Shotgun Sorceress (7 page)

Suddenly, the earthen bed seemed to slide sideways beneath me. I was blind, had the sensation of being smothered … and just as suddenly found myself standing beneath a bare yellow bulb on the concrete floor of an all-too-familiar basement. My flame hand was flesh again. I was in a small chain-link dog-pen cell in the corner of the basement; glass jars of memories I’d captured from the Goad glowed beneath the narrow single bed pushed against the gray cinder-block wall.

This was Cooper’s hell, or what was left of it. The hellement was linked to the fire that burned in my hand. I’d dragged Jordan into the hellement to teach him a lesson. It had been an unthinking act in more ways than one; I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d gotten in here during my confrontation with Jordan, and was even less sure how I’d come to be here from the tent.

And what would happen to my body while I was in here? Had I physically traveled here, or was I experiencing a psychic projection? If I’d left my body behind, what if my arm dropped and set me and Cooper on fire? The thought was worrisome to say the least.

“Okay, let me back out,” I said to the chain-link fence and the wall.

“Let me out, dammit.”

Nothing happened.

I tried to swallow down the alarm building inside me. After all, I’d gotten out easily enough before: I’d just willed us back to Jordan’s office, and there we were. It’d been easier than hopping into a pair of ruby slippers and clicking my heels. Only now … now that I was sinking in cold panic and not surging on the adrenaline of righteous rage, it didn’t seem nearly as simple.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes to concentrate. If I had made a hell for myself, how would I get in and out? Surely I’d engineer a portal, probably one just like the trans-spatial door we’d put in our old apartment that went to our practice shack in the woods.

I opened my eyes.

Before me stood a big red steel door, just like the one to the shack. I gripped the brushed stainless-steel door handle, turned it, and pulled the portal open.

And found myself lying on my back in the tent, staring at my flame hand.

Well, that wasn’t so bad after all
, I thought. My relief was followed by an intense curiosity. What else could I do in the hellement, and what was still in there besides the jarred memories from the Goad’s victims?

I crawled out of the tent, walked to a clear spot on the lawn, and adjusted my skirt so I could comfortably sit on the grass without worrying too much about spelunking ants.

Hey, Pal!

“Yes?”

I’m going to try something. Please keep an eye out to make sure I don’t set myself on fire, okay?

“I’ve been trying to do that all evening, if you’ll recall. And what’s this ‘something’ you refer to?”

A piece of Cooper’s hell survived after I killed the Goad, and my flame is linked to it—I want to check it out a little more
.

“Is it clear of devils? Is it stable?”

It seems to be, yeah … but I need to make sure. Thus my wanting to check it out and stuff
.

“Do you think you can limit your explorations to an hour?”

Probably
.

“Fair enough. I’ll watch for fire and send for help if you’re not back after the hour has elapsed.”

I concentrated on the flames again, and quickly felt the same disorienting shift before I appeared in the basement. The hellement was much as I’d left it; the big red door was behind me now.

So the portal had persisted; I took that as a good sign that I was indeed master of this little domain. On the other hand, maybe I only thought it was little. How far did it go?

The chains on the cell door fell off at my touch and crumbled into dust. No spells were necessary here, apparently. Perhaps the hellement was partially powered by my natural Talent? Spells are just a way of tapping magical energy and redirecting it, after all. Wishing I understood more about what had happened to me when I’d stuck my hand into the Goad’s heart, I opened the door and stepped out into the forbiddingly dark basement.

A flashlight would be handy
, I thought, and a moment later a slim black Maglite with a bright halogen bulb rested in my left hand. The metal felt cool and comfortable, absolutely solid and real.

I shone the light around the basement, seeing the chalked ritual sacrifice symbols on the floor, the music box, random crates and old furniture … and then there came a flash as the beam reflected off a length of sharp, polished steel. It was the sword that had emerged from the Warlock’s magic pendant, given to him by his mother as protection that hadn’t come to fruition until I wore it into the hell. I went over to the sword and picked it up; the blade was still streaked with dried devil ichor, but I could see no other signs of the Goad’s death in the room around me.

