by Landon Wark
Recovered from his shock Abramov looked on the verge of hanging up on the call, but at the same time Ray could see him chewing on his tongue a little.
"There's a meteor coming, Mr. Abramov, and it's gonna wipe out all us big swinging dick dinosaurs and hand the planet over to some mewling, teat-sucking monkeys. Unless we do something about it. We both know you've got more than enough resources to crack down on this—what did you call it?—cult. You do that and I'll send over some goodies over to you from the States."As the last cracks began to form in the dour persona on the screen Ray glanced over at the three lines of white powder on his coffee table. It was going to be glorious.
Christ, why did humanity ever think it could improve on board meetings and blow?
"All right, Mr. Polaski, you've convinced me we need to do something about this cult. As for the rest... You can prove this to me?"
"I'll do you one better. I'll send you the video file. Follow the instructions. Do not let anyone else see it. And Barsi, he must have given you something. That should clinch it. I guarantee that this is going on right under your nose."
Abramov slowly nodded. Ray could make out his good eye darting to another screen as he attempted to surreptitiously search the word 'clinch'. Oxford or no his knowledge of English idioms was lacking.
"Let us assume I believe you," Abramov said. "What are you planning to do about it? What can the two of us do to prevent the spread of witchcraft?"
"Prevent?" Ray pulled a twenty dollar bill out of his pocket and rolled it into a tight cylinder under the desk out of sight of the webcam. "We can't prevent it. Best we can hope to do is delay. Delay until the current dinosaurs are dead of natural causes."
Abramov laughed and pursed his lips. "Fair enough. So, what do you do to delay it?"
"You keep doing what you're doing. Tell that Barsi that I'll have some cash coming his way. And Abramov, find this McAllister. We're going to need to know everything that he knows about... witchcraft."
"We have no information about him. Just whispers here and there. Only one or two have seen his face, but we can't find them either."
"I might be able to help you with that too." Ray flexed the bill/tube in his hands. "There was a Jonah McAllister who bombed a hotel and an apartment building. No explosives were found at either site. I've got a couple of guys who have apparently seen his face coming up."
"And you think anyone who would bomb an apartment building would be stupid enough to not use an alias?"
Ray chuckled and made the misstep of pointing at the screen with the bill/tube. He doubted Abramov noticed, but he quickly hid it all the same.
"I don't think he's stupid. I think he's probably the smartest motherfucker on the planet. He's so smart that he needs everyone to know it. That meteor that's coming; he needs to have his name plastered all over it. He needs it to be the goddamn McAllister asteroid."
Jonah McAllister Makes Good
The rooms in the apartment complex that he had taken over proved to be somewhat less than suitable for the experiments that Jonah McAllister had in mind to further his latest creation; the neighbours had a bad habit of complaining in whatever language it was they spoke (he was often too busy to take stock of it). And so he was forced to rent out a firing range on the outskirts of the city. The owner had protested when he had asked for the entire space and privacy to use it in, but when Jonah had produced a wad of bills of whatever domination they used in this place, the man’s eyes had lit up.
Aegera watched as he unloaded several of the long metal tubes from the rented truck and walked them to the range gallery. Producing a roll of duct tape he shifted the tubes around until he found what she assumed was the particular one he was looking for. She arched an eyebrow as he removed one last object from the back of the truck. She had known about the tubes, but had no idea of the origin of this last object. Where had he bought it and when?
Jonah held the rifle awkwardly as he approached the firing line, his face a grimace of determination and curiosity.
“Are we going to talk about the Adepts or is that going to make you shoot me?” she asked.
“Not today,” he replied without a trace of amusement.
"Uh... We're not going to talk today or you're not going to shoot me today?"
Jonah did not look up from the scope. “We've been over this. We can't put the genie back in the bottle. We can't change human nature.”
"So your official response is 'fighters gonna fight'? You want to do nothing?"
“No, not nothing.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to fix this scope for me.”
She laughed. “I’m going to fix that for you?”
He looked up at her. “I thought everyone where you’re from was good with guns.”
Her laugh turned into a scowl. “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”
With a single motion he pulled the ocular off the rifle and set it aside. “Anyway, accuracy of the shooter isn’t really vital.” He placed the rifle on the bench and stood up, motioning for her to sit. “Do you think you can hit one of those targets down the field?”
Aegera squinted. “No.”
“I want you to try anyway.”
"You can't do it?"
"I need to take notes."
She looked at him and sat reluctantly on the bench. Despite what he thought she had never even held a gun before, let alone fired one. It shook as she hoisted it, making a strange rattling sound that made her believe she had broken it. Once more she looked up to him with deference.
Jonah produced a small brass coloured cylinder from his pocket and shoved it towards her. “You have to load it first.”
The gun seemed like a viper coiled in her hands. “And how am I supposed to do that?”
“Here.” He leaned in close, so close that she could feel his breath on her hands. A quick motion and the breach was open. He took the cartridge and slid it smoothly into the chamber, slamming the bolt back into place after. Aegera looked at the weapon, and felt her stomach turn just a little.
