The Nyte Patrol

by Alex P. Berg

  The hope didn’t last for more than an instant. The roar of bikes sounded behind me, and in the rear-view I spotted a group of motorcycles round the corner. “Larry? Some help?”

  “You know, I would’ve come up with a plan if you’d given me a moment,” said Larry. “If you’re going to work for us on a permanent basis, you’re going to have to practice your self-control.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “Do not attempt to lecture me right now. This is your fault! I showed up at your doorstep, from your ad. It’s your responsibility to get me out of this safely. YOU’RE the leader here. I’m an honors student, for God’s sake!”

  “Technically, that wasn’t my ad,” said Larry. “Dawn posted it. And as for me being the leader—”

  “DO SOMETHING!”

  “Fine. No need to yell. Tank?”

  “On it.” The big guy turned and rummaged in the back. When he pulled around, he held the SIG Sauer tactical patrol rifle in one hand and Dawn’s swords in the other. Dawn took the blades and unsheathed the wakizashi, dropping the larger katana at her feet. What she planned on doing with the swords from the confines of my truck, I had no idea.

  I swerved through traffic and blasted through another red light. I still wasn’t sure what street I was on, but I was definitely heading toward downtown. I could see an I-35 overpass ahead and the Frost Bank tower in the distance.

  Fear lanced through me at the sight of the weapons. What exactly had I gotten myself into? “Guys, we need to lose the bikers, not kill them!”

  “That’s still to be determined,” said Larry. “I mean, how do you propose we get away from them in a vehicle with a top speed of sixty-five miles an hour?”

  “You’re the magician. Think of something!”

  “Really? I told you I’m not good with machinery. I mean, this baby’s old enough that it doesn’t have a ton of electrical components, but still.”

  “I don’t mean supercharge the truck. I mean lose them. With magic!”

  “Supercharge the truck.” Larry rubbed his chin. “Now, that’s not a bad idea. I mean, if I can compress the air coming into the combustion chamber…”

  “What? No. I said don’t supercharge the truck.”

  “No, this could totally work,” said Larry. “If I had to touch the thing, all bets would be off, but if I simply manipulate the air? Hold on. I’m not sure how much of a kick this will give us.”

  “Kick? What do you mean—”

  The engine roared as if it had been replaced with that of a Shelby Mustang, and it bucked like one of those muscle cars from the Fast and Furious franchise. A sudden burst of acceleration smashed me into my seat, and the speedometer jumped to eighty-five in the blink of an eye—which might’ve helped it I hadn’t been on a side street approaching a busy intersection under I-35.

  I laid on the horn and barely managed to swerve around a line of cars turning onto the expressway. A car pulled out ahead of me in slow motion. I jammed on the brakes, but whatever Larry had done to the engine kept right on going. My life flashed before my eyes. I screamed. Melondrious sneezed, and we flew.

  I mean—I think we did. The rumble and vibration of the road left the steering wheel. The car in front of me disappeared, and the underbelly of the overpass grew large in my field of view. Then the truck shook and rattled, the wheel vibrated again, and we were back on the ground.

  Larry turned in his chair. “Melondrious! You sly dog. And here you had me thinking all you had on you was cocaine!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the fairy, who still hadn’t managed to buckle himself in. “I’d rather not die is all.”

  My mind whirled, trying to understand what was going on, but I didn’t have time to think traveling ninety miles an hour down…? Oh, god. I saw the sign. East 6th Street? Home to half the bars and ninety percent of the drunks in Austin? We were doomed.

  That’s when I noticed the bikers were still behind us. The traffic at the intersection hadn’t slowed them, and they didn’t seem intimidated by our newfound speed either.

  “Screw it,” said Tank. “I’ve got this.”

  A light blinked on the dash and I felt the rush of air as Tank popped the side door and leaned out, wrapping his leg over the back seat for purchase. His tactical rifle snickered and cracked, the machine gun-like cacophony only slightly muted by the oncoming rush of air.

