by Gary Jonas
My spirit. My ghost. Dare I say it? My shade?
The skull didn’t drop to the floor.
It only dropped so it was inside my spiritual hands.
To Himmler and Class, it must have looked like it was levitating. They tried to grab it. Their hands passed through it.
The lightning stopped. The wind stopped. The blue light dropped.
The twelve Nazis between the pillars crumbled to dust.
Everything went silent.
A blast of light flared from the skull. Himmler and Class fell to their knees. The barrier around the circle dropped and Kelly moved forward. She cried out and raced across the black sun to my fallen body.
“No,” she said. “No! Oh, Jonathan, no!”
She held two pencils.
Himmler turned to look at her. He said something in German.
Kelly said, “Fuck you, asshole,” and jammed the two pencils through his eyeballs. She yanked them both free.
I’ll spare you the squishy noise.
My ghost stared dispassionately at Himmler as he tipped over sideways and died.
Kelly glared at Class. She pulled back, ready to jam the pencils through his eyes, but held herself in check as he wasn’t a threat.
The skull glowed yellow, like the magical serum, and pulses of energy shot into my ghost hands. I felt a sharp pain and the bones of my hands solidified. My arms and torso and legs pulsed and grew solid.
Muscle knitted around blood vessels. Flesh weaved out of nothingness encasing my veins. The skull in my hands shot the last of its energy into my skin and bones then blinked out of existence. The magic flowed inward, stabbing my newly formed heart, and with a jolt, my heart beat for the first time since I died. I stood naked over my corpse, and drew breath into my new body. It looked exactly like my old body. Felt the same, too.
I glanced down. Magic rebuilt me, but sadly, it didn’t give me a bigger dick.
Oh well. You take what you can get.
Class scurried backward across the floor, gazing up at me.
I turned to look at Kelly, who gazed at me, her mouth open.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Haven’t you ever seen a naked man standing over his clothed corpse?”
“Jonathan?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the body on the floor, then up at me again.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me, too.”
Now that the magic dwindled, and the Nazi soldiers were mere piles of dust, the barrier keeping everyone out of the room dropped. Esther rushed into the room, and Maria Orsic followed her.
“Jonathan!” they both said at the same time.
I turned to look at them and it occurred to me that maybe I should get dressed.
I covered myself as best I could and padded across the floor to my carry-on bag.
Everyone stared at me.
“Come on, guys. You’re making me self-conscious.”
I crouched and rummaged through the bag for a pair of jeans. I rose, turned away so they could only see my ass, and stepped into the Levis. I pulled them up, fastened them, and turned back.
Everyone kept staring.
None of them said anything.
“Okay, I know you can see me.”
“We see you,” Maria said.
“We saw all of you,” Esther said.
“In my defense, it’s a little cold in the castle.”
Esther grinned. “You looked like the cat’s pajamas to me, only without the pajamas.”
“And you’re all still staring.”
“You can’t see what we see,” Kelly said.
I looked at my hands, turned them over. Everything looked normal to me. I ran a hand through my hair. It felt normal, too.
I ran my hands over my face. Normal.
“You guys are looking at me like I have tentacles sprouting from my head.”
“No,” Kelly said. “You’re glowing. Literally.”
“Must be my personality.”
“No,” Maria said. “There’s a glow around you.”
“Like Patrick Swayze in Ghost?”
“A yellow glow,” Kelly said.
“It will fade in an hour,” Class said.
“You clearly know something we don’t,” I said.
“You were holding the skull when you died.”
“And?”
“And the magic chose you.”
“Magic doesn’t affect me.”
“Magic is in your blood. Magic didn’t have to affect you. It had to speak to the skull.”
“The ritual,” Maria said. “Was it completed?”
Class nodded. “Yes.”
“Oh, wow,” Maria said.
“Oh wow, what?” I asked.
“You got what I wanted,” Class said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I don’t understand. I mean, I do understand that Class is right. The magic chose me.”
“It chose you?” Kelly asked.
“That’s what it felt like.”
“Energy isn’t sentient,” Maria said. “Is it?”
Richard Class pushed himself to his feet. He walked over to me. “It was supposed to be me,” he said. “I was trying to save you.”
“That’s not what it felt like. You and Himmler were both trying to kill me.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true. I was trying to pull him off you.” He looked a bit dazed.
“You okay?”
“I’m seeing double. I think I have a concussion from where you head slammed me and the Nazi bastard. But that’s not important. This is.”
He pulled a small knife from his pocket, opened it and handed it to me.
“What’s this for?”
“I’d cut you, but I think if I made a menacing move toward you, Kelly would kill me.”
“You got that right,” Kelly said.
