by Chris Lowry
I might have hit him a little harder than I thought.
Blame the ghost. He’s a squealer and the noise startled me.
“Gross,” Elvis whispered next to my ear, sending a spark from the tip of my finger.
The light caught the eyes of the witch and the creature, but not enough to make them stop, just pause.
“Yep,” I snapped.
I was getting tired of getting scared.
The ritual to steal lifeforce through sex magic was the same as to give it.
That’s what made Elvis say gross.
Cause the Troll laid down on its back, and the witch went to work on getting him ready. It didn’t take much, then she climbed on and straddled him.
It wasn’t pretty, and the physics of it was all wrong. This time the witch was the one screaming.
“I just can’t wrap my head around why?” Elvis turned away and floated his back to the sight. I turned to join him.
“Magic transfer,” I said.
“But to what purpose? A witch and a troll can make magic together, but why? She’s stealing essence, so that makes her live longer, otherwise I would think she would get life points in exchange for the sex magic,” he said. “But we’re missing something.”
His face crinkled in concentration.
“Do we really need a why?” I asked.
“I need to understand what’s going on.”
I stood up in the darkness and adjusted everything that had shifted in my fall and escape, starting with my spine. It popped like it was protesting and I bit back a groan.
“I’m going to let you figure it out,” I told him.
“I can’t stay here while you go Marshalling,” he pointed to the invisible line that tethered him to me.
“Then you’ll have to think it up on the move,” I told him. “She’s doing black magic and I can’t let that stand.”
Plus I had a thing about Trolls.
I’d run into a platoon of them back in the Sidhe War.
They were vile creatures who belonged on the other side of the veil, and when you catch them munching on a battalion of allies in the woods of Bastogne, let’s just say rage is a powerful magic multiplier.
I reached down and tapped into a little of that, then sprinted toward the duo doing it in the dirt.
They couldn’t hear me over the screaming.
She was not enjoying herself.
The Troll turned his head toward me though. Maybe he felt me running, just as I felt his footsteps pounding toward the dome earlier.
He tried to move his hands and bat the witch away.
I didn’t give him a chance.
I channeled a spell into one of his yellow eyes and blew out the back of his head in a spray of gore and guts that painted the Mississippi landscape like a Rorschach pattern.
The witch stopped screaming as something happened in the magic transfer.
She tried to hop off, hop down, hop away.
I quivered a spell into her heart and popped it in her chest before she could do any of it.
She collapsed in a mound on the ground next to the Troll.
“Marshal?”
I turned to look at the wide eyed ghost beside me.
He just pointed.
The problem with interrupting a ritual spell is the build up of magical energy. A ritual is about layering and building, combining forces until the right level is reached. Then all of that pent up energy is released, which makes the completion of the spell possible.
All of that energy was in a bond between the dead Troll and the dead witch, a short black ribbon of shimmering darkness that boiled and churned with tiny purple streaks of lightning.
“Crap,” I sighed.
“This is gonna hurt,” Elvis advised.
The magic exploded in a thunderclap and for the third time that night, I was flying through the air and anticipating another hard landing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I didn’t pass out, though it took several minutes to catch my breath again.
“Thirty two minutes,” Elvis said as I crawled back to my knees and stood on shaky legs again.
Mississippi needed some rain to soften up that soil.
I looked back at the mess of the ritual site.
The Troll was in pieces scattered around the crossroads.
The witch was a stain on the dirt. The two men willing to sacrifice their lifeforce in exchange for talent, possible glory were gone, parts of their clothes and guitars fluttering in the wind.
“I hope I never have to see something like that again,” I told the ghost and started walking toward the tracks.
At least I thought I did.
Elvis had to adjust my direction.
Twice.
Guess I landed harder than I thought.
The tracks were right where we left them. Not that I expected them to move or anything, but after I bounced my head off the dirt a couple of times, I was wondering if the tracks had moved or if there was more magic afoot.
The twin rails ran in a straight line through the black countryside, a wash of stars bright enough to make the sky glow, but cast little light on the ground.
I turned south, double checked with Elvis to make sure it was the correct direction then hoofed it.
The rail line ran across country highways and backroads farms every couple of miles. We approached the fifth or sixth one and saw a beat up pickup truck waiting next to the yellow and black RR crossing sign.
For a moment, I thought it was mind, and the Judge was making magic happen again.
“Marshal?” the voice called from behind the driver’s seat.
I pulled up a spell and got ready to cast it. It never paid to let down your guard in the middle of the night in strange country where no one was supposed to know you were there.
“The Judge sent me.”
I let the spell go.
Not my truck, but I had to admire the fellow for his chosen form of transport.
Almost anyone could say those words, but if they Judge didn’t actually send the man behind the wheel and he said it, then hell could rain down on him.
