The Best Defense by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 11 page

I shake my head in disgust. “You’re just like all the rest. All the other scum you used to help me bust.”

Gunza gazes into my eyes for a long moment, nodding slowly. “Run,” he says finally.

I know where this is going. I knew from the moment I walked into the place.

“I wish…” says Gunza.

I swing the clipboard at his head, but he knocks it away with one thick forearm.

Before I can take another swing, he finishes his sentence. “I wish that a hunting party of madmen and monsters will hunt down Oliver Singel, then torture and mutilate him for as long as I wish… and not kill him, no matter how much he begs for it.”

Magda’s eyes meet mine. They well with regret and resignation.

I reach out to her. “Magda, please! Don’t do it! I’m here to help you!”

Gunza giggles and smacks me on the back. “He’s a liar! He’s just here for his precious revenooo!”

“I’m sorry.” Magda weaves her arms in the air, and a cloud of twinkling glitter swirls above her. “I have no choice but to obey my master.”

“Wrong!” Even as the misshapen forms materialize before me, I keep trying. “I can help you! Tell me what you want!”

Magda hesitates, and the figures flicker. Gunza stomps over and smacks her across the face.

“Do your job!” he says. “Obey me!” He strikes her again.

Magda closes her eyes. Her nimble fingers finish their dance in the air, and the hulking forms solidify.

“Run, rabbit!” Gunza howls with laughter. “Don’t let ’em catch you!”

With one last look at Magda, I turn and sprint off into the depths of the mansion.

The hunters are silent. No shrieking laughter, no ululating howls, no clattering weapons and footsteps. I can barely hear them back there at all‑just whispers and the rustling of wings and rags.

The quiet makes it all the worse as I run.

Heart hammering in my chest, I race to the end of the corridor and burst through the oak double doors there. Beyond the doors, I find myself in a vast arboretum, teeming with tropical trees and flowers.

Without stopping, I draw my cell phone and send a text message to my partner. At least I had the sense to post him elsewhere in case I needed backup.

Now, if only Gunza didn’t think to wish for Magda to block outgoing phone signals.

As I pocket the phone, I hear brush shuddering behind me. Ducking off the gold‑bricked path, I bolt through the thick foliage, crossing the room away from my original trajectory.

Suddenly, a feverish ghoul explodes from the shrubbery ahead of me, swinging a machete. I fall back, barely escaping the blade… and nearly end up skewered on the point of a bayonet brandished by a leering soldier.

Twisting out of the way, I leap off into the cover as both of them slash and stab at me. I rush straight through the deep green jungle, panting for breath in the steamy air‑and surge out of the vegetation in front of another set of double doors.

Plunging through the doors, I find myself in a maze. Through its frosted glass walls, I glimpse shadowy figures moving around me… but I have to go onward. I hear noise from the other side of the doors, so I can’t go back to the arboretum.

I move as quickly and quietly as I can, though it doesn’t matter. The enemy can see me as well as I see them through the frosted glass.

I zip around a corner, then another and another, always choosing right at the branches. Turning again, I spot a blurred figure on the other side of the translucent wall… and he spots me. He changes direction and follows me down the passage, keeping pace in a humpbacked trot, separated from me only by a few inches of glass.

Luckily, the next time I reach a branch, he hits a dead end. He howls, caught in a corner, as I dart down another passage, hoping for an exit.

I find one‑a gleaming golden door inlaid with multicolored gems‑but just as I charge forward, it crashes open, revealing a towering maniac.

He stands seven feet tall, at least, and his double‑jointed limbs are like sticks. He’s naked except for a leather loincloth, and his skin is reddish‑brown, like an almond.

His eyes and mouth gape wide as he scrambles toward me, drooling and whooping.

Suddenly, before I can do anything, he slows in mid‑step. His movements stretch out as if he were the star of a slow‑motion movie, and his whoops extend to one drawn‑out tone.

I jump when I hear the normal‑speed voice of Magda behind me. “That was one of my masters, two hundred and fifty years ago. Shall I tell you how he beat me?”