“Cut yourself. Finger, hand, whatever. Just enough to draw blood.”
“Why would I do that?” I asked, studying the blade.
“So you’ll know what happened. So you’ll understand the ramifications. So you’ll know what you got when the magic chose you.”
“I died and came back with a new body.”
“You don’t know the half of it. You can trust me. There’s nothing I can do to you. I can’t take what you have. The magic chose you.”
I hesitated, then figured it wasn’t that big a deal, and I nicked my flesh with the blade.
Yellow light leaked from the cut.
Then the cut was gone.
“What the hell?”
“You got what we wanted,” Class said. “You’re immortal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“I’m immortal?” I asked.
Class nodded. “Provided no one cuts off your head and keeps it separated from you for a while.”
“Wait, what?”
“Might be a minute. Might be an hour. No sense testing it. But the only thing that might be able to kill you now is getting beheaded. Maybe a nuclear bomb. Something that blows you apart and keeps you apart.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Remember the prophecy? Light magic, dark magic, Shade in balance. The strongest will live forever, the weaker will perish, and the balance will be shattered for eternity.”
“Oh,” Maria said. She looked at Class. “You thought Himmler was dark, you were light, and Jonathan was balanced?”
“I still think that.”
“Jonathan was both. He was dark magic and light magic. In balance. But if he was in balance, how could the light magic be stronger?”
Class shrugged. “Because good is stronger than evil?”
“You guys are full of shit,” I said. “There’s no way I’m immortal.”
***
100,000 years later.
I’m a passenger on a spaceship heading to Rigel Twelve in the Centaurian Sector.
All my friends are long gone, but they lived lives filled with love and happiness.
> When the technology improved, Esther was able to get a new body. She became an actress and starred in a Broadway revival of Chicago where she received rave reviews. Critics said she seemed to be a natural flapper.
Kelly opened another martial arts dojo, and married a handsome warrior. They had many adventures and killed lots of bad guys.
Class never became president, but he served another ten years in Congress without a single scandal. That’s probably a world record for a politician.
As for me, I’ve been sailing the universe. I live on a lush moon with an amazing view of the rings of Tendor, a lovely planet with the most beautiful women in the galaxy. They seem to like immortal clowns like me.
***
Just messing with you.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Jumping back to when I cut myself, I bled normal blood.
Class leaned forward. “That will heal in, five, four…”
It healed.
“See?” Class said. “You’re immortal.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “And I don’t want anyone to shoot me as a test.”
“Try magic on him,” Kelly said. “But nothing major. Try to push him backward with a spell.”
Class waved his hands around.
I just stood there.
He waved his hands again.
It had zero effect.
“I don’t understand,” Class said.
“I do,” Kelly said. “The magic reformed him as he was. Balanced.”
“No,” Class said. “I can’t pull up any magic at all. It’s not working. What the hell?”
Maria laughed.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“The ritual. The skull. It pulled the magic from both Himmler and Class and used it to reform your body.”
“What makes you say that?”
She pointed at Himmler’s corpse. “For one thing, Himmler is still dead. And for another, the congressman is a normal man now. Zero magic.”
“That’s not fair!” Class said.
“If someone ever told you that life is fair, they were lying,” I said. “But are you in pain?”
“No.”
“Then I’d call that a win.”
“The glow is fading,” Kelly said.
“Good,” I said. “I don’t want to seem radioactive.” I turned to Maria. “Gustav said something about you trying to bring back the Men of the Black Stone. What was that all about?”
“They’re dead now. I entrusted them with guarding Hitler’s skull, but Himmler killed the few who remained. Wait. Cole…”
“He’s alive,” I said.
She blew out a breath of relief. “Thank the goddess.”
“He was part of that group?”
“All my bodyguards were, but Cole is my favorite. He’s the one who actually killed Hitler. Where is he?”
“He’s in a hospital in Córdoba.”
“Thank you. I was afraid he’d died.”
“If Cole killed Hitler, you knew where the damn skull was the entire time.”
Maria shook her head. “No. He was under strict orders not to tell me. I didn’t know where the skull was until Himmler took me to Indonesia. The séance there gave me the answer.”
“So where was it?” I asked.
She smiled. “Hiding in plain sight in a classroom at Airlangga University in Surabaya.”
“Beatrice is in the courtyard,” Esther said.
I looked over at the corpses on the floor. Himmler and me. “What do we do about the bodies?”
“Burn them,” Maria said.
“Let me get my wallet and keys first,” I said. “Oh, and my shoes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
In the courtyard, Beatrice waited patiently. She leaned against the castle wall, staring at her phone.
When we stepped outside, she looked up.
“You made it,” she said. “Hmm. Yellow.”
“Not for long,” I said, buttoning a semi-clean shirt.
