Ross frowned. “Did you-?”
“No, I didn’t kill him!” Tallow said, his jaw dropping in offense. “It happened of natural causes. He-.” Tallow raised his hand. “Shh!”
He heard a scraping sound coming from the front porch, accompanied by the sound of heavy footsteps. Tallow stepped closer to the stairs and pointed his cane towards the entrance, sending out tendrils of magic to feel out who was outside.
He grimaced and whispered to the two detectives. “I had to disable some magic wards when we got here,” Tallow told them. “It was a small thing and since there was nothing here, I didn’t think the wizard would bother to respond so quickly.”
Douglas and Ross moved to the stairway and placed their backs against the walls on either side of it. They drew their weapons.
“What are we up against?” Douglas asked.
“Two men and a . . . creature,” Tallow said. His magic was having difficulty with the thing. He could sense a vague shape, nothing more. It was rather big though. “I’m not sure exactly what it is.”
“I don’t like being cornered down here,” Ross said.
“You two stay where you are,” Tallow said. He didn’t move from his position in the center of the room, but simply pointed his cane to the stairway and waited. “When they come down here, be ready to get the drop on them.”
Tallow sensed the doorknob turning upstairs. The door creaked as it opened inward. The two men stayed on the porch as the beast made its way inside. Tallow bit his lip, still unable to make out what it was.
He prepared several spells in his mind and focused through his connection with his cane. Tallow started with a lightning strike, letting the runes on his cane hold the spell and enhance it. He would have to be precise so that the detectives on either side of the stairs wouldn’t be affected.
The creature approached the stairs and started down. Tallow first saw a large fur-covered paw on one of the upper steps. Then a muzzle and an enormous wolf-like head appeared. It growled as it saw him and Tallow swore inwardly.
It was a lupero. A wizard hunter.
Chapter 24: Contaminating a Crime Scene
Tallow rethought his plan as the Lupero’s bristling shoulders came into view. It was covered in dark red fur, its lips pulled back to expose teeth three inches long. A single lightning bolt wasn’t going to take this thing down. It was the biggest example of its kind he had seen.
Luperos were one of the largest species of lupids, long legged wolf-like creatures native to the northern nations of Gaiana. They were known as wizard hunters because of their ability to sense magical talent in people and an innate resistance to magic. Dark wizards liked to keep them as pets in case Mage School forces came calling. This one was wearing a collar with a small clear stone set into it.
Tallow kept the lightning bolt contained in his cane and couched down, placing his left palm on the floor in front of him. Perhaps he could use the ground itself as a weapon against the beast. He sent tendrils of earth magic into the concrete slab that made up the foundation, hoping that this older farmhouse hadn’t been built to modern specifications.
He was disappointed. The foundation was solid; reinforced with rebar. He didn’t have the time to organize a spell capable of breaking that up. Tallow grimaced. He was going to have to call in a favor.
Douglas and Ross, their backs against the wall on either side of the stairs, watched wide-eyed as the lupero came into their view. The thing was nearly six feet tall at the shoulders, its long legs ending in clawed hands. It paused with its rear legs still on the stairs and growled. As it sniffed at the air, its slitted eyes carried an unnatural menace. Luckily for the two detectives, the thing didn’t seem to notice them. It was focused on the wizard in the room. Both of them brought up their pistols.
Without warning, the thing bolted towards the crouching wizard. It covered the ten feet between them in two bounds, its long arms reaching, its mouth open wide.
The lightning bolt left Tallow’s cane at an upward angle inches from the thing’s mouth. The energy of the electricity scorched the roof of its mouth, and snapped its head back, knocking it up on its toes and causing it to crack the top of its head against one of the wooden support beams.
This was the sort of attack that would fell most beasts. The lupero merely let out a startled yelp and clutched its head as its flesh absorbed much of the magic and channeled the energy, letting it dissipate into the concrete. Tallow took advantage of the moment while it was briefly stunned and rolled to the side, getting out of the way so that the two detectives could open fire.
