Blood and Magick

by James R. Tuck

  He sat in a wooden chair, arms wrenched behind him around the pole. I wasn’t worried about him pulling free; those poles were designed for a dancer to swing her whole body around them. They were anchored securely and weren’t going anywhere. Hell, some nights we even had two girls on them at once.

  Someone had put a hood over the warlock’s head. The duct-tape bandage had been cut off and replaced with white gauze. The gauze was white; the blood staining it was bright red where the gunshot in his shoulder had opened up from being cuffed.

  Father Mulcahy stood on the end of the stage in full priest regalia—clerical robes, rubric, the whole enchilada. He had a brass censer on a chain and was swinging it around, chanting in Latin. Thick white smoke trailed off it, smelling like chewing gum and autumn.

  It smelled like Mass.

  My mind tripped, falling backward to my youth. Not to

  a specific memory, just the feeling of being a small boy in a pew, fascinated by the majesty of Mass.

  Boothe and Josh were behind the bar. Boothe held a beer, fingers wrapped around the brown glass of the longneck. Josh sat on a stool next to him, thin hands around a steaming mug. It was probably the coffee he made earlier. Josh was a bit of a teetotaler.

  Kat and Larson sat at a table in the corner, her laptop out and open. Quickly, she looked down at it as I walked through the room. She was there to instantaneously look up any information we got out of Ahriman.

  Kat hid behind her screen, using her attention on it to keep from looking at me. I knew her and I knew what she was doing. That was fine with me. We could work it out later, we always did, but for now just seeing the two of them made my blood pressure rise. If she didn’t talk to me, then we wouldn’t fight. But one word from either of us, no matter what it was, and we would be right back at it like cats and dogs. There was a tension inside of me directed at her and Larson. A hair trigger that would trip with even the smallest touch.

  Larson sat in the chair between her and the rest of the room. He had positioned himself in a way that he could shield her.

  My anger at him burned hot enough to set my teeth on edge, but I still appreciated that. He could kiss my ass before I would tell him that, though.

  I slid up on a barstool. Boothe lifted his bottle. “You want one?”

  “Hell no. You know I don’t drink that horse piss. Pour me a shot. Something dark.”

  “Neat?”

  “It’s the only way to drink it.”

  He nodded and turned to the row of bottles behind him. Josh raised his mug. “How are you doing tonight, Deacon?”

  “Other than satanic, murderous witches? Not too shabby.”

  “Just another Tuesday night in Sunnydale?” His mouth flashed into a smile. It was brief, only lasting a second, but it went all the way from his chin to his eyes. He was a small, delicate man, nearly ten years older than he looked. It was an illusion helped along by a fine-boned face with a quick grin and a head full of tight curls. He pointed at Father Mulcahy. “What’s he doing?”

  “Blessing the room to dampen Ahriman’s magick.”

  “Ahriman’s the tied up guy, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is the blessing going to help get information out of him?”

  “Mostly it will limit his access to power.”

  “How does that work?”

  Boothe slid a shot glass full of dark liquid over to me. It bumped against my fingers, a little of it splashing out over the rim. “Josh wasn’t raised in church and we don’t go now, so he’s a little curious.”

  Josh grinned at him. “You love it.”

  “Entirely not the point.”

  I picked up the shot glass and held it. “It’s all good.”

  I looked at the smaller Were-rabbit over the trembling rim of alcohol. “Magick is a bending and breaking of the physical laws of the universe. Magick trumps physics but it takes a lot of energy. Humans make magick by trading with demonic forces. It all compacts and contracts and sacrifices. Spilling blood and making deals to get power from outside the human world.”

  “Isn’t that all religion?” Josh asked.

  “Big difference between good and evil. It’s not the same league. Hell, it’s not even the same sport. The Angels want to save your soul, demons want to destroy it. And your body. And your mind. And your mother’s soul. And you mother’s body . . . etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, blah-dee-bladdiity blah.”

  My mind twitched. An iron band tightened across my rib cage, cinching one notch at a time with each word. “When people deal in witchcraft, somebody’s got to pay. Somebody’s going to suffer for it.”

