by John Levitt
Ten minutes later, we pulled up in front of a gate that blocked the road, the kind with a bar that keeps out cars but not people. A heavy padlock secured it, and a sign on the gate, illuminated by my headlights, told us the lighthouse was closed and would reopen at 11:00 a.m. the next morning. Our dashboard effigy sat motionless, nose pointing straight ahead toward the closed gate.
“What now?” asked Campbell.
Before I could answer, I saw a figure approaching the car, looming out of the fog and near-darkness. A quick probe reassured me; no magical residue, no talent, nothing out of the ordinary. As the figure approached the van, it resolved into a middle-aged, nondescript Asian man wearing a Windbreaker over a khaki shirt. There was a blur on his upper left sleeve that looked like some kind of Park Service patch, but it was too dark to see it clearly. He peered into the van through steel-rimmed glasses as I rolled down the side window.
“Hi,” he greeted us. “You folks come up to tour the lighthouse?”
I put a warning hand on Campbell’s arm and smiled blandly.
“Oh, I didn’t think the lighthouse would be open this late,” I said, “but I thought we could drive down to where we could get a good look at it.”
The man gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry, folks. We lock off the access road at five. You’ll have to come back another day.”
“No problem,” I said. “We wanted to take a scenic drive anyway.”
I gave him another bland smile and rolled up the window. He seemed to want to say something else, then shrugged and walked away. Campbell looked at me with curiosity.
“What?” she asked. “You feel something?”
“No,” I said, “but I still don’t like it. I didn’t catch anything unusual from the guy, no masking energy, nothing to set off alarm bells. But where the hell did he come from? What is he doing here, anyway? There’s no other vehicle in sight. It seems unlikely that the Park Service would post someone to hang around after dark at the end of a narrow, windswept road, conveniently available to tell confused tourists that a locked gate means the road is closed. And, right where we’re getting close to a missing Ifrit?”
“True enough. So who is he then, and why is he here?”
“I don’t know. Christoph may or may not be around; he seems to be fond of using surrogates for his battles. It might be anyone or anything. But we’re still going down to the lighthouse.” I motioned with my hand. “Come over here for a minute.” Campbell slid over next to me and I put my arm around her. “Whatever he is, he’s still watching us from out there somewhere. We need to make him think we’re perfectly normal.”
“I am perfectly normal,” she said primly. “You, on the other hand…”
I pulled her closer, leaned over, and kissed her. She responded without hesitation, clearing up at least one worry. I hadn’t been sure exactly where we stood. Reluctantly I broke off the embrace. Much as I would have liked to continue, there was work to do. I took the palpable sexual energy arising between us and cast a minor illusion. I always find sexual energy easy to work with—I’m not sure if that’s because it’s so primal and strong, or whether it’s just me.
I pulled the van away from the gate and parked on a slight incline to one side. Then I leaned across, opened the passenger side door, and motioned for Campbell to get out. I slid across the seat after her, grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment as I got out. We might need light, and I didn’t want to indulge in any more magical tricks than necessary until I figured out what was going on. All kinds of people and things can sense talent being used.
The tiny dog figure hopped down from its perch, bounced off the seat, and jumped out the door onto the asphalt. I almost stepped on it as it skittered away. I wondered if it would crunch like a mouse or squash flat like the cookie dough it was. It trotted self-importantly under the gate, perfectly mimicking the gait of Lou on a mission. I glanced back at the van and saw two blurry figures seated inside, going at it hot and heavy. Not much of an illusion, granted, but enough to fool someone at night thirty feet away.
We followed our dogikin up the dark road, more by sound than sight, since I didn’t want to risk the flashlight. The scrabbling of tiny nails on asphalt was perfectly audible even over the sound of wind rushing over rocky crags. A half mile later the road ended at a small parking lot. From there a dirt path led away up a hill. At the end of the path, perched on a rocky crag like a medieval fortress, the Point Bonita Lighthouse squatted. Back when it was a working lighthouse, it would have been shining brightly, a beacon of hope along stormy shores. Now it was dark, grim, and foreboding. The path dropped off sharply on the ocean side, and as we walked, the sound of the surf below crashing against the rocks almost drowned out the sound of our guide. The night fog had thickened and a light rain was starting, giving the entire scene an eerie film noir feeling.
Three quarters up the path, a tunnel hewed straight through solid rock loomed out of the fog. The tunnel mouth transformed the gloom outside into an inky blackness. Our doggie guide plunged in without hesitation, but Campbell and I stopped reflexively at the entrance. As far as I could tell, everything was normal—at least considering the circumstances—but the dark passageway was most uninviting. I didn’t want to send out any probing energy that could announce our presence, so I pulled the flashlight out of a jacket pocket and aimed it down the tunnel. The batteries weren’t that fresh, and I could only see about twenty feet in. As best I could remember, though, the tunnel was only about a hundred feet long anyway. The rough-hewn sides formed a ragged semicircle, seven feet high at the center, less so on the sides, which meant if I walked right down the middle I wouldn’t have to stoop except for low-hanging projections.