They each fired twice, striking its torso with painful effect. Their bullets did more damage than Tallow’s strike had done. It turned on them, now considering the two men to be more of a threat than the magic of the wizard. It lunged back towards the stairs and the detectives fired again, but both the beast and the bullets were halted by the thick wall of air magic that Tallow had raised between them.
“Sorry!” Tallow said. “It would tear you to shreds before you managed to down it.”
The lupero snarled and lashed out at the wall of air with raking claws. The magic disrupting nature of its cells kicked in again and it made a deep gouge into the energy. A few more seconds and it would claw its way through.
“Then you kill it!” Ross shouted.
“I hope to,” Tallow said and he shot a flurry of tiny blades of air out of the end of his cane.
They struck the rear of the beast in a tight cluster, slashing its hide to painful effect, though not penetrating into its muscle before dissipating. It yelped again and turned back on him, its shoulders shifting as it readied itself to pounce.
Tallow prepared another flurry of blades and thrust a hand into his pants pocket. He grimaced as his fingers fumbled aside his car keys. Finally, he was able to grasp the tiny pebble in the tight corner of the pocket.
Reginald! Tallow shouted through the pebble’s link to its host. I need your help!
Getting a message through was a long shot. Reginald’s seeds had an immense range, but Tallow was nearly twenty miles away from the elemental. In addition, Reginald now belonged to Agatha, which limited Tallow’s ability to communicate with him.
Fortunately, the elemental had already been listening. Tallow caught the distinct impression that the rock had gotten bored while watching Agatha vacuum her room.
You told them, was the distant and disapproving response. This was part of an ongoing argument. Tallow had commanded Reginald not to tell Agatha that he was Asher. The disagreement had begun long before he transferred his ownership of the elemental to her. Now Reginald saw Tallow’s admission to Douglas and Ross as hypocritical.
“No time to explain! I’m fighting a lupero here!” Tallow yelled both aloud and mentally.
The lupero leapt at him. Tallow dove to the side, yanking his hand out of his pocket so quickly that he pulled his keys out with it. His dodge was assisted by blasts of air sent through his feet. The boost helped him avoid evisceration from the claws that swiped through the place he had been standing, but it also sent him in an out of control roll across the concrete that ended in a numbing thump against the basement’s eastern wall.
He lost his grip on his cane, but thankfully he managed to hold onto the pebble. He got up on all fours. The lupero had turned and was ready to leap again. Reginald, please!
Cheating, Reginald replied to him, adding a few choice thoughts to remind Tallow that he no longer belonged to him and therefore had no obligation to help.
Then you’re letting Agatha’s brother die, Tallow sent as the creature leapt again.
Douglas and Ross shouted and fired their guns impotently into the wall of air that protected them. Tallow had no time to do more than rise up on his knees. Instinctively, he brought up a shell of protective earth magic around his body.
The lupero clutched Tallow’s torso with its powerful claws and pulled him towards its open mouth. Tallow shouted in defiance and thrust his hand holding the pebble down
the creature’s throat. It bit down, its teeth nearly puncturing the protective magic. It wasn’t going to take much. One wrench of its powerful neck muscles and it would tear his arm from his body.
The pebble instantly ballooned into a four foot boulder.
The force of Reginald’s sudden appearance tore the creatures upper body apart in a burst of gore. Tallow was thrown aside. He hit the wall again, then rose to his feet, the front of his clothes covered in blood.
Reginald’s red-stained boulder stood in the middle of the beast, a disapproving scowl on his chalk line face.
“Hey! That hurt!” Tallow complained, raising his arm that was still partially encased by the lupero’s severed muzzle. He waggled stinging fingers. “If I hadn’t protected my hand with magic I would have lost it!”
Reginald’s eyes narrowed.
“I . . . Thank you,” Tallow said and he stepped forward to put his hand on the boulder to say more mentally, but it became a pebble once more and fell in the muck.
