by N. P. Martin
"You," she said, sounding like she had been up for hours, as I knew she had been. She worked out every day before breakfast. Kettlebells and heavy bag training, followed by stretching. “How’d you get my number?”
“I told you I already had it, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did. What do you want?”
“What’s your progress on the case?” I asked
“None of your damn business,” she replied.
Normally she wasn't quite so curt with me when I asked her about Division business, which the murdered girl had no doubt become. At that point, she didn't know or trust me enough to be so forthcoming with such information, however. Which was also exactly how she was when we first met a few years before. She was hostile and guarded, as was her nature when it came to people she didn’t know or trust. “Come on, Leona. Don’t be like that. I’m going need your help on this.”
“On this? You say that like it's your case or something. It isn’t.”
"Oh, yes it is, don't even go there. I've been made into God's lonely man here. No one fucking knows me anymore. Not a single soul, apart from Blaez that is."
“Blaez?”
“My Garra Wolf. You two get on. You both have the same predatory instincts and intolerance for fools.”
“Fools like you, you mean?”
“Yeah, very funny. And harsh, I gotta say. This is no joke, you know.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“So why are you refusing to help me then?”
“Because despite what you say, I could never see us being friends, or, God forbid, sleeping together.”
“Well, we were friends, Leona, and more,” I said, getting a little cranky now. I needed more coffee. “What can I say, I grew on you like moss on a stone."
“Moss on a stone? You’re so weird.”
"Yeah, and so are you. Trust me, sweetheart, we were pretty good together, considering. And I know you have no other friends. You need me."
“Firstly, I don’t need anyone. And secondly, don’t ever call me sweetheart again.”
“Or let me guess, you’ll cut my balls off?”
“Yeah,” she said, after a moment's hesitation.
“You know why you hesitated there? Because you were actually going to say that. You said the same thing to me the first time I ever called you sweetheart. It's like I said, I know you, Leona Lawson."
"Why would I tolerate a pain in the ass like you anyhow?”
"Because," I told her, "you have affection for me. We get on. It might not seem that way now, but we do, trust me. What if I name your favorite film, will that help?"
"That would just be a cheap parlor trick, but go on."
"It's The Matrix. You have the hots for Keanu Reeves."
"Un-uh."
"Don't un-uh me. This isn't a game show. Admit it."
“I’m going now.”
I sighed, defeated. I’d forgotten what a brick wall she was. “Fine. Enjoy your morning Cappuccino-to-go at Barney’s.”
“How did…you’re beginning to creep me out now. You better not be fucking stalking me.”
"Just call me if you find anything out, will you? I'll do the same. We'll keep each other in the loop like we used to."
“Goodbye, Creed.” She hung up the phone.
"At least she used my name," I said hopefully to Blaez, who had just walked into the kitchen. "That's progress, right?"
The big wolf stared at me, then walked over, his claws clacking on the hardwood floor. Then he pressed his head against my leg and made a growling noise. Crouching down, I put my arms around his thick neck and gave him a squeeze. “At least I have you, Blaez, eh?” Blaez pulled away then and wandered off into the living room where he would most likely lie for the rest of the day before prowling the streets in invisibility mode when darkness fell that evening. “I’ll take that as a yes, then. Good boy.”
Shaking my head and pouring myself another coffee with lots of sugar, I idled in the kitchen for another while, staring at the floor while I figured out my next move. My chief concern was reversing the spell I was under, which I wasn’t even sure could be done. In general, the more powerful the spell, the less likelihood there was of ever reversing it, and the spell I was under was a fucking powerhouse. Certainly one of the most potent and expert uses of magick I had seen in a long while. I mean, think about it, the power it would take to erase the world's memory of you (and anyone else standing close enough, like me, for instance). There weren't many who had access to that kind of power and those that did probably channeled it from an entity much more commanding than themselves.
All of which meant only one thing. If I had any chance of reversing the spell put on me, I had to find out exactly what kind of power I was dealing with.
