Science and Sorcery

by Christopher Nuttall

  Calvin felt his heartbeat racing as he stared at her, feeling lust and desire burning their way through his mind. It was suddenly very hard to think clearly as Marie twisted, exposing her upper thigh and the lower half of her bum to his gaze. The blood in his brain washed elsewhere, just before she moved again and her nightgown slipped, exposing a nipple. Calvin lost concentration completely and felt the spell dissolve into nothingness. The water in the sink was steaming slightly, hot enough to scald someone if they plunged a hand into it, but otherwise there were no signs of what he had done. No one would ever know what he had done.

  Carefully, he pulled out the plug and allowed the water to drain, before creeping back to his bedroom and climbing into bed. The tiredness had returned in force, urging him to sleep, even though visions of Marie’s body were dancing in front of his eyes. It was easy to believe that the jocks had seen more of her, but he found it hard to care. There would be time enough for exploring the rest of her body later.

  Smiling, he drifted off to sleep. There were the other spells he wanted to try, including some that promised to be even more fun. Who knew what would happen in the morning?

  Chapter Seven

  Washington DC, USA

  Day 6

  Golem looked down at his notes, feeling something he suspected was akin to human frustration. Four days of research in a public library had answered some of his questions, but the answers had somehow opened up more questions. At least he’d been able to charm the librarians into leaving him alone, allowing him to remain in the library overnight. Unlike a human, Golem didn't need to sleep, any more than he needed light to read books.

  Two of the librarians were also researchers, or so they’d explained, and it had been simplicity itself to convince one of them to assist him. The other had a trace of magic, enough that Golem had decided to keep his own magic quiet around him, even though he suspected that the librarian didn't have the slightest idea of what he could do. There was so little magic in this world...no, he corrected himself, there had been so little magic in this world. Right now, all the reports his researcher had found for him in local newspapers – and something called the internet – suggested that the magic was definitely coming back.

  It was odd that werewolves had been the first to discover what their ancestors had been, thousands of years ago. Golem actually suspected that the modern world had a mental block when it came to considering magic, judging from the tone of the first news reports; it was quite possible that magic had been coming back for some time, only to be ignored until it became impossible to avoid. Some reports actually suggested accidental magic, including a vague report of three kids being burned to death at a school. This society didn't think to test its children for magic at an early age, nor did it segregate mundane children from those with magical talents until the latter had learned control. Someone – accidentally or otherwise – had managed to trigger a spell and killed three children. It wasn't the only unexplained death over the last two weeks.

  The real question was what, exactly, should he do. Enchanter hadn't given him very specific instructions, pointing out that the world might be very different and any instructions might become invalid. The only real order Golem had been given had been to protect the world against the Thirteen, an impossible task unless he received help from other magicians. Human magicians, those with the ingenuity to do more than recite spells by rote. Enchanter had bent or broken a great many rules when he’d created Golem, but he hadn't given him a human soul, or a spellcasting ability equal to a trained human mage. In hindsight, that might have been a mistake.

  It was clear that the locals didn't have the slightest idea of what was actually going on. The news reports on politics made that clear, even though the news appeared to be hideously slanted one way or the other. Golem had read an article attacking the President and praising one of his political opponents, and then another article that did the exact opposite. It made no sense to have a system which seemed to work by throwing mud at the other side in the hope that something would stick. Maybe a human could have understood it, but Golem found it strange and unworkable. And then there was the endless series of political codewords, none of which made any sense at all. Why didn't they just say what they meant?

  He’d have to talk to the local government, but to whom? Back when he’d been created, anyone could go petition the local king for an audience, yet it didn't seem as if the President allowed visitors from the common folk. Golem suspected that he could break into the White House, but there were so many technological surprises in place of the familiar wards that he doubted he could do it undetected. Enchanter had designed him to be indestructible, yet Enchanter had never dreamed of machine guns, laser beams or flying objects that flew under their own power. No, he would have to find someone else to talk to, and quickly. Matters were already getting out of hand.

  A final possibility had occurred to him, one that bothered him more than he wanted to admit. His time had had almost no technology; magic had handled almost everything. But...what would happen if science and magic started to collide? It was easy to imagine spells that would damage technology; indeed, it was possible that the presence of mana had been deterring the development of science. What would happen now that the mana was flowing back into the world?

  He stood up, picking up his notes and stuffing them into a bag he’d taken off a thug who had tried to rob him. Any footpad from back home would have known better than to try to steal something from a clay-man, but these footpads didn't even have the ability to sense magic, let alone the glamour that hid Golem’s true face from watching humans. He’d snapped the man’s legs and stolen everything in his pockets, along with his bag and coat. No doubt he would learn a few lessons as he crawled to hospital. The healers here seemed to be far more capable than non-magical healers had been back home.

