by Zoe Forward
“Progress with the newest child?” Terek Nadir asked his exec assistant distractedly in a low gritty voice damaged by the multidecade smoker who had owned this body before he arrived. Before he possessed the real Terek Nadir, and took over. Although used to the name, there were moments when he wanted to correct the Hashishins he led. To yell that he was Djoser. As in Pharaoh Djoser. Not lame-ass Terek. But he lived with it. Camouflage in the Human Realm was necessary. For right now.
He stared out the window, excitement thrumming through him. Since he’d relocated the headquarters five months ago, they’d turned a corner in the war against the magi. He’d finally acquired his biggest trophy. A pre-magus. Or, at least, he was ninety-nine percent certain this time he’d found the right kid. Now he just had to jolt the boy into remembering his past. Then, he’d extract the info locked inside his skull.
His assistant, Brant Kiersted, didn’t answer his query. Instead, the guy dropped the daily agenda onto his desk with a satisfied nod. The prick acted like the ten or so typed lines of nonsense revealed the key to eternal life.
He rotated the sheet and scanned. Shit. Dais training today. Terek’s patience for Hashishin beginners lay somewhere around nonexistent. Fear made them reluctant to attempt even basic spell casting. He would grant their anxiety was well founded. He consistently killed at least one out of frustration on his twice-a-month training day, a definite highlight. Their gutless and lazy attitudes, unlike those of centuries past, didn’t fail to disappoint. Long ago, even the Dais didn’t fear death.
The leather executive chair creaked as he shifted. His question remained answered only by silence. He trapped his personal assistant with a lethal glare. No one challenged him, not in his organization.
“Terek, sir…” Kiersted cleared his throat and click-clicked his ballpoint.
“Speak,” he ordered as he poured himself a cup of tea. Another click-click.
No answer. Three more click-click cycles.
Terek whispered an order and his pet shot from his bisht robe sleeve. Only it didn’t strike, not that Kiersted didn’t deserve a little hurt for annoying the shit out of him. The snake knocked the pen from Kiersted’s hand and wrapped its front quarter tight around his fist.
Kiersted screamed like a two-year-old.
“Anena, enough.” The viper released and slithered its way home. He had to grin as he absorbed the fear-energy coming off Kiersted. A ripple of strength infused his muscles. The power boost was divine. “You were saying…”
Kiersted cleared his throat and backed up several feet. “Rishi was pessimistic yesterday. He feels this kid, Cy, isn’t what you’d hoped. The incident in South Africa must have been a fluke. The kid hasn’t divulged anything enlightening. He’s close to breaking in more ways than one.”
Terek sucked air through his teeth. His daemonic nature peeked from behind the guise of the human body. Sulfur permeated the air. The ambient temperature dropped fifteen degrees.
He gulped down a cup of scalding tea that was laced with animal euthanasia-strength pentobarbital. Wait for it. Wait for it. Ten seconds later the drug hit his brain like a newly launched boat hitting water—the null-mind void of free floating. The dose would kill a human. He, however, would be lucky if he got an hour of homicidal daemon-rage suppression from this dose. He should’ve gone for the injection. At least then he’d have four to six hours.
Gods, he hated the handicap of the daemon condition. Sure he was ten times more powerful than the strongest human, and could absorb power from human pain and fear, but as a daemon he was driven with a single-minded motivation to kill all life. To get more power from inflicting pain. For most daemons summoned into the human world, the murder craze usually ended only when a magus showed up, and executed him with a neck three-sixty and a chest stab, jettisoning him back to the Middle Realm. Drugs suppressed the murder drive. But made him slow.
How he hated those sanctimonious magi.
Kiersted’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead.
Based on the renewed terror on Kiersted’s face, Terek knew his eyes must’ve blacked over from pupil to sclera, evidence of his true inner being. Historically, it meant he was within seconds of killing. Little did Kiersted know that his brain was well on its way to pentobarbital la-la land.
