Science and Sorcery

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I'm afraid not,” Caitlyn admitted. “I’m rather surprised they invited me to the meeting.”

  Matt had to smile. “I thought that you were going to present it,” he said. “How could they have it without you?”

  Caitlyn didn't smile. “Politics,” she said sourly. “The FBI got a jump on everyone else because I convinced Director Tomlinson that looking into the whole werewolf affair was a worthwhile use of our time and resources. Everyone else dismisses the werewolves as just another example of people going crazy and looking for supernatural explanations, so when they can't ignore it any longer the FBI looks good and they look bad.

  “But Tomlinson only put me in charge because he didn't take it very seriously himself,” she added. “Now that they know that whatever is happening is serious, someone more senior might want to muscle in and take command. Or the FBI might find itself pushed aside by the CIA, or NSA, or someone else. They played politics with 9/11. Do you really think they wouldn't play politics with this too?”

  Matt heard the bitterness in her voice and nodded. They’d been told that Caitlyn would be attending the meeting at the White House – and she’d been ordered to prepare a presentation for the President, if the President attended the meeting – but there had been few other details. And, given that Caitlyn was the Special Agent in command of the FBI’s task force, that boded ill for the future. Or perhaps it was merely a reflection of just how uncomfortable Official Washington felt with the whole affair. Just like the media, the government had refused to take the matter seriously at first. Why should they have? Matt wouldn't have taken it seriously if he hadn't shot a werewolf.

  “I’ll be wandering around Washington,” he said, with a grin. “I’ll keep my cell phone with me at all times, so just call me when you get out of the meeting.”

  “Have fun, and think of me when you’re admiring Lincoln’s statue or something,” Caitlyn said ruefully. She smiled, suddenly. “I’ve never been to the White House before, Matt. I’d be excited if I didn't feel as if I was reporting to the principal for a lecture on misbehaver.”

  “Good luck,” Matt said, seriously. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

  Caitlyn had put him up at her apartment in Washington, allowing him to sleep on the sofa at night. Their relationship was growing deeper, even though it hadn't become sexual; they felt comfortable with one another, no matter what happened. Besides, he reflected as Caitlyn left the apartment and closed the door behind her, it wasn't as if she had much for someone to steal. Like Matt’s own apartment, Caitlyn’s apartment had a permanent air of transiency, as if the occupier knew that they might be leaving at any moment. But then, FBI agents often had to move around the country on short notice.

  He pulled on his jacket, strapped his holster to his belt and walked out of the door, closing it firmly behind him. It had been years since he’d last visited Washington and there had been little time for sightseeing, so he’d decided that he needed to take a look at his country’s monuments before Caitlyn returned and he learned about what they were going to be doing next. He had a feeling that they were going to be very busy. The media had finally cottoned on to the legal implications of werewolves and vampires and had raised so much hysteria that he doubted that any werewolf would come forward willingly. At least they knew that Joe Buckley hadn't hurt anyone.

  Yet, he reminded himself, grimly.

  It wasn't a long walk from Caitlyn’s apartment to the centre of Washington, but it was long enough for Matt to become convinced that he was being watched. He’d always had good situational awareness – the NYPD tried hard to train its officers to be aware of their surroundings at all times – but this was different. There seemed to be no one following him, at least as far as he could tell, yet the sensation refused to fade away. One hand dropped to his holster as he started to glance behind him and scan the crowd, looking for the shadow. It took several minutes before he realised that his follower was using...something to hide himself.

  Matt turned right into an alleyway and glanced around, looking for a place to hide. He found it in a smelly door that clearly served as a toilet for drunkards when they were staggering home from the bars. Ignoring the smell, Matt concealed himself and waited. His shadow came up to the alley and turned into it, still intent on remaining in sight of Matt at all times. Matt smiled, drew his gun, and stepped out of concealment.

  “Stop right there,” he snapped. “I...”

  He broke off. The shadow was strange. He looked average, so average that there were no distinguishing features on his face at all; indeed, Matt felt his eyes starting to slide past the man, as if he wasn't quite there. If Matt hadn't been able to sense his presence, in the same way he’d sensed the werewolf infection spreading through Joe Buckley, he would have questioned his own sanity.

  The shadow raised his hands, allowing Matt to see that they were empty. “I apologise for following you,” he said. His voice was...average. It was somewhat disconcerting. “My name is Golem. And we need to talk.”

  Matt didn't lower his gun. “What are you?”

  “I am Golem,” Golem said. “We need to talk.”

  “Right,” Matt said. “And what, exactly, are you?”

  Golem’s form seemed to shimmer. When the shimmering was gone, Matt found himself staring at a humanoid figure shaped entirely from something that looked like clay. The face was both human and very alien; bright red eyes burned in the eye-sockets, as if they were illuminated by a fire inside his skull, but the rest of his appearance was disconcertingly human. Matt stumbled backwards, still keeping the gun aimed at Golem’s head. But if he was made of clay, part of his mind asked, what good would a gun do?

