“—but, to be fair, the guy was in kind of a bind. The story goes he used charms and protective circles and various kinds of exorcism and banishment and eventually even tried appeasement, by which I mean human sacrifice, to keep the beast of Felport at bay, but it was all just temporary. The thing kept coming back. He couldn’t kill it, couldn’t drive it away, just failed and failed, and his little settlement was on the verge of permanent disintegration. So one day he sucked it up, gave his dagger of office to his apprentice and chosen successor, and went out into the woods to finish things once and for all. And, apparently, he left this letter explaining his plan to send the beast into the future, to be delivered to whatever poor sucker happened to be in charge four centuries later.” Marla shrugged. “Malkin never came back, but the beast never troubled anyone again, and now we’re waiting for … whatever.”
“Maybe he didn’t send the beast into the future at all,” Rondeau said. “Maybe they just, like, killed each other.”
“We can hope,” Marla said, but the words had barely been uttered when the courtyard suddenly got a lot more crowded.
A hard wind blew, making Marla squint, and a brown hairy thing the size of two gorillas fighting over a tractor tire appeared about three feet in the air, then slammed to the ground hard enough to crack the stones. There was an impression of tusks, snout, and hard black eyes, but it was hunched and crouched and twisting and moving too fast for her mind to encompass it. It stank like the sewers under a slaughterhouse. Marla began speaking words of binding and tossed a handful of charmed stones, but the rocks just bounced off the thing’s matted hide — disappointing, since they should have respectively burned, frozen, and turned it to stone — and then an arm swung out, long as an extension ladder, and smashed Marla against a brick wall. Rondeau went in manfully, baseball bat cocked, but the thing swatted him aside like an annoying fly.
Marla stood up, about to reverse her cloak, to make the soothing white exterior switch places with the bruise-purple lining and unleash her most deadly battle magic — when the beast flung something slightly larger than Marla herself through the air, straight at her.
That’s a person, Marla realized, and then about two hundred pounds of human body — dead or alive, she wasn’t sure yet — hit her square in the chest and knocked her flat. She grunted, shoved the guy off her body, and struggled to her feet, all the wind knocked out of her.
The beast of Felport took a moment to consider its handiwork, and Marla thought, Run for the alley, fucker, get caught in my bear traps, and then the beast crouched, leapt about fifteen feet in the air, grabbed a jutting chunk of brick wall, and went up the side of a building and over the rooftop, like a gecko climbing a garden wall.
“That’s bad,” Rondeau said, picking himself up and taking out his cell phone. “Guess I should call the Chamberlain.”
“It’s her neighborhood,” Marla said, “and I sent her a message before we left telling her there might be some shit hitting her fan this afternoon. Damn it.”
Rondeau looked toward the roof where the beast had escaped. “Yeah. Who knew anything so big could jump like that?”
“I did,” said the body the beast had thrown at Marla, sitting up and rubbing his head. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with a nose like a cowcatcher and bushy eyebrows, dressed in the filthy ragged remains of what might once have been nice old-fashioned clothes. He rose and stalked toward Rondeau. “And so would you if you had read the journals I left behind, detailing everything I knew about the beast! You came here utterly unprepared. What kind of chief sorcerer are you?”
“He’s no kind of chief sorcerer at all,” Marla said, already seeing where this was going. “I’m the chief sorcerer here.”
The man whirled to face her, frowning. “You?” He gestured to Rondeau. “This one is a swarthy immigrant of some kind, that is troubling enough, but you — you are a woman.”
“Yes,” Marla said. “Very perceptive. And you’re Everett Malkin, I presume.”
“Incredible,” Malkin said, staring at the cars going past.
“Yup,” Marla said. “I guess it would be.” The three of them sat on a bus stop bench, waiting for the Chamberlain’s limo to arrive.
“The city itself, though I’m pleased to see its growth, has changed but little. I have spent time in the capitals of Europe, after all.”
Wait until you see the skyscrapers in the Financial District, Marla thought. Or the clubs and quickie check-cashing joints and bars in my neighborhood. They were still in the old city, where an attempt was made to keep a certain vintage feel, but culture shock would hit him eventually.
