by N. P. Martin
Leona stood beside me, her gun aimed at the naked hedge magician in the parking lot. "So what do we do, Mr. Warlock?" she said. "Any bright ideas?"
"I'll excuse your pun there," I said back. "And I'm not a Warlock. Warlocks are drama queens. Do I seem like a drama queen to you? Don't answer that." I stood and thought for a moment, then nodded to myself. "I might be able to work something here."
"Well do it quick because he just saw us."
I snapped my head towards the wannabe adept in the parking lot, who was now staring straight at us. Through the veneer of his defensive energy cocoon, I noticed the sneering grin on his face as he was quite literally drunk with power.
He thinks he’s unstoppable.
In my mind I was rapidly sorting through an index of spells that I could use on the guy. It had to be something that would bring down his defenses, so that Leona could then shoot him. No sense thinking she was going to detain the guy, not after he killed people.
Standing just ahead of me, and showing no fear of the crazed fire conjurer, was Blaez. Wisps of dark smoke were beginning rise out of his hackles, and along his head and body, deep veins of fire began to split open and spew small but intense flames. The Garra Wolf in Blaez was coming to the fore, his elemental power reacting to the firestarter before him. "Wait, Blaez," I barked at him. There was no way Blaez would get through the force field surrounding the guy in the lot, and I didn't want to take the chance that it would somehow do the wolf damage. You never knew with crazed, uncontrolled magick.
Just as the naked firestarter raised both hands in our direction, gearing up for another infernal blast, my mind hit upon a spell that might just take care of the dude's defensive shield. It was a simple enough elemental spell that would counter the fiery energy protecting the guy. But just as I was about to quickly utter the words that would focus the magick for the spell, the novice Pyromancer's hands lit up with flames and then erupted like volcanoes, spewing twin jets of fire right at us. It felt like we were being attacked by an angry dragon who wanted only to annihilate us from the face of the Earth.
There was no time to move out of the way, so I did the next best thing and spun around, grabbing a shocked Leona and pulling her in close to me, at the same time pulling my trench coat up over us, which I already knew was fireproof. I just wasn't sure it could withstand the ferociously hot temperature of the flames coming at us.
A split second later, I felt the hot pressure on my back as the jets of fire hit like two high-pressure hoses, forcing me to pitch forward into Leona as the two of us fell to the ground. The flames continued for another few seconds, my trench coat beginning to heat up to a temperature that was going way past comfortable.
But despite the vicious heat, I forced myself to focus on the spell I was about to conjure a moment ago. By the time the flames had stopped ravaging my back, I had the spell charged up and ready to go.
Spinning around quickly, I forced out one hand to direct the spells magick towards the guy who had just tried to burn us to death. A blast of ice blue energy left my hand and poured over the defensive shield surrounding him. The guy smiled at first, thinking his shield had withstood my attack. But his smile soon faded when the fiery energy around him began to freeze up as a thick frost spread rapidly over it until the guy inside was no longer visible and there was just a huge ball of ice there in the center of the parking lot.
I rolled off Leona, and she sat up, stunned for a second by what she was seeing. “Nice,” she said, bouncing to her feet.
“We won’t have long before—”
My words were interrupted when the icy cocoon surrounding the Pyro in the parking lot exploded in a ball of flame, bits of thick ice propelled in all directions, melted before they hit the ground.
“You were saying?” Leona had her gun pointed at the guy again.
"Shoot him while his shield is down!" I said, taking out my own pistol and pulling back the hammer as I aimed at the Pyro, fired and missed. "Shit!"
Leona got three shots off, one of which hit the Pyro in the leg, but which did nothing to slow him down.
Too full of power and adrenaline to even feel it.
Then the Pyro directed a fireball at Leona as she was shooting. I dived and pushed her out of the way, taking the fireball in the back, the force of it lifting me off my feet and sending me flying forward to the hard ground. It was like getting hit with a hot ball of lead and having it drop on you as you got smacked to the ground. More than that, it hurt like a motherfucker.
Despite the pain, I groaned and managed to flip myself around so I could direct another attack at the Pyro. But then I saw Blaez go charging in, and I stopped with my attack. The Garra Wolf was majestically ablaze, lines of fiery supernatural energy all over his body like thin trenches of magma. The flames which erupted from these power lines were intense, surrounding Blaez. The Pyro didn't even notice the wolf coming at him until the last second, and when he did notice, his mouth dropped open as he realized that he couldn't counter fire with fire, at least not fire with sharp teeth and claws.
Blaez growled with guttural aggression and launched himself at the Pyro from over ten feet away, his fiery black body bolting through the air like the world's most terrifying missile, his massive jaws wide open and aimed squarely at the Pyro's throat. The Pyro all but screamed as he tried to backtrack, but he didn't stand a chance. Blaez hit the guy in the chest like ten tons of steel, his jaws clamped over the Pyro's throat as he flattened him to the ground.
“Halt!” I shouted at Blaez as I scrambled to my feet. “Halt, Blaez!”
