by Mindy Klasky
One heartbeat, it was a slaughterhouse of dead meat. The next, it was gone, not even a fog, a mist, a breath of air remaining to show it had ever existed.
Luke was left kneeling on the beach, his knife winking in the sun, as clean as if it were newly forged. Only the gouges on the sand testified that the animal had ever been there. The gouges, and the harsh gasps of all my witches and their familiars. Warders’ angry shouts echoed as men kicked at the empty beach.
I still could not feel my powers, could barely remember I’d ever had them. Panic scrabbled at the corners of my mind, but I knew I needed to maintain an appearance of calm for my students. They were here because of me. I needed to serve as a role model.
Tony, stranded on the end of the pier, helped each of us witches to our feet. He reached for Raven last, keeping hold of her hand until he was convinced she was unharmed. Even as he steadied her, his eyes raked over the rest of us, seething until he found Neko at my side, until my familiar offered up the tiniest of nods, confirming he was safe.
I wanted to shout that we might be safe, physically, but there was something more amiss. The other women all looked stunned. They seemed as stricken as I was. Their magic had also been ripped from their minds. That was why no one had helped the warders, no one had offered up a drop of magic in our defense.
Jeffrey helped Caleb stand, and they both checked on Luke, who was still turning his knife in his hand, marveling at the pristine blade. “Titanium,” he said. “Not steel. Used it for castrating bulls back home.” He flashed a rancher’s grin at all of us, as if he’d just told a thigh-slapping joke.
His witch, Bree Carter, caught on first. The Montana native wiped her palms on her blue jeans, shrugging her broad shoulders in her heavy flannel shirt. She settled an easy hand on the forearm of her horse-faced familiar, Perd, almost as if she wasn’t seeking support from the man. Narrowing her dark eyes, she tossed her cap of mahogany curls and said, “If you were going for castration, you started at the wrong end.”
“Can’t blame a man for trying,” Luke said, and he shoved his survival knife back into its sheath, in the side of his disreputable cowboy boots.
“Trying like a steer,” Bree said. She won an approving nod from her warder and a ragged chuckle from the other men. No one could blame them if their amusement sounded a little strained. Especially not Zach, who was easing his arm back in his sling and doing his best to shield Cassie from whatever unknown danger might linger on the beach or in the woods.
Still reeling, I acknowledged that Luke and Bree were doing their best to ground us. We witches hadn’t spent any magical power—we didn’t have any power to spend. We didn’t need food and drink to restore us to our senses. But we had to be reminded that we were alive, that the beast had not won.
“Let’s go,” Tony said, eyeing the lake as if a kraken might rear up out of the water. “Back to the house.”
He was right. We shouldn’t stay out here. Not when we had no idea where the dog-thing had come from. Not when something else—anything else?—could attack. Not when we witches were powerless to do so much as light a candle.
The warders sorted themselves automatically, surrounding us in a tight phalanx. I let them make the decisions, allowed them to keep us safe.
One hundred steps into the woods, I began to sense my magic again, a hum of awareness at the very edge of my consciousness. Five hundred steps in, I could remember every spell I’d ever mastered. A thousand steps toward home, and I sensed the interwoven energy of the world around me, the balance, the give and take I’d hoped my students would learn that morning. My powers were restored as if the beast had never taken them, as if I’d never been stripped bare.
We marched through the clearing like an army of Spartans, skirting the ritual circle where the satyr had spawned. Back at the house, the warders split forces. Luke and Jeffrey, Zach and Garth, they all followed Caleb’s lead, collecting my students and securing them with their familiars in the garage dormitory.
Tony nodded as Jeffrey took up a guard post at the single door that led into that building. The other men began a slow walk around the structure. From their extended hands and their gradually widening circles, I knew they were checking the wards they’d previously set. They were testing their magic, bolstering their protective spells.