  The memory I had been battling all night swam to the surface of my head. My heart thumped hard in my constricted chest. Cold sweat beaded along the back of my neck, and the shot glass was suddenly slick in my fingers. The memory darted, rushing at me, blasting right up in my head.

  Mommy isn’t screaming anymore, but I can hear stuff. Bad stuff.

  With a flick of my wrist, I tossed the shot back.

  My throat lit up in a licorice and cough syrup burn. The memory shattered, derailed as the shot smacked me across the face. Thick, mentholated vapors took my breath. I rolled the shot glass away with a flick of my hand. “Jagermeister? Seriously?”

  Boothe grinned, making deep lines in the planes of his face. “It’s what you get for dissing beer. I knew the holy smoke would mask the smell. Besides, you didn’t specify what you wanted.” He held up the distinctive green bottle. “Another?”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  “Hey, I’m a bouncer, not a bartender.”

  “Good, ’cause you suck at slinging drinks and I’d have to fire you.”

  The brass censer made a chiming noise as Father Mulcahy sat it on the bar. He let the chain spill out of his fingers to spool around the base of it. It wasn’t smoking anymore because the incense had burned out. The priest, however, was.

  A cancerstick bobbed up and down from his lip as he spoke. “I’ll take a shot of that.”

  “It’s Jager.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Boothe pulled another shot glass and filled it in front of Father Mulcahy. The priest tossed it back, grimacing as he swallowed.

  The cigarette stayed in his mouth the entire time.

  He set the glass on the bar and rolled his fingers in a “keep ’em coming” gesture. The Were-rabbit obliged. “So . . .” Father Mulcahy picked up the glass, dark green liquid shimmering at the edge of the rim. “What information are you looking to get out of this one?”

  “We know the who, and we know the what. So I want to know the how, the when, and the why. Selene, Athame, and Ahriman are up to no good, but I want the information to stop them instead of having to show up just to minimize the damage.”

  Nicotine-laced smoke streamed out of the side of his mouth. “How hard are you willing to ask him?”

  “These witches are off the deep end. They blew up a restaurant, killed a ton of people, then attacked a movie theater where they killed dozens more. They have to be stopped.” I stood up. “Ahriman is a dead warlock whether he knows it yet or not. I just need information out of him so I’m willing to ask him that hard.”

  Josh slid his arm around Boothe’s waist. “Well, that’s my cue. I’m going to go find a quiet corner while you three work.”

  Boothe turned toward him. Standing as tall as Boothe did made Josh look even younger. If that bothered him, I couldn’t see it. “Do you want to head back home? I can call when the night is over.”

  Josh reached up, hand on the side of Boothe’s square-cut jaw. He pulled the bigger man’s face down and gave him a slow, deep kiss. I was struck by how similar it must look to Tiff kissing me. She did the hands on my face thing, and the size difference between her and I was about the same as between Boothe and Josh.

  Strange. It was like watching a movie of yourself, but weirder because it was live action, only two feet away, and played with different actors.

  They broke the kiss
, both of them breathy on the other side of it. Both of them wore the silly smile of two lovers.

  Josh spoke. “I’ll stay until you leave.” His hand went to his back pocket. It came out holding a paperback novel. “I’ve got an Andrew Vachss book to keep me company.” He stepped back, his hand trailing across Boothe’s hip. When he reached the end of his arm’s length, he stopped and looked over at Father Mulcahy. “Sorry, Father, I forgot you were there.”

  The priest lit a new cigarette. “Whatever are you apologizing for, son?”

  “That. Just now. I wasn’t trying to offend you.”

  “Love isn’t offensive to God.”

  Josh stared for a long second. “You are the coolest priest, Father Mulcahy.”

  “I get that a lot.” He pointed at the book in Josh’s hand with his cigarette. “Enjoy your book, it’s a good one.”

  “You read Vachss?”

  “Only every time he puts out a new one.”

  “Coolest. Priest. Ever.” With that, Josh turned and walked away.

  Father Mulcahy chuckled.

