Hart & Boot & Other Stories (18 page)

***

The ritual didn’t work.

The candles burned, the crystals sparkled, the words filled my mind, but it didn’t
work
; I was like a boat on becalmed seas. My sails were useless, without the wind of magic to fill them, and my magic was gone, as if I’d used it all up trying to compel that little building inspector. This was bad on more than one level. Without magic, I couldn’t renew my life force, and in another week or so I would begin to age and die, the years catching up with me exponentially. On the first day after I failed to renew the spell I would age one year, on the second day two years, on the third day four years, and so on, the amount doubling each day. A week later my body would be over a hundred and fifty years old, and I’d be dead.

That was assuming I survived
this
week. Without my magic to maintain the protective spells on my building and keep the fictives activated, various old enemies would probably take the opportunity to strike. I had a day, perhaps, before those protective spells weakened. The whole reason I’d slept with Kasan the night before was to gain more power to work these magics, and now some assault had drained me.

Which meant it was time to call Kasan, and get him to come over again. A marathon session of fucking would fuel me enough to strengthen the protections on my building, at least, even if I had to cast the spell during the act itself, letting the power pass through me and directly into the workings of magic.

I called Kasan’s home number, and a pizzeria answered. Annoyed, I called his cell phone. The number was not in service. His pager number went to a nursing home. I tried his e-mail address, and it bounced. His fax number didn’t go to a fax at all, but to a local used car lot.

I pressed “Stop” on the fax machine to cut off the querulous voice of the car salesman coming over the speaker. Kasan had given me fake contact information.

I was surprised, and a little hurt, and a lot suspicious. I had apparently misjudged him—it now seemed likely that I
wasn’t
his first one night stand, and that he had the fuck-and-slip-away technique down to a science. He’d certainly fooled me with his shy-and-awkward approach, and I was normally a good judge of such things.

Unless. Was Kasan something more sinister than an opportunistic lover? Was he an enemy sorcerer in disguise? Had he fucked some kind of poison into me, something to steal my abilities? How could I possibly find him, and find out? I wondered if I was being paranoid, grasping at remote possibilities because I couldn’t figure out how to investigate more likely ones.

I sank down to the floor, wanting to curl up and whimper. I’d begun studying magic in order to protect myself, to control my destiny, to author my own fate, so that I would never be helpless or dependent on anyone else. And now that power had been taken away from me. I didn’t know how to cope.

I forced myself back to my feet. Curling up in a ball did not qualify as coping, and if I didn’t know what to do next, I’d just have to think about things until I
did
.

* * *

I walked around the asphalt multi-use path until I reached the wooded side of the lake, a little natural realm in the midst of downtown, the tops of buildings visible over the trees. The day was springtime-cool, blue and clear, and the lake reflected the sky like a mirror. It was too pretty a day to be thinking of last resorts, but here I was.

I went into the trees until the path was invisible behind me, and only the occasional flash of light reflecting on water showed in front of me. I knelt on the leaves beneath the oaks, before a large stone, rounded as if it were the top half of an egg buried in the soil.

“Barry,” I said. “I need it now.”

I waited. After a moment the leaves rustled, and the earth opened up before me, the rock rolling aside as if pushed by invisible hands. Dirt began to slide apart, neatly piling up in heaps on either side of the growing hole.

Down at the bottom, a lump of dull, round stone the size of a coconut rested. It rolled up out of the hole, coming to rest between my knees. The dirt poured back into the hole.

The wind rose, blowing my long hair, lifting it off my shoulders. Barry had always liked it when I wore my hair up, to show off my neck. He’d been a good lover, and a good friend. Ever since he’d been a little boy he’d had dreams in which he was bodiless and all-seeing, a spirit of the wind. After our month was over, many years ago, I helped him attain that wish, sacrificing his body and his mortality to become a local spirit of the lake and the oaks. His desire was not so different from mine, though the path I followed took far longer, and had far greater potential rewards. Barry would only exist for so long as his grove of trees did, while I sought true immortality. Still, he would live long past his normal human span, in happiness and contentment, and I’d helped him reach that point. As thanks, he’d been watching something for me. I picked up the lump of cold stone and brushed clinging bits of soil away, slipped it into a canvas grocery bag over my shoulder, and stood up. “Thanks, Barry,” I said, and headed back home.

I set the stone orb on my altar, then picked up a perfectly mundane claw hammer. I cracked the orb with the hammer, and it split neatly in two, halves falling to reveal the sparkling crystals inside. It was a geode, beauty hidden in a drab exterior, but it was more than that, too—it was my life savings. I’d made this object many years before at great cost, draining myself of power over several successive months, pouring it off into this orb. I’d done no other magic for the half a year it took to make this orb, and using it now was almost painful, like being forced to spend your life savings on emergency medical expenses. This was magic,
my
magic, but not contained within my body, and so safe from whatever corruptive influence had tainted my powers. The orb was a one-use device, unfortunately, and its power would be expended on whatever spell I cast now.

I set up the investigative ritual again, this time putting the geode at the focal point of the objects I arranged around me.

When I lit the last candle and said the last word, the room thrummed with energy, and the crystals in the geode began to turn black, one by one, as the power stored within them dissipated.

I closed my eyes. The ritual worked. Knowledge fell upon me.

***

The vision is difficult to describe. There were voices, images, and implicit knowledge seemingly dropped into my mind, all in the service of answering my questions: Who had attacked me? How had they wrought this harm?

