Reality Bites

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘Askphrit old man,’ the sorcerer greeted him. ‘Sit down old man, you look done in, what can I do for you?’

  ‘George,’ acknowledged Askphrit. ‘By God, you’re a hard man to find, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d been avoiding me; however, I am feeling a bit … I’ll get straight to the point if I may?’

  George inclined his head.

  ‘I need to go back,’ said Askphrit, ‘to change what happened to me. If I don’t I’ll die pretty soon, I know you can do it. Will you help me?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said George. ‘You know that time travel is a tricky business, you are not supposed to do it in order to deliberately change the past; it’s tricky enough just going back to observe, you could make an awful mess, I don’t know if I should …’

  ‘Oh cut it out George,’ said Askphrit. ‘You don’t fool me with all this social conscience drivel, how much is it going to cost me?’

  George considered. ‘How far back do you need to go?’ he asked.

  Askphrit grinned, now it was just a question of the bargaining.

  Askphrit’s hands were shaking as he picked up the bottle and pulled out the cork, BANG!!!

  He faced himself. It was the weirdest experience he had ever had. His other self thought so too. But it had to be this way, this was the only Djinn he was sure he could find (he just had to remember where he had been) and the only Djinn who would give him what he wanted – without consequences.

  He explained the situation, in a highly edited form, to himself. ‘In a few months,’ he said. ‘You are due to meet a young woman named Tamar. If you do, I am your future.’

  His other self agreed that it was not a pleasant prospect.

  ‘I propose a deal,’ said Askphrit. ‘You give me back my powers – without consequence, and we will both be free.’

  As you can imagine, his other self agreed to this with alacrity.

  As the wish was granted, the universe split into two distinct realities, in an unprecedented way. Rifts had occurred before, but nothing on this scale. Askphrit watched his other self vanish into the other one, to meet his future with Tamar, he would have no memory of this exchange; after all, it never happened in that other reality. ‘By Allah, what a fool I was, I never did understand all that metaphysical stuff.’

  Now, with his power returned, he could put his plan into action, after all, he now had all the time in the world.

  * * *

  ‘That’s not possible surely,’ said Tamar. ‘Even the Djinn can’t time travel, let alone a sorcerer.’

  ‘They can if they have access to the mainframe,’ said Askphrit.

  Tamar gasped. ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, old George had the codes,’ said Askphrit, chuckling at her astounded face.

  ‘I don’t know how he got them; it must have cost him pretty dear. I watched him input them, he accessed the archives for me, and opened the file, and all I had to do was “enter”. This was his house.’

  ‘You killed him?’

  ‘When I came back. I had the codes already, after all. What did I need him for? And this place was perfect, had the computer set up and everything.’ He pressed a remote control, and a vast computer screen was revealed from behind the panelling.

  ‘And all this time …?’

  ‘I’ve been in the other reality, moving through time at will, setting things up nicely, until it was time to return to this reality to find you (after all in the other reality you lived and died thousands of years ago.)

  ‘Revenge is all very well, and it was my main objective, but what do you do afterwards? There’s nothing like a little world domination to keep you busy, and the best part is, it’s all your fault. You’ll have to live with that.

  ‘You see it occurred to me that I could use your heroic tendencies against you to further my plan. I already had control of the vampires, posing as Ran-Kur; I took over, oh about 200 years ago. In the other reality, they were flourishing under my protection, although in this one they had become timid and very few. So I went back again, about 7000 years (you know, before reality split) and wrote my little prophecy, I knew you couldn’t resist that. And the vampires, well, I had them right where I wanted them. The only problem there was the real Ran-Kur, but well, you dealt with him for me.’

  ‘Denny’s dreams?’ said Tamar.

  ‘Yes, I did that; I knew you’d fall for it. Such a good little puppet he’s been. You kept him on the side of good, fighting the evil inside, just long enough, although it can’t have been easy, for him or you, but I knew I could rely on you. And now, because all the belief is still there, I now am Ran-Kur.’

  ‘You used us to make yourself a god?’

  Askphrit was enjoying himself immensely. ‘Oh yes, ironic don’t you think?’

