Steele Alchemist

by Deck Davis

  “Let me get this straight,” said Jake. “You’re a mage. A human. And you’ve married…a spider?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you used some kind of spell so that you could have babies. And that’s what these freaks are? The spiders with human faces? Humans with spider legs?”

  The watcher tested his face in anger. His features became darker, his eyes even blacker.

  “Freaks? Freaks?? Tell me, who is the freak? One whose mind is so small he cannot comprehend true love, or me, a man who found his heart’s desire in a place none would care to look?”

  “You,” said Jake, instantly. “You’re the freak.”

  “Say what you will. Your blood has done its job, no matter what filth spews from your mouth. Once my family cross the portal, we will live in a world where we are tolerated.”

  “Earth is a tolerant place,” said Jake, “To a point. Well, some places really aren’t tolerant at all. But let me tell you; you won’t find understanding there. Back in Earth, people don’t marry insects. It just doesn’t happen. I mean, animals, maybe. You hear on the news people having it away with sheep and stuff, but that’s a crime.”

  “A crime? Love is a crime?”

  “It’s not love, you ass. Spiders can’t think. They can’t make decisions like we can. It’s bestiality. You’re sick, Isaac. All the screws in your head are rattling loose. Your marbles are completely scattered.”

  “Another close-minded ape,” said Isaac, shaking his head. “Another who cannot comprehend the many forms love takes.”

  “Look,” said Jake. “Maybe if you were keeping to yourself, just living here with your family, it’d be okay. I mean, I guess you marrying a spider and having children isn’t hurting anyone. But it’s the fact that you go out and kidnap people. What’s the deal with that?”

  “It was for the portal,” answered Isaac. “I knew I needed special blood to make them work. My first thought was that mage blood was needed; so, I had my children listen to rumors and then kidnap children who showed signs of magic in them.”

  “Why not use your own blood?”

  “I couldn’t supply it in the quantities needed.”

  “Quantities? How much blood did you need?”

  Isaac scratched his mutton chops. “How much blood does any man need to open portals? A barrelful? More? A lot, anyway. I lose track after the third bucket.”

  That was it, then. Isaac was trying to open a portal to Earth so that he and his spider-human hybrid family could live there. It was a bad idea for a hundred reasons, but the worst of it was that he needed Jake’s blood to open a portal that he could properly control. And apparently, he needed it in large quantities.

  He still didn’t have a plan to stop him. He could reach into his pocket and grab a vial and hope it was a dissolve potion, but he’d only get one chance. And if he pulled out a healing position, he was screwed.

  Keep him talking, he told himself. I need more time to think.

  “Listen, Isaac,” he said. “you seem like a reasonable guy. Have you thought this through? Do you know just how different Earth is to Sarametis? Have you ever actually been there?”

  Isaac nodded. “Once.”

  Okay…he hadn’t been expecting that answer.

  “When?” he asked.

  “It was over a year ago,” answered Isaac. “I had opened a portal after mixing the blood of a mage with a potion I had my alchemist mix for me. Back then the portals I opened were just crude shards of flickering energy; my alchemist was an incompetent fellow. I found him living in a house in a forest, carved into the side of a rock.”

  “I think I know who you mean.”

  “I hadn’t had much success until then. By chance, I opened a portal, and my children found it in the maze. It was the best luck I had in years! I decided to enter it alone, to make sure of its safety before allowing my children to follow me. When I stepped through the portal, the world changed around me. I found myself in a sleeping chamber of some sort.

  “It was a small room with curious decorations. There was a table on one side, and top of it, a small black box showed curious pictures, one after the other, though the sound coming from it was faint. Across from it, a man and a woman slept in a bed. Next to the man, a small rectangle box had red glowing numbers on it.

  “I decided to leave the room and explore. When I moved my foot, I stood on a small, black object. Suddenly, the picture box made sounds. The man jolted upright in his bed. His wife soon followed. When she saw me, she screamed.

  “I told them that I meant them no harm. The man didn’t listen. He reached to the side of him and opened a little drawer, and pulled out a strange implement. He pointed it at me and moved his finger. A loud boom exploded. A hole appeared in the wall behind me.”

  “That was a gun,” said Jake.

  “I realized then that that the man meant to kill me” said Isaac. “Perhaps he thought I had come to his bedchamber to hurt him. He raised the implement again. Before he could use it, I cast a spell. I raised my hands and incanted the spiritual words, and I sent forth my dark energy.

  “The man died instantly. The spell energy rebounded from him and injured the woman; fatally, perhaps. I know not what became of her, but her blood stained the bedsheets. As the energy of my spell started to wane, it bounced off the woman and into a wall made half of glass, to my right. The glass shattered, and thousands of jagged pieces scattered into the air.

  “I quickly cast a slow spell, and the glass hung in the air, the pieces of it catching the glow from a large light outside the window. Wind rushed in and chilled me. The woman groaned on the bed. She gasped for air. Her blood pooled on her bed covers.

