Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (15 page)

He was growing agitated, drawing closer to me. “Ah!” I said, jabbing at him with the barrel. “Stay still or, as your buddy said, you’ll be a stain on the floor.”

“I smell him on you,” he insisted.

“Who in the hell is
he
?”

He snarled. It was a disgusting wet sound, like someone with pneumonia clearing their throat. “It is not for you to know!”

At that moment, the streetlight flickered back to life, revealing my assailant’s face. His skin was shifting, changing shape and color, turning a light blue. One eye still looked human, but the other was yellow with a flat, horizontal pupil. Strange, circular gills had popped out from under each ear and they pulsated as he breathed, making a soft rasping sound. His odd nose had disappeared, leaving bare skin, and his mouth was barely big enough to be called one.

My eyes widened. He definitely wasn’t human, but hell if I knew what he was.

The creature must have seen my reaction, because his face shifted once more. The muscles under his face writhed, rearranging until the odd, blocky disguise was back in place. Both eyes were yellow though, glaring at me.

“If he looks anything like you,” I said, “I think I wo
uld’ve remembered him.”

“His power is greater than my own,” whispered the…thing. “You would not know him. He could appear as a stone or a beast or not be seen at all.”

“That doesn’t really help me,” I said. “What do you want with him?”

“I will not tell a sampan our secrets!” he snarled, spitting out yet another alien word. “The knowledge would drown your weak mind. It is ours alone to hold.”

“Then this sampan will give you a few new holes to breathe out of.” I waved the shotgun at him. This was getting old.

I heard steps at the mouth of the alleyway. I looked over his shoulder to see two new figures. They too were dressed in
trench coats, smart fedoras perched atop their heads.

That put me in a more precarious position. I only had one barrel left. The one in front of me wouldn’t be a problem, but his buddies would.

I backed into the alley, keeping the barrels pointed in their direction. The two took up positions next to their buddy.

“Anyone moves, I pull the trigger,” I said.

The three watched me silently.

I reached into one of my pockets and produced a handful of shells. I broke the gun quickly, ejected the spent shell, and slid in a red and black striped one.

“Alright,” I said, my tone a bit cheerier. “Now that we have renegotiated the terms of this engagement, I’m going to be leaving. You follow me, I kill you. I see any of you again, I kill you. If I even so much as catch a whiff of the beach, I will simply start firing until I run out of ammo. We clear?”

Suddenly, a vice-like pressure gripped my leg. I flinched, looking down. It was the one I
’d shot before. He had his hand wrapped around my ankle, looking up at me with yellow, hate filled eyes.

It was the moment they’d been waiting for. One of the pair newest to the party flung up his hand. There was a terrible humming sound and a wave of force flung me to the back of the alley.

Too bad there wasn’t something soft like garbage bags to fall on. Just a dumpster.

I tried to recover my bearings. My head was spinning, my vision dark.
Pain wracked my body, filling my head and chest.

Where was I? What was going on? The sound of footsteps snapped
me back to reality. I rubbed my eyes, but all I could make out were three pairs of yellow lights, coming closer and closer.

I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

The barrel containing the red and black shell flashed to life. Devil’s Breath; gunpowder, copper, sulfur, cremated ashes, and a cayenne pepper. Cordite filled my senses again, this time mixed with charcoal and ash.

Even through closed eyes, the light bled through. The deafening boom from the fire roared like thunder, sucking the oxygen from the air. The alleyway had gone up several degrees and I could hear water sizzling on the pavement.

I righted myself, keeping the gun trained ahead as I blinked away the afterimage of the flame. For a terrible moment I waited, listening for any sign of my assailants.

When my vision finally cleared, I realized two of them were just feet away. They had been badly burned, their clothes hanging in tatters, but they were still on their feet. One was kneeling, rainwater coalescing around his body like liquid armor. The other stood in a cloud of steam, the hot mist serving the same purpose.

Water magic. Not amateur work either.

I dragged myself to my feet, breaking the gun and loading in another shell. Pick
had some wild formulas, his one would be particularly effective.

“I don’t know what you want, don’t know what you’re looking for, but if you push this you’ll both be dead at the end.”