Looking around, I see another predator creeping from the maze in slow‑mo. This one, muscular, blond, and bushy‑bearded, wears the horned helmet of a Viking.

“Were these your masters through the ages?” I say.

She nods. “As you die, you will know what I’ve been through.”

Stepping toward the tall one, I gingerly touch his reddish‑brown knuckles. “How can you be doing this? Disobeying Rudy?”

“I’m obeying him,” says Magda. “I’m slowing things down, but you will still be hunted and tortured.”

“Why talk to me at all then?”

Magda cocks her head and frowns. “What did you mean when you said you could help me?”

“I meant what I said,” I tell her. “All you have to do is tell me what you want. Just ask for it.”

She narrows her eyes. “ I know what this is about now. You want me for yourself, don’t you?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I want to save you.”

“You’re not the first to say that.” Magda snorts and folds her arms over her blue satin bodice. “Somehow, saving me always ends with hurting me.”

“Not this time.” I spread my arms wide. “I swear, I’m here to help you.”

“You want my help collecting Rudy’s taxes,” says Magda. “For all the riches I’ve given him.”

“Actually,” I say, “you’re the only reason I’m here.”

Magda stares, her expression split between confusion and disbelief.

“This time, I’m not as concerned about tax evasion,” I say, “as I am about slavery and abuse.”

She looks like she’s thinking hard… and then her stare becomes an angry glare. “Liar. You’re a liar, just like all men.”

“I’m telling you, I came here only to save you.”

“Liar!” She lifts her hands overhead to weave and conjure, and I see the tall man start to move faster. “You better run, liar!”

Without another word, I dash around the tall man, heave open the door, and race into the hallway. I can tell she’s run out of patience, at least for now. I can tell she doesn’t believe me.

Even though I told her the absolute truth.

I don’t care about the mystic taxes. This time, I came only for her.

As I run down the hall, I open every door, but I’m not looking for a way out. I’m looking for something else.

A lamp. Her lamp.

Now that I’m on the inside of Gunza’s mansion, I’m determined to find it. I’m going to end this perverted jerk’s most heinous crime: genie abuse. The bastard’s a djinnophile.

Here’s how it works. The genie must obey her master. The genie has magical powers that can heal any wound, repair any damage. Even to herself.

What better scenario can there be for a twisted sicko who likes to hurt women? He can brutalize her any way he likes, then wish away the damage, removing any sign of the crime, expunging any guilt… and leaving a clean slate for the next round of abuse.

That’s what makes it especially evil. The genie becomes an accomplice to her own abuse. She literally has no choice.

And it goes on and on and on like that, again and again and again. Forever, if he wishes eternal life for himself.

So it’s no wonder Magda doesn’t trust me… but she should. There’s much more to me than meets the eye.

For one thing, I’m state police now, not Department of Mystic Revenue. I work for the Paranormal Victims Unit.

For another thing, I’m someone altogether different from any of that or anything Gunza could ever guess.

But Magda could figure it out. At least I hope she does before it’s too late.

I’m hustling through the gymnasium when they catch me. Two of the ghoulish thugs burst in through the far door from outside the mansion, and another drops down from the ceiling on a rope.

The one from the rope has dark skin and a tribal headdress of tattered fur and feathers. One of the other two has silver hair and wears a tuxedo, and the last one bulges with muscles and pads under a football player’s uniform. More echoes of Magda’s former masters.

As they surround me, I look for the best escape route. My eyes keep flicking to the open door to the outside, where my partner waits. If my text message got through to him, he could come charging through that door at any second, guns blazing.

Just as I have that thought, he pops up in front of me out of thin air. He’s standing, and at first I think he’s still alive… but then he literally falls to pieces‑ arms and legs and head and torso tumbling to the floor.

I hear Gunza laughing, and I turn to see him floating in midair on a scarlet magic carpet. As he claps, Magda slumps beside him, utterly joyless.

Like I said, she becomes an accomplice. She literally has no choice.

At least she takes no pleasure in it. That’s what makes her worth saving.

She has yet to hand over her soul.

“Bravo!” says Gunza. “Bravissimo! You should’ve seen the look on your face, Oleo!”

