Science and Sorcery (28 page)

He’d been able to screw up his courage and walk into the classroom when Marie had walked past him and knocked at the classroom door.  Calvin had frozen in shock, unable to believe his eyes.  Marie going to see the magician-teacher could hardly be a coincidence, but what could it mean?  If she'd known what had happened to her, she would have gone to the police and reported Calvin as a rapist, although she might have had difficulty proving it.  He’d been frozen in indecision for several minutes, unsure of what to do.  The magician might just realise that something was wrong with Marie’s memory and unlock it. 

You have to go now
, Harrow said, finally. 
Your time has come
.

Calvin braced himself and walked up to the door.  There was no point in trying to use magic to spy on them; the magician would certainly sense the intrusion and sound the alarm.  He swallowed hard and then pushed the door open.  Marie was standing in front of Miss Hoover’s desk, crying her eyes out.  She turned and saw him and started to scream.

Silence her
, Harrow ordered. 
Now
!

Calvin threw a freeze charm at her, locking her firmly in place until he could release her.  It almost cost him his life as the magician-teacher plucked a fireball out of thin air and threw it at him.  Calvin deflected it with a complex charm Harrow had insisted he learn, wondering just why Miss Reynolds was screaming into a broach.  The solution hit him a moment later; she was calling for help, perhaps from other magicians. 

Gathering his magic, he threw a spell at her that should have left her as helpless as Marie.  Instead of deflecting it, she ducked under the desk and it splattered harmlessly against the far wall.  Calvin would have admired her reflexes if he hadn't sensed another wave of magic, a split-second before the desk picked itself up from the floor and flew right at him.  Calvin closed his eyes, concentrating on maintaining his wards, as the desk slammed right into his protections.  There was no pain, but the kinetic impact threw him back against the far wall, pieces of the desk raining down all around him. 

Miss Reynolds rose to her feet, one hand lifted in a defensive position while the other was generating a charm Calvin didn't recognise.  At Harrow’s urging, he threw a bolt of raw
mana
directly at her hand, causing her charm to flare out of control and throw her backwards, one hand burning brightly with seemingly unquenchable flames.  She snapped out a word – he sensed Harrow’s shock as she recognised the spell – and the flames flickered and died, leaving her arm blackened and broken.  Miss Reynolds clearly knew how to use magic to dampen pain too, or else she would have been screaming in agony.  She was still trying to cast a spell, but she didn't even seem to be able to aim right...

That moment of overconfidence almost killed him.  Long hands reached over his shoulder, trying hard to strangle him.  If it hadn't been for the wards Harrow had taught him to maintain automatically, Marie
would
have managed to kill him.  Clearly, seeing him using magic had brought back her memories from where his memory charm had hidden them.  Miss Reynolds had somehow managed to break the spell he’d cast on Marie and he’d completely missed it.  He had merely thought that she couldn't aim any longer.

Near panic, he drew on his raw power and thrust it out, through Marie.  Her body caught fire instantly and she stumbled backwards, screaming in pain as brilliant white flames consumed her.  Calvin took one last glance at her and turned back to Miss Reynolds, who seemed to have managed to rebuild half of her wards.  A wave of magic, precisely focused according to Harrow’s instructions, knocked them down and left her quivering helplessly in front of him.  One final spell turned her clothes to dust.  It was one he had seriously considered using during the next assembly...not that it mattered any longer.  Today would be his last day in school.

Use a securing spell to hold her down
, Harrow ordered. 
You cannot rely on control spells with another magician
.

Calvin obeyed.  He’d been warned that breaking her skin, for whatever reason, might make it harder to drain power from her, but thankfully the securing spell didn't need to do more than have her pressed against the floor.  Quickly, he spread her legs and arms, before producing the knife from his belt and starting to carve the first rune.  He sensed Harrow’s quiet approval in his mind as he cut into the magician-teacher’s skin.  Her eyes were wide with fear, a fear that was almost intoxicating.  She knew what was going to happen, all right.

“We could poke into her mind,” he suggested.  “Find out just how she learned to manipulate magic so quickly.”

Dangerous
, Harrow informed him. 
She will meet you as an equal in her mind.  And you are not ready to brew potions that will break her resistance.  Better to kill her now than risk leaving her alive
.

Calvin finished the fifth rune and prepared to carve the sixth.

And then he heard the pounding outside.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

New York, USA

Day 33

Golem had listened without much interest to the whiny girl talking about her problems to a magician who should have had much better things to do.  The whole idea of
talking
about problems was thoroughly bizarre; the modern world seemed to believe that it could shield its children from the unfortunate realities of life, including the one about death coming to everyone.  Indeed, the moment the girl had started whining he’d decided that she wasn't the black magician.  Dark wizards were prone to gloating, not whining. 

And then the
real
black magician had entered the classroom.

