A Shuffling of Planets
Book Three of the Chained World Chronicles
By Daniel Ruth
Dedication
In memory of a wonderful mother, Marti Ruth.
A Shuffling of Planets
Book Three of the Chained Worlds Chronicles
Copyright © 2018 by Daniel Ruth
All Rights Reserved
Kindle ASIN: B07N7NQ9PH
KDP Paperback ISBN: 9781795394918
Revision 1
Chapter 1
I smiled to myself as I finished engraving the last digit into the circle I had laid down in my basement. After years of hard work, I had finally mastered the formation of the inter-dimensional portal. I bit my thumb and let a dribble of my blood land onto the circle. Instantly a blue and black distortion spun in place above the diagram, quickly opening into a tear in the fabric of space.
My grin diminished slightly as I saw a twenty-foot figure on the other side. It wore no clothes but the only bare flesh it showed was shiny scar tissue. It almost appeared as if the man’s form was made of gray wax that had been left out in the sun. The region below its stomach was even less distinct as if a child had playfully molded two lumps and joined it into a mound he called a torso.
“Excuse me, Mr. Playdough man but I need to get home,” I started politely. The pitiful creature was disgusting but there was no reason to be rude. “Could you please move out of the way?”
“You haven’t paid the toll,” the creature gargled in a voice reminiscent of broken glass. “You can’t pass unless you pay the toll.”
“I am pretty sure there isn’t a toll on interdimensional travel.” As a dragon, I had inherited a treasure trove of knowledge. Some of it was instinctual, some of which needed a bit of practice and training and some was simply a database of facts. I couldn’t remember anything
about a toll keeper between dimensions. “What’s the price?”
“It’s a new thing we just started,” the wax monster explained. As I got used to its appearance, I could almost see a vaguely feline outline to the melted face. “I’ll need twenty Twinkies,” he began as I nodded agreeably. “And the soul of a little girl named Beth.”
“Well, I can get the Twinkies but the soul is in use by someone. How about the soul of a creepy elf guardian who needs to be punched in the face a few times?”
“No deal...” he began before immediately being interrupted by the door chime. I seemed to be a bit muddle-headed because it took me a moment to realize it was the front door.
“I have to get the front door,” I said as I turned to go up the stairs. “I’ll get back to you on that soul thing.” Trudging up the stairs glumly I wondered if I added the soul of a crime lord, would it sweeten the deal?
“Hey guys, movie night?” I asked as I passed the living room where my old friends sat on the couch passing around a carton of popcorn.
“Yep. Tonight, it’s the Matrix. Volume one through six,” Parnell said cheerfully, sparkles flickered around his free hand as he let the magical energy in his body play in his hand. What a show-off.
“I wanted to see Sucker Punch but got outvoted,” Leslie grunted. She was playing around with some gears and circuits. She always liked inventing or fixing things... even if I did usually blow it up by accident.
“Say aren’t you all dead?” I asked. It did seem odd. I mean it was movie night but weren’t there supposed to be other people here?
“If you don’t see the bodies, don’t go assuming stuff,” Parnell said loftily. He seemed thinner than usual, almost skeletal. Cracked, withered lips munched gustily on the popcorn. “Besides, why the hell would you be trying to get back if we were dead? Idiot.”
I nodded to myself. That was a good point. Turning I continued to the door. When I opened it, I saw a huge black dragon. He looked down at me with baleful glowing eyes.
“Hey now, you can’t come in,” I said irritably. “Last time I let you in, you blew everyone up!”
“I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?”
I suppose it was rather petty to hold that against him. “Fine. Come in, but no more bombs!”
“Dragon's honor!” With that, I moved out of the way and he strode into the house. I was about to follow when I heard another voice.
“Isn’t it rude to have a movie night without your girlfriend?” the flirty voice of Mirabel came from outside.
“I didn’t know your number,” I defend myself as my girlfriend strode up to the door. I moved out of the way and she sashayed by me, with a cute twirl of her scaly tail.
I looked back outside to be sure I wasn’t missing anyone. I saw a bevy of demon insects marching by but they didn’t seem inclined to come my way. Looking up I glimpsed a cowboy riding on top of a steed that was mostly a mass of tentacles. He was hooting and hollering as he dug in his spurs. It looked like a lot of fun. However, he wasn’t slowing down so I simply shrugged and closed the door.
Walking back inside I saw that the huge black dragon and the really cute dragon were jockeying for space on the couch. They were also tugging at the box of popcorn, neither one willing to share. On the ground, I saw old scattered and crushed popcorn and broken bones. I frowned sadly to myself. On the one hand the urge to have a neat lair tore into me, on the other hand, I couldn’t bear to move them. Odd.
“Am I late?” asked a bubbly voice behind me. Turning I saw a cheerful elf smiling at me.
“No, just in time,” said Maribel from the couch. “We’re watching Chainsaw massacre.”
“Awesome!” She grinned even wider and I noticed that her teeth seemed sharper than normal. Especially the canines.
“Say, Stella, you didn’t by any chance get turned into a vampire?” I asked tentatively. “Because it gives you bad breath and lowers your IQ by at least fifty points.”
“It’s true,” Maribel chimed in as the evil black dragon lazily nodded in agreement as he took the opportunity to steal more popcorn.
“I heard that,” a faint voice screeched out. I ignored it.
“I’m not a vampire, she said indignantly. “Everyone knows how creepy and icky those are. I would never join a club like that whose god is as stupid as the current one.”
We all nodded in agreement. “However, I do need some blood.”
“Blood?” I asked with some trepidation.
“Remember you promised me some blood to help me resettle my little ones.”
“You mean the horde of elemental presently terrorizing the world as they slowly go insane, trapped in our world?” Maribel asked as she fast-forwarded the movie to the gory bits.
“Well, I was going to go with you but...”
“Sorry, I can’t wait. You know how it is. End of the world and all that.”
“Definitely going to be the end of the world for whatever planet they settle and transform into an
elemental hell on earth.” The black dragon chuckled darkly. “I approve.”
“Anyway, give me blood,” the elf airily replied while reaching behind her. When her arm pulled back she was holding a monstrous tool that resembled a jackhammer with a hypodermic needle attached to it.
“Wait a minute,” I said, backing away slowly. “I am pretty sure there’s an easier way... or at least a less painful way.”
“Sorry, no time,” she said cheerfully. I was getting a bit tired of that smile. At this point, it felt a little deranged.
“Be right back, I need to get the portal and talk to a doorman,” I said as I hastily turned around and ran for my lab. “I am pretty sure I can get a good deal on an Álfar’s soul.”
“I’m an elf, not a Álfar, damn it!” The pointy-eared blond shouted indignantly and ran after me. The corridor to the stairs seemed to stretch unnaturally before me. I finally managed to escape these space defying physics as I reached the stairway and leaped down.
A large hand gripped my shoulder and held me in place. Its texture was of melted wax but I could see the claws of a great cat in its basic form. “It’s too late you know.”
All I could do was to crane my neck over my shoulder. Sure enough, the toll keeper stood in the portal, an arm extended out to hold me. “I have
the Twinkies and I’ll throw in the soul of a Álfar. The crazy is free!”
“I said it’s too late. It was too late a hundred years ago. Now you made me get behind schedule.”
“Ah, there you are!” An elf approached from behind me, holding out the machine from hell. “Don’t worry this won’t hurt much!”
“Lair!” I cried out as the abomination was jabbed into my arm. She was indeed lying. It hurt quite a bit. It was also messy as the blood sprayed the entire room. From upstairs the sound of a chainsaw echoed down.
“All done!” The blond said. “Here, have some orange juice.”
“Take your orange juice and shove... wait a minute. I earned this with blood and sweat,” I spat at her. “Give me the damn juice!”
“You should get that,” The gatekeeper offered in his broken voice. I opened my mouth to question him when the doorbell rang again.
“It’s probably someone for movie night. You should go and invite them in.”
“Sure, I’ll do that,” I said as I stomped up the stairs again.
I was still fuming as I swung open the door. I paused in confusion as I saw my new guest. It appeared to be a giant plush toy. It had a female
human torso and a long snake body. It seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite remember where.
“Shouldn’t you be taller,” I mused as I took in the doll-like form that came to my waist. The round vacant-looking eyes squinted at me in what I assumed was anger. Frankly, it was as if a cow chewing its cud was annoyed at me.
“This is your fault,” its velvet paws swept over its body, then it waived them in my face. If it had fingers it would likely be wagging them in front of me. “It’s your damn dream, you placed me in this form.”
“Ah. I see,” I nodded to myself. “So I must view you as some sort of powerless, helpless but incredibly dim-witted entity. Makes sense.” I nodded wisely to myself. “So are you here for the movie? I think we’re seeing Resident Evil, the Mars edition.”
“No. I am here to get you to wake up, fool!” Her high-pitched whining was starting to irritate my ears. “You promised to establish a high priest on each of the ten worlds.”
“I don’t remember you caring much at the time,” I said thoughtfully as faint memories drifted through my mind. “Ah, it happened. You blew up the world! What you lack in power as a minor deity you make up for in poor judgment.”
“Go ahead and invite her in,” the voice of the black dragon came from the living room. “Anyone that can destroy a civilization is alright by me.”
“Just wake up and get back to your promise! You’ve already been asleep for a month. That's enough even for one of you lazy lizards.” She stuck her plush chin in the air. “Your pathetically muddled clairvoyant dreams aren’t worth the wasted time.”
“Huh, your pantheon must really be on your ass to fix things but since you have no worshippers your power base is almost non-existent.” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully.
Above me, I heard the whistling of the wind. An instant later a shadow flew over us and a tentacle reached out and grabbed the plush goddess. Looking up I saw the octopus riding cowboy digging his spurs in and hollering. A tiny snake bodied figure was wrapped up and swinging behind on a rope like a balloon on a string.
“Stupid dream,” a shrill complaint could be heard trailing away in the distance.” I nodded in agreement.
I sat up in my bed abruptly. Stupid dream. Still, it could have been worse. Compared to some of them that had made me put off sleeping, this one was almost a pleasure. I heard a moaning sound from the side of the room.
“Ouch.” Beth was laying against the wall with her arms outstretched as if she was intending on holding it up. No. Her feet weren’t touching the ground and she was embedded in the wall.
“What the heck are you doing up there,” I asked tentatively. She was a smart girl. I’m sure she had some reason for being in such an odd position. “How did you even get there?”
“That would be you,” a dry voice responded from my opposite side. I turned to look. A curly haired red head sat in a chair, relaxing with her feet up. I didn’t recognize her. “I told her not to do it. But we’ll all laugh about it when we think about it in the future. Or at least I will.”
“Maribel?” I asked, making an educated guess. I sensed a dragon nearby and I didn’t think the hydra would be this polite. “You’ve changed your face.”
“I may have caused a tiny bit of a riot the last time I came here to shop,” she replied with a casual shrug. “You know how it is. If you don’t show humans their place, they try to walk all over you. Then you need to do something to keep the mobs with pitchforks away. It was either this or kill them all. And if I killed them all I’d have nowhere to shop.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that logic. “So, what’s with Beth?” Bits of broken stone and mortar crashed to the ground as the little girl wrestled an arm free.
“You... you... you...” she moaned.
“Me, me, me what?”
“As funny as this is, we need to move on. Your human tried to wake you up and you swatted her. Fortunately, you’ve had her undergo some transformative magic or you’d be down a pet.”
“Why did you let her do that?” I whined in dismay. Not only could I have lost one of my favorite humans but if Jeremy finds out I hit his sister it could seriously damage our relationship.
“I told her not to,” the dragon said with a shrug. “You know you can’t be too fawning with your possessions. Not only does it make them weak but then they won’t follow simple instructions.”
I looked at her flatly. Her own pets loathed her so much they went into a rage whenever they saw her. I am pretty sure the only reason they stayed with her was so they could repeatedly try to kill her. It may also be due to the brand she had seared into their hide. I sometimes think she wasn’t socialized around humans when she was growing up.
More rubble fell as Beth freed her other arm. “Saying, ‘stop or I’ll say stop again’ does not count as a warning.” I frowned again at Mirabel. While it was true this would be hilarious to tell stories about, playing games with the lives of my people was not cool.
“I wanted to relive the moment when you bounced off the force field,” she said with a wicked smile.
“Derek! I can’t believe you told her about that!” Beth squeaked with indignation.
“I didn’t! I swear!” I really hadn’t. Mirabel and I hadn’t really had time to talk much.
“I have a spell that allows some limited post-cognition. Its time limited so I needed to cast it as soon as I could.”
“That’s pretty invasive,” I said mildly. I suppose it was my own fault for not including an anti-scrying function in the wards.
“Since we're dating, I need to know what kind of dragon you are. Don’t worry it was all good stuff. I laughed and laughed.”
I finally got up and walked over to Beth. With a simple tug, she was free. She had obviously completed her transformation class and had a body closer to that of a supernatural creature so I didn’t have to worry about hurting her. Of course, the fact that she got stuck in a wall meant we needed to figure out how to increase her strength a bit. Since she had changed her basic constitution it shouldn’t be too hard.
Once I had freed the little girl, I finally got a chance to look around. I winced. The room looked like it had gone through several slasher movies. Dark red blood covered all the walls. There were
even splashes on the ceiling. Even the zombie murder scene hadn’t been this bad.
“What happened here? It looks like someone died in here.” I glanced at the ceiling again. “Several someones.”
“Don’t ask me. It was like this when I got here.” Mirabel shrugged her shoulders again.
“Um... well... I mean,” Beth stammered nervously. Mirabel and I both stared at her. My stare was somewhat disbelieving. I just couldn’t equate the bloodbath with the girl. “It was Stella.” Right, that made more sense. Actually. No, it didn’t.
“I don’t get it. She came in and splashed blood all over?”
“Derek, I know you just woke up but surely you’ve realized all this blood is yours.” Mirabel sighed, shaking her head.
“Huh. How about that,” I muttered to myself. “I thought I had dreamed that part.” I glanced down at myself.
I was wearing my magnificent enchanted robe that could take on the appearance of any wardrobe I wished. Presently it was looking like my favorite suit.
It was resistant to damage to an absurd degree and would slowly repair itself and clean itself if it was somehow harmed. Yet, somehow there were marks that resembled huge hands on my arms and
shoulders and my left arm was covered with fading blood stains. Correction, the entire left side of my clothes was covered with blood.
I pulled up my sleeve. Apparently, I am far less self-cleaning than my clothes. I looked like someone had painted my arms red. I looked over to the mirror hanging from the wall and through the blood covering it, I saw that my face, too, was awash in red.
“She went into your room and locked the door,” Beth shyly continued. “Then there was stomping around and the building shook a bit. I think she summoned her elementals. She cursed a bit about how difficult it was to get something.” She looked at the walls and it was easy to know what she was thinking. “When she left, I went in. I thought she had killed you.”
I nodded absently to her. This room was disgusting. I had to resist the urge to get a mop and start scrubbing it down. Fortunately, I had trained for this. A wave of my hand and blood vanished from a small section of the wall. I frowned. Dragon blood resisted the cleaning spell. How annoying but educational.
“How could she do this to us,” Beth said, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. Meanwhile, I went into a frenzy of casting, repeating my Cleaning cantrip over and over. “She was so nonchalant about it. She even hugged me goodbye!”
“Don’t worry about it,” I responded in between furious spellcasting. Good lord, these stains were tough. I never thought I would be expending my reserves on a simple cleaning. “I promised her some of my blood for... various reasons. I just didn’t expect to be asleep when she collected. It was a bit rude but she’s an Elementalist. You can’t expect her not to put her elementals first.”
“She’s a poor pet,” Mirabel opinioned.
“True,” I agreed. “I can’t believe she didn’t clean up after herself.”
Chapter 2
“So, anything interesting happen while I was gone? Besides Stella.” I asked as I rummaged through cupboards for food. I frowned as I saw mostly bread, muffins, and sweet bread. There was a big bag of something that might have been fruit. Where was all the meat? “Don’t you go shopping? What do you eat?”
“The school has a cafeteria,” Beth deflected. “I can usually get the other students to bring back food. Clarence, Holland, and Sentha came over a few times and brought food. As for events,” she paused in thought. “I really haven’t been out much, except to eat. And that’s on campus.”
“If nothing is happening why does that annoying man keep calling,” Mirabel interjected.
“Which one?” Beth asked blankly. I stared at her. I wasn’t expecting her to have enough people calling her to ask that.
“The whiny one,” the dragon clarified while buffing her talon-like nails. “Makes my teeth itch. I just want to tear him to bits when I hear his voice.”
“That would be my brother,” Beth said with a worried frown.
“Please don’t hurt Jeremy,” I asked politely. “He’s one of my favorite people.” I paused a moment in thought. “I am hoping he grows out of the whining.”
The three of us nodded in agreement. “Who else has the number?”
“Well, I suppose all the guys have your number. I’m pretty sure almost everyone thinks you blew up your terminal again. Still, Conrad called a few times but he is easy to deal with. He’s sending a new terminal, by the way.”
“Really? Who delivers way out here?” I tore a chunk out of the bread. Despite how dry it was, I chewed it vigorously, imagining it was a steak. I pulled out a cup and with a wave of my hand and few words filled it with water. “I guess I’ll have to call them back.”
“Just remember that you’ve been studying in the library.”
I paused in mid-bite. “Why would I remember that?”
“I had to tell him something. He thinks you’ve been in the library, studying magic like a crazed person.”
“That’s silly. They don’t have any magic related books in the library. It’s all mundane things. I could have memorized it in a day. Heck, you could have memorized every book in it within a week.”
“I know. I already have, but I had to have a reason you couldn’t answer the terminal.”
“Good grief, he couldn’t wait a few days?”
“You’ve been asleep for over a month,” Beth responded with a frown.
“A month? We’re lucky he didn’t come over himself.” I stood frozen as absorbed this fact. Then I shrugged and tore another piece of bread off. “I was more tired than I thought.”
“You must have worn yourself out,” Mirabel thoughtfully added. “You should get more rest.”
“There was a demon invasion and the tearing of interdimensional space, a shuffling of planets. You know. The usual thing. It kept getting in the way. Anyway, I can’t believe he thought it would take me a month to go to the library. I’ll have to check him again and make sure you didn’t damage anything when you reprogrammed him.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Beth exclaimed indignantly. “I just made sure he didn’t notice the little things.”
“Right,” I nodded glibly. “Like his sister going off to tromp through hydra infested forests and wizards' school.”
“Is that stupid lizard still roaming the edge of my territory?” Mirabel spat out, suddenly interested in the conversation. “I told that moron, Kregar, I would wring his necks if he didn’t stop sniffing around.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize he was an ex.”
“Ex? Almost an ex-member of the living,” she snorted in disdain. “Bah, hydras. Multiple heads and their IQ is divided by how many heads they
have. I’ll have to clear him out. If the army actually gathers enough force to move him they may get ideas about my territory.”
“If it’s been a month it may be taken care of.”
“I thought you said the army we passed didn’t have enough power,” Beth asked.
“They don’t. They probably barely have enough to make him move to the other side of the forest, but I meant Faramond.”
“What does Stella’s creepy friend have to do with the hydra?”
“When I popped over last time Faramond asked how to get back to Stella. I couldn’t take passengers but I told him how to get to her. How exactly is he creepy?”
“He has that intense stalker stare. You know, the one that looks like your constipated? Fortunately, he’s usually glaring at you.” I nodded thoughtfully. He really did have that look.
“I assume that was the stupid looking armored man that came through.” The redhead sniffed disdainfully. “Even before he spoke, I assumed he was one of yours from the smoking blood he had on his forehead. You seem entirely too free with your lifeblood. It seems a desirable commodity.”
I didn’t really want to go into details about how my blood was effectively the key to all the dimensional portals scattered over ten worlds. Mostly because Jeremy’s world had nuked her home and I wasn’t
confident that she had forgiven them. There was a distinct possibility that if she could freely travel from one planet to the other that Jeremy’s world would suffer from a visit from an angry demi-god dragon.
“Stella and her creepy bodyguard are just like that,” I replied innocently. From her skeptical look, I don’t think she believed me but she let the subject drop. “He is a bear of a man. He also has a magic sword that does... something. He may have driven it off.”
“What if the hydra eats him?” Beth asked in a small voice.
“Hmm... I think,” I pondered the question for a moment. “I think he would probably give it indigestion. I like to believe he would like to go out that way.” I bowed my head in respect. Beth immediately slapped my arm. “Seriously, I’m sure he’s fine. I have no idea what method Stella used to empower him, but it was a good one.”
“The last caller was Principal Sembling.”
“You mean Acting Principal Durmont Sembling?”
“Apparently not so much ‘Acting’. He was confirmed as the official Principal. They also declared the previous Principal and council head a traitor and removed him from his position in absentia,” Beth informed me. “They announced it in class. There was a ceremony but Sentha and I went shopping instead.”
“What did he want? I passed him off to Mayor Carlos.”
“President.” Beth corrected. I ignored her and she continued. “He said something about being grateful and holding a dinner in your honor.”
“Dinner?” I immediately perked up. “I’ll have to get back to him soon. Wouldn’t want to keep an important person like him waiting too long. “I’ll have to see if they allow plus one’s.”
“Are you sure...” Beth trailed off as Maribel glared at her. She had a point. Who knows if someone would annoy my little lady and be devoured? I thoughtfully stroked my chin.
“I’m sure it would be fine,” I said with a nod after considering it.
“If I am forced to lay waste to the pathetic fools that cross my path, I can just change my appearance and aura. With the higher divine magics blocked, there isn’t a thing they can do to me without a great deal of preparation.”
“But...” Beth’s eyes darted around the room, obviously trying to find inspiration.
Now both Beth and I were looking at the defiant dragon woman with the beginnings of panic. “You know, perhaps dinner with stuffy old folk wouldn’t be much fun. How about I take you into the city to shop and then I can take you to eat at this lovely cantina I know.” Actually, it was the only one I knew.
“I do like buying things,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s not quite as satisfying as loot taken from an adversary’s broken corpse but we can still do that later.”
“Right, we can schedule that in after I buy you many shiny things,” I glanced to the side at Beth, who was still looking at the dragon with a subdued shiver. I really wish Mirabel would say her sweet nothings out of sight of my people. I am not particularly bloodthirsty but I was okay with her indulging in sporadic bouts of bloody vengeance as long as they were evil people. The issue was that she insisted on talking about it near my people who were brought up in a rather peaceful civilization. This led to the occasional awkward moment.
“Let’s go now,” Maribel giggled excitedly, grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the door.
“Now?” I asked a bit bewildered. “I just woke up! I have a ton of things to do. I need to make calls, check on the growth of the crystals, check on Beth’s progress with her meditation and...”
“I’m done with the meditation, I’m working on the various states of consciousness you talked about. The crystals are done too. They’re in the cupboard behind the dates.”
“Excellent! I can probably walk you through that in a week and we can start on the actual spells.” I paused in realization, “We have dates?” I started to head towards the cupboards again.
“Fine,” Maribel dropped my hand dejectedly. “I’ll go play with Cinnamon. I haven’t cuddled with him in a while. I can call down Cocoa and Ceyanne too. They should be flying above us.”
“On second thought, I think I need a little more time to get that meditation technique down,” Beth quickly interjected. “Derek, Maribel has waited so long, why don’t you take her into the city. I’ll stay here and you can go over those methods later tonight!” I sighed as I looked regretfully towards the cupboards.
“Fantastic!” the dragon lady said with a grin, instantly perking up. Grabbing my arm again she hauled me out the door. “Let’s storm the shops!”
And so, we did. I didn’t even know what time it was before we made our way outside. The sun overhead showed it was noon giving us most of the day.
“Hold on,” I mumbled as we made our way to the outskirts of the academy. I was in my older form, still wearing my relatively modern suit so I got a lot of odd looks. Maribel was wearing some archetypical bikini chainmail that I swear must have been for appearances only since it had no protective value what so ever. Of course, she was a dragon so it wasn’t like she needed protection. Ironically, I got more stares than she did, though the eyes of the older male students did give her a fair share of admiring looks.
I took a brief detour behind some apartments and with a shake of my sleeve, my circa nineteen eighty
garb was once again a robe. The shake was not absolutely needed but the robes can catch and bind a bit if you don’t.
At the entrance I waved my hand in the air, trying to get the attention of one of the various flying carriages. I would have taken land bound version but it was supposed to be a date. After thirty seconds of waving my arms, I was beginning to feel ignored. I was contemplating encasing one in a bubble and hoping they survived the collision enough to drive us somewhere when Maribel sighed impatiently and issued a shrill whistle.
Within seconds I heard a wind at my back and I felt the familiar sensation of being in danger. Dodging and twisting to the side, I barely got out of the way as a silhouette of a winged horse flew through where I had been. Then I threw myself forward again to avoid a similarly fierce gryphon.
It was only after they had passed me that I realized their image was flickering and wavering as if they were screens and a projector was showing images on their fur. It actually resembled a crude version of camouflage from out of that Predator movie Jeremy made me watch.
“Why not just use invisibility?” I asked.
She looked at me disdainfully as she wrestled with her pets. “Everyone can see the invisible. Even the humans have spells and items that detect it. No one has a spell to make you more perceptive. Although this spell is pretty obvious at close range, a mile up in the clouds you would have to be a god
to detect them.” Or have radar, thought to myself as I avoided the thrashing trio.
I suppose I should have been grateful she didn’t grow to her giant form to pacify them but it still drew attention seeing a chainmail-clad human woman hugging two violently writhing magical creatures and her not being pushed about at all.
“Calm down you two silly things,” she said lovingly as they tried various means to claw, bite and impale her. “I missed you too. We can play later. Right now, mommy has to go on a date and you get to go with her.”
After a few seconds of continued violence, she frowned. “I said settle down or I’m going to have to give out spankings.”
Immediately the two creatures settled down. I have always had some doubts about the intelligence of these creatures but they knew not to cross their master when she was serious. Still, the hate and anger in their eyes could have sent weaker souls to hell. Naturally, she was oblivious.
Hopping on we launched into the air. Once again, I was left with an aching feeling of missing something that was precious. It had been a few years but I used to be able to take on the form of a flying beast, or even another dragon species that had wings and soar the skies under my own power. Still, it was better than being in a vehicle. It almost felt like freedom.
From this height, we saw the formations of flying guard mages that patrolled the air. They gave us cautious looks; however, they didn’t interfere with our flight. Unlike Jeremy’s world, no license was required and only the relatively rich could afford their own flying mounts. Even flying coaches weren’t that common. The more well-to-do merchants had floating barges that moved a large number of goods but they tended to either fly low or simply hover above the street. There was nowhere near enough traffic to have an equivalent to the traffic buoys. Of course, the ground traffic was significantly denser.
Off towards the side of the city, I could see the veritable walls of energy that made up the ley lines cut through the city. It was daylight so it wasn’t as spectacular as during the night. When it wasn’t foggy or raining it almost seemed like rivers of light were rushing through the city.
I had looked at a map and I think several lines met at a node on the far side of the city in a massive empty field used for events and parades. Although the permanent gates were now fixed locations at specific nodes, rather than cycling through random hell dimensions, you could faintly see the old tower defenses ringing the field. I assume they had circles and wards surrounding it as well.
It would come in handy when Vatapi reformed his body and started his invasion again. With the large portals fixed and only the smaller ones flashing open and closed, dropping random visitors and beasts willy nilly through the land, it was actually
far more peaceful than before the Demon Lord had set up his fiefdom in the chained worlds. After all, small portals opening for a few minutes in random locations, but limited to the ten worlds, was still better than monstrous holes in spaces that could lead to the any of the various heavens and hells.
“So is your grandfather going to get worried that you haven’t checked in with him or visited lately,” I asked. I only had to raise my voice slightly over the wind so I could tell she had a simple enchantment that lowered the wind resistance.
“You know how our kind is,” she chuckled at the thought. “Normally we can’t stand being around kin for more than a few days before we have to separate or engage in mortal combat. I suppose divine dragons are a bit different because I saw him for weeks at a time, but then I was the one who had to leave or suffer bouts of grumpiness.”
“That doesn’t seem to promote too many worshipers.”
“I think dragon gods may be one of the few kinds of gods where most of the worshippers aren’t the same species.”
“That’s a bit of irony, but I can completely see it. I can’t imagine worshipping any god, even some almighty dragon.” I paused for a moment. “Perhaps especially an almighty dragon.”
“That makes you... fairly typical. None the less, they don’t suffer any shortages of worshippers. Mortal races of all stripes are drawn to power and
have no problems submitting to others in order to gain something in return. Even the weakest dragon godling is equivalent to a lesser god. A greater dragon god is powerful enough to trade blows with the greater Primals.”
“Primals?”
“Hmmm,” she eyed me thoughtfully. “You may know them as something else. I have no doubt your memory heritage includes some knowledge of them. The incarnations of a concept manifested in physical form?”
“Ah, like hate and anger from the Firmament. I have some memories. Mostly feelings of dread.”
