by Rhys Ford
“I’ve got to put my hands on it to ice it up.” Trent squared his stance, firming his jaw. The look he gave me was hard to read, or it could have been I was avoiding the concern in his eyes. “I can give you some cover while you do whatever mojo you need to do to stop it.”
“Can’t promise much. It’s iffy.” I met his gaze, my hands full of what I needed to stop the monster. “Just don’t get your head bit off. Or anything else. I’ve got plans for all of you later.”
“Good. Looking forward to it.” He grinned and holstered his gun. “Let’s see if I can slow this bastard down.”
He’d left his contacts in the car, murmuring something about them sticking to his eyeballs when he used the powers someone’d spliced into him. Without the thin cloudy lenses, his eyes sparkled, vibrantly blue and electric behind his lowered lashes, and the air around us grew colder, our breath turning into white plumes in front of our faces. Stealing a quick kiss from my already trembling lips, Trent left me with a bit of a burn along my mouth, and then he was off, sprinting through the pounding rain toward the animated insect struggling to cross the walkway.
I glanced over at the spell-raptured, treed odonate. Its stiffened form looked as inert as the sculpture around the fountain’s support pillar, but once we took out the one in front of us, the caster’s power probably would flow into the other, fueling another attack. We’d have to take them down quickly without much loss of strength or we’d be dead before we could catch a second wind. Trent reached the middle of the courtyard and skirted the dragonfly’s right flank, probably to draw its attention while I worked. Keeping one eye on my partner, I mingled the components we hoped would bring down the caster’s creations.
A plastic sandwich bag was serving as my makeshift cauldron. Most hedge witches and mages would have sneered at the sight of me cradling a spell in a bit of flimsy plastic, but it worked as well as iron or wood, especially when throwing things together in the field. I didn’t have the talent or discipline to be a full caster, but I had one thing going for me: I was a natural hybrid who could juice a spell like nobody’s business. Using the alternating currents of my genetic lines, I had limitless, if not powerful, energy and, in a pinch, could hammer through even the strongest cast. It was like chipping away at a mountain with a toothpick at times, but with the right combination of materials and a solidly crafted rite, I could get things done.
I just didn’t like casting something without knowing it was going to work. In this case, we had everything to lose if it didn’t.
Casting one final glance to the stormy heavens, I said, “Kuan Yin, kind of need a little help here.”
As evocations went, I was playing fast and loose with the wording, but my call was sincere, especially since the goddess in question aided women and the imprisoned. I started with a handful of rock salt I’d scraped up from a seacoast cliff, the uneven chunks ruddy with a good dose of my own blood—most of it from my knuckles when I’d harvested it—then added a piece of crackled glass held together with a strip of tinting. Shaking the plastic bag so the salt scraped at the glass, I began the first passage of the rite, looping back to the beginning when I added the final component, a handful of the scorpion netsuke Trent had dragged from my throat.
I was destroying evidence, knowingly ruining any case I’d want to try against the spell caster, but it was a risk I—and the SFPD—was willing to take. Gaines cautioned me in a flat monotone when I’d signed out the fragments, a necessary red-tape mantra I was forced to listen to fully before signing the netsuke out for destruction. I’d scribbled my name, a swirl of loops and jagged marks I’d have to swear was mine in a court of law, then handed the broken bits of stone over to the librarian waiting to bind it to the rite we’d created. I’d never be able to press charges with the scorpion destroyed, because the caster’s magical imprint always needed to be verified in a trial and in front of a jury.
Considering the carnage and death he’d left in his wake and the seemingly endless parade of golems he’d created, one little netsuke that clawed up my throat was a small price to pay to nail this guy down.
There was enough water in the air for me to catch a mouthful to swish around my teeth and spit into the bag. I tried to keep it out of the rain, not wanting to soak the components, so I only caught a glimpse of Trent’s power surging through the dragonfly’s body, flashes of blue light spearing up from cracks along its wings.
The heavy rain plastered Trent’s jacket to him, and while I’d hoped it was strong enough to deflect some of the dragonfly’s force, there were tears in its heavy fabric, and I got a peek of the hard plating sewn into the lining. Its magic still held, though, the jacket’s zipper blinking green at the end points, a sharp reassurance for the lump I had in my throat.
