by Simon Hawke
“I don’t know,” Billy replied. “Modred took that blast full force. It should have gone right through him., His runestone must have saved him.”
“The runestone!” Kira said, staring at Wyrdrune’s blackened chest with sudden realization. “It’s gone!”
“You noticed that,” said Billy tensely.
“You don’t think it was…”
“Destroyed?” said Billy. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. But I suppose it’s possible.”
“Then that would mean Modred is gone, as well,” Kira said in a hushed voice.
“It would mean much more than that,” said Billy with a hard edge to his voice.
Kira swallowed hard as the full import of his words sank in. If the runestone had been destroyed, it would mean more than just Modred’s death, but the deaths of all the animating spirits that inhabited the enchanted gem. She stared at her own runestone, the sapphire magically bonded to the flesh of her right palm, then raised her gaze to the emerald embedded in Wyrdrune’s forehead. The third runestone, the one that had been Modred’s, had been embedded in his chest. Now it was gone. Through Wyrdrune, Modred had lived on, sharing consciousness with him, and the spell of the Living Triangle had survived intact. But now, she thought… What would happen now?
Billy took a deep breath, gathering his energies, and held his hands over Wyrdrune’s injured chest. “Merlin could have done this,” he murmured to himself. “And Gorlois could have done it. That should mean that I can do it, too. Except I’ve never tried.”
“You can do it, Billy,” Kira reassured him. “You know you can. You have to.”
Billy closed his eyes and moistened his lips as he held his hands out, palms down, over Wyrdrune’s burn-ravaged chest. As he inhaled deeply and concentrated, blue thaumaturgic energy crackled around his outstretched fingertips like electrical discharges. Kira bit her lower lip as she watched silently, barely able to breathe. It appeared as if she had already lost Modred. She could not bear to lose Wyrdrune, as well.
A blue aura formed around Billy as he sat there, concentrating intently. It pulsated, expanding and contracting, strobing slightly, then wide beams of thaumaturgic force streamed out from Billy’s palms, bathing Wyrdrune’s chest and enveloping him in a blue aura as well. As Billy’s aura dimmed, the aura around Wyrdrune grew brighter, a visible manifestation of the healing exchange of life energy. Then the blue glow suddenly faded and Billy collapsed.
“Billy!”
Kira caught him before he fell and eased him to the floor, leaning back with him against the front of the sofa.
“I’m… all right,” he murmured, resting his head on her shoulder. “Just… weak.” His eyelids fluttered. “Did it… work?”
Kira glanced at Wyrdrune’s bare chest, from which the burns were already disappearing. The skin of his upper torso was red and fading even as she watched.
“Yes, Billy, it worked. You did it.”
“Good.” He sighed and closed his eyes, utterly exhausted by the effort. “I wasn’t sure… I could…” His voice trailed off and seconds later his chest was rising and falling rhythmically as he slept.
“I wasn’t sure you could, either,” Kira said softly.
There was still a great deal about Billy that she didn’t know. Not even Billy knew. Not anymore. A great deal had happened to him in a relatively short time. He had gone through more changes than most people could be expected to survive, much less understand. From a troubled, young, multiethnic street urchin living by his wits in London’s East End, he had gone to being an avatar of a legendary archmage, possessed by the spirit of his ancestor, Merlin Ambrosius, who had involved him in a struggle dating back to the very dawn of time.
It had not been an entirely benevolent possession. The two personalities, Billy and Merlin, had often been at odds with one another, a situation that was further complicated when Billy came into possession of an enchanted ring that held the spirit of a sorcerer knight named Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, the last surviving member of the Council of the White—and Merlin’s father.
Gorlois had been one of the Old Ones, an immortal race of magic users who had been the dominant race on earth when humans were still walking on all fours. It was from them that human legends of gods and supernatural beings came, for they had regarded primitive humans as nothing more than animals, sources of life energy to empower their thaumaturgic spells. In time, however, as humans started to evolve, many of the Old Ones came to feel that it was wrong to use them in this manner and so the ruling Council of the White decreed that humans could no longer be ritually sacrificed for their life force, as they were developing into intelligent creatures. This was the beginning of white magic, thaumaturgy that called upon the life force of the spellcaster or else employed life energy from other living creatures only in a way that would allow that energy to be naturally replenished.
