This room of the basement was almost empty—it made sense that the wyrm would keep an escape route clear. But there were a few garden implements hanging on the wall. A shovel would have been ideal, but there were none. Asil used a hoe to clear away the stairway debris.
The second time he pushed it into the mass of rotting wood there was a sharp noise, and an old bear trap closed its jaws on his hoe. A closer look found another bear trap and a wolf trap, rusty jaws agape. He triggered those as well before clearing a space where Tami could drop safely.
“Can you tell where the wyrm is?” Tami asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “Can you?”
After a moment she shook her head. “No. It feels like it’s all around us.”
He nodded. “Smells like that, too.”
There were running footsteps from outside, and he pulled Tami away from the open doors, shoving her, not ungently, behind him.
“Thieves,” accused a shrill voice. A woman—Helen, he presumed—jumped into the basement. She landed in the middle of the stair rubble, scrambling awkwardly to her feet.
“Killers,” he corrected absently.
She was not what he’d expected. She looked younger, for one, far too young to have a son nearly grown. She was tiny, less than five feet. Her hair was cut short and she wore fuzzy pajamas with purple unicorns dancing on them. Her feet were bare and she was unarmed.
“Tami?” he asked politely.
“Mine,” agreed Tami. Her magic swept over him and engulfed the smaller woman.
He stepped out from between them. Tami could deal with Joshua’s mother without harming her. Asil would deal with the wyrm he could now hear moving around in the room behind.
The doorway between this room and the next was closed with a pair of old pallets tied together with yarn. The pallets held back the sea of stuff that filled the room beyond, though a few things were starting to slide over the top.
“Helen,” said Tami behind him—her magic making his skin crawl. “Listen to my words.” And then she started a chant, slow and melodic and filled with power. For a white witch, he noted, most of his attention on the wyrm, she had a lot of power.
He stepped to the side—remembering the avalanche of things that had cascaded into the hall when they released the children before using his sword to sever the yarn. But the pallets remained in place.
Behind him, Tami’s magic writhed and built with her chant. Writhed and built—and changed. Surprise would have cost Asil his life as Tami lashed out with her magic—lashed out at him.
But his wolf had not trusted the witch, even though she had smelled as white as snow.
When black magic blasted at them, Asil’s old wolf threw him to the side. The scourge of foulness washed by, leaving him choking on the reek of it. He rolled to his feet and saw Helen lying motionless on the floor and Tami’s face twisted in hatred.
Black witch, his wolf informed him, rage and smugness intertwined.
How had she hidden what she was from him? He who knew so intimately what black magic felt like?
“You killed my mother,” Tami said—incomprehensibly.
He didn’t have time to try to figure out what she meant because she hit him with a second blast of black magic. This was weaker, though—that first hit had taken too much for her to do it a second time, he thought.
He was old, and after his mate’s death, he’d made hunting down black witches the focus of his life for several centuries. He knew some tricks for dealing with witchcraft. He used pack magic to shield himself. It was like fighting a forest fire with snow—he managed to turn her power from a killing stroke into something that merely held him where he stood.
“Your mother?” he asked. It had been a hundred years or more since he had last killed a witch—and witches, unlike werewolves, were not immortal. Not commonly.
Ignoring him, she reached up to grab her amulet—and he saw it clearly for the first time, as if it had heretofore hidden itself from him. He had never seen it before, but he knew it. Mariposa’s work. His foster daughter had a talent for hiding things in plain sight, making one thing seem like another: a complex magical item appeared to be a piece of costume jewelry, or black magic felt like white. His recognition of what that amulet did robbed its spell of the rest of its power. The corrupt feel and smell of Tami’s magic filled the space around them.
But Asil’s attention was all on one thing: Mariposa. He’d thought he was through with her.
“Mariposa was not your mother,” he said, sure of that much. She didn’t smell like Mariposa. The amulet’s power was broken—but that didn’t matter, because no magic would have been powerful enough to hide the feel of Mariposa from his wolf.
“She was my mother in all that matters,” said Tami. “And you killed her.”
He didn’t argue. Mariposa had died hunting him, though it was not Asil who had broken her neck.
“How did you set this up?” he asked, buying a little time for him to work on her spell. “Our not-date?”
“I didn’t,” she said with a wild little laugh. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when you walked into the restaurant this evening and told me your name. How many werewolves are there who call themselves Asil? I am fated to be your death, old wolf. A circle of fate—you killed her, and I will kill you.
“Joshua always visits his sisters on Friday nights,” she told him. “I knew if something happened, he would call me. So I ensured something happened—it didn’t take much to persuade the wyrm. It is afraid of me.”
She drew out a knife. “I have a special death planned for you. How convenient that Helen is here to give me the power I need to make your dying so terrible that it will feed me for decades.”
“Black witches gain power from pain and death,” said Asil, stating clearly what they both knew.
But Tami, crouched beside Helen and petting the unconscious woman with a tender hand, wasn’t paying attention to Asil. Instead she crooned, “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt for long. I don’t need your pain to power this spell.”