  ‘But, why? A Djinn has far more power than a god.’

  ‘Yes, but a Djinn doesn’t have the sway over the hearts and minds of his followers. Now that’s real power.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘Possibly, possibly,’ said Askphrit mildly, ‘wait until you’ve been a powerless mortal for forty years and we’ll see how your sanity holds up.’

  ‘You’re not going to kill me then?’

  ‘Kill you? What do you think I am, some kind of barbarian?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

  ‘No, no, I want my revenge to last a long time, it’s much more elegant this way, and far more satisfying.’ He glanced at Denny, who was lounging against a pillar, looking bored. ‘I want you to live with the knowledge that your arrogance destroyed the soul of the one and only person you ever cared about in your whole miserable, worthless life.’

  Tamar blanched.

  ‘Of course, I needed him evil anyway; he was the only one who could get near enough to you to take away your power, the only one you trust. And if you hadn’t made that wish, I never would have been able to do it. In fact, it was your wish that gave me the whole idea. Now that’s irony, I love it.’ He laughed maniacally.

  Denny yawned and took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘I think maybe you’ve splashed on a little too much “Obsession for Dorks”,’ he commented, dryly, and started cleaning out his fingernails, in a bored fashion. He seemed supremely unaffected by Tamar’s obvious distress

  Askphrit ignored him; he was enjoying this. Far from being unaffected by Tamar’s suffering, he was positively relishing it. He rubbed it in some more.

  ‘It was fun,’ he said, ‘watching you run around like a headless chicken, doing exactly what I wanted you to.

  And you,’ he turned to Denny. ‘You came through like a trouper. When you killed those men – wonderful!’ he clapped his hands in ecstasy, ‘and this fool, didn’t cotton on even then.’

  Tamar gave a low moan.

  Askphrit brought his face close to hers and mocked her through the bars. ‘What was that? Something you want to say?’

  ‘You’ll never get away with it,’ she said dully.

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’ said Askphrit, ‘how unoriginal. My dear girl, I have got away with it. I have you trapped, your lover has betrayed you, the world is under my domination, you have made me a god, in fact, and it’s all your own fault. Face it, I’ve won.’

  ~ Chapter Thirty Two ~

  ‘Guess again,’ said Denny, stepping up and, without warning, thrusting the Athame into Askphrit’s gut. Askphrit screamed in disbelief and fury as he felt the powers he had struggled so hard to regain ebbing out of him again and flowing into the Athame. Denny was wearing his, by now, trademark evil grin.

  He threw a cage over Askphrit. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ he quipped, ‘never know what kind of tricks you have up your sleeve.’

  ‘Why?’ said Askphrit. Much as Tamar had done. ‘It will not benefit you. You already have a Djinn’s powers from her.’

  Denny’s body shimmered and an illusion dropped, revealing Tamar, she grinned,

  ‘Fooled ya,’ she said. Askphrit gaped.

  Tamar snapped her fingers and the ca
ge around what was now revealed to be Denny vanished. He stood up and stretched.

  He looked at her, sardonically. ‘Babe?’ he said. ‘Babe? When did I ever call you babe? For God’s sake!’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought it made me sound more – evil, or something.’

  ‘You cunning, cunning witch,’ said Askphrit. ‘Just how much did you know?’

  ‘Well, we knew how you were having us watched for one thing,’ she told him. ‘It was Denny who worked it out. Clever really – the moths, they were vampires, weren’t they? Pity they weren’t as clever as you. Talking to a man so well versed in his folklore was a big mistake.’

  Askphrit groaned. ‘Idiots!’

  ‘And I knew that the Athame was turning him evil – oh yes, I did work it out – and since he found it here, it wasn’t such a great leap to work out that it was at least a possibility that you meant him to have it. So when I took it away from him to have it blessed, to remove the evil from it, I took precautions, to make sure you didn’t find out what I’d done. I had an idea it might be useful to keep you in the dark. Of course, I didn’t know who you really were at the time. I only knew about the “vampire” that Denny met while he was here. That was … oh what was it – two months ago? Not long after he killed those men, actually.

