by Chris Lowry
That the Indians attacked so close to the post spoke to their desperation, and the fact that more might come.
He licked his lips in anticipation of that happening and began walking toward the trading post.
He could smell bodies on the wind, and moisture. This area of the valley was dotted with springs that created small pocket of meadows in the desert.
He knew where they were by that sign. He had seen it on the maps he studied. Maybe he wouldn't need to keep going to San Francisco, if western bound travelers could come to him through this place.
He would think on it this night, and stay for a few others, if only to gather more information on the place the Spanish referred to as the Meadows. Las Vegas in their beautiful language.
There are reasons most folks don't know about magic. Sure they believe it, like children on the edge of ten still sort of believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but also know that only babies still believe that stuff.
We grow out of belief.
Most of us.
I didn't have that luxury. I was born to magic parents into a magic time just before world war two. My parents were attacked by the Catholic Church and disappeared, which happens a lot more than you think to folks with the ability. I was put in the care of a priest who led the attack on my parents who raised me in an orphanage under his tutelage.
Seriously I didn't have any hang ups about my parents. My childhood was mostly idyllic or at least as sane as a kid raised in a private boarding school monastary could be.
I had new roommates each year, and one or two close friends and was always under the watchful eye of the Father. I was instructed in the rosary and confession, was denied communion until my confirmation and that wasn't allowed until after I hit puberty. That's when they expected any latent magic to appear.
The first signs came when I was ten.
By the time I was twelve I knew I was different and hid it, like most boys who hide their secret longings in their heart or behind bathroom doors.
My body was changing, and whenever the Father tried to question me about it, I just assumed he was referring to the hair in new places.
For my twelth birthday, Father tried to kill me.
It didn't take.
I spent the next four years on the run, living on the streets of city to city, traveling the rails like a hobo. I met a bunch of people, some kind, others not. The kind ones got a little luck on their behalf in the form of magic, just whatever favor I could send their way. A farmer fed me more eggs than I could eat, then boiled two dozen for me to carry with me. I put a blessing on his cows and chickens so they produced more milk and eggs that never spoiled and never went bad.
A grandmother made me cookies once and I put a ward on her home so that bad weather and bad things just avoided it.
Two boys were travelling on horseback to New York and shared their meager meal with me one night and I gave them eternal safety, a personal ward that stayed with them for almost eight decades.
I won't share the details of the bad men.
They were mostly men and they are mostly dead. Men who prey on children deserve horrible deaths, and I gave it to them, and watched while it happened.
The first time I felt guilty.
Good old fashioned catholic guilt for taking the life of another. I didn't like it, I didn't like how it made me feel. Except that I knew that with these types of people gone the world would be a better place.
I sometimes think about that in the dark of the night. When I can't sleep and I wonder about the dark side and the light side. The two wolves that fight inside us and the stronger one is the wolf we feed, if you believe in Cherokee legend.
I could have been a really great Dark Wizard. Maybe not a great wizard, but just great at being bad.
Dark magic is usually used against innocent normal people and done so the magician gains advantage.
When those bad men tried to do worse things to me, I tapped into dark magic to cause them grevious harm. I did unto their person horrors that dwarfed the acts they planned for me.
And when they died I moved on.
Maybe it was the Father's influence that kept me from becoming an evil man.
At sixteen, I joined the War.
It was in the war I learned that the world was a whole hell of a lot bigger than anyone knew, and that we were under constant attack from creatures of legend.
They wanted our world, and they wanted us in it, subjigated to their will and moving to their amusement. The Sidhe.
Creature of fairie and fae, legend lost to modern man and slowly being forgotten much like the magic everyone once believed in. How they hated us, hated that they relied on us to belive in them and that their paths to our world were being severed as we destroyed the wilderness in the name of progress.
The Sidhe kept coming at us and though forbidden by an edict older than even their memory against direct interference they still used their influence to try to usurp control of man.
They wanted us to remember them, and fear them. Fear their magic which we no longer believed in.
They were bad.
It was one of the reasons I said yes when the Judge told me I was a Marshal.
Justice against the bad things.
And I never once considered that I might be one of them.
CHAPTER
It was literally the coolest thing to ever see.
I didn't see it, but it had to be. I sprinted across the ground and dropped to my knees on the slick surface, leaning back Matrix style as bolts whizzed over my head and body. Fingers held out unleashing hell on the witch, on her demon. Coat whipping in the wind and appropriate bad ass scowl on my brow.
Probably a good thing I didn't see it.
That's how I'm telling it though. For anyone who wasn't there.
