Full Metal Magic: An Urban Fantasy Anthology

by J. A. Cipriano

"As always," continued Derek, facing the mirror, "I come to you with the same question." Her eyes were going wild again. Losing their composure to the mysticism of the ritual. A trance state. "Only you can reveal the secrets of life and death. Only you have the power to grant mastership of both."

  This was spiraling pretty quickly into crazy land. The giant's grip was strong. I had to distract him for a moment, but my bird was too slow.

  Derek raised her voice in devotion. "Oh, Ageroth, I ask you to bestow upon me the key to eternal life."

  A smoky presence swirled within the mirror.

  "No," murmured the girl on the floor.

  "Tell me what you see," said Derek anxiously. "I need to know what you see."

  I suddenly understood Rachel's fate. The blinding white light. The searing pain. In that instant I finally realized what had happened. I also knew I had to hurry, because this girl didn't have long.

  "Please," she begged from the floor. "I don't care what happens to me. Just let my sister go. Please. Just let Rachel go."

  I furrowed my brow and turned to Rachel. She was on her knees beside me, watching the ritual unfold. Her frazzled pink hair was worn and abused, sticking in every direction. Her natural color was blonde, though. Same as the girl in the pentagram. She was the one Rachel had been calling for. Tilly. They were sisters. That explained why both girls were the same age and build. They might've been twins, even. Rachel's giant sunglasses hid her face, but a single red tear leaked down her cheek.

  My breath caught in my throat. The emotions from the night before flooded back into my head. The pain. The suffering. Everything I had witnessed through the blindfold. Through my own brand of black magic.

  This was about more than revenge for her now. About more than death. With all the darkness in the world, it hungered for a spark. A fire.

  I could no longer save Rachel, but I could save her sister.

  With a hard jerk, the giant's knife-hand came free of my neck. Rachel was standing now, a single hand clutching the doorman's wrist. He tugged vigorously but her grip didn't budge. He considered her in shock.

  I didn't give him time to work it out. My head came back hard, into his jaw. It was an awkward angle that didn't do a lot of damage, but his arm around me loosed. I elbowed him in the gut and slid to the floor.

  The hooded figures spun to their feet as I broke free from the giant. He snarled, dropping my knife and catching Rachel with his left fist. Her head snapped to the side. The sunglasses exploded into pieces. But she took the blow on her feet, without losing ground. The crowd whispered.

  Slowly, Rachel turned her head to the doorman. Black lipstick smirk. Red bloodshot eyes. Just like those painted on the black door.

  Tilly screamed in panic. Pain. I slid into the shadow of the floor, becoming one with it. My body lost physical form and I slipped past the men holding her down. Before they knew what was happening, I solidified in the circle and ripped off Tilly's blindfold. Her eyes had started to pinken, but she wasn't yet overtaken.

  Derek jerked awake, shaking her head back to reality. "That's my vessel!" she screeched.

  "Not anymore it isn't," I said.

  A hooded man came at me. I called the shadow again. This time it gloved my fist and I pounded him in the chest. Ribs snapped. He flew ten feet and landed with a broken thud.

  The crowd recoiled, many of them witnessing true combat magic for the first time. I barged into the huddle, sending them scattering. The pitcher of warm blood toppled and spilled at our feet.

  "No more rituals!" I yelled. "No more girls!"

  Derek stood with a snarl. Her acolytes were panicking. It was everything she could do to keep them from abandoning her completely.

  Behind me, Rachel pounded the giant in the stomach. He buckled over, losing his lunch in a vile spew. But the fiend only looked up and grinned. He'd finally found a real fight.

  He barreled into her, lifted her on his shoulder, and slammed her to the floor. Her head smacked the concrete. He didn't let up. His fists rained down on her body.

  I lifted my arm and spawned a tendril of shadow from below. It struck like a snake and latched around the giant's neck, yanking him backward. He didn't lose his balance, but it gave Rachel a chance to roll away and recover.

  The fiend was strong, but not remarkably so. Rachel wasn't too worse for wear. She came at the giant and punched him in the face. He staggered and growled.

  "Surround him!" yelled Derek.

