Spell Caster

by Clara Coulson

  I throw up one hand to signal Ramirez, and he says into his mic, “All clear.”

  There’s a thunk in the bedroom off the far end of the living area, followed shortly by the crash of shattering glass as whoever cut the windowpane out of its frame lets it fall to the floor. Heavy boots hit the carpet a second later, crunching atop the shards, and Naomi sweeps into view, one sword drawn, one fist clenched and ready to fire a beggar ring. The Adelman twins slip in behind her and thoroughly check all the hiding places in the bedroom, but they don’t find Nottaway under the bed or in the closet, and there are no trap doors cut into the faux-wood floorboards.

  “Where the hell did he go?” asks Newman as she clambers into the bedroom. “Burgess spotted him in the kitchen not five minutes ago.”

  Li, a step behind her, says, “He didn’t leave, so he must be in here somewhere. Attic or basement, perhaps?”

  Ramirez takes a running jump through the picture window and skids to a stop beside me. “Didn’t you say practitioners often have labs in their basements, Kinsey?”

  I nod. “They usually fortify them too, in case some magic experimentation goes wrong.”

  Naomi strides into the living room. “A dead end, but a well-defended hill to die on. Especially if the only entrance to the basement is a narrow stairway. It’ll be a chokepoint where he can easily pick us off.” She gestures to the Adelman brothers. “Joe, Jake, guard the front and side doors in case there’s a secret exit to the basement.”

  She glances at Ramirez’s teammates as they hop into the living room. “You three each take a room and make sure he can’t go out a window.” Her index finger springs up and points from me to Ramirez to Newman to Li. “You four, with me. We’ll head down to the basement. Kinsey, you take the lead. If he tries to blast us with magic, give him your best shot.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I skirt around the couch and enter the dim hallway, where I find only two doors. One of them sits open, revealing a laundry room, so I creep carefully toward the other door.

  My magic lies just beneath the surface of my skin, bobbing up and down like a tidal pool, a constant tingle in my bones. As I near the door, I clench my right fist, prepared to use my old standby lightning bolt trick if anyone or anything comes flying up the stairs, and leave my left hand splayed open. I haven’t had much practice with shields—they always break after one hit—but I might be able to deflect the first attack, if nothing else.

  A quick check reveals there are no wards on the door, a stupid oversight for a wizard aware there are Crows in his house. That or a clever trap. Depending on how deeply involved Targus was in setting up Nottaway as his fall guy, we could be walking into anything from a fully staged suicide scene, the desperate, depressed wizard already cold and dead on the damp basement floor, to a suicide-by-cop scenario, complete with a practically rabid Nottaway flinging every spell in his grimoire at our heads until one of us finally takes him down. I don’t know Targus well enough yet to anticipate more than his general strategy.

  “I’ll blast the door down the stairs,” I say softly to Naomi, half a step behind me. “If anyone’s waiting at the bottom, the time it takes for them to evade the door or bat it aside should give us the opening we need to get a couple people down there to defend the stairs so the rest of our group can enter.”

  “Do it.” She motions to Li, now wearing a pair of thermal goggles. “Stand just behind Kinsey to shield yourself, and follow him down the stairs. Survey the entire basement as quickly as you can, and if you see the polong, alert us immediately over the com.”

  Li adjusts the goggles and steps up to the plate. “Ready.”

  With a slow, deep breath to settle my pulse, I dig my feet into the scraggly carpeting, reel back my arm, pump a generous dollop of energy into my hand—and punch the air. A wall of force roughly the same size and shape as the basement door hurtles across the hall and slams into the wooden slab with a thunderous bang.

  Instead of splintering like a regular door would under the force of a virtual cannon blast, the basement number, reinforced with a thick metal plate, tears free from its hinges and soars off into the gloom above the staircase. At the bottom of the stairs, it rams into a large piece of metal equipment, which collapses in on itself with an earsplitting screech that echoes through the entire house.

