Jake's Women (Wizards)

by Booth, John

  I had visions of Fluffy doing the baby sitting and winced. Still, he might get rid of the hedges if I could get him laughing at just the right moment.

  “It was built in the 1890’s and the ground floor still has the bells used to summon the servants. That’s why there are kitchens on the ground and first floor, not to mention a downstairs loo along with the bathroom on the first floor.”

  I looked at the plans. “Five bedrooms and two lounges. Do we need that many bedrooms?”

  “We are not stopping at one child, Jake.”

  It was the first I’d heard of it, but it came as no surprise.

  The estate agent was waiting for us at the front door. The house was much more dilapidated than the photographs suggested and when I turned on a tap the plumbing began to shake. But Jenny was right, I could fix that easily and according to my magic sight the building was sound.

  It also had an enormous coal cellar with the obligatory large house spiders. I liked it.

  What really sold it for me was when we went into the garden. Plum and apple trees surrounded a lawn more than big enough for Fluffy to land on, even when you took into account the usual long slide after he landed.

  “Jake?” Jenny said expectantly. There was no doubt about her vote.

  “If I offer the asking price how quickly can we move in?”

  “That would depend on how fast your solicitor can do all the searches,” the estate said. She was in her thirties and believed in power dressing, replete with too much make-up.

  “Assume we waive all that and go straight to purchase?”

  She gave me a peculiar look and then decided I was serious.

  “End of next week?” she suggested.

  “Then it’s a deal. I took her hand and shook it.”

  36. Truce

  Jenny was bubbling with excitement as her Dad drove us home.

  “The first thing we do when we own it; is that you redecorate all the rooms. That shouldn’t take you more than an hour. Then I want you to tidy up the garden.”

  “I think the most important thing is to sort out the plumbing.”

  “Well, of course I expect you to do that first. And check the boiler. Do we need to get a man in for that?”

  “You don’t have the basics. You need to buy a cooker and a fridge,” her Dad said sagely from the front. “And you need to get water, electricity, gas and phone lines sorted out. Not to mention finding an internet provider.”

  Jenny looked crestfallen. “I hadn’t thought about any of those.”

  “Your mother will go over everything with you. She did it the last time we moved house.”

  Jenny brightened at this news, then her face became one of deep concentration.

  “Don’t take it that seriously,” I suggested.

  She elbowed me in the ribs. “Be quiet, Retnor wants something.”

  I shut up, wondering if I should hop straight to the Bat Cave. After ten or twenty seconds she relaxed and smiled at me.

  “Retnor wants you to go to the Bat Cave. But he also wants you to know he has guests and you shouldn’t get upset. He wants me to tell you it’s safe.”

  That raised an ominous possibility.

  “Are you sure he isn’t being influenced or mind controlled?”

  “No, it was Retnor.”

  I kissed Jenny on the forehead. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

  Despite Jenny’s certainty that the visitors were safe, I hopped in with shields raised and ready to fight. There was a bright light in one corner of the cave that resisted my magic sight. It must be our guests.

  “We assure you we mean you no harm,” a familiar disembodied voice said. That confirmed it. The Progenitors had come to visit.

  [Jake. I am connected to the Elders. They advised me of this visit before the Progenitors arrived and confirmed that you would be safe.]

  Easy for the Dragon Elders to say. What did they have to lose?

  “It took us some time to locate this dwelling. Our method of tracing Representatives does not normally include a spatial reference point. Usually it is not necessary.”

  I decided I’d start with belligerence and see where it got me.

  “You are not welcome here. You refused to allow me to leave the Conference when members of my family’s lives depended on it. You attempted to kidnap me in direct contravention of your own rules and now you want to talk as though none of that happened?”

  The disembodied voice sounded contrite; though I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  “The manner of your leaving and earlier use of the Diabli Sword may have led us to employ inappropriate methods. Since the first Conference, many thousands of years ago, we have never had a single Representative cause so much trouble.”

  [Get used to it. Compared with some of the things he has done, Jake was on his best behavior.]

  I can always rely on my dragon for moral support.

  “What do you want?”

  “We wish to assure you that we will be taking no further action against you and to warn you that the Conference World can no longer be hopped to. It would be fatal if you were to try.”

  “I have already got all the information I want about that place.”

  “The Dragons have assured us that you neither know how to create a Diabli Sword nor would want to. That is sufficient reassurance for us.”

  “That won’t stop the Diabli from using them.” Note how cunningly I tried to find out what they know. James Bond has nothing on me.

  “The Diabli are no longer part of the multiverse.”

  “There are places outside the multiverse, and believe me when I tell you, the Diabli are pushing at the interface between us and them.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Do you have proof?”

  “None I am willing to share, but the dragon Elders will confirm I know what I am talking about.”

  “We must think on this.”

  And they were gone.

  [Jake, is there something you have not confided in us?]

  I sat on the sofa and told Fluffy what I’d seen when I rescued my parents.

