Chalice and Blade

by Alexes Razevich

  But it wasn’t just my emotional state that was different now. Then, when the telekinesis worked, I’d seen in my mind what I wanted to happen.

  I closed my eyes, calmed my breathing, and visualized the pillow rising from the sofa and floating to me.

  I laughed out loud when the pillow bumped against my chest. I let it fall to my lap, sucked in a breath, and then visualized it tucked up next to the sofa’s armrest. It obeyed like a well-trained dog. That was worth a handclap. Maybe two.

  I guessed that seeing was believing. If I saw in my head what I wanted to happen and believed it would—it did.

  All-righty, then.

  I practiced until late into the afternoon, moving not only pillows but a loaf of bread, three books at once, canned goods from my pantry, and when I started feeling brave, a glass vase complete with water and two dozen blue and purple irises. I practiced bringing things to me from the rooms upstairs and sending them back, to ascertain if I could move things from and to a distance. I wasn’t perfect, but eight out of ten times I got it right. Fortunately, the vase full of flowers and water was one that worked. I hoped to have it up to ten out of ten by the time we left for the darkling lands.

  By dinnertime, I’d exhausted myself. Of course, the minute I stopped busying my mind, my thoughts went immediately and directly to Dee. How were he and Drake doing? Had they found the blade’s location or were they still fumbling in the dark? I knew how good Dee was. If Drake was close to his equal, they might have found it already and be on their way back. I could hope for that, at least. What I didn’t want to think about was them wandering around aimlessly, or worse, running into trouble. Someone evil had stolen the blade and committed murder for it. If that person still had it—

  I’d borrowed one of Dee’s gazing bowls while he’d been with his family, and had it at my house. I took it down from the shelf in the butler’s pantry where I kept it, filled it with water and set it on the kitchen table. I didn’t have the locating spell memorized and had to get out the spell book I’d also borrowed from his library. Dee had an eidetic memory—which I was completely jealous of. I couldn’t remember much of anything if I didn’t work at it. I thumbed through the book until I found the proper spell, and intoned the words.

  The clear water in the silver bowl grew cloudy. Slowly a picture formed—a forest thick with tall, old growth pine and redwood trees. There were only a few places where redwoods grew naturally. Sequoia National Park or King’s Canyon maybe? Someplace further north?

  I bent until my face was only inches from the water. The picture changed, showing Dee and a slightly older man. Dee’s friend, Drake, I presumed.

  Drake, like Dee, was tall and moved with an athlete’s grace and gait. He was more overtly muscular than Dee, which he probably needed to be to carry the arsenal I saw on him—a wicked looking broadsword on his back and a couple of massive guns on his hips. Hunter, Dee had said about his friend.

  Dee was still unshaven, his hair caught at the nape of his neck with a rubber band. He wore a backpack the same shade of green as the pine needles around them. The men moved cautiously. I could see their mouths moving, probably chanting spells.

  Funny that I could see them on the move. Dee had told me locating spells only worked if the subject was stopped. Maybe it was our connection to each other that let me see him moving. It had occurred to me more than once that my abilities were stronger when Dee was involved. He’d said much the same once—in passing, in that casual way he had—that we seemed to amplify the other’s magic.

  He stopped suddenly and looked around as if he’d heard or felt something, and tapped Drake’s shoulder. The other man stopped as well. Dee said something to him. Drake drew a silver chain with an animal charm on it from beneath his shirt. The animal was a cat of some sort, I thought, but wasn’t sure, and glowed with a soft purple light. Drake pointed in front of them and to the left. They started walking again, chanting.

  The cat charm’s purple glow grew in intensity as they walked. The glow flared suddenly white and the men stopped again. Drake kneeled on the ground, then bent forward to put his cheek on the earth. He lifted his head and nodded, then pulled back onto his feet while Dee shrugged off his backpack, pulled one of those folding camping shovels from it. He began to dig on the spot where Drake had laid his cheek.

