The Best Defense by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 10 page

“Back to the warehouse.”

“Not the estate?”

“Are we not here in Chinatown?” he responded, arm sweeping to the right to take in Chicago ’s Chinatown. “Would we not need to be someplace markedly different if we were heading to the estate?”

“Right…” Martinez responded, voice trailing off as though in amazing discovery. “Will I finally get into the sanctum, boss man? Or do I have to stay in the mundane again? It’s been a year.”

Adrian ’s silence was answer enough.

“Right.” The man could teach a course on sullenness. “So why the warehouse?”

A sigh. He glanced to the left to see how long the Cermak bus would take, and a reminder that he needed the man. Would never be caught without a follower again. “Because there’s something about that death, some astral signature that reminds me of… something.”

“Yeah, boss man? You remember everything. I bet you remember exactly what I said to you the first time we met, after your other assistant ran away.”

In excruciating detail.

“So how you couldn’t recognize an astral print… wacky.”

From Adrian ’s peripheral vision he watched Martinez put down the last of the teeth‑killing drink. He then flicked the bottle toward the trash can with its side opening and it sailed right in. Adrian slowly blinked at the surprising dexterity from the usually ungainly, overweight man.

“Yes,” Adrian spoke slowly. “As you say. Wacky.” The few other individuals at the bus stop abruptly began shuffling toward his position at the edge of the street, a sure sign of the approaching bus that they dared come so close.

The tick in the back of his mind became an itch, one that he finally acknowledged after leaving astral space and the murder scene with only a negative shake of his head to the on‑scene officer; they knew he’d get back to them. There’s only one way that I couldn’t recognize the astral print. That’s if it was obscured. No undead, werecreature, or spirit‑unbound or not‑would think of obscuring its astral signature. Most wouldn’t even know how, and the few spirits that have pilfered enough essence from the mages that have summoned them to know such a thing was possible wouldn’t consider it. No, this was different. Trepidation and yearning filled him in equal measure. There was only one answer. An answer to a question he’d spent his life trying to find.

Another magus.

A lifetime of learning through ancient, crumbling tomes taught him that magus existed in the past, oftimes learning and teaching together. Yet he’d almost given up, convinced that he alone wielded magic in this modern world. The abrupt irony was almost more than he could take. For though the answer must be another magus, it was someone that knew Adrian… and Adrian didn’t know this man! He knew enough about Adrian to know exactly how to obscure his astral print, to bar him from any ability to tweak out the littlest detail. That type of intimate knowledge wasn’t just unnerving‑it was down right terrifying. He’d read of what could happen under these circumstances. Such intimate knowledge conveyed immense power over Adrian.

He gingerly stepped onto the bus, ignoring the gasp of foul, black smoke from its diesel engine and the fearful look on the bus driver’s face as he passed by without paying the fare. He sat down at the rear of the bus‑sending one occupant scurrying toward the front‑but the sudden in‑rush of people allowed him to uncinch the coat once more.

He needed to find who was responsible for the murder. Needed to find him right now, before the man moved against him. That he might have to kill the magus after all the years of searching was a bitter bill to swallow.

Adrian stepped off the bus at 1100 West Cermak, across from the Fisk coal‑burning power plant, Martinez at his heels like an obedient pup. Though he could easily walk through the front door, as ever‑especially with the conjuring he planned‑he walked briskly toward the road entrance to the inner dock. Once he hit the shadows of the tunnel, he stepped carefully, for patches of black ice might have formed overnight, then moved into the inner parking lot proper.

A twenty‑four‑foot truck already sat at the dock, driver talking animatedly to the building supervisor. Several handlers‑puffs of breath in the cold actually larger than the smoke rings they’d be blowing on break‑easily maneuvered pallet jacks with their paper cargo to be warehoused on the fifth floor.

Taking the steps two at a time up to the loading dock, he almost reached the group of men before they noticed him. The building supervisor blanched, cutting off mid‑discussion, while the driver looked around confused at the other man’s shocking change of demeanor.