The main thing I saw in the vision was Komodo dragons. You’ve seen them on television, probably, if not at the zoo. Native to Indonesia, they’re the largest lizards on the planet these days, weighing in at up to 300 pounds, twelve feet long, carnivorous, carrion-eaters, relentlessly predatory, snouts full of teeth so sharp and protruding that they actually slice open the flesh of their mouths every time they bite down. Most importantly, the mouths of Komodo dragons are acrawl with some of the world’s nastiest bacteria—fifty different kinds, at least half a dozen of them septic. Any animal a Komodo dragon bites dies, even if it escapes immediate evisceration, because the resulting infection from the bite is so virulent. It’s not venom, not like snake poison—it’s just
germs
. Komodo dragons are the perfected form of natural biological warfare.

The bacteria are nasty, but the Komodo dragon’s
own
immune system has no difficulty keeping the germs under control; otherwise, the dragons would die the first time their teeth broke the skin in their own mouths. A lot of doctors are interested in Komodo dragons for that very reason, hopeful of finding a human application for the dragons’ supercharged immune systems.

Komodos eat people, sometimes, but then, they eat
anything
they can rip apart and swallow, and they aren’t picky about avoiding hooves, skins, or entrails. They can
swim
, too, which a lot of people don’t know, especially people who jump into the water to try to escape a hungry one. They’re vicious, wicked, relentless, single-minded—perfect predators for their environment.

And, according to my vision, I’d recently had sex with one in human form.

It was possible that Kasan was some sort of Komodo dragon spirit, or a sorcerer who’d fully taken on the totemic powers of a Komodo dragon, or something even stranger. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The effect on me was the same. After the ritual, I went to the bathroom and looked at my shoulder in the mirror. The place where Kasan had bitten me was still red, but didn’t look obviously infected. It probably wasn’t infected, not physically, but Kasan’s bite was the
magical
equivalent of a Komodo dragon’s bite, and it had corrupted me psychically. No wonder my magics had failed. My body would likely have died, too, if not for the protective power of the fictive, which had melted in my place. I was lucky to be alive, but my spirit-body was still swarming with magical infection.

I went back to the living room and looked at the geode, all its crystals turned black, all that carefully hoarded power spent on the ritual. I was powerless again.

No. That was the wrong kind of thinking. I was
magically
powerless, but there were other forms of power.

I went to a cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. Inside, nestled in velvet, were my ritual knives. They were meant for occasional personal bloodletting, for cutting up sacred ingredients, and for other magical purposes, but they were also sharp, curved, and perfectly adequate for other uses. Using them on a person would taint the blades, make them profane and unfit for magic, but with luck, I wouldn’t
have
to use them, just make the threat.

Still, the knives felt good and familiar in my hands. I slid two into sheaths on my ankles, beneath my long black skirt, and tucked others into my waist. If they became tainted with the blood of Kasan the Komodo-man, I’d have to consecrate new ones. With luck, I could convince him to fix what he’d done to me, and I wouldn’t need to resort to violence.

The visions had given me knowledge of Kasan’s whereabouts, an image of him in his home, a run-down little one-story house, and I could recite his street number as if I’d known it for years.

I went out, afraid but determined, and wondered if that was the way all dragon slayers felt as they set out on the hunt.

***

I knocked on Kasan’s door, and when he opened it he was clearly surprised to see me. Even knowing what he was, I still thought he was cute.

“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t expect to... Shit. Melanie, right?”

I seethed. “
Del
anie,” I corrected. “What did you do to me, Kasan?”

He leaned against the doorjamb, as if we were having a casual conversation. “Bit you,” he said. “Didn’t mean to, didn’t
plan
to, but it happens pretty much whenever my self-control slips.” He frowned. “I don’t usually hear from the people I bite again, though.”

“That’s because they usually die, Kasan.”

“Yeah, well.” He scratched his head. “It’s not like I go back to check or anything. I don’t quite have the hang of being human yet, but I’m working on it, you know? I’ll get over the biting thing eventually. I’ve only been doing this for a few months. I didn’t mean for anybody to die.”

“Why did you give me fake phone numbers?”

“Like I said, I’m learning how to be human. That’s what men do when they have a one-night stand, right? Give the girl a fake phone number?” The expression on his face was almost painfully earnest, as if he were worried about being reproached.

I’d give him more than reproach if he didn’t start saying something useful. “Sure, asshole, lesson well-learned. But I’m not a typical girl, and here I am, seeing you again. I need you to
fix
me. Give me the antidote, or suck the poison out, or do whatever’s necessary to make me normal again.” I paused. “Or else.”

“I would if I could, really, but I’ve got no idea how to undo the effects of the bite. You should be impressed that I manage to pass for human, don’t expect me to be some kind of doctor, too. I
bit
you. You’re infected. Most people just die, I guess, like you said. I don’t know what’ll happen to you if you stay alive. Maybe you should get a blood transfusion or something. Or maybe it’ll pass.”

“Infection doesn’t just pass, you idiot. And this is a
psychic
infection, it’s magical, so I don’t think a blood transfusion will help. I’ll probably get the supernatural equivalent of gangrene, and all my magic will rot off.” At least, that might happen if I was going to live longer than two weeks, which seemed unlikely.

“You’re some kind of witch, right? So can’t you... do something witchy?”

“Sure,” I said. “Human sacrifice is starting to sound appealing. You’re not strictly human, but you’ll do.” Kasan was useless, whether he was a lizard-god or something stranger. He didn’t know how to fix me. Killing him wouldn’t change that, but it wouldn’t hurt anything, either, and if I was going to age unto death, I didn’t want to be the only one who died. I slipped my hand into my waistband to pull out one of my knives.