Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog

by D Roland Hess

  I turned around. Stoneface was standing there with his eyes open but unfocused. Dan was tucked up against him, his arm around Stoneface’s shoulders. Dan’s finger lay against the exposed skin of the short man’s neck.

  “Oh come on,” I said.

  “He’s going with us. Or really we’re going with him. He has a house in Shadyside, and the jacket’s hidden there. We’ll drive him home, I’ll keep him in sleepy town, and when we get there, I’ll really dig into him. We’re getting that jacket.”

  I said nothing.

  “He’s got more going on upstairs than the other ones. It’ll take a lot longer to wipe him. It’s safer if we do it somewhere other than here.”

  The spot on my head where the brick had hit me was starting to throb. My brain refused to provide any more arguments.

  “Ok,” I said. “I guess I’m driving?”

  “Duh,” said Dan. We slowly walked the two blocks back to the car, Dan half-limping but always maintaining his contact with Stoneface. Whatever he was doing let him drive the little guy like a remote control vehicle. At the car, I unlocked the doors and opened the back for them. Dan compelled Stoneface to get in. Dan followed, careful to keep his finger on his neck.

  I started the car. He gave me the address on Amberson, which was another 15 minute drive.

  I wanted to try to sort out and process everything that had happened in the last hour. I knew that I was missing a bunch of stuff, but my head was fuzzy enough from the whammy they had put on me, plus the brick, plus the everything else. It was all I could do just to drive, and trust that Dan wasn’t going to pass out or something, leaving me with a pissed off Praecant waking up in my back seat.

  I must have gone into autopilot because it seemed that we were suddenly parked far back in the driveway of a neat Tudor cottage-style house off Amberson Avenue. I had a vague recollection that I had been driving but couldn’t make the memory solid. I needed sleep and food and to not have bricks and spells hurled at my head.

  We walked up to the house, driving Stoneface like an RC car, and Dan fished a set of keys out of the man’s pocket.

  “From what I can get out of him, there’s nobody home,” said Dan.

  “I’m filled with confidence,” I said. “You two can go in first.”

  Some part of my brain was complaining that we were being reckless, but the part that was driving my feet and my mouth couldn’t hear it. Security systems? Traps, maybe? Dragons? How did Praecants protect their homes? I noticed that Dan was turning the doorknob with his sleeve over his hand, so at least one of us was still on the ball.

  We went inside.

  There was a small foyer and a living room off to the right. Straight ahead a wide set of stairs led upward. It was pretty dark, and neither of us had any taste for turning on the lights. Even though Dan had picked Stoneface’s brain to find that he lived alone, we were still quiet. I expected someone to come walking down the stairs at any moment.

  I drew Fox and held him down by my hip.

  “Okay,” said Dan. “I’m going to get him nice and comfy, then dig out where the jacket is. He’s not going to give it up voluntarily.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, it’s valuable. I can trick his brain into giving up stuff like who else lives at his house pretty easily. I start poking around for info about the jacket and his mental alarms will start going off. I just have to be subtle and sneaky. Don’t worry.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “You’re all about the subtle.”

  Which wasn’t fair, because when it came to his Sentist magic, he really was. It was just his everything else that failed to be subtle.

  “So, what should I be doing?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Look around. Don’t touch anything. Yell if something jumps out at you.”

  I slowly wandered around the downstairs of the place. It was nice. Although it was dark, I could see lots of sculpture, and it looked like all original stuff. Not resin reproductions of famous works. When I got home, I’d have to look up the tax records on this place. I was guessing it was in the $1.5-million range.

  As I entered the kitchen, I saw movement on the floor. Nothing big, but something was there. If Fox were properly finished I could just switch programs/payloads and have him emit low levels of pure magical energy from the barrel that would act like a kind of sonar that my glasses would let me see.

  But he wasn’t finished.

