by John Levitt
I whipped out swirls of energy like spider silk, weaving them into a pattern and looping them around the faux men. Real surprise now registered on the face of the one in front of me, but it didn’t last long. In five seconds flat, both of them were trussed up in tight energy cocoons as neatly as a June bug in a web. That should hold them at least a couple of hours, and luckily for them, there was no giant spider awaiting lunchtime.
Unluckily for me, I wasn’t as effective as a giant spider. The cocoons I’d fashioned started deteriorating rapidly, huge rents appearing even as I watched. One of the guys already had an arm halfway out, and they’d both be free in seconds.
Campbell had already gone over to where Lou was pawing at the noose. Slipping her fingers under the loop, she worked it over his head. Before I could stop him he bolted, flinging himself at the nearest of his captors. It wasn’t going to do him any good; if he tried to bite the thing his teeth would break on its rock-hard flesh.
Wrong again. I’ve been with Lou for years, but I still sometimes forget he’s not a dog. I had bruised my hand on the thing’s flesh, but Lou’s Ifrit teeth sank into its calf like it was a rare lamb chop. No wonder they’d taken such precautions removing him from the cage. Lou caught him right under the kneecap and began whipping his head side to side as if trying to rip out a chunk of meat. The creature screamed something in a language I didn’t recognize, but I had a suspicion it was a bad word. It was still partially tangled up in my web, so all it could do for the moment was to hop up and down and yell.
The other one had already freed itself. It bounded over and grabbed me by the arm. It wasn’t as strong as the Gaki, not even close, but it was still stronger than I was. Its mineral-hard flesh as well as its strength gave it an advantage, but that crystalline hardness might also be a weakness. I glanced up and layered the corners of the ceiling with a reflective sheen.
“Scream,” I said to Campbell. “As high and as loud as you can.”
She didn’t ask why, bless her. She opened her mouth and let out a creditable imitation of a woman in a slasher film. I amplified the sound, bounced it off the ceiling, reinforced the harmonics, and directed it through the room. It vibrated strongly, reinforcing itself with every circuit. The sound knifed through my skull and hurt my ears, and Lou, with his more sensitive hearing, flinched and let go of the leg he was chewing.
I was hoping the sound would have an even more profound effect on the crystalline aspects of creatures not entirely flesh and bone. Maybe their heads would explode like a wineglass faced with an opera singer. Nothing that dramatic occurred, but the one holding me did drop my arm and sank to its knees, while the other staggered and put its hands up to its head. Then they both lurched over to the door at the back, staggered through, and slammed it behind them.
As soon as they’d gone, Lou darted to the nearest cage and started trying to get his teeth around the knob of the top bolt, pausing to utter a hoarse bark in my direction.
“Yeah, like I’m just going to leave everyone else here,” I muttered.
I moved quickly from cage to cage, sliding back bolts and opening doors. Each time, the Ifrit inside scrambled out, stopped a moment to stare into my eyes as if to fix me in memory, and disappeared through the tunnel which led to freedom.
I kept glancing over at the back door, expecting the imminent return of the captors, this time with help. We couldn’t have much time left. I jerked my head toward the front door, telling Lou it was time to get the hell out of here. He ignored me, running to the very back of the room, darting in and out of corners, searching. He stopped in front of a cage in the far corner which had been covered over with a stiff blue tarp, got one corner between his teeth, and started pulling.
I backed him off, untied the rope that was holding the cover in place, and pulled it off. Inside, curled up with her back toward us, was an Ifrit dog I immediately recognized as Moxie. So she hadn’t abandoned Sandra after all, any more than Lou had abandoned me. She looked bad. She was horribly thin and her coat was filthy and matted. She whimpered softly as I undid the iron bolts and swung open the cage door.
I reached in and picked her up. As I swung her around to face me, she turned her head to look at me and I nearly dropped her. Instead of the bright and sparkling eyes I remembered, there were only empty and ragged sockets crusted over with dried blood.
