Strange Magic: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (29 page)

OC spray kind of feels like having your face and lungs scraped away by an industrial-grade sander. You can’t breathe or see, any exposed flesh swells and distorts, and it feels like drowning and burning all at once. The natural response to getting doused by OC is to curl up into the fetal position and cry for a couple of days. Except you try not to cry because crying makes the OC spray burn worse—it’s oil based and
any
water serves to reactivate the chemical agent. Imagine having your face covered in honey and then dipped in a fire-ant hill. Now you’re there.

Still, I was okay with being sprayed. Not because it didn’t hurt—it hurt worse than a Muay-Thai kick to the groin—but because it’s a pain I’m familiar with. I’ve been blasted in the face with OC plenty of times, so I knew what to expect, I knew how my body would respond, which meant I could be relatively calm even in the midst of the terrible, sand-paper, fire-ant, groin-kicking pain.

I could work through that shit. Not so for poor Arjun.

He wailed and screeched, flailing about wildly, catching my face and chest with a few wild, but ineffective, swings. I squinted my eyes and beat him, landing carefully placed blows to his ribs, neck, and face.

Dammit! I wanted to scratch my skin off, but I wanted to put this mess to rest even more.

Arjun’s writhing arms deflected many of the blows, but I still landed some solid hits, which had him pleading for me to stop. I didn’t.

Machine gun fire erupted from back in the warehouse, sharp and echoing in the cavernous room.

“In the rafters,” Morse yelled from a distance, followed by the bark of gunfire.

“I got eyes on!” McGoon hollered from somewhere else. “It’s on the move, heading straight for you.”

I didn’t have a clue what was happening—it was hard to think through the pain and swelling which had invaded my face and throat. Couldn’t worry about Morse and McGoon. Even if Arjun did have reinforcements on the way, they weren’t my immediate concern: obliterating Arjun was. If he did have goons incoming, they’d probably kill me dead, but not before I beat him into a lumpy pile of meat. Hopefully.

Body,
thwack
, body,
thwack
, face,
thump
.

Repeat.

Body,
thwack
—for all the broken bodies of women and kids.

Body,
thwack
—for all the ruined lives.

Face,
thump
—for the hell and agony he’d put me through, put my friends through.

Blood covered his face, my knuckles. He was still moaning, but his fitful struggling had slowed significantly.

The knife sank into my lower back, right beneath the edge of my bunched up jacket. I howled like a banshee with a loudspeaker and pitched over to the side, clawing for the handle, frantic to have the excruciating sting gone. A gray, clawed hand wrapped around my throat and pitched me some five feet to the side. I landed with a dull
thud
, my hands still scrambling at my back.

It was a single Rakshasa, wearing black fatigue pants, with a sheath full of ninja kunai-knives strapped to its belt. The same no-good, ass-clown from the motel—the one who’d gotten the jump on me that first time and had thrown me through a window. Damn, I was really hoping this one had been sliced up by one of those fifty-cal gunners. Life’s not fair though, not by half, so it made sense that this jerk would be the only Rakshasa of the bunch to survive and
that he’d be the one to punch my ticket. Asstastic.

He scooped Arjun up in protective arms and rushed him to the bed, laying him down gently, reverently even.

“Okay, Boss?” it asked with a voice ill-adept for human speech.

“The basin of water, at the foot of the bed. Get it.” Arjun said, swinging his legs over the edge of the thin mattress and tentatively sitting up. The Rakshasa hurried to comply. Arjun splashed a little water on his face, trying to clear the blood and OC from his eyes. He doubled back over with a shriek, hands rubbing at his face in near panic.

I chuckled, even half-dead with a knife sticking out of my back. Small victories.

“Enough!” He yelled. “We end this here. Have you secured the intruders?”

“Yeah, Boss,” the Rakshasa said, “Both of ‘em are unconscious. Alive. Figured you might want to feed ‘em to the Daitya.”

