Frost Bite

by S A Magnusson

  Maybe I’d been wrong about Jean-Pierre all along; maybe he wasn’t a vampire.

  I turned away, second-guessing myself, when the door opened.

  A youngish looking man—in his mid-thirties with curly dark hair that flopped forward, nearly blocking his eyes—leaned out of the open door, watching me. He shielded his eyes with his hand, and I frowned. It wasn’t that bright out. With the overcast sky, it was difficult to tell, but there wouldn’t be anything for him to shield his eyes from.

  Maybe he was a vampire.

  I had no idea whether vampires could come out in the daylight, but I suspected that myth was not completely accurate, especially as neither Jean-Pierre nor the stabbed victim seemed to have disintegrated in the daytime.

  “No solicitors,” the man said.

  “What was that?”

  “I said no solicitors. I’m not buying anything.”

  “I’m not selling anything,” I said.

  “Then why are you here?”

  I thought about the symbol I’d seen, reached my hand under my coat, gripping the wand, hoping I could pull upon that magic quickly if need be. I looked over at this man. “I was looking for someone who I had a record of living at this address.”

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  “A man by the name of Jean-Pierre Rorsch.”

  I watched the other man as I said Jean-Pierre’s name, waiting to see if he showed any spark of recognition. His hand twitched just a little. I didn’t see anything change about his face, but could that mean he recognized it?

  “I don’t know anybody by that name.”

  “Could he have lived here before?”

  The man looked past me, down the street, before turning his attention back to me. “I don’t know. I’ve been at this house the last ten years.”

  That was too long for us to have the wrong address on Jean-Pierre. Typically, when patients were hospitalized, the registration department did a good job of updating addresses, especially when it came to people with serious medical problems such as him. The guy had been through a megacode, had survived, and was discharged from the hospital. That was something.

  “You don’t recognize the name.”

  “Listen, lady. I told you I don’t. Now if that’s all you’re after, maybe somebody gave you the wrong address.”

  “Maybe. Sorry to bother you.”

  He pulled the door closed and disappeared back inside. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching, and he appeared in the bay window for a brief second before retreating, disappearing back into the house where I couldn’t see him.

  Heading back to the car, I unlocked it, climbed in, and sat down. My hand drifted to the wand, squeezing the length of it while pulling out my phone. One of the nice things about the electronic medical record our hospital used was that there was a mobile version, and after logging in, I went to my recent patient list, pulled up Jean-Pierre Rorsch, and double-checked the address.

  I stared at the screen. That was the right address. This was the right street and the right suburb. All of this should have been correct.

  Except, apparently this wasn’t where Jean-Pierre lived.

  At least, the man who had answered the door claimed it wasn’t.

  A part of me was tempted to go around and search behind the house, but that was taking things from the simple act of looking into Jean-Pierre, to breaking and entering; now, that would be crossing the line. If I snooped any more, then I would be running the risk of danger.

  While sitting there, a car pulled out of the driveway of the house. It was the same man who had answered the door, and I slumped down in the seat of the car, trying to avoid him seeing me. I wasn’t sure if I did well enough at that, but the car took off down the street, leaving me with a dilemma. I could follow him. I wasn’t convinced he’d been honest with me, but mostly that came from a gut instinct. Doctors—especially ER docs—had to develop the same bullshit detector I suspected detectives had, and mine was going off. I had a hard time believing this address we had on file for Jean-Pierre was wrong, which meant either Jean-Pierre did live here, or the man who’d answered the door knew something about him. The only other possibility I had was breaking into the house to see if something would tell me whether or not he was there.

  I did the more sensible of the two.

  Throwing the car into drive, I started off down the road, following the other car.

  If nothing else, I figured I could track him, see where he went, and doing it this way, I wasn’t breaking the law. I wasn’t even breaking any patient privacy problems. All I was doing was following him. Stalking. That was all.

  I pulled my phone out, trying to keep the other car in view. It was a silver Honda Accord, a newer model, and difficult to follow if he got out onto the interstate. There were cars just like it everywhere, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to easily track it. I pulled up too close, realized my mistake, and slowed down.

  Punching in a number on the phone, I let it ring.

  “Dr. Stone. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. You have been practicing?”

  “Hey there, Barden. I tried to reach you earlier—”

  “You were practicing. I could tell. Did it work?”

  Now wasn’t the time to have this conversation. “I think I was able to use magic on my own but that’s not why I called.”

  There came a pause from the other end. “And why did you call?”

  “I called because I did something a little crazy.”

  “What exactly did you do?”

  “The patient who came in. The vampire. I checked in on him.”

  “The one who died or the other?”

  “How would I check in on the one who died?”

  “As you have undoubtedly seen, not all death is the same.”

  “You think he survived?”

  “Unlikely. If he was a vampire, a stab wound such as you describe would be enough to eliminate him, but it is possible he might have survived.”

  I hadn’t considered that. I could have gone down to the hospital morgue but had no interest in doing so. I never even knew where it would be in the hospital.