  [This is most disturbing. The Elders believe that magic in the Damaged Zone is becoming denser as the Zone shrinks because raw magic cannot be created nor destroyed. That is how Gator was able to transform himself, a feat normally beyond dragon magic. There will come a point when the Zone shrinks sufficiently that the Diabli will be able to escape by using brute force.]

  “I don’t suppose the Elders are prepared to estimate when that might happen?”

  Fluffy laughed and I only just prevented the sofa from fire damage.

  [Pick a number between zero and a thousand years.]

  “I choose a thousand,” I said quickly. “And it would be good if you could schedule their eventual return between my many other crises.”

  More flames filled the room and this time I had to rescue the kettle and the cutlery from Dragonfire. That stuff can melt steel.

  My phone rang. It was Inspector Thomas.

  “Hi Jake, Jenny told me you might be contactable. Can you come and visit?”

  I had a lot to tell him so it might as well be now.

  “If I hop to the front door now can you see me?”

  “Try to stay away from the cameras outside the building. I don’t want try to explain your transportation methods to my staff.”

  “See you in a few minutes then.”

  I put the phone back in my pocket. “Duty calls, my noble dragon.”

  [Is there a pretty young constable at the desk?]

  Where did that come from? Has he started reading my mind?

  “I really wouldn’t know.”

  I had to wait until he stopped laughing to protect the furniture. Then I hopped.

  The very attractive police officer I’d seen last time was manning, or womanning, or possibly personing the desk. She saw me through the plate glass doors before I got to them and waved to me. I waved back as the doors opened automatically and I stepped o
ver the threshold.

  There was a feeling of being whooshed through space and I gasped as hot desert air baked my skin and scorched my lungs. The rubber soles of my trainers began to stink as they melted. The sunlight was blinding and I instinctively shaded my eyes.

  Naturally I was trying to fix all those things with magic, but though I had plenty of stored magical energy, I had none available to deploy. This was becoming increasingly annoying. Just how many ways were there to stop a wizard using his magic anyway?

  A few feet in front of me, resting incongruously on the desert sand was a black lacquered box. It was decorated in runes that glistened. I tried to reach for it and discovered it was protected by a shield.

  Using magical sight I could see my energies being sucked away and stored by the box. They were flowing into it through a round jewel set in a design that looked like an eye. Crude paint marks, completely unlike the rest of the box had been painted on below the eye.

  The heat was beginning to get to me and I could feel my skin begin to burn. Deciding to make a run for it, I only got six feet before running into another shield. I fell to the ground and screamed as the sand burned my hands.

  There didn’t seem any way out of this trap, and I was certain this was a trap set by the bomber. It had all of his hallmarks; the only one missing was the absence of an innocent victim to share my fate. He must be slipping.

  The rate of energy loss slowed down. I stared at the box and saw it was nearly full. A quick check showed that I was still half full. The bomber had made a mistake. He had underestimated just how much magical energy I typically stored.

  I tried to create an umbrella over me, but the slowing wasn’t enough. The lid of the box began to bounce as surplus energy spilled out of it.

  Nothing about this weapon made sense. It had been decorated in a fashion that suggested it was a prized possession you would put somewhere prominent for people to admire. The crude overwriting on the front implied that it had been converted from another purpose. My guess was the box had been designed to store a wizard’s energy to be available when needed. Effectively it was an attractive battery rather than a weapon.

  Great, I had proved how well I could reason just as I was about to die from heat exhaustion.

  I put my hands over my head, which was cooking rather faster than the rest of me.

  The thing about a household tool converted to a weapon was that it wasn’t designed to be a weapon. It was managing to dump energy and stay in balance, but only because it had slowed the flow from me. Now there was an idea.

  I might not be able to slow the flow to the point where I could use my magic, but I could certainly increase the flow. That required only the tiniest bit of useable magic because the box was already doing all the leg work.

  I pushed magic at the box. The sweat pouring from my forehead increased. Magical sight showed the jewel beginning to melt, but more importantly the escape valve couldn’t cope and the magic inside the box was being compressed.

  The inevitable explosion was not in the slightest bit spectacular as the shield around the box caught the blast and all the pieces. However, what remained of it was only fit for burning.

  The sky above me turned dark and moments later a rain storm reduced the temperature by dozens of degrees. I healed my burnt skin and stood with arms outstretched as the rain fell over me. Rain has never felt more magnificent.

  I didn’t want to leave any clues as to how I had beaten the trap so I destroyed what remained of the box down to the molecular level. The shields were easy to remove. Then I scrubbed the surroundings clear of all traces of magic. With any luck, my bomber would be scratching his head for months over what had happened here.

  Then, after a quick magical wash and brush up I hopped back to the police station door. The police woman was in deep conversation with two other officers and didn’t see me arrive. I located the highly sophisticated magic that covered the entrance and erased it before stepping across the threshold, remembering the officer’s name as I did so.

  “I’m here to see Inspector Thomas, Tonia. He’s expecting me.”

