The Wicca-Man: Tongue-Tied

by Emily Veinglory

  “There’s only one focal amulet anyway,” Sean said. “Kevin, you have to take her, go with her. If you don’t want to think I’m dead and buried, you better take these.”

  He handed out the nullifying amulets and took the mourn bead, which functioned as the focus, the amulet for the spell so long as it was in contact with human skin. He just barely heard Laura saying, “Sean, I really don’t think --” before he got the door open and stepped out onto the street, narrowly evading Rhea, who made a last-minute grab to delay him.

  He had to get into the house. Easing into the stream of shuffling vampires, he moved through the front gates as they creaked open. Shoulder to shoulder with about a dozen vampires, he stayed with the group, trying to get where he would be hard to see, and moved up to the front of the house with them.

  But why was he going into the house? He struggled to remember. But it didn’t matter. It called him; it was the smell of sweetness, the promise of rest, the hope of redemption, and as he passed the threshold, he felt such peace and satisfaction. They were guided down stairs into a spacious basement. It was right; it was the right place to be. Never had he felt such an absence of care, such gentle, absolute contentment. No longer even aware of his own name, he lay down on the dirt floor and slept.

  * * * * *

  Sean woke suddenly, lying on his back with his arms flung out. It was pitch black, and other, cold bodies piled about him. Stretching his fingers slightly, he felt the mourn bead on the ground under his knuckles, and a wave a drowsiness immediately began to swamp his thoughts. He pulled back convulsively, sitting up. The air was warm and close. Pulling an old, crumpled receipt from his pocket, he groped carefully to pick up the bead, wrapped it, and shoved it in his pocket without touching it.

  He sat for a while, thinking, strangely calm. Some kind of spell had brought the vampires to town; another, stronger one had pulled them to this house -- which Bessie wanted him to come to tomorrow to camouflage. But what on earth would she and her cronies want with a whole flock of the undead in an invisible house?

  In any case, he knew one thing. Physiological death was the basis of the spell’s action, rather than any specific fetish or focus relating to individual people. And Thane was probably in here somewhere, having been caught rather earlier because he was so much closer when the calling began.

  “Rat,” Sean whispered. “Please, I beg you, could you cast a little light here?”

  I’m not allowed to intervene. Only advise in a general capacity.

  “You’ve never told me that before. I though you guys could do whatever you wanted?”

  Why do you think Wolf, Eagle, and so on are always making with the vague, rhyming prophecies? You monkeys have to work it out for yourselves. And if I didn’t mention it, that’s probably because you’ve never done anything that could possibly require intervention. I must say, you really have stepped it up a bit lately. You could do to pace yourself a bit, you know? Boyfriend one week, nemesis the next ...

  “Rat, bloody hell, just tell me what you advise me to do. I have to find out if Thane is in here.”

  I advise you to start groping vampires. You must know what your boy feels like by now. And spend the time it takes working out how you’re going to escape from here with one hundred and ninety-something pounds of undead weight.

  Crawling, he found the wall, then started systematically moving around the edge. Maybe as one of the first to arrive, Thane might be near the wall. He flinched at every touch of cloth or hair or clammy skin.

  Hurry.

  “Is that you intervening, honorable Rat?”

  It’s advice. I suggest you take it.

  Flustered, he started to grapple over the motionless bodies; none of them responded. Finally he hit something smooth -- leather! Reaching around, he felt jeans, soft shirt, broad chest, strong jaw. Thane, surely. A wave of relief so absolute it was debilitating rushed over him. He ran his fingers over Thane’s slack, stubbled features and felt sure he recognized the contours of that strong brow and straight nose. For a moment he just bowed his head, clutching the still form in front of him. But then he dimly realized the meaning of a distant shuffling sound.

  He had just enough time to hit the ground as the door cracked open, spilling in light. He froze, tucking himself behind Thane’s supine body.

  “Look,” said a male voice. “First there were those guys fooling around out front. Now the wards say there’s someone on the house. Someone alive.”