“You’re going to have to learn to control it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your magic is balanced.”
“I know that.”
“You don’t feel it?”
“I feel like there’s a current running through me.”
She smiled. “Your magic has been unlocked.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you can use dark and light magic.”
“How do I do that?”
She shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m not a teacher.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Maria said.
“What do you mean?” Beatrice asked.
Maria put a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think you’ll be casting any spells, Jonathan. The magic chose you because Class had the potential to be as dangerous as Himmler given enough time.”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” I said.
“Power corrupts. You’re in perfect balance, and because you don’t use magic, you can’t gain the massive amounts of power flowing through you. In essence, you bring balance to the magic when it goes too far.”
“So I should give up my boyhood ambitions of being Galdalf?”
She patted my shoulder and grinned. “Something like that.”
Beatrice looked at Class. “Credit card?”
Class frowned. “I already paid you.”
“To get here,” she said. “Not to get home.”
“It was a waste of money. I lost all my magic and I didn’t get the immortality I wanted.”
“Immortality would suck,” I said, hoping like hell I wasn’t doomed to live forever. “Nobody needs to see Rigel Twelve.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t be a cheap bastard. Pay the lady so we can all go home.”
Class glared at me. “No offense, Mr. Shade, but I’m not paying for you to go back to Washington.”
Kelly jumped up, wrapped her legs around Class, and took him to the ground. She held the two bloody pencils over his eyes.
“Maybe you’d like to reconsider,” she said.
“Jesus!” Class said. “Don’t kill me!”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll pay.”
And that’s how I saved the world from Nazi domination by Heinrich Himmler, and managed to get a ride home from a strange wizard lady in pink camouflage pants.
How was your April?
Just a reminder, to keep up with new releases, sign up for the Gary Jonas Preferred Readers List and get a FREE ebook copy of Gary’s first novel, One-Way Ticket to Midnight. And if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review to help guide other customers. Thank you. You rock!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Jonas grew up in a military family, so he moved a lot as a child. His original plan was to be a comic book artist, but in college things changed. He took a creative writing class for the easy A, and found that when he wrote stories, people were affected emotionally by them in ways they weren’t by his artwork. He switched from art to writing without ever looking back. Well, he might have looked back a few times, but by then it was too late. He sold his first short story to Marion Zimmer Bradley for the anthology Sword and Sorceress VII. Many short story sales followed to various magazines and anthologies including Robert Bloch’s Psychos, It Came from the Drive-In, 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories, Prom Night, and many more.
His first novel, One-Way Ticket to Midnight, was published in 2002, It made the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award. While the novel was well-reviewed, it didn’t sell diddly squat, so Gary turned to writing screenplays for a few years. A couple of Hollywood options led to nothing, and the notes from producers, while sometimes spot-on, were also sometimes way out in left field (if they were even in the ballpark). Gary returned to novel writing with Modern Sorcery. You can visit him online at www.garyjonasbooks.com, and sign up for his mailing list on his rarely updated blog. Or you can follow him on BookBub for notices of new releases. Whatever works for you.<
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Books by Gary Jonas
The Jonathan Shade series:
Modern Sorcery
Acheron Highway
Dragon Gate
Anubis Nights
Sunset Specters
Wizard’s Nocturne
Razor Dreams
Vertigo Effect
Club Eternity
Timeless Gods
Immortal Ascendant (that’s this book, and I hope you liked it)
Spirited Christmas (holiday novelette)
The Kelly Chan series:
Vampire Midnight
Werewolf Samurai
Subhuman Resources (w/Rebecca Hodgkins)
Zombie Rising (w/Rebecca Hodgkins)
Vendetta Blues (w/Rebecca Hodgkins)
The Half-Assed Wizard series:
The Half-Assed Wizard
The Big-Ass Witch
The Dumbass Demon
The Lame-Assed Doppelganger
The UFO Conspiracy Files series:
Guardians of the Sky
Stand-alone novels:
One-Way Ticket to Midnight
Pirates of the Outrigger Rift (w/Bill D. Allen)
Collection:
Quick Shots
Novella:
Night Marshal: A Tale of the Undead West
also available in Night Marshal Box Set (the first three Night Marshal tales in one bundle--includes Night Marshal by Gary Jonas, High Plains Moon by Glenn R. Sixbury, and This Dance, These Bones by Rebecca Hodgkins). The set kicks ass.
Thanks for reading! All authors need reviews, so if you enjoyed the book, please write a review to help guide other customers. Read on!
Cover design by Robin Ludwig at www.gobookcoverdesign.com
Edited by Rebecca Hodgkins & Bill Allen (sometimes it takes two editors to clean up my messes)
