“Stay with me, big guy—you haven’t heard the second special,” the waitress said, slapping a hand against my numb cheek. “It’s a power-packed breakfast. Yeah, yeah, breakfast for dinner is hip to the point of lame I know, but you look like a guy who could use a nice pick me up. So what do you say? You ready to break bread with me?”
“No…”
I gave up clawing, I gave up fighting, I let the darkness slip over me like a warm blanket. Porter’s ring bit into my palm, but I didn’t care, I squeezed until my knuckles turned white.
“Here I am, offering to make you whatever you want, and all you can say is ‘no.’ How about a little gratitude, huh?”
Make… Made—that’s it, the ring!
My blood mixed with the cheap plated gold of Porter’s ring and the hum of Deep Magick shook my body.
“What are you doing, Eugene? That’s not on the menu.”
It is now.
There was only one option left that kept me and my head attached, and not a slave to 69 Mallory Lane—the ring had to be unmade.
22
Parking Lot Lover
I squeezed the ring deeper into the meaty flesh of my palm and tried to find the strength to undo its power. Blood trickled over the tiny diamond setting and down my arm.
“Now, now. Let’s not get crazy here,” the waitress said, her voice softer now. “Even if you survive an unmaking, what happens to Porter? What about that loving wife of yours, unprotected out in the world? You wouldn’t risk your sweetheart, would you?”
Deep in my oxygen-depleted gray matter I knew the House was right—unmaking was nothing short of insanity, and without Lenar’s Logic Loop, Porter would be exposed to all the evils of the supernatural world. Still, I had to try.
The waitress placed her soft hands on my face. “Oh, for the love of all things unholy. You are such a pain in the ass, you know that?”
Funny, that’s practically the exact same thing Mom used to say.
A surge of energy flooded my body and caught me completely off guard. It hit me like that first cup of coffee in the morning—times a thousand. I ripped the New Dead arms off my neck like snapping dry branches, innocent bones crushing under the newfound power humming in my hands. The pain vanished, and an inhuman strength swelled in its place. Technically I hadn’t agreed to anything, but the power felt so good, so right, it was next to impossible not to scream out for more.
“Feels damn good, doesn’t it?” the waitress said, her whispered words tickling my ear. “And that’s just a taste, wait till you get the full course. So what do you say, Master Magician? You ready to wear the big-boy pants?”
I wanted to say it sounded horrible, but when the next punch slammed into my head I lost my words, and almost lost my way.
“You…”
“Yes?”
“You can go to Hell,” I said, kicking back at the mass of New Dead clawing for me under the table.
“You’re impossible—but I’m totally down for impossible causes. We’ll be together. You are exactly what I need…”
“I said, go to Hell!” I shouted, turning my head to find the waitress unconscious on the tile floor.
The House was gone, but it had left me with enough to survive an unmaking.
I hope.
There was no way to safely unmake a Magickal item—it simply didn’t work that way. My memories were bound up in that ring, tight as a drum and powering the Magick that had kept Porter safe. To unmake it now meant sacrificing those memories and willfully setting fire to each one, then letting it burn away to be lost forever. After that, even if you got all that right, you had to be ready for the blowback; you’d be releasing a lot of Wild Magick—which had a fifty-fifty chance of searing your face off.
So, who wants to be a Magician? Anybody?
I squeezed the ring in my fingers and kicked away at the clawing New Dead. The memory of our first date queued up in my mind—pizza at Leonard’s by the Slice just off campus. We’d been kids ourselves, not much older than Cathy. Still, I knew then what I knew now; I didn’t want to let this one go.
A young Porter’s smile burned away at the checker-cloth table in my mind.
I squeezed the ring tighter and let its Magick flood my hand and race up my arm—a warm and tingly feeling that quickly shifted from oddly unpleasant to nigh unbearable.
“Irritum Facit!”
The ring melted away in my fingers, freeing the memory I’d sacrificed and with it the Magick bound up in the cheap jewelry. One by one the still frames of that night turned to ash in the fire of my mind: her hair, the smell of her skin, and at last the heart-stopping twinkle of her eyes in the dark. “Argh!”
The resulting surge was far beyond the House’s gift—this was love, and love meant sacrifice.
An explosion of blinding white light erupted from my body. I was a one-man pyrotechnic show. Wild Magick roared through me like a live wire and flooded the room with tremendous force. Glass shattered and tables overturned. The booth we’d huddled under tore free of its mooring and crashed into the bar, taking several of the New Dead with it.
I couldn’t control it, I couldn’t direct it, and I couldn’t contain it. This was Wild Magick, and like a river that jumped its banks, it was without bounds. It surged over the New Dead caught in its tide and dragged them under waves of pure energy, their scorched flesh fading like dust in the wind. My hand throbbed, and I tried to drop the ring, but those fingers remained closed—the uncontrolled fury of Wild Magick kept them shut and the torrent coming.
It wanted more—more memories, more soul, more me. The Wild Magick wanted out—it was tired of being trapped in my body—and sensing the outlet it blew out a sidewall: flirting with Porter in history, her short-shorts and wry smile calling me to action—burned away in a flash of Wild Magick, racing across campus on an old rusty bike, hoping to catch her before her last class of the week—melted away in a surge of Wild Magick.
