Strangers In Boston: Tales from a Strange World Book 1 (The Strange World Series)

by T. S. Mann

  Luckily, it was the bad guys who had the bad luck first. Just up ahead, they had apparently lost control and slammed straight into a stone wall. Ortiz hit the brakes, and his squad car screeched to a stop a safe distance behind them. Then, he turned on the car's bullhorn and ordered the driver and any passengers to exit the van.

  As he looked closer, though, the officer thought it unlikely that anyone inside was in a condition to respond, as the van had struck the wall with such force that the entire front end had crumpled in completely. But then, Ortiz took a second look, and the mike slipped from his suddenly numbed fingers.

  The wall that the van had crashed into was a stone structure about twenty feet high that had somehow appeared in the middle of a busy Cuauhtemoc street, crossing it in both directions as far as Ortiz could see.

  And it was growing.

  Ortiz stepped out of the car and looked around. A crowd was forming, but the officer got back on the bullhorn and warned them away from the crash site. A few citizens came up to ask Ortiz what had happened, but at first, he found he couldn’t understand anything they said.

  Then, a sudden pain struck at the base of the policeman’s skull. It passed as quickly as it had begun, and Ortiz found he could now understand the other people ... and certainly well enough to understand their panicked cries as they pointed past the mysterious and still-expanding wall. Ortiz followed their gestures and then shouted an expletive of his own.

  For now, there were other structures growing forth in the distance beyond the wall: towers, buildings, even a Meso-American pyramid already a hundred-feet high and growing still! And as impossible as it seemed, Ortiz somehow recognized the emerging structures from pictures he’d once seen of what Tenochtitlan, the fabled capitol of the Aztec Empire, had looked like in its glory days before the Spaniards sacked it and built Mexico City on its remains.

  Ortiz shook his head to clear it and immediately got back into his squad car to report what had happened. But instead of the people on the streets around him shouting gibberish, it was the dispatcher who seemed to be speaking some foreign language. Then, Ortiz noticed his copy of La Crónica de Hoy, a newspaper he’d picked up to read on his break. It was now completely incomprehensible to him.

  As the fallen city of Tenochtitlan grew more and more real in the distance, Ortiz tried desperately not to panic as he realized he could no longer read anything around him – not his newspaper, not the nearby street signs, not even his own name badge.

  After all, all those things were written in Spanish. And Rafael Ortiz, like everyone else within several miles, could now only speak Classical Nahuatl.

  The Invisible College

  Boston

  Matt cradled his unconscious father as all around him, the Invisible College’s gymnasium transformed itself into what looked like a Central American temple. The boy was on the verge of tears. Everyone had insisted that he come up with a brilliant idea, but the only idea he’d had seemed to have doomed them all.

  “Dad, please,” he whispered in a breaking voice. “We really need you.”

  Then, he tensed as a feeling of intense cold descended on him and an unearthly voice whispered in his ear.

  “Come on, Matt. Get with the program! Your dad’s asleep because he cast a spell on himself. So instead of just shaking him and crying over him, why don’t you try undoing the spell? Are you a Stranger or not?”

  “What the … who is this?” Matt exclaimed as he looked around wildly. The mysterious voice snorted in annoyance.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, you’re as bad as your brother. I mean, you only spent thirty minutes massaging my tits just two nights ago, and now you have no idea who I am?”

  Matt did a double-take. “M-Meredith?” he asked in shock, but the voice had nothing else to say. Shaken, he turned his attention to Mickey St. Angel and willed himself to see not the man’s body but the weave of magic that covered him. Immediately, he could see sense the spell that kept his father in a coma. He focused his will and put his hand on his father’s forehead.

  “Wake up!” he commanded as he forced juice into the structure of the coma spell. It dissipated almost instantly in response to his efforts, and he realized at once that St. Angel had designed the spell so that Matt alone would be able to undo the effect easily.

  Mickey’s body tensed and then shook for a few seconds before his eyes fluttered open.

  “M-Matty?” St. Angel said somewhat woozily. “Wha’s goin’ on?”