  I’d never been particularly religious. I wasn’t sure if I even believed in God, at least not the way most people did, but I was raised Catholic, and my parents had impressed upon me that, no matter how dire the situation might be, someone was always listening. So with gunfire in my ears, my Suburban screaming along at nearly a hundred miles an hour, bikers fast approaching from behind, and people yelling, pointing, and running on the sidewalks, I said screw it and gave it a shot.

  “Lord Jesus,” I said under my breath. “I come before you, just as I am. I am sorry for my sins. I repent of them. Please forgive me. In your name, I renounce Satan, the evil spirits, and all their works. I—”

  Larry snorted. “Really? Prayer? That’s a little excessive. We’re going to be fine. Aren’t we, Melondrious?”

  A biker approached on the left side of the ‘burban. Dawn kicked open the door and slashed at the guy with her sword.

  My pious pleas evaporated in a mist, replaced instead with hot anger. “Fine? How are we going to be fine, Larry? Even if by an act of God we don’t die, we’re all going to prison for the rest of our lives! How do you not see that?”

  The machine gun continued its ear-splitting battle cry.

  Larry muttered something under his breath about needing to put more qualifiers on the spell. “Sorry, Lexie. I keep forgetting you’re not familiar with this sort of thing. But you have to remember, I’m a wizard. Remember when you asked me how nobody was giving Dawn crap about her swords at the library? Part of it is because she’s a badass and nobody in their right mind would mess with her—”

  “Damn right,” she yelled from the open door.

  “—but the other part is that to a certain degree I can make people ignore the present and forget the past, just as I said I could. You didn’t want to believe me. Besides, if things get out of hand, I can always ask Frank Connors to soothe things over with the police.”

  Dawn yelled and hopped back into her seat. The Suburban rocked and the wheel fought me. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a blur. Something cracked. The blur coalesced into a leather clad arm and the butt of a pistol as shards of safety glass flew through the cabin.

  “Son of a bitch!” Dawn lunged, wakizashi in hand, through the hole where the window had been and slashed at the biker who’d dared ram us. He didn’t scream, but his bike did. I heard a loud pop. The bike swerved and veered onto the sidewalk before crashing through the front of the Blind Pig Pub.

  “Jesus Christ!” I said.

  “It’s fine,” said Larry. “I’ll hand wave it away with magic.”

  An enormous fireball shot out of the hole created by the out-of-control bike, engulfing the front of the pub in flames.

  Larry frowned. “On second thought, I might need help to quash this particular problem. Speaking of which… Tank. Dawn. Enough with the counterattack. Lexie. Take a right into that parking garage!”

  “At a hundred miles an hour? Are you insane?”

  “Right. Sorry.” Larry snapped his fingers. The engine whined, clunked, and practically died, slamming me forward against my seat belt. At least Melondrious had learned his lesson. The lap restraint punched him in the gut as I yanked on the wheel, sending us careening into the concrete parking structure. Dawn and Tank barely managed to close the doors without flying off during the turn.

  “Why am I doing this?” I asked.

  “Go up, trust me,” said Larry. “I have a plan this time.”

  I suspected he didn’t, but rather than voice my opposition, I sent another silent prayer to the Lord above. The bikers turned in after us as I wheeled the Suburban toward the thi
rd floor arrow.

  “Alright, Melondrious,” said Larry. “It’s your time to shine.”

  “My time?” said the fairy. “What in blazes are you blathering about?”

  “Come on. Don’t be coy. You said you’d rather be handed to Connors than taken by the bikers. Now’s your time to make it happen.”

  “Perhaps all this erratic driving has addled your senses,” said Melondrious. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’re the spell-caster.”

  The tires screeched as I swung onto the fourth floor.

  Larry cast a wary glance out the back window. “We don’t have a lot of time to screw around, Melondrious. Cut the crap and bust out the high-grade nose candy.”

  I nearly burst a gasket. “Your master plan is to get high?”

  “For the last time,” said Melondrious. “I told you, I’ve had a supply issue and—”

  “I’m not playing around, pipsqueak,” said Larry. “The dust. We’re out of time.”