“That would be them. A few hundred thousand years ago they ruled most of the multiverse. From what grandfather says it was a miserable time. Even the lesser Primals hated it.”
“That’s hard to imagine.”
“Well, everyone hated them,” she shrugged. “Why wouldn’t they? They were the physical embodiment of various negative concepts. Even their favored minions were suppressed.”
“How are Primals different than gods?” Peering over the beast’s shoulder I tried to get the lay of the land. I also took a moment to change my suit back into a robe. Maribel was welcome to the stares.
“Gods are made of energy. They can visit the Firmament and can recover from death in the
Firmament, they aren’t quite as intrinsic to the fabric of existence as greater Primals. Also, the lesser Primals seem to have a more solid body. I am not sure I understand it but while a god’s powers fluctuated from some minimum based on their worshipper’s numbers, Primals have a fixed power level no matter where they are and how many followers they have.”
“So, are Primals indestructible?”
“The greater ones seem to be,” she nodded to herself. “During the revolution, they couldn’t or wouldn’t kill them. Grandfather wasn’t clear on whether they couldn’t be killed or doing so would destroy the multiverse. Either way, they were entombed.”
“The lesser ones can be?”
“The lesser ones can be. Compared to gods they have some strengths and weaknesses but being mostly material entities, they can be separated into races. Mostly.”
“So only the greater ones are concepts. I don’t see how being a race though separates them from gods.”
“Gods are energy beings. Whether a people believe in a god so much that one spontaneously manifests form in the Firmament or a mortal or supernatural entity ascends and is reborn, they are individuals. Even a pantheon isn’t really blood-related. They are related by concepts and belief.”
I looked at her nonplussed as we flew and nudged the pegasus over a bit to the shopping area. Her description of gods sounded a lot like greater Primals. “Right.”
“Most of the lesser Primals I have heard of are members of a race. They breed or bud or whatever their slimy little biology demands. They can’t interbreed with other races either. Maybe their ancestors came from the Firmament but their descendants are too physical to do anything except draw power from it. Just like the rest of us do.”
“Gods seem to have an advantage.” I nudged Cocoa again and we started to drift down towards the crowded streets. “What did you mean about slimy?”
“I am not sure about advantages. A powerful god with a large worshipper base is about on par with a normal Primal. A bit harder to kill perhaps. They both tend to have followers and minions, some in the billions, over multiple dimensions. Looks like there’s a clear spot over there.” She paused in the middle of her explanation to point to an area relatively clear of people. “As to slimy. Well, most of the ones I know of are huge masses of tentacles.”
I stiffened. Tentacles. That sounded eerily familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. Ah well, I was sure it would come to me. “Let’s stop in here for a bite. It’s pretty decent and I feel like I haven’t eaten in a month.”
She simply nodded and smiled. If it had been Beth I am sure she would have commented on the bread I had gobbled up. However, Maribel knew that I could easily eat several hundred pounds and barely feel full. Truthfully, neither of us needed food in a world full of mystic energy but it sure felt good to eat. Since it was a date we might as well feast.
“We got a bit sidetracked,” I chatted as we were seated. “Waiter, give me one of everything.”
“Yes, sir.” The well-dressed servant bowed and smiled warily. He might have remembered me from last time. “Would you like anything to drink?”
I stared at him flatly. “What part of one of everything was unclear?”
“Yes, sir. I will get right on that.” He turned away and started to head back to the kitchen.
“Wait a minute,” I stopped him. “You didn’t take the lady’s order.”
He stared at me, eyes wide. “Will anyone be joining sir and madam?”
“No. Maribel?”
“I’ll take two of everything.”
“Yes madam,” he said with a glazed look in his eyes. I frowned at him. I remembered the service being much better last time, but I may have eaten less. He tottered off in a daze. I huffed in wonder.
He couldn’t be thinking that we would share. Unless I made the food myself as a gift it simply wasn’t done, even among prospective mates.
“If we ever go to Arch, I’ll take you to Sulayman’s place. He serves a nice selection.” I paused for a moment. “Or maybe not...”
“Oh? Why not?”
“He accidentally killed off most of the humans in his restaurant...”
“Sounds like the perfect place.”
“We resurrected them all...” I paused as I registered her dismissal. After taking a moment to absorb her comment I simply decided to change the subject.
We chatted a bit more about gods and Primals. The conversation turned to her pets and I learned in uncomfortably intimate details about the brand on them. As I expected, it was an excruciating process. I made a note, again, to not let her alone with my people.
As we talked wave after wave of food and drinks made their way to the table only to be taken away as we finished them. I vaguely noticed that there was a growing atmosphere of tension from the wait staff. Fortunately, it didn’t interfere with our mood.
After over four hours of food and pleasant conversation, we finished the last of the deserts. I paid with barely a hint of reluctance and we left the rather shell-shocked staff behind us.
Chapter 3
We wandered the streets and chatted. Sometimes her conversation was a tad bit creepy but it was always fascinating. I found it relaxing. There were no humans I knew around so I wasn’t worried about offending anyone I cared about. People and faceless strangers milled about us but most seemed to instinctively know to avoid us.
Several times as we were about to enter an alley, I had a slight premonition of danger. Rather than ruin the mood I simply turned into the next street over. I think Maribel might just have thought I was a bit lost or distracted. In general, it was fun, except for the unfortunate amount of money we were spending.
I didn’t particularly mind since I had traded a huge number of gems that were practically worthless in a modern world into an even more massive amount of gold. We even stopped at the same jeweler that I did that trading at. Maribel’s lips curled in disgust at all the gems that didn’t have a lick of energy to them. In her eyes they were worse than useless, they were a blight.
While it was true those artificial gems weren’t good for anything involving magic, I am sure that the rich wives and mistresses we saw browsing the trinkets didn’t care at all. I did notice that the gems had dropped distinctly in price. If I wanted to trade more, I would be wise to do so in another city.
The storekeeper kept staring at me. It wasn’t until we left, I realized that the form I had taken to sell
the gems was a younger version of my current one. He was likely thinking I was a relative of his benefactor. He certainly hadn’t offered me any deals so I found his gratitude severely lacking.
While I certainly enjoyed looking at the gold and gems for sale, and I didn’t begrudge my date a few thousand gold coins for gifts and knick knack’s, I was far more interested in the magic shops further into the market. Maribel didn’t resist this idea. She may have been a female but she was also a skilled magic user and I saw her eyes light up as we entered the first one.
It was a smaller building, perhaps a bit run down. Never the less it sold magic sundries so it couldn’t have been too dilapidated. Maribel was a bit of a snob and sniffed at the enchanted makeup and glowing sparkles. I actually agreed. As an alchemist, I could create a batch of this useless stuff in a few minutes with five gold worth of wilted materials. It probably didn’t help that putting makeup on a shape changer was simply absurd.
We were both more interested in the tomes of arcane knowledge but we were rebuffed by the owner from doing more than looking through the display case since we didn’t have a graduate’s badge.
“So, you say the schools are purposely retarding their student's curriculum in order to control the mages population?”
“I am pretty sure,” I nodded as my lady questioned my explanation. “They mystify a fairly straightforward process and drag out the courses that should take a few months into a five-year journey.”
“That seems a waste,” she said doubtfully. “I would think the other kingdoms would simply swarm them with better-trained mages.”
“It appears to be a multi-kingdom agreement. I think they are worried about out of control five-year-olds and angsty teens becoming weapons of mass destruction. By the time they reach fifteen or sixteen and take advanced training they should be able to follow orders and be able to be converted into fully trained mages within a few months. Until then they practice with fairly harmless cantrips.”
“Seems pretty easy to get around. What if one of the kingdoms raises a secret army?”
“I suppose the other kingdoms under the agreement stomp them,” I shrugged. While it was annoying not to be able to get to the advanced spells when they were right in front of me I did have a few ideas for the future. I also still had the books from the year four and five students to learn, so I wasn’t in a huge rush. “I didn’t really care enough to look into the details.”
“Are the circles and wards under the same restrictions?”
“I assume so,” I replied as I nosed through the exotic components. “I haven’t seen any yet. Circle masters have always tended towards the apprentice system. Still, the components for them seem easily available. Though the unicorn horn dust is atrociously expensive.”
“Don’t waste your time on that junk. Now that I have your circle at home, I can just borrow Cinnamon’s horn and have her regenerate it back in seconds.”
“That sound a bit painful,” I said faintly as I stared at her. I should tell Beth to spend a little less time with Maribel. I don’t think she really needed the warning but better safe than sorry.
“She won’t mind. She gets so excited sometimes I sometimes think she forgets the little things.” She reached the back of the room and looked over some dusty tomes. These weren’t under lock and key. “Oh look, some books on alchemy. Didn’t you say you practice it?”
“These days I mainly use it to make the pastes and paints for the circles and wards. I just started studying them so I can make up for them being a little less than perfect by using a better-quality material base.”
“You do seem to be a bit of a scholar,” she said as I gave her an exasperated look. A dragon that didn’t love a bit of research was no better than a stupid hydra. We’re all inveterate scholars. Who occasionally like to breathe fire. Assuming you’re the kind that can. “I mean more than usual. I
talked a bit with your pet. She says you never get out because you're always studying circles or spells.”
“Since I was trapped in Arc, I’ve been focusing on learning a method to get back.” I opened the alchemy book and casually paged through it. It had large sections on the characteristics of ingredients and seemed to focus mostly on the applications of herbs. Honestly, most of it was herbology that I already knew by instinct.
“I got involved in circles and wards because there was no mage society or even an underground I could find that taught spell craft. It was probably just as well, circles lend themselves better to opening portals and gates.”
“Except when the dimensional fabric has been locked down by the local warlord,” Mirabel reminded me. I frowned as I continued flipping through the second alchemy book. It was similar although it was focused on minerals with random recipes or fragments inserted. Hmm, an invisibility potion. I tapped the page absently.
“Well, it was a goal,” I replied absently. The potion wasn’t very effective, it only lasted a few minutes and used difficult to acquire components. I had my own version that could give a person the ability to turn invisible at will for over two weeks and the ingredients were all commonly available. However, my formula had side effects that cumulatively were rather terrible. This one seemed harmless.
“It indeed seems a bit pointless, looking back. Well, not the limited mastery I finally gained but wasting over a year following vapor trails.” I turned towards the shopkeeper and gave him the book to keep safe and started to pick up some ingredients from the racks. “I’m still annoyed at the mages over there. The end of the world came and went and they’re still cowering in hiding after screwing over the rest of the world.”
“Eh, humans,” she replied as she gestured for several of the displayed gems to be shown to her. I suppose I should have expected that.
“I suppose that now the dimensions are locked down I don’t need to concentrate on studying so much. But it did help me understand the demon lord’s circle enough not to destroy the ten worlds.”
“I suppose there is that,” she said with evident disinterest. “Still, you need to get out more. Preferably with me.”
I grunted noncommittedly. While it was true my ultimate goal of mastering either circle or spell magic to the degree of opening a portal home was now pointless, there were other considerations. One of them was that I really loved learning. Not only that but I had made great strides in circles and was close to mastering the basics of spell craft.
I was actually making progress, which felt great after an entire year of struggling through one failure after another. There was also the fact that my breed was of the scholarly bent. More so than
the average dragon. That part of my interests was normal.
If anything about me was abnormal it was my interest in psionics and my rather unusual strength... for my breed. Admittedly, I was curb stomped by a certain evil ancient dragon and barely held my own with an adult hydra, but in my defense, the average dragon increases hugely in power upon reaching adulthood. Both in magical power and pure physical strength. Sure, I didn’t win but I had nothing to be ashamed of. Really. I didn’t.
As I found myself dwelling on how I shouldn’t feel bad about getting crushed by the adults of my species I heard my new girlfriend squeal with excitement. Throwing off my melancholy I marched over to the counter to pay the butcher’s bill.
It was fortunate that we both had enchanted bags, otherwise, I am sure I would look ridiculous staggering around with dozens of boxes. Mine were mostly alchemy books and ingredients. Maribel’s boxes were mostly gems. It felt odd to trade the gold I had just recently gotten from artificial gems just to get gems back again.
As I contemplated life’s ironies, I noticed that more and more my limited precognition would twinge as we were about to go down one of the narrower
passageways. My date didn’t mind my seeming indecisiveness but I was getting annoyed. At this point, I was pretty sure we were being targeted. It had been obvious for a while but I had been putting off addressing it.
Looking down the street I noticed that several overturned carriages were blocking the street. I snorted to myself. That was so blatant it was insulting. If we wanted to go forward, we would have to take an alleyway a few blocks down. Naturally, I turned into the alleyway I had just moved away from. Better to fight them at a location I chose, even if it was an ambush.
Maribel’s eyes lit up and the corners crinkled as a wide smile slowly made its way onto her face. She turned to me. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I could tell you were getting bored,” I replied with a smile. Above us, figures leaped over the gaps between the buildings and it almost seemed to rain people. In moments we were surrounded by heavily armored men wielding glowing swords.
“Did you think we would be fooled by a flimsy disguise? The Dark Guild has marked you for death. Your fate was sealed the moment you crossed us.”
I stared at him for a moment. He seemed to be waiting for a reply. “Did you practice that? Because it was a little hokey but I really think it worked for you.”
“You have no idea the pain you will suffer,” the man continued, ignoring my reply. I glanced at him crossly. Why bother waiting for my reply if he was just going to ignore it. “You can’t use your little tricks now. You will tell us where the artifact and we will not let you escape into death.”
I looked down at the runed tooth that hung from my neck. When I wore my suit, it was vaguely covered by my jacket as it hung from my side. Since I was wearing my robe now it was displayed prominently on my chest.
“Right. You’re an idiot.” I turned to Maribel. “Try not to kill too many, I have to live here.”
“We will torture your loved ones until even you would not recognize them...”
“Change in plans.” I interrupted him, still talking to my dragon lady. “Go ahead and kill them all except that one.”
I spread out my empty hands as if grasping something. As they closed, psionic energy formed, lancing out from my palms and coalescing into two ridiculously huge flamberges.
Although this raised a few startled cries it also caused then armored assassins to charge us. Glowing swords came down on my own energy blades. The first few swords impacted on my weapons causing sparks and flashes of conflicting energy. Any normal blade would have been shattered but both sides wielded enhanced weapons. I then swept my blades forward. Several
of the warriors skillfully moved their blades to intercept. I admit it was somewhat satisfying to see their eyes widen as I plowed through their uplifted swords and plowed directly into their armored forms. Six forms in front of me were catapulted backward ass over teakettle.
Unfortunately, they were all wearing armor. Not just the leather protection that the first group wore but real plate mail. Obviously enchanted too, or the sheer force of my blow would have exploded them unless they possessed supernaturally enhanced physiques. They tumbled forty feet down the narrow road and jerkily got back on their feet.
Meanwhile, the people stationed on the building above us started to shoot arrows down at us. I snorted in disdain until a glowing arrow darted past my frantically parrying blades and skated along my cheek, leaving a shallow but bloody furrow. I sighed, naturally it was enchanted. It was all enchanted. Otherwise, everything would simply bounce off of me.
I activated my forcefield and the few arrows that made it through my defense thereafter then skittered off of its surface. I was starting to regret leaving without the psionic storage gems I had made. If only I hadn’t been distracted by food.
I gestured and spat a command word and the ground around me became an adhesive field, a second gesture and a monstrous gout of wind gathered to sweep the archers above us onto the
trapped ground below. And then it vanished. I gestured again. Once more the wind gathered but disbursed before having any effect. A moment later the adhesive field vanished.
“Do you really think a group of professionals isn’t prepared to dispel a few cantrips?” Maribel’s sarcastic voice rose up behind me. “I can see a good half of these idiots are wearing enchanted jewelry with stored spells. Stop playing around and kill them.”
I stared at the people surrounding me balefully. Sure, they were cantrips but they were the only spells I knew. Aside from that, I had been embarrassed in front of my girlfriend. Growling I increased my height to my present maximum of twelve feet and leaped at my first target, swinging both blades.
“Ah! He’s not human!”
“Stand your ground, it’s just a simple growth spell. Dispel it!”
“It’s not going down,” was a panicked reply.
My twin blade attack took my first target in the neck, sweeping his head from his body. Now lacking an aura to resist my influence, I swept it up with my telekinesis and started to use his magically armored corpse to sweep the archers from the roofs. At the same time, I targeted the ground-bound assassins one at a time.
I was on the fifth assassin when I found my feet stuck to the ground and fireballs started to cascade around me. As they showered my shield, I could feel my energy reserves dwindling. Damn my appetite.
Dispel was a fifth-year spell I hadn’t gotten to yet. I was also starting to regret not getting any magical jewelry. It wasn’t as if they weren’t commonly available. Spellbooks may be illegal but sparklies that stored limited numbers of spells were perfectly legal. I just hadn’t felt the need. I may, just perhaps, have let my pride go to my head.
Cursing to myself I braced myself and felt large parts of my psionic energy slip away as I focused on the space above me and teleported next to the archers. Although my dimensional teleportation abilities had been locked away by a rune for well over a year, I could still use a more local, limited psionic version. It was just bit more slippery and less accurate than it used to be. Frankly, it felt like moving against an undertow. Despite my compensation, I landed a step away from my target. This one wasn’t shooting, he was pointing his hand downward and raining fire where I had been a moment ago. I took that last step and cleaved another one in two.
“He’s up here! The dispel isn’t working,” panicked cries erupted from the group around me. “That’s not magic, he’s an Adept!”
“Get the girl, we can use her... by the gods! She’s changing into some sort of hideous creature! She’s over thirty feet tall!”
“Hey now,” I felt the need to interrupt. “She’s a perfectly attractive dragon! No need to talk crap before you die!”
“Thanks, Derek!” her voice echoed out from below. It had an odd reverberation to it and it took me a moment to realize that the area around us had a concealment spell that was dampening sound.
“Retreat! Scatter! Let the guild know our target has a pet dragon!”
Now they’d done it. Maribel was going to be pissed off at being called a pet. Sure enough, a moment later a deep roar shook the building I was on, spurring the people around me to turn and run. I dissipated my blades and theatrically spread my arms.
“Since you’ve come this far, there’s no need to leave,” I said theatrically as I started trapping groups of fleeing assassins in force bubbles. There were only a few places to run so it only took five bubbles before they were all trapped.
They frantically slammed against the barriers with swords and fireballs as they attempted to escape before the dragon got to them. She was gingerly popping each bubble and viciously dealing with each small group. A claw swipe, a bite, and a body slam and it was the end of each group.
“This is the best date ever!” Maribel squealed in delight.
Looking around the alley, I shook my head in dismay. What a mess. Muttering my favorite spell under my breath, I pointed at the massive swathes of blood stains on the walls and ground. Mortal blood didn’t require multiple casting to remove.
"Are you done?" Mirabel asked impatiently. I looked around again. The bloodstains were gone; however, the dismembered corpses still told a tale of violence.
"Clean up all you want, but the Dark Guild will find out what you did and will avenge us." This non sequitur came from the last living assassin, gasping under my girlfriend's massive claw.
I looked at him blankly. “You think I'm hiding evidence?" I shrugged in embarrassment. I suppose it was better than thinking I was tidying up a random alleyway. Still, it was such a neat spell. "Right, they'll never catch me," I replied flatly, ignoring the bodies littering the area.
"As fun as this was, let's keep shopping," opined Mirabel. "I'll just clean up this last tidbit."
"Hold on," I sighed. I had been enjoying the afternoon too. "I can't let this Dark Club thing keep running wild. They have already threatened my friends."
"Yes, but it was so fun. If we leave them alone, they can attack us again later," she countered.
"What if they hurt Cinnamon?" I saw conflict behind her eyes as she wavered from being outraged at her things being hurt and the bother of resurrecting them. Indignation eventually won. "Kill them all!"
"If you ransom me..." the killer on the ground began before Mirabel exerted a bit of force and he no longer had spare breath.
“Where was your sense of self-preservation five minutes ago?" I asked in exasperation as I walked over to him. I quickly checked his aura to ensure he wasn’t insane. Finding he was simply a sociopath, I placed my hands on his temples and merged my mind with his.
"Hmm, they are actually fairly large," I said quietly to myself, "They also have the backing of some fairly high-level nobles. It's going to be messy."
"Oh my god! Oh my god!" The assassin babbled frantically, somehow getting enough air to panic. "Forgive..." At this point, Mirabel ruthlessly crushed downward again and his panicked cries died down.
I looked down at him with disdain. The murders, human trafficking, and sheer pettiness were disgusting. Not to mention massively inconvenient. In order to eliminate the Dark Guild, I was going to have to waste weeks shapeshifting, infiltrating and climbing up some silly hierarchy to eliminate hundreds of parasites.
"Well, if we can't go shopping can we do this again?" Mirabel asked hopefully.
I looked at her, an idea coming to me. Smiling I said, "I can't at the moment, but you can start without me."
I moved next to her and placed a hand on her head. I had no intention of merging minds with her, however, as a powerful dragon, she was a natural psychic even if she hadn't developed these skills as far as I had my own. I communicated with her for several minutes.
"You got all of that from a touch," she asked a moment later in bafflement.
"It's got some drawbacks but it’s a useful trick," I said shrugging.
"No wonder they call you Professor."
"What? No, it had nothing to do with that." I paused and took a deep breath to calm myself. "Never mind. Anyway, consider this the final gift of the day. Hundreds of humans to kill and no need to feel guilty about any of them."
"Guilty?" she asked slowly as if was a foreign word.
"Never mind. Go. Have fun! Please don't kill anyone not on that list unless they are evil. When you are done come back and we can go on another date. It may be hard to top this one though."
"All right. I better go now. They aren't all going to kill themselves." She coiled herself in preparation
to fly off when I gestured for her attention. “At least I hope they aren’t.”
"Oh, wait a minute," I finally called out as she ignored my waving. She paused just before taking off. Under my gaze body parts flew through the air in a veritable rain as I used my telekinesis to gather the bodies into a pile. "Could you incinerate these before you head out. I don't have a fire hot enough and it would be pretty gross to put them in my pouch."
"You should work on that," Mirabel suggested helpfully. "Fire is pretty fun," she immediately and enthusiastically put words into action and breathed magical flames over the pile.
As she flew off, I nodded to myself. In the pile of ashes were magical armor and softly glowing swords and rings as well as various jewelry. Magical items are far more durable than humans, even enhanced humans. With a wave of my hand, I cast my cleaning spell and all of the items were pristine once more.
I opened my pouch and with an admittedly dramatic gesture and the objects littering the ground leaped into it. Sighing in satisfaction I turned around, only to stumble on the somewhat flattened corpse of the last assassin. I must have forgotten him in the last-minute rush to clean up.
I felt the magic around me, the light tickling caused by the assassin team's exclusion zone start to fragment. Faint sounds of the street were getting louder as the sound suppression began to fade.
Cursing to myself, I began to think about my options. I really didn't have anything that would get rid of bodies. With flying patrols about tossing it to the roof simply wouldn't work. As the suppression spell finally faded, I sullenly placed the corpse in my pouch.
Imagining how I would sanitize my storage container I stalked back to the academy.
Go to Amazon to read more!
A Dragon at the Gate
Book Two of the Chained World Chronicles
By Daniel Ruth
Dedication
To the three wonderful women in my life, Wendy, Krystal and Amberlyn
A Dragon at the Gate
Book Two of the Chained Worlds Chronicles
Copyright © 2016 by Daniel Ruth
All Rights Reserved
Kindle ASIN: B01NCNAN7L
KDP Paperback ISBN: 9781520195285
Revision 3
Chapter 1
As I stepped through the portal to the dimension I had called home for the more than a year, I stopped and stared at the gigantic cannon that was pointed at my face a handful of meters away. “That’s not a good way to greet friends. Whose porridge did I piss in this time?”
“That would be my porridge and the good citizens of this city,” announced a voice off to the side. I glanced over and saw it was coming from a middle-aged military soldier. I didn’t know much about the military since they had been remarkable only in their absence since I arrived. The four stars pinned to his shoulders seemed indicative of a high rank. “I am General Armbridge. Give me a reason not to obliterate your sorry naked ass.”
Well, looking down at myself, I certainly had to admit I was pretty much naked. Growing to my maximum height and then plowing through dirt and rock had pretty much had sent my clothes to the afterlife. The little that hadn’t been burned away by hellfire. I shrugged. The cannon was unlikely to do much to me. Unlike vampires and weres, my durability scaled directly with the environmental energy available. Standing in the middle of a permanently open portal, feeling the invigorating sensation of mana rushing from one world to another... I felt invincible. I wasn’t, of course, but that cannon wasn’t going to do much to me. “I am Derek. You may have heard of me from Conrad...”
“The Professor,” the soldier said dismissively. I opened
my mouth to comment but then shrugged again. He was extraordinarily brave for a human standing in front of a man holding several tons of concrete on his shoulder. Speaking of which, I let it go and it rolled off to the side, shaking the ground as it landed. Hmmm, still no reaction. Ah, a faint shimmer from the buoy floating behind him. A hologram. Not actually very brave after all. “I read about you. A vigilante who got in over his head and decided to try to direct those who know better...”
“And I assume your knowledge extended to firing your satellite super gun at ground zero here and killing about half of our forces?” I asked casually. If they hadn’t shot me yet, it wasn’t going to happen. My gaze wandered around the area. It had taken me a day to slowly walk back. I had healed completely by then. As chewed up from the hellfire as I had been, the increasing energy from the portal as I neared it had charged my regeneration along with my other abilities.
The circle was there on the ground under me. Of course. It was effectively permanently etched into the ground and would remain there until the end of time. Or the ambient energy faded away. As I said, the end of time. The protective circle was down, which explained the presence of the military. I couldn’t remember when it went down. Perhaps after I had been blown through the portal.
The crater walls were still there and along the edge was mounted military grade force field generators interspersed with large vehicles that looked like tanks. Naturally, their turrets were pointed at me as well. That forest I had walked through was looking nicer and nicer.
Of course, I had left all my stuff here so that option really wasn’t on the table.
“How dare you question my decision,” the general shouted hoarsely. “I had to make a hard call in order to stop the Armageddon you and your kind were unleashing! It’s unfortunate that some brave men had to be sacrificed but they knew the risk....”
“I somehow doubt they were expecting to be vaporized from above. After all, they were expecting to be called on to fight the minions of a demon lord. A demon lord who was actually safely ensconced behind an indestructible barrier.” I shook my head in mock sadness. “But that’s okay. You ignored the advice of the experts, did your own thing and the only people we lost were a few supernatural filth. Does that sound like what you were thinking?”
“Their race had nothing to do with my decision...” I ignored him as I noticed that there were actually some human corpses in slightly singed robes. Odd, they must have died outside and been blasted inward past the field. I walked over to him and started to take off the robe. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting dressed. Or do you like my nakedness?” I replied absently to the raving loon. Better, but I would have to get this cleaned and pressed. The holes and singed patches made my teeth itch. Or I could simply throw them out once I got home. Boy, I could really use a shower.
“By God, you better start taking me seriously, son,” the
crazy man stated. “I expect you to go up and turn yourself in.”
That got my attention. “Say what? Exactly why would I turn myself in? I’m not the one that killed half the special forces in the city.”
“Right, and I suppose that kinetic strike wasn’t your doing?” he said while pointing to a large break in the edge of the crater. That hadn’t been there before. Edging over I lined myself up with the opening. There was a large furrow in the ground that slowly sloped upward and lead to a massive opening torn into the building adjacent to the park. And the building behind that. And the building behind that. And so on.
How about that. I suppose it was the best of bad alternatives. Wow, I hope no one I knew died. I turned to the projection and immediately started to lie. “General, it’s absurd that you could attribute that amount of destruction to me. What kind of monster do you take me for? I would have to have the power of a veritable god in order to do that.”
“Then how do you explain...” he blustered angrily.
“What actually happened is that my fellow defenders of goodness threw ourselves into harm’s way, in the desperate attempt to stop a demon lord from bringing his armies into our world. Brave Mei Ling tore at him with furious sword blows,” I paused a moment to verify Mei’s sword was gone. “And the stalwart Faramond wrestled with the mighty creatures channeling his fairy power,” I paused a moment to suppress a chortle. It definitely
would not fit the narrative.
“So while Estella’s minions distracted him, I was able to mitigate the circle enough stop the army of demons from crossing over. Unfortunately, this angered the fierce demon enough that he empowered a monstrous spell to kill us all with this runic boulder,” nodding to the anchor I had tossed to the ground a moment ago. “Thankfully, I am dreadfully clever and I was able to reverse our position at the last moment and he was struck by his own fateful blow.”
I stared at him with as a sincere look of innocence as I could muster. It was mostly lies, of course. Yes, my companions had indeed distracted the demon lord so I could modify the circle to block the demons, rather than to give access to our dimension to them. I had hoped to dismantle it altogether but there had been too much energy built up already. However, now no demons or similar supernatural horrors could pass through the linked gates without using either my blood or their master’s blood.