It was time to hit the books.
6
A Welcome Distraction
THE BASEMENT OF the Sanctum was where the majority of the spell books were kept, or at least, the ones that held real power. Make no mistake, some books are dangerous. Some books will kill you just for opening them up. With books like that, you need to make sure you're fully suited up before you even think about approaching them. And by suited up, I mean charged up with defensive magick.
There are two books in the Sanctum—The Babylonian Book Of Black Magic and The Book Of Deathly Shadows—that are virtually unapproachable. My Uncle Ray warned me not to go near either of them when I first moved into the Sanctum, not unless I wanted to be sucked into a dimension that wasn't anywhere near as much fun as Earth. Only a Master Mage like Ray could have handled those books, and only when he absolutely had to. Luckily, I had no need for either of the books. I was hoping to find what I needed in one of the less dangerous tomes.
The basement itself was long and narrow, with a low ceiling and a perpetual smell of damp mixed with the strange odors of the books themselves. An entire wall was filled floor to ceiling with hefty, dusty tomes that buckled the wooden shelves under their weight. And despite there being thousands of books, each one was unique in both appearance and content, and I knew them all intimately. If there was a spell that erased the world's memory of a person (and I was living proof there was), I hoped to find it in one of those books.
In the center of the basement floor, there was a large wooden table with stout, intricately carved legs. Scattered over the surface of the table were a whole collection of glass funnels, flasks, beakers, cylinders and other stuff that I used for my alchemical experiments. The wall opposite the bookshelves was where I kept all the potions, elixirs, magickal compounds and a plethora of other ingredients that I used for spells (not every spell required props, of course, but many of them did).
Also on that side of the room was an old record player and a stack of vinyl from the sixties through to the eighties (anything after that I didn’t much care for). After sorting through the pile, I selected the 12” extended version of Blue Monday by New Order, a tune that always helped me think. And when the soothingly familiar synth hook of the track kicked in, I began to walk slowly by the bookshelves, running my eyes over each title.
The first book I took out was a centuries old Grimoire that had been bound in dark red leather and which smelled faintly of decayed vegetable matter. I dropped the heavy book on the table next to all the alchemy stuff and opened it up, a cloud of dust blowing up to greet me as I did so, causing me to sneeze.
For the next twenty minutes, I turned each waxy page in the book, quickly scanning the spells in there to see if any of them resembled the one I was looking for. When I came up empty, I slammed the book closed and moved onto the next one. And the next one. And the next one after that. Until before I knew it, I’d spent half the day down there, pouring over dusty tomes (which was nothing new for me as I’d lost weeks at a time studying old books, time that I barely noticed go by, such was the depth of my fascination and concentration).
Eventually, I halted my search and poured myself yet another whiskey, half filling one of the glass beakers on the table a
nd planking myself down in a rickety chair, the sounds of Crimson Glory now filling the stuffy basement.
What the hell am I going to do? I wondered.
Being a Mage is a lonely pursuit at the best of times. Most of my life had been spent studying magick and lore in darkened rooms. If wasn't careful, I could easily fall into madness pretty quickly (as I had almost done many times in the past). That's the nature of obsession (and magick is an obsession), and something I've always been willing to accept if it meant increasing my knowledge and overall skill as a Mage.
At the same time, though, I had always made an effort to create and maintain relationships with other people, to keep myself from falling too far into my own mad little world. Admittedly, most of those relationships were working relationships—mutually beneficial arrangements (that took years to cultivate in most cases) that allowed both parties to further their own aims. In my decades of existence, I managed to build up quite a network of people who knew me. Just knowing that that network of people was out there was usually enough to stop me from going insane through loneliness and self-imposed isolation.
But now that entire network was gone. Obliterated like it had never existed. Like I never existed. How would you feel if it was you? How would you feel if your friends and family and everyone else you ever knew no longer recognized you anymore? How fucked up would that be for you?