  Matt looked around the room helplessly. “I … I don’t even know where to begin!”

  My now fully conscious, Mickey looked around himself and was horrified to see the terrifying form of Itzpapalotl made flesh. He gently put his hands around Matt’s head.

  “Matt, I don’t think we have a lot of time, and I really need to get up to speed. Is it okay if I read your mind?”

  Matt gave out a choked laugh. “Sure. At least some people ask before they do that.”

  Mickey wasn’t sure how to take that, but he leaned in and placed his forehead against his son’s. “Contact!”

  After a few seconds, he broke the connection, instantly aware of everything Matt had learned over the last few days that had led to this moment. He looked back up at the chaos-demon that now threatened all of Creation, and his face tightened in determination.

  “Matt,” he said earnestly. “Whatever else happens, I am so proud of you. Of that man you’ve grown into. You and your brother both. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “Dad …?” Matt began nervously, but before he could say anything more, his father shoved him hard enough to knock him away.

  Then, Mickey jumped up and ran towards Izpapalotl, reaching into his pocket as he moved. From it, he produced the Birmingham Stapler, the deadly anomaly that, by sheer happenstance, he’d acquired on the very night his boys went strange.

  But then, Mickey St. Angel was a master of Fate magic. And he knew all too well that there was no such thing as happenstance where such magic was concerned. Just as he knew with certainty that Fate was about to collect its due.

  Mickey raised the Stapler to aim at the monster’s back right between its great bat-like wings and pulled the trigger.

  BOOM!

  When Lindsay accepted the chaos-shard that manifested as an Aztec star demon into herself, she thought she would at last be free of her terrible endless existence. The Beyond had written into her physical being an immunity to death, and Itzpapalotl had claimed that benefit for itself, even as it overwrote Lindsay’s mind and body. While riding Lindsay, the star demon could not die – that was simply a fact within this universe.

  But the Birmingham Stapler had also been created through the power of the Beyond manifesting in a different place under very different circumstances. And the Beyond had written into its nature the power to kill anything. That too was a fact within this universe.

  Two mutually exclusive facts of existence, each powered by equally potent aspects of the Beyond, suddenly came into opposition, and it was impossible even for the Beyond to maintain the integrity of both facts in the face of each other’s essential nature.

  There was a deafening clap of thunder and a terrible flash of light in some color that was visible and yet not a part of the visible spectrum. The force of the magical discharge picked up Mickey St. Angel and slammed him against the wall. For an instant, the Beyond fought against itself and simultaneously won … and lost.

  Idomeni

  Father Dimitri opened the door and strode quickly into the church sanctuary. He’d fallen asleep at his desk (most unusual for him in the middle of the day) before being awoken what sounded like a thunderclap that he was sure came from the front of the church. As he stepped into the room, he stopped in amazement.

  The sanctuary was empty, and everything seemed to be in order … except for the unexpected presence of a clawfoot bathtub full of water that some prankster had apparently relocated from his private quarters and left in place of the baptismal fount.

  Father
Dimitri’s amazement would only grow in the days to come when he discovered that the tub was somehow permanently affixed in its new location and could not be shifted by even a half-dozen men straining together. And no matter how much was bailed out of it, the water level never went down.

  The Einstein Tower

  “STATUS REPORT!” screamed Dr. Edith Klein as she ran into the main observation center of the observatory. She’d been taking a nap on the couch in the break room when she’d awoken screaming from the most terrifying nightmare she’d ever had.

  “WHAT ARE THE SOLAR OUTPUT LEVELS! ARE THERE ANY DEVIATIONS FROM NORMAL LEVELS?!?” she added almost hysterically.

  Everyone in the room stared at her in confusion. Her colleague Dr. Mueller was the first one to cautiously approach.

  “Edith,” he said soothingly. “Everything is fine. Solar output is completely normal. Now what on earth is the matter?”

  Klein looked at him with a shocked expression and took a fearful step away from her longtime colleague. As impossible as it seemed now that the man stood before her, Klein was quite certain that at some point earlier that day, she had sliced him nearly in two with a chainsaw.