  “No. Not that one and this might be the first time I’m saying this, but I hope he’s dead. It’s the other one.”

  “The one you saved.”

  “That’s the one. His name is Jean-Pierre Rorsch. Does the name ring a bell with you?”

  As we turned a corner, I heard the sound of computer keys clattering, and suspected Barden was typing in the name to see what he could find out. “No record of anyone by that name.”

  “The address the hospital had for him wasn’t the right one, either.”

  “You went to his house? Is that typical for physicians? I was under the impression house calls weren’t common anymore.”

  “It wasn’t a house call so much as a feed-my-curiosity call.”

  “Did you see your patient?”

  “No. Someone there said he didn’t recognize that name.”

  “Perhaps the hospital had the wrong address.”

  “See, that was my impression, too, but the hospital registration rarely gets things wrong like that.” We stopped at a red light, and I was directly behind the Honda Accord. I could see the man’s black hair over the top of the seat and tried to turn off to the side so he wouldn’t see I’d followed him, though wasn’t even sure I did a good job of that. And if he did realize, how would he react?

  I knew how I would react. I’d be calling the police and looking for help.

  The light changed colors, and the Accord zoomed off. I followed more carefully, not accelerating too quickly, but keeping the car in sight.

  “Dr. Stone?”

  “Sorry about that. I was just thinking I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing.”

  “Why don’t you return to your home, and I will stop by later so we can talk about you reaching your magic.”

  “That sounds like a good plan…”

  I had turned a corner, and a car had s
topped in the road in front of me. It was the silver Accord. I slowed down, coming to a stop, and as soon as I did, my passenger door was thrown open.

  I slammed on the gas, but not before the dark-haired man jumped into the front seat of my vehicle. Swerving around his own, I tried to throw him off to the side, wanting to keep him from getting too settled. He reached for me, grasping my right wrist and squeezing, pulling me.

  “Stop the car,” he said. His voice had changed, taking on more of a growl than it had when he had been at the door. “Stop the car, or—”

  I slammed on the brakes. I had a seatbelt on, but he didn’t. He slammed into the window, cracking it. That was going to be expensive to replace. He reached for me and I realized there was something on his arm I hadn’t noticed before. A marking. A tattoo, similar to the one Rorsch had, though not the same.

  He lunged for me, and I jammed the car into gear again, before hurriedly slamming on the brakes. Once again, momentum flung him forward, and he tumbled out of the seat and free of the car.

  I grabbed for the wand, holding it across my lap, straining to reach into those terrifying memories. I needed to reach them, needed to pull upon that magic, but could I do it now there was such a sense of urgency?

  I didn’t like being helpless. And I really didn’t like someone jumping into my car, attacking me, then making me break the window with his forehead.

  Power bubbled up from within me. I pushed it outward, sending it from deep within me, down to my arms and my hands, and into the wand. I held it there a moment. “Who are you?”

  The man lunged for me outside now, reaching back toward me across the hood of the car, grasping for the broken windscreen. I released the power built up within me, letting it explode into him. He was thrown back, shaking his head and looking over at me. The dazed expression on his face quickly faded.

  Would I be able to pull upon magic again?

  “Who are you working with?” he demanded.

  He reached toward me another time, and I reacted, forcing the power out of me and out of the wand much the same way I had the last time. It slammed into him, but this time, I shifted the focus, centering it on his head, with a plan to use what was left of the shattered windscreen to help me out.

  It was cruel and brutal, but at the same time, if I could knock him unconscious, then I could get help, and question him.

  The power from the wand crashed into his head from behind, sending it slamming back into the glass. The window broke apart finally, shards of glass spilling down, the wind rushing into my car.

  Shit.

  If anyone saw that, I was sure to have the police here.

  Sure enough, sirens wailed in the distance.

  The man shook his head again and started to lean toward me, but I jabbed the wand up at him. He watched me for a moment, then another, but must’ve heard the sirens. He lifted his head up, twisting to the side, and jumped from the hood of my car; he went running off.

  I leaned back, breathing out heavily. My heart thudded.

  I didn’t have long to relax. There came a strange sense of energy, like an electrical current washing along my skin.

  As it did, I pulled on the magic for a third time, already feeling it weakening. Apparently, my limit was two blasts through the wand, and I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough strength for a third.

  Something shimmered in front of the car, and I stepped on the gas, ready to run over whoever appeared.

  As the car surged forward, I slammed on the brakes again.

  “Barden?”

  I opened the door, but he waved his hand. “Stay in the car, Dr. Stone.” He pricked his finger with the end of a blackened blade, and squeezed it, making a tracing along the ground as he went. When he was done, he placed his hand on the hood of the car. “This is going to feel unusual.”

  “What is?”

  He smiled tightly.

  Then pressure began to build.

  I wasn’t sure how to describe it any different way. Pressure built from all around me, seeming to squeeze me. It was a reminder of the time I’d gone scuba diving in Cozumel, the one time I had attempted to go deep underwater. It was painful.