  Instead, I moved slowly forward, straining my eyes to see in the small bit of natural light that made its way into the kitchen. I crouched down and saw that a small plush bed was nestled in the corner, at the baseboard. It was right beside a heating vent that wafted warm air over it. In the bed was a puppy. He was really young, but from his size, I figured he was going to end up somewhere in the Mastiff region as a full grown dog.

  And he was out cold, making little snoring dog sounds.

  There was a blanket spilling out of the bed. I had an urge to cover him but didn’t want to risk waking him up.

  I moved on.

  After a couple more minutes of wandering around, I noticed a red, non-magical light in one of his bookcases. It turned out to be the power indicator on a little bullet camera. So Stoneface had cameras here. He probably had more than one. I looked out the front window and at the exterior door in the foyer. There weren’t any security company stickers, and I didn’t remember seeing a sign in the small front yard, not that that was worth much in my present mental state.

  None of this was horrible though. In fact, the lack of security system was good. It meant that the video was probably stored locally and not actually monitored by an off-site service. I’d built systems like this for my day job.

  For that matter, I’d also compromised systems like this for my day job.

  We wouldn’t have to worry about the cameras if I could find the control unit and wreck the storage. Most likely, it would be in the basement.

  I walked into the living room. Dan had Stoneface laying on the couch. He had his fingers on the man’s temples and was silently talking to himself.

  Very quietly, I said,“Found some cameras. I’ll take care of it.”

  Dan slowly nodded without opening his eyes.

  I tried a few doors (with my hand inside my sleeve, thanks Dan!), which turned out to be shallow closets, before I found the one to the basement stairs. It was pretty much pitch black on the way down, and I had to turn on a light. I found the switch and eased the door closed behind me before I threw it.

  Nothing surprising or spectacular happened, other than momentarily blinding myself. I went down the steps and was glad I had turned on the light. There was junk strewn about, and I almost certainly would have tripped on it.

  The basement was unfinished. Even more sculpture, some really old looking stuff, was stacked in the corners and on shelves. Against the far wall was a small server rack, a keyboard and monitor. Jackpot.

  I didn’t have any of my specialty gear with me of the computer variety, so I’d have to use the brute force method. If I were properly equipped, I’d open the server case, pull the hard drive, ruin it magnetically, then pop it back in. To most people, it would just seem like a hard drive failure. So, Stoneface would wake up at home, bruises all over his back, and not able to remember a thing. His home surveillance system would have just failed at a bad time. Maybe he would be suspicious.

  Well, of course he would be suspicious. Who wouldn’t be?

  But what could he do? No memory. No recording. There would be nothing to link it to Dan and me.

  So the only thing we were giving up by my brute forcing things instead of finessing them would be converting things from a strong suspicion that someone had done something to confirming it. I’d have to live with that.

  He had a small tool set by the computer, and I used it to open the server case. I didn’t have a magnet though, so I’d have to just break the hard drive. Once again, I wished that Fox was finished and fully working. I could dial up a sm
all electromagnetic pulse and fry the thing.

  I resolved that after tonight, getting Fox done was my new top priority. After sleep and food.

  So let’s get it finished.

  I found a hammer and a strong nail on a tool bench on the other side of the basement. Careful to touch everything through my sleeves, I placed the nail on top of the hard drive casing and hammered it through. I made four holes. From past experience, I knew that the platters inside were now little more than pretty shards.

  I put the case back together. The computer was dead, and the hard drive unrecoverable. There was a chance, of course, that all of the video was being backed up to a remote service. If that was the case, there was nothing we could do about it. And well, shit, now that I thought about it maybe there was something I could have done about it a minute ago. But not now. I should have done some poking around on the system before I destroyed it.

  Stupid.

  Way tired, shell-shocked, and stupid.

  I’d have to let Dan know. It was a fifty-fifty shot in my experience. Many of these systems just stored the video locally due to the massive amount of data involved and recycled their storage space every few hours. Some backed up to the cloud, shooting off, say, one frame of video for every thirty seconds.