The false part was that the kick ass magical boulder was part of the magic that bound me to this plane of existence. I had figured that I might be able to modify the definitions of the anchor rune stamped on my chest enough to draw it to me instead of me being drawn to it, in the instant that I crossed the dimensional barrier and the backlash disrupted the spell. Instant kinetic strike with an indestructible runic asteroid. Well, almost instant. It was up in the air for a few seconds whether the demon lord would kill me before it hit him.
“And the magic symbols on your chest that happen to match this cannonball of your?” the general drawled skeptically.
“An unfortunate side effect of interfering with the demon’s work,” I nodded humbly, peaking up through my bangs.
“That is the biggest load of shit I have ever...” he started to shout out in fury. However, a disembodied hand reached out of the air behind him. I was puzzling over this when the holographic image expanded to include Conrad. For the first time ever in my experience, he was out of his armor and he looked terrible. The uniform he wore was folded up at each knee and his left forearm was gone as well. Strangely enough, he was still upright and seemed to be floating in midair. He was wearing a large belt with multiple blocky cells on the side, so I could only assume it was some sort of levitation assistance he was using while his regeneration grew his legs back.
“That’s enough. You had your chance,” Conrad growled in a low angry voice. “The Professor’s answers match what we know. What we expected. Now you need to get out of my city.” His eyes flashed with barely suppressed violence. “You have a court martial to prepare for. Good luck.”
The General stalked out of the projection area. I didn’t pay any attention. My mind was on other things. I slowly climbed up the slope of the crater and peeked over the sides. It was a little difficult to see through the tanks, cannons and unmanned military paraphernalia cluttering the park grounds, however, once I was up against the
glowing blue surface of the force field the military had conveniently left around the portal, I could partly see the surrounding cityscape. I personally questioned the effectiveness of the barrier since it only went up a hundred meters and the portal towered above that as far as I could see. It was like putting a fence around a Sequoia and patting yourself on the back for keeping out the man-eating trees.
The city looked pretty good for a post-apocalyptic landscape. Sure, smoke billowed up from the various buildings for as far as I could see and the lack of civilian traffic was made up by the horde of military vehicles speeding to and fro among the skylines. Seriously, was there really a point to putting camo green on a flying truck with strobe lights and sirens? Yet I didn’t see any active fires, there were hardly any screams of panic and pain and the walking wounded winding their way in between the smashed hover cars littering the streets seemed mostly calm and barely bleeding.
“It’s terrible,” a female voice drifted over to me from behind the armored vehicles. Mei walked out from behind one and over to the field. She looked tired and somewhat bedraggled. The clothing she wore still bore the rents and tears from the fight with the demon lord. However, the dried blood was at least a day old and she looked completely healed. “I am glad you made it back to us. The force of the... um, rock, had us worrying there would be anything left.”
“Eh, it was nothing,” I waved negligently with one hand, still taking in the view. “Without the rock of doom I
would likely be dead and the world overrun with hordes of minor demons. This is actually way better than I thought. In fact, this is the best end of the world scenario ever!”
Mei had come up to the barrier and I could see in more detail. Lines of worry and tiredness etched her face. For a moment I thought that the magics the crazy wizard had cast on her to arrest her age had failed, but I think it was merely stress and exhaustion. Mei suppressed a laugh under a cough and shook her head. “If this is a good outcome I am glad I didn’t see the bad one.”
“I’ll need a more detailed account of what happened,” Conrad’s voice echoed behind me from the buoy’s hologram. “We made plans for a lot of scenarios, but you seemed pretty confident there would be demons and random rifts tearing through the town. So far most of the city’s infrastructure is down and there are very brief tears it’s been mild compared to what we expected if we had failed.”
“You’re welcome,” I said magnanimously.
“Perhaps you could clarify,” Conrad replied dryly.
“While Stella distracted the demon lord, I was conducting shenanigans on the circles. Suffice to say I was able to modify it to mitigate the worst of the effects. I’ll go over it in more detail when you come over.” I looked over at Mei with some trepidation. “I still have a home, right?”
“Yes, Jeremy, Beth, and Mat are all okay. Once the power failed they went around the neighborhood and helped
with the disaster relief. There’s been a lot of fatalities, mostly from floaters that failed when the portals opened. Most of the vehicles had impact foam but a lot of the mechanisms failed. Where they didn’t have fatal head trauma the military is providing temporary cryogenic storage until they figure how to shield the hospitals enough to provide resuscitation services...”
“Great, glad that turned out,” I replied distractedly. As long as my people were okay I really didn’t care about a bunch of strangers. “Conrad, as much as I like hanging around and chatting is there any way you can turn off the barrier for a moment? So I can actually leave?” I gave the glowing transparent wall a poke, which elicited a fat spark. My vision allowed me to perceive the invisible but it often took on just such an appearance. Of course, it may actually be very visible which made me a bit hesitant to point such things out. It can be a bit embarrassing.
A moment later the glowing wall flickered and faded. As I stepped through, I heard the crackle of the energy reforming behind me. I took a deep breath and sighed. “Home again,” I glanced around at the damage and smoke. “It feels even more like home this way.”
I heard a crackle and a wet cracking thump as something impacted the barrier behind me. Turning I saw an eight-foot tall creature resembling a pterodactyl laying sprawled on the sloping crater wall.
“Apparently, the other side houses a large number of very aggressive dinosaurs. The flying ones often come in low enough to hit the shield and die on impact. Fortunately, they are not supernatural in any way and die on impact.”
She was gazing at the body with some ambivalence. “The remaining flyers go over the field and into the city if the guns somehow miss them. Very hazardous to children and even adults if they are taken unaware. The city has put a bounty on them and the shifter population loves to hunt them. Apparently, they are delicious.”
I nodded my head enthusiastically. “They are, way better than cloned chicken. I like the bigger breeds, though.”
“How do the bigger one’s fly?” She asked as we made our way to the edge of the park. The smoke was getting thicker as were the sirens and various humans shouts. “Nothing that has come through has a bit of magic.”
“No, not the flyers, I meant the land bound ones. I think they are similar to a tyrannosaurus rex.” I shook my head as I savored the memory. “Though it might have been an allosaurus for all I know. I never thought learning about extinct species would matter.”
“Damn! Is that going to be a problem?” Mei asked worriedly.
I waved away her concern as we got to the rickshaw. It had been knocked over but I had paid for the most durable materials available and even the paint hadn’t been scratched. “Shouldn't be, as you pointed out they are pretty fragile. The barriers the military have up should stop them here. The ones that get through any of the smaller spontaneous portals that crop up may cause a wee outbreak. The bounty should help, though.”
“Well yes, but what about the more fragile humans?” she
inquired in concern.
“Hmm,” I muttered thoughtfully. “Good point. One of us will have to stay near Jeremy and Beth until the city has some automated defenses in place.”
Mei looked at me flatly for a few moments as we strapped into the seats of the rickshaw. “And what about the rest of the city?”
I glanced at her blankly for a moment before I realized what she was concerned about. “Oh, right. I guess we can set up some sort of neighborhood watch...” I tapered off as she glared at my unenthusiastic reply. “Or maybe I could adapt a ward to keep vermin away...”
Darn, that was not how I wanted to spend my time. Also, they weren’t magical. Without some special characteristic, it would be almost impossible to key a ward to work on a dinosaur and exclude a human.
We wound our way through the smoking remains of crashed flyers. Several times we had to get off the bike to move a fallen vehicle or piece of a building out of the way. As a were-tiger Mei had some very significant strength and of course even as a young dragon my strength exceeded anything I was likely to encounter, now that the demons couldn’t easily transit through the gates.
It was during one of these slowdowns that I felt a fluctuation of the ambient energy levels and almost immediately afterward I heard a wailing siren go off through the city.
“Crap! This is terrible timing. I don’t think there's much
cover except the alley over there,” Mei exclaimed as she frantically gestured for me to stop again. I slowed down, giving her a rather puzzled look.
“Is that an air raid alarm? I thought that only happened in Jeremy’s shows.”
“Welcome to the modern age. They have been repurposed to alert people to get cover from the energy surges.”
“Ah. That's what that was. Wow, I never thought I would see one of those again.”
“You know what these are?” She asked as she dragged me over to the alley.
“Sure, they are minor energy imbalances. They happen all the time and energy moves along the ley lines to rebalance things. Totally harmless.”
“Hundreds of people have been disintegrated and the energy discharges have destroyed at least a building every time it happens.”
“Totally harmless to me, I meant,” trying to smooth over my gaffe. She glared at me again. What the hell is she looking at me like that for? I didn't cause them. “Back where I was born we got them all the time. They just sting a bit if you’re a supernatural. The humans had the magics users put up something like lightning rods to sink the energy safely.”
Around us, static energy was gathering and I could hear explosions going off as the energy normalized along the
ley line. “So you can set something up for the city.”
I growled in frustration. If I kept getting volunteered for all this scut work I would never get back to more important research. “Fine. I think I can come up with something. But it's going to be deployed by someone else. I have better things to do.” Usually, the mages guild used to set something up, but wards actually worked very well to automate energy regulation. Circles may work better, but I think I could set up some portable wards on placards that a minor psychic could place and activate. For a circle, I would have to personally be there.
We continued to huddle in the alley as explosions were heard getting closer. There were a few moments of excitement as discharges looking remarkably similar to lighting trailed through the street in front of our hiding place like a primitive Van de Graaff generator, except larger... and more explosions. Soon after they passed, the sirens faded and the city returned to its peaceful post-apocalyptic state.
Upon opening the door to my house I was assaulted by a tiny blond whirlwind of activity that threw itself at me and clamped around my waist. I looked blankly at the little blond girl hugging me and then around the room at Jeremy and Mat that had come to greet me. My social skills were a little lacking in knowing what the standard
responses were. Hesitantly, I patted Beth on the head. “Um, good girl. Would you like a cookie?”
Mei coughed behind me, apparently amused by my situation. Jeremy was getting an annoyed expression. Beth seemed happy to see me and seeing all my humans together calmed a part of me I hadn’t even known was tense.
“You don’t have any cookies,” Beth’s muffled voice said.
“Do we have a ham left? Because tyrannosaurus is like Chinese food, you’re hungry an hour later...”
“I am glad you have your priorities straight, Derek,” Jeremy growled. He seemed fixated on my hand patting Beth’s head. Was I doing it wrong? I could have sworn I saw people patting their dogs like that. “The city is arranging the distribution of rations. Don’t expect your usual deliveries.” Well, that is going to stink. With all the energy floating around, I didn’t really need to eat but I had really gotten used to it. Maybe I could sneak over to dino land and snag a bite to eat or even bring something back.
“Derek, please stop petting my sister. It’s disturbing,” Jeremy stated flatly, prompting more coughing from Mei. I stopped. It had been rather pleasant. I wondered if I could get Mei to change into a tiger for a scratch behind the ears.
“Okay, aside from our empty larder, how are things going?”
“It’s quieted down mostly,” Mat chimed in. His pallor had
improved and the slight slackness in his expression had faded away. I assumed his ghost was getting better at possessing his body. I was still hoping that at some point it would stop being possession and merge permanently. At the moment he had some similarities with a zombie. Without the corpsiness. “We have a backup generator running, that’s powering up the neighborhood and we have invited some of the people that got hit the hardest to stay in the vacant houses.”
I twitched at that. There were strangers staying in my houses. Touching my stuff. Moving things out of their preordained locations. Making a mess. “Derek! Seriously, stop petting my sister.” Ah, I hadn’t realized I was doing that again.
“How long are they staying,” I asked with trepidation.
“Well, apparently our city fared very well in comparison to most of the other large cities. The preparations we made really made a difference. Also, the army of demons never came so...”
“You’re welcome,” I said absently as I stopped myself from patting Beth. Disentangling myself from her I staggered over to my favorite chair and listened to Jeremy with half an ear, as I tried to convince myself I was okay with random people pawing through my stuff.
“The army is taking advantage of most of the infrastructure being intact to set up in the city. On the one hand, they are very helpful with the search and rescue. On the other hand, the city is under martial law.”
“They didn’t interfere with us,” I said.
“We were on a rickshaw, Derek,” Mei interjected. “While they are running search and rescue they aren’t going to care much about surface traffic unless it somehow matters. Also, Conrad gave me one of these,” she said holding up a bracer that looked very much like the military wrist terminal I used to have before I was blown through the portal. I had thought the ward I had inscribed would have made it indestructible but you live and learn. “Conrad set it to act as a military transponder so I could help coordinate the shifters of the city.”
“I thought the packs wouldn’t organize without Conrad breathing over their shoulder?”
“Well, apparently the end of the world can get them all moving in the same direction. I don’t think it will last but they are allowing me to give directions without a constant threat of violence.”
“What about the vampires?” I asked absently. Maybe I could convince my new tenants to wear gloves and shoe covers.
“I haven’t heard from Sebastian since before we fought Vatapi,” Mei spat. “Or anyone from Tower Plaza.”
“Who is Vatapi?” asked Beth.
“He was the demon lord we fought.” I looked from Mei to Beth to Jeremy. Jeremy shrugged, apparently they haven’t shared the details with his sister. “We thought we were just fighting a crazy wizard bent on world domination. We found out it was actually a demon lord
bent on multi-dimensional domination. Totally different. If we had known, we could have dressed for the occasion.” I quipped.
“Tuxedoes optional,” Jeremy joined in.
“Okay. Finally, where’s Stella.”
“She went to the Blight to check on the ‘roots of Yggdrasil’,” Jeremy said with a tiny bit of skepticism.
“You mean Purgatory?”
“Purgatory? Where’s that?” Jeremy asked with a puzzled frown. I looked at Mei and saw a look of concentration before her eyes lit up in recognition.
“Oh, I had forgotten about that place. That’s where um, Sul...Sulayman was?” Mei asked tentatively.
“Good grief. His damn wards.” I sighed and massaged my forehead as the others stared at me in confusion. “He had wards all over the place to keep the peace and to keep the authorities away. Similar to my ghetto invisibility,” I addressed to Beth as she sat curled up on my side. She nodded in understanding. While I had only walked her through a few psionic techniques I had talked about the more interesting ones. “With the energy flooding the ley lines, I am guessing that the wards got supercharged. We’re going to have to visit there eventually to get Sulayman to tone them down a bit.”
“So, who is Sulayman,” Jeremy asked with a blank look. I stared back silently. There was really no point in explaining it when he would just forget about it again.
“It’s the guy you told me about in Purgatory,” Beth started to explain. At least her nascent training was enabling her to resist the effects. It also likely helped that she hadn’t actually been there or been directly exposed to the wards.
“What’s Purgatory?”
Chapter 2
The next few days were spent mostly in my basement fiddling with my wards. Ideally, I would have liked to work a little bit more with my healing circle. Getting a true resurrection circle was still a priority. I had lucked out with my haphazard solution to ‘reincarnating’ Mat but frankly, having his ghost possess his ghost was really sloppy. Technically, he was still dead.
Instead, I was futzing around with a variation of my anti-magic wards. This was something I had perfected adequately on a small scale. Enough that I could keep my electronics from exploding around my aura. A situation that was only going to get worse since my body was sucking in the elevated ambient energy like a child drinks down a milkshake.
I think I had gotten it to the point that it could cancel the energy strikes from the minor surges long the key line. I could make it feed on the energy pulses to enlarge its magic suppression field. A poor man’s lightning rod. One wouldn’t do it, though. It would take one attached to the top of the building every half mile or so. The part I couldn’t figure out was how to get someone else to trigger it. To test it out with a minor psychic, I had a little helper.
“Try it once more,” I coaxed Jeremy’s sister again. I had affixed the hand sized placard to the bench in the corner. The power was dialed down to the minimum since I actually needed the mana level to be normal down in the
basement if I was going to use it for my experiments.
“It's not doing anything. I can sorta feel the magic energy but it's just not reacting to anything I do with my mind,” the girl pouted. In exchange for helping her with her psionic practice, I was using her to see if a psychic could activate the ward. So far it wasn’t a success.
“Darn, I was afraid of that,” I muttered. I had woefully underestimated how easy this would be. As a dragon, I could instinctively activate and use most magic devices, wards and circles that were already set up for use. I could do this even before I trained myself in the field with my stolen books. Beth didn’t have my reservoir of mana, my instinct or training. “Maybe the vamps can do it.” I had my doubts, though.
“Sorry,” Beth said dejectedly.
After checking her brother wasn’t around, I patted her head. “It's not your fault. You are turning out to be very talented in mind magic. It's simply a matter of it being a different specialty. Just because I was hoping for something different doesn’t make it your fault that it's not working out.”
“Does this mean that your devices can’t keep our city from being blasted apart every few hours?” another voice interrupted. Conrad was standing at the head of the stairs with his typical frown.
“I see your legs are almost done,” I noted, seeing he was no longer wearing the hover belt and was wearing a lighter version of his armor.
“Yes, thanks for your concern,” he nodded gruffly. “Now about our exploding city?”
“Well, the wards can do it,” I nodded to another corner of the room where several stacks of ceramic plates leaned precariously against one another.
“Are you sure they should be leaning that way?” Conrad nervously questioned, no doubt picturing his hopes for a non-exploding city inches away from being dashed.
“It's that new ceramic you guys like to use. It should be able to be shot from a cannon and not chip,” I assured him. “Once it's activated, it should be able to take a shot from that great big orbital cannon in the sky and shrug it off.”
“So why aren’t we deploying them?” the were captain asked, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice.”
“Because if Derek had to place all of them himself he couldn’t do other important things that might save lives,” chimed in Beth from her position standing over the ward. I smiled to myself as she recited the reason I had told her. It was mostly true, although there was a goodly dose of selfishness in the equation.
“Mei asked me to do something about the roaming dinosaurs and I still have to go to Purgatory and fix that mess.”
“Where?” a confused were bear asked.
“Yeah, exactly,” I sighed tiredly.
“I may be able to help,” another voice drifted in from
behind Conrad’s large frame.
“Stella, you are back,” I exclaimed happily. Oh, sure she started out as a bubbleheaded blond but after you got to know her you... got used to it. That and she was the only spell caster I knew of in the world even if she came across as an old world hippie.
“Yeah, I stopped by the Blight...”
“Purgatory,” I corrected her.
“What’s Purgatory,” muttered a dazed Conrad. His efforts to overcome Sulayman’s wards were almost literally making his eyes cross.
“Whatever you want to call it, it's cut off from Yggdrasil,” she sadly shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it happening before.”
“Does this mean you can’t go back?”
“Well, it was the only real way I had to travel the planes,” she paused for a moment. “I suppose I could have gotten a ride from George but he’s stuck here too.”
“Who is George,” I asked, now joining Conrad looking lost.
“He’s the elemental she summoned,” Beth offered helpfully. “Didn’t she introduce you?”
“I wasn’t around long after she summoned him,” I explained to the girl. “He’s trapped too? He’s not staying in the spare room, is he? There is no way I am letting an elemental track dirt into the house...” I paused as the elves eyes narrowed at me and I belatedly remembered
the Norse elves feeling on hospitality. “Unless I can renovate the area so it feels more at home...” I trailed off gritting my teeth. Good Lord, can you even get the maid service after the world ends? Switching gears, I asked, “So you named him George?”
“No one here can speak the elemental tongue, except perhaps you. I wanted something exotic.”
“So you named him George?”
“I wanted to call him Bob but Jeremy kept laughing at me for some reason. I thought George would work. It speaks of mysterious places.” She was no longer glaring at me, so I suppose she could call it anything she wanted. “As kind as it is to offer hospitality, he was not comfortable in your tiny abode.” Pardon me for not needing a palace or decent cavern since I’ve been stuck in this scrawny body for over a year. “He is living underneath the Primary.”
“The where?” Crap, now Conrad has me doing it.
“It’s what everyone is calling the first portal where we fought the Demon Lord,” Conrad groggily splurged as he slowly pulled himself out of his fugue.
“I guess that works,” I muttered.
“He isn’t happy about being trapped here, but at least he won’t starve. Anyway, I am here to help.”
“Um, thanks...” I offered weakly. “Help with what?”
“With the wards,” she prompted. “I can help place and activate them.”
“You... can use wards,” I collapsed on a nearby stool, staring at her.
“Of course, focusing and routing energy is a basic skill I learned before I was even a century old,” she said in her evil bubbly voice. “I had no need of the advanced skills but most elementalists and other schools know that.”
“So when I was training myself in the mastery of wards and circles it didn’t occur to you that I could use a little help?” A small growl may have entered my voice. Beth must have seen something in my expression because she slowly inched out from between the two of us.
“I had mentioned my skill in wards when we first met. I had assumed that you wanted to accomplish this on your own or you would have asked.” I remembered tuning her out after five seconds of her rhapsodizing of the wonders of nature. I groaned and rubbed my forehead.
“Do you have anything to offer now? Now that I am asking?” I prompted her.
“Well, I can activate any wards you wish me to,” she said hesitantly. “I think you have surpassed my knowledge of advanced wards and circles. The priests were the ones to study those things along with runes.”
“So we have a solution to the lightning storms,” Conrad prompted, seemingly fully focused.
“We have a mitigation,” I corrected him absently, still distracted by the thought of all the time I had wasted.
“The wards will help damp down the minor fluctuations
the city is experiencing,” Stella interjected helpfully using her newly exposed knowledge of wards and magical environmental engineering. My fingertips lightly gouged into the surface of the table as she continued her explanation. I am sure it was totally subtle and no one noticed. “However, a real storm will still rip through the city pretty badly. Although enough of these wards may reduce the effects to just above what you're experiencing now.”
Conrad looked at me in concern for confirmation. I took a deep breath and released it, trying to let go of my remaining tension and frustration. I nodded. “Yeah, pretty much what she said. There are mages that specialize in routing and balancing energies to prevent the ley lines from damaging things. It’s really unfortunate that you built a city on such a mass of closely placed nodes. There is a reason Vatapi chose this place as the Primary.”
“He’s the demon lord Derek fought,” Beth explained helpfully. Conrad grunted in thanks.
“And without these wards, a ‘real’ storm will do how much damage?” the officer asked with obvious trepidation.
“I am not completely sure how strong your structures are but even your force fields would offer little protection.”
“It would be pretty bad. They are fairly rare but when they do happen most unprotected cities don’t survive. The building materials you use are mighty strong but I wouldn’t risk it.”
“The other cities in the world haven’t had as much damage as we have,” he looked at us for confirmation. “I assume that’s because we have so many ley lines.”
“It can happen to them too but we are at a higher risk. Also, there’s something about this city that makes it very uncomfortable for human psychics and mages. I am sure that other cities have active magic users helping to smooth things over...” I trailed off. This world's magic users last effort to ‘help’ the world involved a massive spell that wiped the knowledge of magic, the supernatural and the ability to recognize it from all mundane authorities. The supernatural community called this the ‘Announcement’ and it, in turn, came in reaction to a visit from an extraplanar deity that had ended in a city being nuked out of existence. This also had its own name. The “Moscow Event”. Yeah, the magic community probably wasn’t going to do anything useful.
“Likely, some huge necromantic sacrifice within the last millennia,” Stella explained.
“Ew,” Beth gave her opinion of the matter.
“Anyway, we are the ones at the highest risk,” I explained. “But it can happen to any city on a node. There should be a minor trickle down effect as the ley lines connected to ours are stabilized.” Stella looked doubtful at this but didn’t say anything. The look was justified; it would be very minor.
“Give me the plates. Faramond and I can place these through the city as well as activate them.” Stella offered again.
I gestured to the leaning piles of wards in the corner to help herself. “Would it help to have an officer assigned to help you?” Conrad asked. That was actually very generous of him. Faramond was an unregistered supernatural. Before the portals opened and hell was unleashed, the mayor was contemplating cracking down on vigilantes pushing for his own supernatural task force. Conrad was now head of that very same task force but I think the enforcing of the vigilante ban had never been actually enforced. I suppose they had other priorities now.
“I would love the company,” Stella began brightly.
“I assume this assigned officer would be flying them around from one building top to another in either a shielded military vehicle or an older flyer more resistant to the ley lines?” I asked with a smile.
“Why yes...” the burly shifter began before he was interrupted.
“Actually, never mind! Faramond and I can easily do this by ourselves,” the álfar said with a plastered smile. A twitch began to develop in her right eye. Looks like she still wasn’t over that whole crash. I still say she was overreacting. It’s not as if she got eaten by demons like poor Mat did.
“We’ll do that right now,” she said eagerly, somewhat obviously trying to avoid the officer. “You never know when a major imbalance could wipe out the city!” She must have been using some of that fabled elven nimbleness since she stacked the wards until they
teetered over her head and practically sprinted up the stairs.
“She seems a bit over-eager,” Conrad hesitantly said as we all looked up the stairs where she had disappeared.
“Always eager to help,” except when she could have saved me weeks of time. I would get over that eventually. “Back to work then,” I said while clapping my hands. With Stella’s help maybe I could get some research done.
“Actually, let’s go up to the living room for a bit. I need to get your report on what happened and you can help us make some contingency plans now the worst has happened.” Or maybe not.
“Sure, why not,” I replied unenthusiastically.
While I was sitting in my favorite comfy chair I couldn’t help thinking that there were literally more than a dozen things I should be doing and a half dozen I would rather be doing. I stopped by the kitchen to offer Conrad a piece of dinosaur. Mei had really scored with her influence with the packs and finagled an entire leg of an allosaurus. It was cut up and distributed to the local housing. This meant that I was storing it, but since my houses were full of squatters it didn’t really count as mine. It was a good thing I hadn’t told anyone that I didn’t need to eat or I wouldn’t even have this.
teetered over her head and practically sprinted up the stairs.
“She seems a bit over-eager,” Conrad hesitantly said as we all looked up the stairs where she had disappeared.
“Always eager to help,” except when she could have saved me weeks of time. I would get over that eventually. “Back to work then,” I said while clapping my hands. With Stella’s help maybe I could get some research done.
“Actually, let’s go up to the living room for a bit. I need to get your report on what happened and you can help us make some contingency plans now the worst has happened.” Or maybe not.
“Sure, why not,” I replied unenthusiastically.
While I was sitting in my favorite comfy chair I couldn’t help thinking that there were literally more than a dozen things I should be doing and a half dozen I would rather be doing. I stopped by the kitchen to offer Conrad a piece of dinosaur. Mei had really scored with her influence with the packs and finagled an entire leg of an allosaurus. It was cut up and distributed to the local housing. This meant that I was storing it, but since my houses were full of squatters it didn’t really count as mine. It was a good thing I hadn’t told anyone that I didn’t need to eat or I wouldn’t even have this.
“Okay, so our friendly fiend had a plan then went back at least a hundred years. Apparently, he was unwelcome back home in hell and decided to make his own little interdimensional kingdom.” I paused, tearing a strip out of the dino haunch after sharpening my teeth slightly. Since my shape changing had been partially unlocked I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to use it. “Either he was pretty circle savvy or he had an unbelievable circle master working for him. Rakshasa have a reputation for being evil masterminds and magical prodigies, so I’ll go with the assumption that he did it himself.”
“And what did he do?”
“He selected ten dimensions. I am assuming they are all earth analogs, however, that wouldn’t really be required. Over the last several centuries he has been carefully placing circle arrays at the major nodes of the planet he has targeted.” I paused again to activate my telekinesis to drag a towel from the kitchen so I could wipe my hands. Nothing came. Damn, this is why I hate people moving my stuff around. Leaning forward to peer around the corner I spied the truant cloth’s new location and floated it to me. “We are lucky number ten. The last planet on his list. Which is actually very lucky.”
“How is being last lucky?”
“The last circle array was the linchpin. If I had gotten there ten minutes earlier I might have been able to break the master circle and diffuse the energy. Due to unfortunate delays we got there after he had started channeling the energy into it.”
“I assume that was bad.”
“If I had broken the circle at that point, the backlash would have destroyed the city and the energy may have created a cascade event leading to the same energy and portals we are seeing now but with a lot less control.”
“So our worst case scenario, without a directed army of demons.”
“Yeah, random supernaturals all over from everywhere in the multiverse. So I decided against that.” Mostly because I didn’t want to die, but the other reasons were valid too. “So while the demon lord was distracted I modified the circle to exclude all demons and maybe most supernaturals. Except for Vatapi, of course. His signature and blood were impossible to remove in the time I had.”
“So until the circle fails or is broken the demons are trapped.” He paused in thought. “Exactly where are they trapped? Somewhere in this ten world network? Why can’t they travel through some other means?”
“Ah, I don’t think I explained that part. Vatapi was an exile. He didn’t want anyone, especially non-aligned demons to come after him. So he did something that was frankly pretty amazing. He locked these ten planets he had prepared away from all the other dimensions.”
“That does sound pretty impressive,” Conrad growled. “How does that impact us?”
“Stella is trapped here, as is her elemental.” I pointed out. “The rest of the world is actually in a good position.
Because he locked away the rest of the multiverse you will only have random portals popping up from ten worlds. Because of yours truly, most of the supernaturals are locked away without the active help of Vatapi or me.”
“So Vatapi is dead and... wait. You?” The were stared at me in surprise.
“Well, it seemed smart to have a key just in case we needed to actually go somewhere. It was pretty easy to modify that part. It’s meant to be flexible until it's activated.”