Tony gave me a chance to see that everyone was safe before he hustled me into the farmhouse. “Stay here,” he said. “Both of you,” he added, when Neko took a half-step toward him.
“I want—” my familiar said.
“Not gonna happen,” the warder said, with enough finality that even Neko gave up the fight. “Stay inside while I double-check the wards. And lock that thing up.”
He jutted his chin toward Spot. The Lab had slunk into the living room, belly low to the ground, lips pulled back over his teeth. He was making a sound I’d never heard before, a cross between a whine and a growl, as he traced a tight half-circle around us.
Neko recovered faster than I did. He grabbed a dog treat from the jar in the kitchen and lured Spot upstairs. I was relieved to hear the bedroom door latch closed.
After that, Neko and I sat at the kitchen table. I tried to call David, but I got his voicemail. No surprise; he’d never be allowed to have his phone on during the Court’s inquest. I left a message, trying to sound neutral. “Something came up here at the farm. Come straight home, and I’ll fill you in on the details.”
That’s all he needed to know. Especially when there wasn’t a damn thing he could do, not now, not from DC. After I hung up, I waited with Neko, both of us straining our ears as we imagined Tony pacing off the perimeter of the farmhouse, checking the protective measures David constantly maintained. One circle, I counted in my mind. A second. A third.
When Tony finally walked through the front door, Neko was a trembling mess. Both of us leaped from our chairs, rushing toward the living room. The door clicked closed, and the warder said, “Everything will hold. For now.”
Neko launched himself around the couch, folding Tony into his arms. The warder clutched him just as close, lowering his lips to hair that my familiar would never admit was thoroughly mussed.
I headed down to the basement, to the vault and my books. I wanted to give the men some privacy. And I wanted to figure out what the hell that animal had been, the one that had almost killed us on the beach.
~~~
Delving into my books proved more of a challenge than I’d anticipated. David’s insistence on consolidating the collection in the vault had destroyed my careful organization. I had computer records telling me which books I owned, careful notations about rank and shelf, but neither of us had taken the time to update those files with “Frigidaire crate” or “microwave box” when David shifted everything into storage.
My frustration only grew when I realized that my best resources on magical creatures were stacked nine layers deep, in the very back corner of the reinforced room. Given the fragile incunabula stored in the front rows, it would take at least an hour to get to what I needed.
Maybe I’d better take another tack. I could focus on magical warfare. Someone had to have written a treatise about how to wage battle with animals. No. I remembered stacking those books on the back wall. They were buried under the facsimile copies of the Washington Coven’s record books, the forty-one volume cloth-bound set.
Fine. I could research warders’ weaponry. I had to have a reference volume that listed all creatures that could be banished by titanium. But the warders’ books were the first ones David had brought into the vault after Teresa claimed her benefaction. I couldn’t even remember where they’d ended up in the clutter.
If I shifted that stack there… If I balanced these boxes against those. If…
My phone rang, startling me out of my hopeless game of real-life Tetris. I barely glanced at the screen as I answered. “Hey, Melissa.”
“Thank God I caught you before you left.”
“Left?” I craned my neck, trying to identify a co
chineal-dyed copy of Reed’s Magical Beasts and the Nightmares They Breed, going solely by the bottom edge of the volumes stacked behind the haphazard pile of cauldrons.
“You’re going to kill me.”
I shook my head and sank to the floor cross-legged, giving up on my impossible task. “Why would I kill you?”
“I have to cancel.”
Cancel.
That’s right. I was supposed to meet Melissa at the bakery that evening. I should have wrapped up an easy lesson with my students about an hour ago. I would have had plenty of time to come up to the house, heat up a nice bowl of soup for lunch, and change into clean clothes before I made the drive down to DC.
“You must hate me,” Melissa said.
This probably wasn’t the best time to tell her I had forgotten about her completely. “Of course I don’t hate you.”
“Rob just got invited to dinner tonight with the chairman of his firm, and it’s a command performance for me. We’re going to a country club. I have to wear a dress!”
