Bliss showed up with four sisters in two SUVs. At six fourteen they were alone in front of the adobe building. At six fifteen there was a sixth person.
Bliss was the first one to approach the body on the blanket. It was Lex. He was naked and unconscious.
There was the raised bump of a spider bite on the side of his neck. In a few days that would be gone like it had never been, even though it had been red and raised for a long time.
Bliss rolled him over. Along the skin over his spine was a red tattoo. To Bliss it meant nothing, but she knew what to do with it.
They rolled him up in the blanket and lay him in the back of the SUV on a foam mattress that they’d just bought at Target.
Justina Bybreak sat by the boy’s side in the SUV. She’d been Maiden in her coven near San Francisco, but had given up that position after her mother died and moved home to Las Vegas. Her father had been outraged, first to find out that Bybreak’s will excluded him and that his daughter was dropping out of medical school to join his mother’s business.
Bliss smiled at the girl as the car started to move. She was in her early twenties and everything that a good witch usually wasn’t: tall, blond and stunningly beautiful.
Bliss had told her how her mother had died. And then forbid her from hurting the boy.
Justina was already stroking the side of his face with a sharp fingernail.
*-*-*-*-*
As soon as Lia penciled in the last answer to her homework she stood up and changed into some comfortable clothes.
At first it had been very nice to wear beautiful dresses all the time. They were such beautiful clothes that wearing them made her feel like a movie star and they’d only gotten nicer in the last few years. Annabelle’s selections had been nice for a girl that looked eight but it turned out that Miss Chi-Wong had a surprisingly sophisticated sense of fashion and one of the few ways that she was willing to spend time with Lia was to buy her clothes.
But the dresses were limiting. They were made to stand out and she realized after a while that they were not much more than prison uniforms.
Even the “regular” clothes that Miss Chi-Wong bought her though were very nice. The jeans that she was wearing were from a private label and up each side were embroidered flowers. Her white fuzzy blouse was one of the softest fabrics that she’d ever felt and over that she’d pulled a sweatshirt with a brilliant flower on it.
There were werewolf guards at the doors to her rooms, not to mention throughout the building. Ever since she’d been escaping Mohan had been putting a guard on the roof too although that was the easiest guard to evade.
She went to the door and put her hand up on it and concentrated.
Most of the wolves were just normal humans when they hadn’t shifted. A few had improved senses, or could shift part way between wolf and human, but most of them were just ordinary people.
Mohan wasn’t. Michael wasn’t. Lia suspected that Chi-Wong wasn’t. Neither was Lia.
She thought of bubbles and fuzz and fog and anything else that came into her head and pushed them through the door and into the guards on the other side. They wouldn’t see the images, or understand exactly what was happening, but it worked.
After thirty seconds of concentration she opened the door and slipped through the oblivious guards. She still had to move slowly and quietly while the guards daydreamed.
The elevator had a camera and so did the stairs. Mohan was serious about his security.
She had a couple of routes out of the building but the easiest by far was the kitchen window.
There was a much larger and more impressive kitchen down on the main floor of the building that could cater to large groups and meetings that Mr. Mohan sometimes held in the conference rooms on the first floor but the little kitchen up on this floor was what normally fed Lia and provided snacks and lunches for the guards.
Usually the evening guy was a jerk and Lia would have had to fuzz him out as well but today was a Sunday and the weekend guy was a thin Hispanic werewolf named Jaime. He was wearing a white apron and looked up in surprise as she came in.
She nodded to him. “Hola Jaime. ¿Como esta ustedes?” she said. Spanish wasn’t one of her lessons, but even among the servants of the werewolves Spanish seemed to dominate. She’d learned a few words out of self defense.
“Bien, Senorita,” he replied and then said something quickly and sighed.
“Yeah, afraid I need to use the window again,” she said.
She moved toward it, and he moved between her.
“No, Senorita. Senor Mohan no quiere que te vayas.” He doesn’t want you to go, he was telling her.
“Yo quiero.” I want to go.
Jaime looked at her, as though he couldn’t believe that she had desires other than what Mohan wanted. Yeah, Mr. Mohan was scary, but he wasn’t that scary.
“I’m sorry, Jaime,” she murmured and then remembered how to say it in Spanish. “Lo siento, Jaime.”
He bared his teeth for a moment, but she didn’t flinch. She tensed her muscles and things slowed down a bit, and she reached out her hand and touched his face, along his jawline. There was a spark and he was hers.
He was trying to change, and she told him not to. There was a growl in his throat but it was just a human growl.
She relaxed and time went back to the way that it was supposed to be. Jaime flinched at her hand on his face. He looked confused for a moment, then surprised and then scared.
“Lo siento, Jaime,” she said. Go over and stand by the wall for a moment, she said in her animal voice. It was easy to command something like that, it wasn’t even words or language she just had to picture it. Jaime moved back, suddenly aghast and she continued. If they ask you, I never came into the kitchen. She frowned. That was a more complicated image and she couldn’t say that in Spanish.
Well, if she had to hope that he’d understood. She shifted into the raven and fluttered the counter before she realized that she’d forgotten to open the window.
Well, there was Jaime now. She sent and image and he came over, unlatched the window and she flew out into the daylight.
Continued next week . . .
Showing posts with label Ladies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ladies. Show all posts
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Episode 22: Deals and Politics
Bliss left the dessicated collection of animals and insects in front of the door of the small adobe house. They weren't required, and they weren't part of her current bargain, but they couldn't hurt either. There didn't appear to be anyone home but that was deceiving; it never looked like anyone was home.
"Grandmother?" she called out. It would have been rude to try the door and Bliss didn't particually want to touch the house if she didn't have to, so she just stood there in the cool evening.
There was no response and no movement in the little home except for the swaying of the grasses that grew right up to the walls. Sometimes Spider Woman was in the mood to talk to Bliss and some days she was not.
The old spirits, the ones that were written about in legend, were always a fickle bunch. Some were touchy about the fact that they'd mostly been supplanted in the modern world but some had learned to get along.
Some were dead. In fact, most were dead.
Ideas had power, swirling around in people's brains, and when enough people all had the same ideas, they could give birth to things that were not human but alive and powerful. If the people stopped believing though, the spirits would die. Humans were the special case: they would keep living if whether you believed in them or not.
Spider Woman was amazingly resilient. She'd not only lived long enough to set her foot in with the new agers, she'd managed to keep some of her powers. In this area of the world there weren't many spirits that could say that truthfully.
So Bliss used her when she could. There were some things the spirits could do that the "mortals" could not, and vice versa. What Bliss could arrange through a few telephone calls or an internet search was often enough for surprisingly complicated bits of knowledge or powerful magics. The price for this particular assistance had been unusually difficult.
After five minutes, Bliss pulled an envelope out of her purse, went over, and stuck it in the door frame. It wouldn't get lost, she was sure of that. Spider Woman would get the envelope even if she had to chase it across a hundred miles of Nevada desert. Bliss smiled at the image.
But this resolved her debt, finally.
She turned to walk back to the car where Iron Dog was waiting but before she took more than four steps she heard the door open and turned.
Spider Woman stood there, holding the envelope. Considering the trouble that Bliss had gone through to get what was inside Spider Woman looked unmoved.
"This is it?" The spirit woman asked.
Bliss nodded.
Spider Woman slowly and carefully opened the top of the unsealed envelope and pulled out the paper inside. There was just one and she unfolded it carefully.
"You've fulfilled your end of the bargain, Bliss," she said at last, putting the paper away and holding the envelope gingerly. "And my lawyer?"
"I sent him a copy as well," Bliss said. "And the developers won't bother you again. My sisters and I have made absolutely sure of that."
"When do you want delivery? Now?"
Bliss shook her head. "We can arrange for tomorrow. No mistakes this time."
*-*-*-*-*
"Lia's run away again," said Annabelle to Miss. Chi-Wong.
Chi-Wong sighed. "Have you notified Michael?"
Annabelle nodded. "Mohan's not going to be happy."
"No, of course not. But he won't be surprised. What happened this time?"
"She'd been good all morning, I swear I'd been watching her like a hawk nearly since she'd woken up, but she seemed to be enjoying her lessons and she doesn't usually try to run when it's the middle of the day, you know that, so I went to the bathroom and left one of Michael's pack to watch her--."
"Is the guard hurt?"
"Just unconscious."
"Moon be damned . . ."
"She didn't hit him. I don't know how she managed it this time."
"She's getting to be completely uncontrollable. True, the fact that were have her is an important continuing bargaining chip with the Ladies but we can't keep. . . ." Chi-Wong paused. "I will tell Mohan. You know some of the places that she goes, join the hunt. If we can find her before the markets close, he may be willing to overlook your negligence."
Annabelle nodded and excused herself. Chi-Wong arched her fingers and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
All the different shapeshifters were linked through their shared human side. Werewolf, Weretiger, Werellama, they all eventually fit into the hierarchy. You dominated them once, they stayed dominated. If you were at the top of a pack, those under you were nearly completely loyal.
Mohan seemed oddly reluctant to break the girl though, and Chi-Wong had absolutely no idea why. That was what you did with new wolves. You put them in their place and they became quietessent.
Wereravens were rare, and the gift used to create them was rarer. In Chi-Wong's opinion whatever insane shapeshifter had thought it was a good idea to infect a child with lycanthropy, especially wereravenism, should be slowly boiled to death over the course of years by the witches. The problem was that the only person that she knew that could offer the "pure gift" of species undifferentiated lycanthropy was William Mohan.
She'd seen him use it to create Weresnakes out of rattlers. It wasn't a particuarly pleasant experience, and Chi-Wong had only been an observer. For the participants it was extremely painful and sickening, even for the giver.
Considering that the girl had shown up at Mohan's doorstep, it was hard to believe that he hadn't had something to do with her creation, but he still maintained that he hadn't. He pointed out that of all things, why would he have created a wereraven? Even two months before they'd found her their relationship with the Ladies hadn't required the sudden addition of a threat. They'd even considered killing her in her sleep since then to try to win the support of Bliss back.
If the old witch hadn't been such a caniving bitch, they might have gone through with it even.
So now they were left with what amounted to an toxic waste covered wild animal caged in the house. Lia didn't want to be kept, couldn't be easily dominated, and was constantly trying to run away. The Wolves as a group couldn't just let her go because that would permanently fracture their relationship with the Ladies. And, despite their reputation for random violence and as much as Chi-Wong hated to admit it, none of the Wolves really wanted to murder another shapeshifter, especially a child.
So why didn't Mohan want to just dominate her and be done with it? At least then he could tell her to stay put and she wouldn't have a choice in the matter. It was if he thought that her usefullness in negotiations would go out the window if she was broken but how would the ladies even know that if he didn't tell him? Chi-Wong had no idea.
"Grandmother?" she called out. It would have been rude to try the door and Bliss didn't particually want to touch the house if she didn't have to, so she just stood there in the cool evening.
There was no response and no movement in the little home except for the swaying of the grasses that grew right up to the walls. Sometimes Spider Woman was in the mood to talk to Bliss and some days she was not.
The old spirits, the ones that were written about in legend, were always a fickle bunch. Some were touchy about the fact that they'd mostly been supplanted in the modern world but some had learned to get along.
Some were dead. In fact, most were dead.
Ideas had power, swirling around in people's brains, and when enough people all had the same ideas, they could give birth to things that were not human but alive and powerful. If the people stopped believing though, the spirits would die. Humans were the special case: they would keep living if whether you believed in them or not.
Spider Woman was amazingly resilient. She'd not only lived long enough to set her foot in with the new agers, she'd managed to keep some of her powers. In this area of the world there weren't many spirits that could say that truthfully.
So Bliss used her when she could. There were some things the spirits could do that the "mortals" could not, and vice versa. What Bliss could arrange through a few telephone calls or an internet search was often enough for surprisingly complicated bits of knowledge or powerful magics. The price for this particular assistance had been unusually difficult.
After five minutes, Bliss pulled an envelope out of her purse, went over, and stuck it in the door frame. It wouldn't get lost, she was sure of that. Spider Woman would get the envelope even if she had to chase it across a hundred miles of Nevada desert. Bliss smiled at the image.
But this resolved her debt, finally.
She turned to walk back to the car where Iron Dog was waiting but before she took more than four steps she heard the door open and turned.
Spider Woman stood there, holding the envelope. Considering the trouble that Bliss had gone through to get what was inside Spider Woman looked unmoved.
"This is it?" The spirit woman asked.
Bliss nodded.
Spider Woman slowly and carefully opened the top of the unsealed envelope and pulled out the paper inside. There was just one and she unfolded it carefully.
"You've fulfilled your end of the bargain, Bliss," she said at last, putting the paper away and holding the envelope gingerly. "And my lawyer?"
"I sent him a copy as well," Bliss said. "And the developers won't bother you again. My sisters and I have made absolutely sure of that."
"When do you want delivery? Now?"
Bliss shook her head. "We can arrange for tomorrow. No mistakes this time."
*-*-*-*-*
"Lia's run away again," said Annabelle to Miss. Chi-Wong.
Chi-Wong sighed. "Have you notified Michael?"
Annabelle nodded. "Mohan's not going to be happy."
"No, of course not. But he won't be surprised. What happened this time?"
"She'd been good all morning, I swear I'd been watching her like a hawk nearly since she'd woken up, but she seemed to be enjoying her lessons and she doesn't usually try to run when it's the middle of the day, you know that, so I went to the bathroom and left one of Michael's pack to watch her--."
"Is the guard hurt?"
"Just unconscious."
"Moon be damned . . ."
"She didn't hit him. I don't know how she managed it this time."
