Hexomancy

by Michael R. Underwood

  Ree scrambled up and onto the wrought-iron grate, swinging herself around to the first set of stairs.

  She caught a glimpse of Drake fifteen feet back. “Hurry! That thing won’t last long!”

  Drake leaped and bounded off the trampoline as well, catching the fire escape with one hand, his rifle slung over his back once more. Trusting that the interdimensional adventurer could handle it from there, she focused on the stairs, scaling two at a time, hoping that her boots would be enough to avoid slipping.

  Lachesis disappeared over the lip of the roof, and Ree pushed on. Drake stomped behind her, two flights down.

  Ree hopped over the lip, pushing off with one hand and kicking her feet over, landing with a double-crunch on the snow. Lachesis was already at the far end of the black-tar roof lined with solar panels.

  The Strega waved her hands, sang a quick lick in Norwegian or something, and bounded across a ten-foot gap with ease, leaving contrails of magic in connecting geometric art deco shapes.

  “Hexomancers,” Ree cursed, reaching for her sideboard once more. She pulled out a Giant Strength card from the pile, tore it up, and then headed for a solar panel. She ripped the whole thing up from the roof, and swung it like a two-by-four over to the gap. It barely bridged the gap, and might not be that stable.

  Drake hurdled over the side of the building, landing in a crunch behind her.

  “Up and over!” she called, jumping up to the panel. If it broke while she was on it, she had the sideboard. And Drake had his grapple gun. It’d have to do, or they’d have to give up the chase and try again later, when Lachesis knew they were on her trail.

  Ree held out both hands for balance, hustling over the gap as fast as she could in the still-howling winds, glasses smudged by fat snowflakes.

  A rifle burst zipped past her foot. A field of gold and silver geometric patterns flashed into sight and sparked as something bounced off.

  Great, Hex shield, Ree thought.

  The witch turned and smiled, waving with Steve Ditko–esque finger gestures. Then she looked over the side, jumped up to the lip, and dropped out of sight once more.

  But the delay had closed ten feet’s worth of lead as Ree booked across the second roof. She reached the edge of the building, looking over. Lachesis was already on the ground again, heading north. Ree tried to reconstruct the woman’s method of descent. Storm drain to second-floor veranda to open Dumpster.

  Again, not something Ree could do on her own. She pored through her sideboard, looking for a way down. She settled on another Swiss Army–Green Lantern card. This time she fashioned a slide that led down off the roof and into Lachesis’s trail.

  “Chutes and Ladders this time!” Ree called. She kept her eyes locked on Lachesis, who looked over her shoulder at Ree. Ree waved hello as she slid down the construct, the wetness on her coat slowing her descent.

  Ree would gladly have kept a Green Lantern ring on hand to do stuff like this all the time, but it took incredible mental effort to make constructs straight from the ring, as Eastwood had shown several times. These one-shots were way less taxing, but she was already running short. She had one more GL card, then she’d have to come up with other tricks.

  Drake hit the slide as she hopped off. Lungs already heaving, she continued after Lachesis, considering pulling out a fatigue token to get her wind back.

  “Ah!” Drake called, and Ree skidded to a stop. Turning, she saw Drake collapse to the ground, the slide disappearing faster than it should have.

  I hate Hexomancy, Ree thought.

  “I’m fine! Keep going!” he called, picking himself up.

  She did.

  When I catch this witch, there is going to be a face-punching the likes of which the world has not seen since the third age.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Le Parkour vs. Geek-fu

  Ree and Drake chased Lachesis across three more city blocks, the woman gaining on them, bit by bit. Between Hexomancy giving her a boost and dropping black ice and inconvenient crowds in their way, she was building herself the buffer she’d need to escape entirely, resetting their efforts to following with Drake’s tracking machine.

  And that would just not fucking do.

  Ree bit into another fatigue token, shredding the cardboard and feeling a rush of energy fill her up, washing away the tearing pain in her legs and the burning in her lungs. She pushed forward.

  Ahead, Lachesis hopped over a switchback without losing any steam, reversing direction down to an outdoor mall.

