by Harry Nix
“Holy crap, Alex you’re alive. Someone blew up your apartment did you know that?” Puzo said. He sounded like he was running, his breath coming quick and fast.
“Yep, I saw it. Was there actually. Went in to get my laptop and a few things. Just got out when it went boom.”
“I talked to that neighbor of yours. The old lady. I think she might be crazy though bro. She said she saw you jump out of third-story window.”
“She said the same thing to me. Maybe was some clothes or something that came out because that definitely didn't happen, obviously,” Alex said, wondering how exactly the Great Barrier worked with something like a werewolf jumping out of a third story window happened. Had Mrs. King just seen him as a human jumping out?
“Where have you been? You don’t come to work, you don’t show to your own birthday, like where the hell have you been?”
Alex had known Puzo for a long time with and although his friend was worried about him and happy that he was back he was also angry that Alex could disappear just like that.
Alex had come up with an excuse but now it felt stupid. He’d planned to claim he suddenly had a new girlfriend and they’d gone off together to a cabin in the wood, incommunicado. Now that felt like blaming Nia and also something stupid a teenager would say. So he decided to go for the truth, or at least a part of it.
“I can't tell you why disappeared but obviously you saw my apartment got blown up. Some things have been happening and I'm not going to be able to come back to work on the game,” he said.
He heard the sound of footsteps over the phone slowing and then stop. Puzo was silent for a moment before clearing his throat.
“C’mon, we’re your friends, we can help you.”
Alex was almost tempted to blurt out okay I'm a werewolf, that's what's going on but he didn't know what would happen. With the Great Barrier pull on Puzo and he wouldn’t understand him or think he was crazy?
Looking down his bag sitting by the laptop. Alex suddenly remembered the wooden ball he'd captured from the mages with the circuit board inside.
“There's something you can do to help me. I’m going to mail you something that has a circuit inside it, plus a few other things. Don't plug it into any power or fix it but let me know if you can work out what the circuit is for. It should be safe to send me an email about it.”
“Safe to send you an email about it? Damn, that sounds serious. Okay mail me whatever it is and I’ll look into it.”
“I'm sorry, I didn't want to go like this. I'm going to upload every single piece of work for the game that I have. I’ll find some way to get some money to pay my part of the office rent, too. You and Howey need to complete the game.”
Alex heard Puzo sigh. The silence stretched out between them before his friend spoke again.
“Okay, well I guess if that's how you think it needs to be, it’s the way it needs to be. Don't forget we’re your friends though. Both of us will take a bullet for you. Although you need to call Howey or he’s going to murder you. If you need my help or Howey just say and we’ll come running okay?”
Alex felt tears prickling the corners of his eyes. He quickly wiped them away.
“I hope I get this sorted out soon. I’ll talk to you later and you should get a package in the next couple of days,” he said, trying to hold it together. They ended the call and then Alex sat there just looking at his phone.
Despite the wolf inside him giving him calm and contentment, it had no solution for abandoning a lifelong dream. He did have anger, though, and rage and desire for revenge on those who had taken away something that he loved so dearly.
Alex distracted himself by looking through his emails again and then finally setting up and starting to upload through a cloud service everything he’d done on the game. It would take hours but eventually it would be completed. Alex didn’t know what he’d do to get money to pay his part of the office rent though. Even draining his bank account to zero wouldn’t cover it.
Once the laptop began uploading Alex sat back and brought up what he was starting to think of as his spellcasting screen. He saw he still only had a few percent of the spells from the two “junk” rings Juno had bought.
The two rings were sitting on the kitchen table. Alex picked up one and cast Analyze on it, a small screen appearing and filling with information. It was the fire starting ring, an interesting piece of magical technology. If you wore the ring you could conjure a flame by clicking your fingers. The flame sat on safety tip of the finger, not burning you and remained there for a few seconds, enabling you to light a fire. Juno had explained it was popular for people who went camping... or who wanted to commit arson.
Alex copied and pasted the spell back and forth a few times, but then eventually gave up. At the rate it was going across it would take the entire day.
Putting that aside he decide to cast a more powerful version of Analyze on the ring, just like he done yesterday on the batteries in the basement below. This time he cast Analyze three times hoping that he wouldn’t exhaust himself too much while still managing to get useful information.
It was difficult to merge the spells but soon he had Analyze 3x running. The ring was clearly a far less complicated piece of magical technology than the batteries. There are only four spells running on it and they were each detailed rather than having rows of question marks.
There was a spell that protected the user from being burned. Another spell that created a flame upon clicking. A third spell that drew power from the user to recharge the ring and a fourth spell which strengthened the ring itself so could hold all four spells comfortably.
Each of the spells highlighted and Alex was able to open them up. However, he was presented with the same compressed gibberish as before. When he attempted to copy one of the spells it only came across less than half a percent of the time. It wasn't code that he was able to modify to do anything with. Alex checked his mana level – it had gone down to a quarter remaining and now was slowly draining, the Analyze 3x spell taking more than he was generating.
