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I couldn’t explain what happened. By the time I could do anything more than reel in the aftermath of Fortune’s spell, the sun had gone from a muted spot to a fading memory. He’d done something to me with the snatching of that handkerchief. It had been a trip where I felt my soul torn free and shoved back inside. A fleeting moment of freedom in a place which knew none.
The tightness in my lungs had eased but wasn’t gone. The cancer hadn’t gone anywhere, either. Pain still radiated from my spine and through my shoulders. Mingled with the beating from my second throwdown with a demon in as many days, I couldn’t say which was worse.
But I could say something had changed.
The simple armor spell had saved my life. Useless against bullets, it provided just enough hide to spare mine. Deep claw marks faded to light scratches with the spell. Blows from hooves which might have shattered my legs left only welts and bruises.
Fortune’s spell had set off those demons. The men they’d hijacked had signed their death certificates when they accepted employment with Mordecai. A mercy killing, for sure. But nobody deserved to die face down in the mud like this.
Nobody.
Two bodies half-clothed lay nearby in the mud with a good helping of my DNA mingled with theirs. I was developing quite the MO as a serial killer. With my medicine bag, I maybe could’ve warded them away from Fortune’s casting. Or bought enough time for us to disappear. But rituals involving Atofo’s knife rarely kept enemies at bay; they prepared you to do battle.
Scrabbling through the mud, I found my Emperor Scorpion half-submerged. I grabbed it and my jacket. I didn’t bother searching for the shell casings. What was done was done. I needed to find this sword and get back to Atofo, soon.
I got out the deer pellets I’d picked up on the trail. Arms coated in mud and blood, the idea of what I needed to do was less cruddy than it had been. I chose an open wound, squeezed out some blood, and mixed it with the shit in my palm. Next, I smeared it across my scalp.
And you wonder how magic can hide in plain sight? Who in their right mind gonna do this?
Dried crap sticky with blood crumbled in my hair. I tried to not grind it in, just spread enough to start the enchantment. I called out to the Below, home of the hidden, the obscured. I asked for the favor of the deer’s spirit.
Nothing happened.
I didn’t cast these spells much. Transformations were one of the trickiest to do properly. And they weren’t a true transformation of body but of spirit. More like a veil. To others in This World, I’d look every bit like a deer and have the same nimble fleetness flowing through my veins, but no actual physical change took place. I’d hitch a ride on a deer spirit. A friendlier sort of possession.
I tried once more and committed to the grinding of crap into my scalp. No change.
Dusk had started and I had about three miles to go to reach the crossroads. Even in peak shape, I didn’t know if I could make it. A crippled deer could. I stumbled into a futile jog. I’d gone about ten yards when I spotted a woman standing at the edge of the woods.
Araceli? I remembered the items she’d put in my jacket pocket and wondered if I hadn’t accidentally set them off in the fight. I still hadn’t looked at what they might be, but I did remember her saying something about clapping. That hadn’t happened. No, this wasn’t Araceli.
Her hair was like spider silk dipped in charcoal. She wore a deerskin top, the bronze of her midriff exposed. Her moss skirt blended seamlessly into the tall weeds. She raised a slender hand and beckoned.
Demons on the loose. Unknown magics buzzing in the air. I knew better than to follow the request of a random spirit. I had no time to chat or negotiate. I needed to get to the damn crossroads. I took off at a dead run. She followed.
At the Academy, I hadn’t been a slouch during PT. I occasionally led the pack, but most often fell in near the front, able to keep ahead of the required lap times without collapsing at the end. Three miles? I could do it in twenty minutes when not coughing up a lung. I figured I had maybe ten to get back and start the ritual.
The Indian Princess here? She made it clear she could do it faster.
My feet pounded the sand and gravel of the trail. My shadow hopped gamely over fallen trees and through dense thickets, always a step ahead. Sometimes, she’d disappear, and I’d catch sight of her far ahead, or she’d burst from the bushes and spring across the trail in one gravity defying pounce. By the time I got to the manor’s garden, my lungs felt bruised and clogged. I had to stop and suck wind, palms on my knees.
The woman crept to the edge of the tangle of forest, one ear tilted to the wind, her face a shrewd mask. I helplessly raised a hand.
“Go on with it. Drop your curse, demand your price,” I wheezed. “Whatever you’re going to do. I need to dip. Now.”