"She's getting to be completely uncontrollable. True, the fact that were have her is an important continuing bargaining chip with the Ladies but we can't keep. . . ." Chi-Wong paused. "I will tell Mohan. You know some of the places that she goes, join the hunt. If we can find her before the markets close, he may be willing to overlook your negligence."
Annabelle nodded and excused herself. Chi-Wong arched her fingers and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
All the different shapeshifters were linked through their shared human side. Werewolf, Weretiger, Werellama, they all eventually fit into the hierarchy. You dominated them once, they stayed dominated. If you were at the top of a pack, those under you were nearly completely loyal.
Mohan seemed oddly reluctant to break the girl though, and Chi-Wong had absolutely no idea why. That was what you did with new wolves. You put them in their place and they became quietessent.
Wereravens were rare, and the gift used to create them was rarer. In Chi-Wong's opinion whatever insane shapeshifter had thought it was a good idea to infect a child with lycanthropy, especially wereravenism, should be slowly boiled to death over the course of years by the witches. The problem was that the only person that she knew that could offer the "pure gift" of species undifferentiated lycanthropy was William Mohan.
She'd seen him use it to create Weresnakes out of rattlers. It wasn't a particuarly pleasant experience, and Chi-Wong had only been an observer. For the participants it was extremely painful and sickening, even for the giver.
Considering that the girl had shown up at Mohan's doorstep, it was hard to believe that he hadn't had something to do with her creation, but he still maintained that he hadn't. He pointed out that of all things, why would he have created a wereraven? Even two months before they'd found her their relationship with the Ladies hadn't required the sudden addition of a threat. They'd even considered killing her in her sleep since then to try to win the support of Bliss back.
If the old witch hadn't been such a caniving bitch, they might have gone through with it even.
So now they were left with what amounted to an toxic waste covered wild animal caged in the house. Lia didn't want to be kept, couldn't be easily dominated, and was constantly trying to run away. The Wolves as a group couldn't just let her go because that would permanently fracture their relationship with the Ladies. And, despite their reputation for random violence and as much as Chi-Wong hated to admit it, none of the Wolves really wanted to murder another shapeshifter, especially a child.
So why didn't Mohan want to just dominate her and be done with it? At least then he could tell her to stay put and she wouldn't have a choice in the matter. It was if he thought that her usefullness in negotiations would go out the window if she was broken but how would the ladies even know that if he didn't tell him? Chi-Wong had no idea.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Episode 21: Beyond & Behind
The bird was covered in sizzling energy, and hitting it burned Bliss' bare hands, but she did out of desperation.
Despite her flailing and the bird's apparent ability to be all around her at the same time, it took her several more seconds of pecks before her hand finally connected with a wing, and the bird fell backward.
It didn't even land on the ground though, flapping off and stirring up the dust, and circled around slowly and lazily, until Bliss realized it was going to swoop around to attack her again. It was big, the largest Raven that Bliss had seen before, and she knew it.
She reached down, to where the mirror that she'd been holding was, and flung it up in front of her.
The bird was already coming back, it's claws and beak stretched out in front of the vanishingly black wings, and it nearly collided with the mirror.
There was a brilliant flash, illuminating the dusty landscape and the huge bird swooping down on Bliss.
The silent explosion knocked Bliss off her feet, and when she opened her eyes and looked around, the bird was gone.
She'd lost her trademark smile when the bird, or the girl, or whatever it was, had attacked her, but she resumed it now. It wasn't necessary to let the others know that she'd been flustered. Besides, everything had gone well enough.
Careful not to look directly at the open door, Bliss crawled on hands and knees over to the small structure, felt for the doorknob, and closed the door. She'd come back later to finish her part of the deal.
She stood, swept the dust off of her with a flick, and set about trying to wake up the other witches.
*-*-*-*
There was no single moment that Lex awoke. When he finally realized that he was in fact awake, he seemed to know instinctively that he'd already been conscious for several minutes.
He tilted his head, and saw a fire going in a hearth. Despite that, the air on his face was sort of cold. He tried to move closer to the fire, and someone moved to help him.
He might have fallen asleep again, or he might not have, but he felt safe and warm, and he relaxed.
Eventually the other person moved away, and he drifted for a bit longer.
When he finally sat up, the fire was still burning but the air was still cool. He was in a little room that didn't look so much like a room in a house but more of a spherical tent or a cave. Everything, including the little ledge near the fire on which he was balanced, curved in multiple directions.
The walls were fuzzy, and two of them were covered with big blankets, like the Navajo blankets that he remembered from the state fair back in Texas. Across from him, there was a wall covered with shelves of little clay and glass pots and vials and other bits of things. There was half a buffalo skull up on the top shelf, and an entire section of it seemed to hold little twigs and sticks. At the bottom, under the shelves, were old books and piles of yellowing newspaper.
There was movement in the other room, and then a Native American woman entered. She was dressed in a brown dress with a black apron over it and had long dark hair gathered back in a braid.
Lex shivered involuntarily and pressed himself away from her. He felt that something was wrong although he couldn't say exactly what.
She smiled at him, and held out a black glazed mug. "Have some tea. Really, you shouldn't be bursting into people's houses, you know."
"You're not a witch?"
The woman laughed. "No, of course not. Call me Grandmother."
His eyes narrowed and asked for a second opinion.
A moment passed and the woman drew a three legged stool over and put the mug on it, within easy reach of Lex.
Sora? He said again to the inside of his head, and then again.
He must have looked surprised because the woman laughed slowly. "You're looking for the enchantment, aren't you. It was a complicated little thing. I can understand why she made the deal that she did now. The thing that I don't understand is why you let it in your head." She shook her head. "Bad medicine, that. More likely to kill than to cure, whatever it was that you wanted out of it."
"What did you do?"
"I took the knot out of your head."
"I thought you said that you aren't a witch."
"Witch? No. Just a Grandmother and a weaver by trade."
"I want it back," Lex said stiffly.
She shook her head. "Had to cut too many of the threads. Can't be fixed now." Her eyes went up to the shelf and Lex's gaze followed. Among the bottles and other objects he spotted a little figure of sticks and bits of black and white string.
Some of the threads were cut, and it slumped over on it's side. The woman's words sunk in and he suddenly realized that Sora's voice was gone, probably for good.
He tried to stand, and at that moment realized that he was wearing nothing under the blanket. He sunk back down, wondering how long he'd been in the house and how long his only ally had been dead, and he recalled why he'd come.
"Where is Lia?"
The woman blinked at him. "Who?"
"Lia. One of the witches called her the raven."
The woman shook her head. "The Raven? She's not here. Hasn't been in this lifetime. She may be back soon, she may not. Always was solitary, that one, and suffers for it."
Lex ground his teeth. "What does that mean? What does everyone know that I don't? I mean, there are enough secrets out there, vampires and werewolves and witches and all of them seem to know immediately what all of it means, but nobody has thought to clue me in."
"Their shapes are important. Wolf or Bear or even Cat, although that one was not one we knew before they were brought from the east. The shapes determine who they are, either by choice or by force. Ravens . . . they're old birds. Some of the oldest, and they control powerful magics. They're present at the end of things, and their presence is greatly feared by the ladies. She'll live and die of magic and have some powerful influence in her short life. At least till one of the great ravens comes, and that . . ." the woman laughed again softly.
"Then it will be Dreamtime again," she finished and she looked at Lex with an almost angry gleam in her eye.
To Lex, it seemed like more riddles, but one like, that Lia would have a short life, stood out like fire in his brain. He glanced around, wondering if he could use the buffalo skull as a weapon when the older woman finally moved again.
"You should have had some tea," she said. "It settles the mind and it would have made this ever so much easier. Still, Grandmother Spider keeps her promises."
Lex jerked back, as though he'd been hit as he finally woke all of the way up and realized that the Native American woman had been only a dream. She was only there in the loosest sense, and also in her position was a six foot long black spider with gleaming red eyes. Two of her legs caught him, pinning him to the ledge of stone and web and as her torso pressed against him he felt a pain on his side. He tried to roll away but as he looked up at her suddenly bloody teeth the room seemed to spin again.
He closed his eyes but the warmth was no longer enough to make him feel comfortable.
Despite her flailing and the bird's apparent ability to be all around her at the same time, it took her several more seconds of pecks before her hand finally connected with a wing, and the bird fell backward.
It didn't even land on the ground though, flapping off and stirring up the dust, and circled around slowly and lazily, until Bliss realized it was going to swoop around to attack her again. It was big, the largest Raven that Bliss had seen before, and she knew it.
She reached down, to where the mirror that she'd been holding was, and flung it up in front of her.
The bird was already coming back, it's claws and beak stretched out in front of the vanishingly black wings, and it nearly collided with the mirror.
There was a brilliant flash, illuminating the dusty landscape and the huge bird swooping down on Bliss.
The silent explosion knocked Bliss off her feet, and when she opened her eyes and looked around, the bird was gone.
She'd lost her trademark smile when the bird, or the girl, or whatever it was, had attacked her, but she resumed it now. It wasn't necessary to let the others know that she'd been flustered. Besides, everything had gone well enough.
Careful not to look directly at the open door, Bliss crawled on hands and knees over to the small structure, felt for the doorknob, and closed the door. She'd come back later to finish her part of the deal.
She stood, swept the dust off of her with a flick, and set about trying to wake up the other witches.
*-*-*-*
There was no single moment that Lex awoke. When he finally realized that he was in fact awake, he seemed to know instinctively that he'd already been conscious for several minutes.
He tilted his head, and saw a fire going in a hearth. Despite that, the air on his face was sort of cold. He tried to move closer to the fire, and someone moved to help him.
He might have fallen asleep again, or he might not have, but he felt safe and warm, and he relaxed.
Eventually the other person moved away, and he drifted for a bit longer.
When he finally sat up, the fire was still burning but the air was still cool. He was in a little room that didn't look so much like a room in a house but more of a spherical tent or a cave. Everything, including the little ledge near the fire on which he was balanced, curved in multiple directions.
The walls were fuzzy, and two of them were covered with big blankets, like the Navajo blankets that he remembered from the state fair back in Texas. Across from him, there was a wall covered with shelves of little clay and glass pots and vials and other bits of things. There was half a buffalo skull up on the top shelf, and an entire section of it seemed to hold little twigs and sticks. At the bottom, under the shelves, were old books and piles of yellowing newspaper.
There was movement in the other room, and then a Native American woman entered. She was dressed in a brown dress with a black apron over it and had long dark hair gathered back in a braid.
Lex shivered involuntarily and pressed himself away from her. He felt that something was wrong although he couldn't say exactly what.
She smiled at him, and held out a black glazed mug. "Have some tea. Really, you shouldn't be bursting into people's houses, you know."
"You're not a witch?"
The woman laughed. "No, of course not. Call me Grandmother."
His eyes narrowed and asked for a second opinion.
A moment passed and the woman drew a three legged stool over and put the mug on it, within easy reach of Lex.
Sora? He said again to the inside of his head, and then again.
He must have looked surprised because the woman laughed slowly. "You're looking for the enchantment, aren't you. It was a complicated little thing. I can understand why she made the deal that she did now. The thing that I don't understand is why you let it in your head." She shook her head. "Bad medicine, that. More likely to kill than to cure, whatever it was that you wanted out of it."
"What did you do?"
"I took the knot out of your head."
"I thought you said that you aren't a witch."
"Witch? No. Just a Grandmother and a weaver by trade."
"I want it back," Lex said stiffly.
She shook her head. "Had to cut too many of the threads. Can't be fixed now." Her eyes went up to the shelf and Lex's gaze followed. Among the bottles and other objects he spotted a little figure of sticks and bits of black and white string.
Some of the threads were cut, and it slumped over on it's side. The woman's words sunk in and he suddenly realized that Sora's voice was gone, probably for good.
He tried to stand, and at that moment realized that he was wearing nothing under the blanket. He sunk back down, wondering how long he'd been in the house and how long his only ally had been dead, and he recalled why he'd come.
"Where is Lia?"
The woman blinked at him. "Who?"
"Lia. One of the witches called her the raven."
The woman shook her head. "The Raven? She's not here. Hasn't been in this lifetime. She may be back soon, she may not. Always was solitary, that one, and suffers for it."
Lex ground his teeth. "What does that mean? What does everyone know that I don't? I mean, there are enough secrets out there, vampires and werewolves and witches and all of them seem to know immediately what all of it means, but nobody has thought to clue me in."
"Their shapes are important. Wolf or Bear or even Cat, although that one was not one we knew before they were brought from the east. The shapes determine who they are, either by choice or by force. Ravens . . . they're old birds. Some of the oldest, and they control powerful magics. They're present at the end of things, and their presence is greatly feared by the ladies. She'll live and die of magic and have some powerful influence in her short life. At least till one of the great ravens comes, and that . . ." the woman laughed again softly.
"Then it will be Dreamtime again," she finished and she looked at Lex with an almost angry gleam in her eye.
To Lex, it seemed like more riddles, but one like, that Lia would have a short life, stood out like fire in his brain. He glanced around, wondering if he could use the buffalo skull as a weapon when the older woman finally moved again.
"You should have had some tea," she said. "It settles the mind and it would have made this ever so much easier. Still, Grandmother Spider keeps her promises."
Lex jerked back, as though he'd been hit as he finally woke all of the way up and realized that the Native American woman had been only a dream. She was only there in the loosest sense, and also in her position was a six foot long black spider with gleaming red eyes. Two of her legs caught him, pinning him to the ledge of stone and web and as her torso pressed against him he felt a pain on his side. He tried to roll away but as he looked up at her suddenly bloody teeth the room seemed to spin again.
He closed his eyes but the warmth was no longer enough to make him feel comfortable.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Episode 20: Outside of the Door
The driver of the cab kept looking up into the rear view mirror at him, and despite the warm dry heat of the Arizona late winter he kept the plastic panels between the front and the back of the cab firmly shut.
