Even though Alex realized it was all merely a game.
Just like the whole Abyss.
Damn. Stopping by the club always seemed to bring out the philosopher in him.
“But you’re…”
“Pour me the usual, Valerie.”
The girl flashed a calm, white-toothed smile. A smile Alex was sure to like. Alex and no one but him.
An exclusive sort of game.
“Russian tea?”
“Yep.”
“And for your companion?”
“Orange soda, please,” Gribovsky said, rebuffing Alex’s suspicious glance with: “I’m at work. And what the hell is Russian tea?”
Alex was about to answer when another voice (a velvet baritone hiding a secret poisoned knife beneath unconditional hospitality) interrupted to explain.
“Two ounces of whiskey. One ice cube. Two teaspoons of lemon juice. One lime wedge. Mix until half the ice melts. The favorite drink of Robin and his little tail, one known as Alexander Dumsky.”
Sighing to himself, Alex turned to the speaker.
“Hey there, Farrokh.”
“Hi, Doom. Didn’t I tell you I’d kill you the next time we met?”
Chapter 33
Farrokh, the head of the Dark Creatures’ secret organization called the Abyss Club, looked very… ordinary. A classic black suit, straight pants, a gray pocket square peeking out of his chest pocket. His white shirt was washed so clean it shone like starlight in the stage lights.
A wide tie, its color exactly matching that of the pocket square, hung down to the bottom of his stomach.
His face was entirely nondescript. Coming across him somewhere downtown, you’d probably take him for the owner of a consulting firm or maybe a small-time banker.
His well-groomed goatee was reminiscent of Tony Stark. Sharp cheekbones. A wide nose. A thin line formed by ever-compressed lips. A hairstyle worth more than a factory worker’s monthly salary.
The only thing out of step with the overall image of a typical financier was a strand of white—not gray, but actually white—hair starting right in the middle of his forehead and ending at the back of his head.
There was also Farrokh’s constant companion: Silent Blake. A white skull carved with symbols and hieroglyphs hung in the air over Farrokh’s left shoulder. The skull was always smiling, sometimes with an open mouth, but it never said a word.
It was rumored to have been extremely talkative until it annoyed some powerful wizard to the point that he cursed it with silence. That happened before the first steam engine was invented on Old Earth.
Farrokh was an ancient creature.
Perhaps the most ancient of the ones who remained in Myers City instead of moving, flying, or sailing off to another corner of Atlantis or Old Earth.
“So, Alex Doom. You come to the house from which you were banned, and on the day we all celebrate.”
What a voice. He’s had ages to practice the art of making opponents disable the defenses around their mind and soul with the very sound of his voice.
“Why? To make me keep my word and send you to the shadows and your partner to the light?”
Farrokh leaned on his long cane topped with a raven’s metal skull. Not nearly life-sized, of course.
The ancient black wizard had an unhealthy passion for canes. Every time Doom saw him, he was walking around with a new one.
“Could we sit down at a table?” Alex asked.
Their conversation may have looked like small talk, but the club around them was strained to the breaking point. Doom could feel dozens and hundreds of eyes on him belonging to all sorts of wizards and magic creatures.
One gesture from Farrokh, and he and Gribovsky would have been torn to pieces in a moment.
“Why should I sit down with a traitor?” Farrokh arched his right brow in surprise.
“Because the Shadow Court acquitted me completely,” Alex said with his regular defiant smirk, although inside he was trembling like an autumn leaf. He’d been taught never to show his fear to the abyss. Only his courage. And if you have none, then your madness. “I didn’t betray anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. What’s dead can’t be killed.”
“And that is why you’re still breathing and I rewrote the club rules so I could just ban you instead of declaring a hunt. So, we’re even. But let me ask again and for the last time: why, Alexander Dumsky, why shouldn’t I destroy your soul right now?”
There was a heavy pause. The music raged. The patrons pretended to be busy with their own business, but their eyes were drilling holes in the two visitors.
“In memory of Robin,” Alex whispered as his heart was clutched by icy claws. “And the whole Follen School.”
He felt short of breath.
Farrokh’s spirits flagged. His shoulders drooped; he grasped his cane with both hands.
“Come over to the table, Alex.” The owner of the establishment (and the whole organization) turned around and walked toward the table no one ever dared occupy. It was Farrokh’s personal table.
Doom looked at Gribovsky.
“What, pumpkin?” Gribovsky asked with his usual bravado, but with eyes that were serious and piercing.
“I was exiled, lieutenant, but I’m still a black wizard.”
“I know.”
“You and whatever wizardry power you have stink of Light. So, for the locals, you’re no better than a mere mortal.”
“And?”
“Do you know what a group of dark, ever-starving creatures does when they see mortal meat in front of them?”
Gribovsky’s face scrunched up in concentration. Then he lifted the flap of his trench coat to show the handles of his two enchanted guns.
“They’re welcome to try.”