  Shield spell on the tip of my tongue, I take two long strides to the top of the stairs, heightening my magic sense until a blue miasma that I could almost mistake for Targus’ aura coalesces in my sight. All the energy hanging in the air appears to be residual, but the fog of old spellwork is so dense that Nottaway could hide the presence of active magic prep if he has enough sense to be subtle with his construct—

  “Twelve o’clock!” shouts Li. Too late.

  I bring up my shield with a garbled word and a push of will, but the damn thing might as well be tissue paper for all the good it does. The polong’s powerful tentacle drives straight through the shield, shattering the spell with an audible crack, pierces the thick fabric of my reinforced DSI coat, and rams into my shoulder, throwing me back into the wall of the kitchen so hard that the plasterboard implodes and the support beams almost split in half.

  It’s only when I come to a complete stop, more shocked than pained as my jostled brain tries to make sense of what just happened, that I notice Li sprawled out on the floor beside me. His face is a bloody mess where my flailing boot caught him in the nose and busted his goggles.

  The tentacle inside my shoulder wriggles, and the shock dissipates into startling clarity. My hand shoots up and locks around the worming tentacle before it can withdraw. Growling under my breath, I lash out at the polong with a constant stream of electricity whose power level sits a hairsbreadth below the max coverage of my suppression rings.

  The rings still heat up, not built to withstand continuous strain, but I ignore the worsening pain and the smell of burning fabric, ignore the bite of electrostatic needles feeding back through the portion of the tentacle writhing beneath my skin, ignore the blood soaking my clothes, the tang of copper in the air. I ignore everything except the dark space above the staircase, right up until the tortured polong can no longer maintain its natural camouflage and reveals itself under the torment of my agonizing electric attack.

  “Captain!” I call out to Naomi. “There it is.”

  Naomi jumps up from Li’s side and peers into the basement. Spotting the shriveled, grotesque form of the polong, she takes aim with her beggar rings and fires off three enormous balls of flame. When the flame attacks are halfway to the polong, Naomi follows them up with a screaming wind funnel.

  The wind buffets the fireballs, feeds their size and intensity, and merges them into a giant vortex of white-hot flame that consumes the polong in its entirety. The tense tentacle in my shoulder whips every which way, stabbing at my bones, as the polong spasms in distress, but I don’t let up with my electricity stream. Not until the polong finally surrenders.

  Too damaged by the combo strike to maintain its flight, the polong drops from the air and slams into the concrete floor of the basement. The tentacle in my shoulder goes completely limp, and before my coiling stomach can fully comprehend the sheer horror of having a tentacle inside my body, I dig my fingers into the stiff appendage and tug as hard as I can. Four tries in, the tentacle pops out of my shoulder with a sickening squelch, and I cast it aside, fighting down a gag.

  “You okay, Kinsey?” Naomi asks.

  “I’ll heal,” I say through gritted teeth. “You guys go get that damn wizard.”

  She nods and steps down onto the creaky top step of the basement stairs. “Newman, Ramirez, with me. Stay alert.”

  The three of them proceed cautiously into the basement, weapons up, beggar rings glowing at a full charge, the fog of Nottaway’s magic swirling around them as their movement disturbs the air. I watch them like a hawk until Naomi reaches the bottom step undeterred and maneuvers around the disabled polong, which doesn’t so much as twitch when she gives the transluce
nt, misshapen form a solid prod with her boot. In fact, her boot almost goes through the polong, as if it’s body is losing integrity and gradually reverting to the base spirit form. Our attacks must have burned up most of the blood the polong was using to fuel its corporeality.

  As Naomi, Ramirez, and Newman begin searching the basement for Nottaway, I clamber out of the crater in the wall and use what’s left of the support beams to haul myself up. My shoulder complains, but the ragged skin around the gory hole is already stitching itself back together, so I grin and bear the pain as I lean over and offer Li a helping hand.

  He manages to stand, but he’s unsteady at best, blood pouring down his face from his broken nose. He tugs off the remains of his thermal goggles and says in a nasally tone, “You go down and help the captain. I’ll swap places with Joe, have him man the basement door in case the perp tries to make a run for it.”

