Death March: Black Magic Outlaw

by Domino Finn

  A spiked mace on the wall wiggled. Pairs of monstrously white eyes faced the new threat. The heavy weapon careened into an armored carapace and sent it flying.

  The paused combatants sprang into frenzied action. They were fast but, when everything was a weapon, they were surrounded. Spears and swords whizzed through the air with deadly accuracy. Kasper rent limbs and heads askew. While not usually fatal, the damage he caused neutered the incoming attackers. All the while I danced among them, slipping into and out of shadow, making sure obsidian claws never reached their marks. Blood and ash rained in that room.

  Somewhere in the chaos, I spotted a third group sneaking from the back room into the hall. They wore black tactical gear, all helmeted except for one, and I'd recognize her twin pigtails anywhere. Tutti's second arm had regrown and was in a sling. "Let's get out of here," she ordered. Her small team exited the back door.

  My friends were doing fine. Kasper was mostly indestructible against tooth and claw and Darcy had a knack for keeping bodies away. I charged after Tutti's group and glanced in Kasper's office slash bedroom on the way past. Boots scraped the floor as I skidded to a halt. As much as I wanted to teach Tutti a more permanent lesson in manners, I had to confirm what I'd just seen: a slab of C4 attached to a timer, with only seconds left.

  "Everybody out!" I yelled. "Now!" I rushed through the tattoo parlor and dragged Kasper and Darcy after me. "Let's go!"

  Darcy sprinted outside but Kasper gave some resistance. "I'm not running!" he answered. "This is my shop!"

  The two vamps left inside swiped at him. The old man spun and deflected the claws away with his ax.

  "It's too late, Kasper!" I tugged his shoulder but he rebuffed me.

  I ground my teeth and summoned a tentacle of shadow. I hooked it around the old man's waist and burst out the front door, yanking him with me. At the same time, the entire storefront erupted. Lightning cracked. Glass exploded. An assortment of tattoo needles and furniture and body parts ejected outward.

  Darcy hit the floor and attempted to shield us from errant projectiles, but the whole thing was too sudden. Kasper took a polearm in his back. I held up my armored forearm and deflected a vintage tattoo chair away, but the heavy cast-iron swung around and knocked against my temple. The concussive force of the blast finished the job and sprawled us across the street.

  I could make out the tail lights of a van speeding away. I couldn't hear it. I couldn't hear anything, for that matter. Beside me, the smoking top half of a vampire pulled at the ground, struggling to prop itself up. Its red tongue lolled from its mouth as it searched for blood.

  I blinked. Kasper was sitting up. Darcy dragged me away, which was an easy thing with assistance from her spellcraft. The first hearing I recovered was the sound of glass on the street scraping under my jeans. I think the sound was traveling through my body rather than into my ears.

  Kasper's eyes shimmered as he considered the remains of his parlor. Some of the walls had held up okay due to the wards, but they hadn't been intended to protect from the inside. Darcy screamed. My ears were ringing, and I figured that was something, at least. We watched the old man lumber toward the last living vampire. The burnt husk without legs. Kasper flipped him to his back, growled, and dug bare fingers into his chest. Yellow fire rushed up his arm as he ripped the creature's heart out and held it overhead in a mighty Viking roar. Blood popped and rained down on us.

  I rubbed my ears. I heard that, but it was distant, like a dream.

  Darcy said, "We have to go."

  I pushed to my feet and wobbled. Kasper caught me.

  "You hurt?"

  I shook my head and stumbled to my car. "Get in." It sounded like someone else speaking. I made my way to the driver's seat. Kasper didn't move.

  "Come on," urged Darcy. "Your shop's gone."

  He stared at the burning war zone and set his jaw. "So it is." The old man settled into the Firebird and we took off.

  Chapter 36

  I parked behind Evan's car in the tandem parking space, glad to find them safe. Darcy squeezed her motorcycle behind and we wordlessly took the elevator to the lobby. Our faces broadcast stern conviction so well that even Carmela Flores gave us a wide berth. It wasn't a good time to fuck with us.