“Good morning, Mr. Kohl,” the building supervisor spoke, voice brittle as the icicles clustered along the corrugated awning all along the dock.

Adrian stared right through the man.

“If you’d like to go right up, the freight elevator can take you immediately.”

Adrian swept past the super without a nod, ignoring the confused driver as well; no time to educate the man on why he should fear Adrian. A single man‑especially if he proved somewhat intractable to the mind‑bending realities that Adrian would unveil for him‑would not make that large a difference.

The lift took them quickly up to the third floor, where the building supervisor managed to open and close the heavy doors, and slide in a hasty “good day,” all without once glancing into the interior.

As the rumbling lift took the repellent man away, gloom descended onto the room, the single bulb at the entryway barely making a dent against the thickness; a perfect mood setter for the type of work accomplished in the setting. A long‑used wooden blank floor covered every square inch of the four‑thousand‑square‑foot warehouse. Boxes and bundles and packages seemed to rise out of the ground like grotesque trees, festooned with a myriad of rotting, ancient vegetation: cloth and dust and mildew. Adrian reviled such filth and clutter. Yet years ago he’d tried cleaning the entire area, installing full lighting and generally making the place habitable for humans, only to lose control of those who worked this sanctum; sickening how much humans relied upon trappings and regalia for their faith to flourish. Lost to the point where, in disgust, he was forced to dispose of them all and start again new. He hated new. It took so long to work with what he had. Starting new was anathema to the very core of who and what he was, to the arts he practiced.

A woman moved out of the gloom, coarse shift barely covering a thin frame, a holy sheen in her eyes and an obsequious bow practically taking her forehead to the ground. Years before he thought he’d get over it. Thought he’d eventually take it for granted, or perhaps come to enjoy it. Finally prayed that he would at least forget about it. But it never seemed to happen. The guilt over what he’d slowly done to this, his inner cadre, always twisted like a rusty shiv. That it happened to this very woman… bile threatened; a quick snag at a white cloth, from an interior pocket, pressed to lips the only salve to kept his rebellious stomach under control.

“We serve, my lord.” Her voice, soulless as an automaton, raised the bile again until he coughed several times, dry heaving before he remembered the urgency propelling him here: the thought of another man with such intimate knowledge concerning Adrian; another magus with the ability to strike him with deadly force from afar. He glanced toward the walls, floor, and ceiling and noted the carefully tended ruins that marched like horrific hieroglyphs, twisting, fading and throbbing even as he watched. A faraday cage for magic, one might say. But much, much more. That power, that safety brought a small measure of respite.

“We’ve work to do,” he clipped after several more moments to assure his voice was back under his control. Without a further thought for Martinez ‑the man would stay behind, as he always did‑he began to follow the winding path through the stacked goods. He immediately felt a shift in perception, as though a breeze he could not feel were ruffling his close‑cropped hair, a fairy’s blown kiss caressing a cheek. After long years, the trail seemed natural, his feet automatically finding the proper runes. Here, in his inner sanctum, where the faith of his workers lay embedded in the walls so thick they actually appeared solid in astral space, flowing with that power like pulsating veins, he might manage the transfiguration by himself. Yet it would require a needless expenditure; instead, one of his workers always met him at the portal to allow an easier passage.

That soft, unfelt breeze became a tangible force as they continued the seemingly random twist and turn down strange corridors of crookedly stacked, mysterious boxes and crates, always following the unique path marked on the floor, a path only a select few even knew existed, much less could manipulate. An uninitiated mundane, if he managed to cross the initial threshold and live‑highly unlikely‑and then managed to trail him‑almost beyond comprehension‑would see him slowly fade from existence until they were left in a warehouse devoid of human life, simply piled with incomprehensible bits and bobs from around the world.

As Adrian neared the final gate and the end of the piercing of the veil by the path, the power built up along his chakra until his skin vibrated with pent‑up energy. With a last step onto the final glyph, he opened both hands wide and released the energy, like the greatest static charge release imaginable. Unlike the viewing of astral space while still in the mundane‑as accomplished in the subway tunnel‑this didn’t bring pain. This brought ecstasy as he and his follower finished the transfiguration of flesh into pure energy that allowed them to occupy the astral plain.

