You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Wait, wasn’t chapter three last week?” Well, yes, it was, except, frankly, it stunk the place up, and I can do better. So, here’s the “revised” chapter three, new and improved. Enjoy.
     – Java

     Somewhere, a bird twittered, and further on, I could hear traffic, the busy life flow of Detroit. Here in the parking lot it was quiet, and a cold breeze blew leaves over the wet, snow-frosted pavement. In the car, blood dripped, and the driver stared back at me. Thin white smoke drifted up from his blank, empty eyes. He blinked, slack-jawed.
     I stood as the shadow crawled back out of the car, spilling over the side and falling to my feet, stretching out where she belonged. I drew my Colt and popped the drum, checking the load. Mundane ammunition. I snapped the drum shut and paced back a step or two, leveled the gun, fired. The bullet took his head and the window glass in a fine, twinkling red spray, the noise rolling across the parking lot like thunder.
     Can’t leave the soulless wandering around alive. Without a soul to protect him, anything might come along and fill the man up. There’s no end of troublesome shit out there that would love an opportunity like that.
     I holstered the gun and looked around. You would think that the biggest problem with killing someone is body disposal. Not so. Unless you’re connected to the person you kill somehow — you know them, or have an obvious motive — you can pretty much leave the corpse lay. Someone else will inevitably come along and clean it up for you. Handy, that. On the occasions when you do know the person you’ve just offed . . . well, that’s what the Detroit River is for, right?
     The biggest problem is actually cleaning up the kill site, making sure you don’t leave any of yourself behind for the cops to find. Damn forensics being what they are these days, you don’t want to leave something like hair or blood or skin behind. Mages have other reasons for not wanting to leave bits of themselves around. Don’t want some magically talented person wandering by and scrying out the killer because I left a hair on the scene. Your average person doesn’t have a good way to clean up that kind of evidence – tough to find every little cell you drop, particularly during those first hectic moments after slaughtering someone. Fortunately, I’m not your average person, and I wouldn’t be much of a mage if I couldn’t erase tells like that.
     I keep a voodoo doll in the glove compartment for just that reason. This is a handy little fetish, the kind I don’t advertise much. I mean, you don’t exactly want “Murder Scene Clean-Up Fetishes” embossed right on your business cards. Too many nutjobs out there read it as Murder Scene Clean-Up Fetishists and you do. not. want. to know what kind of voice mails that leads to. There’s a lesson I didn’t have to learn twice. Besides, it turns out there’s some kind of “plausible deniability” issue.
     
     I sat in my car, doors closed and windows rolled up, and got the small cloth doll out of the glovebox. It was made out of white cotton, an old sock, if I remembered right, and it was a human-shaped lump, like a stuffed gingerbread man. It had a face drawn on, in black Sharpie ink, nothing artistic, barely more than a smiley face. Several strands of my long red hair were stitched into its head, and inside, wrapped up in the cotton batting that filled it, were shreds of my skin and bits of my nails. I spat on it, poked my finger with my athame, and smeared blood into the thin fabric. I felt the little fetish flicker with energy. Usually you’d use a voodoo doll to hurt other people. This is the same spell, altered some to abjure any bits of myself that I leave behind.
     It’s basic thaumaturgy, elementary sympathetic magic. Like calls to like, as above, so below, all that jazz. I set the fetish on fire with my lighter, and it danced with blue flicks of flame, devouring the doll in seconds. I glanced in my rear view mirror, and watched a few flicks of the same blue flame lick around the door of the dead men’s car, where I had stood, leaned.
     I wiped my face and hands clean with some wetnaps, also kept in the glove compartment, and departed the scene of the crime, whistling as I drove. Feeding the shadow always puts me in a better mood. It shuts up her incessant bitching and moaning about being hungry, for awhile, and it’s nice to have a little peace and quiet in my own head.
     It was shaping up to be quite the busy morning, and I still had a little more clean-up to do, so I hit a Starbucks. The blood splatter on my clothes wasn’t too bad, and I was wearing dark colors that mostly hid the mess, anyway. I took a little plastic bottle of sage oil into the Starbucks rest room despite that, and, after locking myself in a stall, ran the oil over my clothes, face, hands, and hair. I didn’t need to use a lot, so I didn’t smell too much like a Thanksgiving turkey. Sage is a purifying agent. Cuts the link between the owner and the blood, so some smart-ass can’t use that to track back to me, either. After transferring the number to my cell phone, I washed my arm and wiped that with oil, too.
