by AJ Kalliver
“It wasn’t all failure,” I answered softly, no longer looking at him. “Isondra’s mother and little sister survived. They live in Columbus, Ohio, in a little white house with blue trim around the windows.”
He glanced up in surprise.
“You saved them? Even after your master died?” He looked to be torn between amusement and confusion. “You do know that you didn’t have to obey her once she died, right?”
I didn’t answer that; some things aren’t for strangers to know, especially homicidal assholes like this one. Yeah, I’d known even then, just seconds after my creation, that I didn’t have to obey orders from beyond the grave. The thing was… when she died she imprinted me, and that meant more than just having scattered pieces of her memory. In a very real way, I was her. Not the physical stuff, that part of me was more what she wished she’d been; petite instead of chunky, graceful instead of clumsy, beautiful instead of plain… who hasn’t done a little wishing along those lines? That wasn’t the important part, though. What mattered was the emotional side, the… well, you can get all fundy and call it ‘the soul’ if you want, but what it came down to was the fact that the woman screaming for help from down the hall, all those years ago, was the person I thought of as my mother. And the little girl hiding under the bed right next to me, biting her hand and trying to very hard not to sob out loud at the sight of her big sister lying dead just a few feet away, was my sister, and there was no way I was going to let anything bad happen to either of them.
There you go, that’s my story, and it’s me summed up all nice and neat, if you were in the slightest bit curious. No string of nonsense syllables, no ‘true name’ is going to describe me much better than that.
“Columbus, Ohio, huh?” was what I got in response from the asshole playing with his toys at the table. He seemed to have gotten all the information copied down on his pad, and was now back to watching me intently. “You’re not worried, letting me know something like that? After all, I might take it in my head to drive down and find them, maybe use them as leverage to make you more cooperative.”
I returned his stare with one of my own.
“I’m not too worried about it,” I said, in a voice completely devoid of my so-called humanity. And I wasn’t, either. Worried about it, that is. From outside the window, I clearly heard the sound of the El; that incredibly noisy elevated passenger train that services metro Chicago. That reassured me that the summoning that had grabbed me off the street hadn’t actually taken me very far at all, maybe only a mile or two. That being the case, I was feeling much better about my chances of getting out of there with my free will intact.
He hadn’t cared for the look in my eyes when I’d spoken, and he strode right up to the edge of the circle, again being lamentably careful about not treading on any of the glyphs. Believe me, if the rules had allowed for me to affect them at all, I would have been down on my hands and knees scrubbing away like Cinderella on Meth. Too bad for me, that’s not the way it works.
“I’m going to break you,” he informed me, in what I thought a very convincing psycho-whisper. Probably because he was a psycho. “No matter how long it takes me, I’m going to unravel every last bit of you. Then I’ll put you back together, and you’ll be my little wind-up killer. You’ll take care of that bitch Katie for me, you’ll pay a visit to every single person who ever pissed me off in high school, and then—“ He broke off and assessed me from head to heels and back again, then gave me a leer that was ten times creepier than the manic stare had been. “Then we’ll see how you do as a different kind of toy. I’ll make you do all kinds of things for me, and I might even make it so that you enjoy doing it. What do you think of that?”
His face was only a few inches from mine, on the other side of that intangible wall, but I didn’t pull away.
“Well, Corey, let me tell you what I think.” He blinked, and maybe even paled a bit, so I flashed him a grin. The information flow between mages and spirits isn’t a one-way street, and while he’d been looking for my name I’d managed to catch his. Too bad I couldn’t bind him with it; humans are just limited that way. “I think you are one twisted piece of work. The thing with Katie; she’s your ex-girlfriend, right?” He didn’t have to respond, I could see it pretty clearly. “Actually, ‘girlfriend’ is overstating it, she went out with you what? Once? Twice? And when she wouldn’t give it up for you, you went nuts, maybe tried some kind of spell on her, and she threw you out.” He was staring at me with a sort of sick horror, so I rambled merrily on, enjoying his discomfort. “The ‘betrayer’ thing, too; that’s pretty sad. Did you think she owed you something? Are you really so dysfunctional that you believe she belongs to you?” I shook my head in mock-despair. “So your answer is to kill her. And not yourself, not face-to-face, like even the most weasel-hearted woman-hater manages to do. No, you do it with a conjured assassin. Wow, you’re so pathetic I can’t even really hate you.”
“Shut up,” Corey managed in a voice half-choked with rage. “I command you to shut up!”
That got a bright smile from me.
“No can do, boss, unless you use that name thingie that you’re not smart enough to figure out.”
With a wordless snarl he whirled and hurried to the far corner of the room, where he snatched up a long sword that had been leaning there. Advancing on me again, he waved the thing in a somewhat uncontrolled fashion.
“You’d best hope I can discover your name,” he growled at me, his thin face flushed and splotchy. “Because if I can’t, then I’ll happily use this to destroy you forever.”
