Sorceress Super Hero

by Darius Brasher

  Could I borrow the money? The only person I knew who had that kind of money at his fingertips and who might be inclined to help me was Oscar.

  Ugh! The thought of crawling back to the office and begging him for a loan after what he said about me and after he suspended me turned my stomach. I’d be like a dog returning to her vomit to lap it up.

  No. Going to Oscar would be the last resort. There had to be another way.

  I could attack the wererat problem at its source and go after the person who put out the contract on my life. I could persuade them to cancel their contract with the wererats. By “persuade them,” I meant beat them to a bloody pulp. My fists could be quite persuasive when I needed them to be. And oh boy, if there was a time I needed them to be, that time was now.

  The problem was I did not have a better idea now of who hired the wererats than I did before I ventured into the sewers. However, I still thought the leading candidate was Willow Wilde. The fact the wererats attacked me just a couple of days after I punched Willow was too big of a coincidence to ignore. Despite all the other enemies I had made over the years, surely this wererat-hiring enemy had to be her.

  But what if it wasn’t? If I beat the tar out of Willow and it turned out she had not hired the wererats, there would be consequences. The wererats would still come after me, Oscar would probably fire me, the Conclave would punish me even more severely than they already would, and I’d be in trouble with the mundane authorities if Willow called the cops. I’d be even more in the soup than I already was. I’d be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  What the heck was the deal with all my cooking metaphors? Maybe it was a side effect of Elven wine mixed with panic.

  I shook my head at myself. The idea of beating up someone who might in fact be innocent didn’t appeal to me. I was no bully. I was stupid sometimes, but not a bully.

  No, strong-arming Willow without evidence she was connected to the wererats was out.

  More wine disappeared into me. Its disappearance inspired me, which further proved Elven wine had never let me down:

  I could disappear. I could go hide somewhere the wererats and the Conclave couldn’t find me.

  I thought more about running away as I paced. The problem was, running required money which I didn’t have. Plus, I was not sure a place where I couldn’t be found existed. And even if it did, the idea of spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for the wererats and for Conclave enforcement officials didn’t appeal to me. My life wasn’t much, but it was mine. I didn’t want to walk away from it because I was afraid.

  The thought of running away like a scared girl was repugnant to me. If I was going to get stabbed to death, I’d rather get stabbed in the chest while fighting back than get stabbed in the back while running.

  Running was out, borrowing money was out, and smacking Willow around was out. That left me with one option, the one I had been trying to avoid because of all the misgivings I had.

  I put down the wine and picked up the slip of paper Daniel had left me. It had his cell phone number on it.

  I stared at the piece of paper for a while.

  Finally, I picked up my cell phone and tapped out a text message to Daniel. It took me longer than it should have. The wine had made my fingers clumsy.

  Make it $60,000 total and I’m in, the text read.

  CHAPTER 13

  I was sweating, both from nerves and from the District’s relentless summer humidity, even at this time of the day. I glanced at my watch. It was just a few minutes before 3 a.m. Almost the witching hour. How appropriate.

  I looked around, making sure nobody was nearby. The coast was clear.

  I pulled a ski mask over my head. The black mask matched the color of my pants, socks, and long-sleeved shirt. Then, to avoid leaving fingerprints, I tugged on the $600 leather black gloves I picked up at Neiman Marcus last year. Stylish and thin, the gloves were almost as good as not having anything at all on my hands. Sorceress turned cat burglar chic.

  “I’ve been involved in some cockamamie schemes in my time,” I whispered to Daniel, “but this one takes the cake. This is a terrible idea.”

  “You might have mentioned that a time or twenty already,” he whispered back. “Cool your jets. I wouldn’t have pegged you as a worrywart.” Also dressed in dark clothes, Daniel had the Ark fragment tucked between his legs as he slipped on his own ski mask and gloves. A thick coil of black nylon rope was wound diagonally around his torso.