  “I am Golem,” Golem said, patiently. “We need to talk.”

  “So we do,” Matt agreed. He was no stranger to interrogations, or to dealing with drugged up gangsters or people from very different cultures, but Golem seemed almost...alien. It was easy to believe that a clay man would have thought patterns very different from the average human. “I think...”

  He hesitated. “Can you disguise yourself again? I need to take you somewhere safe.”

  Golem’s form shimmered again, creating the illusion of an average man. Now he knew that it was a disguise, Matt could appreciate just how neat a trick it actually was, however it was worked. No one would look twice at Golem, or remember what he looked like, if they remembered him at all. And yet the more Matt stared at him, the easier it was to see that something wasn't quite right. The figure didn't seem to move like a human being.

  Back in New York, he would have taken Golem to the nearest police station; in Washington, he wasn't entirely sure what to do. Caitlyn would have known, but Caitlyn was in the White House and he couldn’t call her there. In the end, he led Golem back to her apartment, praying that he wasn't making a terrible mistake. Golem thumped his way up the stairs – Matt hadn't realised just how heavy he was until he heard his footsteps – and into the apartment, showing little curiosity at all. A human would have glanced around, just to see where they’d been taken. Golem just walked into the apartment and stopped.

  “Please, take a seat,” Matt said. Even hidden behind some kind of magic spell, Golem was disconcerting. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “I require no nourishment,” Golem informed him, as he sat down on a chair that creaked alarmingly under his weight. Matt had the impression that he would have remained standing if he hadn't been asked to sit – and, unlike a human, wouldn't have found it insulting, or worrying. “Your world is in terrible danger.”

  Matt felt a chill running down his spine. “What danger?” He asked. “And just what is happening to us?”

  Golem’s protective illusion vanished. Matt found himself staring into two bright red eyes, burning with a power beyond comprehension. “The mana is returning,” Golem said, “and the Thirteen will not be far behind.”

  He spoke the words as if he expected his listener to understand them, but they made little sense to Matt. Or
maybe they did; mana was an old word for power, hijacked by fantasy writers to represent the force behind magic. For a moment, he wished that he had spent more time reading fiction rather than playing football at school; it might have prepared him better for coming face-to-face with a mythical creature. But who were the Thirteen?

  “I think you’d better start at the beginning,” he said. “What exactly is going on?”

  ***

  The Hunter didn’t understand. Golem felt surprise, and then felt surprise at feeling surprise. It was logical that the Hunter, far removed from his ancestors, would have no idea about his heritage. So many generations had passed that it was unlikely that the Hunter realised that his bloodline could be traced back over thousands of years, right back to the original set of humans who had been...altered by sorcerers and turned into Hunters. In fact, Golem’s research had suggested that recorded history simply made no room for magic. He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping, waiting for the first trickle of mana to restore him, but every time he looked at the modern histories he added another thousand years to his estimate.

  But that still left the problem of explaining what was happening to the modern world.

  “Once, the land flowed with mana,” Golem said. “Many thousands of years ago, the gods walked the world and sowed their seeds upon the land. They created humanity and many other creatures and set them free to build their own lives. And then the gods faded away as the mana levels could no longer support them. In their place, humans who had learned to manipulate mana built the first global civilisations. It was truly a time of wonders.”

  He tried to read the Hunter’s expression, but it was difficult. “There were dragons flying through the sky, mermaids swimming through the seas; dwarfs and trolls digging their way through the mountains, deep underground. And there were the sorcerers who built and powered civilisation. It was the sorcerers who led the battle against the other creatures created by the gods; it was the sorcerers who created beings such as yourself to defend humanity. And so it was a golden age.

  “And then disaster struck. Thirteen sorcerers, each one powerful beyond imagination, believed that they could harness the power of mana directly and become gods themselves. Other sorcerers moved to stop them, realising the danger of what they were trying to do, but they were already hideously powerful. They raised vast armies to their banners, using them against their enemies and innocents alike. It took seventy years of war to contain them and yet we could not remove them from existence. They had done something to make themselves immortal.”

  The Hunter leaned forward. “What did they do?”

  “I do not know,” Golem said. If Enchanter had ever worked out the secret, he had kept it to himself. It was temping to imagine that his creator was somewhere around, but preserving a human life in a world without mana would be far harder than preserving a clay-man. “They could not be killed. My creator eventually managed to seal the Thirteen into a prison that isolated them from the world, holding them in a realm where time didn't pass. But their defeat came at a terrible price.”

  He had agonised about how to explain the fall of civilisation to someone born long after the fall, so long afterwards that civilisation itself was nothing more than a myth, if that. “Maintaining the prison required vast amounts of mana,” he explained. “Over the years, the prison sucked in more and more mana from the source of power. Eventually, the mana in the human world started to run out. Spells that had endured for centuries collapsed, structures that had been held up by mana started to crumble into dust, sorcerers who used rejuvenation spells to keep themselves alive died...it was the end of civilisation.