Her expression didn’t change. I thought she hadn’t understood or couldn’t speak. But her voice came as an insistent whisper, halting like she’d learned English yesterday to speak to me.
“You are not one of us. How is it you know our ways?”
I planted my hands on my hips, letting my lungs expand fully in a raspy gurgle. “Atofo. I’m his...ah, apprentice?”
“I see,” she replied. “He has concealed you. Until now. You are not the first, but your allegiance is...questionable.”
“Miss, I’m not picking sides, unless you’re a goat-footed demon.”
“Goat?” She glanced self-consciously toward her toes and back. “You cannot see my feet.”
I didn’t know if that was a question or a demand. “No.” I pointed past the house. “I gotta take a long ass bop over that way. Can you help or not?”
“I can help my people, yes. Are you or aren’t you?”
“What?”
“My people,” she insisted. “Yours were with you in the field.”
“Fortune? Look, if this is a skin color thing, I got nothing but respect. But Atofo never mentioned that as a problem.”
“And the Wendigo?”
“When to where?”
“Wendigo. The ones with the goat hooves.”
“The possessed guys,” I said, understanding. “White skin, brown skin, anybody who makes a deal with a demon like Mordecai Sunday isn’t my people.”
She took her sweet time to think through what I’d said. “Apprentice of Atofo, I grant you my spirit. Only because we have common enemies. But do not betray my people. Do not call upon any other magic but theirs.” She raised a hand absently and traced the line of her collarbone, her eyes appraising me head to toe in a sensual way which could’ve made me dinner or the date. “I am a jealous patron. You would not like to see that side of me.”
She waved a hand and I felt the mantle of her power wrap me up. It sent a shiver through my legs. The world became crystal clear even under the growing darkness. I became aware of the smallest flutter in the trees and shift in the shadows as the sun burrowed deeper.
The spirit turned to leave. That blip of movement startled me into an irresistible urge to run. I sprinted across the garden, bounding over the flowerbeds, cutting straight through the brick maze. The last glimpse I had of her was a doe darting into the woods.
***
THE SPELL WORE OFF in the road outside Fortune’s house. Araceli hadn’t seen me springing toward her. Lungs tight, they didn’t feel like I’d even tested their limits. I ran not because I had to but because that was how the world worked. Survival was another programmed instinct, not an overwhelming obsession. Had I died as that deer, I’m not sure I would’ve cared. Fought to live? Definitely. But there’d have been no injustice, no sense of loss of This World. What had to be, would be.
Araceli stood in the center of the intersection, flipping her dagger into the air, over and over. Her other hand she held tight across her midsection. She scowled at the spot where I’d last sunk her dagger.
“I’ll save you the knife polishing.” I stepped into the light and held up the fork I’d taken from the manor.
She looked up, surprise shifting into concern. My shirt had been torn to shreds. Again. My pants and my jacket were covered in rich, black mud. Dried blood covered my hands and spattered everywhere else. Then there was the crap ground into my hair.
“What the hell happened to you?” she gasped. “Where are your friends?”
I gave a mirthless chuckle. “Friends? Enemies? How the hell can I tell anymore?”
“I’m your friend,” she said.
I slung the fork into the ground where it stuck a not-so-menacing landing.
“Then tell me about the manor. Tell me about the wizard who lived there and left his mojo spread around like spunk in an hourly motel.” She stopped tossing her knife and looked away. “Tell me everything you know about Mordecai Sunday and what the hell is going on with this sword.”
Araceli set her jaw and cracked her neck. “The sword was meant for the original Magus of the New World. Without it, a defense against the forces who control Mordecai Sunday could never be properly mounted.” She pinned me with a hard gaze. “The New World was lost centuries ago.”
“Why didn’t the magic police just send a new Magus?”
“Russell Fenwick was murdered. Assassinated in the chaos which resulted from historical events surrounding the American Revolution. It’s how they operate. Using societal upheaval as their cover while striking for their own purposes.”
“They?”
“The Overseers. The ones who control the likes of Mordecai. They were the worst of the Inquisition, the slavers—”
“Hold up. I’ll say it again, slowly; you can’t pass off every human rights violation on demons.”
“That’s right. But demons are attracted to those evils. They feed on them, expand them, all for their one singular purpose.”
