by Harry Nix
Nia shrugged. “Sorta both. I kinda skipped rune class but I definitely know that word there. It’s means something like time or lifetime or maybe even eternity. I think this was made by the Tempus witches, which means this tapestry might not be telling an old story.”
Alex frowned in confusion.
“But everything here is old. Broken vases, parchment fragments. That looks like a cave painting over there chipped out of the cave wall and stolen. Why wouldn’t that be an old story?”
“Tempus means time but that’s not really what those witches were. They were... disconnected from time? Outside of it maybe? For all we know that werewolf is a thousand years ago, a thousand years from now or next week. They made all kinds of weird stuff before they vanished. I swear I saw a photo once of an ancient parchment that had an illustration of a guy eating a hamburger, right in front of the golden arches.”
“The witches saw the future and picked a guy gulping down a quarter pounder in front of McDonald’s?”
“Looked like it to me. I mean, check out that dead mage right near the bottom there. That sure looks like he’s wearing sneakers to me and tell me that thing on the ground isn’t a cellphone, like one of those old flip-style ones.”
Alex looked at the mage and saw his feet were encased in a sleek pair of white and black shoes. And yeah, in the right light it did look like an old cellphone sitting on the ground.
“Is that what the glow’s telling us to find?” Alex asked.
“No, it's still pulling,” Nia said. They kept moving, heading towards the back of the room. Soon they came upon the final glass case, and within it was another torn piece of tapestry. Unlike the rest of the room, which was lit in subtle indirect lighting, this piece was in near darkness, the lights above it out. As Nia moved closer, the green glow from the necklace lit up the area and then began to lighten, slowly turning yellow, the emerald itself changing color.
Alex stopped when he saw the tapestry. It was much like the previous one with the strange rune stitched around the edges. This one had another werewolf on it, standing atop a pile of corpses, and howling up at the great light in the sky. This werewolf also had silver eyes.
“Do any of the stories about Ito say he had silver eyes?” Alex finally managed to say.
“No, silver is never in any werewolf stories except as something bad,” Nia said. The light from the necklace was now a warm yellow glow and lit up the remainder of the tapestry. On it was a jeweled semi-circle, fragments of diamond, ruby and emerald sewn into the fabric itself.
“A doorway,” Nia whispered.
There was a single claw emerging from it. Even though it was rendered in stitching, there was something deeply wrong with it. It was unnatural; not of this world.
Nia shivered and then the gem around her neck brightened to intense white light, forcing them both to close their eyes. It came and went in a burst, like an explosion, and when Alex opened his eyes again all he could see were white glimmers flickering. Then three things happened quite quickly.
The black stitching, the witch runes, ripped free from the tapestry.
It burst into flames.
The fire alarm began shrieking.
For a moment the runes hung in the air. Alex, his vision still half-blinded by the white light saw them as dark letters cut out, a deep negative. Then they flew toward him, passing through the glass and hitting him in the face.
He went down on one knee as a sharp pain burst in his skull. Something was being forced into his mind and he could not resist it.
The agony came and went, leaving Alex gasping on the ground. Nia managed to get him to his feet and he saw the flames behind the glass were unnaturally hot, streaked with blue, as they climbed the wall like a living thing set free from a cage.
“We need to get out of here,” Nia said, hauling Alex by the arm. They ran through the museum, back the way they came, and out the door. Every time the alarm blared, Nia cringed, her hearing far more sensitive in hybrid form.
As soon as they made it back to the room with the desk and bookshelves, Nia shifted back to human, her dress and shoes reappearing. It was then that Alex noticed that the emerald on the necklace around her neck was now black and dead.
They kept moving, heading out to the corridor and running into a man and a woman, both disheveled, coming out of the other room, him still doing his pants up and trying to tuck in his shirt. Following the couple, they ran upstairs, hearing shouting from above. Before they could get into the main room, though, there was a sound of an explosion that shook the entire mansion, ringing it like a bell. Cracks shot across the roof.
“What the hell was that?” the man asked, looking to Alex as though he was in charge.
