Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (35 page)

“I said you smelled, I didn’t say you smelled
offensive.
” August lowered his voice. “Quite the contrary. I like your smell.”

Deven felt the words sink into his stomach and roll there, warm and heavy.

August resumed his quick pace. “One stop at the armory, and off we go.”

Deven got to meet the odor-sensitive pixie August had mentioned the night before. Deven had never seen a pixie and was surprised by his size, having assumed he would have been small enough to fit in his hand.

Instead, the pixie was nearly Deven’s height, although his ageless body was thin and his skin nearly blue in color. He wore only a small loincloth and had iridescent wings, which increasingly flapped the more annoyed he got.

And annoyed he was. He begrudgingly shoved a set of freeze balls at Deven only after Agent August cut him off mid-curse and threatened to call in Director Alonsa, the head of the Mexican branch office. August grabbed a weapon for himself from an arms locker that was labeled “shard pistols.” Freshly armed, Deven wanted to test his new weapon, but August was determined to do the vision serpent spell as soon as possible.

72 drove them to a warehouse in an industrial part of the city. The boarded-up building appeared condemned; rusted and dented metal garage doors barred the entrance and a large
Se Vende
sign was nailed over the narrow windows.

72 opened the heavy padlock on the door and they stepped inside, where the building was revealed to be in good condition, brightly lit and clean. The large open space had little furniture, only a few folding chairs and a table set up in the corner, holding a flat of bottled water, a coffee maker, and what looked to be some dirty coffee mugs. The rest of the concrete floor was bare, although markings had been scrawled in a circle at one end and another end was scorched black with burn marks.

“You working for Agent Ortega today?” August asked 72, who nodded. August turned to Deven. “How long does this take?”

“About fifteen minutes to conjure. If we use our blood, the vision will last no longer than an hour.”

August nodded to 72. “Pick us up in two hours.”

72 nodded, his gaping, vacuous mouth echoing screams and chilling Deven. He relaxed once the driver was out of the building.

“Where are we?” Deven asked.

“Practice studio.” August shrugged out of his suit jacket. “It’s a safe environment for conjuring with wards around the facility to contain effects. The agency tries to set one up in every city they have a field office.” He threw his coat over the back of a folding chair. He leaned forward and sniffed at the coffee maker. Something about the odor made him back away. He nodded to Deven. “It’s your show, pretty boy.”

Deven scowled at the name but nevertheless pulled out what he’d taken from Carlos Rodriguez’s evidence box. He also removed conjuring papers from his pocket and matches.

He held out the thorn-threaded cord, a moment of nausea quickly pushed down after years of experience.

“You need blood, right?” August asked. He pulled out the pocket medical kit he’d taken from the forensics lab and rolled up his sleeves.

“Not from your arm.” Deven stopped him. “More effective from the tongue.”

August looked a little queasy at that. “Disgusting.”

“Aztaws usually take the blood from the penis.”

“No thanks.”

Deven handed August the copper bowl. “Hold this under my mouth.” He didn’t think about it. He tore the thorned cord quickly over the center of his tongue and pain choked him. Blood filled his mouth. He spat into the bowl and took it from August, holding it under his chin as he let the blood drip from his tongue.

August had a look of extreme distaste, grimacing at the bowl. “You don’t need that much blood to do a spell, you know.” He pulled a needle from the medical kit and examined it as if making sure it was clean. He pricked his finger, then took the bowl from Deven’s hands. “Our research department has shown most traditional spell casting uses far more blood than necessary. In actuality…” He squeezed the tip of his finger and several drops of blood fell into the bowl, mingling with Deven’s voluminous contribution. “Half a teaspoon will successfully fuel any magic and with less consequences.” He squeezed a few more drops into the bowl, then handed it back to Deven.

Deven glared. “You might have started that speech a minute earlier.” His words were garbled as he spoke around the swelling of his injured tongue.