“Okay, our position is stable until the circle is broken or degrades.” Conrad nodded to himself in satisfaction. I looked at him in sympathy.
“That circle is activated on top of the largest node I have ever seen. It not going to break or degrade... ever. The planet itself is more likely to be destroyed than that thing.”
“Hmm. Not the best news but as I said, the situation is stable.”
I shook my head, “Death means something else to gods and demons than it does to you or me.”
“What? Do you mean...” A look of dread crossed his normally stoic face.
“Yeah, demons come back from the dead unless you kill them on their own plane. Normally their essence goes to their home plane and in a decade to a hundred years they are back and ready to cause more trouble.”
“And in a situation not so normal?”
“It gets a lot trickier to say. Vatapi was a smart, if somewhat megalomaniacal, fellow,” I say thoughtfully, rubbing some stubble on my chin. I like that look so I generally keep some there. “There is no way he would chain himself inside a network of worlds if he didn’t have a way to restore himself. Chances are that there is a tenth world that he has set up with his little horde of demons and he is in the process of restoring himself. Once that happens, he is one of the keys that unlocked the portals and the demons can continue their invasion plan.”
The conversation was muted after this revelation. Conrad was obviously mulling over the implications. Within minutes he had excused himself. I shrugged and headed back downstairs. So much to do and so little time.
So, of course, the bell tolled.
Chapter 3
When I opened the front door, I was expecting a vampire. It only made sense. The house was warded and I had already accidentally vaporized several fine upstanding vampire members of the undead community. I hadn’t really cared, until the council member Vivian Delargo came to my door, practically frothing at the mouth and threw a rock at my head. I may be a little insensitive, however in my defense, back in the dimension where I am from the vampires are all evil psychopaths. Here in this new world, they seem to be pretty much just like humans. Of course, humans that eat other humans, don’t breathe and... who am I kidding? I can’t stand the things.
I had turned off my wards long enough for the undead to reform and leave the perimeter and then placed a bell out on the lawn so the undead could ring it if they needed me to come out and talk to them. I almost felt bad about the temporarily deader undead, since they had burned up trying to deliver messages to me that the service I had arranged was complete. I still get a chuckle thinking about that crazy mixed up time. Vivian was far less amused.
So when I opened the door I fully expected to see a vampire on my lawn. It still took me by surprise. Standing in the street, barely in arm’s length of the bell stood a tall, slender, impeccably dressed man in a black Victorian style suit. I wasn’t quite sure why his hand was missing and the apparently freshly cauterized wrist was smoking. It would explain why he was glaring angrily at
me, but I wasn’t sure how it was my fault. Since it was late afternoon, he wore gloves... on his remaining hand... and he had a black parasol shading his head and face.
Next to him stood his funhouse mirror image. A short, stout fellow whose waist crept over what most would have defined as overweight. He wore a gray pinstriped suit that wouldn’t have been out of place in an Al Capone movie. Undead love their anachronisms. Though he wasn’t wearing gloves or a parasol and wasn’t smoking. Hmmm, must be a minion. Usually, minions try to match fashions with their boss. What a bad minion.
“What the hell? A disintegration field in a public place is so freaking illegal I’m surprised the army isn’t on your ass already,” shouted the distraught mortal.
“Idiot. It is his wards. Mistress Vivian warned me about them but apparently he moved the bell inside the field. How droll,” spat the thin vampire in a tightly controlled voice brimming with anger.
“I don’t care if the thing works by chanting ‘Hari Krishna’. That thing almost killed me!” Shouted the near hysterical man, getting another disgusted look from the undead. “If Mr. Prince didn’t need you I would pop a cap in you.”
Good grief. That horrible outdated colloquialism had to be an affectation. Sure the people around here had a fetish with various old time periods but it was usually restrained to fashion, housing and the odd vehicle here and there.
A tug on my sleeve made me look down to find Beth at my elbow. “Are they doing a Laurel and Hardy act?” she
whispered. The vampire winced, apparently catching the reference with his unnaturally sharp senses. The human continued to curse me, though he seemed to be losing steam. From his reference to my erstwhile victim, the less than upstanding citizen Eddie Prince, it may be that these two were actually not together. Great, now I have two problems instead of one.
“Yes. Yes, they are,” I told the little girl.
“Why does he have an umbrella?”
“I prefer to think of it as a parasol”
“Isn’t that for girls?”
“Yes,” I said with a hand on her shoulder. “But I won’t judge.” Ah, the skinny undead flinched. Obviously, created in a time where people did exactly that. “Better get back inside. The only thing worse that a herd of crazy people are mimes.” Once she had gone back inside I closed the door and walked over to the comedy act gathered in front of my house.
“So, what do I owe the dubious pleasure of your company?” I asked as I examined the bell and swept my hand in the area around it. Well, what do you know? The increased ambient energy was absorbed by the wards and seemed to have been partially expressed by a larger radius. I guess I hadn’t defined the area of affect very tightly on the ward so the extra energy went there. Admittedly sloppy of me, but I didn’t expect the apocalypse to come so soon. Actually, I just didn’t expect the world to be standing afterward. Still sloppy, though.
In the background, the comedy act had stopped talking. I guess I had missed the introduction, but I didn’t care very much. “Okay Laurel, why did Vivian send you here. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the undead sort since the world’s end. Actually, I didn’t even see your sort much before it. Why now?”
“My name isn’t Laurel. It's...”
“Something I’d forget in about five minutes anyway. Stick to the point.” Was I being too rude? “Please.”
“Mistress Vivian required your presence at the Tower Plaza. She promises to make it worth your time.”
“Well that is unfortunate for you since Mr. Prince requires the Professor’s presence immediately,” the shorter fellow said pompously, finally over his irate rambling.
“I am not sure why I should go with either half of the Laurel and Hardy troupe,” I pointed out. I had a lot of things that needed to get done and the most important of them involved research in my basement, not gallivanting around the city.
“Hardy? Why I ought to...” began the human.
“Be quiet in front of your betters, little man. Before I shove this stump down your throat and...” the vampire trailed off, obviously getting a grip on his temper. I looked on in interest. The modern vampires of this world were almost universally polite. Since they had come out of the shadows they had run a concerted campaign to convince the mortals they were harmless. The loss of control was concerning. More so, since Vivian had reason
to send one of her more polite minions to me if she wanted my help. I had helped them out with a problem and they had, in turn, helped me out with some information. I owed her nothing and the reverse was true.
“Right. Perhaps you could discuss who has precedence while I go have a cup of hot chocolate.”
“Mr. Prince is calling in his marker. By your oath you are bound to his service until the debt is paid,” the stout mortal rushed out, clearly quoting another’s words.
“Vivian said to tell you that unless you are willing to lend your expertise to her problem, it may overflow and what’s left of the city will burn,” the simultaneous statement came from the one handed undead.
I looked from one to the other for a moment in silence and then stomped my foot angrily. “Dammit! One more interruption and I’ll summon the damn demon army myself, just so I can get some peace!”
Once I had calmed down slightly, I did the only sensible thing I could think of. I flipped a coin. Eddie Prince won. Neither one would let me out of their sight and likewise neither one would get into the other’s vehicle so we ended up in my rickshaw. I tried to ignore the odd couple in the back as the long silences were broken with bouts of
bickering.
The reason I owed Eddie Prince a favor was simple. When I had come into this world I was destitute. I was living out of the free housing given to the homeless. Jeremy had offered to help, but pride and an unwillingness to live out of his parent’s basement pushed me to take actions of some dubious morality.
In short, I snuck into a local mob boss’s hideout using a combination of psionics and shape changing. I stole his identity, then his money and then his memory of what I did. In my defense, he was a very bad, if talented, man. He was also thoroughly mad. In order to steal his memories and skills, I actually had to cure him of his mental illness. I left his comatose body with the local hospital secure in the knowledge that he would wake up with no memory of me in a week, and even though he would undoubtedly sink back into madness, at least he would do so without any resources.
I later found out he had woken up and beaten the odds, simply by finding psychiatric help to make my cure stick. A year later, he has dragged himself up by his bootstraps and now has an even larger criminal empire. He didn’t thank me for any of that, though. He actually hired a vampire assassin to kill me. When I tracked him down we had a heart to heart and he agreed to drop his vendetta in return for several favors. His timing could have been better.
I was distracted from my internal grumblings by the sound of screams from an alleyway we passed. I contemplated driving onward, but I thought about what
Jeremy would do. I promptly ignored that. Then I thought about what Mei Ling would do. I threw that out too. It was when I was thinking about what Beth would do when I finally gave in. Apparently, I live with a bunch of nosey busy bodies and they would all have issues if I passed on panicked screams.
I brought the vehicle to a rapid halt, that threw the human up against my back before he rebounded into his seat. He was still groaning in pain when I leaped off the bike and rushed into the alley. I was pretty sure he had recovered enough to shout curses at me as I left. The vampire simply sighed impatiently and tapped his foot. Naturally, he hadn’t been inconvenienced by the sudden stop.
The alley turned into a short street that dead ended in what appeared to be a small shared plaza for the neighborhood residences. A shimmering opening, the size of a truck, blocked most of the exit and a large dinosaur was enjoying itself briskly chasing down the two humans desperately ducking behind overturned flyers and the several decent sized trees. As I maneuvered around the edge of the dimensional tear I tried to identify the creature more exactly. The beast was little smaller than the tyrannosaur I killed hiking my way back to the Primary portal in the park, only twelve feet tall. Perhaps an evolutionary offshoot. It looked like an allosaurus but I understood that was an entirely different time period. At least in this dimension.
I finally managed to get around the portal without slipping into it and dashed toward the overgrown lizard.
It was just about to bite down on one of the heftier examples of humanity it was playing with, but it must have noticed my movement out of the corner of its eyes. Swinging around its large head, it glared at me, before leaning forward to tear at me with its toothy maw.
I wasn’t too worried. These creatures weren’t supernatural and that meant I was in another category of predator altogether. The energies of the world flowed through me, reinforcing my strength and durability. Not to mention this pipsqueak was less than half my size in my true form. I moved to the side, brought my doubled fists together down at an angle on its snout. Blood exploded from the destroyed skull as the force of my blow blew the skull backward, dragging the body of the beast along behind it. It landing twenty feet away plowing into the ground whereupon the body flipped over and the carcass came to a rolling stop.
“Oh, my god! What happened? It was lunging at me and then it exploded backward,” the man said dazedly as he staggered towards me. “Did you shoot it?”
I looked at him as I tried to brush bits of torn flesh and blood off my suit. Really? Did it look like I had a gun? Admittedly, I wouldn’t be covered in blood and shattered teeth if I had used one. “Yes. I shot him with my invisible rifle.”
“How can we thank you!” This exclamation came from the woman approaching from the side. She had been slightly better at hiding and now the beast was dead had come out and was hugging the man.
“No need to thank me,” I nobly declared as I stared at the deceased creature. “I know this has been traumatic for you folks. Let me take this thing away and I’ll be satisfied at having made the world a better place.” I absently spouted, as I salivated over the dinosaur. Oh yeah, steak tonight.
I ignored the babble of the couple as I walked over to the carcass and grabbed the tail. This would be a little tricky to get traction on. Carefully leaning into the weight, I began to drag the body behind me. The weight itself was trivial but my feet kept slipping until I concentrated on bringing more of my mass into my form. The rune that fixed me into a humanoid form ached and burned as I pushed my crippled shapeshifting to the limit. My form didn’t change but the impression I left on the world did and my steps became heavier and slipped less.
The couple quieted and huddled away as I dragged the corpse away. I guess they were squeamish. More for me!
Back at the rickshaw, the vampire was still tapping his foot. I had heard a steady stream of obscenities from Hardy but that died down as I came around the corner. His face took on a grayish cast as I approached. Humans are really silly around dead things. Funny, considering how violent they were.
While he was catching flies and the vampire the very picture of impatience, I dug around the rear utility box behind the carriage. As I came up with generous coils of straps, I promised myself to give Beth a raise. I felt a little disloyal in thinking it but in some ways, she was a way better assistant than her brother. I went about tying the
straps around the carcass and fastening it the frame of the bike. It should hold, I did ask Beth to get the strongest available.
When I got back on the rickshaw and started pedaling, I realized the flaw in my plan. The bike was certainly sturdy enough but the wheels simply spun in place. The vampire snorted at my predicament and I spared him a brief glare. There was no way in hell I was abandoning this feast on the roadside.
I sighed as I realized the only way I was going to get this home was to use pure psychic brute force. With a frown, I concentrated and I encompassed the corpse in a telekinetic grip. I didn’t want to waste my energy so I pushed more strength into my power until I barely countered the sheer mass and the bike’s wheels regained traction.
It was with renewed exuberance I pedaled forth. I may be constantly distracted from more important things and my time wasted by renegades from a black and white comedy skit but at the end of this day, I was going have a barbecue.
The last time I was at Mountain High was at night. The buildings looked more mundane and the cracks in the windows and the flat out missing panes lent a certain war torn look to a previously very exclusive neighborhood.
Even now, smoking construction buoys waivers drunkenly in the air looking like they were about to come crashing down onto the people below.
That was another difference. The people. Previously there were scattered well-dressed elite and a security bot at every corner. The security bots were long gone and the people in the streets far more numerous. They were also a lot less well dressed. I would venture to say that many of them looked like refugees from a night club after an all-night bender. The clothes themselves were excellent quality but it was obvious that they hadn’t been washed in days, smudged with dirt and grime and often torn. I suppose the laundry service after the city had been subjected to power outages, massive lightning storms, and dinosaur rampages was somewhat lacking.
With only military vehicles patrolling the air, most people were getting from place to place on ancient bicycles and a surprising number of well cared antique land vehicles I am sure were never intended to be seen outside some very rich people's garage. Still, necessity will always triumph and here they were. The people and what traffic there was, were remarkably accommodating in getting out of the way despite the very sparse coverage of functioning traffic buoys. There were many glances at the large corpse we were dragging and many whispers as we passed. I politely nodded and smiled at them in sympathy. They were obviously jealous of the delicious meal I had with me.
Even with the traffic being so cooperative, I still had to slow as I approached the entrance to Mountain High.
Wheeled vehicles and people just couldn’t move that fast. Hopefully, the traffic buoys would be fixed soon, the entire mob of people in the middle of the street was very chaotic and the constant honking was getting on my nerves.
I pulled up to the front and got off, unhappily brushing the dried gore from my suit. It was tweed. I think Jeremy was making a joke when he stocked them, but it had been remarkably comfortable. I had more at home but since dry cleaning wasn’t the world’s main concern I had to assume it would be a while before I would be able to get the shredded flesh out of the fabric. There was a spell that cleaned things with a wave of the hand. It was supposedly a stupidly simple spell. Ingrained so deeply into the firmament that apprentices used it with impunity. Definitely my first priority.
“Watch the vehicle Laurel,” I said to the thin undead as he looked at me down his long nose in disdain. “Guard the dino too.”
“Why would I care if someone took off with the carcass,” he asked sarcastically.
“If I lose my barbecue, you’ll have to explain to the lovely Vivian why we were delayed hunting down a replacement.”
“Fine.”
“If you’ll come this way Professor I’ll take you to Mister Prince,” Hardy politely offered as he staggered out of the cart. He wobbled a little as if his legs were partially
asleep. Strange, he was significantly more congenial since I brought the dinosaur back.
“Just Derek...” I trailed off in the middle of my protest. “Fine. Professor, it is.” I gave up. I sucked at the whole undercover thing anyway and the end of the world made the point rather moot. They can call me whatever they wanted to.
Then I went in to meet the Prince of the underworld.
The “Prince” wasn’t that impressive. He was a middle-aged plump man with thinning hair. Considering all of this could be fixed with a pill you had to wonder if his insanity was actually completely cured. Even when I had shape changed into him to steal him blind, I thought his form was a tad creepy.
So there I was, sitting in his office, surrounded by his bookcases and luxurious carpets. Eddie sat at his huge desk and I was in a very comfortable chair in front of him. The chair was new. I had smashed the old one in a fit of rage during our last meeting. The carpet was not quite as smooth as previously and I could tell it covered a large crack in the floor that went all the way across the room and up the wall. There were no windows in the room but from looking at the outside of the building, this floor had been hit pretty hard. Most of the windows were gone or half melted from ley line energy strikes.
“So we meet again,” I nodded with a neutral expression on my face, my fingertips forming a triangle. “How are things going?”
“We survived,” he paused. “Most of us.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What?” he asked, distracted for a moment. “Never mind. I called you here to collect on one of your favors.”
“I was hoping for some tea,” I feigned disappointment. “And maybe a steak. It’s getting hard to get the bare necessities.”
“Well it’s only going to get worse,” Eddie said with some disgust. “The military helped initially, but now that we don’t have constant lightning storms I heard they plan to use this city as a base to help organize the aid to the rest of the world.”
“You’re welcome.” He continued his monolog, completely ignoring me.
“Ironically, this is going to mean that all their resources are going to be outside this city except to re-supply. We’re going to have to deal with the monster jack in the boxes ourselves.”
“True. The good side of that is they are delicious.”
He stared at me for a moment in silence. “I sometimes forget you aren’t human. Then you do something like that and it’s in your face. Fine. Your bad ass. You’re the monster that eats other monsters for snacks. You and the
other shape changing freaks can be useful and eat the ones that don’t know their place.”
“Right. I had almost forgotten why I didn’t like you.” I was lying. I hadn’t forgotten.
“You don’t need to like me. We had an agreement. Seven wishes.”
“Favors,” I chuckled. “I am not a genie. I can’t just wave my hand and have reality bend to my whims. But we do have an agreement. What do you need.”
“I need you to resurrect some people,” he stated. I stared at him for a moment.
“Can you wait a couple of weeks,” I asked. “I am still working on that.”
By the widening of his eyes, I could see he was surprised. Ah, I see. He was opening with something he ‘knew’ was impossible so when I denied him he would have an advantage.
“You can raise the dead,” he stated flatly. Yeah, he was fishing now.
“Right now I can only do it to the very recently dead.” Both my psionic healing and circle were more than adequate for such a purpose. “I have been researching more powerful methods. Given a few weeks of ‘uninterrupted’ time, I think I can do it without that limitation.”
“Hmm,” he was silent. I could see plans form behind his
eyes. “So as of this moment, you cannot do what I ask.”
I looked at him in annoyance. “I told you before I don’t do wishes. If I can do something I will. If you want something I can’t do, go somewhere else.”
“When you say you can resuscitate the recently dead, so this include the brain damaged?”
“Ah, you mean the ones that are illegal to revive, by law. I have a couple of methods that can do that, as long as their spirit hasn’t left their body.”
“Like their soul?”
“No, not...” I paused. I really didn’t want to get into a semantics argument with Eddie. “Okay, let’s go with ‘soul’. If their soul hasn’t left their body, I can repair the damage one way or another. Otherwise, we need a better method.”
“A lot of people are in limbo due to the recent disaster. Technically dead. The military apparently has a god awful number of cryogenic pods and has placed almost all of the people that have recoverable remains in stasis.” He snorted, “They promised that once services have been restored, doctors will examine the victims and those that meet the legal criteria for recovery will be revived.”
“And I assume you have some pals that may not meet this definition.”
“Some of my people were technically killed during the events. We have our own stasis pods. Significantly better than the military’s mothballed versions.”
“You don’t want to wait?”
“That and also some of the people may be wanted for questioning. Others may not meet the letter of the law due to some head trauma. I want them back. I don’t give a damn if some bureaucrat thinks they know better.”
“Fair enough,” I nodded. I actually thought the laws regarding reviving brain damaged people or making copies of memories and then restoring them to healed bodies or even new clones, were a bit excessive.
Nodding, he got up and lead me out the back of the office, through several corridors to a storage room. I tried to reign in my aura. I doubted it would be appreciated if I blew out the support equipment for the fourteen people I was supposed to be reviving.
There before me were fifteen capsules. All lined up like coffins ready for burial. Coffins with a transparent faceplate.
“So you want me to heal seven of them,” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“This would be a single favor,” he said firmly, staring me steadily in the eyes. “I would expect six more services in the future.”
I stared at the pods and then back at Eddie. The definition of ‘service’ wasn’t really defined. As annoying as this was, it wouldn’t take me too long. In the end, I decided it simply wasn’t worth arguing over and nodded.
“Doing this surrounded by stasis technology is asking for
trouble. Take me to a separate room and bring them in one at a time. I’ll see what I can do. Assuming they aren’t truly dead, I can either heal them here or back at my home.”
“What you do disrupts technology? Like what happened to all the quantum level tech?” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised people noticed the common theme of the most advanced technology dying with the coming of the portals.
“Yeah, I should be able to keep most of it in check, especially if I am reviving them anyway. However, let’s not tempt fate.” I didn’t feel like getting into an explanation of my aura as a supernatural creature disrupting technology versus my psionics, which happily worked with conventional physics.
It turned out that eleven of the recently dead could be repaired enough that no mental damage was detectable through simple psychic surgery. Yes, massaging their brain through their skull with my healing fingers worked. Three were far enough gone that my psychic talents couldn’t recover their personality or memories. I told Eddie to bring them in a shielded truck to my home. The circle that mostly resurrected Mat should be able to do something simple as regenerate the brain as good as new. That type of healing magic could coax the recorded
templates of people from the firmament.
The last body in stasis was so far gone it would have to wait for the more advanced circle. There was nothing I could do for it at the moment. I could tell Eddie wasn’t happy, but frankly, it was more than anyone else could do. Legally, that is. Someday my upgraded circle would be able to wrest the entire template from the primal layer of reality and stuff it back in the body. If that wasn’t resurrection, I am not sure what else, short of a god, would do it.
Go to Amazon for the rest of the book!
A Prison of Worlds
Book One of the Chained World Chronicles
By Daniel Ruth
Dedication
To the three wonderful women in my life, Wendy, Krystal and Amberlyn
A Prison of Worlds
Book One of the Chained Worlds Chronicles
Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Ruth
All Rights Reserved
ASIN: B00R9ZBF62
ISBN-13: 978-1530599493
ISBN-10: 1530599490
Revision 9
Chapter 1
The huge scaled claw grasped me around the waist and bore down. At this exertion, the last feeble energies that made up my shield collapsed and the sharp digits, each at least a half foot wide, slowly began to sink into my hide. It was excruciating and added more to the panic and terror erupting within me.
I had already summoned my barrier several times throughout the battle, only to have this forty-foot-long, scaly brute seemingly, almost lazily wear it down and then sink his fangs or claws in my flesh. At this point I was tapped out. Exhausted of all my resources, I beat on my captor’s grasping hand with all my remaining strength. My arms spun like scythes, restricted from full strength by the positioning of the hand grasping me, but still respectable in my own eyes. Bruises and shallow cuts formed and healed almost immediately. Damn dragon regeneration. Of course, my own similar regeneration was the only reason I was still alive.
Through my adrenaline and fear, I was overjoyed not to feel the claws sink into my body inch by inch. I had blocked the pain from my wounds at the start of the battle and I really couldn't decide whether to curse myself or not; it also meant I had exhausted my energy reserves a tiny bit sooner. A small part of me idly decided I was glad. If this thing was going to kill me, and it really looked like it wasn't avoidable, I could at least try to keep what was left of my pride and dignity by not screaming like a piglet.
Out of psionic tricks, I tried one last ace in the hole and fuzzily willed my body to make the transition from the scaly form I wore to a formless cloud of mist. I saw a movement from the corner of my eye and then the universe went black.
I think I was conscious for a minute or so before I actually realized it. The world seemed surreal, the gigantic leering dragon face hovered over me like one of the old time derelict human construction cranes I ran across in one of the city ruins. So absurdly huge, I felt I had been shrunk to the size of a mouse for a moment. As things came more into focus, I noticed the incredible pain in my head and some red liquid pouring into my eyes and over my body... and of course the ever present spears of pain piercing my side.
A low rumbling reverberated around me and it took me a moment to realize that the dragon was speaking to me. “Finally awake? I was afraid I broke you prematurely.”
I really wanted to say something sarcastic and witty, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes focused on that huge face. In fact, the creature was even larger than I remembered it being during the battle. My muddled brain tried to grasp this oddity. Did he use some sort of spell to grow? Why would he? He had already won.
It suddenly dawned on me. My skin was pink; well, what I could see of it under the blood. I was in my
human form. Now I was really confused. I definitely did not remember changing into anything. The last thing I remembered was being sucker punched while I was planning my escape as a cloud of animated gas. There was absolutely no human form involved in my plan.
“I see you noticed your new condition, my little trespasser,” the dragon stated in his rumbling gravel tone.
“Huh,” I angrily mumbled through a jaw I could swear was broken. Even when you heal as fast as I do, see if you can come up with something smart to say when you feel like your head, sides, and chest are going to explode or burn up respectively. Honestly, I have been hit with fusion grenades and walked away feeling better.
“Your companions were merely human, so I simply eliminated them. I expect no more or less from vermin.” The giant paused in thought. “You, however, are another issue. You are from a branch that I thought had died off, but still, a dragon is a dragon.” The creature’s next pause was filled with menace. “A dragon should know better than to trespass on another's territory, even a hatchling such as yourself.”
“Hrphhgr.” I filled the pause with my broken jawed wit. Okay, even I didn't know what I had tried to say.
“I have been experimenting with the older magics, from the time of the birth of our race. Lesser beings tend to explode when you apply them, but you... you came at a good time. I think these won't kill you,” he stated
gravely while his other massive hand came into my view and painfully poked my chest. “But they will expand my understanding of how they interact on ... well... you, and help keep you out of my home.”
Looking down to my chest where the dragon was tapping, I suddenly realized there were new symbols etched there. Marks emblazoned and appearing like red tainted scars. The two new symbols on my chest were not my work; however, looking at them I instinctively knew what they were. One was the symbol for ‘human’ and the other was the symbol for ‘anchor’.
A slow surge of panic percolated through my numb brain. I had no idea what language these were in, but I had an instinctive knowledge of numerous things, many of them mystical in nature, and somehow I knew what these meant. And somehow, deep down I knew I was screwed.
“Yes. I see you understand.” A rictus grin stretched across the thing's face as it realized I knew what he had done. “No more changing shapes for you. You came to my home as a human and now you'll stay as a human as you leave.”
He still had one hand wrapped around my waist and his claws embedded deep in my body. This filled my attention as he stood up straight, and I jerked up in the air like I was a marionette, or more aptly, a hooked fish. It elicited a low moan. The motion hurt quite a bit. Damn, guess that technique I used to banish pain had worn off while Mr. Evil had been at work; we hadn't
been formally introduced so that was how I thought of the creature.
He turned away from me, and my panicked eyes feverishly darted over the area we were in. We were in a clearing and there was no sign of the fight, nor thankfully the remains of my friends. That would have hurt more than this guy’s talons in my gut. What did catch my attention was a rather large circle chiseled into the ground. My handy instinctive knowledge triggered and I knew that the circle was meant to open a dimensional portal. Once I realized this, I spread out my senses and realized that we were smack dab in the middle of two ley lines crossing, a point of enhanced power and incidentally a weak point in the fabric of reality. I was starting to get a bad feeling for what this guy’s plan was.
“When I get back I am going to rip your guts out and feed them to the demons,” I finally spit out as my jaw healed enough for me to garble out. There were always demons slipping through the rents and tears of our battered world. Might as well get some use out of the horrid things.
I think he understood because his other hand came out in a blur and broke my jaw again. Did I mention I am a moron?
“You are really exceptionally powerful for one so young. It is unfortunate you had to try your hand against me.” I could almost hear mirth in his voice underneath his natural malevolence. “You will find that I am likely to be the most powerful dragon you'll ever know, at least
until I send you to meet the dark dragon god.” I had kinda figured that out. We are hugely territorial, but I had met a few others... briefly. Mr. Evil was in his own class. He must have been at least ten millennia older than anyone I knew of.
I am not really up on the nuances of various world religions, but I would have to be raised in a box not to understand his reference to the patron god of evil dragons. I think he was promising to kill me. I suppose this was only fair since I had just threatened something similar, if more graphic.
“By the way, you will be staying exactly where I send you until I come to see the results of this little test. The second rune will ensure this.”
My eyes went a little wide at this. Rune magic was a very powerful lost art that was said to be forbidden to learn. I guess being a bad ass ancient dragon makes you fearless in certain areas. As Mr. Evil was gloating, he reached the circle and began the process of activation.
I stared hard at the circle while he absentmindedly waved me around in the air. I couldn't draw this circle, or any other, but part of the hereditary knowledge that allowed me to know what it was also told me that the specific squiggle there was the place you put the coordinates that controlled where this thing went, and more importantly, where you were in relationship to it. I rallied my wavering concentration to impress this information on my brain. If that old lizard was right then I wouldn't be able to use my own powers to
teleport back. I would have to do it the hard way.
I think that Mr. Evil got tired of me wriggling around. Admittedly, he was about three times stronger than me and way healthier, but I like to think I was strong enough to distract him from the more complex magics involved in creating a portal. I even tried to bite his hand, but human necks turn out to be pretty inflexible. One moment I was upright craning my neck towards his talons and the next I had been flipped upside down and I was seeing the ground race towards me.