Alex spent the next twenty minutes clicking around various tabs examining parts of the compressed and compiled code that made up the spells seeing if he could notice any patterns he could use. In college, they'd done things like this, taking the compiled output of a program and having to reverse engineer it, working out how to access data and so on. Although this was similar there were no structures Alex could recognize. He didn't have a guidebook to refer to. He wondered briefly if Juno would be able to help. The idea that he would have to study for sixteen years wasn't something that sat well with him. He had psychotic mages after him so he needed to get good, and fast.
Eventually, seeing his mana was about to reach the bottom (and feeling it in his body), Alex let go of the spell and then dropped the ring back onto the table.
As he did, his stomach gave a loud grumble and he smiled to himself. He had indeed used a lot of energy yesterday.
Alex made his way to the kitchen and raided the fridge. Figuring that Nia would wake up from the smell and maybe Juno would be home too, he prepared a huge breakfast of crispy bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and eggs, much like the Grease Trap’s Heart Attack Special. He got coffee brewing and drank a glass of orange juice while it cooked. Sure enough, just as it was about ready Nia came into the kitchen looking adorably sleepy. She was only wearing a pair of skimpy blue underwear and a white T-shirt that he realized a moment later was one of his. The moment he saw her something deep inside responded. Sure, there was often nothing more adorable or sexy in a girlfriend wearing your T-shirt but this was more than that. She was his. His mate.
“That smells so good,” Nia murmured and walked over to him as Alex was pushing mushrooms to the side of the pan so could crack some eggs in the hot oil. Nia wrapped her arms around him from behind and gave him a kiss on the back of his neck.
“I’m not just a pretty face,” Alex said. Nia took one of the glasses of orange juice and sat down at the table, watching Alex co
ok. The front door slammed not long after, Juno walking in wearing running gear, her cheeks flushed red.
“And he can cook as well?” she said, pinching Alex on the backside and giving Nia quick kiss.
“Did you seriously get up just to go for a run? After all that exercise yesterday?” Nia said, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“It wasn't just a run. I also wanted to see if anyone was doing surveillance in the neighborhood so I went for a jog around. The good news: the wards are working. The bad news: over on Fenwick Street I think a sewage line has broken because it smells really bad over there,” she said. She pirouetted before rushing off to the shower.
“Witches,” Nia grumbled, drinking some more orange juice. Alex served up the breakfast. Soon Juno was back and they were all eating. He quickly polished his off and so did the girls, but then Juno told him to sit down when he went to return to the stove. She whipped up a batch of pancakes that she expertly cooked using two frying pans at once.
Alex hadn't realized how hungry he was. As soon as the pancakes were ready Juno shuffled them onto their plates one by one and Alex and Nia demolished them. Eventually they filled themselves and soon were sitting around the table in a comfortable silence.
“So, obviously we need a plan of some kind,” Nia said eventually.
“ I need a house of some kind. Considering the last one got blown up,” Alex said.
“Me Casa es tu Casa,” Juno said. “Or rather, mi grandmama’s Casa es tu Casa. Is that right? Whatever, the answer is we can stay here until my mother comes back which is probably a month or so.”
“Is she going to throw us out when she comes back?” Alex asked.
“I know we could definitely stay. She’d love that, but believe me you do not want to be living here with that crazy witch. I think my grandmother might be coming back at the same time so you don’t want to be living with those two crazy witches.”
“What? Your grandmother is adorable,” Nia said.
“Yeah, adorable like the way a baby rattlesnake is adorable.” Juno turned to Alex. “I told Nia I’d help you and I will. So I think maybe you lay low and I train you so at least you have some magical skill and then we work out how to track down who is tracking you.”
Alex took a sip of his orange juice and remembered that he'd called Puzo this morning, something he hadn’t yet discussed with the girls.
“That sounds fine... I guess. I called one of my friends this morning, Puzo, by the way, and said I was going to send him that wooden globe so he could work out what the circuit is.”
“Tell him not to power it up if he can help it. It might attract mages,” Juno said, heading for the bench to start loading the dishwasher.
“You don’t have some magical broomstick with buckets that does your cleaning for you?” Alex asked with a smile.
“We do. He’s actually doing two to four years down at Leavenworth. Tax evasion! Who knew? So we’re using the dishwasher until he comes back,” Juno said. “So shall we get started with some training? Nia, what are you going to do?”
Nia gave a big yawn, covering her mouth. “This werewolf is going back to sleep,” she said. She gave the both of them a kiss before wandering back to the bedroom.
“Right, let's go,” Juno said, a musical chime playing as she turned the dishwasher on.
She led Alex to the basement room where the batteries were and knelt on the cushions, instructing him to do the same. Once they are on the ground she took his two hands in hers.
“First of all, you need to learn how to connect to the magic on your own. That's all we going to be doing until you get it,” Juno said.
Alex took a deep calming breath and nodded. “I'm ready,” he said.
