by Ben Reeder
“Infamous?” I asked as he turned the rod slowly.
“Rumor has it you used it on Wizard Chomsky’s killer, and threatened Master Polter with it.”
“I’ve never used it to kill,” I said. “And the Council had taken it from me by the time Polter and I first met.”
“These sigils,” he said, as if I hadn’t just dispelled all the rumors about me, “fae, I presume?”
“Arianh-Rod’s designs, yeah,” I said. “I did the actual etching, though.”
“It’s a wonder it hasn’t blown up in your hands, then. The execution is barely tolerable. You butchered an exquisite design to the point where it is barely recognizable. Were you my apprentice, I would have destroyed this thing and made you re-do everything ten times. Do you have anything else?” He handed the rod back to me with a sigh of disapproval. I pulled the retrieval ring off my right hand and laid it down in front of him, then pulled my touchstones and my amethyst pendulum from my pocket.
“That’s what I have on me,” I said. He picked up the touchstones, then the amethyst, finally looking the ring over.
“Barely adequate … crude and limited … nothing more than a gimmick,” he said as he set the ring down. “Now the necklace.” He pointed at my chest, and I instinctively put my hand over the silver pentacle Wanda had given me. The points of the outward-facing crescent moons dug into my skin slightly, a somehow reassuring sense that it was still there.
“No.”
He did a double take and sat up a little straighter. His eyebrows came together and he took a breath.
“It’s a gift from a friend. And it’s sacred; as in touched by a Goddess sacred.”
For a few seconds, he just sat there, then slowly seemed to deflate. “Very well,” he said with a slow nod of his head. “What other tools have you crafted?”
“Mostly, I’ve been working on casting the TK spell without the rod,” I said. “But, there is this …” I said as I reached for my backpack. His eyes went wide as it flickered into view. I’d replaced the ever-so-slightly-illegal neglenom charm with a chameleon talisman. As long as it was still, the talisman bent light around it, so that you saw what was on the other side of it almost as if it wasn’t there. It still wasn’t perfect; you could see the edges of the bag as a slightly blurry or warped line, but most people never even noticed that. The look on his face was worth a bit of a smirk as I opened the bag to get what I was really after: a small mirror. I had etched runes around the edge of it in green enamel paint, with matching runes on the back side.
“Is your backpack … armored?” Gage asked.
“Kinda, yeah,” I said. “The original aluminum back plates got pretty banged up a few months ago, so Lucas and I replaced them with titanium. I bought the chameleon talisman, but this uses a spell of my own.”
“What does it do?” he asked as he took the curved mirror from me. I set the backpack a couple of feet away from me and let the talisman hide it again.
“Look at it in the mirror,” I said. He angled the mirror, then frowned as he turned his head to look at the place where he knew the bag was.
“The talisman is decent work,” he said. “How does your spell see through it?”
“Trade secret,” I said. “Those are all of the tools I made. Except for the talisman.”
“You said you bought that,” Gage said.
“I lied,” I said.
“Franklin students do not lie,” he said, his voice stern.
“You did when you said my work was crap,” I said. “Demons are pretty demanding masters … and they lie a lot. So, I know my work is good, and I know when you’re lying to me.” The front door opened and Lucas called out.
“I’m baaaack!”
“I’ll alert the media,” I said as I got to my feet. “Let’s get those speakers installed.” Winthrop gaped like a fish as I walked past him.
“We’re not done yet!” he said by way of protest.
“I am,” I said.
In a two-bedroom house that was built in the forties, there was only one place a guy could get some privacy to meditate: the roof. The sun was almost below the horizon by the time I pulled myself up over the last rung of the ladder and set foot on the cooling tarpaper, but my car now had a working sound system, and I’d even managed to get a short run in. Even with only three people in the house, I preferred the solace of Dr. Corwyn’s old retreat. Maybe spending an hour up here every evening for the past couple of weeks had conditioned my brain to see it as a quiet place. Or maybe it was because this was the only place I could talk to my girlfriend uninterrupted. Who could say? Even apprentice magi were inscrutable like that.
