Wizard's Nocturne: The Sixth Jonathan Shade Novel

by Gary Jonas

  “Wait,” Shade said. “What?”

  “There cannot be two Jonathan Shades, but now the time from which you came is not the same for either of you.”

  “You have plenty of time to fix that,” I said.

  “There is no longer any reason to fix it. We have a major reset coming when the Third Reich begins its conquest. We will sort out most of the problems you caused with the Vanguard by the end of that war.”

  I held the crook of Osiris, and the flail still sat near the obelisk. I whipped the crook around, but the man with the spear caught it in his hand and yanked it away from me with ease. “You cannot fight us,” he said patiently.

  I felt their energy, and it was far stronger than Winslow's. There was no way we could fight them.

  “We can try,” Shade said, assuming a fighting stance.

  The man with the spear walked up to Shade, and when Shade took a swing, the man gently pushed him to the ground. Shade tried to resist, but his legs just folded beneath him and he dropped to his knees.

  “You've both done well, but your reason for existing has ended. We will grant you painless passage.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked. “I'm old and tired, and I've been through hell tonight.”

  “Would you like us to take your spirit now?” the man with the flail asked.

  “I want to go last,” I said.

  “You are the one who prevented Henry Winslow from completing his ritual, therefore we shall allow that.”

  “Thanks,” I said and moved over to sit down with my back against the obelisk. The wet stone was cold against my back.

  “Hey, guys, I'm not ready to die,” Shade said.

  “Champions always die,” the man with the spear said.

  “May I ask a few questions before you take our spirits away?” I asked.

  “We have time and you have no power. We shall grant you the answers you seek.”

  “Thank you. First question. What happens to Kelly, Esther, and Rayna?”

  “We will allow them to live out their days here, provided they do nothing to upset the balance we currently have.”

  “Can you tell them so they'll know not to mess with things? I really don't want any of them to die before they've lived their lives.”

  “Admirable,” the man with the flail said. “We shall consider it.”

  “That means 'no,'“ I said.

  “You are more perceptive than I realized.”

  “What about our future self?” I asked.

  “You have corrected the Winslow problem; therefore, we will no longer have a need to send you to the past. You will be born. You will live your life. You will die at the hands of a gunman. Kelly Chan will live out her days teaching women to defend themselves. Naomi Miller will die at the hands of a Sekutar warrior.”

  “I thought her spirit was destroyed.”

  “It was. She will have a different spirit, but it won't change her future. Rayna Noble will be killed by the Marshall Clan, as you won't be alive to protect her. Time will move on, and all will be corrected.”

  “So you're saying I lived longer than I was supposed to,” Shade said.

  The man with the crook nodded. “And your older counterpart lived much longer. We do hope you enjoyed your additional years.”

  “What about Sharon?” I asked.

  “She will always be Charon because she won't be doing our bidding by offering you a new life,” he said.

  “You've thought of everything.”

  “We see most things. Henry Winslow caught us off guard.”

  I rubbed my chest.

  “You all right?” Shade asked.

  “Spasms,” I said. “Bit of pressure. I'll be fine. I just need to hear the rest of this.”

  “There is nothing more to hear,” the man with the spear said.

  “What about the people the Vanguard possessed?” Shade asked.

  “We will sort that out. We'll make substitutions if necessary, but we won't change how things played. The scarring in this area will be easy enough to handle. We have the result we wanted.”

  “Not the result I wanted,” Shade said.

  “Regardless, we thank you for your service. Do you have any final words?”

  “Give me a second,” Shade said. “I'm thinking.”

  “Delaying gains you nothing.”

  Shade smiled. “I'm ready with my final four words.” He pointed at the three Men of Anubis. “You guys are dicks.”

  They looked at one another and shook their heads. The man with the crook stepped forward. The crook shimmered and he drove it into Shade's skull. He hooked Shade's spirit and pulled it out of his body. The crook did no physical damage, and I realized it must not have been a magical device, or it wouldn't have hooked his spirit.

  I considered the ghostly image of my younger self. Then I considered myself. We might be two separate spirits, but we might be one, and we were simply divided. I had no way of knowing, and it seemed paradoxical to even consider how it might work because it might break my brain.

  On one hand, I was old, and I was ready to die.

  “Your turn,” the man with the crook said and approached me.

  On the other hand, there was a perfectly good young body dropping to the grass in front of me. That body was physically stronger than the one I had, and I was finished with this one anyway. I just hoped there weren't any demons waiting for me in the ether. Then again, this was the past. They wouldn't know about me for another eighty years or so. Come to think of it, they would never know about me at all.

  I clutched at my heart and winced in feigned agony. The man with the crook hesitated.

  “Heart attack,” I said, my voice forced as I clenched my eyes closed and pretended I was Daniel Day-Lewis. I remembered my training. It had been decades, but some things are truly like riding a bicycle. Remote viewing and astral projection are among them. I pushed myself from my body, going down in spirit beneath the ground.

  The man with the crook took no chances and drove the crook into my old skull. He pushed far, and I felt a strange tingle when the spirit of my younger self bumped into the spirit of my older self. Then I felt the silver cord attaching me to my body sever, and I knew I was loose.

