by Devin Hanson
“I told you. I was training to be a shaman. If that’s all we came for, let’s get back in the truck and I’ll see if I can explain it to you.”
“Magic is like this,” Ores rumbled, once we were on the freeway heading south once more. The skies were a solid blanket of clouds overhead and wind was starting to pick up, making the trees flex and bow. “It is best described as a state of mind.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ores glared me into silence. “It has been many years since I even thought about this. Longer since I tried it. Even longer still since my gran gave me lessons on the subject. Be still and listen while I try to explain.”
“Sorry.” I mimed zipping my lips shut and throwing away the key.
Ores grunted. “Maybe a better way to explain. The world exists based on belief. Someone with the aptitude for magic could twist reality to a new… position, by strength of will. Not everyone can use magic, though, so this may not help you in using your skull.”
“I’ve used it before. Does that mean I can use magic?”
“Why didn’t you say so? Yes, though it is not surprising. You are halfblood, after all. If you used it once, then yes, you are able to perform magic.”
“I met a houri once who could cast spells on people. It hurt her hands badly.”
Ores nodded. “She was not a pleasant person?”
I coughed a laugh. “You could say that.”
“Magic is about belief. For this houri to cast her spells, she had to want the result to be true very strongly. Could you wish pain or death on someone?”
I frowned. “Yes? Depends on the person, I suppose. I think I could wish death on the ghoul.”
“That is reasonable. But what about him?” Ores nodded toward the car next to us where a teenaged boy was playing with his phone in the passenger seat.
I recoiled. “No! Why would I do that?”
“Why indeed. For the houri, the pain she inflicted on herself started as a way to trick her mind. By convincing herself the pain was being caused by the target, she could hold the belief that the target was worthy of the spell. Eventually, the pain became inseparable from her magic.”
“That’s horrible.” I thought about Elaida and her caustic personality. Despite myself, I started feeling sympathy for her. She must have been truly miserable on the inside.
“It is one reason why I could not bring myself to be a shaman,” Ores agreed. “If I wanted to hurt someone,” he lifted a hand off the steering wheel and flexed it, his muscles bulging in his forearm, “I could do so without playing mind games.”
“Okay. But I didn’t need to do any of that to use the skull. I just commanded the… prisoner to be free. And it happened.”
Ores nodded and put his hand back on the steering wheel. “Two things.” He hesitated, then held up three fingers. “Three. First, there was no contest of wills. Whoever was trapped no doubt wanted to be free quite badly. Second, the skull is designed to act as a focus. It concentrates your will power and makes the effects happen without much effort on your part. That goes for imprisoning the target in the first place as well. What was captured?”
“An archangel. Zerachiel.”
Ores’ knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “You do not lie?”
I shook my head.
“Ah.” He sighed. “Well. An archangel would be difficult… no. Impossible. To overcome with your willpower alone. Even using the skull, it must have taken an enormous effort to capture it in the first place.”
I nodded, remembering the terror of moving through the treasure piles in David’s hoard, knowing that Zerachiel was watching, waiting. “It certainly seemed so. What’s the third thing?”
“Third?” Ores glanced at me, then nodded. “Yes. The third. You must have wanted the archangel to be free quite badly. Angels are terrible beings, and archangels are the worst of them all. I could not imagine what you faced to want Zerachiel free as an alternative.”
There wasn’t any humor in my smile. “Yeah. It wasn’t my favorite night.” I’d had nightmares for weeks, terrified that Zerachiel would somehow work its way free of David’s control and come hunting for me. “So that’s it? I want it badly enough, and it happens?”
“You must also give voice to your desires. Other than that, yes. That is it.”
“The houri used a different language with her spells. It wasn’t Latin then?”
Ores snorted. “Nobody speaks Latin any more. No, your spells must be spoken with the language that is closest to your heart. You must think in the language to use the spell.”
“I can’t believe it’s that easy. Like I could just wish this traffic would be gone? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve yelled at the people in front of me to learn how to drive. Still hasn’t happened.”
He chuckled. “You have to believe, Alex. Not just want. It takes training and a lot of practice to perform magic, even in private. To do it in view of another, well, you must also overcome that person’s beliefs. To make traffic disappear, you would have to believe so strongly that you remove vehicles and people from existence. You must overcome the beliefs of the people driving the cars, the beliefs of their families that they exist, the vehicle registries, the beliefs of the remaining drivers, on and on. All at once. Nobody can do that.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. In a way, it was a relief. I would feel awful if, in a moment of frustration, I killed someone. In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of magic.
“In practical terms,” Ores said after we had driven a few minutes in silence, “using the skull to capture the ghoul should be much easier than making traffic disappear. Much of the heavy lifting, as it were, would be done by the skull.”
“Could you do it? Catch the ghoul for me?” I asked hopefully.
Ores scowled, then shook his head. “Even with a ghoul, I could not wish anyone to that fate. Always is magic used to harm others. I swore I would never perform it again, and I will not start now.”