I woke up covered in sweat and engulfed in almost complete darkness. That's okay, I see in complete darkness, but the trip hammer of my heart and the laborious breathing was definitely not normal. Or at least it hadn't been before an ancient creature killed all my friends, trapped me in human form, and then exiled me to another dimension. I guess that's what growing up is all about.
Without turning on the light, I looked at the barely luminescent clock and noted that I had gotten two hours of sleep. Not comfortable but plenty for me. Sighing, I trudged to the kitchen and got out a roasted ham I had bought from the store and stuck in the cooler for later. Precooked, it really does taste better in human form that way. Who knew?
Slowly the sweat on my skin evaporated and the energetic heartbeat slackened as my body realized it wasn’t about to die. I was too young for this crap. At my age I should still be mindlessly throwing myself into stupidly dangerous situations, not waking up in the middle of the night scared of some scaly boogieman.
I walked back to the study and used a trickle of mental energy to lift one of the books from the pitiful remaining stack of less than twenty ragged hardcovers leaning up against the wall. They varied in age and condition from the newly printed synthetic nupaper to the old yellowed and barely legible acid stained paper of bygone ages. There was a slew of furniture options to choose from in the cozy room, but I slouched into my favorite overstuffed faux leather chair. My hands were still greasy from dead pig, so as I finished off the last bit of meat and licked the juices off my hands, I levitated the book, moving it in front of me and read. I flipped through the pages rapidly, my eyes scanning the page in a second before moving to the next one.
This massive tome was a more recent copy of a copy. After about 20 minutes, I felt a mild throbbing as the concentration I was investing in the levitation and memorization of the book started to wear on me. I was tempted to just ignore it and continue, but memories bubbled up where injudicious overuse of even minor abilities had caused my resources to run dry at critical points. Grunting in slight dismay, I floated a towel from the kitchen to me and wiped my hands clean while allowing the book to fall lifelessly into my grasp.
I know bibliophiles that would kill me for touching a book without thoroughly washing my hands, but I was too dispirited to worry. The book I was reading was what this world had to supply regarding magic. It was written by a quack. A really verbose quack with diarrhea of the mouth, or quill in this case. When one of my kind are born we get a lot of baggage and a cornucopia of gifts. We inherit the general memories of our forefathers and some truly staggering physical gifts. That’s not to say that I remember what my father ate fifty years ago on a Tuesday, but I get a seed of their skills. I know how to make a pie, add, subtract and multiply, whack people with some basic skill with a sword and even know Ohm's Law for electric circuits. My parents must have been true Renaissance people. I can't say I am an expert at any of these things, but with a little practice these seeds can grow more rapidly than you'd expect.
The skill I most value from my inheritance is knowing what to do with my psychic power. All of my kind, and in fact all of our breeds, have it bubbling up inside us, much like our magic. Most don't do much more with it than toss around balls of energy, form a sword, or move furniture around. Basically, flashy parlor tricks.
Someone in my ancestral line must have been a true pioneer because once I started to actively develop my skills, I found entire repertoires opening up from my hard work and meditation. Not to boast too much, but I haven't met anyone better and may never unless I ever actually meet my ancestors. Moreover, I truly enjoyed exploring the powers of the mind, delving into the
sleeping potentials and teasing them out, working with it until it blossoms into a true gift. That’s what psionics are to me and I love them. This actually is more than a little odd for one of my kind of any age, since to be honest, we relate more to magic. Heck, in so many ways we are magic. I still had my instinctive knowledge of magic and that was once more than enough. I took to my budding memories of my psychic potential like a duck to water and never looked back. Until I got exiled here.
Nowadays the love of my life isn't all that helpful. Psionics are great for mind over matter, controlling minds, healing, short distance teleportation, and many other tricks, but I have yet to see a psionic bridge the dimensions with the power of his mind alone. For that, you need magic. Even my digging into my ancestral memories didn't hint at future skills in this direction. My inherent ability to move between the gaps between the dimensions had been stifled by whatever rune the ancient dragon had placed on my chest, and my only hope to get back or even leave this dimension was to learn magic myself or find a friendly mage.
The problem I was having was that as far as I could tell this dimension didn't know squat about magic. The place that I had called home before I got stuck here was what this world would consider a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The particular town I came from was a little stunted when it came to science; however, it was crawling with magic users of a multitude of varieties. In that tiny corner of the scorched earth, the people and
whatever assorted riffraff that had fallen through the cracks in reality had rediscovered magic and used it to pick up civilization by its bootstraps and trudge onward.
I looked once more at the book in disgust. Here everything I had found was cloaked in religious nonsense and generally useless. I had avoided magic in my old home for the most part, but the part of me that made my race what we are just knew what was real magic and what was fiction. I was tempted to throw the book to the ground but lacked the emotional energy. I simply sighed, and dropped it back to the reject pile and pulled another from the larger stack. Tomorrow I would go to the antiquities bookstore on my way about the city and give these away. Books were rare enough in this new world that I would feel guilty to remove one from existence. Even if it was just a piece of crap.
I was just settling down for another long read when a pounding came from my front door. Dropping the book on a nearby table and getting up from the comfortable overstuffed chair I had situated myself in, I trudged to the door and opened it. Squinting a little at the rising sun, I looked at my visitor and was a little surprised to see a thin, twenty-something young man with mousy brown hair peering down at me from a few inches of advantage, swaying on his feet and looking like he was about to collapse any minute.
Frowning in concern, I moved forward to support him and led him into my home, noting in passing that he was dripping blood on my carpet. Oh well, I keep all my nice things in my other apartment. I kept telling myself
that as I avoided looking at my carpet being ruined.
“Jeremy... I wish you' be more careful.” I shook my head sadly. I had Jeremy on an ongoing contract. In my opinion, he was the best private eye in the city, and he liked dressing the part. He wore an old baggy trench coat and a wrinkled off-white dress shirt. Unfortunately, he had a bad habit of playing the hero; I think his clothes were in better shape than he was. He was also a good friend despite his lack of fashion sense.
“Hey, the job’s dangerous, jealous boyfriends and all that.” He gave a small breathy laugh that quickly turned into a groan. “Sorry to wake you.”
By this time we had reached the kitchen, the hardwood floor guaranteed that no more of my rug would be damaged, and I casually tore the coat he was wearing off to expose a bloody gunshot wound. A slight resistance told me it was actually an armored cloth. Probably resistant to heat and stiffened on impact to dissipate kinetic energy. It was likely why he was still alive and not spending the night being resuscitated in the local hospital.
“Hey, that was my favorite coat,” Jeremy jokingly whined. It looked out of place on his six-foot-four wiry frame and rugged features. How he got here with that wound boggled my mind; it's not as if we're close neighbors. He lived at the edge of the bad part of town, nicknamed the Blight by those that knew of it and couldn't avoid thinking about it, whereas this house was in a middle class suburban area of Arch. “Turn on the
damn light. It feels like a tomb in here.”
“Yeah, well you obviously haven’t spent much quality time in a tomb if you think that. You can have my old coat.” I turned the light on and then ripped his shirt open to expose the wound. “And shirt. Now hush, this takes some concentration.”
Taking a deep breath, I opened my inner eye to examine the damage. Within a few minutes, I knew exactly what was wrong with him. “You need to stop smoking, that's going to kill you sooner that some punk's gun,” I quipped, only half joking. He didn't have cancer or anything; these days no one did, but he did smoke. Humans are pretty fragile and they really shouldn't tempt fate. They may have to regrow his lungs someday if he ignores it.
“Then I'll die free.”
“The way cigarettes are taxed? Dream on.” During our banter, I was readying my hand over his wound, and when I thought he was distracted I slipped it in, my hand passing through his skin as if I was a ghost.
“You know, if you took my offer you could heal this yourself,” I muttered as my hand found the bullet. At my touch, it too became insubstantial and I lifted it out if his body with no resistance. As my hand pulled out, I could see the wound closing up. “Okay, psychic surgery complete. I hope your insurance covers this.” The tiny slug was completely flat. The coat must have almost completely stopped its momentum, unless Jeremy’s hide was a lot tougher than I thought.
“No way, I have enough on my table as a PI,” he said as his fingers ran down the side where the wound had been. “Good work as usual, Professor.”
“Stop calling me that,” I snapped. “I hate nicknames. If you cracked a book occasionally, it wouldn't be such a shock that someone actually wants to look at one.” These days the ‘old tech’ was a holographic display, and everyone looked at you as if you were a human anachronism if you didn’t have a neural interface. My entire home was a museum.
“Ah, come on, I heard someone calling you that already.” I winced at hearing that. Too late to discourage it I guess. Probably some smartass bookstore owner. I hate smartasses... other than me, I mean. “Besides you play it down, but you have some serious powers.”
“Well, I play it down because the fewer people know what I can do the fewer idiots I will have after my head.” I waive a finger at him condescendingly, only half teasing. “Besides, there's always someone stronger than you.”
“Voice of experience?”
“I really don't want to talk about it. You saw the aftermath yourself.”
Jeremy was one of the people that found me some time after I had been thrown out of my world. Apparently, I was quite a sight at the time.
“I thought you just got caught in a mugging.” I grimaced at the thought. What the hell did he think could have done that to me? A delinquent velociraptor looking for a score? To be fair, at the time he had no clue of my less than mundane state.
“Oh no, it was... er... I guess you would call it a demon.” How do you describe an ancient dragon and a magic portal to a guy whose only frame of reference was the contemporary 2090 AD urban landscape and perhaps a few fantasy and science fiction books? Well, and old movies. “Anyway, I don't really want to talk about it.”
“Damn, should have known that you had a story behind it,” Jeremy offered. Now I knew he was fishing. I was only slightly annoyed, he's a PI, being nosey is his life. Fortunately, he handled me not talking about things gracefully.
“Oh, come on, I've known you for almost a year.” Okay, maybe not always that gracefully.
“Maybe I'll tell you later, now shut up,” I grunted. This world was weird. I had heard things could be different in the various dimensions. Back home the ambient magic was so great that my very structure oozed with it, fortifying me and my abilities and psionics. So much so that I could take a small nuclear bomb at ground zero and get up again if I was near a node or a ley line. Here, I had all my abilities sans the ones that the runes repressed, but I wasn't nearly as tough as I once was.
“So who is it that's calling me 'Professor'?” I tacitly changed the subject.
Jeremy wasn't fooled, but he let it drop. “You know people in the bad parts. If you're going to take on the muggers, you better expect people to talk.”
“Crud,” I grumbled. I have been using the same shape and face to visit the poorer parts of town to get my books. I guess people were finally starting to notice that if they try to mug that guy he's going to hand you your ass. I could change faces, but then I would have to deal with the additional mugging attempts. Yeah, some parts of town were so bad you knew you were guaranteed to get jumped. For a city that was named to be the pinnacle of the modern concept of a megalopolis, Arch had some pretty crappy places. Some of them are pretty darn close to the upscale places.
“Oh well, how bad could it be?” I asked philosophically.
“I heard some rumors,” Jeremy offered quietly, as he walked over to the sink and started using a wet cloth to get the caked blood off his skin. Great, another thing I need to buy. I hate shopping.
“The mayor is thinking of forming a new police force using supernaturals,” Jeremy said, while frowning at the stains on his pants.
I am not sure if it contributed at all to parts of the city sucking so hugely or it was just natural for a city this large, but people have been saying that ever since the vampires and the various shifters came out of the shadows, and somehow got civil rights, the city has
gone to hell and the police can't control them. Both are almost immune to normal weapons, so who can say they are wrong.
“Well, that sounds like a good idea.” I looked at him closer. He didn't seem pleased. “Okay, I give up. Why isn't it a good idea? This city is hell on earth in some areas. Just because I don't want to play hero doesn't mean it's not a good thing if someone else does.”
“There's talk about him cracking down on freelancers and vigilantes.”
“Okay, that is going to suck for some of the other more hated vigilantes but I still don't see how it's that bad. If anything it'll burden the police even more. It will probably go back to normal in a few weeks after enough police drop dead.” Jeremy gave me flat look. I shrugged; if mortals want to make stupid decisions then by their god, Darwin, they will be weeded out.
“Yeah, it's going to be bad for everyone, but I think you should be worried about yourself... Professor.”
I was momentarily distracted by thoughts of the bloodbath. It was then that his words finally reached my brain.
“Profess... wait a damn minute here,” I exclaimed hotly. “I am not a hero or vigilante. I have work to do! I don't have time to waste.” My words faded away as I saw Jeremy raise an eyebrow. “Okay, it's not a waste, but I have other things on my plate. I don't have time to spend chasing after supernatural genetic waste.”
“So you say, but you have had your share of heroic actions since you got here.”
“That was all self-defense. They were in my way,” I complained. I think there might have been a hint of a whine in my tone. I hated that. I may be young for my race, but I am still manly. “Let the police hire a few werewolves they trust. That should balance the system a bit.”
“And Kingston,” Jeremy asked as he moved into the living room and put his feet up on my table. Damn, he is such a slob. If he tried to light up, I was going to toss him out on his butt. Then I froze. Kingston? He knew about Kingston? I knew Jeremy was good, but how did that happen.
“You're guessing,” I accused.
“I was until you responded,” he grinned smugly.
Kingston had been a fairly successful mob boss that had disappeared off the crime scene about six months ago. That was when I had come into a very significant amount of cash. Okay, I suppose it really wasn't that big a stretch when someone goes from living out of the YMCA and the government provided housing, to owning several properties and placing Jeremy on permanent commission.
What had actually happened was less than glorious justice. I had knocked out one of the lower level thugs, checked his mental health, and then merged my mind with his. After that, I had shape changed into his form
and walked into Kingston’s hideout. I had to work my way up the ladder a little, but they really didn't have any defenses against a psychic shape shifter.
The only really hard part was the actual mind merge. This is a grueling mental talent where you and the target actually share all your memories with one another. For the next few hours you know everything that your target does. It's also incredibly dangerous. If you bond to someone that is insane, it is very likely you will come away suffering from the same mental illness. If he is nuts enough and your unlucky enough, he may just put you in a coma. I had to be very careful picking my targets.
The other down side is that the bonding is a full exchange. For several hours they know everything about you too. I had to force my ‘donors’ into a temporary coma. When it wore off in a week they didn't remember a thing about me.
The other hard part was once I was close to Kingston, and I examined his aura, I realized that, yes, he was nuts. So I abducted him, forcibly cured him of his psychosis through another very exhausting and time consuming psionic procedure and then bonded with him. The cure I know is only temporary without reams of therapy afterward, and it doesn't really change that you’re a bad man. I put him in a temporary coma, transferred his money through several accounts, changed faces, walked in a bank and physically walked out with it, changed faces again and moved it bit by bit into other accounts. I did this using Kingston's own
skills as a very unscrupulous but imaginative bookkeeper to cover my tracks and set up alternate identities. He was a very talented man.
I never did figure out why he vanished afterward; when I left him, he was safe and sound in a hospital occupying a temporary bed in the coma ward. I looked into it afterward and he checked himself out a week after I checked him in, and then just vanished. His organization sort of fell apart, and I am guessing another good fellow took over. I did all of this not because I wanted to be a hero, but because I was destitute and needed to change this status without harming anyone that didn’t deserve it. I am still not sure whether to be guilty about what I did, so I usually avoid thinking about it. Denial is comfort food for the brain.
So when Jeremy dropped his bombshell I suppose it was silly to be surprised. I have always admired his skills as a sleuth, and although strangers may not have noticed anything, to him I may as well have been waiving a red flag. After a moment’s reflection, I just sighed. “No comment.”
“Anyway, if people ever find out that you took out Kingston they may jump to conclusions about your orientation.”
Damn, I hate politics. Back home in post holocaust-ville all I had to do is worry about whether our patrols would run across hostile neighbors.
“I'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I have plans in place but I kind of like my life as it is.” I paused a moment to clarify this statement. “As frustrating as my research is.”
“Dead end,” Jeremy prompted politely, as he got up and walked into the back room. Once he left the room, I surreptitiously sidled over to where he had sat and noted the scuff marks on the table. I was going to have to buff that out as well as get the carpet cleaned. Sometimes, friends are a real pain in the butt.
He came back a moment later with a shirt and jacket that vaguely fit him, though perhaps a little baggy. He usually wore loose clothing so this was actually not a big change for him, except the better quality material. “Well, not completely. I am going through the last stack.” I winced at the thought of the last twenty books. “But I think in the time I have been looking for something real about magic, I have found maybe five books. And they weren't very helpful,” I added sourly. A couple cantrips and wards for evil spirits. I could light a cigarette with my thumb; home dimension here I come!
“It could be that I have a lead for you,” the rumpled PI dropped with nonchalance.
This perked me up right away. “You found something? Why didn't you say something sooner?”
“I think there was something about bullet wounds,” he said, with a slight edge to his voice.
“Er... right, sorry about that.” I kept forgetting humans got worried over this stuff. People have actually called me insensitive. Jerks.
“There's a new shifter in town. Girl called Mei Ling. Some kind of hot shot martial artist bounty hunter.”
“And she interests me how?” I prompted. Not that I doubted the man, I am just like that.
“She's hunting some kind of witch or wizard.”
“Huh?” Disappointment flooded through me. “The wizard is a villain? That does me no good. An evil wizard is more trouble than they are worth. They are notoriously close-mouthed unless you swear eternal servitude to them or some such garbage.” I felt myself on the verge of pouting. “Are you sure it's actually a witch or wizard? I thought they hadn't been outed yet.” I am sure they exist, but they hide far better than the other supernaturals I had found in this world.
“Not officially, but anyone who's not a halfwit can guess some of what's offstage ready to come into the spotlight. Besides, can't you…” Jeremy tapped the side of his head suggestively.
“Bah, you can't take magic by force... well unless you're some whack job of a blood mage.” Agitated, my handed gestured to try to get the point across. I had seen Italian mafia in movies do it and it seemed cool.
Jeremy barely ducked my swinging hands, muttering curses under his breath. It's his own fault, he was the
one that insisted I see The Godfather.
“Well, wizards would have books about magic, right? You're bound to get better stuff that what you’re combing through.”
That thought stopped me. He was right. Anything had to be better than the useless time-wasters I was looking at now.
“So are you interested?”
“Okay, this seems a good lead.” Getting down to business I continued. “Five hundred credits in your account now. If this pans out, one thousand more credits.”
“Great. She is staying at this address,” Jeremy said, while pulling a stained folded square of nupaper from his pocket. I gingerly took the rather abused sheet between my thumb and pointer finger, and noticed rather fresh traces of blood on it.
“Okay...” Slightly nonplussed at the tattered state of my directions, I unfolded the cheap plastic textured sheet and began to read. “She's at the Hotel Riviera? That’s across town in one of the upscale neighborhoods.”
“Well, not everyone stays at the YMCA when they first visit the city.” That earned him a glare.
“By the way, I assume you took care of the problem you had?” I asked while gesturing at his side where the bullet wound had been.
“Yeah, it was just a misunderstanding over a client's possession,” Jeremy said nonchalantly, waving away my concern. “Anyway, I have to head home, I need to sleep. We can watch Mad Max later.”
“You should get some better protection if you won't let me show you a few tricks.”
“I was wearing protection. That coat you ripped off me kept that thing from tearing me in half.”
Looking guiltily at the coat lying on the floor in pieces, I glanced back at him. It hadn't felt that armored. “Okay, buy another one. On me. Maybe have a force field built in it.”
He snorted. “That is restricted military technology. I'll have to settle for armored coats. These days it seems the only time the military lifts a finger to do anything is if they find someone using their tech.”
I walked him to the door and looked out as he rode off in his old beat up blue car. It was such an old piece of junk that I don't think anyone ever tried to steal it despite it being an antique. He had once extolled me with a detailed description of its history and why it was such a fantastic find. I think I purposely blocked out that memory. Hardly anyone used street cars these days, although with the recent renewed interest in 20th-century fads that may change.
The sun was well up and the city around me was now active. I suppose some people just like working at night. Just to stretch my legs I walked out and made a leisurely
tour around the block.
The mostly deserted neighborhood was squarely middle class in appearance and well laid out, which most likely was one of the reasons the crime rate was so low. The streets were wide and empty of cars on the surface; there were no hidden nooks and crannies for criminals to hide. The other reason may have been that I had bought most of the houses around me so there are fewer potential victims. A piercing, high-pitched whine came from the distance, and I saw a mag-lev commuter train barreling by on the tracks several thousand feet away, so fast that it was almost gone before the noise reached me. I frowned. I came from a city full of magic users of various flavors and even now the technologically oriented city threw me off if I paid too much attention to it.
I turned my attention straight upward to see the various air cars, bikes, and scooters flying high above the street. At regular spacing, there were floating buoys that acted as traffic beacons. I used to love flying.
Absently fingering my chest where the runes lay under my shirt, I scowled at the hover cars as I turned back to the house. A faint humming sound swiftly grew behind me reached the door.
“Are you the Professor?” A voice drifted from the lawn at my back and I hunched my shoulders. Damn, I hate it when Jeremy's right.
Turning around, I was somewhat surprised to see a fully uniformed police officer, complete with rigid light body
armor and automatic rifle. “I have heard some people calling me that.” He didn't look hostile, just a bit officious. The armor couldn't be comfortable, even if the morning was relatively cool. Yep, looking closer, a fine sheen of sweat covered his brow. Maybe the ‘advanced’ technology required for refrigerated armor was restricted to the military too.
“Sorry sir, I just had an address and a title. We couldn't find your phone or vid number,” the officer said pleasantly. It didn't look like I was being arrested, but heck if I knew what he wanted.
“I don't have a phone, er, working phone,” I said shrugging. The police man just looked at me like I was a madman. Most of the people I know look at me the same way. I can't stand the things, always making weird noises just before they vent a foul smelling gas. I used to know some psychics that had a special relationship with technology. I am not one of them and never even tried to develop such a thing. I almost have to be in a meditative state to keep my energies from interacting with the new chips.
“Um, right.” He seemed a bit flustered by my flat response. “I am Officer Cromwell. Er... well, Lieutenant Monahan asked me to see if you'd mind consulting on some crimes.”
This took me back a bit. “Me? I don't have any background in criminology.”
I understood now. It's not like the city didn't have its hidden magic users, it’s just that most of them were very much like mystics or shamans. They had an instinctive knowledge on how to cast specific spells. To learn more, they would meditate and become ‘enlightened.’ Useless. They had no idea how magic worked, just how to contemplate their navel. Perhaps that was harsh, but there was some truth to it. I couldn't cast verbal spells yet, but I knew magic, felt it in my bones... and it didn't hurt to have lived in a city full of braggart mages. Damn, I missed them.
So basically the reason they needed me was very similar to why I was looking for educated wizards. If a crime involved magic then either a supernatural entity committed it, a mystic did it, or a wizard did it. Basically, they needed me for my ‘academic’ reputation rather than my vigilante experience. My mind flashed back to my conversation just a few minutes ago. A captured wizard would leave books behind. Surely the nice police officers wouldn't need all those books.
“Okay.”
“The crimes involve magic, sir.”
I understood now. It's not like the city didn't have its hidden magic users, it’s just that most of them were very much like mystics or shamans. They had an instinctive knowledge on how to cast specific spells. To learn more, they would meditate and become ‘enlightened.’ Useless. They had no idea how magic worked, just how to contemplate their navel. Perhaps that was harsh, but there was some truth to it. I couldn't cast verbal spells yet, but I knew magic, felt it in my bones... and it didn't hurt to have lived in a city full of braggart mages. Damn, I missed them.
So basically the reason they needed me was very similar to why I was looking for educated wizards. If a crime involved magic then either a supernatural entity committed it, a mystic did it, or a wizard did it. Basically, they needed me for my ‘academic’ reputation rather than my vigilante experience. My mind flashed back to my conversation just a few minutes ago. A captured wizard would leave books behind. Surely the nice police officers wouldn't need all those books.
“Okay.”
Chapter 2
The air traffic was rather intense, and I assume there was no real time crunch, because the officer only used his siren once to bypass the gridlocked air cars. I enjoy flying under my own power, but sitting in a ceramic and plasteel can, surrounded by other floating boxes, was boring as hell. I am trying to keep a fairly low profile, but if I could still shapechange into something with wings I would probably just shrug my shoulders and tell everyone I was a mutant vampire, just to freely fly around. There was an old cartoon about gargoyles; I could have faked being one of them. Some branches of my species can fly with or without wings. I ain't one of them.
Still, it wasn't really far, and the closer we got the less traffic we saw until we were the sole car in the sky. Can you say target? When I first noticed the traffic go away, I looked down and saw we were over the Blight. If you're not familiar with the city, then let me just say it's insanely thick with unsavory types. Oddly enough, from up here I could see large areas of the slums newly cordoned off behind semi-translucent tents. That just had to push all the transients, homeless, and gangs into smaller areas. I winced. That can’t end well. This worried me since this was where I buy my books.
Technology allows a minimum level of lifestyle to almost anyone. If you, for some unknown reason, don’t want to fit in, are antisocial, or perhaps just bat shit crazy, you can go to the cities only free ranging insane
asylum we call the Blight. You can play gangster, road warrior, homeless, or anarchist to your heart’s content. If you die, you will be taken to the city hospital and resurrected, assuming your brain is intact, then sent on your merry way. The area is largely unpoliced since, crazy or not, the people have cobbled together some pretty slick jammers and EMP generators. It’s safer just to leave them alone, and not worth calling in the military.
When my sixth sense went off, I knew we were about to be attacked; sometimes, I love clairvoyance. This wasn't really one of them. I knew a good minute ahead of the fact that we were going into trouble but didn't know how, when or why. It was a very frustrating feeling.
“Officer...” I began and then trailed off. How do you tell a non-psychic that you feel bad vibes and something unfortunate is going to happen? And, by the way, you can't say what.
“What can I do for you, Prof?” the officer asked good-naturedly.
“Um.” Hemming and hawing may occasionally work, but it wasn't exactly productive in this case. I scanned the area below us for what was triggering my senses, the adrenalin rush seeming to slow the world slightly as my eyes flicked from point to point, the sense of danger slowly growing in the back of my mind.
All I saw were mostly vacant decaying buildings, most with windows broken, some with holes in walls where shattered brick and wood facing gaped open. There
were people down there, most ignoring us, some glaring as the vehicle of the law flew above them. With a moment of clarity, I saw the source of my discontent. Below us, seemingly waiting for us, was a rag tag group of rough looking youths with tubes of some sort pointing at us. While I am not a technophile, Jeremy has brought over enough movies in the last six months to fill in most of the holes in my knowledge with this dimension's Earth culture. That, and they looked a lot like the hi-tech outlaws and hostile colonies who used to shoot at us, back home. There’s a certain intense, crazy look in the eyes that gives them away.
“Missiles,” I shouted, while pointing over his shoulder. I was a little too late since I saw five separate flashes and the too familiar sight of torpedo-like objects rising through the air towards us.
I really have to hand it to Cromwell, he really knew how to fly. Well, I think he did. At least the car bucked and twisted and flipped a lot. I didn't have my belt on, and I got thrown around a lot until I managed to shove my hand through the armored door and anchor myself in place. Hopefully, my pilot would be occupied enough not to notice this. I was trying to stay just a minor human psychic with an education in the occult, not one of the ludicrously strong supernaturals that the city teemed with.
There was a whine and a pop as faint smoke filled the back seat. That was probably the kinetic dampeners that were supposed to keep us from being tossed around. The fact that they conveniently just self-
destructed was most likely my fault. While sad, I suppose I should just be happy we were still in the air. I tried to think tranquil, enlightened thoughts and dampen my energies. The sound of one hand clapping and all that jazz. Officer Cromwell had his harness on; sometimes being truly old school pays.
We avoided the first barrage and I situated myself in a stable enough location to actually look outside again. I was just in time to see another set of five fly towards us. The thought whispered through the back of my mind that this meant there were at least ten guys with launchers down there, because there is no way those things can shoot twice in a row. At least I hoped not. I hated technology sometimes.
Now that I had gotten my bearings, I placed a hundred-foot-wide psionic bubble between us and them in time to take that volley. It was pretty sturdy but still went down at the fifth hit. I hope that confused them at least. My force fields are invisible, unless you can sense psychic energy or see the unseen in some way.
The car rolled over again, still doing those neat evasion rolls that had sent me spinning like a ping pong ball through the back seat. I took advantage of the very clear view of the ground through the window to place a third, smaller force bubble directly around the bad people shooting at us.
The next thing I saw was a very bright light show below us as another set of five missiles rose up, only to impact the interior of the telekinetic wall surrounding the youths shooting at us. Okay, I guess those things can shoot multiple times. You learn something new every
day.