  The younger version of me tried to grab hold, but I was the real me, not him. I slapped him away. Now that I was free, I shot beneath the ground and over to the younger body. I eased up a bit to touch the body enough to begin to make a connection, attaching the silver cord, but not enough to make the body twitch. They needed to think we were both dead.

  The body of the young Jonathan Shade had its eyes open. I pushed my head inside and allowed the connection to slowly take hold just enough so I could see through his eyes but not enough to stop those eyes from being glassy with death. It was like looking through a View-Master like I'd had as a child.

  “The crook did not gain weight,” the man who held it said.

  “His heart stopped beating,” the man with the spear said.

  “I should still have felt the additional spirit.”

  “It's one spirit divided,” the man with the flail said.

  “Perhaps, but I do not trust him. Check both bodies.”

  I pulled out of Shade's body, yanking the silver cord free, and dropped into the earth.

  And I waited.

  I imagined them physically checking the bodies by checking pulses, but it occurred to me that they would probably just use their tools, the crook, the flail, the spear.

  I hoped they didn't stab my younger body. I knew the hands were injured, but I didn't want to pop up only to find a hole in the heart so I'd be a ghost. That would suck balls.

  Time ticked by. I didn't want to come up too soon. If they suspected I'd managed to escape them, they would wait for me. By the same token, I didn't want my younger body to have brain damage. I eased my way up into the body and reattached the silver cord. I let my spirit make the connection. I could see through my young eyes again.

  Bloody water
splashed, and the blurry image of my older body sprawled in front of the obelisk slowly swam into focus. The Men of Anubis were nowhere to be seen.

  I allowed the connections to finish. My thinking aligned with my new brain. My senses pushed outward, and I felt pain in my hands. The moment of truth approached. I needed to breathe, and my heart needed to beat. I pushed up and out of the body then let myself crash back into it. The shock of entry kick-started my heart like a power chord played on an electric guitar.

  I sat up and gulped a deep breath.

  Nobody stabbed me.

  Nobody strangled me.

  Nobody took my spirit.

  I was alive.

  And I was young again.

  But my hands hurt like a son of a bitch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There weren't any spirits pinned to the buildings when I reached Fifth Avenue. I rubbed my hands and determined my bones weren't broken. The pain faded a bit as I retraced my steps along the sidewalk beside the museum. I didn't want to risk showing myself on Fifth Avenue in case the Men of Anubis were there, so I headed the opposite direction. The rain kept pouring down, but I wasn't cold. I felt a strength I hadn't experienced in many years. My breath came easier, and aside from my hands, nothing hurt. My eyesight was clear.

  Being young rocked.

  At the end of the next block, the rain stopped, and the temperature plummeted to the low twenties. I glanced back the way I’d come, and the street was dry. There was no sign it had rained aside from the fact that I was soaking wet. Magic. You gotta love it.

  I caught a cab back to my apartment. The cabbie said nothing about my being wet. New York. You gotta love it.

  Kelly stood outside the front door, waiting. When she saw me, she smiled. “Jonathan!” she said.

  “Kelly,” I said.

  “Did the older guy make it?” she asked.

  This was the moment of truth. I could lie and have her think I was her Jonathan, but we didn't have the shared experiences. As such, she would figure out I was lying before too long. Of course, telling the truth was risky as well, but I didn't feel I had a choice.

  “I am the older guy,” I said. “Your Jonathan didn't make it.”

  She blinked. “But--”

  “Long story short, I took his body after he died. You might say I've had some experience in that area in the past--well, the future . . . in a time that no longer exists.”

  She hesitated. “Did he suffer?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “And Naomi?”

  Again, I shook my head. “I was the only survivor.” I gave her the play-by-play and explained about the Men of Anubis. I told her the truth as best I could.

  When I finished, she drew a deep breath. “So what happens now?”

  “First, we get Esther home. I want her to be able to live out her life, and I can't be part of it.”

  “Understood.”

  “Which leaves us with you and Rayna. The way I see it, we should stick together. We wait and hope that Sharon shows up in 1929 to take us home.”

  “So you and Rayna just show up in 2014, alive months, or in your case years, after you died.”

  I nodded. “We'll set up a business to make some investments, and we'll close that business when we get back to our time.”

  “So we'll all be rich.”

  “Being rich beats the shit out of being poor.”

  “I'm not complaining,” she said.

  “When we get back to 2014, we can all go our separate ways, but that's not what I want to see happen.”

  “I'm listening.”

  “I would hope we could still be partners. That we can work together to help people.”

  “We won't need the money,” Kelly said.

  “Which means we can turn down cases that don't interest us.”

  “I'm curious about one thing. There will be another Kelly Chan in 2014.”

  “Two Kelly Chans is better than none,” I said. “I like the idea of a backup Kelly.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Do you see me laughing?” I asked. “I've seen you die twice, and I don't want to lose you again.”

  “You went through fifty years without me,” she said.

  “And I missed you every single day.”

  “You are not the Jonathan I knew.”

  “Same model,” I said, “higher mileage.”

  “Same model but more emotional,” she said.

  “That too.”

