Neon Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 5) (8 page)

Giving in to the irritation, I scratched again—something was far from right. Putting my hand down the back of my boxer shorts I nearly keeled over when I felt a little hard nub right where my coccyx was.

What. The. Hell?

Unwanted Appendages

I glanced around nervously, wondering if someone had done something sneaky. I didn't know what, and I couldn't think straight in my panic. Had I bumped it? I must have, there was no other explanation.

I thought back over the day again but couldn't recall anything that would explain it. Then it came to me, a connection with the damn gangster as I took his magic, a feeling of something off for a moment as I drained him. Visions of creepy stuff he did, foul deeds committed on others and the knowledge that this was a man who had done many things too terrible to even think about. He was a warped wizard and deep into underground culture full of fetishes and bizarre parties with others that abused the Empty to get off in perverse ways.

And there had been a sly smile, just for a moment, as I took what was his. He'd put a warped spell or curse on me. And it had stuck. With his emptying magic, he'd channeled what he had to change me, used a specialized, and mostly forgotten in our part of the world, spell and imbued me with the partial essence of an animal.

I was monkey.

Was there no end to the madness of this small island? How the hell did people cope with the insanity? This wasn't proper magic like we used back home, this was nonsense. Scary and freaky and I was way out of my comfort zone. Back home we blast holes in each other like real wizards, we don't have homicidal pigs, or spells that turn you into gibbering baboons or whatever it was that part of my body was morphing into.

I put a hand behind me and down my boxers again, utterly alarmed to discover the nub had grown to at least six inches and felt like an energetic, hard and muscular snake in my trousers, and not in a good way.

Panic really set in and I may have run around in the street just a little, perhaps screaming, "Get it off me, get it off," or something like that. And I may have pulled down my trousers and boxers and repeatedly whipped my head around to get a look.

It was longer now, a foot at least and all pink and raw like my hands earlier, fresh skin covering a strong prehensile muscle that would allow me to swing from trees, or lampposts, anyway. But I didn't want to swing from anything, I wanted to keep my feet on the ground and I did not want the thing that was now whipping about wildly and was already two foot long and showing no sign of stopping.

Terrible visions of the Alien film franchise popped into my thoughts, panic rising as I wondered if maybe it wasn't a tail at all but part of a creature that was eating away at my insides, ready to burst through my backside in the grossest way possible. No, I was being stupid, it was a tail, but I think my fears were justified.

Now I was chasing my own tail, clothes around my ankles, trying to grab hold of thick meat that had a mind of its own and kept thrashing at my legs like a whip, leaving red welts that blistered and burned. Now it was slicing across my tattooed legs, red contrasting with the darkness, me spinning out of control as it grew faster, pain increasing as my traitorous coccyx welcomed the new appendage.

Then hair sprouted painfully and that was the last straw. Brittle, hard hairs that pushed through alien skin like needles and grew just as fast as the tail.

I pulled up my boxers and trousers, thinking maybe I could contain it or at least hide it from my own hands as I wanted to grab it and tug it off but it was too wild and kept pulling from my grasp.

Trousers up, the thing squirmed like a snake in a bag, and I was sure it would break through. I reached down, grabbed it, but damn it was like an eel coated in lubricant and angry as all hell. The hair was slick now, coated in whatever goop the bare flesh was, oozing onto my legs and making me panic it would be a despicable, supernatural acid—the Alien thing again. I know, it was silly, but you try staying calm in such a situation.

The tail banged about as it grew but then it was too long to whip up out of my trousers. Taking the opportunity, I fastened my belt as tight as I could manage, tried, unsuccessfully, to compose myself, and moved from the road where I had been acting rather manic and dashed down a side alley for privacy even though the streets were strangely quiet.

My breathing was out of control, ragged and stress-induced, and all I could think of was that I'd turn into a monkey completely and nobody would ever know. What to do? I didn't know what magic to use to counter such a spell, and the guy who did it had blown his brains out. He was probably smiling from some deserved afterlife in between having despicable things done to him.

Ah, maybe my buddy could help. After all, she had a tail, probably knew a lot about them. "Intus," I screamed into the void, hoping my tiny imp friend would hear my cry for help.