That was fine with Asil, because it wasn’t Tami that Asil had been talking to.
As Tami raised her hand to position the knife, a shot rang out.
It was a head shot, beautifully placed. The witch was dead before she would have heard the sound, her head the sort of messy ruin a shotgun fired at close range tended to make.
Shotgun safely held, Joshua jumped down into the basement. Carefully not looking at the dead body, he knelt beside his mother, where Asil was already checking her out.
“Unconscious, but her breathing and her heart rate are fine,” Asil told him. “Weren’t you supposed to wait in the car?”
“I saw Mama come running out the front door with her shotgun,” Joshua told Asil. “I left the kids in the car and came to see if I could talk sense into her before she confronted a witch and a werewolf. Funny thing is, though, about ten feet from the door, she stopped, set the gun down. She stood for a few moments and then ran screaming and jumped into the basement.”
The black witch had needed a victim to power her revenge, and apparently had persuaded the wyrm, who held a leash on Joshua’s mother, to cooperate.
“I would have followed Mama, but by the time I got to the basement door, she was down. I thought Tami was one of the good guys, you know?” His voice cracked, as if he were a few years younger than he was.
Asil nodded. “As did I.”
“You knew I was watching,” Joshua said.
Asil nodded. “We werewolves have very good hearing. I heard you load the shell into the shotgun.”
Joshua’s mouth twisted. He glanced at the dead woman and then away. “I know how to shoot. Grandma taught me.” His eyes widened. “What will happen to the kids when I go to jail?”
“You saved your mother and me,” Asil told him. Though he was pretty sure he would have killed
the witch before she could get to him. He had the pack magic and he hadn’t been idle while the witch was talking. But the shotgun had been most effective.
“What do you mean?” Joshua asked. “Who was Mariposa?”
Asil considered how to spin the events of this night so that they worked to the advantage of all of the survivors. He was too old to have much faith in the justice system. Maybe—
And that was when the wyrm broke through the pallets and attacked.
It was young—which he had gathered when he found that only Helen was enthralled. He had once killed a wyrm who had enthralled a whole village. That wyrm had been forty feet long and six feet in diameter.
This wyrm was a quarter of that size, but quick. Asil had worked up a pretty good sweat, and his wolf was quite happy by the time he slid the sword into the wyrm’s brain and it writhed its last.
With a satisfied grunt, Asil pulled his sword free, cleaned it on a piece of relatively clean cloth from the hoard, and then checked on Joshua and his mother.
The boy was standing over his mother, shotgun at the ready. He looked a little pale, and when Asil approached, he flinched back. “Jeez, you’re fast,” he said.
Awe, thought Asil. With a touch of fear. Appropriate reactions to the sight of Asil in action.
“Yes,” he agreed mildly.
Joshua swallowed, squared his shoulders, and said, “I’m glad you were on my side.” He glanced at his weapon. “I couldn’t get a clear shot.”
“Just as well,” said Asil. “No one seems to have reacted to your first shot. If you’d kept going, someone would call the police.”
“Tami is dead,” said Joshua. “Don’t we have to call the police?”
* * *
—
“I was just driving by,” Asil told the fireman. “I saw smoke. That boy—Joshua—he had his sisters out already. I just helped him find his mother.”
The blaze had been going well by the time the first responders showed up. They would find that the fire started in the basement, that the old electrical system sparked something flammable. Every fireman understood that a hoarder’s home was a fire waiting to happen.
With all of the occupants accounted for, no one would be looking for another person to be in the house anyway. Even if they looked, they would not find a trace of Tami or the wyrm, because wyrm flesh, enriched with magic, burned more than hot enough to turn the witch’s body—bone, teeth, and flesh—to ash. At most they would find a place where the fire had burned hotter than usual.
As for Tami’s sudden disappearance—Asil would call upon the Marrok, and they would smooth it over one way or the other—a new boyfriend, a new job, an unexpected opportunity. Asil was not worried about that part of it.
A black witch and a wyrm, both evil creatures, had been eliminated. A family—Asil looked over to where Joshua and his sisters, all wrapped in blankets, were talking to the EMTs who were securing Helen to a stretcher—reunited.
Inshallah.
* * *
—
That night, in his hotel room, Asil opened his laptop and sent an email.
Dear Concerned Friends,
We should talk about the “no dead bodies” clause in our game. Does it count if, by the end of the date, the dead bodies are eliminated? Also, I do not feel that we have the same understanding about the meaning of the words background check.
Sincerely,
Asil
PS I preferred the cat lady.
IN THE DUST
ROBERT E. HAMPSON
“Three . . . two . . . one. Ready or not, here I come.” Winnie thought he had the perfect hiding place but looked up in annoyance as one of his classmates squeezed in next to him. “This is my hiding place,” he hissed.
Jenny just giggled. She did that a lot.
“Quiet. You’ll give us away,” he whispered. “Why’d you have to come in here, anyway?” He was pretty sure he muttered that last part too quietly to be heard, but Jenny giggled again and he heard the sound of footsteps coming closer.
