by Ben Reeder
“Where are you?” she asked as soon as she picked up. “I’m at Dr. C’s place, with coffee by the way.” Her voice was sharp, and I could tell by the way she cut each word off short that she was pissed.
“Wanda’s following a missing girl’s dog through Shawnee Trails,” I said. “I’m heading for the Third St. turnoff. There might be bad guys.”
“On my way, baby,” she said. I heard something splash over the earphones and her bike roar to life. “Be careful, okay?”
“You know me,” I said.
“Yeah, I do. So be careful. Take care of Wanda.” The phone beeped as she ended the call, and I tried Detective Collins, but the phone beeped at me almost as soon as I hit dial. “No Signal” flashed on the screen. The intersection I was looking for came up, and I took the turn as fast as I dared. The Mustang’s tires barked and screeched across the asphalt as I swerved to miss a pickup, then corrected to get back on my side of the road. The road ahead was straight and open for a ways, so I floored it and looked down at my phone. Even if I didn’t have signal, I had a plan. I hit the app button I wanted, then tucked the phone into my pocket and gave my full attention to the road.
When the Third St. intersection came up, I slowed down and took the turn with a minimum of skidding. I was a decent driver, but I wasn’t in Lucas’s class. Between shifting the gears, I pulled my amethyst scrying pendant over my head and slipped it over my rearview mirror. Once I hit thirty miles an hour, I grabbed the swinging stone and focused my will.
“Wanda,” I whispered, bringing my most recent memory of her to the front of my thoughts. Almost immediately, I felt a tug against my palm, so I let go, and the purple stone swung forward and to the left until it hung there, pointing the way. I drove until it swung further left, then hit the brakes and pulled off the road as it pulled itself horizontal and the point was aimed at my driver’s side window.
As soon as the car’s engine went silent, I heard people moving in the brush across the road. Then voices reached my ears, and I knew that whoever this girl was, she didn’t have much time. If she was running short of time, then so was I. I grabbed my wand and my TK rod from my backpack, then got out of the car and ran toward the eight-foot-tall chain fence that ran along the other side of the road. As I sprinted toward the fence, I held the hawthorn wand out.
“Aer pontem aquae, gravitate carentem quasi nubes, ut solido lapide,” I uttered. Before me, a wispy mass took shape, and I swung the wand up toward the top of the fence. The bridge of air and water took shape, and I poured my will into making it as light but solid like the incantation said.
It worked as advertised, and I ran up the ramp of mist while I swept the wand toward the far bank of the fifteen-foot-wide creek. I made it almost halfway across before I felt the spell falter. On the next step, I planted both feet and jumped with all the forward momentum I’d built up. With the bridge fading on me, I lost most of my leverage, and what was supposed to be a flying leap turned into a flailing mess.
While I was falling toward the bank, I saw a blonde girl emerge from the brush, and at least two figures in the foliage behind her. Then I was hitting the soft bank and trying to pitch myself into a forward roll. More than a year of training saved me from something broken as I turned my fall into something like a flop and a tumble. Both wands went flying as I tried to control my fall.
“Who the hell are you?” a male voice asked. I scrambled to my feet, shook my head and tried to look around without looking like a total idiot. I counted seven people that had come into the clearing, five guys and two girls. All of them were dressed in black with ski masks, and all of them held a stun gun.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “I’m with the Wizard Standards Commission. Our job is to keep wanna-bes like you from putting on too much guy-liner.” Oddly enough, that didn’t go over well. One of them lunged forward and put the prongs of his stun gun to the blonde’s neck, and she stiffened as it crackled. When he pulled it away, he was treated to the usual surprise people using stun guns get the first time they actually use one on a person.
Standard strength stun guns don’t knock you out. They hurt, they make muscles twitch, and if you do it long enough, the person on the wrong end of one will be dazed for a few seconds. But it takes more than three seconds to put someone on the ground, and even then, they’re still conscious, in pain, and probably pretty pissed. The macho dude who lit up the blonde only held it in place for a second, if that, before he let go. The girl staggered forward with a cry and went to one knee. They laughed at her, and one moved toward me, while her original attacker moved in to try again.
