The Wizards of Central Park West_Ultimate Urban Fantasy

by Arjay Lewis

  “Served you right if they’d left you down there,” Bankrock growled.

  “By the way, Frisha has the talismans,” Eddie told Marlowe.

  “What? How could you?” Drusilicus lifted his staff in a defensive pose.

  “Fear not,” Marlowe reassured. “Without Abraxas, those particular talismans have little power. Take the trinkets from her.”

  “I presume that is a job for me,” Eugenia insisted. Bankrock held Frisha's arms as Eugenia began to go through her robes.

  “Leave me be!” Frisha screeched, as Eugenia pulled things from the folds of cloth and hidden pockets.

  As Eugenia went through the old woman’s robes, Luis, Cerise and Rosita drew near.

  “Fireworks over?” Luis asked.

  “I hope so,” Eddie groaned.

  “You’re my hero,” Cerise kissed her husband’s cheek. “We’ll have some fireworks at home.”

  Eugenia pulled out items and placed them on the ground. “Herbs, a crystal ball…ah, what have we here?”

  She held up the jade statue. Even in the moonlight, Eddie could see it glimmer.

  “That’s mine!” Frisha whined.

  “That’s nice,” Eugenia returned her hands to Frisha’s pockets. In only a minute, she located the small box decorated with turquoise.

  “I’m afraid I smashed the mirror,” Eddie murmured.

  “All for the best,” Marlowe consented. “As was leaving the Amulet of Abracadabra in the shrine. It has shifted to that other dimension and it will be very difficult to bring it to this plane again.”

  “Luis,” Cerise asked the tall man. “Do you have any idea what they are talking about?”

  “I know I don’,” Rosita said, which made her father laugh.

  Eddie glanced down at the fallen metal statue that lay on the steps of the Obelisk. “Marlowe what about—”

  “Oh that,” Marlowe raised his glowing staff and waved it in a circle twice. “There!”

  A loud whinny came from behind them, and King Jagiello, still on his horse, rode down the steps, shouting something.

  “Daddy, it’s a metal horsey!” Rosita gushed with delight.

  “What’d the statue say?” Eddie asked Marlowe.

  “The Polish equivalent of ‘Talley Ho.’” Marlowe gave a shrug, as the metallic rider galloped off to return to the stone base that bore his name.

  Luis pulled Eddie’s arm and pointed. “Look who else is gone.”

  Eddie looked up at Belvedere castle, and there was not a single figure on its parapets.

  “Drusilicus,” Eddie indicated the castle, “I saw vampires up there earlier.”

  “Yes,” Drusilicus had a grim smile. “They wanted to see who would win. Probably rooted for the demon.” He watched Eddie hobble closer. “Oh! Let me help you with that.”

  Drusilicus waved his staff, and a pink healing light surrounded Eddie’s leg. Eddie stood up straight, his leg no longer in pain.

  He looked back at Drusilicus, who gave him a nod.

  “Thanks,” Eddie smiled.

  There was a chittering noise, and the four men turned to see a large gray squirrel sitting on top of one of the stone balustrades that ringed the now-dark obelisk.

  “Ah!” Marlowe cheered. “The hero of the day.”

  Marlowe drew closer as the rodent swished his tail. He made a strange sucking noise that was similar to the creature’s own sounds.

  “The squirrel’s a hero?” Luis frowned.

  “Indeed he is,” Marlowe looked over his shoulder at Eddie and Luis. “This is Quiptail. He is a very important figure here in the park.”

  The squirrel rose up on its hind legs and bowed to the group.

  “Is that the squirrel I talked to? I thought he took off on us,” Eddie began.

  “Took off?” Marlowe stood up straight, affronted. “Nay! When Frisha had defeated us, he launched an onslaught and drove her down into the temple.”

  “Wow!” Luis observed the squirrel with a new admiration.

  “All the squirrels do in our neighborhood is raid the bird feeder,” Cerise conceded.

  Marlowe made a few more noises. The squirrel replied, then, in a flash leapt onto a branch and was gone.

  “Ain’t that something,” Luis watched the retreating rodent in wonder.

  “I hope you think so, sergeant,” Marlowe remarked. “I promised him that you and Eddie would bring him a very large bag of nuts.”

  “Look at that, Luis,” Eddie quipped. “We finally get an informant that works for peanuts.”