The basement, though apparently harmless now, was creeping me out. I had no desire to maintain a museum dedicated to the atrocities committed by Cooper’s stepfather and the Goad. If I truly had control of this place, couldn’t I make it look however I wanted it to? I closed my eyes, searching for a more pleasant surrounding. I’d loved the beach, but had only been there once or twice when I was a kid; I couldn’t quite feel the sand beneath my toes. I knew the Panda Inn like the freckles on my arms … but why re-create something I could visit for real whenever I felt like taking a short drive? And anyway, the Panda Inn was only fun because of Cooper and the Warlock. I didn’t know—and at that moment didn’t want to know—if I could create doppelgangers of them in here.

What did I know inside and out that I couldn’t visit anymore? Once I’d asked that question of myself, the answer came to me immediately as I imagined the old Craftsman bungalow that had been my home from my birth until my stepfather married Deb. I could see myself entering the front door after school, tossing my book bag down on the tweed La-Z-Boy recliner in the living room, and going past the library nook with its built-in shelves and cabinets down the hall to my haven.

I opened my eyes, and the dark basement had become my old bedroom, late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the miniblinds from beneath the wide eaves of the house. It was just as I remembered it: my stuffed animals lined up on the dresser, my Power 80 computer and a few comic books on a red wooden table in the corner, and my Buzz Lightyear comforter on the bed, complete with a pinkish stain on Buzz’s white boot where I’d spilled some grape juice. The big red portal door was set in the wall beside my closet; the
My Neighbor Totoro
poster my mother had given me was taped to the front. The only other difference was that I could see the jarred memories glowing in the dark beneath the bed, barely visible past the blue dust ruffle.

I set the flashlight down on the bed, leaned the sword against my dresser, and left my bedroom to explore the house. It seemed to be perfect down to the smallest detail. I found myself constantly surprised by little things I thought I had forgotten, like the Texas-shaped Six Flags souvenir ashtray my mother kept on the mantel for company. The place even smelled right: a combination of dust, furniture polish, and potpourri. On the other hand, if I had lost a memory entirely, how would I realize it was missing from this re-creation?

And the quiet of the place was eerie. The oak trees made a soft swish as the breeze blew through their branches, but no doves or mockingbirds called from the foliage, and no cars hummed or puttered on the streets nearby. The neighbor’s pugs should be barking, but weren’t. I stepped out on the broad front porch to see if I could hear anything, and I found the shield that had also been part of the pendant. Its bronze surface was also splattered with ichor from the Goad larvae I’d fought off.

The bitter, metallic smell of the ichor made me shiver, and suddenly the silent porch with its view of the trees and the other beautiful old houses seemed just as creepy as Cooper’s dark basement prison. I supposed that it would take more than a change of scenery to make a hell feel homey.

I took the shield back into the bedroom with me, propped it up beside the sword against my dresser, and exited through the red portal.

I found myself standing on the lawn, staring down at my flame hand. Wait, hadn’t I been sitting down when I left?

“Hey, Pal, was my body here this whole time?” I asked.

“Yes; was it supposed to go someplace?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if my body would stay here, or enter the hell with me.” I suddenly had a mental picture of myself disappearing headfirst into my flame hand, Girl Ouroboros. Probably for the best that wasn’t the case. “I guess it’s just sort of like an astral projection. Weird.”

I realized that if it hadn’t been for the damage I’d done to Benedict Jordan’s mind, I’d have had no other proof that entering the hell was anything more than a figment of my own imagination. “When did I stand up?”

“Just a moment ago; why? Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. I just didn’t remember standing up, that’s all.”

I pulled my opera glove back on, shook the grass off my skirt, and crawled back into the tent to join Cooper.

chapter
six

Siobhan’s Boys

C
ooper continued to saw serious logs, but I slept fitfully at best the rest of the night. It didn’t help that Pal stuck his big shaggy head into the tent and poked me awake a couple of times on the grounds that I was dreaming, or
looked
like I might be dreaming. Shortly after dawn’s first light, I hauled myself out of the tent and staggered into the house in search of hot coffee and a warm bath.

