Heist

by Kezzy Sparks

  “Ready to roll?” he says.

  “Ready,” I answer.

  We are to use one car, mine, and Zed goes to fetch something from his Honda. He has brought along a thin, wood-handled saber made of copper, one I never knew he possessed. It’s a surprise because our coordinator, believing he is a tough guy, isn’t much into the wielding of weapons, and thinks the hands and feet God gave him are good enough for his defense, and powerful enough for attacking as well.

  “It’s very light,” he tells me of something I clearly can see. “But when it strikes it produces sparks.”

  I already know this, and because of it, I have heard such weapons called Sparkies. I have never held one in my hand however, because it’s against guild rules to touch or examine another associate’s weapons.

  For myself I will rely on my stinger. And even though it can be cumbersome at times like I explained during the raid at Butch Smiryl’s, it’s still a powerful tool. In addition I have my two pairs of limbs, which I resort to when things get hot. I can punch and kick and scratch my way out of situations many would not believe possible.

  Tonight it will be Zed’s turn to drive, but we still decide on the Toyota as it carries some of my stuff I wouldn’t want to leave behind.

  When we take to our seats, Zed produces from his war backpack an unlabeled amber bottle. “Here, take this, like discussed...”

  Simply by opening the bottle, I realize it’s a guild-approved antiseptic that combats the ill effects of poisonous radiation emitted by angry demons. It smells of heather and sage and eucalyptus, but the heather comes out strongest.

  “Very wise of you to bring this,” I cheer Zed.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he murmurs in reply.

  Just before we roll, I check the bottom of my tote to feel the coil of charmed binder. It’s not a weapon, as such, but is to be used as a restraining tool. It consists of a long rope, one end of which is attached to a bone handle. I use it the way regular police officers use handcuffs, or leg irons to restrain a prisoner. The rope is made of jute, a natural fiber that can transmit weakening magic, and the bone used to make the handle is from shark skeleton. Shark bones in able hands make powerful magic; everyone who has an idea how the paranormal world runs knows this.

  The binder is often needed because not all witches I arrest will want to cooperate, and its restraining power becomes useful in those situations. Today it might come in handy against the Lady in Red.

  Zed drives all the way from my office, and not long after, we hit Broadway. By the time we turn into Exchange and then Railroad, I already feel a rush of adrenaline. The coming battle might be tough because mages of Lady in Red’s stature aren’t easily taken down.

  Soon we swing into Savage, and there in front of us, right on the train tracks, sits two cat like figures. Their eyes are a piercing yellowish red. Normal animals will scare when they see a moving vehicle, but these ones don’t, and they remain in one position, glaring. Something seeps into me, and I am reminded of that feline buzz I felt when I journeyed to Medina Sunday.

  “Let me get out to chase them away,” I say as I observe Zed won’t run them over. “They are protecting the witch from a distance.”

  “Bad idea getting out,” says he.

  “No, just let me.” I open my door.

  I have never seen cats jump so high as those do as soon as I am out. It’s like they can fly. I know not what to do as the two rain down on me. Sharp claws sink into my skin. Ever seen a woman set on fire who tries to extinguish the flames by hand—now that’s me. Cat teeth are tearing at my hair as I try to pummel the two off. The pair, Jesus, smells awful.

  From the other side, Zed comes out with his saber. It’s not really meant for fighting magic-infused animals but might help against the cats. Before he reaches me, one feline, a big black one, jumps right at his face. He groans with pain as it digs its claws into him. He drops his weapon and grabs at the feline. I fear the cat might come off with flesh as he pulls it off of him, but he succeeds and then slams it to the ground.

  Blood oozes from the scratches on my ears and cheeks. Seeing what has happened to his twin, the other feline has left my front and jumped up my back. It’s biting the back of my head while scratching ferociously at the sides of my neck. I whirl around, trying to grab hold of it, but my hands can’t properly reach my back.