  Sean cursed silently. He dared not touch the bead and risk not waking up again. The room glared as the light was flicked on.

  “Uh-huh,” the guy said. And Sean realized he was speaking on the phone.

  He might just be here in the house on his own. Sean stayed still, his face pressed against Thane’s back. After what seemed like forever, the door closed again, but the light stayed on. He could just hear the guy’s voice as he retreated. “Yeah, uh-huh.”

  After a minute or two, Sean sat up. His heart was pounding, and he felt about ready to faint. He had to get upstairs to get out, and Rat was right -- it would be a lot easier if Thane was ambulatory. But doing that required a confrontation with the big guy with the phone, alerting the sorcerers and waking up the vampires. The only other option was to somehow make Thane not be dead.

  Leaning back against Thane’s body, he gingerly pulled out the bead. Improvising was sure not his strong point. But desperate times ...

  Pulling out his marker, he leaned down and very slowly, very carefully started to amend the glyph. His fingers were shaking so much that the bead was as likely to try and make human awareness -- the force behind any spell -- count Thane as a Shriner or an aardvark as count him to be alive. The glyph was smudged and uneven, but he prayed the web was still open and the work was good enough.

  He opened Thane’s palm, pinning the hand down and pressing the bead onto it. For a moment he tried to avoid touching it but then realized, hell, he was alive. If the damn thing was working, it didn’t matter if he touched it. For the length of several breaths, in and out, nothing happened.

  But them Thane’s thickly lashed eyes quivered and opened. Sean waited, yearned, for them to fix on him with some expression of pleasure, but Thane barely seemed to focus on him at all.

  “Don’t move,” Sean said. “You see this thing in your hand? You have to hold on to it, carefully, without smudging the marks on it.”

  Thane blinked, peered from side to side, closed his hand, and sat up.

  “Where the hell am I?” he asked in a strange quavering voice.

  The door swung open again, abruptly.

  “Nowhere quite as drastic as hell, young man,” said Bessie with apparent sympathy. She looked a little mussed and out of breath, but otherwise her usual Betty Crockerly self, complete with one of those dresses with matching belts that only ladies of a certain age are seen to wear. It didn’t take long for her contradictory nature to appear as she added quietly, “But that could be arranged.” There were not one but two large, stern-looking men crowded into the hallway behind her, just to add to the menacing effect.

  Sean stood up and brushed himself off. “I considered it a little presumptuous of you to take possession of Thane here, on whom I clearly have prior claim.”

  “What the hell are you freaks talking about?” Thane said. “My name is Michael, Michael MacKay. And I am getting the hell out of here.”

  He walked towards Bessie, but stopped very suddenly short when one of the bruisers pulled a shiny little pistol from beneath his jacket. All of this was casting a new light on the fusty academic sorcerers. But Sean was more preoccupied with Thane’s sudden transformation. The only way he could suddenly be another person was if the mourn bead’s reversal, in making him alive, made him the man he was before he turned. The implications of that were great enough to preoccupy Sean even under the barrel of a gun. It meant almost everything he had been assuming was wrong.

  “Oh, my dear, dear boy,” Bessie said, directing her words to Sean. “Get
up here, and don’t dither. We have so much to do.” Then to Thane, “And I don’t know what you’re up to, but you are staying down here. It’s for your own safety, after all.” She turned to one of her lackeys and asked in a ‘clean-up in aisle three’ tone of voice, “Why isn’t the spell working on him properly?”

  The man with the pistol got some cinematic kind of satisfaction from, well, one would have to call it ‘brandishing’ the gun at Thane, who took a reflexive step back, raising and opening his hands. But it seemed he didn’t have an answer. The mourn bead fell from Thane’s fingers as he stumbled on a slumbering vampire.

  “Oh, my God, are they dead?” Thane exclaimed shrilly. But even before the bead hit the ground, he was swaying. He crumpled in precipitous sleep.

