Science and Sorcery

by Christopher Nuttall

  One by one, the ghosts closed in – and Calvin began to scream.

  ***

  Harrow watched in some small amusement as the ghosts tore into all that remained of Calvin. No one, even the very first necromancer, had been able to say just what a ghost actually was, or why some of them seemed to be so much more than just impressions burned into the local mana field by a particularly violent death. These ghosts seemed rather less accepting of human weaknesses than others Harrow had known, but the modern world was a strange place in many ways. The city surrounding her, she could tell, had more people living within its confines than the entire continent, back when she’d last walked the Earth.

  She looked across at Mindy Jackson and saw the girl staring back at her from where she was kneeling, beside Calvin’s body. The little girl looked to be much older than her age now – but then, judging from Calvin’s mind, the modern world tried to keep its children unaware of the true nature of reality until it was far too late. It made no sense to Harrow, even though she’d taken advantage of it. Someone who was more savvy about the world might have questioned Harrow more closely before accepting her knowledge. She could take Mindy and teach her too, or simply kill her, but it would be unwise. Calvin had sacrificed his own life to save his sister’s, invoking great and terrible powers in the process. It would be unwise to risk troubling them before she was ready.

  Her mind quested out again and found two more stumbling towards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. One was a magician, the same magician who had almost been sacrificed by Calvin, the other was a sensitive with some limited control over her powers. That was interesting, but unimportant. Right now, she needed a base of operations and a chance to build up her power.

  “Tell your leader,” she said, as the newcomers saw her and came to a halt. “This world is now mine. Those who do not submit will die.”

  And then she drew on her mana and teleported out.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Washington DC, USA

  Day 36

  Caitlyn had almost been driven to her knees. The Queen of Nightmares had spoken and there had been something in her voice that had compelled wonder, respect and obedience. Only the memory of generations of slaves on her father’s side had kept her from falling, even when she saw the sorceress standing at the tomb. And then there was a brilliant flash of light and she vanished.

  “She’s gone,” Misty said. “I...she just vanished.”

  “Teleported,” Caitlyn said. Golem had said that it was possible, and the Queen of Nightmares seemed to have power to spare. The sudden surge in mana might have been caused by her breaking free of her prison. “Where...Matt!”

  She ran forward to where Matt was slowly pulling himself to his feet. “Stay down,” she ordered, as she knelt down beside him. One of his legs was broken, but slowly knitting itself back together. “What happened?”

  Matt regarded her bleakly. “I shot her, three times,” he said. “The bullets just bounced off her wards.”

  Caitlyn swallowed a curse. “I should have expected that,” she said. If a Hunter could go after a sorcerer as easily as a magical creature, the sorcerers were unlikely not to have created spells they could use against Hunters if necessary. “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” Matt confessed. “I saw Golem running in, and then nothing.”

  “I’ve found Mindy,” Misty called. “She’s alive.”

  Matt caught her arm. “You sent an eight-year-old girl into this nightmare?”

  “I had no choice,” Caitlyn said, but she knew that it wasn't entirely true. Mindy had insisted and Joe Buckley had agreed to give her a ride, yet sending her had been a gamble. Only her certainty that Calvin wouldn't hurt her had convinced Caitlyn to risk it. “And she appears to be alive.”

  She bent down and helped Matt to his feet. It was funny how quickly the fantastic had become mundane; she’d seen Matt’s rejuvenation abilities when the doctors had started trying to test the limits of Hunter powers. His leg twitched into place and healed, but he was still leaning on her as they staggered towards where Mindy was kneeling beside a dead body. It had been burned to ash, with only a hint of a charred skeleton revealing that it had once been human. The girl was crying.

  “He saved me,” Mindy said, between sobs. “She would have killed me and he saved me.”

  Caitlyn watched as Mindy collapsed into Misty’s arms, crying her eyes out. It was easy to understand why Calvin’s sister might feel that way, but Arlington had been devastated, hundreds of people were dead and an ultra-powerful sorceress was on the loose. Her final message echoed in Caitlyn’s head; somehow, she was sure that she would never forget until she had given it to the President. The country would never forgive Calvin, any more than it would forgive Benedict Arnold or the useful idiots who had spied for the Soviet Union. At least he’d never have to go to trial. A trial would only have widened the rift between magicians and mundanes still further.

  “She’s free,” Golem said. His glamour was gone; his clay exterior looked scorched. “I can feel her in the world, gathering her power. It won’t be long before we see her again.”

  Caitlyn nodded. “I think we’ve gone past the stage of needing to worry about her hearing us,” she said. “What is her name?”

  “If we knew, we might be able to stop her,” Golem said. It was always hard to tell with him, but he sounded irked. “She calls herself Harrow.”

  Joe Buckley staggered up beside them, one hand clutching his chest. “She flipped me back into human form,” the werewolf reported. “I didn't know that she could do that.”

