by Al K. Line
"Goddamn it, guess I look pretty stupid, eh?" said Sarah, putting down the knife.
"You look beautiful, Sarah," I said, wondering what I could do to stop her being afraid.
"Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. She's dead. Don't call me that. I'm Amber." She glared at Dancer. "Will you tell him, please? Before I lose my mind."
Dancer lifted his head and said three words that reverberated around my skull for what felt like a lifetime. Making no sense, beyond my ability to either understand or comprehend.
"She's your daughter."
Things Get Freaky
"What are you talking about?" Numb, I turned from Dancer to, what had she called herself, Amber? They both looked serious. Her beautiful, Dancer like utter death. We didn't have long, but at this point in time I didn't care. I had to know.
"She's your daughter, Spark. She came to me, decided she wanted to meet you. But you were still denying magic and pretty low, and once I'd told her all about you, what was going on, she decided to wait. I'm sorry, but she made me promise and I said I'd let her know when you were back being yourself. Guess I left it a little late."
"This makes no sense. Amber, you look just like Sarah, so similar it's hard not to think of you as her, but whatever you think, I'm not your father. I don't even see how she's your mother. How old are you?"
"Forty-two."
"Oh." I studied her and as I looked, really looked for the first time, it was obvious it wasn't Sarah. The cheekbones were higher, the mouth smaller, nose more pointed and her frame more petite. It was all so long ago, it was incredible I remembered her well at all. She had features that could have been inherited from me. My blue, intense eyes, the slightly large forehead, the set of the jaw, but that could just as easily have been me looking for similarities and finding them, not meaning it was true. Hell, it couldn't be true.
"Look, um, Faz, can I call you Faz?"
"Sure, for now." Nobody called me Faz, just Kate and Grandma, but I was muddled and what if? No, it couldn't be. "Look, Sarah died forty-two years ago, you can't be her child. Can't be mine. She died, and I think I'd know if she gave birth."
Amber leaned forward and put her angelic head in her hands, eyes focused on mine. Then she glanced at Dancer for a moment and I saw him nod. "Okay, here goes." She sighed deeply, reached out for the ashtray beside her and lit the joint, inhaled sharply then set it back down. "This is all what I've pieced together after the fact, but I think it's close enough to the truth for it to be the explanation."
"Go on."
"Do you remember maybe a month or maybe two before Mum died? When you, er, had a final intimate encounter when she was feeling a little better?"
"I do," I said warily, memories flooding back, almost overwhelming me with grief. "She was between treatments, resting up, ready to go back into battle once she got her strength back. It didn't work, but anyway. Yes, we had a final... Damn, what is wrong with me? Yes, we slept together a final time not long before she passed."
It broke my heart. That night we cried like we'd never cried before. Her body was a wreck. She hurt and ached and was bone weary. I asked if I should stop multiple times. No, she'd said, she needed this. The closeness, the connection, just in case it was the last time.
I'd joked, saying I'd ravage her silly once she got better, that I'd never let her out of bed even once she was back on her feet. We never slept together again.
"Faz? Faz?" Amber was calling my name but it was from far, far away. Like I was answering Sarah's call from the other side of the divide between life and death.
"Sorry, lots of memories. That night was special, more love wrapped up with us clinging to it, even though it hurt us both so much. Her more than me. But it was special, something different to how it had ever been before."
"So you felt it, then? That it was different? Special. Deeper and more intimate?" Amber watched me carefully, as if gauging my reaction and my words. Seeing if I confirmed something, although I didn't know what.
"It was an emotional time. She'd gone through so much, had so much more to go through. Ugh, can we change the subject please? This is getting depressing as hell and I'm already about as depressed as I can get."
"There was a note," said Amber. "Mum said that she did something that night, thinking it would be her final gift to you. That if she passed, if the treatments didn't work, then at least you would always have her gift."
"You?"
"Me," she said, nodding. "But then she was taken before she intended. She thought she'd at least see out the time to give birth."
"It surprised us all. She went downhill rapidly. It happened very quickly." Realization hit like a smack from a pissed-off troll to the guts. "You mean... she died thinking she'd lost her baby?"
"Yes."
"No, wait, this makes no sense. If she died then the fetus would have been only a few months old. And I would have known. Someone would have said."
"She made plans, Faz, right at the very end. I guess you knew she was a strong witch, that she was powerful?"
"Of course I did!" I said a little too testily. "Sorry, this is hard to take in. I don't understand. And, ugh." Deep nausea overwhelmed me as I lost myself again.
As I toppled sideways to the floor, I knew this was it. No waking as Faz Pound, Dark Magic Enforcer. I'd awake as zombie, nothing more, nothing less. Even if I kept my sense of self I'd still rip through Amber, my daughter—which was impossible—like she was nothing but meat. Nourishment for my corrupted soul.
Then all was blank. Black. Nothingness. And part of me welcomed it. No life, no pain. No more hurt.
The Cure
This time I awoke to find I was back in the living room, sitting on a rug and propped up against the sofa. Amber finished manhandling Dancer into position just as I opened my eyes.
She jumped back, eyes wide.
"Don't worry, I won't eat you. It's me, Faz."