  “You must learn Squirrel, Eddie,” Marlowe suggested.

  “Maybe later,” Eddie felt his wife shiver next to him. He turned to look and realized she had no footwear. “Baby, what happened to your shoes?”

  “All I had was those stupid bunny slippers,” she said. “I’m cold. Can we go home now?”

  Ahbay stepped forward. “Dear lady, allow me to escort you to Marlowe’s townhouse. There we can arrange a pair of shoes while your husband finishes his work.”

  Luis looked at his daughter. “Can you go with Auntie Cerise, sweetheart?”

  “I wanna stay wi’ you, Daddy,” Rosita entreated.

  “Honey, Auntie Cerise is gonna call your mommy and let her know you’re okay. You wanna talk to Mommy, don’t you?”

  “I guess,” she said sullenly, as Luis handed the girl to Cerise.

  Cerise took the child in her arms, and smiled at her. Then she looked at Eddie. “I’ve missed holding a child.”

  Eddie smiled. “Yeah, our boys are too big.”

  A dreamy grin appeared on her face. “I always wanted a girl,” she walked away with Ahbay.

  “Man, watch out,” Luis warned Eddie.

  “What?”

  “That’s the look Maria gets when she wants to have another baby.”

  “Oh, stop,” Eddie said to his partner and turned to Bankrock. “I have to tell you, the one who really helped distract the old girl was Caleb. Where is he anyway?”

  “I have not seen him, but I do sense him nearby,” Bankrock confessed. “You weren’t here, Eddie, but other wizards, Claremont, Inscope, Driprock, and I helped rouse the others and made Marlowe visible again.”

  “How did you know he was there? I thought he was gone.”

  “Simple,” Bankrock smiled smugly. “I can locate any member of the coven and even though I couldn’t see him, I was aware of his presence. It was only a matter of undoing the effects of the charm he wore.”

  “I have found our missing member,” Drusilicus pointed to a grove of trees.

  Caleb was crouched behind a large oak. His entire body was racked by convulsive shudders. His staff lay on the ground and he stared up at the night sky.

  Eddie approached slowly. “Caleb?”

  The young man looked at him with wild eyes.

  “Are you well, young sir?” Bankrock asked gently.

  “Am I well, am I well?” Caleb rose slowly. “Did you see? Did you? Fire and hail, devils everywhere, corpses on the move and some dead guy possessed me!”

  “It was the medallion you made, it enabled Greywacke to use you as a weapon against Frisha,” Marlowe offered. “You have done well.”

  “Indeed,” Drusilicus threw his shoulders back. “I dare say that it was the most impressive thing any Newling has ever done.”

  “Hey, what about me?” Eddie said.

  “You’ve had your staff a week,” Drusilicus snorted. “He has had his for a few hours.”

  “Oh yeah?” Caleb reached behind his neck to yank off the medallion that carried Greywacke’s symbol. “Well, if this is what it is like to have a staff, you can keep it.”

  “What?” Bankrock was shocked.

  “You heard me,” Caleb complained. “I thought it would be cool. A great big power trip. Being like…a god! But it’s not. It…it…” he struggled for the right words. “It sucks!”

  “But, my boy,” Drusilicus reached out to Caleb, who avoided his touch. “This is what we worked for
, what you wanted for so long—”

  “I don’t want it! You guys are crazy, do you hear? I am so out of here.”

  And with that he threw the medallion to the ground and stormed off, the staff left behind as he went.

  With a gesture, Marlowe waved his own stick and the wooden rod that briefly had been Caleb’s transformed into a pocket watch.

  “I suppose I shall hold on to this, Drusilicus,” Marlowe pocketed the timepiece, “until you choose another.”

  “I doubt I shall,” Drusilicus shook his head in disgust. “They are not worth the effort.”

  Eddie turned to Luis. “You got handcuffs?”

  “No, who for?”

  “Frisha. She’s the warlock,” Eddie advised.

  “Oh man,” Luis complained. “I missed everything.”

  “Were you okay up here?”

  Luis shrugged. “A posse of devils, a rotted corpse who wanted to eat me or something, no big deal.”

  Eddie frowned, not sure if his partner kidded him or not.

  “Eddie,” Marlowe came alongside the men. “I have conferred with Bankrock. As we speak, Inscope, Claremont, and Driprock are altering the memories of those who were in the park.”