No! Stop!
But it didn’t stop. The fiery waves of cosmic power wouldn’t cease, not unless I found the strength to end it. Glasses exploded and bottles shattered; the bistro had become a mini-cyclone of debris. Innocent people had to have been injured in this onslaught.
What have I become? Was the House right?
I pounded my hand against the floor, raining down my fist and praying for the strength to make it stop. My fingers loosened, bloody and bruised; they still held the last vestiges of the ring and weren’t yet ready to give it up. One last memory flooded my mind. This time it wasn’t Porter—it was the girl who’d come before her. The one I’d left for greener pastures, the one that had taken me down a dark and twisted path, the one that had showed me just how terrifying Magick could be.
Morgan’s tears burned away in the searing fire of Wild Magick as the melted remains of a once-great Logic Loop dripped onto the cracked tile floor. The Wild Magick vanished, and with it went the New Dead.
I willed myself up and limped for the door, hoping to God that Porter was still close, and in one piece.
I hadn’t hit the street before I found her.
My wife had her blackened tongue deep in the valet’s mouth. With a hand down his loose pants and the other pushing his head into hers, she rubbed her body against him. Together they gyrated on the curb like the opening scene from some cheap porno.
The stench of New Dead was overwhelming, and I knew this wasn’t Porter, but seeing your wife with another man was just too much to take. Still riding the high of surviving an unmaking I lashed out with my Magick and sent a pen from the valet stand rocketing into the young kid’s thigh. His muffled scream was lost in Porter’s gaping mouth as he clutched at the pen jutting out of his leg.
What are you doing? He’s just a kid!
The unmaking made it hard to think straight and that coupled with the New Dead riding my wife, meant I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
Porter tossed her parking lot lover aside and turned to smile at me, her bloody tongue licking cracked lip
s. “I told you I’d be back.”
“Get out of her now!”
I reached for my wife, but she backed up toward the street, her heels now only feet away from traffic.
“Not so fast,” the New Dead said, grabbing my wife’s breasts and squeezing them. “So good… Come on, let’s you and me have some fun. I bet this body rocks like a metal concert.”
“Hurt my wife and I’ll destroy you.”
“Those are strong words coming from a man in khakis. How did you even get a girl this smoking hot? She damaged in the head? I bet she’s some nut-case right? Doesn’t know what a real man looks like?”
Anger surged, and I reached for my Magick, but found it waning. The unmaking had taken too much, and I’d just used what little I did have to stab an innocent kid—the tank was coming up empty, and going too much farther might be my undoing.
“Porter! You’ve got to fight it. I know you’re in there somewhere. This isn’t you. Push that thing aside and take the wheel.”
My wife’s blackened eyes stared back at me—cold and soulless. I found nothing of the woman I loved in them.
“Sorry, Charlie, she can’t hear you. I got her down deep, on her knees and giving it to me right.” The New Dead pushed my wife’s broken lips into a tight ‘o.’ “Yeah, she knows how to suck—you musta taught her right. I bet you’ve sucked a few in your day too.”
“Let her go!”
My possessed wife flung her hair back. “That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Don’t get me wrong, she feels good—all silky smooth—but I’ve got a job to do, working for the man and all…”
“Who? Who are you working for?”
The New Dead didn’t answer me; instead, it kicked off the curb and threw Porter’s body into oncoming traffic.
23
Don't Forget Me
Movies love to show time slowing down when something really terrible happens. That’s a load of crap. If anything it ramps up to warp speed.
Porter’s body hit the street hard, her head snapping against the concrete like a rag doll. With cars coming fast I didn’t stop to think. I threw myself into the road behind her, scraping my knees on the pavement and flailing my hands in a desperate attempt to break her fall.
The spirit was willing, but the flesh—especially my flesh—was weak.
The New Dead vaulted out of Porter like a teenager springing from the pool. He tossed his translucent frame up and on to the still-warm pavement without giving me a second glance.
I made a half-hearted grasp for his leg, but came up short. My bigger concern was Porter, and while I would have loved to know who was running this New Dead circus, I wasn’t going to risk my wife for it.
I considered Magick, but had barely enough left in the tank to hold up my pants let alone grab on to New Dead. Un-attached I knew he couldn’t go far—the New Dead can’t do much without a host—but he didn’t have to, he had a ride waiting. A large white van shot by, going the opposite direction. He latched on to a hand hanging out that van’s open window and shimmied in as the vehicle roared past.
Taillights whipped by, and if I’d been thinking clearly I might have remembered to get the license plate, but my brain was on tilt.
Porter!
I scooped her into my arms and tried to drag her back toward the curb. Limp in my hands, she flopped like a wet noodle. Bright lights of an oncoming car flooded my vision, and like a deer on the highway I froze. Somewhere deep in the dark crevasses of my mind a scared voice screamed out for help.
I’ll make the deal! Whatever you want, just save my wife!
But there was no response—we were alone.