Blaez's eyes found mine, his powerful jaws still wrapped around the Pyro's throat. I knew by the look on the wolf's face that Blaez wanted nothing better than to crush the Pyro's neck and rip the dude's head off, which he absolutely could do, but I didn't want him to go that far.
Leona joined me as I ran into the parking lot and commanded Blaez to back away from the downed Pyro, whose fire magick had all but burnt out by then. Without all that fiery energy, the guy was just a skinny, naked cretin who no longer inspired even an ounce of fear. When Blaez finally let go of his target, he left behind a number of puncture wounds in the guy's skinny neck, blood oozing from the shallow holes.
“Don’t let it kill me!” the guy screeched.
“Don’t worry,” Leona said. “The wolf isn’t going to kill you. I am.”
She aimed her gun at his head and fired.
8
A Visitor
“YOU DIDN’T SEEM too put out by me shooting that guy.”
We were sitting outside the Sanctum in Leona’s black, government issue SUV. Blaez was in the back, lying stretched across the leather seat. "Put out?" I said. "I stopped being put out by things a long time ago. Besides, I've known you for three years. I know how you operate. I know the protocol you've been given."
Leona stared across at me for a moment, her expression softer now than it was before, but still guarded. “Three years, huh?”
“Three years, and in that time I’ve seen you shoot more than a few people.”
“Like who?”
I thought for a second. “Most recently, that vampire who was raping and feeding on girls in Mansfield Park. You inflicted massive physical damage with eight hollow points before bringing the body back to Division HQ for the Final Death."
"I remember that," Leona said, shaking her head slightly. "But you weren't there. I was alone on that."
“I was standing right beside you. You shot him with a Desert Eagle, took half his head off. You complained about the mess in the back there, about his brains spilling out on the carpet.”
Staring straight ahead, Leona asked, "So what are you going to do about this curse you're under, Creed? How are you going to fix it?"
"I'm still working on that," I replied, a by now familiar feeling of impending doom coming over me.
“Any progress?”
“Nope, unfortunately not.”
"Well, you look like a guy who has ways." Her ice
blue eyes reflected the yellowish light of the street lamps outside, making her eyes look almost preternatural and damn sexy, I have to say.
I laughed. “Oh, I have ways alright…”
“I’ll bet,” she said, laughing herself as she started the engine. "I gotta go and make my report."
“Any information yet on the dead girl?” I asked her.
"They're still running forensics. The investigation is just getting started. I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
"Alright, thanks," I said, happy to hear she was finally co-operative towards me, and even civil it seemed. Despite nearly getting scorched to death by a nerdy Pyromancer, I was glad that I had gotten the chance to earn Leona's trust by saving her life. As a soldier, she wouldn't forget that.
I opened the passenger door and then looked around at her. "You know there's going to be more bodies, right? Whoever killed that girl isn't going to stop. God knows how many he killed before casting that spell."
“There’s always more bodies," Leona said sighing. "We'll deal with whatever comes up like we always do."
“And by we, you mean The Division, or me and you?”
She shook her head and kept her gaze straight ahead. “I’ll see ya, Creed.”
I opened the back door for Blaez and he jumped out to the pavement, in invisible mode again. I was about to close the door when Leona said, "Hey, Creed?"
“Yeah?” I said.
“Thanks for earlier. You saved my life.”
I smiled, happy to hear her say it, consoled that I had at least some connection left in the world with someone. “It’s what I do.”
She smiled before gunning the SUV and taking off down the street, tires screeching as she turned the corner at the end of the block and disappeared from view.
When I went inside the brownstone and closed the door behind me, Blaez stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and started growling, his heckles up. Without thinking, I took out my pistol, sensing what Blaez was sensing. Someone was in the house.
Walking past Blaez, I stepped inside the living room, pistol aimed in front of me as I looked around the room, unsure of what I would find. Then, in the chair by the window, I saw a figure sitting cloaked in shadow. Aiming the pistol, I cocked the hammer back. "Who are you?" I said, wondering how the hell anyone managed to get past my security measures. Why didn't I get a vision that someone was in the house? Unless I did, but I was too busy with the Pyro to notice, though I doubted it. More like the intruder somehow blocked the vision in my head.
“I think the real question,” said a deep, steady voice that I recognized straight away. “Is who are you?”
And that’s when it felt like a vice had been clamped over my head and my brains were about to squeeze out of my ears.
9
Bad News
THE CRUSHING PRESSURE in my head was caused by Mitsuo Sanaka as he mentally forced his way into my mind, pulling apart the very fabric of my consciousness as easily as pulling back a pair of curtains. Normally my mind wasn’t so easily broken into, protected as it was by various warding spells that would repel most attempts at forced entry by other hostile Adepts. But this was no mere Adept breaking into my mind, and I couldn't help wincing at the pain Sanaka’s psychic foraging was causing me. It felt like a starving rat was running around inside my skull as it hunted for food. Sanaka was opening and slamming doors in my mind, searching through my memories. But the curse I was under was such that it made it impossible for anyone to know me through my own memories. I was still conscious of those memories, but for Sanaka, the memories were closed off. For him, it would have been like moving through a black fog that obscured almost everything from view.