They both glared at me with alien, yellow eyes, their disguises discarded. Tentacles dribbled down from their mouths like strange beards, their skin blue.

“Mage,” said the one surrounded by water, “deliver the m’salt and we may let you live. Otherwise your pain will be displayed to all that see you. An apt lesson, do you not think?”

I answered with the pull of the trigger, firing off a green shell. Stewmaker; gunpowder, quicklyme, salt, citric acid, and oil. A blast of liquid, green energy slammed into the creature, eating through his side with a loud sizzling. He went down hard, no longer a problem. He’d be a puddle in moments. I fired the second shell at his companion, but he grabbed the barrel, sending the blast into the sky.

I swung the gun’s barrel at its head and he landed a punch in my gut. I gritted my teeth against the pain and slammed my head into his skull. He fell back, which was good, because that was the second (or was it third) blow to my head for the night and the alleyway had started to spin again.

I pulled a shell out of my pocket, not even looking to see what color it was. I fumbled it into the barrel and took aim, trying to see through my concussion. I just hoped it wasn’t the black one. If I fired that one off, the creature, myself, and probably most of the block would be gone afterwards.

I began to squeeze the trigger.
             

Suddenly, the figure began to glow, an iridescent blue that lit up the alleyway. A wave of force
swept me up and pinned me against the wall. Abigail went skittering across the ground.

The creature was floating off the ground, rips and cracks crisscrossing through its skin, leaking glowing, blue mist. Its head had expanded, nearly doubling in size, thick blue veins pulsating. It let out a horrible scream as its eyes melted from their sockets, replaced with burning blue light.

It floated down to the earth, fixating its terrible gaze on me. The pressure against the wall intensified. It had grown six inches at least, its muscles bulging, its skin stretched taught where it hadn’t torn completely.

It stopped in front of me, looking me over, then grabbed me by the throat. I grabbed the hand, trying to break its grip, but it was like iron. I had no choice, I met its gaze, looking Deeper into the fire of its eyes.

It laughed in response, drawing closer to my face. “Foolish, Sorcerer,” he said in two voices, one with his mouth, the other a mental echo powerful enough to all but destroy every mental defense I had. “I have seen the fourth dimension, have seen the things that live in the outer limits of reality. I am no caster of stones for your petty tricks.”

He squinted, his eyes deepening in their intensity, the light growing brighter.

I screamed.

A thousand alien voices filled my head, eerily similar to the one before me, flaying my mind, peeling away my defenses like a cheese grater. Black clouded my vision, a burning pressure closing over my head. Searing hot pain lanced from my eyes all the way down my spine. It consumed me. Everything drifted away, my body growing numb.

Suddenly, red filled my vision, beating back the darkness. A strange language, deep and bellowing, filled my ears. The creature fell away, holding its head. I slid to the ground, coughing and confused.

It was shaking its head, supporting itself against the far wall. Energy coursed from the thing’s body, its skin glowing so bright it became transparent. The thing’s head swiveled my way, its eyes burning even brighter than before.

I reached into the small pocket inside my sleeve, pulling out another of my toys; a small derringer.

I focused on the weapon and my assailant, activating the enchantment along the barrel. The gun began to glow, the delicate silver scrollwork along the barrel shining with lethal, red light.

The creature waved his arms, pulling together power. Blue Aether swirled around his hands, pulling the water from the air, swirling it about him with graceful lethality.

“How dare you use those words against me, sampan!” he roared with two voices.

The derringer’s hammer cocked, letting me know the spell was ready.

I pulled the trigger.

Inside the gun, the pin let go, shattering the small glass bullet I’d preloaded into the weapon. A sound like cannon-fire rocked the alley, louder even than the fire that erupted minutes ago, and a sonic blast ripped through him. Literally. The blast blew him in half at the waist, gouging a great hole in the wall behind him as well.

I lay there in shock, hot tendrils of pain shooting up my hand and arm. I ignored them, just laying there as the cool rain fell down around me.

After a moment, I groaned and stood, pocketing the derringer. My left hand wasn’t working anymore. All I could feel was a deep throbbing that went from my fingertips all the way to my elbow, ten times worse than after Cruder’s lightning bolt.