“The connection is like a muscle. If you build it, it will grow stronger, and eventually be able to reach on your own. I’ll reach, you’ll connect, and then we’ll break it.”
Alex felt Juno connect to the magic and then through her he connected. The moment he did, briefly sensing the waves of magic swirling around them, Juno cut the connection.
“Again,” she said.
18
Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye. Every day, Alex went to the basement with Juno and practiced connecting to the magic. It's all they did from sunup to sundown – connect, disconnect, again. Connect, disconnect, again. Every night, Alex would stagger back upstairs, barely able to walk or think and they’d have dinner prepared by Nia. She'd taken on the job of looking after them, including posting the wooden ball to Puzo, along with a note from Alex warning him not to power it up.
The short break from dinner was often enough to revive Alex somewhat which was good because both the girls would then drag him off to the bedroom shortly thereafter.
Alex felt he had entered some strange alternate world. There was some nights where after returning from the bedroom they’d sit on the sofa and watch some ridiculous movie Juno had in her collection. She was incredibly obsessed with older movies and although some of them were undoubtedly good, like the Untouchables and Lethal Weapon, others were so bad the only way to get through them was with a hefty dose of alcohol. Alex discovered that now he was a werewolf his metabolism was far better at processing alcohol and as a result when they sat down to watch something truly terrible there were often plenty of bottles of wine or beer on hand. He'd nearly gone through three bottles of wine on his own to watch the Masters of the Universe, cringing every time Skeletor’s terrible make-up appeared on the screen.
Eventually, on day nine, Alex managed to connect to the magic on his own. It had taken him enormous effort, leaving him sweating and shaking but finally he could feel the magic around him. When he was connected through Juno it felt like it was full of eddying currents and waves. He could sense warmth and direction and temperature. On his own it was only a faint shadow of that, like the echoes of waves on a distant beach.
Juno had still treated it as though he'd just won the gold medal at the Olympics, jumping up and down and hugging him and cheering, causing Nia to come rushing downstairs and join them in their celebration. The cheering and yelling turning soon to kissing and clothes being pulled off and the three of them landing in the giant pile of cushions spread across the floor.
Once Alex got the connection the days changed. Now he only spent half the day practicing it over and again, growing stronger. The rest of the day Juno taught spells. She taught him many basic ones, like how to light a flame on the end of his finger like with the ring. How to purify polluted water. Telekinesis – which he could use to throw a small pebble. Unlock – which opened physical and electronic locks.
Alex had no frame of reference for how complicated a spell could be. The spell to create fire from his fingertip was simple enough and he quickly learned it, but the Scrying spell Juno had used to look up in his apartment was impossibly complex. To Alex it was like Juno reading out a novel to him and expecting him to copy it line by line. Her healing spell was the same – far too large for him to copy at all. Eventually she'd given up saying they would work on smaller, simpler spells. From what is gleaned of the Scrying spell it appeared it was performing multiple complicated functions. She described it as taking the light from a certain area and showing it somewhere else, like opening a tunnel in physical space. Due to his lack of reference. Alex didn't know if this was how all scrying spells were meant to work but it seemed overly complicated to him. Of course the physical act of moving light from one place to another would be difficult but surely there were other ways to do it.
As they hit the two week mark, Alex now had ten spells that he could cast on command, which appeared to be his current limit.
Know Thyself
Analyze
Shield
Purify
Flame Finger
Haste
Unlock
Find food
Conceal
It was at the two week mark when Juno caught Alex attempting to type out the Know Thyself spell on his laptop.
“No
, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that,” she said, mashing a hand on the keyboard to mess it up before telling him to delete the whole thing.
“Why not? I'm just trying to study it to see if I can work out how to reproduce it or make a spell of my own.”
“Here, try this – write it on this piece of paper and see what happens,” Juno said handing him a pen.
Alex brought up the spell and then carefully copied the code down onto the page. The moment he set down the final character he felt a small pull in the magic. Juno carefully pushed the piece of paper into the middle of the table, moving everything else out of the way. It was easy to see why a minute later when a small curl of smoke arose from the paper and then it burst into flame, turning to ash quickly.
“A completed spell draws power, even sitting passively. That's why the rings have strengthening spells on them and often outputs to radiate heat or vibrate to dump energy. The spell sitting there will take in magic and there is nowhere for it to go. You write on paper and whoosh, up it goes. Type it on your laptop and you end up with one dead laptop.”
“What if I etched it on metal? How do they make spell books?”
“You put that spell on a sheet of metal and within a day or maybe two it will heat up to the point that it destroys itself, depending on how powerful the spell is. It's good way to make a bomb or kill yourself. Because once it destroys itself it lets go of the magical energy all at once. So if you want red-hot droplets of molten metal going everywhere that's what you do. The spell books are carefully prepared and require multiple spells, each one laying on top of the other, carefully integrated to prepare the surface to hold the spell. Even so they can be quite dangerous. Some of the older spell books have gone nuclear from the spells within them.”
