by Layton Green
The darkness in front of the necromancer coalesced into a hovering shadow thing. Grayish ectoplasm formed its hair and nails, its eyes and mouth looked like trapped starlight, and Will felt a sense of unnatural dread that was stronger even than the terror coursing through him.
Just as Will began to rethink his position on the sword, he heard a police siren in the distance. The necromancer’s head cocked at the sound, and he brushed his hand through whatever was manifesting, causing it to disintegrate. He extended his arms and flew towards Charlie, scooped him up with one arm, and hovered above the ground while the brothers watched in shock. Charlie tried to toss the journal to them, but the wizard caught his hand and took it.
“Bring the sword by the second nightfall hence,” he said, “or this man won’t live to see a third.” He pointed a bejeweled finger at Will before flying off into the darkness. “You know where to come.”
-6-
Caleb sank to the ground. “Jesus Christ. He just flew away. With Charlie.”
Will stared in the direction the necromancer had disappeared. “Why not take me? Was it because of the sword?”
“We can worry about that later,” Val said. “Right now we have about five seconds before a bunch of cops find us with a freshly fired handgun, a giant sword, Charlie’s blood on the ground, and zero explanation. We can’t help Charlie from jail.”
Caleb pushed to his feet. “Nuff said. Down the alley?”
“What’s behind that empty field?” Val said.
“A few blocks of ’hood and then South Claiborne.”
Val turned to Will. “Can you run?”
“Yeah,” Will wheezed. “I’m fine.”
“Then let’s go.” As sirens blared around the corner, Val shooed them towards the field and reached for his cell. “I’ll tell the cab where to meet us.”
Five a.m. that night. Will still wide awake and lying on his back on the hotel bed, listening to the chorus of shouts on Bourbon Street. Val had paid cash at a random hotel, reasoning that since the cops had deterred the necromancer—or whoever he was—then a hotel near large crowds might do the same.
The next thing Val did was call the police to report the kidnapping. Lance hadn’t answered Will’s call, but NOPD called back a few hours later, telling Val they had sent two officers to the address Val had given them and found nothing suspicious, not even the skull collection. The owner of the house claimed to have no idea what the police were talking about.
Without further evidence, the police had said, they could hardly arrest him. And until three days passed, they couldn’t report a grown man missing.
Three was one day too late.
Will was relieved to have Val take charge. Val had street smarts and intelligence, a rare combination, and he had an attorney’s way of cutting to the core of a problem and seeing what type of ruthless action needed to be taken.
The problem was, despite what just happened, Will didn’t think Val believed any of it. After they checked in to the hotel, Val had discussed rational solutions to saving Charlie and bringing the man in the black cloak to justice. Solutions like bringing in the FBI or hiring a mercenary.
Caleb sided with Val, because Caleb didn’t even believe in God, much less manticore-raising necromancers. They both assumed the man was in possession of some kind of advanced technology.
Will, on the other hand, saw no rational explanation. The man had flown away, taking off with Charlie like a bird of prey carrying a mouse. Not to mention the skeletons and zombies, the wraith thing, and the magic sword.
Will was feeling a mix of emotion: a giddy excitement that magic might be real, and abject terror that the necromancer might not let them live a day longer to enjoy it.
And Charlie, poor Charlie. He was a second father to Will. They had to figure out some way to help him. Had to.
Not only that, but Charlie knew things about the necromancer and the sword.
He knew things about Dad.
Will kept trying to sleep, but shouts from drunken stragglers jerked him awake every time he drifted off. But that was okay, because each time he lost consciousness the necromancer strode into his mind, the toothy maws of his skull necklace leering at Will as the man tossed a bag of fresh bones at his feet.
And each time the bones were Charlie’s.
Val woke before sunrise, almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.
First things first: he couldn’t risk his career, and his family’s security, by missing the client meeting. Somehow, after a gallon of coffee, he found the focus to brief the CEO of an international gaming consortium on the legal and financial intricacies of opening a casino in New Orleans.
Val was a Type-A, oldest-sibling Virgo: a perfectionist with an intergalactic sense of responsibility. He truly envied Caleb’s laissez-faire nature.
As soon as the meeting ended, Val’s head started spinning with potential solutions. None of which he liked. He would do his best to help Charlie, but if it came down to it, he would have to get his brothers someplace safe. Val’s first priority in life was his brothers’ well-being.
Six hours until sundown. He thought about the impossibilities he had witnessed, the things Charlie had said about Dad.
And gave no credence to any of it. There were technologies out there that could quite literally accomplish miracles, though he had to admit last night had been pretty unbelievable. What he knew for sure, however, was that he didn’t believe in magic.
The parlor tricks Val had always been able to perform with his mind meant nothing. ESP was not exactly unheard of, the human brain an exotic and poorly understood organ. The fact that Val could sometimes make a pencil roll across a table by looking at it would only embarrass him professionally if it got out, so he had kept it to himself. He had no idea how Charlie had known about it, but assumed his father had the same quirk. Maybe his father’s ESP had fueled his fantasies.
Though his father, an honest and forthright man, didn’t seem the type.
