Hexbound like the one that just strode in through the south doors, its shiny wrinkled face scowling at Gypcie and me as it approached to attack.
Apparently, the wards didn’t hold.
I leaped into the air and cast a chaos spell to fracture reality, rending space-time and causing immediate, ongoing damage to the Hexbound as it loped into the area of effect. Then I cast some chaos distortion, which increased my magical protection, while further debilitating the familiar’s ability to attack me.
As a result, it swung its arm wildly at me, enraged with animated anger, but largely missed—its fingernails carving a groove out the bridge of my nose. Blood splattered from the wound and began to run down my face. Oww! The Hexbound’s attack was strong, but sloppy due to the distortion, and the follow-through from its swing turned its body toward Gypcie.
Despite the sharp sting of the gouge on my nose I needed to make sure the Hexbound continued to attack me, not Gypcie, who was still on the ground nursing her damaged right ankle.
With a barrelhouse kick that started on my left leg, I called on the Winds of Change, and spun around, flipping my leg into the air at head height. The kick connected, hitting the Hexbound across its cheek with a smack and making it even angrier. I was starting to run low on energy, but the familiar showed no signs of tiring.
With no other immediate choice, I closed with the Hexbound and began striking it with little bursts of chaotic energy from my open palms, attempting to deconstruct it at a molecular level. Who knew what kind of mess this would leave in the library’s reality when I was done? Assuming, of course, that I was still around to care.
Gypcie scrambled back against the large Anima Ward Generator in the center of the library and climbed to her feet, using the wooden structure to avoid putting weight on her ankle.
“Get down” she shouted, and I dove to the left, toward one of the large bookshelves, out of her line of fire.
She raised the barrels of her Harmonizers and emptied both clips into the Hexbound’s head, each shot echoing loudly in the open room. It crumpled into a messy pile, leaking blackish purple fluid onto the library floor.
“And don’t get up, you chancer!” Gypcie swore as she returned her pistols to the holsters she wore on her hips.
I wandered over to look down at the ruined mess of the Hexbound’s face. Shards of bone and brain tissue poked through the pale skin in its now concave face.
“Huh. Apparently several headshots a close range will down a Hexbound,” I said, my head still reeling from the fight. “Who knew?”
“Let’s not take any chances. There’s no anima charge so it might be down, but it’s not out. You’ve got to drag the Hexbound outside into the hall, and I’ll reinforce the ward to keep it, and whatever else might have heard us, out.”
I grabbed the Hexbound’s legs and dragged its body out of the library into the hall, while Gypcie used the W.A.N.D. to generate an anima shard from the charges we’d collected.
“You know they are wondering what the hell is happening back in the Office,” I looked left and right to see if we’d attracted the attention of anything else in the hall.
“Have you actually listened to the noises around here?” she countered, grumpily. “I doubt they even noticed.”
Clearly, she was in a little pain. I walked back into the library itself. “We could check back in to have Ms. Usher look at your ankle if you want?”
“The pain is wearing off. I think I’ll be OK.” She put her foot down gingerly and shifted her weight to her right leg to test it. Satisfied it would hold, she hobbled over to the drained south ward and fed it the fresh anima shard. The ward blossomed with blue energy in response.
“Let’s find that book instead. We’re running out of time.”
With the south ward reinforced, I did a quick scan in each of the north and west entrances to the room to make sure the coast remained clear.
Gypcie scanned the bookcases themselves trying to identify the likely location for the tome and had moved toward the cases on my side of the room. “The third shelf of the fourth bookcase to the right of the north door…”
“How do you even remember that? All I heard was ‘If memory serves, blah, blah, blah, blah.’”
“That’s what you get for cogging all the time instead of listening.” She examined the far side of the closest shelf on the west.
“What. EVER.” I retorted, stung. I had not copied off her homework. Ever. Well, all right, maybe once when I stayed out late on a date with Rene, but that was an emergency. “Teacher’s pet.”
“Cogger.” She walked the row, her finger tracing along the spines of the books on the third shelf.
“Teacher’s pet.”
“It’s not here.”
“Teacher’s…what?”
Gypcie snickered. “Still not listening, apparently. It’s. Not. Here.”
“How can it not be there? Mr. Memory Serves said it would be.”
“Don’t know. But it’s not.”
I wandered over to stand beside her at the western-most freestanding bookcase. Rows of tightly packed books stood on the shelves, their spines well used and their once-bright colors faded with age. I read the titles one by one: Elegant Tools for Xenobiological Compounding. Elementary Pyromancy. Elephant Ears and Their Uses in Native African Magical Traditions. Energy Collection using Anima Sources: A Primer for the Newly Initiated. Equations for Blood Magic Rituals. Extraordinary Feats of Will. Sure enough, no Extradimensional Assassins 101—neither the first nor the revised edition.
“You’re right.” I conceded. “What do we do?”
“I think the answer for you, Miss Mallory, is in the card catalog.” Gypcie mimicked the headmaster’s voice, then added, “Let’s see if someone has the book checked out.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. “You know, you’re kind of snarky for someone with a bad ankle and good ideas. I hope you know how to use the card catalog.”