  The red, white, and blue of a D.C. Metropolitan Police car approached on Independence Avenue. Despite the bright moon overhead and the numerous nearby street lights, we were shrouded in the shadows of the museum we stood next to and probably couldn’t be spotted from the road. Even so, I held my breath and thought invisible thoughts until the cop car passed.

  “I worry because there’s reason to worry,” I said once the cop’s taillights faded from view. “I can’t believe you talked me into stealing this Cloak of Wisdom thingamajig. What if we get caught? I’ve already got a record. The judge will throw the book at me.”

  “It’s not a thingamajig. It’s a Relic of great power. One of the neutral ones. Show some respect. It can augment your magic to help us find the Spear of Destiny. And, we’re not stealing it.” Daniel saw me roll my eyes. “Okay technically, under mundane law, we are stealing it. But under magical law, the Cloak belongs to whomever has the wit to find and wield it.”

  “If we get caught, it’ll be a mundane judge we’re dragged in front of, not a magical one.”

  “We’re not going to get caught. And even if we did, it’s for a just cause.”

  I snorted. In the still hours of the early morning, the sound was louder than I meant it to be. “Yeah, I can see me in court now: ‘You should just let me go, your Honor. The fallen angel I broke into the Smithsonian with so we could steal a magic cape assured me we did it for a just cause, namely to help us find a spear that’s also magic and that can be used to conquer the world.’ I imagine that defense will go over like a lead balloon, assuming the judge stops laughing long enough to hear it.”

  “Stop being such a nervous Nellie.”

  “And you stop being such a . . .” I groped for an appropriate alliteration.

  “Definite Daniel? Decided Daniel? Dauntless Daniel?” he supplied.

  “No one likes a know-it-all. Especially not an overly confident one.”

  We stood next to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, a squat, rectangular pink and gray granite building on the District’s National Mall, the huge area which stretched between the United States Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial. The one-story granite structure was the only part of the gallery that was aboveground; the other three stories were underground.

  I had been to the Sackler Gallery many times, but never in the wee hours of the morning when it was closed. It was part of the Smithsonian’s Quadrangle Complex, which also included the National Museum of African Art and the S. Dillon Ripley Center. The African museum with its domed roof was directly ahead of where Daniel and I stood. Independence Avenue ran by us on the right. The four-acre Enid A. Haupt Garden was to the left. The towered Smithsonian Institution Building was on the other side of the garden, and the rest of the Mall beyond that.

  The Smithsonian Institution Building loomed over us. That building was more commonly called the Castle because that was what it looked like—a red sandstone, Gothic castle. Urban legend said the Castle was haunted. A necromancer at Capstone Security had assured me a while ago the legend was true. I wondered if some of those ghosts were staring down at me now from the Castle’s towers, wondering what in the world I was doing here in the middle of the night. I wondered the same thing.

  Ghosts looking at me would be far better than the Hero Ghost looking at me. I scanned the air for him but did not see anything but the night sky. Now would be a terrible time for the meddling Hero to show up, right when I was about to commit several felonies.

  “Okay, let’s get this party
started,” Daniel said. He looked at me expectantly.

  I took one more wary look around. I still did not see anyone, but it was what I could not see that I was worried about. “Are you sure we’re not being electronically surveilled? A major tourist destination like the Mall must have hidden cameras all over the place.”

  “There are cameras everywhere, but not here. The tiny area we’re standing in is a dead zone the cameras don’t cover.” Daniel shook his head impatiently. “We’ve been over this. Just like we’ve been over how the gallery’s alarms don’t cover the roof. Just like we’ve been over how there are cameras inside, but no one monitors them in real-time, so if we keep our masks on, no one will be able to identify us later. Just like we’ve been over how there are no security guards in this particular gallery from 2:00 a.m. until 5 a.m. Thanks to budget cuts, only certain museums get round-the-clock protection, like the National Museum of Natural History where the Hope Diamond and other priceless gems are on display. The lack of round-the-clock guards at certain museums is not common knowledge, so keep it under your hat.”