  I pulled up a ramp and turned the corner onto the roof. My heart dropped as I let off the gas. “Christ. You’re right.”

  “What are you doing?” said Larry. “Faster!”

  A sense of calm fell over me. I wasn’t really that scared anymore. I’d accepted my fate. “There’s nowhere to go, Larry. Game over. We’re dead.”

  “Bullshit.” Larry flicked his fingers. Something kicked my foot off the brake. The truck lurched and started to accelerate.

  “What the…?” I tried to stomp the brake but something invisible stopped me, a compressed block of nothingness. The same thing protecting the brake seemed to be pressed against the accelerator. “Larry?”

  Larry held out his hand. “The dust, Melondrious.”

  “I swear to you, I don’t have any—”

  The concrete edge of the parking structure rushed toward us. “LARRY!”

  “The dust, man! The dust!”

  “Fine!” The fairy’s hand flew inside his jacket. The concrete shot toward the Suburban’s front wheels as he whipped his hand out. A fine white powder boiled through the air, coating the dash, the seats, our clothes, my face and hands. I sneezed and felt a bit woozy, but we never crashed against the edge of the parking structure.

  We flew.

  11

  Until that moment, some part of me had resolutely held out in disbelief. Even after having witnessed Adric pull a first generation iMac from the pages of a magazine, a portion of my mind had reasoned that maybe, just maybe, it was an elaborate act, and I’d been tricked into seeing what someone wanted me to see. But as I gazed out the window of my flying Suburban at downtown Austin, I was a believer. Magic was real—either that or the special fairy cocaine I’d just snorted was the best shit ever.

  “You sneaky sack of crap,” said Dawn. “You’ve been holding out on us this whole time.”

  Melondrious crossed his arms and scowled. “To be fair, I did not deceive you. I am in very short supply. Fairy dust is extremely hard to produce in large quantities, and now I’m almost completely depleted.”

  “Considering you’re going to jail, I don’t think your supply matters much,” said Larry. “You could’ve saved us all the trouble and done that sooner.”

  Melondrious snorted.

  I tested the wheel, then the accelerator. Amazingly enough, the controls still worked even though the tires didn’t have anything to push off of. “So, uh… where to?”

  “South,” said Larry. “Across the Colorado River to Auditorium Shores.”

  “Okay. Shouldn’t be too hard,” I said. “Though I don’t know how to put her down.”

  “I’ll handle it,” said Larry. “But don’t dawdle. Fairy dust isn’t the most long lasting of drugs.”

  Melondrious’s frown softened, and he sniffed a little. “That’s what he said…”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Dawn.

  I glanced at my dash, hoping the magic had also added an altimeter. No dice. “Why are we going to the river shore? I thought we needed to dump the fairy, not hit an open air concert.”

  “Trust me, I’m as eager to do that as you are,” said Larry. “But between the assault rifle fire, the flying Suburban, and the fiery explosion in that bar, we’ll need to do some cleanup first.”

  “And you know a good mop vendor who frequents the park?”

  “Stick to driving the flying car,” said Larry. “It’s what you’re good at.”

  I skirted the edge of the Austonian condo complex, wondering if anyone had spotted us through their thirtieth story window, and headed toward the river. Without traffic or having to worry about bridges, we’d be at Auditorium Shores in no time. Although I could do without the freaky stuff and the constant threat of death, this kind of magic I could get used to.

  “You know, speaking of my truck,” I said. “I’m going to need a good body shop guy who knows how to keep his mouth shut. I’ve got a side mirror missing, scratches and dents along the side, the window’s busted, the interior needs vacuuming, and I haven’t even looked at the front bumper yet. I can’t imagine it’s going to come cheap.”

  “Don’t forget the bullet holes in the back,” said Tank.

  “Bullet holes?”

  “The bikers were good shots. Plus I missed a few times.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Larry. “A little bit of duct tape, everything will be fine.”

  “Yeah, the duct tape will throw the cops off our scent for sure.”

  “I’m kidding. We’ll take care of everything, cops and car included.” Larry waved toward the oncoming shore. “Put her down on the dirt path next to the trees.”