Still shuddering from the echoes of that energy, which far outstripped any sexual experience of his life (even that he’d experienced with her), he stepped into the warehouse. Yet one unrecognizable from anything viewed by human eyes. Ghostly and ethereal, yet as solid as anything touched in the real world, every part of the warehouse shone with an inner light covering a rainbow of colors beyond imagining, luminosity varying depending upon the object. Bought, scavenged, and oftimes outright stolen by a network he’d spent years building, to the mundane each object was simply a rare artifact or beautiful, precious stone. But each was in reality an item imbued with astral force that he could manipulate, some naturally occurring, others created by ancient magus, some dropping back as far as the dawn of mankind when man first discovered the meta planes of astral space, the spirits and monsters that resided there and that, like gods, men could learn‑albeit very painfully‑to manipulate to their bidding.

“Master, we serve,” a half dozen men and woman intoned, their naked bodies translucent like crystals, energy pulsing in one rhythmic swell. While each beat to its own rhythm, all immediately fell into a single chorus shimmering with latent potentiality; he closed his eyes, felt the power mirrored in the thrum of his own heartbeat.

“Someone has cracked my inner sanctum,” he spoke, eyes opening. He took a step and crossed the entire distance of the warehouse to his worktable‑after all this time he did not know if he instantaneously crossed that distance or whether that distance crossed to him.

“That is not possible,” the woman who met him at the portal said, appearing next to him, her shift gone, her luminous energy brightest of all.

His urgency wavered once more, knowing that he couldn’t even bring himself to use their names anymore. For one mind‑numbing moment he thought he detected movement out of the corner of his eye, as though she were on the verge of touching his arm. No one touched him here, especially her. But he only imagined it. He knew she would never violate such a dictum. Yet he still jerked upright‑now on the other side of the table‑and forced his iron will to control his mind and force it back to the task at hand.

“It is possible,” he spoke, relieved at the same even tone as ever. “There is no other explanation for what’s occurred. There’s another magus.” Saying it aloud was still astonishing. “And that magus cannot possibly have obscured so much of an astral event from me, so much of his own print, without intimate knowledge of me. He’s good. He’s very good, or I would’ve noticed something wrong with the sanctum. Therefore, we will summon an unbound spirit to find that crack in the astral façade of the sanctum. And from that crack we will find the thread that binds the magus to the breach and follow it until we find him.”

While his followers rarely spoke without a direct query, their silence almost deafened. They would never gainsay his word, but an unbound spirit could be a thing of horror if even the smallest mistake in the summoning occurred.

He began thinking of the needed ritual objects and tapped the worktable, each appearing from their stored locations throughout the warehouse with each finger strike. Yet despite trying to focus on the work of constructing a perfect summoning, the itch that rode the back of his mind became a furious burn. Something wasn’t right? What wasn’t right?

An Olmec statue appeared on the table. Two thousand years old, its ornately carved jade a pulsing green of the living energy fused with the stone by the magus that crafted it millennia ago. Grasping the statue, he opened his mind and fed it energy, and his senses catapulted to new heights. The wrongness he knew to be in his inner sanctum abruptly spiked until he could sense it. His astral perception roved the walls and ceiling and floor as he flashed around the warehouse from one thought to the next, trying to find the breach.

In mid‑thought‑leap, he froze as he caught a hint of the wrong essence, as though a wolf passing through the scent trail left by prey. He unleashed more energy to focus his senses as much as possible, the force becoming painful as it hammered through the statue, on the verge of incinerating the irreplaceable item.

Zeroing in on the trail, it finally led back to Martinez. Confusion sundered his concentration, and the energy drained away, the dust of the vaporized statue drifting unnoticed. What was Martinez doing here?! The man followed him into his sanctum? How? He’d not allowed it. Not yet. That man needed another year, five years, before he could be trusted so much. Yet how… the slow, awful truth wormed past the confusion, setting the hair on his arms and legs to standing.

“No,” he finally managed.