Well shit. So much for that easy route. “Okay. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”
He worked his hands on the steering wheel. “You could not know. Magic has never been something to enjoy for me. And now… I don’t know if I even can. You have to want it, Alex. And I hate it.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry, Ores.”
Ores sighed. “I should warn you. Even with the skull, capturing the ghoul will be extremely difficult. It has been alive since before the days of Adam, and will have an incredible strength of will. If it has trained itself to withstand magic, difficult will become impossible.”
I swallowed and looked down at the skull in my lap. “It’s sworn itself to killing me. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what will.”
“That is the way of magic. Once you know it can be a solution to a problem, it becomes the only solution. If you go down this path, know that soon you too will be inflicting pain upon yourself. This houri you spoke of had a relatively harmless method. I have known shaman who could only perform magic by slicing open their own flesh with razors.”
“Christ,” I muttered. “Does it always get so bad? My… ah. I know someone who could cast spells without anything like that. All it took her was a word and a look.”
“Was she mortal?”
Mortal was not a descriptor anyone would apply to my mother even by mistake. “No.”
“And she was evil?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Only evil would think it of no consequence to alter the existence of another living being.”
“Is magic really that bad, though? Surely it can be used to help people too.”
Ores nodded, his eyes distant as he stared out the window. “Most shaman start out thinking as you do. That they would maintain their integrity and only use their skill for good. But the power you develop over time is enormous. Even helping someone recover from an illness requires immense strength of wi
ll.
“Imagine, this: you spend long, exhausting days concentrating, altering reality to cure someone of cancer. Weeks, sometimes. Then, later, your patient is murdered in a mugging. All your effort, all your compassion, wasted because of some piece of shit with an itchy trigger finger.”
“I would be pissed,” I said.
“Exactly. You could get retribution, though. All you would have to do is concentrate for a few hours. You could loosen a brake line in his car, force him to be careless with his cigarette while refilling the lawnmower. Nothing major, just tweak existence a little bit. Nudge an already self-destructive behavior a little over the edge.”
I frowned. “Okay. I think I get where you’re going with this. But I think I’d have the discipline to avoid that.”
“What if it happened to your brother? Or father? Or lover?”
“Well…”
“What if it happened ten times? Fifteen? A hundred?”
“I mean, how real is that, though?”
“Maybe not with people you have cured from cancer, but you see injustices every day, I imagine. How long could you go before you started exacting a little judicious vengeance here and there? How long before you want to create an effect you can’t fully convince yourself is the right thing?”
I made a face. “Okay. Point taken. But this ghoul, and the skull, this is a one-time thing. I hardly think I’ll fall to the dark side over that.”
“All magic is, is a shortcut. Even with the ghoul, there are other solutions, if only you knew where to look.”
“Well now I’m a little wigged out.” I crossed my arms and frowned out the window at the cars going by. “Why are you telling me about magic if it’s so horrible?”
Ores sighed. “Magic is magic. Car accidents are terrible things, but that does not make cars bad. Magic is wonderful, exhilarating to use, incredibly useful. And until it is abused, it can make your life and the lives of the people you love better in uncountable ways. But I have never met a single shaman who hadn’t eventually fallen to the temptation.”
“Then why tell me about it?” I pressed.
Ores shrugged. “I can’t see any other way to defeat a ghoul. If there are other ways to do it, I have not heard of it.”
I shrugged. “There are other ways, I’m told. But I would have to sell my soul to find out about it.”
He chuckled. “Now you begin to understand. Always another way. The question is, is the danger of magic less than the alternatives?”
“I would say so,” I said sourly. “At least in this situation.”
“Then in this case, magic may be the correct, and only tool.” Ores looked at me, his brow furrowed with worry. “You have not intentionally used magic before. It is possible… likely, even, that you will fail on your first attempt. You should have a backup plan for what you will do when the ghoul realizes you are trying to imprison it.”
“It will know?”
“Count on it. This path you have chosen, it is incredibly dangerous, Alex. If you fail, the ghoul will be tireless in hunting you. You think it is bad now, but it will not rest while you still breathe. You, and everyone you know, will be hunted down and killed. It will not risk the knowledge of how to capture it existing in the world.”
“Damn.” I eyed Ores a little irritably. “You’re not a very good motivational speaker, are you?”
Ores shrugged. “I am honest. And you are young and foolish. Do you have anyone reliable you would trust at your side in this fight?”
I immediately thought of Sam. For all that I was pissed off at him, he had proven himself to be reliable in a scrap. But Sam wasn’t able to join the fight on this one. Who else could I turn to? Ethan? I didn’t want to expose Ethan to the ghoul. He just wasn’t ready to fight something like that.
What about the Red House? I definitely wouldn’t mind having Amat at my side, or even Savit. I dug my phone out of my pocket. While I had been up in the mountains, it seems I had missed a few phone calls. One was from Francois Sauvage, my photographer. I ignored that for now; I didn’t want to shoot another album without having a chance to sit down and work out how to minimize the damage the photos did.