  It crept along the entire surface of my body, but the pain focused mostly along my head, squeezing it in a vice-like grip. I think I screamed but wasn’t sure.

  The pain lingered, seemingly for hours. Why was Barden tormenting me like this?

  Everything went dark. Sounds became muted, even my screaming was dulled. Then it all stopped. The pain eased.

  I opened my eyes, looking around, and realized I was in the garage near Barden’s warehouse. He opened my car door, standing there a moment. “You can get out now, Dr. Stone.”

  “What was that?”

  “That was not easy.”

  “When I was with Kate and she teleported, it wasn’t anything like that.”

  “Had there been any other choice, I wouldn’t have chosen your car, but I feared leaving it behind for someone to identify you. Besides, this way we can restore it.”

  I looked at the car. It had been with me for a while and I wasn’t eager to replace it just yet. “You can restore it? Really? In this mess?”

  Barden nodded. “We can restore it, but while we do, I think we need to see if we can’t uncover more about this man who attacked you.”

  14

  My eyes grew blurry the longer I stared at the computer screen. I’d had enough of computer monitors from the hospital where I had to chart and document, so needing to do it for this reason, to investigate the magical attack, left me with a pounding headache that I doubted no amount of Tylenol or ibuprofen would take away. I rubbed my temple, trying to shake away the headache, but that wouldn’t do anything for me.

  “Not seeing anything,” I said to Barden. I looked up from the computer, my gaze drifting around the inside of the warehouse. I was seated at one of the cubicles, and Barden had ensured a certain level of privacy by sending the other people who’d been sitting at the computers nearby off to work somewhere else. Still, I spoke softly, not wanting anyone else to fully know what was taking place.

  “If you need to rest, Dr. Stone, there is no shame in that.”

  “I should be okay,” I said.

  He watched me, a level of concern in his dark eyes I wasn’t sure how to interpret. “Let me get you a coffee, at least.”

  He got up and disappeared before I had a chance to object. I wasn’t sure coffee was in my best interest at this point considering the possibility I’d need to get home and sleep. Already I had been there several hours and seeing as how I had to work the next day, I didn’t want to remain there too long. At the same time, Barden was determined to help me understand what had taken place. He had been concerned by this man attacking, and even more so because he’d known something about magic.

  After having sat there for the better part of several hours, I had a better sense of the type of work Barden did. Most of it involved acquiring information. The screen had displayed a series of pictures, all of them documenting people in the magical world he’d somehow photographed, leading to a small blurb about their involvement.

  Barden’s programmers had it all set so I could search by gender, then filter by age—mostly by apparent age—and other sorts of factors, including what kinds of magical attachment they might have. In the case of my attacker, I’d started with searching for vampire familiars, but so far it hadn’t revealed anything. The database included thousands of people, all of them from Minneapolis alone, and it made it difficult for me to know if I would even be able to figure this out. It was like looking through some massive police lineup, but none of it got me any closer to understanding what had happened.

  Barden returned, setting a mug in front of me. I arched a brow at the label on the mug.

  “World’s #1 Boss?”

  “It was given freely, Dr. Stone. No coercion.”

  I laughed, leaning back in the chair, wrapping my hands around the mug. It wasn’t cold in the warehouse, thou
gh there was a strange chill in the air. Most likely that had to do with the openness there, the scale that made it difficult to keep anything properly heated this time of year.

  “I don’t doubt it was given freely. Who gave it to you?”

  “Why?”

  I stared at the mug, bringing it to my lips and sipping. It was hot, but not to the point where I couldn’t drink it. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m not surprised you would get a mug like this from your people.”

  “No?”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who abuses their workers.”

  “If you abuse your people, you risk losing them. For many years, the Dark Council has operated under the threat of an attack by the Mage Council. Loyalty was needed to ensure our safety. We all work together, protecting each other. I might have led, but all it would take would be for someone to reveal our presence and everything would be over.”

  “Do you lead all of the Dark Council?”

  Barden cocked his head to the side, his gaze darting around the inside of the warehouse. I followed the direction of it, my own gaze settling on the various cubicles scattered around. “The Dark Council operates similarly to the Mage Council, though not quite the same. Much like the Mage Council, we rely upon the places of power throughout the world, places like Minneapolis where power tends to concentrate.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We call them ley lines, connections to a deeper source of magic. For some reason, these ley lines tend to concentrate here. There are other places where they concentrate, but Minneapolis is dense with magic. It is part of the reason we have managed to remain concealed for as long as we have. At least here. In other places, the dark mages have struggled, though we have had our share of struggles even here.”

  “So, these ley lines tend to conceal you?”

  “The ley lines are a source of concentrated magic that conceals the use of other sorts of magic. It’s the reason places like Minneapolis and New Orleans have long been hotbeds of magical activity.”

  “I was with you up until the point where you said Minneapolis has long been a hotbed of magical activity.”