  ‘Jack knew.’ she indicated Stiles. ‘In fact, it was something he said that put me on to it. Do you want to know what it was? It’s kind of silly really. You were right, all the other things he did, even killing those men, I had another explanation for it – I didn’t want to see – but when Jack mentioned to me that Denny’s guitar playing was pretty good, I knew something was wrong.

  Denny, the Denny I know, would never use his powers for petty vanity like that. His guitar playing usually stinks you see? No offence,’ she said to Denny.

  Denny shrugged. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘My parents thought music lessons were for ponces.’

  ‘That’s how I knew that he wasn’t Denny anymore, anyway.’ resumed Tamar. ‘He had been taken away from me, and the demon who was wearing his face was killing people. I must have been blind not to see it.’

  She brought her face close to Askphrit’s. ‘If it’s any comfort to you, when I realised what I’d done to him, I felt every bit as bad as you could have ever meant me to. I knew then, that it was my fault, that my wish had done it to him.’

  Denny nodded as he remembered her distress and self-recrimination. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Everything you heard tonight, she had already said on that night, I remembered it; I’ll never forget it.’ He glanced at Tamar repentantly. ‘She’ll never let me. I also remember that, at the time, I didn’t care either. But I suppose that wasn’t really me, was it?’

  ‘Actually I was a bit worried when Jack came running in,’ said Tamar. ‘I thought he might give the game away, that’s why I gagged him … oh God.’ She stopped. ‘I forgot to let him go.’

  She released him. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  Stiles shrugged. ‘That’s okay,’ he said. He did not sound as if he were being sarcastic.

  Cindy and Eugene were listening curiously (their vampire captors had fled as soon as they had seen their “Master” put in a cage.)

  ‘Two months?’ said Askphrit, disbelievingly. ‘It was after that when you murdered that old witch.’

  ‘That was actually an act of compassion,’ said Denny. ‘She had been a prisoner in that cave for thousands of years; it was the only way to release her, from what had become a torment. Also, it was time for the labyrinth to be closed forever. The power to kill gods is too dangerous. The witch knew that, she was worried about it. That was why she asked me to stay behind.’

  ‘Well, you turned your landlord to stone,’ argued Askphrit.

  Denny shrugged. ‘I’m only human,’ he said.

  Stiles laughed. ‘The point is, he didn’t kill him,’ he said.

  ‘I just wanted to,’ said Denny. ‘What? I hate that guy,’ he added when Stiles frowned at him censoriously.

  ‘Anyway,’ Tamar continued, determined to tell her story, ‘when we got here, and found Hecaté, that’s when we really began to put it together. She had no idea who we were. When we thought we had met her, she was actually here. It had to be you, therefore, who had come. And why? To lure us here of course! What else could it be? And to trick us into killing Ran-Kur, yes we worked that out too, we already knew that you would have taken his place, Peirce had told us that you were posing as him. Poor blighter, he wasn’t very bright was he, he had no idea you were taking his name in vain, did he?

  ‘And why did you want Denny evil? Because you didn’t have the power to get past me. We didn’t know it was you, of course, but what we did realise, was that whoever the “Master” was, he, that is you, wanted Denny evil, so that he would put me out of the way for you. Like you said, who else could do it? So we decided to give you what you expected.’

  ‘I figured that part out,’ said Denny. ‘Being evil, gives you an insight into how a warped mind works, I knew what you expected me to do, I had even thought about doing it, while I was under the influence of the demon who made the Athame, and I knew that you would know that.’

  Tamar resumed. ‘Since, whoever you were, you wanted me out of the way, it seemed reasonable to assume that I would be able to handle you, otherwise you would have just taken me on by yourself.’

  ‘When did you …’ began Stiles. He gestured expressively to indicate the complicated plan they had apparently come up with in a matter of minutes. ‘I mean there was no time.’

  ‘Oh, it’s amazing how much you can say in only a few seconds with telepathy,’ said Tamar.

  And Stiles remembered them gazing at each other, almost vacantly, inside Hecaté’s cell. They had been formulating a whole plan?

