by Andrew Dudek
Of course, we were also both armed. Aside from the swords at our hips—mine a cruciform arming sword, Bill’s a squarish katana—we both had guns. Bill’s hunting rifle was strapped across his shoulders and his hand rested on the butt of a big pistol. I wore a shoulder holster with a revolver, though I was nervous about it: I didn’t have much experience with firearms.
I did my best to put my boots in Bill’s size fourteen prints. It was a deception tactic. We didn’t think LeFleur had any hired sentries, but if there were, we wanted them to see only one set of prints. After all, how dangerous could a lone hiker be to a sorcerer?
The snowy woods of British Columbia were quiet, except for the crunch of our boots on the crusty ice. I couldn’t take the silence—I was a city boy, through and through, and the total silence of the wilderness was unnerving.
“I don’t get it,” I said, “why doesn’t the Vancouver or Seattle office handle this? Isn’t this their jurisdiction?”
Bill shook his head but didn’t look at me. “That ain’t always the way it works, kid. Seems Ol’ Man Strain wants the Table’s best soldiers to get his little girl back. He called up the Pendragon personally and asked the Nomads to handle this one.”
I grinned. “I’m one of the best?”
“I’m one of the best. You’re a green kid that needs practice. Shut up, we’re comin' up on the place.”
The place was a tiny cabin at the base of a hillside. A small, two-room affair at most, made out of logs. Stumps with a thin layer of snow suggested that it had been built recently. There were no windows, and only the one door. A covered porch was empty.
“Remember,” Bill whispered, “don’t hurt the kids.”
The kids were a group of magically talented teenagers who had recently gone missing from up and down the West Coast. The Magic Council’s investigators had traced the disappearances to an aging sorcerer named Wayne LeFleur and requested the Round Table’s assistance.
Bill stared at the cabin for a while. “No way to sneak in back. That would’a been easier. Tell ya what, kid, why don’t you knock on the door?”
That seemed to defeat the purpose of a sneak attack, but Bill was my captain. As he unslung his rifle, I crept towards the shack. The sorcerer could have set up magical booby traps around the place. I made it to the porch without blowing myself up, so that was a start. I looked out at the tree where Bill crouched. I could just make out the polished black barrel of the rifle.
I knocked on the door.
The man who answered looked like a demented grandfather. His head was bald except for three or four wisps of white hair. The lower third of his face was covered with a patchy, pathetic beard. He wore a white T-shirt and flannel pajama pants against the winter chill. His eyes—murky green, shot through with blood red—widened. “Who are you?” He had a voice like a parrot: high-pitched and squawky.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the sorcerer didn’t give me the chance. He raised a hand and I was thrown across the porch as if I’ve been smashed by a car. I hit the snow, only stopping when my back slammed into a stump. Ow.
Bang!
Bill’s shot went wide. Wood splintered as the bullet tore into the cabin. LeFleur spun at the sound of the rifle and raised his hand again. A tree was ripped out of the ground. Bill sprinted towards the cover of a thick copse of pines. Branches and pinecones fell from the sky, pelting Bill with tiny missiles as he ran.
Up to me, then. I drew my sword. Before I’d gotten a couple of steps, a pile of snow welled up from nowhere and tripped me, sending me sprawling on my face.
“You can’t take them!” LeFleur screamed. “You can’t!”
Storm clouds gathered in the sky. Dark and angry, the kind you normally only see on humid summer days. Lightning flashed inside the clouds, and a bolt struck in the grove where Bill had ducked for cover. Woodsmoke filled the air.
I pulled my revolver and aimed at LeFleur. I was never much of a shot, and I’d never killed a human being before. I took a deep breath and fired.
I missed. The bullet sailed harmlessly by the old man’s head. His eyes flashed like strobe lights and he started down the porch, his hands in front of him, making complicated gestures. Snow whirled in miniature tornadoes. They advanced towards me, stinging my face and cutting my skin with tiny shards of ice. I threw an arm in front of my eyes to protect them, but after just a moment, they faded and collapsed.
