by Phil Gabriel
“Daeng, I want you to have this,” I said, handing her the cash and documents from winning the bets, along with the small cooler.
“Ajarn-Scott,” she said as she stuffed everything into her purse, “this is a lot of money.” She looked down the street nervously and bit her lip. Tears filled her eyes and were washed away by the rain. “Why do you trust me? What if I run away with your cash?”
“You’re my student,” I said, “not my slave. Anytime you want to leave, you can go. Take the money with you. Hell, if you want, I’ll change your eyes back, and you won’t see magic anymore.” I’ve had a lot of students quit. You can’t force a student to love magic.
I pointed back the way we had come, the real direction of our hotel. A local moto taxi was approaching. “You should get a tuk-tuk and get out of here.”
“My family...” she whispered.
“I understand,” I said. “You have to protect them. Don’t worry.”
Daeng gave me a hug, a very un-Thai gesture. I enjoyed the feel of her large breasts against my chest. The scent of her damp hair wafted in my nose, and I regretted making her my student and, therefore, off-limits. It had been a long time since I had hugged a human.
A steady tapping noise interrupted us. Kitty-Sue was tapping her foot in impatience. Since she never makes noise unless she wants to, this was a warning. How long had we been hugging? I broke away from Daeng.
“I’ll wait for you at the hotel,” she said.
“No,” I said, “take the money and go back to Bangkok. I want you to take care of Jack and Toy. Continue your dancing lessons with Tani Tiger-Lily. Ally-cat will be here to help you in a few days.”
“Chai-ka,” she said, “I won’t quit, no matter what happens. I’ll take care of the kids.”
She turned and made a wai to Kitty-Sue and John, then slid into the seat of the tuk-tuk.
“Nobody ever trusted me before,” she said. Daeng looked down at the ground before saying, “You know it’s a trap, right?”
“Of course, it’s a trap,” I said. “I’m depending on it.”
The tuk-tuk made a U-turn and headed away. Daeng watched us through the tiny plastic window in the back of the tuk-tuk until she was out of sight. I wondered if I would ever see her again.
22
It’s a Trap! There Are Three of Them
We walked down the nearly deserted street under the drizzling rain. John moved silently, curiously hard to see even though he was still wearing that flamboyant Hawaiian shirt. I had to look directly at him to be sure he was there. His steps were quick as he glided through the rain, smooth as oil on glass.
Kitty-Sue, still in Pam’s form, moved just as silently, belying her weight and clunky shoes. She sniffed the air and a feral gleam came into her eyes. “They’re there,” she whispered, pointing with her nose, “just around the next corner.” She shivered with anticipation.
In infrared, I could see the dim glow of bodies that seeped around the corner. It’s hard for a human to sneak up on a magician. And I would say it’s impossible for them to sneak up on John or Kitty-Sue.
As we neared the corner, John held back, fading into the gloom. Between one blink and the next, he had disappeared. Kitty-Sue started thumping her feet on the sidewalk, muttering complaints about the rain and how Daeng had abandoned us. I played with my umbrella, popping it open and closed to make noise.
“So, it’s a trap,” I murmured.
“Of course, it’s a trap. But for them. John and I are the trap,” said Kitty-Sue.
“Wait,” I said, “what does that make me?’
She furrowed her brow. “The cheese in the trap?”
I held Princess up and for a moment the insane thought of her piercing me like a toothpick through a cheese appetizer flashed through my mind. How many beers had I had?
Those thoughts were swept away by the appearance of the bookie and his fighters. Five fighters, one limping badly. Must be the asshole that John had beat.
I pretended to be happy at the bookie’s appearance. “Hey, buddy,” I said, “how’s it going? Let’s go have a beer. After all, you’re buying.”
His expression soured at my mocking tone. He spat out a command in Thai, and the fighters circled us. I felt the thrum of anticipation through the hilt of Princess; she was eager for enemy blood. A bubble of kitsune magic surrounded us, dropping the background noise of the city to a low level.