My phone was a cheap pay-as-you-go model that Mom could barely afford the minutes for. Texting took me forever on the little numeric keypad, and it couldn’t do all the slick things Wanda’s or Lucas’s phones could, but I could text and talk to Shade, and that was good enough. I slid the top up and followed the menu to the text screen, then slowly put in my message.
– Hey. U there? –
For a couple of minutes, I watched the screen. Every time there was a delay, my brain went into overdrive. Was she out with her parents? Was she laughing with a friend at her boyfriend’s dumb text? Was she going to text me back and break up? It was stupid, I knew none of my terrible fears were going to actually happen, but I couldn’t stop the thoughts from tumbling over each other in my head. Maybe she was just going to ignore me tonight …
– Hey, baby. Miss u. :) U coming home tonight? Want 2 c u so bad! –
I smiled as I read her message, fears forgotten and my day instantly better.
– Miss u 2. Had 2 stay 1 more day. Long story. Want 2 hear ur voice. Call? –
– Sure! 2 minutes. –
My smile got bigger and my stomach flipped as I laid the beach towel I’d draped over my shoulder down on the roof and settled on my back to wait for her to call. It took an eternity for the phone to buzz. My finger hit the answer button in a split second.
“Hey, beautiful,” I said.
“Hey yourself,” she breathed. “What are you doing?”
“Sitting on the roof, trying not to kill the stupid proctor from the Academy. What are you doing?”
“Sitting in the chapel we hid in last October. So, whatcha wearing?” Her tone was playful, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Sweat pants and a t-shirt. I’m all sweaty from working on my car.”
“I like you all sweaty,” she said, and I could feel my body react. “Now, ask me what I’m wearing.”
“Okay, what are you wearing?”
“Same thing I was wearing that night,” she said. Her voice went sultry, and I could feel the heat from it seep into my veins. Just the thought of that night still made my monkey brain sit up and take notice. I swallowed and took a deep breath before I went on, imagining her in the same pink t-shirt and sweats.
“When?” I asked.
“At the beginning. If you were here, though …” she said, then gave a soft little moan that curled my toes. “Would you stop me this time?” My right hand curled into a fist as I remembered her taking her shirt and her bra off like it was yesterday. I’d stopped her then because it hadn’t felt right. We both knew how to use sex as currency, and neither of us had been able to say no until then.
“I wouldn’t want to,” I rasped.
“But you might?” she said. I didn’t say anything for a moment, torn between what she’d said and the thought of what I wanted to do. She sobbed, and I sat up.
“Shade, are you okay?” I asked. Stupid question, yeah, but it was all that I could think of. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“You … you’re determined to make me fall in love with you, aren’t you?” she said, her voice breaking a little.
“Well, yeah,” I said, feeling like I was missing half of the conversation. My thoughts were slow and clumsy, and even I didn’t know exactly where they were going. “And yeah, I might still stop you. But … not why you think.”
/> “Then why?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I just … I guess I’d know what to do if I was there.”
“God, why the hell aren’t you here?” she almost whined, but I could hear more of her wolf in the question than a teenage girl being pouty.
“The proctor guy the Academy sent showed up like seven hours late, so we have to take off in the morning. He’s a real dick, too. He’s a Boston Gage, talks like his teeth are stuck together half the time.”
“I already don’t like him,” she said, sounding more teen than wolf. “He’s keeping my Chance from me. And I get cranky if you’re not here to kiss me and nibble on my neck enough.”
“We’ll have to fix that,” I said, my own voice suddenly husky again at the thought of doing just that. The sound of the screen door opening and closing reached my ears, and I heard Lucas greeting Junkyard.
“Dude!” he called out. “Pizza’s here! I’m not waiting on you.” Over the line, I heard Shade laughing.
“What?” I asked her.