  The crowd was fleeing the Underground. The robed acolytes stayed tough. They began organizing against me. If they had more than parlor tricks, it was now or never. They were amateurs, but I couldn't discount the damage they could do as a unit.

  I had to release the shadow tethering the doorman to wrap it around my fist again. I swung menacingly at whoever drew near. My swipes were defensive, meant to keep them at bay. I could beat them down, but the fastest way to end this was to get to Derek.

  Tilly wiped hexed blood from her eyes. "Rachel?" she asked softly. "Is that you?"

  The giant and Rachel kept pounding each other, oblivious to anyone else. The bulk of men surrounded me and chanted. Their presences merged. Blurred. It was like they were entering my mind. Derek's soothing voice was at the head of that chorus.

  Group incantations are powerful lulls. I wondered if she had slowly infiltrated all of them, drawing them under her wing. But no. The song filling my head was asking, not telling. This wasn't mind control, it was temptation.

  A window shattered. Finally the bird fluttered into the basement. My pet flew haphazardly, half a wing torn off from the glass. That was okay. I didn't need it for much longer.

  I put my silver whistle to my lips and blew, directing the pigeon downward. It careened to the floor and tumbled over the pentagram. Slid into the blood of the spilled pitcher. The fluid drenched its feathers. Seeped into the coarse stitching on the bird's underside.

  Blood is important in voodoo. It's an activator. In this case, the spark powder that filled its belly was ready to go.

  As the chanting encumbered my mind, the bird lifted off the cement and flew like a dart at the coming horde. The wild flapping of wings was nothing compared to their voices, but the resulting boom of the explosion must've been heard over two city blocks.

  I was blown to the floor. All the sidewalk windows shattered outward. Everything muted and tumbled in slow motion. Then it all rushed back with a crash on the floor and ringing in my ears.

  I coughed. Smoke. Flames licked the wooden furniture against the wall. Car alarms bleeped in the distance. Robes were burning everywhere, some of them still wrapped around body parts. Most of the onlookers left standing sprinted for the black door. The diehards that remained backed away, fearful to do more than watch in horror.

  I crawled through the chaos until I reached Tilly. She was hysterical. I grabbed her shoulders and held her tight. "I got you," I said. "You're safe."

  Rachel flew head over heels and landed beside us. Her face was battered. Her arm was broken. Still she rolled to her feet and re-engaged the giant. They continued beating on each other as if the entire room hadn't just exploded.

  The doorman was huge and mean and didn't show signs of tiring. Rachel was quicker. She sidestepped his body blow and planted her heel into the side of his knee, snapping bone. With an ear-splitting shriek, he crumpled to the floor.

  The smoke thickened. I pulled the rope off Tilly's arms and legs, but she would do nothing but cry.

  The doorman's sobs were louder. He roared over the car alarms and panicking pedestrians above. Rachel approached the broken giant, calm against his braying. She locked both hands above her head and brought them down on his skull, cracking it open. His whimpering ended abruptly.

  In the commotion, I didn't notice Derek picking up my bronze knife until too late. She slipped by me, came up behind Rachel, and plunged the blade into her neck.

  "No!" screamed Tilly.

  Rachel clutched the knife and spun to her attacker. Derek's cold sm
ile was ruthless and unapologetic. But Rachel's bloodshot eyes didn't flitter. She didn't cry out in pain or buckle to the floor. She stood still and restrained, knife protruding from her neck, her black lips perked.

  Slowly, Derek's expression shifted to fear. "I... I know you."

  Everyone in the room was frozen.

  "You do," I said. "You did." I climbed to my feet. "That's what you do, isn't it? Pick up lost transplants, new to Miami, without family to claim them. Except instead of taking them under your wing, you offer them up to your dark god."

  Derek stared at Rachel in horror, fully recognizing last night's murder victim.

  "You wanna know the secrets of life and death?" I asked her. "You're talking to the right necromancer."

  I had been in the Everglades the night before. I was there a lot. It's where I hid from the ample streetlights and glow of the city. From those that would look for me. Life's hard for a black magic outlaw. But it's not all bad. The Everglades are peaceful if you don't mind the chittering insects and critters. They're also the perfect place for a body dump.

