Random Acts of Sorcery (17 page)

“How—”
She started, and then they heard a crash from the café. Sam bolted through the break room door, with her right behind him.

At the register, Khalil’s back was to them. “Guys, stay back,” he said quietly.

Cassie looked and saw Billingsly’s massive frame on top of a black-clad man in the far corner of the cafe. She frowned. What the hell was going on? The few customers who hadn’t already bolted were in the process of running out the door.

“He had a gun,” said Khalil. “H-he took it out, but Bill was on him before….”

Instead of leaving, one customer sprinted back inside and threw off his coat. Cassie gasped, horrified; his body was wired with explosives.

“For the LIGHT!” he shouted, and held out a detonator in his hand. Billingsly was already moving, just a blur of black spandex, but it was too late….

Then there was a familiar thunderclap, and Cassie realized she could see her breath. Sam fell to his knees beside her; it was the second time he’d stopped the clock in 48 hours.

“Hang on,” she said, and knelt beside him. She put her hand in his. “You need help.” He nodded weakly, and began the transfer.

Something odd happened when he tapped into her energy. Normally, when they connected, it was a sensation of warmth slowly leaving her body; not painful, but not pleasant either. This time, it was different; the warmth seemed to swell and then recede in waves, like she was being lapped by a gentle ocean current. When he had finished, she felt oddly at peace, despite the crazed suicide bomber right in front of them.

Sam scrambled back up to his feet, with Khalil steadying him. Billingsly glared at the frozen bomber. “What should I do with him?”

“Nothing, I’m going to bubble him,” said Sam, “Put a barrier around him and let him blow himself up. If you throw him outside, other people will get caught in the explosion.”

Cassie blinked. He sounded awfully calm, confident even, considering he was staking their lives on one barrier.

Sam mouthed a word, and Cassie could see the barrier come to life all around the man’s body. The barrier wasn’t opaque, but she could tell it was there due to a weird shimmer in the air. She could feel goosebumps budding over her entire body; this was a big one.

She grabbed Khalil’s hand, which felt clammy and cold.
It must be horrible for him. He can’t see barriers, so he can’t even see that Sam is doing anything.

“Trust us, okay?” she said quietly. Khalil’s face was ashen, but he nodded.

“Cassie,” Sam said quietly after a few moments. “Is that or is it not the thickest barrier I’ve ever made?”

She squinted at it; there seemed to be hundreds of layers, all wafer-thin and semi-transparent, but she knew they were harder than any steel. “Yes, it is.”

“Good,” he said, then he mouthed another word and she felt time resume.

The man hit the button on the detonator with an exaggerated motion of his thumb, a deranged grin taking up his whole face. The loudest sound Cassie had ever heard forced her back in pain, covering her ears, but the barrier didn’t break. It was a ball of fire, shining so bright that it was like a small sun that bleached the entire room painfully white. Then the light faded to gray smoke, and when the smoke faded, there
was only the bloody remains of the bomber, and his clothing. Strangely, one shoe was entirely intact, though it was covered with gore.

Khalil turned around and retched on the floor behind the register. Cassie felt like joining him, but managed to hold back her nausea; she had a feeling it was the lingering effects from the power transfer that were keeping her calm.

“First time I’ve ever seen that,” said Billingsly. Even his deep, resonant voice sounded shaky. He opened his mouth to say something else, then turned at a sound the rest of them couldn’t hear and snarled.

Another black clad man was running into the café. “Death to the Demonspawn!” he yelled.

The group was ready for him this time; Billingsly was already moving, and Sam was pointing in his direction, ready to down him with a curse. It turned out to be unnecessary when the man immediately fell forward, almost on top of Billingsly’s sneakers; there was a boxcutter buried in the back of his head.

“That is the last of them,” said Aeka, entering the shop in shorts and flip-flops as though nothing were amiss. “There are no more.”