Literally.
The Judge was that strong.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I opened the passenger door and slid into the worn seat. A handsome man with rugged Nordic features nodded as I buckled up, then dropped the truck in gear and rumbled across the tracks.
“Eric,” he held out a hand.
I twisted to shake it, surprised when he moved his grip to my forearm and squeezed for three shakes.
It was an old-fashioned warrior handshake, and gave me a tingle of the magic coursing through his veins.
And something else.
A possession. The man had a spirit inside of him, not a demon, but a tag along, something he was born with.
He let go before I could get a full impression, but he smirked as he did so. The Viking knew what he intel he was sharing with the handshake.
“My Shield wall ran into a nest of biker vamps in Louisiana. I lost my Hund and had to go make a report to the Jarls.”
“Jarl’s?”
A word I hadn’t heard in years, not since my time on the border in the Sidhe War.
“Earl’s,” he Americanized it for me. “Our wise leaders.”
Someone could have hung a coat on the sharp way he said wise. Eric wasn’t impressed with the Jarls, or one of them at least.
“One of them told me to be on that crossing at midnight and wait for you to show up.”
He glanced over at me.
“They had the timing right.”
“Biker vamps?” I tried to change the subject.
“My Jarl told me to tell you the Judge sent me. Who’s that?”
I glared at the black sky through the open passenger window.
“No one of consequence.”
“You’re going to pay for that,” said Elvis.
He sat on the seat between us, paying extra attention to keep his non-corporeal thigh from touching
the driver, lest he shiver like a ghost ran across his grave.
Which pretty much put him in direct contact with me, making me shiver like a newborn in a snowstorm.
Eric reached up and turned the heat over all the way, then adjusted his vents so the blast turned away from him.
“What did you fight back there?”
He was a warrior.
I could tell by the scarred hands, the thick shoulders, the look in his eye. He was an apex predator, which I guess he would have to be if he was in charge of a Shield wall hunting Vampires.
“Troll.”
He made a whistling noise with his lips and looked at me with newfound respect.
“Alone?”
I nodded.
“Damn.”
He said it with respect, which made the aches and pains feel a slight bit better.
“I knew Marshals were tough, but a Troll alone. That just means you’re crazy.”
“A voo doo witch was trading lifeforce with it,” I said.
“A witch and a Troll?” he scoffed. “You’ve moved past crazy and over into insane territory.”
I could feel the respect seeping away.
“Borderline stupid.”
I felt a surge of anger.
Who the hell was this guy, warrior or not. Damn Vikings and their messed up-
“I’m just messing with you,” he smiled.
Guess he could tell I was pissed.
“And you shopped shivering. Took your mind off being cold, off the aftereffects of battle.”
He did. I had.
“Been there,” the Viking continued. “Done that. Burned the Tee Shirt.”
“Trolls?”
“No, just vampires. The Trolls in Norway are twice as big as American Trolls. They trapped them in the Mountains with giant barriers disguised as power lines. Most of the ones left over here are runts.”
I’d found the mountain Trolls in the woods. They were bigger.
Still, fighting a twelve foot runt wasn’t anything to sneeze at. And a witch, though she didn’t do much fighting.
And didn’t do much good for my hunt.
“You can sleep if you want,” Eric offered. “I don’t know what you’re planning in the Big Easy, but something is going down.”
“I met a vampire on the train,” I told him. “A conclave.”
His eyes flashed red in the darkness of the cab as the spirit inside him surged to the surface.
I watched him fight it back, an internal battle that only showed on his face, the grit of his teeth, the crinkled eyes.
“Did you kill it?” he growled.
Still fighting.
“Only allowed in self-defense,” I told him and he nodded. “We talked.”
“Talking doesn’t do much good with the bloodsuckers,” he said.
My turn to nod.
The Normanii were a group of vampire fighters dedicated to keeping the world safe from the undead. They had one reason for existence, to end the scourge of vampires.
They were pretty locked in on that worldview.
And they were damn good at their job.
But the Marshal’s had to see things just a little different.
Shades of grey, I liked to call it on my ethical slide rule.
A lot of vamps could exist with humans, there were enough of the goth types that would offer up blood for the asking.
I could no more cast a vampire than I could a witch without reason.
The reason didn’t have to be much, sure. It could be a perceived threat, or a hint of one.
But I tended to err on the side of basic decency, a live and let live policy that usually served me well.
Until I got my ass handed to me on a platter.
Then I could go crazy with the magic.
“Did he tell you what they were con-claving about?”
He played with the word, and I bet under different circumstances we could be friends or drinking buddies.
If I was allowed to have either.
“Didn’t get the chance,” I told him. “Ran across a ritual at a crossroads before I could get more out of him.”
The Viking nodded.