He never saw Wanda coming.
Wanda serves the Goddess, and most days, she is pretty much the adorable poster girl for the Our Sparkly Lady of Fluffy Bunnies and Rainbow Unicorns. If Bright And Shiny Goddess wore black and red most of the time and liked bands like Suicidal Jester or Love ‘N Chains. But just then, Wanda was channeling the Dark Goddess, and she had a big damn stick. Bark and splinters flew as Wanda poured out her Goddess’s wrath across the back of the Stun Gun Guy’s cranium. He dropped like a side of beef, and she turned to the next guy, leaving me to dodge the dude who had come at me. I managed to jump back enough to keep the prongs off my skin, but in dodging one attacker, I had jumped right into the arms of another one. And this guy knew how to use a stun gun. I felt the probes jab into me from behind, right below my rib cage, and then the world became a white haze of pain.
I hit the ground gasping, my core muscles spasming as they rebooted the instructions on breathing again. Wanda fell nearby, and before she could move to get up, someone hit her with a stun gun again. Movement came from my right, and I kicked, feeling impact with flesh and bone through the sole of my boot. The grass rustled to my right, giving me just enough warning to roll that way and catch that would-be attacker in the shins with the weight of my body. While he staggered and tried to regain his balance, I kicked my legs up and rolled to my feet.
“Run!” I yelled to Wanda, and she lurched to her feet.
“Get that bitch!” one of the guys yelled when she turned and took off. I had just enough time to see someone sprint past me before I had to dodge another crackling stun gun. Still trying to get some air, I grabbed the guy’s wrist and twisted. It bought me just enough time to get tackled from behind. We went down, and I felt something sting my arm. My right elbow caught the guy on me, and I rolled out from beneath him, only to stumble sideways when I tried to get to my feet. I looked back at the guy I had just hit and saw him drop a thin syringe. Then I was on the ground, without knowing how I got there. Someone stumbled out from the foliage, his hands to his crotch, then Wanda fell to the ground beside him. She struggled to get back to her feet, then slumped back to the ground.
“Shit, shit, shit!” one of the guys spat. “What the hell are we going to do with these two?”
“Same thing we did with the bitch this morning,” another voice rumbled.
“Shut it, Kelwin,” another one said.
“We don’t use names!” Kelwin shouted.
“All of you!” another voice came, this one distinctly older sounding. “Shut the fuck up! You screwed this morning’s operation up royally. This one came looking for the girl,” the man said. He nudged me with his foot, and I flopped onto my back. “There might be others. We take them both, we get out of here and we find out what they know. You two, get the bitches. You, dumbass, you carry the guy.”
“But I wasn’t…” The rest faded into gray.
I came to in darkness, and it wasn’t a quick process. My head swam for a while, and my thoughts slowly started to make sense. When I tried to open my eyes, the darkness stayed in place, and I could feel something pressing against my face. My arms were pinned behind my back, and I could feel something in my mouth. I tried to spit it out, only to find that it was not only lodged in tight but tied into place. Okay, they were smart enough to gag me in addition to tying my hands. If you didn’t have spellbinders, it was enough to keep an apprentice from a
lmost all magick. I couldn’t see, couldn’t talk and my hands were bound.
But I could See. A slow breath and a moment of concentration, and my Third Eye opened a little. A familiar bright yellow aura with gold at the edges was only a few feet away from me. Evidently, our captors had compensated for the smart move of gagging and blindfolding me by putting Wanda in the same room as I was in. I extended my mystic senses a little, and found a series of wards floating on the outside wall, ceiling and floor. Symbols of negation and obfuscation were interspersed through one, while the other two held shielding and safety symbols. I recognized the style and components from the Mystic Machinations series of demonic authored spell books that were available on the Dark Web. Most wanna-be mages, or cookbook sorcerers, ended up finding some version of them. They presented the most basic spells as the deepest, darkest secrets of mystic lore, and added in extra steps before and after to make them all look different. I’d sold more than a few myself, always hooking my clients with the secret incantations that they alone were getting from my version.