August laughed, his eyes twinkling as he pulled a bandage from the kit and meticulously wrapped his index finger. He used his bandaged finger to point at Deven. “Less chance of infection too.”

“It was your friend’s thorned cord,” Deven reminded him.

“Actually, it was most likely Bea’s. She was researching links between Aztaw invasions in pre-Columbian Mexico and influences on indigenous culture. She loved old artifacts.”

Deven spat more blood on the floor as a response.

August walked over to the table and returned with a bottle of water. He handed it to Deven.

“Thank you.” Deven gratefully diluted the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. When the bleeding slowed enough, he held out his summoning papers. “If you’re ready, turn off the lights.”

August switched off the lights and moved to stand behind Deven. Other than the faint glow of an emergency exit sign in the back of the warehouse, the space blackened completely and Deven relaxed in the safety of darkness.

He poured their mingled blood over the papers, lit a match, and set them alight. At first the smoke sputtered, the paper soaked wet, but then a whiff of the smell reached the underworld and the paper burst aflame.

Deven dropped the fiery sheet into the copper bowl to burn up the rest of the blood. He pushed the bowl away and stepped back. August avidly observed his actions.

Deven had performed little magic in the natural world and for a moment he wondered if he’d done something wrong. Then a burst of smoke mushroomed from the flame and shadowy shapes filled the darkness. White smoke coiled, curling and expanding into a massive double-headed serpent, rearing on its tail from the flaming bowl. Its two skull heads turned, forked tongues reaching out to nearly lick their faces. The serpent grew to the ceiling of the warehouse.

Deven glanced at August to make sure he was all right. Deven had seen human captives faint dead away or go white, screaming at the sight of vision serpents. But August stared intently at the specter, not scared, simply looking like he was trying to figure it out. Deven felt oddly proud.

White smoke clearly defined one of the serpent’s heads, detailing each tooth and bone. But the other head wavered in smoke tendrils, barely formed as it peered into another world.

The head facing them hissed. Deven raised the Aztaw bone from Rodriguez’s apartment. “Show us what he died to hide,” he commanded in English and in Aztawi. He threw the bone at the serpent. The smoke rippled where the bone shot through the vision. The skull in the natural world pulled away and the obscured skull of the supernatural world turned to face them. Its jaws opened and dislocated, revealing what looked to be a filthy, dark Mexican alley. An Aztaw lord walked slowly through this alley, dragging one leg as he moved. His body rhythmically pulsed as if he were a walking heart. The vision of the lord was vivid, even in the dark, flickering only as air currents disturbed the smoke.

He was Aztaw, no doubt about it, but he didn’t look like any lord Deven had ever seen. Paper-thin, translucent skin stretched over his luminescent skull and spine, weathered with age. His face bones were painted in black and yellow stripes, and his eyes burned in their sockets, wide and lidless. His lipless mouth opened to reveal teeth sharpened into long fangs.

His left leg ended in a sandaled foot, but the right terminated at an exposed shin bone that scraped along the ground as the monster walked. He wore black and yellow Aztaw armor and carried a tall staff in one hand. In his other hand he held an axe with a handle as long as a man’s body. An obsidian mirror was strapped to the back of his head.

All Aztaw lords were terrible in appearance, but this one was particularly unusual because his flesh was so thin it revealed coursing red blood moving underneath the surface, pulsing around his spine. He resembled a fat, transparent tick, swollen on blood. Dozens of red arteries streamed out from his spine and stretched into the ether. The blood vessels hovered above the alleyway pavement, turning the corner as if the creature were the heart of a city-sized circulatory system. As he walked, dragging his right foot behind, his entire body pulsed and the blood under his skin pumped.

“Christ...” August blinked at the vision.

Deven recognized the black and yellow paint from oral legends. “Night Axe,” he said. “Lord of Hurricanes.”

The lord spun and stared straight at Deven, pupils contracting to pinpricks. His mouth opened wide, revealing sharp, jagged teeth.