  “I still can’t believe a homeless guy is on the Smithsonian’s board of directors.”

  “It’s called the Board of Regents. The fact I’m not allowed to keep a permanent residence doesn’t mean I don’t keep my fingers in a bunch of pies. How am I supposed to do enough good to earn my wings back if I don’t know what’s going on in the world? My connection with the Smithsonian is how I got this piece of the Ark. In the 1960s, the Smithsonian secretly excavated where Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat in Turkey. You can accumulate a lot of money, power, and intel in a couple thousand years. Now would you hurry up and get us to the roof before another thousand years passes me by? You’re procrastinating. The longer we linger, the greater the chance somebody will wander by and spot us.”

  “Stop jogging my elbow. Add Demanding Daniel to the list of names. All right. Hold still.” Trying to swallow my fears and doubts, I summoned my will, visualized what I wanted to do, waved my hands in the necessary pattern, and said, “Ventus.”

  The moist air, still up until now, stirred. The gentle breeze became a gust of wind, which in turn became a powerful mass of air that swirled around me and Daniel, picking up dust and small debris from the surrounding area. The whirlwind lifted us into the air like an invisible elevator.

  The whirlwind deposited us on top of the Sackler building. I relaxed my will and allowed the whirlwind to dissipate. Daniel immediately crouched down between two of the six pyramids that adorned the roof, hiding from the view of someone who might be passing by. I also crouched down.

  “This way,” Daniel murmured, still crouching down as he led me toward the center of the roof. A trapdoor was there, secured by a large padlock that would make a picklock gnash his teeth in frustration. Daniel touched the tip of his staff to the lock. The dark wood shimmered rainbow colors for a moment, and the lock snapped open. First my place, now this gallery. No supposedly secure location was safe from this guy.

  “Why does the staff always shimmer like that when you draw on its power?” I asked.

  “Like a rainbow? It’s because of God’s promise to man.”

  “What promise? What are you talking about?”

  “It’s in the Bible. Genesis. Don’t you read the Bible?” When I hesitated, he said, “Don’t you read anything?”

  “Sure. My horoscope. The National Inquiry. Twitter. I read lots of things.”

  “You’re quite the scholar,” Daniel said wryly. “Since you’re such a big reader, perhaps we should go after the Philosopher’s Stone instead of the Cloak of Wisdom. The Philosopher’s Stone is a book, you know.”

  “Of course I know.” I did not.

  “Back to rainbows and the Bible. After God destroyed the world with a massive flood, the one He had Noah build an ark to escape from, He promised Noah He would never destroy the world again by flooding it. Rainbows are a reminder of that promise. As long as this fragment remains intact, the rainbow and God’s promise remain intact.”

  Daniel flipped the trapdoor open. He then took the rope from around his body and tied one end of it to a thick metal pipe that jutted from the roof. After tugging hard on the rope a few times to make sure it was secure, he tossed the other end of the rope into the open trapdoor. The rope disappeared into the void below.

  On our hands and knees, Daniel and I peered into the dark gallery below us. Other than the first few feet of rope, nothing was visible. I was reluctant to climb down. The last time I descended into a dark and scary place—namely the sewers—it had not worked out so well for Team Sage.

  “Ladies first,” Daniel urged me.

  “Me?” I said, balking. “Why don’t you go first? Whatever happened to chivalry? Or does that concept not exist in Heaven?”

  “My chivalry ends where your employment begins.”

  “I’m not your employee. I’m an independent contractor.”

  “You’re also procrastinating.” Daniel motioned with his head. “Down you go.”

  Daniel was right. I was procrastinating, and I had been since we got here. I knew that me going into the building was like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon—once I did it, there would be no going back. I would have fully committed myself to this insane enterprise.

  I sighed. After a bit of haggling, Daniel and I had finally settled on a total of fifty thousand instead of my initial demand of sixty. He had already paid me a fifteen thousand dollar retainer, and the rest would be paid if I located and obtained the Spear of Destiny for him. I had already used some of Daniel’s retainer to get current on my rent. I would need the rest of the money Daniel promised to pay off the wererats and get them to cancel the contract on my life. There was no turning back now.