I found blond toddler Blue wandering around the kitchen, looking forlorn in his hand-me-down Superman footie pajamas.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

He stared up at me with huge cloudless-sky eyes. Because the venom from his Wutganger still tainted my blood, Blue was able to communicate with me telepathically, as if he were a kind of familiar. So far, he hadn’t uttered a single sound, not a laugh or cry or even a hiccup. Mother Karen had speculated that his muteness might be traumatic. I thought the boy might simply prefer telepathy with me; he was surely able to convey much more complex information than if he were trying to wrestle unfamiliar words out through immature vocal cords.

“Tertius and Quartus woke me up,” Blue replied earnestly. “I think they have dirty diapers. They are very upset.”

I winced. Diaper duty before I’d had any caffeine was simply inhumane. I wished Mother Karen believed in using changeless diapers, but she didn’t, at least not anymore. There was an ongoing debate among Talented parents about where the waste from the diapers actually went. It turned out there was an ambiguity in the standard baby-safe enchantment and it wasn’t clear whether the waste was whisked away and destroyed or if there was a poo dimension someplace where it all just built up. The environmental/ethical concerns of dropping diaper loads on unsuspecting people aside, if the waste was simply stored someplace, there was the possibility it could be used as a pointer against the young Talents later.

“Well, let’s go see if I can’t get them changed.” I took Blue’s tiny hand and let him lead me upstairs to the nursery. He probably didn’t know his brothers’ real names—it was likely that their mother’s murderous husband, Lake, had never bothered to name the boys at all—and Blue surely didn’t know the Latin names for the fourth and fifth sons born into a family. But when he conveyed the concepts of his infant brothers to me, in my mind I’d begun hearing Tertius, Quartus, Quintus, and Sextus.

Blue sometimes referred to the Warlock as Septimus. As far as Lake had been concerned, the boys were merely components for the blood ritual intended to give his adored first son, Benedict, tremendous magical power. If the boys’ mother, Siobhan, had enough mind left to give the Warlock and his numbered brothers proper names, I hadn’t heard them spoken in Cooper’s hell.

Names
matter
in the magical world. Knowing the true, secret name of a devil or other supernatural creature can help you gain control over it. It’s one thing for a Talent to be thoughtlessly named; it’s another to have never been named by your parents at all. Being a nameless Talent means you don’t have full access to your own potential, your own powers. You’ve been cut from the grounding forces of your own family bloodline. A nameless wizard can still be a powerful wizard, but almost never a well-rounded one.

I stared down at my gloved arm, thinking of my dead mother. Whether we like to admit it or not, our parents give us everything we have to start out with, good and bad. Sometimes their mistakes hang around your neck like loops of heavy, unbreakable chain.

Blue and I reached the nursery. I couldn’t hear any babies crying, but Mother Karen had probably put a sound-dampening enchantment on the room so her other kids wouldn’t be disturbed. She’d surely have some kind of baby monitor working at the same time. I opened the door.

The room was in utter chaos. Mother Karen was floating in the air, surrounded by a swirling storm of stuffed animals and colorful teething toys. She was holding onto the edge of the changing table for dear life, her free hand clutching a folded dirty diaper. Her graying brown hair was blown out in a wild corona around her face. Below her, the naked baby boy on the changing pad giggled and kicked in delight.

“Karen—” I began, ducking to dodge a flying teddy bear.

“All under control! Shut the door!” she cheerfully yelled back.

“But—”

“
TakeBluebacktobedandshutthedoor!
”

I quickly did as she told me, feeling rejected and useless. And, frankly, a bit scared. Most Talented kids don’t start developing their magical skills until they’ve reached an age of rational thought. And that’s exactly as it should be. A happy baby with full-blown magical powers is far more dangerous than an angry baby with a bag full of live grenades.

And we apparently had a house full of ’em. Christ in a chum bucket.