"I was there," said Elvis.
"Shut up ghost."
"That's not how it happened."
"Did you hear the shut up part, or did I just say it in my mind?"
He was right. I hated it.
My slip and slide into battle started off well enough. I got the sprint part right.
But instead of dropping to my knees, one foot clipped the other and I sprawled on my face.
Instead of sliding in a very cool, awesome manner, magic blazing, it was more of a desperate crawl on the floor hoping like hell I didn't get my ass shot off.
Literally.
I fetched up in the corner where the wall met the floor and rolled over in time to shoot off a couple of blocking spells.
See, there's no way the first version isn't more entertaining. More elegant.
"I know you," said the ghost of my watcher. "I know how you operate. You're going to play this up and try to come out a hero."
"In the middle of a fight Elvis."
"Left."
I banged off a shot from the tip of my finger. It wasn't a lightning bolt, more like a shimmer in the air as energy transformed from my willpower into a manifestation of magic.
The result was an expanding circle of nothing that collided with another circle of shimmering air from the witch I could still hear cackling until a miniature sonic boom popped her quiet for a second. A literal second.
Then she cackled again.
"You snort when you laugh," I called out. "You're snorting."
That shut her up.
But now she was quiet and doubling down on the whole try to kill me thing.
I wiggled my fingers and tried to think of a way out of this predicament. Because the witch had back up. In the form of a demon, and they both had me dead on the agenda.
CHAPTER
During the second book, the Marshall learns about the third witch summoning a Dragon in Montana. Awakens an ancient Dragon.
“There are rumors afoot.”
“Afoot?”
“It’s an expression.”
“I think you’ve been hanging around Tera too much.”
“I’m tethered to you my corporeal friend, if I�
�m too close to someone it’s my proximity to you that’s the cause.”
“About that-”
“You haven’t found a spell to untether us.”
“I haven’t found a cure to this ailment.”
“I ail you. You prefer I ale you?”
“A ghost who spouts beer instead of rumors. That’s a tether I wouldn’t mind.”
“The rumor is one of the witches has awoke a dragon.”
“A dragon.”
“In the West.”
“How far West? All the way to Japan West? Because I’ve always wanted to visit Japan. I’d like to meet a Kitsune.”
“I can summon a Kitsune, if you like.”
“Kitsune can’t be summoned. They aren’t demonic.”
“I meant summon as in to call, not the supernatural sense.
“You have a kitsune on speed dial?”
“Had. One of the Watchers is Kitsune.”
“Their experience with dragaon’s may come in handy.”
“This particular dragon is not in Japan. It’s in the West, as in the old Western part of Montana. Big Sheep country.”
“I think it’s Big Sky Country.”
“Nope, Big Sheep. Dragons can’t carry off the sky to eat.”
“Dragon’s in Montana.”
“With a witch.”
“Damn it.”
“I told you, it’s gonna be that kind of day.”
LATER
“A dragon is as large as a whale.”
“One of those cute little white whale’s right?”
“Blue Humpback.”
“A flying whale.”
“That breathes fire,” she added. “And is magic resistant.”
“Great.”
“You could get a lance.”
“Do lance’s work?”
“How do you think Lance-a-lot got his name?”
“He killed dragons?”
“He and Merlin.”
“Knights of the Round Table were dragon hunters?”
“Merlin lived in Japan for almost a century before journeying to the Isle. He carried with him the knowledge to protect and defend in the land through which he traveled and eventually settled to call home.”
“Where does one go about finding a lance?”
“They were destroyed in the Dragon wars. You will have to make one.”
The Marshall pushed up the edge of his hat and sipped on the sweating bottle of beer between his fingers.
“I’m not up on my current metal-ology so I don’t know how to make a lance. Is it like carving a spear point on the end of a stick? Because that I can do.”
“Metallurgy,” said Okori. “And no mere wooden stake would harm a dragon. A lance must be forged.
The Marshall leaned his head sideways and shot a withering look at the Kitsune. She didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m not a blacksmith.”
“You are a quest magic man,” she turned up the corner of one mouth into a cute smirk. “A magic quest to build an object of magic the world hasn’t seen in over five hundred years.”
“I’m here to hunt a witch and stop a dragon,” he argued but it was weak.
“Your ghost friend can tell you how important this is, and to save the world.”
“Save the world?”
Okori bowed her head.
“He did not share this information with you.”
“Elvis?”
“I was going to, I swear, we just hadn’t reached that point yet.”
“The point where you tell me I have to save the world.”
“That one.”
“A dragon will self replicate in fourteen days once awakened.”
