“This time magic,” he said, probing for details as the water boiled, “what specifically can you tell me?”
I looked around the room, wondering if MagiTekk’s goons would suddenly pop out of the woodwork like a scene from 1984. But this place barely had running water. It seemed unlikely that it would be wired.
So I said, “Time loops.”
“Interesting.” I heard a spoon tap against the side of a mug. “You asked what happened to me.” He walked back into the living room, balancing the steaming cup. Even over the short distance, I could tell that he had a significant limp.
“Sure,” I said. “You should be a wolf.”
There was a cagey wildness to his movements, like part of his nature had simply been suppressed.
“MagiTekk trial,” Aaron said. “Paid a hundred bucks for medical testing.”
“And?”
“They injected me with a serum.” Aaron shrugged, bare shoulders tensing. “Suppressed the lupus gene.”
“Permanent?”
“Been eleven years,” he said with a wry smile. “Lookin’ that way.”
I sat down on a ragged futon and looked at him. For the most part, he seemed surprisingly at ease about his loss of supernatural identity—barbs from strangers holding guns notwithstanding. Most creatures were proud of their lineage, and would probably rather die than lose it.
In this world, though, concession might have been the better part of valor.
“Your people still listen to you, though.”
“Made me the man I am now,” Aaron said, sipping the tea. His eyes still glowed, albeit softer.
“Might be a problem if they see us having tea together.”
“I make my own rules.” He set the half-empty mug down and got up, limping toward a small bookshelf. That was one thing I hadn’t seen much of in recent years: paper. My list was like a little black swan, floating in the midst of a thousand holographic ones.
With a slight groan, he knelt, searching for a volume. After a brief moment murmuring to himself, he selected one from the shelf and returned to his seat.
“There aren’t too many people around here interested in this.”
He handed me what amounted to a stapled pamphlet—like some sort of underground ’zine a radical college kid would put together. Printed off a copier, edges sliced haphazardly with a paper cutter, it looked decidedly lo-fi and unpromising.
I turned the yellowed first page, which served as a cover. In plain text, it read The Arcana of Temporal Manipulation.
“So what, you decided to become a wizard after the whole wolf thing didn’t work out?”
“I became a student of the mind.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said, flipping through a series of unreadable diagrams and spells that looked suspect even to my non-spellcasting ass.
“I’m not the leader in the Mud Belt because I’m stronger.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” I passed some sort of technique that required more than twenty clocks, all set to the same time. That couldn’t possibly work.
This was looking like a dead end.
I wondered if the vamps had eaten Roark yet. Maybe I could drag him out of there and catch a ride with him.
“I’m the leader because I know more than them.” He gestured for the pamphlet, and I gave it back. “And I am capable of using that information.”
“I’m sure your fifth grade teacher would be proud.” I reached for the shotgun, thinking it was time to leave. “Just get me a ride and you can have the aid kit and rebreathers.”
His fingers stopped flipping through the pages, reaching one toward the end. He held it up, pointing at the contents. “You said time loops, correct?”
The unspoken question being unless I was lying and really wanted to know something else.
Which was a fair question, given my overall attitude and lack of courtesy.
But I was never one for making friends—which went double in the loop.
“Did I stutter?”
Aaron gave me a wolfish, lupine smile. “You’re not for hire, are you, Ruby?”
I looked around the surroundings and said, “I don’t think you’d pay enough.”
“What if I had the answer to your loop?” The page dangled in front of me like a chunk of meat in front of a lion.
I didn’t appreciate that, and I let him know by raising the shotgun and racking the slide.
Or what should have racked the slide.
I pumped it again, but the mechanism refused to move, like someone had glued it into place.
“Another way you remain leader,” Aaron said, draining the rest of his tea. “Anti-firearm wards in your home.”
I set the useless gun down and considered strangling him. But he was still fit—most wolves were, unless they made a concerted effort to be flabby pieces of shit—and had about a hundred pounds on me.
Maybe in the movies I’d win that fight, but in the real world, I was going to end up with a mouthful of broken teeth. It was one thing talking shit to Stevens when I was already cuffed. It was another matter entirely to initiate my own demise.
“Should’ve guessed.”
“Nicolette is a talented witch.” Aaron shrugged a little, as he listened to her moans. She’d been getting into it, but upon hearing her name, she’d decided to go full-on porno. Let big bad crime lord know about what he was missing.
I liked her already, wards notwithstanding.
“Passionate,” I said, keeping a straight face.
“I wouldn’t disagree.” The ex-wolf placed the pamphlet down on his lap and stared at me. “So do we have ourselves a deal?”
“I could just come back tomorrow,” I said.
“But you lack the patience.”
“Wow, you should tell fortunes.”
“A blind dog could see that.”
It was annoying when people were right. I wanted to get the hell out of this loop and away from the camp, Roark, the necromancer—everything. It wasn’t my damn problem. Like I’d told Marshall next to the tree, I had no love for politicians. He could string them all up and reanimate them for his little marionette bell.
