Wizard Unleashed Page 9

  "Won't be necessary," I said, powering on my computer. It wasn't the first Middle Persian I'd transcribed. When you work with old languages as much as I did, a good investment in OCR - optical character recognition - technology was a must. With my phone, I took pictures of the sheets and uploaded them to my program, oddly named Babel Fish.

  My phone chimed just as I'd transcribed the only spell within the loose sheaf to a fresh page within my own spell book. The spell’s name, literally translated, meant Stone Fist. My first run at the enchantment wouldn't be perfect. Spells took time to master and this one was more complex than any other I'd cast. Fortunately, I had the components readily at hand. The hero component was a glove, but it also called for hydrangea, black walnut, nail clippings of a raccoon, common sand, melted ice, and a handful of everyday items.

  My phone chimed, reminding me that I'd heard it ring once already. No doubt I was running late, but Amak would give me a few minutes. I pressed on, lighting the propane flame beneath my copper cauldron. After mixing the ingredients, the spell was activated by chanting imbuere lapide pugno, in perpetuum and dunking my gloved hand into the solution. The trick was I also had to cause my palm, thumb and forefinger to bleed into the fabric of the glove.

  I ignored a third chime from my phone.

  Imbuere lapide pugno, in perpetuum

  Imbuere lapide pugno, in perpetuum

  Imbuere lapide pugno, in perpetuum

  Power welled up and flowed through me from the stone floor below. At first, my hand started to itch. It was concerning, but I knew better than to interrupt an enchantment in progress. Energy, once drawn, must be used, or unpredictable and bad things were likely to happen.

  "That's it, my boy," Gester mocked. I spared him a worried look as I continued the chant.

  My attention was drawn back to my hand as the itching transitioned into a light burning sensation. I realized I'd broken an important rule of spell casting. I had no real idea where this spell came from. Gester had successfully used my impatience against me and planted the idea that the spell belonged to my mother. The paper being in a loose sheaf should have been a telling clue.

  "There can be no meaningful gain without sacrifice," he chided and I struggled to block out the distraction.

  It took everything I had to keep my hand in the cauldron's mixture as the burning sensation intensified. My hand felt like it was engulfed in fire and at the same time crushed by a great weight. Through gritted teeth I screamed the chant, unwilling to give in to the pain. I focused on the words, written in Latin by my own hand, unable to do anything else for fear I might pass out. Gester continued to mock, but I could no longer make out what he was saying. Pain traveled up my forearm, the now familiar itch giving way to the prickly sensation of heat. I closed my eyes and pushed back at the spell. I'd already committed my hand, but I would not allow the spell to consume anything more.

  And then it was done. As is common with magic, there was a single, clarifying moment when the spell transitioned wild energy to the confines of the enchantment. I felt immediate relief and reached up to brush away tears from my eyes. The roughness of my hand felt foreign against my face. When I held it in front of me, I discovered the leather glove had been consumed. In its place, my skin had transitioned into the texture and color of granite.

  "Delightful." Gester clapped his hands together. "A brilliant choice. Who'd have thought the sand you gathered would have been of such quality. I tell you, the Baltazoss lineage has unbelievable luck."

  I ignored the demon. Flexing my fingers, I heard the sound of stones scraping together. "What have you done to me, Gester?"

  "Exactly what you requested. I provided a spell ogres are unable to resist," he said.

  "But my hand," I said.

  "What is enchantment without sacrifice?"

  "This is permanent?"

  "Until it is not," he said cagily. "Now my first page. A deal is a deal, after all."

  My phone chimed again and this time I picked it up. I'd missed ten texts from Amak and had a voice message. I attempted to respond, but my right thumb merely scraped at the glass. Awkwardly, I used my left hand to hit the call-back button.

  Amak’s voice was tense. "Slade. I've been sitting out here for nearly thirty minutes. Your doors are locked. I thought I heard screaming. What's going on?"

  "That was me. I'm okay, at least I think I am. I'll be up in five," I said and hung up.

  "Big date with your troll girlfriend? Did you clear out the witch for a tryst?"

  Just as Gabriella warned, the demon had proven more than capable of causing harm from within his prison. Not being the type to dwell, I filed the information away for the future. I paged through the book Gester had requested, found a page which contained the least information and set it on the stand in front of him.