“I think the party is over,” Alex said and barreled his way through the door into the main hall. It was pandemonium out there with people rushing for the exits, shoving past each other, many screaming and shouting. Alex heard a woman bellow that there were werewolves attacking, and another man said it was mages. There was another dull thud from outside the mansion that shook the chandeliers high above that were swinging and threatening to fall. Alex looked around but he couldn't see April or Juno.
“Is this Ruby's distraction?” he asked Nia, thinking that if it was, the old witch was totally insane.
“She's a bit crazy, but not this crazy. I think we need to go out a window,” Nia said, pointing at the huge crowd that was blocking the door. Together they ran through the hall away from the main doors.
At the rear of the hall, the no-neck guards were shouting into their earpieces, milling in chaos. Skipping past them, Nia and Alex ran through one of the rear doors and found themselves in a corridor that ended with a high window. Nia ran forward without pausing, picked up a chair that was sitting in the corridor, and flung it at the window, smashing a hole. The pair of them shifted to hybrid form in unison, leaping up onto the ledge and outside. There was a long drop out there, the grass sloping away, but it was no more than a story high and both of them landed easily.
Alex wasn't sure if this was the distraction Ruby had planned, but he knew the old witch would use it to her advantage if she could and so, together, they ran, heading to the agreed meeting spot at the rear back corner of the mansion.
“Over here!” Ruby shouted out from the darkness. She seemed to appear from nowhere, shifting out of the dark beside the mansion, clearly using a spell to keep herself concealed. She still had the box of crystals, which was now half empty.
“Hey Juno!” Ruby called. Alex turned and saw April and Juno coming running from the other direction, their shoes gone and hiking their dresses up. Most worryingly, Juno had a splatter of blood across her face although Alex could see it wasn’t hers.
“There is a werewolf pack attacking out the front and some mages too,” Juno said, skidding to a stop.
“Let’s just do what we came for. This way,” Ruby said in a commanding tone.
“Where did you go?” Alex asked the two of them as they followed Ruby.
“Where did you go? We just went to explore for a bit. When we came back the two of you were gone,” Juno retorted.
April spotted the necklace Nia was wearing.
“What happened there? Did it activate?” she said
“Yeah, and ended up starting a fire downstairs. Amongst other things,” Alex said.
“We’re here. You three stand guard. Alex, lift me up,” Ruby said. She carefully placed the box of crystals on the ground . Nia, April, and Juno each took the crystals within, fanning out in case someone approached.
“What other things happened?” April asked.
Alex put his hands together, and Ruby stepped into them, Alex easily lifting the little old lady up off the ground. He saw a brief flicker of a spell screen above her head and then she touched the window. Alex saw it flare red for a moment. It appeared there had been some other barrier in front of it, invisible, which quickly cracked and broke into pieces.
“There was a tapestry down there with this black writin
g on it that came off and hit me in the head,” Alex said.
“Now is not the time,” Ruby said quickly casting another spell. Alex realized, in all the pandemonium, he hadn’t done the most basic and easy thing, so he quickly brought the spell screen up and cast Know Thyself. At first glance, everything looked normal, stats and spells, but as he flicked over to a new page, he saw it was full of the scratchy runes. He also saw it had wiped out some of the code he had taken from the Great Barrier spell, overwriting it. It looked like he'd lost some of the pages of numbers. He still had the image of the werewolves and the light.
The black scratchy runes were in a separate place of their own now, and although there was an execute button at the bottom, it was grayed out.
“I think it gave me part of a spell,” Alex said. With Ruby standing in his cupped palms, he couldn’t bring his hands up to manipulate it, and he was too hyped up from what was happening to do it mentally.
When he had first seen spell code it had been gibberish: symbols and numbers, sometimes images that had slowly changed to readable code. The runes were completely unreadable to him. As a glanced over them, he felt like they were sharp somehow, as though he was looking at a collection of knives and if he reached in the wrong way it would cut him badly.
“Come on, let's go,” Ruby said. She had the window open now and scrabbled through it.
