by DAVID B. COE
I recited the litany to myself six times, and on the seventh go-round I released the magic that had been building inside me. I felt the spell settle over me, as light as mist, as reassuring as a blanket.
I took a long breath, and then I eased around the corner, keeping my back to the building wall, and placing each step as softly as I could. Darby didn’t notice me. I sidled toward him, wondering as I did what spell I ought to try next. Mark was bigger than I had thought—maybe six foot four, and nearly as wide as he was tall. He was soft around the middle, and with his shaggy curls and thick features he bore more resemblance to a pastry chef than to a linebacker, but still he had at least six inches and sixty pounds on me.
Most times I might have been able to take him anyway. I was wiry, and I kept myself in shape. But my muscles had atrophied a bit in the past few weeks. For this evening at least, I was hoping to rely on magic rather than brute force. That said, I was doing all right. My physical therapist had warned me that my leg might start to hurt if I tried to do too much, but for the moment it felt good. Too good.
Overconfidence in a sorcerer—or in an investigator for that matter—can be deadly. In this case it wasn’t that bad; it was just stupid. As I drew closer to Darby and the car, I slid my lead foot into an empty bottle that had been left by the side of the building. It fell over with a clinking sound, rolled in a circle and bumped up against the building.
Darby spun. “Who’s there?”
He sounded scared, and his eyes were wide. But he was looking bigger by the moment, and in the time it took him to whirl in my direction, he had pulled out a .380—in that light I couldn’t tell what brand. Not that it mattered.
He was staring at the bottle, and still had given no indication that he could see me. But I didn’t like the way he was holding his weapon; I half expected him to fire off a few rounds in my general direction, to be on the safe side.
I cast another spell, three elements this time. My fist, his jaw, and an impact that would rattle his teeth. It was a simpler conjuring, and I didn’t have time to wait for the magic to build. I cast, and an instant later, he reeled. I charged him, the leg that had been shot going from “fine” to “crap that hurts!” in about two strides. If I survived the night, my PT was going to kill me.
Darby must have heard my footsteps, even though he still couldn’t see me. He straightened, aimed his weapon—straight at my chest as dumb luck would have it. I knew I wouldn’t reach him in time. I wasn’t moving well and the distance was too great. I tried to recite that same three-part spell again, desperate to do anything I could to knock him off balance.
But I didn’t have time even for that. I saw his finger move. An image flashed through my mind: me lying on the filthy pavement, still shrouded in my camouflage spell, bleeding out because no one could see me. Until I died, at which point my casting would cease as well. Spells die with the sorcerer; it’s one of the fundamental rules of magic.
I’m a dead man.
Flame belched from the muzzle of his weapon, three times. The reports roared, echoing off the building. And in that scintilla of an instant—not even the blink of an eye—I thought I sensed a frisson of power ripple the air around me.
Then it was gone.
All three shots should have hit me. The distance between us wasn’t great, and Darby appeared to know how to handle a firearm.
But he missed. Somehow, incredibly, he missed.
He stared, not really at me, since I remained camouflaged, but at the spot where he’d been aiming. Then he glanced down at his pistol.
For a moment, I could do little more than gape myself, amazed at the mere fact that I was upright and breathing. But he was still armed, and I didn’t feel like trusting to good fortune a second time.
I went back to the fist spell, staggering him again. And before he could recover, I closed the distance between us, hammered a real fist into his gut, and knocked him to the ground with another blow that struck high on his temple. The pistol clattered on the pavement and I kicked it beyond his reach.
He stirred, but before he could push himself up, I planted a foot in the middle of his back, forcing him back down to the ground. For good measure, I pulled out my Glock and pressed it against the nape of his neck.
“Don’t move, Mark.”
He stiffened.
“I’m feeling twitchy, and I’m a little pissed at you for taking shots at me. So I’d suggest you do exactly what I tell you to.”
“Who the hell are you?”
I pushed harder with the pistol. “Shut up.”
He gave a quick nod.
“Now, I want you to put your hands out to the sides where I can see them. Slowly.”
He stretched his arms wide. He had turned his head to the side, and I could tell he was trying to get a look at me.
Casting the camouflage spell had been complicated; getting rid of it was easy. Three elements: Darby, me, and my appearance, warts and all. Not that I have warts . . . As I said, there’s nothing inherently magical about the elements themselves; more than anything, having them in my head, reciting them a few times, helps me focus my conjuring. Other conjurers might have used other techniques, but this one worked for me.
One second he couldn’t see me, the next he could.
“Whoa,” he said, breathing the word. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what? Kick your ass? It wasn’t that hard.”
“No, I mean—”
“You’re going to answer some questions for me.” I pulled a small digital recorder from the pocket of my bomber.
“The hell I am. I know my rights.”
“I’m not a cop, and you have no rights.”
“If you’re not a cop—”
“I’m a PI. I was hired by Nathan Felder to find out who’s been robbing his stores.” I switched on the recorder. “What’s your name?”