LeFleur turned back to the cabin.
A girl stood in the doorway. Her chin-length hair was filthy, so the red didn’t shine the way it would on a sunny beach. The long-sleeved thermal shirt and sweatpants she wore were stained and torn. Her gray eyes were righteous with fury. She lifted a hand, and the door was ripped off the cabin’s frame. It slammed into LeFleur’s chest and knocked him to the ground. She started down the stairs. A burst of thunder caught her attention and she looked at the sky. With a wave of her hands the clouds dissipated and drifted away. The sun was bright in the blue sky, reflecting off the snow.
Bill emerged from the trees, his sword in his hand. He watched as the girl stalked towards the old man.
With a flick of her wrist, the door broke into a dozen pieces. The jagged shards cut into LeFleur’s skin. There was a loud crack, and the old man’s knee suddenly bent outwards.
She stared down at him for a moment, then spat in his face.
I crept forward and crouched next to the sorcerer. He was making quiet whining noises. Hurt, but obviously alive. I looked at the girl standing over me. “That was amazing,” I said.
“Thanks. He killed the rest of the girls. He was absorbing their power, trying to make himself young again.”
Bill jerked his head at her, and when I still didn’t move, he grabbed my wrist and draped my arm around her shoulder. She sobbed and I awkwardly stroked her hair.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I said, feeling lame and useless. “My name’s Dave.”
She looked at me. The tears made her gray eyes seem deeper, somehow, like a stormy ocean. “I’m May.”
Bill sent me to recruit her four weeks later.
The Strain family was one of the oldest magic clans in the world—the Windsors with a bit of Merlin mixed in—and their home reflected that status. They lived in a massive estate, overlooking the Pacific, a few miles south of San Diego. Ten-foot concrete walls enclosed the property. The house was made of Spanish-style dark bricks. With its high roofs and enormous picture windows, it resembled nothing so much as a mighty palace.
The California sun was warm, the air salty. Sixty-five degrees. In February. Unbelievable.
I stopped before a guardhouse built into the perimeter wall. No one was inside, but there was a speaker, next to an intricate carving that I recognized as a magic symbol. I pressed a button and the symbol glowed to orange life. “Hi,” I said, “my name’s Dave Carver. I…I met May last month.”
After a moment, the speaker let out an electronic beep and a gate, which had not been there a moment before, swung open. I shivered, despite the warmth. I was still getting used to this magic stuff.
May was waiting at the threshold. Her red-gold hair was down and it shone in the afternoon sun, perfectly framing her beautiful face. The pale yellow sundress she wore moved around her hips with the ocean breeze. “Hi,” she said.
“Uh, hey,” I said, marble-mouthed. I hadn’t ever talked to many girls that were this pretty.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“LeFleur?” She nodded, and I said, “The Round Table has a place where we keep people like him. It’s, like, a magical prison. He’ll never get out. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
May shrugged and tucked a strand of hair behind an ear. I noticed she was wearing an earring that was shaped like a strawberry. “So what else can I do for you?”
“Actually,” I grinned, “we have a job offer for you.”
I stared into those gray eyes and I felt again like I was looking into something deep and vast. Beautiful and powerful and more than a little danger
ous, like the eyes of a tiger. From the moment when I saw her in the door of that cabin, I’d known she was something special, but that was nothing compared to seeing her now, still recovering, but hale and healthy. She’d been eighteen for less than a month, and her youth was written on her face, but so was the hunger for more. This modern castle on the beach may have been her home, but it wasn’t where she belonged. In that moment, I knew she’d accept the job.
I asked her about it, years later, and she told me that she’d seen something special in my eyes, too. Not something beautiful, though. Even then, before I’d collected most of my scars, she sensed the anger in me. I was cut, deep to my core, and she could feel the pain in my soul.
“I know what the Round Table does,” she said as we sat on an enormous patio bench, playing with the ends of her hair. She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “You protect people from…monsters. It’s important, but I don’t think I can help you. My family has been practicing magic for hundreds of years, and we have, sort of, a tradition of pacifism. We can’t use magic to hurt people.”
