Magic Awakening: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Spirit War Chronicles Book 1)
Page 15
“And when that happens, Sonya, you will not be able to escape. Even if you escape me, if you escape Nuforsa, do you really think you can escape every human who has been conscripted into a shifter? It is just not possible. So here is what I propose to you. Come with me. I will take you to Mundus. He will train you to your fullest, and when he cannot commit the time, I will train you. In return, Mundus will give you eternal life and whatever you want. All that he asks is that you swear allegiance to him. I will not try and remind you of a past that even I shudder at. I will not build you up to be the greatest fighter from the human realm, for that is too risky. I instead make this pitch to you, Sonya. Tell me, what do you think?”
On the one hand, what he said did carry an element of sense to it. I had seen the demons biting humans and transforming them, often without the humans’ awareness. As much as I didn’t want to believe that demons were popping up elsewhere, it was highly unlikely Mundus was concentrating his forces in just one place.
But frankly, the guy across from me was a demon himself. And demons had no reservations about lying, manipulating, cheating, and bending the truth to get their way. Why would Tyrus be any different?
“I think it’s a good thing you aren’t a human salesman, because with that poor of a pitch, you’d be broke faster than a degenerate gambler in Atlantic City.”
Tyrus snorted, hard enough that I felt the breath from his nostrils.
“Witty as I would expect,” Tyrus said. “I sense the doubt in you, Sonya, and understand it. But I had hoped that you would see why my words are true and understand that Mundus cannot be stopped.”
He sighed and snapped his fingers as I smelled smoke.
“Very well. I can see that my time here will not change your mind—for now, at least. But keep in mind what I said. You can call me at any moment. Unlike other demons, I can take human form rather easily and appear. Just say my name. And Sonya. When I say anytime, I mean anytime.”
With that, he disappeared, but he left behind a fire which was consuming the bathroom. I jumped over the flames and tried to unlock the door, but it was jammed, the lock shut in place.
“Damnit, Tyrus!”
I slammed against the door, driving my shoulder into it, but still nothing happened. The smoke was still near the ceiling, giving me plenty of time to figure out—
The shower heads!
I opened the shower doors, turned on the shower at full blast, pulled the head from the wall, and aimed it straight at the fire. The fire still burned—hell fires didn’t go out so easily, it seemed—but I was winning the fight as the flames became smaller and smaller with each passing moment. Eventually, as I moved the shower head closer to the fire, the fire went out. Perhaps not coincidentally, seconds later, I heard a click. Though I was dressed in pajamas, I didn’t care if DJ was sitting on my bed—I just wanted to get the hell out of that bathroom.
I was still alone. I quickly put on my clothes—tight jeans, black boots, a white tank top and my black leather jacket—and tucked Ebony and Ivory into my holsters by my hips. No matter what happened today, I was not going to leave my guns anywhere except on my body. It was getting to the point where I would think about being naked with DJ and still holding my guns.
No, Sonya, don’t think about that!
I went into the bathroom one more time—this time leaving the door wide open, propping it open with DJ’s suitcase—and checked my face. I didn’t show any ill effects from the fire and my encounter with Tyrus. I adjusted my glasses, played with my hair some, and smiled. I looked as good as possible for a day of bike riding and having just survived a bathroom fire.
I ambled down the stairs, saying hello to Carsis, who called me over just as I walked by.
“Remember, 3 p.m. today, Sonya. It’s critical that you come. Don’t trust anyone who tries to keep you away.”
“Understood,” I said, but just because I understood it didn’t mean I was going to follow it. I didn’t intend to push off Carsis’ training forever, but I did intend to enjoy my vacation while I could. Besides, I knew how to teleport out of the spiritual realm. Everything else was just supplementary.
Carsis looked like he wanted to add more, but I left with such swiftness that I barely gave him the chance to breathe in response. I found DJ, Brady, Richard, and, to my pleasant surprise, Nicholas hanging out at a booth. I quickly slid in next to Brady, with DJ across from me, and waved to Nicholas.