“And go!” Juno said, throwing a sleep crystal. Alex saw one of the no-neck guards come around the back of the mansion. Juno hit him right in the face with a sleep crystal, and he dropped unceremoniously to the ground. It was then that Alex noticed there were a few other sleep crystals scattered around the place, probably from Ruby earlier on, setting them up like a minefield.
Alex didn't really want to go inside again, not with the fire alarm blaring and hurting his ears, but he couldn’t leave Ruby in there alone. He hauled himself up the windowsill and inside, landing softly on thick carpet. The room he entered looked the same as the one he and Nia had been in: bookcases, ornate furniture, that feeling of immense wealth, and knowing that the sofa alone cost more money than he’d ever made in his entire life put together.
“Over here,” Ruby said, waving him on. Alex wasn't quite sure why he did it. Perhaps it was the image of Prince, putting his arm on Roma, and her grimacing and bearing it. As he walked over, he scratched a single claw across the top of the sofa, tearing through the fine leather in a juvenile act.
“Stop it. We don't need them blaming werewolves more,” Ruby said crossly. She held out her hand to Alex and it was only after a moment he realized what she wanted; to share some of his magic. He put his large clawed hand in hers, then Ruby turned towards a bookcase—or so it appeared—and began casting a spell. It pulled on Alex's magic so sharply it was like having a tooth ripped out of his head. His natural mana almost went to zero immediately, so he started drawing on the others. First the sex magic, which drained, and then the pain.
Ruby grunted as the pain mana flowed from him to her. He could see her spell screen above her head. Whatever she was doing seemed like twenty spells at once, compiling, connecting, compressing over on top of themselves. After a moment, the bookcase rippled as though the image was water and a stone had been thrown into it. Then it vanished entirely, revealing a large, solid, vault door. Ruby’s spell completed, and her palm burst into flame then narrowed, going from golden to red to blue and on the edge of ultraviolet. She pressed her palm against the vault door and then traced a circle. Alex had to look away from the glare, noticing that Ruby had pulled on bedazzled goggles at some point. After a moment it was done and Ruby pulled Alex forward.
“Kick it for all your worth,” she said. Alex let go of her hand and kicked the circle as hard as he could. Pain shot up his leg, but the door gave way with an enormous clang as it fell inwards into the vault. The hole Ruby had cut was still molten, but the old witch just skipped through it, landing the other side. Automatic lights inside the vault flickered on. Alex had to briefly shift back to human form to get through the door, otherwise it would have burned him. Even as it was, he charred part of his suit getting through.
“This is what we came for,” Ruby said.
In the vault there was a stack of gold bars, something Alex had never seen outside of a movie, sat in the middle of the room. Nearby were plinths, similar to the ones he'd seen in the private museum, and sitting on them were necklaces and other gems.
“Take two bars of gold. I’m gonna get the gems. Nothing else,” Ruby said. He didn't argue. The screaming of the fire alarm was still going and although he could feel magic all around him, he could tell something big was happening outside. There was the occasional surge in it, signs of a distant battle being fought.
Alex had to shift to hybrid form to move the gold properly. The bars were enormously heavy. He took one in each clawed hand then turned back towards the door. Ruby had grabbed some of the jewels and gems off the plinths, stuffing them into the pockets in her bag, before waving him back to the exit. She was gone in a flash through the door, which was still hot. For a moment Alex looked at the pile of gold. He didn't know how much gold was worth of course, but there was no doubt that there were millions of dollars of it here. It seemed foolish to leave more of it behind. Perhaps they could come back.
“I said two bars, let's go right now,” Ruby called from outside. Alex reluctantly followed her, his arms straining with the weight of the gold. He burned himself getting through the door. Thankfully, his natural mana was recovering and began to heal him immediately. Ruby was at the window and out in a flash and Alex followed her. He looked outside to make sure no one was in the drop zone.
“Watch out below,” he said, then pushed the two of gold bars out. They landed with a solid thud, one of them embedding into the grass. As Alex climbed out, he spotted a few more of the no-neck guards who were sleeping on the grass. They must've come around the rear of the mansion doing sweeps and were hit with sleep crystals.