I turned my attention to the inside of the building we were in, and found nine more auras within the wards. A particularly bright one was in the room across a hallway from us, if my hazy perceptions of the walls and doors was accurate. Most barriers were actually psychic constructs, which was how some people could find a moment of solace in a bathroom, even when the most disruptive energies were bouncing around only inches away, with nothing truly protective surrounding them but sheetrock and a flimsy wooden door. People’s perceptions were what gave the physical world structure to mystic senses, and the horizontal aura nearby was streaked with the sickly shade of yellow most people showed as fear. A pair of black stained auras were parked in the hallway, one on each door, and another was barely visible outside the more solid barrier of the front door, though the threshold of this house was so ragged that it was useless. Four were in a room so mired in demonic energy that it was like a dark red fog filled the room. Another was on the far side of what I presumed was the door into the house’s back yard.
The ninth was the one I didn’t want to look at. This one was as dark and messed up as mine was and it was also right next door to us. Worse yet were the dark spots near him, focuses for spells. None of them were pleasant, and one in particular was a noisome shade of black that wasn’t so much a color as a vacuum of perception that sucked all the light out of the air around it.
The moment before I looked away, the aura of the person in the next room shifted, and two bright spots appeared where the face would be. Then a third spot opened, and I shut my Third Eye, hoping that they hadn’t seen me snooping. For a few minutes, I laid there, hoping nothing came of it. My hopes came crashing down when I heard voices outside our door.
“They’re awake,” the older voice said.
“They are?” a female voice asked. “We haven’t heard anything.”
“Did I ask for attitude from you?” the older man said. “Open the door.” There was a click and the squeak of hinges, then footsteps on the carpet. Suddenly, I was pulled up and shoved up against the wall. A thump and a grunt from beside me told me that Wanda had been given the same treatment. Then bright light hit my eyes, and I was face to face with the leader of our current batch of cultists.
He didn’t look like a cult leader. He looked like someone’s dad. Oval faced with a layer of fat smoothing his features and brown hair done in a mall haircut, it was his eyes that made me shudder. Here was a man with issues, and he wasn’t afraid to hurt someone else to boost his own little ego. He reached for me, and I got a glimpse of smooth, shiny nails and soft hands that made my skin crawl for the microsecond I had before he ripped the duct tape off my face. It felt like a lot of hair came with it, and it pulled part of the cloth I was gagged with from between my teeth. I spat whatever it was the rest of the way out.
“Thanks,” I said. “Witty comebacks are a bitch when you’re gagged.”
“Screaming isn’t nearly so satisfying when your victim can’t do it properly,” Cult Dad said.
“I agree,” I smiled. “Lucky for me, you can talk just fine. Hey, some water would be great, if you have it.”
“You will speak when spoken to,” He barked, then backhanded me, splitting my lip. I tasted blood in my mouth, so I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth, then spat.
“My own mother can’t get me to shut up, and I respect her. What makes you think I’m gonna listen to some entitled douche like you?”
He drew back his fist, so I kicked him in the face. It was far from my best attempt, but it knocked him back and when he turned back to face me, blood trickled from the side of his mouth.
“Hold him!” he said, and the two guarding the doors rushed in the grab my arms. They pulled me to my feet, and Cult Dad stepped in with his arm drawn back behind his ear. Once he was committed to the punch, I moved my head to the side and let him hit the wall instead. As he howled in pain, I stomped on the foot of the one to my right, then twisted and headbutted the one on the left. Then Cult Dad hit me with two quick left jabs and a right hook, and I was back on my ass. Before I could recover, they had flipped me over so I was face down on the carpet. By the time I could get my wits back about me, they had taken off my boots and had something strapped to the front of my leg, forcing me to extend my feet.
