by Rob Cornell
The old-school methods meant not collecting on as many bounties as I used to. (I’d been so good at demon hunting using my magic, the other hunters in Detroit had banded together to try and kill me when the Ministry had mistakenly placed a bounty on my own head.) But I didn’t know how else to make a living. Hunting the misbehaving creatures of the paranormal world was the only job I’d ever had.
When I pulled into the driveway of the suburban ranch-style house I shared with my mom, all I could think about was a hot shower and maybe a bottle of craft beer. Bells? Founders? Great Lakes Brewing? Whichever I chose, it would definitely be an IPA. I could taste it already.
I grabbed my axe and got out of the car—which, incidentally, was an ‘87 Plymouth Reliant I’d had to get because I’d flipped my old car into the air to crush a vampire under it. You could still see where the car had chewed up the front lawn during the confrontation. The wrecked sod had turned to mud from the rain earlier that day.
The chilly October night air smelled like dead, wet leaves. A shiver ran through me as I walked up the approach to the house. The motion sensor turned on the porch lights for me, illuminating the hovering mist. You never knew how the weather could go during a Michigan October. Some days carried the faint remains of spring. Others, you could taste the coming winter with every breath.
That night leaned toward the latter. Which made that hot shower I planned all the more appealing.
Of course, that’s when the vampires decided to slink out of the shadows and surround me.
Two stepped up onto the porch from opposite sides. They must have been shadow walking right behind the damn shrubs. They had their vamp faces on—corpse-gray skin and a red flash in their eyes. They peeled back their blood-red lips to make sure I could see their fangs. They were dressed a little weird, each of them in tailored charcoal two-piece suits, white dress shirts underneath, and bright red ties. Pin a corsage on their lapels and they’d look ready for the homecoming dance.
From the edges of my vision, I saw more shadows shift on either side of me and take vampire form. Dressed like the others.
A revving engine tore through the night silence from the street behind me.
I turned toward the sound as a black van squealed to a halt at the curb in front of the house.
For the gods’ sake, hadn’t I seen this before?
A similar van had pulled up to my house last July. That van had brought with it the crew of vampires who had helped nearly turn me into one of their kind. Now more vamps were at it again?
Seriously?
The side door to the van slid open and two more fanged friends all gussied up hopped out carrying fucking AK-47s. Vampires with full-autos. Never a good sign.
I spun back to the vampires on my porch, sensing the ones to either side of me closing in. I raised my hand and drew on my magical energy. Now was not the time to conserve. I focused on the air, bending it to my will, and exploded a hard gust toward the vampires standing between me and my front door. I forced enough velocity into the wind to knock both vampires back off the sides of the porch.
Their twin shocked cries sounded like a pair of strangled crows.
I ran for the door.
The two flanking vamps rushed me.
I swung my axe at the one on my right, a wild swing that had luck on its side. The blade embedded itself square in the middle of the vamp’s face. He staggered backward, growling, his fingers with their long, yellow nails scrabbling at the axe head.
That extra strength training I had started at the gym after getting branded was paying off.
The other vampire grabbed my left arm. But his grip slid loose on the imp blood slicking my leather sleeve.
The fumble bought me enough time to throw another blast of wind at my front door, blowing it off its hinges and clearing the way for me to dive inside just as the rifle-toting vampires opened fire. A spray of fully automatic hell chattered, pinged, and cracked behind me.
I used the air once more, this time altering it at the molecular level so it could gather tightly enough to form an invisible yet solid shield around me. Shards of brick and splinters from the doorframe sprayed the shield, but nothing with the force of a bullet seemed to hit it. Apparently, vampires had as much shooting prowess as a Star Wars Stormtrooper.
I scrambled out of line of the open doorway and flopped to my belly on the living room floor. The beige berber smelled like carpet freshener. Mom must have vacuumed that day. And here I was, army crawling across it and smearing imp gore into the nap.
Sorry, Mom.
The automatic gunfire continued rattling in the night air, punching holes through the front window until the glass crumbled, the falling pieces sparkling in the orange phosphorescent glow of the streetlight outside.
I kept my head down.
Eventually, their rifles would run dry, forcing them to reload. I didn’t have to worry about the vamps charging in because they couldn’t enter the house without an invite. While they reloaded, I would have a chance to rush deeper into the house and find Mom. She typically went to bed around 10:00 PM. It was half past. Poor Mom. What a wonderful way to get jerked out of sleep. But at least I knew I could find her in the back bedroom, which—thankfully—kept her away from the barrage at the front of the house.
Waiting out the capacity of their clips seemed to take forever, even though it couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds for each of them to run dry. Funny how time drags when someone is trying to kill you.
Finally the shooting stopped.
Three months ago I would have stood up and started tossing fireballs through the destroyed front window. I would have made walking wicks of those bastards. But I couldn’t risk draining my magic unless I absolutely had to. Like I said, I don’t know my limits anymore, except that they are a lot lower than they used to be.
Staying low, I charged down the hallway and into Mom’s room.
