by Colin Sims
“But what about me?” I asked.
She scooted closer. “You,” she said. “Have an endless supply. That’s what being a wizard is all about.”
“I do?”
“Oh yeah.”
I chewed my lip a moment in thought. “So you only sleep with wizards then?”
Her eyes left mine a moment and she actually blushed a little. “Um, no,” she said. “You’re my first, actually.”
“Wait. So you were a …?” It felt awkward to complete that sentence, but Cassie just laughed. “A wizard virgin, yes,” she said. “The rest is … complicated. Are you sure you want to know this stuff?”
I was sure that I did not. Especially not right now. “You’ve got a point,” I told her. “So what do we do now?”
She shrugged. “Room service?”
“No, I mean you and me and the SIA and all that. What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Have lots of fun between assignments? Speaking of which, I think we should take full advantage of our current—”
Right then, the hotel room’s telephone rang sharply. It was surprisingly loud, with a jackhammer-like quality to it. Cassie rolled over immediately to grab it.
“Boss?” she said with a level of distress that made me sit up. It was like she’d just answered the Bat Phone and automatically knew something was wrong.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll be there. Don’t worry.”
She hung up and jumped out of bed—completely nude, which is something I just have to mention—and found her underwear. Then, searching the rest of the floor, muttered, “Crap. I think I dropped the clothes …”
“Who was that?” I asked. “Rosewood?”
“Yep. There’s an emergency in Florence. We have to go right away.” She stood up straight and nodded to herself. “Stay here, okay? I’ll get our clothes.”
“But—”
“I’ll explain on the way,” she said as she was already disappearing out the door.
She was back in less than a minute and tossed me my stuff.
“There’s a Larva Mage in the Museo De Galileo in Florence,” she explained as she hopped back into her shorts. “Rosewood needs us to destroy it before it finds what it’s looking for. He thinks it has something to do with Steinberg.”
Since the other day’s incident with the Drider, I’d taken a moment to read Thaddeus Kroeber’s Introduction to Dark Creatures: Where to Find Them and How to Destroy Them. Thus, I knew a fair deal about Larva Mages. They were essentially powerful magicians—not quite wizard-level though—whose bodies were entirely made of worms. And not only that, but they could supersize their worms into giant larva creatures that were almost as deadly as the Larva Mage himself. (I’m assuming most Larva Mages were male, but I’m not sure. The book didn’t say.) Anyway, the thought of fighting a Larva Mage didn’t exactly fill me with joy—primarily because of the words, “larva creatures”—but if Cassie was going then so was I. I didn’t know how much good I’d be with my four spells, yet as a wise man once said, “Four spells is better than no spells.” That’s an actual quote, too. I’m not kidding.
I started pulling on my jeans and hopped toward the bathroom. I know most stories tend to skip these kinds of details but I’d just woken up after a long night of insane sex. So by the time I finished taking the piss of a lifetime, I reemerged to find Cassie fully dressed. She gave me an earnest look and threw me my shoes. “We have to hurry,” she said. “There’s a backdoor that will get us close to the museum, but we have to make a stop first.”
“Where?”
“We need guns,” she said. “I’ve got a big stash nearby. Or sort of, I guess. It’s in Istanbul, but the backdoor is really close.”
“Okay. Do I get a gun?”
“No.”
About ten minutes later we were in the basement of a kinky-themed nightclub off Istanbul’s infamous Taksim Square. (It’s like the Turkish Times Square.) The entire room was a dream come true for any eleven-year-old boy, or any U.S. Marine. It was stocked wall-to-wall with every type of awesome weapon you could possibly imagine. There were heavy machine guns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, shotguns, and not one, but two flamethrowers.
Cassie—with a somewhat disquieting level of professional efficiency—began taking one of everything and zipping them into holding discs. She also changed her clothes, which in spite of the situation, I couldn’t help but enjoy. When she caught me blatantly staring, she gave me a playful slap. (It still hurt, though.) She’d changed from her shorts and tank top to what I assumed was her battledress—which was somewhere between Lara Croft and The Matrix. It looked good. Really good.