“You’re going to feed Junkyard cheese, aren’t you? You know chemical warfare is against the Geneva Convention, right?”
“I’m a very bad person, I know,” I said. “But he really, really deserves it.”
“Damn straight he does,” she agreed. “He’s keeping my man away from me. When are you leaving?”
“Oh-dark-thirty,” I said. “We’re only stopping for gas and food.”
“Get drive-through,” Shade said, her voice smoldering again. “I can’t wait to see you.”
“I can’t either. I’ve gotta go. I miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
We hung up and I headed for the ladder. Winthrop Gage was going to regret making me late getting home.
Chapter 2
~ Our shadows are often our anchors, our reflection in negative. ~ Lazarus Moon
“I’m beginning to see the appeal of car sickness,” Gage said after the first hour on the road. Lucas was leading the way, and I had Linkin Park in the CD player. “At least then I would have something else to focus on than that noise and this God-forsaken landscape.” He looked a little less dapper without his blazer, and no amount of product in the world was going to keep his hair in place in a car doing seventy with the windows down. Okay, seventy-ish. Most of the time. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and it was still visibly damp under his armpits. Of course, the back of my Miskatonic U. shirt was pretty much soaked with sweat, but that wasn’t unusual for an eighty degree morning.
“There’s a box of eight tracks in the trunk,” I said as “Burn It Down” ended. “If you’re looking for something a little more classic rock.”
“I believe I’ll pass,” he said. “Perhaps we can forego the music entirely for a bit.”
“Sure,” I said, and hit the stop button. The Mustang’s muted rumble filled the sudden silence, and I drove on, all the while envying Lucas, whom I could see through his rear window bouncing to whatever he was listening to.
“Lord, what is that smell?” Gage asked a moment later. We had topped a hill, and I could see the rows of white buildings to our left. The morning sun was just hitting them, and we were being treated to the smell of agriculture in action. Below us, I could see the road ahead, with patches of sunlight and shadow from the big, puffy columns of cumulonimbus clouds to the east.
“Fresh air and eau de pig,” I said with a little more relish than the moment called for. In the rearview mirror, I saw Junkyard pop his head up. He sniffed the air for a moment, then nudged at my neck with his nose.
“What is it, big guy?” I asked as we hit the base of the hill. He gave a soft huff of a bark and put a paw on the seat.
“He probably objects to the smell even more than I do,” Gage said. “Though I’m amazed he even has a nose left, given the stench he produced last night.”
I ignored the comment and grabbed the walkie talkie from the middle console.
“Lucas!” I called out. There was no response, and I could see his head still bobbing in time with his music. I tried again, but he still didn’t respond so I sped up a little and flashed my headlights at him. It wasn’t until I honked my horn that he noticed me.
“Sorry, dude, what’s up?” he asked over the radio.
“Junkyard’s—” was all I got out before the world around us went dark.
“Whoa!” Lucas called back. “You didn’t just play a glowing ocarina did you?”
“This isn’t me,” I said. “No matter what, you just keep moving till you see sunlight. You got it? Keep heading north.”
“Yeah, I got it! Keep movi—” Lucas’s voice disappeared in the hiss of static. His tail lights came on in front of us and the road in front of him lit up under his headlights. I let up on the gas and watched him pull away.
“Junkyard, backpack,” I said as I opened the top of the center console. The LeMat was nestled inside. I reached over my shoulder and felt Junkyard’s fuzzy head under my hand, so I reached down and followed his jaw until I could grab the handle of my backpack. “Good boy,” I said, and he let go.
“What are you doing?” Gage demanded. He had his phone out and was busy running his finger over the surface of it. “We need to set a ward and call for help!”
“Yeah, you have fun with that,” I said as I dropped the pack into his lap. “And once you figure out you don’t have signal, open that up and grab my Ariakon.” The car coasted to a stop, and I opened the door.
“Your what?” he asked.