  ‘Why did you turn into each other?’ wondered Stiles.

  ‘Because we wanted him to spill his guts,’ said Tamar. ‘And we knew he wouldn’t do that until he thought he’d won, he had to believe he’d got me. Believe me villains aren’t as stupid as they seem in Bond Movies. But of course, really, I had to be free to deal with him, if it became necessary. I thought we played each other pretty well.’

  ‘Very convincing,’ said Stiles. ‘You certainly had me fooled, ’specially since you had no time to rehearse.’

  ‘It’s easy when you live with someone – you know all about them.’

  ‘It’s easy when you’re telepathic,’ corrected Denny. ‘Don’t pretend you weren’t feeding me lines.’

  Tamar shrugged.

  ‘Not just the lines either,’ muttered Denny. ‘I felt it; just what you had felt.’

  Stiles heard this and raised his eyebrows; now that was some guilt trip, he thought. He wondered if Tamar had done it on purpose. Of course she had!

  ‘You cunning, cunning witch,’ said Askphrit again, who had been listening to all this in horror.

  ‘I said you wouldn’t get away with it,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, bite me,’ snapped Askphrit petulantly.

  ‘But,’ said Stiles, ‘you really did stab him with the Athame, I saw you!’

  ‘Oh this?’ Tamar held it up. ‘It’s a fake. I manifested it.’ she held up the real one. ‘Spot the difference,’ she said. ‘This is the real one. The one I used on him.’ She held it out to Denny. ‘I suppose this is yours.’ She looked at it thoughtfully. ‘What a pity you weren’t the one who stabbed him,’ she said to Denny.

  ‘But what can it matter?’

  ‘If you had, then you would have taken the power he had.’

  ‘So what?’ then he got the point. ‘Oh, I see, then I would have had a Djinn’s powers too, and we could …’

  ‘And then we could … as you say.’

  ‘Denny took the Athame. A strange look came over his face. ‘Unless the power resides in the Athame itself,’ he mused. ‘Like the demon’s power it came with.’ This, he felt, was a good point.

  He was sure he could feel the power flowing through him. There was only one
way to find out for sure, however.

  He grabbed Tamar round the waist and held her fast. ‘So far so good,’ he said. He kissed her hard, as desperately as if she were his first drop of water after a month in a desert and Tamar realised how much he had longed to do this. He had hidden it well. Now, suddenly, he was like a man possessed. As if he had been waiting his whole life for this.

  The others turned away, embarrassed in the face of such a passionate display.

  Finally he broke away. ‘I don’t even feel faint,’ he said triumphantly.

  ‘Well I do,’ said Tamar. She was weak at the knees – finally!

  ‘Well that seems pretty conclusive,’ said Denny. He was glowing.

  Really he looked almost handsome, thought Cindy.

  Stiles, who had not really followed this, got back to the matter at hand. He shook his head. ‘But you did stab him,’ he said, meaning Denny. ‘When he looked like you,’ he added.

  Tamar pulled herself together. She passed the “fake” Athame through her hand as if it were made of nothing more substantial than smoke. ‘Misdirection,’ she said. ‘The hand is quicker than the eye.’

  ‘Like one of those fake knives they use in plays, with a retractable blade?’ said Stiles catching on.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Cindy, suddenly rounding on Askphrit. ‘It was you who sent us on that rotten quest.’

  Stiles rolled his eyes. ‘What page are you on?’ he said. ‘We did that bit.

  ‘Oh, oh right, carry on.’

  ‘I think that’s it,’ said Denny. ‘We just have to decide what to do with him.’ He gestured to Askphrit.

  ‘You’d better kill me this time,’ said Askphrit. ‘Otherwise …’ He made a threatening gesture.

  He was largely ignored.

  Cindy spoke again to Denny this time. ‘You seem different now,’ she said. ‘If you were never really evil, at least, not since I met you, why did you seem so – so sinister and intimidating?’

  ‘Scared you did I?’ he asked, grinning. ‘I had to act that way, we were being watched, remember?’