by Unknown
As if sensing my tribulations, the rose in Walker’s lapel snapped its petals open and closed, like some sort of botanical piranha. I continued sending attacks at Walker, just to keep him interested. They only seemed to elicit boredom, for he blocked them with a practiced ease. But at the same time, I sent spectral hands outward, casting about in the physical world and looking for anything that I might be able to use as a weapon. I could perhaps tear down a wall of one of the buildings, but to bring that much mass to bear would take all the strength I had. I would perish in the attack as well. My senses brushed against a Dumpster, but as soon as I tried to latch onto it, Walker sent it hurtling down the alleyway, so far away that he would be able to block it before I could hurl it at him.
Then, overhead, I skimmed across something else. A nest of yellow jackets was held quiescent by Walker’s time dilation spell, yet enough awareness of what had transpired nearby remained to stoke their senses and tickle their fury. Furtively, my spectral fingers tugged and pulled on the ribbons of Walker’s spell, trying to unravel it enough for the yellow jackets to be freed from its effect.
Walker either discounted my efforts entirely or was completely unaware of my doings. He leaned over me, which was a good thing, as his visage was beginning to grow blurry. “Levi will never have the florin.” His voice was a low, throaty rumble. “I know he covets it. All the leaders of the covens want the separate pieces of florin, so they can lay claim to Abramelin’s coin. The fragments have been items of contest for centuries. Only the best guard them because only the best understand what happens when the fragments come together.”
“Why not… go after them… yourself?” I whispered.
Walker shook his head. “Because I like living, boy. Even at my age, I like living. And the only thing Abramelin’s coin is good for is causing a whole lot of killing.”
I coughed up a pallid laugh. “Like that’s… something new to you?” My vision was fading, and my voice barely registered in my ears. I could feel the panic subsiding, sidling aside to allow a queer sense of calm to take its place. I was dying, being crushed to death beneath a metaphysical weight I could not counter, all while a bald black man in a neat suit with a carnivorous flower in his lapel bent over me.
“Killing is one thing,” Walker said, and his voice sounded very distant. “Eliminating the entire human race is most assuredly another. You don’t know what happens when all the florin are brought together, do you, boy? Well, it’ll happen one day. But not today. Not today. You’re headed for a better place, Rufus. Enjoy the trip.”
As I felt myself receding down a long, dark tunnel, my vision began to gray out. But my spectral fingers continued their work, and suddenly, the yellow jackets were free. I didn’t have to urge them into action; they knew what to do and how to do it.
Walker swore when the first one stung him on the neck. The wasp exploded in a brief flash of light, and then another stung him beneath his right eye. I could hear the rose in his lapel, its petals gnashing as it emitted a whispery snarl.
The weight pressing me down lessened for just a moment. It was long enough. I took in a deep breath of air then lashed out at Walker with all my strength.
The yellow jackets disappeared into pinpricks of fire, like miniature airplanes being struck by tiny anti-aircraft weapons fire beneath Walker’s attack. At the same time, the bones in his legs snapped as a wave of force ripped them out from under him, and the older man let out a curious cry as he slammed to the concrete beside me.
We grappled, not physically but with the black powers we controlled, slapping at each other with swords of fury. Walker began breathing heavily, making small noises in his throat. He was badly hurt, and I puzzled over that. While having his leg bones shattered was doubtlessly painful, there was something else at play.
But whatever it was, he wasn’t giving up. There was vitality aplenty in his defenses and attacks, and he was wearing me down. I wasn’t going to win in a magic-to-magic contest. Walker had me beat.
So I reached into my boot, yanked the knife free, and jammed it into his chest. Once. Twice. Three times. I twisted the blade each time I inserted it and pulled it free, tearing tissue and causing maximum damage.
Walker’s attacks stopped, and he went limp. “Didn’t see that coming,” he whispered through the bloody froth flowing from his mouth. “Didn’t see that coming at all. How did you know that I’m allergic?”
“Allergic?” I asked, confused.
Walker let out a drawn-out, three-note laugh. “Bees. I’m allergic to them.” Laboring for breath, he stared at me. “He was right,” he whispered.
“Who was?” I asked, even though I didn’t care.