“Holy . . .” Ross stammered as blood dripped down the magic wall in front of him.
“Crap,” Douglas finished. “Are you okay?”
Tallow banished the wall, letting the blood fall in a spatter. He pointed up the stairs. “There are still two men outside. I think they’re running away.”
Douglas and Ross ran up the stairs. Tallow figured that they were likely grateful to be facing something as normal as fleeing suspects after what they had just seen.
Tallow groaned. He hurt all over. The creature’s claws and teeth had gouged and bruised him despite his protections. He was going to be really sore in the morning. It was too bad that wizards couldn’t heal themselves.
He pulled the lupero’s jaws open and let them fall from his arm, then bent down to pick up the torn collar that had been around the creature’s neck. There was a slight glow of magic about it, a mix of elemental magic with a slight cloud of spirit magic.
“Interesting,” he mumbled, wishing that he had his full laboratory available to inspect it.
He picked up Reginald’s pebble and was retrieving his cane and keys when the detectives returned. They stopped part way down the stairs.
“You’re a mess,” Ross said with a grimace.
“They had just gotten into a white van when we made it outside,” Douglas reported. He lifted his phone. “I took some pictures of them as they drove away. They’re a bit blurry, but we’ll be able to make out the plates.”
“That’s good,” Tallow said and he stepped to a clean spot of the concrete floor. “We should leave in case they send something else.”
“You can’t get into the car like that,” Ross said.
Tallow reached up and tapped the top of his head, releasing an air spell. A golden ripple flowed down from the spot he had touched and the blood and gore fell away from his body to splatter on the floor around him. He put his keys and the pebble back in his pocket and extended a protective air spell over his shoes, then stepped over the mess. His clothes were now clean but torn and punctured in a few places.
He saw the looks on their faces and explained, “It’s a useful old spell, taught to me by my master when I was an apprentice.”
Ross blinked. “That would cut down your dry cleaning bill.”
“We can’t just leave this place like this,” said Douglas. “We broke in and fired our guns.”
Ross snorted. “You wanna stick around and get ambushed again?”
“There’s trace everywhere,” Douglas argued, pointing at the bloody shoeprints that Tallow had left behind amongst the gore before cleaning himself up. “Erl and whoever he’s working for could use this against us in court. Police breaking the rules will get a case thrown out quick.”
Tallow lifted his cane over the lupero’s remains and sent out tendrils of earth magic, looking specifically for the metallic signature of lead. The flattened remnants of the detective’s bullets pulled free of the corpse and floated up to stick to the cane. He then moved the cane towards the stairs and the shots that had been fired into the wall of air sprung up to join the rest.
“Lead isn’t magnetic,” Douglas said numbly.
“I didn’t use magnetism. Pick up your casings and we’ll be on our way,” Tallow said. He swung his arm out behind him and used water magic to cause a pool of blood to roll over and obscure his tracks. Moving his arm like that sent a twinge through his ribs, but he grinned away the pain. “Sorry for showing off like that, but we really should hurry.”
The two detectives bent down to pick up their empties. Douglas didn’t look happy about it and Tallow knew it had to be killing his father to willfully help rig a crime scene, but they really didn’t have much of a choice.
Moments later they left the house and shut the door behind them. Tallow scrubbed his prints from the doorknob with a flick of air and they got in the car and drove away. Douglas frowned the whole way. Tallow tried to distract him from his probably guilty thoughts by telling the two detectives about the lupero and what its purpose was.
“Luckily Reginald was willing to come to my aid,” Tallow said as Douglas pulled onto the freeway towards the city. “Begrudgingly willing.”
“He’s back with Aggie now?” Ross asked.
“He didn’t like being away from her side for even those few moments,” said Tallow, feeling slightly perturbed that his life meant so little to the elemental after the years they had spent together. “He really seems to have taken a liking to her.”
Douglas didn’t say anything and the frown hadn’t left his face since leaving the farmhouse. Ross kept glancing over at his partner worriedly. Finally he licked his lips. “Doug, hey. You just learned you got your son back, remember?”
