by Unknown
***
There were no flights to Memphis that night, and given the distance between the two cities, air travel was the only option available to me. The first flight out of La Guardia that made any sense—i.e., one that wouldn’t take me to Denver first—was at 7:29 a.m. That gave me enough time to turn to another intelligence resource: the internet. I searched for a Louis J. Walker in Memphis, and while there were several hits, I didn’t know who was who until I found a picture of him. That was surprising; allowing oneself to be photographed was unusual for a warlock. But apparently, Mr. Walker had a thing for roses. The photo I found showed him displaying a floral arrangement of some gorgeous pink roses as he flashed his kindly smile toward the camera. He wore a lightweight linen suit over a white shirt.
Louis Walker of Memphis, Tennessee proudly displays his collection of Belinda’s Dream roses, read the caption. I liked it. That Walker had allowed himself to be photographed with something as mundane as roses was indicative of an arrogant warlock, indeed. He didn’t think such a thing could lead to his possible undoing, or if he did, he felt he was prepared for whatever came his way. It was unfortunate that Louis J. Walker had never thought I might be the one coming for him.
I searched for more about Walker or his roses but failed to come up with an address.
Though not a morning person, I made it to the airport at five thirty. An hour and a half later, I boarded a Boeing 757 and settled into the uncomfortable seat to begin the first leg of my journey. I had brought an overnight bag, even though I wouldn’t be staying in Memphis for long. Traveling without luggage was certain to throw up a few red flags, and while the TSA wouldn’t find anything amiss, I was just like everyone else when it came to dealing with federal agencies. I preferred to avoid them.
The connecting flight in Atlanta was a much smaller jet, with seats no more comfortable than the first. But it sped me to Memphis in less than an hour and a half. Not that I noticed the passing time. I spent most of the ride asleep. The drone of jet engines did that to me.
***
After landing at Memphis, I picked up a rental car. Elvis’s hometown was a bit of a ho-hum affair for me. The city lacked the energy and vitality of New York but had more than double the poverty. Everywhere I looked, there were stores that had gone out of business, street corners full of unemployed men, and people with that vacant, somewhat hungry gaze. To me, Memphis was a seedy place, not hard edged like Harlem but soft, like the lines of a coloring page entitled Hopelessness that had been colored in with despair. I hated it and couldn’t wait to leave.
But leaving would be a problem. The spell I had sent to track down Walker hadn’t worked, hadn’t even generated an echo. That was an unusual set of circumstances that I had experienced early on but not since I had matured as a caster. So I had no idea where Walker was. However, there was a silver lining to the dilemma. It likely meant I’d been able to package the spell so tightly that it wouldn’t lead Walker back to me. Either way, it was a wash.
I stopped at a Wal-Mart and went to the outdoors section. I found what I was looking for very quickly—a boot knife complete with leather sheath. I paid thirty dollars for it and carried it out to the car. Once there, I tore open the package and inspected the black blade. The business end was less than six inches long, with a rubber grip that fit easily in my hand. The knife was a little larger than what I would have preferred, but the weapon slid in and out of the sheath easily even after I’d placed it in my left boot. I wasn’t planning on using it, anyway. It had been years since I’d been anywhere near a knife fight, and in that instance, absence did not make the heart grow fonder. But since a firearm was out of the question, given my state of residency, a knife would have to serve as my backup plan.
In case my magic failed.
***
After three hours of crisscrossing the city and sensing nothing from my spell, I found myself on Beale Street in downtown Memphis, right across from the FedEx Forum. There was an oyster bar across the street, called Silky O’Sullivan’s. Hardly my kind of place, but where I was, I realized I couldn’t be too choosy. Silky’s was an Irish pub kind of affair, but with a different slant than what I’d normally find in New York. Blues music played over the sound system, and from the looks of the stage area, the place hosted live music events. They also had beer-guzzling goats, which was an oddity I’d never been exposed to before.
The food was excellent. For the few minutes I spent eating, I was in heaven.
But my dilemma remained. I had to find Walker, and while Memphis wasn’t as large as New York, it was big enough that I’d need more than twenty-four hours to find him on my own.
Then a thought came to me. If I couldn’t find Walker...perhaps I could help him find me.
It was an interesting concept and one that wouldn’t normally cross my mind. Remaining off the grid, so to speak, was what I specialized in. Even though it hadn’t been my forte in my early years, Levi had instilled in me a sense of caution that complemented my magical abilities. He had once likened me to an oboe; while the trumpet got all the attention in an orchestra, the oboe was an instrument of phenomenal power, one that was always overlooked until the time came for it to be put to use. Trumpets got attention. Oboes did not, but they were a critical component for a skilled composer to add to his arsenal. To that end, crafting a spell that would actually advertise my presence was something that felt silly.
But in order to meet the mysterious Mr. Walker, it might be just what the doctor ordered.
I considered this at some length as I sat and luxuriated in the air-conditioned comfort of the tavern while taking in its ambience. Something about blues music stirred my soul. Maybe Memphis wasn’t such a downer, after all.