“He was right,” Walker repeated. “You have hoodlum eyes.”
That shocked me. “Where did you hear that?”
Walker died before he could answer, with blood staining his fine shirt and jacket a brilliant scarlet. The rose in his lapel released a low keening sound, as if mourning his death.
The time dilation spell broke down, and cacophony ensued as debris hit the ground in real time, finally giving in to the incessant pull of gravity. The hulk of the rental car continued to execute its demise, slamming up hard against the Starbucks in an explosion of dust and mortar. Cars braked on Beale Street, and their drivers turned to see what all the commotion was, looking at me as I knelt over Walker’s still form. I gasped for air, sweating in the heat and humidity that seemed to pervade all of Tennessee. Harlem had never seemed so good nor felt so distant.
The rose snapped at me with a tiny snarl. I regarded it for a moment, wondering why it hadn’t died with its master. Warlocks occasionally took odd things as their familiars, but those lived and died with their owners. That the funny little flower was still alive was momentarily interesting to me.
Which meant that it wasn’t a familiar, after all.
It was an ally.
I thought back to the article I had found that bore Walker’s picture on the internet…of him posing with a set of gorgeous pink roses.
Louis Walker of Memphis, Tennessee, proudly displays his collection of Belinda’s Dream roses.
I rolled Walker’s body over and went through his pockets. I found his wallet, and inside, his driver’s license. 1070 Alden Road, Memphis.
I struggled to my feet and stumbled back as people began to emerge from the buildings nearby, looking around for the cause of the commotion. By the time they made to where Walker lay, his body was on fire, and I was nowhere to be found. They wouldn’t be able to put out the flames until the corpse had been consumed in its entirety, including the little pink rose that screamed as it blazed.
***
The taxi dropped me off in the driveway of a fairly large but otherwise unremarkable home in the Whitehaven neighborhood of Memphis. Despite its name, Whitehaven was a mostly black neighborhood, for which I was thankful. The chances of slipping in and out unnoticed where far greater than if he had lived in a Wonder Bread section of town. I paid the driver with bills taken from Walker’s wallet then walked up the driveway toward the home as if I lived there. The driver backed the taxi out and pulled away without even a second glance, probably heading back to the downtown area to hunt for another fare.
I didn’t try to enter the house. As I moved toward it, I reached out, hunting for any traps that might have been placed. I knew Walker’s signature, and it was all over the house. The place was fairly well defended, but all the traps were camouflaged. While they were undoubtedly nasty, they weren’t remarkably overt. Clearly, Walker had never believed he would be attacked in his own home. Just the same, I put off trying to access the house proper for as long as I could.
I went into the backyard and faced the garage. One bay was open, where Walker presumably kept the car he had used to drive to our little tête-à-tête. I peered inside and saw a 1970s vintage pickup truck in a second bay. Not cherry, by any means, but it looked to be in good shape. I considered the vehicle for a long moment, trying to ferret out any traps that
might lie inside. The garage seemed clear, so I stepped inside—cautiously. I reached for the handle of the truck’s driver’s side door and found it was unlocked. I opened it and looked for the ignition, but the steering column was blank. Leaning inside, I saw keys dangling from the dashboard, where the ignition was mounted. I’d actually never seen a vehicle with a dashboard ignition.
Behind me, something snapped and snarled.
I turned and stepped out of the garage. Against the back of the houses was a huge rose bush. Pink Belinda’s Dream roses turned toward me, spreading their petals wide, hissing and snarling, coiling about on their stalks like guard dogs readying to spring. I laughed. I had figured it out. I knew where the florin lay. Walker had buried it in his garden beneath a carnivorous rose bush that would likely devour me alive if I got too close.
The roses released pale cries of agony when I burned the entire bush to the ground with one burst of magic. I grabbed a shovel from Walker’s garage and began digging. The roots ran deep, and they lashed out, trying to wrap themselves around my boots. Sweating in the hot afternoon sunlight, I backed off a bit and hit the roots with another burst. I kept up the barrage until they stopped moving, then I dug up the smoking remains and tossed them aside. I kept an eye on them, just in case. I’d never seen that kind of ally before, so I had no idea how great its regenerative powers might be.
