pill. It trembled when I touched it. My stomach clenched. That wasn’t a pill. It was a tiny pod.

  “It won’t hurt,” she said.

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” I already had a shadow slug attached to me, and now I was expected to swallow something that would live inside of me? I batted her hand away. “Forget it.”

  “Then you stay here. And I reveal to your partner and your organization that you’ve been practicing blood magic.”

  If a look could have killed, she’d be on the floor in bloody pieces after the glare I gave her. But, I didn’t have a choice. I had to focus on now.

  “This will actually aid you,” she added.

  I sighed. “How about some water to wash this down with?”

  She shook her head. “Just put it in your mouth. It will do the rest.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to do. “This might give me more mana, but what about restoring my spells?”

  “It will do that, after a fashion. Enough to make you of considerable use in a few minutes.” She glanced at her watch. “We need to move, now.”

  Now Dara was in a hurry. I hesitated, then put the pill on my tongue.

  The pill expanded in my mouth, and began wriggling, slithering down my throat. I gagged, but it pushed its way into my stomach. Nausea rolled through me in a sweaty wave.

  My stomach heaved as the snake-worm manifestation swelled. Then the nausea subsided.

  Dara watched me closely the entire time. She nodded to herself. “Good. You won’t be rejecting it.”

  I wanted to vomit, then the feeling passed, and suddenly I no longer sensed the mana snake inside me. “This had better be worth it,” I gasped.

  She gave me a thin smile. “It will be.” The smile disappeared. She handed me my blood amulet. “This is yours. We won’t be informing your superiors about your use of blood magic. Oh, and the mana snake is a part of you now, so much so that a standard body sweep for magic will not reveal it. So that secret is safe with us, as well.”

  For now, I suspected. I had managed to get myself into a very tight spot.

  I’d worry about getting out of that later. We had to move.

  “Now that that unpleasantness is over, we need to get to your garage or wherever it is we’ll catch our ride, right?”

  “After a fashion, yes,” Dara said, amused.

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but after the mana snake, I’d roll with whatever it was.

  16

  Tully and Riley, followed by ten men and women in black suits, waited for us in an empty and windowless room. The suits wore wrap-around sunglasses that glowed faintly with golden light--obviously arcane artifacts.

  There were seven doors, counting the one Dara and I walked in through. All were made of some sort of industrial looking alloy. Riley handed me a wand, and my binding knife.

  “Thank you,” I said. I adjusted my jacket, putting the wand in the holder inside the jacket, and the binding knife in its sheath. I closed my eyes, and considered my spells. I could see them waiting in my mind. Somehow, they’d been restored. My new snaky pal must have made that possible. I shuddered. I’d have to do my best to set aside my loathing until after this was over.

  The A.S.A. team all carried wands and, from the look of their suits, were packing pistols. Riley carried that silver rod of his, and Dara pulled on elbow-length white gloves that must be artifacts of some kind.

  “Which door to the garage?” I asked.

  Snickering broke out all around me.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  Tully looked at me, sympathy in his eyes. He knew, curse him.

  “We’re not taking vehicles,” Dara said. She nodded at Riley, who went to the second door on the far wall, opened it.

  A shining corridor appeared.

  Wonders knock me flat, I swore silently. The A.S.A. had teleportals, too.

  “Guess teleportals aren’t as secret as we thought,” I said, trying to sound funny.

  “Is that what you call them?” Dara asked, her voice incredulous.

  “Sure, what else would you call them?”

  “Not that,” she replied. “We’re going to go in in three groups.”

  I noticed the men and women in black had lined up in two groups of five at two other doors.

  “Alpha group will take the access door in the north wing of the convention center, facing the hotel. They’ll deal with reshaping perceptions and memories of the ordinaries fleeing the hotel. Bravo team will go to the service elevator at the hotel, and clear any secondary threats, and stand ready to assist us. We’ll be arriving next to the grand ballroom, where we forecast Gott will be. It’s on the second floor. The local embed has already been notified to call in a fire alarm for the hotel in--” she glanced at her watch, “--three minutes. That should clear out the normals and enable us to neutralize Gott.”

  She made it sound so easy. Gott was an unknown wizard who shouldn’t possess the apparent abilities he had. Then again, he was in the closing stages of his ritual, and would have already expended many of his spells. His super-staff had to be nearly exhausted, as well.

  “Let’s do this thing,” I said. A few groans sounded at this. Tully gave me a look I decided must be disbelief, while Dara and Riley both rolled their eyes. “Come on, people, lighten up a little,” I said.

  I admire your confidence, a voice said in my mind, coming from the direct
ion of my stomach. Confidence underpins spellcasting. Apparently, the mana snake was a talker.

  The two other teams went in first and then Dara led us through our teleportal or whatever it was they called theirs, Riley bringing up the rear. We arrived in darkness. I ran into a brick wall that went oomph, and a realized I’d just bumped into Tully. I stepped aside just as Riley came through.

  Dara spoke a command word and her wand lit up the room. We were in a conference room, empty of chairs and tables.

  “The alarm should be sounding in sixty seconds,” Dara said.

  That was cutting it close. The four of us headed toward the doors. The building shuddered. Ear-piercing screams erupted in the ballroom next door, punctuated by what sounded like a full chorus of cacophonous gremlin laughter.

  The overhead lights came on, strobing rapidly.

  “Looks like Gott started ahead of your schedule,” I said.

  Dara ignored me. She pressed a hand to her ear, lips moving without sound. She was subvocalizing with the other teams, no doubt using an artifact.

  “Bravo team is in trouble,” she said, continuing to lead us to the doors. “We don’t have a reserve.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Immaterial,” she snapped. “We need to go after Gott.”

  I could put two and two together. Bravo team teleportaled into a service elevator in the vicinity of a gremlin outbreak. The elevator had likely turned into the world’s most vomit-inducing “amusement ride,” or worse, a one-way trip to Hades.

  I swallowed. Not a good way to go, if the latter had been the case.

  Riley jogged past me to join Dara at the doors.

  The screams grew louder, and the gremlin laughter more maniacal. I met Tully’s concerned look, and made a show of shrugging. I got the tiniest of headshakes back, any reaction was better than no reaction, especially now. If I wasn’t trying to make light, I’d be curled up in ball, whimpering.

  Dara nodded at Riley, who hit the crash bar on the right-hand side door and rushed into the hall. Brandishing her wand, Dara went next. I followed her, Tully right behind me. Purple haze filled the hallway. Mana. Lots of mana. I could actually see the eddies in the mana, there was so much of it, as it swirled down the hallway toward the grand ballroom. The overhead lights strobed like a light show at a metal concert.