  Pushing into my place, I was relieved to lock hands with Evan. We were all here. Emily, Fran, and even her four-year-old brother John. The little guy was playing with my tablet and had already figured out the wireless Sonos system. Apparently he was fond of Nine Inch Nails. Kasper made a beeline for my favorite recliner—after a pit stop for beer—and Darcy hovered idly at the edge of the living space. Emily watched everyone from the balcony before turning back to the Miami skyline. It wasn't just us with a lot on our mind.

  "My team pulled out," reported Evan. "The FBI took over my scene. Bell's pretty pissed we skipped out but it's equitable payback. We'll need to straighten things out with the feds later."

  "Can't be helped," I agreed.

  "So what are we doing here? What are the chances we're in real danger?" Fran perked up.

  "It's worse than I thought. Manifesto is a wildcard with an ax to grind, but the Obsidian March are doing their darndest to make my life hell. They just blew up Kasper's shop."

  Evan's eyes widened. "Metaphorically?" He raised a hand to stifle my answer. "Never mind, Cisco. I should know by now that explosions are always literal with you."

  My daughter wandered over to Darcy and offered her hand. "Hi. I'm Fran."

  Darcy feigned a polite-but-grim smile. "Darcy. I work with Cisco."

  "You're an animist."

  The teenager bit her lip.

  "Can I see your fetish?"

  Evan watched with a critical eye as Darcy turned to me. I just nodded. The witch offered the statue of Hecate, her patron, to the preteen. Fran ogled it before handing it back. "It's cool. Don't let my brother touch it or he'll break her head off."

  Darcy chuckled. "Got it."

  I continued as Emily returned indoors. "Any one of us could be a target, including a couple of Society guys who won't be joining us."

  "How safe is it here?" asked Emily.

  "You see the walls, don't you? The glass?"

  Emily waved a palm over the ceiling-to-floor windows. Prismatic colors reflected from microscopic etching and filaments, lighting up glorious runework plastered over every exterior window and wall. She blinked. "This is beautiful."

  "Gracias," said Kasper in horrifying Spanish. "Took me months."

  "You." I briefly wondered if Emily remembered Kasper at all, not that he was forgettable.

  Evan put his arm around his wife. "Should I point out that your store is nothing but rubble now?"

  He sighed. "It was a public business. The walls were fortified some, but my doors were always unlocked. No point protecting heavily when trouble could walk right in. The wards didn't protect from a bomb on the inside."

  "So what stopped that from happening the entire time you've been in business?"

  He shook his head and flicked on the massage chair.

  "Kasper's neutral," I answered for him. "He's Switzerland. No animist wants to screw with him because they might need his scripting or medical talents at any point. It's why he never entered the business of offensive runes. As long as he was a protector, a medic of sorts, no one ever took the fight to him." I canted my head. "Aside from the random clueless biker who'd take a bat to his window."

  That drew a smile from the old man. "Happened a few times. My response always staved off that behavior for years after. Another reason I didn't bother with the windows."

  "So if you're Sweden," interjected Darcy, "why come after you now?"

  Once again, Kasper decided to leave the question unanswered. He closed his eyes and relaxed. John switched to a Nirvana song.

  "I didn't know you like classic rock!" said Fran excitedly.

  Evan and I muttered to ourselves under our breath.

  She traded glances between us. "What?"

  "Way
to make us feel old, honey" he said.

  I scoffed. "We're not old. Only a millennial would call Nirvana classic rock."

  "I'm not a millennial," returned Fran. "The youngest millennial is drinking age by now."

  I slapped my face. "Okay, mind blown. We are old." I decided to address Darcy's question to change the subject. "I don't know why they attacked Kasper. The Obsidian March must've known who he was and what he did. They knew he wasn't a threat."

  "They're not animists," pointed out Emily. "They're a criminal enterprise that doesn't make use of his services."

  "A growing criminal enterprise," added Evan. "Leverett Beaumont said the void created by defeating the Agua Fuego cartel had given rise to a new Obsidian March. One whose footprint in Miami has tripled in size over the last year."