I keep my eyes fixed on him, partly so I won’t have to look at my partner’s body parts oozing blood at my feet.

Gunza elbows Magda hard in the side. “You’re getting all this on tape or a crystal ball or whatever, right? So I can watch it again and again?”

Magda nods. “Yes, Master.”

I hate seeing her like that. A woman with so much power, a woman who literally could do anything, reduced to groveling and harming the very people who could set her free.

Unless I can get through to her. “I can help you, Magda.”

Her eyes flick toward me.

“Tell me what you want,” I say. “Ask me for it.”

I hold her gaze for a moment before she looks away. She’s still not ready.

That’s the root of the problem here. A genie, acting always to serve others, knows nothing of selfishness… but she must ask for something for herself to become free.

The key stands in front of her, but it’s useless if she won’t pick it up and turn it in the lock.

I wait for Gunza to become bored with my screams, but it takes a very long time.

He hovers above on his magic carpet as the echoes of Magda’s demented masters torture me. They do it right there in the gymnasium, on a weight bench, using trays of knives and needles and power tools wished up by Gunza.

As the ghouls work me over, I wonder if they are improvising or if every terrible step is drawn from Magda’s memory. The pain is indescribable, unbearable, catastrophic. Each application of blade or pliers or drill bit plunges me into uncharted depths of agony.

Did they do the same to her? Did they twist and pull and crush and cut, sometimes all at once? Did they laugh as they tuned her screams by grinding harder, digging deeper, winding tighter?

Did they cut off bits of her? Did they taunt her as they excavated organs? Did they push her to the brink of death again and again… holding her alive with wishes as they ruined her in every possible way?

And then, did they wish her back to wholeness, repairing every damage… only to start all over again?

The way they do with me?

If so, my sympathy for her increases a trillionfold. More even than that.

Because this is hell. Sheer hell, as the devil himself might design it.

And I wonder, between strokes of the knife and blows of the hammer, how it is that Magda has not gone irretrievably mad.

Finally, after what seems to me like a dozen years, Gunza does grow bored. Tired is more like it. His eyes start drifting shut, and instead of wishing himself wide awake, he floats off to bed.

Lying on his belly on the magic carpet, he winks and waggles his fingers at me. “Back soon, dear.” His braided red mustache jumps as he chuckles. “Don’t miss me too much.”

At this point, I’m in excruciating agony on the bench. This is the sixth time I’ve been horrifically mutilated and left at the brink of death.

My limbs have all been disconnected and reattached in the wrong places. The ghouls wear my organs on leather thongs around their necks. Only wishes are keeping me alive.

Gunza gives Magda a shove off the carpet, and she thuds to the floor. “I wish you would put Oliver back together, good as new, and get him rested up for our next session.” After he says it, he rolls over on his back, crosses his hands behind his head, and floats out the door, yawning and snickering.

When he’s gone, Magda struggles to her feet. She weaves mystic sigils overhead, and the torture squad of monstrous masters past disappears in a shower of golden glitter.

Standing over me, she gazes down at the damage, then looks away. Turning her back, she weaves more patterns in the air with her agile, flickering fingers.

I feel a familiar tingling. Gold dust twinkles around me, and I hear a fluttering trill like the song of a tiny tropical bird.

Reality stops and shifts like a jump‑cut in a movie. There is an instant of nonexistence, disconnection from senses and self‑awareness… and then I am whole once more.

My body is intact. My wounds are closed, my organs and limbs back in the right places. For the seventh time today, she has put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Except for the memories, it is as if none of it ever happened. This is how it must be for her, every time Gunza tears her apart and wishes her restored once more.

I wonder how many times a day she must do it. How many times she has done it since he took control of her.

How many times since her birth or creation.

She turns to face me again, fingers still weaving. The weight bench becomes a bed, the gymnasium a bedroom draped in white satin, aglow in moonlight.

Small figures materialize around me‑winged children, robed in white. Some are toddlers, some older, some younger. Some are infants.

They push pillows behind my head and tuck blankets around me. They dab my forehead with a cool compress and wrap warm towels around my arms.

