Spellbent (3 page)

We left the freeway and drove up Broad Street. On one side loomed the St. Joseph Cathedral, which had been home to more than its share of miracles because it was so close to the Grove; on the other was the high stone garden wall that surrounded most of the park. The fence had gone up in the 1960s when traffic got bad enough that wandering Grove creatures started running a real risk of getting squashed by cars.

The only open side faced the Statehouse, and it was also the only part that attempted to masquerade as a standard city park. There was half an acre of mowed lawn, some decorative cherry trees, a goldfish pond surrounded by concrete benches, and a few picnic tables. A line of ward-charmed rocks marked the border between the lawn and the western edge of the Grove. The wards were subtle, but effectively kept most mundanes out of the Grove and reminded most Grove denizens to stay put.

Cooper turned the Dinosaur left onto Third Street and then took another left into Taft Park’s tiny parking lot. He gunned the motor to get the huge car over the curb and drove it across the grass, dodging picnic tables and startling a small flock of sleeping Canada geese. The tires left no marks on the turf; Cooper had long ago enchanted the wheels.

“Yuck. Grass is probably covered in goose shit,” he said as the geese flew off, honking alarm. “Annoying birds.”

“Could we use it for anything?”

“Use what?” he asked. He hit the brake and put the car in park. We were about a dozen yards away from the fishpond.

“Goose poop.”

That’s the core of ubiquemancy: Magic is in everything. The spellcaster just has to figure out what kind of magic, how it can be used, and then invoke it in a spur-of-the-moment chant that sounds like a Pentecostal speaking in tongues to those who can’t understand the primal languages. Unlike other magical disciplines, ubiquemancy seldom involves calling on spirits directly. Instead it relies on instinct, improvisation, and imagination to focus ambient magical energies.

Some people think that we can do any kind of magic with ubiquemancy, and while that’s theoretically true, in practice it’s a whole lot trickier, especially if things have Gone Terribly Wrong. It’s not just about coming up with the right words. It’s a lot like singing—some spells are about as hard as “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” but some of them are as challenging as
La Bohème.
Few singers can do a difficult aria the first time out of the gate, and if they don’t have the right natural range they might never be able to. do it. And even if a singer has range and skill, being able to improvise and perform a brand-new aria right there on the spot while the audience is ripping the chairs out of the aisles and throwing them at your head. . . well, like I said, it’s tricky. But then again, you can get lucky sometimes.

Ubiquemancy worked very well with Cooper’s manic, live-for-the-moment mind-set. People who dismiss the style call Cooper and our kind Babblers; the name’s stuck enough that even those who respect the art use it.

Magical talent is the biggest thing that makes a good Babbler. And Cooper had talent in spades. On his good days, he was one of the best wizards I had ever seen; I couldn’t have asked for a better master. Unfortunately, on his bad days he had a tendency to give in to his self-destructive streak and drink himself senseless. At least after we became lovers he’d cut
way
back on his alcohol intake.

I sometimes got frustrated with ubiquemancy’s magical anarchy and Cooper’s pat “Oh, you just
know”
replies to my questions. Sometimes I thought I would have been better off learning a more formalized magic like Mother Karen’s white witchcraft.

But darned if Cooper’s crazy magic didn’t
work.
“Goose shit,” Cooper mused. He turned off the ignition. “It’d be great for curing barren earth.. . fire tricks.. . controlling geese. . . summoning predatory animals.. . Spoiling food and water. . . plant growth. . . and maybe flight. Lots of stuff we don’t need to do tonight.”

“Should we go to the pond?”

“No, we don’t want to be right by water. Over there by those oaks looks good. Let’s get undressed.” I tied the ferret’s leash to the stick shift and pulled off my T-shirt, sports bra, and sneakers. I shimmied out of my cargo pants and panties, folded my clothes, and stacked them on the dashboard.

Cooper was already standing naked on the grass, stretching and scratching his back. “No, it’s better if you stay in here,” he told Smoky.

The dog whined.

