by J. L. Doty
He frowned. “Then why wear them?”
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and said, “They look good. And I look good in them.”
“Female vanity,” he said, shaking his head.
“And not ashamed to admit it.”
He looked up at her degrees hanging on the wall, beamed with pride. That always gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling, when he did that. She wouldn’t call herself a great psychiatrist; she was a better witch. But she’d combined the two effectively, could use a simple spell to help gain the trust of a recalcitrant child, often accomplish in a few weeks what took her more mundane colleagues months. In that, as a professional, she always felt she was a bit of a fraud. But no one could deny the results. She could help people, especially children, and that she liked.
“Please, father, it has been a long day. What’s so urgent that it can’t wait until we have dinner this weekend?”
Walter McGowan took a deep breath and she knew she wasn’t going to like this. “I need your help with Paul? I need you to take a more active role in his training. He responds to you nicely. And next week Salisteen wants me bring him down to Dallas. She suspects some sort of netherlife crossed over some time ago and is feeding in the Dallas area, and she’d like to see if Paul’s special abilities might prove advantageous.”
Katherine was certain the old man was purposefully omitting something. “Paul’s not ready for a hunt. It was pure luck that that fiasco with the Secundus didn’t end in a terrible tragedy.”
Her father was a horrible liar, and at that moment he looked exceedingly uncomfortable. “I don’t think it was luck,” he said. “I’ve been reading up on necromancers—had to brush up on my Latin. I’ve got a grimoire written by a ninth century Saxon monk. I trust his written word more than most because his spells and incantations actually work. And he believed that chance conforms subtly to the needs of a necromancer, and that the people he needs to help him do whatever he’s supposed to do are drawn to him.”
He shut up and let her chew on that for a moment. She didn’t like the idea that she might be drawn into some arcane, mysterious sequence of events, regardless of her own desires. But if practitioners were being drawn to Paul, that meant . . . “Wait! You mean you and Colleen and me?”
McGowan nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Colleen and I have discussed this, and yes, that’s probably what’s happened. And, oddly enough, that probably means he needs those ass-hole Russians in some way. But you and he seem to work together in a special way, so I think the rest of us are the backup group, while you and Paul are the headline act.”
She couldn’t hold back her anger, stood and leaned forward on her desk. “No! Absolutely not! Before he came along I was just a simple, little witch. I’d never met a demon, never been to the Netherworld, never met leprechauns and Sidhe, never been kidnapped to Faerie—never even been to Faerie for that matter, never had a bunch of crazy Russians shooting at me . . .” She ran out of steam, sat down in her chair and closed her eyes.
“You know how strong he is?” the old man asked calmly. “When I was trying to locate him he repeatedly snapped my locator spell with nothing more than a shrug.”
Now that was intriguing. There weren’t more than a couple practitioners in the world who could snap one of Walter McGowan’s spells, let alone do so easily with just a shrug.
The old man continued. “I thought you liked him.”
She opened her eyes. “I do. I did. But . . . there’s something wrong about him. It just doesn’t feel right. My instincts tell me to stay away from him. That he’ll hurt me, or someone I care about. You know, he told me himself he thought he was nuts, and he’s probably right.”
“I thought shrinks didn’t use words like nuts.”
“Ok,” she hissed. “Then let’s use the proper technical terms. He’s probably all fucked up. You know, bongo, wacko. I don’t need to be around someone like that.”
“But he’s not. He’s quite sane. He thought he was bug-fuck nuts—those are his words, by the way. I would never use such derogatory terms—”
She groaned, “Ah jeese! Get to the point. Please.”
The old man hesitated, and for the first time in her life he seemed uncertain. She suddenly felt a chill, and fear gripped her. “My dear,” he said calmly, carefully, pointedly, “the point is, he is sane. And the point is . . . I don’t understand much of the magic he’s using.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered, and dropped back into her chair.
Anogh had been summoned, and when he entered Ag’s private audience chamber he was surprised to find the unpleasant Russians there as well. Ag and Karpov were seated in large, comfortable chairs near the back of the room, speaking in hushed tones, while Karpov’s two thugs gawked about like bumpkins, and Simuth looked upon them with obvious distaste.
