Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  The man following her ignored the truck, and the slush seemed to ignore him. Hairs prickled along the back of Maureen's neck. Without speeding up or even looking at her, he'd halved the distance between them. The paranoia kicked in, elbowing her anger aside and substituting cold calculation. She needed some defenses.

  "Enough of this crap," she muttered, or maybe it was her voices. The next alley offered places where a small woman could hide, places where muscles wouldn't help him. If he came in after her, he was history. She thumped the pocket of her wet ski jacket and felt the reassuring weight of metal.

  She ducked around the corner. Dumpsters lurked in the shadows, two of them, jammed right up against brick walls and close enough together to just leave space for a single person between. She ducked into the bunker they formed and waited, remembering her lessons.

  Smith and Wesson Chief's Special, she heard the instructor lecture, thirty-eight caliber. Five shots, short barrel, not very accurate--don't ever shoot at anything beyond ten yards. Light, compact, reliable--perfect weapon for close-range self-defense.

  If you ever really need your gun, don't give warning. Don't wave it around. Don't make threats. Just shoot as soon as you show the weapon. Shoot twice. Shoot to kill. He's trying to kill you!

  Her gloves jammed in the trigger guard. She slipped them off and stuffed them into her pants pockets. The wood and metal of the pistol grip actually felt warm compared to the sleet.

  The squat shadow turned the corner, outlined against orange streetlights. "You stupid ass," she whispered, "you just voted for the death penalty."

  She crouched between the dumpsters, took the two-handed stance she'd learned in the firearms course, and centered on the shadow's torso. Her senses switched into overdrive and the world slowed down. Kill or be killed, just like the instructor said.

  She wimped out. "Stop, or I'll shoot!"

  The man kept coming. He didn't speed up, or slow down, or flinch, or anything. Was the sonuvabitch deaf? She aimed at the bricks across the alley and snapped the trigger as a warning shot.

  Click.

  Her belly froze. She hadn't checked the cylinder before tucking the gun in her pocket. Had Jo been frigging around with the gun, dry-firing in their apartment?

  Her hands trembled as she flipped the cylinder open and saw the glint of cartridges. It was a goddamn dud. She'd never had a misfire before. She snapped the gun shut.

  Click. Click.

  Two more duds, centered on his chest. She ran the whole cylinder around again.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Clear in spite of the shadows, the man smiled in slow motion. He inhaled deeply through his nose, as if he had been tracking her by smell. His mouth opened and spouted gibberish.

  "Na gav aygul orsht. Ha an dorus foskulche."

  That's what her ears pulled out of the air. God only knew what he'd actually said. Maureen started to scream and found she couldn't. She started to throw the useless gun in his face and found she couldn't. The alley was nowhere near as dark as it had been a few seconds earlier.

  The slow-motion unreality continued. The man had a face now, not just a shadow, and his eyes were fire under heavy brows and a mop of coarse black hair. What she had thought was the drape of an overcoat was his square body, short but muscled like a Bulgarian weight-lifter. He radiated power and compulsion.

  Maureen flashed back to childhood Sundays in church, and she grabbed the crucifix she wore as jewelry rather than a statement of faith. She started to mumble the "Our Father," offering it as a prayer against witchcraft.

  The alley seemed as light as day, and the sleet had vanished from the air. Somebody must have dumped flowers in the trash because Maureen could smell them, lilacs or something sweet like that. The brick walls looked more like fieldstone masonry now, like the peasant cottages in Grandfather O'Brian's yellowed photographs of County Wicklow.

  Something flashed in the end of the alley, and Maureen saw another man striding easily through the molasses-slow air. Steel mail rippled across his shoulders and swung heavily as he struck the dark man from behind. Gold crowned the second man's head over honey-blonde hair.

  She'd stepped into a tale of knights and mages. Swords. Sorcery.

  Bullshit!

  Maureen gasped at the renewed sting of the sleet. The metal of her pistol burned cold. Shadows swirled in the darkness and resolved into one man standing and another stretched out at his feet. Her scream finally escaped into the storm, sounding more like the squeak of a mouse.