Then he gripped the wheel and glared at the road, the red glow in his eyes softening to just a circle around the iris that I could only see when he glanced over at me.
That was my cue to shut up and catch some shut eye, so I hunkered down against the door of the truck and tried to do just that.
Elvis was quiet enough to let me.
But sleep wouldn’t come.
Instead I thought about my wife, and where she went missing. It was on a Troll hunt, a mission for the Judge.
No word on what happened.
No sign of where she went.
Like she just disappeared.
I bet he poofed her straight to the fight though. No messing around with bumming rides on trains and trucks trying to clean up a mess.
That was part of his way for punishing me, I bet.
And with that thought, I drifted down into a nap.
CHAPTER NINE
The Viking dropped me off on a corner where the trolley tracks crossed the road, just as he had picked me up near tracks a few hours earlier.
Dawn gathered on the horizon, ready to assault the morning and wash the city with daylight.
“I’ll be seeing you,” the Norseman promised as he rumbled away, and I gave him a small wave he could see in the rear view.
"Does she know you're coming?"
"Usually I'd tell you and you would do whatever it is that the Watcher's do to prepare the way."
"So, you didn't tell anyone?"
He hung there six inches off the ground with a very judgy look on his face.
I should know, I'd seen it on the Judge's often enough.
"I told you, didn't I?"
"I don't have access to the resources I once did."
"But you could put it out on the ghost network."
"I could," he agreed. "But this Watcher would have to know a ghost and talk to a ghost and so far as I can remember from the archives, this isn't normal."
He waggled one ghost finger between him and me.
"You're an Elvis impersonator, Elvis," I told him. "There's nothing normal about you."
"We could try calling."
"Does she own a cell phone?"
"Hannah?"
"That's who we're talking about."
"How would I know that?"
"Watcher Rolodex?"
He patted his pockets.
"Must have left mine in my other coat."
Smart. Ass. Ghosts.
"Can you find a ghost neighbor and do the network thing to get me to his house?"
"That? Sure, I can do that easy."
He floated to the end of the tether, which was about fifteen feet when he stretched out with his toes pointing back at me. I could see animated hand gestures at a patch of air that was completely blank.
For all I know, the ghost was making it up.
But after a moment, he came back with a smirk on his features.
"Follow me," he said in a very Lurch like voice.
At least he still had jokes.
“The game is afoot,” I told Elvis as we started walking.
“You think you’re going to Sherlock Holmes this?”
“No man, I think I’m walking.”
It beat waiting for the trolley.
I wasn’t sure what I could figure out anyway. The witches and the vampires making a move around the same time hinted at bigger forces involved.
Bigger forces made me think Sidhe.
And if the Sidhe were making a play to get back into the world, everybody was in a heap of trouble.
We beat them back in WW II when the Nazi’s aligned with them in a domination attempt.
They almost established a foothold at Dresden Germany, but I was one of the wizards there that stopped them.
It destroyed the city.
The Allies took the brunt of the heat
for the destruction, claiming it was a bombing that got out of hand.
I could see the Judge’s hand in that.
No need to put the blame on the back of a young wizard just coming into his power.
And I’m not even a fire mage.
I just popped some magic into the wrong munitions bunker and then things got out of hand.
“You’re shivering again,” Elvis said and floated a little bit of distance between us. “Sorry.”
“Wasn’t you,” I told him. “Just remembering.”
“Wife? Witches?”
“War.”
Elvis nodded.
“You were in it, right?”
Still guessing. It must have been the worst kind of torture for him, a man who relied so much on his mind and memory to suddenly start to lose access to it.
When we got to Hannah’s, I’d put her to work on it too.
“So, where is she?” I asked the ghost after we had wandered around for a couple of hours.
“I think-” he started to say.
“Don’t think,” I snapped. “Know.”
He had led us to three houses so far, each in opposite directions and far from where we were. I was hot, hungry, still sore from the previous night’s activities.
Which would have been as fun as hell to say if I was with a lady, but I wasn’t.
Or technically I was with a witch and a Troll, and they were doing it, but I was trying to stop it.
Not in a prudish sort of way, because hey, when in Rome, but we were in Mississippi not Italy.
I put a stop to it and paid a price.
The bill was coming due.
My head hurt. My feet ached. And I wanted food in my belly. Now.
We were on the fringe of the Ninth Ward, the district that suffered the most during the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. I was still passing scars from nature’s battle, bald lots between refurbished houses, a few remnants of shattered homes still lingered, and an oasis on the boulevard.
A café.
Not the café that brought us here, but another, just a tiny little mom and pop grill, soda signs in the windows, four metal tables out front and what I’m sure heaven must smell like filtering through the smoke from a vent in the wall.
I made it to the table and sat to wait for service.
An elderly black man with white hair stuck his head out of the door and gave a friendly smile.