I waited impatiently, leaning against a lamppost and pushing hard against the tail to stop it spasming and generally terrorizing me. It seemed to take the hint and I felt the muscle relax. Such a strange sensation, I could feel it. There were nerves and I felt it just like it was a natural part of me, which I absolutely, under no circumstances wanted.

A hit of sulfur to the nostrils, and a hint of red on my shoulder, told me my friend had arrived.

"What's the emergency? I was bathing the kids." Intus looked stressed, ears flat against her head, tail down, face serious. Intus is normally full of the joys of being an immortal demon, so she must be having a really hard time of it.

"Sorry, I've got an emergency." I undid my belt and pulled down my trousers and boxers.

Intus jumped down onto the ground and stared up. "It is rather small, but I've heard you humans say it's what you do with it that counts, not the size." She carried on staring at my appendage, just not the right one. Talk about hitting a guy when he's down.

"Not that. This." I turned around and the tail lashed out at Intus fast as a cobra. She vanished and reappeared up on my shoulder.

"It's a tail. So what? Everyone's got them." Wow, she really was in a bad mood.

"Look, I'm sorry to disturb you but the kids' bath can wait, can't it?"

She sighed dramatically. "Do you know how long it takes to heat lava to the right temperature and get all the lumpy bits out? No, of course not. And do you know how hard it is to keep the kids all in a line and make them go in one after the other? No. They all want to get in at the same time, saying they don't want to be the one having all the dirty lava. Ugh. Nightmare."

"Nightmare! This is a nightmare. It's not supposed to be there, it isn't mine." I yelled, regretting calling her.

Intus frowned, then a smile spread across her face. "I think it suits you, gives you character."

She was being no help, so I pulled up my clothes quickly and buckled my belt again before the tail became wild. It had settled down so I wasn't risking it.

Intus looked around and said, "Hey, this isn't Cardiff." She sniffed and said, "Ah, the smell of Japan in the evening. Lovely. Do you know I haven't been for ages, maybe... Gosh, probably a century at least. What's it like, is it nice?"

"Nice? Nice!? I've got a tail! No, it isn't nice. The sooner I get back home where things make sense the better."

"You are such a baby at times, Spark. Oh, and congratulations on not being dead. I know you seem to think it's very important."

"I've told you before, we aren't like you. Not being dead is about as important as it can get." Now wasn't the time for a conversation we'd had so many times already—she'd never get the death thing.

"Well, nice chatting to you, and congratulations on the tail. Be seeing you. I have to go check on the kids. You can bet they've hidden the pumice by now. Cheeky little buggers love the lava and I bet they've got it all over the floor, too."

I couldn't even begin to imagine what Intus' home looked like, just knew I never wanted to visit. Now she had me sidetracked and I needed to focus. She was staring at me funny, waiting impatiently and stamping her foot. "Hurry up. Sorry, Spark, but you know... the kids."

I angled my head away, my tinnitus getting worse thanks to more regular contact with my red friend.

"Okay, sorry. You have a tail, how do I get rid of it?"

"Hmm, never thought about it before. It would be like chopping off an arm. Ah, that's it!"

"What? Do you know how to take it off, make it go away? Anything? Come on!"

"Blimey, keep your shirt on. I've got just the thing." Intus disappeared in a cloud of rotten egg smoke then was back in a flash, down on the ground wielding a three foot scythe with a blade so sharp it was slicing the air in pieces, cutting through reality and revealing a glimpse of her home world.

The moment I saw it my head went fuzzy then my brain turned thick, like concrete was being poured in through my ears. The tinnitus screamed at me as nightmare visions of an immortal hell filled my mind. Trillions of imps ran around manically, throwing socks in the air, endless mountains of spare change higher than Mount Fuji were home to billions of tiny imp children sliding down the steep sides, and molten lava streamed around vast islands of misplaced keys that were lost to evil, red skies, and row upon infinite row of studious imps sat at miniature wooden desks carefully weakening the stitching on the crotch of garments of all description.