  Steel flashed again, hacking at the fallen mugger. The light-haired man swung some kind of heavy bent knife, almost a short machete. Sour bile clawed at Maureen's throat, and her bladder burned like she was going to soak her pants.

  A severed hand scuttled through the snow, sideways like a crab, searching for its wrist. Blood flowed black in the shadows. The meat-cleaver chunking seemed to go on forever. Her rescuer kicked something into the heaped snow across the alley, and Maureen gagged when she recognized it as a head. It hissed at her and clacked its teeth.

  The light-haired man dropped his knife and pulled a can from his jacket, sprinkling something over the corpse. It writhed across the filthy snow and seemed to spit steam.

  He looked up at her and nodded as if she’d asked a question.

  "Lye," he said. "Drain-cleaner. It prevents healing, blocks the tissues from connecting back together." His voice was bright and cheerful, with a faint accent she couldn't place. He sounded like a TV chef assembling lasagna.

  The whole scene was insane. His teeth flashed a savage grin from the shadows, as if killing a man was a public service like emptying the rat-traps in the basement laundry room of her apartment. Then his smile vanished as he stared at her shaking hands.

  "You tried to fire that gun. Give it to me."

  She hesitated and shrank back against the bricks.

  "Quick, you fool! Killing him hasn't ended the danger!"

  She handed him the .38.

  He swung the cylinder open and spilled the duds into the nearest dumpster, muttering something under his breath. Then he grabbed her wrist and dragged her around the corner onto the sidewalk. Two steps down the street, he slowed and took a deep breath, handing back the empty pistol.

  "He stretched time for the cartridges. That's sloppy, temporary. Never take short-cuts with your spells: Murphy's gonna bite you, every time."

  Maureen's mind chased after the surreal concept of slowing the laws of physics. Her thoughts were punctuated by a muffled pop behind them. Two more followed after a short pause, then two more.

  "What the hell was that?" she asked. "A .38 makes a lot more noise!"

  "Not enough pressure. Smokeless powder just burns in the open air. You have to confine it for an explosion."

  She shuddered and stared at her hand. Five cartridges in the cylinder . . . .

  He grabbed her wrist again and pulled her back to the entrance of the alley. The body still twitched in the slush, trying to push itself erect with the stumps of its arms, as if it was searching for its head. It couldn't balance and fell, again and again. Maureen slapped a hand across her mouth and turned away, desperate for a place to run, a place to hide.

  "You need to watch." His voice was quiet but implacable. "You must never talk of this. You'll see why, in about a minute. That man did not belong in your world."

  He turned her around. He didn't squeeze, didn't hurt, but she could feel the power in his grip and realized, with a shock, that he was built as solidly as the other man. He was immensely strong. Those hands gave her no choice.

  What she had seen as chain mail was a gray anorak of tight-woven wool. Splattered blood glistened black in the reflected streetlights. The gold crown was a yellow ski cap, equally worn and stained. His pants looked like army surplus. He must be soaked. She was soaked, and she started to shiver with the cold rain and reaction. Her gaze darted around everywhere except at the slowing jerky spasms of the corpse.

  Blue light flickered in th
e corner of her eye, and for an instant she thought it was the flashers of a police car come to rescue her from this madness. The light strengthened and steadied. Terror snatched her breath again and froze her pulse.

  It was the corpse.

  It burned with a blue flame like gas, smokeless, with flashing tendrils of copper green or cobalt or strontium red like the flame-test for salts in chem. lab when she waved the platinum wire over the Bunsen burner. The alley filled with a quiet hiss and sizzle that must be the rain and the slush boiling, because she could feel the heat of the burning twenty feet away through the storm. Her mind locked on the horror, and she barely noticed when her rescuer let go of her.

  Bits of flame showed her where the severed hands lay. A blue ball consumed the head and melted the snow-bank across the alley. Liquid fire like gasoline floated on the water and licked up splashes of blood from pavement and wall. It even outlined her rescuer, eating the blood off his sweater and pants.

  Flesh dissolved. Organs dissolved. Bones glowed into ash and hissed into the flowing water of the melting. The skull popped, spattering gouts of flaming skin and brain across the slush.