“Let’s try this again,” Cult Dad said. “Only this time, the punishment is harsher. Give me an answer I dislike, show me disrespect or try to lie to me, and you will suffer appropriately. Like so.” There was a whistle of something moving through the air, followed by a sharp pain across the bottom of my left foot. I let out a grunt of pain, determined not to give this asshole the satisfaction of hearing me suffer.
“Try asking a question first,” I hissed. “It works better.”
“I’ve looked at your aura. I know you serve a demonic power. But I didn’t find a demon mark. It stands to reason that you must serve one of my enemies. The question is, which one?”
“What if I told you I don’t serve a demon or a circle?” I asked. Pain exploded across the arches of my feet, and I let out a yell without thinking.
“If you’re going to lie to me, try to make it a believable one. Now,” he said, and another blow set the arches of my feet on fire. “Who. Do. You. Serve!” Each word was punctuated with another blow to my feet.
“I’m telling you the truth, dumbass!” I yelled. “My name is Chance Fortunato. I escaped from the Red Duke a year and a half ago. I’m the Demon’s Apprentice.” That shut him up for a few seconds. While he thought that new info over, I took a few deep breaths and tried to wrap my head around the pain lancing up from the soles of my feet.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? You didn’t have any ID on you.”
“I don’t know, look me up on the internet or something. Scry. I don’t care. That's not my job.”
“Oh, but it is,” Cult Dad said. He tapped the soles of my feet, and I flinched.
“What, you don’t have the magickal mojo to tell if I’m lying?” I asked. “No wonder you’re getting attitude from a girl. Hells below, you probably don’t even know how to access the dark web, much less the shadownet.” That earned me another hit across the feet, then I heard him stand up.
“Enjoy the break. Once I’ve checked your story, I’ll be back to pick up where we left off.”
“Better hurry. Clock’s ticking.”
“No one is going to find you here. We’re warded against scrying, and we changed vehicles on the way back here.”
“I’m just saying…tick tock.”
“You’re pathetic. Take her shoes off,” he said. I heard another scuffle break out, and one of the cultists ended up falling on top of me. Someone came in and dragged him out, and two other guys took his place.
“I am going to ask you some questions,” Cult Dad said. “If you do not answer them to my satisfaction, if you-”
“Just start hitting me now, okay?” Wanda said. There was a slap of something striking
flesh.
“The nerve endings in the feet are tightly clustered,” Cult Dad said. “And they do not adapt to repeated sensations. In other words, the more I do this, the worse it will hurt. And, as a woman, you do not have the same ability to tolerate pain as a man does.” Another smack came.
“Look, you misogynistic asshat,” Wanda sighed, “I wear high heels and I deal with menstrual cramps. So, you can smack my feet with your little stick all you want. You’re not going to top that.”
“I may just indulge myself in that very thing,” Cult Dad said. I heard him stand up, then he stepped over me and toward the door.
“Oh, that shit didn’t just scream creepy pedo all over,” I muttered.
“We’ll see who ends up screaming,” Cult Dad said from the door.
I waited until the bolt clicked to roll over to face Wanda. She was looking at me with wide eyes. “That was badass,” I whispered.
“It was creepy as Hell,” she hissed back. “He knows way too much about hurting people. How long before he comes back?”
“Probably not long enough. If I can get my hands free, though, we can make sure that isn’t an issue.”
“Then we need to get these things off our feet,” she said, still keeping her voice pitched low, then she kicked her feet into the air and flipped halfway over into a sort of sideways somersault, coming to rest on her knees. She lowered herself to the carpet and rolled to present the front of her legs to me. “Okay, scoot down so I can reach your legs.” I rolled to face away from her and a few minutes later, my legs were free of the board. She scooted down, and I reached out with my hands until I felt the straps around her legs. After a few minutes of cursing and fumbling, her feet were free of the boards they’d lashed to our shins, and I heard her moving again. The next thing I knew, she was kneeling beside me with her hands in front of her.
“How did you manage that?” I asked.