Tales of the Once and Future King

by Anthony Marchetta

  “And that’s when it happened. There was this shriek… this horrifying, high-pitched scream. And that’s when I saw my dream. A huge black shadow rose up and followed us. As we fled they descended upon us. They clawed at our faces, ripped at our skin. Some of our men didn’t make it. I don’t know what happened to them. Those things only left when the sun started to rise. When it was all over, we had lost at least a third of our men, and half of the survivors were so terrified they were practically out of their mind.

  “I’m not proud of what happened next. Michael and I had a fight. I wanted to take our men and leave, get far away from Wales. Michael refused; he considered it a betrayal to his people to let someone like Morgan le Fey take over. But le Fey didn’t invade his dreams… well, as far as I knew. I couldn’t do it. I left and fled for Scotland, and that’s where Lance found me.”

  When the story was over, there was silence for a moment. Lance broke it. “So you’re saying…”

  “I’m saying that we’re fighting le Fey. And I’m saying that I don’t want to enter this city. I’m sorry. But I’ve had enough of the supernatural. I’ll cover you outside, but I’m not going in with you.”

  This was very unlike Gavin, who generally went wherever Lance went and never betrayed the slightest hint of fear. But after hearing him tell his story, Maddie thought she understood.

  “People have ever been surprised at the supernatural.” Maddie and the rest of the group jumped. Fox had shown up seemingly out of nowhere. “Even when it showed up in front of their faces.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Arresting Merlin, by Declan Finn

  “When you get to be two thousand years old, you won’t look half as good as I do,” the ten-year-old smart mouth informed me. He jerked his arm, still testing the handcuff keeping him to my desk.

  “Probably not, Yoda,” I muttered as I continued to tap out the arrest report on the word processor. Yes, a word processor. My station was high tech compared to the ones still using typewriters.

  The kid looked at me with cynicism. That was standard for most street kids, but this one had the additional air of “been there, done that.” He sat back with a disapproving look, like he was the adult awaiting an explanation from a child. This was undercut by his shaggy black hair and the fact that he was, you know, ten. Though the deep dark eyes were a little off putting.

  “I am not a measly nine hundred year old,” he objected. “Now, shall I continue with the report, or are you still busy fighting your contraption?”

  I glanced at the form to remember his name. “Listen, Mister Emerys—”

  “Merle will suffice.”

  “—these things have an order to them.”

  He grimaced. “Every time the gendarmes take me in, it feels like they’ve added another layer of bureaucracy.”

  My right eyebrow twitched. “You’ve been arrested before?”

  “Not since the 1940s. I think I preferred being beaten by truncheons to this. I’d be out by now.”

  Yes. Right. Of course. I double checked the date of birth and did some math. “By that point you would have been sixteen hundred and forty years old?” I asked casually.

  “Though technically I looked about fifteen at the time.”

  “I’m happy for you. I’m twenty-five, and I already feel like I’m pushing fifty.”

  “I can fix that for you,” the kid said. He eyed the handcuffs. “Once you unlock these shackles.”

  “I think not. I need your address.”

  “The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park,” he answered. “It was either that or Belvedere Castle in Central Park, but I’d rather be out of the way when I can.”

  “Sure, kid.” I tapped it out anyway. I’m a uniform, I don’t get paid to think. “I’d like to say that I’m shocked that I have to type up an assault charge for a child, but you’re my third this month. But did you have to attack the mayor with a lawn ornament?”

  “You have to use cold iron to dispatch a creature like him.”

  That one stopped me. “It could be worse. You could have used lead.” I patted the offending weapon, tightly wrapped in its evidence bag. “But did you have to use a wrought iron flamingo? That was embarrassing to carry into the station.”

  “How did you think I felt? It was the closest thing to hand.”

  I considered it and nodded. “Understood. Now, while I understand wanting to take a shot at everyone’s less-than-beloved mayor, did you have any particular motive for instigating the incident?”

  “It’s a compulsion,” he explained. “When I see a spawn of the fey, I have to beat it to death.”

  I nodded, completely understanding. If I lived in his delusion, I’d probably have considered doing in the mayor, too.

  Who was I kidding? Living in the real world made it look tempting.

  “You continue to insist that you have no guardians, caretakers or other adult who cares for you?”

  “Why would I need any? I age backwards. You can only imagine what my stock portfolio looks like when you remember the future.”

  I frowned. I was far more comfortable with the crazies who ranted, raved and screamed. They were easy to ignore. The quiet ones were creepy. They were so convinced of their worldview, they didn’t feel a need to convince you. It gave them a sort of charisma that drew you in, threatening to warp your own reality. But when it’s a kid that suffers from it, it adds an extra layer of creepy. It was like the original film for The Shining—really eerie, and it made no sense.

  “Could you take me to an isolation room, please?” he asked suddenly.

  “Really? Eager to be arrested properly? Perhaps testing out modern prisons?” It was a cheap shot, but it was just too easy to ignore.

  The kid looked at the clock. “They should be coming for me any time now.”

  It was apparently time to add paranoid delusions as well.