  I slide past him to block the basement threshold. “Will do.” As he shambles off toward the front door, I tap my com and say into the mic, “Captain Sing, you got any company down there?”

  “No sign of Nottaway yet,” she replies quietly. “He’s either veiled or hiding. Basement’s large, dark, and three-quarters full of stacked plastic totes, with some cardboard boxes thrown in for good measure.” The sound of a boot crunching soft plastic comes over the feed. “We could use a keener pair of eyes down here. Are you back on your feet?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “And Li?”

  “Switching out with Joe.” I spy the designated Adelman twin shuffling around the corner. “Permission to join you once he secures the door?”

  “Granted.”

  Joe gives me a nod as he takes up a defensive stance behind me and readies his rifle and rings. “All set.”

  I descend into the basement. On the way down, my boot bumps the polong’s limp tentacle half a dozen times, and I bite back the surge of revulsion that stirs the bile in my stomach. The sensation of that weird, leathery appendage digging around in my shoulder is perfect nightmare fodder, and it rubs me so far the wrong direction that I can’t resist the urge to give the polong’s bulk a few good kicks when I reach the bottom stair. My boot goes halfway through the spirit’s unmoving shape before it rebounds. It feels like kicking some kind of thick oil with a rubber balloon in the middle.

  As I’m stepping around the bulk, I notice that the edges of the polong’s form are starting to disappear. It won’t be long until it’s invisible again. And if we can’t see it or touch it, there’s a good chance we’ll lose track of it while we’re dealing with Nottaway. Which is bad any way you look at it.

  Depending on the orders it received from Targus, the polong may hover off to collect more blood, restore its corporeality, and then return to try and poke more holes in us. If I have to choose between dealing with a disabled polong now and a fully powered one later…

  Ignoring the knot of disgust in my gut, I bend over and grab hold of two of the polong’s larger tentacles, which feels oddly similar to sticking my hands in a bucket of vegetable oil to grab a couple of half-rotten bananas. I drag the surprisingly heavy creature away from the stairs, my shoulder throbbing with every step, and deposit it on an empty spot on the floor. Next, I grab each of its tentacles one by one, bundle them up like coils of rope, and tuck them underneath the spirit’s bulk. Patting my belt, I locate a small pouch next to my first-aid supplies and pop it open to reveal two rows of white chalk.

  Banishment spells are extremely complex, and I didn’t have time to learn any this morning, but it just so happens that I dabbled in binding circles last week. And sure, most of my attempts blew up in my face, but my last three tries were successful enough that I’m willing to give it a shot.

  Worst-case scenario, I earn a pair of singed eyebrows and the polong goes on its merry way to terrorize us another day. Best-case scenario, the polong stays put long enough for Riker to bully a local ICM practitioner into conducting the banishment for a respectable amount of monetary compensation.

  I say through the com, “I’m about to perform some circle magic over here. Don’t get too close.”

  “Careful with the fireworks,” comes Naomi’s quick reply. “There aren’t any sprinklers in here.”

  “Ha ha.” I wave my chalk in the general direction of the box and bin stacks. “Very funny, Captain.”

  There’s an awkward pause before she says, “That wasn’t a joke, Kinsey.”

  My entire face grows warm. “Oh. Gotcha.”

  While the trio continues picking through the boxes and bins, I draw a binding circle around the polong, careful to ensure that each and every line and symbol is exactly the shape it’s supposed to be. When I finish scrawling the last few lines, I lean back and review the circle construction not once, not twice, but three times, so I can be absolutely certain that it matches the template I memorized from my textbook. No mistakes stick out to me, so I replace the chalk in its spot in my pouch, clap my hands together, producing a puff of white dust, and dig out the banishment spell from my tiny mental grimoire.

  Here comes the fun part.

  Eyes closed, I wet my lips with a swipe of my tongue, empty my mind of everything except the binding spell—which is a major chore, considering a wizard could jump out from behind a box at any time and sling a death spell at my back—and, coming off a hot breath, begin to speak. The first two lines roll off my tongue with ease, the basic words that siphon my magic energy out of my interlocked hands and down into the inner ring of the circle, from which it’ll be distributed later in the spell. The next three lines of the activation sequence build the basic framework of the circle itself, guiding strings of energy into the outlying shapes and lines that surround the more complex symbol clusters. At this point, the circle ignites with that familiar violet glow.