  One report had attracted him, so much that he’d read it time and time again. A policeman, armed with one of the strange guns, had killed a werewolf. And that should have been impossible; werewolves could be killed by silver and fire and beheading, but not tiny slugs of metal. Unless, of course...lycanthropy wasn't the only magical condition that might have been passed down from the era of magic to the return of mana. It was just possible...

  With a new objective in mind, Golem strode out of the library and headed towards the river. There were some spells he had to cast, and then he'd know where to look for the policeman. And if he was lucky, he would have his first ally.

  ***

  “Charming place,” Matt muttered. He’d never been on a military base before, even when he’d arrested soldiers who had been caught drinking themselves into a stupor, or fighting with protesters who thought that the team ‘peaceful protest’ included throwing insults, stones or even brandishing live weapons. “Do you really think we can do some good here?”

  “I very much hope so,” Caitlyn said. She sounded on edge too, as if there was something wrong about the building. But then, Matt had never liked hospitals of any sort, even when he’d been escorting wounded arrestees to be treated before taking them back to jail. “My boss had to call in a few favours to convince the hospital director to allow us to experiment here.”

  She grinned over at Kaleen, who looked back at her nervously. Matt wouldn't have taken her for an EMT if he’d met her in the streets; she looked barely sixteen, with long dark hair that framed a brown face and a rather shy smile. But she was a qualified doctor who had been working in an emergency department when she’d discovered that she could heal the sick simply by laying hands on their wounds. She’d reported her powers, proved them to a whole series of sceptical doctors, and then found herself forwarded into Caitlyn’s care. Matt was mildly surprised that she hadn’t been scooped up by one of the hospitals in Washington, perhaps the one that handled the President, but perhaps they were still doubtful of the long-term effects of her treatment.

  “Welcome,” a voice said. Matt had expected a military doctor to be in uniform, but he wore a white c
oat over a white shirt and trousers. The only thing about him that suggested the military was the ID badge he wore on his coat. “I am Doctor Hamish Watson. Is this the young girl you mentioned?”

  “Yes,” Caitlyn said briskly, as Kaleen shrank away from Watson. “I understand that you have patients who need treatment?”

  “Right this way,” Watson said. He led them down a long white corridor and into a small office. “You do understand that whatever happens here cannot be discussed outside the building without my permission?”

  “I understand,” Caitlyn said. “I’ll copy you into my report and you can edit it, if there’s anything classified inside the paper.”

  Matt had a different question. “What made you so eager to invite Miss Patel here?”

  Watson studied him for a long moment. “There was an...incident at a nearby military base,” he said, finally. “We have four men who were wounded, one quite badly. I heard about Miss Patel and thought that she might be able to help them.”

  He opened a second door and led them into a small ward. The first patient was lying on his side, one leg covered in bandages. A pair of attractive nurses were feeding him from a bowl of mush, something that he didn't seem to like at all. Matt caught his flat stare and knew, instinctively, that this was a very dangerous man. Kaleen seemed to recoil away from him before plucking up her courage and stumbling forward until she was standing by the side of his bed.

  “Training accident,” the soldier grumbled. “Some REMF faggot managed to fuck up his gun and put four bullets through my leg. I’ll kill him when I get out of here.”

  “Try to heal him,” Watson said. “His grumblings are driving everyone else insane.”

  The soldier actually grinned. “I try, sir,” he said, mischievously. “But I guess I’ll never play football again.”

  Kaleen ignored him, her fingers touching the bare skin beside the cast. “We’ll have to take it off,” she said, bluntly. Matt watched in some amusement as the shy persona was pushed aside, replaced by someone who could remove a cast without difficult. The soldier sucked in his breath as she exposed the flesh underneath, and then pressed down on it with her fingers. A tingle ran down Matt’s spine as he sensed...something flowing around Kaleen, reaching down into the wound and slowly healing it. The soldier let out a gasp as his leg twitched once, and then started coughing. Kaleen stepped back and admired her handiwork.

  “Try to stand up,” she ordered, holding out a hand to help him to rise. The soldier tottered slightly, but otherwise remained upright. Doctor Watson was staring at Kaleen in absolute disbelief, as if he hadn't really believed the reports when he’d read them. “And I...”

  Kaleen staggered, slightly. Matt caught her before she could hit the ground, while Caitlyn produced a chocolate bar from her handbag and passed it to Kaleen. The experiments had proven beyond all doubt that whatever Kaleen did – they’d started to call it healing, for want of a better word – cost her energy. No one was quite sure how her talent worked, but no one could deny that it did work. And who knew what else might be just waiting to be discovered?

  “The next patient was wounded in an IED explosion in Afghanistan,” Watson said, when Kaleen had finished the chocolate bar. “We patched him back together, but there are wounds and scars that we cannot deal with quickly. I thought that you might like to try.”