Something else that looked really good was the modified, special forces-style M4 carbine with a laser scope resting on a pair of hooks to my right. It looked like the centerpiece at a fine art gallery. I went to pick it up—just for fun—but Cassie seemed to read my mind and batted my hand away. “You’re a wizard. Stick to magic,” she said.
“I only know four spells. And did you know that Larva Mages can conjure giant fire-breathing centipedes that move as fast as a cheetah?”
“They can also make ‘larva dogs,’ which can bite your head off,” Cassie said. “They’re really intimidating. And if you have a gun, you’ll end up freaking out and shooting yourself in the foot. Or me. Which would suck.”
“Come on, I need something,” I said. “No dude can walk into this room”—I gestured toward all the gun racks—“and not leave without at least a hand grenade.”
Cassie paused, stared at me, and then blew out a breath. “Fine,” she relented. “You can have this.” She opened a small hard case and took out a tiny pistol. She pressed it into my hand and the entire thing was barely bigger than my palm.
It was a two-shot derringer. How do I know what that is? Because I’ve seen a lot of westerns. You probably know what a two-shot derringer is too. You’ve seen them a bunch of times. They’re those tiny little double-barreled pistols that a gentleman, circa 1872, could keep tucked away in the small pocket of his waistcoat. Or he could keep it tucked away up his ass and barely feel a thing.
“Cassie, shit, what am I gonna do with this?” I said.
“The bullets are special,” she explained. “Believe me, you’re packing some serious firepower there.”
I looked at the tiny derringer. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. They pack a bigger punch than their appearance suggests.” She winked at me. “Kind of like someone else I know.”
“Shut up,” I said.
I put the pistol in my pocket and clapped my hands. “So,” I said. “Is there a game plan? What do we do when we get there?”
Cassie zipped a bulletproof vest clipped with Ice Grenades into a holding disc. (I knew that they were ice grenades because they had a little snowflake on the side.) “Ice and fire in combination,” she said briskly. “I’ve got a lot of ice weapons from Q, but you’re going to need to supply the fire.”
“Isn’t that a flamethrower over there?” I asked, pointing.
“It is. But I wanted you to feel included.”
“That’s harsh,” I said.
“Not as harsh as a fire-breathing centipede. Besides, I may actually need you on this one. I fought a Larva Mage once before and it was tough. But this time—with the two of us working together—it should be a cinch. Sort of.”
A few minutes later we were back in New York riding on my scooter toward the backdoor to Florence. Cassie said it was in Central Park. When we got there—a small public restroom—she didn’t waste any time unlocking the door and hopping back on the seat. We rode through it together, and then we were zipping down a narrow and crowded Italian street. We fit right in on the Vespa.
I didn’t get a chance to take in much of the city, but I did notice one thing. Florence had that permanently historic look to it, as if all the modern additions like paved streets and traffic lights were just a temporary nuisance to the original buildings of centuries past. It was
as if some guy traveled back in time to stick a STOP sign outside the drawbridge of a medieval castle.
It only took a few minutes to get to the Museo de Galileo with Cassie shouting directions in my ear. How did she always know where everything was? I could barely get around LA.
The building itself—from the outside at least—looked surprisingly unimpressive. It sat on the corner of a crowded intersection and looked like a brick cube with a few windows up top. Inside, however, was a different story. The lighting and décor was modern with a lot of high-tech display cases and security cameras. I—a man who has a slight weakness for museums—took a second to glance at some of the exhibits. The museum was basically about the birth of science, back when science was a steampunk paradise. Intricate contraptions of polished brass and carved wood lined the walls behind protective barriers, while bell jars housed lighted gases and rested on podiums. I couldn’t help but think: This was from a time when science was magic. They were literally the same thing. When did that change?
Cassie brought me back to reality with a tap on my shoulder. “Really interesting, huh?” she said.