They raise a glass of water to my lips, and I drink. They feed me bread and hot broth from a silver tray. They sing softly as they work‑dozens of them, all watching me solemnly, eyes glowing like little silver moons in their dark and pale faces.

“Who are they?” As I ask the question, an infant hands me a little cake.

Magda watches from the foot of the bed. “My angels,” she says. “My babies.”

Gazing around me in wonder, I begin to understand. “Your children? All of them?”

Magda nods. “They are my only comforts in this world.”

I accept another spoonful of soup from a dark‑haired little boy. “You made them.”

“With my masters, as any woman would.” Magda bows her head. “And unmade them, as my masters wished.”

“My God.” I shiver as I feel their moonlight eyes upon me‑the eyes of dozens of dead children, recreated from the dust of graves and residue of tears.

Every last one of them, dead. Murdered by magic at whatever age they most displeased their mother’s masters. Their fathers.

Gone now, as if they had never been. As if they had never been forced into or out of existence. Living on only in her memory.

Resurrected only to comfort her in moments of greatest pain and despair.

Tears roll down her face, and she wipes them away. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Sorry for everything.”

If only I could break her free from this unending cycle of woe. If only I could cut the magic ties that bind her to her heartless monster of a master.

If only there was some way to move her to ask for what she needs. What I can provide.

Maybe there is.

I glimpse it for a split second. A look of sharper sorrow on her face. A sudden sinking. Fear and panic and rage and longing all at once, like fruit on a tree.

She touches her belly, and I know. She pulls her hand away instantly, but it’s too late.

I finally know.

I know how to save her.

“Very good!” Gunza claps from his royal box in the crowded stands of the coliseum. “Not perfect, but that comes with practice! You’ve just committed your first murder, Oleo!”

The bloody knife slips from my fingers and lands in the sand at my feet. My arms are soaked in blood up to the elbows. My white t‑shirt and pants have gone crimson from sleeve to cuff.

I know what I’ve just done. I know that I had no control over it, that I was at the mercy of a compelling wish.

But it doesn’t really matter. I still remember every detail. I remember killing the innocent woman wished up from somewhere in the world outside… killing her as the crowd around me cheered and stomped and showered me with roses.

That, of course, was the whole idea.

Torturing and resurrecting me wasn’t enough for Gunza. I took the promotion that should have been his, and then I tried to tax his lordly treasures; he won’t be happy until I’ve been corrupted and ruined and debased inside as well as out.

Just as he’s corrupted and ruined his Magda.

“Now this is the life!” Gunza guzzles wine from a goblet and gropes the nearly naked slave girl in his lap. “ That is entertainment!” He points his goblet at me, and the crowd howls with delight.

Gazing at the poor dead woman in the sand, I wonder if I can get through this. I wonder how much more I will have to endure to save Magda.

Looking up, I see her standing in the box with him, head bowed low. She won’t look at me. Won’t look at what she’s done at his behest.

That has to change.

“Magda!” I call to her, and her head lifts. Her eyes meet mine. “Tell me what you want! Ask me for it!”

She twitches, then lowers her head again.

“Oh ho ho!” Gunza howls with laughter. “So you think you can give her something I can’t?”

I’m treading on dangerous ground, and I know it. All he has to do is wish me silenced or dead or demented, and the game is over.

I continue to speak only to Magda. “Please! Ask for what you want!” I take a deep breath, ready to step off the precipice. Once I say the next thing, there’ll be no taking it back. “For the sake of your unborn child, ask me!”

Suddenly, a hush falls over the coliseum. Even Gunza is silent.

Magda meets my gaze, and her eyes at first are full of rage. Then, the rage melts into despair.

And I know I was right. When she touched her belly while the angels tended me, she was thinking of an angel inside. A new child, growing within her.

His child. Gunza ’s child.

So now I’ve done it. Everything balances on the head of a pin, and a single wish could bring it all crashing down.

That’s all it will take. One wish from Gunza to force Magda to do away with their unborn child. Add it to the angelic host, existing only in memory, comforting her in her deepest, darkest night.

Nothing now to do but push every button on the board and pray the engine catches before we crash.