Already I felt the dark corners of my mind begin to stretch out as they threatened to consume my sanity, driving me towards a madness that I might never escape from. For the first time in a long time, I felt genuinely scared about my prospects. The thoughts of going out into the world and starting afresh, although it might appeal to some people, didn’t much appeal to me. The weight of loneliness was crushing.
You only think that now, I thought, drinking more whiskey and trying to keep my mind focused on finding solutions instead of highlighting the problem. You’ll find a way.
I hoped I was right as I finished the whiskey in the beaker and went to leave the room, intending to go upstairs and start in on the books up there. As I went to leave, however, my phone rang. The caller ID said LEONA. A smile crossed my face when I saw her name. Thank God for Leona. She was the only thing making my nightmare more tolerable. "Hey, sweetheart," I said, tipsy from the whiskey. "I told you I would grow on you, didn't I?"
Leona made a tutting sound. “Get over yourself,” she said sternly. “And didn’t I tell you not to call me that?” She sounded agitated.
“What’s wrong? And what’s all that noise in the background? It sounds like explosions.”
"It is explosions. There's some fucking nutjob in Harlington blowing the place to shit using fireballs that come out of his hands."
A Pyromancer, I thought straight away. Probably one of that new breed of idiots whose obsession with magick had gotten the better of them.
"So shoot him. That's what you always do with these out of control types, is it not?”
"You think I haven't tried to already, genius? He has some sort of forcefield around him. Nothing is getting through, and no one can go near him without instantly bursting into flames. People are fucking dying here, Creed.”
I made my way hurriedly out of the basement to the living room where I grabbed my trench coat and pulled it on. "Don't worry. I can help you. I'll be there in a minute."
“You’re in Harlington?”
"No, East Oakdale."
“Then how—”
“Hang tight. I’m coming.”
I tossed the phone on the armchair and looked over at Blaez, who was lying on the floor, his head now up, his yellow eyes sparked with interest. “This sounds like a job I could use your help on, Blaez. Come on.”
The wolf jumped immediately to its feet and quickly crossed the room before standing at heel beside me, making excited rumbling noises in his throat. One thing about Blaez, he was always up for some action.
"Ready?" I said to him.
I placed a hand on Blaez’s back, closed my eyes for a few seconds and then we disappeared out of the room like we never even there to begin with.
7
Pyromancer
TELEPORTATION IS A skill that took me nearly thirty years to master, and one which I didn't use very often, mainly because it put a significant drain on my magick reserves. The farther I had to teleport, the more of a drain I experienced. I could also only teleport to within about a five hundred mile radius at that point. Which was okay, because Harlington was well within that radius, being about ten miles away from East Oakdale.
I landed with Blaez in a dark alley, which was intentional. Onlookers tend not to take too well to people just appearing on the street out of thin air. Plus, there was also another reason for my secrecy that I haven't yet mentioned. Due to the paradoxical nature of magick, if any non-adept (Sleepwalker) happened to witness magick in action, the magick itself would become skewed (how skewed would depend on how many people saw it). The consequences of misaligned magick could often be disastrous, as I found out to my detriment enough times in the past. To a certain extent you could offset this unwelcome side effect by concocting a spell and casting it on certain individuals, so their presence would have no negative effects on any other spells that were cast. As with Leona for instance (I neutralized her influence shortly after we met since I would often have to perform magick around her). So bottom line, I gotta be careful about who sees me do my thing.
I couldn't say the same for the maniac who was burning up the place in Harlington. From the alley, I saw flames and smoke rising half a block away, past the rundown tenement buildings and near the local Taco Box. There was also a gas station nearby, and I wondered how long it would be before the whole place went boom. "Not looking good," I said to Blaez, who was standing beside me with his ears pricked up, his tail held straight out as if he was waiting for a signal to go charging in. "Not yet, Blaez. Let's see what we're dealing with first."
Blaez looked at me and then turned invisible as we headed out of the alley, although he was still visible to me (Blaez’s doing, not mine—he could make himself visible to anyone he chose).
