by Sam Cheever
I felt my eyes widen. She would?
The woman gave Darma a broad smile and stood. She pulled the little boy forward and told him to say thank you. As Darma shook her head to tell the woman it wasn’t necessary the little boy took it out of her hands. He climbed into Darma’s lap and gave her a loud, wet kiss on the cheek.
“I wuv you,” he said in his sweet, baby voice.
Darma watched them walk away and sobbed one last time. “I owe you a huge apology, Astra.”
I didn’t need her to elaborate on that and I didn’t want to see her suffer any more at the moment. “It’s all behind us now. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
She sniffled and nodded. “Thank you for understanding.”
I sat down next to her on the bench. “We need to talk.”
“I know.”
I watched Dialle and Torre. They were sitting on the merry-go-round punching each other on the arm. I smiled. Men could be such children. Even deadly devil men.
I turned to look at her. “I have to say I’m shocked. I didn’t think you had the magic.”
She shrugged. I could tell she wanted to say something but was struggling with it. Finally she turned to me. “I’ve always had it. I just tried to deny it to myself and everybody else. But lately...” She looked at Torre, rubbing her arm thoughtfully. “It’s been harder to fight. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s as if there’s something changing. The wall I built between me and the magic is disintegrating and I can’t seem to stop it.”
I sat back on the bench and looked up at the purple sky. The mist was still above the trees but it felt lower than before. I shivered and my wrist suddenly pulsed. “Something is happening, Darma. I can feel it too. I think the best thing to do is to train yourself in your magic since you can’t seem to stop it. It would be safer for everybody.”
She stared straight ahead, her eyes haunted. But she finally nodded. “I know you’re right. The truth is, it terrifies me not to have control over it. I could hurt somebody.” Her blue gaze raked the area of the playground that had been covered in demon parts only moments earlier.
I stood. “Then it’s settled, you’ll come work with me.”
She turned to me with a look of surprised horror on her face. “With you? I can’t do that.”
“It makes the most sense, Darma. I can train you in using your magic. And you can help me in the business.”
She shook her head, her face settling into the stubborn lines I knew only too well. “No, I won’t help you kill things for a living. That part of your life I don’t apologize for hating.”
I blew out a frustrated sigh. “They’re demons, Darma. They deserve vanquishing.” When she continued her stubborn refusal I lost my temper and surged to my feet. “I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to kill things you know, Darma. My job is really dangerous and sometimes it sucks. I didn’t choose this line of work, it needed to be done. It’s my calling.”
She stared at me for a long time and then slowly nodded her head. “In some part of my brain I know you’re doing a job that needs to be done, Astra. I’m sorry that I don’t approve. I know it’s hard and I know it’s dangerous and I know that really you have no choice.” She touched my hand gently. “But don’t you see... I do have a choice. And I know that doing what you do would kill me slowly. I can’t be like you. Don’t ask me to be.”
I sighed. “Okay. I’ll let it go for now. But somebody needs to train you.”
She glanced toward the merry-go-round. “Torre can train me.”
I frowned. “Are you sure? He’s only familiar with dark magic. What about the light?”
Darma shrugged, “Father can help me with that.”
I stared at her for a long moment. For some reason she didn’t want me to help her. I had to respect that. Even if it wasn’t logical. I mean, after all, when was the last time my sister was logical?
CHAPTER FOUR
It Begins
The twisted veil distorts the minds, of all who magic lack,
And those who carry magic power, must ’round humans watch their backs.
Emo was sitting behind his desk when I got into the office the next morning. He was making notes rapidly as he listened to a conversation in private mode on his televisual.
I waved and walked past him into my office. Throwing my long leather coat onto the chair by the door, I shivered, rubbing my arms. The weather was unseasonably cold and the air was moist, making the cold sink deep into my bones. I suspected the thickening cloud of mist had something to do with the weather changes.
I glanced through the big window behind my desk. The day beyond the glass was starting slowly. The sun was buried under a thick blanket of smothering mist. I’d been watching for the mist to begin dropping closer to the ground but so far it had stayed high in the sky. It was definitely thickening though and had begun to shift and roil as if something was stirring it up from the center, rippling outward.
Movement below caught my eye. Two men stood talking on the street and the conversation did not look friendly. One of them I recognized as a tenant in my office building.
Ralph Peters was the taller of the two men and had longish, curly black hair. I remembered he also had the most amazing hazel eyes with long lashes. I’d only spoken to him a handful of times but he seemed like a really nice guy.
He was talking animatedly to the other man, whom I didn’t recognize and his long arms were waving around as if he was getting passionate about their subject.
The shorter man was just standing there, his legs spread in a slightly hostile stance and his hands on his hips. I couldn’t see his face because his back was to the building but suddenly one of his hands shot out and his fist connected with Ralph’s attractive face.
Ralph went down like a stone.
“Holy shit!”
The man followed up the punch with a few brutal kicks to Ralph’s head and torso and then turned and walked away.
I ran out of my office. Emo called out to me but I waved him off. “Call unplanned care.” Then I was in the flash elevator and heading down to street level.