“You were amazing at the cabin,” I said. “It’s why my captain wants you to work with us.”
“I don’t think I can hurt anyone.”
“So don’t think of it as hurting people. You’ve seen evil, May. So have I. I think, once you’ve seen that kind of thing, you only have three choices: ignore it, forget it, or fight it. I understand you don’t want to hurt anyone, but the things we fight…they hurt way more people. If you come with us, you can make sure no one else ever gets hurt in the same way you were. You can help us stop monsters like LeFleur.”
She closed her eyes. “Can I have a few days to think about it?”
“Of course.” I left her with a business card and showed myself out.
As I crossed towards the gate, I happened to look back at the house. In one of the upstairs windows, a woman was staring down at me. She looked like May, only ten years older, and her hair was black and much longer. Her lips showed no trace of smile, and her eyes were hard and intense. Those eyes watched me as I left the estate, and I shivered. There was something cold in those eyes, something dangerous but oddly practical.
I never met April Strain, and I never saw her after that. One night, after May and I got together, she told me about her sister. April and May were the only children of her parents. April was ten when May was born, and it quickly became apparent that the younger sister was the more powerful. While April had to scratch and claw for every spell she learned, May picked them up with ease. The effort paid off, though: May had confided in me that her older sister was at least as good as she was. Probably better.
Not long after May joined the Table, April disappeared. Not in a poof!, magical way, but she left the Strain estate and no one had heard from her. May was upset, of course, but not surprised. Her sister had always been distant and cold.
As far as I knew, no one had heard from Aprilena Strain in eight years.
Chapter 18
You know that feeling when you bite into a piece of pizza that’s too hot and the roof of your mouth burns—it doesn’t hurt, but it’s numb for the rest of the day? That’s how my arm felt when I woke up. A thin sheet was draped over my legs. Everything felt fuzzy, up to and including my head. The last thing I remembered was collapsing in the field. I was looking, now, at gray walls and a single window with a thin, nearly translucent curtain. There was a poster on one wall, a sheep poking his face through a chain-link fence.
Wait a minute. I knew that poster.
This was my bedroom.
How the hell had I gotten here?
My head didn’t quite want to turn on my neck and my mouth was so dry I couldn’t speak, but there were voices nearby. In the room with me. It took a tremendous force of effort, but I managed to make a noise that was half-grunt, half-cough.
That cleared my head enough that I could let out a passably intelligible croak: “How long was I out?”
“Twelve hours.” Krissy’s voice.
I twisted my body so I could sit on the edge of the bed. My head still felt fuzzy and I was dizzy, but I was awake and feeling better. Krissy sat Indian-style on the floor, next to Amy. Each of them were holding playing cards and there was a pile in the middle. Krissy looked nervous. Amy looked unperturbed.
“Well, this is one to cross off the bucket list,” I said, standing. I wobbled on my feet, but I managed to stay upright. “I’ve always wanted to wake up with two beautiful women in my room.”
Amy snorted. Krissy rolled her eyes and flicked the Queen of Spades at me. “Pig. How’re you feeling?”
“Weird,” I admitted. I raised and lowered my right arm, the numb one. “It’s like I can’t feel anything with this.”
“Well, don’t ask either of us to help with that.” Amy had a sly grin.
“Everyone else is at the office,” Krissy said, looking at Amy through sideways eyes. “Trying to figure out how long the effects of the Leash should last. You thirsty, Dave?” Amy cocked an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“Not really—”
“Amy, could you get him a glass of water?” When the blond woman was out of the room, Krissy closed the door, put a hand on my shoulder, and forced me to sit down on the bed, her expression serious.