Not long afterward, my shovel struck something beneath the surface. I excavated the plastic-wrapped box carefully, even though it was quite small. My shovel had torn the plastic on one end, revealing some kind of ebony wood. I didn’t need to open it. The florin, the fractured section of Abramelin’s coin, literally seethed with power. I’d never been exposed to anything quite like it. I couldn’t gauge how powerful it might be. I only knew it was raw, undirected energy. In the possession of someone who could harness its power, the florin would be an incredible weapon.
A sense of foreboding descended upon me. Walker had told me the coin was a power best left fragmented. To bring its parts together would give rise to a horrible sum, one that could spell the demise of the entire human race. At the time, I’d dismissed it as some old warlock mysticism. But with the florin in a wrapped box at my feet, and I began to wonder if Levi truly realized the depth of the powers he might one day release. Would The Black Fang himself be the eventual cause of humanity’s demise?
I decided I would ask him that when I saw him. Gingerly, I picked up the box and carried it to the pickup truck. It was a long drive to Ohio, where Levi waited for his hard-won prize: the florin from Abramelin’s fragmented coin.
September 3
The nights cooled although the days remained sticky, like a dirty cotton T-shirt. The shade from the forest helped but it also attracted insects. My mattress stank like dried urine and mold and it drew other critters as well. Laying in my own filth would be a sacrifice I would have to make to convince Matthew I was dying.
He didn't know it, but I already knew the fate of some of my warlocks. Not all nine were going to make it to Ohio. Some met the gruesome death they deserved. Just because we're a coven doesn't mean we like each other. The Black Fang is not about friendship and singing songs around the campfire. The organization amassed a fortune over the centuries and I was the custodian.
The leader of the coven always had discretionary use of the funds, which is why it was so coveted. I could spend whatever I wanted, channeling money through overseas accounts and shadow corporations with high-priced lawyers on the payroll to hide our tracks. Our moonshine distillery made us enough to pay for our food, but it was more important as a cover for The Black Fang. The locals loved our product and did everything they could to protect us from the authorities. Because of that, the witch hunters had a hard time finding us. It would have been the perfect headquarters if it wasn't in Ohio, America's armpit.
The Story of Mayukh by Mainak Dhar
I was dreaming of headless bodies covered in blood when the alarm woke me. I sat upright, covered in sweat, my left hand still shaking, as it did when I was under stress. I grabbed it with my right hand to stop the shaking and I kept telling myself the same thing I did at such times.
"It was just a dream."
But was it? Or was it what little remained of my human conscience reaching out to me when I was sleeping, when my defenses were down, reminding me of the horrors I had seen, and committed in the cause of The Black Fang? I got up and walked to the bathroom, splashing water on my face. When I looked in the mirror, for a second I saw myself as perhaps my mother had seen me—with the soft, dreamy eyes of someone who would be a poet or a singer. I closed my eyes, trying to wish away the few memories that I still had of my human mother, and when I opened them, the eyes that looked back at me were hard, uncompromising, the eyes of a warlock of the order of The Black Fang, as my father had been before me. My mother had given birth to me, and then discovered the terrible truth my father had hidden from her in the two years of their marriage. She had discovered why he went out on lengthy "business trips" and why despite supposedly being a manager in a construction firm, he kept coming back with injuries to his hands and face, which he explained away as workplace accidents. My mother had given birth to me, but he was the one who had made me what I am today after he spirited me away when I was four years old. When he passed, I thought of searching for her, but I had nothing, no name, no photo, just an old letter she had secreted in my belongings that I had found in my father's cupboard after he had met his end at the hands of witch-hunters, a letter that simply said.
"Whatever anyone tells you that you are, remember you are always my son. My son, Mayukh."
I dressed in silence, and finally put on my coat before heading down from my penthouse apartment. The driver was waiting, and handed me the day's paper as I sat down. I had a meeting at nine and had a packed day, and for a while as I checked my calendar on my smartphone, I became not a warlock, not a young man still conflicted by the path he had taken for so many years, but an investment banker headed to office. The Black Fang had grown in many ways from the days my father had served it, and Levi Phillips, though aging, and no doubt fading in power, had realized the true sources of power in our age—money and influence. So warlocks were encouraged to find ways of making money or gaining political influence, and here I was, an MBA from Harvard funded by one of The Black Fang's many trusts, a job in New York and now in Mumbai, where I had been inserted six months ago to plan a new mission, to kill a warlock from Red Lotus, a warlock who to anyone who didn't know better, appeared to be another middle aged executive – my boss.