The headlights bore down on us, and I knew there wasn’t enough time to get back to the relative safety of the curb. With my Magickal reserves all but spent, there would be no fantastical escapes, no grand portals to safety, no brilliant displays of cosmic power. We’d die tonight beneath the grill of that steel beast, our bodies crushed by tires and our children lost to a series of foster homes. My mind played through a thousand scenarios in the span of seconds, showing me the tapestry of possibilities my poor kids could face.
I squeezed Porter tight against my chest and let go of our future. We’d never grow old together.
Old!
I’d said before, but Magick is about belief, and sometimes you don’t need much to make those beliefs come true—especially if they’re damn plausible.
I wrapped one arm around my unconscious wife and extended the other toward the oncoming car.
“Obliviscatur,” I said, willing the last scrapes of Magick left in me toward the driver seconds away from crushing us.
Forget…
The car’s brakes squealed on the smooth pavement. Its front end dipped, pulling down as the car tires tried desperately to cling to the road. I closed my eyes, certain that this was the end, and tried to shield my wife from the worst of it.
I held my breath—nothing.
I peeked out to find the car’s front bumper bobbing gently in front us, mere inches from Porter’s bloodied face. I exhaled, clutching my wife with shaking arms as the adrenaline wrecked my nerves.
Thank you…
The driver door opened and a pair of pristine white loafers stepped into view. A brilliant and confusing pair of wild-print argyle socks rose up from those loafers, then vanished under the cuffs of some of the most elaborate plaid pants I’d seen since my days working at the golf course.
“I’m telling you, Irma Lee, it’s right here. This is the place.”
Another voice, from the sound of it a member of the same generation, bellowed from the passenger seat. “Damn it, Omar, you can’t just stop the car in the middle of the road. Get your butt back in the seat and pull us into the parking lot.”
Horns blared and more cars ground to a halt behind Omar’s Lincoln.
“I’ll have you know this is a perfectly fine place to stop.”
It sure is.
“They’re honking at you, you idiot. Get back in the car.”
The white loafers moved back toward the car, then stopped and resumed a rather defiant pose. “I will not.”
Before our unlikely savior could change his mind, or the adrenaline left me entirely, I scooped up my unconscious wife and carried her to the curb.
“Get out of the damn road, you ninny! You’re going to get us killed,” the passenger shouted.
Omar stood his ground. “I will not, you are allowed to park on the curb, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
The driver door slammed shut in time with the faint hum of a window rolling down.
Irma Lee continued to berate her husband as I carried Porter past them and into the parking lot.
I whispered a silent prayer, thanking them for forgetting at just the right moment. Magick was funny that way, sometimes the best results were the ones that you’d never guess were Magick in the first place.
Porter’s head leaned against my chest, my shirt wicking up the blood rolling down her temple. Her chest moved softly against mine—I knew she was alive, but I had no clue just how much damage she’d sustained.
I found our car keys on the abandoned valet stand. With Porter’s car unlocked, I laid my wife gently in the back seat.
We pulled out of the far side of the lot to avoid the backup Omar and my impromptu Magick had created. Traffic was light, making it easy to merge onto the street and then onto the highway. I pushed the pedal down and sped off toward the emergency room, unable to stop checking on Porter in the rear-view mirror every few seconds.
Magick has one singular truth—it demands sacrifice, and it doesn’t give a damn who from.
Come on, honey—stay with me.
24
Stitches and Fixes
I didn’t get more than a few feet inside the automatic doors before the nurses had my wife and started peppering me with questions. One of them must have noticed my cuts, which had already begun to diminish thanks to the gift from an unwanted benefactor, and pulled me into a se
parate room to get them stitched up.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked, rolling up my sleeves.
“We’ll do our best.”
That was fair—not what anyone wants to hear, but fair. There was no way to know what sort of injuries my wife had sustained. I knew she’d taken the pavement hard, but there was no telling what else the New Dead had subjected her to before that.
“Do you have someone you should call?”
Oh my, God—Cathy!
I let my nurse get her tools together and pulled out my phone. My loving daughter had already sent me a text.
Hey Dad, can I have the last of the ice cream?
It’s funny how the things that seem important one minute pale in the next.
I punched up her number and let it ring; this was not something you text.
“Hey, Dad—before you ask I left you some cookies and cream.”
“Cathy.”
I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell your daughter that her mother was just possessed by a spirit of the damned, ridden like a plow horse, and tossed into the street?
“Yeah? How’s the date night?”
If she was really coming into her Magick, then my daughter was going to have to know about all these things: the Imp in our garage, Old and New Dead, and even 69 Mallory Lane.
I wasn’t ready for any of that.
I took a deep breath. “It’s fine. I need you to do something for me.”
“Sure.”
“Is the house locked?”
“Ah…” Cathy let her response draw out while she went from door to door.
Click. Click.
“Yup. All locked up.”
“What about the garage,” I asked, seeing the nurse glance at her watch. “Is the garage door locked?”
“No. Do you want me to lock it?”
“Yes.”
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
“Just do it, Cathy.”
Dead Set Page 11