Because they sure as hell weren’t gonna watch out for me.
So I said, “What’s the job?”
“That’s the spirit.”
And then Aaron Daniels explained what I needed to do in exchange for his assistance.
19
I got my ride into the city—and got to keep my first aid kit and rebreathers. Lucky me. I was headed back to the Fallout Zone.
Madsen was still there, and more than willing to take a bribe to let me slip through. Recalling my little incident with the Elite Guard last time, I asked my driver how I’d get back through the gate.
He’d just laughed his ass off and said, “You won’t.”
That didn’t leave me feeling warm and fuzzy, but he assured me that the information would make its way to the other side if I did my job. Apparently you could hack the rebreathers, make them display coordinates and maps via their holographic outputs.
I was told that a location would be sent once the job was done.
I didn’t see what the point of jumping through this hoop was. If Aaron Daniels believed that I was really in a time loop, then he’d also know that he’d forget anything I told him by tomorrow. So this was either for sport, or because he thought I was crazy and figured he could get some free work out of it.
To be honest, the print quality of The Arcana of Temporal Manipulation had not been particularly inspiring. But there weren’t a ton of places I could go for help. My list of old allies had been a short list of one.
Now zero.
And Pearl had always been the networker. It was a trait of Seers: they didn’t have a Realmfarer’s intuitive powers, couldn’t read things as clear
ly. But they also weren’t nomadic, wandering assholes.
Well, Pearl was an asshole. But she made contacts.
I didn’t.
Which left me heading into the Fallout Zone alone. Searching for some geneticist in hiding.
This time, instead of crossing through the steel gate via car, I did so on foot—security cameras be damned. As I passed the threshold of the massive gate, I felt the air change almost immediately. It was still breathable near the guard tower, but once I got about thirty feet out, my lungs began to itch.
I reached into the pocket of my leather jacket and pulled out one of the rebreathers. Slipping it over my mouth was an instant upgrade. 60:00 flashed before me in holograph lettering before drifting off into the haze.
Still carrying the first aid kit like a first grader would her lunchbox, I popped it open. I recognized only the pen and three small syringes of morphine, which were non-standard gear last time I checked the FBI’s protocol. But I guess times had changed. Roark didn’t strike me as a junkie, and the expiration date indicated it’d been manufactured awhile ago.
Morphine didn’t go bad, as best I could tell, so I kept the syringes around. Could be handy.
I jabbed myself in the neck with the radiation inoculation, hearing the contents hiss as the gate lumbered shut. After a final glance toward the rest of the supplies, I let them drop by the wayside.
This was the kind of place where you kept both hands on your gun at all times.
I made my way through the radiation fog. A lone gunman strolling through a landscape like an Old West town. Back then, places would simply vanish, only the buildings left behind. No trace of what happened to the locals.
Whether they left—or whether something came and killed them.
The story was a little clearer here. Bombs from the mortals, some holdouts surviving amidst the fallout. Ghostly whispers shouted the truth from every scrawled LC2 graffiti tag.
This place had been buried for rebelling against the insurmountable tide of progress.
A hologram map floated from the rebreather, displaying my time—forty-three minutes—and instructions to turn left. The streets were narrowing, becoming claustrophobic in their ruined non-splendor. Decrepit buildings loomed, like they were ready to attack.
I gripped the shotgun tighter, finger inching over the trigger. But this wasn’t the type of place someone bothered a person with a gun. That was a good way to shorten an already terminally low life expectancy.
My eyes scanned the wrecked street. A pair of rusted trucks blocked the sidewalk ahead, acting as a low-tech gate.
“Aaron, you son of a bitch.” I bit my lip as I realized where the ex-wolf had sent me.
This was someone’s territory.
It shouldn’t have been surprising. Humans had nation states, counties, corporations, property lines—a million imaginary ways of divvying up what was and wasn’t theirs. Creatures of essence were little different.
Well, except for one thing.
They were more territorial. Ever noticed how a dog has to piss on the same hydrant? Annoying if you’re the owner, getting dragged two blocks out of the way. But ultimately a trivial irritation.
Now imagine a pack of vamps, or wolves, or shifters who feel compelled to protect their boundary lines at all costs.
Lot of blood and spit starts staining the ground.
The wisps began to dance red around the rusted pickups. But this time my intuition was late to the party. I already had this place figured from experience alone.
I walked up to the front wheel well and kicked the splintered hub cap. It let out a lonely, hollow crack into the murk. No response came in the silent streets, other than the now familiar backing symphony of the Fallout Zone: howls, screams, the occasional staccato burst of gunfire.
The mask let out a little beep, indicating that I had thirty minutes of air remaining.
“Haven’t seen you around here.” It was like the fog itself was talking to me. But I knew a warlock’s tricks by now.
“So people keep telling me,” I said.
“Bold.”
