I heard the screams as soon as I stepped outside. New Yorkers love a spectacle – there had been brave souls watching as I prepared to face the Voodoo Cultists – but this was something else. I could hear a loud roaring in the distance, a sound that spoke to the part of the human soul that feared and hated the darkness, and flinched. I wanted to escape, to flee…and only the thought of my duty kept me from running. Well, that…and I doubted that I could outrun the creature, whatever it was, anyway.
A horse cantered past me and I stared. “Come on, you varmint,” Cowboy shouted, as he headed off into the distance. “Last one there’s a rotten egg.”
“So that’s the famous Trigger,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. The horse might have been magically enhanced, or it might have been merely intelligent, for it jumped and weaved between the cars and civilians without risking any of them. It was a magnificent beast, I decided, but I wouldn’t have dared do half the idiotic stunts he was trying…and performing magnificently. He seemed to pause on the top of a massive bus, the passengers turning to stare, before the horse pranced off the bus and onwards. There was no way that that had been achieved without magic.
I concentrated, summoning an aversion spell around myself, and started to run after Cowboy. The aversion spell isn’t easy to perform, but there was little choice. I ran right through the oncoming flood of terrified people and somehow I was never where they were. From my point of view, cars and buses seemed to hop out of my way, allowing me a straight line towards the screams. Whatever was going on wasn't getting any better. I don’t know why I was even pretending to be surprised about that.
They sent the monster after us, I thought. I knew it, with all the certainty of a new convert to a religion. The Voodoo Cult, perhaps, or maybe one of the other major players trying to make a point. It had to be someone fairly major. A single magician, no matter how powerful, wouldn’t want to piss off the Guardians like that, unless he was completely mad. What the hell do they want?
I remembered Brother Andrew’s comments about Faye’s new research into magic and felt cold. Had Faye been researching something new and very dangerous? Had he sacrificed his own daughter to summon something up out of Hell, or down from Heaven? If Brother Andrew hadn’t said that Cecelia was alive, I would have wondered…or was the Sensitive wrong? They weren't all-knowing, merely very observant and magically perceptive. And…something very powerful had interfered with Brother Andrew’s attempt to use his gift. Had Faye summoned something that had turned on him?
The crowds of fleeing civilians vanished suddenly as I turned the corner and stopped dead. The creature was sniffing at a trapped bus, preying away at the handful of terrified passengers, playing with them like a cat plays with a mouse. It didn’t seem deterred by the sealed bus…or perhaps the bus wasn't sealed after all; it had definitely been heavily damaged by the impact. The entire street looked as if Godzilla had come to call and, looking at the creature, I wondered if that wasn't too far wrong. It was smaller, but just as destructive.
It looked, at first, like a giant dinosaur. There were some dinosaurs these days – they’d stumbled into Faerie and had been preserved like flies in amber – but they were very rare, mostly because of hunters making them rarer. As I looked closer, I realised that it was more of a framework of a dinosaur, one formed out of snake-like creatures that someone had bound together. I could see their red eyes glinting as their combined form lurched and ground around the bus. It was only a matter of time until it broke in and started to devour the trapped people.
“All right, you idiot,” I said, looking around for Cowboy. “Where are you?”
“Up here, you varmint,” Cowboy shouted. Somehow – it had to have been magic – he and Trigger had reached the top of a medium-sized block. The windows were crammed with people staring at the monster, but I doubted they could see the madman on the horse. “Come and get me if you think you’re hard enough!”
The monster reared up to face him and howled a challenge. I had never heard anything like it before. It was a strange combination of a hiss and a roar. It was also thoroughly terrifying. Cowboy drew his six-shooters in one smooth motion, pointed them vaguely in the creature’s direction, and opened fire. Like my gun, his weapons were charmed; no matter how often he fired, he would never run out of bullets. They were also iron-jacketed bullets. Nine out of ten supernatural creatures don’t like them.
“Damn,” I muttered. Cowboy, despite his casual pose, was hitting the creature, but it didn’t seem to be affected. It wasn't looking at me for the moment and I took the risk of peering at it through my Sixth Sense. It wasn't just the snakes; it was held together by a powerful binding spell, providing a guiding mind that forced it onwards. I probed onwards for a weakness, finding nothing, but hints of demonic activity. Someone had put the monster together just for us. “I wonder if…”
The monster took a step backwards under the onslaught, hunched down, and leapt into the air. It didn’t seem possible that it could leap so high, but it did, easily reaching the roof that Cowboy was occupying. Trigger leapt without him saying a word, leaping right over to the other side of the road, but the monster didn’t seem to care. Unlike the dragon beforehand – I looked up in hopes of seeing it again, but saw nothing – its weight was starting to topple the building. The designers probably hadn’t anticipated having to handle the weight of a monster when it had been built. The monster leapt again, leaving the building to start to collapse behind it, trying to catch Cowboy. I shuddered. This was not going to end well.
“Cowboy, get down here,” I shouted. Two collapsing buildings were putting hundreds of lives at risk. We should be trying to get the entire area evacuated – the NYPD were already setting up barriers and urging people to flee – but it was already too far out of hand. “We need to think of something else!”
