Authors: Scott V. Duff
“Are they still active?”
“Yeah, but as long as they don’t come into contact with their intended victim, they’ll stay dormant. It’s possible we might be able to turn the spell around to attack its maker if there’s enough of a signature left.”
The running footsteps entered the hallway about fifty feet ahead of me. Five men all wearing dark slacks and light blue jackets with name badges marked “Security.” Jonas Randolph was in the middle of the pack, trying to slow and assess at the same time. Following his eyes, he only looked at one thing before he turned to the man behind him and said, “Get Bishop.” He looked at me and only me and made that determination. Six deadly curses on the floor and I was the problem.
Snorting in disbelief, I squatted opposite Peter. “I really haven’t let you see much of this shit. It’s vile crap to even look at.” He glanced over at me and grinned, looking back again.
“You’re protecting me. How sweet.” Though it wasn’t exactly dripping with sarcasm, there was enough that I recognized he didn’t appreciate it.
“Always, so don’t get your jock in a twist or whatever underwear you choose to wear,” I said confidently. “Kieran and Ethan have seen just as little. Notice the type and level of the binding energy of the activation spell. It truly hides the strength of the curse simply by being so diffused. Disgusting because people died to create these things.”
“Ohhh,” Peter said. It came out as a low groan of understanding. “A latent similarity bond through emotional and blood relations. This isn’t possible with our magic. Similarities are active, period. And how did they…? Oh, you’re right; this is shit. Will they all die the same way? I’m getting a different impression from them.”
“These are smaller than the one at the Morgan’s farm, so I doubt they hold the same memory of torture that his did. Honestly, I don’t know enough about it to say what’ll kill the victim, but they do look different than the two I’ve seen and you’re right about each of these looking slightly different. Both of those involved fire. Want to try a ‘What if?’?” He grinned and tapped my wrist to gain a stronger connection.
Peering into the first sample, the one we’d been staring at, I pulled the structure of the magic into my cavern and dropped down beside Peter. He was staring off into the darkness at something. For some reason, my imagination fascinated him.
“How many of those things have you got now?” he asked, pointing in the direction he was looking. Willing us to wherever he was looking, we were suddenly amid the huge graveyard-like forest of lodestones.
“About twenty-eight thousand,” I said, looking around. “I keep making and charging them subconsciously whenever I’m over here. Nervous habit I’ve been trying to break.” He gave a silent chuckle as he shook his head, waving us back the way we came. The easy part of having my brothers link into my cavern is that I didn’t have to be easy. They could follow my thoughts here. Split seconds separated our locations as I started expanding the blood spell and forcing it into its full form. It was rather organic, but not one I’d call biological. Deconstructing the spell into parts turned out to be easier than I expected.
Creating a fake man, I removed the triggering mechanism, which was also the latent similarity that so bothered Peter, and launched the curse at it. When it hit, I triggered it with the peculiar energy it needed. We watched the curse attach to the mannequin and shoot straight for the head. There, it pulled what energy it could from everywhere it could and created a huge electrical discharge in the brain. When I supplied the mannequin with magic, it happened in a fourth the time.
Peter took the second one apart and tested it. With this one, the curse attached to the lungs and started eating, stopping somewhere around the ribcage and taking just about everything in between. The third one was less imaginative. It stopped in the throat and just exploded. A normal man would lose about three inches of his throat and the shock would probably kill him anyway. The magical mannequin lost its head and part of its clavicle. The fourth must be aimed at Bishop, or maybe Randolph, because it was a low-powered incendiary. Either one would go the way of a human torch once the curse attached.
“These two are different for another reason,” I said as Peter expanded the fifth sample. “These were created with sex magic instead of by torture, which isn’t necessary mutually exclusive. Here, I think they are because the spells are the same, but not copies.”
“That just makes it attack a different part of the mind, right? Makes the relationship different?” he asked as he examined the functions of the energy flows.
“I think so, but it’s possible that it might change the attachment, too.”
Peter detached the trigger and tossed the curse at the mannequin. It attached to the head and caused massive increases in blood pressure, exploding blood vessels throughout the brain. Instant stroke out. Just to be sure, I deconstructed the sixth and tested it while Pete reset his mannequin for a magical victim. We threw our curses at the magical victims almost simultaneously. They both exploded into goo. The human body was not meant to be goo.
“How long have we been here?” Peter asked, staring at the imaginary goo on the imaginary floor.
“’Bout three seconds in reality,” I answered. “Suppose we should be getting back.”
“Yeah. Suppose,” he said and sighed, pulling himself out of the link. “That’s some nasty work.” He stood up and faced the troop of heavy-breathing security staff. Randolph had pushed to the front by now. He was finally paying attention to the piles of crap on the floor. “Is there a problem, Mr. Randolph?”
Randolph looked at Peter in astonishment, unsure how to complain about me shaking the hotel. Honestly, not even knowing if we were responsible except for the six piles of evidence on the floor we were so carefully examining and blocking them from getting at. Ryan walked quietly but obviously behind them with six canisters, glass and quart-sized with hinged lids and rubber gaskets. Stepping over the piles, I stopped Ryan at the shield wall, took the canisters and thanked him. The curses needed to be contained before I dropped the wall. Bishop was coming through the lobby, so momentarily three of the six presumed targets were about to be within striking distance.
The canisters were brand new, two sets of three, taped together and separated by pieces of cardboard. Made it easy to carry anyway. Tossing one set to Peter, we set about filling the canisters with the blood curses while the others shuffled and paced. Each curse filled the canister almost to the top and we both levitated them in. I’d touched more than I ever wanted to touch.
Once we stood up and turned back around, Randolph regained his composure. “You shook the entire hotel with four tornadoes! What are you doing in here?” he asked loudly without shouting.