“What? Oh, right.” Cooper opened the rear door. Smoky jumped out, ran over to a picnic table, and peed on the tubular steel leg. He gave himself a good shake, kicked grass onto his mark, and happily trotted back to the car.

Cooper shut the car’s doors after Smoky was back inside, then met me on the other side.

“Think wet thoughts,” he told me, lightly touching the small of my back and running his hand down to my ass. My skin prickled into goose bumps at his touch. “Think low pressure. The clouds are our audience; make them come.”

We walked across the grass to the edge of the trees. Cooper backed me up against the trunk of a red oak.

“This tree’s roots touch those in the heart of the Grove,” he whispered, planting small kisses on my face. “We’re all set to broadcast; let’s make it good.”

He closed his eyes and started planting soft kisses down my neck, over my breasts. My hormones lit up like Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve.

This is the best job ever,
I thought.

He started moving against me, breathing rhythmically in preparation for the chant. I closed my eyes and followed his body’s rhythm. There was a brief, stretching sting as he pushed up into me, but after that it was beautiful. I wrapped my legs around his waist and ignored the scratching of the bark against my back. Once we really got going the pain might actually start working for me. I don’t think of myself as a masochist, but my wires sometimes get a little crossed.

Anyway. I was glad to have the chant to focus on, or else it would all be over too quickly. Cooper could last for hours, provided I came quietly. But the nightmares had left me with too much pent-up anxiety to have a nice polite little orgasm. I’d be biting, screaming, demanding the obscene application of Popsicles. . yeah, I figured the distraction of the spell was going to be a good thing. Silly me.

The old, old words started tumbling out of him, first as sounds that might have been little more than grunts of the ancient pre-humans who lived at the sea and rivers, worshipping the spirits they saw in the cool waters. Then his round grunts grew angles, grew more refined; my mind was filled with an image of a sunburned warlock standing in the reeds of the Nile, begging the gods for rain.

The words were coming out of me, too; my language was different, a tongue that spoke of mists and crashing waves, of broad, gray thunderstorms rolling over windswept North Atlantic islands.

I felt the air around us stir, felt the tiny hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rise. The tops of the trees began to rattle as the wind rose.

Cooper’s chant rose to match, changed to something more musical, Western and Eastern in the same breath. I caught a flash of storm clouds boiling above a vast American plain as a medicine man dressed in deerskin and buffalo hide raised his ropy arms to the sky. I could smell the damp plains earth and sweating leather on Cooper’s skin.

My chant shifted to match; I spoke the shadow of an old priest in a bear-pelt cloak, standing in the dry forest of a new, green land, pouring the last of his mead on the thirsty earth and asking the Father God to grant him and his men a touch of rain.

Then Cooper’s body jerked, and his chant was chopped short by his sudden, pained gasp. I heard the scream in my mind, smelled entrails being pulled from a still-living body and thrown on a charcoal fire.

“Oh God!” Cooper turned and gave me a hard shove away from him. I tumbled backward over the grass.

I rolled to my feet, feeling confused and exposed, wishing my clothes weren’t all in the car. “Cooper, what the—”

His body had gone rigid; the cords of his neck stood out, and his tattooed sigils glowed faintly purple in the dim light. The air was growing ominously electric, the clouds above them darkening into a slate-gray spiral.

“Get away!” He sounded as if something was choking him. “Far. Fast.
Now!”

I knew better than to argue or waste time asking questions. I sprinted back for the car, fear churning in my stomach. Nothing like this had happened before. Cooper had said that the ritual couldn’t be interrupted, no matter what.

I got to the Lincoln, ran around to the driver’s side, and dove into the seat. Smoky was whining on the front seat, his paws pressed against the window. Before I could get the door closed, he’d jumped over me and was running toward his master.

Cooper started to scream. His voice sounded like a band-saw blade grinding against a rusty iron post.

Should you run away like this?
I wondered as I cranked the key in the ignition and slammed the car into drive.
Don’t think. Just do it. Cooper knows this stuff way better than you do.