  “And then the door opened, and someone entered the room. Before he could see me, I stepped backwards and into my portal, leaving the new world behind.”

  Isaac had finished talking, but Jake was oblivious to the end of his speech. All he heard now was a ringing in his ears.

  He started to feel sick. Images began flashing in his brain, one after the other as if they spun on a reel that he couldn’t slow down.

  It felt as if his mind was opened. As if the doors of long-locked memories were creaking open. Or more clearly, that something was pushing them open and letting the darkness flow out, so it could have free reign in his mind.

  He remembered it now. A year ago, in his parents’ house.

  He had woken up to a booming sound. It his sleep-fuzzed head, he thought there’d been a car crash outside. Then he heard Dad shouting. The sound sent a jolt of panic through him; Dad was a quiet guy, and he never shouted.

  He grabbed his metal baseball beat. He ran into the hallway. A draught of night air hit him. He was dressed only in his boxer shorts, but he didn’t care.

  At the doorway of his parent’s room, he paused. A stupid thought hit him; what if I bust the door open and they’re…doing stuff?

  He almost turned to head back to his room, but something was wrong. Why had Dad shouted, and where was the freezing draught coming from?

  And then he heard Mum cry in pain.

  He pushed open the bedroom door. Three sights hit him at once, each one a blow to the stomach.

  Dad covered in blood.

  Mum gasping for air, thick, red liquid seeping from her throat.

  At the end of the room, a man stepping into shimmering rectangle of light.

  He’d kept his wits about him enough to call for an ambulance, and then he’d sat with his mum and dad. Sometime after that, he went into shock. The next thing he knew, a policeman was leading him downstairs, away from the body of his parents.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A rumbling sound tore him from his thoughts. Rhythmic thuds, one after the other, each of them shaking the tunnel walls and sending dust crumbling from the ceiling. As much as he needed to focus his attention on whatever it was, his memories latched onto him like vines and pulled him back.

  Isaac turned to face one of the tunnel openings. This one was larger than
the others, at least three times the size. All the other entrances to the oval room seemed fit especially for Isaac’s spider children, but this opening had been made for something much bigger.

  “I keep telling her, don’t walk so loud,” he said. “You’re meant to be a spider; can’t you go a little quieter? She’s going to have this place falling on our heads one day. And then who’ll be digging out a new tunnelway? Me! I mean, not actually digging. It’ll be a spell. But still.”

  Jake watched the wizard and felt anger and hate churn inside him. It was all clear to him now. His fear of smashed glass, his parents. The police hadn’t been able to tell him much after it all happened; only that it was a burglary gone wrong. They interviewed Jake for hours on three separate occasions, and more than once, he got the feeling he was a suspect. Or if not a suspect, a person of interest.

  As it turned out, they were right to ask him about the night. He’d seen it all. Or the aftermath, anyway. But his memories had closed up, locked away inside a shell like a rotten pearl.

  Hate bubbled in his stomach. It was so strong that he could taste the bile. When he looked at Isaac Shackleton, the leering, wrinkle-faced sorcerer, he felt so much fury that he wanted to be sick.

  He put his hand in his pocket. He didn’t even try to hide it. The glass vials felt cool on his fingers. He cast his glance over to the other side of the oval room, to Faei and Solly. They didn’t look dead, but they were chained up, and the poison had taken its toll. He’d have to do this alone.

  Come on. Pick a potion, and throw it. Hope for the best. Hope it’s a dissolve potion, and it burns his face off.

  But he couldn’t. No matter how much he needed to focus on the present, thoughts for Isaac and his parents intruded. They stopped him doing anything. The memory of that night had been so harmful to him that his mind had locked it away. Now, with all the colors and sounds of it swirling in his brain, he was rooted to the ground.

  Isaac and Thotl whispered to each other. Thotl nodded, and the tall henchman strode across the room and over to a cast iron set of doors. In the centre of the doors, there was a round, empty fitting. It looked like something had to be placed in it; a broach of some kind.

  Jake looked at the sorcerer in front of him. Although his face was full of wrinkles and his eyes were beady, there was nothing inherently evil about him. That made it worse somehow, just as knowing what happened to Mum and Dad made everything worse. They weren’t picked out deliberately, there was no good reason for their deaths.

  The police were right, in a way. It was a stupid home invasion gone wrong. It was just that the invader wasn’t some low-life hoping to steal a TV; he was a sorcerer from Sarametis. It was all so pointless. Isaac’s portal could have opened anywhere else on earth, and Jake’s parents would still be alive. The randomness of their deaths made him furious.

  Thotl opened one of the iron doors and stepped through it.

  “Isaac,” he said.

  The sorcerer nodded. “I have to go now,” he said. “It was lovely to meet you. My wife will be along shortly for dinner.”