Fourteen
At first, when you worry at a question every day, you think about it all the time. Eventually it recedes into your subconscious. And there, deep down in your mind, it lurks. Then, when you least expect it, there comes a blinding and horrific moment of revelation. Everything becomes clear. There is no logic involved, no clever and rational unraveling of mystery. You just know, instantly, with the certitude of faith.
Those precious stones, beautiful and mysterious. Sparkling gems of brilliance and light, bright and shining and magical. Like the deep and liquid eyes of an Ifrit.
I don’t know how or where Christoph had learned to transform Ifrit eyes into jewels. Maybe from those crystalline creatures guarding the lab. I flashed back to my time in the singularity, where I’d found one of the stones. Bones. Small bones crunching under my feet. Ifrit bones and an Ifrit eye. Maybe it had escaped, slipping through dimensions as Ifrits do, before dying far from home. Maybe the singularity was where Christoph transformed the eyes. Maybe the Ifrits had to be alive for it to work; that’s why they were in cages. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the act itself: sick, greedy, dark, and vile beyond comprehension.
And the attacks on me? Of course I had assumed they were about me, but they weren’t, not really. Christoph had told me as much at my house, but I hadn’t listened. I was just in the way. Once I was gone, whether dead or lost, an unprotected Lou would be vulnerable, another grotesque source of riches for him.
Moxie had been easy pickings. Sandra couldn’t protect her; she could barely take care of herself. I was a problem though. Lou was almost always with me, and even if Christoph managed to snatch him up, he’d face me eventually. Sooner or later I’d connect the dots, I’d come after him, and I wouldn’t quit until one of us was dead. But that was before. Now he was strong enough that he no longer cared what I did.
Not that I’d done anything. When Lou went missing I moped around the house for a week, oblivious to the real situation. That idiocy had almost cost Lou his eyes. If Victor and Eli hadn’t been on Christoph’s tail, distracting him by working day and night to find him, I would have got here too late.
At least Campbell was along; in this situation she was going to be more help than I would. I set Moxie down and tried to examine her wounds, but Lou interposed his body and when I reached for Moxie again, he growled and bared his teeth. I was so astonished that I took a backward step. He gave me another warning growl, then turned to her and sniffed over every inch of her body. Finally, he licked her gently on the muzzle. She thumped her tail briefly, then bowed her head in assent. In a flash he seized her by the back of the neck, crunched down with those surprisingly powerful jaws, and twisted sharply. There was an audible cracking and Moxie’s legs jerked once, then she went limp. She fell over soundlessly and lay there, splayed out on the floor like a curly brown dog doll. Lou looked up at me with a combination of guilt and defiance as if he’d been caught doing something secret and shameful, something no practitioner should ever see. This was Ifrit business he was telling me, as clearly as if he could speak.
I heard Campbell’s sharp intake of breath, but before she could say anything I took her arm and pulled her toward the door. The lab guards could be returning any minute and we needed to get out while we still could. Now was not the proper time to discuss what had just happened. I’m not sure there was ever going to be a proper time.
We headed toward the opening in the wall, Campbell one step ahead, Lou on my heels. Out the door, through the tunnel, back along the path. Partway down, Lou stopped. I peered through the fog and rain and darkness. Farther down, half-hidden by the swirling mist, stood the dim outl
ine of a figure. Lou started up with a hoarse growl—not his warning growl, but the one he uses when he’s seriously angry. Campbell grabbed at me.
“What is that?” she asked, nervously. “I can’t make it out.”
I couldn’t either, but clearly Lou could. His eyesight is far better than mine, especially in low light or darkness. Since it’s never a great idea to blithely approach something unknown and scary lurking in the dark, I needed to utilize some talent. It would have taken a couple of minutes at least to fashion a vision-enhancing spell, but luckily I didn’t need to. One of my occasionally useful skills is the ability to see through Lou’s eyes when he’s next to me, to see whatever it is that he’s seeing. It’s not something I attempt often, since whenever I do the resulting dislocation leaves me dizzy and nauseous and produces a splitting headache which lasts for hours. Not an ideal state to be in during a crisis. It’s much like viewing on the psychic plane, but even harder on your body and mind.