  “My creator was one of the few who understood the truth. He knew that the Thirteen had to remain sealed away, even if the price was civilisation itself. But he also knew that the prison would weaken and the mana would start to return to the world. And when it grew strong enough to support them, the Thirteen would be able to return themselves. That is the danger facing your world.”

  The Hunter studied him for a long moment. “You said that they created beings like myself,” he said, finally. “What am I?”

  “Your ancestors were Hunters, humans gifted with a raw talent for killing supernatural beings,” Golem said. “Your weapon would not have killed a werewolf, had it been fired by anyone but you. A sword would have had the same effect.”

  “I...see,” the Hunter said. He sounded stunned, leaving Golem to wonder if he’d given too much information too quickly. Human mentalities were complex, not given to cool and rational analysis. Golem would have accepted the information and moved on, but a human...? They were distracted by emotional responses. “And why...why now?”

  “The mana is returning,” Golem said, patiently. “All of the twisted humans – the werewolves, the vampires, the gorgons and many others – are going to start discovering their true natures as the mana grows strong enough to support their existence. Werewolf magic is linked to the moon, which is probably why they appeared first. The others won’t be far behind.”

  “There’s a girl in Memphis who grew a mermaid tail overnight,” the Hunter mused. “What will happen to her?”

  “She will have to learn to live underwater,” Golem said. Part of his mind noted that the girl herself might find the concept terrifying, but it was just a fact. He moved on. “She will find that she can breathe normally while deep under the waves.”

  The Hunter looked shocked. “And...why does the moon affect werewolves?”

  It was a pointless question, but Golem tried to answer it anyway. “According to legend, the first werewolves came from a tribe that attacked a temple belonging to the Children of the Moon, a female cult that considered the moon to be a god. The priestesses cursed the tribesmen, using magic to ensure that they became monsters whenever the moon rose in the sky. As they tried to steal silver, the curse included a component that turned silver into deadly poison for a werewolf. Their descendants became the first wolf people. Later, the curse would have lost its power as the mana faded away.”

  “But now the mana is coming back,” the Hunter mused. “How many people are descended from werewolves?”

  “I could not even begin to estimate,” Golem said. Humans often asked themselves pointless – or unanswerable – questions. “The curse will have been passed down through the families until now.”

  The Hunter seemed shocked into silence, so Golem pressed ahead. “But the werewolves are hardly the main problem,” he said. “You have magicians already developing their powers. It will not be long before the Thirteen can return to the world and resume their mad scheme to gain supreme power for themselves. You have to prepare to stop them.”

  “You want us to stop unstoppable magicians,” the Hunter said. Absurdly, he started to laugh. “And how exactly do you want us to do it?”

  He paused. “Maybe an atomic bomb would work,” he added, musingly. “Do you think so?”

  “I do not know,” Golem said. His understanding of what an atomic bomb actually did was somewhat hazy. “However, you may have to prepare for other problems. Some of your magicians, without proper training, are likely to hurt themselves, or others. One of them may have already done so. Worse, you may discover that magic interferes with technology. Your society may wind up threatened by the same collapse that destroyed the one that created me.”

  The Hunter stared at him. “That isn't possible,” he said. “If magic interfered with technology, wouldn’t we be seeing the effects already?”

  “I do not know,” Golem said, unsure if it was another pointless question or not. “I merely raise it as a possibility.”

  “I need to bring you into the labs,” the Hunter said. “And I need to have you speak to some others. Can you stay here for a few hours?”

  “I am here to assist you in preparing for the Thirteen,” Golem said. Logic said that it was unlikely that the strange new society could kill the Thirteen, certainly not with Mana returning to the world, but they might be able to return them to
their prison. Or even seal it, if they found the cells in time. “I am at your disposal.”

  “That’s good to hear,” the Hunter muttered. Golem recognised it as sarcasm and said nothing. Sarcasm was yet another pointless human concept. “My name is Matt. Pleased to meet you, I think.”

  “You should be,” Golem said. The Hunter had sounded ambivalent about his own heritage, which puzzled him. Back before he’d been put to sleep, women had often seduced Hunters in the hopes of bearing a Hunter child. Even an untrained Hunter could be deadly dangerous to the supernatural. Their resistance to magic alone gave them a significant advantage. “Without me, you would be walking into the darkness without a candle to light your way.”

  The Hunter nodded, thoughtfully.

  Chapter Ten

  Washington DC, USA

  Day 7

  Caitlyn had known, in theory, about the layers of protection around the White House – and the President, but nothing had prepared her for the reality. The Secret Service agents fingerprinted her, scanned her retinas and compared both to her FBI file, before carrying out a blood test, putting her through a metal detector and searching her handbag. She was mildly surprised that they didn't insist on a cavity search as well, but by the time they cleared her to enter the building she felt as if she had been stripped naked, scrubbed clean and then dressed in something that marked her as a human sacrifice.