Terek said softly, “I’ve allowed Rishi seven days with this child. That’s more than enough time. The brat was thrown from a derailed train through a glass window as the car rolled over him, and wasn’t even scratched. There was but one other survivor of the incident and she was a mangled mess. The child fits the prophecy.” He paused to pour a new cup of tea. “Perhaps it is time I met this one. I guarantee I can give him incentive to remember.” He smiled.
“If he is the one. I mean, how many kids have we been through that fit the prophecy in the past three years? Thirty or so? Cy is only thirteen or fourteen. We all know Rishi is an artist when it comes to extracting info, but there’s only so far he can push before breaking the boy. The kid doesn’t heal like a magus. He’s got bruises from head to toe. His pale skin is thin as tissue paper.”
“Obviously, he hasn’t been converted to a magus, yet. The soul is there, meaning the memory of past lives is in there too. If he is the one, then he can remember the past. He must, since his brain is the library for magi spells. When is Rishi starting today?”
Kiersted rolled his wrist to consult his watch. “In about twenty minutes.”
“Let him know I want to speak with the boy before he does anything today.”
“Of course, sir.” Kiersted executed a one-eighty and scurried from the room.
“Why do you tolerate him?” Zimeri’s thick Turkish-accented voice projected from the dark corner beside the door. He peeled his tall, bisht-robed frame from the wall. His face was hard and centered. Zimeri’s dark left eye met his gaze dead-on. No fear. The right eye, eerily white from an uncorrected cataract, most would consider a hindrance. Not Zimeri. He considered it a badge of honor since this represented the only occasion he’d pitted his Fedavis skills against his master. What a spectacular pupil.
Terek had considered summoning his right-hand, Imotep, from the Middle Realm and allowing him to possess Zimeri, but held back. Zimeri was a useful human. Worthy.
“Kiersted serves a purpose.”
Zimeri executed a slight head bow. “I beg you forgive my disrespect of eavesdropping.”
“Forgiveness depends on why you are here.”
“Since you entrusted me with security and our biggest threat is the magi, I have a new angle to suggest.”
“Please, enlighten me.” He waved at the chair in front of his desk and scooted around to take his chair. He sipped at the tea.
Zimeri glided to the chair and perched upon its edge. The guy never liked being grounded, cornered. He was prepared. Terek knew if he sent Anena after him, his pet would end up diced into unrecognizable bits within seconds.
Terek widened his eyes in a clear get-on-with-it.
Zimeri continued, “Magi have two weaknesses. First is their need to stay under the radar of American society…well, any governmental organization. Second, are their women. To weaken them we need to take out their women. But we have to do this stepwise. Find them. Track them. Take out their women. If that doesn’t work, then put them on the government’s radar. We’ve got enough contacts in the NSA and FBI now.”
“Did you question Marelena?” After his bas kadin miraculously spent a few months as the magi’s housekeeper before being detected, they had gained some information on their day-to-day operations, although not much.
“She reports they usually travel by plane. Their own private jets. They must have someone to do computer work for them. To keep the planes off the record. She seemed pretty sure it is a non-magus kid.”
“You want to kidnap him?”
“No, I want to do a forget-spell on the IT guy and implant spyware onto his computer. You wouldn’t believe how useful our contact in the FBI has been
on providing us the proper programs to do this. Then track them to where they’ve relocated. Perhaps, by monitoring his computer activity, we can determine when the women leave the estate and may be more vulnerable. Or we can institute viper spies again once we know where they reside. Who knows what other information we can glean from his computer.”
“Interesting. How do you propose to get near this computer person?”
“Marelena says he goes with them a lot of the time, but I bet they don’t allow him to tag along when they…do their thing. He is, therefore, probably on his own near their transport.”
“Draw them out. Keep the magi busy and then get him?”
“Exactly.”
“Do it.”
Zimeri smiled. “Already in motion, master.” He rose, bowed, and left.
****
Hatred and terror seesawed in Cy’s mind as he watched the skinny, dark-skinned Asian approach. He scanned his prison cell, gauging the distance along the wall. To know how much space he had to move when Rishi hit.
Rishi’s lip curled upwards into a left-sided leer. This was going to be a bad day.