“Oh, yes,” the man spoke, voice a complete octave lower then his normal range, the teenage‑boy‑in‑a‑man’s‑skin mannerisms gone, sloughed off like so much dead skin.

“How? You were never initiated.”

A bellowing, mocking laugh ripped from the man’s large chest. Adrian started, another shock stabbing further into his ability to handle the situation as the astral plane nearest Martinez responded violently to the emotion. He can’t be a magus!

“Ah, you’ve finally figured it out. Watching you flit about like a mad fairy was most amusing. Almost made up for the shit I’ve had to eat at your hands for the last year.”

“But it’s not possible,” Adrian continued stoically, unable to get beyond the obviousness of the man’s presence in astral space, in Adrian ’s own sanctum. His mind worked furiously, and an idea emerged from a text read long ago. “You have to be bound by another magus. You’ve never revealed the slightest hint of potential. Nothing to convince those around you so you can draw power from their belief. These followers are mine, bound across most of a decade. You cannot draw anything from them. I would know it.”

Martinez shook his head, smile as condescending as any Adrian handed out. In another time, another place, Adrian would’ve bristled. But here it terrified. Where was the man drawing his power? Another, even more horrific, thought surfaced. Had the man managed to bind an unbound spirit? He’d read of such acts in only remnant pieces from ancient books filled with the art as black as the deepest cave. But to fail, to be dragged off to suffer torment for eternity? Not even a madman would risk such, despite the continuous flow of power that would render all the hated charades meaningless.

“You still don’t get it, Adrian. Your grasp of the arts is intuitive and even masterful. But the foundation of your art is mind‑bogglingly limited. When I first met you, I did not believe it possible to construct such limitations and reach the height of your art. I certainly didn’t believe that you’d managed to craft an inner sanctum carved into a bubble of astral space. I thought I’d be able to convince you earlier, but your paranoia was simply too much to breach. So I had to do something that might send you scurrying to your sanctuary with such haste that I might finally follow.”

The pieces, despite the lunacy of the image they created, began falling into place. The strange astral print he couldn’t identify… the filth the man poured into his system. His mind simply refused to accept the possibility, despite it staring him in the face. “You murdered that man,” Adrian continued, unable to voice the painful truth of his own arrogant blindness. “After this much time you know me well enough to have crafted such a snarl that I couldn’t see anything.” As he spoke, he carefully began to channel energy, knowing that despite their silent words, his followers knew their lord and master would be triumphant. Knew that here, in his inner sanctum, nothing could touch him. That absolute knowledge, wedded to the years of unceasing faith directly crafted within astral space, gave him a reservoir to tap that he’d never come close to plumbing. “Why?”

“I already told you. I couldn’t believe you’d managed to gain such knowledge and power with the shackles you’ve given yourself. We’d heard of you and finally managed to track you down. But we had to be careful. Had to approach you in a way that wouldn’t endanger us.”

Despite the situation, Adrian couldn’t help the words as they slowly dragged out of him. “What… are… you… talking… about?”

Another giant belly laugh. “You think others must believe you are a magician for your power to work. The more powerful that belief, the greater magic you have; hence all your silly public rituals. It’s rubbish. All rubbish. Power is power, and you’ve shackled yourself with meaninglessness. If one of my pupils taught you in this fashion, I would have him killed for such stupidity. Who taught you, Adrian? That’s what I’ve wanted to know all along. What we must know. Why I’ve put up with your insufferable arrogance. Your teacher is twisting magic learning and twisting minds in the process. Who knows what effect that might have on the meta planes? I can already see what you’ve rendered here through actually using other human beings as part of your rituals. Do you have any idea of what you’ve done to them? Who knows what other damage you might be wreaking on the natural order of things?”

Adrian ’s mind worked feverishly, trying to figure the other man’s angle. Was he trying to distract me with such lies? Trying to delay my assault? Make me doubt my art? None of it made any sense. And of course he knew what he’d wrought on these people. Despite their devout belief that had become faith and then so much more; despite that natural progression that involved no coercion at all on his part, making it all the more difficult to bear; what he’d wrought twisted with pain continually.

