Savage: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Solumancer Cycle Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  A fifty-gallon drum of used cooking grease stands outside the restaurant’s back door. A stepstool with three wooden stairs is pushed up against the drum as if to let someone climb in for a swim. Wisps of purple steam vent from a hole in the lid, striking me as fishy in more ways than one. I grimace in disgust as I lift the lid with delicate fingers.

  Sure enough, a glowing purple spiderweb hangs above the surface of the grease, stock-still in the windless night. Snowflakes fall through the web and melt into the grease beneath. This isn’t the sort of doorway I was expecting. It’s where Buster must’ve gone, though, so I’m going to follow him.

  The places everyone knows are there, but no one ever looks, I remind myself, wishing I’d never looked here. The stepstool creaks beneath my feet as I climb to the highest step and prepare to make a short hop down what could be a very long rabbit hole. There’s a handgun in my shoulder holster, a cell phone in my jacket, and a wallet in my back pants pocket, none of which will escape this little stunt unscathed if I’m wrong. I blink the snowflakes off my eyelashes and study the spiderweb again to make sure it’s what I think it is.

  Holding the drum lid over my head, I jump and tuck my legs beneath me. I fall through the spiderweb and into what I expect will be a slimy, grimy bath. It isn’t. It’s warm and dark, and the sound of the drum lid clattering to rest echoes into the nothingness around me.

  A cushioned chair breaks my fall. Warm yellow lights bloom in pyramidal sconces along the wood-toned walls of a luxurious room smelling of old money, dismissing the darkness as though I’ve just regained consciousness. Rows of chairs identical to mine stretch out before me and behind, with space for an aisle down the center. A dark-skinned elf sits in the chair to my right, holding a numbered sign-card with a wooden handle. I’m holding an identical sign-card with a different number.

  A gorgon in dark sunglasses lands with a shudder in the empty chair to my left, huffing purple steam. A blue elastic headband restrains her serpentine dreadlocks, which writhe and hiss and strike and force me to lean away. Bitch needs a haircut. The elf to my right leans away from me as though I’m just as hazardous to his health as the snakes are to mine. I brush the purple mist off my clothes and risk a glance down the row.

  Buster McCracken is sitting in the end seat across the center aisle. The organizers of this event were kind enough to provide him a booster seat, but he still sits a head shorter than everyone else in the row. When he looks over, I sit bolt upright and look straight ahead in hopes he hasn’t noticed me.

  Behind the auctioneer’s podium at the front of the room stands a muscular half-dragon in bifocals, his massive wings folded behind a pristine business suit and blood-colored tie. He clears his throat and raps his gavel on the podium, where a gilded leaf motif underlines the word Throgmorton’s in gold-plated lettering. He taps the gooseneck microphone with a clawed finger. A pair of low-frequency thumps pierce the speaker system. “Welcome, one and all, to Throgmorton’s,” the half-dragon booms. The mic squeals, but he doesn’t flinch. He glances at his heavy wristwatch, which he must’ve bought at a Big & Tall. “If everyone’s ready, I think we’ll get started.”

  Someone poofs into the chair at the end of my row.

  “Barring any further interruptions,” the half-dragon grunts, evoking scattered laughter.

  Another poof in the row behind mine, this time with sparks.

  The half-dragon frowns, drawing another laugh. “Let’s bring up our first item of the evening.”

  The revolving display stand at the back of the room spins a complete set of diamond jewelry into view. The crowd expresses its appreciation with murmured awe.

  “We have here the Valinestra Crown Jewels, owned and worn by her highness the queen of Wendmyr. We’ll start the bidding at one-hundred thousand.”

  An elf in a bespoke business suit holds up his sign-card.

  “I have one-hundred thousand,” says the half-dragon auctioneer. “Do I hear one-hundred ten thousand?”

  Two gnomes in workman’s clothes confer briefly before holding up their sign-card.

  “One-hundred ten thousand,” says the half-dragon. “Do I hear one-twenty?”