I also had a text from Jason. I turned my phone away from Ores just in case he had sent a dick pic or something, but I needn’t have worried. All it was, was a simple message. “Thinking of you and looking forward to next time.” That was sweet. I smiled as I read the message again. It was a relief to have someone in my life without any complications.
No time to daydream about Jason, though. I called Tovarrah’s number and listened to the ring. Five, six, seven rings, with no response. After the eighth ring, I hung up. “Shit.”
“What is it?”
“That option isn’t coming.”
I had one more number to call. Ryan picked up on the second ring. “Halsin.”
“Ryan, this is Alex.”
The formality evaporated from Ryan’s voice. “Alex! Hey, how are you?”
“Alive. How did things go with Trina?”
“Athletic.” I heard the grin in his voice. “What’s up?”
“I need help.”
“Talk to me.” There was a scuff over the microphone, and I heard him call out that he had to go. “All right, what do you need?”
“I have a way to get a location on the ghoul.” I gave Ryan a quick update on what had happened since the last time I had talked with him.
“Whew. You’ve been busy.” There was a hint of guilt in Ryan’s voice. Maybe he felt bad for relaxing and cavorting while I was out risking my life. “Ah. Okay, where do I go?”
“We’re heading to the docks now. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick up the trail there.”
“Right. Well, I’ll call an Uber then. I’ll meet you down there?”
“See you soon.”
I hung up and the first fat raindrops splattered across the windshield. The storm was starting to break.
We found Ryan standing on the curb a block from the dock gates with a golf bag slung over his shoulder. Rain had been falling for the last ten minutes, and his canvas jacket was dark around the shoulders, his blonde hair plastered to his head.
I pointed him out to Ores and the hinn pulled the truck over to the curb. I shouldered the door open, then shifted over to the center seat to make room for Ryan. Ryan got one foot up into the cab and froze, his eyes locked with Ores.
“Ryan, this is Ores. He’s helping me.”
Ryan pulled himself the rest of the way into the cab, moving cautiously and never breaking eye contact with Ores. “I see.” After a moment he stuck his hand out. “Ryan Halsin.”
“Ores.”
Their handshake was a quick grip and release.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Do I need to get a ruler out so you two can measure your dicks?” I scowled back and forth between them until Ryan dropped his gaze and flushed a little.
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “You, ah, have interesting companions.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No.” Ryan pulled the door shut and it stuck before it closed all the way.
“You have to slam it. There you go. You came prepared, I take it?”
Ryan settled himself and pulled the seatbelt over his shoulder. It was a tight fit with Ores, Ryan and myself, and Ryan got a good feel of my ass as he tried to find the buckle. Once secure, he patted the golf bag in his lap. “I’ve got my tools.”
“Is this where the ghoul came through?” Ores asked brusquely.
“Yeah. I mean, it must have. I don’t think there’s any other way out of the dock.”
“I can smell it.” Ores cranked his window down and stuck his head out into the rain, sniffing.
The bone structure in Ores’ face shifted, elongating and thickening. Ryan drew in a sharp breath and I elbowed him in the ribs and glared at him to behave. Ores leaned out of the window a little further, his nostrils flaring as he huffed in the air.
“You can smell… what?” Ryan asked.
“I can smell the death. Many bodies, a dozen or more.”
“Good,” I breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re not too late then?”
“It will be close. Hopefully the bodies were not taken too far and the storm holds off a little longer.”
Ores put the truck into gear and we swung back out onto the road. The hinn kept his window rolled down and leaned out into the wind. We came to the next intersection and Ores slowed the truck to barely a crawl, sniffing the air. The driver in the car behind us leaned on his horn.
“Fucker,” Ryan grumbled.
We coasted through the intersection, then Ores gunned the truck back up into higher gear. “We are on the trail,” he announced.
The car behind us swung around to pull up next to us. An angry Mexican, his face done up in tattoos, stuck his head out the window. “Hey, puta!” he shouted. “Get the fu—” his voice trailed off as Ores turned to face him and snarled.
The car peeled out as the driver raced away from us, skidding on the wet street.
“Asshole,” Ores rumbled.
Ryan laughed. “I think I might like you, Ores.”
We repeated the process at the next intersection, then again as we passed a freeway entrance. Ores started gaining confidence as we stayed on the surface streets. We blew threw the next two intersections, then turned east onto Anaheim Street.
“Where did the ghoul go?” Ryan asked.
“Somewhere close,” Ores replied. “And it was driving slow.”
“You can tell that?” I asked.
Ores rolled a shoulder. “It is hard to explain. If he was driving fast, it would have thinned the scent.”
We crossed a bridge and I looked at the traffic around us glumly. There had to be a dozen container trucks in view. Storage depots, warehouses, refineries and industrial yards went by on both sides. There were a million ways for the ghoul to make bodies disappear in this part of the city.
Suddenly, Ores slammed on the brakes and swerved over to the curb. A truck blared its horn at us as it went by. “Shit!”
“What?” I asked. The sudden move had thrown me forward against the console and put my heart in my throat.