“Shift back to human, take your jacket off, wrap the gold in it, and then don't touch it and shift back to hybrid. It’s too heavy for the shifter charm to take, so you’ll have to carry it,” Ruby said to Alex. He did as she instructed, seeing that the suit was definitely ruined from being charred. Soon he was back in hybrid form, the gold bundled up in his suit jacket.
“This way,” Ruby said. She led them on a path through the impromptu minefield she’d created, back around the side of the mansion, heading to the car park. It was only when they got around the corner that the full extent of what was happening became apparent. There were werewolves, at least twenty, attacking like mad things. Witches and mages alike stood side-by-side, casting great and terrible spells, fighting them off. As they ran towards the battle, an enormous fireball hit a werewolf, burning his arms and legs off in an instant. The werewolf didn't die, however. He was on the ground, a head on a limbless body, thrashing around, blinded and blackened, snapping his jaws.
Ruby ran straight towards this chaos, Alex struggling to keep up while carrying the gold. People were screaming everywhere, still flooding out the mansion. A dark shape suddenly shot across the battlefield, tearing a werewolf's head off. For a moment, Alex saw it was Prince, his suit bloody and his face feral with long fangs protruding from his mouth. His fingers had grown claws much like the werewolves. He moved like smoke, vanishing from the headless werewolf, and suddenly appearing back up on the roof of the mansion again before leaping down once more.
It was no wonder the magic was stirred up as there were spells detonating everywhere. Vines were growing out of the ground, ice shards and fireballs flying. Alex spotted three golems made out of dirt tearing a werewolf to pieces. One of the werewolves spotted them, and bounded towards them. It was a female werewolf in hybrid form, her claws and jaws dripping with blood. Her eyes were red and bloodshot. Alex saw she was frothing at the mouth.
Juno threw a ball of ice at the werewolf but swore immediately. Her magic must've dropped because although the ball hit the werewolf, it ba
rely slowed her, merely frosting across her shoulder. April's vines shot up from the ground but weren’t fast enough to grab her. Alex saw a flicker of Ruby’s spell screen and then she flung her hand upwards. The werewolf who was bolting towards them, insane and vicious, was suddenly flung up and over them. She nearly went as high as the mansion before crashing to the ground far behind them.
“Keep moving,” Ruby called. Alex risked looking behind him and saw the werewolf had got to her feet and was shaking her head. She was injured but not out.
They ran into the battleground proper. There were bits of dismembered werewolf and body parts everywhere. One of the werewolves had taken down a mage and was slashing away at his throat, although the mage was long dead. Something great and terrible flew over their heads, a spell that Alex only felt. He turned and saw Isabella standing calmly on the mansion steps, moving her arms around as though she was a conductor. She’d cast the spell. Alex turned to see it land where five werewolves had been facing off against a group of witches. There was a crack, like a stick breaking, and then they simply fell apart as though they were toys, their arms, legs, and head disconnecting from their bodies in an enormous spray of blood. The witches ended up drenched but then cheered as their adversaries died.
In the chaos, Alex saw a familiar face—the fae assassin. For a moment the roar of battle vanished and all he was acutely aware of was how exposed he was. He had his spell screen up but his hands full, carrying the gold.
She had gold dust pooling in one hand and a wickedly sharp dagger with a green blade in the other.
Then there was a snap and something impossibly fast streaked by Alex and then away.
The fae’s head was gone, cut from her body, which toppled to the ground.
The noise came roaring back and over the screaming and the distant fire alarm, Ruby whistled. Jeremiah got the signal, Boris bouncing over the grass towards them. He pulled the wheel, sliding sideways and coming to a stop, the doors flinging open. They all dived in, Alex barely inside before the door slammed shut and Jeremiah punched it. He ran down a crazed werewolf without a second thought, the crunch of it leaving a bloody spot on the windshield and fracturing a line across at. There were other people getting into cars, trying to escape, and somehow Jeremiah dodged around them, murmuring as he went.