No answer. I smacked the top of his head with the butt of my pistol—just hard enough to get his attention—and then pressed the barrel against his neck again.
“What’s your name?”
“Mark Darby,” he said, his voice low enough that I wasn’t entirely confident the recorder would pick it up.
“How long have you been stealing goods from Custom Electronics?”
“I don’t know what—”
I smacked him again.
“Ow! About four months.”
That matched what Felder said when he hired me.
“Who are you working with?”
He clamped his mouth shut.
Before I could ask him again, I heard a siren wail from not too far away. I listened for a few seconds, long enough to know that it was coming in this direction. Felder would not be happy.
“That’s your fault, Mark. If you hadn’t shot at me, no one would have called the cops.”
“I guess I have rights now, don’t I?”
“Yeah, smart ass, you have the right to go to jail. Felder would have been happy to fire you and be done with it. But you took shots at me, which makes this armed robbery. You’ll probably wind up doing ten years at Lewis or Florence.”
“Shit,” he said in a whisper.
“No kidding. Of course, if you tell me who you’ve been working with, maybe Felder will decide not to press charges. And maybe I’ll be willing to forget about those shots you fired off.”
The police car came around the corner with a squeal of rubber on pavement, the siren dying away. Doors opened on either side of the car and two uniformed officers got out, both holding shotguns, both using their doors for cover.
“Drop your weapon!” one of them shouted.
I placed my Glock on the pavement where Darby couldn’t reach it.
“Now lie down and put your hands on the back of your head.”
“Your word against mine, PI,” Darby said as I followed their instructions.
I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was grinning.
“Not quite, asshole. I didn’t fire any shots. You did, and the la
b can confirm that. And that’s your car filled to the ceiling with stolen goods.”
“Quiet, both of you.”
By now the cops stood over us, their shotguns no doubt aimed at our heads.
“What’s going on here?”
“My name is Jay Fearsson,” I said, before Darby could answer. “I’m a private investigator, and I used to be on the job. My license is in my wallet. I was hired by the owner of Custom Electronics to find the employee who’s been stealing from them since February. That would be the moron lying next to me: Mark Darby. I caught him in the act, and he fired three shots at me. Missed all three times. His weapon is on the ground, a few feet to the left of him. And that’s his Subaru pulled up to the loading dock.”
One of the officers, a short, barrel-chested white guy, bent and picked up my Glock. “Did you fire your weapon?”
“No.”
I heard him sniff at the barrel. He retrieved the other weapon and sniffed at that one as well. I couldn’t see him well in the darkness, but I thought I saw him nod once to his partner.
“All right, Fearsson,” this second cop said. “You can get up.”
I climbed to my feet and pulled out my wallet. The other cop checked my ID before handing me my pistol and walking over to the wagon.
The second officer, a young, light-skinned African-American man, kept his shotgun aimed at Darby, but he was watching me. “You’re the guy who caught the Blind Angel Killer, aren’t you?” At my nod, he said, “That was nice work.”
“Thank you.”
“And now you’re back doing grunt work like this?”
I grinned. “That’s the job, right? I still need to earn a living.”
“I hear that.”
The other cop, who was still by Darby’s car, let out a low whistle. “There must be twenty grand worth of stuff in here. Maybe more.”
I walked over to Darby. “Your word against mine, eh?”
He raised his head fractionally. “Screw you.”
They cuffed Darby and read him his Miranda rights, and then they took a statement from me. I made sure to mention my suspicion that Mark was working with at least one of his fellow salesmen. While I was still answering questions, a second police cruiser showed up. A few minutes later, so did Mister Felder, driving a BMW, dressed in a suit I couldn’t possibly afford and flinging himself out of his car very much like a man who had been called away from a social occasion he didn’t want to leave.
One of the cops explained to him what had happened. Felder eyed the loading dock and Darby’s car as the cop spoke to him, but when they were finished talking, he walked straight over to me.
He shook my hand, a tight smile on his tanned, round face, but there could be no mistaking his tone as he said, “I thought we agreed that we were going to handle this matter without involving the police.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, not flinching at all from what I heard in his tone. “But then Darby took a few shots at me with a .380. Someone heard the shooting and called it in. It wasn’t my decision.”
“He shot at you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Felder huffed. “Then I suppose it couldn’t be helped.” A pause, and then. “You’re all right?”
“Thanks for asking. Yes, I’m fine.”
Even as I spoke the words, though, a memory stirred. Not of the shooting itself; I’d have nightmares about that—the flare of flame from the muzzle, the deafening pop! pop! pop! of the shots.
Rather, I recalled—as I should have long before—that fraction of a moment during which I felt magic all around me, charging the air like an impending lightning strike.
“Mister Fearsson?”
I roused myself with a small shake of my head and faced Felder again. He was watching me, expectant; I assumed he’d asked me a question.
“I’m sorry, sir. What did you say?”
“I asked if Darby did all this alone.”
“No, I don’t think he did. The police showed up before I could get a name out of him. But I have some experience with these things: He won’t hold up long under questioning. If he had a partner, you’ll know it soon enough.”
