Wanderers: Ragnarök

by Richard A Bamberg

  “You carry a katana in your boot?” I asked as I examined the blade.

  “It was a gift. I carry it in my boot because it would draw attention to go around with a visible daisho.”

  “Daisho?”

  “A matched set, katana and wakizashi together.”

  “You have its mate?”

  “No, the man who gave me the katana lost the wakizashi during our fight against a demon. He thought it a disgrace to have lost part of the set, but offered me this weapon as a memento of our alliance.”

  I nodded and started toward the stream to clean the trout. “So, he was another Wanderer?”

  “Yes, he’d asked my help for something particularly troublesome. But getting involved was a bit of a problem,” Walt said, his gaze lost focus as he spoke.

  “What was the problem?”

  “It was 1936, in Manchuria.”

  “Oh, that would be a problem,” I said.

  “He was also Japanese.”

  I didn’t have a response for that, so I cleaned the trout and cooked them over the fire. They were some of the best fish I’d ever eaten.

  While I cleaned our plates and utensils in the stream, Walt stuffed some of his fragrant Cavendish blend tobacco into a briar pipe that was older than I was. The tip of his finger ignited and I watched him puff until he had a cloud of smoke around his head.

  “Walt, explain what we’re doing here, again. I mean, I know you felt a calling from Fate – hell, I felt some of that summons myself, but what’s it mean? Do you actually know what to expect? If you do, then the summons you felt must have been a lot clearer than mine.”

  Walt took a couple more puffs and then lowered the pipe. “It’s never that specific. We get the summons, go to the location, and then we look around for something that needs fixing.”

  “So we go in blind and tackle whatever Fate throws at us?”

  “Except for that ‘whatever Fate throws at us’ part. Fate throws us at events, not the other way around.”

  “Seems like semantics,” I said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “So, how long do we wait?”

  “Not long, a day or two, maybe.” He hesitated and then reached inside his jacket. “Rafe, are you ready to try your first tattoo?”

  “Seriously? Damn straight…if you think I’m ready,” I hedged, trying not to seem overeager.

  “You’re ready.” Walt drew a small leather bound notebook from his jacket. He tossed it to me. I caught it and turned it face up. There were no markings on his grimoire and simple leather straps tied it closed. I’d expected something fancier when I first saw it; maybe an all seeing eye or just a crescent moon and stars on the cover. I untied the binding and flipped the book open to the page Walt had marked for me. I’d been studying the pattern for several days and was sure I could reproduce it from memory. Walt had insisted I never try to burn a tat without a visual reference that I could prove worked.

  Walt’s tats glowed while activated. For that reason, this tat was to be burned completely beneath the skin to hide it. When activating a combat tat like the fire thrower, it didn’t matter if someone saw it glowing. I mean, are you really going to notice, or care about, a glowing tattoo on someone’s arm when flames are blasting from his hand?

  I had already selected a spot, low on my left side, to burn this tattoo. I stared at the image in Walt’s grimoire until I had it firmly fixed in my mind. Using the technique Walt taught me, I focused energy into and under my skin. At first it was like someone holding a magnifying glass over you and letting the beam’s focus start to cook your skin. As I moved the point of focus into a gradually twisting three-dimensional curve, the feeling intensified. I gritted my teeth and kept at it. I wasn’t a quarter of the way through the pattern when the pain became unbearable.

  “Hell and damnation,” I cried, releasing my focus. The pain remained. I rubbed the burned area through my shirt and glowered at Walt.

  He grinned. “Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?”

  “Damned straight! Are they all going to be this bad?”

  “Some tats are more elaborate and will require more sessions to complete, but you’ll learn pain control.”

  “Maybe I should have learned that before I started.”

  “Perhaps…Rafe, pain control is rarely perfect, and you need to get started on your tats as soon as possible. With the tats you will grow into a Wanderer, one of the most powerful spell casters ever to walk the earth. Without them, you’re an apprentice at best. Powerful sorcerers and witches spend their entire lives mastering their craft. You’ll spend your life mastering yours. But it’s the tats that will give you an edge on everyone else.”

