The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy

by T. S. Barnett

  Maduro scooted an inch back from his desk in alarm, and Elton let him see him turn the heavy deadbolt behind his back.

  “Rafael Maduro?” Elton asked. Even if he hadn’t been staring at the man’s picture for days, the sudden pallor on his face would have been a dead giveaway. “I came to ask you a few questions.”

  “He told me you would come.” Maduro pushed to his feet, but he kept beside his desk in an attempt to maintain the distance between them even while Elton began to close it with a measured step.

  Elton paused. “He” could only be one person. Korshunov. The blond’s eyes narrowed as he watched the older man. “I want to ask about Nichole,” he said. “And about the state of the other workers in your factory.”

  “You—you’re the one who broke into my house? What have you done with her? What—”

  “I think you misunderstood me,” Elton cut him off. He reached a hand into his breast pocket and retrieved his folio of talismans, knowing Maduro’s eyes were on him as he let it fall open in his palm. “I’m asking questions. You’re answering them.”

  “I don’t know who you think you are,” Maduro spat, without looking up. “You think you have the right to just come in here asking questions? Just because you killed some brat up north? I’m not telling you shit. You can’t touch me—you think the Magistrate doesn’t know what I do here? You think they don’t pay me to do it?”

  Elton lifted his eyes to Maduro’s trembling, defiant face. “I don’t answer to the Magistrate.”

  “Yeah? Well you’ll answer to this.” Maduro reached for a chain and tugged an amulet from underneath his shirt, and Elton prepared to block whatever spell was about to come his way—but as the older man put the silver to his lips, Elton hesitated. It wasn’t an amulet.

  Maduro blew into the narrow whistle, but no sound came out. A moment passed between them, and when Maduro’s eyes flicked to the locked door behind Elton, the blond spun to follow his gaze. The door hadn’t opened, but the floorboards of the office creaked under the weight of the creature now standing between Elton and his only exit.

  It was easily nine feet tall, a hulking mass of fur and muscle. Its head was almost like a dog’s, but too large, with a single bulbous red eye glowing at the center of its face and inches-long teeth glistening like metal and dripping saliva onto the floor. Its human torso bristled with thick fur that turned sleek over its long, skeletal fingers and claws, and its legs angled backwards and ended in heavy, chipped horse’s hooves the size of dinner plates. The heaving breath that poured out of the creature was icy cold against Elton’s face. He’d never seen anything like it before—and it certainly didn’t seem open to negotiation.

  Elton lifted a slip of paper from his folio, the first he could get his hand on, and pressed it toward the monster with a hurried incantation. The thing’s teeth tore through his talisman like tissue, the flame that should have engulfed it dissipating harmlessly into wisps in the dog’s dirty iron jaws. Its claws fastened around Elton’s arms, and it lunged forward without hesitation, teeth burying in the flesh of his right shoulder—the movement firm, purposeful, and with a jerking twist like it meant to pull the meat from his bones. A strained cry escaped him, and his vision blurred from the pain. With a shaking hand, he managed to slip another talisman loose, but he could barely move his arms in the creature’s grip even without the numbing shock of the teeth in his shoulder.

  The monster was pushing him down to the ground, its jaws opening just enough to reposition—to chew. Elton’s eyes were squeezed shut as he forced the incantation out, and this time the talisman did snap forward, sealing itself against the monster’s bulky torso and crushing its spine backwards. The creature gave a roar of fury and released Elton as the electricity shot through its body, bony fingers clawing madly at the paper stuck fast to its belly.

  Elton’s gaze flicked across the room to Maduro. He’d found a grounding in one of his desk drawers and was now inching toward Elton, as though he didn’t trust the beast he’d summoned enough to get too close to it himself. Elton acted first—he lurched forward while the creature howled in pain, almost tearing his talisman in his rush to free it from its folio, and slapped it onto Maduro’s wrist. The paper wound itself around both of the man’s hands painfully tight, and Maduro’s grounding stone clattered to the floor. The creature’s tortured snarling had slowed to a low, heaving growl, but it still struggled to pick the last of the paper from its stomach. Elton weighed his options in the second of reprieve he had, his arm heavy and screaming in pain and his eyes on the monster’s talons and teeth still wet with his blood.

  He ran.

  He threw one last talisman in Maduro’s direction, catching the movement out of the corner of his eyes as the bound man sunk to the floor, and he fumbled with the deadbolt on the door with his left hand, his right arm hanging useless at his side. He clung to his folio of talismans as he rushed through the narrow passages of the factory, and before he reached the metal doors, he could hear the heavy hoofbeats and snarling howls of the monster on his heels. Elton crashed through the doors more than opened them, stumbling into the street and down the sidewalk with his own breath deafening in his ears. He ran until he grew too lightheaded to continue, and as he slumped down to the ground against the wall of a closed shop, he could see the trail of blood he’d left behind him, but there was no sign of the creature. Maybe it was limited to the factory itself somehow.

  Elton gave a wincing sigh and let his head lean back until it touched brick. The first coherent thought that passed through his head made him frown in distaste. He wished he’d brought Nathan.