  The ground must have been soft because he didn’t seem to have a hard time digging through the soil. A mound of dark, rich brown dirt piled up around the hole he was making. He dug long enough that I got a little antsy and looked up at the clock on my kitchen wall. Forty-five minutes had passed and I hadn’t noticed.

  Dee stopped suddenly and looked at Drake. He said something, which of course I couldn’t hear and I’m generally rubbish at lip reading. My guess was that he’d found what he was digging for. Drake had been leaning against a redwood tree, his eyes alert, scanning the area. He sprinted forward and looked into the hole. Dee dropped to his knees and reached into the earth. He stood and showed Drake what he’d snagged—a long knife in a dirty, black leather sheath, the visible hilt covered in mud. I grinned, seeing their success.

  Dee flicked bits of mud off the hilt. He pulled a bottle of water from his backpack and poured water over the sheath, then rubbed the hilt against his jeans to clean it. He held the sheath up again for Drake to see. Jewels gleamed on the hilt. Rubies, emeralds, and diamonds were my guess from the colors.

  A man stepped from behind one of the large redwood trees. Dee and Drake were facing the other way and didn’t see or, evidently, hear him. I saw him though, in the gazing bowl, and gasped. He was taller than the two wizards by at least half a head, with long, shaggy reddish-brown hair, and a wiry-looking beard that reached below the hollow of his throat.

  I couldn’t hear the man when he started speaking, but his body language was pretty clear: give me the blade.

  Dee wheeled to face him, then very markedly put the blade in his backpack and drew the zipper closed. His body language told me he was working up a spell even though he wasn’t chanting any words. Spoken words give power to spells, but they can be worked silently and still be effective, if not as strong.

  The bushy-haired man watched Dee with a slim smile on his mouth, as if bemused. The man didn’t see Drake’s hands fall casually to the grips of his guns. My skin prickled and my heart rate sped. Everything about the scene said a fight was coming.

  “Quick magic, Dee,” I muttered.

  Dee’s conjuring skills were excellent. He could bring anything that existed in the real world, and something’s that didn’t, into temporary existence.

  I kept muttering to him even though he couldn’t hear me.

  “Big magic. Lots of fire and sparks or sudden pouring rain. A pack of hungry wolves. Stampeding elephants. Something to make the man’s eyes open wide and his heart to quake. Scare him and send him scurrying away.”

  Dee rubbed his hands together and turned them palms up to display a fireball about the size of an apple dancing just above his skin.

  The man threw his head back and seemed to roar with laughter.

  Dee muttered again and flicked his hand. The fireball disappeared, replaced by a wicked looking sword Dee swung in a large infinity sign in front of him, and then pushed toward the man.

  The man’s eyes narrowed and, this time, when he threw back his head I thought it was not to laugh but to growl. I don’t know if I blinked or looked away for a moment, but where the man had stood was a huge reddish-brown bear. Even on all fours, the bear was nearly as tall as Diego. And while the man had the normal two eyes, the bear had three—the third, large and completely black, in the middle of his forehead.

  Drake swore—that word was easy to lip read—and pulled a gun free of its holster.

  Dee stepped into a fighting stance and swung the sword down, aiming for the back of the bear’s head. The bear feinted to the right and rose onto its hind legs. Standing, it was half again as tall as Dee. It knocked the sword from Dee’s hands with a swipe of its giant p
aw. The sword sailed through the air and embedded itself in a sapling redwood.

  The bear advanced toward Dee and Drake slowly, with heavy steps, as if it knew that no matter what the men did to try to escape, they would fail.

  Why didn’t Drake fire? He seemed stunned by the huge thing coming toward him.

  I wanted to fall into the gazing bowl and through it to the place they were. I wanted to bring my Smith & Wesson and pump bullets into the bear until it was dead and Dee no longer in danger.

  All I could do was sit at my kitchen table and watch.

  Chapter 5

  Drake shook his head as if clearing his thoughts, aimed his gun and fired. Blood gushed from the werebear’s chest and matted his fur. The bear dropped to all fours and swung his head from side to side, bellowing in pain and rage. Dee moved to the side of the bear, conjured a second broadsword, and raised it high over his head. Striking off the bear’s head was the only sure way to know it was dead.

