by Martha Carr
Lois let out a snort. “Fair enough. The report is about regular citizens, translate humans, seeing larger than average wolves that have been tearing up plants and maybe a few pets. Then disappearing into thin air. Boy, this is not good. I was hoping I’d get to go to my grave without humans finding out about shifters. I believe they call them werewolves.”
“You knew all along about shifters?”
“Of course I did,” said Lois, insulted. “I was a member of the Silver Griffins, after all.” She slid her finger across the screen, scrolling to the next page. “Shifters have been with us since ancient times, long before the last gates were open. But the natives took them as some kind of sign of the devil at first, and then as pure fiction. The magical community on Earth helped perpetuate that myth and we were all hoping to keep it that way. Humans have proven to be testy when they find out some of them were used in spells and turned into hairy beasts with claws and fangs. They tend to burn the rest of us at stakes when they hear that sort of thing.”
Hagan kept looking up at the board even as he fumbled around for the bowl of Starburst. Lois conveniently kept waving her wand to move it inches from his reach. “Dragon egg found on farm in Virginia… Artifact… artifact… artifact…” He looked up just in time to see Lois lower her wand. “Hey! Unspoken rule among partners. You don’t mess with the food… ever.” He jerked his head back toward the scroll crawling across the middle of the room. The annoyance quickly dropped from his face as he waited to see if the same combination of symbols passed in front of him again.
“There it is… sanctuary. You don’t think? Is the magic stream keeping an eye on the sanctuaries? What’s that symbol mean? Isn’t that death… no, something close…”
Lois lowered her iPad and looked up, the color draining from her face. She jumped to her feet, pushing up her glasses as the iPad slid off her lap. “Maim… that’s what that means. Rough translation but close enough. Nothing good. Something bad is happening at the sanctuary.”
Hagan looked back at the symbols, doing his best to read them. “I thought that place was the magical Fort Knox for animals.”
“It’s supposed to be. Hell, this is the first time it’s shown up on our boards. We need to tell Leira.”
“General Anderson sent her on some kind of recon and Correk’s out on a Fixer assignment.” Hagan stood up and clapped his hands together. “That leaves you and me. Come on, don’t shake your head. From the looks of that thing, there’s no time to consult with others. That place means a lot to a lot of good people. Beam me up there. Do it!”
“Oh, I am going to get in so much shit if this goes south. Helping a human being go battle something magical in a hidden sanctuary. So much paperwork if you get killed.”
“I’ll do my best to save you from the paperwork, trust me. Now do it. Come on, chop chop.”
Lois looked up at the coordinates one more time and waved her wand, opening a portal just behind the wounded Perrom. His arm lay by his side, torn at the muscle by his shoulder and he was bleeding badly. Lucius was towering over him, his arm raised to tear out Perrom’s throat.
Hagan leaned through the opening of the portal and lifted Perrom in one motion, pulling him into the warehouse. His hands dipped into the black mist partially covering Perrom, clinging to the hairs on his arm as he pulled back. His stomach lurched at the stench as he held up Perrom’s head, even as he looked directly in Lucius’ eyes.
“Close it! Close it now!” He could feel the swish of wind as Lucius brought down his paw in anger and lunged toward the opening. Lois was ready and whipped her wand across the open space, zipping the portal closed in the nick of time.
Hagan rested Perrom on his desk, pushing everything off the surface and onto the floor as he laid him back. Perrom’s body tried to take on the appearance of the desk, instinctively hiding him but the scales fluttered, going back and forth. “Get some bandages or some rags to stop this bleeding.” Hagan wasn’t waiting for Lois. He pulled off his tie and wrapped it around Perrom’s arm just at the shoulder, making a tourniquet. “Come on Wood Elf, stay with us.”
Lois came running with the first aid kit shoving it toward Hagan as she raised her wand, mumbling spell after spell trying to find one to stop the bleeding. “Nothing is working!” She shook her head in desperation. “Has to be that damned shifter! There’s something about him. Some kind of spell clinging to him that’s poisoning everything. We have to find the Gardener. He may know what to do.”