However, not all the Old Ones had obeyed the dictate of the Council. There were those who had rebelled and refused to give up necromancy—the sorcery of death. These were the Dark Ones, and the conflict between them and the Council led to war. It was a devastating struggle recalled in Norse legends as the Ragnarok. In Germanic myth, it became known as the Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods. The upheaval had its counterpart in many creation myths, because from it humans had emerged as dominant. Not many of the Old Ones had been left alive. The Dark Ones were defeated and entombed in the Euphrates Valley, held in a magical state of half-life by a powerful spell devised by the surviving members of the Council of the White, all of whom—save one—gave up their lives, or at least their corporeal existence, to infuse their life energies into three enchanted runestones that held the Dark Ones prisoner. These stones became the spell known as the Living Triangle, and they were placed within the Eternal Circle where the Dark Ones were confined. The one who placed them there was Gorlois, the youngest and the last surviving member of the Council, who then went out into the world to live among the humans.
As the ages passed, Gorlois made his way to the lands of the north, where he became a warlord. He took a De Dannan witch to wife and had a son with her named Merlin, who inherited the sorcerous powers of his father. When his wife began to age, Gorlois abandoned her and found another, a young Welshwoman named Igraine, with whom he had three daughters. He named them Elaine, Morgana, and Morgause. And each of them inherited his powers, too. One day, a rival warlord saw Igraine and fell in lust with her. Aided by Merlin, Uther Pendragon overcame Corlois, who realized too late that Uther had magic on his side, and as he died, he infused his life force into the fire opal ring he wore, a ring that passed on to his daughter, Morgana, who became known as the sorceress Morgan Le Fay.
To revenge herself on Merlin and his pupil, Arthur, son of the man who had brought about her father’s death, Morgana cast a spell on Arthur and took him to her bed. The issue of this union was a boy named Modred, part human, part immortal mage. Then Morgana tricked Merlin with the aid of a young witch whom she sent out to seduce him. She cast a spell on him, immuring him within the cleft of a large oak, where he would sleep for the next two thousand years. Arthur and Modred then faced each other on the field of battle and both fell, but being part immortal, Modred had recovered from wounds that would have killed an ordinary man. He left Britain and for the next two thousand years traveled the world as an embittered mercenary, living many different lives and amassing a huge fortune. When Kira had first met him, he was a shadowy hit man known as Morpheus, who had accepted a contract on her life.
In the meantime, the world forgot the ways of magic. Thaumaturgy became relegated to storybooks and legends until the day technology came grinding to a halt in the global disaster known as the Collapse. It was then, when anarchy reigned at the close of the twenty-second century, that Merlin awoke from his long sleep and brought back the old knowledge. It was the beginning of the Second Thaumaturgic Age. Merlin founded schools throughout the world, training adepts in the discipline of magic, and t
he old infrastructure of technology revived, supported by thaumaturgy as a new energy base. But the return of magic to the world awoke the Dark Ones in their tomb, and with the aid of one of Merlin’s pupils, who had removed the runestones, they managed to escape. And ever since that day, Kira’s life had no longer been her own.
She recalled the day it started for her, the day she chose to steal the runestones from Christie’s auction house. It was not her usual sort of job. She was a cat burglar, not a snatch-and-grab artist, and the idea of stealing the gems in broad daylight, in a roomful of adepts, seemed crazy—yet she had been unable to resist. From the moment she had read about the auction in the paper, she had felt strangely compelled to make the heist. In fact, she had been quite literally compelled, both by fate and magic, though she had not realized it at the time.