  I stood and gathered the paperwork on the arrest report. “The last thing I need today, kid, is for you to jerk me around. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to file your paperwork, and—”

  I looked from the papers to the kid. He was no longer cuffed to the desk, but had both hands in his lap, cuffed together. He had managed to unlock the cuffs, then recuffed himself.

  “Cute trick. Where did you learn that one? Harry Houdini?”

  “Nah. He used British cuffs,” the kid explained. “All he had to do was bang them on a solid surface, and he was clear. I was cuffed a lot during the sixties.” He shrugged. “The standard premise was to arrest everyone still standing.”

  “Right.” I sighed and shook my head. “You know what, kid? Fine. I’ll happily throw you into solitary.”

  “Thank you kindly, Officer Tinney,” he said as he hopped off the chair. He led the way, as though he knew where he was going already. “Bring the flamingo,” he said over his shoulder.

  I followed, making certain he wasn’t going to try to make a break for it.

  Sergeant Fuesting waved me down as I passed. “Hey, Glenn. You’ve got people coming for your VIP in a few minutes.”

  I collared my little perpetrator before he got away. “What do you mean?”

  “We have a couple of suits incoming. They say your perp here committed an act of terrorism when he took a swing at the mayor.”

  “What, they’re going to send him down to GITMO, Sarge?”

  Fuesting shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I just work here.”

  “Gotcha.”

  We went our separate ways, and the kid pulled me along with him as he charged for the isolation room. It was basically a windowless concrete box with a door that locked from the outside.

  I closed the door behind me, and the kid was already acting strange again. He fell at my feet, and used the edge of the cuffs to scratch at the floor inside the door. I was going to tell him to cut it out, but I didn’t feel like arguing. It wasn’t like he could dig his way out of the room.

  I sat back on the table in the center of the room. “You doing something in particular, or
do you just like carving into stone for fun?”

  The kid ignored me for a moment as he scratched away. When he did speak, he didn’t even look at me. “I’m making a sigil in the floor. Tell me you know what that is, right? Maybe call it a rune if you play those sorts of games?”

  I crossed my arms, waiting for this to go somewhere. “It’s supposed to be a magic symbol of some sort. It does something.”

  “Right. I can’t draw on as much magic at one sitting anymore, not in this body.” He scrapped at the floor with his cuffs faster now. “So I have to use a rune, charge it with my magic, and then trigger it. It’s why I didn’t bother with using it to blow up the mayor’s limo—fire also works, after all.”

  I nodded slowly and seriously. Good. If he was going to be using something from his delusion as a weapon—and not taking the flamingo in hand—then maybe he can be brought around after nothing happens.

  “I don’t have much time to explain,” the kid continued. “My name isn’t Merle Emerys. It’s Merlin Emerys. I really am over fifteen hundred years old. I’ve just been aging backwards since the time of King Arthur. I slept from Arthur’s time until just before the mid 1700s. Since then, I’ve been using my time to wipe monstrosities from the face of the Earth. They seem to have been taking over the place since magic users generally went out of the world.”

  “Uh huh. And where exactly do you get this magic from?”

  The kid gave me a dirty look. “Are you stupid? Magic comes from either God or from Satan. Anyone who tries to tell you different is smoking something. Even the nature worshippers should figure out that nature magic uses the power of creation. The short version is that magic is not sufficiently advanced technology, but more like sufficiently advanced biology.”

  “Uh huh. And what exactly are you doing the rune for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I’m trying to prevent this from looking like the police station shootout from The Terminator. The ‘suits’ your sergeant referred to are almost certainly fae minions coming for my head.”

  “If that’s the case, I’d just shoot them.” I made certain to be calm, and keep the sarcasm out of my voice. It was meant to be reassuring.

  The kid laughed at me. “Please. If it were that easy, I wouldn’t be worried. You’re not using iron bullets. Even steel would be better.”

  “Right, of course. How could I have forgotten?” I had to admit, the kid was up on his mythology. I briefly wondered if D&D was played…wherever he was from.

  “Because you’re not dealing with it on a regular basis like I am,” he said, answering my question. He brushed away at his scratching, then nodded, happy with his work. He placed his hand on it, muttered some Latin, ending with an “amen,” then backed away.

  “They’re almost here,” he told me as he circled the table. “Back up. I may have overcharged it.”

  I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to be bothered, but humoring him seemed like the better option. I stood next to him, and he kicked the table over, keeping the top between us and the door.

  The door opened. All I caught was the image of two men in FBI chic before the first man stepped over the rune.

  Blue flames shot from the rune, engulfing both of them. They didn’t even have time to scream before the flames consumed them, burning them both to ash.

  I took an involuntary step back and undid the gun strap on my sidearm.

  “Yes, I know,” the kid said. “Impressive.”

  I blinked. The door was open. I had locked it. I knew I had locked it. So someone had to have opened it. Someone had been there. The only thing left of that someone was a blackened rune on the floor. And it hadn’t been black thirty seconds ago.

  I only had three possible conclusions. Either I was dreaming, I was insane, or this was actually Merlin. The best outcome would have been a dream, but I was certain I was awake. If I was insane, I was probably already done for as a cop. And if everything was true…

  My eyes were locked on the blackened rune and the open door when I asked, “How many more should we expect?”