  After a brief rest, during which he was grateful for being in an empty, shitty part of town, he turned his head toward the door and looked up at the painted letters on the glass. A pharmacy. He wasn’t completely luckless tonight. He exhaled slowly. There was only one next step he could take. He couldn’t go back to the hotel like this—even if he wasn’t ridiculously conspicuous, he’d pass out from loss of blood before he got halfway there.

  He reached for the door handle with his left hand and heaved himself up, leaving a smear of blood on the wall he leaned against for support. The glass surface of the door was cool under his palm. He waited for a breath to focus himself, then drew a low, soft hum from his throat, feeling the vibration of the sound flowing all the way down to his fingertips. Breath magic was exhausting—without a specific grounding, you could only do the most basic kinds of work, and Elton had only the jade pendant he’d found in Boston. The magic tended to leave Elton with a splitting headache, but his options were limited at this point. He flinched just a little as the glass in the door shattered, but then he quickly stepped over the threshold and into the darkness of the closed pharmacy with shards crunching under his feet.

  It was difficult to get the packages open with one hand and more difficult still to get at the injury on his shoulder without removing even more skin than the beast had torn off with its teeth. Elton managed to remove his torn jacket and peel away the scraps of his shirt from the right side of his chest, and he hissed in a breath and let it out in a groan through gritted teeth as he poured antiseptic over the ragged flesh. He swore as the foaming mixture of blood and peroxide spattered onto the tile floor. He didn’t know what kind of monster or spirit that Maduro had guarding him, but it was definitely going to be a problem.

  He caught sight of himself in the mirror on one side of a turnstile of sunglasses and grimaced. He could see the muscle of his shoulder in the worst parts of the wound and the tears the creature’s teeth had made in his chest and back. Even the smallest movement of his arm sent a shock of the side of his neck that made it clear the thing had scraped bone on his shoulder blade. Elton gave a short sigh and forced his eyes away from the scraps of meat hanging from his skin, taking up the bottle of peroxide again.

  Once he’d mostly stopped the bleeding, he wiped his ruddy hand on his ruined shirt and flipped to the back of his folio, where a single healing talisman lay tucked into
a pocket. He didn’t expect it would be exceptionally potent since the ones he made never were, but as he smoothed it down over the worst of his injury, it did its job passably well, pasting itself to his skin and forming an invisible seal over the open wound. His arm relaxed instantly as the pain faded to only a pounding throb. He still struggled to stand, but he was at least able to move back to the front of the pharmacy with his tattered jacket hung over his good arm. As he stepped into the spread of broken glass he’d left near the entrance, the sound of a car door slamming shut stopped him cold. Red and blue lights flashed from the street outside, and Elton could already hear the footsteps of two approaching men.

  “God damn it,” he sighed. He leaned his uninjured shoulder against the empty frame of the door and waited, too lightheaded to do much else. He must have tripped a silent alarm. Sloppy. He’d already gotten two policemen killed since they’d arrived in Miami—he needed to be more careful.

  “Whatcha up to, there, buddy?” one of the policemen called out, his hand on his fastened holster.

  “I’m not armed,” Elton offered, though he was only able to lift one hand in resignation. “I just needed first aid.”

  “Most people would call an ambulance,” the other officer said. Both men approached Elton with a wary step. “You wanna tell us what happened?”

  Elton almost laughed. He could picture explaining how he had been injured by a one-eyed dog-horse monster after breaking into a factory to investigate brain-wiped workers making anti-magic rope. He could also picture being locked away in the drunk tank or taken to rehab. Even if being arrested wouldn’t mean the Magistrate would absolutely be immediately notified of where he was, his only option for bail would be Nathan—and making that phone call was unthinkable.

  “Not particularly,” he answered. “I was attacked, but I’m not interested in pressing charges. I’ll happily pay damages—”

  “That isn’t how this works,” one of the men cut in. “Why don’t you turn around and put your hands on that wall?”

  “Gentlemen,” Elton sighed, already reaching his fingertips inside the folio hidden under his folded coat, “there must be something we can do here.”

  “I said hands on the wall!” the officer snapped, and both of them stepped forward, one with his hand moving toward the gun at his hip and the other reaching to turn Elton forcibly by the shoulder. A strained sound slipped past his clenched teeth as the officer’s fingers dug into his fresh injury. His face pressed into the brick and spots of light blurred his vision from the pain, and he felt the cold metal of handcuffs clipped around his wrists before he found the strength to resist. When the man tore Elton’s jacket from his arm and dropped it to the ground, the blond’s folio went with it, but the talisman tucked between two of Elton’s fingers did not. A soft incantation and a flick of his wrist sent the paper upward to snake around the officer’s throat, closing his airway and drawing a sudden choking sound from his lips. He stumbled away from Elton with his hands at his neck, and while the other officer stared in shock, Elton used the last of the energy left to him after his blood loss to close the gap between them. He slammed his aching body into the torso of the other man, knocking both of them to the ground in a heap and sending the gun skittering across the pavement. Elton pulled himself up through what felt like sheer force of will, his hands still bound behind him as he pressed all of his weight into one knee forced against the officer’s neck. He pressed his first and fourth fingers together behind his back and focused as much as his tired mind allowed him, and the whispered syllable “saan” heated the amulet under his shirt and eased the limbs of the man beneath him to stillness.