  And what’s worse, they were starting to get witnesses. More than a few.

  “Urban tag!” she shouted to a cluster of tutting elderly women, who very well might be clutching their pearls under their massive powder-blue and salmon coats.

  Drake continued to lag behind, his arsenal of tricks and gadgets good for getting up, but not nearly as versatile as Ree’s for speed, strength, and weird situations.

  “Don’t mind me! I have the tracker!” he shouted as she slowed to keep him in sight, then gave her best overexaggerated stage wink and set off again.

  She tore up a Flash card from the Vs. card game and watched the world go slow-mo as she kept booking at the same speed, moving faster than a time-lapse video. The Doubt was going to be working overtime today, but so be it. Two blocks later, Ree slipped on a patch of black ice, scrambling for footing in super-speed. It wasn’t coming, so she dove into a roll, trying to bleed off some speed before she collided with the very-solid wall beside a café with a sickening crunch that could only have been her.

  Groaning, Ree fumbled for a healing potion token. She ripped the cardboard between her teeth and the overwhelming pain washed away with a full-body tingle.

  There was no way that was a real chunk of ice. Hexomancy strikes again. As long as Lachesis had the lead to burn in bits and pieces to drop hexes, she’d be able to escape the pair indefinitely. And if she was an experienced traceur, she probably had the lungs to outrun both her and Drake.

  Getting to her feet, Ree pulled out her deck to look for another way to catch up with the Strega.

  The entire deck flew out of her hands with a gust of gold and silver magic.

  “Witch!” Ree shouted, wanting to use a different word but not around the cluster of kids playing in the snow nearby. She managed to grab one card before it could flutter away. It was a Hulk, probably good for one super-bound.

  Ahead, Lachesis jumped, pushed off a wall, then turned and jumped again, grabbing on to the bottom of a second-floor balcony of some ritzy apartment building. Ree did the math based on the size of Hulk’s super-jumps in films and comics, aimed so that even with Hexomantic interference she’d still end up on the building’s roof, and then ripped the card mid-run.

  As the energy seeped into her legs, Ree took one mighty leap. She arced high over the street, keeping her eyes on Lachesis, who looked over to see Ree heading for the roof above. She wove another Hex, gold and silver energy arcing up to send her careening off-course even farther than the woman’s curses had sent her before.

  Ree did the math and realized she was going to miss the roof. But barely. Hyping herself up and hoping for residual magic, she shouted, “Puny Strega!” and flipped around, grabbing the lip of the roof, her hands crushing the marble in their grip, her feet cracking the brick of the outer wall.

  The landing knocked the power straight out of Ree, but she’d made the landing. She pulled herself up and onto the roof with not-even-Banner-level strength.

  “Head her off, Drake!” Ree shouted as she ran across the roof, hoping to catch the Strega between them.

  Lachesis popped up to the roof of the building as Ree crossed the halfway point. Ree drew her phaser and fired, but the Strega tossed it off with a gesture, another gold-silver field protecting her. Ree kept firing as she closed, also drawing and tossing one of her knives. The Strega slowed, focusing more
on the shield, then took off after the dagger hit. Ree drew her lightsaber, no longer willing to play nice, especially if she could wear the Strega down to take her out with an old-fashioned right cross.

  Ree was on track to head the Strega off, as long as she could keep Lachesis’s focus on defense, not Hexy offense. She feather-touched the phaser’s trigger, borrowing out of her experience gaming Quick Time Events by spamming a button, and reached for another throwing dagger.

  A green glob of zap crossed through her vision, signaling that Drake had made it up to the roof. The Strega stopped, turning to face both of them.

  “The abomination has chosen his minions well.”

  “Is that Strega for ‘I give up’?” Ree asked, closing in. “If so, I accept your surrender. Now get on your knees and keep your hands still.”

  Lachesis’s smile was a bloody knife drawn across a goat’s neck. The zealotry burned bright in her eyes, and Ree lost a step. The woman was far from giving up. Which meant that the fight was on.