Sam and Cassie exchanged glances. “How do you know?” Sam asked.

Aeka stuck out her chin, proud. “Ten men had taken the Lord’s name in vain. Now, all is quiet.”

“We think that all of these attacks were the result of a coordinated terrorist plot,” said the detective. “Based on the testimony of several witnesses, plus the surviving terrorists themselves, we have reason to believe that the terrorist cell had some kind of religious affiliation.”

Eugene was unamused. “What a triumph of deductive reasoning, positively Sherlockian. I see nothing gets past the police of this fine metropolis.” His lawyer was giving him dagger-eyes, but he didn’t care.

The detective was doing a good job of ignoring his sarcasm. “Now, Mr. Buckley, we have several witnesses that peg you as lifting one of the terrorists and throwing him several dozen feet through the air, at which point he collided with a glass display case and died instantly. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little…skeptical of that,” he said, eyeing Eugene’s aged body. “Hysteria makes people see strange things sometimes. Tell me what happened, from your point of view.”

“I was protecting my ward,” said Eugene. “An evil, deranged lunatic was going to kill him, an innocent little boy, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

There was a pause.

“So did you pick up and throw the man or not?”

“I think you should be spending less time interrogating the victims, and more time trying to hunt down these accursed terrorists,” said Buckley.

“We will find the terrorists, Mr. Buckley. Assuming any are still alive, besides the few we have in custody. Considering the fact that you claim that you and your…friends all lack military training,” he said, looking at the notes in front of him, “A surprising amount of the victims killed their attackers.”

The detective scratched his head. His confusion seemed to be tinged with outrage. “Supposedly that little blond girl killed a man with a boxcutter, and critically wounded another man with the same weapon? Then there’s the redhead, who can’t weigh more than 90 pounds, who supposedly fought off a
200-pound man and pistol-whipped him into unconsciousness with his own gun. And then there’s one of the bodies we found in the coffee shop…if you can even call that a body—”

“Is there a point to this, detective?”

He threw his hands up. “Look, throw me a bone here. Nothing about any of this makes sense, everyone knows it, and none of your stories add up either. It’s going to be worse for you the longer you hold out on us. Harder for your little boy, too.”

Eugene leaned all the way forward in his chair. “I will tell you what I know.”

The detective mirrored his pose, leaning forward as well. “Go on.”

“There is nothing unusual about this case,” said Eugene crisply.

“Excuse—” The detective started to protest, but then the look in Eugene’s eyes lulled him into a trance.

“Nothing unusual at all.
You will forget everything you know about this case that troubles you.”

“I will forget everything I know about the case that troubles me,” said the detective, eyes wide. He sounded relieved.

“Is there anything further?” said Eugene, returning to his normal cadence.

The detective blinked and looked at his notes.
“Ah, no. Please feel free to take your little boy home, alright? Make sure you both get some sleep. Call me if you remember anything else about the terrorists.”

“Thank you, Detective,” said Eugene, standing up. As he and his lawyer left the room, he heard the detective cursing over his notes. “This is gibberish, who wrote this?” he muttered.

“I apologize, Joel,” said Eugene to the man walking next to him. “I always feel like it’s an insult to your profession when I have to resort to that.”

The lawyer laughed. “Are you kidding? I wish all my clients were like you.” He bid Eugene goodbye and walked out the front entrance of the station towards his car. It had been a two-and-a-half-hour drive, but Eugene was one of his best clients.

When Eugene reached the waiting room, he smiled at the sight of Ethan asleep, his head resting on Miri’s lap. “He wanted to stay up until they were done questioning you, but gave up just a couple of minutes ago,” she said.

“This poor child has seen more horror in his short life than most people ever see,” said Buckley gently, stroking the sleeping boy’s cheek. He saw Sam out of the corner of his eye and left Ethan safely sleeping on Miri’s lap. He knew she would quash any nightmares if she sensed them.