“Sure is,” I said breathlessly.
“When we’re done, we’ll take a little stroll and look around.”
“Yeah, definit—oh. You’re joking.”
“I am.”
I refocused. “So where’s the Larva Mage?”
“Not sure. At least the museum is empty, though. I was worried there’d be people here.”
“The sign outside said it was closed for renovations.”
Cassie shook her head. “That was an illusion spell. I’m almost positive. The Larva Mage probably made it so he could be alone. They’re very solitary.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
She gave me a sideways look. “His face is made of worms. I doubt he’s very sociable.”
We moved deeper into the maze of exhibits. It really was a maze, too. Each room led into another until I felt totally turned around and had no idea where I was. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be too scary, but in this particular circumstance, I thought it best to remember the fastest way to the exit.
Cassie and I were both moving on tiptoes, ears straining for any sound, when I felt a tiny tap on my shoulder. I thought it was Cassie so I turned to her, but she was staring fixedly at something up ahead. My eyes naturally drifted downward and I flinched. A little curled up larva twisted around on my shoulder and then rolled off. Definitely not a good sign.
I turned to whisper to Cassie, but she held up a fist. It was the same gesture you see Special Forces guys do in the movies.
I felt another tap on my shoulder, and then another and another.
Now, in my defense, Cassie may very well have been doing the “holding up a fist” thing, but unless you’re a trained Navy SEAL, there’s no way you’re not going to jump—and possibly even squeal a little—when a bunch of maggots are falling on your head.
Cassie whipped around, just long enough to roll her eyes at me. When she looked forward again, she muttered, “shit,” and then whispered to me, pointing, “One of the centipedes is in the next room. It knows we’re here.”
I suddenly realized how crazy this whole thing was. (A bit late, right?) Up until now, it didn’t seem real. Even after everything I’d seen, the thought of giant, fire-breathing centipedes seemed far-fetched. Yet now, apparently, just such a centipede was about ten feet away on the other side of a thin, plasterboard wall.
“Make a fireball,” Cassie whispered, while flipping a grenade launcher out of a holding disc. “When I freeze it, hit it with fire. That’s what kills them.”
I made a Firebolt and got ready to throw it. It sparked and fizzled around my fingertips, and I knew from painful experience it would explode within a minute if I didn’t get rid of it. Cassie shouldered the grenade launcher and aimed toward the door. Then, in a blink, she screamed for me to get down and pushed me to the floor right as a ball of liquid flame shot over my head. I heard a couple low thumps followed by the tinkle of crackling glass. When I looked up, I saw that Cassie had hit a gigantic centipede twice and turned it into a gnarled statue of solid ice. And by “solid ice,” I literally mean ice, as in frozen water. That’s why the Firebolt could melt his ass. I got back to my feet and tossed it at him. Before long, he was a puddle. I stared until Cassie clapped me on the shoulder. “See?” she said. “Easy as pie. But now they know we’re here so we have to move.”
With that, she yanked me by the sleeve and took us back the way we came. Just above the doorway, the fireball that had missed my head was burning a large hole. The flame looked thick and viscous, dripping down in little clumps like lava. I could feel its heat as we passed underneath.
Cassie led the way through several more rooms until she halted abruptly and held up her fist again. “Three of them,” she whispered. “Plus larva dogs. Do you have any protection spells?”
“I have Force Bubble,” I said.
“Make it. And don’t do anything until I tell you. Even if it looks like I’m about to get eaten. I’ll be fine.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, and formed an Imago.
Cassie flashed me a girlish grin as she loaded two more grenades into the launcher. She then flipped out a flamethrower from another holding disc. “What I do best,” she said, and then launched herself into the next room. Frantically, I did the Canti for FB while screeches, explosions, and the roar of shooting flames erupted from the other side of the wall. I’d just formed the bubble when one of the centipedes surged through the door. It came right for me and a burst of flame issued from its mandibles. I held out a palm to shield my face, but the flame missed. The centipede itself shattered against the invisible barrier a split second later. Cassie had tagged him with an ice grenade. When I looked up, I saw her jump back into the other room to finish the rest.