“That arm looks bad. If we don’t figure out something he may not be able to keep it.”
Lois shook out her arms and waved her wand, opening a portal to Oriceran. “Then we better get moving.”
“Not the way I pictured seeing another world for the first time.” He gently lifted Perrom off the desk and held him close as the blood soaked through his shirt making an ever-increasing stain. He stepped through the portal and stood in the clearing looking around, waiting for Lois. “How do we find the Gardener?”
“We don’t. He’ll find us. I just hope we’re not too late.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Yumfuck sat on the back of the couch in the guest house, wearing his red cowboy boots. He was licking his paw and rubbed his paw on his cape, working at the worst of the stains to see if he could make his super hero costume look a little more dignified. It wasn’t working. “Meh, will have to do for now. There’s work to be done.”
He put on the cape and mask and bounded up to the back of the red velvet chair to get a look at himself in the mirror. “Not bad.” He dropped his voice into a low grumble and put his hands on his hips. “I am Batfuck. Time to get to work.”
He headed out into the neighborhood looking for trouble. The bar was just getting warmed up with the early lunch crowd as Yumfuck waited in the shadows for Estelle to walk back inside. He saw his chance and ran for the knot in the fence that was just his size and leaped through head first, the cape streaming behind him. It snagged on a nail and left him hanging, floating just above the concrete on the other side.
The troll took the opportunity to spread his arms out straight in front of himself and fly momentarily. He let out a satisfied cackle and put his feet down, working the cape off the nail and examining the new small tear it had made. “Price of justice, motherfuckers.”
He took off running down Rainey Street searching for trouble and turned on Driskill headed toward the highway frontage road. He was almost to the frontage road when he heard a woman cry for help. He let out a tiny gasp and stopped to listen, trying to figure out where the cry came from.
“Hey! Somebody stop him!”
A wiry man with a scruffy gray beard and long, dirty dark hair came running down the sidewalk toward Yumfuck. Just behind him down the block a woman was yelling, waving her arms, unable to see the five-inch troll on the ground. She was desperately looking around for help. “He has my purse! Help!”
Yumfuck looked up at the rapidly approaching man and saw the grey leather purse he was cradling tightly, close to his chest. The troll made his move and positioned himself in front of the man’s right leg, timing his encounter.
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi… Now!” Just as the toe of the man’s worn work boot hit Yumfuck, the troll grew to a foot tall, startling the thief and tripping him. He fell, face first breaking his nose on the concrete, still clutching the purse, knocking himself clean out. Yumfuck quickly shrunk back down and grabbed the purse, holding it over his head as he ran back toward the woman.
“I have got to cut down on the coffee for sure. My doctor was right.” The woman watched, mystified with her mouth open as her purse bobbed toward her, as if it was moving on its own.
The troll dropped it at the woman’s feet, crawling out from under it and put his hands on his hips. “I am Batfuck,” he growled, cackling, sticking out his tiny chest. “At your service.”
“Holy shit, the girls will never believe this one. I was saved by a rat wearing a mask and miniature cowboy boo
ts.”
Yumfuck took a bow and stood up smiling, showing all his tiny, pointed teeth. “Aloha motherfuckers,” he chirped and ran in the direction of home, the tiny cape flapping behind him. He turned the corner and stopped for a moment, surveying the landscape. “I’m really getting good at this,” he said, as he bound onto the top of a car rolling toward home, hitching a ride like a tiny roof ornament out to save the day.
The woman cautiously bent down and retrieved her purse, digging out her phone to take a picture of her rescuer but by the time she stood back up again, Yumfuck was gone. “Okay, maybe I need to start drinking wine in the morning instead,” she muttered as she dialed 911.
“911, what is your emergency?” The calm operator’s voice came on instantly.
“Um, uh…”
“Ma’am are you okay? What’s your emergency?”
“Someone tried to mug me.”
“Tried ma’am? Are you safe?”
