Magic and Loss: A Novel of Golgotham

by Nancy A. Collins

  “That’s enough! Stop threatening her!” Hexe growled, grimacing in pain. “You’ve made your point, Marz!”

  “I’m glad we’ve reached an understanding. Bonzo, please show our guests out.”

  The squirrel-monkey jumped off its master’s shoulder, transforming into its demonic aspect in midleap. As Bonzo reached for us, Hexe staggered to his feet, valiantly putting himself between me and the hell-ape. With a hideous shriek, the familiar swept us up in its shaggy arms as if we were dolls and disappeared in a cloud of brimstone.

  Suddenly I was tumbling through darkness, my ears echoing with the distorted screams of an angry ape. Although I could see nothing in the void, I felt Hexe’s arms wrapped about me. I returned his embrace, hanging on for dear life. Then the next thing I knew, I was dumped on the street outside the locked gates of one of the piers that jutted out into the East River. Hexe was lying on the pavement next to me, his face drawn and pale. He cradled his damaged hand close to his chest, as if protecting a small, wounded animal.

  “We’ve got to get you to Golgotham General,” I said as I helped him back onto his feet.

  “No,” he said with an emphatic shake of his head. “They’ll ask questions. Take me to Dr. Mao.”

  Chapter 8

  Dr. Mao’s Apothecary and Acupuncture Parlor was located on the bleeding edge between Golgotham and Chinatown. By the time we arrived, Hexe was barely able to walk and I was genuinely terrified that he would collapse on the street and I wouldn’t be able to get him back on his feet. I banged on the front door so hard that the SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED placard nearly flipped itself back over.

  The door opened the length of its security chain and a feline eye peered out. “Can’t you read?” Lukas growled, his face an intimidating admixture of puma and human. Upon recognizing us, he resumed his usual boyish appearance. “What are you two doing here?” he asked in surprise.

  “Open up, Lukas,” I said urgently. “Hexe has been hurt.”

  The young were-cougar threw open the door and helped me escort the near-unconscious warlock over the threshold. “Bast’s eyes!” he gasped upon seeing Hexe’s damaged hand. “What happened?”

  “Never mind that,” I said tersely. “Just fetch Dr. Mao.”

  “What’s going on out there?” the old were-tiger asked sharply, stepping out from behind the curtain that separated his family’s living quarters from the shop. He had shed his traditional black Mandarin jacket and was dressed in a damask robe covered with embroidered phoenixes. “Why did you open the door? You know I don’t see patients after hours. . . .”

  “There’s been an accident, Doc,” I explained. “Hexe told me to bring him here.”

  “Take him into the parlor,” Dr. Mao said, pointing to an alcove at the far end of the shop that was partially hidden by an elaborate lacquered screen.

  Where the apothecary resembled a traditional Chinese herbalist shop, with jars and cases filled with dried caterpillars and sliced deer antler, the acupuncture parlor looked more like a doctor’s examination room, complete with stainless-steel exam table. As Lukas and I lifted Hexe onto it, his eyelids fluttered and he groaned in pain.

  Dr. Mao winced as he saw Hexe’s hand. “Go fetch Meikei,” he told Lukas. “I’m going to need her help.”

  Upon hearing his friend’s voice, Hexe opened his eyes and attempted to sit up, only to have Dr. Mao push him back down. “Lie still, Serenity,” he said gently. “I must assess your wounds.” As the were-tiger attempted to examine Hexe’s fingers, he gasped like a drowning man coming up for air and his golden eyes rolled back in their sockets.

  “Where’s Tate?” he rasped.

  “I’m right here,” I said as I grabbed his uninjured left hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. His eyeballs abruptly dropped back down like the reels in a slot machine. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

  He flashed me a wan smile before turning his attention to Dr. Mao. “How bad is it, Doc?”

  “You need a boneknitter, not an acupuncturist,” the old healer replied matter-of-factly.

  Hexe shook his head. “A boneknitter would be worse than useless. It’s a witch-hammer injury.”