Please don’t let it be needles today. The drugs hurt and made him puke. Rishi hurt him worse when he did that.
Rishi promised an end only if he answered questions. Questions about magi, daemons, and some temple. Stuff he knew nothing about. Not one iota. He was tempted to make something up, but suspected Rishi would know.
For a while after he first got here, he thought he’d been sucked into some alternate super sci-fi world. He still worried he’d been cast as the pitiful secondary character scripted for death after a prolonged torture fest.
What had he done to be taken from the hospital right after he watched his foster parents die? How long had it been since he was thrown from the train when it wrecked just outside Cape Town? He hadn’t particularly cared for Karen or Bryce. Didn’t mourn their deaths. As his third set of fosters in three years, they liked laying down the hurt. But in comparison to Rishi’s hurt, Karen and Bryce were in the junior league.
“Ready to talk about the magi?” Rishi asked in his thickly accented voice. He raised his hand.
Cy shook his head. His sweat-slick palms slipped against the painted-brick wall as he moved away. This windowless room offered no chance for escape. No crying. Don’t even go there. On those few occasions when his eyes leaked, Rishi laughed. And hit harder.
“Master Nadir is coming to speak with you today. For him, I advise you remember.”
Cy focused on the dark hand throughout its advance. He turned the instant it started its downward arc, deflecting the blow to his shoulder. He crawled into the corner. How could he remember what he didn’t know?
The door flew open. Cy gaped. The height of the guy entering forced his neck upward. He had long gray-streaked, black hair that flowed down his back and a burn-scarred left cheek. But the unnatural aqua eyes turned his intestines into a frozen slushy. Familiarity slid through his mind. Puzzling. He’d never met anyone with eyes quite that freaky.
“Hello, Cy. I’m Terek Nadir. I hear you are not being forthcoming. Perhaps I can help.”
Cy shook his head and croaked out, “Don’t know anything.” The temperature dropped around him as the man approached. A sewage odor permeated the air.
“Perhaps your memory has yet to be triggered.” Terek seized his small biceps and yanked him to his feet. Although lanky, Cy was tall for his age, but Terek still dwarfed him. A frigid burn traveled up his arm. He stared in horror at the appendage clamped onto his arm, the black hairs on Terek’s forearm standing erect. Welts formed up Cy’s arm. An icy burn spread in his body. Something squeezed his chest with a crushing pressure. He screamed the moment he felt his arm on the verge of cracking, but the scream cut off into a strangled gasp as he discovered himself unable to draw in air. His eyes locked onto Terek’s, which were no longer aqua but solid with a blackness that covered the whites and cornea. Devoid of life.
The sign of the Devil. Not a devil…a daemon.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata blasted into Cy’s mind. He heard the barest whisper of a girl’s voice. “Follow the music. Let me play for you.” The lilt of the girl’s voice in the familiar South African accent comforted. He slammed his eyes closed and strained to hear her laughter as it dissolved away into the swelling melody. He wanted nothing more than the serenity the music offered. Within the notes, all his pain disappeared.
He didn’t know how long he lived within the music, but was jolted back to reality by violent shaking.
Terek demanded, “How did you resist the spell? Tell me what you remember. Now.”
Cy groaned as Terek twisted his arm almost to the point of dislocation. What did he mean about a spell? He looked around and listened for the music. Nothing. It was in his head. Not good. Now he really was losing it.
As the pain in his shoulder worsened, the music returned. It crescendoed in his brain until there was only the haunting beauty of the melody. As the sonata came to its climax, the doorway to memory opened. Over a thousand years of memory downloaded—knowledge of spells, incantations, Scimitar Magi, and legends. And a beautiful woman with a talent for music.
How many times had he been reincarnated as the spell keeper magus? Too many.
Never, though, had he been granted memory prior to his induction ceremony. Never when he was but fifteen.
Cy met the glowing aqua evil of his daemon-possessed tormentor. Djoser. The former Third Dynasty pharaoh had been a grand master of dark magik when human thousands of years ago. Some might call him a sorcerer, but the word seemed too upbeat for this twisted maniac.