Val grabbed another coffee and spent the next few hours arranging a search warrant. It was a tough sell, but he made a breakthrough with a judge who owed the firm a favor. His plan in motion, Val spent an hour researching the Myrddinus. Unsurprisingly, he found no mention of it. He did learn that the root name Myrddin might refer to Myrddin Wyllt, also known as Merlinus Caledonensis or Merlin Sylvestris, a Welsh historical figure who may or may not have inspired the Arthurian legend of Merlin. Clearly a flight of fancy to which Charlie, and whoever had rigged the fantastical events of the previous evening, adhered.
He snapped his fingers. Of course—why hadn’t he thought of this before? It was too much of a coincidence that he had spouted that nonsense about their father at the same time this necromancer wacko had appeared.
Charlie was in on it. Val didn’t know how or why, but someone obviously wanted something bad enough they would go to any lengths to obtain it. Now that he could understand.
Val checked his watch. As the late afternoon sun spread shadows over the skyscrapers in the Central Business District, he stepped into one of the high-end jewelry shops on Chartres Street.
A beak-nosed man wearing a gold watch approached him. Val was still wearing his bespoke gray power suit, and the attendant gave him an appraising look. “May I help you?”
Val held out the staff Charlie had given him. Val had tried to wiggle the milky-colored, ultrathin crescent moon, but it hadn’t budged. “I’d like to analyze the top of this staff.”
The jeweler put on his reading glasses, his face inquisitive. “Family heirloom?”
“Something like that.”
“There will be a cost, of course—”
Val waved a hand. “Is there any way you could get to it quickly?”
The man’s deference returned. “Of course. I’ll need a few minutes.”
“I’ll wait.”
A few minutes turned into thirty, and Val was checking his watch impatiently when the jeweler returned rubbing his forehead. “Where did you get thi
s again?”
“As I said, it’s been in the family.”
The jeweler hesitated, then gave a small shrug and handed the staff to Val. “I thought it was metal, but this is a stone. Unlike any I’ve ever seen. ”
“What do you mean?”
“The craftsmanship is extraordinary. It has a tensile strength stronger than a diamond five times its thickness. It’s stronger than steel. And under the microscope, the structure is bizarre. I’d say it was something like graphene, except graphene is as thin as a human hair, and not this color. The vivid hue alone is remarkable.”
Val covered his chin with his hand, tapping his mouth with his pointer finger. “So what is it, then?”
“To be frank, I’ve no idea. But unless you’re about to win the Nobel prize or tell me who set you up to this, I’d say you’re holding a secret government technology.” He chuckled. “That or a wizard’s staff.”
Will cracked a Mountain Dew, stepped onto the balcony, and started to pace. At noon he tried to wake Caleb, then gave a disgusted shake of his head when his brother put his pillow over his head. Caleb could sleep through Armageddon.
Lance still wasn’t answering and his voicemail was full. Will sent him a text. If Lance had a double shift today, he might not get back to Will until midnight—and then Will might be the one unable to answer the phone.
Now that he had a little separation, Will tried to process what had happened. Leaving aside the seeming impossibility of manticore skeletons and glowing swords and that thing forming out of darkness, Will sensed the key to surviving their next encounter with the necromancer, and helping Charlie, was Dad’s journal. The enormity of that loss, both strategically and emotionally, caused an unbearable pang of sadness.
Why had Dad been looking for that particular sword? Had the necromancer really traveled across the universe to find it? And if so, how?
Something else: had Dad really fallen off that cliff? Or had someone else, perhaps even the necromancer, had a hand in his death? The thought of that caused Will to tremble.
He stood in the middle of the room with the sword in his hands. Something magical had happened when the sword made contact with the manticore, Will was sure of it. He hadn’t even felt the blow.
Not one to sit around and overthink his options, Will grabbed lunch at the hotel bar and then went to the business center. He spent the rest of the day Googling every single supernatural or metaphysical angle to last night’s events he could imagine. He hit the role-playing chat boards, the fantasy forums, the weird police blotter news, even the nutcase conspiracy blogs.
Nothing sounded right. Or even vaguely applicable. With a defeated sigh, he signed off as the sun sank into the buildings, his chest tight with fear.
Caleb woke sometime after noon and shambled to the balcony to light a cigarette, his hands shaking at the memory of Charlie tumbling across the parking lot, blood splotching the ground.
Caleb despised violence of any sort. He didn’t even like friendly competition. In his youth, he had been one of the best junior tennis players in the state, but when high school rolled around, he couldn’t bring himself to care enough to practice. He would rather hang out with his friends.
Caleb held the strange bracers in his hands, feeling the heft and suppleness of the leather, admiring the intricate tribal etching. He slipped them on his forearms. With his ripped jeans and T-shirt, chain necklace, and the Pura Vida tattoo on the inside of his left biceps, he thought the bracers fit nicely.
After another smoke, he headed to the hotel bar. Caleb wasn’t an addicted smoker but neither was he good at quitting, especially in times of stress. His heart wasn’t in either extreme.
