“Of course. We don’t sell junk here. These, like the previous ones, are created by Loki himself and completely safe for the user. Like most syms, however, they tend to be…quite malleable.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked, knowing I was being a little rude now, but honestly irritated by what I saw as deliberate evasiveness.
He didn’t seem to notice the rudeness. As a shopkeeper someplace as weird as Starhaven, maybe he was simply used to it. “The initial batch we had was of a lower quality and had a very limited assortment of powers. They were popular for a while, but interest petered out. These are high-end models, comparable to syms one could get from the original designers, and therefore I am unable to ascertain what powers they may confer.”
“Powers?” I was getting more and more confused by this exchange. What did he mean by powers?
“I’m not sure even Loki understands how they work. Suffice to say that all syms grant their wearer special abilities—abilities that may seem like magic, but actually influence reality on a higher level than magic appears to. In example, say you have a sym that allows you to manipulate fire. If you were to come across a mage who specialized in fire or used fire consistently, your sym would be able to override his magic. You could snuff out his magical fire or cause it to do things he hadn’t intended.”
I was starting to catch on. It sounded damned intriguing, but I was certain I couldn’t afford one of these things. “How much?”
He clapped his hands together in apparent delight. “My first sale!” He leaned across the counter and murmured conspiratorially. “How much you got?”
“I’ve got five hundred credits,” I told him. I expected him to laugh in my face.
“Wonderful! My partner is currently elsewhere, and since she’s the one who’s obsessed with money, I find myself in the perfect position to sell you something you desperately need at a price you can afford. Four hundred and forty-five credits.”
I could scarcely believe my ears. “Four forty-five? Are you kidding?”
When he shook his head, I whipped out my five hundred credit chit and tossed it on the counter. “You’ve got a deal,” I told him.
He shoved the chit into a reader and handed it back, then turned around and started poking around the blank wall behind him. I could hear him muttering to himself and, after a moment of it, came up with what looked like a small wine cask. “All I ask is that you go someplace private to open the package,” he said. “They can be a little wild when they’re first released.”
I had no problem with that. Now that I had what I came for—or, at least, what I thought I’d come for—I was quite content to return to Earth and try this thing out in the privacy of my own home.
Needless to say that Spite seemed to have no problem with that and actually dropped me off at home within an hour. She lingered on the porch for a few minutes, looking rather uncomfortable. “Is everything okay?” I asked her.
“I enjoyed spending time with you, Hydra. I was wondering if we might do it again sometime.”
“Sure,” I said, stunned that someone like her would find me at all interesting.
She smiled her beautiful smile. “Great. Good luck with the sym. I’ll be seeing you at the Lounge.” She then leaned forward and brushed her lips against my cheek.
With that she turned, gestured, and walked into nothingness.
Feeling like a kid, I carried my keg inside and set it on my extra-large coffee table.
All the furniture in my house is larger than life. If I could, I’d buy oversized appliances as well, but, of course, no such equipment seems to be available.
I rely on my house mainframe to run most of the equipment like the stove and view set because my hands are too large to manipulate such things as buttons or dials without risking disaster. The weird thing is that I really don’t mind being the size I am. I just don’t like the more freakish attributes that go with it.
Taking a deep breath, I popped the lid off the cask.
I forced myself to sit still as something like a living shadow burst from it and leaped upon me. I felt a strange and disconcerting tugging sensation, but before I knew it, I’d been completely enveloped by the thing. Apparently syms are one size fits all. I was gratified to realize this, since I hadn’t bothered to ask while still at the shop.
I stood up and looked down at myself, realizing that I was covered in an oily black material and my clothing, such as it was, lay in shreds at my feet. I stumbled into the bathroom, somehow unable to control my limbs to the extent to which I’d always been accustomed.
I ordered the house main to turn on the lights and stared in amazement at the image that appeared in my mirror. Gone was the humanoid elephant that had always greeted me before this moment. I had a real face now, black as midnight and astoundingly familiar. It took me a moment to realize that I looked an awful lot like Spite. Too much, I decided, and I concentrated on changing my features. I lengthened the nose a little, widened the lips, and ran a hand over the shiny surface of my skull. I turned my head this way and that and concentrated on reducing my ears to a pair of vestigial swirls of flesh.
This was simply amazing. I couldn’t believe it had been this easy.
I wished for the sym to become a suit of clothing—something semi-formal—and I was standing there in a nicely cut business suit. “Holy crap,” I murmured. “I’m gorgeous. Hades, eat your heart out.”
I walked into the Lounge the next night feeling like the king of the world. I arrived early, as usual, and for a change, the normals who frequented the place before all us freaks started arriving didn’t run screaming, though they did give me an assortment of strange looks.
Strange looks I can live with.
Callie was back behind the bar, washing glasses, and Jack was at his customary place in the corner booth. With him were Boneyard and Kevin, which is why the were-panther hadn’t been guarding the door as he usually is this time of night.
I walked up to the bar. “I’d like a shot of tequila, please,” I told Callie. She eyed me curiously for a moment, then poured the shot. I knocked it back, grinned, and laid a chit on the bar. “That’s a hundred. Keep ‘em coming for me, and if an Abyssian woman comes in, give her anything she wants on my tab.”