  He raised his hands in the air theatrically, like a matador about to start a bull fight. He gave two sharp claps.

  And then the rumbling started again. The walls shook, and Jake felt the vibrations beneath him.

  “For G’ydor’s sake,” called Isaac, “Stop it, Nezrock. You’ll have the whole place falling down.”

  He looked at Jake, and jerked his thumb toward the large archway opening. Judging by the size of it, Nezrock was big. Really damn big.

  Isaac faced the spider children on the walls.

  “Don’t you all have work to do? Chop chop!”

  The spiders scuttled away from the walls and out of the chamber, exiting through the various openings cut into the stone.

  “Nezrock will be here in a jiff,” said Isaac, “so I’ll be on my way. Got work to do. Portals to open, and that kind of thing. Before, you know, all the killing and that nasty business starts, tell Nezrock that I had the children spin fresh webbing in the east chamber, just like she asked. Okay? Good bye Jake.”

  Isaac started to walk away. He approached the iron door, and stopped. He held his finger on the air, and turned.

  “I forgot. No point giving you a chance to fight back, is there?”

  He raised his hands in his matador style again, and clapped. A lone spider leapt from the wall. It was as tall as Jake’s waist, but its leg span made it seem much wider. It had a human face, complete with tufty brown hair that met with its jet-black spider skin.

  “Yes papa?” squeaked the spider.

  “Poison the lad for me, will you, Clive?”

  Clive the spider child nodded. “I’ll poison ‘im good and proper.”

  “Him, Clive,” corrected Isaac. “Not ‘im, it’s ‘him’. Pronounce your ‘h’s.’”

  Jack still didn’t have a plan. He needed time.

  “Wait,” he said. “Don’t you need my blood?”

  “Thotl took it while you were cocooned. We cut it open, took some lovely blood, and one of my gals wrapped you up again. Anyway, I must be off.”

  Isaac left their room via the iron door, leaving Jake alone with Clive the spider. Not completely alone, since Faei and Solly were across the room, but they weren’t going to be much help.

  “Father is in his study now,” squeaked Clive. He scuttled toward Jake. “That means I can play with you.”

  Jake reached to his waist for his flagger. Damn – it was gone. He grabbed a potion from his pocket.

  Please let it be brittle bone, he thought.

  He stared at Clive, potion vial held high.

  “Play time’s, over,” he said.

  And then he threw it. The vial tumbled through the air. Clive jumped to the left and let the potion smash harmlessly on the floor. The scent of berries and sugar wafted over.

  It was a healing potion anyway, thought Jake.

  Taking his cue, Clive leapt forward at him so fast that there was no time for Jake to react. The weight of the spider winded him, and he stumbled back. When he felt the sharp agony of Clive’s teeth in his neck, his legs gave way. He crashed to the ground with the spider on top of him. He felt Clive’s poison pump into his fresh wound, and he wanted to be sick.

  Clive released him and then scuttled back. Without a word, he went out of the room by one of the smaller archways.

  This left him alone. Alone with a neck wound and poison flooding through his system. Faei and Solly were tied up and probably dying from the same venom. Isaac was off in his lab creating portals using Jake’s blood.

  There was nothing he could do. He’d screwed it all up; coming here to save Cason, what was he thinking? Things just couldn’t get any worse.

  A loud thud resounded. Dust shook from the tunnel walls and ceiling. Another thud followed it, then six more. The sound repeated over and over, getting louder each time, the vibrations from it getting stronger.

  That was Isaac’s spider wife, right on cue. So, things could get worse, after all.

  He tried to get up, but all his energy had left him. Not only that, but he couldn’t focus. The only thing he could think about was beating the hell out of Isaac for what he had done to his parents. The memory, freshly woken in him, was still hard to think about.

  More booms. Dust fell onto his hair. He cast a wary glance at the ceiling, sure that it was going to cave in. Isaac was right about one thing; his wife really needed to walk quieter.

  Well, maybe he’d tell her that right before she killed him.

  “Get up, dung-face.”

  He looked to his right. Across the room, Faei was staring at him.

  “You’re okay?” he said, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

  “Apart from being tied up. Cut me loose.”

  Then Solly moved his head. “Me too, chap, if you don’t mind.”

  “What’s going on?” said Jake. “I thought you were poisoned?”

  “So, did the spiders. But the mutoction we to
ok to get down here must have given us venom resistance. Which means you’ll have it too.”

  That did make sense. He’d completely forgotten about that. Still, it didn’t matter.

  “It’s over anyway,” he said. “That giant damn spider is coming, and we’re stuck here.”

  Faei tugged her wrist, but the webbing binding her to the wall wouldn’t move.

  “So, you’re just going to sit there?” she said, anger flaring in her voice. “When Isaac was babbling on, I listened. I was pretending to be dying, so there wasn’t much else I could do but listen. When he was talking about going through a portal, you went strange. Really quiet. And you had this look in your eyes.”