“Good. Get the ritual instruments ready—and if the mage moves a
muscle
,” he hissed the word, “I want him dead—you hear that Lazarus!? Dead!” Apparently, someone was a little grumpy-pants about the whole OC spray thing.

I grunted my acknowledgment, but it wasn’t like I was going anywhere. I was done. Arjun moved over near the girl and into a large and elaborate summing circle, painted on the ground and surrounded with unlit candles.

“I’m going to kill her now, Lazarus. I’m going to sacrifice her, open the portal, and let the Daitya consume you and your accomplices. With your life force in him, he will surely have enough power to maintain his form on our plane indefinitely.”

“Must have suffered some brain trauma in our scuffle,” I said through clenched teeth, “it’s only Monday, jackass. You’ve got a week before you can invite Big and Ugly over for your next shindig.” I laid my head down. It hurt to talk. To breathe. To live.

“You are an ignorant child.” He took a ceremonial knife—an old wood-handled thing with a stone blade—from the returning Rakshasa. “I can summon the Daitya whenever I choose, assuming I am willing to pay the price.”

News to me.

“Granting the Daitya access to our world is not easy, Lazarus. The portal requires sacrifice: either seven unblemished, one-year-old, male lambs—one each day at sun’s set—or a single, unblemished child.”

“So you could’ve been sending this thing out daily?” I asked. “The hell, man? Why didn’t you?”

“I’m not a monster—I don’t
like
to kill,” he said, exasperated and tired.

“You’re kidding right? You’re going to help a friggin’ plague-god break free—he’ll murder millions.”

“Yes, but I don’t like to do the killing myself.”

“Not man enough to pull the trigger?” I asked, equal parts scorn and exhaustion in my voice.

“No,” he said without hesitation. “Not if I don’t have to. Most civilians are fine with soldiers killing the enemies of their nation, yet most would not like to pull the trigger themselves. Many people aren’t even comfortable killing animals, but have no qualms about eating steak or poultry. I am no different—save that I will do what I must. I will burn down the world in order to start again, in order to save it.”

He took off his blood-drenched shirt and stepped into the circle. With a small effort of will, he set the myriad of candles around him ablaze and then drew the stone knife along the inside of his left arm. The cut was not long or deep, but blood welled under the pressure of the old, pitted blade. He shook the crimson from the tip of the knife into an ancient bronze cup, no larger than a coffee mug, sitting on the concrete floor. I could feel the thrum of energy and tension filling the air. He was using himself, his blood, as the anchor and control for the gateway.

The girl’s blood would serve as the key to open the lock.

The Rakshasa moved into position next to Arjun, it had my M-16 pointed right at me.

“It’s over,” Arjun said. “Now lie still and make peace with your gods. Take some solace, though, I will make the end quick for you. You fought well despite the fact that you are terribly misguided.” He turned and looked at the Rakshasa, “If any of them move—Lazarus or the others—kill them without prejudice.” He turned back to face the girl. “I’m sorry,” he said to her and then began to chant, a slow, slightly off-key mantra in some long-forgotten tongue.

THIRTY-ONE:

End Game

I was done, I knew it in my heart—Arjun had played a better hand, and for me the fat ol’ Blues Man was about to trumpet his last note. I could feel blood seeping out of the knife wound in my back—there wasn’t a pool by any means, but certainly enough to concern me. Also, it was starting to get cold and my legs felt too heavy. I wasn’t ready to die here, I wasn’t ready to go on to whatever came next. My heart was beating heavy in my chest and tears ran down my cheeks.

There was a lot I hadn’t done, people I’d never had a chance to say good-bye to.

My sons were still out there. My grandkids. All probably thought I was long dead. Still, I would’ve liked to see them again. I always suspected it would end more or less like this for me—a lonely and violent death. I’d accepted that reality. But there’s an ocean worth of difference between accepting something rationally and staring that ugly, shit-kicking truth in the face.

I knew from the beginning that it was a mistake to get involved in this ordeal. Knew it wouldn’t end well for a whole lot of people—me, right smack-dab, at the top of the list.