‘Hmm’, thought I, considering the weapon he held. It looked to be a clunky piece of catalog crap, the kind of thing intended to hang on walls and look pretty, not actually cut things. I could see that he’d invested it with a bit of power, though, so it probably could hurt me to some extent. Not that it would come to that.
“You can’t kill me, Corey,” I told him. “And it’s not because you’re a sad, twisted, impotent little shadow of a man, either.” His knuckles went white on the sword, but he wasn’t quite so far gone that he tried to swing it at me. “No, the problem is, you can’t kill a death.”
He barked an angry laugh.
“You’re Death?”
I only shook my head, and held his eyes with mine.
“No, not Death; death, with a little ‘d’. One of many, y’know? Think about how I came to be, Conjurer. I was born because somebody died. The first thing I did after being created was wipe out a mob of bloodthirsty freaks who thought they were doing the world a favor by killing women and children.”
Oddly, Corey’s reaction to that was to use reason as a defense. Weird, coming from someone so unhinged.
“You’re just a spirit,” he said aloud, as a sort of mantra against the fear I’d woken in him. “Yes, the circumstances of your creation defined your aspect and abilities. Even so, the fact remains that you are just another spirit, and therefore I have the means to control you or destroy you.”
My eyes are black. Not dark brown; black. Most people don’t notice unless I get very angry, then they discover that if you look too long and too closely, you can feel a sense of vertigo like the world is spinning ever-so-slowly out of kilter.
“I’m not just a spirit, Corey. I am the cold and empty place where people like you go after all this is over. I am what it is to be falling forever, screaming forever, and never, ever finding an end to any of it.” I had my cloaky coat wrapped tight around me, and even though there wasn’t even a breath of moving air in the room, it began to ripple and stir as if in a rising wind. My hair, too, swirled gently around me as I began to set my power free for the first time in a good long while. No, it still wouldn’t be enough to breach the barrier that held me; that didn’t matter.
“You don’t scare me,” Corey said, standing defiantly with the sword still in his hand. The slight shaking of his hand undercut the accomplishment a little, but it was a decent effort regardless. “I know you’re bluffin
g, you can’t break that circle from the inside.”
I nodded agreement, looking down at him from where I now loomed, seven feet tall and still growing. These old buildings had nice, high ceilings.
“There’s one thing about me that you don’t know, Corey,” I said, my voice now hollow and echoing, as if coming from the bottom of a stone well. He glared up at me, determined to hold his ground in the face of what he still thought was an empty bluff.
“Okay, tell me,” he grated out. “What don’t I know? Are you so all-powerful that you can kill me from in there?”
“No,” I admitted, having now reached the limits of how large I could go without touching the edges of the circle. “I don’t have to do it from in here, though,” I added, flashing him a sudden grin. “Because my puppy follows me everywhere.”
He didn’t have time to process the apparently random comment, as there was a triumphant “Bawoof!” from just outside, immediately followed by a deafening crash that shook the building.
“—The hell?!” Corey managed, turning to look at the door to the room where we stood. Something large and powerful could be clearly heard barreling towards us, smashing things as it went, and a moment later a loud snuffing came from the base of the door.
“Here boy!” I called, hoping my spooky, altered voice wouldn’t confuse him. “Tun! Come!”
The Conjurer’s head snapped around, and he stared at me in stunned disbelief before looking back at the door. That panel of old, oft-painted wood promptly came under determined attack, shuddering violently as the thing on the other side tried to obey me.
“Whatever this is, it won’t do you any—“ Corey’s words got cut off as the door basically exploded off of its hinges as Tun found enough room to really give it a push. He rolled into the room like an avalanche, a huge mass of brown and white fur, bright brown eyes, and a furiously wagging tail; my dog.
‘Tun’, you see, is short for ‘Quarter-Ton’, which is about what he weighs. He’s a Titan Hound, one of the supernatural animals species that popped up after the second Event. Hounds are actually very much like a typical everyday dog, except they’re as big as a small pony, sport six-inch fangs, and have a semi-mystical tracking ability that had allowed Tun to find me without the benefit of an actual trail to follow.
With the way no longer blocked, he charged towards me, bowling Corey over along the way. Big as the dog was, he was still non-magical flesh and blood, so the barrier that held me meant nothing to him. He slid right through it, his enormous paws and thick fur smearing and partially-obliterating a huge swath of those carefully-chalked glyphs and lines. I sighed as I felt the constriction vanish, and gave in to an uncontrollable urge to stretch as I stepped out.
Tun looked at me curiously; he wasn’t used to my head being higher off the ground than his. Other than that, though, he took my secondary form in stride, and I paused for a moment to stroke his head affectionately.
“Good dog; you’re a very good dog!”
(WAGWAGWAG!)
Corey, on the other hand, didn’t take things so well.
“I-I command you,” he started in a shaky voice, the sword held high, “I command you to depart!” The mystical force behind the dismissal was enough to make my easily-swirled hair swirl prettily, but that was all. “Begone! Leave me, leave this place and never return!” More swirling. Maybe if he’d had a few chickens handy…. Okay, so it would have taken an entire poultry truck of sacrifices to give him even a chance; it still would have made me feel better about what I did next.