  Before the car stopped, I'd already known what they were there for. Identifying an off-the-beaten path where water and wildlife would swallow up a corpse. The man with the sideburns exited the car, pulled Rachel's body from the trunk, and dropped her in the drink without pretense. He only watched the swamp a moment before driving off. That's how fast Rachel was swallowed up by the Everglades.

  But he hadn't counted on me being there.

  I didn't sound the alarm or go to the police. I could do them one better. I'm a necromancer, a speaker for the dead. I dragged Rachel from the swamp before the gators got to her. Saw the remnants of dried blood on her skin. Noted the traces of spellcraft. The girl had been through several lifetimes of pain but hadn't suffered any physical damage save the bruises on her neck, wrists, and ankles. Then there was the curiosity of her inky, bloodshot eyes.

  So I got to work. I did my blindfold trick to witness her last moments of life. To feel them. Blindfolds close one kind of sight to open up another, you see. Rachel had been blindfolded too. I just didn't get why at the time.

  In my vision, I couldn't see through the red silk. Hampering my spellcraft further, her final moments of consciousness were heavily drugged. Panicked. The poor girl had been unaware of most everything save her precious mortality.

  I followed along until Ageroth's vision flooded her brain. My spellcraft wasn't enough to translate whatever Rachel saw. Even if it was, I doubted it would've been comprehensible. The searing light was so painful that I had to disconnect. And then she was no more.

  I got what I could from her final moments, but I didn't get enough.

  So I did the next best thing. I animated her corpse. Made her a zombie. My thrall. I revived the body and the muscle memory with it. Rachel's soul was long gone, but her flesh remembered.

  I cleaned her up. Hastily cut and dyed her blonde hair pink. Slapped on a cheap pair of designer shades and a hoodie. Anything to hide her identity long enough to lead me to where she died. To those that had killed her.

  As a general rule, I don't get attached to my thralls. They're just empty husks, devoid of the magic that gives us life. But something about this girl spoke to me. Something about her tragic story demanded my involvement. I dunno. Maybe I'm a sucker for the downtrodden. Maybe I saw an easy opportunity for vengeance. Or maybe these assholes had just dumped her body in the wrong fucking place.

  Derek's eyes were suspended wide in shock. She hadn't killed Rachel directly. That had been Ageroth's work. A vision of life and death so arcane the human body couldn't withstand it. But Derek had loaded that gun and pulled that trigger. She had seen Rachel die with her own eyes, all the while demanding that the poor girl reveal her blessed vision. How many others had died in her pursuit of forbidden knowledge?

  "Impossible," she said.

  I smiled coldly. Derek was an animist, but she didn't know true magic. She'd stumbled upon something. A spirit, a god. It didn't matter. Truth was, she hadn't learned to harness the Intrinsics any more than most of the posers upstairs.

  The thrall standing before her wasn't party voodoo. It wasn't another pigeon or animated piece of roadkill. She was a masterpiece. A fully working automaton that could pass for human. Derek had never seen anything like her.

  Rachel stepped toward her would-be benefactor. I waited. Fitting for the thrall to be the one to do it. That's how revenge works.

  "This can't be," stuttered Derek.

  The aging emo club kid backed away from my date. Her fishnet feet slipped in blood and she tripped backward over Tilly. Rachel converged with a passive mask.

  And then something crazy happened.

  Amidst the flames and smoke and car alarms, a rumbling shook the building. I drew the shadow to me, ready to react to this new threat. I squinted against the stuffy interior and crouched below the smoke. That's when I noticed the giant sideways eyeball in the standing mirror. It blinked.

  Ageroth wasn't just page ten of the Monster Manual.

  Rachel ignored the being of terror. Derek lay under her, afraid to move, shielding her face with quivering hands. The zombie lifted her fists above her head and...

  And...

  Stopped.

  "You are not a suitable sacrament," boomed a voice that could only be Ageroth's. A deep bass that vibrated like tectonic plates settling, threaded with the scratching of thousands of panicking insects. It was overlaid with a sort of clipped monosyllabic utterance, a binary sampling that failed to capture the harmonic saturation of the god's true words.