  Then the real sigil winding begins.

  Sweat forms on my brow as I rattle off word after tongue-twisting word, pinging each symbol in the circle with energy in the order specified by the spell instructions. Halfway through the winding, I feel a mild disturbance in the circle, and for a brief second of terror, I think I’ve made a mistake, even as I force my tongue to continue spitting out the difficult syllables.

  Opening my eyes, I find that I haven’t flubbed the spell. The disturbance was caused by the polong, which has started to come around after its brutal knockout. The creature is shifting slightly inside the unfinished circle, one of its tentacles dangerously close to the inner ring. If it smudges the chalk before I finish the spell, I’m doomed.

  So I pick up the pace. Words fly off my tongue so fast it feels like I’m flying down a mountain on an unstable sled, liable to lose control and crash into a pine tree at any moment. But somehow, I hold it all together, the last dozen activation words tumbling off my tongue with nary a stutter. The final few symbols pulse with power, twice, to indicate the end of the winding sequence, before the glow of the entire circle flares so bright my eyes water and I have to screw them shut again.

  Finally, a tingle like faint static zips up from my fingertips and into my chest and gradually settles into a sensation that vaguely resembles a heavy rope draped over my shoulders. This is the sign that I’ve successfully activated a perpetual charge circle, a magic circle that will continue to drain the amount of power necessary to sustain its effect until such time as I intentionally disconnect it from my soul and allow it to collapse.

  I wrench my wet eyes open again to view the results: a softly glowing circle on the floor with a translucent cylindrical projection extending up from just inside the inner ring. One of the polong’s tentacles slaps weakly against the projection, but the violet wall doesn’t shudder. Which means the binding spell is stable…

  A burning sensation encompasses all my fingers, and I lift my hands to find my suppression rings are faltering under the strain of the continuous drain of energy caused by the binding. And through my splayed fingers, I observe the circle dim slightly at the power flow interruption caused by the rings. An icy panic
sloshes through my veins. Shit. Shit. Shit!

  I hastily tug at the rings to remove them before the spell’s stability degrades from the lack of adequate power flow. Only to find that, once again, the damaged rings are fused to the fabric of my gloves. They won’t come off.

  “Oh, for the love of god.” I rip a knife off my belt and tear into the gloves with abandon. They fall away in shreds, cracked rings clinking against the concrete. As soon as the last ring pops off my pinky finger, the circle regains its normal glow, power flow restored.

  Just to be sure though, I sit there and stare at the circle for another full minute. Nothing happens. My magic continues to stream out of my body and into the circle in a significant but manageable amount. The circle continues to glow steadily, none of the sigils on the fritz, the construction perfect. And the defeated polong continues to mope, a few tentacles flopping around to no effect.

  Everything is fine.

  Then Roman Nottaway bursts out of a plastic bin and throws an axe at my face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I yank my head out of the way, and the spinning axe zings past my ear. The broad side brushes my skin, leaving an oily residue behind. As the blade rams into the wall behind me, I realize it must be coated in the same poison that knocked me on my ass yesterday. Hastily wiping my ear off in case the poison can be absorbed through the skin, I spring to my feet and thrust my free hand at Nottaway, who’s wheeling around toward the storage mounds to my right—where Naomi and the others are practically trapped and surrounded by perfect kindling—a red-hot ball of fire growing above his palm.

  “Hey!” I shout, and Nottaway fumbles his fireball throw, attempts to spin back my direction so he can toast my ass instead. But I don’t give him the chance. With a hard push of will, a powerful but uneven force blast spirals out from my hand and ripples through the air with a rumble like thunder. It catches Nottaway in the legs and sweeps him off his feet, throwing half his body into the large plastic bin where he was hiding and slamming his face into the concrete so hard his nose shatters.