  “Who did this?” Dr. Mao demanded, his head suddenly replaced by that of a snarling tiger. Although I knew he meant me no harm, I instinctively recoiled in fear at the sight of his razor-sharp teeth and flashing amber eyes. “It was Marz, wasn’t it?” Mao growled, his stripes once more fading back into his skin. “I may be old, but I’m no fool.”

  “Yes, it was Boss Marz,” Hexe replied grudgingly. “But you can’t tell anyone what you know, Doc. Marz has threatened to kill our families and friends—including you and Meikei—if we talk.”

  “I understand,” Mao sighed. “But how did the Maladanti get their hands on a witch-hammer?”

  “They stole a collection of Witchfinder implements from the Museum of Supernatural History,” I explained. “The Curator was talking about the theft when I was there with Canterbury earlier this week.”

  “I’m not surprised that the Maladanti would stoop to such tactics,” Mao grunted as he took out a black and red lacquer box from a nearby medicine cabinet. “Have no fear, you have my silence on the matter.”

  Meikei, dressed in a housecoat, entered the parlor. “What’s going on? Lukas said something about an emergency—” She froze upon seeing Hexe lying on the exam table, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

  “Don’t just stand there gawping at the patient, girl!” Mao snapped. “I need you to compound some Chin Koo Tieh Shang Wan while I block his nerves. You know the formulation?”

  “Pseudoginseng, dragon’s blood, Angelica root, myrrh, and safflower,” Meikei replied, quickly regaining her composure under her father’s quizzing.

  “That’s my girl,” Mao said, with a proud smile. “Now go make pills.”

  Lukas moved to follow Meikei into the apothecary, but Dr. Mao shook his head. “You stay here, boy,” he said sternly. “My daughter can run the pill mill by herself. I need you to hold him down when I insert the needles.”

  The young were-cat nodded his understanding and laid his arm across Hexe’s shoulders, pinning him to the exam table.

  The healer scowled down at his friend’s hand, which now resembled an overfilled hot-water bottle, the fingers jutting from it at unnatural angles. “I wish I could lie and tell you this isn’t going to hurt,” he said apologetically.

  “I understand,” Hexe rasped, clenching his jaw. “Go ahead and do it.”

  Dr. Mao flipped open the lid of the lacquer box, revealing rows upon rows of golden acupuncture needles ranging from near-microscopic to something you could knit with. As he inserted the first of them into the fractured right hand, Hexe’s body jerked and bowed, as if undergoing electroshock, and then suddenly went limp.

  “Don’t worry, he’s still alive. He’s just fainted, that’s all. It is better he not be awake for this, anyway,” the were-tiger explained. Seeing the worried look on my face, he gave me a reassuring smile. “You got him this far, Tate. Lukas and I will take him from here.”

  I nodded dumbly and stepped away from the exam table, leaving Dr. Mao and his apprentice to their work. It tore me up inside that the man I loved was in agony, and there was sweet FA I could do about it. As I entered the apothecary, I saw Meikei at the counter, wearing a half-mask respirator as she vigorously pounded the contents of a pharmacist’s mortar with a pestle.

  “If my father wants to know what’s taking so long,” she said in a muffled voice, “you can tell him that I’m working as fast as I can and to get off my back, Dad.”

  “Actually, I just came out here to keep from being underfoot,” I admitted.

  “You can help me make the pills, if you like,” she said, gesturing to a machine that looked like a cross between an old-fashioned meat grinder and a die press. I joined her behind the counter and took my place at the compounding bench. “The Chin Koo Tieh Shang Wan will reduce the swelling and soft tissue damage, and dull the
pain,” she explained as she poured the powder from the mortar into the machine’s hopper.

  I turned the crank on the side of the press. There was a slight resistance, but not too much, and a second later the mechanism popped out a yellowish aspirin-sized tablet, which dropped down a narrow slide and fell into a small steel basin. Relieved to be of assistance, no matter how slight, I turned the handle faster and the solitary tablet was followed by several more. Suddenly, in midcrank, my vision abruptly dimmed and flared, like a malfunctioning video monitor, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor, staring up at a startled Meikei.