“Fearsson!”
I turned. The African-American officer was striding our way.
“Sorry to bother you, man, but Darby is claiming that you assaulted him. He says you hit him with your weapon.”
I glanced off to the side, exhaled.
“Did you?”
“It was hardly an assault,” I said. “I was asking him some questions, and he was having trouble remembering stuff. I was trying to jar the memories loose.”
The cop laughed; even Felder allowed himself a chuckle.
“But officially,” I said, “I never hit him.”
“Good enough for me,” the cop said. “You can go. If we need you for anything else, we’ll let you know.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Darby called from the back of one of the squad cars.
“His word against yours, Darby,” the officer said. He gave me a wink.
Darby swore loudly.
“Come by tomorrow, Mister Fearsson,” Felder said. “I’ll cut you a check.”
“I will. Thank you.”
I walked back to the Z-ster, favoring my bad leg, conscious as well of a dull ache in my arm. I guess this is what the doctors had in mind when they warned me about trying to do too much.
Still, I was pleased. Sure, the police had shown up, but Felder hadn’t been too angry. And given how the evening could have ended—with me in a body bag—I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.
Again, I thought of that frisson of magic. I hadn’t cast a spell, and I was certain that Darby was incapable of casting. Had I imagined it? Everything had happened in such a rush—it could have been a sensation born of panic and desperation. But how else could I explain the fact that Darby had missed me?
I needed to have a conversation with Namid’skemu of the K’ya’na-Kwe clan, the Zuni shaman who had been my runemyste for the past seven years, and who had been dead for close to eight centuries.
CHAPTER 3
The runemystes were created by the Runeclave centuries ago, their collective sacrifice an act so courageous, so selfless that it boggles the mind. Essentially, they were once weremystes, like me—sorcerers who had devoted their lives to the mastery of runecrafting. Thirty-nine of them were sacrificed by the Runeclave, the governing body of their kind, their spirits granted eternal life so that they could be guardians of magic in our world. They were essentially ensorcelled ghosts, although I’d learned over the years that they didn’t like to be referred to as such.
As I understood it, Namid and others like him were tasked with training new generations of weremystes and keeping watch on those who might turn to the darker elements of runecrafting. In all but the most extreme circumstances, they were forbidden from acting directly on our world, but through their instruction and training of weremystes, they could help to keep wielders of dark magic from doing harm to either the magical community or the non-magical population. The renegade-turned-serial-killer I mentioned, Cahors, was one of the original thirty-nine. But he chafed at the limits placed on his powers by his fellow runemystes, and he found a way to escape their controls and assume corporeal form once again. More, by committing murders each month on the night of the first quarter moon, he was able to keep himself young and powerful. If Kona and I hadn’t killed him, he would have gone on murdering for as long as he wished to live.
But Cahors was dead, and the runemystes now numbered thirty-eight. In the weeks since we’d killed him, I’d often wondered if Cahors had been training runemystes the way Namid did. Were there sorcerers out there who for years had been learning the darkest secrets of our craft?
I could have asked Namid about this, but he tended to be tight-lipped when it came to answering questions about the runemystes. To be honest, he was that way about everything, which at times made him an exasperating teacher. And tonight I had other questions that were more urge
nt.
I drove to my home in Chandler. It was a drive of no more than eight miles, and at this hour it took only a few minutes. At rush hour, which these days in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area stretched from dawn to dusk, it might have taken me three-quarters of an hour.
It had been a scorching day—July in Phoenix; go figure—and it was still hot in the house. But the night had cooled off considerably, as nights in the desert often did, and so I opened every window and changed into gym shorts and a T-shirt.
“Namid,” I said, pitching my voice to carry over some distance. I probably could have whispered it and he would have shown up just as soon, but I liked to maintain the illusion that I had some small measure of privacy.
Within seconds, he began to materialize before me, shimmering with the light of my reading lamps like the surface of a mountain lake reflecting the moon.
In life, Namid had belonged to the K’ya’na-Kwe clan of the A’shiwi or Zuni nation—the water people, as they were known. His clan was extinct now, and had been for centuries. I didn’t know if Namid’s appearance was his way of honoring their memory, or if it was simply the natural, or perhaps magical, manifestation of his tribal heritage. Whatever its origins, Namid always appeared to me as a being made entirely of water. He had the build of a warrior: tall, broad-shouldered, lean, muscular. On this night he was as clear as a woodland stream and as smooth as the ocean at dawn, but one could read his moods in the texture of his liquid form the way a ship’s captain might gauge the weather by watching the sea. His eyes were the single exception: They always glowed, like white flames within his luminous waters. I would never have said as much to him—I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction—but he was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.
“Ohanko. It is late. You should be asleep, and I should not be summoned at such an hour.”
He was also the most infuriating.
He’d been calling me “Ohanko,” which, as far as I could tell, meant “reckless one,” for so long that I couldn’t remember when he had started. And he had been talking to me as if he were my mother, telling me when to sleep and what to eat, for even longer.