He frowned; he was probably going to have to psychically dim Ethan’s nightmares again. He had only stopped having to do that a week or two ago.

Sam was looking at the officers on the other side of the room, drinking from a Styrofoam cup. “How did it go?”

Buckley switched to his mental voice.

Between myself, Dmitri
and Miri, I think we got all the detectives. They’ll all forget everything unusual about the case, but of course the bad news is, they’ll be too clueless to be of any help either. All they know is that there was some kind of bizarre terrorist attack and some people fought back successfully.

I figured as much,
Sam responded, and Eugene barely stifled a wince. Sam wasn’t used to speaking mind-to-mind, and it showed. Communicating with him this way was like standing still while someone shouted with a megaphone in his ear, but it was better than being overheard.

What do we do now? We can’t just all peel off in different directions, it’s unsafe. Some of the vampires, like Liam, need rest just as badly as the humans right now.
Can’t count on them for guard duty for a little while.

Eugene considered that for a moment.
Why don’t we all meet at my penthouse? Just for tonight, and maybe tomorrow, you can put a giant protection barrier around it, and keep everyone covered at once. We can resume the bodyguard arrangement after things have calmed down again.

Sam considered that, his mouth a thin line. “The swarm will also protect us,” he said, nodding. It took Eugene a moment to realize he meant the thousands of bats that had taken up residence in the city. “I’ll put them on alert. If anything is still coming for us, or anyone’s families, they’ll see it a mile away.”

And since when you can do that, my child? You learn so fast, it’s no wonder the court is afraid of you.
“Then it’s settled,” said Eugene.

“On one condition,” said Sam, then he looked at Eugene with a tired half-smile. “Did Ethan ever put away those stupid cards?”

The Buckley penthouse was spacious, with multiple guest rooms, but there still weren’t enough beds for everyone. Dwight had volunteered to sleep on the couch in the living room, but it wasn’t much of a sacrifice; the huge couch was about as spacious as his bed at home. Still, despite the comfortable bedding, he found himself unable to sleep.

After tossing and turning for what had to be an hour, he got up and made his way to the kitchen, hoping to find something cold and alcoholic.

There was already someone in the dark kitchen when he entered, and for a second, his heart leapt into his mouth. As his eyes adjusted further to the dark and he realized that it was Khalil, sitting motionless at the kitchen table, he chided himself for his jumpiness.

Khalil looked up at his entrance. “Fridge has the goods,” he said quietly.

Dwight opened the refrigerator, and saw that Khalil was right. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but Eugene’s fridge was filled to bursting with all kinds of food and specialty drinks. Now that Eugene could eat food again, it looked like he’d gone on a shopping spree.

Good for him
, Dwight thought as he grabbed a can of artisanal beer and sat down across from Khalil at the kitchen table. The two men sat in silence for a moment while Dwight drank.

Finally Khalil sighed, and leaned forward onto the table. “I want to take the blue pill, man. I’ve had enough of this.” When Dwight didn’t answer immediately, Khalil looked up at him. “Think we can?”

Dwight considered that. If the vampires could hypnotize the police into submission, surely making a few humans forget their knowledge of all things demon-related was possible. With Eugene’s wealth, erasing their memories and setting them both up in a new life somewhere probably wouldn’t be very difficult.

“Demons will still rule the world whether we know about it or not,” said Dwight. “Personally, I’d rather know.”

“This place is full of vampires, they can probably hear us right now,” said Khalil. Then he scowled. “Fuck it, I don’t even care, let them hear.”

“Don’t curse,” said Dwight reflexively.

Khalil sat up. “I know, I know, some demons like to listen for four-letter words when they’re browsing for souls. But what are they going to do to us? What could be worse than what happened to us today?”

Dwight didn’t respond. He was pretty sure things could actually be a whole lot worse, but it seemed petty to point that out to Khalil at the moment. He saw his friend’s point.