Anogh approached Ag but stopped at a polite distance and waited. Ag and Karpov conversed for several more minutes, then Ag looked up and took notice of the Summer Knight. Ag stood and Karpov stood with him. As they walked toward the center of the room, Anogh, Simuth and the two thugs joined them there.
“Sir Knights,” Karpov said, acknowledging Anogh and Simuth. “It appears we have common cause.”
“Yes,” Ag said. “This necromancer is a problem for us all. And I find it disquieting that he’s bound himself to the Old Wizard. It would be better if he were bound to our good friend Vasily here.”
He’d been looking at Anogh when he spoke. “And you’ll help him, won’t you, my Summer Knight?”
Anogh bowed slightly. “If that is Your Majesty’s desire, then, of course.”
Karpov looked to his two thugs and said, “And His Majesty tells me he believes a necromancer must have some demon blood in his veins.”
The big bearish fellow grumbled, “I knew he was a fucking demon.”
Karpov’s hand lashed out and struck the fellow across the cheek, the slap resounding loudly in the small room. The strike had been fast, inhumanly so, like that of a pit viper. “You will not use such crude language in the presence of His Majesty. Apologize.”
“I am sorry, Your Majesty,” the big bear grumbled in his thick accent, lowering his eyes. “Please forgive me.”
Ag waved a hand impatiently and spoke to Karpov. “These young fools all have so much to learn.” He looked Anogh’s way. “But I think you’ll find Sir Anogh to be quite resourceful on the Mortal Plane.”
Leftover pizza, the breakfast of champions. Paul finished the last cold, congealed slice, gulped down the last of a cup of coffee, stuffed both Sigs and his holsters into a cloth shopping bag, pulled on his coat and shot out the door.
Paul couldn’t find it in his heart to return to his old place. He and Suzanna had lived there since before they were married, and Cloe had spent her entire life there. And after the “home invasion” by the Russians, it had been relatively easy to break the lease. Paul had found a new apartment, a nice apartment as apartments went, just a little lonely. He missed Suzanna and Cloe, but he’d sworn a silent oath that he wouldn’t fall into that trap again. They were gone, and he was going to make himself accept that whether he liked it or not.
The new place was South of Market, an area of San Francisco devoid of the quaint charm of nineteenth-century, wood-frame houses with three or four stories of bay windows. A few years ago Paul read an article predicting that South of Market was destined to become a new, upscale, yuppie enclave. Paul hoped no one was taking advice on the stock market from the guy who wrote the article. Some people wanted to call South of Market SoMa, hoping to give it a fashionable flair like SoHo in New York. But tall, modern office buildings dominated the north side of the district, while the south side was filled with cheap hotels, a few rundown buildings, and some apartment buildings four or five stories high, boxy structures with little charm. In any case, Paul had signed a lease on a three-and-a-half room bachelor flat: living room, bedroom, small bathroom, half a kitchen.
When he arrived at McGowan’s the old man met him
at the door and hustled him into a car with the cryptic explanation of, “We’re going to go see Clark, introduce you properly.”
As McGowan pulled out onto Van Ness, he shifted into his lecture voice and said, “On the way let’s talk about the three realms: the Mortal Plane, the Netherworld, and Faerie. They’re also sometimes referred to as the three lives. First—”
“Wait,” Paul said. “First let’s talk about why you’re doing this for me.”
McGowan frowned, clearly taken aback. Paul continued. “I’m nothing to you. Nobody. But it must be costing you a great deal of money to take care of me, and certainly a great deal of effort. And most importantly I am, apparently, a dangerous unknown. And now you’re willing to put that aside. Why?”