I snapped up my pistol as the monster leapt overhead and fired twice. As far as I could tell, my shots had no effect on the creature, but it twisted somehow and ended up glaring down at me. It was far from human, I realised; it seemed to flow down the building and ended up in the road, reaching out for me. It wasn't a real creature, just something a mad sorcerer had created from the snakes, but that wasn't a consolation. It was going to try to kill me.
“Motherfucker,” Cowboy shouted, and snapped his hand down. A pulse of magic struck the creature and sent it staggering backwards. The spells that bound it together adapted within seconds, but for a moment, it seemed dazed. “Hit it, now!”
I focused and unleashed a blast of raw magic of my own. It should have disrupted the monster, perhaps caused it to collapse back into individual snakes, but very little happened. Cowboy shouted an incantation aloud and flames roared up around the creature, reminding me of the dragon, but it seemed unaffected. The spells that had created it were feeding off the magic we were spitting at it.
Cowboy and Trigger landed next to me. The horse wasn't even breathing hard. “That bastard needs to be plugged full of lead,” Cowboy said. It was staring at us, but it wasn't making any hostile moves. I didn’t dare try to sneak another peek at it though my Sixth Sense – it might have been lethal if it had struck while I was distracted – but I didn’t dare assume that it was hurt. We’d both shot it with iron-jacketed bullets to no affect. Something would disrupt the spells, but what? “We should try to cage it?”
I nodded. A magical cage really required three Guardians – it wasn't as if we were trying to contain a ghost instead of a physical form – but we were alone. If Aylia had been with us, we still wouldn’t have been able to use her to form the cage. She lacked the experience and probably the knowledge as well.
“No choice,” I said. I looked down the street and saw dozens of armed men. I knew with a sick certainty that they wouldn’t be enough. The bastard who had created and unleashed the monster would be responsible for the deaths of thousands of citizens. If it had been sent after Aylia and I, it would rip half the city apart to get at us. “We just need a distraction.”
Cowboy
lifted his weapons into the air and threw them towards the monster. It eyed them suspiciously as they levelled out and swooped towards it, before they opened fire, blowing great chunks of flesh out of the monster’s body. I was impressed – although, naturally, I would never tell him anything of the sort – and not a little disturbed. If you give a weapon – or anything – a mind, it might decide, one day, that it doesn’t need you any more. I hoped to God that Cowboy had done his spells properly.
He smiled, apparently unaware of my thoughts. “Will that do?”
“Just about,” I said. “Now?”
We clasped hands briefly, squeezed tight, and then separated, walking away from each other to encircle the monster. There was little magic in the air for the monster to detect – if it could detect magic, which was quite possible – but that would change once the cage was completed. In magic, the symbol of a cage was a cage, once we had charged it with magic. If we could complete the cage before we were disturbed, nothing, not god or demon or elder creature, would be able to break out. I rather suspected that we could even trap a dragon.
I could see Cowboy’s face, calm and composed despite his worry, and hoped that I looked half as good. It was shocking to realise that Cowboy was actually five years younger than me – barely twenty-three – and he was already starting his decline. We just didn’t have enough Guardians, I remembered Wilkinson saying, but how could we find and train more? The job killed most of us within ten years. I pushed the thought aside and concentrated on the cage, feeling the shadowy magic shimmering into existence…
And then a reporter ran right through the cage and started to take pictures of the monster. It roared in outrage, lashing out with its claws and slicing the unfortunate reporter to shreds, even as the cage shattered and fell back out of existence. I swore aloud as the monster lunged at me and I teleported away, bare microseconds before it ripped me apart. A moment later, it lashed out with its long tail and sent Cowboy flying down the street towards the NYPD lines. He would be safe, I hoped – his protections should hold up under even that battering – but he was definitely out of the fight for the moment. Somehow, I was unsurprised to see Trigger racing down the street towards his master, leaving me all alone. The monster turned and stared at me. I could see no real eyes, nothing that the guiding intelligence could use to look at me, but I knew it was watching…and it hated. It wanted me dead for intensely personal reasons.
It must be connected with the case, I thought. My thoughts were somehow very clear as the monster advanced on me. It knew that there was nowhere to run any longer. I could have teleported away, but that would have left New York at its mercy. Whoever sent this thing after me wants to stop me, permanently. What the hell do they think I know?
My hand reached my pocket and drew the Faerie weapon. It felt warm in my hand, somehow urging me to use it and destroy the abomination, but I pushed the voice aside. I needed to think clearly, but I could barely focus. The spells that had created the monster were reaching out to attack me. Just for an instant, I felt a moment of true despair. What was there in the world that was worth living for? Soldiers had other soldiers, their wives had other wives, but what did we Guardians have? We fought and died and no one mourned our passing.
“No,” I said, aloud. It was a declaration. My anger shaped the Faerie weapon into a long spear, which I used to slice into the monster. It howled as magic cascaded around the spear, trying to heal the creature, but the spear was implacable. The Faerie had created it as a weapon of war and it knew no limits. “I will not allow it to end this way. After all I’ve seen, after all I’ve done…I will not let myself die!”