  “Four. They travel in packs of six.”

  Just like the mayor’s security team, I thought. “You said iron or steel, right?”

  He nodded. “Steel’s just an iron alloy. Why?”

  “I’m either accepting reality, playing along with the most lucid dream ever, or just embracing the madness.”

  Merlin pressed my handcuffs into my empty palm. “Glad to have you aboard, Officer Tinney.”

  I pocketed the cuffs without thinking about it, and strode through the open door. “How much time do we have?”

  “They’ll have sensed the rune detonation,” he said quickly, just keeping pace. He brought the flamingo with him, and was already pulling it out of the evidence bag. “They won’t waste any time.”

  I stopped just short of the bull pen. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have in front of the guys. “Will they engage the entire station?”

  “They’ve wanted my head since the French revolution—and yes, pun intended—a small precinct like this? They wouldn’t think about it.”

  “Stay here, then.”

  The front desk to our precinct was a narrow table with an Apple II computer on it. I was already at it when the next of the fae came through the door. In fact, it looked like they were cut from the same cookie mold. Did they get glamour on the cheap if they came as a set?

  I reached under the desk just as the first one asked, “Excuse me, I’m looking for a child brought in? He attacked the mayor? Two of our agents came in already. They should be with the suspect now?”

  I smiled and nodded. I was the perfect patsy. Of course, you’re FBI agents, they also get their agents from a cookie cutter. I waved them past me. I was just waiting for all three of them to walk by.

  Either the last one was in the car, keeping the engine going, or he’s in the back of the station, expecting us to make a run for it.

  The lead “agent” reached the hallway at the back of the bull pen, and before he could ask which way to turn, Merlin stabbed out. The spike made to keep the flamingo in the ground rammed the leader in the chest, coming out his back. There were little blue flames coming out that marked where the spike exited his body.

  The next two fae weren’t stupid. Either they concluded that this was a trap, and they were about to buy it, or their comrade was about to go up in flames in front of everybody and they didn’t want any witnesses left behind. They were also fast. In a split second, they drew compact automatic weapons from inside their jackets. They were dual-wielding Uzi submachineguns.

  The fae nearest Merlin was already being consumed by the flames that spread from the stab wound. I didn’t know if it was an allergic reaction they had to iron, or if it was the release of magic from within them. The only thing I knew is that, in my precinct, my desk sergeant kept a pump action shotgun under the front desk, and it was loaded with steel shot.

  That’s when I swung the shotgun I had taken from under the desk up to my hip and racked the pump. The one nearest to me didn’t even have a chance to turn around when I blew a hole into the small of his back with the first blast.

  I pumped the shotgun again as both fae went up in a column of blue fire. I leaned to one side and fired around my first kill to get to the third fae. He had just enough time to see me before his face became a mask of flame.

  Every cop in the precinct drew down by now, but held their fire. If you were suddenly confronted by men who immolated like they were made out of sterno, you’d hesitate, too.

  I lowered the shotgun, lest my colleagues chose to take the “last man standing” approach to law enforcement (“When in doubt, arrest whoever’s standing”), and strode for the back hall. I hung a left, and Merlin followed me. He carried the wrought iron pink flamingo by its neck. The spike seemed to be gone, melted off by the fire.

  “Nicely played,” he complimented me.

  “Thanks. Now let’s get you out of here before they come out of shock and decide to
ask questions. The last thing I need right now is to answer any.”

  “Imagine doing that for a few centuries, you’ll have a sample of my biography since I’ve woken up.”

  As we reached the back door, it was kicked in. I could barely tell that it was one of the carbon copy fae before I was looking down the barrel of his Uzi.

  Merlin acted before I could, and threw the flamingo into the face of the oncoming enemy. It bought me enough time to drop to one knee and fire into the fae’s chest—twice, just to be sure.

  “Well done. I might keep you,” Merlin complimented.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  We got to my patrol car a few minutes later, and we were off and on the road. “So, do you generally do this?” I asked. “Hunt down the fae and try not to get killed?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t see anyone else doing it. Even with my abilities limited by my…condition…I can’t just sit by and let these schmucks just have free reign over the world. Trust me, the Terror of the French Revolution was just a small sample of what the evil things of the world will do when they run around unchecked.”

  “The fae were behind that?” I asked.

  “No. Vampires. That’s why you had French citizens run up to freshly beheaded corpses and soak up the blood with bread. Trust me, I wish I had been on that side of the world at the time. I was busy checking out this side of the Atlantic. It would have been uglier had I not gotten there.”

  I chuckled. “Great. You’re a supernatural cop.”

  Merlin slumped down in the passenger seat. “Only I don’t have to be bothered with the paperwork.” He sounded tired all of a sudden. I would think that he’d have more energy, given that he was physically prepubescent.

  I told him this. He said, “It ain’t the years, son. It’s the mileage.”

  I must admit, not even the kids I’ve arrested have sounded anywhere near that world weary. “Can’t you just give up the magic? Die of natural causes?”

  Merlin scoffed. “Please. And leave the world defenseless? Never. I’ve an obligation.”