  "What's this?" he asked, offended. "No. Open it to the front."

  "It is what you asked for, Phezore, to open the book you specified." I mimicked his tone when he'd informed me of the same.

  "Do not use my name," he growled.

  I cast the sonic shielding spell and ignored his enraged gesticulations as I pulled the cover back over the translucent spell circle's sphere. Free from his prying eyes, I flexed my stone fingers. My fingers worked easily, albeit noisily, and I had little feeling in them.

  From beneath the desk, I pulled my go-bag, which was filled with useful herbs and other essentials for working outdoors. I crossed the lab and attempted to open the wizard’s lock on the door. The lock required finesse and telekinesis to successfully open, but I was no longer able to feel the tumblers with my stone hand or use muscle memory for the correct motions.

  "Altum Visu," I cast my wizard's sight and found where I'd left the locking mechanism. With my left hand, I picked up the bolt and slid it along the correct path. The lock was complex and I dropped the bolt into trap after trap as I attempted to finesse the mechanism. Finally, I opened the door. I ran up the stairs and repeated the same process on the simpler lock that allowed entry into the house.

  "Want to explain what that was all about?" Maggie was lying on the couch in the family room having changed into winter clothing.

  "Not really," I said. "You didn’t want to let Amak in?" Maggie mumbled something I didn’t catch as I jogged through the back of the house to the mudroom. When I opened the door, I found Amak seated on the frozen steps.

  "Sorry," I said. "Complications."

  "What is that smell?" she asked.

  "Give me a hint."

  "Burned fennel," she said. "Something else I can't identify."

  I held up my hand and flexed the fingers.

  "What the hell, Slade?"

  "New spell. Didn't work out like I'd hoped." I wasn't ready to admit I'd made a bad trade with the demon and I really wasn’t looking forward to having that conversation with Gabriella.

  "How do you want to do this?" Amak asked as I pulled on a long coat and a heavy hat.

  "We're meeting the wolves at Orchard Park. We'll take two of them with us.” I yelled into the other room, “Maggie, let’s go."

  "That's asking for trouble," she said.

  "They've a stake in this with Joe in jail," I said. "We either bring them or they follow us."

  "What happened out here?" The three of us were headed to the truck when Amak gestured to the chaotic patterns in the snow.

  "I think Daphne and I are trying to establish who's dominant."

  She kicked at the snow. "You need to hurt her, Slade. She won't understand anything else."

  "We're working on it."

  A few minutes later, we were in the truck, driving north through Leotown. The snow was mostly cleared but the roads were slick.

  It took twenty minutes to arrive at the park. The lot was filled with ratty old cars and a couple of motorcycles.

  "You're late," Squirrel said before I'd even exited the truck.

  "Wizard business," I said. "Couldn't be helped."

  A scruffy man I recognized from the h
ospital approached. "What's with all the chicks?"

  "Two wolves, O'Donohoe," I said.

  "Looks like you've added one," he said. "I'm bringing one more. Cody, you're in."

  "Fine. Your word the rest of the pack stays behind?"

  He nodded. "You have my word. If we run into trouble I can't guarantee they won't come looking for us though."

  "Just as long as they remember who the good guys are."

  Daphne approached, holding a bottle of beer. "What's this piece of shit doing here?" She pushed her finger into Maggie's chest. "She's the one who killed Flaeger."

  Amak pushed between them and laid the end of her five-foot-long oak staff against Daphne’s chest. "Let's have this out, little bitch. You've been poking at my tribe all night."

  "Damnit," I said. "We don't have time for this."

  "Got somewhere better to be?" a greasy-haired man asked. "Seems like the ugly one laid out a challenge. Bluestein has the right to accept it."

  "Daphne… I swear," Squirrel growled.

  "I accept." Daphne bowed as if accepting the accolades of a packed audience, sloshing her beer on the ground.

  Amak brought her staff around in an upswing and caught Daphne beneath the chin, sending her sprawling backward. The beer dropped from her hand and broke open on the ground.

  "That's fucked up," the scraggly man said. "She hasn't changed to wolf."

  "She had it coming," Amak said. "But I can wait. We've done this dance before."