  I aimed the flying boat in the right direction and Larry took care of the rest. We landed on the reddish dirt light as a feather. I instinctively pulled the keys out of the ignition, though the engine wasn’t running any more. Hopefully it would once the magic wore off.

  “Alright,” I said. “We’re here. Now what?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Larry. “Now we amplify.”

  Everyone filed out of the ’burban, leaving me dumbfounded at the wheel. “Right. Amplify. Like that makes any sense…”

  I hopped out and slammed the door behind me. The shoreside path wasn’t lit at night, but the moon was out, almost full, and the night was clear, so there was plenty of light to see by. The front bumper of my truck looked even worse than I’d expected, practically folded in half with the side hanging on by a thread. I wouldn’t need a body shop. I’d need a miracle worker.

  Larry and the rest of the gang—including Melondrious, who seemed resigned to his fate—walked forward and stopped in front of a bronze monument near the water’s edge. “And this,” said Larry, “is where we amplify.”

  We stood in front of the statue of blues rock legend and guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughn. “I don’t get it. Are you making a terrible electric guitar joke?”

  “No,” said Larry. “This is where we amplify my mind control magic to make everyone forget about the craziness on Sixth Street. We’ll also patch up your ride while we’re at it.”

  “And we’ll do that next to the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Larry. “He’s buried here after all. That makes the power well crazy strong.”

  I looked at the rest of the group. “Okay, I literally have no idea what he just said. And more importantly, Stevie Ray Vaughn isn’t buried here. He died in a tragic helicopter crash. His remains are in a cemetery in Dallas, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Melondrious gave me a sideways look. “Come, young lady, you don’t believe any of that tripe, do you? That was the cover story the Magician’s Guild put out to cover for his untimely death at the hands of the demon Astralgoroth.”

  “Magician’s guild? Demon?”

  Larry put a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry. Again, this is my fault. We’re used to dealing with folks who are steeped in magical subculture like the rest of us, and when you showed up at the door, well… it sort of threw a wrench in everything. You see, Lexie, Stevie R
ay Vaughn wasn’t just a musician. He was the strongest wizard of our era. Playing the guitar was more of a hobby for him. His true talents lay in mind-control magic and in defense against the dark arts.”

  My first reaction was to reject the notion as complete balderdash, but as I thought about it, I found myself nodding. “You know, that actually makes sense. I always thought his level of talent was superhuman.”

  “Exactly,” said Larry. “The sad part is he barely had to try. He simply funneled magical energies into his fingertips and the rest is history. For the record, Yngwie Malmsteen is a wizard, too.”

  “What about Steve Vai?”

  “No, he’s just crazy talented,” said Larry. “Anyway, the point is, as the final resting place of SRV, this spot possesses great power, specifically in the areas of magic he was most proficient in. Trust me, if I ever had to fight a demon, I’d choose to do so right here, but more pertinent to our current interests is this spot’s power with respect to mind magic. I’m not strong enough to make half of downtown Austin forget our impromptu Hollywood action chase, but with a little boost and the right additive, I think we’ll be fine. Melondrious?”

  The fairy sighed. “Fine. It’s not as if I have a use for it.” He reached into his jacket and produced a plastic baggie. “This is the last of it, mind you. I swear, I don’t have any more.”

  Larry hefted it. “It’ll do. Now stand back. I don’t want anyone getting any second degree contact burns.”

  I turned to Dawn. “Is he serious?”

  She took me by the arm and we took several steps back. “Probably. Better safe than sorry when it comes to magic.”

  Larry opened the baggie, dumped the fairy dust into his palm, closed his fist, and whispered something into the clenched fingers. His arm whipped forward, and he flung the dust at the base of the bronze statue. For a moment, nothing happened, but then a strange crackle filled the air. Tendrils of cyan light appeared at the statue’s feet, swirling in the night air. They whirled faster and expanded before shooting off in all directions. They flew past me, pushing me back and fluttering my hair. On the wind, I heard a whisper. Not a voice, but a melody. “Texas Flood,” I think.