Science and Sorcery

by Christopher Nuttall

  On the face of it, the advisors agreed, Layla Griffin was likely to remain a permanent danger to the population and could therefore be legally confined permanently. However, a minority opinion suggested that she was an escape risk wherever they put her and recommended executing her, simply because she was too dangerous to leave alive. Caitlyn was tempted to agree with that suggestion, although the advisers warned that it might require legal backing from the Supreme Court. Perhaps it would have been better to ask Matt to kill her rather than trying to take her alive.

  She glanced over at where Matt’s body lay under the covers and smiled. They’d fallen into bed together the day after Matt had captured the vampire, the result of stress and mutual attraction, and they’d spent the following nights together. Matt was now a hero, according to the press, although the media hadn't worked out his true nature. Caitlyn was hoping that they’d find a way to identify more Hunters, but so far they hadn't isolated the DNA strands that separated Hunters from normal humans. Their best hope lay with Matt’s relatives, the doctors had decided, yet so far nothing had happened.

  Shaking her head, she pushed the report to one side and glanced at the stream of new incidents that had been reported to the FBI. Every day, something new and bizarre came in, only to be pushed aside the following day by something even worse. Today, according to the police report that had been forwarded to the FBI, who had in turn forwarded it to the Mage Force, a man had visited a tattoo parlour and insisted on having his back tattooed with an ancient invocation for bringing good luck. But something had gone wrong with the tattoo and it now invited bad luck, causing the poor bastard to suffer a whole series of accidents and disasters, culminating in the death of his wife. He was now trying to sue the tattoo parlour, only to discover that no lawyer would take his case. No doubt that too was a sign of bad luck.

  The duty officer had asked Golem about the case and Golem had agreed that it was possible, although he was surprised that anyone in the modern era had been able to draw an invocation of any kind. Caitlyn was surprised too; very little beyond myths and legends, all badly warped, seemed to have survived Golem’s time. Some Hindu myths seemed to be bad reflections of the war against the Thirteen, while Noah’s Ark bore definite resemblance to Golem’s tale of two human families caught up in a war between gods. And then there were cities that were destroyed by magic, perhaps the origin of the tale of Sodom and the other city God had destroyed. Caitlyn could never remember the other city’s name.

  God help us when that gets out, she thought, tiredly. Modern religion was having enough trouble coming to terms with magic and the Changed without discovering that many of their most prized stories were actually legends from Golem’s time. The Vatican had instructed Catholics with magical talents to declare themselves to the Church, an order of questionable legality and – practically speaking – unenforceable. Given that every country in the world was trying to round up magic users for their own magic programs, it was unlikely that many of them would be allowed to go to Rome. Israel had issued its own request for Jewish magicians to report to the government to aid in Israel’s defence, while various Islamic groups had taken a darker view of events. A handful were insisting that magicians should not be allowed to practice, unless their activities were closely regulated by the religious authorities; the remainder seemed convinced that it was all a Western plot and magicians – and Changed – had to be destroyed as quickly as possible.

  The level of paranoia had to be seen to be believed, Caitlyn knew. One senior mullah in Iran had loudly proclaimed that magicians drew their powers from drinking menstrual blood. It had made no sense to Caitlyn until a CIA analyst had pointed out that it harked back to various blood libels made against the Jews. They had to know it was nonsense – as far as Caitlyn knew, none of the magicians discovered in America had made a habit of drinking blood – but it hadn’t stopped the rumours from spreading around the world. Even some of the more extreme right-wing sects in America had picked up on it.

  She put the tablet PC to one side as she glanced at the clock, and then pulled herself out of bed. It was 7am; they needed to be on the base at 8.30, where yet another noted scientist was supposed to be presenting a hastily-written paper on the theory of magic. Every college and university in the civilised world had established a program for studying magic, along with a number of businesses. Apparently the mermen and mermaids were already being headhunted by businesses to work in underwater mining, which opened up a new series of legal problems. Caitlyn couldn't see how anyone could fail to regard the Changed as human, at least the ones who didn't become snarling monsters for a few days each month, but legally speaking it was questionable if they were human. Someone would have to come up with a law as quickly as possible, before the shit hit the fan. What would happen when someone tried to refuse payment on the grounds that the Changed weren't human and therefore could be cheated at will?

  The thought made her roll her eyes as she made coffee, filled two mugs, and walked back into the bedroom. Right now, that wasn't even the most serious problem on the list. Some of the civilian researchers had been very inventive when they’d come up with concepts for magical research, ranging from polymorph theory to something that involved fiddling with the energy state of the universe. Caitlyn was no scientist, but she’d shown it to a couple of government researchers and they’d been horrified at the possible implications. She hadn't understood a word of the technobabble that had followed, but it had seemed to boil down to making the entire universe pop like a soap bubble. That angle of research would have to be left strictly alone.