Given that Djoser was coherent and controlled, not madly trying to kill everything in his path like most summoned daemons, meant he had somehow figured out how to suppress his homicidal urges. He had probably acquired the Necherophes wesekh. Somehow he always seemed to get the Egyptian beaded collar before any of them could prevent it or destroy the piece. The faience and carnelian collar appeared innocuous enough but granted its owner unlimited fortune, which in the case of a daemon didn’t just mean wealth. Fortune to a daemon was to remain somewhat in control and, therefore, under the radar of them—the magi. If his ability to remain calm in possessed form had nothing to do with the collar, then Djoser was far more dangerous than Cy was willing to consider.
Djoser wanted what he always sought when in the Human Realm—the Trifecta: the Necherophes wesekh, Anukrati amulet, and the sword of Neith. Three items each with unique qualities that, if brought together and wielded by one user, would grant him power equal only to the gods. Probably enough to lift the curse of the daemon, and to ensure him immortality and unlimited supremacy within the Human Realm. Good luck to him on him getting the pieces together, especially that sword.
Djoser uttered a low curse in the daemon language. Cy recognized it as a spell forcing truth.
He quickly whispered a counter spell. Would it work? Did he have any magik as a pre-mag? To cover his uttering, he whimpered loudly, faking fear.
Djoser demanded, “Tell me which magus you will become.”
Cy waited for the evil of a black spell to overtake his mind, but nothing happened. Thank the gods for giving him some ability. He forced out another whimper and whispered, “Know nothing.” He cracked his lids to see if Terek-Djoser bought it.
Terek-Djoser threw him hard against the wall and spat a string of curses.
Cy cradled his injured arm and curled into the fetal position. He chanced an upward glance. The bastard was coming for him again.
As a pre-mag, he was susceptible to dark magik and all the foul potions these Hashishins liked to play with. As well as their serpents…
He saw a serpent slither from Djoser’s sleeve. Oh, gods, no. He despised the snakes. If he didn’t die from the snake’s venom, it would seriously screw him up.
Only a fully indoctrinated magus had a natural resistance to Hashishin evil and the venom those serpents injected. He mentally sighed wahoo when the snake
didn’t strike.
But his counter spells would only work for so long before his casting was discovered.
All that stood between the modern world and a new Dark Age with humans enslaved to this daemon was a weak, juvenile pre-mag.
Chapter Four
The driver stomped the accelerator with all the finesse of a battering ram. The SUV lurched away from the prison with a wheel-spin sand-spit into the Colombian dusk, plastering Dakar against the back seat.
Self-propelled carriages. Transport had changed remarkably since he was last here. In his opinion, nothing beat a fine horse, but he had to admit these cars provided a fast, smooth ride.
He shifted to peel his sweat-soaked skin from the leather seat in the areas exposed through his shirt’s holes. The others in the car would probably be disgusted if they knew how long he’d been in these rags—over two centuries. New clothes would be a relief. But could wait.
He returned the driver’s stare in the rearview mirror. The guy was a nervous magus with short brown hair and several small hoop rings in each ear and above one eyebrow. If the bastard didn’t quit peering at him, he’d break the mirror on his face and pluck out a few pieces of that ridiculous facial jewelry.
He reached for seichim to evaluate the energy radiating from the two magi in the car. He knew all ten magi—their powers, their weaknesses, their women, and their idiosyncrasies.
The pretty-boy next to him, Christian, scrolled through colorful screens on a handheld device between glances out the window. The Charmer. The vain sex addict always made the rest jealous. He could woo the habit off a nun with little more than a half smile.
Then there was Lightning, the driver. The guy must be newly inducted. Once he got control of his ability, which always came with a high level of unpredictability in the early years, arrogant was his middle name. Instead of these shifty dart-glances he kept throwing, he would’ve challenged him to a staredown.
Of the ten magi, neither of these two could remember the past. Each time the gods jammed their soul back into a body it was all new to them. Their past remained a blank slate. Why the gods condemned them to amnesia he’d never know, but who was he to argue with the inanity of the gods’ decisions?