  The bidding escalates until, at a crisp two-hundred fifty thousand dollars, the jewelry sells to the gnomes. Arrangements are made, and the item is rotated out in favor of an easel containing a large painting of a lonely forest road edged in fallen snow. A red streak veers off into the trees, evoking the impression of a trail left by a wounded animal.

  “Next up, we have a painting by acclaimed vampire artist Sebastian Honsberg, entitled The Tranquil Storm. This is the original painting believed to be the final piece Honsberg completed before his death. It has become a topic of intense debate as to whether the red marks here…” he indicates the location with a laser pointer, “and here, were added under duress, or if Honsberg intended them to appear as shown. Some have even speculated that Honsberg painted the marks using the blood of his final victim. The Tranquil Storm is both Honsberg’s most widely duplicated work and his most controversial. We’ll start the bidding at fifty thousand dollars.”

  The painting’s price rises rapidly, winding up at an astronomical three-hundred and seventy thousand dollars before the bidding stalls out. A pale fellow in a tweed sport coat with patched elbows smiles modestly at his victory, revealing a pair of sharp canine teeth.

  The half-dragon cycles through a dozen other lots, including a ceramic statue of an ancient beast called the Gumashtu; the deed to an abandoned chateau in the French countryside once inhabited by a long-dead necromancer; a Fabergé egg believed to hold magical properties; a dagger with an orichalc blade and a handle fashioned from the bone-ivory of a dark angel; and a piano owned by Shelah Morgain, the harpy whose song was said to be so beautiful and haunting it could make her listeners drop dead.

  Each lot sells for a small fortune. It’s getting late, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve been tracking Buster McCracken’s movements over the past few weeks for nothing. If my contacts on AnonymCity have led me astray, I’ll be forced to restart my search from scratch.

  Then it happens. When the display carousel rotates, a wrinkled leather-bound tome, yellowed in color and banded with pewter cornice pieces, sits beneath an enclosed glass case on a pedestal stand. I nearly choke.

  “This next lot is one of the most remarkable artifacts we’ve ever had the privilege to auction here at Throgmorton’s,” the half-dragon announces. He adjusts his bifocals and squints at his cue card. “Codex Sepulcrum. The Book of the Grave. Second of the six grimoires of magic, a matched set of volumes considered to be the rarest in existence. It is unknown how many copies of each book remain. Despite being of anonymous authorship, the legendary grimoires are renowned for their insights into the secrets of the universe, and are considered by many to be the authoritative texts regarding the bonds between the arcane and the mundane. The cryptic inscription on the title page of each grimoire is widely speculated to suggest that a complete collection of all six volumes will bring about some notable event heretofore unimagined. The Book of the Grave is truly a one-of-a-kind item for the serious collector and the aspiring magician alike. The bidding will start at half a million dollars.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Buster McCracken raises his sign-card. So do two other bidders: a dark elf with a shaved head and a vampire with a tight black ponytail in a blue suit. Both corporate stooges sent to bid on behalf of their respective syndicates, no doubt.

  The three contestants spark an immediate bidding war, driving up the price another million bucks before things start to slow. Several other bidders enter at various price points, but none stick it out like the original three. As the active bid approaches two million, my aspirations of sniping the auction at the last second begin to wane. Sure, I’m good for it, but spending this much money in one shot doesn’t sit well with me. The grimoires are important, and I want to improve as a wizard so I can find my dad. But Arden’s lifestyle ain’t cheap, and once the fortune�
��s gone, it’s gone.

  The Book of Abominations, which I found in Krydos’s safe at Kingdom’s Keepe six months ago, has already opened my eyes to a plethora of new magic. I’ve learned all kinds of grotesque spells ranging from the profane to the merely disturbing. Yet I’ve come no closer to finding my father, a man who left my mother and me under mysterious circumstances when I was seven, and who I now know was the ruler of the vast kingdom of Tolmyr on the otherside.

  The dark elf drops out at two-point-one million. Buster McCracken is now in a pitched battle with the vampire in the blue suit. I hang back and let them duke it out, though the half-dragon auctioneer slackens his pace as the price rises.