The danger passed, I leaned against the wall, ticking off my assailants one by one. A bubbling green puddle told me the first was done for, the two halves
at my feet confirming the second. The third was roasted, caught in the blast of flame, but its arms were twitching.

I walked over to him, picking up my pistol from where it had fallen. The rain had cooled the grip but the metal had been scoured black and the wooden grip was charred. I slid the clip out. Miraculously, none of the bullets had gone off.

Abigail was fine, the thing hadn’t damaged her at all when he disarmed me. Delicately, I picked her up with my bad hand and maneuvered her into my pocket.

I flipped over the survivor with my boot. “I didn’t want this,” I said, out of breath
, holding my side. “For the last time, why did you attack me?”

His face was half burnt and he could barely speak. Enough to spit at me and rasp, “Die Sumpah!”

“That’s what I thought.” The pistol barked twice in the dark alleyway, silencing the creature.

I walked to the last. Shorty, was still alive, though the buckshot had ground his chest to hamburger meat.

I squatted down and rocked back on my heels. He was lying on his side, his hand pressing down on the wound.

“So,” I began, “are you going to answer my questions or am I going to have to put two in you as well?”

“We mean no harm!” he said.

“Yes you did.”
I thought back to their condescending attitude, their disgust. The knife. “You were going to kill me once you found what you were looking for. What is it you thought I had?”

He spat at me but couldn’t make it go very far. “Die!”

I pistol whipped him across the jaw with the heavy barrel of the .45. It wasn’t hard enough to break anything, just knock out a few teeth. If he had teeth that was.

I cocked the hammer.
“Next time I won’t ask as gently. What were you looking for?”

“Need find him. He need punishment. Wronged us, betrayed us.”

“What did he do?”

“Left us.”

“That’s it? Where did you come from?”

He reared back and spat again. This time it
made it. “Schof you, Sumpah! Leave me. No kill you.”

“I don’t believe you,” I replied. “And I do not like looking over my shoulder.” I raised the gun.

“No!” he shouted, covering his face with his hand.

The gun barked twice more and he was quiet. “Mercy’s a luxury,” I said sadly, now just to myself. “And I’m broke.”

CHAPTER
TEN

I cursed at the sound of sirens
. They were still distant, but getting closer by the moment. It had only been a matter of time. Gunshots were one thing, a fireball though, that was bound to attract attention in any neighborhood.

I holstered my pistol. Quick as I could, I searched the bodies
for my possessions. Most of it was junk, but my talisman were essential.

I paused, examining the grimy rings in my palm.
Four
  grimy rings. Where was the fifth? Desperately, ever aware of the encroaching sirens, I rubbed the dirt from the surface of each. The tin ring was missing. Where in the hell was it? I searched the ground frantically, digging through the muck and waste the rainwater had washed into the alley.

None of my attackers had it, I had searched them already Had I missed it? Could they have dropped it? Everything else was here. Why would they have kept it?

Then I saw a glimmer of light. It was the ring, buried in the mud. Relieved, I grabbed the handful of muck, lifting it to my face as I tried to dig it out. Quick as that, it popped through my fingers and I watched in seeming slow motion as it dropped through the air.

Straight through the sewer grate, a quite bloop punctuating the end of a rough night.

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth in frustration. Son. Of. A.
Bitch
!

The sirens were getting louder. With my luck the Coven would be called in. The police were one thing, Wizards another, but Witches…there wasn’t anything in the world that could make me tangle with a Witch.

Dejected, I stared at the sewer grate. There was no way I could pry it up before the cops arrived. My decision was simple, if difficult and I left the alley cursing to myself as I headed back toward my apartment.

I made it to my building as fast as m
y battered body would take me. I slammed the door and tore off my muck stained clothes. An odd cerulean tinted them. I guess they bled blue. What the hell were those things? I threw it all, coat, clothes, and hat, into the tub with a handful of detergent and turned on the hot water.

Then I sat on the bed.

I put my face in my hands and waited for the adrenaline to wear off. It was quickly replaced with a weariness I’d felt only a few times before. This had been too much for today. Between the Cathedral and mortal danger, I was drained.