“No one taught me.”

For the first time since dropping his disguise, Martinez seemed thunderstruck, out of his element. “What?”

“No one taught me. All I’ve learned I taught myself. I’ve spent my life hunting for other magus. And now, when I finally find one, he’s mad. Mad and possessed.” His skin began to tingle with the energy build‑up as it neared the flash point, and Adrian prepared to unleash all its fury.

Martinez opened and closed his mouth several times before finding his voice again. “That’s just not possible. You can’t learn alone. You cannot stumble upon the art. It must be nurtured and drawn from you like a tree from fertile loam. It’s not possible. Someone self‑taught doesn’t have the right control. Is a danger to everyone around him. Is‑”

In mid‑word Martinez struck, the hammer blow of argent energy flung off the man’s abruptly outstretched arms, double fists of energy to crush Adrian.

But this was his inner sanctum, crafted across long, long years. And he’d been slowly building energy for longer than Martinez. In a fiery cascade of force Martinez ’ attack fell against his own force screen, the blow easily diverted in a shower of sparkling energy. With the last of his confusion falling away, Adrian knew he did indeed look at a bound spirit in the shell of a man: a possessed magus. The only explanation for how the man wielded his art without a single soul that believed him to be a magus at hand.

The single greatest yoke that bore down a magus. The yoke that forced medicine men from time immemorial to be showmen; the same heritage that found its way down into snake oil salesmen and finally sleight‑of‑hand magicians of the modern age, with all the trappings of a true magus but with none of the spirit that such rituals allowed a user to invoke. A hollow shell, missing the true forms of power beneath.

With his true believers and their towering batteries of faith hyperactivating his power within his own inner sanctum and fortress, he drew in energy from the astral plane until he screamed out loud from the pain of it; he unleashed the gates of hell in a raging inferno that struck from all sides simultaneously. Martinez ’ life was cut from existence with such force that astral space itself trembled. The energy, with far too much power and inertia to be expended after the ease with which it killed the other man, cascaded back along time itself, withering the mundane world’s memory until Martinez ceased to ever exist.

Adrian collapsed into unconsciousness.

Adrian slowly woke, his twelve‑hundred‑thread Egyptian cotton sheets a balm to sweaty flesh. A cloth slowly sponged cool water across his forehead before a hand gently lifted his head to pour liquid ambrosia in the form of water onto parched lips and a throat scarred by what must surely be the fires of hell.

He cracked his eyes to pain, despite almost no light in the room. Long, almost silent minutes of such ministrations passed, the pain receding further and further. Finally, the dim outline resolved into an intimately familiar shape, though one he never thought to see here, in his own home, again.

“You.”

“Master, I live to serve. After your collapse you became sick, feverish. We knew not what to do. So some of us… we touched you,” her words continued, timid and terrified and filled with that worshiping tone that twisted the knife deeper. “Laid ointments as best we could. Brought you here to heal.”

Through the haze of lethargy, pain, and the blackness surrounding any events after Martinez, his inner voice began its sardonic subtext. He had begun to take them for granted. Had gotten used to what he’d done. Used his sense of guilt for a shield that allowed him to continue to use them in such fashion, ignoring his own humanity being lost.

The memories of the whole, fantastic ordeal unfolded like an unlocked treasure chest. The betrayal by his assistant, a possessed magus, with his ludicrous attempts to distract Adrian with outrageous lies. Despite it all, despite the lunacy of the man and his failed attempt to destroy Adrian, he knew the man did speak one word of truth. He had taken too much for granted. Had turned humans‑once friends, once… lovers (even now it hurt to think about it)‑into something less. Less than human. Knew he must start down a different path if he was to avoid becoming mad. Avoid becoming Martinez and embracing magic to the point of allowing a spirit to possess him in his feverish desire to find other magus. Knew now that other magus did exist, that other magus could be found, but the current price for finding them was unacceptable.

That different path must start now. His tongue scraped at lizard‑dry lips, working moisture into his mouth before he spoke her name with as much reverence as she intoned his.