Golem hadn't hesitated.  He’d jumped out of the window and fallen ten metres to the ground, landing without the aid of a single spell.  A human would have smashed both of his legs to splinters – at the very least – but Golem merely picked himself up and started to run towards the school gates.  Enchanter had built him for speed as well as resilience; when the school doors failed to open in time, he simply crashed through them and raced towards the black magician’s last known position.  He barely even noticed the caretaker before he clipped him, sending the poor man staggering to the floor with a broken arm.  All that mattered was getting to the black magician before anyone else.

Harrow’s dupe poked his head out of the classroom and stared in absolute disbelief.  Golem knew that Harrow would probably have been a far better teacher than he’d been, even if patience wasn't a trait that most sorcerers possessed, which meant that her student would probably be better trained than any of the magicians he’d taught.  He knew that Matt and his lover wanted to take the black magician alive, but Golem knew better than to allow that to happen.  As long as the black magician was free, the entire world would be in terrible danger.  Golem pounded towards him, lifting one fist.  An impact at this speed would turn the magician into nothing more than a stain on the walls.

The dupe acted on instinct, blasting Golem with a wave of raw magic that barely halted his charge.  Enchanter had built all kinds of powerful protections into his clay, including some that laughed at even raw magic.  The second attack was much more powerful and focused, probably guided directly by Harrow.  Golem lost his footing and hit the ground with a terrific crash.  The third attack splinted the floor below his feet and he plunged into the basement.  It didn't hurt anything, but it would take time for him to climb back up...

***

Matt followed Golem, but the humanoid creature left him firmly in the dust.  The SWAT team were deploying – thankfully, they now had a visual image of the black magician – and two of the officers were following him into the school, while the remainder were taking up position outside it.  A SWAT team possessed more firepower than the average citizen realised, along with air support and armoured vehicles.  Matt desperately prayed that they would not be necessary, but if half of Golem’s stories were true the shit was definitely about to hit the fan. 

He was just in time to see Golem falling down through the floor and crashing into the distance below.  The basement wasn't very deep – according to the school plans, it served as a gym and general storage space – but it was possible that the fall had damaged him in some way.  Or that the black magician, with his own source of knowledge from that era, had managed to destroy Golem completely.  He pushed the thought aside as he levelled his pistol at the black magician.  The kid might be young – Matt doubted that he was any older than fifteen – but he was incredibly dangerous.

“NYPD,” he snapped.  “Put your hands in the air,
now
!”

The black magician gave them an odd look, without bothering to raise his hands.  It took Matt a moment to realise that he was genuinely astonished that they were pointing guns at him, as if he knew they couldn't hurt him.  Golem had warned them that some wards could be used to protect against gunshots, but no one knew if the wards could stand up to Matt’s talents.

“Put your hands in the air,
now
,” he repeated, “or we will open fire.”

There was a brief moment of utter stillness, followed by the black magician lifting a hand and throwing a spell at him.  Matt jumped to one side as the spell flared down the corridor, just as the two SWAT team members fired.  They were both expert shots, but their bullets simply glanced off the black magician’s head.  He'd warded himself against bullets and presumably against anything else he thought could hurt him.  A moment later, one of the SWAT men was picked up and flung down the corridor by an unseen force.  The sound of the impact as he hit the far wall suggested that he’d been smashed to a pulp. 

Matt aimed and fired, his bullet catching the young man in the shoulder...

***

Calvin screamed as a red-hot poker seemed to jam itself into his right shoulder.  The spell he'd been crafting fell apart, sending him stumbling backwards in shock.  He’d never felt so much pain in his life, even when Moe had twisted his arm backwards and forwards just to see what would happen.  How
could
the policeman have done it?  Was he a magician himself, or had the government managed to figure out how to combine magic and science?

Magic flared around him as he became aware of a dark figure advancing on him.  He lashed out, creating a wall of fire that should drive back anything, apart from the inhuman creature he’d seen charging at him.  What was
that
?  He’d often thought of Moe and his cronies as gorillas who’d been strategically shaved and released into school, but it had never crossed his mind that his absurd conceit might actually be real...

You’re entering shock
, Harrow said.  Her voice was very cold, very focused, and he clung to it as a lifeline. 
Maintain the flames, then expand them.  Let the entire school burn.

Calvin did as she said, stumbling back into the classroom.  The fire alarm was finally sounding – how reassuring, part of his mind noted – as the flames spread rapidly out of control.  One of the policemen was definitely dead, he was sure, but what about the other two?  And what about the inhuman monster he’d seen?  One of the Changed or something else entirely?

Leave it for the moment
, Harrow ordered.  Calvin looked over at Miss Reynolds, who was still held firmly down by the spell he’d cast on her.  He’d left out the final rune, which meant he couldn’t sacrifice her before the policemen – and their friend – managed to get through the flames.  Time was running out – and he’d exposed himself for nothing. 
Concentrate on fanning the fires
.