  “Fr… Franz?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Yes,” he said as he took a cautious step forward. “It’s me … Franz. Now why don’t you just calm down and tell me what’s going on?”

  She didn’t answer at first. Instead, her face crumpled as she burst into wracking sobs and collapsed to the floor. Mueller moved forward to catch her and hold her while she wept hysterically, while the other shocked scientists gathered around. Finally, she spoke through her tears.

  “It’s all wrong,” she whimpered. “Everything’s changed now. We’re all supposed to be in the dark!”

  Cuauhtémoc

  Rafael jerked upright in his squad car and looked around wildly. He remembered having a moment of panic when it seemed he’d lost the power to read, but then he glanced down at his newspaper and was relieved to see that it was perfectly legible, as were the street signs outside his vehicle.

  But his fears began to return when he glanced down at his badge. The words “Federales Policia Nacional” looked normal, but the name tag below the badge which should have said “Sgt. Rafael Ortiz” followed by a badge number … was now completely blank.

  Rafael pulled himself woozily out of his squad car and looked around. The wall and all the other structures that had somehow been sliding into existence were gone. He made his way over to the van with his weapon drawn.

  The front of the van was still completely crushed in as if it had hit a wall face-on at great speed. But there was no such wall now nor any sign of what the van could have struck. A check on the occupants showed that both driver and passenger were dead from the impact.

  Then, Rafael sighed in relief as he heard approaching sirens. And he smiled when a figure he knew well emerged from the first of three squad cars. It was Officer Anita Belmonte. They’d been to the police academy together, and over the years since, they’d been both partners and lovers before settling on friends. He ran towards her car.

  “Anita, thank God!” he exclaimed. “Do you have any idea what the hell has been going on tonight? It’s been crazy!”

  Belmonte didn’t answer immediately. She just looked up and down at Rafael’s disheveled form.

  “Do I know you?” she finally said in a deeply suspicious tone that made Rafael’s sense of panic rise once more.

  The Invisible College

  The force of the blast knocked everyone in the gym to the ground, but the first to recover were Electra and Matt. Luke was a close third as he scrambled to his feet to join Matt around their father’s prone form.

  Luke was already prepared to find that the elder Sullivan was dead. Though less experienced at magic than his brother, Luke had a much better feel for how stories worked, and he’d already grasped the role that narrative structures played in magic and especially in Fate magic.

  Consequently, he was pleasantly if not deliriously surprised when the narrative end he'd expected was averted. The father had not sacrificed himself to save his two sons – John Sullivan was still alive.

  Lying on the ground next to him were the remains of one perfectly ordinary, non-magical (and non-homicidal) staple gun that had been shattered into multiple fragments, all of which were still smoking lightly. The man groaned in pain but otherwise seemed both unharmed and genuinely amazed to find himself in such a state.

  “I don’t … I ….” He looked around at Matt and Luke. “I’m … alive?” he asked in astonishment.

  “Yes, Dad,” said Matt, “you’re alive. But are you hurt? Can I do anything?”

  “No, no,” John said, still amazed and confused. “I’m … fine.”

  “But you weren’t expecting to be, were you?” Luke asked in sudden realization. “When you called on Fate back at the college, you were expecting to die from it!”

  His voice was almost accusatory, and in response, Matt’s face also grew hurt and angry at the thought of losing his father just hours after finding him again. John looked somewhat abashed at the boys’ reactions.

  “… yeah. Calling on Fate isn’t always fatal, but it always exacts a price, one that’s … commensurate with what you’re asking for. When I asked for a pathway to prevent an end-of-the-world scenario that would also allow both of you to survive unharmed, I assumed that it would want my life in exchange. To be honest, I don’t understand how I could … possibly … have….”

  His voice trailed off slowly. Then, he suddenly ripped open the front of his shirt and pulled out an amulet he wore around his neck. It was a silver amulet bearing a complex pattern of interwoven Hebrew and Latin words that had been passed from Stranger to Stranger for untold centuries since its creation. And as John held up it to inspect it, the ancient item simply disintegrated into a fine powder.