“He’s asking where the strong guy is,” Kitty-Sue translated.
I suppressed my urge to look upward, certain that John was above us. “Tell him that John had to take a taxi to the hotel because he was hurting from the fight,” I said.
At this, the bookie smiled, the thought of our best fighter out of commission warming his cold, thieving heart. His fighters moved around us, putting us at the center of a circle.
The bookie spat out another sentence in Thai.
“He wants the money back, plus all our valuables,” translated Kitty-Sue.
“Offer him all the money back if he’ll leave Daeng and her family alone,” I said. At her quizzical look, I said, “He’s not attacking, I have to give him the choice.”
I concentrated on the bookie. I briefly considered his balding pate. Perhaps bribe him with regrowing his hair? Many men would give a great deal to have a full head of hair again.
A look in his eyes showed the avid greed of an insatiable man. No amount of money or magic would ever be enough for him. I felt sorry for a moment as I mentally put him into the “better off dead” column.
“He says he will take everything and beat you, too,” said Kitty-Sue.
“OK,” I said with a smile that didn’t need translation, “let’s do this.” I furled Princess and held her in front of me in a swordsman’s stance. The bookie stared at me as I brandished the umbrella, then gave an order to his fighters. I could sense them moving in closer at our backs.
Kitty-Sue shook her head at me, then slipped off her shoes, leaving them on the street. She popped off the buttons of her blouse with one hand, then tossed the blouse aside, revealing her huge breasts barely contained in a white sports bra. Then she pulled up her skirt to a scandalous length to give her legs freedom.
The bookie laughed until she punched one fist into her other hand, creating a thunderclap sound that stopped all the fighters in their tracks.
Kitty-Sue licked her lips and said, “I’m going to enjoy this.” No knives appeared, as she was still incognito to avoid the appearance of a kitsune working in Thailand.
I ignored the fighters behind us, confident that John would take care of them.
At my right, Kitty-Sue moved faster than humanly possible. A punch to the throat of one assailant crushed his trachea, leaving him gasping for breath on the sidewalk. Another double kick, to a knee and to a crotch, left a second assailant on the ground, unable to move.
Although I heard nothing, the lack of an attack showed that John had taken out the other two assailants without a sound.
Princess made a sound like a bell ringing as she transformed into her katana shape. A quick slash disemboweled the bookie before he realized I was holding a flaming sword instead of an umbrella. He stared at his intestines as they spilled out, falling to the street. Princess sang with the joy of drinking blood. The bookie stared at the blood on Princess’ blade as the rain washed it away, then folded to the ground. The stench of entrails wafted through the air.
I had a moment’s hesitation before thrusting Princess through his black heart, sucking out the remaining years of his life. Hell, he was dead anyway, no hospital on Earth could heal him. The jolt of energy, stronger than twenty espressos, brought me fully awake.
I looked down on his desiccated body, which was aged to dissolution, the rain washing away the last few strands of hair the bastard had. I whispered a prayer the bastard would find peace. Even assholes deserve a prayer for redemption.
I turned back to the other fighters. Four of them were permanently disabled, two with broken limbs and one w
ith the floppy look that indicated a broken spine. The one with a crushed trachea was slowly turning blue. He wouldn’t last much longer.
Only one appeared reasonably intact. I approached him with Princess raised.
“Hold off, boss,” Kitty-Sue said. “this is Bandit, Daeng’s friend. We don’t want to kill him.”
At the look in my eye, Kitty-Sue stepped back and pointed to the others. “Take care of them first,” she said.
I dispatched the four disabled fighters, sucking the life energy from them through Princess, repeating my prayer that they find whatever peace they could. Don’t know how Buddhists felt about praying for the dead. Didn’t really care. The more honest part of me realized the prayers were more for me than the people that attacked us.
I felt my energy grow with each life I absorbed. Princess sang in my grip, urging me on to a killing spree. I took a deep breath and raised Princess. There were thousands in this city that should be killed.
John’s hand clamped down on my shoulder, breaking Princess’ spell.