The concept of a library card catalog, for those not born in the Stone Age, or at least before personal computing, was a wooden cabinet, full of long thin drawers that provided organization for the contents of a library, alphabetically, on 2-inch by 5-inch index cards. The cards offered useful information such as the title and author, the publish date if known, and some form of library science cross-referencing. In the mundane world, that was the Dewey Decimal System.
At Innsmouth Academy, the system in place was the Armitage Access Anomaly Avoider. Which is to say that Mrs. Armitage spat in the faces of Library Scientists everywhere and did what she wanted. So, while the books on the shelves were kind of alphabetically organized, it was possible they still weren’t in perfect order. Mrs. Armitage had been particular in her method—she would not have put the book on rats as witches’ familiars next to one on magical felines of the savannas, for example. This worked out mostly for the best for everyone involved. Finding a book that fell into one of her protective subcategories was another matter entirely, hence my apparently infamous feud with the card catalog. Thankfully, the old index card system had been replaced last year by an online relational database as technology paved the way for the future with advances in data organization.
Mrs. Armitage then put the old card catalog into the Faculty Lounge, to assuage the more change avoidant among the school’s staff members. Any doubts some may have had about Mrs. Armitage’s political savvy were proven gloriously wrong.
As a result, no such cabinet existed in the large square room that housed Innsmouth Academy library. It had tall mounted shelves on each of its four walls, interrupted only by the doorways. In the middle stood the large square Anima Ward Generator, which looked a little bit like a toll booth, but with a thick crystal globe inside that held anima in reserve. In better times, the ward generator had served unfailingly—with proper upkeep—to keep the riff-raff out and the books in.
The floor of the library had a half dozen or so two-sided standing wooden bookcases, each five shelves high. There were a couple of r
ound reading tables with chairs and small lamps around the room as well. It wasn’t an enormous collection, but when judging magical tomes, quality overrides quantity every time.
We were nowhere near the Faculty Lounge at the moment, but Gypcie had her phone, and it had Wi-Fi. Problem solved.
Using the online card catalog, it turned out, was as simple as bringing up the web page and typing in the book title. Judging by Gypcie’s muttering, typing in the book title was by far the hardest part. Too bad we hadn’t thought to try that first. I blamed Mr. Memory Serves.
“I typed ‘101’ not ‘LOL’ you stupid….” She grunted. “There it is. Extradimensional Assassins 101 (Revised Ed.) Soft check-out to Ruby Mathers.”
“What’s a soft check-out?”
Gypcie looked at me for a minute and then must have decided that I really didn’t know because she answered. “A soft check-out means the book is still here in the library but is not on the shelf. Ruby was probably reading it at one of the tables, before…”
She didn’t need to go on. We both remembered the chaos and disruption all too well. If Ruby, a sweet girl with black hair and a tendency to wear red, had been reading the book at a table in the library when the zombies burst through the gates, there was a strong possibility it was still there.
We quickly checked the reading tables and found the book, on the table next to the east door on the right side. I picked the book up, scanned the index for wraiths, turned to section 12.b, and read the passage aloud:
CONFRONTING THE WRAITH 12.b.
THE REFLECTED IMAGE
Confrontation is never an ideal course of action. In the event that confrontation is unavoidable:
Remember that the Wraith loathes our physical reality, and perceives it through the minds of its intended victims.
Highly reflective surfaces, such as mirrors, appear to be escape routes to the Wraith when it is agitated.
After passing through the mirror, the Wraith will always attempt to re-engage its victim through another mirror.
“Well, duh, on confrontation not being an ideal course of action,” I said as I finished reading.
“So we’ll need a mirror, for sure.” Gypcie had moved forward on the plan in her head.
“Sounds like it, but I have a few more questions. Just who or what is this wraith? Why is it appearing here now?”
I remembered the section about wraiths in Summoning Theory clearly because it upset me. The word ‘wraith’ was Scots’ Gaelic but was used commonly during the Victorian era to define a particularly nasty variety of specter or ghost. Wraiths were basically pissed off dead people who couldn’t rest because of unfinished business and as a result were deeply vengeful to the person or persons who had done them wrong. Since we had a school full of specters roaming the halls, after that section I could no longer view them as harmless curiosities.
“The ‘now’ part is probably simple,” Gypcie said. “We know it is after Headmaster Montag, but he never leaves the campus. Since…well, the wards are failing now and the wraith can finally get in.”
We both shuddered at that thought.
“So it’s all the more important we figure out who it is, I think.”
“No, no. Wraiths can also be sent by another as vengeance for wrongdoing. I’m not sure the specific identity of the wraith is critical.” Gypcie said. “Montag said something about the Peacock King…I think that’s our clue.”
“Well, look at you, Nancy Drew.” I rhymed in response.
Gypcie scowled at me in return, but I couldn’t help myself. The tension of the past few hours was starting to get to me.
I leaned over to look at the south entrance and jumped. “Look, Gypcie,” I said with alarm, dropping the book back on the table.
Standing just outside the threshold and the ward on the south entrance to the library was the Hexbound, glowering at us. Or at least it felt like it was glowering. It was hard to tell for sure in the mess Gypcie had made of its face. Next to it were a half dozen familiars, including the plotter with the bullet hole in its stomach and missing arm. All of them were just standing and staring in at us intently. None moved toward us or the glowing blue ward that would incinerate them.