Today was the day I would kill him.
By the time I reached office, my mind was still just as Levi Phillips had trained me to keep it—still and focused on nothing but the mission that lay before me. In my twenty-five years, I had killed many times, my first kill being as an eight year old when I had shot a man with my father's gun when I thought he had been trying to rob my father at our home. Only then did my father tell me who he really was, and had me help him bury the witch hunter I had shot in the back yard. I had killed with knives, with guns, with my bare hands, and sometimes with nothing but my mind but today I would kill with a spreadsheet. For the last two months, I had been laying an elaborate trap, siphoning off millions of dollars from the bank's accounts into personal accounts, all traceable to one man—my boss, Shiv Dhoni. I had discovered his weakness for putting away small amounts in his accounts from deals and then I had created more accounts, hacking into his server to tie them all back to him, and poured millions into them. Today was the day they would be revealed to him and to the authorities. I saw him now through the glass partitions of his cubicle, and felt nothing but contempt. He had grown soft and fat, lost in the material comforts of his day job, forgetting that he too was a warlock sworn to defend his order. Many times, I respected the men and warlocks I killed, and rationalized that it was just business, but this time it was going to be all pleasure.
I brought up the spreadsheet on my tablet, checked it one
last time and then pressed send on the email program, sending an email to the Income Tax office, the bank's CEO and to my boss, all from an anonymous email account I had created. Then I sat back and watched the fun unfold. By the time the day was over, Shiv had fallen to his death from the office balcony, presumably to avoid disgrace and prosecution, the bank had collapsed, and the millions in the accounts had disappeared, siphoned off to serve The Black Fang.
All in a day's work.
***
Even warlocks are allowed their weaknesses, and mine is an ice cold glass of Kingfisher beer. I had hated the pollution and crowds of Mumbai when I first landed, but if there was one redeeming feature, it was the beer. I sat in silence in a corner of the bar. Once or twice, single women looked at me, and then turned away when they saw my eyes. I was in no mood for romance. I had other things on my mind. I had arrived home to see a letter from Old Man Phillips, a letter that threatened to turn everything upside down with its very first line.
"My mortal flesh is weakening and we must choose a new leader for The Black Fang."
I had long felt that Phillips may have been a wise, even brilliant warlock, but was now just too old and weak to lead us. Now he had confirmed that, but instead of choosing a leader, the old fool had decided to create some sort of an elaborate mission. Fine, if that's what it took, I would do it. But it would be far from easy, as the second line itself told me.
"I have spent hours discussing the transition with Matthew and have decided one of you will take over upon my departure from this plane."
Matthew, with his beady eyes, and that stupid hat he insisted on wearing. How could Phillips never see the naked ambition in his eyes? I had been quite sure that if the old man didn't abdicate his position, Matthew would arrange a convenient "accident" and take over. For that was the way of The Black Fang. Transitions of power in the order were always a messy affair, and only the most ruthless stayed at the top. I was determined to get there, to take the place that perhaps should have been my father's. I had heard about how during the previous transition, he had been pitted against Levi Phillips, and was seen as the frontrunner, only to be betrayed at the last minute, to fail when success was all but his for the taking. Old Man Phillips had claimed that the betrayal had been unknown to him, that someone else, perhaps in the Order of the Lotus or another rival coven had done so, attempting to kill both him and my father, and leave The Black Fang leaderless. I was but a child of ten, unable to do much other than look upon the shattered body of my father, and it was then that I had realized that my vengeance, and my purpose lay within. I could do nothing from the outside—so I had embraced the Old Man and his coven and trained harder than any other warlock of The Black Fang. I had honed my body and mind into a weapon that had been used by him countless times to advance his own power and influence, and now the time was coming when I would use that same weapon, coupled with his trust in me, to take the leadership of The Black Fang.