  33

  “Do you want me to move George?”

  “Where is he?”

  Boothe pointed at the end of the bar. I walked over, looking across the bar top. A 500-pound Were-gorilla lay curled in the fetal position on the floor. Big gray monkey mitts were wrapped around the now-empty bottle of Jack, and a line of drool ran from his jutting jaw to the mouth of the bottle.

  It looked like he got all the way to the bottom of the bottle.

  “Leave him be. He won’t wake up even if a tornado destroyed the place.”

  I looked at my watch: 2:19 A.M. Had it really been six hours since dinner earlier? Holy Mary, Mother of God, it felt like forever ago.

  Exhaustion fell on me. I’m nocturnal, always have been, but it had been a long damn night. Pushing off the bar, I turned to the staqe. Father Mulcahy had put a black satchel, the kind doctors used to carry when he had been a boy, on the stage. It was his exorcist bag. He was elbow deep inside it, the stage littered with items. Some I recognized—vials of holy water, a jar of blessed salt, a hammer, iron nails— and some I didn’t recognize at all.

  That’s okay. Father Mulcahy has decades of experience as an exorcist and occult expert for the Vatican.

  He holds Mass at St. Augustine of Hippo, which is the Church’s main cache of occult objects in North America. Vatican investigators find some scary shit, and they send it to Father Mulcahy’s parish to keep it safe and out of the wrong hands.

  Yeah, I trusted him.

  The stage was hard against my hip as I leaned next to him. “How do you think we should work this?”

  “I’ve got some items here you’ll find helpful in getting information out of him.” He handed me the hammer and the iron nails.

  “Am I building a birdhouse?”

  “Most magick users with any power have fae blood in their veins. It’s what makes them able to do more than light candles and use a Ouija board.”

  “So a fairy took a dip in Ahriman’s gene pool?”

  “I’ve never read a case history where they didn’t find it.”

  I knew that witch-finders of old had used iron nails to interrogate witches during the Salem infestation, but I didn’t know why. Learn something new every day.

  “This is going to get pretty ugly. Are you okay with that?” I asked because of Father Mulcahy’s Catholic priesthood. Yes, he drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney. Yes, he could use a shotgun like a painter used a brush. Yes, he could knife fight like a convict, but none of that meant he didn’t have limits.

  Father Mulcahy was the reason I hadn’t gone over the edge when I first started. He was the one who would reach out and stop me from going too far; the one who taught me to hold back with supernatural people like lycanthropes.

  He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray beside his bag on the stage. His voice was hard. “Son, I will do anything to keep those three children safe.”

  The Padre had a soft spot for kids, those three in particular. He’d been there to help Sophia from the moment they had been born, changing diapers, handling feedings and bedtimes, whatever was needed. They were a lot of work not just because there were three of them, but because they grew so quickly that they were hard to keep up with. But he had been there for her. They were like the children he didn’t have.

  More like the grandchildren.

  “And afterward? When it’s time to stop them?”

  “Wizards thou shalt not suffer to live.” He quoted the Scripture. “If I can, I’ll give them a chance to repent, but the commandment stands and I’ll help you enforce it.” His gray-green eyes were pieces of flint.

  I nodded. Good enough for me.

  Time to get started.

  Time to get ugly.

  34

  I walked across the stage, carrying a wooden chair. My boot heels were loud, ominous on the polished wooden planks. I banged the chair down in front of the bound warlock, then swung my leg over it.

  The club was silent save for the low hum of Father Mulcahy starting to pray and the muffled sound of Ahriman’s breathing under the hood. I waited a long moment, just watching, letting his mind wonder what was going on. Letting his mind feed on itself, twisting around what was about to happen.

  It took almost a full minute before anxiety made him move.

  He twitched, the handcuffs on his wrists chiming against the brass pole. Leaning forward, I whipped the hood off his face with a jerk of my hand.

  The cloth pulled wiry black hair forward. Streamers of it stuck to the sweat on his face, plastering in thin trails across his skin. The wide strip of duct tape was still across his mouth, sealing it closed.