Lex didn't care. He'd been picked up in a bad section of town, and he'd eventually been forced to offer the cab driver $300 to drive him outside the city. In advance.
Still, the cab driver was nervous. He obviously didn't trust the young man in the back seat. Lex sat with his hands held in front of him, looking out of the window into the now dark night. Except for the horizon glow over his left shoulder the lights of Las Vegas were gone.
It wasn't dark in Lex's eyes though. Viewed through invisibly woven spells, he could see every detail of the road, and something was urging him onward.
I have a bad feeling about this, the voice said, but Lex didn't reply. He could feel her out there, the familiar presence. Lia was nearby.
The cab driver pulled to a stop, and Lex glanced at the road ahead. There was a cattle guard in the road, and above it was stretched a heavy chain from which hung a "No Trespassing" sign.
"Can't go any farther," the Cabbie said.
Sora's voice, through Lex's body, flickered a glyph at the chain and frowned when it did nothing.
It's protected, the voice relayed.
Can you do something about that? Lex asked silently.
Not without looking at it.
He opened the cab door without thinking and got out, walked over to the chain. It didn't even have a lock, and so Lex reached out to grab it and throw it aside.
As soon as he'd touched the metal, the cab behind him roared. He twisted around to see the cabbie pulling back down the road they'd come up.
Lex dropped the chain and started to run, but the cabbie swung the car around and pealed out, showing him with loose bits of gravel and sand from the road.
Sora's voice pushed at him to relinquish control, but Lex didn't allow it. The cab didn't matter. He turned back to the chain.
How are you planning to get us home? the voice inquired, but Lex didn't have an answer.
He started to unchain the opening between the fences before he realized that it didn't matter now that the cab was gone. He ducked under the chain and started to walk up the dirt road.
There were animals out at night. Rabbits and mice watched him from the brown grass and under the scrubby juniper bushes. They paused as he came into view, hoping that pausing in the dark would protect him.
He wasn't after them though. All he cared about was finding Lia, and the familiar feeling of her was getting slowly closer.
He was walking slightly uphill, and after fifteen minutes or so on the dark road he took off his coat before it became drenched in sweat, but he didn't pause until a gust of wind floated down from above him carrying words.
". . . waiting out here in the dark . . ."
Just like one of the mice he'd passed, he froze as the voices continued.
". . . back to the fire . . ."
". . . angry at us . . ."
". . . stupid . . ."
". . . not going to happen anyway . . ."
". . . dangerous, out here alone . . . killed Bybreak . . ."
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and Lex bit his lip.
It's a trap, said Sora's voice, stating the obvious. Lex though, could feel Lia, just up ahead. Only a little bit past the ridge line.
Without movement to warm him up, his sweat soaked clothes felt like ice.
Time for some new tricks, he told the voice.
Slowly he turned around, shielding his hands from view behind his jacket and began to sketch out the runes that the voice fed him. The first set was a minor magic to keep his feet from making noise. Then a minor rune of invisibility, one that would make the shadows around him deeper (Any more, the voice warned him, and the witches will be able to sense the magic that went into it). Finally, he sketched out a circle in his mind, filled it with the basic runes that he would need.
You'll need more, Sora's voice said, sketch out five or six . . .
Alex reached out, his hands on either side of the circle, and concentrated. Carefully he felt around the edges of the circle. There should have been nothing to feel, the blue lines were only faint traceries of energy, but there was. With his fingernails he slowly peeled away the top of the circle, and everything in it peeled away as well.
Two identical rune circles floated in front of him.
Oh, said Sora's voice. I didn't know that was possible.
He copied the rune a half dozen more times, and then gathered them together, holding them like a stack of plates, each floating about half and inch from the next.
Time to go, Lex thought.
He slipped off the road and around the left side of the hill where he thought that the witches waited. Even with the magic, he stepped carefully, not wanting the rustle of his clothes or the sound of scraping against a plant to give him away.
There they were, leaning against the rocks, with a view of the road. Two women, young looking, both with dark hair and wearing heavy wool coats. They were obviously supposed to be keeping watch for him, but neither of them was paying much attention. They were still murmuring back and forth, and every once in a while one would glance down the hill.
They were looking right into the glow from the Las Vegas lights, Lex realized. Whenever they looked down the hill, their eyes had to adjust to the light, and he could have made it most of the way up the road before they would have spotted him.
He took the top magic circle, sketched the activation rune with one hand, and gave it a flick. One of the women yawned.
Another rune, another flick.
The first woman leaned heavily against the rock, and slid to the ground. The other looked at her in surprise for a moment before collapsing herself. They barely made a sound and they weren't hurt, they were just asleep.
Lex frowned. If either of them had hurt Lia, he wouldn't just be putting them to sleep.
He crept up the road slowly, examining every bush and stone for signs of life, and listening carefully for any further giveaway sounds.
He crested the hill, and saw a flicker of light.
A bonfire had been built in the middle of the road, just before it ended before a small house. It was the house, the tiny one from his dream. The tall cactus was there, half illuminated in by the bonfire, but the house looked empty and dark. There was no light coming from the little window, like there had been in his dream.
Around the fire were women, all bundled in clothing, some with their hands out toward the fire. One or two of the faces illuminated by the fire Lex recognized from that night in the mansion with Soraperion.
There were at least ten, and there was already magic in the air. Around the red-orange glow of the burning wood he could flashes of blue.
There was no sign of Lia, but the feeling of familiarity was almost overpowering. It was there in front of him somewhere.
One of figures was holding something, and she suddenly looked up at him and Lex saw that it was Bliss.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and at the same moment he felt something wrong beside him.
He threw himself to the left, and something whistled through the space where his head had been. It was the Native American, the one from the mansion, the one that had gone with Bliss into the hole after Soraperion. He was dressed in black, like a ninja, and in his hands he carried a wand or staff or some wooden dowel. He raised it, and Lex automatically flicked one of the spell disks he'd been carrying at the large man.
A split second to sketch the activation, and it flashed to life, wrapping itself around the man in a glowing string of blue runes. The man shook his head, as though he were trying to stay awake, and the spell fell to pieces. He didn't look tired.
He's protected too, the voice shouted in his head.
Lex's hands clenched, and in the left palm he felt dirt crunch. He flung it up at the man above him just as the staff came down again.
The rod hit him in the shoulder with a sharp crack, and Lex fell backward, howling with pain. At the same time, the dirt had hit the Native American in the face and it was obvious that his eyes weren't protected from that. He stumbled back.
Sora's voice didn't wait for Lex to recover. He slipped into enough control to cast without having to feel the pain.
He flung out the arm that had just been struck, causing Lex to cry out in pain, but also sending the remaining spells down the hill toward the women standing around the fire. He sketched out the activation, and the things burst into spinning disks of azure light.
Lex rocketed to his feet, jerked upright through his telekinesis, and at the same time he grabbed at all of the empty dirt that he could see and shoveled it up with his powers. The Native American was pelted with more dirt, and then with a gout of fire from the next set of sketched runes.
The fire had no more effect than the sleep spell had, but the dust forced the man to shield his face.
Another telekinetic blanket caught a slew of spells from around the fire, and he quickly started to itch again. Crap, he thought, but Sora's voice had a solution this time. A complicated rune of protection, a word, and it went away.
Why didn't you do that last time? Lex thought, annoyed.
No runes, no speaking, no movement, remember?
Right, he thought and went back on the attack.
More useless fire sprang from his hands, but that was only a distraction. With his telekinesis he grabbed the man and jabbed as hard as he could.
It was like a wire effect from one of those Chinese movies. The Native American popped up and backward, flying up at least twenty feet before falling heavily to the ground.
Sora's voice was already sketching heavy protection spells, the first few of which caught fire, ice, hissing bolts of electricity and javelins of darkness.
Me them, you him? Sora's voice asked.
Duh.
Fair fight then, the voice responded.
At least one of the women had been caught by the flying sleep spells, and now a series of loud explosions occurred in the air in front of those remained. Some, like Bliss, seemed unaffected and others shrugged it off but four of the women went sprawling backward into the dirt. Only one tried to sit up, but was caught with a purplish bolt of something to the head and went down again.
The Native American rushed back into the fight as the witches returned attacks while Lex's hands sketched his next moves. The wooden rod came down at his head, but telekinesis stopped it dead, and jerked it back, twisting it in loops.
The man twisted his arm, trying to compensate, but the telekinesis didn't have to worry about things like arm joints. Already off balance from the sudden stop he toppled over as the staff was ripped from his grasp. It hung in the air for a moment, and then began to attack the Native American, hitting him viciously over the head until he stopped trying to get up.
Lex's hands finished their complex dancing, leaving a crescent of linked runes. They pulsed momentarily and expanded, growing diffuse until they'd melted away.
Then there was a rumble, and the ground around the fire shook. Fingers of sharp stone shot up in the midst of the witches, throwing them around like dolls, and from their points they glowed with electricity which arced out, slicing through the dolls.
Only Bliss was left standing, untouched in a circle of clear ground, the lightning ignoring her. She looked at her scattered sisters, and then slowly bent her knees, leaning back into a position that reminded him of a karate pose, placing the hand mirror that she was holding on the ground at the same time. She didn't kick or punch though, she just raised her arms into a defensive posture and looked at him.
She hasn't attacked us yet, Sora's voice pointed out. She's just stood there for the entire time.
I wonder why? Lex thought to himself and then out loud he called, "Why didn't you attack with the others?"
Bliss shrugged slowly. "It's good for them, to be in a fight against someone creative with magic. They spar amongst themselves, but only know a few tricks and think they've mastered magical combat. You have the range of a Mage, the speed of cheetah, the creativity of an artist."
His mouth opened a bit, and she gave him a level look. "Why so surprised?" she asked.
"I didn't expect you to answer my question."
"How will you ever learn if I don't?"
He looked at her closely for the first time. She was smiling, just as every other time he'd seen her, but she seemed serious enough.
"Are we going to fight?" he asked her after a pause.
"Of course."
They stood facing each other for a few more moments and then he asked, "Uh . . . should I count to three or something?"
"You can start whenever."
"Oh."
Sora's voice murmured, That sounds bad.
So Lex raised his arms and hesitated at the still form of Bliss.
Then he sketched the first blue line in the air, and her arms whipped into action.
The first of Lex's shields were just getting up when the first of Bliss' attacks struck them. Instead of vanishing they clung to the invisible barriers, pressing on them and eating away at them like acid. A jab of telekinesis disrupted the spell that was eating away at his defenses, but it was all that Sora's voice could do to work up new protection spells before the next volley of light and heat hit him in a shower of iridescent bolts of lightning.
All of the other witches that he'd fought had been slow. They'd chant something, and Lex would have three or four spells sketched and away before they'd finished their first. Now the tables were turned. The ground around him splintered and cracked. The dry bushes burst into flame for a moment before disintegrating away to dust. The air filled with the smell of ozone. And Bliss never hesitated, continually throwing spell after spell at him.
Sora's voice finally managed to throw an attack between multiple protection spells, but it did nothing. Bliss almost negligently canceled it out with a flick of her wrist.
So Lex lashed out with his telekinesis, driven by the resurgence of adrenaline as beams of energized air flickered around him.
Bliss countered that as well.
And then she hit him back with her own telekinesis.
Lex threw up a blanket around himself but Bliss poked at it with her own abilities, blows that made what he'd done to the Native American look like a friendly pat. They were sharp pokes too, as though she was forming her abilities into two foot long needles.
Lex concentrated, trying to harden the blanket into a wall, but each time his concentration slipped Bliss was right there, probing and the jamming her powers home, ripping his shirt to shreds, and his skin beneath it.
She's . . . better . . . than . . . we . . . are . . ., the voice managed in between spurts of heavy concentration, and Lex could feel that he was correct. Her attacks were layered, building up from the energy of previous attacks, and their defenses were not. Not to mention that if Lex himself lost concentration, she could rip his defenses apart with her telekinesis.
The door, Lex thought back, but it looked hopeless. It was behind Bliss, much too far, and with each volley of destructive magic it looked even more out of reach.
Then then sky moved. Flickered, a bit, behind where Bliss stood.
Something resolved out of the darkness, like it had been just made. Lex and the voice were busy with other things, but for a moment it seemed to Lex like another attack. Perhaps another witch hidden by the darkness.
It didn't aim for them though. It lanced straight for Bliss and passed through her magical barriers like they didn't exist. The runes composing them turned from blue to red in an instant, and then faded completely.
Bliss had a moment to look around, and then she screamed.
Whatever hit her seemed to burst apart, a mass of inky blackness and claws, and the attacks against Lex ceased.
Lex ran for the door. Sora's voice, suddenly free for attacks, began to rain spells back at Bliss. Some of them were cast aside, but some finally found their mark.
Lex was almost there, almost to the door, and the presence of Lia . . . even though it was weird now. It echoed oddly, as though she wasn't just behind the door. But Lex didn't have time for that. He reached the handle, not even considering that it could be locked, and flung it open.
Golden light was through the door, and he flung himself into it, warmth seeping up at the same time that everything faded to black.
Lex didn't care. He'd been picked up in a bad section of town, and he'd eventually been forced to offer the cab driver $300 to drive him outside the city. In advance.
Still, the cab driver was nervous. He obviously didn't trust the young man in the back seat. Lex sat with his hands held in front of him, looking out of the window into the now dark night. Except for the horizon glow over his left shoulder the lights of Las Vegas were gone.
It wasn't dark in Lex's eyes though. Viewed through invisibly woven spells, he could see every detail of the road, and something was urging him onward.