  “You have a spell woven into your body that moves you between human and wolf forms,” Golem informed him, gravely. “Harrow was able to trigger it and send you crashing back into human form.”

  “Right,” Matt said, leaning on Caitlyn’s shoulder. “What the hell do we do now?”

  Caitlyn looked around her. Arlington had been devastated, giant plumes of smoke were rising up all over Washington and she could hear the sound of rioting in the distance. She’d felt Harrow’s influence on her mind, whispering suggestions that her conscious mind had been able to dismiss. Somehow, she suspected that others wouldn't be so lucky.

  “As God is my witness,” she said, “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  She looked over at Golem. “How were they trapped in the first place?”

  Golem hesitated. He’d been unable – or unwilling – to answer questions about precisely what Enchanter had done to trap the Thirteen, something that puzzled Caitlyn. She knew that the magicians of old had been reluctant to share information, even with their own apprentices, but surely, if someone had known that the Thirteen would return thousands of years in the future, he would have given Golem the knowledge required to trap them again. Caitlyn couldn't understand why anyone would not have shared that information.

  “It’s complicated,” Golem mumbled, finally.

  “We need to know,” Caitlyn pressed. “Right now, we have to put this particular genie back in the bottle.”

  Golem studied her for a long moment with glowing red eyes. “Enchanter created a series of pocket dimensions that concentrated vast amounts of mana,” he said. “Those who fell into the dimensions would be able to use the mana without apparent limits. They would be gods within the pocket dimensions, but unable to escape – perhaps unable to realise that they’d even been trapped.”

  “Like trapping someone in a VR environment,” Buckley said. The werewolf grinned at Caitlyn’s surprised expression. “I used to love watching science-fiction TV shows.”

  Misty looked up. “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams,” she quoted. “They wanted godhood; in the dimensions, they’d think they’d succeeded.”

  “Yes,” Golem said, flatly. “Until the prison walls began to crack.”

  He looked down at where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had been. “But she’s free and it won’t be long b
efore she manages to free the others,” he added. “And they won’t fall for the same trick twice.”

  “No,” Caitlyn agreed. She cleared her thought. “Misty, you and Joe Buckley take Mindy back to the base; the nerds there can see if they can come up with something new to use against her. Speak to the remote viewers and see if they can locate Harrow, wherever she is. Golem...”

  She hesitated. “Is she likely to go after Mindy again?”

  “Unknown,” Golem said. “If Calvin genuinely did offer his life in exchange for Mindy’s, Harrow would know not to try to kill her a second time. But if Mindy simply misunderstood what happened...”

  “You go with her too,” Caitlyn said. “Matt and I will go report to the White House.”

  “And what,” Misty enquired, “are you going to tell the President?”

  Caitlyn shook her head. “I wish I knew,” she said. “Right now, the entire country has to be panicking.”

  ***

  Washington DC looked like a war zone.

  The surge of mana had somehow shorted out thousands of cars, leaving countless drivers trapped on the streets. Harrow’s influence had touched their minds, stirring up panic and rage, eventually sending them off on a rampage against everything. The rioting had been utterly undirected, the citizens lashing out at everyone and everything, something that only made it worse. Harrow’s influence had even reached the policemen and soldiers on duty; some of them had turned on their fellows, while others had opened fire on the crowd.

  “My God,” Matt said, very softly. A line of wounded men and women were being treated by a medic, but their wounds were bad enough that most of them should have been in hospital. “Is this how it’s going to be from now on?”

  “Let's hope not,” Caitlyn said. Judging from the shouts, at least one plane had fallen out of the sky near the city, creating a disaster to rival 9/11. “But...what if we can't stop her?”

  Matt had no answer. Just by escaping from prison, Harrow had caused more damage to the United States than the Japanese had at Pearl Harbour. Her thoughts had blurred into countless minds and driven them crazy, if only for a few moments. Now, the citizens of Washington were left to clear up the mess. He caught sight of a man staring down at a broken bloodstained body, crying in horror. Who knew what Harrow had brought out of his mind? If she'd turned a relatively harmless teenage boy into a mass murderer and probably a rapist, what else could she do? Matt knew – all policemen knew – just how closely the darkness lurked within the human soul. A single touch from Harrow might be all it needed to break free.

  Armed Marines were guarding the White House, looking around nervously as they fingered their weapons. Matt couldn't help feeling nervous himself as they approached the gates; the Marines looked badly rattled, as if they too had been affected by Harrow’s touch. There were bloodstains in front of the gates, although there were no bodies. He hoped that meant that the wounded had been taken away for treatment, but he didn't want to know.

  “I’ll have to check with the office,” a Marine said, when Caitlyn identified herself. They had to look a sight; Matt had heard that there was a protocol for visiting the President and he doubted that it included rumpled, torn and muddy clothes. But there was no choice. They had to warn the rest of the country, even if they didn't have a workable plan yet. “One moment.”