  “Thank you,” Matt said, as she prodded him into wakefulness. She hadn't thought that policemen were supposed to be lazy, but then she had given him a proper workout last night. And he had been involved with supervising the preparations for the next full moon, when the werewolves might return to wolf form. “What’s the time?”

  “Time you got a watch,” Caitlyn said, dryly. She glanced at her bedside clock and smiled. “And time you got out of bed.”

  Matt pulled back the covers and swung his legs out of the bed, sitting up with practiced skill. The brief encounter with the vampire had left bruises all over his chest, but they had faded away completely, along with most of the other evidence of the struggle. Golem had said that quick regeneration was one of Matt’s capabilities; the doctors had been astonished to monitor just how quickly his body knitted itself back together. They even had a plan to start introducing blood from Matt’s body into willing volunteers and see if it produced more Hunters.

  “This is very good coffee,” he said, as he sipped his mug. Caitlyn snorted. She had never bothered to develop a taste for expensive coffee, a legacy of her father’s dictum that expensive habits were expensive to maintain. “What’s happening in the world today?”

  Caitlyn smiled. “It seems that a team of role-playing nerds has managed some success in channelling mana,” she said. “Do you know anything about role-playing?”

  “I was never in the nerdy club,” Matt said, wryly. “I had sex instead.”

  Caitlyn elbowed him. “How long do you think it’s going to be before one of them turns a bullying jock like yourself into a slug and steps on him?”

  “It’ll happen as soon as the mana level becomes high enough to support it,” Matt said, grimly. The scientists had yet to develop a way to measure mana in its natural state, but Golem – and the other magicians – had said that the level was slowly creeping higher and higher. In fact, Caitlyn worried about what might happen if the level reached the point where it could support gods. “And then the world will shift once again.”

  He scowled. “It may have happened already,” he added. “Remember New York?”

  Caitlyn nodded. Two incidents at the same school might not be coincidence – although she had a feeling that the second one might be nothing more than someone trying to evade responsibility for his own actions. Several years of service in the FBI had left her alarmingly aware of just how many people tried t
o escape justice by pleading everything from demonic possession to mental illness. It wasn't helped by the fact that the media portrayed insanity as a perfectly reasonable defence in court.

  She tapped a switch on the tablet and brought out a different report. A hunter in Alaska had reported sighting, of all things, a dragon. If he'd reported it before werewolves and vampires had been proven real, he would have been laughed at, but now? Golem said that the mana level was nowhere near high enough to support a dragon – something that large couldn't fly without magic, let alone breathe fire – and that the dragons should have died out when the mana faded away, but they had to take the report seriously. Besides, he'd also said that some dragons had been capable of taking human form. Perhaps dragon genetics had survived down the ages too.

  Matt got dressed with commendable speed while she shut down the tablet and reached for her own clothes. They’d have to start thinking about moving onto base once they took possession of the disused military base that was currently being reactivated for the Mage Force, but for the moment they could share her apartment. Besides, it was more discreet than sharing quarters on a base...

  Her secure cell phone rang. Caitlyn picked it up and pressed her thumb against the sensor, allowing it to read her thumbprint. “Hello?”

  She listened grimly to the report from New York. “Understood,” she said. “I’ll send Officer Coombs and...and an expert at once.”

  Matt looked up as she put down the phone. “What’s happened?”

  “You’re going to New York,” Caitlyn said, “and you’re taking Golem with you. There’s been an...incident.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  New York, USA

  Day 25

  “Back here again,” Matt said. “I don’t know why I don’t just stay in the city.”

  Golem would have shrugged, if he had been human. Humans seemed to want to vent their frustration whenever they felt it, rather than just proceeding along as calmly as possible. His students, the humans who were meant to be learning magic from him, suffered from frustration regularly. They didn't seem to realise that magic was a discipline that took time to learn – Enchanter had spent ten years as an apprentice, even though he'd been unquestionably brilliant – and besides, Golem wasn't a very good teacher. He’d learned his spells by rote and his sensitivity to mana was pitiful compared to even an unskilled human.

  It had almost been a relief to be asked to go with Matt to New York, even if it meant wearing a glamour and trying hard to avoid being asked too many questions. The local authorities, for reasons that made little sense to Golem, had chosen to try to keep his existence a secret while they searched for other relics of his time. Golem suspected that their search wouldn't be too fruitful – he’d been prepared by the greatest magician of his era for his long sleep – but there had been reported incidents in a dozen museums around the world. Maybe they’d recover something useful, or maybe they’d end up wishing they’d left it strictly alone. Anything buried by a magician from his time might well be something that wouldn't let itself be buried a second time.