I have a bad feeling about this, the voice said, but Lex didn't reply. He could feel her out there, the familiar presence. Lia was nearby.
The cab driver pulled to a stop, and Lex glanced at the road ahead. There was a cattle guard in the road, and above it was stretched a heavy chain from which hung a "No Trespassing" sign.
"Can't go any farther," the Cabbie said.
Sora's voice, through Lex's body, flickered a glyph at the chain and frowned when it did nothing.
It's protected, the voice relayed.
Can you do something about that? Lex asked silently.
Not without looking at it.
He opened the cab door without thinking and got out, walked over to the chain. It didn't even have a lock, and so Lex reached out to grab it and throw it aside.
As soon as he'd touched the metal, the cab behind him roared. He twisted around to see the cabbie pulling back down the road they'd come up.
Lex dropped the chain and started to run, but the cabbie swung the car around and pealed out, showing him with loose bits of gravel and sand from the road.
Sora's voice pushed at him to relinquish control, but Lex didn't allow it. The cab didn't matter. He turned back to the chain.
How are you planning to get us home? the voice inquired, but Lex didn't have an answer.
He started to unchain the opening between the fences before he realized that it didn't matter now that the cab was gone. He ducked under the chain and started to walk up the dirt road.
There were animals out at night. Rabbits and mice watched him from the brown grass and under the scrubby juniper bushes. They paused as he came into view, hoping that pausing in the dark would protect him.
He wasn't after them though. All he cared about was finding Lia, and the familiar feeling of her was getting slowly closer.
He was walking slightly uphill, and after fifteen minutes or so on the dark road he took off his coat before it became drenched in sweat, but he didn't pause until a gust of wind floated down from above him carrying words.
". . . waiting out here in the dark . . ."
Just like one of the mice he'd passed, he froze as the voices continued.
". . . back to the fire . . ."
". . . angry at us . . ."
". . . stupid . . ."
". . . not going to happen anyway . . ."
". . . dangerous, out here alone . . . killed Bybreak . . ."
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and Lex bit his lip.
It's a trap, said Sora's voice, stating the obvious. Lex though, could feel Lia, just up ahead. Only a little bit past the ridge line.
Without movement to warm him up, his sweat soaked clothes felt like ice.
Time for some new tricks, he told the voice.
Slowly he turned around, shielding his hands from view behind his jacket and began to sketch out the runes that the voice fed him. The first set was a minor magic to keep his feet from making noise. Then a minor rune of invisibility, one that would make the shadows around him deeper (Any more, the voice warned him, and the witches will be able to sense the magic that went into it). Finally, he sketched out a circle in his mind, filled it with the basic runes that he would need.
You'll need more, Sora's voice said, sketch out five or six . . .
Alex reached out, his hands on either side of the circle, and concentrated. Carefully he felt around the edges of the circle. There should have been nothing to feel, the blue lines were only faint traceries of energy, but there was. With his fingernails he slowly peeled away the top of the circle, and everything in it peeled away as well.
Two identical rune circles floated in front of him.
Oh, said Sora's voice. I didn't know that was possible.
He copied the rune a half dozen more times, and then gathered them together, holding them like a stack of plates, each floating about half and inch from the next.
Time to go, Lex thought.
He slipped off the road and around the left side of the hill where he thought that the witches waited. Even with the magic, he stepped carefully, not wanting the rustle of his clothes or the sound of scraping against a plant to give him away.
There they were, leaning against the rocks, with a view of the road. Two women, young looking, both with dark hair and wearing heavy wool coats. They were obviously supposed to be keeping watch for him, but neither of them was paying much attention. They were still murmuring back and forth, and every once in a while one would glance down the hill.
They were looking right into the glow from the Las Vegas lights, Lex realized. Whenever they looked down the hill, their eyes had to adjust to the light, and he could have made it most of the way up the road before they would have spotted him.
He took the top magic circle, sketched the activation rune with one hand, and gave it a flick. One of the women yawned.
Another rune, another flick.
The first woman leaned heavily against the rock, and slid to the ground. The other looked at her in surprise for a moment before collapsing herself. They barely made a sound and they weren't hurt, they were just asleep.
Lex frowned. If either of them had hurt Lia, he wouldn't just be putting them to sleep.
He crept up the road slowly, examining every bush and stone for signs of life, and listening carefully for any further giveaway sounds.
He crested the hill, and saw a flicker of light.
A bonfire had been built in the middle of the road, just before it ended before a small house. It was the house, the tiny one from his dream. The tall cactus was there, half illuminated in by the bonfire, but the house looked empty and dark. There was no light coming from the little window, like there had been in his dream.
Around the fire were women, all bundled in clothing, some with their hands out toward the fire. One or two of the faces illuminated by the fire Lex recognized from that night in the mansion with Soraperion.
There were at least ten, and there was already magic in the air. Around the red-orange glow of the burning wood he could flashes of blue.
There was no sign of Lia, but the feeling of familiarity was almost overpowering. It was there in front of him somewhere.
One of figures was holding something, and she suddenly looked up at him and Lex saw that it was Bliss.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and at the same moment he felt something wrong beside him.
He threw himself to the left, and something whistled through the space where his head had been. It was the Native American, the one from the mansion, the one that had gone with Bliss into the hole after Soraperion. He was dressed in black, like a ninja, and in his hands he carried a wand or staff or some wooden dowel. He raised it, and Lex automatically flicked one of the spell disks he'd been carrying at the large man.
A split second to sketch the activation, and it flashed to life, wrapping itself around the man in a glowing string of blue runes. The man shook his head, as though he were trying to stay awake, and the spell fell to pieces. He didn't look tired.
He's protected too, the voice shouted in his head.
Lex's hands clenched, and in the left palm he felt dirt crunch. He flung it up at the man above him just as the staff came down again.
The rod hit him in the shoulder with a sharp crack, and Lex fell backward, howling with pain. At the same time, the dirt had hit the Native American in the face and it was obvious that his eyes weren't protected from that. He stumbled back.
Sora's voice didn't wait for Lex to recover. He slipped into enough control to cast without having to feel the pain.
He flung out the arm that had just been struck, causing Lex to cry out in pain, but also sending the remaining spells down the hill toward the women standing around the fire. He sketched out the activation, and the things burst into spinning disks of azure light.
Lex rocketed to his feet, jerked upright through his telekinesis, and at the same time he grabbed at all of the empty dirt that he could see and shoveled it up with his powers. The Native American was pelted with more dirt, and then with a gout of fire from the next set of sketched runes.
The fire had no more effect than the sleep spell had, but the dust forced the man to shield his face.
Another telekinetic blanket caught a slew of spells from around the fire, and he quickly started to itch again. Crap, he thought, but Sora's voice had a solution this time. A complicated rune of protection, a word, and it went away.
Why didn't you do that last time? Lex thought, annoyed.
No runes, no speaking, no movement, remember?
Right, he thought and went back on the attack.
More useless fire sprang from his hands, but that was only a distraction. With his telekinesis he grabbed the man and jabbed as hard as he could.
It was like a wire effect from one of those Chinese movies. The Native American popped up and backward, flying up at least twenty feet before falling heavily to the ground.
Sora's voice was already sketching heavy protection spells, the first few of which caught fire, ice, hissing bolts of electricity and javelins of darkness.
Me them, you him? Sora's voice asked.
Duh.
Fair fight then, the voice responded.
At least one of the women had been caught by the flying sleep spells, and now a series of loud explosions occurred in the air in front of those remained. Some, like Bliss, seemed unaffected and others shrugged it off but four of the women went sprawling backward into the dirt. Only one tried to sit up, but was caught with a purplish bolt of something to the head and went down again.
The Native American rushed back into the fight as the witches returned attacks while Lex's hands sketched his next moves. The wooden rod came down at his head, but telekinesis stopped it dead, and jerked it back, twisting it in loops.
The man twisted his arm, trying to compensate, but the telekinesis didn't have to worry about things like arm joints. Already off balance from the sudden stop he toppled over as the staff was ripped from his grasp. It hung in the air for a moment, and then began to attack the Native American, hitting him viciously over the head until he stopped trying to get up.
Lex's hands finished their complex dancing, leaving a crescent of linked runes. They pulsed momentarily and expanded, growing diffuse until they'd melted away.
Then there was a rumble, and the ground around the fire shook. Fingers of sharp stone shot up in the midst of the witches, throwing them around like dolls, and from their points they glowed with electricity which arced out, slicing through the dolls.
Only Bliss was left standing, untouched in a circle of clear ground, the lightning ignoring her. She looked at her scattered sisters, and then slowly bent her knees, leaning back into a position that reminded him of a karate pose, placing the hand mirror that she was holding on the ground at the same time. She didn't kick or punch though, she just raised her arms into a defensive posture and looked at him.
She hasn't attacked us yet, Sora's voice pointed out. She's just stood there for the entire time.
I wonder why? Lex thought to himself and then out loud he called, "Why didn't you attack with the others?"
Bliss shrugged slowly. "It's good for them, to be in a fight against someone creative with magic. They spar amongst themselves, but only know a few tricks and think they've mastered magical combat. You have the range of a Mage, the speed of cheetah, the creativity of an artist."
His mouth opened a bit, and she gave him a level look. "Why so surprised?" she asked.
"I didn't expect you to answer my question."
"How will you ever learn if I don't?"
He looked at her closely for the first time. She was smiling, just as every other time he'd seen her, but she seemed serious enough.
"Are we going to fight?" he asked her after a pause.
"Of course."
They stood facing each other for a few more moments and then he asked, "Uh . . . should I count to three or something?"
"You can start whenever."
"Oh."
Sora's voice murmured, That sounds bad.
So Lex raised his arms and hesitated at the still form of Bliss.
Then he sketched the first blue line in the air, and her arms whipped into action.
The first of Lex's shields were just getting up when the first of Bliss' attacks struck them. Instead of vanishing they clung to the invisible barriers, pressing on them and eating away at them like acid. A jab of telekinesis disrupted the spell that was eating away at his defenses, but it was all that Sora's voice could do to work up new protection spells before the next volley of light and heat hit him in a shower of iridescent bolts of lightning.
All of the other witches that he'd fought had been slow. They'd chant something, and Lex would have three or four spells sketched and away before they'd finished their first. Now the tables were turned. The ground around him splintered and cracked. The dry bushes burst into flame for a moment before disintegrating away to dust. The air filled with the smell of ozone. And Bliss never hesitated, continually throwing spell after spell at him.
Sora's voice finally managed to throw an attack between multiple protection spells, but it did nothing. Bliss almost negligently canceled it out with a flick of her wrist.
So Lex lashed out with his telekinesis, driven by the resurgence of adrenaline as beams of energized air flickered around him.
Bliss countered that as well.
And then she hit him back with her own telekinesis.
Lex threw up a blanket around himself but Bliss poked at it with her own abilities, blows that made what he'd done to the Native American look like a friendly pat. They were sharp pokes too, as though she was forming her abilities into two foot long needles.
Lex concentrated, trying to harden the blanket into a wall, but each time his concentration slipped Bliss was right there, probing and the jamming her powers home, ripping his shirt to shreds, and his skin beneath it.
She's . . . better . . . than . . . we . . . are . . ., the voice managed in between spurts of heavy concentration, and Lex could feel that he was correct. Her attacks were layered, building up from the energy of previous attacks, and their defenses were not. Not to mention that if Lex himself lost concentration, she could rip his defenses apart with her telekinesis.
The door, Lex thought back, but it looked hopeless. It was behind Bliss, much too far, and with each volley of destructive magic it looked even more out of reach.
Then then sky moved. Flickered, a bit, behind where Bliss stood.
Something resolved out of the darkness, like it had been just made. Lex and the voice were busy with other things, but for a moment it seemed to Lex like another attack. Perhaps another witch hidden by the darkness.
It didn't aim for them though. It lanced straight for Bliss and passed through her magical barriers like they didn't exist. The runes composing them turned from blue to red in an instant, and then faded completely.
Bliss had a moment to look around, and then she screamed.
Whatever hit her seemed to burst apart, a mass of inky blackness and claws, and the attacks against Lex ceased.
Lex ran for the door. Sora's voice, suddenly free for attacks, began to rain spells back at Bliss. Some of them were cast aside, but some finally found their mark.
Lex was almost there, almost to the door, and the presence of Lia . . . even though it was weird now. It echoed oddly, as though she wasn't just behind the door. But Lex didn't have time for that. He reached the handle, not even considering that it could be locked, and flung it open.
Golden light was through the door, and he flung himself into it, warmth seeping up at the same time that everything faded to black.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Episode 18: Three Factions
They held the memorial on the third day, appropriate for someone that had risen to the rank of Matron in such a powerful Coven.
Bliss, as usual, refused to oversee the ceremony, which meant it was up to the Maiden, Belle Aldecott, to run things.
Belle was relatively new to the coven though, just having moved from Boston, and her training was mostly theoretical. She had to read the memorial and the spirit convocation from a book, and didn't add a personalized epigraph to it. Several of the other coven members looked uncomfortable with the formality of the ceremony when this was a woman that they'd known for years.
Bliss smiled as she stood just outside of the glade. It wasn't any personal resentment against Bybreak for dying, Bliss always smiled.
Mistress Greenwood approached her glaring fiercely, but not doing a very good job. Bliss was substantially more threatening than the thin, bitter looking Greenwood could ever hope to be, and she would smile the entire time.
"There was nothing that you could have done?" Greenwood hissed. She wasn't the first to ask, but she would likely be the last. There were few others in the Coven that could stand up to Bliss, even if she wasn't actively trying to be threatening.
Bliss shook her head.
"Say it."
"There was nothing more I could have done to save Bybreak from herself," Bliss said happily.