I found her crouched against the wall underneath her window. Only a faint bit of moonlight illuminated the room, but I could see the whites of her wide eyes. Strands of her long, gray hair hung in her face. She glanced at me and looked relieved to see me.
The curtains hanging on either side of her window fluttered in the icy and damp breeze coming through the shattered glass.
My heart jumped into my throat. I had assumed the attack had come strictly from the front of the house. All the gunfire had blended together, so I hadn’t realized more was coming from behind the house.
The vamps had us surrounded.
Chapter Two
Just as I realized they had us surrounded, the gunfire started up again.
I dove to the floor beside the bed.
Bullets tore holes in the ceiling. Chunks of drywall rained over me. With the bed between us, I couldn’t see Mom, which worried me. It shouldn’t have, though. After all, magic is kind of like wine. It gets better with age, and Mom was pushing one-hundred fifty. I felt the sudden surge in magical energy fill the room. It felt like a change in air pressure and an electric tingling across my skin. A moment later a pale green light chased the shadows into the corners. A pulsing hum competed with the chattering gunfire and the cacophony of its damage.
I dared a peek over the top of the bed.
Mom stood a few paces back from the window, arms outstretched. A wavering green glow surrounded her hands, while a matching translucent glow formed a screen across the window. Each round that hit the screen caused a bright green flash to ripple outward like a pond disturbed by a dropped stone.
I could hear some of the shots hit the side of the house above the window, but the brick facade kept any from coming through. I had to wonder why their aim was so high. Maybe the recoil from the assault rifles was kicking their barrels up.
Unlike me, Mom had full access to all her power. She probably could have held that shield all night, until the police or the sunlight chased the vampires away. I felt pretty lame hiding behind my mother’s shield like a toddler apprentice, but I wasn’t going to
let machismo get between me and staying alive.
Once again, the shooting stopped.
I wondered how much ammo they had. Between the van and all the assault rifles, I had a feeling these vamps were well funded. Hell, they could have had enough rounds to turn the whole house to dust if they kept at it. I couldn’t see the point, though. They must have realized by now they couldn’t get to us.
Mom dropped her shield and peered out into the dark backyard. “Where’d they go?”
I rounded the bed and joined her at the window. There was enough moonlight so that I could see the iron patio set, the line where the concrete patio gave way to grass, and the white siding of the detached garage. A single maple a little taller than the house commanded the center of the yard and cast deep enough shadows under its boughs for the vamps to draw back and blend with them. A shadow walking vampire could take the smallest scrap of darkness and blend with it.
“Under the maple?” I said.
Mom brushed some strands of her hair out of her face and frowned. “Damn vampires.”
“Maybe they gave up. All this racket, the police can’t be far off. And shooting up the house didn’t do them much good.” I looked up at the ceiling with all the holes in it. “Their crappy aim didn’t help either.”
Mom bit down on her lip as the thought. Then she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
She isn’t a psychic, but she could have claimed the power right then, because she had no sooner said that when I heard a strange whoosh come from the front of the house. A few moments later a smoky haze rolled in from the hallway carrying an acrid, burning scent. I was real familiar with the smell of fire and the various bouquets it emitted depending on what it burned. In this case, I guessed carpet. The particular chemical tinge in the smoke was what gave it away.
My stomach clenched as the whoosh pulsed several more times in a controlled pattern.
I sensed Mom come up behind me. “What is that?”
“It ain’t dragon breath.” I happened to have firsthand experience with dragon breath. I didn’t think they were using any kind of magic to conjure these flames. I hurried down the hall using a mere hint of power to form a breeze that cut a path through the thickening smoke.
I could feel the heat building as I neared the end of the hall. I peeled off my slimy coat and tossed it aside. Wavering orange light made the shadows across the floor and walls writhe. When I reached the living room, I found nearly the entire front stretch of the house from front door to the far end of the picture window in flames. Through the undulating fire around the doorless entryway, I spotted a vampire on the front law with a tank strapped to his back and a flamethrower in his grasp.
He triggered a pair of gouts in quick succession—whoosh, whoosh—while his wide eyes reflected the inferno around the red glow in his pupils. He had his jaw stretched wide, his lips peeled back, while he cackled as if having the best time of his unlife. The nice suit he wore made the image all the more deranged.
I stared, mesmerized by the growing blaze. The intensity of the heat made the hairs on my arms curl, and if I stood there much longer, my skin would start to blister. Yet I couldn’t draw myself away.
Mom’s hand on my shoulder startled me out of the trance.
“Why are they doing this?” she asked.
“Trying to smoke us out.”
“No. Why are they attacking us?”
Best I could figure, they wanted a repeat performance from the summer. That would explain their horrible aim. They didn’t want to kill me, just contain me until they could get their yellow claws on me, infect me, and make it stick this time.
But gods damn, this seemed a bit overkill, no?
And bold as hell. They didn’t appear the least bit concerned about attracting attention from the surrounding mortals or the inevitable arrival of mortal law enforcement. Not to mention the repercussions the Ministry would mete out when they caught wind of such flagrant disregard for their own laws governing the supernatural world.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We need to get out of here before they burn the house down on top of us.”