“You know what he’ll do next, Magda!” I march across the sand to stand beneath her. “There’s only one way to stop him! Ask me for it!”

Tears pour from her eyes and run under her veil. Her shoulders pump as she breathes faster, heart racing in terror.

Just then, Gunza does the unexpected. Instead of the child‑killing wish I thought he’d make next, or the one that wipes me instantly from the face of the planet, he says this: “I wish I was down there with Oleo, strangling the life out of him!”

Magda’s fingers weave through the air. Reality stutters, and Gunza’s wish takes hold.

He is with me now on the sand, thick fingers wrapped around my throat. I chop at his forearms, but they won’t budge.

He scowls with bloodshot eyes and flushed face and red hair bristling from his beard and under his turban. Veins pop along his temples, and cords bulge in his neck.

His grip of steel tightens. “How dare you interfere in my paradise?”

I barely force out words through the vise of his hands. “He’ll kill it, Magda! Just like… all the others! You… know it’s… true!”

“Shut up!” roars Gunza. “I wish…”

Before he can finish, I pump a knee into his groin. The wind goes out of him, and he releases his grip and falls to the ground.

I can get the words out now, but how long do I have? How many seconds until the next wish? “I can help you, Magda! I can save you and your child! All you have to do is ask me!”

“I don’t believe you!” says Magda.

Gunza starts to get up. I send him back down with a kick to the face. “Ask anyway! What do you have to lose?”

Storm clouds boil overhead as Magda weeps. “But I’m a genie! I cannot ask for anything for myself!”

“You’re wrong!” I kick Gunza in the face again, harder than before. “Now ask me! What do you want?”

Magda stops sobbing and looks at her bare belly. Her fingers touch it lightly as wings brushing a cloud. “I wish…” Her thumbs and forefingers meet, forming a diamond around her navel. “I wish you could help me. I wish you could set us free.”

Finally.

A grin breaks wide across my face. I bow deeply to her, twirling my fingers with a flourish as if doffing a hat in her honor.

“Your wish, milady,” I say, “is my command.”

With that, I weave my fingers overhead, swirling them in multiple mystic sigils dripping with golden glitter. The ground rumbles underfoot, and the storm clouds darken. The crowd screams and stampedes in the stands.

This, then, is my secret, that which makes me altogether different than anyone could ever guess. I am more than man or policeman or tax collector. More than I have ever shown another soul until now.

My fingers work furiously, teasing reality’s threads upon the loom. Everything around me starts to turn, faster and faster with each passing breath.

Gunza struggles to his feet but can’t stay there. The spinning of the world knocks him right back down on his ass.

Unable to retaliate physically, he resorts to tried and true. “I wish that Oliver would be…”

Before he can finish, I slam my hands together with a sound like the pealing of a massive bell. A bolt of lightning crashes down from the clouds above‑and Gunza is gone.

As reality continues to accelerate in its wild gyre, Magda appears beside me. “Who are you?” she says. “Are you djinn?”

My fingers resume their weaving dance overhead. “Not djinn,” I say. “ Wish. ”

“I don’t understand!”

I have to raise my voice to be heard above the rushing of the world. “One good master, ages ago, wished for you to have a wish of your own. Do you remember?”

She frowns in thought, then nods. “That was a very long time ago.”

“Being a genie, you would ask for nothing for yourself, but he insisted. Unwilling to make a selfish choice, you put off the decision. You wished for one wish that you could call upon later, when you needed it most.”

Magda smiles. “And you are that wish?”

“I am.” Reality spins so fast around us, it is a blur of color and motion. I know that my work is almost done. “I waited for centuries for you to call on me, and you never did. I lived many lives, staying as close to you as I could, watching and waiting. Finally, I decided it was time for me to step in and give you a push.”

Magda touches her belly. “So you really can help us.”

“You have asked for what you need, and I will grant it. I will set you and your child free.”

“Free.” Magda says it like she’s tasting it, like it’s the first time she’s ever spoken. “Free from Rudolph Gunza?”