The dark alcove was barely deep enough to hold one person, and Jenny squeezed in tighter. Winnie was eight and Jenny was seven and a half. That half year was important, and he thought of her as just a kid. She didn’t seem to think so, and had an annoying tendency to follow him around. Like now.
Jenny squeezed past him to the back of the alcove. Although her movements were quiet, her squirming around threatened to push him out into view of nine-and-a-half-year-old Chris, who was Seeker this round. His elbow bumped something, and he stifled a shout over the tingling pain shooting down his arm.
The game temporarily forgotten, he turned to examine the wall and the strange projection. A door! It was some sort of hatch, and there was a large lever instead of a conventional handle or doorknob. He pushed on the lever and there was a loud metal-on-metal scraping sound.
“A-HA!” Chris was standing in the hallway, blocking the alcove. “Caught you.”
Jenny quickly kissed Winnie on the cheek, then ducked low and ran under the older boy’s arm. Once in the hallway, she ran straight for the fire hose cabinet that they were using for home base. “Olly Olly Oxenfree!”
Darn it.
The older boy reached out and punched Winnie roughly in the shoulder. “Tag. You’re it.”
* * *
—
“Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to open a door until you know what’s on the other side?” Jenny was tagging along. Again. Sometimes it was annoying, but he had to admit that he’d gotten used to it over the years.
“I heard my parents talking about it. They said it was special, once, but not anything of importance anymore. Aren’t you curious what it is?” Winn had “borrowed” a can of lubricating oil from his father’s shop, and was busy applying it to the latch and hinges.
“I heard it was a storage room of some sort, but Chris says that it’s the door to summer.” Jenny glanced around nervously, but she didn’t leave.
“Hah! As if he even knows what that is.” Winn snorted. He added some more lubricating oil into the mechanism and then worked the handle. The door creaked but opened without too much effort. He reached up and switched on the light affixed to his headband.
“Oh. Wow.”
* * *
—
“You realize that everyone thinks you are nuts,” Jenny said. “No one else our age would want to spend time in a museum.”
Winn thought about that for a moment. He knew his—well, he wouldn’t exactly call it an obsession—“hobbies” were laughed at by most of his friends. “I know. They think I’m weird. But somebody has to look after the stuff, or else the history will be lost.”
“Well I’m going to the movies, and then a bunch of us will be meeting for sodas afterward.” Jenny was popular, and there was no doubt that there would be plenty of boys willing to escort her to both the movie and to the diner. The fact that she appeared to feel something for him was not entirely lost on Winn; after all, she’d been trailing after him for eight years. Unfortunately, he still had more work to do tonight. Otherwise it would be weeks before he could get back to fix these displays.
Winn thought a moment. “I know. I wish I could go, too. But the longer these things stay out without a proper sealed display case, the harder they’ll be to clean.” Sure, it was a lame excuse and would just be more material for insults and teasing by the classmates who didn’t get it. Only Jenny seemed to understand why he wanted to preserve the museum, particularly since the adults didn’t seem to care anymore. The town of Armstrong was suffering, the mine was closed, and it seemed like there was hardly a reason for tourists to come here. They used to come to the museum, but there hadn’t been a curator for at least twenty years. Some of the artifacts were in poor repair, and the displays had more or less fallen apart. Winn had taken it upon himself to try to fix things up, ever sinc
e he’d started sneaking in here five years ago and become enthralled with the art and history of the place.
“Okay, suit yourself,” Jenny said. “But if you have time later, why don’t you come by for a soda or milkshake?” Winn wasn’t sure what the look was that she had just given him, but it sure caused a shiver that couldn’t be blamed on the cold workshop. He wasn’t so oblivious that he didn’t realize he really needed to try to meet the others at the diner once their movie was over.
Jenny turned and left the museum, taking care to seal the door that she and Winn had discovered those many years ago playing hide-and-seek. It was their own private entrance to the museum, a service entrance everyone had forgotten. The front door was locked and thermal sealed, with an official-looking sign that read MUSEUM CLOSED over a hand-lettered sign that read PROBABLY FOREVER.
Winn pulled the thermal hood of his parka up and went back to working on the display case. He had found two 70 mm Hasselblads and a Maurer in a broken case surrounded by dust eddies and ice crystals. The pressure seal had probably deteriorated recently while he was working on creating a new catalog of stored exhibits. Winn guiltily figured he needed to replace the case and get the cameras into an inert atmosphere soon, or restoration would be difficult if not impossible.
Fortunately the cold temperatures in the workshop helped with the preservation, even if it did make working in the museum more difficult. He planned to restore all three. He didn’t need two of the 70 mm cameras, but there was a guy in Eugene who wanted a working camera and was willing to pay or trade for other supplies and collectibles. It was always a toss-up whether to work for payment or trade, considering he usually spent any extra money on new acquisitions. He could usually only afford nonworking items for which there were no parts, but that was okay . . . he could make the parts himself. It took more time, but the only cost was for feedstock; he could earn extra money as a machinist, same as his father. The problem was, no one wanted to hire a sixteen-year-old these days, no matter how good he was with a programmable milling machine and 3-D printer.
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