“‘What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?’” I took a strange comfort that the words came to mind easily. Even if my magical life was in shambles, I could remember my Shakespeare. If worse came to worst, I could give up on the magicarium and get a job teaching high school English. Actually, right about now, that career shift sounded like heaven.
Melissa’s aggravated shriek told me she recognized the quotation, even if she wasn’t amused. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” she said. “And I hate that play. I cannot wait until Rob’s stupid partnership vote is over. I don’t care if he ever makes partner—I just want to be done with the dog and pony shows!”
The panic in her voice almost made me feel guilty for taking pleasure in the Bard. “It’s okay,” I soothed. “You’ll do fine. And we’ll reschedule my coming down to the city. I’ve actually got a lot going on here today.” I was not going to tell my best friend that I’d been attacked by a two-headed dog on the beach, my powers had temporarily been stripped, and the monster’s corpse had disappeared without leaving a single hair behind. She’d make time for me if I told her that. She’d make time all the way to the psych ward.
“Friday night,” she said. “Mojito Therapy. I’ll come out there, since I’m the one wimping out tonight.”
“Friday,” I agreed. “Can’t wait.”
And that wasn’t a lie. I desperately wanted to retreat to the early days of our friendship—to the easy times when we lived a few blocks apart, when we were both looking for the loves of our lives, when our greatest dilemma was whether we had enough lime juice for another round of well-muddled tropical drinks.
I heard a bell jangle in the background on Melissa’s end, followed by the clamor of kids begging for enough sugar to wire all of DC for a year. “I’m sorry,” Melissa said.
“Don’t be. Go. I’ll see you on Friday.”
Melissa’s call served one valuable purpose: it broke the hopeless cycle of my searching in the vault. I wasn’t going to reach the materials I needed, not without help. I might as well backtrack and try a little mundane research. I headed upstairs.
Tony had rearranged the living room furniture, dragging one of the heavy armchairs so he had a clear view of both the front and back doors. His unsheathed sword rested on the coffee table, in easy reach, and the largest butcher knife from our kitchen lay on the floor by his right foot. Neko sat next to the knife, leaning his head on Tony’s left knee. The warder’s fingers worked Neko’s nape, as if he could smooth away the horrors of the morning as easily as he could work out a muscle kink.
“Did you find anything?” Neko asked, starting to stir, but I waved him back to his place.
“Nothing useful. I’m going to check a few things upstairs.”
“Pull the window shades up there,” Tony said.
“You don’t think—”
“I’m not taking any chances. Pull the shades.”
I pulled the shades.
I didn’t want to imagine what sort of enemy magic could get at me through a second story window. I collapsed onto my bed and picked up my tablet from my nightstand. My fingers flew over the surface, keying in search terms. Someone had written a song called “Two-Headed Dog” and half a dozen musicians had covered it. A Russian scientist had done freak transplant experiments, creating a two-headed puppy.
Then I hit pay-dirt. Orthros. A two-headed dog. An ancient Greek monster, litter-mate of the three-headed Cerberus that guarded the gates of the underworld.
I followed up on the entries, digging deeper into Greek mythology. Orthros was part of a family of monsters. He was owned by a giant who had three bodies; the dog was supposed to guard a special herd of red cattle. Heracles worked his labors and stole the cows, killing Orthros.
Well, Heracles hadn’t quite gotten the job done, had he?
There were references to The Iliad and images of Greek pottery, black lines incised on red clay.
I tried to tell myself that myths were just that—stories passed down through the ages. They often had some seed of truth. Maybe some ancient cowherd had a bitch that whelped deformed puppies. Maybe a man stole cattle and had to explain how he was a good guy and not a common thief.
But someone had taken those stories and turned them into reality. Someone had worked magic, building on the foundation of legend. Someone had launched a horror on the beach, a deadly threat greater than any dusty tale I could read about online. And someone had inured that monster against steel, against warder’s magic, honing its ability to strip away witches’ power.