The Garra Wolf and I ran across the street and hurried the half block to where all the chaos was originating. Not surprisingly, there was only one firetruck that I could see, four firefighters attempting to put out a number of burning cars in the street and not succeeding because the flames were so fierce. I couldn’t see any cops or media yet, nor did I expect to. Harlington wasn’t far off being a slum town, so the city authorities tended to avoid it as much as possible. Cops and other badge carriers were not welcome in Harlington, and given what was happening at present, that was probably for the best. The last thing I wanted to see was some out of control Pyromancer all over the damn news and social media.
“Creed!” Leona came running across the street in her usual getup, her long black coat billowing behind her as she ran on powerful legs. She gripped one of her custom Berettas in one hand. “How’d you get here so fast? And is that a damn wolf with you?" She stayed back a few feet as she eyed the huge wolf with fearful suspicion, raising her gun slightly, so it pointed towards Blaez.
“You can see him?” I asked.
“Of course I can see it. It’s a huge fucking wolf. How can I not see it?”
Leona and Blaez knew each other well. But as Blaez was attached to my memories, that meant Leona's memory of the wolf had been erased along with everything else about me. The spell was thorough, I’d say that much. “He’s here to help. Don’t worry.”
“How’d you get here so fast?”
“I teleported of course. Now where is this firestarter at?”
Leona gave me a queer look like she didn't quite take in what I said. Then she just shook her head and pointed towards the Taco Box across the street. “Behind there, currently blowing up cars.” As if to confirm what she said, there was a loud explosion from behind the Taco Box and a cloud of black smoke billowed up into the night sky.
Goddamn amateurs, I thought as I shook
my head. They don’t know how to keep it in their pants. “Let me guess. A kid, early twenties at most? Looks like a crazed obsessive?”
"He has that look," Leona said, eying me up at the same time like she saw the same look in me. "Why? You know him?"
"Not him specifically, but I know his type. A member of this new Occult Underground that has sprung up in the last ten years or so. You've heard of them, no doubt?" I had told her all about the new breed of adepts before, but of course, she wouldn't have remembered a single word of it, only the information given to her by The Division, which probably wasn't much.
“I’ve heard of them.” She shook her head dismissively. “But listen, they’re all fucking hedge magicians to me. I don’t care what they call themselves. When they do shit like this, that’s when I care. You gotta plan, you and…your wolf?”
"I hadn't thought about it," I said, beginning to head across the street towards the Taco Box. "Hey, maybe it's just a guy who had too much chili on his taco earlier."
“Did you really just say that to me?” she asked, striding purposefully beside me.
"Humor. Don't worry. I know it isn't your strong suit."
She threw me a look. "Like this is a really fucking funny situation. Three people have burnt to death so far."
“Just trying to lighten things up. Why have you no backup here?”
"Because we're stretched kinda thin right now, that's why. So much shit is happening in this city these days that we can hardly keep up. Every day, some new freak like this guy comes crawling out of the woodwork."
“I hope you don’t include me in that summation.”
“We got incidents all over tonight,” she went on, ignoring me. “Crazies everywhere for some damn reason.”
We were at the corner of the Taco Box. I had to stop and stare in astonishment at the post-apocalyptic scene of destruction in the small lot. There were about a dozen cars in the parking lot, and about half of them were on fire, creating a fierce heat that you could feel searing your face. The cause of all the fiery destruction was a young looking dude standing in the center of the parking lot. He was completely naked from what I could see, his clothes having burnt of him by that point presumably, or else he came out that night already naked, wanting to save his clothes perhaps. Either way, I didn't care. I just wanted to stop the guy before he decided to hit the gas station down the street and caused even more damage. Getting to the guy was going to prove difficult, however, and not just because he was shooting jets of flame like napalm from his hands, but because, as Leona mentioned to me, he was surrounded by some sort of crackling, fiery force field that shimmered around him, sealing him in an orangey translucent cocoon.