I blacked out at the sight no human is ever supposed to see. Imp language, their way of life, their world, it's all unknowable to us. If Intus spoke aloud in her native tongue I would be dead in a moment, too alien and too full of magic for the human mind to process or even hope to cope with. I came to and said, "Stop waving it about. Ugh," or something just as pathetic.

Intus looked down at her hands as if unaware of what she was doing, and then planted the scythe on the ground and stood impatiently, my tiny demon friend holding something so sharp it could cut reality asunder.

"Oops, sorry. But it's really sharp, should do the trick."

With my head as cloudy as a Welsh winter sky, and mind still screaming, I stood up, dropped my trousers again, and turned sideways. I gulped, and mumbled, "Just make sure you chop off the right appendage. You sure this will work?"

"Dunno, never used an immortal, infinite scythe to chop a tail off before. We use it for the gardening."

What she gardened I had no clue. "Infinite scythe?" I asked, taking a step away—or a rather pathetic shuffle with my clothes bunched around my ankles.

"Yeah, means it's well sharp. You know, infinitely sharp."

It made no sense, but then so little did at that point, so I just said, "Do it," and closed my eyes.

"Just don't move," warned Intus.

"I won't." I held my breath and kept holding it, and still nothing happened. An eternity passed until I finally had to breathe again. I opened my eyes and looked down at my friend.

"I wondered when you were going to start breathing. Don't you need to do it regularly to stay alive?" Intus stood with the scythe thankfully pointed away from me.

"Um, yeah, comes with the body. Will you please get on with it?"

"I've done it, all gone." She nodded at my backside.

I looked down but could see no tail. I put a hand to my coccyx and it was as it had been, just ever-so-slightly tender. No monkey tail. Result! Hitching up my trousers, I said, "Thanks, Intus, you're a real lifesaver."

"What are friends for? Maybe one day you'll do a spot of baby sitting in return?" she asked hopefully, wiggling where eyebrows would be if imps had any hair.

"Um, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Worth a try. Right, busy, busy, got to finish the bath before it turns solid. It's a nightmare chipping them out of it, takes years. See you soon, buddy."

She was gone, taking her infinitely sharp scythe with her. Sometimes it pays to have truly Hidden friends.

There was no sign of the tail, gone now the spell was broken.

Hardly feeling in the mood, but knowing I wouldn't rest until it was done, I continued to house number one.

Time to make a few corpses. Hopefully one would be of a beautiful Japanese assassin and now gangster Head.

Such is the life of a foreigner abroad.

Nice Eyebrows

With a phantom tail still whipping about in my trousers and my mind made up I would never return to Japan no matter how long I lived—assuming I didn't die here—I checked my phone again to make sure I had the right address then peered through the simple gate.

The grounds were extensive. Ordered, immaculate, and deserted. The house was something out of an ancient manuscript, all faded wood, wraparound veranda, topped with a huge, overhanging and very ornate roof. There wasn't a soul to be seen.

As I leaned on the gate, peering between my hands, it creaked and I almost fell flat on my face when it opened inward.

Look, what would you do? Yeah, I went in, what did you expect?

Magic Spidey-sense tingling, looking out for talkative rocks, unsure if the bushes were just bushes or contained some malevolent spirit, eyeing the pond nervously and the carp suspiciously, I was as jittery as a gremlin at an 80's reunion where microwaves were in abundance as I crunched across the gravel drive and studiously avoided making eye contact with any of the oni statues—it would be just my luck they'd begin to attack.

Up the wooden steps, I found myself on the porch and rattled a thick cord attached to a bell. As the sound rang out I waited, half of me hoping nobody was home, the other half expecting just about anything to happen. Nothing did. I rang again, but it was as silent as a roomful of foreigners five minutes after being in the presence of the Tongue Stealer of Okinawa, so I tried the handle on the front door and wasn't surprised to find it open.

Inside, the place was spartan but opulent with its furnishing. Statues of demons stood as silent sentinels in rooms that contained little more than tatami mats and low tables. Other rooms were completely devoid of anything but the paper and wood shōji divides and the heavy, black oak floors. After checking the side rooms, I went back to the main hallway that bisected the house and headed to the large central room that dominated the structure.