  “Well, there goes Mickey St. Angel, I guess,” he said somewhat wistfully. “That was a really useful fiction cloak.”

  Then, he looked up at his sons and grinned broadly. “But I’ll learn to live without it.”

  Then, he pulled Matt and Luke into a hug. But when neither boy was watching, his grin faded into a more pensive expression. Sacrificing his powerful magical identity might have been enough of a down payment on his Fate-debt to save his life, but he was sure it wasn’t enough to pay the debt in full.

  “At some point,” he thought to himself, “the balance of that marker is gonna get called in. I can only hope it ends up being a price I can afford.”

  Nearby, someone else found themselves surprised (if disappointed) to still be alive as well. The form of Itzpapalotl had fallen away like ash to reveal Lindsay Forrester lying on the floor coughing furiously.

  A complex display of emotions washed over the nephilim’s face. Both relief and fury that she’d failed to destroy the world. Both joy and horror that, for the moment at least, she was mortal. Both hope and despair as she could already feel the Beyond wriggling around inside her soul, striving to reestablish the connection before this servant was lost forever.

  And then, a shadow fell across her face. It was Electra pointing a gun at her head.

  Lindsay chuckled. “I, um, don’t suppose it would matter if I said I was sorry?”

  “That would depend on how sincere you were, I guess,” Electra replied quietly.

  Lindsay wiped away a tear, the first one she’d shed in years. “Well, for the next few seconds at least, consider my apology to be completely sincere. I am truly sorry for everything I’ve done. To the world. And to you.”

  Electra nodded. “In that case, it won’t change what happens next, but for what it’s worth, Lindsay, it matters to me.”

  Lindsay smiled wanly. “I’m … I’m glad.”

  Then she grimaced. “They’re coming, you know. I can feel them rebuilding the connection. If they complete it, I’ll be … that thing again. And I won’t ever stop trying to break the world.”

  Electra said nothing, b
ut her gun hand shook almost imperceptibly.

  “Electra, please! I don’t want to be … her anymore! I don’t want to …!”

  Before she could finish her plea, Lindsay paused with her mouth opening and closing as if the words were caught in her throat. Then, she let out a soft giggle.

  Electra fired instantly with a blast powerful enough to vaporize her former friend’s head.

  The body collapsed to the ground. It did not regenerate. The assembled Strangers gathered around the corpse cautiously, including Lionel Bartok who had been waiting outside the entire time protected by his own personal shields.

  “So, is it all over?” he asked. “The day saved and all that?”

  “Looks like it,” said Brother Falcon. “No thanks to you,” he added with a sneer.

  Bartok shrugged without concern. “I did my part by mapping out the perfect arrangement of Strangers to maximize the coven’s power. As I am neither a Collegian nor a Blade paladin, my inclusion in the coven would have undermined its effectiveness rather than improving it.”

  Luke looked at him oddly. “Um, I’m not in the College or the Unity Blade either, but you stuck me into your arrangement.”

  Bartok gave him a foul look. “Yes, yes. I suppose the fact that I value my own life more than any of yours played a role as well. Deal with it.”

  “Sure, whatever,” said Bryce. He clapped his hands and surveyed the Unity Blade members who still slightly outnumbered the Collegians in the room. “Soooo, the crisis is over. I guess that means it’s time for you to be moving along now. You know, as per that oath your leader swore.”

  Mother Eagle stood firm. “Not just yet, Mr. Caulfield. Three matters remain to be addressed.”

  She turned in the direction of the three Sullivans. “First: John Sullivan, as Prefect of the Boston Congregation of the Church of the Unity Blade, I officially withdraw the sanction that the Boston Congregation previously placed against you and grant you absolution for all subsequent crimes committed against the Strangers of Boston and against Reality itself. I do not speak for other congregations, but so long as you and your sons commit no further reality crimes within our jurisdiction, you are no longer of interest to us.”