  She closed her eyes. “I don't need to decide this right now. We have nearly two and a half years before Sharon is due.”

  “And she might not even show up,” I said.

  “And if that's the case?”

  “I'll hang out my shingle and take cases here.”

  “Final question,” she said. “What do we do about the Men of Anubis?”

  I liked that she said “we.” That was definitely a step in the right direction. “We do nothing. They're too far out of our league, and they won't be looking for us.”

  “But you think Sharon will still show up?”

  “As an artifact of time, she might. The Men of Anubis might not bother with that because she'd have no one to take anywhere, and they have a lot to repair over the next few years.”

  “You don't think we could stop the collapse of the stock exchange, maybe change the future and live things out from here?”

  “Maybe I'm an asshole, but I just want to go home.”

  She considered that. Finally she nodded. “Me too.”

  “I'm ready to see Rayna and Esther now,” I said.

  She opened the door and let me in.

  October 29, 1929

  My heart felt full and strong when I woke up that morning. Kelly, Rayna, and I had just returned from the Mohonk Mountain House the day before. We'd attended the wedding of Esther Carmichael and a young businessman named James Dalton at the beautiful Victorian castle in the Hudson Valley. The views from the cliffs over Lake Mohonk were truly amazing, and while I loved all the trees, it was nice to get back to the city.

  The stock market was going to crash that day, but that was not the important event of the day in my view.

  The Men of Anubis were so busy making substitutions to make sure the plans they'd so carefully laid out would come to fruition that they'd either forgotten or didn't care about one little artifact lost in time.

  As I sat down to breakfast with Kelly and Rayna, the air in the kitchen shimmered and opened. Sharon stepped through and looked a bit worried. The rift nearly closed behind her. She wore her typical librarian skirt and blouse with her hair tied back to give her an intense look.

  “I'm sorry I'm so late,” she said. “The time around Henry Winslow's murder was being watched, and we couldn't get through. We--” She looked at me and Kelly and Rayna. “Where's Naomi?”

  “She didn't survive,” I said.

  “Who's this?” Sharon asked pointing at Rayna.

  “Rayna Noble,” Rayna said. “Nice to meet you.”

  Rayna had met a different Sharon, so I'd coached her to pretend she'd never met any version.

  “Three passengers for Denver in 2014,” I said.

  “I can't take her,” Sharon said.

  “She's from a dimension beyond the Dragon Gate,” I said. “She doesn't belong here, and she was instrumental in helping us with Winslow.”

  “So the mission was a success?”

  “Henry Winslow is dead,” I said. “Mission accomplished.” I kept my emotions in check because she didn't need to know that I felt Henry's death meant I'd failed him.

  “We didn't get his spirit in the Underworld.”

  “His spirit was . . . vanquished.”

  “There's been odd maneuvering around the time of Winslow's death. We--”

  “Can we talk about this when we get home?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Sharon turned, reached down, and pulled the rift open again. The air shimmered at the edges of the gap, and inside there was only darknes
s. “Follow me,” she said and stepped through.

  Before she passed all the way through, I grabbed a fistful of her shirt and followed her.

  As I'd instructed them to do, Kelly grabbed my shoulder, and Rayna grabbed Kelly's upper arm. I felt the steam from Rayna's breath waft past, and I knew she was ready.

  As I'd suspected, we did not step through to 2014.

  We stepped into a void. The ground dropped out from under us, and winds swirled and pulled in different directions, so I grabbed a fistful of Sharon's hair in case her shirt tore. Kelly gripped my shoulder with one hand and reached back to keep hold of Rayna. The currents shook us about, but we held tight, and things settled down. Sharon stood on a piece of rock that led into the distance like a bridge to nowhere. I pulled myself up and brought Kelly and Rayna with me.

  On the positive side, once we were on that outcropping, we could breathe, so there was oxygen everywhere or at least in the area surrounding Sharon.

  “You'll need to let go so I can open the other end of the rift,” Sharon said.

  “Not a chance. Where is he?” I asked.

  Sharon tried to twist from my grip, but I held tight and pulled hard on her hair to tilt her head back.

  “Who?” she asked, playing innocent. I couldn't hurt her as she was Charon, but she'd have one hell of a fight on her hands if she tried to pull away.

  “Chronos,” I said. “You don't have enough power to open a rift between the years.”

  “You didn't know that before,” Sharon said. “How could you know that now?”

  I grinned because she had no clue I wasn't the Jonathan she'd sent back to 1926. Kelly hadn't known about Chronos, so I knew this was designed to be a dead end. What's the easiest way to get rid of someone after you use them and abuse them? If you're Chronos, you cast them into a timeless void.

  “Let's just say I've had some time to think about things. Call him.”

  She tried again to pull away, but I refused to let go.

  “Call him,” I said. “You don't think he sees you as expendable, do you?”

  “Chronos!” she shouted. “Get your ass in here!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Chronos!”

  Still nothing.

  “You know what they say about the third time,” I said.

  “Chronos!”

  A large silver pocket watch engraved with ornate images of stars and planets fizzled into view before us, and a moment later, Chronos popped into view. He looked as I remembered. A slender bald man in a business suit.