It wasn’t a fight; sword or no, the guy was essentially unarmed when it came to dealing with the likes of me. I suppose I could have shrunk back down to my usual self and gone at him hand-to-hand; the Buffy fan in me would have liked that. The rest of me, though…. I didn’t want to touch him, didn’t want to sully myself with someone as sick and tainted as this.
So I did what I’d more or less promised him I would do; I walked forward, and I showed him my true face. My entire, nine-foot form shimmered, turned black, and then went away, leaving only a vaguely woman-shaped void which opened into an icy, howling darkness. Gravity went all weird for poor Corey then, and he found himself falling forward, through the gate I’d become, and his scream faded quickly as he fell away into the nasty, endless place where people like him go.
Isa’s fourth and final cosmic rule? ‘Do not fuck with Isa.’ Remember that one, and the rest will work out fine.
Tun whined from behind me, upset by all the strangeness, and I changed back to normal as swiftly as I could manage.
Corey was gone, gone forever, and I had no doubt that it was for the best. That left just me and my dog, who gave me a quick inspection, with much snuffling and licking of my hands and face, before being satisfied that everything was again as it should be. As for me, I wandered through the house for a few minutes, not really caring about what I was seeing.
Yes, I’d killed a man, and most people would agree that it had been a righteous thing. He’d set out to murder a defenseless girl, after all, and he’d meant to use a truly horrible weapon to do it, namely me. I didn’t feel bad about what I’d done, I hadn’t gone looking for trouble or anything. Hell, I lived on the streets exactly because I didn’t want any trouble.
No, what bothered me was that of the four concepts which defined my existence, it was the last one, the ugliest one, that came the easiest. Killing, not helping. I would much rather have helped poor Edna with her problems today. Instead, I’d executed a psychopath. There was something pretty seriously wrong with that picture, and I couldn’t help but feel a little depressed as I….
“Hmm,” I said to my dog as I stopped, and looked once more at the squalid little house that Corey the Conjurer had called home. It was nasty, no doubt about that. Filth, and garbage, and enough clutter to bury Tun and half-a-dozen more just like him. Even so, it had walls, and a roof, and if my guess was right, nobody was likely to come looking for the former owner anytime soon. Which naturally led me to thinking….
* * * * *
“—At this mess!” Edna exclaimed, looking around the magical workroom. “Why, it looks like a herd of elephants came through here. And look,” She stared down at the partially-obscured diagrams on the floor in dismay. “Someone’s let their children draw all over everything!”
I nodded to let her know that I heard her and kept busy with building a fire in the little brick fireplace. There wasn’t any firewood, of course, but the big ugly books on magic and conjuring burned just fine. In no time at all the room was warm enough to be almost uncomfortable.
“You say that the young fellow just up and moved out?” she asked me for the third time, and I rose to my feet and moved to join her.
“Yeah, he had to move on… suddenly.” She gazed at me steadily, and it seemed like a good idea not to meet those old eyes for too long; what with that bit of Talent she had and everything. “It’d be a shame to just let the place sit here empty, when there’s somebody who could use it.”
“I suppose,” she murmured. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, still unsure about how much she’d seen on the street when I got yanked away. It seemed impossible that she hadn’t seen me vanish, but then her eyes were pretty bad… which turned out to be a very good thing when I saw her poking through the papers on Corey’s worktable.
“What’s this?” she asked, even as I reached out to take it. The sheet was filled with lots and lots of nearly illegible writing, though one bit near the bottom of the page jumped out at me.
‘Isondra MaerAlixIyaa….’
I crumpled the paper up into a ball.
“Looks like a shopping list; the guy must have liked lots of exotic food. Weird names.” I tossed it into the fireplace, where it promptly flared bright and was gone. Only twenty-three more syllables and I would have been ol’ Corey’s very own murder-spree Barbie; not a fun thought. “So, what do you think? Want to move in?”
She looked uncertain. Of me, maybe, or of the house thing, it wa
s hard to tell.
“Do you think I should?” she asked, even as she edged as close to the warmth of the fire as she could manage without setting herself ablaze.
“It would make me feel better if you did,” I answered with complete honesty. Maybe there was some selfishness there… probably was, actually. I didn’t want this to be just me killing somebody. If my actions mean that this sweet old lady would survive the winter, didn’t that balance the scales at least a little?
“Well,” Edna said, looking around again. “We’d better start straightening up then. We’ll start with finding you a place to sleep.”
I blinked at that; it had never occurred to me that I might end up living there too.
“Um, ah….” Seriously, it wasn’t a concept I could easily process. “See, there’s a problem with that, with Tun and all. You’ve never seen an ‘accident’ like a Titan Hound can manage, and there’s never been a reason for him to learn not to--” From behind the house came a deafeningly-loud series of barks, as he prowled the tiny, weed-choked backyard. No doubt there was a squirrel or something he felt was mocking him. “I’ll help you clean up, though. And that front door needs some nails to help hold it together after what he did to it. Maybe some duct tape and glue….”
