Sorcerer's Luck (23 page)

On the way home I kept brooding about the poor dog, a female at that. Had Nils meant her
horrible death to rebound onto me? Since Tor and I were sharing the back seat,
once we got onto the freeway and smoother riding, I asked him.

“What else?” he said. “I dispelled that, too. And deflected the curse back to him.” His
voice dropped to a growl. “We'll see how he likes that.”

When we reached our building, Tor invited Billy and JJ in, but Billy had to get back to
work, and JJ needed to return to the graduate library—to allow his thesis to
continue driving him insane, was how he put it. I practically ran up the stairs
to our flat. I wanted refuge from the cruelty I'd seen. I flopped onto the
couch and stared at the beautiful Chinese vases and the masterpiece of a jade
mountain. Tor paced back and forth in front of the west window.

“I understand one thing now,” Tor said. “Why he didn't use a horse's head. It's
too public up there. He killed the dog somewhere else and brought her up with
him. He couldn't have gotten a dead horse into his SUV, and killing a live one
in the open?” He shrugged. “Someone would have noticed. The park rangers if no
one else.”

“They would have found the pole eventually, wouldn't they? Despite that spell, I mean.”

“Oh yeah. Aversions don't make people blind. But if we'd left it, it could have done a
lot of harm. Look. I agreed to stay on defense, right? We both felt sorry for
crazy old Nils. No more. He tried to hurt you. I want to send him howling like
the coward he is. I want to terrorize him so bad that he'll stay away from us
forever. The full moon's nearly here. I'll make my first strike once it's over.
Assuming he hasn't made one on me first.”

I'd been raised to value compassion as the One Great Thing, the lesson every sentient
creature needed to learn from incarnation. But the scene I'd witnessed rose in
my memory—the tortured dog on the mountainside—and warned me that Nils had
slipped over the edge into dangerous madness.

“Okay,” I said. “That's fine with me.”

The image of the dead dog on the mountain haunted me. When Tor made lunch, I could barely
eat. How could anyone do that to an animal, especially a dog, who would have
loved its owner? As my mind kept bringing up the ugly scene, pieces of a
different puzzle finally fell into place. Hiking in the Catskills, a rare blood
disease, and a werewolf here in California who just happened to run across Tor
in the local wilderness?

“What is it?” Tor laid his half-eaten sandwich down on his plate. “You look kind of
strange.”

“I just realized something. Nils isn't going to attack us at the full moon. He won't be
able to.”

“What? Why —”

“Because he has to be the lycanthrope that bit you. Anything else would be too much of a
raw coincidence. Didn't you tell me that the wolf came right up to you? In
daylight? He must have been tracking you.”

Tor looked at me for a long moment, then laughed with a sharp bearish chuff. “Of course,”
he said. “Revenge, and he'd been watching, waiting to see where he could get at
me.”

“What I wonder is how he knew you'd be on Mount Tam. I mean, he must have gone over
there before the full moon. He couldn't drive in wolf form.”

“I'd scattered Dad's ashes up there the year before.” He shoved his barstool back
and got up. “He loved the mountain, and he had a favorite place, a kind of
hollow on the mountain side, and in the rainy season there's a stream and a lot
of ferns. That's where he wanted to rest.”

“Is it near where you got bitten?”

“It
is
where I got bitten. Nils must have been watching, must have known.” Tor went
very very still. His voice growled when he spoke. “The bastard.” He stood with
his head thrown a little back, his hands curled into fists, his mouth tight and
thin, his eyes narrow with rage, and yet his body stayed quiet, tense but
quiet, like a sword blade. “I'm going to get my revenge on this guy. It's not
enough to just drive him away. I—” Tor broke off and looked my way. “What's
wrong?”

“I'm terrified, that's what!”

“Don't be. He's not going to be able to—”

“Not of him. Of you!” I was shaking, so chilled and sick that I couldn't lie. “I've
never seen you—I've never seen anyone look like this, say things like this.
Tor, please!”

“I'm sorry.” He spoke quietly. “But if I don't make him pay for this, I'm not going to be
able to live with myself.”

In that moment I understood everything I needed to know about the old sagas.