“Who dug this, anyway?” Campbell asked. “And how?”
“Chinese laborers. Sometime around the time of the Civil War. No explosives, just pick-and-shovel work.”
“It must have taken them years.”
“No, I don’t think so. I remember a Park Service guide saying it was six months, or nine, or something.”
The little dog made its mouse-squeak bark, looking back impatiently over its shoulder.
“I guess we go in,” I said.
I kept the light on the dog as we plunged into the darkness of the tunnel. By this time I was sure that our ultimate destination was the lighthouse, although with tourists traipsing through every day it was hard to see how anything could be concealed there. But then, halfway through the tunnel, the dog stopped abruptly, scratched pathetically at the side of the tunnel, gave a tiny exhalation and fell over on its side. When I bent down to see what had happened, our little dog was no more. Instead, the original cookie dough lump lay there, as if it were a carelessly dropped morsel of food. One of the tiny legs was worn almost to a nub from the rough trip along the path.
“I guess we’re here,” said Campbell
“I guess so. But where is here?”
I looked up and down the tunnel as far as my light would shine. Nothing. I stared at the side of the tunnel where our guide had collapsed, hoping for some clue as to what might lie there. Solid rock. Up toward the roof, several large spiders had spun webs, although I couldn’t for the life of me see what they hoped to catch in this cold and dank place. If I’d ever had any doubts, by now I was convinced the little dog had indeed been following Louie’s trail. There was definitely something here; I just couldn’t find it.
“What now?” Campbell asked.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I think I’ve got to send out a deep probe. It may bring trouble down on us, if there’s anything bad around, but the only other choice is to turn around and go home.”
Usually I need a lot of outside stimulus to do anything effective with my talent. It’s easiest of course to create spells based on similarities—like using the fluidity of water to morph one thing into another. If I were more talented, or more knowledgeable, I wouldn’t need that connection, but I’m not. Put me in an isolation tank and I’d have some trouble getting out.
Being in a dark rock tunnel didn’t provide the best scope for my abilities.
I did have the cold, though. I had damp. I had darkness. Ahh. I had my flashlight. Light. The thing that didn’t fit. Easy. I wrapped them up and sent out a pulse looking for anything else that didn’t fit, something askew. The tunnel walls flashed momentarily, almost too quick to register, and what remained was an afterimage of delicately drawn lines, doorway-sized, right in front of where our little dog had reverted back to dough. Okay, there was something behind the wall, and unless I missed my guess, it was Lou. But how to get in? My spell had shown us where to look, but the rock wall was as solid and unyielding as ever.
I felt suddenly exhausted, discouraged, and helpless, in a dank and cold windswept tunnel with flashlight batteries rapidly fading. Lou was counting on me, and not only had I sat around moping for a week, now that I was finally here I’d run out of inspiration. Then Campbell reached over and took the flashlight out of my hand.
“Wait here a second,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.”
She walked back toward the tunnel mouth, flashlight bobbing and weaving, leaving me alone in the dark with nothing but spiders on the walls and the sound of wind rushing past rock. Not that standing there alone with God knows what lurking in the darkness bothered me. Not much it didn’t. I almost expected Christoph to spring up out of the darkness, large as life and twice as scary, with dripping fangs and glowing eyes. A most unmanly relief washed over me when I saw Campbell returning, flashlight giving off its comforting gleam. She came up to me holding some sort of plant in one hand. Big surprise there.
“Ivy,” she said succinctly. “I noticed it growing on the rock face when we came in.” She took small bits and started edging them along where the line of the doorway was still glowing. “Can you make this stick to the wall?”
That I could do. Eli keeps telling me I have great potential, and I proved it once again by whipping up a spell to make bits of plant matter adhere to a rock wall. When she was done placing the ivy, she muttered another of her incantations under her breath and stood back. The ivy started to glow, then grow. It wasn’t growing into the rock, it was somehow growing into the line of light which outlined the rock doorway. The more the ivy grew, the brighter the line glowed. I looked at Campbell with renewed respect. There were obviously a few things she could teach me. Eventually the entire area around the door was lit up like a Christmas tree, and then, with a soundless crack that I could feel in my bones, the outline of the door separated and fell to the floor of the tunnel, still glowing. In its place, another tunnel led away into the distance, winding its way into the hillside.
“Damn, you’re good,” I said.
“I know,” she said. She gestured toward the opening. “After you, sir.”
The tunnel curved and twisted for a couple of hundred feet, then opened up into a large room. Directly across the room was a closed door leading off to somewhere even farther back. I stopped at the entrance and looked around with a combination of interest and horror. The room, a cross between a veterinarian’s office and an animal shelter, had cages stacked against every wall, most of them occupied with an assortment of small animals. Empty crates were piled up haphazardly everywhere, and the spiders that filled the tunnels seemed to have proliferated, crowding into every corner. More ominous were the long stainless steel tables like those of an autopsy room. On one table, sharp gleaming instruments had been carefully laid out.