  I nodded. "So they're taking out any and all potential threats to their empire. It's all-out war."

  Everyone in the room let that sink in for a second. No one said a word except for Kurt Cobain. It was Fran who finally spoke up.

  "If it's a fight they want, let's kick their ass."

  "Honey!" hushed Emily.

  "What?"

  "She's right," I said. "We need to make a statement. We need to make them back off. Otherwise they'll take potshots at us any time we step out of Brickell."

  "Which generously assumes Beaumont can keep order for more than a few days against the larger hegemony," pointed out Emily.

  "Another reason to take them on now."

  "You make that sound easy," said Evan.

  "The Obsidian March isn't unbeatable. It was three against ten at the tattoo parlor and we kicked their ass. Vampires go down if you hit them hard enough."

  "The problem is there's a metric shitload of them."

  "Metric, imperial, what's the difference? Your task force is sixteen strong, right?"

  "Cisco, I can't just mobilize them any time you want to pick a fight. If there's a crime in progress and we have probable cause, I can go in."

  "They're criminals."

  "And a case against them will be built from the ground up over the course of a year. Even if I rushed it past the point of irresponsibility and reckless disregard for the law, we're talking a few months at the very least."

  "Well, that's not going to work." I huffed and continued pacing. There had to be an angle here. A way to make the vamps back off, capture Manifesto, and put a pretty bow on the whole thing for the feds. Staying alive would be a desirable side effect. "Okay. For now the important thing is that we're all here. While holed up in the condo, we're safe. While we're together, we're safe. No one's gonna take us all on at the same time."

  "That would be suicide," chirped Kasper.

  Emily put a gentle hand on my shoulder to halt my nervous pacing. "Cisco, dear, everybody can't just camp out in your living room until this is solved."

  "That depends how quickly we solve this."

  "I've got nowhere else to go," said Kasper, seeming to realize it as soon as the words left his mouth.

  "I have bedrooms. You and Evan take one," I told Emily. "Kasper has his, and the kids can share."

  "What about me?" asked Darcy pointedly.

  "Sorry. You're not a kid. I know."

  "I can sleep in your room," she said slyly.

  "I don't like this new bit you're doing," I said. "There's a futon in my office. If this goes long term I can move the desk to my room."

  She crossed her arms, only partially satisfied.

  "It's not a plan," said Emily, "but it makes the most sense for tonight. But I do wonder why Fran and John need to be here. The Obsidian March didn't go after Fran—it was Nicole they wanted. And our house is presumably protected from them in Brickell. I think we should take our kids home. Away from all of this."

  "It's not just the vampires." I pulled the crumpled photo from my back pocket and unfolded it. "Manifesto keeps tabs on possible victims." John was pleasantly distracted, having moved on to Alice in Chains, but Fran was avidly hanging on my every word. I decided not to sugarcoat it. "You've caught his attention."

  Emily took the photo from me. Her eyes flared as the scope of this lockdown dawned on her. Her voice came out strained. "Manifesto doesn't care about the Brickell protection."

  "That's right. Your house might be safe from the March, and that's a big if, but the Manifesto Killer doesn't check in with criminal organizations before striking."

  She breathed in and out, trembling at the thought of our daughter in his sights. "But Fran and John should be okay. They're not animists." She looked at me. "Evan can take them home. Manifesto only wants practitioners."

  My jaw tightened. "He's killed at least one civilian before," I reminded. While there was a good chance the random killings he'd claimed were bullshit, I'd personally witnessed him murder a woman during a carjacking not a few hours earlier.

  "No," said Emily, denial overtaking her. "My babies won't be hurt. They're not animists."

  I worked my jaw. I had wanted this conversation to go a different way, to be under different circumstances, but there was no avoiding it anymore. Fran's talents were a material concern now, and Evan and Emily deserved to know.

  "Yeah," I squeezed out with a wince, "about that..."

  Chapter 37

  "She WHAT?!?" fumed Evan, taking an angry step toward me.

  "Cool it, buddy. We're all grown-ups here."

  "You just told me my daughter is a... a..."