  I stared at Walt for a few minutes. The burning under my skin was still there, but lessening. I opened Walt’s grimoire back to the Enhanced Senses tat and pulled in my focus.

  The little kid with the magnifying glass tortured my side until the tat was done.

  CHAPTER 11

  I awoke to the sound of mockingbirds. I lay between soft linen sheets, the thick down comforter thrown off during the night. It was light out, but not much after six. As I listened to the birds, I realized I couldn’t hear traffic noise.

  I threw back the sheet and padded naked to the French doors to my private balcony. The curtains were back, leaving only a thin liner between me and the glass. I moved it aside and gazed out. There wasn’t much traffic, but even when I listened, I couldn’t hear anything from the occasional passing vehicle. Abigail’s wards were exceptionally fine. They passed the bird noise, but none of the traffic. The old woman continued to impress me. It was hard to believe this powerful a Wiccan priest was using whatever source of night magic that had drawn me here. If she weren’t using it, perhaps someone else was going to. Who in her coven would she have given access to? Marian? Cynthia?

  I let the liner fall closed and went into the bath. I used the facilities and then stared at myself in the mirror. Fading bruises mottled the skin of my ribs, but I could breathe without pain. Thank goodness for healing spells.

  I opened my travel kit. Ha, why’d I call it that? I’ve never stayed any place long enough to have anything else for my toiletries, I should have another name for it. I removed my father’s old straight razor; its mother-of-pearl handle was cracked and damaged by the fire that killed them and laid it beside the sink. Abigail didn’t keep shaving cream, but I’d done without it for so many years that I no longer missed it.

  I turned on the shower and stepped into it with my razor before the temperature had settled. I splashed some water on my face, soaped up, and flicked open the straight razor. I’d spelled the blade to remain preternaturally sharp and it glided across my face removing whiskers with next to no resistance. I was through shaving in a minute and placed the razor in the soap dish while rinsing off the lather.

  In an effort to keep my toiletries and other items to a minimum that riding a Harley required, I had worked on hygiene spells that kept me spring-time fresh with a minimum of effort. But there was nothing better than a brisk shower in the morning to get the blood pumping. The razor, Colt, and the Harley were the only things I had that were my father’s, except maybe my eyes.

  I dried off and returned to the bedroom. I unrolled my duffle and dressed in clean underwear, shirt, and jeans. A simple spell kept them wrinkle free.

  I couldn’t hear Abigail, so I tiptoed around in my bare feet, stuffing socks into my riding boots and taking them downstairs to set them beside the front door. In the kitchen, I started the coffee and unlocked the back door. Abigail didn’t have much need for an alarm system.

  Birds flittered through her garden as if Audubon himself had built the place. I walked back through the yard, the dew-covered grass cold against my feet until I came to the picnic table beneath the massive old oak that lay at the center of her acre yard. I lay back on the table, stared up at the tree, and enjoyed the quiet solitude.

  After a while, I went inside. The coffee had finished. I poured a large mug, modul
ated its temperature until it was perfect, and drank the entire cup without pausing.

  I took my jacket off the hook in the hall and carried it and my boots out the front door. I finished dressing on the front steps. Beast waited at the curb. Abigail had asked if I wanted to park it in the back, but I couldn’t see intruding Beast on her charmingly restful garden. Besides, Beast hunted at night.

  “Good morning, Beast. Did you have a good night?” I asked.

  “I ate well,” he growled.

  “No one’s pet, I hope.”

  “A deer, in the forest, miles from here, I doubt it belongs to anyone,” he replied.

  “Good.” I started the engine without worrying about waking Abigail. Her wards would block the Harley’s signature roar. I mounted up and headed out of town in the direction we’d gone the night before.