  “Yeah, that would be—” An idea grew bright in Eddie’s mind. “Wait. Can you choose who forgets and who doesn’t?”

  “Of course,” Marlowe said.

  “Then I have a plan,” Eddie said, wryly. “But first, I have to call my captain.”

  Sixty-Three

  Within fifteen minutes the park was quiet, and on Park East Drive the flashing lights of police cars arrived in response to Eddie’s phone call.

  “Berman,” Captain Jacobs said as he approached the obelisk from a northern path flanked by a half-dozen uniformed officers.

  “Captain, I’m glad to see you,” Eddie said.

  Jacobs came to a stop in front of Eddie, and gave a glance to Luis, and the other people who held an oddly dressed woman in purple robes.

  “Lieutenant, I want to know what you think you’re doing, getting me out here at this time of night.” He looked at his watch. “It’s past midnight!”

  “Sir,” Eddie stood at attention, “I called you immediately upon apprehension of our prime suspect in the murder of Mr. Yamasuto, Mr. Cuccolo, as well as the homeless man.”

  A group of black-clad agents suddenly trooped up the stairs. They carried machine guns hung from straps on their shoulders, but they were dirty, some covered in ash, and all looked dazed.

  The uniformed police officers’ hands went for their weapons.

  “Stand down,” Jacobs yelled to them. “Who are you men?”

  “FBI,” Wilcox stepped into the light. “We’re part of the Urban Crime Task Force.”

  “Yes, Agent Wilcox, isn’t it?” Jacobs said. “What’s going on here?”

  “I want an explanation, too, captain!” Wilcox demanded.

  “An explanation of what?” Eddie said.

  “What? That pit…those bats…how…” Wilcox pointed at Eddie. “How that man got here…and those creatures—”

  “It was all to catch the killer.”

  “What?” Wilcox howled. “You are suspended, Berman. You can’t even arrest someone for littering!”

  “You’re right,” Eddie agreed. “That’s why I called for backup.”

  “Backup?” Wilcox said, flabbergasted.

  “You’ve heard of that, right?” Luis glanced at his partner. “We always get backup, right Eddie?”

  “That’s how I was trained,” Eddie shrugged.

  Wilcox turned to Jacobs. “Captain, I want to register a complaint. Lieutenant Berman has no right to involve himself—”

  “I would not have, sir,” Eddie interrupted. “Except for the fact that the suspect kidnapped my partner’s daughter. We took immediate actions to rescue her.”

  Jacobs glanced over at Vasquez. “Is that true, sergeant?”

  “You bet your ass…uh…sir,” Luis said.

  “I came here in response to a call from Mister Marlowe here,” Eddie jerked his head at Marlowe, whose clothes had been transformed into a seersucker suit that looked very proper. “Mister Marlowe is a witness who was very helpful with information about a homeless woman here in the park. He called to tell me that he’d seen her with a child that matched Rosita’s description.”

  Marlowe smiled warmly at Jacobs.

  “You should have called the precinct,” Jacobs protested, “not gone after her yourself.”

  “Sir, I wasn’t sure if Mister Marlowe was correct or not, so Sergeant Vasquez and I came merely to observe. However, we found the woman with Rosita Vasquez and she seemed to be in the midst of some kind of satanic ritual.”

  Jacobs looked over at Frisha in her strange robes, held tightly between Marlowe and Drusilicus.

  “She thinks she’s a witch,” Eddie stated in a low voice.

  “I’m a prophetess!” Frisha announced loudly. “And there’s nothing wrong with me hearing!”

  “Captain,” Wilcox said. “This is all bunk! My partner followed this woman into the park and he saw no child. Only an African-American woman.”

  Eddie turned to Sam, who still wore his jogging suit, which was now filthy. “See anything unusual near this site?”

  “There were a lot of weird lights,” Sam shrugged.

  “The woman worked with an accomplice that is still at large,” Eddie intimated. “However, sir, we found these objects on her!”

  Eddie took the jade statue and the decorated box from Eugenia and handed them to Jacobs.

  The captain turned the objects over in his hand. “That’s the missing statue that was in Mister Yamasuto possession.”

  “Yes, sir. And the box was part of a collection owned by Mr. Cuccolo. I believe all of the murders revolved around a belief in witchcraft.”