  Her face paled and she used the table for support.

  “I saw you vanish.”

  “He didn’t get far then,” one of the two male officers said, with more than a trace of sarcasm.

  The two men laughed and walked away.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” I said to the distressed officer. “I’m a very missable sort of guy.”

  “I have to rerun the video.”

  That certainly wouldn’t be a good idea. My magical sight had located the computer involved and a second later the recording was gone.

  “I wouldn’t waste your time.”

  I indicated I was going upstairs and Tonia nodded her head absently. It probably would have been fairer to remove her and her colleagues’ memory of the event, but I hated touching people’s minds like that. It always felt dirty.

  The Inspector waved a piece of paper in my face as I walked in.

  “We received another letter, just like the previous one, incomprehensible marks and your name in English in the middle of it.”

  I took the letter and read it out loud in English, translating as I went.

  “To the moronic Welsh police. This should flush out that incompetent Jake Morrissey and then he will be dead and you will never know what happened to him. Unless some prospector in the Nevada desert stumbles over his bones. The box will be long gone by then.”

  “He doesn’t have a high opinion of us, does he?” the Inspector mused. “Any idea what that Nevada desert reference is all about?”

  “Trap set at the police station door. You might have to send Constable Tonia to rehab. She saw it sprung.”

  “I take it, it didn’t kill you?”

  I ran my hands over my body. “Not even close.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Only one and he doesn’t seem that likely. The bomber’s bound to get fed up of failed traps and come out into the open soon.”

  The Inspector sat at his desk. “Try and keep the casualties to a minimum when he does. And absolutely no more dead police officers. Is that understood?”

  “I’ll tell him the first chance I get,” I assured him.

  “And don’t feel you have to bring him back for trial. Kill the bastard.”

  37. Visits

  I left the police station, giving Constable Tonia a cheery wave. She gave me a suspicious look. I was going to have to find out her last name if we were to keep meeting like this. There had been no sign of Sergeant Jones during my recent visits to the station and I made a mental note to ask the Inspector about him the next chance I got. I missed annoying him.

  Once clear of the surveillance cameras I decided what to do next. I was out of ideas on how to chase the Bomber or Dafydd regardless of whether they were one and the same. It was time to tap Betty again for her arcane knowledge. At least, that’s the excuse I gave myself to visit her.

  Betty was in the milking shed. Only a farmer could describe such a large building as a shed. Over a hundred cows were being milked and Betty was supervising the men carrying out the task.

  When she saw me approaching she ran up to me and put her arms around my neck, lifted herself off the ground and kissed me.

  “I’ve missed you lover,” she whispered in my ear.

  “It’s only been three days since you saw me in hospital.”

  She pressed her body against mine. “It’s been weeks since you shagged me. A girl has needs.”

  It didn’t seem that long, but there was no doubt that whatever I thought when we were apart, when we were together the need to make love to her was close to overwhelming. I’d given up fighting it.

  “We can’t do it here.”

  “There’s a hayloft next door.”

  I don’t know why people associate hay with sex. For one thing hay is sharp and with Betty insisting on being on top, I was the one who ended up with a bottom looking as though it had been beaten. Give
me a mattress any day. However, I cannot deny the sex was pleasurable.

  “Four out of ten, Jake. You are usually better than that.”

  “Perhaps I’ll stick to my wives from now on. They are much more appreciative.”

  Betty laughed good-naturedly.

  “Not going to happen. But try having sex with one of them just before visiting me. Maybe you’ll last longer.”

  I reached over and pulled her over my lap. She struggled as I spanked her, but not enough to suggest she wanted me to stop.

  The spanking came to an end when my hand began to ache.

  “Can’t even do that right,” Betty said as she rolled off me. “You only got me halfway there.”

  That may be so, but I noted she was pretty fast to pull up her jeans.

  “Do you have any idea how to catch this bomber character? He tried to kill me again and it’s getting tedious.”

  Betty gave it serious thought as she buttoned up her shirt.

  “You know who he is. Seek him out.”

  “So it is Dafydd?”

  “Don’t know. Who’s Dafydd?”

  That led to a long explanation.

  Betty shook her head. “I still don’t know whether it’s him. My abilities don’t work that way. But he does seem to be your best bet.”

  “There was nothing personal to use to find him with.”

  “Not in America, but you do know his mother.”

  Whenever I think that maybe I’m getting smart, something happens to remind me I’m not. How come that thought never occurred to me?

  I got up and fell over as my jeans were round my ankles. When I’d pulled them up and Betty had stopped laughing, I gave her a long lingering kiss.

  “You’re neglecting your wives.” She pushed me away from her. “But tidy yourself up first. You’re covered in hay.”

  And some of those bits had got into my jeans and were biting me. I did my famous instant wash and brush up.

  “Better. Now be off with you.”

  Jenny was playing with Merlin. He smiled at me as Jenny turned to face me.

  “See, he knows his Daddy,” Jenny said proudly. “He’s precocious.”