That was the day she had met Wyrdrune. She smiled as she recalled her first impression of him. It had been far from favorable. A scruffy, young warlock with a mass of curly blond hair and the look of a boy caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. He had been born Melvin Karpinsky. Wyrdrune was his mage name. Most adepts had by then dispensed with the tradition of using mage names, but Wyrdrune had received his from his old teacher, none other than Merlin Ambrosius himself, and he preferred it to his birth name. But legally, he could not lay claim to being an adept. He had been expelled from the College of Sorcerers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for practicing magic without certification. He had returned to his native New York City, where he lived in a railroad flat located on East Fourth Street, along with the most unusual familiar Kira had ever seen—a straw broom that he had animated and that had become impressed with the irascible personality of his late mother.
As an adept, Wyrdrune possessed great natural talent, but it was undisciplined and unrefined. With his education interrupted, he had been casting about for some way to complete it on his own, but that required money, and for some peculiar reason, he had also become fixated on the auction of the Euphrates artifacts being held at Christie’s.
They had both tried to steal the runestones at the same time and circumstances had forced them to team up for the theft.
Thereafter, despite their initial dislike of one another, they had been unable to break up the team. Each time they tried to fence the runestones, the gems had magically returned to them, which led to at least one well-connected fence putting out a contract on them. With the police pursuing them as well, they had been forced to turn for help to Wyrdrune’s old professor, Merlin, who had been the first to realize the true nature of the runestones. When they encountered Modred, who had been sent to kill them, the living runestones had forged a link between the three of them, magically bonding with them, making them avatars for the spirits of the mages whose life energies imbued the stones. From that point on, their lives had changed irrevocably.
It was fate that they, the descendants of Gorlois, should have all been brought together to align themselves against the threat posed by the Dark Ones. It was fate that after Merlin died, his spirit should have possessed his sole surviving relative, a young English delinquent by the name of Billy Slade, and it was fate that Morgan Le Fay’s enchanted ring, which had held the spirit of her father, should have come into Billy’s hands, bringing the spirit of Gorlois to his descendant. Fate, magic, synchronicity, whatever it was, thought Kira, they had all become caught up in it.
As she watched Billy sleep, Kira thought about all that they had gone through. She thought about what they had risked, what they had won, and what they had lost. Billy had lost not only his individuality, but he no longer even looked the same. He had become a completely different person. The Billy Slade who came back with them from London had died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, killed by a necromancer. The spirits of Gorlois and Merlin had fused their life energies with his as he lay dying and the result had been a sorcerous mutation. Merlin was now gone, and Gorlois was gone. The Billy Slade she knew was gone, as well. But elements of all three of them had been magically combined to give birth to the young man whose head now rested on her shoulder. He looked about nineteen years old, but in a sense, he had lived for thousands of years. And in another sense, he was a newborn. Spellborn. There had probably never been anyone like him before. He was unique. Kira wondered what it felt like. And at the same time, she didn’t really want to know.
Wyrdrune and Modred had changed, too. The enchanted, living gems had wrought changes in their molecular structure, changes that were, according to the laws of science, utterly impossible. When Modred died, killed by a Dark One’s acolyte in Tokyo, Japan, his runestone had absorbed his life force and bonded with Wyrdrune, so that the integrity of the spell uniting them could be preserved. The two men she had loved wound up sharing consciousness in the same body, a body that could shapechange. Wyrdrune could physically manifest as Modred and both of them were present all the time. It had made her love life interesting, to say the least, and she had wondered if she would not be the next to undergo some sort of sorcerous mutation.
Kira clenched her fist, feeling the sapphire runestone embedded in her palm. She had not asked for any of this. She had never been given any choice. The runestone was a part of her now, and yet she had never grown completely accustomed to it. She wondered if she ever could. It frightened her. It gave her strange, disturbing dreams that defied her comprehension. Often, in the middle of the night, it seemed as if she could hear voices murmuring to her, and she was never certain if it was a dream or if she really heard them. And each time she tried to remember what they said, the memory slipped away.
She had no idea what would happen now. Had Modred’s runestone been destroyed, and Modred along with it? Or had his life force fused with Wyrdrune’s, as the life energies of Gorlois and Merlin had fused with Billy’s? The only thing she knew for sure was that she bore the blame for what had happened. She had allowed her guard to slip and that was inexcusable. It had all happened so fast… She suddenly smelled hot cocoa. She frowned. Hot cocoa?