You might expect the usual barking and meowing and squealing a group of caged animals usually provides, but this place was eerily silent. Because these weren’t animals in the cages. They were Ifrits.
“Holy mother of God,” I breathed.
Campbell looked around at the cages, but she didn’t fully understand the impact it had on me. Practitioners, like anyone else, have disagreements, and those disagreements sometimes turn nasty. Violence is not unknown, and there is even the occasional practitioner who observes no conventions of any sort, like Christoph. But mostly, no matter what the conflict, no matter what the situation, Ifrits are off limits. Even when Christoph had attacked Lou, it was in a fit of anger. This was something very different.
Imagine a Mafia don locked in a turf war with a rival boss. Then imagine his going to that rival’s house and murdering the children he finds asleep inside, and you get some inkling of how practitioners feel about those who would target Ifrits. And putting them in captivity? It was as outrageous as coming across a group of four-year-old children sealed up in wooden crates.
Several furry heads snapped around as we entered, but not one of the Ifrits uttered a sound. I’d never seen so many of them gathered in one spot. They must have come from all over California. At least four cats were in cages, as well as a Chihuahua and something odd that looked dapper and ferretlike. Campbell noticed me looking at it.
“Pine marten,” she whispered in my ear.
I wasn’t paying attention. In the middle of the room, carelessly thrown over the back of a chair, I saw a distinctive gray and black striped wool poncho. The last time I had seen it was at the Challenges in Golden Gate Park, draped over a certain practitioner named Christoph.
“Well, goddamn,” I said. I looked around frantically, but no Lou. Then I heard a soft canine muttering, not quite a bark, coming from the back of the room. I took a step sideways to get a look, and there he was, in a cage set on top of two others. He sat there quietly, staring intently at me. No barking. No tail wagging. No frantic pawing at the wire mesh. The cage was secured top and bottom by flat sliding bolts which were protected by a steel plate over the mesh. Even if he managed to chew through the wire mesh, an impossible feat, he still wouldn’t be able to reach the bolts.
I quickly started across the room toward his cage, but before I’d taken more than a few steps, the door on the back wall opened. I grabbed at Campbell and ducked down behind a row of unused cages stacked by the tunnel entrance. I stupidly hadn’t realized this search for Lou might turn dangerous. I hadn’t thought much about it at all.
I was sure it would be Christoph walking through that door, but instead, two men entered. Except, I wasn’t so sure they were really men. They both appeared Asian, both youngish, both sporting those same glasses with steel-rimmed frames that the supposed park ranger had been wearing. The one on the left was donning a pair of heavy-duty protective gauntlets, the ones firefighters wear. The other was carrying a pole about three feet long with a ribbed handle and a wire noose at one end, like those used by animal control officers. Without bothering to look around, they headed directly toward Lou’s cage.
Lou hunched as far back into the cage as possible, snarling and showing teeth. When the cage door opened, he lunged at the first guy, then swerved at the last second and tried to slip by him to freedom, but there wasn’t enough room. The first guy blocked his escape with his gloves and the second deftly slipped the noose over Lou’s head. He dragged him out of the cage struggling and kicking, holding him up off the ground at arm’s length. Lou was gagging and choking as the weight of his body tightened the noose around his neck. His eyes bulged and his legs bicycled frantically as if he were treading water instead of air.
I found myself across the room before I could form a conscious thought, coming up right behind the one strangling Lou. I slammed my fist against his head, right where the base of the skull meets the neck. You’d think that with my talent, for what it’s worth, I could have instead come up with some spell designed to freeze him in his tracks. But, like Lou, my impulse control isn’t the best, and my first reaction is usually to strike out physically. Most unseemly for a practitioner. Sometimes the unexpected outburst saves me, but just as often it just gets me in more trouble.
Instead of crumpling to the ground like I’d hoped, he merely turned around and regarded me with mild surprise. He did drop Lou, but it was more from the surprise than anything else. I probably could have produced the same reaction by jumping out and yelling boo. The man didn’t appear hurt at all, but I felt like I’d
broken my hand. It was as if I had punched a moss-covered boulder.
As soon as he hit the floor, Lou scurried away out of reach, dragging the pole along with him, still choking. The first guy, the one with the gloves, smoothly glided over in front of the tunnel, blocking any escape. He glittered as he moved, blurring momentarily, losing some of his human aspect and leaving the impression of a crystalline creature, a living faceted gem. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. I should have known. At times like these, I wished I was like Victor, armed with preset power spells that could be triggered by a single word, raining destruction down on my enemies.
Still, I do have skills. I backed up to where Campbell was standing as the first guy moved unhurriedly forward. The essence of this place was that of a trap, a jail, a place of confinement. I reached out and gathered that essence in. I added the prolific spiders, huddling in every corner. And I’m not above using pop icons as a focusing device.
“Don’t worry, Mary Jane,” I said to Campbell. “They don’t know who they’re messing with.”