“Honor,” I said. “That's it, isn't it?”

“Damn right! He profaned my father's grave. He's going to pay for that. And for
threatening my woman, he'll pay again. And incidentally, for what he did to me,
he'll pay a third time. Fucking right he's going to pay in full.” He smiled,
but there was no warmth in it. “And no, I don't want you to help me. I blew it
once, dragging you into this. I'm not going to do it again.”

“I want to watch. I want to be there.”

“No.”

“Tor, I'm afraid of what he might do. I want to see. I might be the one who's got to pick
up the pieces afterwards.”

He blinked at me.

“Well?” I got up and faced him. “Don't I have to take care of you when you're in bear
form? I'll do the same if you're exhausted from whatever it is you're planning.
I'll need to know what happened.”

He stared at the floor for a long moment. “Okay,” he said. “You can come down and watch
when the time comes. Once the moon starts to wane.”

He turned and strode off downstairs. I heard him slam the door at the bottom. I went into
my bedroom and checked the writing desk. The green lion lay on his back, dead
in a circle of hovering ravens. Tor stayed downstairs all afternoon, and I was
too afraid to go down and ask him what he was doing there.

Yet, when we met Jim and Cynthia for dinner, Tor acted perfectly normally. While we
waited for a table at the restaurant, the two guys discussed baseball, whether
the A's had a chance to redeem their awful season, if the Giants could stay hot
for the rest of theirs. Cynthia had invited Brittany and Roman to join us, but
neither of us expected Brit to be on time. Just as we were seated, though, she
did call—on my smartphone, not Cynthia's, which was odd since Cyn had made the
invitation. I found out why right away.

“Maya,” Brittany said, “is Roman with you guys?”

“No. Was he supposed to meet us here?”

“No. I was just hoping that maybe he would.” She paused for a long moment. “We might be
having our first crisis. The relapse. I mean, they usually do backslide at
least once.”

“Oh shit!”

“Yeah. Look, tell Cynthia I'm sorry, but I'm going to stay here. He might show up.
I'll phone you if he does.”

“Please. I don't care how late it is. I'll take the phone to bed with me.”

“Okay. Talk to you later.”

I clicked off. My hands were shaking so hard that I had trouble getting the phone back
into my shoulder bag. My voice shook, too, as I explained the situation to
everyone else. Tor turned in his chair to watch me with narrow eyes.

“Oh my god!” Cynthia said. “Maybe we should go into the city and just be there while Brit
waits. I hate to think of her being there all alone.”

“Can't we eat first?” Jim said. “Brit seems to have one of these crises every goddamn
month.”

“Aw, honey, that's not fair!” Cynthia turned toward him. “There haven't been that many.”

Jim opened his mouth to reply, but Tor got in first.

“You guys stay and eat. Maya and me will drive in. Okay? Our turn.” Tor glanced at me. “Why
don't you call her and tell her that help's on the way?”

“I'll do that, sure,” I said, “and thank you.” I gave Cynthia as reassuring a smile as I
could manage. “He's my brother. It's my problem.”

Jim and Cynthia both relaxed. When the waiter appeared with menus, Tor stood up and
greeted him.

“I'm sorry,” Tor said. “We have to leave. Medical emergency.” He pulled a twenty dollar bill
out of the pocket of his slacks and handed it to the startled young waiter. “Here's
something for your trouble. Looks like it won't be a party of six after all.
Our friends will be staying, though.”

The waiter took the money and thanked him. Tor slipped his arm through mine and steered me
through the restaurant while I called Brittany. When she heard that we'd be
coming over, she nearly cried in relief.

Before we headed for the freeway and San Francisco, Tor drove us home, much to my
surprise. He put Gretel into the garage, then backed my old Chevy out while I
waited on the sidewalk. He got out and secured the garage with his smartphone.

“I've been thinking,” he said. “You should wait here while I go get Roman. Where I'm
going, Gretel would be stripped in about ten seconds. No one's going to notice
this car. I'm hoping I won't have to get out of it, but you never know.”

I gaped at him. “You know where Roman is? How?”