The storm was gathering with alarming speed. Thunder rumbled.-In the rearview mirror I saw the wind whipping a dust devil around Cooper’s rigid form. The sound of the gale was drowning out his scream.

I hit the accelerator just as a massive bolt of lightning shot down from the sky.

The earth around Cooper exploded. A shock wave whipped across the park, and I was thrown forward into the steering wheel as the back of the Lincoln jerked off the ground.

Ohshitohshitohsht!

The car tilted, and the gale blasted into the Lincoln’s passenger side, lifting it and knocking it over onto the driver’s side. I fell hard against the window, helpless, as the car spun like a carnival ride across the grass. My clothes and the ferret flew off the dashboard. The weasel scrabbled for purchase on my sweaty skin to keep from being hung by his leash. The car slammed into a steel-framed picnic bench bolted to a concrete slab beside the goldfish pond and stopped.

I untangled myself from the steering wheel and set the frightened ferret on top of the passenger-side headrest. I grabbed my scattered clothes and got dressed as quickly as I could. The ferret had left a dozen pinprick scratches on my side and hip. Once I was no longer in danger of being arrested for public indecency, I unrolled the passenger-side window and stuck my head out to see how Cooper was doing, hoping against hope this would turn out to be just another one of those funny little Babbling-gone-wacky incidents where he’d be standing there amid smoke and debris with singed hair and a sheepish
Oops did it again
look on his face.

No such luck. There was a steaming crater the size of a child’s wading pool where he’d been. I couldn’t tell how deep it was, but the charred sides reflected a bright red glow, as if from live coals or lava.

“Cooper! Cooper, where are you?” I shouted, feeling sick bile rise in my throat.

No answer.

Smoky lay near the crater, his flanks heaving as he gasped for breath. His body looked strangely bloated.

I bent down to make sure the ferret’s lead was still secured to the stick shift. “You stay in here,” I told him, my voice shaky, not certain if he understood. “I’ll come get you when I’m sure it’s safe.”

I pulled myself up through the window and slid down the curved door, landing lightly on the grass. Where was Cooper? Had he been knocked unconscious and thrown into the trees? Or was the crater all that was left?

No, no, no. He couldn’t be dead. He just
couldn’t.

“Smoky?” I called. “Smoky, where’s Cooper?”

The terrier was trying to get to his feet, dragging his hindquarters as if he’d broken his back. Bloody foam flecked his muzzle. He saw me and started to howl.

Oh, Jesus, poor thing,
I thought.

The crater smelled like a gangrenous wound, like bad magic, and I was getting the same stink off Smoky.

I stepped closer to the crater. And then it hit me: I was looking at an intradimensional portal. I couldn’t have been more stunned if I’d put a cake in the oven, left it to cook, smelled smoke, and opened the oven to discover the cake had transformed into an angry firedrake. Actually, the cake-to-firedrake I could have explained away as a prank from the Warlock, but this? This was off-the-chart bad and unexpected.

How in the name of cold sweat and stomach cramps had we created
an intradimensional portal
from a simple storm-calling chant?

After a couple of beats, my brain shifted out of shock and into more practical questions: Where did the portal lead? I had no clue, but by the look of it, it sure wasn’t a beachside resort. Had Cooper been pulled inside? It seemed likely. I couldn’t see any trace of him nearby. If he’d been blown apart in the explosion, there’d still be blood or—I swallowed sickly against the thought—scattered bits of his flesh.

My first instinct was to call Mother Karen and get her to send help, but I realized I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing while I waited for the cavalry. God only knew what might come through. Might come through at any moment. I realized I had to do my best t get that sucker
closed,
and fast.

I’d heard Cooper and the Warlock talking about travel between dimensions; portals were hugely dangerous. The longer they stayed open, the worse things got. And creating one was supposed to be a complicated ordeal involving extended rituals and the blood of red-haired virgins and stuff like that. I never imagined that anyone could open one by
accident.