“And that is?”
“Armageddon.” Araceli stared somehow harder, daring me to disagree.
“Don’t even come at me with that,” I said. I dropped my gaze and began to sketch out a circle with my boot.
She grabbed my shoulder with those compact but vice-like hands. “It’s true.”
I waited until she let go then continued to draw, keeping broken eye contact. “If that’s so, a sword won’t stop the world from ending.”
“We must have faith,” she said. “But the sword gives us more than that, it gives us hope.” Her voice became impassioned. Whether I believed it or not, she was all in. “The sword’s creation had already begun when Fenwick was killed, so upon completion, it was sent disguised as a mundane officer’s sword. Smuggled here in plain sight. Somehow, those who murdered Fenwick caught wind and retrieved it.”
“So Shaw was sniped in that battle specifically to take his sword?” She nodded. “And then, to throw people off the scent, a fake sword was reburied with him?”
“Yes, so official records would obscure the true sword’s whereabouts. But we’ve known it was a fake for a long time.”
“You aren’t making sense. Fenwick would’ve died long before the sword was ready. And if you guys knew it was fake, why take so long to come looking?”
“Like their enemy’s, like Demon’s, the Magus’ plans unfold over eons.” She’d gone full on fanatic now, the Jehovah’s Witness who knocks and puts his foot in the door. “The steps it takes to bring about the actual end of the world require certain conditions which humans were not capable of even a century ago. Overwhelming the magic here in the New World was the first step.”
I finished off the circle with the heel of my boot and looked up. Not all of it had been overwhelmed. This Magus Fenwick, owner of the manor before the Hallewells, had found something special about the New World magic or he wouldn’t have had a garden devoted to the stuff.
“I don't need to remind you who Atofo blames. And it ain’t no demons.”
She managed not to roll her eyes. “He’s not wrong. But once the Old World sailed this way, the disease, the death, the slavery...” She left a respectful pause. “The demons followed. They took the initiative from every human frailty and strategically amplified it when they could to suit their ambitions.”
“Why not make a spell drop a meteor? Blap!” I said, flourishing my hands. “All done.”
“Because that isn’t the Armageddon they need. They need humanity to end it all. To be responsible. Complicit. That’s the biggest spell, the most complex ritual of all.”
I scrubbed the back of my neck suddenly wishing I could be the clueless deer or whatever. Pieces of this puzzle had started to tumble to the tabletop, and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to put them together. I didn’t want any of this to be my problem. A cure for cancer, or at least a spell I could manage on my own to buy time and still go home to see my boy, that’s what I wanted. That was impossible enough. Fighting demons? Stopping Armageddon?
But good police never clock out. I recounted my own experience with the gaps left behind in magical traditions from Baltimore to the tip of Florida. I recalled Atofo pointing at the smartphone saying ritual was somehow inside there. The sinister plans of the Promised Land Ministries and their growing network of prisons. MiRA, the company branding Orwellian level tech. The words of the Deer Woman about how we had a common enemy. And now I was being told there’s somebody else guiding all this with ambitions for the End of the World?
“These Overseers. Who are they?”
“One group in a cabal of evil intent on bringing about the End. They’re sometimes known as fallen angels. They sired the demons on Earth.”
“What’s in it for them?”
“Domination. A world which they rule without question and where humanity is reduced to cattle. Where their seed no longer hides in the shadows but roams free.”
I let that sink in. The worst of the spirit realms becoming commonplace here in This World. Demons like Mordecai Sunday keeping pens of humans for snack time. Trading enslaved mortal souls openly. Visiting agony on every man, woman, and child. A world I would leave for my son to try and survive.
A familiar sound wailed in the distance. Not just a single squad car, it was like a code 30 had gone out and the entire motel parking lot was responding this way.
Araceli’s ears perked up. She lowered her gaze. “We need to get out of here.”
I shook my head. Mordecai had all the leverage. He would at least until I found a body hidden in the swamps and a magic sword meant for some super cop to save the world.
Turning to face the gathering darkness, I stepped into the circle and called out, “Devil! Shadow hound! Whatever you are, I’ve been here three times and I’m done with you playing bent! You either help, or you come put me out of my misery. You don’t, I’ll come for you. So help me, I’ll hunt your ghostly ass through these woods long after the world ends.”