It only took about thirty seconds. She reemerged with both weapons smoking heavily from the barrels. “That was intense,” she announced. “But we could use a couple fireballs. The flamethrower ran out of juice.”
I stood stunned for a moment until I found my voice. “Happy to help,” I said, and popped the Force Bubble. I felt a little embarrassed that I’d been hiding behind it.
After melting the remaining ice statues in the next room, we continued our quest deeper into the museum. The scariest part—for me at least—was going up the stairwell. It was narrow and dark, and I kept thinking that a centipede was going to drop on our heads at any moment. We searched each floor, and by the time we were done, Cassie had killed eight more centipedes and dozens of larva dogs—which weren’t actually dogs, but giant, fast-moving potato bugs the size of Dobermans. For some reason, they creeped me out even more than the centipedes.
When we got to the top floor, it was clear this was the place. We couldn’t see the Larva Mage yet, but his spawn were everywhere. And the weird part was that they didn’t attack us. There must have been a hundred centipedes crawling slowly along the walls and ceilings while countless larva dogs roamed the floors.
“Wow,” Cassie breathed. We were both standing still as statues. “This is a bit more than I was expecting.”
“This isn’t what happened last time?” I asked.
“Not even close,” she whispered.
“So what do we do?”
She paused a moment. I could tell she was debating whether or not to charge forward with a bunch of guns and just hope for the best. Finally, she frowned and said, “They’re all clustered together. If I lob a bunch of grenades I can freeze a dozen at a time.” She then paused again and did a little mental math. “Yeah,” she said. “I should have enough for that. Probably. You don’t know any ice spells, do you?”
“I looked them up once,” I said, “but they’ll all Level Five. Apparently ice is a lot tougher than fire.”
“Well at least you have the fire. Speaking of which, you’re gonna need to make a lot of it. I’m all out of flamethrowers.”
“I’ll do my best,�
�� I said.
“Okay. Are you ready?”
For some reason, I had a sudden flashback to when she asked me that same question last night. Same words. Very different context.
“Ready is my middle name,” I said before I could stop myself.
Cassie popped the pins on a couple grenades and looked at me.
“Okay, I’ll work on that,” I said.
“Good. Now on the count of three …”
She counted to two, and then charged into the room. It was the classic “on three” or “after three” blunder, but within a millisecond it didn’t matter anymore. The larva creatures came to sudden life and surged forward. They covered every surface making it look like the building itself was alive. Cassie put well-aimed grenades into the writhing mass while juking around screeching larva dogs like a football player.
I started hurling cantrip Firebolts as fast as I could. I thought I was doing great—making lots of ice puddles—until a large detachment of larva creatures forgot about Cassie and came for me instead. I didn’t have any way to freeze them, and as I learned, a Firebolt by itself did precisely nothing. I opened an Imago and quickly formed a Force Bubble. The next second, I was completely surrounded. The bugs couldn’t break through the barrier, but that didn’t stop them from dogpiling on top of me.
Now, in my experience, most insects tend to be at their very grossest from underneath. On top they might have a little carapace or something, but underneath they’re all wiggling little feelers and hairy legs and undulating sacks that are truly disgusting. It made me wish that the Force Bubble wasn’t so freaking transparent. The view was like something from a nightmare. I was covered in so many giant bugs that all the light was blocked out. I made a Firelight, but upon seeing all the insect bodies, I quickly got rid of it. I also threw a few more Firebolts at some of the exposed underbellies, and while I managed to singe a few legs, most of these guys had six or seven hundred more to spare.
I remained pinned for what felt like an eternity, although it was probably only a matter of seconds. My biggest problem—which had my heart pounding like a drum—was that the Force Bubble would wear out within a few minutes. As soon as it did, I was toast. My only hope was that Cassie was faring better than I was, and that she could throw a couple ice grenades onto my pile of centipedes.