McGowan nodded, considered his words carefully. “A lot of reasons, kid. First, if you had continued the way you were going, someone, probably me, would have had to kill you to prevent you from harming others. Think about Cassius. Two, three, four hundred years ago some sorcerer let that Secundus loose on the Mortal Plane. That demon was powerful enough that he was consuming two or three lives a week. Do the math. It doesn’t matter if that ancient sorcerer let him loose through evil intent, or merely sloppiness or inexperience. If there was the possibility you might do the same, we had to stop you, even if that meant killing you. But while I will admit I can be ruthless, I’d rather not commit murder until I know I can’t fix you properly.”
“So if I don’t cooperate you, or someone else, will kill me?”
McGowan frowned and considered Paul’s question. “I honestly don’t know. You’re not what we thought, a simple rogue, so I’d probably hold off. But I can’t vouch for those Russians.
“Another reason I’m working with you is that you’re an unknown, to us all. There hasn’t been a necromancer around for twelve hundred years, not that we know of. So I want to be close to understand why you’re here, now, at this time and place.”
“There has to be a reason?”
“I think there has to be.” McGowan looked away from the road, looked at Paul carefully for a moment, studying him, evaluating him. His eyes returned to the road and he said, “Our history books are written by historians who don’t believe in magic or sorcery, so they make events fit into their mundane framework. But I’ve spent many decades translating and studying ancient grimoires—basically cookbooks for magic and sorcery with little bits of history thrown in—written by men and women hundreds of years ago with a vastly different perspective. And believe me it’s a bitch trying to understand them. They’re vague, and superstitious, so a lot of interpretation is needed. But an alternate interpretation that emerges is that a couple thousand years ago a Primus caste demon, one of the nine princes of hell, crossed over to the Mortal Plane. That led to the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the dark ages. And it wasn’t until about eight or nine hundred years later that a necromancer came along to banish the Primus back to the Netherworld.”
Paul buried his face in his hands. “Jesus, god in heaven,” he said. His mind started racing. Maybe he could just run away and hide. Play along with McGowan for a day or two, yank all his savings out of the bank, take only cash, move to some south Pacific island, grow a beard, become a beach-bum and just hide.
“Paul!” McGowan shouted, and he realized McGowan had shouted his name several times already, but Paul’s thoughts had gone so far away he hadn’t heard him. “Calm down. It’s just all speculation, and conjecture. I told you it’s all subject to wide ranging interpretation. And you should see some of the crap those superstitious idiots wrote ten, twelve hundred years ago. Remember, these are the morons who came up with the test for a witch: drown her, and if she lives she’s a witch so kill her, but if she dies she’s innocent, so pray for her when you bury her.”
Paul had to struggle to accept that, forced himself to an artificial calm. “Well, at least now that everyone knows I’m a necromancer they’re not out trying to kill me anymore.”
McGowan sucked air through his teeth. “About that . . .”
“Ah shit! Please tell me they’re not trying to kill me anymore.”
“Wellllll!” McGowan grimaced unhappily. “It’s not that simple. You see, the Sidhe don’t have souls, so they’re kind of . . . not really considered among the living, so . . . you may have some extra special powers over them, and they won’t like that.”
Paul turned on him and shouted, “What kind of powers?”
McGowan’s grimace remained. “We don’t know. Maybe none. But the Sidhe Courts, as a rule, don’t take any chances in such matters, so don’t assume anything.”
Paul felt that somehow he was supposed to remain calm and rational. “Well, at least the fucking Russians aren’t trying to kill me anymore.”
McGowan added a frown to his grimace. “About that too. It’s really hard to bring a Primus caste over, even for me, but maybe not for a necromancer. So your very existence might make it possible.”
Paul managed to get his voice down to a growl. “So everybody thinks I’m going to be the cause of the destruction of civilization?”
McGowan glanced at him apologetically. “I just wouldn’t assume that there is anyone who isn’t out to kill you. Well . . . you can count on me and Colleen and Katherine and Clark. We’re on your side. That’s why we’re going to see Clark.”
“Clark?”
“Ya. Clark Devoe?”
“Who?”
“Gun shop owner. You met him when you came to his store. And then again the night you took out that Secundus. That was a nice piece of work, I might add. Earned you a few brownie points among my colleagues. That’s why some of them won’t . . . well . . . might not try to kill you.”