Having a bloodthirsty supernatural sword as a companion could cause problems. That’s why I didn’t call on her often.
One last squeeze on her hilt, then I relaxed my grip and tried to force Princess back to her umbrella shape. No fun! she said in her zither-toned voice.
“Enough fun for now,” I said. She was a powerful weapon, but barely controllable. Like a nuclear hand grenade, she needed careful handling. Every time I used her as a conduit for life energy, she grew in power. My arm rose again, urged upward by my blade, pointing Princess at the cloudy sky. Above us, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed across the sky.
“Quit playing Highlander,” I said to Princess as I pushed her down. “Lightning might not hurt you, but for me it would sting like hell.”
It wasn’t until I had regained control of Princess that John let go of my shoulder. Suddenly certain that his dagger had been pointed at my heart, I forced Princess back into her umbrella shape.
Kitty-Sue walked back to where she had discarded her shoes. Despite her size, she bent over gracefully to pick them up. She upended them to drain any rainwater, then slipped them back onto her feet. She smoothed down her skirt and walked over to where she had tossed her top.
Looking at the missing buttons and tears, she tsked and said, “I’m hard on clothes when I get excited.”
“Allow me,” I said, taking the blouse from her. A quiet spell and a tiny surge of magic caused the buttons to roll back to my foot, then roll up my pants to my waiting hand. I tossed the buttons towards the blouse held in my left hand and they all flew back to their original spots, the thread obediently rejoining and weaving them back in place.
Another spell repaired the tears in the fabric. I looked at Kitty-Sue and said, “Perhaps another color? I can easily change it.”
“So, you can leave a design only visible to magicians that says ‘Property of Scott Freeman’?” she replied. “No thanks, I’ll make the fashion choices.”
“A childish prank?” I said. “I would never do that.” Well, almost never. I handed the blouse back to her.
While I had been working on the blouse, Bandit had backed up against the nearest building. His eyes were wide with terror as he stammered out a sentence in Thai.
“He says you’re not human,” translated John. “Fixing that blouse with magic proves it.”
“So, the killing of his friends, disemboweling the bookie, sucking out their life force through a magical flaming sword, calling up thunder and lightning, then transforming the sword into an umbrella didn’t scare him, but a little magical tailoring did the trick?” I asked.
“You know how it works,” said John. “Humans can’t accept real evidence of magic. By tomorrow, these drained bodies will be classified as victims of a lightning strike.
“It’s the simple things,” he said, nodding at Kitty-Sue, who was just finishing buttoning up her blouse, “that drive them crazy.”
We stood in front of Bandit, Kitty-Sue and John flanking me. He pressed his back tighter to the brickwork.
“What should we do with Bandit?” I mused. He was no longer a threat, so killing him was out. Unless he attacked us again. The way he was clamping one arm against his side indicated he had a couple of cracked ribs. I replayed the fight in my mind; Kitty-Sue had kicked Bandit in the chest, tossing him several yards away. After that, the fight had ended before he could jump back in. She could have easily killed with the same blow.
“Are you getting sentimental, Kitty-Sue?” I asked.
She sniffed in derision. “I thought you wanted one to survive so he could let everyone else he knows not to fuck with magicians.” She flicked her short hair back. “It’s just a coincidence that he’s Daeng’s friend.”
Speaking through Kitty-Sue, I said, “Bandit, here’s the Deal. I’ll let you live because Daeng asked us not to hurt you. You owe her your life.” I held up my hand and activated my pentagram tattoo. “If you ever see someone with a tattoo like this, run the other way.”
John stepped to one side, allowing Bandit an egress. Bandit slid along the wall until he was several meters away, then gave a deep wai. It must have hurt like a bitch, due to his broken ribs, but he did it. Seconds later, he was gone, the beat of retreating footsteps echoing down the street.
“So, what about the bodies?” she asked. “You going to send them to the center of the earth, like you did with the werewolves and witches?”
Do that enormously complicated spell in a foreign area? Without the help of Akiko? “No,” I said, “it’s a lot harder to do that here. Plus, when they’re found, people will believe they were hit by a lightning strike.”