“My dad took me hunting once when I was a kid,” he explained. “I got so bored sitting out there in the snow all day that I took apart one of his old rifles.”
“I’m amazed,” she whispered. “I never pictured you as the outdoors type.”
“Once was enough. When you’re ready the safety’s right next to the trigger. Just line up the sights on one of those targets at the other end of the field and squeeze the trigger. Oh, and put these on.”
He handed her a pair of what looked like safety glasses that she took skeptically. “You’re kidding right?”
“What?”
“I said—” When she looked back up at him he was wearing a pair of ear protectors along with a second pair of glasses. “Never mind… Where are my ear guards?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She slipped on the glasses and awkwardly gripped the rifle. She had seen people use such a weapon before and knew somewhat how you were supposed to aim it. Just position the front sight in between the back ones and make sure what you were shooting at was in the background. A vision of an innocent bystander walking across the field at the exact moment of her shot filled her with a sudden dread and she hesitated. The nervousness was a bit of a shock. After all, she handled things more dangerous than this rifle on a daily basis.
“Don’t be nervous,” Jonah said from behind her. “We’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”
Bearing down her finger reached for the trigger and slowly curled over it. The tension in her muscles increased until the small lever began to pull back. It reached a point of resistance and she squeezed harder, and then a little harder than that, and a little harder than that…
“Crud.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I left the safety on. It’s this red thing h—”
A loud blast cut the air, the rifle’s report echoed off first the walls of the range and th
en the hills surrounding them. Aegera jumped where she sat, looking wildly around to see where the shot had gone, knowing on a subconscious level that she would never be able to see it.
One of the incandescent bulbs down behind the targets at the other end of the field exploded in a shower of glass.
“Oh my God,” Aaegera shouted in disbelief. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t even aiming for it. I wasn’t really aiming at all.”
Jonah looked at the notebook sitting beside him. "Okay. The control works." He calmly produced another cartridge from his pocket and presented it to her. “Try again.”
Skeptically she took the cylinder and this time managed to load the rifle herself as he started . The safety off she leaned in and focused in on the same target down the range as best she was able. The rifle clacked in her hand as the hammer came down. Although she jerked in anticipation there was no loud bang accompanying it.
"This gun you bought sucks," she said, shifting the weapon in her hands.
"It was on for a discount."
“What are you doing?” She turned to Jonah who was inspecting the tube beside her.
“I’ll show you in a minute,” he promised, producing yet another round. “Just try once more and this time—” He pointed downfield and handed her another cartridge. "Use this one."
Aegera pulled back on the small handle sticking out of the gun. 'Opening the bolt' she was pretty sure it was called. She carefully replaced the bad bullet with the fresh one and closed the bolt. With her hands still shaking though less than they had been) she closed her left eye and aimed down the field.
Clack
"This thing's not going to blow up in my face, is it?" she asked.
Jonah nodded his head as if the whole incident was a result he had been expecting and bit his lower lip thoughtfully. He produced one of the metal tubes from behind a wall and laid it flat on his palms so that she could get a good look at it. It looked like any sort of average metal tube.
“I found a way,” he began, “of making some materials reproducing the effect that our..." He swallowed. "Spells have. Beryllium, specifically. Can't have too much electron motion. Now the object in question has to be a certain size. Too large and everything gets diluted to the point where it won’t work. Too small and it breaks down too quick. It also needs to be a single composite item. You couldn’t do it to say, a telephone or a computer. In this case it prevents the primer in the bullet from igniting by increasing its stability.”
Aegera stared at the tube, disbelieving that she had any disbelief left in her. “So you can… enchant things?”
He bristled. “Essentially… yes.”
“Have you done this to anything else?”
“Originally I was going to make something that could deflect a bullet, but it would be too large to be portable. And anything stationary would risk someone getting hit by the deflection. This seemed best for close range combat with an armed opponent.”
“Have you done anything to anything else?”
He looked perplexed. “Well, the soles of my shoes tend to wear out pretty quick, so I reinforced them. Rubber is a complex organic molecule, but the effect is fairly simple—"
“I’m already sitting down and I think I need to sit down farther,” Aegera breathed. “What else can you do?”
Jonah McAllister shrugged his best scientist’s shrug and leaned back against the wall of the range shop. “I haven’t figured it all out just yet.”
“Could you at least sound excited about this?”
“There’s still a lot of work to do before we get too excited.” He reached around the corner and heaved a heavy black case from its concealment. The latches holding it shut snapped open and he pulled two sinister looking cartridge magazines from inside, shoving one of them into the base of the rifle with a resounding click. “We still have a few more tests to run.”
It was late in the evening by the time they had finished to Jonah’s satisfaction. He had several tubes of different materials that they swapped in and out to check for resiliency and reliability, both physically and metaphysically, over the course of a few hours. Sometimes the gun would fire regularly or intermittently. When the time had come to leave they left nearly everything, rifle, leftover magazines, everything except the tubes on the range. Jonah gave the explanation that having guns around was going to arouse suspicion, and besides, they weren’t really necessary anyway.