Greenwood tilted her head, tasting the words, trying to find a lie but there was nothing there to find.
"And the boy."
Bliss turned her attention full onto Greenwood, who shrank back suddenly, as though Bliss' big white teeth in her toothy smile sent forth a chill.
"What about the boy?" Bliss inquired.
Greenwood opened her mouth, closed it, and finally asked, "Are we going to search for him?"
There was a long pause.
"No," Bliss said. "We're going to use him for bait."
-*-*-*-*-
Mr. Lo sat quietly in the shadows of the hotel lobby. In Las Vegas so many people lived in artificially lit Casinos nearly all of the time that it was easy to forget that there was daylight just beyond the thick walls. Inside, day and night meant close to nothing.
It was so easy for vampires to blend in, to sit and gamble with their heightened senses in the false twilight. To enjoy a floor show and then vanish into the tunnels that connected the various hotel properties to each other and several of the vampire's holdings.
Lo liked to sit and watch the people come and go. A few were happy, having just won money or attended a wedding, and some were saddened by losses at the tables or waking up to find that they'd enjoyed too many free drinks the night before.
He wore a suit but people's vision slid right over him. If he was important, he wouldn't be sitting in the lobby of a hotel by himself and he certainly wouldn't be relaxing and reading a paper. The few people that could recognize him would not disturb him unless it was vitally important.
So when his secretary Miriam appeared, he put down his paper at once.
Miriam was tall and blond and wearing a silvery evening gown even though it was just past eleven a.m. She looked remarkably beautiful, even compared to the usual Las Vegas girls, and men's heads turned as she walked along. She was young though, only about fifty years dead, and she still had something of the predator to her. The men looked, but discreetly, and no one dared to approach her.
"Sir," she said softly as she approached, and then sat delicately on the chair beside him. "I got a report from . . ." She looked around. "From our friend with the Ladies."
"About the death of their Matron?"
She nodded. "A name came up. One that I think you might recognize." She took a slip of paper from her slim valise, and held it out.
Lo looked at it and frowned. That was deeply disturbing.
"The wolves haven't reported seeing him in the area that they're patrolling for us," he said.
"It happened to the West, in the Executive Airport annex. He's on the move, obviously, but he seems to be out of our area for the time being."
"Sue said that he was last seen in the presence of One of the Five."
"Ah," said Miriam. "I have more on that as well. Our same friend says that the incident that happened at the Coven house on the 26th involved both that one and also him," she said as she gestured with the slip of paper.
Lo tried not to let his surprise show. "I thought that one of the two attackers died in that incident. And if the boy killed their Matron he must have been the one that survived the attack."
Miriam nodded slowly as Lo's undead mind churned.
"Soraperion was not the weakest of the five," he said at last, softly. "And so far the boy has survived encounters with two full vampires and Mistress Bliss twice. And he killed the Matron of the Coven during one of those encounters."
"Do you think that the boy is a trap?" Miriam asked.
"For whom? Me? Bliss? The Ladies in general? The only faction left unaffected is the Wolves, who seem to have had remarkable luck avoiding such a problematic person so far. If you'll remember what happened at our last meeting, it would seem that William is already trying to bait the Ladies on one front. Why not another?"
"Should we let this take its course then?"
Lo shook his head. "Not necessarily. The Ladies have uncommon influence in this dark city. If we have judged the game correctly we may be able to turn these machinations to our advantage in the long run." He thought for a moment. "Cancel the Wolves' patrol of our area, but double the lookout of our own thralls around the Southwest section. Call for a Family conference, in the usual place, for the day after tomorrow."
He picked up his paper again and Miriam, always so good at reading people, took her clue to leave, followed by the adoring stares of several men.
-*-*-*-*-
Mohan woke late, rolled out of his elaborate bed, and slipped on his calf skin slippers.
Michael was outside the door, waiting for him. He'd slept through his alarm: he knew that, but he hadn't expected Michael to be here already.
There were no clocks, mechanical or electric, inside of his bedroom. The buzzing of electric devices sometimes bothered his sensitive hearing.
He dressed quickly, stepped outside, and took the proffered watch, wallet and cell phone from Michael. He checked the time and found that he was indeed quite late.
"Breakfast with the Marcandos?"
"I delayed it until tomorrow."
"The business reports?"
"I have them."
They made their way downstairs. Miss Chi-Wong was waiting patiently in the limo. As always, she looked absolutely flawless and completely unflustered by Mohan's late appearance. Sometimes Mohan suspected that she wore her makeup and a suit to bed.
"There has been a delay in the most recent cocaine shipment, of course," she said. "And the witches are already looking for a replacement for Bybreak."
"Wonderful," Mr. Mohan responded. "Have we heard anything else?"
Chi-Wong shook her head.
"That is interesting," Mr. Mohan said. "Bybreak was definitely a calming influence on the Coven, especially with Bliss running roughshod over the rest of them."
"They'll come, eventually." Michael mumbled.
"But when?" Mr. Mohan said. "That's the question. We have a deadline, after all."
Bliss, as usual, refused to oversee the ceremony, which meant it was up to the Maiden, Belle Aldecott, to run things.
Belle was relatively new to the coven though, just having moved from Boston, and her training was mostly theoretical. She had to read the memorial and the spirit convocation from a book, and didn't add a personalized epigraph to it. Several of the other coven members looked uncomfortable with the formality of the ceremony when this was a woman that they'd known for years.
Bliss smiled as she stood just outside of the glade. It wasn't any personal resentment against Bybreak for dying, Bliss always smiled.
Mistress Greenwood approached her glaring fiercely, but not doing a very good job. Bliss was substantially more threatening than the thin, bitter looking Greenwood could ever hope to be, and she would smile the entire time.
"There was nothing that you could have done?" Greenwood hissed. She wasn't the first to ask, but she would likely be the last. There were few others in the Coven that could stand up to Bliss, even if she wasn't actively trying to be threatening.
Bliss shook her head.
"Say it."
"There was nothing more I could have done to save Bybreak from herself," Bliss said happily.
Greenwood tilted her head, tasting the words, trying to find a lie but there was nothing there to find.
"And the boy."
Bliss turned her attention full onto Greenwood, who shrank back suddenly, as though Bliss' big white teeth in her toothy smile sent forth a chill.
"What about the boy?" Bliss inquired.
Greenwood opened her mouth, closed it, and finally asked, "Are we going to search for him?"
There was a long pause.
"No," Bliss said. "We're going to use him for bait."
-*-*-*-*-
Mr. Lo sat quietly in the shadows of the hotel lobby. In Las Vegas so many people lived in artificially lit Casinos nearly all of the time that it was easy to forget that there was daylight just beyond the thick walls. Inside, day and night meant close to nothing.
It was so easy for vampires to blend in, to sit and gamble with their heightened senses in the false twilight. To enjoy a floor show and then vanish into the tunnels that connected the various hotel properties to each other and several of the vampire's holdings.
Lo liked to sit and watch the people come and go. A few were happy, having just won money or attended a wedding, and some were saddened by losses at the tables or waking up to find that they'd enjoyed too many free drinks the night before.
He wore a suit but people's vision slid right over him. If he was important, he wouldn't be sitting in the lobby of a hotel by himself and he certainly wouldn't be relaxing and reading a paper. The few people that could recognize him would not disturb him unless it was vitally important.
So when his secretary Miriam appeared, he put down his paper at once.
Miriam was tall and blond and wearing a silvery evening gown even though it was just past eleven a.m. She looked remarkably beautiful, even compared to the usual Las Vegas girls, and men's heads turned as she walked along. She was young though, only about fifty years dead, and she still had something of the predator to her. The men looked, but discreetly, and no one dared to approach her.
"Sir," she said softly as she approached, and then sat delicately on the chair beside him. "I got a report from . . ." She looked around. "From our friend with the Ladies."
"About the death of their Matron?"
She nodded. "A name came up. One that I think you might recognize." She took a slip of paper from her slim valise, and held it out.
Lo looked at it and frowned. That was deeply disturbing.
"The wolves haven't reported seeing him in the area that they're patrolling for us," he said.
"It happened to the West, in the Executive Airport annex. He's on the move, obviously, but he seems to be out of our area for the time being."
"Sue said that he was last seen in the presence of One of the Five."
"Ah," said Miriam. "I have more on that as well. Our same friend says that the incident that happened at the Coven house on the 26th involved both that one and also him," she said as she gestured with the slip of paper.
Lo tried not to let his surprise show. "I thought that one of the two attackers died in that incident. And if the boy killed their Matron he must have been the one that survived the attack."
Miriam nodded slowly as Lo's undead mind churned.
"Soraperion was not the weakest of the five," he said at last, softly. "And so far the boy has survived encounters with two full vampires and Mistress Bliss twice. And he killed the Matron of the Coven during one of those encounters."
"Do you think that the boy is a trap?" Miriam asked.
"For whom? Me? Bliss? The Ladies in general? The only faction left unaffected is the Wolves, who seem to have had remarkable luck avoiding such a problematic person so far. If you'll remember what happened at our last meeting, it would seem that William is already trying to bait the Ladies on one front. Why not another?"
"Should we let this take its course then?"
Lo shook his head. "Not necessarily. The Ladies have uncommon influence in this dark city. If we have judged the game correctly we may be able to turn these machinations to our advantage in the long run." He thought for a moment. "Cancel the Wolves' patrol of our area, but double the lookout of our own thralls around the Southwest section. Call for a Family conference, in the usual place, for the day after tomorrow."
He picked up his paper again and Miriam, always so good at reading people, took her clue to leave, followed by the adoring stares of several men.
-*-*-*-*-
Mohan woke late, rolled out of his elaborate bed, and slipped on his calf skin slippers.
Michael was outside the door, waiting for him. He'd slept through his alarm: he knew that, but he hadn't expected Michael to be here already.
There were no clocks, mechanical or electric, inside of his bedroom. The buzzing of electric devices sometimes bothered his sensitive hearing.
He dressed quickly, stepped outside, and took the proffered watch, wallet and cell phone from Michael. He checked the time and found that he was indeed quite late.
"Breakfast with the Marcandos?"
"I delayed it until tomorrow."
"The business reports?"
"I have them."
They made their way downstairs. Miss Chi-Wong was waiting patiently in the limo. As always, she looked absolutely flawless and completely unflustered by Mohan's late appearance. Sometimes Mohan suspected that she wore her makeup and a suit to bed.
"There has been a delay in the most recent cocaine shipment, of course," she said. "And the witches are already looking for a replacement for Bybreak."
"Wonderful," Mr. Mohan responded. "Have we heard anything else?"
Chi-Wong shook her head.
"That is interesting," Mr. Mohan said. "Bybreak was definitely a calming influence on the Coven, especially with Bliss running roughshod over the rest of them."
"They'll come, eventually." Michael mumbled.
"But when?" Mr. Mohan said. "That's the question. We have a deadline, after all."
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Episode 17: Spiders and Webs
There was enough cocaine in the warehouse to supply the city of Las Vegas for two months, bundled into bales and stacked into thick white walls of blow.
Lex had hidden behind one of the larger walls in a little alcove formed by the rounded corners of the bales. The hundreds of kilos of powder was packed so tightly that it felt like stone against his skin.
There were no witches in the room. If there had been when he broke in, he would had to let Sora's voice fight for it and they'd been coming up with new tricks to use against him.
The men moving the stacks of cocaine with fork lifts were just heavies for the mob. The witches wouldn't come all the way out here at night unless something was wrong.
So they should be almost here.
Ready? he thought.
Sora's voice didn't bother to make a response, but on the edge of his consciousness he could feel the presence waken.
Outside there was the noise of an jet taking off from the Las Vegas Executive airport, and then in the background there was a car engine roaring closer. Lex wiped his sweaty hands on his shirt.
There was a squeal of tires in the front and all three of the men in the room suddenly ran for the back door, pulling guns from their holsters as they ran. There hadn't been a warning and, as far as they knew, it was the cops.
*Bang* went the door, and a woman in a black dress with a red shawl was standing there.
The men raised their weapons, but only for a split second before dropping them back down to their sides. They knew what the shawl meant, probably better than Lex did.
The witch stalked into the room, peering from side to side, but there was nothing to see now. Lex wasn't using the least bit of magic, and hadn't since Sora's voice tipped off their intrusion system. Two men, both easily six feet tall, black and covered in muscles followed her.
"Mistress Bybreak?" said one of the men. "Is there a problem?"
She waved him to silence. "Out!"
All three of the mob heavies started toward the door, and the witch and her men spread out among the cocaine boxes.
Time to go, thought Alex, and mentally stepped back, letting the voice take over his body.
The witch was the most dangerous of the three left in the room, but she was also the target. The voice didn't think they'd get a second chance at this, and he didn't want to risk messing up this opportunity.
"Well?" demanded the woman once the door had closed.
"I don't see anything," the first black muscle man said as he peered down one of the aisles.
"Me neither," said the other.
"He can't have left. I would have felt him pass back through the perimeter." She lifted her thin face and closed her eyes. Lex recognized her now, she'd been one of the witches that had gone down the hole after Soraperion when he'd died in pursuit of his box.
Alex gestured with one hand, tracing out a rune. At the same time, the part of him that was him reached out and grabbed a metal bar leaning against one of the stacks of cocaine with invisible hands.
The bar twitched, but didn't fly up like it was supposed to.
The completed rune blazed and took hold. The voice said something to release the spell and it blazed toward the man standing closest to the witch and slammed into him. He collapsed, cracking his head against the concrete floor.
Are you going to . . . started the voice, but Lex reached out with his mind again, suddenly terrified by the absolute uselessness of his telekinesis. As hard as he could he thought, SLEEP, at the other man. There was a pause and then that man dropped to the ground as well.