  Zed jumps to my help as I moan. He grabs the feline again by his hands. He slams it down, but the other one is already twining between my legs, biting and scratching. There is a bit of clothing protection there, so its teeth and claws don’t sink in as much. Whilst in pain I get a chance to trap it between my feet, and then as I pretend to let it go, I slam a boot onto its head. It wails. I slam a second one, and then the cat limps away. I sure don’t want it to escape though, and I rush into the car to grab my stinger wand.

  Before we know it, a woman in red appears. She is in the company of a black shadow with that curving horn on its head. I try to shout, but my tongue is tied. This must be The Mage. Lady in Red!

  “Look out.” My voice finally breaks out. “There she comes…”

  Fifty-seven

  Only moments earlier, tendrils of panic have shot through The Mage when she hears the frenzied caterwauling of her familiars. She had only sent them to watch the road, yet now what is going on? She rushes out the house.

  “Quick, Ratan, come down; there is war.” She commands the horned demon with urgency in her voice. The shrieks of Tyrese and Wheeler can’t be just to warn her what’s coming. It justifies a panic.

  In front of the house there is nothing, but up the road is a real sound of hisses, meowling and then the war cries of humans.

  “Ratan, we must go.” Her voice catches in her throat. She ought to have expected this. What with the client phoning yesterday to say she had been captured.

  The demon hurtles downward, slicing through the air like a diving kestrel. “I see it, oh, Jove,” he says in Quimglich. “Right at the train tracks.”

  There is no need for The Mage to go back into the house for any weapons. She can pluck magic forces from the air in emergencies, just like she did at The Boss’s house.

  The pained caterwaul of Tyrese and Wheeler is turning into deathly wails as they run out of energy.

  “Come, hold my hand,” says Ratan. His hold is tight, and as he pulls her, he accelerates to a high speed. In a moment they are at the battle front.

  Tyrese and Wheeler, are getting overwhelmed but still fight. What a pair of faithful, courageous family members.

  “Zed mind,” The Breaker calls her companion.

  Instantly Ratan is on them. He attacks with his fiery disabling air blows, and he dives forward to gore the foes with his horn. The Breaker and her mate reel backward.

  The male, whom Breaker calls Zed, reaches for a metallic thing that has fallen to the ground. It looks light and harmless, but no, it’s a clever weapon. He aims to strike at Ratan. The Mage must jump in with a diversion.

  “Huntress, what are you doing here?” she screams.

  “You are under arrest,” The Breaker retorts.

  “No way, and who is this idiot?” she smirks at Zed when there is a bit of a lull.

  Zed glares at her, positioning to strike.

  “We aren’t afraid of you,” growls the Breaker.

  Aiming to finish, the Mage gathers from the air her spider’s web. The cloud is thick and black. She hurls it at them, and it becomes like a cascading black net. It has a great force, and The Breaker and Zed are hurled back.

  A freight train is on its way; it’s lights shine on the tracks. What an opportunity to fling the Breaker down and get her run over. The Mage dives aside as The Breaker unleashes a sting. The pulse of high-energy magical light zips past her.

  Ratan has literally locked horns with this pest of a guy, Zed. The demon blows and blows his fiery magical gusts, but Zed keeps darting aside and trying to stab with his sharpened weapon. He maintains a safe distance, so Ratan can’t gore him wit
h his horn.

  “Hang on, Mel. We will win this.” He rallies.

  The freight train arrives. The driver doesn’t blow his whistle, for he can’t see a thing. The engine is deafeningly noisy, but it's the wheels that the Mage wants to throw Mel under. In a tricky move, she spins to the right then summons another net. She catches Mel on the head, and then pushes her toward the tracks. The Breaker tumbles and almost trips. Her head is just missed by the engine hurtling by.

  Still, things aren’t going so well. Ratan is getting weaker and more sluggish because each time he is caught by that saber of Zed's, it sparks and leaves a burn mark on him. The demon still blows his gusts and attempts to gore Zed who ducks and ducks while impaling with the sparking saber.