  The house was surrounded by human vehicles – cars, he’d been told – and dozens of humans wearing different uniforms. Little about the human police and military command structure made sense to Golem, but humans definitely had a knack for making things complicated for themselves. The police had set up barriers at both ends of the street, but there was a small crowd of curious onlookers waiting beyond the barricades. Golem wondered, absently, if they had no sense of self-preservation. Mundanes who found themselves caught up in duels between wizards seldom came out of it in the same shape and form they’d had when the duel started. But then, he doubted that the mana level was high enough to support a formal wizard’s duel.

  Matt spoke briefly to one of his fellow humans, and then looked back at Golem. “They’ve taken photographs and suchlike,” he said, “but they’ve left the body strictly alone for us. I’m told it isn't a pleasant sight.”

  “I have few emotional reactions to anything,” Golem informed him, patiently. Humans could be emotional, but it was a weakness, one Golem was glad to avoid. “Let us see what your friends have found.”

  Some of the policemen outside the house gave him odd looks, clearly sensing something not quite right about him. Golem wasn't too surprised. The glamour was devised to fool the unwary, not people who made a career about of spotting things that were out of place. His false image was really too bland, too unresponsive, to be truly human. Even if they didn't know what he was, they'd know that something was badly wrong. Back home, the City Guardsmen would have called a sorcerer to take a look at him before letting him out of their sight. Here...

  Matt led him into the house. It was typically human in that it was over-decorated, with paintings of the owners scattered everywhere. Enchanter had once said that the only wealth lay in knowledge, which hadn't stopped him stocking his castle with decorations as well as books – and of stone statues that had once been his enemies. Golem wondered absently what had happened to them, before realising that they would have returned to life when the mana faded away and then died, perhaps of old age. Or maybe they would have been cut down by swords before they realised that there was no longer enough mana left to let them defend themselves.

  “My God,” Matt said. “What the hell happened here?”

  Golem stepped past him – and stopped, dead. He’d told Matt that he had few emotional reactions; right now, he suspected that he was on the verge of something comparable to a human heart attack. The shock was so great that his thoughts seemed to swim into a blur in his head, as they’d done back when Enchanter was still shaping his personality. What he was looking at was impossible, but he – unlike a human – could not engage in self-deception. He was seeing what he was seeing and he could not look away.

  He took a step forward, feeling uncommonly wobbly, as if his legs would no longer support him. There was no mistaking the scene in front of him. Someone, using knowledge that had been forgotten thousands of years ago, had drained the victim of all of the mana wrapped up in her soul. He knew, without looking, that he would see the four nails – the runes carved into her hands and feet – and the heart, carved over her chest. And then there was the fifth mark, carved just above her groin.

  “Golem!”

  Matt was shouting at him, his voice clearly displaying his alarm. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Golem said. “I am not all right.”

  He leaned closer, studying the fifth mark. There could be no mistake. Only one person in all of time would have used that mark and its presence could not be a coincidence.

  They called her the Queen of Nightmares.

  But the name she had chosen for herself was Harrow.

  ***

  Matt had seen horrific crime scenes before running into a werewolf, but this one was different. The poor girl had been carved up and then murdered, a ritual that would have been frightening even before magic had returned to the world. There was no way to tell how she had been restrained – there didn't look to be any ropes or cuffs keeping her immobilised – but there didn't look to have been a struggle. Maybe she’d been a willing victim, but he couldn't understand how anyone would volunteer to be butchered. And Golem had clearly recognised something about the crime scene.

  “These are runes from my time,” Golem said, flatly. Matt had spent enough time with him to know that Golem did have something resembling emotions, whatever he claimed. Right now, the clay-man sounded badly shaken. “I do not see how they could have survived to your era.”

  Matt stared at him. They’d researched every magical tradition that survived in the world, particularly the traditions that had started producing results when the mana flowed back, but this was different. How could knowledge have survived over seven thousand years? There was Golem, of course, but as far as they knew, he was alone. Unless Enchanter hadn't been the only sorcerer to create a message in a bottle for the future.

  “These four runes bind her sou
l and mana,” Golem said, pointing on the marks on the girl’s hands. “This rune” – he pointed to the one above the girl’s heart – “focuses the mana and provides a route for the discharge, straight up into the wards of the magician.”

  Matt scowled. “And the final rune?”

  Golem seemed to hesitate, and then nodded. “It is the personal rune of one of the Thirteen,” he said, finally. “They called her the Queen of Nightmares.”

  “The Thirteen,” Matt repeated. It was funny how...abstract the threat had felt, until now. No doubt the terrorist hunters had felt the same way, before 9/11. Now he felt as if he had been punched in the belly. “Does that mean they’re out of their prison?”

  “I don’t think so,” Golem said. “If they were free, they wouldn't need such a ritual. No, she’s managed to get her hooks into some poor fool and manipulate him to help her escape.”