To Alex’s consternation, Gribovsky really meant what he said. If the club’s clientele had attacked him right then, he wouldn’t have retreated. He might have perished in the lopsided battle, but he apparently wasn’t afraid of death. He preferred to take the lives (or afterlives) of those coming for his flesh.
Damn cowboy.
“They’re going to push you, Gribovsky. Metaphorically and literally. You can defend yourself however you want, but don’t kill anyone.”
“Why not, pumpkin?”
“Because,” Alex hissed, “if you do that, we’ll both be murdered on spot. Or they’ll have Joe kill us, which would be even worse. I’ll try to finish the negotiations as fast as possible. And you…you just try to stay alive.”
“Trust me, boy.” Again, Gribovsky’s eyes flashed in a way that was highly incongruent with the pumpkins he threw around so liberally. “These brutes have met their match.”
Doom started at the word “brutes.” But who was he, anyway, to try to change society’s perception of Dark Creatures in general and black wizards in particular?
Alex turned around and followed Farrokh. With every step he took, a tolling bell inside his mind awoke memories he’d been running from for over a decade.
***
The little boy with black, curly hair and funny glasses hiding his emerald eyes clutched the magic handbook disguised as a porn magazine as he watched the florist’s sand-colored dress vanish into the overgrown weeds.
“No!” screamed a girl from the shrubs. “Help…”
Then the sound of blows. Lots of blows. Wailing. Men’s shouts.
Alex had heard those sounds before at St. Frederick’s Orphanage. Like all the locals, he knew you never ever went over to see what they were about.
There, in the dark…
Scary.
So scary.
He heard their voices again inside his head.
Look, it’s Alex Doom! The dark wizard who’s afraid of darkness!
What a terrifying dark lord—ha! Let’s lock him up in the storeroom!
“No,” Alex whispered. “No. Please don’t.”
Afraid of darkness, you villain? We light heroes will overcome you. Drag him down into the cellar.
Scar
y…
“Please don’t. Please. We’re friends, aren’t we? We played together.”
Friends with a black wizard?! Do I look like an idiot?
“Please don’t.” Alex curled up into a ball beneath the tree. “Don’t go over there, Miss Elisa. Please.”
He looked over at the tall weeds, waiting for the only human who hadn’t teased, scared, or beat him over the previous few months, who had always been there for him, to come back.
The only warmth he knew.
The warmth doing battle for him with the encroaching darkness.
The darkness Alex feared so much.
He really was afraid of it.
Because he knew.
He could sense what was lurking there in the dark, waiting for him. It was a thousand times scarier than any monster under the bed or any creep from the horror movies the wards used to secretly watch at night.
“I’m scared.”
Alex really was very, very scared. He had to follow Miss Elisa. Help her. Rescue her.
If only he had been able to move.
He knew all too well what was over there in the overgrown weeds.
“What are you…”
“A human wizard! Great, more flesh to go around!”
“No!” A woman’s shriek pierced Alex’s ears.
It was Miss Elisa.
Dropping his handbook, the boy rushed into the weeds.
Chapter 34
The tall, sharp grass cut his hands and face, big drops of blood falling onto the cold ground.
Stumbling, Alex fell, smashing his nose and breaking his teeth on the gravel, but jumping up and running on.
Not her. Please, not her.
Screaming. Blows. Bright flashes of all different colors illuminating figures in the dark.
Not her. Not Miss Elisa.
Alex ran out into a small clearing.
…and saw with his own eyes what the older boys had been talking about.
Four of them. Tall and creepily beautiful, straight and arrogant. Either humans looking like animals or animals doing their best to look human.
They were called fairies. The fae people. Worshippers of the Goddess Danu.
Half-naked, flashing their male parts and bodies as perfect as that of the Greek god of the sun, the fifth one was down, making weird twitching moves on top of an orphan girl from St. Frederick’s. The girl was reduced to just weeping softly.
Her name was Ku Sin, if Alex remembered correctly. She had beautiful almond-shaped eyes and black hair.
But she and her silent tears weren’t what he cared about right then.
“Look! A human boy.”
Where is she?
“Any bum bandits here?”
Where’s Miss Elisa?
“Are you insulting my honor, Viscount Porway?”
Where was his warmth in the endless dark?
“Just asking a rhetorical question, Baron Kelven. It’s a joke.”
“No more kidding like that.”
A burst of laughter came from the beastly men or manly beasts.
Then Alex saw her. The torn pieces of the sand-color dress were scattered over ground soaked with blood.
Doom knelt next to her and touched her hand.
Cool. All warmth gone.
Red flowers had torn through her dress. Piercing her flesh with sharp thorns, breaking her bones, and slicing her tissue, they’d taken on the color of blood. Up and up they rose to the moon, growing right out of Elisa’s body.
Her body no longer shivered or twitched.
It just disappeared beneath the flower roots, turning into a bloody, morbid flowerbed.
Her warm brown eyes disappeared, two creepy, thorny stems in their place.
What kind of magic is that?
“You…” Alex whispered.
Black wizard, the voice in his head said.
“Look! The human larva speaks!”
“You killed her?” Doom asked.