He glanced out of the window – and swore as another bullet bounced off his wards.  There looked to be a small army of policemen outside, complete with heavy vehicles he hadn't seen since watching the footage of the last great Occupy Wall Street protest six months ago.  No doubt the military too was on the way, perhaps with aircraft that could bomb him from a safe distance.  It wouldn't be long before they figured out who he was, now they’d seen his face.  He’d definitely have to go on the run.

There was a crash behind him and he saw a black-suited man jump right
though
the fires, followed rapidly by the inhuman monster.  Calvin desperately tried to focus his mind for a spell, but his thoughts seemed to be slipping away...

Give me control
, Harrow ordered.  He felt her thoughts sink into his mind and wondered, with a moment of sickening insight, if Marie and Sandra had felt the same way when he'd moved them like puppets.  And he’d killed both of them afterwards. 
Now...

***

Matt felt the heat of the fires burning him as he jumped through, but somehow he made it into the classroom.  The black magician was staggering, one hand pressed firmly against his shoulder as if he were trying to stanch the bleeding.  Even a trained soldier would have difficulty shrugging off such a wound and the shot had been precise, rendering the magician’s right arm useless.  It wouldn't stop him using magic, Golem had said, but it would make it much harder to do it if he couldn't use both arms. 

The magician turned to look at him...and his face changed.  It was nothing so blatant as a glamour, but something else, something that set alarm bells ringing in Matt’s mind.  The magician suddenly looked very old and powerful, even though Matt could never have said why.  And the way he stood seemed different...

He lifted his gun, but it was already too late.  A blue sphere of light flickered into existence around the magician and then carried him away, crashing through the wall and heading towards the police barricade like an oversized bowling ball.  Matt saw shots from both the snipers and the policemen at the barricade bouncing off the ball, just before it crashed through the cars and rolled off down the street at terrifying speed, picking up cars and squashing pedestrians as it moved.  It bounced into buildings, slamming into them hard enough to shake them badly, maybe even knock them down.  Some policemen were already running after it, but such pursuit was futile.  The ball was simply moving too fast.

Desperately, Matt keyed his radio.  “Get the choppers after it,” he ordered.  “And the drone.  I want eyes on it at all times.”

He heard an explosion in the distance, followed by a rising plume of smoke.

“I’m going,” Golem said.

He jumped out of the window himself and started to run.  The policemen saw him coming and scattered before he could slam his way through them, some of them tending to the policemen who had been injured by the black magician’s escape pod.  In the distance, Matt could hear the sound of sirens as fire engines began to converge on the school, but he suspected that it would be too late to save the building.  Shaking his head, he walked back to where Misty waited and tried to pull her to her feet.  For a long moment,
something
held her nude body to the floor and then it broke, allowing him to free her.  One look at the other body confirmed that there was no hope for Marie.  She'd been burned to a blackened skeleton.

“Hang on,” he said, as they walked to the edge of the classroom.  The black magician had smashed the wall down when he’d made his escape.  “An ambulance is on the way.”

Misty muttered something in reply.  Her right hand was completely wrecked, burned to a crisp.  Maybe the Healer could do something about it to force it to regenerate, or maybe not.  But if she hadn't stalled the black magician long enough...

Matt looked down the street, following the trail of devastation, and winced.  If one black magician could do so much damage with only one sacrifice to his name, what could one do with a dozen sacrifices – or more?  Could modern society even survive?

***

Despite the devastation and injuries, Golem was actually quite pleased to note that the bubble held together for nearly ten minutes.  Sustaining such a spell would normally have been impossible until the
mana
level rose much higher, which suggested that the black magician and his mentor were tapping into the
mana
they’d secured by sacrificing Sandra Yeager.  The longer they kept the spell going, the weaker they would be.  It would also cause no end of devastation to New York, but that was a minor concern.  The nightmare that would be unleashed if the Thirteen ever returned to full power
had
to be averted, whatever the cost. 

The bubble finally crashed into a large building and came to a halt.  Unsurprisingly, the shockwaves caused by the impact – and perhaps some magical manipulation – brought down most of the building on top of it.  Golem knew better than to assume that the damage would be sufficient to crack the bubble before Harrow’s pupil safeguarded himself.  Instead, ignoring the dead and wounded, he started to dig into the rubble as soon as the building finished collapsing.  Perhaps he could catch them before they had a chance to escape.

***

Calvin felt dirty as Harrow pulled out of his mind, slipping back to wherever she drifted in prison.  The pain in his shoulder had become a dull ache, but it was still there and Harrow, for whatever reason, hadn't used any healing spells.  He was about to cast one himself when Harrow interrupted him.  The bullet had been charmed and had to be removed manually, while the painkilling spell was in place.  If not, the bullet would remain in his body and no regeneration spell would be able to heal him completely.  And losing one arm would cripple his ability to work magic.

Just reach in and pull out the bullet
, Harrow ordered, calmly. 
There will be no pain as long as you act quickly
.