“You plan to call together the whole council?” Malkin asked. He gnawed at an apple Marla’d bought for him. Rondeau’s joke about how he must be hungry, seeing as how he hadn’t eaten in 400 years, had fallen flat, though, and Rondeau had been quiet and sulky ever since.
“Just the Chamberlain for now. This is her neighborhood, and from what you said, the beast won’t go too far. If it’s in her bailiwick, the Chamberlain will find it.”
Malkin grunted. “Another ‘her.’ You are the chief sorcerer, or so you tell me — should not the heart of the city be your ‘neighborhood,’ as you say?”
Marla snorted. “This? This is toy-town. A tourist trap. Old-fashioned stuff for history buffs and tourists scared to stay in the real city. The heart of the city nowadays, where the action is, that’s south of the river. That’s where I live.”
Malkin mulled that over, and finally said, “You have told me of the Chamberlain, and the current Granger — sad it is to hear his lineage has decayed. I would not have entrusted him with the letter had I known his offspring would be ruined — but who are the other sorcerers of note? In my day it was only myself, Granger, and my apprentice, Corbin.”
“There’s a chaos magician named Nicolette, she looks after the financial district. The Bay Witch watches the water and the port. A sympathetic magician named Hamil over by the university. Viscarro, who lives in catacombs beneath the city. A junkyard wizard named Ernesto out in the industrial section. That’s about it for the council, but there are lots of talented apprentices and freelancers in town, too — a mad-scientist technomancer type named Langford, an order-magician named Mr. Beadle — not to mention the usual wannabes and alley wizards.”
“I will need to meet all of them as soon as they can be gathered,” Malkin said.
“Oh, yeah?” It was rare for all the sorcerers to get together — they usually only had councils when some dire threat menaced the city, something Marla couldn’t handle herself, and she wasn’t sure yet the beast of Felport qualified. “Why’s that?”
“They must meet their new chief sorcerer,” Malkin said. “I will assume your position, of course.”
Before Marla could respond to that bit of apocalyptic nonsense, a long black limousine slid along the curb before them, its back door swinging open. The Chamberlain, dressed in her usual impeccable evening-wear finery, beckoned with an elegant hand. “Come on, then. Let’s hear about the latest disaster.”
Malkin leaned forward, squinting. “Is this woman … a Spaniard?”
“I’m black, dear,” she said. “Of West African descent, though my people are from Felport for many generations.”
“This future is a peculiar place,” Malkin said, but he climbed into the limousine after Rondeau, settling himself down on the dark leather seats across from the Chamberlain and Marla. Despite his ragged appearance — and the fact that this was his first time in a car — he looked at ease. “Your carriage is … most pleasant.”
“I understand you brought a monster to my community,” the Chamberlain said, smiling a smile that was not friendly at all.
Malkin frowned. “I expected sorcerous techniques to improve in the intervening centuries, so that the current rulers could defeat the beast with ease.”
“Kind of like people who die of brain cancer and have their heads frozen so they can be thawed out in the future when there’s a cure for tumors and decapit
ation,” Rondeau said, apparently trying to be helpful.
Malkin just looked at him blankly and continued. “Instead I find an unprepared … woman playing at sorcery, who did let the beast escape.”
“You might want to watch it with the sexist shit,” Marla said. “You’re kind of outnumbered here.”
“Women can excel at erotic magic, and herbwifery, and certain nature magics, but the more intellectual rigors of advanced sorceries are not suitable for the weaker sex.” Malkin shrugged. “I mean no offense. These are merely facts.”
“Are you sure we can’t send him back in time?” the Chamberlain said.
“I don’t even know what he’s doing forward in time,” Marla said. “Your letter said you were setting a time-trap for the beast. Why the hell did you hitch a ride?”
“The beast seized me,” Malkin said, shifting uncomfortably. “We struggled. Then the beast stepped into the circle of power. We were transported. I … did not intend to join him.”
“Well, now you’re here, and so’s the beast, so tell us what we’re dealing with,” Marla said.
