The Left-Hand Path: Mentor

by T. S. Barnett

  “Nathaniel Moore is not controlled,” Phillip hissed. “You aren’t old enough to remember him, but I am. How can you do this? You know something about these bodies, don’t you?” he pressed. “You’ve clearly already allowed him to work dorche. How many have you let him kill? If you’re the cause of all this—”

  “I’m taking him to the Magistrate for trial,” Elton insisted. “He’ll face his punishment.”

  “Trial?” Phillip growled, turning to stare into Nathan’s smirking face. “You think he’s going to cooperate with you? Or do you think you’re more powerful than he is? Think you can bind him?” He shook his head. “There’s only one way to deal with his kind.”

  Before Elton could offer an objection, Phillip reached back to retrieve the handgun from the back of his belt, leveled it at Nathan, and fired. Cora screamed as he fell to the sidewalk into the spray of blood from his skull, and she scrambled out of the Jeep to run to his side. Elton stared open-mouthed at the still body, but as soon as he turned on Phillip, a single deafening pound shook him on his feet. Nathan took one raspy, gasping breath, and Cora’s cries were cut short as he sat up in one swift movement as though lifted by an invisible string attached to his chest. Elton tried to call to her to move away from him, but his voice wouldn’t make a sound.

  Nathan’s head fell back as the skin on his face knit back together, leaving wet blood on his cheek and in his hair, and his eyes burned a bright red as he stared across at Phillip. Phillip raised the gun again and Elton snatched it from his hand before he could fire, shouting at him in silence as the spent bullet slipped from Nathan’s wound with a metallic clink. Nathan was pulled from the ground, a red symbol appearing under his feet as the last of the blood dripped down from his chin. He stumbled as though his strings had been cut and pressed his hands to his eyes, gasping for breath as he doubled over.

  “Nathan!” Cora called, the first to be able to use her voice, and the mark on the ground turned to ash as she stepped forward to take hold of Nathan’s arm. He patted his chest until he found the turquoise amulet around his neck, and then he laughed and touched Cora’s cheek to settle her. He straightened and ran a hand through his bloody hair.

  “Oh, Phillip,” Nathan purred, pulling free of Cora’s clinging grip and taking a step toward the Chaser. “You’re so far out of your depth, you don’t even realize you’re drowning.”

  “Nathan,” Elton warned, his voice remarkably steady despite the thudding heart in his chest. This went beyond any magic he had ever heard of before. No one could survive a gunshot to the brain—not even a witch. Nathan had been dead, he was sure of it. Just for a moment. Nathan looked over at him, and Elton felt an unwelcome tremor at the darkness in the other man’s eyes. He’d been fooled by his affected caring, his teasing, his infectious smile. He’d taken his friendliness for granted. He’d forgotten he was dealing with Nathaniel Moore.

  “What would you have me do, darling?” Nathan asked as Phillip took a step backward. “This person tried to take your prize from you. Doesn’t that make you angry?”

  “That’s enough,” Elton said. “He’s doing his job, the same as me.” He was hesitant to stand between them, but he put a hand on Nathan’s chest as he moved forward. “If you kill him, I have to do something about it. You know that.”

  Nathan watched him for a long moment, taking in the Chaser’s worried green eyes and set mouth. He was frightened, but not of Nathan. He was afraid for his fellow Chaser. He looked over Elton’s shoulder at Phillip and sighed. “Give us the address for the needle-woman,” he said at last. “That’s my price. I recommend you pay it.”

  “Are you joking?” Phillip snapped, and Elton turned on him in an instant. Nathan was briefly impressed that the Chaser was still willing to turn his back on him.

  “Don’t push your luck here, Mr. Martin,” Elton said. “The address.”

  Phillip scowled at them for a moment more and then slowly retrieved a card from his jacket pocket. Elton took it from him and left the gun on the pavement well out of reach, then turned Nathan by his arm and urged him back toward the Jeep. Nathan blew the other Chaser a kiss over his shoulder before stepping up into the passenger’s seat, and Elton had to hiss at Cora to get her unstuck from the spot. He waited until she was in the back before starting the Jeep and pulling away from the office.