The witch's eyes snapped open. She raised her arm and a ball of crimson fire flew toward Lex. He was still in his hideyhole of cocaine bags, and the bloody fireball burnt through the plastic wrap. The sudden acid smell of burning cocaine seized him. Desperate to avoid the toxic cloud, he pushed forward, through the wall of coke and out into one of the open spaces.
The voice was still sketching runes into the air, but now Lex was gasping for air. He flicked them at her anyway, but they didn't do much without the words to support them. I could use some backup here, kid, the voice thought at him.
The first thing that popped into Lex's head was the bar that he'd been supposed to hit the man over the head with. He grabbed it with his telekinesis and threw it at her, and this time it worked. It was the danger, the adrenaline, that was powering him.
He expected her to try to catch it with her own abilities, like Sue had done in the alley way with the knife, but she didn't. She just stepped to one side, and the bar flew past her harmlessly. She gestured at him, almost negligently, and suddenly the world skewed and Lex's body went completely limp and fell to the floor.
Crap! said Sora's voice in his head.
The witch seemed to think that she'd neutralized him, but she'd been in the hole when Lex had been fighting the other witches in the mansion. She didn't even pay attention to Lex, she went over to the black man and felt his neck for a pulse.
No hands, no mouth, no magic, the voice said.
Except my other stuff, Lex thought back.
His body lifted up, buoyed by his abilities. His arms held out like a scarecrow, his head hanging to one side. His clothes rustled as he moved, and the witch suddenly turned back around, her eyes wide.
Lex's telekinesis propelled him forward, his feet hanging inches above the floor. Bybreak raised her own arm, and he bounced off something that appeared between them.
But the metal bar was behind her and, before she could do anything else, he picked it up and hit her over the shoulders with it. She screamed with pain, looked back, and the metal bar just fell apart into dust.
I hope she can't do that to me, Lex thought to himself.
She looked shocked that he'd obviously been affected by her spell but hadn't been reduced to helplessness.
"They told me," she said aloud. "They told me, but I didn't believe them. I just thought they were making excuses for their failure. After all, we defeated the Mage himself. How three of my sisters failed against one untrained mageling puppet was unbelievable, but I'm beginning to understand."
He said nothing, but then he couldn't say anything: the muscles of his voicebox were paralyzed with the rest of him.
"I am impressed, though," she said. "You're more resourceful that I imagined."
She was doing something, gathering herself for another spell, and this time it was going to be a big one.
He couldn't think of anything to do except throw up his telekinesis like a blanket in front of him. She gestured, and there was an invisible pressure against this blanket. For a moment his abilities seemed to stop it but then Lex felt an itching at the bottom of his feet.
I need the spell you were going to use, he thought at the voice. I need it now!
Without your hands or your voice . . . Sora's voice began.
Now! Lex yelled internally. I have to try it!
Four runes appeared in his head along with two spoken words, just as the itching turned into a burning sensation along the soles of his feet.
He lifted a hand, but with his muscles paralyzed, he couldn't seem to created the glowing runes. But they were magic and so was the telekinesis. There had to be a solution there.
The burning was moving up his legs now, and out of the corner of his eye he couldn't see anything happening, but the pain was intense, as though he was being burned at the stake. Bybreak was watching him carefully now, but not doing anything else. She was waiting for him to try something.
Lex's eyes darted around the room, at the walls of cocaine, looking for another metal bar. None were visible, but as the pain reached his chest an idea popped into his head.
One of the bales of cocaine exploded with a muted *bamf*, showering the room with a cloud of powdered cocaine.
Bybreak's eyes darted to it immediately, and then back to Lex. He hadn't moved a muscle to attack her, not that he could while hanging limp in the air.
Powder rained down, and then another exploded, and another, filling the air with a mist of finely powdered drugs.
Bybreak gestured, and a bubble of clear air formed around her. More cocaine bags exploded, but her eyes remained locked on Lex, and the longer they did so, the more painful the burning sensation became, sneaking up his back like a slow moving fire.
In the powdered cocaine surrounding Bybreak, runes were etching themselves. She was so focused on him, waiting for his attack, that she didn't even see it coming.
Internally, Sora's voice and Lex shouted the words in the silence between Lex's mind.
There was a flash of blue light, and Bybreak looked down to see that she was surrounded by runes nine feet long. She had a moment to blink, and then she stiffened and fell backward. Lex was dismayed to see that the inch of cocaine on the floor cushioned her fall. He would have rather she hurt herself.
The pain and the paralysis vanished, and so did his telekinetic ability. He dropped to the floor, and he overcompensated trying to keep himself up and toppled over. The cocaine wasn't nearly as thick around him, and didn't provide nearly the same protection for him.
Still, he rolled to his feet, kicking up little swirls of coke dust and limped over to her, careful not to disturb the patterns of cocaine on the floor.
One of Bybreak's arms had twisted behind her back as she fell, and he basically sat on the other one, using his right hand to lean on her lower throat. If he was as careless as she had been, he was screwed.
Wake her up, he ordered the voice, and a few seconds later she sputtered awake. She was confused at first, but with Lex holding her down, she got the picture real quick.
"I have some questions," Lex said.
She frowned, gritted her teeth, but nothing happened. Whatever Sora's voice had done to her, it had worked just fine, despite the unorthodox activation. She said nothing though.
Lex leaned forward, putting his weight on his hand and slowly cutting off Bybreak's air. She struggled, but she was weak from whatever the voice in Lex's head had done. She started to keen, and Lex realized that she was trying to scream.
"Talk," he ordered her. "And tell the truth." He relaxed the pressure, and she stopped whining. "Do I have to do it again?"
Bybreak shuddered. "No. What are your questions?"
"Do you work with the vampires?"
"No."
"Then . . . you don't?" He hadn't expected that answer.
"No. Not usually. Whatever alliances exist between the witches and the vampires are temporary and arranged from region to region."
"But the witches control the drug trade here in Las Vegas?"
"Yes. The Vampires control the prostitution, and the Werewolves control the paid violence." His surprise must have been evident on his face because she laughed shallowly. "You didn't know about them, did you?"
"The Wolves," he said. "Yeah, I knew about them."
"Liar," she said.
"Who controls the gambling?"
"This is Las Vegas, all of the factions have a hand in the gambling."
He shook off the answer to the question. "What was Soraperion looking for?"
Her face went hard suddenly. He pressed lightly, but she didn't say anything so he leaned in harder. She was almost blue when he let up, but she still didn't say anything.
"I will kill you."
She smiled again, and she didn't have to say what she was thinking again.
Last question. "Where's Lia?"
She frowned. "Who?"
"The girl! Where's the girl?!"
"What girl?"
"There was a girl," he said, and he started to press down again, although not enough to choke her completely. "But after . . ." he said, thinking about the night on the Strip with Martin the vampire, but stopped. "She disappeared. I've scoured every bloody inch of the city, and I can't find her. You're the only ones that could be protecting her."
Bybreak's eyes narrowed. "Lia, you said?" she whispered through pale lips.
Lex grabbed her by the collar of her dress and pounded on her upper chest. "Damn you!"
"The raven. Your girl is the raven," Bybreak said in a grotesquely happy tone. "No wonder you can't find your little friend."
She laughed shallowly again. "I would give her up now. The wolves have her, and they don't let go of prey easily."
There was a noise by the door, and Lex looked up to find another woman standing in the door. It was Bliss, the witch with the yellow shawl. The one that he suspected had actually killed Soraperion.
Sora's voice slipped nearly instantaneously into control of Lex's body, but even then it was nearly too late. A protection spell caught most of the fire that Bliss threw at him, but not enough to keep the cocaine from breaking out into poison smoke again.
Lex roared something and spun a whirlwind between his hands, sending a tornado of smoke and stinging powder at the older witch.
She ignored it: the air parted around her harmlessly. She geared up for another spell, but Sora's voice and Lex's hands were too quick. He flung himself up and out and her spell sizzled through the space that he'd occupied.
He landed on top of a twenty foot high tower of stacked blow, kicked the bales forward, and then exploded them all as he jumped backward toward the metal wall of the warehouse. Huge clouds of white filled the air, and Bybreak's scream was cut off by the falling metric ton of cocaine.
I wasn't lying when I said I'd kill you, he thought to himself, fiercely proud of having proved her wrong.
Another spell blew open the back wall as he filled the air inside of the warehouse with bolts of ricocheting lightning, and then made for the chain link fence.
He found the gap in the fence that he'd used earlier in the evening, and tried to launch himself through. His pants caught on the edges, and caught off balance, he slammed to the ground.
He twisted onto his back, struggled with the loop of cloth that was tangled in the fence, and looked up.
Meredith Bliss was standing on the roof of the warehouse, her eyes showing up above her yellow scarf were looking down on him.
He froze, waiting for her attack, but she didn't. She raised no hand, no unnatural wind stirred.
His numb hands struggled with his jeans, separated the wire from the fabric, and then slowly pushed his way through the fence.
They looked at each other for a moment as the last of the noise from inside the warehouse died away. Then Bliss turned away, disappearing behind the edge of the roof.
Lex scrambled to his feet and ran, trying and failing to comprehend what had just happened.
Lex had hidden behind one of the larger walls in a little alcove formed by the rounded corners of the bales. The hundreds of kilos of powder was packed so tightly that it felt like stone against his skin.
There were no witches in the room. If there had been when he broke in, he would had to let Sora's voice fight for it and they'd been coming up with new tricks to use against him.
The men moving the stacks of cocaine with fork lifts were just heavies for the mob. The witches wouldn't come all the way out here at night unless something was wrong.
So they should be almost here.
Ready? he thought.
Sora's voice didn't bother to make a response, but on the edge of his consciousness he could feel the presence waken.
Outside there was the noise of an jet taking off from the Las Vegas Executive airport, and then in the background there was a car engine roaring closer. Lex wiped his sweaty hands on his shirt.
There was a squeal of tires in the front and all three of the men in the room suddenly ran for the back door, pulling guns from their holsters as they ran. There hadn't been a warning and, as far as they knew, it was the cops.
*Bang* went the door, and a woman in a black dress with a red shawl was standing there.
The men raised their weapons, but only for a split second before dropping them back down to their sides. They knew what the shawl meant, probably better than Lex did.
The witch stalked into the room, peering from side to side, but there was nothing to see now. Lex wasn't using the least bit of magic, and hadn't since Sora's voice tipped off their intrusion system. Two men, both easily six feet tall, black and covered in muscles followed her.
"Mistress Bybreak?" said one of the men. "Is there a problem?"
She waved him to silence. "Out!"
All three of the mob heavies started toward the door, and the witch and her men spread out among the cocaine boxes.
Time to go, thought Alex, and mentally stepped back, letting the voice take over his body.
The witch was the most dangerous of the three left in the room, but she was also the target. The voice didn't think they'd get a second chance at this, and he didn't want to risk messing up this opportunity.
"Well?" demanded the woman once the door had closed.
"I don't see anything," the first black muscle man said as he peered down one of the aisles.
"Me neither," said the other.
"He can't have left. I would have felt him pass back through the perimeter." She lifted her thin face and closed her eyes. Lex recognized her now, she'd been one of the witches that had gone down the hole after Soraperion when he'd died in pursuit of his box.
Alex gestured with one hand, tracing out a rune. At the same time, the part of him that was him reached out and grabbed a metal bar leaning against one of the stacks of cocaine with invisible hands.
The bar twitched, but didn't fly up like it was supposed to.
The completed rune blazed and took hold. The voice said something to release the spell and it blazed toward the man standing closest to the witch and slammed into him. He collapsed, cracking his head against the concrete floor.
Are you going to . . . started the voice, but Lex reached out with his mind again, suddenly terrified by the absolute uselessness of his telekinesis. As hard as he could he thought, SLEEP, at the other man. There was a pause and then that man dropped to the ground as well.
The witch's eyes snapped open. She raised her arm and a ball of crimson fire flew toward Lex. He was still in his hideyhole of cocaine bags, and the bloody fireball burnt through the plastic wrap. The sudden acid smell of burning cocaine seized him. Desperate to avoid the toxic cloud, he pushed forward, through the wall of coke and out into one of the open spaces.
The voice was still sketching runes into the air, but now Lex was gasping for air. He flicked them at her anyway, but they didn't do much without the words to support them. I could use some backup here, kid, the voice thought at him.
The first thing that popped into Lex's head was the bar that he'd been supposed to hit the man over the head with. He grabbed it with his telekinesis and threw it at her, and this time it worked. It was the danger, the adrenaline, that was powering him.
He expected her to try to catch it with her own abilities, like Sue had done in the alley way with the knife, but she didn't. She just stepped to one side, and the bar flew past her harmlessly. She gestured at him, almost negligently, and suddenly the world skewed and Lex's body went completely limp and fell to the floor.
Crap! said Sora's voice in his head.
The witch seemed to think that she'd neutralized him, but she'd been in the hole when Lex had been fighting the other witches in the mansion. She didn't even pay attention to Lex, she went over to the black man and felt his neck for a pulse.
No hands, no mouth, no magic, the voice said.
Except my other stuff, Lex thought back.
His body lifted up, buoyed by his abilities. His arms held out like a scarecrow, his head hanging to one side. His clothes rustled as he moved, and the witch suddenly turned back around, her eyes wide.
Lex's telekinesis propelled him forward, his feet hanging inches above the floor. Bybreak raised her own arm, and he bounced off something that appeared between them.
But the metal bar was behind her and, before she could do anything else, he picked it up and hit her over the shoulders with it. She screamed with pain, looked back, and the metal bar just fell apart into dust.
I hope she can't do that to me, Lex thought to himself.