Ralph was still lying on the sidewalk when I got outside. People had started gathering and one man was bent over him, checking for a pulse. The concerned citizen looked up when I pushed my way through the crowd and apparently recognized me as someone who should take charge of the situation.
“His pulse is a bit weak. He seems to have broken his head open when he fell.”
I looked at the spreading slide of blood on the sidewalk and cursed silently. Dropping to my knees beside him, I glanced up at the man hovering over Ralph. “I need some room. Get these people out of here.”
What I didn’t want to tell him is that I planned to use my power to heal Ralph as much as possible and I didn’t want the people who were standing around to catch any magic backlash.
He nodded and stood up, trying to push people back. “She needs some room to work here, people. How about you move on. Things are under control now.”
I heard a few of the gawkers move away but several people refused to leave. There were hostile murmurings behind me about magic users and tempting the devil. The small hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.
I tried to ignore the wall of hostility behind me as I began to pull my power forward. If there were magic haters in the crowd I’d just have to deal with them after I saved Ralph. A burst of wind tossed my hair into my face and the crowd behind me started to fall to the side. I felt a warm, solid presence beside me and looked up into Emo’s worried face.
“Astra. Let me help you get him in the air vehicle. Unplanned care isn’t coming. We’ll need to take him in.”
“I’ll just...”
He gave me a sharp negative jerk of his head. “No. Let’s get him into the vehicle.” He raised dark eyebrows at me in warning and I hesitated, not willing to let a bunch of magic bigots keep me from doing the right thing for the man on the ground in front of me. Finally I sighed and nodded.
I could help him better and ultimately faster if we got him away from the crowd hovering over us.
Between us we carried Ralph to Emo’s sleek, black air vehicle and laid him down on the floor behind the seats. As Emo input directional instructions for the unplanned care unit I bent over Ralph, pulled my power forward and focused it carefully into him. He had at least three broken ribs and a crack in his nose from the punch. I healed the gash to the back of his head, which was bleeding a lot but probably wasn’t life threatening and then did what I could to align his ribs and nose and seal them back up. It was only a temporary fix but it would get him safely into unplanned care.
Then I flopped into the seat next to my partner and met his gaze. “He’ll be okay. What happened back there, Emo?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure. I’m seeing signs of a growing level of...” he frowned, “I guess you’d have to call it aggression...among the humans. A new anti-magic feeling is taking hold. I’ve been taking calls all morning from dark worlders asking if we have any jurisdiction over the humans. Apparently angry humans are attacking and the dark worlders can’t fight back because they’ll be marked for vanquishing.”
Emo looked at me and shook his dark head, “This is a problem we didn’t foresee when we let the human government set the rules.”
I sat back and scrubbed both hands over my face. It wasn’t bad enough I had to deal with the big, dark and uglies. Now I had to play referee between humans and the dark world, with the humans as the aggressors. “Shit.”
Emo nodded. “Yeah.”
Emo pulled his air vehicle up to the Emergency area of the building and an arm came out and locked onto it. The emergency med techs tucked Ralph onto a stretcher and carefully lifted him out of the vehicle.
I followed them into the building to give what little information I could about him; mostly just his name and the location of his business, so they could contact his partner for more info.
A familiar voice hailed me as I watched them taxi Ralph toward a surgical room on an air gurney.
Doctor Lee smiled at me when I turned and held out her hand, clasping mine in a warm grip. “Mx. Phelps, what brings you here to see us again?”
I returned the smile, shaking my head. “Unfortunately I had to bring a fellow tenant in. He was beaten up on the street.” I watched her face carefully as I went on, “by a magic hater.”
Her triangular eyes narrowed slightly before she placed a hand on my shoulder and walked me away, to a slightly more private area of the room. “That change we were talking about a few days ago?”
I nodded.
“I’m more convinced now than ever. It’s affecting the human race too.”
My eyebrows peaked.
She nodded. “I know it sounds paranoid. But I have numbers to back it up. This facility has never been busier. I’m logging four times as many attacks from magic wielders every day and ten times more attacks from non-magic humans. That’s a substantial change in volume.”
I had to agree. “What is it, Doctor Lee? What’s causing all this violence?”
She glanced at a med crew passing within inches of us, guiding an air gurney with a fat woman who had blood all over her pudgy face toward surgery. When her strange yellow gaze returned to me it was guarded. Her voice was nearly inaudible. “It’s in the prophesies, Mx. Phelps. You’ll need to look for it there.”
Then she turned away and left.
~SC~
Emo and I left after extracting a promise from one of the med techs that he would call us when Ralph came out of surgery. We headed back toward the office, remaining below the mist. After my encounter with the dragon I couldn’t stop myself from staring out of the viewports for anything that looked violent, hostile, or just downright ugly.
We made it to our building and Emo put the air vehicle into hover in the parking area. I climbed out, running my hands over the vehicle’s sleek, black surface. “This is one of those Avenger models isn’t it?”
Emo nodded, “The Knight, 2090x.”
I checked out the grill and the back end. “Sweet. Top speed?”