  Nathan seemed quite calm, all things considered, as they sped down the street. Cora sat as close to him as she could get, and he allowed her to clutch his dangling hand between the seats. She wiped away the drying tears on her cheeks and quietly sniffed in an attempt to clear her head.

  “What just happened, Nathan?” she asked after a while. “He…he shot you, right?”

  “He’s got surprisingly good aim,” Nathan laughed, touching the spot on his forehead that had been torn open minutes before. “How uncouth to use a reg weapon.”

  “This isn’t the time for jokes,” Elton said, gripping the steering wheel tight. “He’s going to tell the Magister here what happened. Then he’s going to tell my Magister. They’re going to know I’ve had you and haven’t brought you in. And I don’t even want to begin to address what black magic just went on that can bring a man back from the dead.”

  “Yes you do,” Nathan chortled even as Elton turned to glance at him.

  “What was that?” he asked despite his previous assertion. “How is it possible?”

  Nathan plucked the talisman from beneath his shirt by the chain and sighed as he held it in his palm. A second crack ran from the center of it now, and he touched the mark lightly with his thumb. “I suppose the cat’s out of the bag.”

  “It is special, isn’t it?” Cora asked. “Did that thing save you?”

  “Leave it to a lich to work out an enchantment to prevent death,” Nathan said. “Even I don’t know how he did it. It gives you time—just a moment, just a breath—to come back from a wound that would normally kill you. So, unless you’re quite good at healing magic, it isn’t exceptionally useful, since that’s really all you have time to do. Unless you just want to take the other person with you, which is the more dramatic option, I suppose.”

  “Why would a lich even need an amulet like that? Doesn’t the phylactery protect it?”

  Nathan shrugged. “I imagine the frame of mind one has to be in to make turning yourself into a lich seem like a good decision isn’t the most stable sort. Even when he was being friendly, he was crazy. Obsessed. Terrified of death. He probably wanted any protection he could get. It’s a genius little charm, really, though I suspect it has limited uses. They had better last, because I’ve no idea how to replicate the magic.”

  “But that wasn’t any healing magic you did back there,” Elton said.

  “Well I never said I was good at it, did I?”

  ”That mark on the ground,” Cora spoke up, leaning forward to be heard, “that circle. It’s the same as the tattoo on your back. What does it mean?”

  “Smart as paint you are, my love. But that’s a rather delicate matter.”

  “No,” Elton said, and he pulled off the road and stopped the Jeep in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box. He put the car in park and turned in his seat to face Nathan. “No more. You don’t get any more secrets. We’ve been to New Orleans because of you, we’ve got a human heart under the seat and a lich on our asses because of you, and I’ve probably just ruined my career because of you. Either you be straight with me—absolutely completely straight—or we’re done, and I will drag you out of this piece of shit Jeep and bind you in the street, and I don’t care how many mundanes see us.”

  Nathan paused, tilting his head as he looked at Elton in silence for a long while. He seemed to actually be weighing his options, but Cora made a soft, nervous sound that drew a sigh from him. “Fine. You’ve been fair, Elton. Let’s go back to the motel so that I can get this blood off of me, and I’ll tell you what you want to know. It won’t do for our needle-woman to see me like this.”

  Elton frowned, but he pulled the car
back onto the road while Nathan dug in his pocket for a cigarette. Finding his pack empty, he swore and tossed it out the side of the Jeep. Elton considered scolding him for littering, but in the moment he took to glance at him, a dark figure appeared in the street in front of them. Elton put a hand out on instinct as he slammed on the brakes, screeching the Jeep to a halt a few feet from the creature in the road. Nathan brushed aside Elton’s motherly hand and unfastened his seat belt, pulling to his feet to look out over the windshield.

  The figure in front of them had the shape of a human, but the skin was missing. Each limb was covered in wet, bleeding muscle that clung to the blue fabric wrapped around its shoulders. There was no hair on its head, and its eyes were still nothing but empty holes. It shrieked at the Jeep and pointed one bony finger at Nathan.