  Ree slipped the lightsaber back into her coat, not liking what would come of a Hexomantically-misdirected laser sword, especially as she and Drake moved into their combined melee approach, the man out of time jogging forward as he fired on his rifle’s best impression of full auto.

  Lachesis struck Jean Grey psychic poses as Drake fired, and angled the shield so that it deflected the shots straight at Ree. She dodged and dove, still closing on the Strega. This woman didn’t have Connie’s mass, and if her major physical chops were in evasion, maybe she wouldn’t be as good in hand-to-hand.

  Ree decided to skip striking and move directly in for the grapple, taking small steps to minimize her exposure to Hexomantic whammies.

  As Drake’s rifle slipped from his hands, still firing, the adventurer dove to the side, taking Lachesis’s focus with him. Ree shuffle-stepped through where the shield would have been, happy to discover that it wasn’t a full dome or plane, more like the Dune shields—all about the individual attacks, slow blade pierces the shield and all.

  Ree locked a hand around the Strega’s wrist with a “Gotcha!”

  But where Lucretia would have struggled ineffectually, Lachesis threw her arm down and around in a circle, breaking Ree’s grip.

  Okay, sticky hands it is. She’d played it only a few times with her dojang-mates that cross-trained in Daiji, but the idea was simple enough. Keep pushing and pulling and grabbing until something stuck and you could knock your opponent off their balance. If she could get her to the ground long enough for Drake to dog-pile, they’d have her.

  Ree lashed out with grabs, strikes, and pushes, trying to get the Strega off her balance, and especially to occupy her hands. The Teutonic Strega met her move for move, showing herself to be no melee slouch.

  But still, it was two to one. Drake joined the fight, kukri taking cautious swipes at the Strega’s flank while Ree and Lachesis parried and riposted with punches and grapples.

  “Keep it at the ninety to one hundred and fifty,” Ree said. At that angle, they’d have less chance of missing what the other was doing and opening themselves up to a Hexomantic disaster.

  Lachesis knocked the kukri out of Drake’s hand, then spun and caught Ree across the chin with a hook kick. Reeling back, she came up to see a quick flash of gold and silver. Drake tripped directly on his knife, cutting his arm.

  “Oh, now you’ve fucking done it,” Ree said, rolling back up to her feet. Another Hex and she flopped straight to the ground, tucking her chin to avoid biting her tongue.

  Hex by Hex, step by step, she slipped, rolled, and tripped her way back to Lachesis, a growing mound of bruises, but still going.

  Lachesis picked up Drake’s bloodied kukri, holding it up to catch the winter sun as Ree wobbled to her feet once more.

  “Your blood will ensure the other’s doom and the completion of the prophecy,” she said, voice thick with hate.

  Ree fell forward, her feet still confounded by hexes, but this time she was close enough to topple into the Strega, sending them both to the ground and the kukri off to the side.

  The woman struggled, elbowing Ree in the collarbone as they rolled on the snowy roof. Ree bit down on her lip and snaked an arm around the woman’s neck, moving to the side and putting pressure on the Strega’s larynx. Lachesis’s nails bit into Ree’s arm, but she held fast. Ree snaked her other arm around Lachesis, starting what would be a fight-ending half nelson.

  Drake kicked out at Lachesis, catching her in the wrist. The woman grunted, breath strained, and Ree took the opportunity to apply the other half of the half nelson (the other quarter nelson?).

  “Now would be the time to give up,” Ree said, putting pressure on the back of the Strega’s neck, keeping her hips above the small of the woman’s back. Lachesis didn’t have the mass or strength to break this hold without magic, and with no hands free, no magic.

  “You going to come quietly?”

  Lachesis screamed, frustration and rage bypassing words.

  Ree let one arm slip, leaning her shoulder into the biceps of the woman’s freed arm, and grabbed the manacles that Eastwood had given to her when they left Dr. Wells’s.

  She snapped the Mana Sink manacles on one hand, then the other, then relaxed her hold. Lachesis wasn’t going to be able to escape her again now. Her phaser still had a good two stun shots left in its charge.

  Three paces away, Drake had a bandage out, wrapping his bloodied arm.

  “You okay?”