“Kim.”

The Wish of a Wish by Robert T. Jeschonek

You’d think genies might get a wish to themselves now and then… but from the pain in Magda’s eyes when she opens the mansion’s door, I can see she’s getting zero wish fulfillment out of life.

“Yes?” Her eyes are beautiful, an unearthly bright greenish gold, but the look in them is one of pure misery.

“Good morning, ma’am.” I flash her my badge, and she winces. “Oliver Singel, State Department of Mystic Revenue. I’m here to see Mr. Rudolph Gunza.”

She ushers me in without hesitation. She doesn’t fear me at all; as a genie, she need fear only one man in all the world.

That man is her master, Rudy Gunza.

As she closes the heavy door behind me, I gaze around at the opulent entryway. Everything is glittering gold and crimson velvet and gleaming marble, from the winding staircase to the fountain in the middle of the giant room.

Ill‑gotten gains, all of it. Whipped up on a whim and a wish by the magical beauty standing in front of me.

She tosses her head, and the lush, black curls flop about her shoulders. She straightens the dark blue satin bodice of her outfit, smooths the silk harem pants below her taut bare midriff.

Even with the beaten look in her eyes, even with her mouth and chin covered by a pale blue veil, she looks breathtaking. She looks more perfect and radiant than any woman alive, as beautiful as any fantasy sculpted by a man’s imagination.

Then again, she has to, doesn’t she?

“What business do you have with Master Gunza?” There’s a hint of a glint in her eye as she says it‑a flicker of power. She might not be able to exercise it against her master, but that doesn’t mean she can’t use it against someone else, like me.

“Serious business,” I tell her. “ Tax business.”

“Oh‑ho!” Gunza’s jolly voice booms from the top of the staircase. “And here I thought this was purely a friendly visit!”

A weak smile doesn’t quite make it onto my face. “Hello, Rudy.”

Gunza wobbles down the stairs, looking like a tubby sheikh. His glittering red robes can’t hide the stupendous gut wagging in front of him.

When he and I were partners, he never had a gut at all.

“Long time no miss!” says Gunza as he drops from the last marble stair to the floor. “How’s the old gang of idiots?”

“Better than ever, now that you’re gone,” I tell him.

Gunza throws an arm around Magda’s shoulders and squeezes her tight. “Oleo and I used to work together! Isn’t that something, Magda? We was revenooers together.”

Magda’s head bobbles as he jerks her around. Her flat stare drifts past me like litter on a breeze.

“Went after tax evaders, didn’t we?” says Gunza. “Folks who didn’t pay the state a piece of the action from wishes granted and spells cast.”

“It’s income, Magda.” I wave my clipboard at the surrounding opulence. “The state deserves its share under the law.”

“Bull‑squat, Oleo.” Gunza chortles and strokes his braided red mustache. “Let the state get its own genie.”

“Yes, fine idea.” I walk around the room, taking notes on the clipboard. “We could get one the way you did. Force an old lady at gunpoint to use up her three wishes on nothing and hand over the lamp.”

Gunza’s grin darkens. “Hey now, Oleo. That was a straight‑up gift, and no one can prove otherwise.”

“Almost no one.” I shoot a look at Magda, and she turns away.

Gunza shrugs. “If a door closes, open a window. The department passed me over for a promotion‑which you got‑but Mrs. Sandusky thought I deserved an even greater reward. She wished for me to have it.”

The walls are made of alternating gold and platinum ingots, which I note on my clipboard. “Well, I wish you’d paid your taxes. ” I write more on the clipboard. “If I were you, I’d wish you don’t have a coronary when you see the grand total you owe the state.”

“I don’t owe one cent!” Gunza releases Magda and storms over to grab my clipboard.

I snatch it right back. “You lazy prick. How hard could it be to pay your taxes? You already wished for unlimited wishes, didn’t you?”

Gunza smirks. “That was my first wish.”

“Why not wish for her to pay your taxes?” I point my pen at Magda.

“Because I don’t choose to.” Gunza’s features twist into a scowl. “Because I am the master. ”