I gritted my teeth and did the mental leap that puts me behind Lou’s eyes. Instantly the dark landscape jumped into focus. It was like wearing infrared night goggles except for the hint of color that remained even in darkness. I staggered, fighting the usual urge to throw up, and tried to concentrate on what he was seeing.
The dim figure resolved itself into our middle-aged Asian Park Service guy. Except it wasn’t. The first time I had looked at him I hadn’t really seen him. I’d seen only a clever optical illusion, like the goblet that becomes two faces when you stare at it long enough. Its face was all angles and planes, crystalline, like a multifaceted gemstone. Like the Ifrit eyes. It glittered as it turned its head to look directly at me. What I had seen before as steel-rimmed glasses was in truth a shelflike projection over the eyes, maybe for protection. There was something insectile about it but also something of the inanimate. Where had Christoph found these things? It was actually quite beautiful in a weird way. And dangerous, I was sure. I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought it was human. I couldn’t believe it had fooled me so easily. I was a sorry excuse for a practitioner.
Before I could take note of anything that might prove useful, my vision blurred and I felt the nauseating dislocation that meant Lou was on the move. I tore my consciousness back to my own eyes as he took off down the path toward the motionless figure. He ran forward at top speed, deadly silent, and I could feel waves of hatred emanating from him.
“Lou! Louie!” I shouted, staggering, trying to regain my equilibrium. “Get back here!”
No use. I doubt he even heard me. When he was about twenty feet from the thing, two more figures rose up menacingly from where they had been crouching unseen at the edge of the trail. Lou did a sudden one-eighty, spinning so quickly he almost lost his balance and tumbled over. Two seconds later he was sprinting back toward us as fast as he had been charging away. Out of control he might have been, but he still retained enough sense to realize the odds had just shifted dramatically. He scurried up to where we were standing and ducked behind me, peering around my legs. Obviously I was supposed to protect him. Wonderful. Who was going to protect me? The stunt I’d pulled back in the cage room had taken most of my reserve, and now there were three of them and this time they would be prepared.
I didn’t have much interest in proceeding down the path toward those three, but I didn’t like the thought of retreating back through that dark passageway behind us, either. That option became moot when I glanced over my shoulder and saw four more figures emerging from the tunnel behind us. It hadn’t taken the ones from the lab long to secure help. Excellent. Creatures in front, creatures in back, steep drop-off on one side, steep cliff face on the other. All that was needed to make things perfect would be for Christoph to rise up out of the fog. The figures in front started moving slowly up the path toward us, gliding soundlessly. Campbell instinctively crowded closer.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “Shouldn’t you cast another spell or something?”
I didn’t care for it myself. I can handle most things. A bunch of thugs out to cause trouble? Not a problem. Supernatural creatures powerful enough to shield their true natures and kidnap Ifrits? Maybe a touch more difficult. The high-frequency trick wasn’t going to work again; without an enclosed area the sound would dissipate up into the night sky.
I bent over and picked up some moist earth from the side of the trail, wove in some fog to give it some substance, drew some sap from a stunted evergreen tree, and cast it down the path toward them. It was a weak spell, a sticky that wouldn’t slow anything down for long, but I didn’t have energy to waste and I wanted to see what effect it might have. I wasn’t too sanguine—my previous experience with the Gaki had shaken my magical confidence and the web spell hadn’t held them long. Sure enough, they hesitated, then glided right through more annoyed by it than hindered.
I’d like to think I would have come up with something else, but it might well have been one of those stories that ends “…and then the bear ate me.” Luckily, the cavalry arrived. As our erstwhile Park Service guy moved forward, one of the freed Ifrits, a large ginger cat, launched itself out of the fog and landed on the back of its neck. I don’t know if you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to have a seriously pissed cat wrap itself around your head, all teeth and claws and feline screams, but it’s enough to give anyone pause, even a being of unknown powers. And of course, being an Ifrit, it was able to affect him.