“The big pistol-looking thing in the holster-looking thing,” I said as I got out of the car and reached into my front pocket. The smooth, flat surface of my touchstone slid beneath my finger as I fished for what I wanted, finding the rounded surface of the stone Dr. C had given me. I pulled it out and held it in the palm of my open hand. This was different magick than I usually did, mostly because I was asking someone else to do all the heavy lifting. “Little brother, I need roots that go deep and hold strong.” The stone suddenly grew heavy in my hand, and my skin tingled as something out in the darkness turned a powerful and horrible attention on me. The taint of true darkness had a different feel from what we were in the middle of. This was shadow, easily lit. We’d passed under the shadow of a cloud right before this had started, so I was guessing whatever was behind this wasn’t looking to get a tan. And that could work for me. All I needed to do was ground the shadow.
“I found it!” Gage called out, his voice high-pitched and bordering on panic. “Get in the car!”
I stepped away from the Mustang and straddled the yellow line in the middle of the gray asphalt. My left side seemed to tingle more than my right, so I turned my head to face that way.
“I feel you out there,” I said to whatever it was. “I drop a rock on your shadow.” My hand turned slowly, and the rock slid across my palm and fell toward the ground. It seemed to drop forever, and when it hit I could feel a surge of power pulse by me. The world seemed to ripple at my feet for a moment, then it was past, and I heard the otherworldly screech of something Infernal and pissed-off.
“What did you just do?” Gage demanded as I slid back behind the steering wheel.
“Dropped an anchor on something’s foot,” I said, and then floored it. The Mustang fishtailed for a moment, then leaped forward with a roar of eight-cylinder glory, and I power-shifted through all four gears as I tried to catch up to Lucas. Over the engine’s full-throated rumble, I heard something snarl, a sound like reality splitting down the middle. Then the smell hit. Not even Junkyard’s worst emissions could compete with the stench of brimstone. People had compared it to Sulphur once, but it wasn’t even close.
“What is that smell?” Gage managed to gasp.
“Brimstone,” I said. “Makes rotten eggs smell kinda like Pine Fresh, doesn’t it? What color is the tape on the top of the paintball gun?”
“Red, I think,” Gage said. Incendiary pellets were marked with red. It would do for the moment, but I needed something a little more p
otent.
“Let me have it. Look in the backpack for one with white tape on it.”
“What do you have it loaded with now?” he asked as he rummaged in the pack.
“Flaming hot sauce,” I said as I looked out my window.
“And the white-marked hoppers?”
“Holy water and garlic,” I said. Something big was moving alongside the road, keeping pace with us.
“A much better option,” he answered. I pushed the gas pedal down a little further and watched as the speedometer climbed up past eighty, then ninety. Up ahead, I could see Lucas’s tail lights getting brighter. As we got within a hundred yards of him, he swerved and a shadowy shape narrowly missed his back fender. I had only a second or two to maneuver before I was right on top of it, but I just straightened my arms against the wheel and ran it down. There was a screech at the moment of impact, then it was like the thing burst into a black goo that splattered against my windshield and seemed to evaporate in a few seconds. I looked at my hood, but it wasn’t dented. Whatever it was had dissipated almost as soon as the front bumper had hit it.
The list of demons that could come out during the day on their own was short. The list of shadow-based demons who could defy the sun was even shorter. But only one ran with a horde of minions that had a problem with anything ferrous.
“Orlaggish,” I said softly. “Servant of Nergal.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt the tingle of magic down my arms confirm my guess. Now the field was a little closer to level. Up ahead, Lucas was swerving left and right, trying to avoid Orlaggish’s shadow hounds.
“Why doesn’t he just ram them like you did?” Gage asked.
“Airbags,” I said as we got closer. “His front fender isn’t made of steel like mine is, either. You wouldn’t happen to know any combat spells, would you?”
“No,” he said, sounding almost offended. “I’m not a Sentinel.” We were almost even with Lucas by then, and I realized I was moving almost faster than I could improvise.