“You made it out!” I said.
“Yeah, came down with something nasty, but nothing that a good night’s snooze wouldn’t take care of,” he said, his voice scratchy and his face looking exhausted, but certainly in a far better state than frozen. “Tell you, though, had some mighty fucked up dreams last night. Unlike anything I’ve ever felt.”
“I know the feeling,” I said, yearning for the night when I could actually sleep well without a dream involving demons. “Anyways. Sorry for being late. I just needed a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m sorry, I think the word you were looking for was hibernation,” Brady said.
“No, it was actually asshole,” I said, bringing laughter from the entire table. “But yeah, I’ve earned it.”
Brady nodded knowingly. Everyone else mumbled something in response that I didn’t quite hear.
“So, rumor is that we’re going bike riding today, is that true?” I said.
“Oh yes, darling, we’ve been thinking that as much as we love the, ahem, window shopping and options here in Amsterdam, we wanted to see something a bit more natural,” DJ said. Still with that “darling.” At this point… I daresay it’s grown on me. “A bit more Earthly, if you will. So our plan was to go to this place called Mike’s Bike Shop, rent bikes for the day, and then head north. There’s a small town called Edam that looks nice, apparently it’s got a marvelous cheese shop—”
Done.
“Say no more,” I said. “Holy shit, Brady, we should have done that the first day!”
“Well, someone wanted to try the local fare and next thing you know—”
“I was being sarcastic, bro,” I said, with emphasis on the last word, again drawing laughs from the peanut gallery.
“But yeah, so we’re going to finish up here and start biking at 11 a.m.,” DJ continued. “We have to be back by 7 p.m., though. One, because that’s when the shop closes and we pay extra euros if it’s late.”
“Oh no, heaven forbid,” Brady said, making me elbow him in the stomach. I knew when his sarcasm was humoring and when it was mocking, and it was the latter this time. For whatever reason, Brady had just taken an unusually strong disliking to DJ.
“And two, a storm is rolling in that’s going to hit around 6 p.m.,” DJ said, ignoring my brother, though it seemed too deliberate of an ignoring. “As much as I can let things roll off my back, I’m not sure I’d want to be caught in a storm in a foreign country on just a bike.”
I honestly didn’t care what the conditions were. I just wanted to get out of the heart of Amsterdam as quickly as I could. I would be willing to ride a bike through a thunderstorm in Edam if it meant avoiding Amsterdam on a clear sunny day, knowing what lurked just around a nearby portal.
Everyone stated their agreement with DJ except Brady, who gave a weak thumbs up. As they had all finished their breakfast, they waited on me, but I made the wait a short one, gulping down a glass of orange juice, half a bowl of cereal that looked like Fiber One, and two bananas in under five minutes. I slammed the glass on the table, making sure the OJ was the last thing I consumed, and said, “let’s roll, gents.”
We made the 1.2 kilometer walk to the shop as I took special note of the bikers. The bells from their bikes sounded exactly like “Bicycle Race” by Queen, which was one of those statements that seemed so obvious now but was a connection I never would have made otherwise. They pushed through traffic with the confidence that having full right-of-way gave them, though I didn’t sense the kind of pushiness you’d see in the heart of Boston or New York City.
“Nice of him to buy our trust,” Brady said.
What the fuck, seriously? I need to bring this up later.
But two employees brought out two bikes each, and before I could confront Brady on his unwarranted disgust with DJ, I’d sat my butt down on a bike in first gear, ready to get away from hell on Earth and toward a little bit of natural paradise.
Chapter 13
I laughed in delight on the bike ride as soon as I started pedaling. Not because I missed the feeling of being on a bike—I never had a special attachment to it. Not because I needed the exercise—I kept myself in top-notch shape just to keep my job.