  Elton pulled back, sitting back on his heels with his breath coming in labored waves. He heard the struggling gurgles of the unconscious man behind him and took a moment to steel himself before scooting backward on his knees just far enough to touch the crushing talisman and release it. He glanced around at the scene he’d created—two unconscious policemen, shards of shattered glass and unused paper talismans littering the sidewalk, and flashing lights still shifting red and blue in the darkness—and he gave a long sigh.

  He set his jaw and attempted to find the right resonance to break the metal of the handcuffs, but the effort tinged the edges of his vision black, so he stopped before he did himself even more harm. He tried crouching, kneeling, and bending backward, but he had to leave behind most of his talismans, unable to maneuver enough to pick them up with his hands bound behind his back. He managed to get his jacket sloppily over his wrists to hide the handcuffs before he pushed to his feet with the aid of the nearest wall.

  It was a long, slow walk back to the hotel, broken up by frequent pauses to lean against buildings or streetlights and catch his breath. He considered calling Cora—but she was almost certainly at a bar with Nathan by now, and he couldn’t trust her to be discreet. He couldn’t have reached his phone even if he wanted to, besides. So he trudged at the speed his body allowed, pressed his elbow against the elevator button when he finally reached the hotel lobby, and knocked on the door with the toe of his shoe, resting his forehead against the frame while he waited.

  “Hello?” Nichole’s voice sounded from inside.

  “It’s Elton,” he answered in a tight voice. “Open the door, please.”

  The click of the deadbolt was like an answered prayer, and when Nichole allowed him inside, he had to accept the risk of being physically unable to reset the protective wards. He assured the girl that he was fine, despite all evidence to the contrary, and he laid down on the bed with his face firmly in the pillow. With his head pounding, his hands sore, and his shoulder aching, he barely had the energy left to get angry at the smug look Nathan would have on his face when he found him like this.

  13

  Cora woke up with her cheek pressed against a firm pectoral muscle and a pounding in her head. She’d had a few more drinks before leaving with—she thought his name was Gustavo?—and now she was paying for it with a dry mouth and a rolling stomach. She eased out of the bed as slowly as she could to keep from waking him and dressed herself in lightheaded, hurried silence. She rolled up her fishnets and shoved the wad into her purse rather than trying to put them back on, and she tiptoed out of the apartment before sliding her bare feet into her boots. She had anticipated feeling a little guilty for leaving without saying goodbye, but as she clicked the front door shut behind her, the only regret she felt was for the hook on her bra that the stranger had broken. Even if Nathan had been wrong about the reason she needed a break, she had to admit that a good no-strings romp had lessened some of the weight that had settled on her shoulders over the last few days—and it had definitely been a good romp.

  She called a cab from outside and squinted unhappily into the morning sun until it arrived and paid the driver with a glamoured tissue from her purse once they reached the ratty hotel. She knocked quietly since she didn’t have a key, and a few moments later, she was met with Elton’s scowling face through the cracked open door.

  “Where have you been?” he asked as he pulled back to allow her inside. He was only half dressed, his arms in his sleeves but the shirt hanging open over his unbelted trousers. Cora saw the subtle wincing in his face as he retreated back to the bed, and her eyes went wide at the sight of the rumpled blankets crusted with dried, browning blood. A pair of handcuffs laid on the corner of the nightstand, and when Elton sat, she spotted the torn, haphazardly-bandaged skin of his right shoulder.

  “Jesus,” she said without answering Elton’s question. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Long night,” he murmured. “I’m fine. I’ll explain when everyone’s awake.”

  Nichole was still sleeping soundly in the far bed with the covers tucked up around her chin, but the sound of the running shower was faintly audible behind the closed bathroom door. Cora quirked her head to listen.

  “Is Nathan back already? He actually beat me?”

  A sneer curled Elton’s lip. “He got back some time ago,
” he said, profound distaste evident in his voice. “He showed up around 3 a.m. coked up and handsy. I almost hand to bind him.” He jerked his chin toward the bathroom door. “I put him under the water and shut him in to cool off.”

  “He’s been in there since 3 a.m.?” Cora echoed, already leaving the blond behind to get to the bathroom. She turned the knob and peeked inside to find Nathan in a heap in the bathtub, clothes soaked and chin on his chest, and she rushed forward to turn off the water. She took his face in her hands and tried to rouse him with gentle pats to the cheek.

  “I thought you’d keep an eye on him,” Elton said from the doorway, “not let him get high and wander off unsupervised.” His skin was pale, as though it had taken some effort to follow her across the room.

  “I’m not his babysitter,” Cora grumbled. She gave Nathan one more firm smack that startled him into consciousness. He squinted at her as she helped him to his feet, slipping once on the slick bathtub before finding solid ground.

  Nathan straightened with a sharp, bracing inhale through his nose, but he frowned as he patted his pants pocket and glared at Elton over Cora’s head. “You’ve ruined my cigarettes,” he huffed.