Her curious stare grew even more pronounced, but she nodded.
I made my way to Jack’s table and squatted down so I was eye to eye with them. “Hey, guys. How’s it going?”
“Hi, Hydra,” Jack replied. “I see you found what you were looking for.”
I wish I knew how he did that. I didn’t look anything like I had and I’m pretty sure my voice had been changed considerably by the whole process, but he wasn’t fooled for a minute.
Boneyard and Kevin performed synchronized double-takes and I chuckled aloud. “Yep, it’s me. How’d the search for the kid go?” I’d been a little worried about it, but hadn’t heard anything on the view regarding the search once I’d calmed down enough to switch it on the night before.
“The kid wasn’t really missing,” Boneyard said. “He’d gone off to play at a friend’s house without telling anyone. He’ll be lucky if he isn’t grounded until he’s sixty.”
“That’s good news,” I said. “Glad to hear everything turned out all right.”
I stood and turned and found myself looking back at Spite, who was watching me with an unreadable expression on her face. I smiled at her and she returned it tentatively. “Is that you, Hydra?” she asked as I approached.
I nodded. “In the flesh. Pretty cool, eh?”
“You look a little like one of us,” she said. “I didn’t expect that.”
“Either did I. I didn’t set out to look like a wingless Abyssian, but I’ll take it.”
“You may be able to change your form again,” she remarked thoughtfully. “When I kissed you I probably left a trace of DNA the sym responded to when it bonded with you.”
That was something I hadn’t considered, but it made a lot of sense. I nodded.
“Something to think about later,” was all I said. “Did you order a drink?”
“She said it was already paid for.”
“It was. I was hoping you’d be in.”
“How could I stay away? I was curious.”
“Only curious?”
“Well, maybe a little more than curious,” she admitted. “I also wanted to see you again.”
I felt my heart do a little skip at that confession. “I know I wanted to see you. Tell me, do you like boats?”
She shrugged. “I suppose. Why?”
“Because I’d like to take you out on a little cruise tomorrow, if you’re interested. Just my way of saying thank you.”
“You have a boat?”
“I design boats,” I told her. “I’ve got a boat specifically built with us plus-size people in mind.”
“Then I’d like that very much,” she said. She leaned forward and gently kissed me, sliding her hand up my arm and around my neck. When the kiss finally broke, we looked around and found more than a few of the regulars looking on and the normals gone.
A cheer rang out. “We were wondering if you’d ever come out of it,” Hades said jokingly, shooting a grin at his girlfriend, Steph. “Who’s your friend?”
“Folks, this is Spite.”
“Not anymore,” my Abyssian lady said. “It’s time for another name change.”
“Oh? To what?”
“I think Hope feels like a very good fit right now.”
“Hope? Sure, why not?” I stroked her cheek with my hand and she nuzzled it gently.
“Where are Timothy and Hammad?” I asked, looking around. “We could use some music.”
“They’re not here,” said Kevin, who was up on the stage tinkering with something. “But we can do something about the music ourselves. I think this development calls for a karaoke party.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Hades wince. There are a lot of things Hades does very well. Singing isn’t one of them. But that doesn’t stop him from getting up there and giving it his best shot.
If you can’t caterwaul in front of your friends, I always say, they’re not really your friends.
Episode VI: Storm Chasing
Bad night all around. It was wet, nasty, and cold. And I was missing a boyfriend. I came out of the night, barreling out of Golden Gate Park and leaping Stanyan St. and its sporadic traffic of bicycle cabs and pedestrians without a single downward glance.
I had one goal in mind and woe to anything that got in my way.
I hit a skidding right turn at Cole and practically flew up the sidewalk, blowing by Boneyard as if he were standing still. Not hard, considering he was standing still. I straight-armed the door, smashing it open and leaving it hanging by one hinge, a shattered ruin.
All eyes leaped to me as I stood in the doorway, shaking and unable to speak for a brief moment. “I need your help!”
Jack, the manager, stood up from his usual corner booth and strode across the dance floor to stand right in front of me. He gazed past me toward the broken door and sighed. “You know you have it, Rio. But was breaking the front door really necessary?”
I gave him my best steely-eyed stare. He met my gaze squarely, not shrinking back an inch. Jack is a normal, as far as I can tell, but he’s a brave sonofabitch. Not many humans could lock gazes with a pissed-off vamp and not flinch.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Storm’s missing and I need as much help as I can get in finding him.”
“How do you know he’s missing?” asked Boneyard from behind me. The ‘thrope had come through the broken front door while I was looking at Jack. I was off my game if I hadn’t even felt him coming.
“Now there’s a dumb question,” I shot back over my shoulder. “He’s missing because he wasn’t there when I woke up. He never does that.”
The look of concern that passed across every face in the joint was truly astounding. They didn’t question my statement at all.
“Where should we start?” asked Hades, the former evil immortal. I was one of those who remembered his name from the bad old days. It’s odd thinking of him as an ally now.