No, I missed the feeling of being absolutely free. The wind blew at my face, I soared past the people on feet, and I didn’t have to compete with cars—there were cars, but they moved so slowly relative to our bikes that it didn’t make any sense to drive a car in this city. I pedaled with a giddy feeling as we all followed DJ down a road that took us to Amsterdam Centraal. We looped to the left, went down a long tunnel that reminded me of tunnels from airports—except now, we were on bikes!—and then boarded a ferry with about five dozen other bikes to cross the river.
I loved how many people in this town rode bikes. The ratio of bikes to cars had to be ten to one, at a minimum. Everyone here was so healthy and so relaxed. I could count the number of obese and stressed people on one hand, even if I’d had a digit amputated. It was quite beautiful, the kind of thing that I wished I could have more of back home.
It almost overcame the fact that a demon’s uprising was taking place in this very city, just in a different realm.
Not today, Sonya. Not today. At least not until this evening.
The ferry crossed the surprisingly choppy waters. Motorbikes revved, bikers raised their feet to their pedals, and mopeds grumbled. As soon as the gunwale lowered, a sea of small, personal vehicles and bikes pushed out like hornets scattering out of a nest. Waiting near the back, we all shot along the suddenly open road, finally free of the mass of downtown Amsterdam. What had started as a smaller, less crowded part of Amsterdam soon turned into gorgeous countryside. We passed through a golf course, student housing, and privately owned roads before reaching small farms, where cows gawked at us, sheep shuffled away from us, and the only people were other bikers—who only passed us by maybe once every fifteen minutes. To say that I had reached tranquility after the nightmare of the past couple of days would be the understatement of the trip.
I hopped off my bike after half an hour of biking, laughing giddily as I saw a windmill about thirty feet high, gently twisting clockwise. I waved my brother over and held my phone out.
“DJ, would you do the honors? Brady, come over here! Come on!”
Brady, never one to like photos, sighed but did as I requested, putting on a half-assed smile as I put my arm over his shoulder.
“DJ?” I said, inviting him over. DJ gave the camera to Richard and wrapped me in close. Our positions were impossible to ignore for my brother, who I’m sure had some level of denial going on in his head. He could still carry it on, as he was looking out toward the open space when we took our photo.
The funny thing was, it still wasn’t denial but the truth, even though from the outside everyone probably thought we’d gone down each other’s throats last night.
“How far out is Edam from here?” Nicholas asked, more out of breath than the rest of us.
“Probably about 15 kilometers would be my guess. So a little under ten miles for you Americans,” DJ said with a wink.
“I know how to do the conversion,” Brady said. “Contrary to the stereotype you may have, we’re smart Americans.”
“Oh, I know. But being smart Americans usually means that you are just curious about the conversion, not that you actually know it.”
I made it a point, as the Brits laughed, to force Brady onto his bike before he and DJ got into an actual fight. We continued riding down the country, dirt road, the five of us in something of a single file, DJ at the front, me right behind him, Brady behind me, and then Richard and Nicholas at the rear. Whenever other bikes came to pass us by, we slowed down and let Nicholas catch up, a task we didn’t mind since, hey, what was the rush? I knew there was the deadline to pay for just one day, but even I could have afforded to pay for all five of our bikes if we didn’t get back until after 7 p.m. As long as we didn’t break them, an extra three euros per bike was nothing.
The country roads soon turned into a small town road—actually, small town was overstating it; it looked more like a neighborhood road—which then turned into a single road next to the equivalent of a highway. For as much land as I could see besides the highway on our right, it felt like I’d landed in the middle of Kansas—in other words, a boring disaster while driving, but heaven on Earth while outdoors. They have bike lanes next to highways. We don’t even get bike lanes in city streets.
The sun had reached its zenith, the road ahead stretched out several kilometers, a massive church in the distance added some scenery, and only farmland remained on the left. It felt like I had returned to my base, to the most natural environment a human could reach while still in touch with modern society. I had found a place I could move to if I ever got sick of America. Assuming the demon issue is gone, too.