I turned left and strode into the kitchen. Mom hung by my side. All the lights in the house were out, but the inferno in the living room poured plenty of light into the kitchen. I had stopped pushing around the air, so the smoke had a chance to close in around me. The taste of cinders filled my mouth, and my tongue felt like desert sandstone.
“If we run out the back,” I said, “can you shield us on the move?”
She furled her brow. “Why can’t you shield yourself?”
“Mom, we’ve had this discussion.” I had to raise my voice to speak over the increasing snap and growl of the fire. “The brand, remember?”
“The brand didn’t take all of your power. Quit being so bashful, for heaven’s sake.”
I didn’t really want to argue about this in the middle of a burning house. More and more smoke filled the air around us. We’d start choking on it before we came to an agreement on how carefully (or carelessly) I needed to dole out my magic. She had no idea how it felt to have her power halved—at least. No way to know when she might hit the wall and find out she had nothing left. I likened it to walking blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back in a room I had no idea the size or shape of. At any moment I could slam face first into a wall, but had no way to know when it might happen. Best to move as little as possible, and only when necessary.
Right?
Mom waved a hand through the air. Pale green light stretched from her hand like a comet tail. The smoke around us suddenly cleared. Breathing no longer felt like swallowing fiberglass insulation.
A twinge of envy touched me at how easily she threw out her magic. Even if I hadn’t been branded and had full access to my power, I didn’t have the level or ease of magic Mom did. Not by half. Her magic came raw but refined. For her, moving aside some smoke took as much effort as breathing.
So she should have saved her nagging until we got out of the damn house.
“I’ve already used some juice to get into the house without getting killed. I don’t know how long one of my air shields would last against a few AK-47s and maybe another damn flamethrower.”
“If I put something around you while we’re on the run, and you move too fast or fall behind, the energy will zap you to smithereens.”
“We won’t have to run,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder. The flames had advanced several feet along the carpet in our direction. The heat pushed its way through the archway into the kitchen, concentrating it like a furnace blast. “You can walk us out of here.”
“Sebastian, honey.” She took my arm. “If we walk, they follow. They follow until they figure out a way to break through my magic. I am not invincible.”
I opened my mouth to speak but words didn’t come out like they were supposed to. Growing up, I had imagined nothing could defeat my parents. They had always seemed so powerful to me. Some of that childhood belief had followed me into adulthood. Even now, despite the fact that something had beat my father’s magic and killed him. And that same something had erased all but the barest sign of life in Mom for three years and had left a scar over her memory of the event.
I am not invincible.
Mom smacked me across the face.
“What the hell was that for?”
“We don’t have time for you to freeze up. If you can’t cast your way out of this on your own, you’ll need a boost.” She grabbed my arm. “The basement.”
For a second I thought she had lost it. Hiding in the basement would only lead to getting crushed under the house when it caved in around us. But as she dragged me through the kitchen to the stairwell, I caught up with her train of thought.
Not all magical energy comes from within. Even sorcerers used tools, and the basement was chock full of them.
We scampered down the stairs so fast, if I had missed a step I would have sailed off my feet and tumbled down the rest of the way, taking Mom w
ith me.
Thankfully, we came out of the stairwell on our feet.
The basement holds a massive collection of magical doodads, from spell and history books to artifacts of numerous shapes and sizes and all manner of cultural origins. My parents had worked as scholars for the Ministry, studying and cataloging the ancient magical items and practices of civilizations most of the normal world had never even heard about, let alone read so much as a footnote about in a history textbook. You could say Dad was like the Indiana Jones of the supernatural word. Which, I guess, would have made Mom Lara Croft. While most of what they gathered went to the Ministry coffers, they had amassed an impressive collection of their own.
And stored it in their basement like a pair of hoarders.
We stood in the middle of it all, a labyrinth of sagging wooden shelves, long tables, and stacked curios, all permeated with the scent of age. A scent that wouldn’t last much longer once the smoke and flames reached down here.
The growing inferno rumbled above us. We wouldn’t have much time to pick out what we needed. I hoped Mom knew her way around her mini-museum better than I did. There was no discernible system organizing all this stuff.
She rushed around a bookshelf to the right of the stairwell that acted as a makeshift wall blocking off the corner of the basement Dad had favored as a sort of workshop. It’s where I had found his enchanted pocket watch last summer, something he had carried at all times, except on the day he went to his death, as if he knew he wasn’t coming back and had left the watch for me to find.
I heard the rustle and clink of Mom rummaging on the other side of the shelf.
Another bout of muted automatic gunfire joined the sound of the crackling flames. It was obvious they were shooting blind. Probably still aiming high, just trying to panic us into rushing out into their trap. I almost wished they were trying to kill us. The idea that they wanted to turn me so badly that they would go through all this drama made my skin want to crawl off my bones.
Mom rushed out from behind the bookshelf carrying something in each hand. In one, a gnarled wooden staff that looked one step more refined than it had fresh off the tree it had been cut from. She tossed the staff at me.