“If you take the blue pill, that means saying goodbye to Miri,” he said, draining the last of his beer.

Khalil sighed. “I’ll always come in second with her. She’s so loyal to him.”

Dwight tapped his empty can. “Think she loves him?”

Khalil frowned.
“Maybe not in a love-love way. But they’ve got this crazy magical bond going on. He brought her back from death, from having her head cut off her body—remember, I saw that—and now she’ll follow him to the ends of the Earth. I can’t compete with that.”

Dwight didn’t know what to say in response. Khalil sat up straighter.

“Like, I’m not even mad at him, you understand? I get it. I just can’t compete with that. No one can compete with that.”

“You know, maybe it’s not a competition.”

“Grant me more of your sage wisdom, O Wise One,” Khalil said bitterly.

The both jumped in their chairs when they heard footsteps, but it was just Jay. “I can’t sleep,” he said quietly.

“That’s weird, I wonder why,” Khalil deadpanned.

Jay opened the fridge. “There’s tons of beer in here!” he said, and Dwight had to crack a smile at the barely restrained glee in his voice.

“Yes there is.”

Jay looked back at them. “You guys aren’t gonna stop me from taking some?”

Dwight and Khalil exchanged glances, a small current of amusement rousing them from their general state of shellshocked exhaustion. “You almost got killed today, I think you can have a drink if you want one,” said Dwight. “Actually, while you’re in there, get me another one.”

“What kind?”

“Don’t care.”

Jay plunked a tall can in front of Dwight,
then took another seat at the kitchen table. He made no move to open his own beer; maybe he felt more grown up just holding it. “I couldn’t do anything to help my Mom,” he said quietly.

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Dwight. “There was nothing you could have done.”

Jay narrowed his eyes. “You fought back,” he said. It almost sounded like an accusation.

“I’m also twice your age,” said Dwight, opening the second beer can. For once, he wished his alcohol tolerance was lower; these two beers weren’t going to come anywhere near getting him drunk.

“It’s not about that. Aeka’s even smaller than me and she always fights back,” said Jay.

“You do
not
want to be like her,” said Khalil. “I don’t know what happened to that girl to make her the way she is, but you don’t want it.”

There was a snapping sound as Jay opened his beer, then a gurgle of disgust as he tried to drink some. The boy managed to swallow it down with a loud, painful gulp. “That’s nasty!
How does anyone drink this?!”

“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.” Dwight said. Three beers: he still would not be drunk. This was aggravating.

There was silence at the table for a while, just Dwight sipping his beer. Jay was staring at the table.

“I need to take Karate or something,” he mumbled. “I need to be able to fight.”

Dwight wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t, that it was a waste of time. That there was no way Jay could hope to defend himself with beginner’s martial arts, not in this league, but instead he said nothing.

So the kid wants to learn how to defend himself—is
that so bad? Just because I think he shouldn’t have to, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. He probably won’t be able to fight worth a damn, he doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body, but maybe it will do something for his confidence at least.

They heard footsteps coming, but they were slow and tentative; it was the sound of someone walking deliberately so not to spook them. Dmitri poked his head around the corner.

“Could you all, perhaps, trying being less loud?” he said. There was a trace of an accent in his voice that Dwight hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it only came out when he was tired.

“We’re not being loud,” said Khalil, ironically raising his voice as he did so. “Can you try sticking some cotton in your ears to blot out your super-vampire hearing?”

“Strange, we’re fresh out of cotton,” Dmitri muttered, but he pulled his head back and left them alone.

A soft blue light was just becoming visible through the window; they had all gotten to the penthouse in the wee hours of the morning, and it would be dawn soon.

“I don’t think I’m going to school today,” said Jay.

“And no one’s going to work; even with the detectives in la-la-land, there’s still a police investigation going on,” said Khalil. “DG should be closed for a while.”

Well, I finally got the time off I wanted
, thought Dwight
. I should try to look on the bright side here.