“What is going on? Why aren’t they trying to get in?” Gypcie whispered.
“This is not a good development,” I responded. “Are they learning? Have they figured out about the wards?”
I looked in a panic at the other two entrances on the west and north sides, which were thankfully clear for the moment. “We’ve got to run the Anima Ward Generator to reinforce the rest of the wards in the library. There are too many of them for us to fight.”
“But won’t it attract others?”
“I think we have to take that chance. If the wards continue to decay, we’ll end up with all of them in here.”
“We don’t have enough anima charges to make a shard for the generator. I need at least three more for the W.A.N.D.”
“You keep watch here,” I said, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
I moved back slowly from where I was standing at the table, and headed to the north entrance directly across the library, and noted that as expected, the ward there also needed a charge. From the threshold of the steel doors, I could see a bunch of regular looking—if such a thing could be said—familiars lingering outside of the Magical Theory classroom.
Inching around the bookcases toward the west side, I made my way to the west entrance. I peered around the corner quickly, dragging myself back into the room as I spotted a phantasmal faculty magus floating up the hall away from us. I kicked away the door stops from the heavy steel doors and closed both on the west side carefully, and locked them. The doors wouldn’t keep a specter out, but they would keep the familiars at bay. Thankfully, specters tended to ignore humans as they wandered the halls unless you caught their attention, which I had no intention of doing.
That left just the north and south entrances to be secured, but I didn’t dare shut them completely, leaving us blind to what the familiars were up to and effectively cutting off our own escape routes. Plus, I wasn’t going any closer to that Hexbound in the south entrance than I had to.
I moved back to my position on the north side where I could see the small gaggle of familiars outside of Magical Theory. The four of them didn’t look like they’d drunk the Hexbound’s Kool-Aid—yet. This was our chance to get more charges if we could dispatch them without a bunch of ruckus.
Unfortunately, chaos magic mainly required close range. Oh, I could pull them with evulsion, but without a ward to destroy them with, it didn’t seem like a wise plan to have all four of them suddenly in my face.
But blood magic…
I sighed. I hated using my secondary magic skills. I had inherited a talent for blood magic from my mother. She was a level 50 blood mage in the Templars and among the most skilled. I hated it. Blood magic was messy and gross and had far too intimate a feel for my taste.
Oh, it had range—excellent range, as a matter of fact. I could torment one easily with my blood magic from here or cast a dread sigil that would hit all of them at once. But there were two problems with that plan.
First, as soon as I hit one, we’d have that whole group charging for the door and possibly more than that, since I couldn’t see into the Magical Theory classroom from this vantage point. I doubted I could kill them all with one sigil. Casting a second one would take some time. Also, who knew what the group of familiars on the south side would do in reaction. Would they even notice? Would they run around the outside and attack?
The second problem was that to cast a dread sigil, I was going to have to cut myself and bleed.
“How’s it going over there,” Gypcie asked in a stage whisper.
“I see the solution,” I said. “I just don’t like it.”
Staying where I was so I could keep an eye on the small group of familiars, I explained my thought process to Gypcie, as well as my reluctance.
“So, you could probably
kill them with a couple of sigils, but to do that you’d have to shed some blood.”
“You say that like it’s no big deal,” I said, defensively.
“No. I actually understand completely. I am totally freaked out about using my elemental magic as well.”
“You are?” This came as a surprise to me. After all, she was pretty handy with a fireball.
“My Gran Rose was an elemental magician, but self-taught,” Gypcie explained. “So she never fully learned how to control it completely. When she was a teenager, she permanently injured her hands fighting off a clan of badgers she stumbled upon while walking across a field. She overloaded them with electrical shocks to escape. I grew up looking at her broken and bent fingers, as well as the scorch scars on her palms. It…it affected me. I am afraid I’ll lose control and hurt myself or someone I care about.”
“But your fireballs are perfect,” I responded.
“Yup. I’m good with the little elemental spells,” she chuckled. “It’s the big ones I’m afraid of.”
“You can learn to do the big ones too,” I encouraged her. “If anyone has the talent, it’s you. You just need to dig in and trust you can do it.”
Gypcie raised her eyebrow at that and gave me a look filled with irony.
“Oh,” I said. “Touché.”
Left with no excuse not to give blood magic a shot, I consulted my plain, gold-covered Thaumaturgist Manual that I kept close at hand—it was strapped to my back next to my beat-up bronze Chaos Focus—to make sure I had all the details of creating the sigil fresh in my mind. I reached into my pants pocket for the small, sharp, black-handled athame blessed for ritual blood-letting. Despite the blade being protected by the custom-fitted leather sheath, it was probably none-too-clean.
That’s just great, I thought to myself, sourly. It’ll be a fitting end if I die of blood poisoning after all this.
“Oh just get on with it, you big baby,” Gypcie said. “The clock is ticking on these wards.”
She was right. Again.
To Sir, with Love: An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World (Unofficial Legends of The Secret World Book 1) Page 4