“How do you think I know? Now, you go upstairs and—”

“No! He's my brother, and he'll listen to me better'n he'll listen to you.”

Tor thought this over while I fumed.

“Okay,” he said. “Get in the car. We're going to grab him before he does something really
stupid. He's hanging out in San Francisco. Over in the Crocker-Amazon.” He
paused and went totally still for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yeah, not far
from the Daly City line.”

I groaned and got into the car. Don't get me wrong. A lot of decent, hard-working people
live in that district, and a lot of students. You can find whole streets of
nicely painted houses, but they'll all have grates or bars over their front
windows. Cheap rental buildings and liquor stores, the scruffy bars on Mission
Street, the empty lots and the trash blowing around, and the way the cops avoid
the area unless they're cracking down on someone—it all combines to attract
weak souls and their predators.

By the time we got across the bridge and down to the south-eastern edge of San
Francisco, the last light of the day was fading. The fog came pouring in, covering the
sky a few tendrils at a time, turning the world cold and gray. We left the
freeway and eventually found a desolate stretch of Mission Street, fringed with
old stucco buildings and the occasional row of cheap little stores. What
traffic there was moved fast, especially the big gray and red city buses, as if
the drivers were hurrying to get out of the neighborhood. Tor kept in the right
lane. We drove north, back toward the city, until we came to a block with a
couple of empty lots and a bright pink Mexican restaurant, a stucco cube that
could have been imported whole from Tijuana. That's not a compliment.

“I spotted him around here,” Tor said. “But if he's going to shoot up, he'll be inside
somewhere.”

“I don't think he uses needles. I've never seen any tracks.”

“That's a good sign, then.”

Tor made a U-turn in an empty intersection and headed back south. Near a big, well-lighted
gas station I finally spotted Roman. He was leaning against the outside of a
bus shelter, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets while he kept watch up a
side street as if he were waiting for someone. When Tor pulled up at the curb,
I unbuckled my seat belt fast and got out.

“Ro,” I said, “what are you doing out here?”

He spun around and stared at me. In the fluorescent light from the gas station, his
skin looked gray, and his eyes were dark and huge.

“I could say the same for you,” he said. “Shit.”

“Get in the car. Brit's worried sick.”

“Can't. I'm meeting someone.”

“Yeah, I bet. One of your dealers?”

He turned his back on me. Tor got out of the car and strode over to face him. Roman spun
around only to see me still there. He turned back, tried to take a step
sidewise and rammed into the side of the bus shelter. When he nearly fell, I
grabbed his arm by the elbow and steadied him. He reeked of bourbon.

“For chrissakes,” Roman said. “So I didn't want to go out to fucking dinner with my
little sister's fucking ever so clean and nice fucking friends.”

“Yeah, and this is better?” Tor said. “Come on, Cantescu! I know what's going on. You keep
seeing re-runs of the action in your head. Someone's face exploding when you—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Roman said.

“Was it a woman, and you thought it was a guy with an IED, but she was carrying a baby?”

Roman swung at him, a hard right straight for his head. Tor stepped to one side as fast and
smoothly as a dancer and grabbed Ro's arm in both hands. He twisted and pulled.
Roman started swearing in a stream of profanity so foul it was surreal, but Tor
kept the pressure on, stepped forward, and forced him to his knees.

“How many, Cantescu?” Tor said. “How many re-runs? You need to blot them out, don't you? Every
death. Every scream. Booze won't do it anymore. Especially when you remember
your dead buddy.”

Roman looked up at him and started to cry. He sobbed, the tears ran, he caught his
breath in big gulps and wept the harder. Tor let him go, then bent down and
helped him to his feet.

“Come on,” Tor said. “Get in the car.”

I opened the back door. Roman stopped crying. He got in and slumped down, half-lying,
half-sitting across the entire seat. I got in the front seat and turned around
to lock the back door. Roman looked up at me, started to speak, then wept
again. I just managed to buckle my seat belt before I started weeping with him.
I finally got control of myself after Tor had driven us half-way across the
city. I opened the glove compartment and took out the box of tissues I'd always
kept there. I pulled out a handful and then handed the rest over the back of
the seat to my brother.