I’m not a hero, I never wanted to be. All I wanted was to play my music, throw down a little action on a game of poker once in a while, and be mostly alone.

Instead, I was bleeding out on the floor while a little girl cowered in the corner—her face dirty and tear-streaked, her knee-highs covered in warehouse filth, her arms curled around her coltish legs. Instead, I had a little girl who was about to be murdered. An eleven-year-old named Samantha who went by Sammy.

If I didn’t stop Arjun a bunch of other good people would die too, but those people were far away, while Sammy was sitting right in front of me. Crying.

Like Mick Jagger said so long ago,
you can’t always get what you want
. Too true, brother. Too true. And if I was going to go out … well, dammit, at least I could try to give that little girl a chance. I even had a plan, sort of. A long shot which might stop Arjun and maybe save the girl.

She would get a fucking chance, even if it cost me everything.

I hadn’t ever let go of the Vis, even though the flow feeding into me was a weak thing, a trickle of power. That wouldn’t do though, I needed more. I let myself go, let myself draw more deeply than I should have, especially in my weak state, knowing I could easily burn myself out and lose the ability to touch the Vis. I reassured the gibbering voice of caution in my head that I was going to die, so it wasn’t worth worrying about. The power I was holding was substantial, but there was so much juju floating around in the air, Arjun would never notice.

If you’re diddy boppin’ along the road on some warm still day, you might notice a strong gust of wind. You sure as shit won’t notice that same breeze if there’s a friggin’ tornado roaring by a block over. Arjun was calling up a tornado.

But I couldn’t throw some quick-and-dirty, last-ditch-effort, construct at him. Whatever else he may have been, he was a damn good mage, operating from a place of strength, and he’d have a defense up for just about anything. He had my measure. He might not be able to feel my power, but if a new and different construct sprang into being, he’d sense it from a mile off and swat it down like a gnat.

But he wouldn’t notice a construct almost identical to his own. Weaving a construct with the same resonance pattern as his would be like hiding a smaller shadow inside of a much larger one.

I focused my flagging will, spinning hundreds of razor-thin strands of radiant heat into a rough lattice square, overlaid and woven through with streams of air, and knots of earthen power. The structure was invisible to the unaided human eye, but it would have vaguely resembled a medieval castle gate—a door—which is what it was. Arjun was opening a gateway, so I decided I would open one too. I constructed mine strand by strand about a foot below
his feet, right between him and the Rakshasa, hidden beneath the concrete floor of the warehouse.

Remember, I’m not exactly the best at opening portals—big kablooey, lots of fire, black hole of doom into another dimension. I’m no Harold the Mange. When I rip open a gateway it gets messy and dangerous, and all the more so now because I didn’t know where this place overlapped with Outworld. Whatever. A big kablooey was just what I needed right about now. And hey, I’m a gambler, I’ve taken plenty of long shot bets in my days, what was one more? Good to know I could go out being true to myself—maybe I hadn’t avoided being inanely heroic, but at least I could still go out playing the ponies.

Arjun’s chanting took on a new rhythm, the words coming faster and faster, his pitch rising in fanatic zeal, the knife in his hand hooking and slashing in well-rehearsed and practiced movements. Terrible strain filled the air. The crackling pressure which proceeds a momentous lightning storm or some unspeakable act of Mother Nature.

With the Vis filling me, I could see his construct: easily twice the size of what I had made and far more intricate and beautiful. Arjun’s portal resembled the entrance to Norte Dame
,
while mine, by comparison, vaguely resembled the cave-dwelling entrance of some ancient and especially dense Neanderthal.

I drew still more deeply from the Vis, letting that power flow out of me and into my grubby portal, my body a conduit and little more.

“Please, mister,” the little girl whimpered. Arjun stepped closer to the edge of the circle, rising the knife high above his head in a two-fisted hold, readying himself for the killing blow. “Please don’t do this,
pleasepleaseplease
…” Heaving sobs racked her frail form, she drew her knees even more tightly against her body.