The creature exploded into a storm of snakes. I felt, just on the edge of my mind, the guiding intelligence die. The snakes might not have been harmless – knowing the kind of mind that could create the monster in the first place, they were probably deadly poisonous – but for the moment, they weren't my concern. Stripped of their magic, they could be destroyed by New York’s pest control, or fight it out with the various other secrets under New York for dominance. There’s supposed to be a whole tribe of magically-enhanced turtles in the sewers and it wouldn’t surprise me for a moment.
“Fuck,” I said, and slumped. The next thing I remember clearly was Cowboy splashing water over my face. “Just…fuck.”
“Maybe the Mayor will give you a personal handjob,” Cowboy said. He sounded unusually grim. Being thrown through the air hadn’t fazed him, but something else had stopped him in his tracks. It took me a moment, through the haze, to realise that it was the spear. “What is that thing?”
“Classified,” I said, pulling myself to my feet. My legs staggered under me and threatened to collapse, but I managed to remain upright. One of the advantages of being a Guardian is that I heal very quickly, assuming that I had a chance to call on my magic to speed the process up. “Trust me on this, Cowboy; you don’t want to know.”
“I’m sure,” Cowboy said. I saw him glance uneasily at the spear and I was sure he’d taken a look at it through his own Sixth Sense. He would probably guess its origin. Nothing any human could make, even Faye’s group of researchers and theorists, would be like the spear. “Do you want to stay and be photographed, or do you want to go back to your girl?”
“Back to the station,” I said. Cowboy whistled and Trigger cantered over. “You’re joking.”
“Not at all,” Cowboy said. He helped me to clamber onto the horse, where I clung on for dear life. “Giddy up, girl!”
I’ll draw a veil over the ride back to the station, but the look that Aylia gave me made it all worthwhile. I really don’t understand what some people see in horses – why use a horse when magic or more mundane cars will do – but it might have come in handy. I didn’t want any photographers capturing images of me, even though the vague glamour that is intended to prevent any such thing should have ensured that they couldn’t. We’re already more public than anyone would prefer, including us.
“You saved the city,” Cowboy said. “Still, I trust you do understand why I want the pair of you out of here?”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. I couldn’t blame him really. If someone was determined enough to put all of New York at risk to get at me, he wouldn’t want me around. “You don’t want me cramping your style.”
“You wish,” Cowboy said. He gave Aylia a smile he probably practiced in front of the mirror. It didn’t make him look anything like Roy Rogers, which was probably a relief, although I wasn't sure for whom. “I hope to see you again, my dear.”
I bit down the response that came to mind – something about threatening to fill him full of lead – and smiled. “I may need your help later,” I said, cheerfully. “I have a robbery to plan. Did I tell you I once thought that I’d make a highly successful criminal?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“My dear fellow, I have given it every consideration. I am never precipitate in my actions, nor would I adopt so energetic and, indeed, so dangerous a course, if any other were possible. Let us look at the matter clearly and fairly. I suppose that you will admit that the action is morally justifiable, though technically criminal. To burgle his house is no more than to forcibly take his pocketbook -- an action in which you were prepared to aid me.”
-Sherlock Holmes
“You have got to be joking,” Aylia said, when we reached my house. I could have left her with Cowboy, but he wouldn’t have wanted her company for long, let alone leave her alone in his house. Besides, I wasn’t sure I would have trusted him with her for very long. “Are even you Guardians allowed to burgle a house at will?”
“No,” I said, flatly. I was on the verge of committing a crime, merely in pursuit of a greater good. It was a moral line that other Guardians had crossed and not all had returned from…and it was not something we normally discussed with our superiors. The vision of a small child, helpless and alone, drove me on, but what would happen if I were caught? The entire service would be put at risk. Wilkinson would have to denounc
e me as a rogue operative and every man’s hand would be against me. “We have some permission to intervene if things look like getting out of hand, but we can’t break into a residence without proof…”
I had already considered trying to find grounds for a search warrant, but I knew Maxwell by reputation – I wasn’t the first Guardian to have looked for that proof – and it wouldn’t be easy. Magic adds an extra dimension to criminal activities; it was possible to ensure that no one would go running to the police, or keep out any police surveillance systems. The hell of it was that Maxwell probably had plenty of links to various governmental services himself – his legend included freelance work for the CIA, which resents our dominance of the magical world – and his allies would provide him with plenty of warning if I started applying for a warrant. It would be a robbery – a thoroughly illegal search of his house – or nothing.
It was hard to justify it, even to myself. Maxwell was one of the more quirky characters in the magical world, a man who was a better researcher, alchemist and potions-brewer than a magician. His early research into the use of magic had rivalled Vincent Faye, but he’d somehow gone off the rails and become involved with various semi-legal and outright-illegal syndicates. They had paid him handsomely for his work – nothing was ever proven, of course – and even if he had no blood on his hands himself, he had certainly helped others to commit murder, or worse. The more I wondered about it, the more I asked myself if Maxwell had created a device or technique for slipping through heavy wards; he might even have been present when Cecelia had been kidnapped. What if she was trapped somewhere within his house?
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