  Regardless, I didn’t have to make things more obvious than they needed to be. I replaced the tools exactly where I’d found them and made sure that the server rack and surroundings were returned to their original state.

  I went back up the stairs.

  Pup was waiting at the top of them, looking eager and happy.

  “Hey,” I said and reached out my hand. He sniffed it, then nibbled my finger with his razor sharp puppy teeth.

  I left the basement stairs, turning off the light as I went. As I walked into the living room, the little dog followed me. His paws went pad pad pad on the hardwood floors. Dan wasn’t there, but Stoneface was laying on his side on the couch, eyes closed and peaceful. Dan had covered him with a blanket. He looked cozy. Still ugly as can be. But cozy.

  “Got it,” said Dan from behind me. I jumped. He grinned. “Check it out.”

  He wore a waist-cropped jacket of deep green leather. It fit him like it had been tailored. I reached out to touch it.

  It felt… amazing…

  “That’s right,” said Dan.

  It made him look fantastic, like a model out of GQ. I started to think that Dan and I should hang out more often.

  Something was bugging me though.

  It was a kind of deja vu.

  This feeling like I was being…

  Dan took off the jacket.

  Controlled.

  “Pretty awesome, huh?” he said.

  It was the jacket.

  “Makes the wearer kind of irresistible.”

  Fifteen things ran through my head at once.

  “So, was I going to start making out with you or something?” I said.

  “Not unless you kind of already wanted to to begin with.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But as long as I wasn’t suggesting you do something that was wildly out of line, you’d have found some way to rationalize doing it because you’d think I was just that awesome.”

  It made sense that Dan had sought out something like this in the past and wanted to recover it when he’d had a chance. It’s the perfect magical present for your favorite borderline narcissist.

  “But I could tell what was going on, sort of,” I said.

  “Right,” said Dan. “That’s because of your hat.” He tapped the brim of my ball cap, the one I’d had custom made with certain magically resistant threads of my own manufacture. Clearly, it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, because I’d still felt the effect.

  “If you hadn’t been wearing it, you wouldn’t have had a clue.”

  He started toward the door.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Vasily will wake up tomorrow with a bruised back, missing his jacket, and no memory of what happened.”

  I followed.

  The pup tried to follow too. I had to push him gently back inside the door as we left. Go lay down with your master, little guy.

  “You should get an X-ray. I’ll bet I broke one of your ribs,” I said.

  “Yeah, probably not. I’m going to be sore as hell tomorrow though.”

  “It already is tomorrow.”

  “Nah,” said Dan. “We’ve got at least an hour before sunrise.”

  I handed him the keys. Broken ribs or not, my head was killing me, and we’d be better off with him driving. I was having trouble maintaining a consistent train of thought.

  “Hey,” he said. “Let’s call the girls and have them meet us up on Mt. Washington. Sunrise is pretty great up there.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said. “I need sleep and food.”

  “I’ll get you food. Up there. Come on.”

  “Take me home,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  We got in the car and left. Dan wanted to wear the jacket, but I wouldn’t let him.

  I was asleep in two blocks.

  Chapter 3

  I woke up and wasn’t home.

  For an instant, a dream I’d been having but couldn’t remember followed me out, and I had the sense that I was being stalked. Then it was gone.

  We were on a side street on Mt. Washington. A woman climbed out of a black exotic car—a Lotus?—parked in front of us. Brigit.

  Dan jabbed me in the shoulder.

  “I messaged Gwen too, but she didn’t answer,” he said.

  Probably because Gwen was a normal human being and not awake and bored at 5 a.m. Brigit was wearing what looked like a burgundy toga-style dress and a black trench coat. Her already-short blonde hair was gelled flat against her head. I’m not really sure why you’d look like that at this time of night, but I’d never been sure of a lot of things with Brigit.

  “I wanted to go home. Sleep. Food,” I said.

  “Sorry bud,” he said. “This night is too good to let it end.”