  The werebear leaned back, shifting its weight to its hind legs, and leaped toward Drake before Dee could finish the stroke. Drake emptied the rest of the clip into the on-rushing bear.

  Someone knocked on my front door. I ignored it.

  The bear crashed to the ground, raking its massive claws across Drake’s torso from his right shoulder, traversing his chest, down to his left hip as it fell.

  Dee ran toward them, his mouth open, his face contorted in a scream, the broadsword held above his right shoulder.

  Drake slumped against the rough trunk of a redwood tree.

  The knocking came at my front door again, only now it was pounding.

  Blood seeped through the front of Drake’s shirt, dying it bright crimson. Diego reached the fallen bear, reverting now to human form. Dee hesitated only a moment before bringing the sword down on the shifting man’s neck. The head rolled away. Blood spurted from the wound, wetting both Dee and Drake.

  The pounding on my front door increased.

  Panting hard, I could see his chest expanding and contacting, Dee stood over the dead were—which was now totally in human form. Drake slid down the tree’s trunk and sat awkwardly on the ground.

  The picture in the water began to fade.

  There was another round of pounding on my front door. I looked up and frowned. When I looked back into the bowl, there was nothing to see but clear water.

  “Shit.”

  I ran down the hall as a new round of someone pounding the side of their fist on my door began. I threw the front door open with the force of all my worry and anger.

  Jack Schneider stood on the porch. He wasn’t dressed in the all-white uniform of the magic police. Instead, he wore jeans and a blue Polo shirt, open at the neck. He was alone, so this wasn’t an official visit. The MPs always sent at least two policemen for official calls.

  “Is Diego here?” Jack said the moment the door fully opened.

  I stared at him, my mind stuck on what I’d seen—and not seen—in the gazing bowl. I forced my attention back to the man standing in front of me, and his question.

  “He’s in Sequoia or King’s Canyon, I think. Why?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach him. He’s not answering his phone. Judging by his overgrown front yard, he hasn’t been at his house for a while. I hoped he might be here.”

  Which probably meant Jack had run into some sort of problem and wanted/needed Dee’s help.

  I belatedly remembered my manners. “Would you like to come in?”

  He nodded and followed me into the parlor.

  Jack and Dee were friends. I wouldn’t say Jack and I were friends, exactly, but he’d bent some rules and outright broken a few at my request when The Gate and Dee had been abducted. I’d say we had a healthy respect for each other.

  “Diego hasn’t been home since,” I drew in a breath, wondering how to phrase what had happened, “the incident with Gil. He’s been with his family.”

  Jack settled himself on the sofa, crossed his legs and leaned back. “You said he was in King’s Canyon.”

  “Now he is. Or Sequoia National Park. Or on the coast somewhere up north. He’s working. Retrieving something for a client.” I paused. “Tea? Water?”

  Jack shook his head. “You know The Gate’s been arrested in connection to the murder of Hugo Bernard.”

  I nodded. “He didn’t do it.”

  Jack snorted. Dee and Jack might be friends, but I had the feeling Jack blamed The Gate for Diego’s habit of ignoring rules and laws he found inconvenient to his purpose. “He’s asking to see Diego or you. He’s refusing to speak to anyone else.”

  I understood The Gate asking for Diego, but was surprised he’d ask for me. I eyed Jack’s clothing obviously. “You’re not here in an official capacity.”

  “Partially. Sean McGowan has assigned me the job of getting The Gate to say what, if anything, he knows about Bernard’s murder and the thefts. The Gate says he’ll only speak to you two. If Diego isn’t available, then I’m asking you to come talk to him. See what he has to say. Try to get him to agree to talk to me, or just to offer up where he was when Hugo was killed.”

  “Hugo wasn’t killed with magic then? Because if someone used magic, it might not matter where anyone was at the time of death.”

  “Will you come?” Jack said, neatly evading my question.

  I gave him my best gracious nod. “Of course.”