Wincing in sympathy, I looked to see the shield go down. Did I mention that my race can see things that are invisible? They kind of glow blue to me. I am not sure how others that can see these things or perceive them. My glowing bubble popped as the missiles hit them. I tried to keep an eye out on the location as the car continued to make like a roller coaster. When the debris and smoke finally cleared I noted that five missiles exploding fifty feet from a human isn't a good thing. There was no one still standing beneath us. On the good side, I didn't see body parts or blood blanketing the area so maybe they were still alive.
“Are you alright sir?” my dear friend Officer Cromwell called from the front.
“Yeah, just a little motion sick. I think the car got hit with something though,” I said innocently. It's never too soon to cover your butt.
“Well, we can fix the car. Good thing their ordinance misfired. Saved our asses.”
“Yeah, thank goodness,” I muttered with mixed emotions. Since the officer had offered a good rationale, I planned to jump on it.
We landed and got out. I started checking the injuries of the people that were caught under the explosion. Cromwell stayed back after verifying I actually had some medical knowledge, apparently calling in the event to the station. Maybe he should have been securing the
perimeter or something, but I have no idea what standard protocol for having missiles shot at you was.
I walked over and frowned at the first fellow I was starting to tend. Serious burns and bruising, blood from the ears. I looked over at another. A broken bone at least. Bah. I should have stayed over by the police car; now I felt guilty. Sighing in defeat at the assault of my conscious, I knelt down and touched the first punk, focusing a tiny bit of my power on him to smooth over the burns. Not enough to have the guy jump up and make a break for it, but enough to keep him out of the critical care ward or a resuscitation tank. I wasn't that guilty.
I had heard this neighborhood was bad, but shooting missiles at police were a first. None of these kids were supernaturals, either. While I was contemplating the situation, I knelt next to the next victim of misplaced anger. Bones were a pain; I had to straighten it out and then apply the energy to speed the natural healing.
I moved on to the next unconscious guy, straightening his limbs out in preparation for a little flesh manipulation. Afterward, I smoothly set the broken bone, and with a quick application of energy healed it enough to forgo a splint, though he wouldn’t be doing athletics any time soon.
I admit that I have an ego the size of a planet. My entire race in all its myriad facets, light and dark, has this condition. But sometimes the universe really does revolve around you for just a few seconds. It’s a scientific fact. I read it in a magazine, so it must be true.
However, it did make sense to me that statistically it would be more likely for people to be shooting missiles at me rather than at random police. If I had more time, I could do a light telepathic probe on these guys and find out why they would take such a huge risk.
“Looks like you did a good job of sorting these punks out.” I jumped at the words behind me.
Spinning, I noticed that Cromwell had finished his report over the communicator, and was showing the newcomers from the floating paddy wagon where the downed criminals were.
“Can't believe our luck,” Cromwell said, while gesturing to the youths that were being carted into the van. “If one of their launchers hadn't misfired we would have been nothing but burning wreckage on the street.”
“Yeah, luck was with us,” I said, trying to keep the irony from my voice. My acting skills must have been enough, since Cromwell turned back to the car.
“I know it's been a tough day for you Professor, but would you mind going on to take a look at things?” the officer asked, contritely over his shoulder.
Once more, I was surprised. I was never in any real danger; why would I mind going on to look at the crime scene? I got a hold of myself just before I said anything. Sometimes, it's hard to remember who you're pretending to be twenty-four hours a day.
“Yes, well as upsetting as this incident is, we can't let the criminals get in the way of your investigation.” God
that sounded pompous. Something then occurred to me. “Did this attack have anything to do with your case?”
“Doubt it,” Cromwell stated definitively. “Totally different MO. You'll see.”
“Oh, seems a bit of a coincidence.” I trailed off.
“Not really, I recognize that gang from their colors.” I must have looked befuddled. “They all wore red jackets with the stylized 'X'. That gang was raided last week, and the gang members that are still free vowed vengeance on the police.”
“Vowed... vengeance,” I said wonderingly. Okay, maybe this was a complete coincidence and I was being paranoid. “I hadn't realized it was that bad. These guys seemed really well armed.” I had no idea what they were, but the missile launchers looked more advanced that what I usually saw on the vid. Of course, Jeremy and I mostly watched movies almost a hundred years old. Maybe I should watch the news more.
“Yeah, it's getting bad out here,” the officer said darkly, as he smoothly raised the hover car into the air. “The missiles are new. I don't think they are common on the street... thank God. Usually, we can handle the normals, but the supernaturals are getting worse too.”
From what Jeremy said, I suppose the Mayor agreed.
Chapter 3
There was no more excitement on the way to our destination. This just happened to be in the middle of the Blight. I was actually surprised; I had heard from Jeremy that no police would dare to go there. Even if it was a first, considering the welcome we got on the way, it's amazing that anyone called the police, and more so that someone actually came.
We landed outside the remains of an old tenement house from the 2060's. The windows looked blasted out and gaping holes covered the walls; bricks and mortar littered the ground outside. It looked only a little worse for wear than the apartments on either side. The original damage was probably from the Aussie Meltdown riots, the rest from time and abandonment.
As we approached, I started to get a crawling sensation on my skin. The aura of the city had always been... dark, violent. It was why there were so few true psychics in town. It was a very uncomfortable feeling to be engulfed in the emanations of millions of very unhappy people that had lived, and died, in the city for decades. Or perhaps the city was built over some evil pre-Aztec temple. Who really knows what happened? However, it was significantly worse in this building. My tolerance for this kind of thing is pretty high. Being a creature of magic with many supernatural traits, my kind has lived and thrived in some very harsh environments. Still, I felt edgy, like there was some supernatural evil just around the corner. No problem.
Outside the door, a shattered police buoy rested on the ground. Apparently, the locals didn’t like the police leaving their markers in place. Continuing up the stairs, I noticed claw marks in the stone and mason of the walls. I paused a moment to look closer, and Cromwell quietly paused next to me and let me examine the gouges. I placed my hands close to the wall, and the officer coughed.
“Excuse me sir, but please don't touch the evidence.” I was about to make a sarcastic remark when he continued. “Wouldn't want your genetic evidence to get mixed up with the perpetrators when the scanning crew comes through.”
Ah. Genetics. That would be a problem for me. “Yeah, wouldn't want that.”
“Here use these,” he offered helpfully, while handing me a pair of disposable gloves. I was starting to feel like an official deputy. It felt far too familiar for my comfort. The difference between now and back when my team was alive was at that time I was the junior member.
After rolling the gloves on, I felt them react to the heat of my hand by shrinking into a skin tight film. Raising my hands again, I compared the marks in the stonework to my own. A little larger but not that much. I did the same to the marks just a little over and found them smaller.
Without saying anymore, I walked up to the next floor. Walking through the door with all the old style sticky warning tape surrounding the area, I saw a scene from a bad horror film. Bodies covered the floor, some torn
apart, some simply sprawled on the ground. All seemed to be adults, which was a welcome miracle, but other than that there seemed little else in common. The corpses ranged in age from late teens to probably over sixty and numbered around twenty.
Walking over to one of the more intact male bodies, I noted there was only a little blood, though the bruises on the neck and protruding tongue made me think that he was choked to death. Smudges on the forehead caught my attention, and I drew a startled breath in recognition. I deeply regretted this, and the breath that I had been holding was expelled as I drew some not so fresh air into my lungs. I can hold my breath for a very long time and was extremely sorry for letting my surprise release it.
I immediately got up and staggered to the window to suck in a breath of fresh air. I hate the smell of rotting meat.
“It's hard to believe that one human did this to another,” a deep baritone sounded behind me. Turning around, I scowled at the figure. I was getting surprised too often for my comfort. Perhaps I was getting too dependent on my sixth sense to keep me aware of my surroundings.
Behind me stood a very large man with the physique of a body builder. A body builder wearing a heavily armored SWAT style bodysuit. He looked like a pumped Arnold Schwarzenegger ready to crack down on evildoers everywhere.
“Geez man, why do you wear that thing,” I complained. It was hard to take someone seriously that looked a hair breath away from walking off an old Robocop movie. I don’t know where he got the armor, but it was definitely not standard. “Can't you wear long johns like every other respectable hero?” I heard a gasp behind me as one of the other officers on the scene goggled at me mocking the most respected officer of the city.
“It works,” was all the man in the armored suit said.
“Right. Whatever.” I love that human catch phrase. It conveys the perfect amount of dismissal. We had met a while ago. He was one of the few officers with the nerve to go alone into the Blight, and while we were far from friends we had gotten used to one another’s quirks. He seemed to haunt the bookstores and more specifically the occult section. I would have thought he was staking it out, but he is not at all subtle in that armor. He also knew how I felt about his tank of a suit. I tease him about it almost every time we meet.
“So if you're done criticizing my wardrobe, perhaps you could give us your opinion of this,” Officer Conrad asked seriously. He did everything seriously. It probably came from being the first official shifter on the police force. A shifter in armor is the very definition of over the top. I was betting that if the mayor had his way, he would be the center of the new supernatural department. I believed this because he had been on many news clips. He was the mayor’s favorite and seemingly the new face of the police department. Jeremy insisted on showing me the reruns.
“Well,” I drawled. This was the tough part, so I kind of
put it off. “Do you believe in magic?”
“I am familiar with Faramond,” he stated simply. That stopped me cold. Faramond was a vigilante in the city, famous for having the power of a champion of fairy. He was reputed to be monstrously strong and a nigh invulnerable hulking brute of a man. But that wasn't why I turned away and groped the window sill as I desperately tried to keep myself from breaking down into a giggling mass.
You see, where I come from, fairies are tiny magical humanoids about a foot or two high. The good fairies are notorious for playing relatively harmless magical pranks on humans while the evil fairies play rather deadly tricks. I had never actually met him, but the mere thought of a champion of the little clowns just cracked me up.
“Are you all right, Professor?” That calmed me down fast. Even the flipping pinnacle of officialdom was calling me the Professor. Gathering myself, I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes and slowly turned around, putting a serious look on my face.
“Yes, it's just the tragedy of all of this finally hit me,” I said seriously. It was indeed sad to see the dead lying about me, but it's hard for me to get emotional over humans unless they are close friends. I still mourn my friends killed by Mr. Evil, but dead strangers just don't do much to me even if the smell was a bit much.
“Yes, but we'll find the people that did this and bring them to justice,” Officer Conrad said, his voice quivering
with determination. He was a very serious man.
“There may be a slight hitch in that plan,” I cautiously offered. I hate to get between and man and his dream. “What did this wasn't people.”
“What do you mean?” he said, spearing me with his eyes.
I opened my senses and scanned the area around us quickly to confirm my suspicions, and then locked down my senses again from the unpleasantness around me.
“Notice the general lack of blood from these corpses?” I asked, waving my hand to encompass the bodies around us. “Only these two corpses actually bled anything. The others were just torn apart while fighting.”
“Torn apart? While fighting?” Conrad seemed startled, but at least he wasn't calling me an idiot or charlatan yet. The day was still young.
“This body actually has a part of a circle inscribed in blood on the forehead.” I trailed off in thought. “Looks like it wasn't completed.”
“What wasn't?” the shifter officer asked, confused.
“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled. “Got ahead of myself. Zombies. Most of these are zombies.” Gesturing to the two bloody corpses, I continued. “Except for those two. Looks like the ritual got interrupted.”
“So someone was creating zombies and someone else broke in and killed them all,” Conrad asked, looking as if he was coming to grips with the situation.
“Well,” I paused for a second. “No.”
“Then what?” he asked, starting to get an impatient note in his voice.
“Zombies take some time to animate from the dead. All of these were already up and about. Only those two were fresh and the ritual seems to have been interrupted.”
“So someone was creating zombies and someone else broke in and killed them all,” Conrad repeated.
“I said no,” I said, slightly miffed that he had ignored that part.
“Then what...”
“I was getting to that part,” I interrupted. “A bunch of humanoids with supernatural strength broke in and tore the zombies apart, and probably drove the maker away.”
“Okay, so how is my interpretation incorrect?” the supernatural officer asked with reined-in patience.
“Well, the zombies aren't dead and although the two on the ground look dead, in a couple of days they'll be up and about again.”
“That doesn't sound good,” the officer deadpanned.
“It gets worse,” I offered pessimistically. He just gave me a long stare. In the background, I heard the police shuffling around nervously. This was beginning to sound like a grade B horror movie.
“Yeah, the zombies will pull themselves together and go seek their master soon, unless they have other orders,” I started to say.
“They're wearing the colors of Baron Samedi,” a very pale Cromwell offered.
“The whosis?” I asked. These human packs were impossible to keep track of. And that name sounded familiar.
“They are a gang of thugs that are a bit infamous for their blatant operation outside the law.” The officer gulped as he put together the pieces in his mind. I looked at him puzzled. I had thought everything was blatantly open and illegal in the Blight. “Murder, drugs, extortion, you name it, they do it. Out in the open and fearlessly.”
Looking at the temporarily inanimate zombies around us, I nodded. “Fearless. The dead don't know fear.” I corrected myself. “Sorry, the undead. Actually they are animated dead. I am not sure how they are classified. Amusing, that he took the name of the vodoun spirit of the dead. At least he has a sense of irony.” I had read some books on the subject; it was just as misguided as most of the other ideas, but it had some interesting insights to spirits.
“So how bad is this?” Officer Conrad took control of the conversation again.
“Well, the zombies are bad,” I admitted. “They can only be damaged by silver and killed by destroying the body with fire. I think you have to separate the head too.”
“So they can be destroyed. The police can...” I coughed to interrupt him.
“Ahem, invulnerable juggernauts of supernatural force,” I inserted as a reminder. “I think you may need some of the supernaturals help on this, unless you shoot them from the air with silver bullets. And I think we have seen that the police shouldn't fly around here too much,” I said, looking knowingly at Cromwell.
“Still, we can work this,” the well-built shifter stated confidently.
“Against the zombies, probably,” I nodded thoughtfully. “I really think the vampires could possibly cause a problem though.”
I admit I play to the crowd just a teeny bit. Moments like this, the people surrounding me with their jaws agape, were the times I lived for. I guess I'm petty, but I do enjoy it.
“Wait a minute,” Officer Conrad spluttered. It was the first time I had seen anything resembling uncontrolled emotion in his face since I met him a few months ago. “Zombies and vampires? Together? That’s a bit hard to believe.”
I had been wondering where the suspension of disbelief would end. People that deal with the rational, even the not-so-rational of shifters and vampires, technology and super science and so forth, always draw the line at magic. He'd lasted longer than I thought. I shrugged eloquently.
“At the same time? That's stretching probability,” Officer Conrad floundered on.
“Well, it's not really a coincidence,” I said, catching his attention again. “It's fate.”
“What?” he barked, once again agitated. I loved it.
“No, just kidding,” I offered brightly, ignoring his low growl. “Seriously though, the zombies have obviously been around a while. Officer Cromwell has known of the gang for a bit. I doubt they were all turned yesterday.” Cromwell thoughtfully nodded his head. He looked like he had swallowed something sour.
“Vampires tend to enter a place and entrench. They make themselves a home and...” I paused here for a moment to think. My information on vampires was flawed. In my own dimension, vampires were an evil plague that started from a single extra dimensional entity and spread to human minions, and soon you had a horde of thousands of nearly mindless vampires. In short, they held an eerie similarity to how the zombies and their maker operated.
When I had heard that vampires and shifters had been granted protection under the law, I almost swallowed my tongue. Images of a land controlled by vampires had flitted through my mind in several nightmarish variations. Shifters were one thing, after all except for a few animal instincts, a mild pack mentality, and occasional unfortunate hygiene incidents, they were mostly human, for better or for worse. Vampires though... I had to see this. I had made my way to one of the vampire clubs to see how the heck this had snuck
into society, and been completely surprised. These variations were definitely supernatural undead creatures, but it was hard to deny they had culture; no dead bodies littered the alleyways or the club nooks and crannies, and most important... they didn't radiate evil. Being psychic, I can feel that entire evil thing when it's in unnatural things. Humans and other non-mystical races are harder to detect the evil vibe from.
“They are also pretty territorial,” I said, picking up my train of thought where I had left off. “This looks like the start of a turf war.”
“Would they as bad as the zombies you mentioned?” Cromwell interjected.
“Worse actually.” I waived my hand at the carnage around me. “These guys didn't stand a chance. They share a few invulnerabilities, but on the undead supernatural food chain the vampires are several rungs higher.”
“What makes them worse?” Officer Conrad asked. He seemed to have gotten over the idea of his city being infested with supernatural horrors and was ready to get down to business on how to get rid of them.
“Well, that depends actually.” I paused and waved my hand at the carnage around us. “Because they are territorial, they almost had eliminated competing undead. Is that a bad thing? Well, only you can decide I guess...”
“This place looks like a butcher's workshop, how can it
be good?” Conrad growled out, the animal in him inching towards the surface.
I ignored it, though Cromwell and the other officers edged back away from the armored man. “Look at it this way. Every zombie is most likely a murder victim. They have no personality and obey the zombie creator without question, who is the one that most likely killed them. The magic that animates them also will likely make them immune to any resurrection techniques.”
“Do they have souls?” Conrad asked, in a tight voice.
“I have no idea, ask a priest. I don't even know if vampires have souls.” I shrugged. Humans worry about the silliest things. I didn't even know if humans had souls. Or care.
Conrad looked startled at the question, the others just looked vaguely nauseated. “So what, are these vampire vigilante heroes?”
I gave him an annoyed glance. “How the heck should I know? They could even be a rival gang. You can book them for taking the law into their own hands, but frankly everyone here was already dead when the vampires came in and kicked butt. The master got away, so they didn't actually kill anyone, but apparently a mass murdering zombie master got away.”
“So they allowed the 'zombie master' to escape,” Cromwell slowly said, as if trying to get a hold of the situation in terms he could understand. I had no idea if the vampires were heroes or villains. Considering this was the Blight, it was likely just a rogue vampire gang moving in. That would be just as bad or worse than the
zombies.
“Do the police actually have a procedure for this?” I asked the flustered cop. Conrad looked at me with a thoughtful frown. I could see he already knew where I was going with this question.
“Well, if there's bodies or evidence,” he muttered to himself.
“What happens when the murder victim gets up and tells the police officer there's no problem and to run along?” I asked, seeing the poor man wince.
“That’s why the mayor is trying to form the new department to deal with these things.” Conrad’s deep voice reassured the younger officer.
I had my doubts of the effectiveness of such a department unless some of the older vampires and werewolves joined it. As we had found here, unless you can identify what the hell you're actually seeing, having a division of police officers with supernatural strength isn't going to do squat. Perhaps my doubts showed on my face. I never claimed to have a great poker face.
“It will be one step in the right direction,” the large man elaborated while staring at me. I just shrugged. Who was I to ruin his dream? “So how do we track the zombie master down?”
“That is the easiest part. Follow the bodies,” I stated triumphantly.
“We can't wait for this guy to kill again and raise a new
army,” Cromwell squawked indignantly.
“New army? Why would he need a new army?” I asked, puzzled.
“Oh no.” I saw Conrad looking around with a new eye at the crime scene. Cromwell just looked confused. The poor smuck.
“Oh yes. What part of the 'only can be destroyed by fire' shtick did you not understand?” I know I had mentioned this part before, but I can forgive these guys for suffering information overload. It would be a lot to take in if you weren't used to it.
The police officers who had been standing around, trying not to look like they weren't hanging onto our words, almost danced away from the bodies. Conrad stayed put, though he was keeping a cautious eye on the corpses and pieces of corpses. It probably helped his peace of mind immeasurably to know that he was strong enough to tear them to pieces if they made a grab at him. I know it made me feel better.
“When...” He cleared his throat as he thought about his question. “When will these things come alive?”
I held up my finger dramatically, and then dropped it and shrugged. “Not a clue.” Watching the mixed emotions flit across his face entertained me for a few seconds before I mercifully continued. “However, if I had to guess I would say before tonight, you have a decision to make.”
“Decision?” the shifter asked as if he wouldn't like the answer. He was right.
“Yes. My educated guess that sometime before sunset these parts are going to start pulling themselves together and once they do, they are going to make a beeline for their Sammy’s location,” While I was describing this, my fingers were making little walking motions. I am not sure if Italians were quite so emotive with their hands, but I figured it would be even better to get the point across.
“Baron Samedi,” Conrad muttered a correction, deep in thought.
“Oh my God.” Cromwell made a soft groaning noise in the background. It startled me that the man was almost blasé about the missile attack and so squeamish about animated corpses. I saw Conrad give him a small frown, though I couldn't tell if he was concerned about the man or disgusted at his unmanliness. If it was the later, he would have seen an echo of Cromwell's unease in the other officers in the room as they shuffled from foot to foot, subtlety shying away from the bodies as if they would come alive and tear them apart.
“So...” the armored man prompted softly.
“So... you either gather up these pieces and burn them before they pull themselves together, assuming your police procedures allow it,” I said to Conrad, subtly reminding him that he had some rules to thread. “Or you follow this army home to the master and perhaps into the arms of a second army of zombies.”
“I think we can come up with a compromise.” Conrad's posture changed as he came to a decision. “Cromwell,
get these parts tagged as hazardous waste. See if we can get the paperwork completed to incinerate these without having to go through decontamination ourselves. Use the nanite infection protocols. You may have to have the chief contact the mayor or it may take too long. Leave one complete corpse here. We will follow it back.”
I coughed slightly to draw the attention back to me. “And the ambush that may be waiting for you?”
“What would you suggest?” Conrad looked at me thoughtfully.
“Only you and other supernaturally strong creat... er... people are anywhere near strong enough to defend themselves from one of these, let alone do enough damage to them so you can burn them. If you have people tagged for that new department, I suggest you call them in. Otherwise, you'll need a posse of werewolves and vampires.”
I could see the shifter's lips pursed as he mouthed the word posse. “Posse?” he whispered a moment later. I looked at him in confusion. Jeremy and I had just watched a cowboy movie the other week, and the concept was very clear.
“Yeah, a posse. Where you deputize a gaggle of strangers to bring some poor SOB to justice.” I gestured with my hands. “You know, a legalized mob!”
“Right, a posse.” I could have sworn I saw a slight smile cross his face, but it was probably my imagination since it didn't crack.
“So is there anything else I can do for you, or are we done here?” I asked.
“I think we are done. Thank you for your consultation. I will have a check drawn up for your time.” Conrad nodded to me and I paused in confusion. What was a check? Wait, I was getting paid for this?
“Um, thanks.” I had mixed feeling about getting paid for giving advice. On the one hand, it’s the standard way mortals deal with one another; on the other hand it seemed to cheapen my advice. I figured I would deal with the emotional conflict by using the money to buy something to put in my house. Maybe a gem or bit of gold.
“Oh, before you go, does this zombie master have access to any other magic?” the shifter casually asked. I froze, a storm suddenly going off in my head. There was no reason the zombie master would restrict himself to raising the dead. He could very well be a caster of another type as well.
Looking around the room with a fresh eye, I looked at the walls and ceiling to see if lightning or fire had marked the surface, gradually becoming somewhat disappointed in the obvious lack of such damage. I would have noticed it coming in, but hope springs eternal.
“Doesn't look like he used any blatant magic other than the zombie thing. If you see any glowing walls or fireballs or sheet lightning you should call me right away.” If he did that, maybe he would leave some
books behind. Something other than zombie-raising books. Humans are common enough; why would you want undead humans running around too?
“Is that likely?” Cromwell asked nervously.
“Well, he is a magic user,” I said thoughtfully. “There's no real reason he couldn't use non-necromantic magic, but he might not have gotten the hang of it yet.” I nodded confidently. “Yes, he could definitely do that, though since he didn't do it here I would be more worried about magic circles. He actually does use those in his rituals so he must be somewhat conversant in them.”
“What can he do with circles?” Conrad asked. Ugh, that was a tricky question. There is an entire school of circle magic. Some are simple protection circles, others summon and control elemental forces. They take a lot longer than the more conventional ‘wave your hand’ and toss a lightning bolt but they are probably more powerful. Not terribly transportable though.
“A lot,” I admitted slowly. “It’s pretty rare but you can do tornados, instant death, fireballs, lightning. You name it.”
“Do you have any advice?” Conrad asked solemnly.
“Well, don't step in any big circles on the floor.” I started ticking points off on my hand. “Be careful of rugs and carpets that may cover these same circles from sight. I suggest you have a magic-sensitive with the group. I hear some werewolves can smell magic?” I asked tentatively.
“Some can,” the armored man said shortly.
“Okay, make sure you bring one and don't go on the carpet.” At this, I heard a muffled chuckle from one of the nameless officers in the room. I frowned; I really preferred when I said something funny on purpose. I made a mental note to ask Jeremy, he was better at catching nuisances. It’s a culture thing. “If he is a circle master he will hold up in a big room with circles in it. Stay out of line of sight and shoot him from cover.”
“I am not sure how practical that may be,” Conrad frowned.
“Well, he's going to have a lot of advantages. Your only other option is to destroy his circles. That’s easy if they are chalk but if he has built that room from scratch he could have had everything etched in the floor. Also, once a circle is activated they are pretty durable.”
“What about gas?” Cromwell volunteered.
“Good idea, but zombies are immune and there exist circles that will shield him. Damn, I hope this doesn't turn into a siege.” Still what were the chances that a necromancer ritualist had a fortress full of other ritual magic? I mean, necromancy is a niche that most wackos are happy to stay in.
“Anything else you can think of?” Conrad asked. I could tell he wasn't sure if he wanted to hear more.
“Anything more would be sheer guesswork,” I admitted. “All we know for sure is he raises zombies.”
“If you find any books, I suggest you have me come by. Some special books are trapped.” Not only was this true, but I may be able to have the police do all the retrieval work while I get to do the research.
“We will send Cromwell to get you if we find anything.” Conrad nodded in dismissal.
I nodded back and headed out with one of the nameless officers as my escort. Looking around and called over my shoulder. “I would hurry up on gathering these parts. I think I saw an arm twitch.” I think I heard some scrambling behind me.
Go to Amazon for the rest of the book!
A Prison of Worlds
Book One of the Chained World Chronicles
By Daniel Ruth
Dedication
To the three wonderful women in my life, Wendy, Krystal and Amberlyn
A Prison of Worlds
Book One of the Chained Worlds Chronicles
Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Ruth
All Rights Reserved
ASIN: B00R9ZBF62
ISBN-13: 978-1530599493
ISBN-10: 1530599490
Revision 7
Chapter 1
The huge scaled claw grasped me around the waist and bore down. At this exertion, the last feeble energies that made up my shield collapsed and the sharp digits, each at least a half foot wide, slowly began to sink into my hide. It was excruciating and added more to the panic and terror erupting within me.
I had already summoned my barrier several times throughout the battle, only to have this forty-foot-long, scaly brute seemingly, almost lazily wear it down and then sink his fangs or claws in my flesh. At this point I was tapped out. Exhausted of all my resources, I beat on my captor’s grasping hand with all my remaining strength. My arms spun like scythes, restricted from full strength by the positioning of the hand grasping me, but still respectable in my own eyes. Bruises and shallow cuts formed and healed almost immediately. Damn dragon regeneration. Of course, my own similar regeneration was the only reason I was still alive.
Through my adrenaline and fear, I was overjoyed not to feel the claws sink into my body inch by inch. I had blocked the pain from my wounds at the start of the battle and I really couldn't decide whether to curse myself or not; it also meant I had exhausted my energy reserves a tiny bit sooner. A small part of me idly decided I was glad. If this thing was going to kill me, and it really looked like it wasn't avoidable, I could at least try to keep what was left of my pride and dignity by not screaming like a piglet.
Out of psionic tricks, I tried one last ace in the hole and fuzzily willed my body to make the transition from the scaly form I wore to a formless cloud of mist. I saw a movement from the corner of my eye and then the universe went black.
I think I was conscious for a minute or so before I actually realized it. The world seemed surreal, the gigantic leering dragon face hovered over me like one of the old time derelict human construction cranes I ran across in one of the city ruins. So absurdly huge, I felt I had been shrunk to the size of a mouse for a moment. As things came more into focus, I noticed the incredible pain in my head and some red liquid pouring into my eyes and over my body... and of course the ever present spears of pain piercing my side.
A low rumbling reverberated around me and it took me a moment to realize that the dragon was speaking to me. “Finally awake? I was afraid I broke you prematurely.”
I really wanted to say something sarcastic and witty, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes focused on that huge face. In fact, the creature was even larger than I remembered it being during the battle. My muddled brain tried to grasp this oddity. Did he use some sort of spell to grow? Why would he? He had already won.
It suddenly dawned on me. My skin was pink; well, what I could see of it under the blood. I was in my human form. Now I was really confused. I definitely did not remember changing into anything. The last thing I remembered was being sucker punched while I was planning my escape as a cloud of animated gas. There was absolutely no human form involved in my plan.
“I see you noticed your new condition, my little trespasser,” the dragon stated in his rumbling gravel tone.
“Huh,” I angrily mumbled through a jaw I could swear was broken. Even when you heal as fast as I do, see if you can come up with something smart to say when you feel like your head, sides, and chest are going to explode or burn up respectively. Honestly, I have been hit with fusion grenades and walked away feeling better.