  Sean was shaken. What the hell had his spell done to Thane? But then it clicked. Upon contracting vampirism, a person’s memories were wiped clean, their whole personality reordered and reshaped. But what if the person they had been was still in there, somewhere, preserved? It was a sickening thought.

  Bessie raised her brows, not missing a thing and not at all perturbed. “Your handiwork, Dr. Watkin?” she asked. “It is good to see you have some kind of ability. It is lamentably rare in the new generation of practitioners. So many aspire to talent, but so few are willing to put in those long hours of study needed to develop whatever gift they might have been blessed with. I suppose I shall just have to consider you early for our little appointment. Now, come along, do.”

  Bessie stood aside, as did, after a moment’s hesitation, her two assistants. He recognized the less obviously armed one as a tutor from the medieval history course. Cute guy, rather brawny for that department -- which was very much beside the point.

  “I’m not going without Thane,” he said, folding his arms stubbornly.

  “Yes, well, quite the entourage you seem to have developed all the sudden,” Bessie remarked. “But your little playmate is staying down here. As of tonight, any vampire in this city belongs to us. No, wait. Perhaps we can oblige you, as we obviously wish to.” She turned to the tutor. “Give me one of the command amulets. We may as well conduct a test run here, and all the better if it accommodates the wishes of our honored guest.”

  The man passed her a simple metal disc suspended on a knotted piece of string. Bessie took one step forward. She grimaced, lifting Thane’s head by a hank of hair, and shoved the string around his neck. As she stepped back, Thane began to move groggily. Sean stumbled over the lax body of the girl in the red dress to get to his side. But kneeling and looking Thane over, he saw Thane’s eyes were fogged and showed no recognition of him.

  Thane seemed dazed and disoriented. Sean squeezed his arm, trying to communicate what reassurance he could.

  “Come upstairs, if you please,” Bessie said with a shooing gesture. “Both of you.”

  Thane obeyed groggily, but it seemed that he met Sean’s eyes for a moment and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Sean felt a furious leap of hope at even that most muted reconnection. Thane was with him, shackled by yet another layer of the occult, but with him all the same. He had to get them both out of this.

  Bessie gestured for one of her men to pick up the bead, which he did gingerly. They all filed up the stairs to the kitchen, where two women waited, both professors he vaguely recognized as from the neighboring humanities faculty, and one of them balanced an old shotgun across her arm while the other held a bulky device that looked suspiciously like a Taser. And what they were keeping an eye on was a figure gagged and bound with duct tape to a kitchen chair.

  “Mfmurph,” said Rhea, perhaps by way of warning, or perhaps apology. He just hoped Kevin and Laura had got the hell out of the area.

  The rest of the sorcerers’ party came up behind them and closed the door. The room was quite sealed off except for the uncurtained windows. But short of throwing a bound woman and a potentially uncooperative vampire out a closed window, hefting one over each shoulder, and making a clean break, escape did not seem to be an option. Thane was standing back behind him now, and Sean dared not be so obvious as to turn to him.

  “So now,” Bessie said, “you are going to tell me how you woke this one up. Then you are going to get started on the obfuscating spell, and then you and I will get on marvelously, I am sure. Although you really do have no business whatsoever interfering with the business of my cabal.”

  Sean could resist no longer; his gaze flicked to Thane. The vampire stood relaxed, facing Bessie passively, betraying nothing. Was he just playing along, or had the sorcerer’s amulet seized control of his will? It was Bessie’s academic occult versus Granny Lou’s old grimoire, and he had no idea which would come out ahead. Brilliant. Hook an alpha-male vampire boyfriend and still have to do all the dealing with elderly supervillains myself.

  “Cabal, eh?” Sean mused. It wasn’t exactly a green accord sort of term. “Before I get on to that, why don’t you tell me what the sorcerers want with a basement full of vampires? Because I’m not the only one likely to notice them all disappearing off the street. Admittedly the only other ones to notice might be the police when they have more spare time of an evening, but all the same ...”

  Bessie looked at him sharply. “Why, I thought you knew. If you didn’t take this one to interfere with our plans, then why?” And she did seem, somehow, genuinely interested.