“Self replicate? Clone itself?”
“I’m sorry, the translation on that word may be wrong. It will make babies. Hundreds of dragon eggs scattered around the countryside.”
The Marshall sucked down the rest of his beer.
“Dragon babies.”
“Dragon babies who will awake hungry and wreak terror upon the world.”
“Hunt a witch, kill a dragon, find it’s eggs. Magical quest,” the Marshall shook his head and stood.
“Collect the materials and forge the lance, kill the dragon, and if it’s laid eggs, you must hunt them as well.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
He laid a twenty dollar bill on the bar and zipped his leather bomber. He glanced at the eyes of the Kitsune and felt a small tug at his heart. Why did the bad ones always have to be so gorgeous?
The Marshall has to find a meteor with the right metal in it.
The Marshall has to find a five hundred year old tree.
"You know you need a staff, right?"
I shook my head.
"I don't need a staff. This isn't the middle ages. I'm not Merlin with some crystal ball on a stick."
She grinnned, eyes twinkling and the magic she infected the world with reached out and tickled my loins.
Or maybe that wasn't quite magic, but hey, who's going to contradict me.
"A big long staff," she teased. "The gods know you need to compensate."
I opened my mouth to snap back and she slapped me in the abdomen with a branch from the redwood.
"This will do."
"Do what?"
"Whatever you ask of it," she said.
She ran her slender hands along the course bark, tracing a carbon streak from the lightning strike.
"Touched by heaven," she whispered.
"Cursed," I suggested.
She gripped it in her hands and pushed it further into my chest.
"I could tell if it was cursed. This is what you need," she glanced over her shoulder.
"For the lance. For your staff."
She bent over and grabbed another stick, eighteen inches long and twirled it in her fingers.
"You could even make a wand if you wanted."
"No thanks," I answered.
But I kept the branch. I didn't want to push it.
Besides, a walking stick could look kind of cool. If I took up hiking.
The wood thrummed under my fingertips, vibrating with unreleased energy.
The Marhsall has to go to Yellowstone to forge the lance in the heart of the Earth fire.
The Marhsal has to drive the lance up to the dragon lair.
The Dragon has laid her eggs across the country.
The kitsune is captured by the dragon.
The Marshal storms the cave to rescue the kitsune. Okari. He destroys the dragon.
The Marshal confronts the witch. The Marshal and witch duel. He kills her. Her spirit goes to join Gloria.
It was literally the coolest thing to ever see.
I didn't see it, but it had to be. I sprinted across the ground and dropped to my knees on the slick surface, leaning back Matrix style as bolts whizzed over my head and body. Fingers held out unleashing hell on the witch, on her demon. Coat whipping in the wind and appropriate bad ass scowl on my brow.
Probably a good thing I didn't see it.
That's how I'm telling it though. For anyone who wasn't there.
"I was there," said Elvis.
"Shut up ghost."
"That's not how it happened."
"Did you hear the shut up part, or did I just say it in my mind?"
He was right. I hated it.
My slip and slide into battle started off well enough. I got the sprint part right.
But instead of dropping to my knees, one foot clipped the other and I sprawled on my face.
Instead of sliding in a very cool, awesome manner, magic blazing, it was more of a desperate crawl on the floor hoping like hell I didn't get my ass shot off.
Literally.
I fetched up in the corner where the wall met the floor and rolled over in time to shoot off a couple of blocking spells.
See, there's no way the first version isn't more entertaining. More elegant.
"I know you," said the ghost of my watcher. "I know how you operate. You'
re going to play this up and try to come out a hero."
"In the middle of a fight Elvis."
"Left."
I banged off a shot from the tip of my finger. It wasn't a lightening bolt, more like a shimmer in the air as energy transformed from my willpower into a manisfestation of magic.
The result was an expanding circle of nothing that collided with another cirlce of shimmering air from the witch I could still hear cackling until a miniature sonic boom popped her quiet for a second. A literal second.
Then she cackled again.
"You snort when you laugh,"I called out. "You're snorting."
That shut her up.
But now she was quiet and doubling down on the whole try to kill me thing.
I wiggled my fingers and tried to think of a way out of this predicament. Because the witch had back up. In the form of a demon, and they both had me dead on the agenda.
WITCHMAS DAY
I asked the Judge once why we were where we were and he looked with me with eyes made huge by the tiny glasses he wore, round spectacles perched on the end of his hawk like nose that made the pupils too large to stare at for more than a moment.
"I'm in Memphis," I explained. "The nexus of Little Egypt and close to a ley line."