I zeroed in on a window about four houses down from the trucks. “You’re pretty close to the firing lines.”
There was no response for a long time. Then, “How’d you know where I was?”
“I’m here about the geneticist.”
“I could kill you just for standing there.”
I racked the slide and said, “You can try.”
On cue, a stream of bats erupted from the window. Glass crinkled to the warped sidewalk as they screeched.
I didn’t fire, understanding that it was mainly an optical illusion. There were creatures who could do impressive things in this world. But magic was energy intensive and generally wasn’t free. Tossing off inferno spells or summoning minions wasn’t exactly as easy as snapping your fingers.
Newton’s laws.
Something about entropy and equal and opposite reactions.
It’d enough to turn Marshall’s hair white.
The bats screamed toward me, rabid fangs bared. I coolly looked over them, bringing the shotgun up to aim at their leader.
One MagiTekk diamond studded round later, and most of them disappeared. The real bats dispersed, receiving mixed signals from their dying master. I slid over the hood, feeling the rust scratch against me jeans as I watched a shifter contort back into human shape.
Not looking away, I said, “You could’ve come down here yourself.”
“But then what are the perks of being boss?” came the voice from the window.
Looking at the bloodied man with his chest torn apart, arm broken in six places from the fall, I had to agree. From his aura, I didn’t think this guy was being mind-controlled. But I didn’t have time to figure things out before a series of doors slamming in succession caught my attention.
Warily, I scanned the street. Where there had been nothing but crumbling steps and seemingly empty rowhomes were now dozens—maybe over a hundred—creatures of various origins. Their auras blurred together, making it hard to determine what they all were, barring the more obvious candidates.
“Welcome to my kingdom.”
I took a step back as a deep-rooted survival instinct kicked into overdrive. The eyes peered back at me, unblinking, ready to serve their not-so-fearless leader.
“Your kingdom could use better roads.”
“I’m sure the mortals will get on that if I ask nicely.” A dismissive laugh. Not bitter or harsh, like one might expect. Then again, if you were a feudal lord, then things were good. Life was a game of relativity, not absolutes.
Being slumlord king wasn’t a bad position.
Wanting to get this over with—and brasher than usual, given the necromancer’s sordid gift of the time loop—I said, “Aaron Daniels sent me.”
“And you were stupid enough to listen.”
“I can always come back later if now’s not a good time.”
“A sense of humor.” The hidden warlock cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t have expected that from looking at you.”
I glanced up at the broken window, but saw no eyes.
“And here I can’t see you.”
“But you can. You just have to look hard enough.”
I kept my eyes focused on the broken window, waiting for the warlock to emerge. But, after a minute of nonactivity, I realized that sleight of hand might have been the most powerful magic of all.
And it didn’t even require essence.
With slow, deliberate steps, I turned around, sensing the warlock more than I saw him.
I tried to stifle my response, but there really was no hiding it.
“I know,” the woman in the white lab coat said. “Surprise.”
Then she blew a fistful of powder into my face, and I crumpled to the ground.
&nbs
p; “Hello,” the sorceress said. “Let’s see what secrets that beautiful body of yours is hiding, shall we?”
20
Almost twenty-one years ago
August 4, 2018
Phoenix, AZ
An electric blue burst surged from the shotgun’s barrel, reducing the man to a pile of ashen guts. Few things were certain in life, but as I went to reload, there was almost one surefire guarantee.
Today was going to be the day I died.
The essence-infused shell shimmered as I slid it into the chamber.
“It’s over, bitch.” Outside, Jameson whistled a tune far too cheerful for the smoking carnage that lay outside the window. We’d reduced the nice suburban street to a smoldering warzone over the last half hour.
Not bad for an upstart.
Definitely not my usual style. I was a disciple of the Genghis Khan school of battle: burn one village, spare the rest. The former acts as a reputation builder and allows you to reap the rewards of your conquests without fear of reprisal from your enemies.
But some enemies were more persistent than others.
And the problem with burning villages—at least in the modern day—was more a matter of governmental intervention.
Tasting smoke on my bloodied lips, I could hear the distant wail of sirens cut across the desert. Could be five minutes, could be one minute away.
But they were coming.
And I was as good as screwed.
“Fuck you.” I racked the slide, ejecting the spent shell. Grime covered fingers gripping the shotgun stock tight, I peeked out the ruined window. A supersonic burst of automatic weapons fire sent me straight to the floor.
Plaster rained down from the ceiling as I crawled along the plush, off-gray carpet. I paid the bodies ruining the fibers with their guts no heed. Survival and sentimentality didn’t mix. As I reached the stairs, sirens growing louder, I realized—for the first time in two hundred years—that I might be truly fucked.
I maintained a low profile on the steps to minimize the chances of being perforated.
Having a shootout with the police wasn’t part of my modus operandi. No one would accuse me of possessing a particularly benevolent heart. But I kept to dispatching supernatural marks in my bounty hunting.
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