  The Breaker rises fast. The Mage gathers a final force and unleashes, but Mel holds. She bounces leftward and fires a bolt. The Mage is caught, and a hole burns in her dress.

  As things would soon go, Ratan falls and Zed is coming for her. Two against one won’t do; she might be the one to be thrown under the train.

  Scared, she jumps in between cars, grabs fast onto a metal handle welded to the body, and away she escapes.

  Fifty-eight

  “Oh my God we are losing her.” I try to give chase to the car The Mage jumped on, but can’t reach it. Sadly, the train is going faster than us.

  “No hope,” Zed says behind me, and then stops.

  I have no option but to give up, too. The freighter’s wheels make loud grinding noises against the tracks, and with each squeak The Mage makes good her escape. And worse, unaware of what’s happening, the engineer pumps more diesel into his engines, and the darned thing will never stop. There is no way we can arrest The Mage tonight, that’s for sure. She is GONE.

  “Don’t worry she is weakened,” says Zed, hyperventilating.

  “I really wanted to whack her.” I exhale.

  Eluded, we pad back to the road. The heat in my chest is intense; my face and hands burn from all the scratches and bites I received from the felines. Oh God how horrible is the smell of the fur from those cats. My nostrils bite, and I sneeze.

  Soon I stop to cool down a bit, but that makes me feel more of the pain. Blood trickles on my forehead, same for my neck and chin.

  Zed wasn’t targeted as much by the felines, but still he isn’t in much better shape. His whole face is a lake of sweat, seasoned copiously with blood. His arms are severely scratched and bitten; it’s like he fought with a thousand snakes that kept sinking their fangs into him. He walks tiredly even for a strong man like him, and I know that’s because of the poisonous magic carried by those familiars. The anti demon lotion helped, otherwise we were not going to survive this.

  To our weapons’ credit however, the demon and felines are completely defeated and unable to run away. The striped cat lies stunned on its back with its legs kicking a bit, while the black is completely still and on its side. It’s not dead, but its eyes don’t gleam with that fire as before. The demon sits on the pavement, its shadow form now darker, showing how sapped of energy it is.

  When you have got familiars stunned like this, and no longer pausing a threat, this is the time you can finish them off with a graveyard wand. What I usually do is to tap the wand into the familiar with the hammer, no need to even puncture the skin and the job is done.

  Because demons are of the same nature as resurrected spirits, they cannot be killed in the normal sense that we know. What the graveyard wand does is to vaporize them and send the spirit back to hell where it can no longer be with the living again. Nothing already in a spiritual state can be killed a second time.

  Animal familiars are flesh and blood things however, and technically may not even need to be killed by the use of a graveyard wand. Like anything living, they can be slain using brute force, or by way of cutting or piercing weapons, but in magic circles that is never recommended. A familiar slaughtered by regular ways can have its stored magic force releasing—to be captured and used again by other evil mages. Therefore to take care of an animal familiar permanently, only a proper finisher wand is recommended, of which mine I call it the graveyard. Killed that way, any bad magic stored in the familiar is dissipated and disappears for good.

  Since I am the one who started this, Zed expects me to make the call regarding the slaying. The felines are stunned but still breathing, showing that if a bad mage where to wave a curative wand, the two could revive to the point of being able to fight again. Which is why killing them the proper way might be the only right thing.

  Anger flashes through my injured and poisoned self, and I would like to destroy those little devils so they never see the sun again, but something tells me to act differently.

  I hold myself and think. Why not temporarily spare these enemies for one very good reason that I will explain to Zed should he ask. The notion sounds very attractive, and I immediately search for my anti-black-magic gloves.

  At that, Zed’s eyes widen. “I thought you'd get the job done once and for all.”

  “No, I’m thinking to save the brutes for a while.” I tell him of the idea. “They will be a big help in capturing The Mage.”

  My logic is that if we slaughter the familiars, she will have no incentive to hang around, and might skip town to evade punishment. But if we keep the familiars alive, she will be tempted to rescue them, and that’s when we can catch her.