  I consider chiming in when the bid reaches two-million two-hundred thousand, but I reconsider. I’ll stay out and hope Buster wins. Plan A was to outbid the highest bidder. Plan B is to jack the winner and steal the book for myself.

  Buster hesitates at two-point-five million, at which time the vampire outbids him at two-point-six. I consider a bid, but I can’t justify this kind of expenditure, even for one of the grimoires. The half-dragon hesitates, then calls for final offers.

  He raps his gavel.

  The ponytailed vamp picks up the win at two-point-six.

  I curse under my breath. Buster would’ve been much easier to shanghai than the vampire. I know better than to mess with vamps, so I make a mental note of what Mr. Ponytail looks like and stow it in the back of my mind.

  Buster slides off his booster seat and storms down the aisle, shouldering through the doors at the back. One of the gorgon’s snakes strikes at me as I stand and excuse myself past the row’s other occupants. I slip through the doors and discard my numbered sign-card in a lobby garbage can. Buster turns down an empty hallway, where he enters a utility closet and slams the door behind him.

  There’s a flash, and a fizzing sound. Purple smoke fumes beneath the door. I wait a few seconds before knocking. When no one answers, I go inside.

  The closet is empty except for a mop and some cleaning supplies. I search the walls and shelving units for signs of a door, but find nothing. A pull string dangles from the fluorescent ceiling fixture above my head. I give it a tug.

  The closet goes dark. A glowing purple line draws itself across the back wall, turning at right angles to form an outline resembling staggered brickwork. I push. Cold air sweeps over me as the wall sucks open onto a snowy winter’s night. I step through and find myself in an alcove along the side of an old church building. The door in the brickwork grinds to a close behind me.

  There’s a gas station and convenience store across the street from the church. I don’t recognize the street names on the green signpost at the corner, so I lean out of the alcove and look both ways. Buster McCracken is waddling along a row of headstones in the small community graveyard around back, cell phone pressed to his ear. Though I can’t make out the words, there’s no mistaking the scratchy, high-pitched timbre of the goblin’s voice.

  Slipping from alcove to alcove, I eventually make it to the corner of the church building and press my back to the wall, tilting my head in hopes of catching an errant word or two. The layer of new-fallen snow carries Buster’s voice to me across the distance better than I’d hoped.

  “We’ll get it back,” he’s saying. “Even if we gotta take it.”

  He pauses, listening to the response on the other end.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Bloodsuckers.”

  Another pause. He spouts a string of goblic words and hangs up. When he turns back toward the church, I duck into the alcove and look for someplace to hide, knowing he’ll see me when he walks by. There’s no time to swallow one of the residue pills Ersatz has been making me use, so I’ll have to settle for the horsehair bracelet on my wrist. It flares a golden white as I draw an immense amount of energy from it and cast a mistform spell to turn myself into a white column of fog.

  I’d typically use a spell like this to squeeze through a tight space. Since I don’t have enough magic on hand to go invisible, it’s the next-best camouflage I’ve got. Buster waddles by, breath misting the air. Before he reaches the end of the alcove, he stops. Unlike his breath, I hang there without dissipating.

  The goblin turns toward me, his expression descending into a frown. He backs up a step. When he opens his coat and reaches inside, I’m pretty sure I’m done for.

  Chapter 3

  Buster’s hand emerges from his coat holding not a gun, as I’d hoped, but a gnarled wand, as I’d distinctly not hoped. Bullets are nothing to worry about when you’re a cloud of ethereal mist. Spells, on the other hand, can prove problematic. Your mileage may vary.

  A goblin sorcerer, I observe, feeling like I should’ve known it the moment I got my hands on Kaz Golug’s data. AnonymCity has proven itself an indispensable resource for digging up information on persons of interest. It’s easy to post an anonymous RFI (request for information), get a quick response, and transfer payment through secure channels, all without leaving my apartment. There are people on AnonymCity who know everything about everything, so when I embarked on my quest to track down copies of the six grimoires, I figured it was the best place to start.