  Fuck, so much for the Rutger Hauer strategy. Time to try sucking up. Sean turned to look at Thane. He laughed, aiming for fearless and hitting a little closer to hysterical. “Come on, look at him,” Sean said. “Surely even you guys know enough psychology to understand the appeal for the lonely ‘bachelor gay’ like me. And look, you’ve got plenty. I’m happy to help you out, join up, even -- but there has to be a perk or two involved.”

  Bessie watched, perhaps forgetting herself in surveying him with such a cool, dissecting gaze. Her array of geek minions glared at him with clear hatred.

  “All right,” she finally said. “If you tell me how you got in, and you give us the details on the spell you used to free this one and to make this place vanish, then you can keep him. Fair trade, and we go out separate ways.”

  “You ca--” one of the women interjected.

  One look silenced her. Mary ... something. He vaguely remembered her from last graduation. She did some kind of modern European history and was a ‘kenner’ of negligible power. That is, someone who can tell things about objects just by touching them. Now that he thought about it, a pretty large proportion of the history department were at least nominally sorcerers. A larger concentration than anywhere else on campus. Was that a coincidence, or was Bessie collecting them?

  She was backing out of offering to list him on the accord, it seemed, but there were more urgent matters at hand. He just hoped Laura was coming up with something to cover them on that front. He felt vaguely dissatisfied at leaving the other vampires at their mercy, but there was a great temptation to just do what they wanted and get Thane and Rhea the hell out of Dodge.

  “I believe you said you had spoken to my supervisor about my thesis work,” Sean ventured

  “Professor Jennings. His main opinion of you was that you were a -- What was his typically colorful term? Pussy, I think. Wizards can be so uncouth, don’t you find? But besides that, he did seem to think you had come up with a viable method for making people believe a given person was dead. Just believe, not really make them dead.” She gave a dismissive snort.

  “Magic is belief,” Sean said patiently. That was something the sorcerous texts didn’t much acknowledge. “To the extent that everything we know about the world is just belief. And if a thing is believed by the person who casts a spell, the spell will always be obedient to that belief. What we believe is reality.”

  “Postmodern bullshit,” Mary muttered. For people who worked in humanities, they sure had a hard-science approach to the occult.

  “You used it to be dead, and so you came in with the others. Because Jerry’s calling was most easily focused simply
on the dead, vampires being the only dead able to respond to the directives given.”

  “And then, opposites being the most closely related parts of any spectrum, I reversed my spell to get Thane out. But that’s when it became clear that there are layers of magic here, and layers of magic means interaction, means things are bound to go wrong.”

  Bessie shook her head. “The control spell and the dispersal spell are different valences. They will not interfere.”

  “And the spell that makes these people vampires?”

  Bessie’s face was frozen in a distant, musing expression, like she was wondering if she’d left the gas on, but she was still listening to him. “It is a condition, medical. Everyone is aware of that.”

  Sean pointed to Thane. “A modification of my working made him alive. And in doing so, he actually ceased to be Thane and became the man I presume he was before the change, this Michael. That means this so-called haemophagic syndrome is occult. A massive open, attention-grabbing spell counter to everything the accord is meant to enforce. And that means you are laying a spell on top of another, an inherently unstable proposition when the lowermost spell is not known or understood.”

  Bessie continued to watch him, holding a finger to her lips as she thought. “And the extent of this perception-of-life spell of yours?”

  He hadn’t thought of that; the old lady was sharp. “No further than the city limits. Whoever decided to make these creatures, or whatever power source supports their existence, it’s in this very town. You are kidnapping the creations of someone very powerful, and very local.”

  “You have cast a rather new light on things,” Bessie conceded. “You obviously have it in you to be somewhat clever, when not being utterly foolish. But now you would be wise to do as I first asked, and be grateful for the mercy. Mary, here, who I gather is already not fond of you, will take you into the loft to lay a spell, and you will have it done before nine this morning.”

  “Release Rhea first. This does not concern her,” Sean said.