  I bit down on the whistle and willed Rachel to complete her mission, but something about Ageroth's presence was interfering.

  "Who wishes my blessing?" boomed Ageroth.

  "The blindfold." Derek scrambled for it and held it over Tilly's head.

  But the girl was no longer bound and pinned by five men. Her tears still flowed, but so did her resolve to live. The two girls grappled in blood. Tilly forced Derek to her back and straddled her. She clawed at her face. The animist struggled to fit the blindfold around her. Then Tilly's thumbs found Derek's eyes. She gouged into them with a liberating scream.

  Derek's howl joined her. She convulsed and shook Tilly off. The blonde landed hard on the cement. Rachel still ignored my commands.

  "I—I can't see!" cried Derek, patting her bloody eyes.

  The mirror bulged outward, taking the rounded form of Ageroth's eye. His many voices intermingled with satisfaction. "There you are."

  I scooped Tilly into my arms. She tried to push me away, but I held tight and dragged her out of the pentagram. Away from the squirming prophet.

  The smoke in the room retreated from the space between Derek and the mirror, as if the embodiment of Ageroth's will was a physical presence occupying space. Whatever it was, all his energy went into the emo girl in the skirt. The one who had often summoned him. The one who had desperately wanted to know the secrets of life and death. And truth.

  Ageroth's full blessing and wrath focused on Derek and the background chittering came to a stop. "I. Will. Show. You."

  The animist's bleeding eye cavities opened wide, as did her mouth. She shrieked and wailed in growing waves, each injection more painful than the last. The bloody visions of a mad god. Derek was finally learning the secrets of the universe. Finally learning she wasn't meant to know.

  What can I say? The truth hurts.

  I turned to the few remained hooded figures. "This is over," I said in a tone that dared them to challenge me. Despite the light of the flames, I drew the shadow around me like a cloak. "Get out of here and never come back. Or you're all dead."

  They scrambled for the door as Derek's dying screams rattled the basement of the Underground. Police sirens joined the car alarms above. I pulled Tilly away from the madness. When Derek choked her last tortured breath, the freestanding mirror shattered. Rachel jerked free. She followed us up the smoky steps and outside the black door.

  The
patio was abandoned. Even the bartender was gone. Tilly wiped her eyes, but they still burned. From the smoke. From the blood. She couldn't get the pink out.

  "Are you okay?" I asked.

  Her brow creased. She blinked away the tears to consider her twin sister, fingers running through newly pink hair.

  "It's you," she said softly.

  I turned away. Rachel didn't respond.

  Tilly swallowed. "You're... dead. But you came back for me."

  I stared at my boots. Like I said, it wasn't really Rachel. Her spirit had already left this world. I'd tried to locate her in the Murk but couldn't. All I had was her husk. Her muscle memory.

  It had been enough.

  "She can't come with us," I said softly.

  "But—"

  "Don't you get it?" I snapped. I bit back my ire. Softened my voice. "You're the one that got saved, Tilly. It's too late for Rachel. Nothing can bring her back."

  She silently fought to understand my words. To come to terms with them.

  "She needs to stay here," I said. "There needs to be a victim. The police need to pick up the pieces of what happened here. As much as they can, anyway."

  Tilly sniffled and clasped her sister tightly. Rachel stood stoic, like a statue. I sighed and sent her a silent command. Rachel lifted her arms and hugged her sister back. Tilly sobbed into her twin's shoulder.

  Rachel's last flashes of life ran through my head again. That was the downside of the spellcraft. It wasn't just a vision but an experience. As if I had died myself, it was my memory now too.

  Those final moments were hard. Helpless. Once Rachel had stepped through that black door, she was overtaken by forces she had no chance of understanding. It wasn't power or insight she had gained, but death. The last true frontier. In a way, Rachel had passed through a different kind of black door.

  But her next life had overcome those odds. This one, empowered by death, had become a weapon against her predators. She put a stop to Derek's madness. Ended the giant's miserable life. And, in the end, she'd accomplished much more than justice. She'd saved her family. Her blood. Sacrifice for salvation. That was something Ageroth could never teach.