Science and Sorcery (21 page)

“Thank you,” Matt said, as she prodded him into wakefulness.  She hadn't thought that policemen were supposed to be lazy, but then she
had
given him a proper workout last night.  And he had been involved with supervising the preparations for the next full moon, when the werewolves might return to wolf form.  “What’s the time?”

“Time you got a watch,” Caitlyn said, dryly.  She glanced at her bedside clock and smiled.  “And time you got out of bed.”

Matt pulled back the covers and swung his legs out of the bed, sitting up with practiced skill.  The brief encounter with the vampire had left bruises all over his chest, but they had faded away completely, along with most of the other evidence of the struggle.  Golem had said that quick regeneration was one of Matt’s capabilities; the doctors had been astonished to monitor just how quickly his body knitted itself back together.  They even had a plan to start introducing blood from Matt’s body into willing volunteers and see if it produced more Hunters.

“This is very good coffee,” he said, as he sipped his mug.  Caitlyn snorted.  She had never bothered to develop a taste for expensive coffee, a legacy of her father’s dictum that expensive habits were expensive to maintain.  “What’s happening in the world today?”

Caitlyn smiled.  “It seems that a team of role-playing nerds has managed some success in channelling
mana
,” she said.  “Do you know anything about role-playing?”

“I was never in the nerdy club,” Matt said, wryly.  “I had sex instead.”

Caitlyn elbowed him.  “How long do you think it’s going to be before one of them turns a bullying jock like yourself into a slug and steps on him?”

“It’ll happen as soon as the
mana
level becomes high enough to support it,” Matt said, grimly.  The scientists had yet to develop a way to measure
mana
in its natural state, but Golem – and the other magicians – had said that the level was slowly creeping higher and higher.  In fact, Caitlyn worried about what might happen if the level reached the point where it could support
gods
.  “And then the world will shift once again.”

He scowled.  “It may have happened already,” he added.  “Remember New York?”

Caitlyn nodded.  Two incidents at the same school might not be coincidence – although she had a feeling that the second one might be nothing more than someone trying to evade responsibility for his own actions.  Several years of service in the FBI had left her alarmingly aware of just how many people tried to escape justice by pleading everything from demonic possession to mental illness.  It wasn't helped by the fact that the media portrayed insanity as a perfectly reasonable defence in court. 

She tapped a switch on the tablet and brought out a different report.  A hunter in Alaska had reported sighting, of all things, a dragon.  If he'd reported it before werewolves and vampires had been proven real, he would have been laughed at, but now?  Golem said that the
mana
level was nowhere near high enough to support a dragon – something that large couldn't fly without magic, let alone breathe fire – and that the dragons should have died out when the
mana
faded away, but they had to take the report seriously.  Besides, he'd also said that some dragons had been capable of taking human form.  Perhaps dragon genetics had survived down the ages too.

Matt got dressed with commendable speed while she shut down the tablet and reached for her own clothes.  They’d have to start thinking about moving onto base once they took possession of the disused military base that was currently being reactivated for the Mage Force, but for the moment they could share her apartment.  Besides, it was more discreet than sharing quarters on a base...

Her secure cell phone rang.  Caitlyn picked it up and pressed her thumb against the sensor, allowing it to read her thumbprint.  “Hello?”

She listened grimly to the report from New York.  “Understood,” she said.  “I’ll send Officer Coombs and...and an expert at once.”

Matt looked up as she put down the phone.  “What’s happened?”

“You’re going to New York,” Caitlyn said, “and you’re taking Golem with you.  There’s been an...
incident
.”

Chapter Twenty-One

New York, USA

Day 25

“Back here again,” Matt said.  “I don’t know why I don’t just stay in the city.”

Golem would have shrugged, if he had been human.  Humans seemed to want to vent their frustration whenever they felt it, rather than just proceeding along as calmly as possible.  His students, the humans who were meant to be learning magic from him, suffered from frustration regularly.  They didn't seem to realise that magic was a discipline that took time to learn – Enchanter had spent ten
years
as an apprentice, even though he'd been unquestionably brilliant – and besides, Golem wasn't a very good teacher.  He’d learned his spells by rote and his sensitivity to
mana
was pitiful compared to even an unskilled human. 

It had almost been a relief to be asked to go with Matt to New York, even if it meant wearing a glamour and trying hard to avoid being asked too many questions.  The local authorities, for reasons that made little sense to Golem, had chosen to try to keep his existence a secret while they searched for other relics of his time.  Golem suspected that their search wouldn't be too fruitful –
he’d
been prepared by the greatest magician of his era for his long sleep – but there
had
been reported incidents in a dozen museums around the world.  Maybe they’d recover something useful, or maybe they’d end up wishing they’d left it strictly alone.  Anything buried by a magician from his time might well be something that wouldn't let itself be buried a second time.