  Daphne rolled to her feet and shifted. I was mesmerized by the process. She kicked off her shoes and disrobed with speed borne of necessity. Even as she pulled clothing off, her extremities changed and a wave of grotesque disfigurement washed over her body. No more than ten seconds elapsed before a gray wolf emerged from the undulating mass.

  No sooner had she shifted than she charged across the quickly forming circle. Excitement erupted from the bystanders as the wolf barreled into Amak, who only partially blocked with her staff. Unlike Daphne, Amak easily rolled away from the combat and came up on her feet. Daphne attempted a second rush but Amak brought the staff around and thwacked the wolf's side, extracting a yelp. Instead of waiting for another attack, Amak braced her staff against the ground and vaulted over Daphne to the other side of the circle. The wolf turned toward the staff, snapping at the air. As Amak landed, she brought the end of the staff up, contacting Daphne's chin. With speed I didn't realize she had, Amak landed blow after blow on the wolf's back and shoulders. No hit was particularly lethal, but each sounded painful. Soon, Daphne's tail curled between her legs as she snapped wildly, frustrated by the barrage.

  "She doesn't fight fair." The scraggly man, who'd first challenged us, kicked off his boots and started pulling at his shirt.

  "Josh - stop Bergie," Squirrel said flatly. With the grace of a top-rated, high school wrestler, the young man standing next to O'Donohoe leapt onto the greasy haired instigator. For a moment, Bergie resisted, but it was a fight he was ill prepared to complete. Josh wrapped his arms and legs around the older, heavier man and used their combined weight to carry them both to the ground. There was a brief struggle before Josh pulled the man into submission.

  The distraction only took a moment, but when we turned back, Amak had rolled Daphne to her back and was holding a knife to her throat.

  "Do you submit or do I bleed you out?" Amak asked.

  Daphne yowled a response and Amak looked back to O'Donohoe. "Is she done? I don't speak dog."

  He shook his head disapprovingly. "She acknowledges your victory."

  Amak flicked her knife across Daphne's cheek drawing a line of red with the point. "When you look in the mirror, remember the Senwe."

  Daphne snapped as Amak released her, but scurried away, gathering clothing in her jaws.

  "Now can we go?" I asked.

  "I'd heard trolls were fighters," O'Donohoe said, ignoring me. He held his hand out to Amak. "That was an impressive display. Daphne is quick on her feet, but you were the better today."

  "I was glad not to kill her," Amak said. "A warrior must learn her place and those that do not, often learn the hardest lessons."

  "Shit, enough of the Yoda talk," Maggie said. "Are we just going to stand here freezing?"

  O'Donohoe turned to me. "How will you keep up, wizard?"

  "I'm not entirely sure," I said.

  "Men are worthless," Maggie said, throwing her coat into the truck. She pulled off her sweater, followed by her t-shirt, exposing naked skin, which brought a chorus of wolf-whistles. "Yeah, yeah, chuckleheads. Dream about this, already. And I'm telling you, I get a fang in my ass, that'll be the last time the owner eats meat." Her voice could barely be heard over the freshly excited crowd.

  For a moment she was there, naked and shivering in the parking lot. The very next, she'd transformed into a thick-coated, four-hundred-pound caribou with a multi pointed rack on her head. Unlike with the lycan, her change was instant and appeared completely painless. She pawed the ground and snorted, shaking her head, swinging it toward an advancing lycan, freezing him in place.

  I smiled. "Nothing says Christmas like reindeer."

  Chapter 9

  Farm

  "Max, you're with us," Squirrel directed. "Josh, take the pack back to the hotel."

  He'd no more than given the instructions when he pulled his own clothing off and stuffed them into a small leather bag which he handed to a dark-haired teen-aged boy. The boy undressed and stuffed his own clothing into the same bag, all the while looking around uncomfortably and holding the bag protectively in front of his parts. Squirrel shifted to a dark-red, thickly-set wolf. Max looped the bag's thick straps around Squirrel’s neck and then proceeded to change.

  Maggie dipped her head, dropped her massive rack to the pavement and bent slightly. I took my cue and hefted onto her back.