“So, boss,” said Kitty-Sue, ever the practical one, “do you finally have enough hocus-pocus juice to find this damned armor?”
23
Rumble in the Jungle
I started walking down the street, away from the dead bodies and towards a more populated intersection, where we could catch a taxi. “Yeah,” I said, “I can find it now.”
I pulled the crystal globe that contained a lock of the samurai’s hair out of my satchel and fed my newly acquired energy into a tracking spell. The tug of the globe felt like a magnet pulling at it. I had a direction and a rough sense of distance. I pulled a pouch and thong from my satchel and placed the globe inside the pouch. The thong went around my neck. My hands were free and I could still feel the tug of the crystal.
Both John and Kitty-Sue noted the direction I turned. Kitty-Sue was surprised when John and I started walking away from the corner.
“Hey,” she said, “aren’t we going to get it now? Why are you going in the wrong direction?”
“Triangulation,” I said. “We need a precise location so we can get as close as possible using the roads.”
Three hours later, our taxi dropped us off on the side of a road. We had made that driver’s month with our seemingly random changes of direction and destinations. He hesitated to let us out in this unlit section of roadway at 1:00 a.m., but we insisted that we had a pickup arranged. He probably thought we were there to make a drug deal.
As the taxi drove off, the darkness descended on our little group. Of course, for magicians and fox spirits, darkness wasn’t an issue. The nearly impenetrable wall of plant life at the side of the road was. That was going to make this tough.
“So how far away is this treasure?” asked Kitty-Sue.
“Six miles in that direction,” I said, pointing at the wall of trees.
“Ten kilometers,” she said, “in the rain, through the jungle. You know I’m a city girl, right? I liked scampering around in the forest when I was a kit, but now...”
“Oh, come on,” I said, “it’ll be fun. Just like camping out. And the rain helps keep the bugs down.”
“In these shoes?” she said, pointing at her Pam-sized footwear. “I think I need to change.”
I reached into my dragonskin satchel and pulled out a pair of lug-soled hiking boots. I changed my foot
wear, putting my old shoes in the satchel.
John elected to go barefoot, slipping out of his shoes and handing them to me for safekeeping. He removed his Hawaiian shirt, made a complicated fold, and tied it around his neck like a sling. He then reached into his pants pocket and started pulling out a woven grass rope about as big around as my thumb. He pulled and pulled, and the rope kept coming, like a magician’s handkerchief trick. I couldn’t tell if his pocket was like my dragonskin bag, or if the rope was magically extending. Once the rope finally ended, he looped it up and slung it over his shoulder.
With a start, I realized that this was the same rope I had seen John using in my vision of him chasing werewolves through the streets of Bangkok. Did I catch the prophecy bug from that damn dragon?
“Milady fox,” said John, “if you would care to don your other form, I would be honored to carry you to our destination.” He gestured at the sling he had created.
“Oh, my lord,” said Kitty-Sue, “you’re such a gentleman. I gladly accept your kind offer.” She gave me the “see how to treat a lady” look.
I had the suspicion that if I had made the same offer, I would have ended up carrying her Pam-sized body piggyback through miles of jungle.
With that, her form started to shift, becoming smaller and smaller, until a red-furred fox with two tails sat on the road. I briefly wondered where the hell her clothes went when she changed. I knew her clothes weren’t a glamour; if they were, I wouldn’t have had to repair her blouse. Another mystery of kitsune magic. I’ll understand women before I understand kitsune magic.
Kitty-Sue scampered up John’s legs and landed in the sling, giving a yip of pleasure. In a tiny voice, she said, “Wake me when we get there.” Then she closed her eyes and dropped off to sleep.
John raised an eyebrow at her behavior, and I said, “She’s fast, strong, and extremely dangerous. But she needs to sleep like humans. She can’t push off sleep as we can. She’ll wake refreshed and ready to kill.” I could have sworn I saw the dozing fox grin in her sleep.