“Your companions were merely human, so I simply eliminated them. I expect no more or less from vermin.” The giant paused in thought. “You, however, are another issue. You are from a branch that I thought had died off, but still, a dragon is a dragon.” The creature’s next pause was filled with menace. “A dragon should know better than to trespass on another's territory, even a hatchling such as yourself.”
“Hrphhgr.” I filled the pause with my broken jawed wit. Okay, even I didn't know what I had tried to say.
“I have been experimenting with the older magics, from the time of the birth of our race. Lesser beings tend to explode when you apply them, but you... you came at a good time. I think these won't kill you,” he stated gravely while his other massive hand came into my view and painfully poked my chest. “But they will expand my understanding of how they interact on ... well... you, and help keep you out of my home.”
Looking down to my chest where the dragon was tapping, I suddenly realized there were new symbols etched there. Marks emblazoned and appearing like red tainted scars. The two new symbols on my chest were not my work; however, looking at them I instinctively knew what they were. One was the symbol for ‘human’ and the other was the symbol for ‘anchor’.
A slow surge of panic percolated through my numb brain. I had no idea what language these were in, but I had an instinctive knowledge of numerous things, many of them mystical in nature, and somehow I knew what these meant. And somehow, deep down I knew I was screwed.
“Yes. I see you understand.” A rictus grin stretched across the thing's face as it realized I knew what he had done. “No more changing shapes for you. You came to my home as a human and now you'll stay as a human as you leave.”
He still had one hand wrapped around my waist and his claws embedded deep in my body. This filled my attention as he stood up straight, and I jerked up in the air like I was a marionette, or more aptly, a hooked fish. It elicited a low moan. The motion hurt quite a bit. Damn, guess that technique I used to banish pain had worn off while Mr. Evil had been at work; we hadn't been formally introduced so that was how I thought of the creature.
He turned away from me, and my panicked eyes feverishly darted over the area we were in. We were in a clearing and there was no sign of the fight, nor thankfully the remains of my friends. That would have hurt more than this guy’s talons in my gut. What did catch my attention was a rather large circle chiseled into the ground. My handy instinctive knowledge triggered and I knew that the circle was meant to open a dimensional portal. Once I realized this, I spread out my senses and realized that we were smack dab in the middle of two ley lines crossing, a point of enhanced power and incidentally a weak point in the fabric of reality. I was starting to get a bad feeling for what this guy’s plan was.
“When I get back I am going to rip your guts out and feed them to the demons,” I finally spit out as my jaw healed enough for me to garble out. There were always demons slipping through the rents and tears of our battered world. Might as well get some use out of the horrid things.
I think he understood because his other hand came out in a blur and broke my jaw again. Did I mention I am a moron?
“You are really exceptionally powerful for one so young. It is unfortunate you had to try your hand against me.” I could almost hear mirth in his voice underneath his natural malevolence. “You will find that I am likely to be the most powerful dragon you'll ever know, at least until I send you to meet the dark dragon god.” I had kinda figured that out. We are hugely territorial, but I had met a few others... briefly. Mr. Evil was in his own class. He must have been at least ten millennia older than anyone I knew of.
I am not really up on the nuances of various world religions, but I would have to be raised in a box not to understand his reference to the patron god of evil dragons. I think he was promising to kill me. I suppose this was only fair since I had just threatened something similar, if more graphic.
“By the way, you will be staying exactly where I send you until I come to see the results of this little test. The second rune will ensure this.”
My eyes went a little wide at this. Rune magic was a very powerful lost art that was said to be forbidden to learn. I guess being a bad ass ancient dragon makes you fearless in certain areas. As Mr. Evil was gloating, he reached the circle and began the process of activation.
I stared hard at the circle while he absentmindedly waved me around in the air. I couldn't draw this circle, or any other, but part of the hereditary knowledge that allowed me to know what it was also told me that the specific squiggle there was the place you put the coordinates that controlled where this thing went, and more importantly, where you were in relationship to it. I rallied my wavering concentration to impress this information on my brain. If that old lizard was right then I wouldn't be able to use my own powers to teleport back. I would have to do it the hard way.
I think that Mr. Evil got tired of me wriggling around. Admittedly, he was about three times stronger than me and way healthier, but I like to think I was strong enough to distract him from the more complex magics involved in creating a portal. I even tried to bite his hand, but human necks turn out to be pretty inflexible. One moment I was upright craning my neck towards his talons and the next I had been flipped upside down and I was seeing the ground race towards me.
I woke up covered in sweat and engulfed in almost complete darkness. That's okay, I see in complete darkness, but the trip hammer of my heart and the laborious breathing was definitely not normal. Or at least it hadn't been before an ancient creature killed all my friends, trapped me in human form, and then exiled me to another dimension. I guess that's what growing up is all about.
Without turning on the light, I looked at the barely luminescent clock and noted that I had gotten two hours of sleep. Not comfortable but plenty for me. Sighing, I trudged to the kitchen and got out a roasted ham I had bought from the store and stuck in the cooler for later. Precooked, it really does taste better in human form that way. Who knew?
Slowly the sweat on my skin evaporated and the energetic heartbeat slackened as my body realized it wasn’t about to die. I was too young for this crap. At my age I should still be mindlessly throwing myself into stupidly dangerous situations, not waking up in the middle of the night scared of some scaly boogieman.
I walked back to the study and used a trickle of mental energy to lift one of the books from the pitiful remaining stack of less than twenty ragged hardcovers leaning up against the wall. They varied in age and condition from the newly printed synthetic nupaper to the old yellowed and barely legible acid stained paper of bygone ages. There was a slew of furniture options to choose from in the cozy room, but I slouched into my favorite overstuffed faux leather chair. My hands were still greasy from dead pig, so as I finished off the last bit of meat and licked the juices off my hands, I levitated the book, moving it in front of me and read. I flipped through the pages rapidly, my eyes scanning the page in a second before moving to the next one.
This massive tome was a more recent copy of a copy. After about 20 minutes, I felt a mild throbbing as the concentration I was investing in the levitation and memorization of the book started to wear on me. I was tempted to just ignore it and continue, but memories bubbled up where injudicious overuse of even minor abilities had caused my resources to run dry at critical points. Grunting in slight dismay, I floated a towel from the kitchen to me and wiped my hands clean while allowing the book to fall lifelessly into my grasp.
I know bibliophiles that would kill me for touching a book without thoroughly washing my hands, but I was too dispirited to worry. The book I was reading was what this world had to supply regarding magic. It was written by a quack. A really verbose quack with diarrhea of the mouth, or quill in this case. When one of my kind are born we get a lot of baggage and a cornucopia of gifts. We inherit the general memories of our forefathers and some truly staggering physical gifts. That’s not to say that I remember what my father ate fifty years ago on a Tuesday, but I get a seed of their skills. I know how to make a pie, add, subtract and multiply, whack people with some basic skill with a sword and even know Ohm's Law for electric circuits. My parents must have been true Renaissance people. I can't say I am an expert at any of these things, but with a little practice these seeds can grow more rapidly than you'd expect.
The skill I most value from my inheritance is knowing what to do with my psychic power. All of my kind, and in fact all of our breeds, have it bubbling up inside us, much like our magic. Most don't do much more with it than toss around balls of energy, form a sword, or move furniture around. Basically, flashy parlor tricks.
Someone in my ancestral line must have been a true pioneer because once I started to actively develop my skills, I found entire repertoires opening up from my hard work and meditation. Not to boast too much, but I haven't met anyone better and may never unless I ever actually meet my ancestors. Moreover, I truly enjoyed exploring the powers of the mind, delving into the sleeping potentials and teasing them out, working with it until it blossoms into a true gift. That’s what psionics are to me and I love them. This actually is more than a little odd for one of my kind of any age, since to be honest, we relate more to magic. Heck, in so many ways we are magic. I still had my instinctive knowledge of magic and that was once more than enough. I took to my budding memories of my psychic potential like a duck to water and never looked back. Until I got exiled here.
Nowadays the love of my life isn't all that helpful. Psionics are great for mind over matter, controlling minds, healing, short distance teleportation, and many other tricks, but I have yet to see a psionic bridge the dimensions with the power of his mind alone. For that, you need magic. Even my digging into my ancestral memories didn't hint at future skills in this direction. My inherent ability to move between the gaps between the dimensions had been stifled by whatever rune the ancient dragon had placed on my chest, and my only hope to get back or even leave this dimension was to learn magic myself or find a friendly mage.
The problem I was having was that as far as I could tell this dimension didn't know squat about magic. The place that I had called home before I got stuck here was what this world would consider a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The particular town I came from was a little stunted when it came to science; however, it was crawling with magic users of a multitude of varieties. In that tiny corner of the scorched earth, the people and whatever assorted riffraff that had fallen through the cracks in reality had rediscovered magic and used it to pick up civilization by its bootstraps and trudge onward.
I looked once more at the book in disgust. Here everything I had found was cloaked in religious nonsense and generally useless. I had avoided magic in my old home for the most part, but the part of me that made my race what we are just knew what was real magic and what was fiction. I was tempted to throw the book to the ground but lacked the emotional energy. I simply sighed, and dropped it back to the reject pile and pulled another from the larger stack. Tomorrow I would go to the antiquities bookstore on my way about the city and give these away. Books were rare enough in this new world that I would feel guilty to remove one from existence. Even if it was just a piece of crap.
I was just settling down for another long read when a pounding came from my front door. Dropping the book on a nearby table and getting up from the comfortable overstuffed chair I had situated myself in, I trudged to the door and opened it. Squinting a little at the rising sun, I looked at my visitor and was a little surprised to see a thin, twenty-something young man with mousy brown hair peering down at me from a few inches of advantage, swaying on his feet and looking like he was about to collapse any minute.
Frowning in concern, I moved forward to support him and led him into my home, noting in passing that he was dripping blood on my carpet. Oh well, I keep all my nice things in my other apartment. I kept telling myself that as I avoided looking at my carpet being ruined.
“Jeremy... I wish you' be more careful.” I shook my head sadly. I had Jeremy on an ongoing contract. In my opinion, he was the best private eye in the city, and he liked dressing the part. He wore an old baggy trench coat and a wrinkled off-white dress shirt. Unfortunately, he had a bad habit of playing the hero; I think his clothes were in better shape than he was. He was also a good friend despite his lack of fashion sense.
“Hey, the job’s dangerous, jealous boyfriends and all that.” He gave a small breathy laugh that quickly turned into a groan. “Sorry to wake you.”
By this time we had reached the kitchen, the hardwood floor guaranteed that no more of my rug would be damaged, and I casually tore the coat he was wearing off to expose a bloody gunshot wound. A slight resistance told me it was actually an armored cloth. Probably resistant to heat and stiffened on impact to dissipate kinetic energy. It was likely why he was still alive and not spending the night being resuscitated in the local hospital.
“Hey, that was my favorite coat,” Jeremy jokingly whined. It looked out of place on his six-foot-four wiry frame and rugged features. How he got here with that wound boggled my mind; it's not as if we're close neighbors. He lived at the edge of the bad part of town, nicknamed the Blight by those that knew of it and couldn't avoid thinking about it, whereas this house was in a middle class suburban area of Arch. “Turn on the damn light. It feels like a tomb in here.”
“Yeah, well you obviously haven’t spent much quality time in a tomb if you think that. You can have my old coat.” I turned the light on and then ripped his shirt open to expose the wound. “And shirt. Now hush, this takes some concentration.”
Taking a deep breath, I opened my inner eye to examine the damage. Within a few minutes, I knew exactly what was wrong with him. “You need to stop smoking, that's going to kill you sooner that some punk's gun,” I quipped, only half joking. He didn't have cancer or anything; these days no one did, but he did smoke. Humans are pretty fragile and they really shouldn't tempt fate. They may have to regrow his lungs someday if he ignores it.
“Then I'll die free.”
“The way cigarettes are taxed? Dream on.” During our banter, I was readying my hand over his wound, and when I thought he was distracted I slipped it in, my hand passing through his skin as if I was a ghost.
“You know, if you took my offer you could heal this yourself,” I muttered as my hand found the bullet. At my touch, it too became insubstantial and I lifted it out if his body with no resistance. As my hand pulled out, I could see the wound closing up. “Okay, psychic surgery complete. I hope your insurance covers this.” The tiny slug was completely flat. The coat must have almost completely stopped its momentum, unless Jeremy’s hide was a lot tougher than I thought.
“No way, I have enough on my table as a PI,” he said as his fingers ran down the side where the wound had been. “Good work as usual, Professor.”
“Stop calling me that,” I snapped. “I hate nicknames. If you cracked a book occasionally, it wouldn't be such a shock that someone actually wants to look at one.” These days the ‘old tech’ was a holographic display, and everyone looked at you as if you were a human anachronism if you didn’t have a neural interface. My entire home was a museum.
“Ah, come on, I heard someone calling you that already.” I winced at hearing that. Too late to discourage it I guess. Probably some smartass bookstore owner. I hate smartasses... other than me, I mean. “Besides you play it down, but you have some serious powers.”
“Well, I play it down because the fewer people know what I can do the fewer idiots I will have after my head.” I waive a finger at him condescendingly, only half teasing. “Besides, there's always someone stronger than you.”
“Voice of experience?”
“I really don't want to talk about it. You saw the aftermath yourself.”
Jeremy was one of the people that found me some time after I had been thrown out of my world. Apparently, I was quite a sight at the time.
“I thought you just got caught in a mugging.” I grimaced at the thought. What the hell did he think could have done that to me? A delinquent velociraptor looking for a score? To be fair, at the time he had no clue of my less than mundane state.
“Oh no, it was... er... I guess you would call it a demon.” How do you describe an ancient dragon and a magic portal to a guy whose only frame of reference was the contemporary 2090 AD urban landscape and perhaps a few fantasy and science fiction books? Well, and old movies. “Anyway, I don't really want to talk about it.”
“Damn, should have known that you had a story behind it,” Jeremy offered. Now I knew he was fishing. I was only slightly annoyed, he's a PI, being nosey is his life. Fortunately, he handled me not talking about things gracefully.
“Oh, come on, I've known you for almost a year.” Okay, maybe not always that gracefully.
“Maybe I'll tell you later, now shut up,” I grunted. This world was weird. I had heard things could be different in the various dimensions. Back home the ambient magic was so great that my very structure oozed with it, fortifying me and my abilities and psionics. So much so that I could take a small nuclear bomb at ground zero and get up again if I was near a node or a ley line. Here, I had all my abilities sans the ones that the runes repressed, but I wasn't nearly as tough as I once was.
“So who is it that's calling me 'Professor'?” I tacitly changed the subject.
Jeremy wasn't fooled, but he let it drop. “You know people in the bad parts. If you're going to take on the muggers, you better expect people to talk.”
“Crud,” I grumbled. I have been using the same shape and face to visit the poorer parts of town to get my books. I guess people were finally starting to notice that if they try to mug that guy he's going to hand you your ass. I could change faces, but then I would have to deal with the additional mugging attempts. Yeah, some parts of town were so bad you knew you were guaranteed to get jumped. For a city that was named to be the pinnacle of the modern concept of a megalopolis, Arch had some pretty crappy places. Some of them are pretty darn close to the upscale places.
“Oh well, how bad could it be?” I asked philosophically.
“I heard some rumors,” Jeremy offered quietly, as he walked over to the sink and started using a wet cloth to get the caked blood off his skin. Great, another thing I need to buy. I hate shopping.
“The mayor is thinking of forming a new police force using supernaturals,” Jeremy said, while frowning at the stains on his pants.
I am not sure if it contributed at all to parts of the city sucking so hugely or it was just natural for a city this large, but people have been saying that ever since the vampires and the various shifters came out of the shadows, and somehow got civil rights, the city has gone to hell and the police can't control them. Both are almost immune to normal weapons, so who can say they are wrong.
“Well, that sounds like a good idea.” I looked at him closer. He didn't seem pleased. “Okay, I give up. Why isn't it a good idea? This city is hell on earth in some areas. Just because I don't want to play hero doesn't mean it's not a good thing if someone else does.”
“There's talk about him cracking down on freelancers and vigilantes.”
“Okay, that is going to suck for some of the other more hated vigilantes but I still don't see how it's that bad. If anything it'll burden the police even more. It will probably go back to normal in a few weeks after enough police drop dead.” Jeremy gave me flat look. I shrugged; if mortals want to make stupid decisions then by their god, Darwin, they will be weeded out.
“Yeah, it's going to be bad for everyone, but I think you should be worried about yourself... Professor.”
I was momentarily distracted by thoughts of the bloodbath. It was then that his words finally reached my brain.
“Profess... wait a damn minute here,” I exclaimed hotly. “I am not a hero or vigilante. I have work to do! I don't have time to waste.” My words faded away as I saw Jeremy raise an eyebrow. “Okay, it's not a waste, but I have other things on my plate. I don't have time to spend chasing after supernatural genetic waste.”
“So you say, but you have had your share of heroic actions since you got here.”
“That was all self-defense. They were in my way,” I complained. I think there might have been a hint of a whine in my tone. I hated that. I may be young for my race, but I am still manly. “Let the police hire a few werewolves they trust. That should balance the system a bit.”
“And Kingston,” Jeremy asked as he moved into the living room and put his feet up on my table. Damn, he is such a slob. If he tried to light up, I was going to toss him out on his butt. Then I froze. Kingston? He knew about Kingston? I knew Jeremy was good, but how did that happen.
“You're guessing,” I accused.
“I was until you responded,” he grinned smugly.
Kingston had been a fairly successful mob boss that had disappeared off the crime scene about six months ago. That was when I had come into a very significant amount of cash. Okay, I suppose it really wasn't that big a stretch when someone goes from living out of the YMCA and the government provided housing, to owning several properties and placing Jeremy on permanent commission.
What had actually happened was less than glorious justice. I had knocked out one of the lower level thugs, checked his mental health, and then merged my mind with his. After that, I had shape changed into his form and walked into Kingston’s hideout. I had to work my way up the ladder a little, but they really didn't have any defenses against a psychic shape shifter.
The only really hard part was the actual mind merge. This is a grueling mental talent where you and the target actually share all your memories with one another. For the next few hours you know everything that your target does. It's also incredibly dangerous. If you bond to someone that is insane, it is very likely you will come away suffering from the same mental illness. If he is nuts enough and your unlucky enough, he may just put you in a coma. I had to be very careful picking my targets.
The other down side is that the bonding is a full exchange. For several hours they know everything about you too. I had to force my ‘donors’ into a temporary coma. When it wore off in a week they didn't remember a thing about me.
The other hard part was once I was close to Kingston, and I examined his aura, I realized that, yes, he was nuts. So I abducted him, forcibly cured him of his psychosis through another very exhausting and time consuming psionic procedure and then bonded with him. The cure I know is only temporary without reams of therapy afterward, and it doesn't really change that you’re a bad man. I put him in a temporary coma, transferred his money through several accounts, changed faces, walked in a bank and physically walked out with it, changed faces again and moved it bit by bit into other accounts. I did this using Kingston's own skills as a very unscrupulous but imaginative bookkeeper to cover my tracks and set up alternate identities. He was a very talented man.
I never did figure out why he vanished afterward; when I left him, he was safe and sound in a hospital occupying a temporary bed in the coma ward. I looked into it afterward and he checked himself out a week after I checked him in, and then just vanished. His organization sort of fell apart, and I am guessing another good fellow took over. I did all of this not because I wanted to be a hero, but because I was destitute and needed to change this status without harming anyone that didn’t deserve it. I am still not sure whether to be guilty about what I did, so I usually avoid thinking about it. Denial is comfort food for the brain.
So when Jeremy dropped his bombshell I suppose it was silly to be surprised. I have always admired his skills as a sleuth, and although strangers may not have noticed anything, to him I may as well have been waiving a red flag. After a moment’s reflection, I just sighed. “No comment.”
“Anyway, if people ever find out that you took out Kingston they may jump to conclusions about your orientation.”
Damn, I hate politics. Back home in post holocaust-ville all I had to do is worry about whether our patrols would run across hostile neighbors.
“I'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I have plans in place but I kind of like my life as it is.” I paused a moment to clarify this statement. “As frustrating as my research is.”
“Dead end,” Jeremy prompted politely, as he got up and walked into the back room. Once he left the room, I surreptitiously sidled over to where he had sat and noted the scuff marks on the table. I was going to have to buff that out as well as get the carpet cleaned. Sometimes, friends are a real pain in the butt.
He came back a moment later with a shirt and jacket that vaguely fit him, though perhaps a little baggy. He usually wore loose clothing so this was actually not a big change for him, except the better quality material. “Well, not completely. I am going through the last stack.” I winced at the thought of the last twenty books. “But I think in the time I have been looking for something real about magic, I have found maybe five books. And they weren't very helpful,” I added sourly. A couple cantrips and wards for evil spirits. I could light a cigarette with my thumb; home dimension here I come!
“It could be that I have a lead for you,” the rumpled PI dropped with nonchalance.
This perked me up right away. “You found something? Why didn't you say something sooner?”
“I think there was something about bullet wounds,” he said, with a slight edge to his voice.
“Er... right, sorry about that.” I kept forgetting humans got worried over this stuff. People have actually called me insensitive. Jerks.
“There's a new shifter in town. Girl called Mei Ling. Some kind of hot shot martial artist bounty hunter.”
“And she interests me how?” I prompted. Not that I doubted the man, I am just like that.
“She's hunting some kind of witch or wizard.”
“Huh?” Disappointment flooded through me. “The wizard is a villain? That does me no good. An evil wizard is more trouble than they are worth. They are notoriously close-mouthed unless you swear eternal servitude to them or some such garbage.” I felt myself on the verge of pouting. “Are you sure it's actually a witch or wizard? I thought they hadn't been outed yet.” I am sure they exist, but they hide far better than the other supernaturals I had found in this world.
“Not officially, but anyone who's not a halfwit can guess some of what's offstage ready to come into the spotlight. Besides, can't you…” Jeremy tapped the side of his head suggestively.
“Bah, you can't take magic by force... well unless you're some whack job of a blood mage.” Agitated, my handed gestured to try to get the point across. I had seen Italian mafia in movies do it and it seemed cool.
Jeremy barely ducked my swinging hands, muttering curses under his breath. It's his own fault, he was the one that insisted I see The Godfather.
“Well, wizards would have books about magic, right? You're bound to get better stuff that what you’re combing through.”
That thought stopped me. He was right. Anything had to be better than the useless time-wasters I was looking at now.
“So are you interested?”
“Okay, this seems a good lead.” Getting down to business I continued. “Five hundred credits in your account now. If this pans out, one thousand more credits.”
“Great. She is staying at this address,” Jeremy said, while pulling a stained folded square of nupaper from his pocket. I gingerly took the rather abused sheet between my thumb and pointer finger, and noticed rather fresh traces of blood on it.
“Okay...” Slightly nonplussed at the tattered state of my directions, I unfolded the cheap plastic textured sheet and began to read. “She's at the Hotel Riviera? That’s across town in one of the upscale neighborhoods.”
“Well, not everyone stays at the YMCA when they first visit the city.” That earned him a glare.
“By the way, I assume you took care of the problem you had?” I asked while gesturing at his side where the bullet wound had been.
“Yeah, it was just a misunderstanding over a client's possession,” Jeremy said nonchalantly, waving away my concern. “Anyway, I have to head home, I need to sleep. We can watch Mad Max later.”
“You should get some better protection if you won't let me show you a few tricks.”
“I was wearing protection. That coat you ripped off me kept that thing from tearing me in half.”
Looking guiltily at the coat lying on the floor in pieces, I glanced back at him. It hadn't felt that armored. “Okay, buy another one. On me. Maybe have a force field built in it.”
He snorted. “That is restricted military technology. I'll have to settle for armored coats. These days it seems the only time the military lifts a finger to do anything is if they find someone using their tech.”
I walked him to the door and looked out as he rode off in his old beat up blue car. It was such an old piece of junk that I don't think anyone ever tried to steal it despite it being an antique. He had once extolled me with a detailed description of its history and why it was such a fantastic find. I think I purposely blocked out that memory. Hardly anyone used street cars these days, although with the recent renewed interest in 20th-century fads that may change.
The sun was well up and the city around me was now active. I suppose some people just like working at night. Just to stretch my legs I walked out and made a leisurely tour around the block.
The mostly deserted neighborhood was squarely middle class in appearance and well laid out, which most likely was one of the reasons the crime rate was so low. The streets were wide and empty of cars on the surface; there were no hidden nooks and crannies for criminals to hide. The other reason may have been that I had bought most of the houses around me so there are fewer potential victims. A piercing, high-pitched whine came from the distance, and I saw a mag-lev commuter train barreling by on the tracks several thousand feet away, so fast that it was almost gone before the noise reached me. I frowned. I came from a city full of magic users of various flavors and even now the technologically oriented city threw me off if I paid too much attention to it.
I turned my attention straight upward to see the various air cars, bikes, and scooters flying high above the street. At regular spacing, there were floating buoys that acted as traffic beacons. I used to love flying.
Absently fingering my chest where the runes lay under my shirt, I scowled at the hover cars as I turned back to the house. A faint humming sound swiftly grew behind me reached the door.
“Are you the Professor?” A voice drifted from the lawn at my back and I hunched my shoulders. Damn, I hate it when Jeremy's right.
Turning around, I was somewhat surprised to see a fully uniformed police officer, complete with rigid light body armor and automatic rifle. “I have heard some people calling me that.” He didn't look hostile, just a bit officious. The armor couldn't be comfortable, even if the morning was relatively cool. Yep, looking closer, a fine sheen of sweat covered his brow. Maybe the ‘advanced’ technology required for refrigerated armor was restricted to the military too.
“Sorry sir, I just had an address and a title. We couldn't find your phone or vid number,” the officer said pleasantly. It didn't look like I was being arrested, but heck if I knew what he wanted.
“I don't have a phone, er, working phone,” I said shrugging. The police man just looked at me like I was a madman. Most of the people I know look at me the same way. I can't stand the things, always making weird noises just before they vent a foul smelling gas. I used to know some psychics that had a special relationship with technology. I am not one of them and never even tried to develop such a thing. I almost have to be in a meditative state to keep my energies from interacting with the new chips.
“Um, right.” He seemed a bit flustered by my flat response. “I am Officer Cromwell. Er... well, Lieutenant Monahan asked me to see if you'd mind consulting on some crimes.”
This took me back a bit. “Me? I don't have any background in criminology.”
“The crimes involve magic, sir.”
I understood now. It's not like the city didn't have its hidden magic users, it’s just that most of them were very much like mystics or shamans. They had an instinctive knowledge on how to cast specific spells. To learn more, they would meditate and become ‘enlightened.’ Useless. They had no idea how magic worked, just how to contemplate their navel. Perhaps that was harsh, but there was some truth to it. I couldn't cast verbal spells yet, but I knew magic, felt it in my bones... and it didn't hurt to have lived in a city full of braggart mages. Damn, I missed them.
So basically the reason they needed me was very similar to why I was looking for educated wizards. If a crime involved magic then either a supernatural entity committed it, a mystic did it, or a wizard did it. Basically, they needed me for my ‘academic’ reputation rather than my vigilante experience. My mind flashed back to my conversation just a few minutes ago. A captured wizard would leave books behind. Surely the nice police officers wouldn't need all those books.
“Okay.”
Chapter 2
The air traffic was rather intense, and I assume there was no real time crunch, because the officer only used his siren once to bypass the gridlocked air cars. I enjoy flying under my own power, but sitting in a ceramic and plasteel can, surrounded by other floating boxes, was boring as hell. I am trying to keep a fairly low profile, but if I could still shapechange into something with wings I would probably just shrug my shoulders and tell everyone I was a mutant vampire, just to freely fly around. There was an old cartoon about gargoyles; I could have faked being one of them. Some branches of my species can fly with or without wings. I ain't one of them.
Still, it wasn't really far, and the closer we got the less traffic we saw until we were the sole car in the sky. Can you say target? When I first noticed the traffic go away, I looked down and saw we were over the Blight. If you're not familiar with the city, then let me just say it's insanely thick with unsavory types. Oddly enough, from up here I could see large areas of the slums newly cordoned off behind semi-translucent tents. That just had to push all the transients, homeless, and gangs into smaller areas. I winced. That can’t end well. This worried me since this was where I buy my books.
Technology allows a minimum level of lifestyle to almost anyone. If you, for some unknown reason, don’t want to fit in, are antisocial, or perhaps just bat shit crazy, you can go to the cities only free ranging insane asylum we call the Blight. You can play gangster, road warrior, homeless, or anarchist to your heart’s content. If you die, you will be taken to the city hospital and resurrected, assuming your brain is intact, then sent on your merry way. The area is largely unpoliced since, crazy or not, the people have cobbled together some pretty slick jammers and EMP generators. It’s safer just to leave them alone, and not worth calling in the military.
When my sixth sense went off, I knew we were about to be attacked; sometimes, I love clairvoyance. This wasn't really one of them. I knew a good minute ahead of the fact that we were going into trouble but didn't know how, when or why. It was a very frustrating feeling.