  “Now?” Nathan sighed, leaning against the rim of the windshield. “Look at you. You’re underdressed, old friend. You think you’re ready for this?”

  The lich hissed and extended its clawed hand, sending a flurry of ice toward the Jeep that Nathan had to duck to avoid.

  “Oi!” he called out, gesturing down at the shards embedded in the metal of the hood. “You’ll scratch the paint.”

  “Nathan,” Cora called anxiously, half hidden behind his seat, and Elton held up a hand to quiet her and put a finger to his lips.

  “This really isn’t the best time,” Nathan continued, dropping down from the Jeep and stepping closer to the lich without hesitation. “I’ve just had a rather trying near death experience, and I’ve run out of cigarettes, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not in the best mood.”

  The lich opened its lipless mouth and spoke in a low, breathy voice that barely seemed human. “Devuelve lo que robaste, brujo,” it hissed, and Nathan lifted the pendant from his chest with one finger through the chain.

  “What, this? It still works, you’ll be glad to know.” The lich reached out for him, making him stumble forward in its icy hold, but it wasn’t the cold grip around his neck that drew his attention. From the Jeep, Cora cried out and clutched her hands to her chest, scrambling away from her seat in such a hurry that she fell to the street. Elton leapt over the seat to her side and put a hand to her forehead, his ring hot against her skin, but she still cried and writhed under his touch.

  He pried her hands from her chest and found her fingers reddened and swollen, the tips beginning to show a bit of black. She whimpered and curled up on the road as the pain moved up her arms and legs, and she called out for Nathan between sobs. Elton grasped her hands in his and murmured under his breath, trying to slow the spreading frostbite and warm her hands.

  “La tomaré primero,” the lich growled.

  Nathan put up his hand and snapped out, “Uts’i,” releasing the creature’s hold on him and sending it stumbling backward. “You think you can threaten my girl? Show up here and make demands of me?” He held his hand to the lich’s chest and blew a burst of fire at it without a word, making the thing scream and claw at him, but its fingers scraped harmlessly against an invisible barrier. “I put you in a box before, old friend, but not this time. I’m all out of good deeds today.” He set the lich’s body ablaze with such force that the windows shattered in a car parked nearby, and a truck approaching from the opposite direction didn’t stop in time to avoid crunching into the creature’s crumbling body.

  Elton shouted at Nathan as Cora’s hands stopped trembling, but the other man ignored him. The panicked couple in the pickup truck yelled at each other, and the driver hastily threw the vehicle into reverse. The tires screeched, and the truck refused to move, smoke rising from the street as the driver put the gas pedal to the floor to no avail. Nathan’s hand didn’t waver, his sneer of a single word keeping the truck in place.

  “Nathan!” Elton tried again, pulling Cora to her feet and helping her into the passenger seat of the Jeep. “Nathan, let them go!”

  “They’ve seen us, Elton,” Nathan called back without turning his eyes from the mundane’s frightened face. “We can’t have that, can we? What would the Magistrate think?”

  “Stop!” Elton left Cora’s side and ran forward to snatch the other man by the arm. “Please,” he said earnestly over the roar of the engine, and Nathan turned to look up into his face. “Let them go.”

  Nathan hesitated, taking a moment to look between the struggling truck and the Chaser’s hard, pale eyes. With a growl of frustration, he shook out his hand, allowing the truck to tear backwards into a power pole as soon as it was released. The driver immediately turned the truck’s wheels away from the scene and sped down the street away from them.

  Nathan pulled away from Elton’s grip and stepped over to the charred remains of the lich, already beginning to stir. He kicked one of the bones away from the pile and sliced a wound into his forearm with a quick whisper, letting the blood drip into his palm. He spit into the pool of red and squeezed the mixture through his fingers onto the ash.

  “Rete desann,” he sneered, and the bones went still on the street again, at least for the time being. He looked over his shoulder at Elton and tilted his head toward the Jeep. “Come on then. We’ve business to finish.”