She looked shocked that he'd obviously been affected by her spell but hadn't been reduced to helplessness.
"They told me," she said aloud. "They told me, but I didn't believe them. I just thought they were making excuses for their failure. After all, we defeated the Mage himself. How three of my sisters failed against one untrained mageling puppet was unbelievable, but I'm beginning to understand."
He said nothing, but then he couldn't say anything: the muscles of his voicebox were paralyzed with the rest of him.
"I am impressed, though," she said. "You're more resourceful that I imagined."
She was doing something, gathering herself for another spell, and this time it was going to be a big one.
He couldn't think of anything to do except throw up his telekinesis like a blanket in front of him. She gestured, and there was an invisible pressure against this blanket. For a moment his abilities seemed to stop it but then Lex felt an itching at the bottom of his feet.
I need the spell you were going to use, he thought at the voice. I need it now!
Without your hands or your voice . . . Sora's voice began.
Now! Lex yelled internally. I have to try it!
Four runes appeared in his head along with two spoken words, just as the itching turned into a burning sensation along the soles of his feet.
He lifted a hand, but with his muscles paralyzed, he couldn't seem to created the glowing runes. But they were magic and so was the telekinesis. There had to be a solution there.
The burning was moving up his legs now, and out of the corner of his eye he couldn't see anything happening, but the pain was intense, as though he was being burned at the stake. Bybreak was watching him carefully now, but not doing anything else. She was waiting for him to try something.
Lex's eyes darted around the room, at the walls of cocaine, looking for another metal bar. None were visible, but as the pain reached his chest an idea popped into his head.
One of the bales of cocaine exploded with a muted *bamf*, showering the room with a cloud of powdered cocaine.
Bybreak's eyes darted to it immediately, and then back to Lex. He hadn't moved a muscle to attack her, not that he could while hanging limp in the air.
Powder rained down, and then another exploded, and another, filling the air with a mist of finely powdered drugs.
Bybreak gestured, and a bubble of clear air formed around her. More cocaine bags exploded, but her eyes remained locked on Lex, and the longer they did so, the more painful the burning sensation became, sneaking up his back like a slow moving fire.
In the powdered cocaine surrounding Bybreak, runes were etching themselves. She was so focused on him, waiting for his attack, that she didn't even see it coming.
Internally, Sora's voice and Lex shouted the words in the silence between Lex's mind.
There was a flash of blue light, and Bybreak looked down to see that she was surrounded by runes nine feet long. She had a moment to blink, and then she stiffened and fell backward. Lex was dismayed to see that the inch of cocaine on the floor cushioned her fall. He would have rather she hurt herself.
The pain and the paralysis vanished, and so did his telekinetic ability. He dropped to the floor, and he overcompensated trying to keep himself up and toppled over. The cocaine wasn't nearly as thick around him, and didn't provide nearly the same protection for him.
Still, he rolled to his feet, kicking up little swirls of coke dust and limped over to her, careful not to disturb the patterns of cocaine on the floor.
One of Bybreak's arms had twisted behind her back as she fell, and he basically sat on the other one, using his right hand to lean on her lower throat. If he was as careless as she had been, he was screwed.
Wake her up, he ordered the voice, and a few seconds later she sputtered awake. She was confused at first, but with Lex holding her down, she got the picture real quick.
"I have some questions," Lex said.
She frowned, gritted her teeth, but nothing happened. Whatever Sora's voice had done to her, it had worked just fine, despite the unorthodox activation. She said nothing though.
Lex leaned forward, putting his weight on his hand and slowly cutting off Bybreak's air. She struggled, but she was weak from whatever the voice in Lex's head had done. She started to keen, and Lex realized that she was trying to scream.
"Talk," he ordered her. "And tell the truth." He relaxed the pressure, and she stopped whining. "Do I have to do it again?"
Bybreak shuddered. "No. What are your questions?"
"Do you work with the vampires?"
"No."
"Then . . . you don't?" He hadn't expected that answer.
"No. Not usually. Whatever alliances exist between the witches and the vampires are temporary and arranged from region to region."
"But the witches control the drug trade here in Las Vegas?"
"Yes. The Vampires control the prostitution, and the Werewolves control the paid violence." His surprise must have been evident on his face because she laughed shallowly. "You didn't know about them, did you?"
"The Wolves," he said. "Yeah, I knew about them."
"Liar," she said.
"Who controls the gambling?"
"This is Las Vegas, all of the factions have a hand in the gambling."
He shook off the answer to the question. "What was Soraperion looking for?"
Her face went hard suddenly. He pressed lightly, but she didn't say anything so he leaned in harder. She was almost blue when he let up, but she still didn't say anything.
"I will kill you."
She smiled again, and she didn't have to say what she was thinking again.
Last question. "Where's Lia?"
She frowned. "Who?"
"The girl! Where's the girl?!"
"What girl?"
"There was a girl," he said, and he started to press down again, although not enough to choke her completely. "But after . . ." he said, thinking about the night on the Strip with Martin the vampire, but stopped. "She disappeared. I've scoured every bloody inch of the city, and I can't find her. You're the only ones that could be protecting her."
Bybreak's eyes narrowed. "Lia, you said?" she whispered through pale lips.
Lex grabbed her by the collar of her dress and pounded on her upper chest. "Damn you!"
"The raven. Your girl is the raven," Bybreak said in a grotesquely happy tone. "No wonder you can't find your little friend."
She laughed shallowly again. "I would give her up now. The wolves have her, and they don't let go of prey easily."
There was a noise by the door, and Lex looked up to find another woman standing in the door. It was Bliss, the witch with the yellow shawl. The one that he suspected had actually killed Soraperion.
Sora's voice slipped nearly instantaneously into control of Lex's body, but even then it was nearly too late. A protection spell caught most of the fire that Bliss threw at him, but not enough to keep the cocaine from breaking out into poison smoke again.
Lex roared something and spun a whirlwind between his hands, sending a tornado of smoke and stinging powder at the older witch.
She ignored it: the air parted around her harmlessly. She geared up for another spell, but Sora's voice and Lex's hands were too quick. He flung himself up and out and her spell sizzled through the space that he'd occupied.
He landed on top of a twenty foot high tower of stacked blow, kicked the bales forward, and then exploded them all as he jumped backward toward the metal wall of the warehouse. Huge clouds of white filled the air, and Bybreak's scream was cut off by the falling metric ton of cocaine.
I wasn't lying when I said I'd kill you, he thought to himself, fiercely proud of having proved her wrong.
Another spell blew open the back wall as he filled the air inside of the warehouse with bolts of ricocheting lightning, and then made for the chain link fence.
He found the gap in the fence that he'd used earlier in the evening, and tried to launch himself through. His pants caught on the edges, and caught off balance, he slammed to the ground.
He twisted onto his back, struggled with the loop of cloth that was tangled in the fence, and looked up.
Meredith Bliss was standing on the roof of the warehouse, her eyes showing up above her yellow scarf were looking down on him.
He froze, waiting for her attack, but she didn't. She raised no hand, no unnatural wind stirred.
His numb hands struggled with his jeans, separated the wire from the fabric, and then slowly pushed his way through the fence.
They looked at each other for a moment as the last of the noise from inside the warehouse died away. Then Bliss turned away, disappearing behind the edge of the roof.
Lex scrambled to his feet and ran, trying and failing to comprehend what had just happened.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Episode 13: Finders Keepers
Lex lounged on the couch. He'd finally found it a few days ago, and it was more comfortable than his cot. It had been buried under a metric ton of books, but it was real leather and exceedingly soft. Soraperion hadn't even noticed when Lex had shifted the books around so he figured the old mage wouldn't mind.
Soraperion was searching again. Lex could see him through the doorway to the workshop, sitting at the round table in the center of the room with his books spread around him, still tracing runes in the air. The patterns were more complex now than they'd been before, and they were still getting more and more complicated as he worked longer.
Lex had finally begun to wonder if he should run away again. Soraperion provided him with some protection, but he'd learned a trick or two since he'd been attacked by Sue. If he could make it out of
It was early in the morning, and Soraperion didn't own a television. Still, he might as well wait for sunrise . . .
From the workshop came a yell. Soraperion was standing, and there was something glowing in the air above the books. The runes had contracted into a spherical crystal, and inside was a wooden box.
Soraperion laughed, his grin so broad that tears streamed down his face. "There it is, there it is."
Lex stood, coming into the workshop and looking down at the box. "What is it?"
Soraperion sighed deeply, still smiling like a clown. "It's immortality, of a kind."
"Like a vampire?"
"No. Not at all. Have I told you anything about Vampires?"
"They won't attack you if they're afraid of you."
Soraperion smiled as though Lex had made a joke. "I meant, about where their powers come from.""No."
"Vampires are consumed with the hunger for blood. The older and more powerful the vampire, the better he or she will have controlled their hunger and turned it into something that they can use to fuel their abilities and powers. This, though, is something that doesn't require that same damning hunger or impose the same half-life limitations." Soraperion reached out and touched the bubble, which flickered and then vanished.
"Where'd it go?"
Soraperion laughed. "That was just an image. A guide to the real thing. So we follow where it points."
"Now?"
"Yes," Soraperion looked around the room, and then down at himself. He was wearing one of his brown work robes and as far as Lex knew he was still working off a few moments sleeping at his bench from the day before. "Get dressed," he ordered Lex, and then swept toward his bedroom.
Lex was already wearing his only clean set of clothes. Since he'd moved in with Soraperion he'd only scrapped together one change, and when it was dirty he still wore his old jeans and jacket.
Soraperion returned a few moments later wearing a heavy black robe and carrying a tall silver staff.
Downstairs, the gray car was pulling around. It didn't have a driver and Lex suspected that Soraperion didn't know how to drive at all. How it guided itself was a mystery to him.
They both got in the back seat of the car, Soraperion laying the staff across their laps. Soraperion gestured, and the car set off in the night, and Soraperion made a set of gestures. A circle of pulsing blue runes appeared in the air, and as they drove Soraperion gave instructions to the car, which drove through the darkened streets of
Soraperion growled at every red light, and finally, out of the outskirts of the city they reached a gate and the car stopped.
"Come along," Soraperion said, and got out of the car.
The gates were iron and heavy, supported by two huge stone posts and walls extended into the grayish twilight on either side.
Soraperion looked up at the gate, and spoke a word. The bars glowed blue white for a moment. He shook his head.
"They have no imagination," murmured Soraperion.
"Who?"
He gestured at the gate vaguely. "The bars are enchanted."
"So what do we do?"
Soraperion walked over to one of the stone pillars that bordered the gate. He turned to Lex and gestured for him to follow.
As Lex approached, Soraperion cast a spell. Something hit Lex from behind and he stumbled, but Soraperion caught him and pushed him forward at the same time. They stepped forward through the stone.
There was a roar and something pitch black spun around him, like a swarm of minute bees. He could feel them glance off of his skin and then spin around him. Soraperion pulled him forward and through the darkness, his feet slipping and sliding on what felt like marbles until he fell out in the silent night on the other side of the wall.
"Enchanted the gate, but they didn't do anything to the walls," Soraperion said smugly.
Lex looked wide eyed at the stone. There was a gaping hole in the stonework, but as he watched tiny pebbles of gray stone gathered back together and resolidified with a murmur.
Soraperion shook one last bit of stone off his cloak. It flew back to the wall and clicked into place, leaving the pillar completely whole again. Then Soraperion turned and started walking up the driveway, and Lex followed along behind.
"Do vampires live here?"
"No. Witches."
The house came into view around the curve of the driveway. The building was huge, four stories high and it had parapets like a castle.
There was a circular road in front of the house, and Soraperion walked right into the middle and stood there, looking at the building as though he wasn't worried about anyone seeing him. He gestured, and the circle that he'd conjured in the car reappeared, but now he enlarged it, adding symbols on both sides at once, and speaking forcefully. The noise seemed to be trapped in whatever he was building in front of him.
The pattern of lights grew larger, until it was a plate of moving runes three feet across, when suddenly it collapsed together and flared brightly. The box had reappeared, and it was pulsing. As he looked, Lex realized that a trail of blue fire, part of the nimbus that surrounded the box, was slowly flowing off toward part of the building. It was pointing to the third floor, to the left of the door.
"Aaaaaaahhhh," Soraperion sighed, and then turned to Lex. "When we go in, I'll be very busy. I want to give you this. If you're in trouble, open it, and it will protect you." He fished something out of his pocket with his free hand, and handed it to Lex. It appeared to be a small shell clasp, like a locket.
"I think I'm prepared then." Soraperion said. "Nothing more to do now except retrieve the box."
He turned back to the house, and they walked toward the door. As Soraperion approached it, he gestured with his staff and something white flashed, and the door disintegrated into dust, blowing backward in a boom. Somewhere in the house a keening wail rose, almost like a baby crying. It wasn't natural though: it never stopped for breath.
Just inside was a darkened room. Soraperion spoke a few words, and lights sprang up, dancing through the hallways until the entire place was filled with brilliant grayish yellow light.
The entryway was huge. It was two stories high, and at the back of the room was a marble grand staircase covered with a red carpet. There was even a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
Someone bounded out of one of the hallways but encountered a ball of fire from Soraperion's staff and crumpled screaming to the floor. Another bolt of white light collapsed the arch of the hallway through which the man had come.
Lex stared at the burning figure, suddenly wishing that he hadn't come along, or at least that there was something he could consciously do to protect himself. The scream from the burning body trailed away and the the form twitched a few times before going still. The scent of burned blood washed over him and he gagged and almost threw up.
Soraperion gestured at another hallway and a latticework of iron grew into place through the stonework entrance like a metal creeping ivy. There were voices from that direction but no one appeared through the gaps in the metal.