“Um, uh… yes, I am but the thief uh, tripped and knocked himself out. You better hurry.” Better save the whole story for the girls. Worse they’ll do is laugh at me. I was saved by a crime-fighting rat from Texas. Holy shit… “Aloha motherfuckers is right…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Leira stood in the warehouse listening to Hagan and Lois take turns telling her what happened. Twice she started to make a portal and go over to Oriceran herself, but Lois stopped her both times. “I’m telling you, there’s no more we can do for now. The Gardener of the Dark Forest found us pretty damn quick and took over from there. He didn’t even ask us many questions”
“Just wanted to know who did that to his son. All we could tell him was a shifter from hell. That same beast we saw at the vineyards.” Hagan rubbed his face with his hands. “It was not pretty. His arm was practically ripped off his body.”
“His name is Lucius. He was a Light Elf but Rhazdon turned him into that hundreds of years ago.” Her stomach turned and she swallowed hard. The bitch has managed to reach out and hurt someone else I care about and still no justice. Anger crawled up her throat as she clenched her fists at her side. Her eyes glowed momentarily. The energy sensed her desire to do something, but she held back… for now.
“Rhazdon…” Lois said it with a shudder, slowly pushing her glasses back up her nose. “That dark bitch. She crawled off to lick her wounds after Lavender Rock.”
“Yeah, well she crawled back and sought refuge at Turner Underwood’s estate.”
Hagan sat down heavily behind his desk and slammed his hands on the top. “What the fuck? When did this happen?”
“It’s only been a couple of days. She says she’s here to make amends. To give us help with the shifter and the dark families.”
Hagan’s face turned red with anger. “No fucking way. She’s no different than every other felon we picked up for years. They lie to get something they want. If it occasionally helps us out, they don’t have a problem with that but there’s still something they want more.”
“I don’t disagree with you at all. But Turner Underwood is insisting we let her help. Lucius was his friend...”
Hagan cut off Leira, waving his arm. “His judgment is fucked.” He shook his head. “I saw how Rhazdon fought us on Lavender Rock. There was no shred of decency in her. She was doing battle with us to get her jollies. A magical psychopath. Where’s the justice?”
Lois let out a weary sigh. “Justice gets trickier when magic is involved. Not as clear cut.”
“It should be,” Leira said evenly between clenched teeth. “Hagan… I gave my word that we’d do this Turner’s way, for now. He’s convinced we need her help to prevent more chaos and more death.”
“Then you should share with the Fixer what Lucius has done lately.”
“Does the general know?”
“Against my better judgment, I didn’t share all the latest news with him. We still work for him and there would have been way too much to explain. Not sure I did the right thing. How the hell did that beast even know how to find the sanctuary?”
“If I had to guess, it’s the bionic animals that are being kept there. Lucius is tied to the dark mist, even now that he’s out of the world in between.”
“I saw that damnable mist. It was swallowing up Perrom. Couldn’t scrub the stink off me even after a few showers. Rose even asked me if I was battling demons in hell.” He moved his jaw around angrily. Leira had only seen him do that a few times and it was always when a prosecutor told them a case wasn’t strong enough to go to trial, even when everyone knew the killer would try again. “I told her I was battling something from hell here on earth. Regretted it the second the words left my mouth.”
“The dark mist has an agenda of its own, separate from Lucius. He’s after Rhazdon.”
“We do need the information Rhazdon can give us.” Lois stood back from Hagan and Leira, talking softly. “Lucius is the bigger menace right now and there are thousands of shifters in the world. If he could command them…”
Hagan opened and closed his mouth a few times, finally sputtering out, “Command them. Is that even a thing?”
“He’s the alpha over all other shifters. Yes, he can lead them, if he chooses to.”
Leira sat on the edge of her desk. “Then his focus on Rhazdon is useful for more than one reason.” She held up her hand. “I know, Lois, I know. We need her and I gave my word.”