The house was surrounded by human vehicles –
cars
, he’d been told – and dozens of humans wearing different uniforms.  Little about the human police and military command structure made sense to Golem, but humans definitely had a knack for making things complicated for themselves.  The police had set up barriers at both ends of the street, but there was a small crowd of curious onlookers waiting beyond the barricades.  Golem wondered, absently, if they had no sense of self-preservation.  Mundanes who found themselves caught up in duels between wizards seldom came out of it in the same shape and form they’d had when the duel started.  But then, he doubted that the
mana
level was high enough to support a formal wizard’s duel.

Matt spoke briefly to one of his fellow humans, and then looked back at Golem.  “They’ve taken photographs and suchlike,” he said, “but they’ve left the body strictly alone for us.  I’m told it isn't a pleasant sight.”

“I have few emotional reactions to anything,” Golem informed him, patiently.  Humans could be emotional, but it was a weakness, one Golem was glad to avoid.  “Let us see what your friends have found.”

Some of the policemen outside the house gave him odd looks, clearly sensing
something
not quite right about him.  Golem wasn't too surprised.  The glamour was devised to fool the unwary, not people who made a career about of spotting things that were out of place.  His false image was really too bland, too unresponsive, to be truly human.  Even if they didn't know what he was, they'd know that something was badly wrong.  Back home, the City Guardsmen would have called a sorcerer to take a look at him before letting him out of their sight.  Here...

Matt led him into the house.  It was typically human in that it was over-decorated, with paintings of the owners scattered everywhere.  Enchanter had once said that the only wealth lay in knowledge, which hadn't stopped him stocking his castle with decorations as well as books – and of stone statues that had once been his enemies.  Golem wondered absently what had happened to them, before realising that they would have returned to life when the
mana
faded away and then died, perhaps of old age.  Or maybe they would have been cut down by swords before they realised that there was no longer enough
mana
left to let them defend themselves.

“My God,” Matt said.  “What the hell happened here?”

Golem stepped past him – and stopped, dead.  He’d told Matt that he had few emotional reactions; right now, he suspected that he was on the verge of something comparable to a human heart attack.  The shock was so great that his thoughts seemed to swim into a blur in his head, as they’d done back when Enchanter was still shaping his personality.  What he was looking at was impossible, but he – unlike a human – could not engage in self-deception.  He was seeing what he was seeing and he could not look away.

He took a step forward, feeling uncommonly wobbly, as if his legs would no longer support him.  There was no mistaking the scene in front of him.  Someone, using knowledge that had been forgotten thousands of years ago, had drained the victim of all of the
mana
wrapped up in her soul.  He knew, without looking, that he would see the four nails – the runes carved into her hands and feet – and the heart, carved over her chest.  And then there was the fifth mark, carved just above her groin.

“Golem!”

Matt was shouting at him, his voice clearly displaying his alarm.  “Are you all right?”

“No,” Golem said.  “I am not all right.”

He leaned closer, studying the fifth mark.  There could be no mistake.  Only one person in all of time would have used that mark and its presence could not be a coincidence.

They called her the Queen of Nightmares. 

But the name she had chosen for herself was Harrow.

***

Matt had seen horrific crime scenes before running into a werewolf, but this one was different.  The poor girl had been carved up and then murdered, a ritual that would have been frightening even before magic had returned to the world.  There was no way to tell how she had been restrained – there didn't look to be any ropes or cuffs keeping her immobilised – but there didn't look to have been a struggle.  Maybe she’d been a willing victim, but he couldn't understand how
anyone
would volunteer to be butchered.  And Golem had clearly recognised
something
about the crime scene.

“These are runes from my time,” Golem said, flatly.  Matt had spent enough time with him to know that Golem
did
have something resembling emotions, whatever he claimed.  Right now, the clay-man sounded badly shaken.  “I do not see how they could have survived to your era.”

Matt stared at him.  They’d researched every magical tradition that survived in the world, particularly the traditions that had started producing results when the
mana
flowed back, but this was different.  How
could
knowledge have survived over seven thousand years?  There was Golem, of course, but as far as they knew, he was alone.  Unless Enchanter hadn't been the only sorcerer to create a message in a bottle for the future.