"Don't want to make the same mistake they did though," Soraperion said to himself and swept his staff out. There was another burst of light and this time red and a crimson haze spread out and painted the formerly white surfaces with dark ochre slick. There was a smell almost like burned oil from a car.
"Third floor I think," Soraperion said to Lex. "Come Along."
They went up the stairs, and at the top of the stairs they headed left through an opulent hallway. Lex could hardly stop himself from looking around at the fancy surroundings even though he knew that he should be looking out for more people. I wish I was rich enough to live like this, he thought to himself, trying to imagine it but failing.
Soraperion's conjured lights were floating in concentrations around one of the doors in the hallway, which turned out to be another stairwell. They climbed one floor, and went through into a darkened hallway. Soraperion summoned more lights, and they continued.
At the end of the hall was a plain door made of wood. Compared to the others that lined the halls it looked rather ordinary. It didn't even have simple paneling and wouldn't have looked out of place in a warehouse to Lex. Soraperion gestured with his staff again, and there was a boom, but the door didn't budge.
"Better," he said and began to cast runes in front of him, spinning them together like thread until he had a knot of them in his fist. He gestured, almost like the glowing ball was a yo-yo, and it jumped forward at the door.
For just a split second Lex could see the heavy yellow and purple spells glowing spells protecting the door. Soraperion's knot spell splattered against them and the blue runes began to eat through the protection spells and through the door itself like acid. Within a few moments the door was a melting pile of sludge, and Soraperion stepped through.
There were in a large room, and it was filled with shelves that contained gold, jewels and pieces of artwork. Soraperion gestured, and the heavy shelves pushed out to the edges of the room. At the far end was a tapestry. The mage gestured again, and the tapestry was flung aside, revealing a safe door.
Soraperion examined the door, and frowned. "Very good actually. This is a passageway. Very clever." He looked at Lex. "Stay here. If someone comes in, use the device. Do you understand?"
Lex nodded, swallowing.
"Good then." Soraperion reached out and took the handle of the vault. There was a noise so loud that it flung Lex backward, and a five foot circle around the safe jerked down, pulling Soraperion and the safe out of sight into a black hole that opened up in the floor.
And then there were a few moments of silence.
Lex went over and looked down through the hole. Despite the magic lights that Soraperion had conjured, the sides of the hole were so deep that it vanished into darkness. "Soraperion?" he called and when there was no response, he tried louder.
Nothing.
Lex backed away from the hole, and looked around at the treasures that surrounded him. A few weeks ago he could have sold anything in this to pay for Lia and himself to live comfortably for a year. Now the idea of taking something was pointless. Soraperion would care for him, and even if Lex left, he wasn't sure that Soraperion couldn't simply kill him from a distance.
As he thought about it, he couldn't quite understand why he'd followed Soraperion. True, the mage had taken him in and protected him from the vampires, but breaking into this house, killing those people in the hall seemed extreme. It was wrong. They could sit in jail for years although Lex wondered if the authorities had any prison that could hold Soraperion. Or himself, for that matter.
There was a commotion at the door that Soraperion had melted, and Lex turned to see a group of people stumble through the door.
Most of them were women wearing night gowns, but one of the women, the one in front, wore black robes that reminded Alex of Soraperion's robes only she wore a yellow scarf around her neck.
She was short, and a little bit overweight, and she was smiling kindly. She reminded Lex of an aunt that had always been nice to him as a child.
"Who are you, dear?" she asked.
Lex didn't know what to say.
"Hold him," the woman said pleasantly, and two men started out from behind her toward him.
Lex's fingered fumbled with the catch on the shell device, and for a second he thought he wouldn't get it open before they reached him. Suddenly, his fingers worked the clasp and the two pieces opened.
There was a spell inside.
The runes were tiny, much too small to be written by Soraperion's fingertips. The glittering thing expanded, and Lex realized that this was by far the most complicated thing that he'd ever seen constructed out of runes and light. There were libraries of letters, and for a moment he could almost make out that each individual rune was composed of thousands of smaller runes.
The spell floated for a moment. Time for Lex slowed to a crawl. It was like the two men were fighting through molasses, but he couldn't look away from the little glowing thing in his hands. He wondered for a moment if it would throw fire at the witches and their men, or if it would act like the spell that had broken through the door.
The spell shivered, flickered, and then poured into Lex.
He screamed immediately from the pain. He was pretty sure that he was unconscious and he could no longer sense the room around him. There wasn't even a satisfactory noise to reassure him that his lungs were fine and working and that despite the pain he was still alive and screaming.
When things faded back into view, there was a slight blue tint and blur to everything that he could see, almost like he was underwater. A hand flickered up, and the two men coming toward him were thrown back into the far wall.
"Meredith Bliss," said Soraperion's voice. "You haven't changed a bit."
"And neither have you, Soraperion," the woman with the yellow scarf said happily. "Still using interesting people, I see."
"Do you like him?" Soraperion said, and Lex's hand lifted in front of his face. Lex suddenly realized that Soraperion's voice was coming through his mouth. He tried to move, but as he struggled he realized that he was no longer in control of his own body.
"An untrained mage," she said. "Also an untrained warlock, and perhaps a hint of something else as well. There are not many people that are so many things. It's much too bad he fell in with you."
Lex's body shrugged. "I knew that he'd come in useful sooner or later."
Meredith looked back at the people gathered behind her. She gestured five of them forward, two pretty younger women, one older woman, and two men. "Kill him," she ordered them, smiling. "Bybreak, you and Bear are with me."
The people that she'd ordered stepped forward, the women raising their arms and beginning to chant and the men pulling knives out of their coats.
Lex felt himself smirk, and he began to struggle again, but whatever had hold of him was not letting go. He sketched out a combination of wind and fire runes, and as they formed under his fingers he spoke a word of power and the simple spell expanded out into a sheets of fire, filling the room. The older witch finished her counterspell in the nick of time, and the flames stopped just short of the women.
One of the younger women, a pretty brunette, finished with her spell and launched it. It wasn't much of a spell. It would have stopped Lex's heart and he couldn't let her do that. He flicked it back at her and concentrated on the next woman, a blonde, as the brunette stumbled, gasping.
She was trying something slightly more ambitious. A seething ball of fiery plasma erupted in front of her, and streaked out at him. Lex sketched a barrier rune against fire, and let the ball harmlessly burn against it. He sketched a similar barrier rune but this time added a complex set of energy specifications onto it, and flung it at the opening to the hole. Bliss had been making her way toward it, but now she slowed and was forced to examine the impediment.
The old witch had finally finished her first offensive spell. She didn't want to attack Lex directly, so she dissolved the floor below him instead. Lex could have prevented it, but instead he sketched a set of air runes and flew up as the floor turned to sand below him.
Now that he was airborne, there were certain things that he had to guard against. He launched a series of protective spells, and then sent a series of force runes at the women. The older women and the recovering brunette managed to block, but the blonde was caught in the middle of her second spell, a real doozy, and she was slammed back into the wall. Her unfinished spell sputtered and exploded, surprising the brunette, who flinched back and stumbled again but still managed to keep her feet.
The old witch launched a wave of ice at him, but he just swung the fire protection rune around, and her ball of cold was eaten by the blonde's fire spell. Yellow light flared for a moment, and a ribbon of golden light raced out and caught his arms. It was a smart trick by the brunette but not enough to catch him.
A few carefully chosen words dissolved the bonds but by then one of the men was in attack range. He jumped up, stabbing with his knife at Lex's floating legs, but one of Lex's protection spells guarded him. Before the man could jump again, he gestured, and the man dropped his knife, sitting down in the middle of the battle with a blank look on his face.
Bliss was almost through Lex's barrier but from below came a brilliant blue light which filtered through the glowing mesh of the spell and resolved into a creature that resembled a spider, if only spiders had eight scorpion stingers instead of legs and were six feet high. A large man with long dark hair and tattoos, a Native American perhaps, stepped in front of her, and started to defend her with a staff or spear of some kind.
The Brunette had conjured a nifty looking knife from her position still sitting on the ground. She balanced it for a moment while she spoke to it, and then launched it at him.
"You don't want to do that," Lex said to the knife, which paused mid flight. "Aren't you more comfortable back with her?"
The knife seemed to realize its mistake and shot back toward the dark haired witch. Whatever spells she'd enchanted it with were effective. It cut through her own protections like butter and thunked into her shoulder with a happy splortch.
The second man was almost on him. Lex floated higher, momentarily out of reach and then flicked a fireball at him. The man's protections stopped it just above his skin, but the fire quickly heated the knife to a dull red. He screamed and dropped it, which he seemed to realize was a mistake about the same time his protections shattered and the remaining fragments of the fire burned deep into his skin.
The old woman had been working for a few moments, and she raised her hands. A wave of something black passed over him. It was like all of Lex's hairs were on fire, and on the inside he screamed again. On the outside though, he just smiled. "Not very effective," said Soraperion's voice, and he summoned a slew of firey arrow heads and fired them in her direction.
He glanced over at the barrier. The spider creature was dead, and Bliss, Bybreak, and the Native American were gone. Oh well, nothing for him to do about it now.
The arrow heads had paused inches away from the old woman's outstretched hand, but she was sweating, and the arrowheads hadn't dropped yet. The brunette, even with the knife in her shoulder, managed to gesture and shout something, and the arrowheads all dissolved into smoke.
As they vanished he sketched out a series of things. Water and air swirled together and were modified with a set of brilliant electricity runes. Lightning flickered out toward all of the women, but it only struck the already unconscious blond woman. He was hoping to surprise them, but another woman, middle-aged and with her red hair tied back with a white scarf stepped forward with just enough time to put up a defense. The bolts of lightning bounced off of her magics and into the shelves lining the walls, vaporizing several expensive looking works of art.
Two against one wasn't nearly a fair fight for the witches, but with the brunette still helping out with defense they were just managing to keep themselves alive against Soraperion's Lex puppet.
Down below there were noises, bangs and booms, and the occasional gust of colored smoke. Inside Lex struggled and struggled, but the spell had complete control of him. With Soraperion's spell inhabiting him he understood the runes though. The magery made perfect sense to him.
He also realized that the runes were all Soraperion knew. Everything was done with runes and modifiers and spoken words to add subtle variation and power. Lex had never needed any of that before. The part of Lex's mind that was still Lex looked around the room as Soraperion's Lex looked at the hole after a particularly loud bang.
Behind him on one of the shelves was a golden statue. As Lex's head turned away, he couldn't see it any more, but that didn't matter to what he had planned. He still struggled with the Soraperion Lex so that it wouldn't get suspicious, but he also reached out with his simpler telekinetic powers, grabbed the cow statue and jerked it forward.
For a second, he was worried that nothing would happen, but suddenly there was a shock and he fell out of the air, sprawling out on the sandy floor and seeing stars floating before his eyes.
With Soraperion Lex distracted, Lex suddenly found himself winning. One of his arms grabbed his other arm. For a moment, Lex wasn't sure which one he controlled, but neither was Soraperion Lex.
There was mostly silence in the room though. The witches were looking at each other and at Lex, lying on the floor, his arms clasped together.
"Did you do that?" the middle-aged witch asked the older witch.
"I don't think so," the older witch said, looking at him. "Stay back, it might be a trick."
Inside his head, Soraperion's Lex was still struggling with the real Lex. If you don't allow me to take over, they're going to kill you, Soraperion's voice whispered.
They can try, Lex replied.
I can protect you, the voice said almost desperately.
So can I, Lex bitterly replied.
A lick of probing fire glanced off of Soraperion Lex's remaining protections, most of which had vanished when Lex had knocked himself on the head.
He sat up, and looked at the women. There were lots of objects around. Behind the women, coins, boxes, statues and vases jumped off the shelves and started pummeling them viciously. The middle-aged witch let a bolt of something fly, but Lex lifted a hand and it glanced off like it had bounced off a mirror.
I need to get out of here, Lex thought to the voice in his head.
You have to wait for Soraperion.
Aren't you Soraperion?
The voice didn't respond.
Suddenly, the lights in the room flickered and went out and the floor shook. The Soraperion voice in his head suddenly began to buckle and fragment, even though Lex had ceased to struggle with it moments earlier in surprise.
He also felt his understanding of the runes fading away.
Internally, he grabbed the edges of the voice, which seemed to cling back.
Help? It suddenly seemed to think at him.
I need a way out, Lex reminded it.
This symbol, this symbol, and then say "Yona calla 'hrippe."
Alex started to sketch. Even with the voice showing him how to move, the symbols didn't come effortlessly, like it had under Soraperion's control. He had to take the time to carefully sketch them so that they wouldn't be ruined.
As he started the second rune, something rose out of the hole. It was the woman with the yellow shawl and the Native American, and neither of them looked hurt, or even as though they had a hair out of place. Bliss was carrying the box Soraperion wanted in one hand, and a bloody red staff in the other hand. She looked over at the women, and then over to Lex as though surprised to find them both alive. Before she could raise her hands, Lex's fingers finished the final line.
"Yona calla 'hrippe!" He shouted, and suddenly the runes flared. Something jerked him straight out of the building through the wall, sending stone and plaster exploding outward. He flew down the driveway, over the gate, and landed heavily in the gravel next to the car.
Can you move? inquired the voice.
Lex groaned. He tried to move his arm, but he couldn't. For a moment he thought that Soraperion's voice had taken over again, but it was just hanging at an odd angle. He'd hurt it when he landed.
Instead of his arms he used his head. His powers dragged him to his feet, opened the gray car's door, and propelled him inside.
The voice said, It will only take instructions from Soraperion. Let me use your voice.
Alex complied.
"Home," Soraperion's voice ordered, and the car started and began to drive away from the gate and the house of witches beyond it.
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