“But if Lucius catches up with her… and from what I saw of him up close and personal I’d say that’s a real possibility… don’t expect me to shed a tear. Rhazdon has killed down through the ages.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” said Leira, “but Lucius is also a victim. One of Rhazdon’s victims who spent almost a millennium in the world in between saddled with a curse.”
“I remember when I thought a serial killer was the worst thing we’d have to face, Berens. Go to Turner Underwood. Update him on what his house guest has caused now, even indirectly. We’ll continue to hold down the fort here. But you better hurry. At some point this will all spill out into the open and the general will find out anyway. He’s not a stupid man and he has other resources. If he puts all the pieces together on his own, he’s bound to know we knew already and might see that as a betrayal. Can’t say I’d blame him.”
Leira stood up and gathered her keys. “At some point, we do have to stop making up the rules as we go. Only problem is the game keeps changing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Leira stood at Turner’s tall front door, counting to ten before she knocked. Wouldn’t do any good to go in already angry. Save that for five minutes into the visit. She finally knocked and waited as she listened to approaching footsteps. The hair along the back of her neck stood on end, and she pulled in a little energy, ready for whatever answered the door.
Turner swung the door wide, taking in the glow in her eyes and grimaced, waving her inside. “Has there been a development?”
“Let me use some of your tricks of the trade and just show you.”
Turner looked surprised but stopped in the large foyer and waited, patiently. He had one of his favorite canes with him. The hickory cane stained dark with a silver eagle’s head on top.
Leira created a transparent ball of light between her hands, rolling it around as she sung into it just as Correk had shown her.
Turner looked slightly annoyed. “I can see Correk is going to be a new kind of Fixer and share a little more than I ever did.”
“Correk is different from you in a lot of ways.” An image of Perrom appeared, crossing over the worlds. He was unconscious, lying on a pallet in the Gardener’s home deep in the forest on Oriceran. His shoulder and arm were heavily bandaged.
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“That’s a friend of mine, a good one and Correk’s best friend. I haven’t told him yet…” She felt a pinprick of regret. “But I’m going to the moment he gets back from wherever you sent him. His best friend almost died, torn literally limb from limb by
Lucius. Your old friend… cursed by Rhazdon.” Leira tilted her head to the side, pressing her lips together. She was doing her best not to say anything she’d have to regret for the next nine hundred years. Too bad the look on her face said it all.
Turner raised his bushy gray eyebrows and leaned on his cane. “You think my old friendship with Lucius, who he was, is clouding my judgment. Fair enough. But you are going to live a long time and fight many battles, even lose some believe it or not. They will come to temper your wisdom. You are a servant of the greater good, Leira Berens. It’s in your DNA and comes forward no matter what happens to you.”
“Doesn’t change that your friend in many ways died a long time ago and has become a menace to that greater good. Or that your house guest put him there.”
“That is where you are going to have to loosen up your old definitions if you’re going to still do good in this new world order. We are on the edge of very dangerous times. Far more dangerous than optimistic. Magic is returning and it has stirred the bottom of the pot. All kinds of things that stayed comfortably hidden for thousands of years are bubbling to the surface. You know what’s on the surface?” He held up his hand. “Human beings and the lifestyle they’ve grown to accept as fact. But it was a kind of temporary myth all along. I’d like to put off awakening them for as long as possible. If I’m going to do that I’ll need your help and taking this curse off the shifters is the first step. The only being willing to help us with that mission is Rhazdon. The only other beings who possess that knowledge are the damned Wizards and Witches who created this cursed mess.” His voice was growing in volume, booming through the house. “You can see the dilemma. Serve the short term need for revenge, which you handily call justice or hold back, serve the greater good on this new playing field and see what apocalypse we might be able to stave off.”
“I gave you my word I’d play things out your way. Asking me to like it is going too far. It’s not justice, no matter what reasons you come up with. That’s the really strange thing about justice, after all. You do it because it’s the right thing to do and not because you can’t think of a thousand good arguments to look the other way. It’s the thing that really stops the chaos at the door. Everything else is what we’re going to tell ourselves because we’re afraid of this new world order.”