Suddenly, the front door of the farmhouse crashed open. I heard a shout, and then my name, bellowed from the landing: “Jane!”
David took the stairs two at a time. I only had time to set aside my tablet, to stand beside the bed, and then he barreled into the room. His hands crushed me as he tested my arms, my shoulders, the back of my head, checking to see that I was there, that I was alive. His eyes were wild, and he said my name over and over as I clutched him, held him close, trying to tell him with the press of my body against his that I was fine, I was safe, I was his.
When I could speak, when he could hear me, I managed, “I didn’t hear your car on the driveway.”
“I used warder’s magic. As soon as I left the inquest, the instant I heard Tony’s message.”
Of course. My carefully non-alarmist voicemail had been for naught.
David led me over to the edge of the bed. He sat beside me and folded my hands between his. “Tell me what happened.”
I did, starting with our lesson on the dock, the reaching for balance, for harmony in the animal world. I told him about the stag, and then the dog. Orthros. I explained what I’d found in my research so far.
David nodded, as if he were memorizing every word. When I finished, he said, “Again.”
I obliged, because I didn’t know what else to do. Our lesson, the stag, the dog, Greek legend.
“One more time.”
“David—”
“Please.”
Lesson. Stag. Dog. Orthros.
When he stood, it seemed as if we’d been sitting for hours. But I understood why he’d made me repeat myself, why he’d forced me to go over the horror again and again. By the time I finished the third repetition, the morning was something I’d read about in a book, a story that had happened to another person ages past. The beast had lost the power to terrify me. I could study it, question my knowledge, live with what I’d seen.
David stalked to the closet. His sword banged softly against the bed as he settled the scabbard around his waist.
“Where are you going?” I asked
“To the beach.”
“None of us saw—”
“You weren’t in any shape to see anything. Not after that thing attacked.”
“Let me go with you?”
Right. Well I had to ask, even though I’d been certain of his answer. I followed him downstairs and watched as he strode down the porch steps, hand firmly placed on
the grip of his sword.
It seemed like he was gone for days. It was less than thirty minutes, according to the clock on the mantel. When I saw him crossing the field, no one could keep me from running out of the house—not Tony, not Neko, not the ghosts of a hundred Greek monsters.
David settled his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close as we returned to the house. His face was grave, and he kept his free hand on his sword until the door was locked behind us.
“What?” I asked, my curiosity echoed by Tony and Neko.
David reached into his pocket and pulled out a perfect snowy handkerchief. Unfolding the cotton with care, he peeled back three layers before he extended his palm.
Neko hissed at the item in David’s hand, taking a full step back before he could control himself. Tony started to swear under his breath, a steady stream of curses that linked words I’d never thought of combining.
I leaned close enough to realize that David held a tooth, a great curved incisor as long as my index finger. The surface was sickly white, grooved as if it had been eaten by acid. A rusty stain at the base showed where it had been attached to a massive canine jaw.
Tony was the first to speak. “Caleb must have knocked it out of the dog’s jaw when he hit the thing.” Except he added an adverb before knocked. And he had another word for dog. And thing.
David nodded. “Standing alone, it didn’t have enough magical force to disintegrate with the rest of the body.” He sounded clinical. Dispassionate. Anyone listening to him might think he was delivering a lecture to a bored audience, speaking from PowerPoint slides in an overheated, darkened auditorium, where the projector’s hum lulled the entire audience to sleep.
But I knew David better than that. I knew his perfect control masked an anger so hot he feared he might destroy everything around him—the house, Tony, Neko. Me—if he loosened his self-control even a micron.
Because, along with David, I sensed what the other men could not. Along with David, I recognized the faintest arcane residue on the tooth. I never would have suspected, if I hadn’t first felt in stolen documents, in records David had no business keeping. But I knew that shimmer, that taint.