  Jack muttered under his breath. There was a whoosh, a tiny sense of vertigo, and my ears popped. I’d been whisked to Jack’s station a few times now and no longer freaked out when I was in my house one second and in the police station the next.

  Every time I was there I wondered why they didn’t make the place look nicer. The floors were cracked brown linoleum and the walls painted a pea soup green that had seen better days. Now I wondered if the run-down, decrepit appearance was purposeful—a way to inspire despair in prisoners and visitors alike.

  When I’d been in the station before, I’d only been in McGowan’s very utilitarian office. Now Jack led me down a flight of stone stairs and past a variety of rooms, some with solid silver doors, some with water continuously running over iron doors, some with protective wards so strong they made the air shimmer and my teeth ache. I shuddered to think what sorts of beasts or sorcerers were kept behind any of them.

  The Gate was in what must be their ‘not a big threat’ cell. It looked a lot like a small studio apartment that had seen better days. The walls were a dingy white. A narrow, white melamine counter running three feet or so along one wall held a coffee maker and a tiny microwave. Dee’s old mentor sat on a twin bed—a real bed, not the usual jail cot—covered with a white comforter which looked new, in contrast to the rest of the room.

  There were also two small, white, padded chairs, a small, white table with two paperback books lying on it, a ladder-back chair pulled up to the table, and a door that I thought probably led to a private bathroom. Very posh for a prisoner’s cell. The sort of room where you might keep your misbehaving VIPs while you tried to figure out what to do with them. The sort of room where you kept people you trusted not to use their considerable magic to open the door, turn invisible, and walk on out.

  The Gate shot me a big smile as I entered the cell. He looked to be in his sixties, though he was, according to Dee, much, much older. His silver and steel-gray hair was as neatly combed as ever, and he managed to look suave in the bright-red sweatpants and sweatshirt he wore. Not a lot of men could pull that off.

  “Ah! Fierce lamb, I am happy to see you,” he said, his deep-blue eyes twinkling.

  “I’m happy to see you, too.” I walked over to stand in front of him. “Though this wouldn’t have been the place I’d have picked.”

  The Gate shrugged. “Mistakes can be quite instructive when viewed the right way.”

  Whatever that meant. McGowan’s mistake, or The Gate’s?

  He patted the spot beside him on the twin bed with the thick, white comforter, an invitation for me to sit. I glanced at J
ack who still stood in the doorway.

  “I’ve been told to stay,” he said.

  The Gate grinned at him. “Fine with me. I enjoy company. Stay as long as you like.” His grin faded. “Though it’s likely there won’t be much important talking going on so long as you’re listening.”

  Jack frowned. The Gate nudged me gently with his elbow. I nodded. I’d caught the meaning in his words: feel free to read my mind.

  I slid into The Gate’s thoughts. He raised his eyebrows slightly, possibly in surprise from feeling me there. It was a weird feeling to have someone in your mind, like a tickle inside your skull.

  The Gate shifted slightly on the bed as if settling in for a long contest of wills.

  Is Diego well?

  I shrugged and nodded slightly. The Gate wasn’t psychic. He couldn’t simply hear the answers as I thought them.

  “Jack isn’t going to put up with us sitting silently and me nodding or shaking my head for long,” I said quietly. “You need to answer some questions for me.”

  Of course, The Gate thought. Ask me anything. I will probably tell you the truth.

  Probably.

  “Did you have anything to do with Hugo’s death?” I said, keeping my voice low.

  Grief like a knife stabbed me in the chest. The Gate’s emotion, not mine. Grief over Hugo’s death. They’d not been friends for a very long time, not since The Gate had helped Hugo’s wife and children escape from what had become a bad situation. But they had been close for years before that. Hugo had hated The Gate, but The Gate, I thought, had continued to love Hugo even when he didn’t like him.

  “Then why are you sitting here, refusing to talk to anyone?” I whispered.

  Two reasons. One, Sean McGowan annoys me. It seems only fair to annoy him back. And two, I needed a change of scenery. This isn’t a lovely place, but it does nicely suit my current needs.

  “Which are?” I said.