  Drake’s face was pale, drained. He’d caught up without any magical speed boosts, but the effort had winded him.

  “May I trouble you for one of those healing potions of Eastwood’s?” he asked.

  At Eastwood’s name, the woman screamed again.

  “You got it,” Ree said. “Can you help me with Lachie here?”

  Drake offered his unwounded arm, looping it around the Strega’s.

  A quick survey of the not-quite alley beside the building didn’t provide anything handy, which meant this would go the hard way.

  She reclaimed the phaser from where she’d dropped it, now wet in the snow beside the grill.

  Ree hauled the Strega forward. “We’re going to get down, and then you’re going to come with us, okay?”

  “Idiot. Nearsighted, uncivilized, primitive idiot,” Lachesis said, a nearly Elvis-level ’tude on her snarl.

  “Then why are you the one in chains, and I’m the one with the gun?” Ree said, prodding the Strega in the shoulder with the business end of the phaser. “Now, over the side.”

  Lachesis swung one leg over the balcony ledge, then the other, hopping down and landing with ease. Ree jumped right after, landing in a crouch. On a good day, she’d look nearly as good as Lachesis.

  This wasn’t a good day. She toppled to the side, remembering to keep the phaser trained on the Strega.

  “Shortsighted, too. The cowboy must die, lest others be emboldened by his continued existence. He has stained the pattern, disrupted the flow of the river. I should have set those ball bearings to detonate, made them jagged, something. Atropos will not be so easily stopped.”

  “Atropos. That your third sister, along with you and Connie Clothos-Line?” Ree asked as they walked out of the alley.

  “Stop, police!” came a call from the street level.

  “Fucksicles,” Ree said, looking down at the officer, who had his gun out and ready but not trained on them.

  She sorted through possible responses, taking inventory of what tools she had on hand.

  “I’m a federal marshal,” she said after a moment. “This woman is a bail jumper, indicted on three counts of attempted murder. Cover me as I come down and I will be happy to show my badge.”

  Ree climbed down the fire escape and dropped into the slush by the officer, leaving Lachesis with Drake, still on the fire escape.

  “Go
ing for my badge,” she said, fishing around in her jacket, pulling out the psychic paper she had on loan from Eastwood since he didn’t exactly need it while he was in traction. She showed it to the cop, hoping that the zillions of hexes Lachesis had been throwing around wouldn’t cancel out the artifact’s magic.

  “And if you’re still not satisfied, you can call Captain Chu with SWAT. He knows me.”

  The cop’s whole stance changed when she mentioned Chu. “You worked with SWAT?”

  “Yep. The fugitive here is one of those,” she said.

  The Pearson PD were clued in on the supernatural. Or at least some of them were.

  The cop gave her ID a look, then nodded, holstering his gun.

  “Can we bum a ride?” Ree added. “My partner here took a nasty cut, and this one gave us one hell of a run.”

  The cop looked at Drake’s coat and his bloody arm. “Your partner, eh?”

  “Independent consultant.”

  The cop nodded, returning to his squad car. “Yeah, I hear SWAT has a lot of those. Come on, and see if your partner can keep from bleeding on the backseat.”

  Ree rode in the back, keeping an eye on Lachesis, watching the manacles. She went ahead and gagged the Strega after two minutes of incoherent, nearly evangelistic raving about the prophecy and her sister’s revenge.

  The patrolman dropped them off a block from the Dorkcave, leaving them to walk the Strega the rest of the way. Ree consciously locked Lachesis up by a different set of stacks than where Eastwood had bound Connie, leaving the gag in place for a minute while she reactivated all of the wards and traps.

  They cleaned and dressed Drake’s injury, then he downed another healing potion and took a seat to recover, leaving Ree with the Strega, still struggling against her restraints.

  Ree squatted down in front of the Hexomancer and pulled out the woman’s gag, taking care to stay out of biting range. “Okay, start talking. Why are you after Eastwood, and what’s this Atropos like?”

  Lachesis laughed. But it wasn’t arrogant laughter, defensive laughter, or anything like it. This was full-on Mark Hamill’s Joker.