"Oh, good. Damn, you guys gave me a scare."
"Sorry. Look, I don't know what to think about all this, but whatever the truth is I want you to know it's been lovely meeting you. I apologize if I said anything untoward. This is all messed up in my head. I don't know what's real and what's the infection. For all I know I'm not even here."
"It's okay, I understand."
Dancer moaned and we turned to him. He was close to the end now, and I was, too. His face was almost black, his breathing shallow, and he twitched like he was having a seizure. Tremors racked my body and I knew I'd been doing the same and looked just as bad.
"You want me to save you both? Get rid of the virus?"
"Oh, God, yes. You can do that?"
"Sure I can. That's why Dancer brought you here, right?"
"I guess. And to meet you."
"Haha, I may have only met him once before tonight but I get the feeling he's a good guy deep down. Not at all what he appears to be."
"Yeah, you're right. Although, if we get out of this alive, I am gonna kill him."
"Haha, he said you were funny."
"He did?"
"Yup. Right, let's get started. You first, or him?"
"Do Spark first," whispered Dancer, eyes opening slowly, his hand going to his hair automatically.
"No, you first, Dancer. You're worse than I am."
"Have you seen yourself? You look gross. Brains. BRAINS!"
"Brains! Ugh, whoever you do, please do it quick."
"Okay, okay, both at once. This will hurt and it will definitely freak you guys out, but you ready?" Amber finished her joint while we talked and the sweet smell hit my nostrils for a moment before it was buried under the scent of her, the scent of her flesh.
But there was something else apart from the craving for brains and human meat. Her scent was so familiar. This was Sarah's child, I knew it deep down on a primeval level. Every ounce of my being knowing it was true. Her scent was that of her mother's, and I no longer doubted.
"We're ready."
"Whatever you're gonna do, please do it now," I said, f
eeling urges begin to overwhelm me. My heart kept skipping beats and my pulse was weak and slow, the cravings morphing into a need almost impossible to resist.
"Okay, but you won't like it."
She wasn't lying.
It Begins
Amber stared us both down—she was an expert, even stoned—as if weighing our mettle, summing us up in a single, way too protracted gaze that left me feeling exposed. She nodded, seemingly satisfied, then turned from us and brought her long-suffering joint to life. She toked on what was little more than a butt until the doobie—that's still cool, right?—flared to life, then exhaled a heady cloud of smoke that veiled her.
I felt dizzy, the worst kind of light-headed, and shook my head to gain clarity as the inner zombie clawed at the gaps in my consciousness. I'd been opened up with a rusty can-opener and part of me scooped out, there's no other way to describe the feeling.
Dancer moaned beside me but I didn't have the energy to focus on him, to be concerned with my friend. No, all I could do was try to save myself as an uncaring numbness gripped my mind like spectral hands were crushing my brain between immensely strong fingers, squishy goop falling to the floor in wasted lumps that mocked my pathetic excuse of a life.
Sarah was still hazy, the smoke increasing in the room until I began to panic that we'd somehow been caught in a fire and would burn alive. Would I still be zombie if I went out like that? Damn, what was wrong with me? Of course I would.
I tried to stand, to call out, warn them, but my legs didn't work and my hands and arms were entirely ineffective. Accepting, I slumped back, all energy and will gone. It was just me, locked inside my own head, watching with only mild interest as the zombie stepped out of the shadows, ready to embrace me. To turn me at last.
But something changed, and as the smoke drifted lazily by I understood this was nothing but the incense and the cigarette Amber now puffed on between mumbling incoherent words in a deep voice that reminded me of those Tibetan monks that chanted high on their windswept mountain tops.
Amber's spell grew more intense and her call louder as the smoke eddied in increasingly violent patterns. Forces congregated in the room. Drawn by her call, her summoning.
Who was she? What was she? Was she really my child? How could that be? Such questions would have to wait. Already, the thoughts were drifting away, sucked out of me along with my desire to understand this woman, my need for answers. There was something stronger taking the place of my questions, it was a tugging at my very essence, at who I was and what I was. At the heart of the man, at what made me more than just a bloke called Faz. At what made me Black Spark.
She was sucking the magic right out of me!
I panicked. Deep, utter, mind-bendingly freaky-as-hell panic that stabbed at the core of the person I knew I was. The magic I'd finally come to accept made me whole. What defined me as a person, as a wizard. The truth that I was Hidden, immortal of sorts. A user and abuser of magic I no longer quite stole from the Empty but was granted permission to use when asked, all of that was being taken from me.
Amber was like me!
My daughter was sucking not only on her cigarette, but between lungfuls of nicotine she was imbibing the nature of what I had become, what I'd accepted.
Amber was taking my magic and she was powerful. She could do it and there was nothing I could do to stop it in my weakened state. Hell, I wasn't sure I'd be able to stop her even if I was in top condition.
I felt her strength, her power, her abilities as she breathed me in. My mouth was forced open and my head snapped back with a loud crack. As I struggled to hold on to my sense of self, my throat expanded and magic from my core forced its way out my mouth.