***
I’d parked in the alleyway behind the restaurant, mostly because it had been more convenient than driving around the block. Beale Street was a one-way avenue, and the spaces at the curb in front of the establishment were already taken. The car was hot, so I started it and cranked up the air conditioning while taking a moment to consult a paper map I’d been given when I rented the vehicle. I was looking for a place that was a bit remote, somewhere I could hopefully entice Mr. Walker to join me for a little chat. Memphis was basically surrounded by farmland. There were fields and glades aplenty to choose from, so I just had to get to one and make my challenge.
As I peered at the map, I felt a little tickle in the back of my mind, a small sense of unease that moved sinuously, like a python slowly unwinding after compressing the life out of its prey. Many people would have ignored the stirring. Some would have even discounted it as nothing more than the machinations of an overly energized imagination. I did neither.
I dived across the passenger seat and shoved my head into the foot well just before a tsunami of force sheared the roof right off the car in an explosion of glass, shrieking metal, and crackling plastic. When the top of the car was flayed to one side, the driver’s door went with it, torn from its hinge as the car’s body jerked to the left. I didn’t waste a moment. I leaped after the door and slapped onto the hot pavement. I felt a moment of gratitude for my usual black jacket as I rolled, though nuggets of glass still dug into my elbows and back. I ignored the pain as the stirring in my mind transitioned to full-on alarm.
A peculiar thickness surrounded me, and from the corner of my eye, I could see the traffic on Beale Street slowing—but not from motorists hitting their brakes. The transition was too languid, too peaceful, too symmetrical. A crow flew past in the sky, its wings decelerating even as it remained aloft, as if the bird had been caught in a movie that had switched to slow motion. The thickness that surrounded me moved in even tighter, threatening to smother me in its immense embrace.
I was facing a time dilation spell, a local area effect that diminished the passage of time. Under such a spell, the caster could move normally. Even a casual walk could seem to be light speed to a subject entrapped in time dilation, and I was clearly the target that was to be ensnared.
As did Louis J. Walker, of course.
He stood twenty feet from the destroyed rental car, wearing a neat cream suit with matching shoes and panama hat that almost, but not quite, matched the suit. His pocket square was black, mirroring the band that encircled his hat. In his lapel, a single pink rose provided the only color to his ensemble. As I watched, the rose undulated, its petals convulsing like an anemone, impatient to taste its prey. His shirt was bright white and open at the neck, revealing a slight turkey neck of loose skin. His face was dry, without even the slightest indication of perspiration despite the heat of the afternoon and the fact that the time dilation spell, coupled with his brute force attack against the car, must have taken considerable effort. But Louis J. Walker only smiled his benign smile, even though there was murder in his dark, gentlemanly eyes.
“Rufus Carter,” he said, his voice thin but pleasant enough under the circumstances. “Also known among the covens as The M12. Might I welcome you to Memphis?”
“Louis Walker,” I said. The shattered glass from the destroyed car continued to arc toward the ground, a blizzard of scintillating diamonds slowly tumbling in the afternoon light. “A hard man to find.”
“No, not really. One just needs know where to look. That was quite a seeker spell you sent. I almost didn’t notice it. Had I been asleep, it would have tagged me, indeed. But old people never sleep, as you might know. Did you create the spell, or was it Levi himself?”
“I did,” I said, wondering what in the world had him interested in such idle chat.
Walker made a sound in his throat and inclined his head respectfully. “Well done, young sir. Well done. Your reputation is deserved. Tell me, do you prefer to be addressed as Rufus or just M12?”
“M12,” I said. “Rufus Carter died a long time ago.”
Walker laughed, and his teeth were as bright as his shirt. “A decade is hardly but a moment’s time, my boy. But a moment’s time.” The smile disappeared finally, and a predatory cast settled on his features. “Why are you here? What business do you have with me?”
“With you? Nothing.”
Walker’s eyes narrowed. “What business, then, does Levi have with me?”
I marshaled my forces, and I felt Walker doing the same. If he’d thought the banter would distract me from the fact that I was facing down a formidable wizard, he was about to find he was mistaken. Power crackled around us, an ethereal yet black kind of energy that normal humans would have remained unaware of. But for us, a spectral light show was brewing, like a dark storm front sporadically illuminated from within by bolts of lightning.
“Your head,” I told him.
I struck with twin columns of black energy that moved faster than the speed of sound, covering the fifty feet between us in less time than a man could blink. Walker’s defenses were just as swift, and the fury of my attack was redirected at the shattered rental car. In slow motion, the Chevrolet began to fracture when its sheet metal hood was rent asunder. The four-cylinder engine warped as its single serpentine belt parted and frayed.
At the same time, Walker launched an attack of his own, two pulsating tentacles of blackness that soared toward my head, intending to decapitate me. I described wide arcs with my arms, as if I were using martial arts. And in a way, I was. The physical activity was mirrored by arcane forces that followed my bidding, blocking Walker’s attack and deflecting the two tentacles upward, where they collided head-to-head. The ensuing detonation of force bordered on awe-inspiring, if I hadn’t had more important things to do than gaze at a fancy spectral light show.