Finally, after biking for over an hour, my body sweaty from the unobstructed sun but my mind cheerful and clean, we reached Edam, a town that couldn’t have had more than a couple thousand residents. We locked our bikes at one of the dozens of bike racks, though in a town like this, I strongly suspected crime just didn’t happen. That, too, I loved. You couldn’t find a parking spot to save your life in Amsterdam, but pretty much everything here was either a bike rack or a place you could lock your bike to.
“Cheese!”
I was startled by DJ’s sudden shout and felt embarrassed when I hadn’t seen the cheese shop to my left. It literally said “Cheese” in English above the store. I followed DJ inside as Brady leaned against the bikes, arms folded.
“Oh my Lord, I never thought I would see cheese like this,” he said. “They don’t make it in Australia like they do here.”
“No kidding,” I said. “It’s funny, cuz in America, there’s a place called Green Bay where, when you go to their football—American football, I mean—games, a lot of the people wear cheese on their heads. I used to think Wisconsin, that area, was cheese heaven, but if that’s true, then this is like where the Cheese God resides.”
“Cheese God,” Richard said with a chuckle. “Brilliant.”
I gawked at what looked like solid buoys of plastic cheese but actually contained so much goodness inside I could die from a cheese overdose. And they were cheap, too! Four euros for about a pound of cheese—I seriously contemplated buying some and would have if not for being unsure of how I would store it.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about that, as DJ bought three pounds of cheese, one pound of it aged cheese that looked like swiss but, I assumed since we were in the Netherlands, was infinitely better than the stuff you’d buy at Duane Reade or Kroger. I knew if anyone was going to share their cheese with me, it was that man—even more so than my brother.
“OK, cheers, guys, my life is complete,” he said, drawing laughs from all of us.
“Write a bestselling, award-winning novel, meh. Travel the world, OK. Buy cheese in Edam, Netherlands, life win!” I teased DJ.
“Watch your mouth, or I might just stuff it with cheese.”
“You better watch your own mouth, boy,” I said, but I smiled instead of keeping a serious composure.
I leaned back and saw the devilish intent in DJ’s eyes. I decided to leave him hanging as I walked out to Brady with a casual, smug look on my face.
“I’m hungry,” Brady said. “There’s a shop right over there. Sells pancakes and most everythin
g. I think you should have some, given that your first adventure with pancakes involved you disappearing to God knows where.”
Or Mundus knows where.
“I think I would love to do that,” I said. “DJ! You good for pancakes!”
“Always, darling,” he said, his voice passionate and excited. I almost felt like I’d given the man ten cups of coffee with the way he was bouncing—it was almost unfair how I’d teased him.
We sat down outside at the restaurant, Restaurant de Fortuna, which had several nice tables outside and some even nicer ones inside. Across from us, we saw a van equipped as if going to a wedding and a church. Our waiter came out and offered us lunch menus, which I immediately declined and asked for their pancake menu. The waiter, perhaps used to this, swapped them out without going back to the waiter station or breaking expression.
When I looked at the variety of pancakes, I was blown away. They had them broken down into sweet and savory categories, and the toppings looked like something out of a buffet menu. Bananas, bacon, mushrooms, lemons, sugar, chilis, goat cheese, nuts, chocolate sauce… The menu covered a full page, but that didn’t do it justice, as the “full page” looked like a poster more than a standard 8.5’ by 11’ sheet of paper. I was having so much trouble deciding that I scarcely heard the wedding bells going on next door.
I did look up in time to see the wedding process literally right in front of our table, with the bride and groom walking to a private room inside. DJ and I traded amused looks, as I could never imagine having a wedding in this public a space in America. I wondered if DJ had the same thought, or perhaps was thinking a bit further ahead than I was. Actually, now I’m curious if a man with his lifestyle would ever want to get married.
“Married in the city,” Richard said. “So beautiful.”
“Lad, this ain’t a city, this is like a village,” Nicholas said.
“Hey now, not everything can be London or Manchester, you know this.”