My Path to Magic (32 page)

That test supported the only conclusion: those half-baked macaques did mess me up.  Seriously.  They had not "killed" the magic, just broken it, the meager charlatans.  What could I do with the Source now?  Maimed magic is much worse than none at all.  Disappointed, I habitually kicked the Source and, surprisingly, received a kick back, wrapped in a sort of anger—someone really expected me to be grateful and gave a hint that it had become bored.  What the hell...?

The familiar feeling of the presence of another being set my hair on end.  Holy priests, was
Rustle
sitting inside of me instead of the Source?  Was that possible at all?

Hello, skeleton with brown foam...

I wanted to hang myself, fearing that forty days of quarantine would start anew.

Quietly, quietly, no panic!  I read a book about
Rustle
, did I?  To get rid of it was quite simple—I only needed to get to the garage...  I rushed out of the basement bunker as if pursued by a hundred
ghoul
s, ignoring Rakshat's surprised exclamations and the bewilderment of the oncoming students.

I wanted to run non-stop and not think why and where I was going!  Otherwise, this time more than just vision would fail me.  I needed to get to the junkyard where my motorcycle was.

It was like a bet not to "think about the white monkey"; an ordinary man would have lost it, but not a dark magician.  Two thoughts dominated my conscience: the need to get to the garage, and absolute, all-consuming rage.

How had the monster dared to play its trick on me, me?!  Okay, no one had managed to exterminate
Rustle
in the last one thousand years, but I was ready to fix that.  Even without the Source.  Indeed, I didn't need magic to kill the
ghouls
before!  The complexity of the mission wouldn't scare the dark off.  I would bring down on it the entire power of technomagic!  I would find what the technomagic was about and use its might on the monster. 
Rustle
seemed to become impressed.

I must have looked awful on the outside; nobody requested that I buy a tram ticket, and that says a lot.  Judge for yourself: I hissed, spat, and cursed myself, and looked like a mage at that.  No wonder I scared people.  I broke into the garage and grabbed the saddle bag taken off the motorcycle after the "death" of the Dark Knight.  In the bag I kept my combat mage's kit, including a powerful enchanted lamp—quite harmless to
Rustle
when it was inside me.  But the lamp had a source of energy...  I began violently plucking out the accumulator from the case, trying not to focus my thoughts on what I was doing.  The zombie-dog skeptically watched my efforts.

There it was!

A painful touch stabbed my tongue, and my mouth became sour.  Yes!  Now I could think.  In addition to the blue light,
Rustle
disliked electricity, so its victims were treated by... hmm... there was no point going into detail.

Cold and resounding emptiness reigned in my head.  Perhaps, that's how life looks like after the imposition of the
shackles
: the apotheosis of solitude.  Given the alternative, I felt incredible relief.  As they say, everything is relative.

The first round was on me.  Nodding to a puzzled Max ("alright, ciao!"), I took the battery and got back to the apartment.  It didn't make sense to return to classes; tomorrow I would claim illness.

* * *

To get to the central NZAMIPS lab, wisely located in a separate outhouse, the captain had to cross diagonally the entire police building.  When Locomotive reached the place, he understood how fortunate he was: waiting in his office for the expiration of the twenty-four hour timeline, he had a good night's sleep, unlike all the others.

Gray from fatigue and looking ten years older, Satal sat in his chair, relaxing, and sipped something that resembled poorly made tea.

"How are you?" Locomotive called to him cautiously.

The coordinator did not waste energy on the greeting.

"We pulled out of the pump-sign the imprint of the aura, selected fifty candidates from the database, and are examining them now."

"What if he is a visitor?" Baer asked practically.  The dark are usually quite mobile people; they do not like sitting in their gardens as the white do.

"That would mean no luck," Satal dropped indifferently.

"I've sent officers to the university and local services to inquire whether they saw a new mage.  It is unlikely that the initiated magician is a tramp."

"Watch," the coordinator put the cup up to his head, "if there are any eccentrics on the streets.  The time has come for that."

"What do you mean?"

"Did you get at all what had happened?"