  "Due north," I said. When she swung her giant head around to look at me, I pointed down the snowy street. She took off with a lurch. I shifted around as she moved and finally found a reasonable spot to sit. I’d been a little concerned about her ability to carry me, but she easily bore my weight as she accelerated, choosing to run through the snowy yards instead of the street.

  A howl startled us and I turned to see the wolves keeping pace with us in the street, with Amak following. The pack echoed Squirrel's call with a return chorus from the parking lot as we headed up Sixty-Sixth Street. After five blocks, I nudged Maggie's shoulder with my knee and she turned into a wooded area, up onto the snowy field of a golf course.

  "Hold up here." I pulled gently on Maggie's mane. Once she stopped, I leaned forward, swung my leg off to one side and slid down. My legs wobbled as my feet hit the ground.

  "Is this it, Slade?" Amak asked, her breath forming white clouds of mist as she exhaled. While she breathed deeply, she was hardly winded.

  A yelp caused the two of us to turn in unison and we watched Max scamper away from Maggie's flank as Maggie pulled a hoof back beneath her body. Squirrel approached, exiting from the cover of trees that ran along the edge of the fairway.

  "Max, I wouldn't test her," I said. "Squirrel, would you take a spin around the front of this house?" I pointed at the back of a house where temporary plastic sheeting had been hastily erected. "We need to make sure it isn't being watched."

  Squirrel turned gracefully, loped toward the house and through the side yard, easily clearing a five-foot-high iron fence and disappeared. Amak whistled and motioned to the black-furred Max as she slid down a small embankment toward Rosen's lot-line. A gate had been pulled from its hinges as had a full eight-foot section. Snow partially obscured the ruined fence, which put the time of the destruction at some time before the snow had started to fall.

  "Felix," Amak said in a low voice, knowing I would hear her.

  I approached the gap. "What do you have?"

  Max loudly snuffled a broken portion of the fence.

  "Max has a rather keen nose," Amak said. "There's blood here."

  With the back
of her hand she whisked snow away, uncovering a jagged piece of metal with a small hunk of flesh stuck to it. As if on cue, Max reappeared, snuffling loudly. For a moment, I was concerned he might actually inhale the meat. Amak slapped his nose just as his bright pink tongue darted out, attempting to retrieve the morsel.

  "Any tracks you can follow?" I asked.

  Amak retrieved the gray flesh and a scoop of frozen, black snow next to it that I suspected was blood. She held it to her nose and breathed deeply. "The fresh snow will make tracking hard, but I have an idea where they came from. A fresher sample would be useful, though."

  Movement caught my eye as Squirrel approached from the opposite side of the house.

  "Cops?" I asked.

  He shook his head negatively.

  Most of the homes in this section, like Rosen’s, were separated from the golf course and each other by a line of trees and an expensive iron fence. The homes on either side were busy with activity, but the trees provided a visual screen. When I started for the back of the house, Squirrel looked at Max for a moment and then followed. Squirrel must have been communicating his instructions because Max sat, staring after us and didn’t attempt to follow.

  The sliding glass door that provided entry into Rosen's kitchen was locked and I instinctively swiped at it with my right hand, telekinetically. The scraping sounds of stone-on-stone reminded me of the enchantment Gester had tricked me into using. I lowered my arm in disgust, switched to my left and awkwardly opened the lock.

  "What are we looking for?" Amak asked, pulling plastic wrap away from the hole in the back of the house, ignoring the sliding glass door. The kitchen nook we'd entered was in complete disarray. Tables, chairs, and all matter of debris were strewn about, a testament to the ogres’ rampage.

  "Omer and Oppelt shot the ogres in the family room." I pointed across the open floor plan to the equally ruined seating area that now had a much larger view of the heavily treed back yard – if you didn’t mind the plastic. "There should be plenty of blood spatter for a fresh sample."

  Amak and Squirrel needed no further prompting and set off to search through the rubble of Rosen's house. I had a second objective and worked my way back to the office. The closer I got, the worse the destruction. The ogres had systematically destroyed all furnishings and had just started ripping drywall out when the police interrupted them. Just as Dukats had indicated, the books were gone and no item that could possibly be an artifact remained. The pieces of the heavy stone altar were still here, although they had been pulled from the alcove at the back of the room and scattered on the floor.