  “Are you okay?” she gasped as she tore off her mask.

  “Wh—what happened?” I muttered, blinking in surprise.

  Meikei knelt beside me, checking my pulse and inspecting my pupils. “One moment you were cranking the pill press, the next you stopped and sat down—except there wasn’t a chair.”

  “I’m sorry if I freaked you out,” I said apologetically. “I guess everything just kind of caught up to me. . . .”

  Meikei frowned and leaned in closer, sniffing me like a cat checking out a mouse hole. “Have you been nauseous lately?” she asked.

  “Well, I have been feeling a bit queasy, here and there,” I admitted. “But I’ve been under a lot of stress at work. . . .”

  “That’s not why you fainted,” she said with a shake of her head. “You are with child, Tate.”

  I sat there for a long moment, my brain vibrating like a struck gong. I tried to figure out what Meikei must have really meant to say, because there was no way it was what I just thought I’d heard. Maybe she said I’d been beguiled, and in my dazed state I heard something altogether different. Surely it must have been a simple misunderstanding on my part.

  “Tate? Did you hear what I just said?” Meikei asked, snapping her fingers to get my attention. “I said that you’re pregnant!”

  “No, you’re wrong.” Even as I shook my head in denial, my mind was zipping around like a hummingbird on speed, finally making the connections I’d been steadfastly ignoring over the last month. “I mean, it’s impossible! I’ve been on the pill for years!”

  “Human contraception is all very well and good,” Meikei said with a smile, “assuming your partner is also human.”

  “Oh, crap,” I groaned as my last defense crumbled before me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked gently, resting her hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “It’s going to take a little while for this to really sink in. Right now, I’ve got to think about Hexe.”

  “Of course,” she said as she helped me back onto my feet. “I won’t say a thing.”

  • • •

  “There you are!” Dr. Mao said as Meikei and I returned with the pills. “I was beginning to wonder if you had fallen into a black hole.”

  “There was a mechanical problem with the pill press,” Meikei fibbed, glancing in my direction. “Tate was able to fix it, though.”

  “Ah, very good,” her father replied, returning his attention to the last of the needles. Hexe’s right hand bristled liked an angry golden porcupine.

  “Where’s Tate?” he moaned, drifting in and out of consciousness.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I whispered as I brushed the hair from his face. “I’m here.”

  “Don’t let them take it,” Hexe rasped, his eyes rolling about in their sockets like greased ball bearings. “My hand—don’t let them take it.”

  “Nobody’s going to take away your hand, Hexe,” Dr. Mao said in a loud, slow voice, as if speaking to a child on a bad phone line. “Take these—they will help with the pain.”

  Hexe clumsily tossed down the offered tablets with his left hand and chased them with a sip of water. Within a minute of taking them, the knot in his jaw unclenched and the muscles in his face relaxed. With a relieved sigh, he lay back down and closed his eyes.

  “That should give him some relief for the time being. Safflower is similar to opioids for Kymerans,” Mao explained. “Now that he’s sedated, I can splint his hand properly.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” I asked anxiously.

  Dr. Mao paused for a long moment before finally answering. “I’ve done everything in my power to help him, but there was a great deal of nerve damage. The hand, once splinted, should heal well enough. But I seriously doubt he will regain complete dexterity without the aid of magic.”

  My heart sank like a lead anchor, threatening to pull me downward into despair, but my brain told the rest of me that turning into a blubbering ball of boohoo was not going to help anything or solve any problems. I stared down at Hexe’s unconscious face, still pale and drawn, and felt a surge of love so intense I almost forgot to breathe. We had been through more, in the relatively short time we’d been together, than most couples would ever face in a lifetime: escaping angry mobs, angrier demons, and crazed homunculi, all while saving one another’s lives thrice over. If we could survive all that, then we would overcome this as well.