My tattoos flared briefly then flatlined. All power gone. I tried to call to the Empty, to ask for just a little help to save me from this deranged daughter of mine, but the call wasn't answered. She had control, was blocking my attempts, and the most annoying thing was she did it exactly how I did it to others. This was my specialty. Nobody else had this skill—it was what made me so called upon by those having trouble with magic miscreants.
She was better.
I would be empty, would be lost and back to being just a man. No chance of ever becoming what I once was. The ways of magic would be blocked, a barrier put in place to stop me ever brimming over with magic again. My ink would never channel powerful forces, direct the magic until it did my bidding. I would never be able to call on it in my time of need, protect myself from the supernatural beasties that would come for me now I was a Regular.
True, complete panic set in as I experienced for the first time what it was I'd done to countless others. My one true companion over the endless years, who I'd shunned and cursed and cried over and reveled in and screamed with joy at the power she gave, she would be gone and I'd never get her back.
I tried to scream as I felt a deep ball of magic solidify deep inside the pit of my stomach, to rage at her and tell her no. That she had said she would help but was destroying me. If she was my daughter then why was she doing this?
But screams didn't emerge from my taut throat. No, a fat lump of ephemeral magic tore through my system and scratched up my esophagus. As my hands went to my neck—sure it was nothing but jagged flesh but finding it smooth and slick with sweat—my jaw hinged wide and pellets of magic spat from my mouth. Black as my anger and strong as my hatred for what she was doing.
They shot across the gap between us and blew holes in the screen of smoke that shrouded her, and I watched, aghast, as the smoke cleared to reveal the essence of what I was being sucked on down. Other lumps of magic were coming to her, and I turned my head enough to see that Dancer, who I'd forgotten entirely, was being treated in a similar fashion.
Again, and again, magic was ripped from our systems, our chakras stripped bare, our bodies sucked dry. Taking drags of her cigarette between the more dangerous and volatile breaths containing all we'd worked to achieve.
All the toil and trouble, the strife and bliss, it was being consumed casually by this woman as if it were nothing.
She wafted a languid hand and the gathering smoke parted around her face again. Her eyelids were heavy, her face a mask of focus and determination, and she winked at me as she breathed deep. Then her happiness vanished and she hunched forward, screaming in utter agony as our magic hit her system.
Amber's face darkened, black veins appearing on her face like a spider's web had been slapped onto her skin, and her features morphed into those of the undead.
Her eyes rolled up in her head and for a moment all that could be seen was a milky white. Then she screamed again and globs of tainted magic shot from her mouth in a streamer of corruption, gushing up into the air and merging with the smoke before fading like a dream through the ceiling.
She lowered her head, wiped at her brow, and smiled a smile that somehow felt comforting. The smile of my daughter. The smile of family.
"Right, let's get started," she said.
Oh shit. I though that was it, but it was only the beginning.
An Interruption
As Amber spoke I gained a sudden clarity. And I have to admit I was mightily impressed. Not only did she have abilities akin to mine, she could go beyond what I'd accomplished. Amber had enough skill to take specifics of magic from whomsoever she wished. Unsurprisingly, there was a cost.
When I suck the magic right out of Hidden, I take on their power along with something more personal. I almost become them, their essence soaked up like a sponge along with their magic. I spit that tainted essence right back out as soon as I can, along with the magic they have accumulated, but I can't pick and choose what I take. I draw their whole magic, all of it, out of them.
It seemed Amber could be more choosy with her efforts. She had the skill to remove sections of it, to leave you with your abilities even as she removed the corrupted parts, the parts she wanted to take. She could stop you being able to channel it in certain ways, stop you being able to control it for certain acts
if she so desired, or, in our case, remove infected, corrupt magic that was the cause of the zombie infection.
What she'd done so far was nothing more than a taste of what was to come. She'd located the virus, had removed what I guess you could call an outer coating. The husk of protection within which the virus had been wrapped up safe and sound, seeping into us like a slow release capsule, one of those squishy tablets with liquid inside. She had left the virus exposed and weakened, drifting in our systems without the control and direction it had before.
Boy did it hurt.
This wasn't the end, though, this wasn't even a true beginning. A magical aperitif, the main course yet to come.
"You guys taste gross," Amber said, giving us another sweet smile, her face framed by her shining hair. Almost white through the haze of incense and yet another cigarette.
"And you're an angel," said Dancer, his understanding of what was happening catching up with mine.
"You okay?" I asked, words feeling alien in my mouth, my tongue still swollen and my throat raw from the expunging of the zombie husk.
"Yeah, just about." Amber drew deep on her cigarette and again my vision clouded as she disappeared behind her screen of smoke.
I watched the patterns swirl and eddy, everything sucked in through her mouth as she breathed in deep and her chest expanded. Like the center of a whirlpool, everything drawn into the depths of a truly powerful witch. If that's what she was. To be honest, I was at a loss how to classify her. She didn't give off a vibe like she was a witch, seemed fairly neutral, but I'd met such Hidden before, and usually it meant they were a lot more powerful than I could comprehend so I wasn't looking in the right place.
My head snapped up, my back arched, and what felt like a thousand volts fired into my brain then shot through my tattoos. I was left gasping, sweating, and wondering if my ink had burst in a million places.