When the Hell did Trent start to matter? More than any other person I had in my life at the moment other than Bob and my uncles Will and Brae? When did I begin to feel like I’d swallowed the scorpion whole and it was making a nest of my stomach?
“Any time, MacCormick!” Trent yelled through the crackle of icy rain surrounding him.
The dragonfly was frozen along its joints, but I could see the wintry grip Trent had on it weakening. It glittered, covered in frosted fern patterns, but the heat of its animation slowly ate away at the cold. Chunks of ice were falling from the sculpture’s body, and its wings dipped once, a piece of concrete tumbling from a jagged rip forming along its thorax. Trent’s hands were closed on the creature’s tail, his fingers connected to its length by a trembling webbing of ice.
“Break off when this goes off!” I shouted back across the courtyard. “Or it’s going to go right through you! Not into necrophilia!”
I had everything ready to go with just a bit more to throw in. Chanting out the final round of lines from the rite, I took a deep breath, braced myself, then plunged my hand into the bag, closed a fist around everything I could hold, and felt the glass break from its constraints and its shards drive into my flesh.
My blood and spit lit the spell, and I turned my head, averting my eyes so I wouldn’t be blinded by the flaring light pouring from the plastic bag. The power ricocheted around the courtyard, seeking its target. Ribbons of light curved and danced from my hand, a tapestry of white and pale green tinged with copper and gold. The spell suckled at my strength, weaving through my blood and sipping my energy, but I held on, my knees shaking with the effort. We’d worked out the lines to seek the base of the animation spell, hoping it would be buried in the thickest core of anything the caster brought to life, and I could only watch—fearful, hopeful, and a whole other set of ’fuls I couldn’t even name—while the spell unfolded, kneading my hand through the glass to spill more blood to fuel its course.
The spell’s ribbons struck the dragonfly at the same time Trent jerked himself free. It hit hard and fast, spreading over its stone-hard body. Finding cracks in the concrete, the lightning threads burrowed down into the crevices along its thorax Trent had dug into with the ice he’d been able to pull from his core.
The ribbons wrapped around the sculpture, squeezing as tendrils of light snapped and crackled under its surface. An odd red line formed along the dragonfly’s tail section, and it whipped about, slamming the length of jointed pieces across Trent’s side. Tumbling, he hydroplaned across the sidewalk, rolling with the hit, his elbows up and his head tucked. The odonate convulsed, and the red line began to smoke, jagged black stripes radiating from its tail.
Trent struck the fountain’s base, then scrambled to his feet, his hands coated with ice shards. His shoes slipped across the walkway in his haste to get away from the trembling sculpture, and it snapped at him, catching the back of his jacket.
I dropped the bag and broke into a run toward him. My stomach clenched into a knot, and the cup of coffee I’d gulped down threatened to burn back up my throat. I couldn’t get my gun loose from its holster, and my hand was bloody from the glass gouging into it—but none of that mattered. I’d tear apart the damned dragonfly wit
h my fingers if I had to.
“Stay there! It’s getting hot!” Trent yelled, twisting about to loosen the creature’s hold on him. He broke free with a jerk, then bolted toward where I stood, my hands wet from blood and rain and pulsating with the power of the spell components clinging to the snarled skin on my palms. “It’s going to blow, Roku! Stay the fuck—”
Something snapped inside the dragonfly’s body, a knot of metal unraveling, or even the ball of magic the caster shoved into its center, but whatever it was, the spell the librarian and I had cobbled together under a bank of florescent lights on a stack of tea-stained pages did the trick. The ice on its body peeled off in chunks, and the rain hitting its body turned to steam while black splotches spread over its joints and head.
The glass in its wings broke first, the metal channels used to form the sweeps melting away in dribbles of scorched silver. It fought to maintain its path, straining to reach Trent, but its legs folded in, unable to support its weight anymore. Its tail gave way, dropping onto the walkway, gouging out a length of rubble behind it where its exposed steel frame dug in. It shuddered once, then stopped, turning its head toward me, jaws gnashing at the air.