  The next healing went as simply as the first healing, although it was clear that it cost Kaleen plenty of energy to heal two people so quickly. Watson insisted on running a few tests, including x-rays, only to discover that pieces of shrapnel that had lodged themselves inside the IED victim’s body had disappeared. There was no clear sign of where they’d gone, but they certainly didn't seem to be life-threatening any longer. The third soldier had lost an arm completely, thanks to a terrorist sniper in Afghanistan, and had been waiting for an artificial replacement. Kaleen started to heal him, but then collapsed on top of his chest and had to be rushed to a bed herself. Matt couldn't help wondering if they’d overstrained her before Doctor Watson pronounced that she’d simply depleted her body’s natural reserves of energy too far. All she needed was rest and an IV containing an energy solution.

  Leaving Caitlyn to take care of Kaleen, Matt wandered forward, guided by an instinct he didn’t fully understand. The military hospital had dozens of tiny rooms, each one holding one or two patients, but his senses led him unerringly to the last room in the corridor. Peeking inside, he saw a middle-aged man reading a paperback book with a picture of a young lady wearing Victorian dress on the front. Oddly, there were airships flying through the sky behind her.

  “Come on in,” the man called. Matt couldn't see any wounds on him, but he guessed they were probably covered by the hospital robe. “Did you bring me any smokes, or booze?”

  “No,” Matt said. The sense of wrongness was growing stronger. “I’m just visiting the hospital.”

  “No one brings me anything,” the man bemoaned, with a sly smile. He held out a hand and Matt shook it, gravely. “Specialist Joseph Buckley, 3rd ID. I go to Iraq and don’t get scratched; I go to Fort Hood and get bitten on the bum by a oversized mutt some idiot brought into camp. And then they insist that I get sent up here for observation. I think the CO must have realised that I was buggering his daughter on the side. What did you do to get sent up here?”

  “Matt Coombs, NYPD,” Matt said. He found himself liking Buckley, yet he couldn't banish the sense that something was badly wrong. “What exactly happened to you?”

  “I thought this was Washington,” Buckley said. “I refuse to go to New York on moral grounds and because of several outstanding warrants..oh, I shouldn't have told you that, should I?”

  He laughed. “Butt Monkey – that’s my tank – needed some servicing,” he added. “We’re meant to be exercising against the jarheads in a couple of weeks and the CO insisted that everything had to be perfect, or the Marines would kick our asses, so we were checking and rechecking everything. I was bent over and fiddling with the tank when something bites my bum and won’t let go, so I scream like a little girl and look behind me. There’s a fucking great black dog there with eyes like burning embers and it won’t let go. My partner smacks it with a wrench and the dog-thing howls and runs for it, leaving me bleeding out on the tarmac.”

  Matt frowned. The dog-thing sounded alarmingly familiar. “Next thing I remember,” Buckley said, “I was in the hospital. There’s nasty marks on my bum, but everything else seems to have healed. I want to go back to duty and instead they ship me up here. God alone knows what is going to happen to my tank without me to look after her.”

  “I see,” Matt said. Now Buckley had told him where the marks were, it was alarmingly easy to isolate the sense of wrongness. Something very unpleasant seemed to be spreading through the Specialist’s body. “Have you been watching television?”

  “The bastards don’t let you have television in this dump,” Buckley said. He snorted. “Come on! It was all I could do to convince them that I needed a book to read. I’d bust out of here in a moment if I had my clothes.”

  “I think they may have made a mistake,” Matt said, tightly. “How long ago was it when you were bitten?”

  “Five days,” Buckley said. “Why?”

  Matt scowled. That meant that Buckley had been bitten around the same time as he’d shot the werewolf girl. But how had a werewolf gotten onto a military base? Stupid question, he told himself, a moment later. One of the soldiers had been a werewolf without having the slightest idea – and, if he or she hadn't come forward afterwards, they probably still didn't know that they were a werewolf. And Buckley had been bitten, and Matt was sure that he could sense the taint...there was no escaping the conclusion. Buckley had been turned into a werewolf.

  Buckley must have seen something in his face, for he reached out and gripped Matt’s arm. “What happened to me?”

  “It’s a long story,” Matt said. He wasn't sure if he should say anything, but Buckley deserved to know. “You may b
e a werewolf.”

  He ran through the entire story, from the werewolf he’d shot to the other strange reports and Kaleen the Healer. It struck him that they could ask Kaleen, once she woke up, to see if she could do anything for Buckley, but if not...he’d done some reading on werewolves after shooting one and discovered that legends tended to disagree on some details. Some werewolves only transformed during the full moon; others, it seemed, could transform at any moment they chose. God alone knew how reliable the legends actually were.

  “That’s not possible,” Buckley said, when he had finished. “They put me in the freaking madhouse, not the hospital.”

  “I wish I was lying,” Matt admitted. The world had definitely turned upside down. Meeting someone who was effectively from a time before the world turned weird had brought that home to him, even though he was surprised at how quickly he’d accepted the change. “I think that you had better be put somewhere safe before the next full moon.”

  “It’s still bullshit,” Buckley said.