  The Marines eyed them until the officer returned, their eyes spooked. They looked badly shell-shocked, desperately in need of relief, but it might be a long time before any relief arrived, even from the nearby barracks. Just how far had Harrow’s influence reached? Matt had watched experiments that suggested that magic actually propagated faster than light, suggesting that she might have influenced the entire world...no, he refused to believe it. If she could, they might as well surrender at once and save time.

  “You’re allowed in,” he said, briskly. Underneath, his voice still sounded shaky. “Follow me.”

  Matt had never been inside the White House before, but somehow he’d never envisaged it being crammed with wounded and disorientated personnel. Staffers, Marines and Secret Servicemen were lying everywhere, trying to recover from the psychic onslaught. A small number of medics were doing what they could for their patients, but they were injured themselves. Matt couldn't help, but wonder if the entire population of Washington looked like this. It would be a catastrophe far deadlier than an atomic bomb.

  “We got the President ready for Marine One, but it fell out of the sky before it got here,” the Marine said. “We don't even know why.”

  “It might as well have been an EMP,” Caitlyn said. Matt suspected that the real answer was more complicated than that, but it would do for the moment. There had been a very high discharge of mana and mana sometimes caused advanced technology to glitch. “How is the President?”

  “Better than some of the others,” the Marine said. He had to be shaken, or he wouldn’t be talking so freely. “I heard there was bloodshed in Congress.”

  Matt and Caitlyn exchanged glances. The Act that the President and Senator Whitehall had introduced had been badly flawed, but right now it was certain to pass. And then the problem would become enforcing it. Harrow wasn't likely to surrender just because the government had ruled her magic illegal. It had taken a small army of magicians from Golem’s time to even stall the Thirteen long enough for Enchanter to spring his trap; right now, there were only a handful of magicians and only one of them had any real experience. They’d have to pin their hopes on Jorlem and the rest of his researchers.

  The Presidential Bunker had been designed to resist a nuclear attack, or so Matt had been told. It hadn't provided much, if any, protection against Harrow’s assault; he caught sight of a sobbing secretary in one room, trying to pull herself together after she’d torn the room apart. Two male aides were sitting against the corridor wall, carefully not looking at each other. Matt was surprised that they hadn't tried to get the President out of the city, before realising that it might have been impossible. Washington had descended into chaos and no close-protection team worthy of the name would have risked their charge in such an environment.

  “Mr. President,” Caitlyn said, as they entered the President’s office. Unlike the Oval Office, it was surprisingly barren, as if the designers had wanted to concentrate a few minds. “Are you all right?”

  The President looked up at them, one hand rubbing his forehead. “My head hurts,” he said, to no one in particular. “You’d think I’d be used to that in this job.”

  He shook his head. “What happened?”

  Matt listened as Caitlyn began to explain. Calvin had gone to Arlington, unlocked the prison and freed the Queen of Nightmares – she was careful not to mention Harrow’s name here – and then died, leaving Harrow free to work her will on the land. In hindsight, Matt found himself wondering why Harrow hadn't simply taken Washington at once. She could have bagged the President and much of the government and, jokes aside, no one was going to launch nukes at Washington DC. By the time they’d realised that they might have no choice, it would be too late.

  “Dear God,” the President said, when she’d finished. “What do we do?”

  Matt and Caitlyn exchanged glances. “We think she will try to build up a power base,” Caitlyn said, finally. “When she starts, we may need to disrupt it.”

  The President looked at her for a long moment. “A power base?”

  “Yes,” Caitlyn said. “If one person can gain enough power to unlock her prison through sacrificing a handful of people, she could presumably do the same. A few dozen sacrifices and she’d be damn near unstoppable.”

  “But she’d have to do them all personally, wouldn't she?” The President asked. “Or did Jackson’s murders supply power to her directly?”

  Matt frowned, and then nodded. Golem hadn't said much about how human sacrifices actually worked, but it made sense that whoever wanted the power had to carry out the sacrifices for themselves. They couldn't just assign their slaves to do it, or their slaves would s
uddenly be boosted with power. And they had to mark the body with runes first...unless Harrow had some way to kill thousands of people and drain their mana without them. But if that was the case, the battle was already lost.

  “We’ll have to hope so,” Caitlyn said. “Mr. President, we need a state of emergency.”

  “I think we have one,” the President said, rubbing his head. Matt found himself hoping that the VP had been out of range of Harrow’s mental effect. How exactly did one remove the President on suspicion of outside influence, or mind control? Presidents could be impeached for misbehaviour, but it would be tricky to prove mental manipulation, almost as hard as it was to prove incompetence. “And what are we going to do when we find her?”

  Caitlyn winced. “We’re still looking for possible answers,” she admitted. Given time, Matt was sure that the Niven’s Wheel would become a viable weapon against someone like Harrow, someone who needed mana to remain alive. “We will find them.”

  “Until then,” Matt added, “we will have to force her to expend her power. Mana is all that is keeping her alive. We might be able to trick her into losing too much...”