Caleb gathered the usual female stares, ordered an Abita Amber and a shot of Jager, and sauntered to the video poker machine. A Wild Magnolias tune was playing in the bar. He slipped two dollars in the poker machine, sipped his beer, and sighed in pleasure. He was a simple man.
He was halfway to forgetting the events of the previous evening when he turned the left bracer over and saw something carved into the leather. He peered closer and saw the initials DMB. Dane Maurice Blackwood.
Dad.
Caleb ran his thumb over the initials, forcing back the lump in his throat. He had yet to meet the man who approached his father’s combination of intelligence, strength, gentleness, and wisdom. He had been all the good parts of his sons rolled into one.
His cell vibrated, and Caleb checked the caller. Yasmina. Besides his family, the only honest soul he had ever known. He knew he would never deserve her, so he didn’t bother to try.
Some guy in a business suit scowled into a phone as he stomped across the lobby, shoulders hunched with tension. Another corporate type who collapsed into his bar stool after a twelve-hour day, complaining bitterly about his job. But instead of making a change, he would buy a new car and a bigger house and fight for promotions that would make him work even harder.
Oh, Caleb was unhappy, too. Deeply so. Not in an everyday way, but in an existential one. And since he couldn’t control that, he embraced his gift of living in the moment.
Or at least that was how he saw it.
He ignored Yasmina’s call at the same time he caught a slender brunette eying him from across the bar. Since Val’s fat checkbook was paying for the room, Caleb sent a drink over. He hadn’t forgotten about their predicament, he had just decided there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
The brunette picked up her cocktail and walked his way.
Darkness had fallen. Will needed some food and his brothers by his side. Where were Val and Caleb?
As he passed through the lobby, a hand touched his elbow. Will jumped as if he had been Tasered. He turned to see the old man from Caleb’s bar sitting at a cocktail table, wiry arms folded and a penetrating look in his eyes.
“Are you ready for that drink yet, Will Blackwood?”
-7-
The old man was wearing a wrinkled tweed coat over a white dress shirt. Exhausted, terrified, and sick of being in the dark, Will sat across from him and leaned forward. “Who the hell are you? How do you know my name?”
“You may call me Salomon.”
He had a slightly clipped, almost Slavic, accent.
“Is this some sort of deranged reality show?” Will asked. “A science experiment?”
Salomon cocked his head at the question. “While it’s true that science can appear magical to a less advanced society, I’ve never considered whether the inverse holds true. I suppose it also depends on the definition of advanced.”
“I was joking.”
Below the sloping forehead and curling eyebrows, a pair of strange silver eyes glittered with intelligence. “I assume you realize he came for the sword?”
“The necromancer?” Will asked. “Came from where?”
“From New Orleans. The other one.”
“The other New Orleans,” Will repeated dully, pawing at the three-day stubble on his face.
A waiter came over and Will ordered a coffee. He needed his wits about him. Salomon ordered an apple juice, which killed Will’s theory that he was a delusional alcoholic.
Salomon interlaced his fingers on the table, tapping his pinkies against the backs of his hands. “Do you understand the basics of pluriscientia quantum-string multiverse dynamics—forgive me, I forget myself sometimes. How conversant are you in theoretical physics?”
“Um, not very.”
“Are you at least familiar with basic Brane theory, cosmic principles of electromagnetism?”
Will raised a hand. “Sarcasm again. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of fantasy novels and mythological monsters, if that helps.”
Salomon brightened. “Excellent idea. Let’s speak in terms of Earth-based fantasy.”
“Let’s do that.”
“The necromancer you encountered is a wizard of some repute in the universe of which I speak.”
Will put aside logic, patience, common sense, syntax, and reality, and soldiered fo
rward. “An alternate universe?”
“Parallel universe would be more apt. A twin universe—fraternal, not identical—sharing many of the same characteristics, but with evolutionary differences that have magnified certain elements and diluted others.”
Will wished he had ordered something stronger. “Back to fantasy. So it’s another world like this one, but with magic? And monsters?”
The old man’s head seesawed back and forth. “Monster is a relative term.”
Will swallowed. “I’d say that creating a walking manticore skeleton out of a bag of bones was relatively big magic and relatively terrifying.”
Salomon’s eyes glittered. “Granted.”
“This necromancer—does he have a name?”
“Zedock.”
“Is he human?” Will said.
“As with all wizards, his psionic signature is different from yours, but he is firmly human.”
“Differences like the ability to perform magic.”
“You’re a quick study.
“Can we hurt him?” Will said. “Kill him?”
“In theory, of course you can. He’s human. In practice, this is quite another matter. With your present capabilities, even in this unfamiliar environment, it would be a virtual impossibility.”
“Not a glass half full kind of person, huh?” Will sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it cupping the back of his neck. “So what are we supposed to do?”
“I cannot assist you there.” Salomon reached into his coat and produced a silvery-blue key the length of a smart phone. The shade of blue reminded Will of the color of his sword when it struck the manticore. Complex and deep, as if the tip of a wave had been captured mid-roil and formed into a piece of metal.
“But you can, if you so choose, help yourself,” Salomon said.
“What is that?”
“A key.”
“Wow, I thought I was literal,” Will said. “What kind of key?”