  “That would explain a lot of things we saw here,” Collins said. “Strange smoke, odd lights.”

  “It is my belief that she was burning a large quantity of herbs laced with some kind of hallucinogen,” Eddie explained.

  Collins gave a nod. “That would explain the smoke we saw.”

  Wilcox broke into a sweat “When my team got here, we found Vasquez out cold at the bottom of the steps.”

  “My partner was injured by the accomplice, who remains at large.” Eddie waved his hand at Bankrock, Drusilicus, and Eugenia. “But with the help of these citizens, we were able to subdue the suspect.”

  “I see,” Jacobs eyed the group. “Are you all willing to make statements?”

  They nodded and murmured assent.

  “Well,” Jacobs said, “your actions were a bit unorthodox. But as a father, I understand your motives. And you did capture the suspect.”

  “I don’t believe this—” Wilcox groused.

  “Agent Wilcox, what were you doing while my lieutenant was apprehending this woman?” Jacobs faced the federal agent.

  “We were attempting to secure the area,” Wilcox waved his arm in the direction of the park. “My teams and I were attacked by demons and corpses!”

  “What?” Jacobs glared at him.

  “You have no idea what happened out here, captain. This huge pit opened up and there were these four flying horses, one of which was the Angel of Death!”

  “Angel?” Jacobs repeated.

  “Of Death!” Wilcox said triumphantly. “Then we were attacked by demons—little guys with horns and tails.”

  “No pitchforks?” Jacobs added wryly.

  Wilcox considered this for a moment. “I didn’t see any.”

  “And what about these demons?”

  “My men saw it all,” Wilcox said and turned to the group of black-clad agents. They looked at their feet and muttered among themselves.

  Sam turned to the captain. “It was pretty dark—”

  “Come on, you all saw that huge pit,” Wilcox pleaded. “I swear, it opened to Hell itself!”

  One man stepped forward. “Actually, sir, it’s all prett
y hazy. I think Lieutenant Berman may be right, there was a lot of smoke. There must have been a hallucinogen in whatever that woman was burning. We all saw a lot of strange stuff.”

  Wilcox’s mouth fell open.

  “Agent Wilcox,” Jacobs shook his head, “you are not under my jurisdiction, but I find your entire operation suspect. Why were you following my lieutenant to begin with?”

  “Berman had something to do with Cuccolo’s death, captain,” Wilcox stated plaintively. “It made sense to follow him. You didn't see him this afternoon when he disappeared at Bethesda Terrace!”

  “Disappeared?” Captain Jacobs’ eyebrows raised.

  “I’m telling you there was a pit in the middle of the Great Lawn!” Wilcox blurted as he gesticulated toward the open area.

  Jacobs looked past Wilcox at the field beyond. “Nothing there now.”

  “It was Berman.” Wilcox was desperate. “He did it and then he made it go away. Look, captain, we were attacked by giant bats tonight, right men?”

  “Agent Wilcox neglected to mention that he and his men raided my house,” Eddie interjected.

  “He did what?” Jacobs growled.

  “We had just cause!” Wilcox whined. “Federal authority gives me the right—”

  “Sounds to me like you sent this large team of agents to harass my lieutenant,” Jacobs fumed. “And trust me, Federal Plaza will hear of it. Now take your agents and get out of my park.”

  Wilcox’s mouth tightened into a hard line, but he was wise enough to know when to be quiet. He glared at Eddie and Luis, then snapped to his men, “Back in the vans, men.”

  He turned back to Jacobs and in a tense voice added, “The FBI wishes to apologize for any inconvenience to the NYPD.”

  He joined his black-clad men and looked as if he’d like to find a dog to kick. They all strode down the stairs and faded into the darkness, doing their own brand of magic.

  “What a horse’s ass,” Jacobs muttered, then looked at Eddie. “Good work, lieutenant,”

  “Thank you, sir,” Eddie said.

  “Lieutenant, sergeant,” Jacobs chimed in. “Come to my office first thing in the morning, and I’ll see that you get your shields and weapons returned. Your suspensions are lifted!”

  “Yes, sir!” Luis had a goofy smile on his broad face.

  Frisha, who had been standing passively with her head down, suddenly stomped on Marlowe’s foot. Marlowe gave a loud “Ow!” and staggered back. She yanked loose from Drusilicus, and pulled a sparkling object from a hidden pocket of her robe.