Black wizards don’t have friends.
“Killed? Of course not, boy. We just primped her up a little.”
“Oh yes. That mortal piece of flesh looks so much better as a flowerbed.”
Another burst of laughter.
Alex turned toward them. Toward the beastly men.
They’d taken away the last bit of warmth protecting him from the darkness. And without it…
“I hate you,” Alex hissed.
“What?” one of the monsters asked mockingly.
“I hate you all!” the boy yelled, jerking his right hand up. The lilac fire whirled around his fingers. Then…
…a sharp, sudden pain slashed across his right cheek, and a tremendous force picked him up, dragged him through the air, and flung him back onto the ground.
A shout of pain escaped the boy’s lips to go along with a splash of blood.
“Kill him,” a cold voice came.
The darkness was encroaching. Someone was coming for Alex.
He couldn’t see that well, his vision blurred by blood and tears.
But that was nothing.
Come, come closer.
Alex reached for the darkness. A different sort of darkness. Not the outside one—he wasn’t afraid of that darkness.
It was the creepy darkness living inside him. Somewhere next to his heart.
It would suffice.
Come closer.
It must suffice.
Come.
Suffice for…
“Hey!” called a merry, light-hearted voice. “You, furballs in the pasture!”
“What?”
A new figure stepped forward to shield Alex. He was a tall man, the hems of his stylish black jacket flapping in the wind, his narrow tie flowing too. His pants fluttered over brogue shoes polished to a shine, and his head was covered by a black, stripeless hat.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Me?” The stranger exhaled cigarette smoke. “I’m the terror that flaps in the night. I’m… Damn it, you monkeys. Judging by your faces, you haven’t seen Duck Tales.”
“What??”
“See how stupid they are, boy?” The stranger pointed his cigarette at the fae with a click of fingers. “That’s what hormones do to animals. Creepy, isn’t that?”
“Get out of here, whoever you are,” one of the closest fae said through gritted teeth. “He’s our prey.”
“Prey?” the young man in black suit repeated. “What about playing with a different kind? Someone your own size?”
“Are you…?”
Before the fae could finish, the young man threw out a palm and cast a flash of lilac fire that was awfully familiar to Alex.
He was a black wizard.
Alex realized that a moment before losing consciousness.
***
“Hey!” Someone was slapping his cheeks. “Hey, young prodigy!”
The claps were strong but not painful.
“Yes, you, orphaned wonder kid. Hey! Earth to moon boy!”
Alex didn’t want to wake up.
“Hey, come on little Rambo!”
“Rambo? Who’s that?”
“Damn it. Another illiterate.”
Alex opened his eyes.
He was seated on a bus stop bench. Squatting in front of him was that same young man, only with blood trickling down his face, his suit torn in several places, and his left arm bent unnaturally.
“You…”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” the stranger replied with a dismissive wave of his uninjured arm. “I’ll be fine. You should have seen those other guys. Their own mothers aren’t going to recognize them.”
The young man sat down next to Alex. With a trembling hand, he retrieved a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his inner pocket. Taking one, he lit it with his thumb and puffed a cloud of smoke into the High Garden night sky.
“Where are we?” Alex asked.
The young man looked around and shrugged, instantly gritting his teeth. The movement was apparently painful.
&nb
sp; “Somewhere between Rose Street and 17th Street.”
“I can see that.”
“Then why ask stupid questions, little one?”
“Why am I not back at the orphanage?”
“I got you out of there.”
“Am I going back?”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Then why ask?” The young man smiled with a kind of defiance. “Remember, little one: never ask questions when you know the answer. Or when you don’t want to know what it is.”
Alex thought that over.
“Where are we going?”
“Now that’s the right question, Mr. Spooner.”
“My name’s Alexander Dumsky. Not Mr. Spooner.”
The young man cursed.
“You haven’t seen I, Robot either. What a long way to go. That wasn’t even a Matrix joke. Farrokh prefers Keanu, but I’m a big Will Smith guy. Maybe because he’s black, too. Hey, that’s a great racist joke!”
Alex had no idea what the strange man was saying.
“Well, boy,” the young man stood as he held onto the lamp post with his bloody hand, stood up, and limped off down the street. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Where?” The young man looked back and flashed a broad smile, merry and kind. Just like Miss Elisa’s. “To Follen School.”
“What’s that?”
“A place for people like you and me,” the young man explained. “For black wizards.”
A place for black wizards? A place for them to live and…apparently study?
Alex jumped off the bench and followed him.
“I’m Robin, by the way. Robin Loxley.”
“Like Robin Hood?”
“Oh abyss! The patient’s more alive than dead. Not all is lost. I’ll make a man of you yet, little one.”
Chapter 35
Alex sank into a leather-and-velvet sofa that embraced his behind softer than a skilled siren of the first order at a five-star hotel in downtown Myers City. Although, honestly, Doom was no fan of the ladies of the night. His Semite spirit rebelled against a descendant of glorious lenders and jewellers paying for what he could get for free.
Dark Wizard's Case Page 19