His girlfriend Steph stood up and put her arm around his waist. “What can we do?” She’s another vamp—relatively young compared to me, but quite powerful as such things are measured. These days she’s a pretty big cheese in the Conclave, which is kinda like a vampire union. She had resources I could only guess at. Politics are so not my thing. “We start at Alcatraz,” I replied.
The island had been overlooked as the mages rushed to protect San Francisco from the effects of global warming, but I hadn’t overlooked it at all. I’d buttressed the shores against the rising water and rendered the island effectively invisible in the process. I’d already decided to make the Rock my home and wasn’t at all interested in entertaining visitors.
Storm had done some of his own work to keep the island safe from intruders. Not only was it perpetually shrouded in mist, but the uninvited were very likely to attract unwanted lightning bolts—even out of a clear sky. Not that we saw many of those.
I can’t fly. Some vamps can, but I’m not one of them. I can summon a windsprite and bind it into something and fly that way, but like most vamps, my ability to communicate with spirits is pretty spotty. Sometimes they refuse to acknowledge our existence and that makes them hard to command. I prefer to avoid anything to do with them if I can.
I’ve got the island warded pretty heavily, which prevents uninvited mages from showing up unannounced, but it also makes it that much trickier for me to get on and off the Rock. I have to utilize a key spell, encoded just right to temporarily negate the sigil that’s the foundation of the island’s defenses.
If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, don’t feel too bad. A lot of talented mages don’t understand wards very well. They’re pretty complicated, and not that easy to explain. Let’s just say that I have to expend a lot of energy to get back to the island without my defensive spells considering me just another intruder.
More importantly on this occasion, I had to do this all without alerting the other mages to what I was doing. Hades, Steph, and Kevin were all magi, and none of them were boneheads. I had to initiate the disarming sequence without letting them see the pattern I used.
Not that I didn’t trust them. I trusted them as much as I trust anyone who isn’t me or Stormchild. Which isn’t much, to be honest.
I also had to do it all without alerting them to the fact that I’m not really a mage at all. Oh, I can fake it as well as anyone, but the key to my magic is something I’m not supposed to even let anyone else know about.
It’s a secret. I don’t actually cast spells myself, but do it through the two mage gems hidden on my person. I tell the gems what I want done and they manipulate the mana in the way I require to get the result I’m looking for.
It’s only one of things I don’t advertise about myself. I’ve got tons. I’m one of the few day-walking vampires. I never truly died and I wear a symsuit. Most vampires can’t. Vampire cells and syms don’t bond.
I’m also a powerful psychic, but not the kind that reads minds or any of that scary stuff. Psychic Creativity is my forte. I can recreate any object or compound I myself understand. Since I’m a bioengineer, this means I’m able to do some pretty amazing stuff.
Enough secrets. I don’t really plan on letting anyone read this, but you never know. Accidents happen.
I transported myself and the volunteers (which included just about everyone but Jack) to Alcatraz and, while the others were exploring, I jumped down to my lab for a quick second. When I arrived I found the imp, Quickfingers, messing with some of my equipment. He’s the one ultimately responsible for my condition, the little shit. He thinks I don’t know. I let him believe that. If he wasn’t an imp and damn near immune to anything I could do to him, I’d let him know in a way he wouldn’t soon forget.
I’d bitch to Jaz about him, but named imps are notoriously difficult to contr
ol, and none more than the first of their kind. Jaz may have created him, but Quickfingers was most definitely a free agent. She could influence him, but no one ruled him.
“Hey, Rio!” he said, turning away from the microscope and peering at me through his large round eyes. “What’s up?”
“Storm’s missing,” I told him. “I brought some friends to help look for him. Don’t cause any trouble.”
“Trouble? Me?”
His feigned innocence is so blatantly false I couldn’t help but laugh. Trouble follows Quickfingers around like a pet.
I was afraid to ask what he’s been up to. God only knows. In case one might wonder why I even let him into my lab, my only answer is that it’s part of a deal we made. It’s awfully difficult to keep him out of any place in particular and he’s far less likely to deliberately cause a disaster if he’s welcomed in, no matter how distasteful I might find it.
I exited the lab without another word and reappeared with the others, who were currently inspecting one of the cell blocks. “So they actually imprisoned people here, huh?” Steph asked, shaking her head. “Seems kinda…uncivilized.”
So spoke a product of the twenty-first century. I nearly laughed, but thought it would be rude. “Some of the people they sent here should’ve just been shot.”
“Aren’t you just a poster child for progressive values,” said Hades with what looked suspiciously like a smirk.
I gave him the evil eye. I never know if he’s serious or joking, or some combination of the two. He’s still an enigma in many ways. “Never claimed to be,” I shot back. “Some folks are just a waste of perfectly good oxygen. Rapists, child-killers and scum like that should be eradicated like vermin.”
“We’re not here to discuss politics and social theory,” said Hydra, giving us both a hard stare. Believe me, when a nine-foot-plus black troll glares at you, you know you’ve been glared at. “Or are you not worried about your boyfriend?”
I returned his glare. “You guys been able to sniff anything out yet?” I asked Steph and Boneyard.
Tales from the Magitech Lounge Page 11