Malkin nodded. “The natives said the beast was a dark god that had roamed the land since the beginning of time. It cannot be harmed by iron, or fire, or blades, or charms. Even my dagger of office, which can cut through all things, only scratched the beast, and the wound closed instantly.”
Marla touched the dagger at her waist — it had been Malkin’s dagger, passed down from chief sorcerer to chief sorcerer over the centuries, and it was one of her most potent weapons, capable of slicing through everything from steel cables to ghosts.
“Some magics worked,” Malkin said. “A spell to make it sleep for a thousand years succeeded in making it slumber, for but half a dozen seasons. Spells of disorientation caused it to wander, lost, for another year. But it learns, and once it overcomes a particular spell, the spell loses all efficacy. I do not know if it is a demon, a sorcerer from long ago who attained immortality, or, indeed, an ancient god.”
“Okay, but what does it want?” Marla said.
“Want? It is a beast. It wants to kill all who encroach on its territory. It wants to rend flesh. It prefers to sleep in the day, and emerge at night, wandering and howling. Its motives are no more comprehensible than those of any other beasts. I am sure it is disoriented by the changes here, and it will go to ground somewhere, hiding, and wait until dark to emerge. And then … ” He shook his head. “The beast will not stop until the city is scoured to dirt. It is clever. It will set fires, build traps. Your people will die.”
Setting arson and building booby traps didn’t sound very beast-like to Marla, but then, Malkin was from another time — he considered Marla and the Chamberlain and even Rondeau, who was Hispanic, basically beasts, too, didn’t he?
“Call together a council,” Malkin said to the Chamberlain. “I will announce my return to the position of chief sorcerer, and formulate a strategy.”
The Chamberlain looked at Marla, raising an eyebrow, and Marla sighed. “I’m not stepping down, Captain Retro. I’m still in charge here. We honor your past service and all that jazz, but you can’t just come back and—”
“Silence, woman. Give me my dagger of office, and let me begin my work. Sorcery is no business for you. Despite your mannish affect you are not unattractive, so perhaps you can serve me in some other—”
Marla punched him in the throat. Malkin gagged, grabbing at his windpipe — Marla hadn’t hit him hard enough to do permanent damage, but he wouldn’t be speaking any spells for a while — and fished a sachet of sleep potion out of her pocket. The Chamberlain and Rondeau both grabbed their noses as Marla slapped the cloth pouch of lavender and stranger herbs into Malkin’s open mouth. He gagged, gasped, and then dropped into a deep, supernatural slumber.
“This guy,” Marla said. “This guy is going to be trouble. I don’t think I’ll be able to sucker-charm him again, either.”
“He does need to confront certain new realities,” the Chamberlain said. “But, Marla, that’s Everett Malkin. He’s legendary.” The Chamberlain had a certain reverence for the past — much of her power came from her relationship with the ghosts of Felport’s founding families, including the persistent spirits of many former sorcerers from the early days.
“I liked him better when he was just a legend,” Marla said. “He’ll be asleep for a while, you mind watching him for me?”
“I — I suppose. And if he wakes up, he can speak with the ghosts — his apprentice, Corbin, is among the residents on my estate. But, Marla, what of the beast?”
“Yeah,” Marla said. “The beast is another problem. I’m gonna have to go see a guy about that.”
Marla wore black, loose-fitting pants and a snug top that kept her arms free, the better to aim the specially modified sniper rifle she cradled. Rondeau was dressed like an extra in a movie about a special forces operation, all black padded vest and a helmet and night-vision goggles (which he found more fun than Marla’s more practical magical night vision). He persistently referred to their operation as “playing dress-up,” which was annoying, but Marla knew she could rely on him in a pinch — and he had a backup rifle, albeit less fancy than the weapon Marla held. They were on the dark balcony of a charming little pied-a-terre a few blocks from the place where the beast and Malkin had appeared. The apartment’s rightful residents were off in Aspen or something, wherever rich ordinaries spent early spring.
“What if the dart doesn’t work?” Rondeau said. “We got a plan B?”
“I throw you to the beast, and while he’s dismembering you, I sneak around and hit him on the head with the rifle butt.”