“One marshmallow or two?”
She looked up and saw Sebastian Makepeace standing over her, holding a steaming hot mug of cocoa in one hand and a bag of marshmallows in the other.
“Sebastian! I didn’t hear you come in…”
“Well, you didn’t exactly use the door yourself now, did you?” Makepeace replied.
He made an imposing sight, as usual. He stood six feet six inches tall and weighed close, to three hundred pounds. He wore a black beret at a jaunty angle, and his long white hair cascaded to the shoulders of his ankle-length, black leather coat, beneath which he wore a red and white striped shirt, a bright blue, Flemish style cravat, a purple tweed jacket, khaki pants, and suede desert boots. For a university professor, it was quite a flamboyant outfit. On the other hand, for a man who claimed to be a fairy, it was probably conservative.
“Sebastian, we were hit,” she said.
“So I gathered,” he replied, setting the mug down on the coffee table. “Two, I think.” He waggled his index finger and two marshmallows obligingly floated up out of the plastic bag and plopped themselves into the cocoa.
“You knew?”
“No, but when I come home to find two of you unconscious in my living room, the energy residue of a healing spell permeating the entire place, and you sitting there with your aura palpitating like a strobe light, it doesn’t take a great leap of deduction to figure out you’ve had some trouble. Now drink your cocoa.”
She stared at him. “How the hell can I drink cocoa at a time like this?”
“You simply lift the mug up to your lips and sip,” said Makepeace. “Careful, though, it’s hot.”
“Sebastian, are you listening to me?”
“Drink.”
With a sigh of frustrated resignation, she raised the mug to her lips and took a sip. It tasted indescribably good. She took another, larger sip. The warmth of the hot cocoa seemed to spread slowly throughout her entire body. She felt herself starting to relax as a sense of calm contentment came over her.
“Good, isn’t it?” Makepeace said.
“Mmmm, it’s delicious.” She drank some more. She felt as if she were floating on a warm and fluffy cloud. A crooked smile played across her lips. “I must be really tired. I think I’m getting a buzz off this…”
“Drink up.”
She finished off the mug, then gave a small belch.
“Better?” Makepeace said.
“Mmmm. Much.” Her eyes crossed and she keeled over onto the carpet, unconscious.
“I make the best hot cocoa in town,” said Makepeace.
CHAPTER TWO
THE YOUNG WOMAN who came into the penthouse apartment did not look like anyone who would be part of a police investigation. Her long and wavy hair was naturally blond, or so McGuire seemed to recall. He had also seen it brunette, henna red, and silver. At the moment it was violet. She wore large hoop earrings and a gold butterfly stud in her nose. Dark violet eyeshadow, dark violet lipstick, dark violet fingernails out to there, McGuire noted, taking inventory. She had on a puffy-sleeved blouse of dark blue silk, a black and gold embroidered velvet vest, tight, faded blue jeans, and knee-high leather boots with high heels. To complete the ensemble, she wore a profusion of necklaces and amulets, a dark blue silk scarf tied around her head, like a Barbary pirate, and she carried a paisley blue and purple wool serape draped over one shoulder.
Natasha Ouspenskaya, better known simply as “the Gypsy,” had no formal connection with the N.Y.P.D. Most department officials would get blank looks if her name was mentioned, though they all knew about her. They simply weren’t very comfortable admitting it. The Gypsy was not an adept. At least, she was not certified as one, though McGuire could not swear she abstained from practicing magic without a license. To the best of his knowledge, she had never tried to pass herself off as an adept. “I’m just a simple gypsy fortune-teller,” she would say with a look of wide-eyed innocence that looked as genuine as it was misleading. However, whether she practiced any illegal hocus-pocus on the side or not, any talents she might have had in that area were not what interested Deputy Commissioner Steve McGuire, or anyone else in the N.Y.P.D. for that matter. What interested them was the fact that she was a highly gifted psychic, the strongest and most reliable they had ever encountered.