  Despite Dr. Mao’s grim diagnosis, I refused to give up hope. Golgotham was filled with wizards, witches, and miracle workers—somebody, somewhere, had to know how to fix that which could not be repaired.

  Chapter 9

  “Lukas will accompany you home,” Doc Mao said as he helped me load an extremely groggy Hexe into the livery carriage. “You will require assistance getting him upstairs.”

  “That’s okay, Doc,” I replied. “I can handle him.”

  The old were-tiger raised his unibrow in surprise. “Are you sure of that? Given your condition?” Dr. Mao chuckled as my eyes darted suspiciously at Meikei. “No, my daughter has not betrayed your confidence, my dear. However, I did not get to the age I am now without knowing a pregnant woman when I smell one,” he said, tapping the side of his nose.

  As Lukas and I entered the front door, Hexe slung between us like a drunken sailor, we were greeted by Scratch, who was perched atop the newel post of the staircase like a living finial. “Finally! It’s about time you two came home!” the familiar yowled indignantly. “Beanie is about to explode! And if you think that I’m going to clean up after him . . .” He trailed off as he watched us guide Hexe toward the stairs, his hairless brow furrowed into a feline frown. “What’s wrong with the boss? Is he munted?”

  “Yes, but not how you think,” I replied as we dragged Hexe upstairs and steered him into his room. The carved owls atop the bedposts swiveled their heads about in concern as I propped a pillow under his splinted right hand. “Thanks for helping me, Lukas,” I said as I unlaced and removed Hexe’s high-tops before tucking him in. “I can handle it from here.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he asked worriedly.

  “I’ll be fine,” I replied, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Go home and get some sleep. It’s been a long day for everybody.”

  “Call me if you need anything,” he said as he gave me a farewell hug. “I’ll bike right over.”

  Scratch jumped up onto the bed, nervously slapping his tail against the footboard as he watched me do my best to make Hexe comfortable. “What’s going on?” he growled.

  “There was an accident,” I replied.

  “What kind of accident?” Scratch scowled.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I answered hastily, trying to dodge any further questioning. “It’s none of your business. . . .”

  “‘None of my business’?” the familiar spat. “Hexe is my master! I have no business but him!” He cast back his head, sniffing the air as if on the trail of a rat hiding in the wainscoting. “What’s that smell?” He hopped onto the mattress, slowly creeping forward. As his twitching whiskers brushed against Hexe’s injured right hand, he recoiled in disgust. “Saint of the Pit!” he screeched. “Malleus Maleficarum—the witch-hammer!”

  The familiar threw back his head and gave voice to a yowl that sounded like a band saw chewing its way through sheet metal. As he leapt off the bed he cast aside his domestic skin, reveal
ing his demonic aspect—that of a hairless saber-toothed tiger with the wings of a dragon and the tail of a crocodile.

  “Who has done this thing to my master?” Scratch roared, his outrage rattling the very walls and frightening poor Beanie so badly he peed himself in terror and dove under the bed skirt for protection.

  “Calm down!” I shouted, clamping my hands over my ears.

  “I’ll ‘calm down’ once I’ve torn the throat from whoever’s responsible for this affront!” the familiar snarled, his head nothing but blazing eyes and gleaming fang. The acerbic, wisecracking Scratch I thought I knew was nowhere to be seen, and in his place was a demon, born and bred in the pits of the Infernal Realm, transformed by anger into something truly terrifying. “Tell me who did this!” he thundered, slapping his tail against the floorboards so hard it shook the entire house.

  “I can’t!” I replied, my voice quavering with fear.

  Scratch roared again, his monstrous, curving fangs flashing like scimitars. “Tell me their name, nump!” he growled as he took a menacing step in my direction.

  I stood there, momentarily paralyzed, like a frightened gazelle, before breaking free of my fear. I snatched up one of Hexe’s high-top Chucks and hurled it at Scratch’s head, striking him between the eyes.