After several long, drawn out moments of that painful, invasive probing, I could tolerate it no longer, and I started to force him back out of my mind. But this was no mere Mage I was pushing against, this was a Master Mage, the person who had taught me in the first place how to enter someone's mind and how to force out anyone who invaded my own.
“If you were really my student,” Sanaka said. “You would eject me from your mind.”
My face screwed up with the extreme effort it was taking to fight back against him. It was like trying to push a stubborn bull out of a field, so firmly planted in my mind was he. And it wasn't just that. Part of his cunning was that he didn't direct all his energy in one big block. He instead would allow his psychic energy to branch off like tentacles that reached around your defenses from all angles, making it impossible to block them all. But Sanaka had also taught me the art of physic self defense. He taught me how to mount multiple defenses at once that would allow me to counter his splintered attacks. My eyes scrunched closed as I concentrated hard, my hands and arms tense with the effort, I eventually managed to throw Sanaka out of my mind. He could have fought harder if he'd wanted, probed deeper and left me like a vegetable, but he didn't. He only wanted to see how I performed, to see if my patterns of magick matched the ones that he would have taught me (patterns only he would recognize), which of course they did.
"Jesus," I said, relaxing a little and turning on the light, although my head was still thumping from the pressure put on it. "Sanaka. What are you even doing here? You said you didn't know me when I called you earlier.” I didn’t need to ask how he got past my security measures. That would have been child's play to him.
The old Mage stood up from his chair. Of Japanese descent, Sanaka wasn't a particularly tall man, nor was he what you would call physically imposing. He did, however, exude a calm composure that frankly, could be a little unnerving at times. In the two decades I had known him, I had seen him lose his composure exactly three times, and two of those times were done entirely to me. Things could get a little heated between us sometimes, although I hadn't seen Sanaka in a few months before his arrival that night, as he was always off on some clandestine mission doing god knows what. For someone who was over three hundred years old at that point though, he looked good in his black slacks and dark pullover, although his gray-streaked dark hair and beard were slightly longer than they were last time I saw him.
As always, Sanaka was not without his sword, which rested against the front of the chair. The sword was a Japanese Katana and was made by Sanaka over two centuries ago in Japan so he could protect himself against a brutal band of Ronin who were out for his blood at the time. Sanaka served as a sorcerer of sorts to the Emperor at the time. The Ronin once served as Samurai to the Emperor, until one day Sanaka realized the Samurai had sold their souls to a demon in return for greater fighting and healing abilities. As far as Sanaka was concerned, anyone who sold their soul to a demon could no longer be trusted because they could be made to be a puppet of the demon at any time, and thus the Samurai posed a threat to the Emperor, who banished the Samurai immediately. None of the sixteen Samurai took kindly to being banished. Revenge was promised. Inevitably, the Samurai returned and managed to overrun the palace, killing the Emperor in the process. The Samurai had become so preternaturally strong that no one could stop them, and they soon took over the palace. Sanaka managed to escape, which is when he decided he would need the right weapon if he was going to avenge the Emperor’s death and restore justice in the palace, which he was honored to do. So he forged himself a sword from steel and magick, a sword so powerful it would be able to strike down anything it cut. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. Sanaka used his sword to kill every one of the sixteen Samurai, including the demon they sold their souls to. The sword had hardly left his side since. To Sleepwalkers, the sword was invisible. To the magickally initiated however, the polished, blood-red scabbard stood out against Sanaka’s customary dark clothing—serving as a warning not to fuck with the man carrying it.
Blaez had stopped growling and was now padding over to Sanaka like he was an old friend, rubbing his head against the Master Mage’s waist. Despite not remembering the Garra Wolf, Sanaka didn’t seem uncomfortable at all in its presence as he stroked the wolf’s head. “That’s Bla
ez,” I said, taking off my coat and examining the back of it. Apart from a few scorch marks, it seemed fine. Demon skin. Every high street should stock it. “You two were friends, in fact.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Sanaka said. “A magnificent animal.”
I poured myself a glass of whiskey and sat on the arm of one of the chairs after moving the books that were stacked there. “I’ll not offer you one. I know you don’t drink anything you haven’t made yourself.”
He looked at me with his usual cryptic smile and deep, knowing brown eyes that never gave anything away. Ever. “It appears you do know me.”
"You've been my mentor for the last twenty years after my Uncle Raymond put me on to you. Raymond McCreedy?"
Sanaka nodded. “A Mage of great distinction.”
"What brings you here, Sanaka? I'm just a stranger to you, after all, as I am to everyone else now."
“Your phone call stirred something in me.”
“As long as it wasn’t your loins. We might have a problem then.”
Sanaka gave me a dismissive smile and shook his head before sitting down again, his left hand automatically going for his sword, which he held in a loose grip. Blaez sat on the floor, at Sanaka’s feet. “I felt a faint connection when I heard your voice. You also mentioned the spell you were under. It’s a type of spell that I have encountered before.”