“Look, Kris, I’m flattered,” I said, “but we had this conversation yesterday. Besides, I don’t think I’m up for it—”
“Shut up a minute,” Krissy said. “This Professor is May’s sister, right? We were gonna contact her, but none of us know how. We decided to wait until you were up and let you do it—”
“What?” I said, rubbing my forehead. I had a headache, but it wasn’t anything paralyzing. “Absolutely not. She told me she doesn’t want to be a part of this life anymore. She laid down her sword, so this isn’t her problem.”
“Don’t you think she’d want to know?”
“We may have to kill April,” I said. “May won’t help with that.”
“I really think you should tell—”
“Drop it.”
Krissy raised a hand in defeat and hurried out of the bedroom, just in time for Amy to come in with two Dixie cups of tap water. “You didn’t have any clean glasses.”
I took a sip. There may not have been much of it, but the water was cold. It slid down my throat, cooling and refreshing, and it actually returned a bit of the feeling to my arm. “Good enough,” I said. “All’s quiet on the home front while I was napping?”
“‘Far as we know,” Amy said. “But we’ve been under your landlady’s wards the whole time, so who knows.”
“My landlady has wards?” I asked. “Mrs. Chang?”
Amy laughed and tossed her head back, forcing her chest to stick out. “Yeah, man. Good ones, too. We’re invisible to remote magical detection here.”
Who knew. I’d been living under some serious magical protection for five months. Come to think of it, that may have been why the Table chose Mrs. Chang’s house as the captain’s lodgings.
“So what happens now?” Amy asked.
I stood up, still shaky, but I managed to not fall over. “Nap-time’s over. Now we get back to work.”
Krissy insisted on driving back to the office. Amy sat in the backseat. My apartment was only a few blocks away, but the silence that quickly settled in made the short ride awkward and long. Krissy’s eyes were on the road, her lips pressed tightly together. Every time Amy made a noise, Krissy would glare into the rearview. Eventually, Amy caught on and began exhaling more quietly.
My arm was still numb, and I didn’t have the energy to deal with Krissy’s tantrum right now. I hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I knew. She was my page, true, but that didn’t make it my job to play therapist. If she wanted to talk to me, she’d talk to me—in the meantime, she was a big girl and I let her stew.
After a few moments, though, the silence changed tenors. Where before it had been awkward and tense like a dinner party after a political discussion, now it was wary and te
nse. Krissy kept glancing into the rearview mirror. Her eyes flicked back and forth much more quickly than they normally would.
I was about to ask what was wrong when she said, “I think we’re being followed.”
I’ve spent my adult life hunting things that can hunt right back. Vampires, werebeasts, goblins, trolls, whatever—all of them are more than capable of turning the tables on even a skilled hunter. Normally, my instincts should have clued me in on the possibility that I was being stalked, but my brain was still fuzzy from my run-in with the Leash.
Casually, I took a look over my shoulder. A black sedan, about three car-lengths back. I’d seen sore thumbs that were less conspicuous. A good tail driver can weave through traffic like a shark in a reef. This guy was foundering like…well, like a flounder. The windows were tinted black, which made it impossible to see into the car, but also attracted attention. I mean, come on. I wasn’t asking for Bondian levels of spy-cool, but don’t send an amateur.
“I noticed him when we left your apartment,” Krissy said. “He was double-parked near the bus stop, and when we pulled out, he followed. He’s been with us ever since.”
“Pull over, here.” I pointed at a fire hydrant near the mouth of an alley. Krissy parked illegally. “Okay. Wait here, both of you. Watch this guy. I think he’ll follow me, but if not, wait five minutes, then blow the horn three times.”
“What are you doing?”
I tried a cocky grin. I wasn’t really feeling either cocky or like grinning, but it was expected of me in this situation. “I’m gonna go see what he wants.”
I got out of the car and jogged down the alley. I hopped over a pile of plastic garbage bags and crouched among the trash. There the sound of a car door slamming, followed by the nearly inaudible slap of footfalls on concrete.
A think man sprinted into the alley and kept right on going. I leaped out of my hiding place, drawing my knife. I grabbed the guy by the shoulder and dragged him to the ground, putting the edge of the blade against his throat.