  Acid rushed up from her belly, and Maureen vomited.

  When she could see again, the alley was dark. Wisps of steam floated upward and vanished in the freezing rain. The only evidence of the fight, of her terror, of the corpse, was a scattering of holes melted through the snow to the brick pavement of the alley.

  She staggered out into the pale orange light of the street. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably.

  "You need warmth and light. I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

  The voice startled her. She had forgotten about the knight dressed like a street bum, out wandering in a storm.

  She ought to scream and run. Part of her mind was screaming. But whenever he came close to her, she felt calm radiating from him like heat from a sunlamp. She remembered strength, and grace, and a sense of protection. She remembered a tantalizing smell.

  "God, what the Mob would pay to be able to get rid of a body like that," she blurted. "Was that magic? Did you do that?"

  "Define magic. That was spontaneous human combustion, well documented in scientific literature. Of course, the subject wasn't exactly human."

  She staggered into a recessed doorway and squatted down, trying to clear her head. The apartment was at least a mile away. Maureen didn't think she could make it.

  She needed coffee.

  She needed warmth.

  She needed explanations.

  She stared up at the stranger. Silhouetted against the streetlights, he looked too damned similar to the man who had been following her. And he hadn't really answered her question. He had just killed . . . something. Something "not exactly human."

  All the bone seemed to melt out of her legs and spine and she huddled back against the doorway. Maureen's memories ran off with her, fleeing the alley. Buddy Johnson had looked like that. Squat, strong, hairy, broad nose and powerful jaws like the Christmas Nutcracker and a forehead that looked like the business end of a battering ram. Java Man walked the streets of coastal Maine. He grew up to play pro football. Brutal aggression fit in there. Steroid rage. He'd bought off a couple of rape and assault charges with his earnings.

  Maureen shivered and curled tighter into her ball. She was suddenly ten years old, cold and wet and frightened, hiding from the neighborhood bully who insisted on playing "doctor" with her when he came over and Jo wasn't home yet. It hurt. Every time she met a man, she had to fight down those memories. She kept wishing Buddy Johnson was dead and buried along with her teddy bear and tap shoes.

  Something touched her shoulder, and she flinched back. Words flowed around her, gentle, barely louder than the sleet rattling against the storefront glass. She shrank back into the deepest corner but felt implacable hands lift her and guide her back out into the storm.

  "You need a chance to dry off and something hot inside you. There's an all-night coffee shop a few blocks from here."

  Those were her own thoughts, pulled out of her head and spoken. The man knew what she needed. He wanted to help her. He was concerned. And now that he was close, she smelled him again. He was the first man she'd ever gotten close to, who smelled right. He smelled safe.

  "Prefer. B-b-b-booze. Need. D-d-d-drink." Her teeth were chattering too fast for coherent speech.

  The apparition in the yellow ski cap shook his head. "The only bar close to here is no place for a lady. Let me buy you coffee."

  "S-s-strip joint. Next b-b-block. Open. Serve booze. Walk by it every n-n-night. Seen naked women b-b-before. M-m-mirror."

  Besides, she was much too cold to be affected by the atmosphere of sex. And she was used to aggressive, wanton women. She lived with one.

  Chapter Two

  Brian thought he'd just as soon skip any place calling itself "The London Derrière." At least it had a vestibule, and the vestibule was warm. It was dirty, yes, with cracked and peeling wallpaper, water-stained ceiling, and a smell of unwashed bodies, but warm. It was also bright after the stormy streets, as if the management liked to get a good look at its customers before it let them in.

  Oh, well. He'd seen worse in his many decades of soldiering for God and King. Bangkok came to mind, a place called Wong's in the Chinese slums where the bouncer carried an Uzi. He shook sleet out of his hair and gave himself a quick once-over for evidence of the brawl.

  He couldn't see any blood--only a little dirty slush to show for his night's work. The burning and his own powers had cleaned up the gore.

  Call it luck. Skill. Art. Mostly luck. Liam hadn't sensed him coming up behind. The bastard had been too busy concentrating on the woman and her gun.