Aegera went along patiently with his obsessive measurement taking, jotting down figures and carrying tubes, taking her turn with the rifle; though it still made her nervous. All the while something tugged at the back of her conscious thought, something which she was unable to articulate until they had piled the last of the tubes into the back of the rented truck. As he walked back to leave the range key under the mat she called out to Jonah.
“If you think everyone here is going to sit down together and have a few drinks together… why are you building gun jammers?”
His colouring became a little paler than usual and a weak little smile formed on his face. “It was more of a gift. I know you're getting nervous. Something to help clear your mind, I guess.”
The Tutelage of Tom Nightshade
Yawning with all the sun-soaked exhaustion of an African lion, Tom Nightshade swung open the tiny personnel entrance to the old garage. The glare from the sunny but cold day outside cut into the dingy fluorescent light of the interior. The unevictable smell of old automotive fluids and motor oil hit him, evoking memories of his father's old overalls hanging on the back of the kitchen chair. He wondered briefly how old dad was doing in the days since he had left home, but the thought was quickly shoved out of his mind. Dad could take a ten foot walk off a nine foot pier as far as he was concerned.
Within the garage were four men and two women whom he recognized as the Adepts that Aegera was always getting on about. Three of them were perched around a workbench, two more were conversing by the wall and the sixth was leaning against a standup toolbox with a rusted out bottom. The mood among them was downcast, but then again the cold had a way of doing that, despite the warm-seeming light blazing in through the small, elevated window along the side of the garage.
"Good afternoon, duckies," Tom said, tossing his bag against the wall next to the door the way he imagined a Uni professor would. "There were supposed to be nine of you. Where's the other three?"
Sitting at the bench a small Asian woman picked up, brushing her hair behind her ear and speaking with a moderate accent. "We are... not sure. Yuri, Borty and Dez are not terribly reliable."
So, you kicked them out, but didn't tell any of the others, Aggy.
Tom frowned. He had assumed that some kind of discipline would be necessary, but heaving two men with that kind of power onto the street seemed pretty reckless.
"Aggy must pretty pissed," he muttered under his breath.
"Where is Aegera, anyway?" Pietro, Tom remembered his name from their late night session at the restaurant, asked.
"Aggy's out with the big man this afternoon. They're..." Did the Adepts need to know that they were likely discussing things that could get some of them killed? "I don't know, making out behind a dumpster or something. Okay. Names. I need to know who you are and what you were working on with Aggy. Pietro, I know you." He pointed to the Asian woman. "You, go."
Tom pulled out a ratty swivelling stool and sat down, enjoying the shoot-from-the-hip style and its energy. He had always thought that if he had stayed in England he might have thought about teaching. Not that he could have gotten the money to get an education. And not that they would have had someone like him teaching second grade.
The woman seemed a little startled by the callout. "I am Lanying, but everyone calls me Lianne. I don't know why. Lanying is not hard to say. I came here to study European law, but the government closed the law school. I think it was you who had me waiting on your table and brought me to the first gathering."
"All right, fine. That's your whole life story, innit?" Tom yawned.
Looking miffed, Lanying continued. "We were going over some of the commonalities between some of the incendiary spells and extracting the relevant phonemes."
Tom smiled. Aggy had told him that Big Mick wanted to downplay things like spells. Of course he had ignored her. It was gratifying to learn that she had done the same. He had quite quickly become bored with the commonalities between all the light show tricks. They were great for getting attention but when it came to changing... things, they were all but useless. It might be beyond his purview as a substitute teacher, but if he could get a half dozen kids beyond flash and towards substance, this whole thing might be worth it.
As he listened without interest to the others tossing out their names and two sentence back stories he decided there was something he was working that could use an airing among the rank and file.
"Well, all right, duckies." He pushed—shoved really—himself off the stool and half-walked, half-hopped the several steps over to the workbench. "Today we're gonna learn a little bit of practical magic for an impractical thing. Let's do a little bit of body modification."
A couple of hours later each of the Adepts had what counted as a decent tattoo on their forearms, or at least as decent as their innate artistic ability would allow. Pietro was in the process of finishing the small firebird, tracing a red line with his voice over top of one of the more prominent veins.
"These... Aren't completely permanent, are they?" Lanying asked, rubbing her own lumpy design in a way that shielded it from the sight of the others.
"Aggy told me a way she used to get some unwanted spots off her hand," Tom replied. "I wrote it down somewhere. Don't rightly remember where."
Lanying grumbled and stopped rubbing her arm, instead hiding it behind her hip. "When is Aegera coming back?"
"All right, so, to review:" Tom tapped a pen on the sheets of paper where he had written the formula. "We've got this bit here that can shift the colour of the line, and this one here for width. Maintain your focus—"