  I knew how Dan was sometimes and figured that if he got annoying enough, I could just get in the car and drive off. He could manage to make his way home, I had no doubt.

  My head throbbed, and the couple of minutes during which I’d basically passed out in the car hadn’t done anything to change it. My ears were kind of ringing now too, and that was new, so, great. I wondered if it was a biological consequence of the mental whammy that Baby Face had put on me.

  “How are the ribs?” I said.

  “Delicious.”

  “Haha.”

  “They hurt. Brig’s here. She’ll fix me up.”

  Dan put down his window as Brigit walked up to the car. She leaned over.

  “Hi, big guy,” she said to Dan. “Link.” She nodded to me but didn’t take her eyes off Dan.

  “You’re hurt,” Brigit said. “You’re both hurt. Come on, get out.”

  Dan opened his door and gingerly climbed out of the car. I did so too, slowly. We were just around the corner from Point of View Park, which is basically a section of sidewalk and a bench on Mt. Washington with a great view of the Point far below and across the river. I’d never been up here before for anything but dinner, but it did look like a great place to watch the sunrise.

  We walked, Dan with his arm over Brigit’s shoulders. She was almost a foot shorter than him, but didn’t seem to have any trouble bearing a good deal of his weight. We got to the bench and sat.

  “So what happened?” she said.

  Dan told her about the last several hours. While he talked, she worked her way around him making motions and murmuring. I’d taken my glasses off because they were killing my temples and ears. I couldn’t see the magic I knew would be flowing out one of her hands, through Dan, then back into the other hand. Her primary skill as a Praecant was in Vulnistry -- healing. I’d seen her fix some messy stuff.

  But it wasn’t just like casting some kind of healing spell for her and bing you wer
e better. It was more like being a surgeon, and the magic was her toolset. I thought that was pretty awesome.

  First, she had to probe around to figure out exactly what was wrong, and then she would wield the power on the fly and actually fix what was broken, closing a wound, coaxing blood vessels to regrow, nerves to sprout and join, or in this case, bones to knit. Dan had told me that she’d fixed a tooth for him once without using any anesthetizing magic, because he’s an idiot, and it had felt like he was being tortured. I guess if they didn’t know what they were doing, a Vulnist could mess you up pretty badly.

  Come to think of it, I wouldn’t want a trained Vulnist for an enemy, for the very same reason.

  After several minutes, she stopped. There was sweat on her face, even though the air was cool.

  “All better,” she said, and planted a kiss on Dan’s forehead.

  “Feels great,” he said.

  “Your turn?” She turned to me.

  “I --” I said, but couldn’t think of anything else.

  It’s not that I didn’t trust her. I knew that she was good at it. But I suspected I had either a mild concussion or some kind of magically-induced mental aftershock. I really didn’t want her touching my brain with her eldritch scalpel. Could a Praecant get a certification in neurosurgery?

  “It’s my head,” I said. “I’d rather not…"

  “Oh,” she said. “How about this then: I take a peek to tell you if it’s anything serious. If it is, go to the ER. If not, no worries. I won’t change anything.”

  It sounded reasonable. And if I had a concussion, I should see a doctor sooner rather than later. I nodded.

  We heard the scuffing of shoes on concrete, and a jogger crested the hill. He was two blocks away, coming downhill in our direction. We waited until he’d passed, trying to look like people who weren’t using magic.

  “Lose the hat,” Brigit said, positioning herself in front of me. I reached up to take it off and found that my shoulders were killing me too. If I was going to keep acting like this, which I wasn’t planning on doing, I’d have to start hitting the gym. My body was not built for stress and adventure.

  She gently placed two fingers from each hand on my temples and closed her eyes. She applied a slight pressure, and started to speak the sounds that disappeared before they could lodge themselves in my memory. A tingle, warm and calming, entered my scalp where her fingers touched me. It spread, becoming a thrill that ran down my back.