Movement near the wall pulled at my attention, but I couldn’t spare the time to look. With pieces of the dragonfly’s body falling away, the rain struck the white-hot metal framework caught within the sculpture, sending up clouds of metallic-scented mist into the air. Trent grabbed me, and we both went down, his muscled arms forming a cage around my ribs, and we half ran, half crawled to huddle behind the only shelter we had, a four-foot-tall stone pagoda, its top green with prickly, thick moss.
When the pagoda went, the blast blew the scream clean out of my lungs.
Flaming pieces of concrete rained down on us, studded with metal and glass bits from its wings and frame. A large part of one eyeball smashed into the pagoda’s roof, shearing the ornamental bulb. The shrapnel and stone went wide, blowing out into a circle around the fountain. With the shock wave still ringing in my ears, I untangled myself from Trent when I heard shifting in the rubble near the wall.
While the other dragonfly had begun to twitch, it’d taken some damage as well, its abdomen and head cracked nearly in two and its wings twisted around its back. Still, its mandibles were moving, and more importantly, it was now loose from the tree, scrabbling on its remaining three legs, heading straight for the large Japanese cop picking his way over the fallen outer wall.
“Fucking Hell, it’s Yamada.” I breathed a sigh of mingled relief and resignation. “Damned late and headed straight for the other blasted dragonfly.”
I swished my hands in a puddle on the walk, hissing at the slight sting on my palms. There was nowhere to dry them. Hell, there wasn’t a dry patch left on my body. My T-shirt was clammy beneath my protective jacket, and my jeans were caked with mud on my thighs and knees. My gun was somewhere, probably lying in another puddle near where Trent tackled me, and my ribs hurt when I breathed, but seeing Yamada show up lightened the ponderous ache in my chest.
“We don’t know if he’s on our side,” Trent cautioned, standing up slowly. Unlike me, he hadn’t lost his gun, and he raised it, leveling it at Yamada, who’d spotted us near the dragonfly’s remains. “He could be—”
The still-moving dragonfly lurched toward Yamada, and he yelped, reaching for his weapon. Planting his feet firmly into the gravel, he fired three rounds, taking off sections of the sculpture’s head, but the insect kept moving forward, shoveling itself across the loose, swamped rocks to reach him. It was shuffling forward at an alarming rate, and Yamada backpedaled, nearly losing his footing.
“Okay, so maybe not,” Trent confessed sheepishly, then handed me his gun. “Go! I can get this. You go find Jie and your grandmother.”
“Don’t get Yamada killed,” I ordered, shoving his heavy firearm into my holster, then flipped my jacket back down. The gun didn’t fit as well as my own, but it was going to have to do. I still had my knives, but I was running low on magic I could pull out. If I found something as large as the dragonfly waiting for me, I’d need help. “I’ll be right back. If you don’t hear from me in a few minutes, come after me. I might have run into the asshole who started all of this.”
“If you do, just shoot him,” he growled. “Don’t dance around with him. No monologues. Just fucking shoot him and come find me. We’ll be waiting right here.” Yamada let loose a wild, off-key scream, threw a rock at the dragonfly, and hit its wonky left wing. “Okay, I better go help him or it’ll just be me when you get back.”
AS TEMPTING as it was to cut through the mansion, I didn’t want to walk through the death someone left scattered about the rooms. There was an eerie disquiet about the house, and I had little hope there was anyone left alive inside of its thick walls. The wide porch wrapped around the house, serving as an outer hallway for the interconnected rooms, and the killer left more than a few of the doors open, giving me glimpses of sliced-open bodies and the anguished expressions of the tortured dead. The scent of blood and gore followed me, and finally, after a long jog through a side yard thick with ornamental bushes and tumbled gravel walks, I found the estate’s quaint teahouse and its tiny gardening shed.
The rain had eased up to a mist by the time I got to the slight hill built up in the backyard, but the ground was slippery, slick with wet leaves from the thick canopy of maples, willows, and elms. The house was nearly lost in the foliage, only its roofline visible through a stand of junipers at the hill’s crest. A wide staircase of thick black rock wound down the slope, and I took it carefully, drawing Trent’s gun in case I found company waiting for me at the end of the path.