“I did not!” Peter said sharply, almost petulantly. “He did it. And there were six, not four. Be grateful, they were bombs.”
“What? Bombs? What kind of bombs?” Randolph asked, moving in closer and peering into the containers.
“Jonas, no!” Bishop barked from the front of the hall. Randolph jumped upright and turned to face his boss.
“Sir?” he asked confused.
Bishop pushed quickly through his men even as a path was created for him. Without even looking at them, he asked me, “Are those what I think they are?”
“Hmm, loaded question. If you mean ‘that old black magic’, then yes,” I answered throwing in a bemused smile. Closing and locking my office door, I shifted the two sets of containers to my desk, feeling the instant sense of relief from oppression from everyone else in the corridor. “Not as bad as most I’ve seen, but effective. My guess is that three of them were aimed at Ryan, Randolph, and you, but I don’t know the other three. Just a guess, though, can’t really tell without letting them fire and by then you’d be dead. You ready, Ryan?”
Randolph recovered quickly from his surprise and Bishop had grown used to our fast-talking diversionary tactics already.
“Wait a minute! You can’t just drop that kind of information and leave,” Randolph said, advancing on us. “What were those things? Who set them? We need to study them and find out. Stop them from setting more here.”
“That, I agree with,” Bishop said casually on the last point.
“All right, if you insist, but it’ll have to be one of yours,” I said in warning and pantomimed tossing a baseball at the ceiling. They couldn’t see my magic and they didn’t see the blood curses in the first place, so let them search for nothing for a while. “You aren’t risking someone else’s life just to be thick-headed. You didn’t even know they were there until I pulled them together.”
“We’re on a timetable though, so… Good hunting and be careful,” Peter said smiling. “Are you ready to go, Ryan?” Davis stepped around Bishop’s men but any answer was drowned out.
“Wait! Wait, wait,” Randolph called.
“Where did you put it? Who is the victim?” Bishop asked nearly frantic.
“Back where it was and I don’t know who it was for,” I said innocently. “This is a very subtle working, ya know, and fast, so be careful as you walk the halls.” Holding up three fingers as I turned and putting my hand on Ryan’s shoulder, Peter took the game over and grimaced horribly at the memory of the third curse. Then he mimicked a big explosion with his hands, cheeks puffed and fingers splayed. I wrapped us in portals and dropped us just outside the entrance to the Hilliard brothers’ compound on Deighton Street and broke down laughing immediately. Peter was right behind me, laughing.
“You didn’t put anything back, did you?” Ryan asked while we were still laughing, inciting me into more fits. Peter managed to shake his head in response, still laughing himself.
Ethan brushed against the anchor lightly, calming me down almost immediately. “They’re close now, Pete,” I said quietly, which sobered him, too. “Ryan, do you have the list of rites from the Hilliards?”
“Yes, Seth,” he answered and pulled a manila envelope from the pocket of his overcoat. “I went over it last night and of the eight hundred or so rites described, I can only deny about a hundred of them myself.”
Taking the envelope from him and pulling the pages out, I flipped through the list quickly. Evelyn Woods had nothin’ on me. Ryan’s opinion seemed to be based on the necessity of the rites and not on the necessity of the bloodletting. I was going to have to work with him on that aspect, too, it seems. Separating the document into four parts with the last part taking over half, I explained what I needed Ryan to do for me today.
“We’ve got a very important appointment in a few minutes that’s going to take all of our attention so I need you to give the Hilliards’ Circle the bad news for me. Don’t take any guff and blame everything on me, especially since it’s my fault anyway. These are denied outright. They can find another way, at least two exist.” I handed him the largest stack of over four hundred rites. Davis was surprised, but only just showed it. “They have three years to find a way around the use of blood rites for these.” I separated out another hundred and ten rites, folding the pages differently than the first stack, and gave them to my freelance druid. “Two years on these and a year on these.” Each stack was folded differently and successively smaller.
Davis stared at the four stacks in his hands for a moment in awe for a moment then nodded and went into the jewelry store. We followed him, curious how they went in and out. The shop was empty which didn’t bother him. He headed for the back door straight away with Peter hot on his trail. We were both watching the folds in the path that the druid walked through as he entered the glen. I could see the near recognition crease Peter’s face, probably the shortness of the walk. Now that I knew what to look for, the path was easy to see and one wrong turn meant starting over again.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Davis,” I heard a voice call out in greeting. My vision through the walls formed up more solidly as the probability of entering that fold in reality neared one. “And to you, Mr. Borland.” The man was a groundskeeper, one of the guardians of the glen. He quickly turned his wooden three-tined fork and shoved it into the ground. “Good afternoon, Archdruid.” He knelt for me. Wasn’t I the special one?
“Good afternoon,” I said awkwardly. “I figured that’d be over by now. Be nice to Mr. Davis. He’s the only reason I’m giving in on any of this and he wanted much, much more than I gave.” Pulling the Authority directly from the Oath in my cubby, I concentrated on the list of rites along with their intents and time limits in days. Working with only the ones I would allow made things a little easier, but there was still a lot of additional “oomph” required from me this time. I didn’t want it to drain me personally, so I pulled the power from the lodestones.
Throughout the valley, the mark of the Accords shined through the Authority, each person’s brightness denoting his position within the hierarchy. There was always a hierarchy involved in faery things. Every so often within the population, there were keys. The keys spread randomly and functioned as natural controllers for the Accords’ compulsion—any compulsion of significant size, if it has to exist for long, had them. These were the bright green lights among all the blue and red and white. I seized the compulsions on the key peoples’ minds, completed the handshake operation with the Authority and inserted the changes I wanted. As I withdrew, I pumped enough energy into their systems to run London for a day and a half. Drained over two thousand batteries before I felt the amendments lock into place.