Douglas’ frown deepened. “Did I?” His eyes flickered up to meet Tallow’s through the rear view mirror and Tallow recognized the look his father used when gauging a stranger. “We were interrupted before you told me what happened to my real uncle.”
Tallow nodded slowly and reminded himself that he had known that becoming part of his family’s life again wasn’t going to be easy. “That’s right. I . . . when I realized where my spell had sent me and the date, I knew that I couldn’t just return to Atlanta immediately. You didn’t even know I had been abducted yet. You wouldn’t have believed me if I had shown up then and told you the story.
“So I thought of Uncle Errand. He was in Boise, only a few hundred miles from where I was and after the year I had spent emailing him back and forth when I was seventeen I felt that I knew him.”
“Why did you think he would find it any easier to believe you than me?” Douglas asked.
Tallow thought on that for a moment. “I guess I didn’t think I had as much to lose with him.”
“What was it like?” Ross asked. “Coming back to this world after being gone so long?”
“It was disorienting at first,” Tallow said, which was an understatement. It had been frightening, realizing just how unprepared he had been. “I had brought some clothing with me that I had hoped wouldn’t seem too out of place. But I probably looked like some weird middle-aged escaped cult member or renaissance festival refugee walking around lugging my chest full of belongings and gawking at everyone.”
Ross chuckled. “I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, I was able to exchange some gold pieces for cash at a pawn shop. I realize now that they robbed me blind, but at the time I was just glad to have spendable money. The first thing I did was get fast food.”
“Wendy’s?” Ross asked.
“Burger King,” Tallow said. “I had to see if Whoppers were as good as I remembered them.”
“And?” Ross asked. “Was it still good after eating elf food for sixty years?”
“My uncle?” Douglas reminded them.
“Right,” said Tallow. “Uh, I bought some new clothes and a bus ticket to Boise. I had to ask around to find his house and when I finally got there it didn’t seem like anyone was home. I sent my magic inside and that’s when I found him.” Tall
ow sighed, the sadness he had felt then creeping up on him once again. “He had been dead a few days. Heart attack. Too much alcohol and cigarettes.”
Douglas looked into Tallow’s eyes through the rearview mirror again and what he saw must have satisfied him because he let out a sigh. “I don’t know why it makes me so sad to hear that. If I had heard about it a week ago I don’t think it would have affected me. I guess I’ve kind of felt like I’ve gotten to know him over the past few days.”
“I’m sorry,” Tallow said. “I felt sick about it. I went inside and cared for his body and that’s when I had the idea. I saw the resemblance we had with each other and knew that with a few changes to my appearance I could pass for him.
“It wasn’t too difficult. He didn’t have any ex-wives or children. He’d become estranged from the rest of his family. I spent the next month going over his things, relearning how to do things like use computers and drive. I found his identification and got all new pictures taken, had his name officially changed.”
“And took his money?” Ross said in a tone that Tallow thought was quite unhelpful. He felt ghoulish enough as it was.
“I didn’t need to,” Tallow said. “I was quite wealthy back in Gaiana and I had brought a lot of gold with me.” It had been a good thing he had spells to reduce the weight of the chest he had brought or he wouldn’t have been able to bring it out of the mountains. “I found more cost-effective ways of turning that gold into cash than pawn shops. But if it helps . . . I found Errand’s will. He had changed it about six months ago. He left everything he owned to me. To seventeen-year-old Asher. He had you down as the executor of his estate, Douglas.”
Douglas let out a long sigh. “What did you do with the body?”
Tallow couldn’t meet his father’s eyes in the mirror this time. “I buried him in the back yard with earth magic, down deep where . . . I did it with the greatest respect and care.”
The car grew quiet and they sat in Atlanta’s rush hour traffic for several long minutes before Douglas spoke. “You need to tell Agatha.”
Tallow Jones: Wizard Detective (The Tallow Novels Book 1) Page 29