  I reached for the rope. “If I wind up getting arrested, I’m telling the cops you coerced me into this. If I give them my wide-eyed innocent look and squeeze out a few tears, they’ll believe me. Men are such chumps. Hopefully they’ll curb stomp you and accidentally shoot you a few times while taking you into custody. It’ll give you some lovely new scars.”

  “If your yammering could find the Spear of Destiny, I’d have it already.” Daniel’s eyes twinkled in the moonlight.

  The only reply that sprang to mind was Oh yeah?, and I was too ashamed of its lameness to say it aloud. Since I didn’t have a wittier retort handy, I instead replied by lowering myself down the rope into the darkness of the gallery.

  Soon my feet touched the museum’s floor. I froze, straining to hear the slightest noise. Despite Daniel’s assurance about the absence of guards, I halfway expected to hear footsteps on the gallery’s stone floor.

  I heard nothing. No footfalls, no alarms, no swarming police yelling I was under arrest. The place was as silent as a tomb. Unlike outside, the air in here was dry and cool, no doubt to preserve all the exhibits on display. Other than the faint moonlight which trickled in from the skylights on the roof, it was as dark in here as the inside of a whale.

  I cast a light spell like the one I had used in the sewers. I made the light dim so it would not draw the attention of someone who might pass by outside and see the light through the windows on this floor. Even on low, my magic globe’s glow gave me plenty of light to see by.

  I stood in the gallery’s atrium, near the building’s grand staircase which led to the underground floors. I waved to Daniel. He tossed down his staff, which I caught before it hit the floor. I did not like touching something that had blasted me across a room, but Daniel had assured me the staff was harmless unless I was trying to do violence to its bearer.

  The plan was for Daniel to lead us to the Cloak of Wisdom on the lower levels, we’d grab it, and return here. I’d climb back up the rope to the roof, use my super strength to pull Daniel up, and we’d then beat a hasty retreat before the guards returned to their patrols. Simple plans were the best plans.

  Even so, I was on pins and needles. I expected Murphy’s Law to exert itself at any moment. Things had not exactly be
en breaking my way lately.

  As Daniel shimmied down the rope with the coins in his pocket tinkling faintly, I realized the nylon rope was not the only thing hanging from the ceiling. A suspended sculpture hung from the roof’s skylight and disappeared into a hole the grand staircase was built around. The sculpture hung all the way down to the third underground floor, almost touching the reflecting pool there.

  I knew from prior visits the sculpture was called Monkeys Grasp for the Moon. It was composed of twenty-one laminated pieces of dark wood, with each piece fashioned to look like a stylized monkey. Each piece was a rendering of the word monkey in a different language, including Chinese, Japanese, Thai, English, and Braille. Monkeys Grasp for the Moon was based on a Chinese folktale in which monkeys in trees were intrigued by the moon’s reflection in a pool of water. Linking tails and forming a monkey chain, they hung down from one of the trees, with the last monkey in the chain trying to scoop up the moon’s reflection. The moon’s reflection disappeared as soon as the monkey disturbed the water by touching it. The moral of the story was that the thing you work to achieve might prove to be an illusion.

  I stared at the sculpture, reflecting on its moral. The thing you work to achieve might prove to be an illusion. Huh. If the universe was sending me a message about finding the Spear of Destiny, it was not being terribly subtle about it.

  Daniel touched down on the stone floor next to me, jarring me from my reverie.

  “Where to next?” I whispered. The whisper turned into a surprised shriek when I caught sight of a hulking figure sitting in a chair against the wall. I nearly jumped out of my skin. “What the—”

  “It’s all right,” Daniel said as he grabbed my arm. He probably didn’t know if I had been about to run or blast the shadowy figure with spellfire. I didn’t know either. I rarely knew what I was going to do up until I did it. “It’s just a sculpture.”