  His hooked nose flared as he tried to draw air through it. It wouldn’t be enough. If your mouth is sealed shut, it makes your mind go haywire. Panic rides in heavy on thundering hoofbeats. Suddenly your nostrils feel like they are glued shut, and the only air you can get is through a tiny, clogged straw, just enough to keep you alive.

  Reality is, you can breathe comfortably through your nose, but your mind forgets when it has to rely on only your nose to deliver all your life-giving oxygen. It makes you panic, your mind in a blender set to puree, unable to think straight. Your heart begins to pound and pound and pound inside your chest, burning up what little oxygen you can get. Your mouth fills with saliva behind whatever gag is breaking your jaw. It pools over your tongue, trickling down your throat in maddening dribbles. You feel like you are drowning one tiny stream of water at a time.

  I’ve been tied up and gagged before.

  Ahriman’s eyes were smashed open inside dark, nearpurple hollows. The pupils had dialed down to pinpricks, revealing sickly yellow irises in full. They skittered in hysteria as he tried to look everywhere at once. Red vessels had burst, splashing his eyeballs with pink from the corners to the irises.

  Reaching under my holster, I drew one of the ten-inch knives.

  The light of the club gleamed along the cutting edges, tracing around the blade in a thin, razor-sharp line. The warlock’s eyes locked on it, still wide, still jittery, focused on only that knife. His face jerked away as I pushed the blade toward it. The chair went up on two legs. Every millimeter I moved the blade, the farther back he leaned. The cuffs chimed frantically against the pole, the sound mimicking his movement. Pressed against the pole, he couldn’t go any farther.

  My hand darted forward, flicking the blade down, slashing the tip against the side of his face. Duct tape parted around a slash mark that opened beside his mouth. The tape pulled the edges, making blood run freely to soak into his beard. One corner of the tape lifted, slicked free by the blood flowing from the cut, rolling back like an awning. I grabbed that corner between two callused fingers and yanked.

  The tape tore free, came away covered in wiry, blueblack hair. Red irritation blossomed across his mouth and cheeks, tiny droplets of blood welling up where the hair had been yanked out.

  The point of
the knife pressed into the thin skin under his left eye before he could make a sound.

  My voice was low and even. “There is only one rule now. If you lie to me, I will hurt you.”

  His eye twitched above the knife blade, trying to see the point he could feel. The sound of his voice was strangled, pitched three octaves higher than earlier. “You are going to kill me. I’m not telling you anything.”

  I pushed harder, blood welling around the point. That eye went spastic, like it had been hooked to a live wire. “We’ve got a long, hard road before we get to that. There’s a lot of pain between here and there.”

  “Pain doesn’t frighten me.”

  I dragged the tip of the blade downward. It snagged, bumping over his cheekbone. It stut, stut, stuttered across the bone ridge, then sliced smoothly through the fleshy part. Ahriman’s teeth clenched, air hissing between them. Blood rolled out, mixing with the warlock’s oily sweat to make a wide slick.

  Wiping the blade on my pants leg, I slipped it back in its sheath. “What is Selene’s plan? Why does she want the children?”

  “I don’t know—”

  My fist cracked across his jaw.

  His teeth clacked together, head whipping to the left. Blood from the cuts I had given him smeared across my knuckles.

  I sat back down. His face rolled back toward me. Air sucked in through his mouth, each tooth outlined in crimson.

  “What is Selene’s plan? Why does she want the children?”

  “I don’t—”

  My fist cracked across his jaw.

  This blow caught him under the chin, sweeping up in a lazy, half-assed uppercut. His head went straight back, banging into the pole he was chained to. The chair lifted, then slammed back down onto the stage. His head lolled forward, hanging low. A line of bloody spit swung off the edge of his already swollen lower lip.

  I sat back down again. “What is Selene’s plan, and why does she want the children?”

  “I—”

  My fist cracked against his jaw a third time.

  This one I stood all the way up on, bringing my whole body into it. I twisted from the waist, pulling with all my core muscles and driving my fist into him. Blood-slicked knuckles smashed with all my weight behind it.