  "An animist," I repeated in the soothing voice of a therapist, hoping the manner of what I was saying distracted from the actual content of my words. All eyes in the room turned to my daughter. To her credit, she took the attention with a half-baked shrug. "I know it's a lot to take in..."

  Evan did a poor job tempering his anger. "This wasn't your decision to make." Even his neck flexed.

  "Buddy, hear me out. This wasn't me. This was Connor Hatch."

  At the mention of the drug kingpin's name, Emily went white as a sheet.

  I summoned Dr. Phil and explained. "Dirty politics, the DROP team, the Miami Covey—you guys have always been in his sights. What you didn't know is he'd secretly been giving Fran spellcraft lessons for two years."

  "WHAT?!?" Evan had gone full circle. His runtime was broken.

  "It's like Emily said before. That's how Connor operated. He got his hooks into family members, enticed them while they were young."

  Emily's wet eyes quivered as she considered her baby.

  I raised calming palms to the air. "But it's okay, because we got her back. Fran's fine."

  Evan swallowed and nodded. That had been the night we all realized we were on the same team. The night all the internal bullshit between us was nothing compared to the evil in the world. We'd banded together and taken it head on, and although complete success arrived at a later date, we knew we could trust each other after that. From then on, old friends were true friends. Only there had been a price.

  One was my reputation in the Miami necromancer community. I'd effectively sold a lot of them out and was still trying to make amends for that. Another side effect was Fran, bearing a new talent but left stranded, without the wisdom to channel it.

  "I..." I swallowed and started again, hoping my best friend wouldn't see this as a betrayal. "It was a while before I looked into it. Maybe I ignored it and hoped it would go away. Maybe I had problems of my own. But when I got back to town to lay roots..."

  Fran helpfully chimed in. "Cisco's been training me once a week for the last three months."

  Evan's face went stone cold. "You're training... MY daughter... how to use magic?"

  "She's good at it."

  "Cisco! You know how I feel about magic."

  "And she'd begun instruction before I ever came back from the dead." Again, the state of affairs pointed squarely at Emily's past affairs with the drug cartel. She was grief-stricken. She dropped to her knees beside her daughter and embraced her. Fran latched on tightly while her mother wept.

  "It's not gonna go away,
Evan," I insisted. "She needs someone who'll teach her to be responsible with it. Teach her right. You know... you know why that person should be me."

  He lowered his head, unable to shoot me down. He couldn't deny my love for my daughter. He knew I would literally walk to the ends of the steppe and into the others to save her. Still, the mood in the room was all wrong.

  I took a breath and changed tack. "You need to understand what a gift it is."

  He turned away abruptly. "I don't want to hear it." For a second I thought he might cry like his wife. A year ago he hadn't known about Emily either. Now his house was harboring two animists.

  "It's purely defensive. You'll like it. It's null magic. By itself, it doesn't do anything at all, but it voids the spellcraft of others."

  Emily pulled her head away and considered her daughter intently. Null magic wasn't very common, and it took an animist to understand how truly formidable it could be. Kasper went for the fridge—this was old news to him—but Darcy watched from the corner with interest.

  "It's true, Mom, Dad," affirmed Fran. "Cisco saved my life yesterday."

  They turned to me. I cleared my throat. "We've been doing drills. Getting her to concentrate under pressure. Dispelling my constructs. Simple stuff. Nothing dangerous. And when the Obsidian March had her in that van, she disrupted their hearts. Their magical cores." I shook my head. "She exploded one of the fiends all by herself."

  That news was bittersweet for them. No one wants their baby to become a stone-cold killer. In my book, black-armored monstrosities with daggers for fingers didn't count for human, but nobody would discount putting them down as a kill.

  "It's a great defense," I assured them. "For moments like right now, when we're under assault by the things that go bump in the night, it could mean the difference between life and death. Her life. That's what matters, isn't it?"

  Emily was already wiping her tears. She still wouldn't let go of her daughter, but I saw the turn in her. She was an animist, after all. Her daughter following in her footsteps must have come with a certain amount of pride.