  “As long as these are breathing, we have a good hope of apprehending her.” I explain further.

  “Okay, your call.”

  “Good.” I give him a small nod. “You get in the car, let me finish this.”

  Fast, I pick up one feline and slam it into the trunk, and then come back to pick the other.

  “Now what do with the big one?” Zed glares at the sapped demon. “Vaporize it?”

  “No,” I say, “I’ll tie it.”

  While the most reasonable thing would be to vaporize the fiend and be done with it as Zed imagines, I wish also to temporarily save it, like the felines. My thinking is that the demon has more magical communication ability and might send signals to The Mage that it hasn’t been destroyed, and that’s how she will know where to look for him. And then she will walk into the big trap I plan.

  I fetch the binder and tie a leash on the brute. The other end of the rope, the one with the bone handle, I fasten to the Corolla’s rear—on a chassis member underneath the trunk. It’s going to be as though I am towing the demon, and in a way that is what will happen.

  “Right, let’s go.” I dispose of the soiled gloves and now will take to the steering since Zed doesn’t know where I intend to imprison the fiends.

  Wounds sustained in a magic fight heal faster if you have won. The scratches and bites and scrapes have stopped bleeding, and already don’t hurt as much.

  I roll down my window and shout to the demon. “You follow right behind.”

  The fiend hears me, though he remains passive, but I don’t waste time putting the Corolla into gear.

  Zed glances back as we go. “I never imagined anything like it.”

  Through the rear view I see the demon, too, towed by the rope. It’s an experiment without precedent, but the laws against a public display of magic things are not being broken, because the demon is a spirit thing only very few can ever see. It’s the dead of night, also, and that makes things even better.

  My family owns a farm that is now derelict south of Hamburg and that’s where I am going. It’s a piece of property that is the subject of a fight between me and Natalia, but for now, that irksome family dispute won’t bother me, because I just want a place to deposit these evil familiars until such a time I have captured The Mage, or perceive that the monsters don’t serve any advantageous purpose to me anymore.

  I keep glancing back. Demons can be fast, and this one of The Mage’s has no problem following behind the Toyota. Even in his much-weakened state, regular road speeds aren’t anything to him. His shadow runs pretty well, and the binder rope won’t go tight to indicate he i
s stalling.

  In a while we have reached Hamburg. The farm is located on Lakeview Road, which is off Pierce Street. When we park, I first unload the felines and dump them into our abandoned farmhouse.

  “What if they revive and escape?” Zed rightly asks.

  “I intend to lay a magic wall.” I hint to him the Alcatraz.

  That trapezoid will contain the felines until such time as I lift it. And it’s the same thing I also hope to trap The Mage in, should she ever make the mistake of tracking her lost familiars. She will never walk out of it. It’s a simple but effective thing.

  After closing the door with the cats behind it, it’s time to deal with demon.

  “You stay here, you aren’t going anywhere.” I say to it in Quimglich while I loosen the rope’s end that is tied to the car chassis.

  The fiend glares to see what I am doing. I guess he is surprised I didn’t vaporize him.

  “I just want to study your properties for a little while,” I say to him, so he doesn’t know I want to trick The Mage.

  Next, I tie the free end of the rope to a tree trunk, and that means he is effectively tethered. I need to do this because demons are spirit things that can’t be held within Alcatraz walls.

  “Call the witch to rescue you, if you wish,” I add as a way of taunting.

  Before we go, I lay the Alcatraz around the yard using the oaken scepter. I am lucky I hadn’t removed the tool from the Corolla’s trunk ever since I used it that time at Kay’s apartment.

  The biggest hope is that the evil witch will walk into it...

  Fifty-nine

  A breeze rustles and bites at the exposed parts of The Mage’s body. The dawn is cool, the sky clear. The stars she gazed at for the better part of the night are fading into their daytime hiding places—to leave behind a brightening blue canvas. Around her, the gravestones that had only been hazy shadows are solidifying into gray or black monuments. There is no green, white, or red.