The ginger cat was tearing viciously at him, doing a bang-up job. The guy screamed as loudly as the cat, staggered sideways, and reached up to grab at it. I started running toward them. Once he got his hands on our Ifrit friend, it would be all over. But as he reached up, another cat appeared from the opposite side and leapt up onto his arm, grabbing his attention. Three seconds later I had arrived, running at full speed, and as I came up on the creature both Ifrits jumped off as if they had been scalded by hot water.
I didn’t want to close with this guy, or thing, or whatever it was. It was surely stronger than I was, not to mention that it consisted of material impervious to me. My aching hand was a reminder of that. It was, however, standing on the edge of a path with a steep drop-off down to a rock-strewn cove. I put my shoulder down and hit it midway between shoulder and hip. It made a gratifying oof sound and went flying over the edge.
When you see football players on TV it looks easy, but the reality is considerably different. The shock of the hit numbed my entire right side and my momentum almost carried me over the edge after it. Campbell, three steps behind me, reached out and pulled me back to safety. I spun back to face the other two figures but they were already fully occupied. Every Ifrit who had been in a cage was now clawing and snapping at them: the cats, the pine marten, and something else that I couldn’t identify. Lou, who now that he had allies was emboldened enough to sink his teeth into any loose appendage he could find, was venting his outrage. The snarling, hissing, and screeching, all muffled by the thickening rain and fog, created a surreal soundtrack to a surreal scene. Then, the faint pounding of approaching feet warned me that the creatures who had been behind us were coming up to join in the fray. I briefly considered the discretion/valor thing.
“Go! Go! Let’s go!” I shouted, and took off down the path. The Ifrits got the message and skittered past me, disappearing into the dark.
We were breathing hard, running full speed as we slipped around the gate and approached the safety of the van. The two illusory figures I’d set up were still going at it, but their motions were jerky and disconnected and they were beginning to tile like a television program with a weak digital signal. I flung open the van door, and Campbell let out a high-pitched shriek when she saw who was sitting in the driver’s seat. Or maybe that was me who shrieked. It’s hard to remember.
Christoph. Who else? I don’t expect things to ever be easy, but why do they always have to be so difficult? He didn’t have the fangs or glowing eyes, but he was almost frothing at the mouth. He managed to choke out a few strangled words past clenched teeth.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he screamed. His psychosis was leaking out before our eyes. “Do you know how long it takes to gather that many Ifrits? I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
I started to make a sarcastic comment about that being exactly what he’d been trying to do for quite a while now, but he made a quick gesture and my throat seized up.
“Shut up!” he shouted, beside himself. “Shut up!”
Since I often relied on talking my way out of situations, not being able to speak was a serious drawback. He raised his hand again but before he could act I grabbed at Campbell and took off through the bushes. Lou seemed to have regained his senses, since he was already well out in front of us. Behind us I could hear Christoph scream out some incantation, and a moment later the perpetual drizzle of rain started heating up. It felt like we were now running through a warm shower and I guessed before long the water falling from the sky would be literally boiling. Being scalded to death is not a good way to go. Not that there are too many good ways.
I could only protect us for so long and I didn’t have enough power left to reverse Christoph’s spell, so instead I enhanced it. I focused twenty feet overhead and poured a small amount of additional energy into the massive power he’d sent surging through the sky. It was just enough to tip the temperature balance. The rain heated up even more and then turned into a supercharged virga, evaporating before it ever reached the ground. I may not be all that bright, but I am clever.
Clever wasn’t going to help us much when he found us, though. Even without Lou, I was sure Christoph could see through darkness, or even light up the entire area if he wanted to. I bent down and grabbed Lou by the scruff with one hand and kept hold of Campbell with the other. I formed images of the three of us, but these needed to be a lot more convincing than the blurry figures I’d earlier placed in the van.
“Brace yourself,” I said to Campbell. Lou flinched in anticipation. He knew what was coming, but it had to be done if it was going to fool Christoph. I dug a tiny piece of essence out of each of us. It hurt. Lou yelped sharply and Campbell added a couple of choice words. I wove the essence into the duplicates and sent them running back up the hill, crashing noisily through the scrub.