The car lurched toward me, no longer entrapped by the time dilation spell. Walker had freed it to enable him to use it as a projectile. The disintegrating hulk pitched toward me at a surprising speed, trailing debris, oil, radiator fluid, and gasoline. I erected a shield, but knew instinctively that it wouldn’t be enough. Deflecting physical masses of that magnitude required a precision of action and concentration I couldn’t muster while under attack, something Walker must have known. Using blunt force trauma to eradicate an enemy was certainly a time-honored response to an attack, but it also demonstrated a lack of grace and subtlety. I would have to find a moment to mention to Walker that such a crude attack was beneath him.
But while Walker’s attack had caught me momentarily unable to halt it—indeed, the car’s hulk crashed through the impromptu shield I had created without even slowing—my opponent had inspired an idea. I was free of his time dilation spell, even though I felt it pulsing all around me as he retooled it on the fly, hoping to find a way to trap me in it. Perhaps it was time to use it against him.
In my mind’s eye, I folded the space between us just as the car’s blown front left tire touched my forehead. The strands of distressed metal from its belted steel radial began to pierce my skin—
Time contracted
—and I found I was within literal striking distance of Walker, and the car continued tumbling along behind me, smashing against the brick wall of the Starbuck’s next to Silky’s. Walker’s eyes went wide as I swung a black hammer of arcane energy at his head. The instrument of his demise crackled as it slashed through the air, speeding toward his white panama hat.
The hat was all it hit. As the headwear disappeared in a puff of blue flame, the hammer continued and slammed into the pavement, driving a giant crack across its surface. Walker had sideslipped, using a time contraction maneuver himself. Cunning bastard.
The battle continued at arm’s length. Walker lashed out with great whips of magic that flashed and sizzled in the sunlight. I crafted a series of poles that surrounded me, deflecting his attacks, while simultaneously launching a pike at his heart.
He snapped the pike with a field of blackness then fashioned a giant hand that threatened to squash me like a bug. I shifted to the right, and the hand slammed down, shattering concrete and pelting me with debris. The shock wave jolted me, and that was all it took to break my concentration for a split second.
Walker pressed the advantage, launching a series of attacks that I had to parry. He was good. He fired off a staccato of brute force spells that masked the more insidious ones, the surreptitious assaults that would have stopped my heart cold. He had finesse, that old man. He knew how to work his mojo, and he could conjure attacks on the fly that could have killed any number of warlocks.
Though I was still young, I had the innate skill to read a combatant, to know what was on his mind. At the end of the day, Walker was just another warlock. And as I blocked his attacks and launched some of my own, I could see he was flagging. He was slow to bend one brutal pile-drive spell away from him, and he looked shocked when it ripped the right sleeve of his jacket. Beads of sweat emerged across his bald dome, and I allowed myself a split-second to be impressed with my own efforts. The M12, as I was known, was a stone-cold killer.
Then Walker’s smile returned, accompanied by a rusty chortle. “Pride before a fall, M12.”
The world stopped, and I fell onto my back as if I suddenly weighed three thousand pounds. My head hit the concrete, and I saw stars. Walker shredded my remaining attacks and stepped through my hastily erected defenses as if they didn’t exist.
As I stared into the bright afternoon sky over Memphis, I cursed myself. The old man had suckered me in, hitting me with just one hand behind his back—something Levi had always warned me about. I’d even used the tactic myself, time and time again. Man, this is pathetic.
My wind had left me when I hit the pavement, and Walker
added more weight to my chest, preventing me from drawing a breath. Panic surged in my breast, but I beat it back. Casting about in blind terror wasn’t going to free me. All it would do was burn off the oxygen in my blood, leading to my descent into unconsciousness. If that happened, I was done.
I thought back to the little colored bottles in my living room in Harlem, each of which contained a human soul. I was certain then that Walker had a similar collection and that he would simply love to add me to it.
Walker’s face slipped into view as he stood over me, his reconstituted hat in hand. He beamed and brushed some dust from the panama and slowly placed it back on his head, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “An expensive hat, M12. I just couldn’t let you vaporize it without recalling it, could I?” His teeth were so brilliantly white they were almost dazzling. “Levi was wrong to send you to me. I know you’re one of his best. In fact, I’ve known about you for some time. I always keep tabs on the competition. And you are an excellent caster. But me? Well, hell, boy. I’ve always been one of the best, and Levi’s been aware of that for a century. The only person who could take me down would be Levi himself.”
I could feel the power radiating off Walker since he had no need to contain it. It was, in a word, awesome. Louis J. Walker had walked the earth for centuries, and he’d been a greedy warlock during that time, amassing a cache of mystic energy that, if it were possible to use it in such a way, could power New York City for years. While I was no slouch, I was nothing compared to him. My power and talents just didn’t stack up. So why did Levi send me?
As far as I knew, Levi did not hold me in an ill light. I had been a faithful member of the coven and had served The Black Fang willingly and without hesitation. So either Levi wanted me out of the picture, or he knew something about me that I didn’t know myself. But what?
I struggled to take a breath. Blood pounded in my ears, and my heart hammered in my chest. My body was depleting its oxygen supply at an alarming rate, and I calculated that I had maybe sixty seconds of consciousness left.