“That’s always your plan B.”
The Chamberlain’s diviners had tracked the beast to an uninhabited apartment across the quiet upscale residential street, where their best remote-viewer said it was sleeping heavily on a mound of blankets and the shredded remains of a mattress. The beast hadn’t torn the door off its hinges to get inside — it had unobtrusively jimmied a side door with its claws. Smart beast, laying low. Marla wondered if it would be possible to communicate with it … but communication wasn’t part of the plan.
“Something moved there,” Rondeau said, pointing to the front window, where a shadow had shifted. “Poor thing must be scared to death. One minute you’re fighting your mortal enemy in the woods, and the next, poof, you’re in the future and there’s not a tree in sight.”
“Let’s hope it’s still disoriented,” Marla said. She watched through the scope as the side door opened and the beast slouched out, its physiognomy still a mysterious jumble of apelike and boarlike and manlike and, well, beastlike.
She squeezed the trigger three times, and three darts flew through the air to bury themselves in the beast’s flesh. The darts were each charmed with a different armor-piercing and true-aim spell, and she hoped at least one of them would hit — worst case, all three would hit, and the beast would overdose and die, and wait, that was kind of the best case, too.
The beast lifted its shaggy head, looked straight at Marla, then charged toward the balcony where she and Rondeau stood, loping and leaping and snarling.
“Oh this is fucked,” Rondeau said, and lifted his air rifle, firing another dart at the approaching furry projectile. The beast jumped for the balcony … and bounced off the railing, landing on the street, sprawled on its back, unconscious. Maybe it was immune to Malkin’s sleep spells, but times had changed, and Marla had mixed up a potent cocktail of chemical and magical tranq-juice, concentrated enough to make a blue whale yawn. Still, who knew how much time they had to finish the plan?
Marla stood looking down at the beast while Rondeau was on his cell calling in Langford and the rest of the team. Comprehending its form was difficult, as if it had joints and limbs that weren’t entirely in this dimension. Whatever it was, demon or god or refugee from another plane of existence, it didn’t belong here. Maybe it had once, when Felport was just trees and dirt and hills, but this was a human place, n
ow. The beast couldn’t stay, even if it had a prior claim on this land as a home.
“Let’s get it on the truck,” Marla said. “And then go see Malkin.”
“You fool,” Malkin said, stalking into one of the Chamberlain’s many parlors. He was dressed in period finery doubtless dug out of mothballs in some deep basement in the Chamberlain’s estate, and he smelled faintly dusty. “You dare to attack me, and leave the city vulnerable to the beast’s—”
“Gods, shut up, the beast is taken care of,” Marla said. “Come on, I’ll show you. Coming, Chamberlain?”
“Oh, indeed,” she said brightly. “I haven’t begun to tire of Mr. Malkin’s company at all.”
Malkin didn’t shut up. “You will be flogged in the town square,” he said, following Marla, Rondeau, and the Chamberlain out of the mansion, toward the truck parked in the driveway. “You will be stripped of whatever authority you think you have, and banished. I am the chief sorcerer here, and I will not be —”
Marla pulled open the back of the truck, and Malkin shut up when he saw the beast bound with ‘chanted chains in the back, watched over by the technomancer Langford, who had a tranquilizer pistol in one hand and a complicated-looking cell phone in the other.
“So you rendered it unconscious,” Malkin said. “Very well, but what happens when it wakes?”
“I don’t imagine it will wish to wake,” Langford said mildly. He beckoned, and the others climbed into the back of the truck. “Though I do wish I could be allowed to vivisect it. I’m not fond of mysteries, and this creature is unprecedented in my experience.”
“I’ve got nothing against scientific curiosity,” Marla said, “But I’m a pragmatist, and studying it is too dangerous.”
“Standing here while it slumbers is too dangerous,” Malkin snapped. “You are unfit to lead, and your folly is too great to be borne—”
“The beast is harmless,” Langford said. He pointed to a silvery mesh net that covered the beast’s lumpy skull. “This device controls the electrical impulses within the beast’s brain. It’s a beautiful place, in there. If you’re a monster.”
Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives Page 2