“These four runes bind her soul and
mana
,” Golem said, pointing on the marks on the girl’s hands.  “This rune” – he pointed to the one above the girl’s heart – “focuses the
mana
and provides a route for the discharge, straight up into the wards of the magician.”

Matt scowled.  “And the final rune?”

Golem seemed to hesitate, and then nodded.  “It is the personal rune of one of the Thirteen,” he said, finally.  “They called her the Queen of Nightmares.”

“The Thirteen,” Matt repeated.  It was funny how...
abstract
the threat had felt, until now.  No doubt the terrorist hunters had felt the same way, before 9/11.  Now he felt as if he had been punched in the belly.  “Does that mean they’re out of their prison?”

“I don’t think so,” Golem said.  “If they were free, they wouldn't need such a ritual.  No, she’s managed to get her hooks into some poor fool and manipulate him to help her escape.”

Matt winced.  “Why?”

“Their prison is slowly collapsing,” Golem said.  “The Queen of Nightmares might have been the weakest of the Thirteen, but her ability to extend her mind into the dreaming was unmatched.  It stands to reason that if she could get an ally on this side, she could break out of her prison ahead of her comrades and start preparing the ground for their eventual rise to power.”

“Or leave them locked away while she takes supreme power for herself,” Matt said slowly, feeling his heartbeat starting to race.  “Can she do that?”

“I do not know,” Golem said.  “She may have sworn oaths to her fellows, oaths that would make it impossible to betray them if she walks into a
mana
-rich area.  Or she may believe that she can break down the rest of the prisons from the outside.”

Matt scowled.  Golem knew a great deal, but there were far too many curious gaps in his knowledge.  Starting with the obvious question of just what Enchanter had done to imprison the Thirteen in the first place.

“All right,” he said, calmly.  “Just what happened here.”

Golem looked down at the body.  “Someone touched by the Queen of Nightmares...”

Matt interrupted.  “Doesn't she have a name?”

“If I speak her name out loud, she will hear,” Golem said, “and then she will know that we know about her.  And then she will advance her plans.”

He spoke onwards before Matt could say another word.  “The person she...controls killed the girl and took her
mana
for himself,” he continued.  “That will give him a considerable reserve of
mana
to draw on at will.  Now that he has successfully mastered the act, we must assume that he will kill again and again until he has enough
mana
to break through the locks on the prison and release the Queen of Nightmares from her confinement.  And then she will be free.”

Matt nodded, trying to think.  “And how many victims does it need to break into the prison?”

“I do not know,” Golem said.  “The fact that
mana
is leaking back into the world is proof that the prison is already collapsing.  It may be already too late.”

“But there’s no way to know for sure,” Matt said.  “Can you pick up any traces of whoever did this?”

“No,” Golem said.  “I am not as sensitive to magic as a human would be.  And even if I was, the backwash from the ritual murder would have wiped out most of the traces.  It may be impossible to track the killer before it is too late.”

Matt smiled.  “That was your world,” he said, hoping he sounded confident.  Golem was acting as though the battle was already lost.  “This is ours.  The forensic team will go through the house with a fine-toothed comb and see what they can find.”

He led Golem back outside, into the bright sunlight, and spoke rapidly with the NYPD’s incident coordinator.  A full forensic team had already been assembled; as soon as Matt authorised it, they moved into the house and started work.  Matt left them to get on with it and headed down towards one of the police vans, where a junior officer was handing out coffee and sandwiches.  Taking a mug for himself, he motioned for Golem to join him and brought up the preliminary NYPD report on the scene.  Some detectives had been working for hours before Matt and Golem had arrived.

The victim’s name was Sandra Mei Yeager, a sixteen-year-old only child with parents who had both been working overnight when she died.  A detective was already checking out their alibis; the updated note proved that the mother, at least, had been in company when her daughter had been murdered.  Matt would have been surprised to discover that her parents had sacrificed their only daughter, but it was a possibility.  They’d learned to watch for honour killings after they’d come to public attention.

There were no reports of the neighbours having seen anything out of the ordinary, unsurprisingly.  It was the kind of neighbourhood where no one ever saw anything.  They’d certainly had no reason to suspect the parents of anything, apart from being loners who kept themselves to themselves.  Police officers would follow up on any leads generated by the remaining interviews, but Matt suspected that it would be useless.  The only sour note had been a teenage boy, an ex-boyfriend, who’d called Sandra a cock-tease.  Someone might have murdered her after she’d pushed him too far, he’d said.  His words had put him right at the top of the list of suspects, which – so far – had only two names.