“Officer...” I began and then trailed off. How do you tell a non-psychic that you feel bad vibes and something unfortunate is going to happen? And, by the way, you can't say what.
“What can I do for you, Prof?” the officer asked good-naturedly.
“Um.” Hemming and hawing may occasionally work, but it wasn't exactly productive in this case. I scanned the area below us for what was triggering my senses, the adrenalin rush seeming to slow the world slightly as my eyes flicked from point to point, the sense of danger slowly growing in the back of my mind.
All I saw were mostly vacant decaying buildings, most with windows broken, some with holes in walls where shattered brick and wood facing gaped open. There were people down there, most ignoring us, some glaring as the vehicle of the law flew above them. With a moment of clarity, I saw the source of my discontent. Below us, seemingly waiting for us, was a rag tag group of rough looking youths with tubes of some sort pointing at us. While I am not a technophile, Jeremy has brought over enough movies in the last six months to fill in most of the holes in my knowledge with this dimension's Earth culture. That, and they looked a lot like the hi-tech outlaws and hostile colonies who used to shoot at us, back home. There’s a certain intense, crazy look in the eyes that gives them away.
“Missiles,” I shouted, while pointing over his shoulder. I was a little too late since I saw five separate flashes and the too familiar sight of torpedo-like objects rising through the air towards us.
I really have to hand it to Cromwell, he really knew how to fly. Well, I think he did. At least the car bucked and twisted and flipped a lot. I didn't have my belt on, and I got thrown around a lot until I managed to shove my hand through the armored door and anchor myself in place. Hopefully, my pilot would be occupied enough not to notice this. I was trying to stay just a minor human psychic with an education in the occult, not one of the ludicrously strong supernaturals that the city teemed with.
There was a whine and a pop as faint smoke filled the back seat. That was probably the kinetic dampeners that were supposed to keep us from being tossed around. The fact that they conveniently just self-destructed was most likely my fault. While sad, I suppose I should just be happy we were still in the air. I tried to think tranquil, enlightened thoughts and dampen my energies. The sound of one hand clapping and all that jazz. Officer Cromwell had his harness on; sometimes being truly old school pays.
We avoided the first barrage and I situated myself in a stable enough location to actually look outside again. I was just in time to see another set of five fly towards us. The thought whispered through the back of my mind that this meant there were at least ten guys with launchers down there, because there is no way those things can shoot twice in a row. At least I hoped not. I hated technology sometimes.
Now that I had gotten my bearings, I placed a hundred-foot-wide psionic bubble between us and them in time to take that volley. It was pretty sturdy but still went down at the fifth hit. I hope that confused them at least. My force fields are invisible, unless you can sense psychic energy or see the unseen in some way.
The car rolled over again, still doing those neat evasion rolls that had sent me spinning like a ping pong ball through the back seat. I took advantage of the very clear view of the ground through the window to place a third, smaller force bubble directly around the bad people shooting at us.
The next thing I saw was a very bright light show below us as another set of five missiles rose up, only to impact the interior of the telekinetic wall surrounding the youths shooting at us. Okay, I guess those things can shoot multiple times. You learn something new every day.
Wincing in sympathy, I looked to see the shield go down. Did I mention that my race can see things that are invisible? They kind of glow blue to me. I am not sure how others that can see these things or perceive them. My glowing bubble popped as the missiles hit them. I tried to keep an eye out on the location as the car continued to make like a roller coaster. When the debris and smoke finally cleared I noted that five missiles exploding fifty feet from a human isn't a good thing. There was no one still standing beneath us. On the good side, I didn't see body parts or blood blanketing the area so maybe they were still alive.
“Are you alright sir?” my dear friend Officer Cromwell called from the front.
“Yeah, just a little motion sick. I think the car got hit with something though,” I said innocently. It's never too soon to cover your butt.
“Well, we can fix the car. Good thing their ordinance misfired. Saved our asses.”
“Yeah, thank goodness,” I muttered with mixed emotions. Since the officer had offered a good rationale, I planned to jump on it.
We landed and got out. I started checking the injuries of the people that were caught under the explosion. Cromwell stayed back after verifying I actually had some medical knowledge, apparently calling in the event to the station. Maybe he should have been securing the perimeter or something, but I have no idea what standard protocol for having missiles shot at you was.
I walked over and frowned at the first fellow I was starting to tend. Serious burns and bruising, blood from the ears. I looked over at another. A broken bone at least. Bah. I should have stayed over by the police car; now I felt guilty. Sighing in defeat at the assault of my conscious, I knelt down and touched the first punk, focusing a tiny bit of my power on him to smooth over the burns. Not enough to have the guy jump up and make a break for it, but enough to keep him out of the critical care ward or a resuscitation tank. I wasn't that guilty.
I had heard this neighborhood was bad, but shooting missiles at police were a first. None of these kids were supernaturals, either. While I was contemplating the situation, I knelt next to the next victim of misplaced anger. Bones were a pain; I had to straighten it out and then apply the energy to speed the natural healing.
I moved on to the next unconscious guy, straightening his limbs out in preparation for a little flesh manipulation. Afterward, I smoothly set the broken bone, and with a quick application of energy healed it enough to forgo a splint, though he wouldn’t be doing athletics any time soon.
I admit that I have an ego the size of a planet. My entire race in all its myriad facets, light and dark, has this condition. But sometimes the universe really does revolve around you for just a few seconds. It’s a scientific fact. I read it in a magazine, so it must be true.
However, it did make sense to me that statistically it would be more likely for people to be shooting missiles at me rather than at random police. If I had more time, I could do a light telepathic probe on these guys and find out why they would take such a huge risk.
“Looks like you did a good job of sorting these punks out.” I jumped at the words behind me.
Spinning, I noticed that Cromwell had finished his report over the communicator, and was showing the newcomers from the floating paddy wagon where the downed criminals were.
“Can't believe our luck,” Cromwell said, while gesturing to the youths that were being carted into the van. “If one of their launchers hadn't misfired we would have been nothing but burning wreckage on the street.”
“Yeah, luck was with us,” I said, trying to keep the irony from my voice. My acting skills must have been enough, since Cromwell turned back to the car.
“I know it's been a tough day for you Professor, but would you mind going on to take a look at things?” the officer asked, contritely over his shoulder.
Once more, I was surprised. I was never in any real danger; why would I mind going on to look at the crime scene? I got a hold of myself just before I said anything. Sometimes, it's hard to remember who you're pretending to be twenty-four hours a day.
“Yes, well as upsetting as this incident is, we can't let the criminals get in the way of your investigation.” God that sounded pompous. Something then occurred to me. “Did this attack have anything to do with your case?”
“Doubt it,” Cromwell stated definitively. “Totally different MO. You'll see.”
“Oh, seems a bit of a coincidence.” I trailed off.
“Not really, I recognize that gang from their colors.” I must have looked befuddled. “They all wore red jackets with the stylized 'X'. That gang was raided last week, and the gang members that are still free vowed vengeance on the police.”
“Vowed... vengeance,” I said wonderingly. Okay, maybe this was a complete coincidence and I was being paranoid. “I hadn't realized it was that bad. These guys seemed really well armed.” I had no idea what they were, but the missile launchers looked more advanced that what I usually saw on the vid. Of course, Jeremy and I mostly watched movies almost a hundred years old. Maybe I should watch the news more.
“Yeah, it's getting bad out here,” the officer said darkly, as he smoothly raised the hover car into the air. “The missiles are new. I don't think they are common on the street... thank God. Usually, we can handle the normals, but the supernaturals are getting worse too.”
From what Jeremy said, I suppose the Mayor agreed.
Chapter 3
There was no more excitement on the way to our destination. This just happened to be in the middle of the Blight. I was actually surprised; I had heard from Jeremy that no police would dare to go there. Even if it was a first, considering the welcome we got on the way, it's amazing that anyone called the police, and more so that someone actually came.
We landed outside the remains of an old tenement house from the 2060's. The windows looked blasted out and gaping holes covered the walls; bricks and mortar littered the ground outside. It looked only a little worse for wear than the apartments on either side. The original damage was probably from the Aussie Meltdown riots, the rest from time and abandonment.
As we approached, I started to get a crawling sensation on my skin. The aura of the city had always been... dark, violent. It was why there were so few true psychics in town. It was a very uncomfortable feeling to be engulfed in the emanations of millions of very unhappy people that had lived, and died, in the city for decades. Or perhaps the city was built over some evil pre-Aztec temple. Who really knows what happened? However, it was significantly worse in this building. My tolerance for this kind of thing is pretty high. Being a creature of magic with many supernatural traits, my kind has lived and thrived in some very harsh environments. Still, I felt edgy, like there was some supernatural evil just around the corner. No problem.
Outside the door, a shattered police buoy rested on the ground. Apparently, the locals didn’t like the police leaving their markers in place. Continuing up the stairs, I noticed claw marks in the stone and mason of the walls. I paused a moment to look closer, and Cromwell quietly paused next to me and let me examine the gouges. I placed my hands close to the wall, and the officer coughed.
“Excuse me sir, but please don't touch the evidence.” I was about to make a sarcastic remark when he continued. “Wouldn't want your genetic evidence to get mixed up with the perpetrators when the scanning crew comes through.”
Ah. Genetics. That would be a problem for me. “Yeah, wouldn't want that.”
“Here use these,” he offered helpfully, while handing me a pair of disposable gloves. I was starting to feel like an official deputy. It felt far too familiar for my comfort. The difference between now and back when my team was alive was at that time I was the junior member.
After rolling the gloves on, I felt them react to the heat of my hand by shrinking into a skin tight film. Raising my hands again, I compared the marks in the stonework to my own. A little larger but not that much. I did the same to the marks just a little over and found them smaller.
Without saying anymore, I walked up to the next floor. Walking through the door with all the old style sticky warning tape surrounding the area, I saw a scene from a bad horror film. Bodies covered the floor, some torn apart, some simply sprawled on the ground. All seemed to be adults, which was a welcome miracle, but other than that there seemed little else in common. The corpses ranged in age from late teens to probably over sixty and numbered around twenty.
Walking over to one of the more intact male bodies, I noted there was only a little blood, though the bruises on the neck and protruding tongue made me think that he was choked to death. Smudges on the forehead caught my attention, and I drew a startled breath in recognition. I deeply regretted this, and the breath that I had been holding was expelled as I drew some not so fresh air into my lungs. I can hold my breath for a very long time and was extremely sorry for letting my surprise release it.
I immediately got up and staggered to the window to suck in a breath of fresh air. I hate the smell of rotting meat.
“It's hard to believe that one human did this to another,” a deep baritone sounded behind me. Turning around, I scowled at the figure. I was getting surprised too often for my comfort. Perhaps I was getting too dependent on my sixth sense to keep me aware of my surroundings.
Behind me stood a very large man with the physique of a body builder. A body builder wearing a heavily armored SWAT style bodysuit. He looked like a pumped Arnold Schwarzenegger ready to crack down on evildoers everywhere.
“Geez man, why do you wear that thing,” I complained. It was hard to take someone seriously that looked a hair breath away from walking off an old Robocop movie. I don’t know where he got the armor, but it was definitely not standard. “Can't you wear long johns like every other respectable hero?” I heard a gasp behind me as one of the other officers on the scene goggled at me mocking the most respected officer of the city.
“It works,” was all the man in the armored suit said.
“Right. Whatever.” I love that human catch phrase. It conveys the perfect amount of dismissal. We had met a while ago. He was one of the few officers with the nerve to go alone into the Blight, and while we were far from friends we had gotten used to one another’s quirks. He seemed to haunt the bookstores and more specifically the occult section. I would have thought he was staking it out, but he is not at all subtle in that armor. He also knew how I felt about his tank of a suit. I tease him about it almost every time we meet.
“So if you're done criticizing my wardrobe, perhaps you could give us your opinion of this,” Officer Conrad asked seriously. He did everything seriously. It probably came from being the first official shifter on the police force. A shifter in armor is the very definition of over the top. I was betting that if the mayor had his way, he would be the center of the new supernatural department. I believed this because he had been on many news clips. He was the mayor’s favorite and seemingly the new face of the police department. Jeremy insisted on showing me the reruns.
“Well,” I drawled. This was the tough part, so I kind of put it off. “Do you believe in magic?”
“I am familiar with Faramond,” he stated simply. That stopped me cold. Faramond was a vigilante in the city, famous for having the power of a champion of fairy. He was reputed to be monstrously strong and a nigh invulnerable hulking brute of a man. But that wasn't why I turned away and groped the window sill as I desperately tried to keep myself from breaking down into a giggling mass.
You see, where I come from, fairies are tiny magical humanoids about a foot or two high. The good fairies are notorious for playing relatively harmless magical pranks on humans while the evil fairies play rather deadly tricks. I had never actually met him, but the mere thought of a champion of the little clowns just cracked me up.
“Are you all right, Professor?” That calmed me down fast. Even the flipping pinnacle of officialdom was calling me the Professor. Gathering myself, I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes and slowly turned around, putting a serious look on my face.
“Yes, it's just the tragedy of all of this finally hit me,” I said seriously. It was indeed sad to see the dead lying about me, but it's hard for me to get emotional over humans unless they are close friends. I still mourn my friends killed by Mr. Evil, but dead strangers just don't do much to me even if the smell was a bit much.
“Yes, but we'll find the people that did this and bring them to justice,” Officer Conrad said, his voice quivering with determination. He was a very serious man.
“There may be a slight hitch in that plan,” I cautiously offered. I hate to get between and man and his dream. “What did this wasn't people.”
“What do you mean?” he said, spearing me with his eyes.
I opened my senses and scanned the area around us quickly to confirm my suspicions, and then locked down my senses again from the unpleasantness around me.
“Notice the general lack of blood from these corpses?” I asked, waving my hand to encompass the bodies around us. “Only these two corpses actually bled anything. The others were just torn apart while fighting.”
“Torn apart? While fighting?” Conrad seemed startled, but at least he wasn't calling me an idiot or charlatan yet. The day was still young.
“This body actually has a part of a circle inscribed in blood on the forehead.” I trailed off in thought. “Looks like it wasn't completed.”
“What wasn't?” the shifter officer asked, confused.
“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled. “Got ahead of myself. Zombies. Most of these are zombies.” Gesturing to the two bloody corpses, I continued. “Except for those two. Looks like the ritual got interrupted.”
“So someone was creating zombies and someone else broke in and killed them all,” Conrad asked, looking as if he was coming to grips with the situation.
“Well,” I paused for a second. “No.”
“Then what?” he asked, starting to get an impatient note in his voice.
“Zombies take some time to animate from the dead. All of these were already up and about. Only those two were fresh and the ritual seems to have been interrupted.”
“So someone was creating zombies and someone else broke in and killed them all,” Conrad repeated.
“I said no,” I said, slightly miffed that he had ignored that part.
“Then what...”
“I was getting to that part,” I interrupted. “A bunch of humanoids with supernatural strength broke in and tore the zombies apart, and probably drove the maker away.”
“Okay, so how is my interpretation incorrect?” the supernatural officer asked with reined-in patience.
“Well, the zombies aren't dead and although the two on the ground look dead, in a couple of days they'll be up and about again.”
“That doesn't sound good,” the officer deadpanned.
“It gets worse,” I offered pessimistically. He just gave me a long stare. In the background, I heard the police shuffling around nervously. This was beginning to sound like a grade B horror movie.
“Yeah, the zombies will pull themselves together and go seek their master soon, unless they have other orders,” I started to say.
“They're wearing the colors of Baron Samedi,” a very pale Cromwell offered.
“The whosis?” I asked. These human packs were impossible to keep track of. And that name sounded familiar.
“They are a gang of thugs that are a bit infamous for their blatant operation outside the law.” The officer gulped as he put together the pieces in his mind. I looked at him puzzled. I had thought everything was blatantly open and illegal in the Blight. “Murder, drugs, extortion, you name it, they do it. Out in the open and fearlessly.”
Looking at the temporarily inanimate zombies around us, I nodded. “Fearless. The dead don't know fear.” I corrected myself. “Sorry, the undead. Actually they are animated dead. I am not sure how they are classified. Amusing, that he took the name of the vodoun spirit of the dead. At least he has a sense of irony.” I had read some books on the subject; it was just as misguided as most of the other ideas, but it had some interesting insights to spirits.
“So how bad is this?” Officer Conrad took control of the conversation again.
“Well, the zombies are bad,” I admitted. “They can only be damaged by silver and killed by destroying the body with fire. I think you have to separate the head too.”
“So they can be destroyed. The police can...” I coughed to interrupt him.
“Ahem, invulnerable juggernauts of supernatural force,” I inserted as a reminder. “I think you may need some of the supernaturals help on this, unless you shoot them from the air with silver bullets. And I think we have seen that the police shouldn't fly around here too much,” I said, looking knowingly at Cromwell.
“Still, we can work this,” the well-built shifter stated confidently.
“Against the zombies, probably,” I nodded thoughtfully. “I really think the vampires could possibly cause a problem though.”
I admit I play to the crowd just a teeny bit. Moments like this, the people surrounding me with their jaws agape, were the times I lived for. I guess I'm petty, but I do enjoy it.
“Wait a minute,” Officer Conrad spluttered. It was the first time I had seen anything resembling uncontrolled emotion in his face since I met him a few months ago. “Zombies and vampires? Together? That’s a bit hard to believe.”
I had been wondering where the suspension of disbelief would end. People that deal with the rational, even the not-so-rational of shifters and vampires, technology and super science and so forth, always draw the line at magic. He'd lasted longer than I thought. I shrugged eloquently.
“At the same time? That's stretching probability,” Officer Conrad floundered on.
“Well, it's not really a coincidence,” I said, catching his attention again. “It's fate.”
“What?” he barked, once again agitated. I loved it.
“No, just kidding,” I offered brightly, ignoring his low growl. “Seriously though, the zombies have obviously been around a while. Officer Cromwell has known of the gang for a bit. I doubt they were all turned yesterday.” Cromwell thoughtfully nodded his head. He looked like he had swallowed something sour.
“Vampires tend to enter a place and entrench. They make themselves a home and...” I paused here for a moment to think. My information on vampires was flawed. In my own dimension, vampires were an evil plague that started from a single extra dimensional entity and spread to human minions, and soon you had a horde of thousands of nearly mindless vampires. In short, they held an eerie similarity to how the zombies and their maker operated.
When I had heard that vampires and shifters had been granted protection under the law, I almost swallowed my tongue. Images of a land controlled by vampires had flitted through my mind in several nightmarish variations. Shifters were one thing, after all except for a few animal instincts, a mild pack mentality, and occasional unfortunate hygiene incidents, they were mostly human, for better or for worse. Vampires though... I had to see this. I had made my way to one of the vampire clubs to see how the heck this had snuck into society, and been completely surprised. These variations were definitely supernatural undead creatures, but it was hard to deny they had culture; no dead bodies littered the alleyways or the club nooks and crannies, and most important... they didn't radiate evil. Being psychic, I can feel that entire evil thing when it's in unnatural things. Humans and other non-mystical races are harder to detect the evil vibe from.
“They are also pretty territorial,” I said, picking up my train of thought where I had left off. “This looks like the start of a turf war.”
“Would they as bad as the zombies you mentioned?” Cromwell interjected.
“Worse actually.” I waived my hand at the carnage around me. “These guys didn't stand a chance. They share a few invulnerabilities, but on the undead supernatural food chain the vampires are several rungs higher.”
“What makes them worse?” Officer Conrad asked. He seemed to have gotten over the idea of his city being infested with supernatural horrors and was ready to get down to business on how to get rid of them.
“Well, that depends actually.” I paused and waved my hand at the carnage around us. “Because they are territorial, they almost had eliminated competing undead. Is that a bad thing? Well, only you can decide I guess...”
“This place looks like a butcher's workshop, how can it be good?” Conrad growled out, the animal in him inching towards the surface.
I ignored it, though Cromwell and the other officers edged back away from the armored man. “Look at it this way. Every zombie is most likely a murder victim. They have no personality and obey the zombie creator without question, who is the one that most likely killed them. The magic that animates them also will likely make them immune to any resurrection techniques.”
“Do they have souls?” Conrad asked, in a tight voice.
“I have no idea, ask a priest. I don't even know if vampires have souls.” I shrugged. Humans worry about the silliest things. I didn't even know if humans had souls. Or care.
Conrad looked startled at the question, the others just looked vaguely nauseated. “So what, are these vampire vigilante heroes?”
I gave him an annoyed glance. “How the heck should I know? They could even be a rival gang. You can book them for taking the law into their own hands, but frankly everyone here was already dead when the vampires came in and kicked butt. The master got away, so they didn't actually kill anyone, but apparently a mass murdering zombie master got away.”
“So they allowed the 'zombie master' to escape,” Cromwell slowly said, as if trying to get a hold of the situation in terms he could understand. I had no idea if the vampires were heroes or villains. Considering this was the Blight, it was likely just a rogue vampire gang moving in. That would be just as bad or worse than the zombies.
“Do the police actually have a procedure for this?” I asked the flustered cop. Conrad looked at me with a thoughtful frown. I could see he already knew where I was going with this question.
“Well, if there's bodies or evidence,” he muttered to himself.
“What happens when the murder victim gets up and tells the police officer there's no problem and to run along?” I asked, seeing the poor man wince.
“That’s why the mayor is trying to form the new department to deal with these things.” Conrad’s deep voice reassured the younger officer.
I had my doubts of the effectiveness of such a department unless some of the older vampires and werewolves joined it. As we had found here, unless you can identify what the hell you're actually seeing, having a division of police officers with supernatural strength isn't going to do squat. Perhaps my doubts showed on my face. I never claimed to have a great poker face.
“It will be one step in the right direction,” the large man elaborated while staring at me. I just shrugged. Who was I to ruin his dream? “So how do we track the zombie master down?”
“That is the easiest part. Follow the bodies,” I stated triumphantly.
“We can't wait for this guy to kill again and raise a new army,” Cromwell squawked indignantly.
“New army? Why would he need a new army?” I asked, puzzled.
“Oh no.” I saw Conrad looking around with a new eye at the crime scene. Cromwell just looked confused. The poor smuck.
“Oh yes. What part of the 'only can be destroyed by fire' shtick did you not understand?” I know I had mentioned this part before, but I can forgive these guys for suffering information overload. It would be a lot to take in if you weren't used to it.
The police officers who had been standing around, trying not to look like they weren't hanging onto our words, almost danced away from the bodies. Conrad stayed put, though he was keeping a cautious eye on the corpses and pieces of corpses. It probably helped his peace of mind immeasurably to know that he was strong enough to tear them to pieces if they made a grab at him. I know it made me feel better.
“When...” He cleared his throat as he thought about his question. “When will these things come alive?”
I held up my finger dramatically, and then dropped it and shrugged. “Not a clue.” Watching the mixed emotions flit across his face entertained me for a few seconds before I mercifully continued. “However, if I had to guess I would say before tonight, you have a decision to make.”
“Decision?” the shifter asked as if he wouldn't like the answer. He was right.
“Yes. My educated guess that sometime before sunset these parts are going to start pulling themselves together and once they do, they are going to make a beeline for their Sammy’s location,” While I was describing this, my fingers were making little walking motions. I am not sure if Italians were quite so emotive with their hands, but I figured it would be even better to get the point across.
“Baron Samedi,” Conrad muttered a correction, deep in thought.
“Oh my God.” Cromwell made a soft groaning noise in the background. It startled me that the man was almost blasé about the missile attack and so squeamish about animated corpses. I saw Conrad give him a small frown, though I couldn't tell if he was concerned about the man or disgusted at his unmanliness. If it was the later, he would have seen an echo of Cromwell's unease in the other officers in the room as they shuffled from foot to foot, subtlety shying away from the bodies as if they would come alive and tear them apart.
“So...” the armored man prompted softly.
“So... you either gather up these pieces and burn them before they pull themselves together, assuming your police procedures allow it,” I said to Conrad, subtly reminding him that he had some rules to thread. “Or you follow this army home to the master and perhaps into the arms of a second army of zombies.”
“I think we can come up with a compromise.” Conrad's posture changed as he came to a decision. “Cromwell, get these parts tagged as hazardous waste. See if we can get the paperwork completed to incinerate these without having to go through decontamination ourselves. Use the nanite infection protocols. You may have to have the chief contact the mayor or it may take too long. Leave one complete corpse here. We will follow it back.”
I coughed slightly to draw the attention back to me. “And the ambush that may be waiting for you?”
“What would you suggest?” Conrad looked at me thoughtfully.
“Only you and other supernaturally strong creat... er... people are anywhere near strong enough to defend themselves from one of these, let alone do enough damage to them so you can burn them. If you have people tagged for that new department, I suggest you call them in. Otherwise, you'll need a posse of werewolves and vampires.”
I could see the shifter's lips pursed as he mouthed the word posse. “Posse?” he whispered a moment later. I looked at him in confusion. Jeremy and I had just watched a cowboy movie the other week, and the concept was very clear.
“Yeah, a posse. Where you deputize a gaggle of strangers to bring some poor SOB to justice.” I gestured with my hands. “You know, a legalized mob!”
“Right, a posse.” I could have sworn I saw a slight smile cross his face, but it was probably my imagination since it didn't crack.
“So is there anything else I can do for you, or are we done here?” I asked.
“I think we are done. Thank you for your consultation. I will have a check drawn up for your time.” Conrad nodded to me and I paused in confusion. What was a check? Wait, I was getting paid for this?
“Um, thanks.” I had mixed feeling about getting paid for giving advice. On the one hand, it’s the standard way mortals deal with one another; on the other hand it seemed to cheapen my advice. I figured I would deal with the emotional conflict by using the money to buy something to put in my house. Maybe a gem or bit of gold.
“Oh, before you go, does this zombie master have access to any other magic?” the shifter casually asked. I froze, a storm suddenly going off in my head. There was no reason the zombie master would restrict himself to raising the dead. He could very well be a caster of another type as well.
Looking around the room with a fresh eye, I looked at the walls and ceiling to see if lightning or fire had marked the surface, gradually becoming somewhat disappointed in the obvious lack of such damage. I would have noticed it coming in, but hope springs eternal.
“Doesn't look like he used any blatant magic other than the zombie thing. If you see any glowing walls or fireballs or sheet lightning you should call me right away.” If he did that, maybe he would leave some books behind. Something other than zombie-raising books. Humans are common enough; why would you want undead humans running around too?
“Is that likely?” Cromwell asked nervously.
“Well, he is a magic user,” I said thoughtfully. “There's no real reason he couldn't use non-necromantic magic, but he might not have gotten the hang of it yet.” I nodded confidently. “Yes, he could definitely do that, though since he didn't do it here I would be more worried about magic circles. He actually does use those in his rituals so he must be somewhat conversant in them.”
“What can he do with circles?” Conrad asked. Ugh, that was a tricky question. There is an entire school of circle magic. Some are simple protection circles, others summon and control elemental forces. They take a lot longer than the more conventional ‘wave your hand’ and toss a lightning bolt but they are probably more powerful. Not terribly transportable though.
“A lot,” I admitted slowly. “It’s pretty rare but you can do tornados, instant death, fireballs, lightning. You name it.”
“Do you have any advice?” Conrad asked solemnly.
“Well, don't step in any big circles on the floor.” I started ticking points off on my hand. “Be careful of rugs and carpets that may cover these same circles from sight. I suggest you have a magic-sensitive with the group. I hear some werewolves can smell magic?” I asked tentatively.
“Some can,” the armored man said shortly.
“Okay, make sure you bring one and don't go on the carpet.” At this, I heard a muffled chuckle from one of the nameless officers in the room. I frowned; I really preferred when I said something funny on purpose. I made a mental note to ask Jeremy, he was better at catching nuisances. It’s a culture thing. “If he is a circle master he will hold up in a big room with circles in it. Stay out of line of sight and shoot him from cover.”
“I am not sure how practical that may be,” Conrad frowned.
“Well, he's going to have a lot of advantages. Your only other option is to destroy his circles. That’s easy if they are chalk but if he has built that room from scratch he could have had everything etched in the floor. Also, once a circle is activated they are pretty durable.”
“What about gas?” Cromwell volunteered.
“Good idea, but zombies are immune and there exist circles that will shield him. Damn, I hope this doesn't turn into a siege.” Still what were the chances that a necromancer ritualist had a fortress full of other ritual magic? I mean, necromancy is a niche that most wackos are happy to stay in.
“Anything else you can think of?” Conrad asked. I could tell he wasn't sure if he wanted to hear more.
“Anything more would be sheer guesswork,” I admitted. “All we know for sure is he raises zombies.”
“If you find any books, I suggest you have me come by. Some special books are trapped.” Not only was this true, but I may be able to have the police do all the retrieval work while I get to do the research.
“We will send Cromwell to get you if we find anything.” Conrad nodded in dismissal.
I nodded back and headed out with one of the nameless officers as my escort. Looking around and called over my shoulder. “I would hurry up on gathering these parts. I think I saw an arm twitch.” I think I heard some scrambling behind me.
All roads, past and future.