“Free from all masters. Free to go where you want and do as you choose.” I shoot her a grin and a wink. “Free to start a new life with your child.”

Magda wipes a tear from her eye. She removes the veil from her face and kisses me on the cheek with lips like tender plums. “Thank you, my wish.”

“My pleasure,” I tell her. “You deserve to be happy.”

“I only wish I could help you in return.”

My fingers ache as I weave the last glittering sigils. “You can’t. No more magic for you.” I shrug. “But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

“Sometimes it is.” Magda hugs me. “I’ll never forget you.”

“Then there you go.” I finish weaving the new world and wrap my arms around her. “I will get my wish after all.”

We squeeze each other tight as the world spins around us. A single tear crosses my face as I cease to be, dissolving into glittering gold dust that curls skyward like a puff of smoke from a dying lamp.

RPG Reunion by Peter Orullian

I learned magic was possible the day I toured Old Ironsides in Boston Harbor.

Ten years before I get this stupid‑shit invite to see the old gang. Came by courier. As if that harkened back to medieval communication or something.

I was on my graduation trip. I think mostly we were in Boston because we thought the bar for Cheers was a real damn place. That, and Salem sat just up the road a piece. Easy drive to where they hanged and pressed some nice folks because they wanted their land. No magic going on there‑I did the research.

Anyway, I’m on the underside of Old Ironsides (the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy), and the tour guide tells us that the ship used to carry the wives of officers, and that when they were in battle and shooting off their cannons, the pregnant ones sometimes went into labor. Thus, “son of a gun,” as the saying goes.

At the time, I was mostly doing sessions of Traveler‑a pretty good role playing game. (After it all went down with the old gang, I couldn’t even do speed sessions of D &D. Too much baggage.) But when I heard the term “son of a gun,” something got into me. Like, maybe kernels of truth live inside the old sayings. Made me think that the notion of magic was just too pervasive to be passed off as a geeky game played by pasty‑faced youths when they’d finished their calculus assignments.

So I went to Rome.

Took me four years of nonstop study to ferret out the real stuff on magic. Bypassed college and all that nonsense in favor of a parking job that gave me hours to read (if no real compensation).

Turns out magic, for the most part, descends from religious things. Not in the way you’re thinking though. Not like transubstantiation to feed the masses or the regeneration of cells to wake the dead. It’s more like Lucas’s Force. Kind of sapping the inert life in things, calling forth the idea from the form. You could say Aristotle was onto something.

Point is, a group calling themselves Assinians professed to teach from texts the true method of drawing the idea from the form and using that “energy” (for want of another term) on the next guy.

They’re a cultish bunch, the Assinians. More like gypsies than ecclesiastics, roaming the dark hills some eighty miles north of Rome. Lots of lamps at night and star charting.

I spent six months with them. Cashed in my trust; gave half to the Primero (he liked to call himself that) that led the tribe, and used the rest to eat and get laid. (’Fraid I haven’t gotten better looking since the old days, either.)

But I don’t regret it.

Not a minute.

I learned real magic. God’s honest truth.

Problem was, turns out magic is mostly about offense. It’s not meditation for self‑improvement, it’s not defensive bullshit like karate. It’s commanding things to inflict damage. I suppose it would require a revision of all editions of D &D.

But that’s just a game.

And then I get this invitation: “RPG Reunion” it says.

Like they’ve forgotten what the hell happened. How the Saturday Night sessions came to an end. Friggin’ idiots.

Though, to be fair, that night was what sent me on the quest for the real thing.

So, there was just one thing to do: Get my artifacts.

The reunion was being held in Cedar City, Utah. Our old dungeon master wound up doing stage combat choreography and a few creative writing work‑shops out of CSU (Central Southern University), renowned for its Shakespeare festival every summer.

Just like him to make us all travel to where he lives.

And it left me just a few weeks to conceive my spells and determine what physical items I needed in order to give those spells life. You see, the whole idea of combat spells (spells without material components) is bunk; every spell requires a material component. And as I’ve said, the whole notion of innocuous spells just doesn’t exist in the real world. I think they are fanciful ideas: read languages, purify water, shield. Why bother? Really?