Terror rushed through Deven. “He’s seen us!” He kicked over the copper bowl, spilling the remains of their blood onto the concrete.

“I thought it was only a vision,” August said.

“Somehow he knows we’re looking at him.” Deven cursed himself for not crafting a jade spell breaker. “Enough!” He waved at the vision serpent. “Turn your face away!”

But vision serpents were notoriously disobedient and the terrible image of Night Axe remained. The lord seemed to smile. His body throbbed as he pointed his staff directly at Deven. He dragged the sharp tip over his own neck in warning.

“Look away!” Deven commanded again, and at last the jaws of the vision serpent snapped shut. Its tongues hissed at Deven, screeching as it dissipated back into the copper bowl. The smell of sulfur and ozone permeated the air and soot scorched the back wall of the warehouse, forming a final, murky image of the serpent.

Deven breathed heavily. Fear tingled down his spine.
Impossible
.

“Shit.” He heard August curse somewhere off in the distance. Then the lights switched on. Deven covered his eyes with the palms of his hands.

“Is that what Aztaw lords look like?” August asked.

“No. He’s mutated.” Deven lowered his hands, wincing at the light.

“Do you know who he is?”

“Yes, but I don’t know how he could be here.”

August frowned. “Your hands are shaking.”

Deven swallowed. “Night Axe...he’s the bogeyman to Aztaws. And I’ve never seen any lord break through a vision spell and peer back at the spell caster like that.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means he’s here.” Deven fumbled on the ground for his bottle of water and took a deep gulp.

“Here?”

“He’s not on another plane. He’s
here
in Mexico City, hidden by magic but in the natural world.” Deven’s tongue throbbed angrily in his mouth.

August frowned. “So Carlos and Bea were trying to find out where he was?”

Deven nodded. “Yes, although why I have no idea.”

“Who is he?”

“He is the Lord of Hurricanes, although Night Axe is what Lord Jaguar always called him. Almost a thousand years ago, the lords banded together in a rare moment of unity to collectively exile Night Axe from Aztaw. Even by their standards he was considered too evil—reckless in his manipulation and excess. I’ve heard of him spoken of only in whispers, but he has many names. He’s the Trickster, the enemy, the Lord of the Smoking Mirror. His house power allows him to change his appearance, even mimic the shape, movement, and sounds of others. Doing so, he brings discord and deception wherever he goes. The lords exiled him for the unadulterated pleasure he gained by continuing a cycle of destruction. He once burned crops to purposefully bring famine to his own vassals. And when Aztaws suffered, he’d use his smoking mirror to reflect their pain and prolong their suffering.

“But he didn’t just hurt Aztaws. Even though all Aztaw lords sacrifice humans for their blood, they treat us respectfully in the underworld until death, because our role is so important. Aztaws truly believe humans will be reincarnated as part of the eternal house powers they die to fuel. But Night Axe showed no such respect. Night Axe entered the human realm and killed en masse, torturing his sacrifices.”

August walked back over to the table and pulled on his coat. “If the other lords feared him so much, why didn’t they kill him?”

“He was too powerful,” Deven said. “He had enchanted armor and he can modify his body, allowing him to hide in plain sight in the guise of animals or other Aztaws. Coupled with his insatiable passion for battle, the other lords lost and were forced to offer gruesome tributes, killing their own people in the dark to be eaten by Night Axe’s soldiers. His soldiers were fierce and he had the tzimimi under his will.”

“So instead of killing him they exiled him here? To Mexico City?”

Deven scowled. “No! That would have defeated their purpose. They needed him stripped of power. And of course, human blood only strengthens the lords. Since they couldn’t defeat him, they worked together to align two tricky calendars and forced Night Axe to the realm of light, hoping he would weaken without darkness and starve without human blood or Aztaw food.”

“Clearly it didn’t work.” August snapped open a bottle of water and took a deep gulp.