  Elton followed him back to the car with a wary step, watching him gently settle Cora beside him on the back bench as she wept into his chest. Nathan touched her arms and hands, whispering softly to her while Elton got into the driver’s seat.

  15

  Elton did his best to tend to Cora’s injuries in the motel room, though she flinched and cried as the two men stripped her to her underwear and laid her on the bed. The burns extended from her feet all the way up to her thighs, from her fingertips to her shoulders, but thankfully stopped before they reached any of her vital organs. Nathan mixed tonics from his herbs and oils and let Cora’s head rest in his lap while he fed them to her, and Elton passed his hands slowly over her limbs and murmured incantations to heal the frostbitten skin.

  A few blisters remained on her fingers and feet, but by the time Elton was finished, most of her skin had returned to its natural fairness. He sat back on the opposite bed and wrung his hands, wincing at their stiffness. Healing had never been his strong suit, but a Chaser needed to know a little. Nathan slipped out from beneath Cora and folded the blanket over her, letting her fall into a restless sleep.

  “She’s really having a hard time with me,” he whispered, dropping onto the bed beside Elton with a short sigh. “I ought to give her some hazard pay.”

  Elton didn’t look at him. They hadn’t spoken since they stood in the street together, and Elton wasn’t sure what to say to him now. This man wasn’t who he thought he was, and he was more, all at once. All the stories Elton had heard, all the fantastic tales and horrific warnings—none of them could have prepared him for seeing Nathan in the flesh. The mundanes thought that magic could do anything, but for most witches, it simply wasn’t true. There were rules. Limits. Someone seemed to have forgotten to tell Nathan.

  They sat in silence for a while, watching Cora get a few minutes of sleep, and finally Elton looked over at the man beside him.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “For letting those people go.”

  Nathan turned to him with raised eyebrows. A beat passed when Elton might have almost said the man was speechless, but then Nathan grinned and nudged the Chaser with his shoulder. “You know I can’t help but do what you ask, darling,” he chuckled. “You were giving me such a serious face.”

  “This is all a game to you, isn’t it? Really.” Elton turned slightly to face him. “You don’t take any of this seriously. How can you make jokes? Cora could have been killed.”

  “I could waste my life worrying about could-haves, Elton. What’s the point? She isn’t dead. You’re not dead; I’m not dead. Even Phillip isn’t dead—you’re welcome. We got the address for the needle-woman and we put the lich out of commission for a while. All in all, it’s been a very productive day.”

  Elton let out a humorless laugh and ran his fingers through his hair, let
ting his hand drop back to his lap as he looked across at Nathan. He wanted to argue, to tell him that he was insane, that none of this should have happened. What would he tell Jocelyn? She would think he’d gone crazy. He wasn’t positive he hadn’t.

  “It’s Kalfu,” Nathan said in the silence. He glanced sidelong at Elton. “The mark on my back. His veve. That’s what saved me—aside from the amulet, of course.”

  Elton furrowed his brow. “And what is Kalfu?”

  “He’s a loa. He’s the master of the crossroads between this world and the next. All magic passes through him. But specifically, the bad kind. I’m bound to his service. Well—service isn’t quite the right term. We have an engagement.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He saved my life a long time ago,” Nathan said in a low voice. “When I was young, I caught yellow fever on the island. I asked the Baron Samedi to save me, to heal me, but I stayed sick. So I spoke to Kalfu. I begged him to save me from death. He took the sickness from me and said that in exchange, he would have me when I died. I don’t know that he expected it to take this long.”

  Elton frowned, looking down at the worn motel room carpet. “Then why save you? Why heal you when the amulet gives you time?”

  “I’m not entirely sure, honestly,” Nathan answered a little too quickly. “Maybe he thinks I’m getting better with age. A better prize for him. He may not help if it happens again. I’ll just do my best to avoid being shot, yes? And in the meantime, I pay service to him.”

  “How many times has this happened to you?”

  “It’s not something I make a habit of, you know.”

  Elton shook his head and looked back up at Nathan. “That wasn’t an answer. None of this was in your file,” he said. “Your early history, a bit, but nothing this in-depth. Why didn’t I know about this?”