  Speaking of the woman . . . . Brian finally got a good look at this distraction who had wandered into his shark-hunt. Thin. Medium short. Almost skinny, but you couldn't tell any figure under that drenched yellow ski-jacket and wet baggy jeans.

  She pulled off a green wool cap and revealed curly wet hair, burgundy red and cut short. Her eyes were green, and a cloud of freckles stood out like they were painted in dried blood across the white skin of a ghost.

  Well, she had an excuse to look a little pale. Brian fed more Power to his calming spell, soothing her thoughts while wondering just how much of her memory he was going to have to edit. That was as tricky as playing around with primers, and he’d rather skip the process.

  The bouncer at the inner door was also studying her as they dripped Maine winter all over his floor. Brian gave him a professional look-over and decided to behave. The guy was a little fat, but he could probably bench-press Brian with one hand.

  The vault door shook his head. "I'm going to have to ask you for some I.D., Miss."

  That was understandable. She looked like she was about seventeen, maybe one of those homeless waifs. That would explain why she was out after midnight with a .38 in her pocket. It'd be God's own joke if she'd been trying to mug Liam rather than the other way around. He reminded himself that he was in America, the Wild West where people carried guns all the time.

  She fumbled for her wallet and handed over her driver's license. Her fingers were still shaking from the cold or the shock or both. It made her look even younger and more afraid.

  The bouncer looked at her, at her license picture, at her again. He took the license over to a light and peered at it carefully, shook his head, and then studied Brian for a moment before handing the bit of laminated Polaroid back to her.

  "Kid, I'll give you a C-note if you tell me who did that for you. It's the best job I've ever seen."

  "Department of M-m-motor Vehicles," she stuttered between her chattering teeth. "S-s-secretary of S-s-state Office."

  "Yeah. And if you're twenty-eight, I'm the mayor of Boston."

  The man opened the inner door and waved them through into a tunnel throbbing with canned techno-pop. Strobe flashes lit up the blue glow of a set of stairs leading down. Brian's instincts twitched, and he started looking for exit signs. Life had t
aught him the old rule of the fox: always have at least three ways out of your den. He followed the girl down, warily.

  Girl, he repeated, in his mind.

  Sixteen, seventeen, he thought, with an I.D. saying she's twenty-eight. What in hell has Liam been up to? The Old One might have authored a list of sins as long as a hangman's rope, but random rape or mugging weren't on it.

  It doesn't really matter, after tonight. Now Mulvaney can sleep, in whatever grave he's found. Brian felt tension drain out of his back, as if he’d dropped a burden he’d been carrying for years.

  The stairs spilled them into a gloom of empty tables and stabbing theatrical spotlights. A fog of cigarette and cigar smoke warred with the tang of sweat and lust and spilled booze. It looked like a thin house: either a lousy show or the lousy weather. Probably both. There was one exit sign, floating in its red glow through the haze. And another. Plus the way he came in. Good.

  The music pounded at him, squeezing just behind Brian's eyeballs. It was worse than firing his FAL full-auto on an indoor range. He scanned for the speakers of the sound system and steered the girl toward the corner farthest away. The table also had a clear view of all three exits. It was well away from the stage, but Brian didn't consider that a problem.

  The dancer was totally nude except for an incongruous pair of ballerina's toe-shoes. Her body glistened with sweat or oil and jiggled in about five directions at once as she did various obscene things with her hips, but if she had I.D. saying she was twenty-eight, it would be about twenty years too young.

  "How do they get away with this?"

  Brian thought he'd been muttering to himself, well under the noise-level, but he must have spoken louder than he thought.

  "F-f-fix. Newspaper says, woman who owns this p-p-place, lives with a cop."

  Her teeth were still chattering, even though the room felt hot after the winter storm. The house kept the furnace at full blast for the dancers.

  The table sat right by a hissing radiator, and Brian thanked blind luck. Now he could get that soaked jacket off her and let the heat go to work while he figured out some explanations--ones he could sell whether they were true or not. He pulled out a chair for her and held the shoulders of her coat while she wriggled out of it.