Locomotive shrugged uncertainly—he had never dealt with such exotic cases of supernatural encounter, and the experts' report had not been provided yet.  Actually, that was the purpose of his visit to the coordinator.

Satal majestically waved his cup (fortunately, it was nearly empty): "In conjunction with the pump-sign, the
shackles
do not inhibit the Source, just tear it from the controlling willpower.  The energy channels are left open-loop, and the initiated magician in such condition may try to get energy from the outside."

Baer nodded: that he knew, but the burned-to-ashes corpses didn't look like they had been sucked by a vampire.

"If at this moment some otherworldly creature offers itself as the Source, the monster will have access to the etheric body of the mage, bypassing all his natural defense mechanisms.  Like manure directly into the vein!  In that case, the infection cannot be stopped; the body resists for some time, but then the otherworldly wight totally subdues the subordinate's shell and destroys its host.  If we don't find the carrier before his willpower has failed, we would have to deal directly with the thing that played in the hangar, so to speak.  Got it?"

Locomotive did get it—his protective suit was not designed for that level of defense.  With the risks so high, the dark was delaying the quarantine?!  He had to start notifying the services immediately: plain soldiers from the barracks wouldn't be enough to collect a really strong combat group; the "cleaners" would need time.

"Sir, there is a match!" a junior magician put his nose into the room.

The coordinator rushed from the place so quickly that he got into the lab before the captain.  A pile of recorded crystals and cartons lay on the table; hopefully, they wouldn't confuse the records afterwards.  The dark mage was already comparing two muddy balls.

"I have two pieces of news for you: good and bad," Satal began.

"F*ck you!"  Locomotive could not refrain.  "What's there?"

"It looks like it's our friend.  That would be logical.  What a strange crystal..."

"It cannot be!  I checked on him last night!"

Satal snapped: "What was he doing?"

"He seemed to be asleep."

The coordinator froze for a second: "Okay.  Take a group, go to him.  I am exhausted now, but he knows you.  Try to make him drink an inhibitor: that is his only hope.  I'll call Fatun—let him bring his guys to town."

Locomotive trotted to the garage, where the operative group was waiting for his orders.  Let's hope Satal would manage to get a call through to the "cleaners".  Baer had not had a chance yet to work with the magician that replaced Colonel Grokk, but they said he was an intelligent man.

* * *

I accurately paid for a tram ticket, politely shook hands with the concierge, and tried to compensate everyone for my crazy look with good behavior.  No need to test human patience beyond what was necessary!  My fingers trembled unpleasantly.  Passing the mirrored windows and seeing my reflection, I even started: a real psycho looked back at me.  The body's physical health directly affects the condition of a magician's soul, and I was getting into scrapes, one after another, one after another!  Even a dark with a very strong spirit has a limit to what he can stand.  I ordered myself to look more cheerful and decided not to drink coffee: chemical stimulants in my condition would only hurt.

What a bobble came out with Laurent!  Even if I had roasted him slowly, enjoying his cries and stretching his agony, he couldn't play a meaner trick on me in reply.  Why did all this happen to me?  Because one fool, rather than going to professionals, got engaged in self-treatment, as if the problem would go away by itself.  Yeah, indeed!  Out and back.

But my decision was firm: I would exterminate
Rustle
.

At first I was full of optimism.  Why not?  There were plenty of people kissed by the monster!  If I did not touch the Source, it wouldn't climb out of there, would it?  True, the day after tomorrow I was supposed to resume my classes in magic.  How my spellcasting would look in that situation, I didn't dare to picture.  Hence, I would need to withdraw from the class; it would be shameful, but necessary.  Next I would need to find a specialist in
Rustle
, perhaps even pay some combat mage.  I was not crazy and understood that I wouldn't get out of such trouble alone.  What if the lesion started progressing?

Nothing happened for a few hours, and I finally relaxed; after all, the entire morning had passed on without any problems.

There was no entertainment in my rented suite; all class assignments had already been done.  I could go take a nap, but sleeping at noon was a clear sign of sickness.  Bored, I took from the bedside table a book wrapped in yellowish newspaper—it was that very same rarity of Uncle's (I hid it in the most visible place, according to the ancient spy methods), and began reading.  Its pages breathed antiquity and magic; they must have been hiding something very important.  It was a pity that I could not decipher what secrets they kept.