  In twenty minutes, I reached the Vaughn estate. I eased past the main drive, conscious that not everyone would have Abigail’s sound deadening wards. A cattle barrier formed a gate into the field. I crossed its metal rails and followed the tracks the emergency vehicles had left until I was at the murder scene. The field’s soil would not hold up Beast on just his foot stand, but he could balance himself, so I put the stand down.

  The ladder over the barbwire fence was gone, but I climbed over the top strand and moved to where the ground was black with dried blood. The rope circle had been claimed as evidence, but the matted down grass showed where it had been.

  I avoided disturbing the blood as I moved into the circle. Taking a small jar of salt from my jacket pocket, I tossed the contents into the air at the same time I focused. The salt came down in a thin circle exactly where the rope had lain. I stored the jar and invoked a containment spell and a hollow hemisphere of energy snapped into place along the salt, closing above my head.

  With the circle placed, I could research the last circle set here. It’s not always easy to find out much about the previous spell caster, but if the police hadn’t contaminated the scene too badly then I might be able to drag out the identity of the murderer.

  I triggered a scrying spell and my containment darkened. Figures moved across its surface. Images coalesced into the forms of Agent Biers and Detective Agrinzoni. I strained a little and their images disappeared and a cloaked figure appeared alongside Jessica Spelling. I expected to see the demon appear with them, but it had been outside the circle last night. I froze the images. Outside with the spell caster inside? That was backward of regular night magic. The mage who had summoned the demon should have placed it inside a circle until they had a bargain – unless the two of them already had an agreement. That made little sense unless the mage was powerful enough to make the demon behave; otherwise it might have told the mage what it could do with its agreement and gone off to have its own fun.

  Most demons will use any trickery to get free of the compulsion placed on them by a summoner. That one had been summoned outside a circle and yet had protected the mage who’d summoned him was troubling. There were only a few people in the local area that could have put such geas on the demon. Abigail, of course, but a major Wiccan priest would never summon a demon. It went against everything they believed in. A couple of the other coven members might have been able to summon a demon, but could they hold one?

  I took the playback off pause and it continued. The hooded mage completed the ritual summoning. The activation of the spell left marks in the recording, but I could still see the images well enough. Jessica nodded toward the hooded mage, let her own robe drop to the grass, and then knelt in the grass.

  What the hell? Could Jessica have been a willing participant? That wasn’t possible or was it? Some religions managed to convince their followers to die in the name of a vague goal. But this was hardly a religion.

  Jessica held her hands out in front of her and inclined her head as though in supplication. The mage stepped around her and I saw the knife appear from under the robes. Jessica’s head jerked back as the mage seized her hair and for the first time I saw shock and fear on the young woman’s face.

  The knife opened an enormous wound as the mage drew it across her throat severing both carotid arteries. Blood gushed.

  Jessica’s eyes were panicked and she struggled against the hand that held her before, mercifully, she faded into peaceful oblivion.

  At least it had been fast.

  The mage bent and did something I couldn’t see next to the girl’s body, and then stood. The knife had once more vanished into the mage’s clothing.

  I watched for another minute as the mage prepared another spell. Then there was a burst of energy and the images were gone.

  Disappointed, but not unexpectedly, I released the circle. I opened my little jar and summoned back the salt. Salt is cheap and easy to come by, but I didn’t like having to replace it all the time and I certainly didn’t want anyone to know someone had used the circle again.

  I cast about for the trail the mage had left coming and going to the circle and eventually located the spot where people had come into the glade opposite of the direction Cynthia and I had entered the previous night. The tracks were not well defined, but definitely there. Growing up a Boy Scout has its advantages. I followed the trail of disturbed leaves through the forest for not much over fifty yards and came to an old road. The road was overgrown. Small trees, some over three feet tall, dotted the center of the track. The mage’s trail followed the road toward the east, back toward the Vaughn estate. The killer had been at the party.

  One of these earth magic users, peaceful Wiccans, was summoning demons and killing young women.