  I was right. After months of searching, I found someone claiming to possess inside information on the city’s black market auction houses, one of which was an establishment in the Between called Throgmorton’s. Finding an entrance proved fruitless, so I decided to tag along behind someone who knew how to get in. That’s why I latched onto Kaz Golug.

  Kaz is a premiere member of the Warrendale Crew, a loose-knit goblin gang focused on petty crime in the neighborhoods along New Detroit’s western limits. The Crew’s primary business venture is local trucking, though the legal goods in their vehicles often serve only to conceal the contraband they smuggle across the Canadian border. I’m told they’ve shipped cocaine in bags of baking flour, knockoff cigarettes strapped to the undersides of furniture drawers, and counterfeit pharmaceuticals disguised as candy. When I found out the Warrendale Crew was one of several interested parties in a rare book being sold off at a private auction, I knew I needed to be there. Too bad the auction didn’t work out the way I’d hoped.

  The goblin waves his wand and casts a spell. I’ve got seconds to react and very few options at my disposal. If it’s a fire spell, he’ll vaporize me into wisps of steam and that’ll be the end of it. A detection spell will show him where I am without damaging my immediate personhood. But what he’s most likely to throw into the alcove is a soulseeking spell, which will strike whoever is hiding here regardless of their visibility, size, or shape. There’s no beating him to the punch now, so my best and only bet is to float lazily upward and hope he isn’t summoning fire magic.

  Buster defies my expectations altogether by casting an interstice spell. It’s the same spell I cast in the collapsing demon-infested orphanage several months ago to locate the hatbox-sized pocket of Between that saved my life. Buster touches his wand to the alcove wall, illuminating a purple-lined door in the brickwork. When he pushes it open and steps through, I debate whether it’s worth following him. Yes, I decide, without sufficient time to think it over.

  I slip through the opening just before the door closes. Buster and I travel through the Between and coalesce in a humid greenhouse crowded with thick foliage. Leaves and vines tickle my misty nethers as I follow him outside.

  We’re on a high rooftop terrace overlooking the city, where the warmth of the greenhouse is quickly replaced by a biting cold. Beneath a covered overhang dusted with snow, half a dozen goblins lounge on a three-sided sectional couch surrounding a marble slab with an inset gas fire pit. It isn’t until Buster steps through the invisible barrier surrounding their outdoor lounge area that I see they’ve insulated themselves from the elements using a cube of obstruction, which shimmers at his touch.

  I pass through the barrier on Buster’s heels. The air shifts from cold to warm, and the sounds of wind and traffic die away. Buster takes a seat without removing his coat
and proceeds to warm his hands by the fire. No one notices me or the extra shimmer I caused when I came through.

  The goblins greet Kaz Golug with poorly concealed disappointment and spend a few minutes commiserating with him over what I imagine concerns losing the grimoire to their deplorable vampiric rivals. I can’t understand a word they’re saying, but I’m loving this mistform spell for giving me the chance to eavesdrop undetected. As long as I don’t stray too close to the fire, I might as well be a fly on the invisible wall.

  Several tankards of a thick greenish sludge sit on cocktail napkins around the marble slab table. One of the other goblins gets up, leaves the warmth of the cube-shaped lounge area, and enters the adjacent penthouse apartment through a sliding glass door. He returns a moment later with a tankard of the green stuff and hands it to Kaz, who takes a long, slurping gulp before setting it on the table and wiping the froth from his upper lip. The host goblin barks something at him. Kaz grabs a cocktail napkin from the stack and slips it beneath his tankard.

  That’s when I realize I’ve made a terrible mistake. The bracelet on my now-incorporeal wrist is burning away fast; I can feel it slimming by the strand. Knowing my spell will wear off the second my bracelet burns out, I float to the floor and slide beneath the couch. When I pop into solid form, I bump my head on the couch’s frame and let out a grunt. The goblins go silent, listening.

  I lie still and wait.

  One of the goblins rips a massive fart, rumbling the seat cushion above my head. They burst into laughter, giving me a moment to breathe. Apparently farts are funny in every language. By the time their laughter dies off, they’ve forgotten all about the mysterious bump from below. If you never thought a fart could save your life, think again.