And then the strange faded scrawls formed in my mind a clear sentence: "The perimeter leaks in three spots."

A wave of panic swept over me.  Throwing the book off, I retreated to the far end of the bed, but the mysterious squiggles still danced in my mind. 
The perimeter leaks in three spots
.  The perimeter of what?

Maybe I dreamt that because I was nervous?  It happened to me sometimes, like a short circuit in the brain.  I opened the book randomly and looked at another page.

"Salem assures us that there is no threat," the anonymous author had written in haste.  "His ability to anticipate the attack is scary, but it's our only hope."

It seemed that if I wanted, I could see the unknown author, look over his shoulder, admire his mysterious perimeter, and maybe even move there, becoming a hero of the past and living his life, again and again.  I wrapped the book in three layers—with my shirt, a blanket, and a bed sheet—and shoved it in the darkest corner of the cabinet.

I felt reluctance to learn anything from the book.

Childish curiosity touched my consciousness, as if the monster wanted to understand why.

Because!

And I realized that stupid tricks weren't all that
Rustle
was capable of.

I heard a kettle whistling in the kitchen.  I had no habit of drinking tea and didn't use the main gas (Quarters' uncle's business) at all.  Hot drinks weren't a tradition in Krauhard—our ancestors had no stoves to make them.  Their meal was simple and artless.  Surprised, I dragged my slippers to the kitchen and turned off the burner under the tinkling kettle.  Pinch me, but I knew I was seeing that roundside copper kettle for the first time in my life.

And then, abruptly, without any transition, I found myself standing on the balcony.  High railings saved me!  Slowly, touching the walls, I got back into the room and began violently poking myself with the accumulator's electrodes.  My arm ached displeasingly—I needed to find a less self-destructive remedy.  I imagined a huge, droning electric arc and suddenly realized that I was poking my arm with a fork, and the accumulator lay on the table.  At lightning speed I corrected the error.  Also, I understood why I ended up on the balcony—the kitchen and balcony doors had been reversed.

My God...

I could not even imagine that such things were possible.  Let's face it: the magic skills of the creature were impressive.  And what would it do at night then?  This thought made me freeze in my tracks.  I couldn't sleep under the electric current every night for God knows how long.  I would die from the nervous tension alone!

My deceased Uncle advised to go to an empath with any problem, but they belonged to the white and didn't know much about the otherworldly creatures.  Now, when he passed away, nobody in my family would help me—even if I managed to reach Krauhard, refraining from sleep for two days.  Chief Harlik was Uncle's friend, not mine, and it didn't make any sense to go that far to ask NZAMIPS for help.  In any case, I would not dare to approach any people dear to me in that condition.  God knows what the angry monster was capable of.

And the accumulator would be drained soon.

What did that beast want from me?  The answer came instantly: its cold sticky tentacles greedily reached out to my mind, to the spot where memory is stored, where the source of my desires was, where the threads of my feelings converged.  I plunged the electrode plates into the skin until it bled and kept it so until a chilling emptiness started reigning in my head.  I'd rather die then yield to it!

I needed to hurry up.

I took Captain Baer's card out of my desk.  My hands shook—I couldn't turn the door key on the first try.  There was no sense regretting and repenting now.  I wouldn't have time to find any other help; I would be lucky if I reached NZAMIPS sane.

I did not dare to catch a tram—I was afraid that I would go in circles, but any cab driver in Redstone knew the building on Park Road.  I had never thought that I would call that address of my own free will.

The entrance to the police headquarters looked impressive: its glass windows weren't broken and the copper was not faded.  There were surprisingly few people in the lobby.  Last time I ran out of there so fast that the interior was not imprinted in my memory, and Captain Baer was taking me in through the service entrance.  They were obviously well-funded!  A beautiful blue-gray carpet lay on the floor.  Why not?  Redstone's police headquarters is not a municipal police station; they don't deal with drunken revelers there.  But my imagination stubbornly put under the carpet a few protective pentagrams.  I was practically sure that if I lifted up the rug's corner, I would see them.