  Something moved in the undergrowth, disturbing the leaves of a mountain laurel. I thought squirrel or maybe bird, but then a leaf moved out of the way and a small face stared at me out of the shadows.

  I smiled. “Good day to you. I hope I’m not trespassing. Say, are you the pixie I passed on the trail last night?”

  There was a twittering that I couldn’t make out and the pixy flew into the forest a few yards and then disappeared in a small flash. I activated my sense tat and moved toward where it vanished.

  What the hell? The air had a distinctive shimmer that faded as I watched. The pixy had gone through a door, a portal into another world. I activated another tat, this one on my right calf, and the shimmer expanded until I could step through.

  I stepped out into a dense forest of ancient trees. Massive boles climbed toward the sky on all sides of me and undergrowth was nearly nonexistent. A waterfall crashed somewhere nearby, drowning out any other sounds. The forest could have been on Earth, but with my senses expanded I could see the aura of magic throughout the woods. I thought it might be an elven world, but it could have belonged to one of the other myths man once believed in. Most of the mythological gods had long since been banished to other worlds, other dimensions; at least that was what I was told. Man wasn’t exactly appreciated in most of the alternate worlds that a few humans could still visit.

  There was a flash of color and a four-inch high pixie shot out from the branches over my head and buzzed me. I jerked back, surprised.

  “Don’t be using your magic on me!” The pixie swept past my face again and I saw that she held a wand, or maybe a sword, in her hand.

  “I wouldn’t think of it. I was just amplifying my hearing so I could make sure we could talk.”

  Her wings buzzed close to my left side. I felt a sting around my sensor tat.

  “Hey! Watch it Tinkerbell,” I exclaimed and ducked away from her.

  She swept in front of my eyes, almost too close to focus on. “Tis true, your spell is benign. But don’t be calling me Tinkerbell. I’m not a fairy and you don’t know my name.”

  She pointed her wand at the center of my left eye.

  I was tempted to force a sneeze and blow her back away from me. “Okay, no offense meant. I’m not looking to antagonize anyone, particularly someone who might be of help.”

  She swept back from me until I could focus on her. “Help? Why would a Wa
nderer need my help?”

  Now that the pixie was holding steady at a distance I could focus, I saw that she didn’t really look anything like the Disney fairy. Well, mostly not, who can tell when the lady in question is hardly more than four inches high? She had long green hair and it moved with the wind from her vibrating wings. Her features looked like a beautiful young woman, except for the light green skin. Emerald studs adorned her ear lobes and she had gold bracelets on each wrist. Her clothes were nearly invisible as they were the same pale green as her skin, but she appeared to be wearing a skin-tight leotard that covered her from high on her breasts to mid-calf. Matching slippers covered her feet to over her ankles and thin gold bands looped around her flesh just above the slippers. Around her waist was a belt of brown decorated with a gold buckle.

  “So you know Wanderers?” I asked.

  “Mundane humans and even witches rarely cross through the doors and never tattoo spells beneath their skin.”

  I nodded with a twist of my head. “Point taken.”

  She buzzed backward and settled on a twig that would have made a good perch for a hummingbird, except she was sitting. “So, Wanderer, are you here for the sacrifice?”

  “Sacrifice? You mean the murder?” I asked.

  “Unless there’s another that I haven’t heard about yet. Ophelia said to watch out for you, but she didn’t talk like you’d be sacrificing virgins under a full moon.”

  “I feel like I’ve been insulted. Why would you think such evil of me? You did pass me on the trail when you were fleeing the scene.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t fleeing. I was merely avoiding the demon summoning. And don’t take it personal. The humans are a nuisance and if you want to kill a few of them I won’t complain.”

  “Aren’t we the vicious little thing,” I commented. “Tell me Tinkerbell, why the antagonism toward the humans?”

  Her wings buzzed like an angry bumblebee, but she remained on the twig. “I told you not to call me, Tinkerbell. I have a name.”