He grinned, “Off the record?”
I snorted.
“I got it up to four hundred in clear air space.”
My eyes widened and my mouth watered. “No frunkin’ way!”
He slung a muscular arm over my shoulders, “Would I lie to you, boss?”
I snorted again, reluctantly letting him pull me toward the flash. “What colors?”
“Legal?”
“Of course not!”
With the new anti-color law that had been enacted because of pressure by ultra-green environmentalists, six out of ten air vehicles were a paintless aluminum. The painted ones could no longer be purchased above ground. Fortunately the world government didn’t actually enforce the anti-color law. Probably because they’d have to arrest many of the spoiled and corrupt members of the government if they did.
The Viper’d had a fire-red exterior. I’d purchased it just before the anti-color law passed and I was damned if I was going to buckle to pressure and buy a paint free vehicle to add to the pain of having lost my beloved Viper.
Emo gave me devilish grin, “Just tell me what color you want and I can get it for you.”
I shared the grin as the flash doors slid closed.
~SC~
We stopped to tell Ralph’s partner, Bob, what had happened before we headed into our own office. He was noticeably upset and promised to call unplanned care to provide whatever information they needed. The televisual was blinking when we walked through our office door. When Emo checked it, the memory was nearly full with calls.
Emo shook his head. “I guess I need to put a new message up that says we don’t vanquish angry humans.”
I snickered. “That should go over well with our human clients.” I headed toward my office with the hope that I could clean up some of the work waiting for me there. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
“Hold on, Astra.” Emo called out. He stood up and headed for the door. “There’s a gargoyle running loose in the park.”
“Shit.” I glanced wishfully at my office. What I wouldn’t give for some peace and a few quiet hours to clean up reports. “Let me grab some weapons.”
I opened my weapons vault with the pad of my left pinkie and selected several platinum knives that were specially coated with angel’s blood. I also grabbed my vial of angel’s tears, dropping the chain that held it over my head. I reemerged from my office and threw Emo a couple of the knives. He caught them easily and slipped each one into a special knife holster he’d strapped on his forearms. He already had a couple of longer knives strapped to his thighs. Those didn’t have angel’s blood on them but they kicked ass when you wanted to chop off limbs and heads.
“Let’s go.”
He grabbed my arm and we were suddenly locked in time and space. We shimmered into the playground again.
“Déjà vu all over again,” I murmured. He glanced at me and I shrugged. “This is where Darma vanquished the demon.”
It didn’t take long for us to spot the gargoyle. The thing had a man pinned to the ground and was gnawing on his arm. Grimacing, I prayed the man was dead, or at the very least unconscious.
Emo and I ran toward the ’goyle. We had to step over and around several mangled bodies as we went. I moved up behind the thing as silently as possible. As I neared it I realized there was really no need for stealth. It would have been hard to hear an air vehicle flying overhead with all the chomping and slurping noises. Emo and I shared a look of disgust and then I threw a knife tipped with blood at the nasty thing.
The knife went into the goyle’s neck and buried itself to the hilt. That’s the nice thing about angel’s blood on dark worlder flesh, it just kind of melts it, making it much easier to cause real damage with a minimum of effort.
The ’goyle jerked as the knife entered its neck and stood, shrieking with pure old-fashioned rage. It turned and fixed glowing red eyes on us and then, gath
ering itself like a large dog, lunged in our direction.
I grabbed another knife and lifted my arm but the ’goyle was on me before I could pitch it. I went down hard onto my back with about two hundred pounds of nasty, smelly ’goyle on top of me.
Three inch long, gore covered teeth that smelled like a butcher shop snapped together in front of my face. My hands were on its chest and my arms trembled with the effort of keeping it away.
Emo was hacking and slashing away at the ’goyle from behind until the thing swung a massive leg at him. Emo sailed away with a decidedly surprised look on his face.
I needed to get another knife into the ’goyle but I couldn’t release my grip on its throat or it would be on me like stink on a sewer demon and I’d be dead. I realized I’d have to do it the new-fashioned way. Forcing myself to concentrate on pulling the power forward I felt it beginning to build. But my arms started to give out before I could draw enough power forward and I lost my concentration. The ’goyle’s snapping, blood-coated teeth grazed my cheek and a string of drool dripped like acid down my cheek.
I knew Emo had returned when one of the goyle’s front legs was suddenly severed from its body and he sank more deeply onto me.
Emo’s face finally popped up over the ’goyle’s shoulder. “I’ve cut off three of the thing’s four legs, Astra and it still keeps coming.”
“Cut off the last one then! Hurry.”
“If I do it’ll crush you.”
A razor sharp fang sliced into the soft flesh of my cheek. “Just do it!” I screamed.
Emo swung hard and the last leg collapsed away from the raging gargoyle.
I grunted as two hundred pounds settled completely onto my chest and another tooth entered my face.
Emo kicked a trunklike, severed leg out of the way and reached around the gargoyle to grab its neck. He used a power induced wrenching motion to pull the thing off me and fling it away. I screamed as the gargoyle’s teeth ripped my face on the way out.