I did, and he stood, patient and silent, as I stepped into the teahouse’s outer yard.
He was still shorter than I was, having not grown since I’d last seen him, but rocks, unlike trees and people, didn’t grow once they left the soil. The tattered sweeps of his wingtips brushed the ground, their orange and black faded to russet and heather, but he’d stained them bloody with the marks of his kills, more red stars than I had years. His eyes were bright, frenetic, and mad, a swirl of purple and a hint of yellow beneath his wet, frowsy ginger hair. The rain on his bony face left a hint of blue around his lips, adding a bit of color to his pale gray skin. Twisting his mouth around, he slid his curled-up slimy pink tongue out, dabbing at a bit of water on his cheek.
Unlike the casual clothes I’d seen him in at the benevolent society’s hall, he wore a loose long-sleeved short blue kimono with mirroring crests on his chest and matching hakama. The pants were too long and loose for him, hems dragging in the mud, and he’d pulled the kimono’s tie tightly around his stomach, cinching it across his narrow chest. A hint of metal clung to him, but I couldn’t tell if it was from a weapon or a resonating echo left in my senses from the sculpture’s destruction.
The mon on his kimono was one I recognized. Not that I knew every one in the thousands of family sigils, but I was intimately familiar with the city’s dominant families’ crests, and the circled crane and ginger was an old form I’d not seen before.
“Hello, chóng.” His words slithered out of his parted moist lips, and his eyes narrowed when I said nothing in return. “Tell me you’re surprised to see me here. After all I’ve done to get you to this place, I’ve earned a little pleasure for my patience.”
“I should have known you’d be at the end of this idiot’s leash.” His nostrils flared, and I caught the twitch in his left eyelid. “Or… are you yanking your own chain here, old man?”
“You have no idea the years I have waited for this day.” He took a long, shuddering breath, his throat rattling when he exhaled. “There is no one gripping my leash or holding me back. Today is a day I’ve longed for—a day I deserve! When the Takahashi finally end up where they belong, beneath my feet and broken.”
“You deserve nothing but a pair of handcuffs, and since I promised not to monologue, I’ll tell you I don’t give a shit. I’ll give you credit for having th
e shrine god flee the building.” His sneer was ugly, revealing a row of shark-sharp teeth behind his thin lips. “It was coming back to you, wasn’t it? Tell me. Did it fail at the mission you sent it on? Is that why it went scurrying home?”
“It was a sacrifice.” He slid forward, gliding closer on the balls of his feet. “An experiment to see if I could gather energy remotely. So imagine my delight when it came dragging in the one person I thought I had no hopes of getting close to.”
”Don’t act like you weren’t surprised to find your pet knickknack brought the cops with it, and you don’t seem like the kind of guy who likes having his plans screwed up.” I smiled back in answer to his malevolent grin. Lifting the gun, I shrugged. “But that’s exactly what I’m here to do. Let me see your hands. Then get down on your knees. You’re under arrest.”
He stepped forward, and I aimed the gun at his forehead. His wings shivered, the death markers embedded in their membranes chiming discordantly. I cocked my head, wondering what he was about. He was an assassin, a life-taker, by the count of tokens he wore. There shouldn’t have been any noise. The fae should have been silent, stealthy, but the ripple of water around his left foot betrayed him.
One of his wings tilted, fluttering behind him in an erratic tremor, and he pulled himself up short, tilting his chin up in defiance. A red star dangled precariously from its hole near the tip of his right sweep, its point blackened from age or maybe rust. His fingers shook, even as he tried to hide their palsy by clenching the folds of his kimono.
“You’re sick, old man.” Keeping him firmly in my sight, I skirted around him, trying to get in front of the gardening shed tucked into the southern corner of the wall, but he was too quick, skipping over the slurry rising from the trimmed grass near an arched bridge leading to the teahouse proper. “If you think you’re going to go out in a hail of gunfire, you’re mistaken. Now, since you didn’t hear me the first time, get on your knees and put your hands above your head.”