McGowan pulled the car into a parking spot in front of South-bay Guns and Ammo. Paul remembered the place from his one and only visit. It was still rather seedy, a simple unassuming store front with a neon sign. And it needed a coat of paint.
McGowan pulled a briefcase out of the back seat, nodded toward Paul’s shopping bag containing his Sigs and said, “Grab your stuff, kid.”
Paul followed him into the shop. It had only been a few months since he’d first wandered into the place and it hadn’t changed, a long row of glass display cases running down the right side with handguns displayed under glass, racks of rifles on the wall behind the cases. Along the left wall were racks of ammunition, clothing, holsters, cleaning kits, all sorts of paraphernalia.
The plump female with frizzy, unkempt hair sat behind the counter toward the back. She was wearing another moo-moo, or maybe the same one, and eating something out of a plastic refrigerator tub. “How ya doin’, Mr. McGowan,” she said around a mouth full of food. “Clark’s expecting you. Go on back.”
Clark Devoe was waiting for them in the back room. He looked to be in his mid-sixties with shoulder length gray-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, and three or four days of stubbly beard growth. Paul thought he might be wearing the same old army fatigue jacket and NRA cap he’d had on the first time Paul met him.
“Mr. McGowan,” Devoe said, shaking McGowan’s hand.
He turned to Paul, shook Paul’s hand in a hard grip, said, “Nice job you did on the vamp.” He looked down at Paul’s shopping bag. “Let’s see what you bought.”
Paul upended the bag on a nearby workbench. Both Sigs were in their hinged, blue, plastic, factory cases. Devoe opened one, lifted the weapon, ratcheted the slide back, then quickly field stripped it, removing the slide and the barrel. He sighted carefully down the barrel. “This is good hardware, little expensive, but a good choice. And it looks like you’re cleaning it and oiling it properly.”
Devoe went through the same process with the other Sig. Paul apparently passed muster on that one as well. The man questioned him a bit on his background as a child hunting with his father, was happy to hear he’d gone through a couple thousand rounds at a gun range to get the feel of the two weapons. Devoe wasn’t so pleased with the holster. “This is ok, but it could
jam you up a little, slow you down in a pinch. Leave it with me for a few days and I’ll make a few mods.”
McGowan opened his briefcase, handed Paul a small card and an envelope full of paperwork. “That’s a CCW permit—to carry a concealed weapon—for the state of California. You don’t know it but you applied for it and received it several months ago.”
Devoe nodded toward the card. “Those’re hard as hell to get in this state. Mr. McGowan has connections.”
Devoe gave Paul a pump-action sawed-off twelve-gauge and a couple hundred rounds of his “special double-ought.”
Paul looked at McGowan and Devoe and said, “Where’s the Uzi, and maybe a fifty-caliber machine gun? I could mount it on the floor of my living room to cover the front door.”
Devoe frowned and looked at McGowan. “Kid ain’t gonna live long if he don’t start taking this seriously.”
He watched her walk to the bus stop, the beautiful little Mexican girl. Watched her carefully and couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Her parents had dressed her in a blue pinafore over a white blouse, and white knee-high stockings ending in shiny black shoes—very Alice in Wonderland. He loved Alice in Wonderland, not the story but the girl herself, wished Alice were real so he could love her.
The little Mexican girl’s parents must be very proud of her, must love her very much. She had incredible raven-black hair that hung past her shoulders, flawless olive skin and almond shaped eyes. He thought she might even be more beautiful than the little blond, and that brought a pang of guilt. It felt like cheating to desire the little Mexican girl more than the little blond, a horrible act of infidelity.
No, the voice said, a faint hiss somewhere deep within his soul. She is the one.
Yes. He’d loved the little blond so much, but now she was gone and he so desperately needed someone to hold, someone to share his affection. But this one would be different. This time he would just watch from afar, admire her, love her even, but never touch her. He didn’t want to hurt her. She was too beautiful to be hurt. He just wanted to hold her closely, tell her how much he loved her, how much he needed her.