     I get a little practice at this sort of thing.
     Back out front, I stood in line until I could get a big cup of coffee. I threw some cream and sugar in it. I usually take my coffee black, but Starbucks needs all the help it can get. I sat at a little cafe table with my coffee, rubbing my eyes and sipping coffee, trying to plan out my next move.
     I could just call this Yuri guy, but he might be a mage. Until I knew for sure, and knew what kind of mage I was dealing with, I didn’t want to go off half-cocked and get myself in deeper trouble. Technomancers are still pretty rare, but I didn’t want to find out I was wrong when he sent a lightning bolt through my cellphone and fried my head. Still, I had a name, and that could be useful.
     I still had that glyph to track down, too. I hadn’t got very far into my notes, either, but I was doubting that was going to turn up anything useful. I have a good memory. If I’d ever seen the glyph before, I’d remember it, which meant that it was new. To me, anyway. I confess to a little greed in this respect. It’s not often I run across a new glyph – not that I know so many, just that you don’t see them too often.
     My phone beeped, so I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. “Shit.” I said softly. Tyrell. I answered it. “Hi.”
     “Morning. Are you up?”
     “Yeah.”
     “Can you meet me somewhere?”
     I suppressed a sigh. “If it’s about that thing last night, I haven’t found anything yet. I’m gonna need a couple of days.”
     “Would it help any to get a second look?”
     I stilled for a long moment, the steamy, coffee-scented heat of the shop coating my skin, filling my nose, listening to the busy sound of the place, voices, espresso machines, clatters and rattles. “There’s another one?” I glanced around. The shop was crowded, full of soccer moms who’d just taken their kids to school, and businessmen snagging coffee before work. No one seemed to be paying any attention to me.
     “Yes.”
     I considered all the good cuss words I knew. None of them seemed foul enough for the situation, and that’s saying something. I knew some doozies. The deputy mayor had died, what, early yesterday? No more than the day before, judging by the state of the body. That wasn’t much time between kills.
     “Where at?” I asked, scanning the crowd, then glancing at myself. In the bright sunlight, I got a better idea of the mess I’d made, and it still wasn’t too bad. It would pass for spilled coffee.
     He rattled off an address in Grosse Pointe. Crap – all the way back across town from here. “I’ll be there, but I’m all the way across town. What am I looking for?”
     “It’s a big house, three story, white and green, three-car garage, tall hedges out front, right on the corner.”
     I rubbed my eyes some more, repeating his description back to make sure I had it. “All right. See you in a bit.” I snapped the phone shut, drank down a big swallow of coffee, and went up to the counter for a refill before taking off.
     I used the same tricks to hustle to Grosse Pointe that I’d used to make it most of the way to Farmington Hills, and located the address pretty easily. I drove up the long, winding drive, feeling a ripple of magic roll over me as I did. I parked at the head of the drive, behind two other cars, and got out, looking back. There was a hell of a powerful enchantment across the property, and I recognized the work. Brianne was here, too.
     I turned back to survey the enormous house. I think when they get this big, they start calling them “mansions”. It did have three stories, and it was a lovely shade of cream with plenty of forest green trim, and a large front entrance with a roofed porch and an expensive front door with frosted glass. The neatly manicured lawn leading up to the entrance had gone brown and crispy. Despite many naked maple trees on the property, there wasn’t a leaf to be seen. Someone around here took a lot of pride in their lawn.
     I stood by the car, coffee in one hand and cigarette dangling from my lips, and looked back at the line of enchantment, squinting. Some kind of mask would be my guess, maybe to hide the fact that we were here. Enchantments weren’t my best skill, to put it mildly. It’s a subtle magic, affecting the mind, tricking it, and skill with it requires a deft and delicate touch.
     Something exploded in a roar of cracking wood and crashing glass, and I spun in time to see a gout of flame, glass, and debris rolling out of a second-story window. The force carried a man with it, arcing him out of the window. He plummeted to the ground and landed not ten feet from me, trailing smoke, a huge black dog on top of him.
     I shifted my coffee into my left hand and pulled my Colt, leveling it. I could hear screams from the house as my heart kicked into high speed and adrenalin filled my veins in an icy rush.
     The man and the dog – wait, dog? No, not quite, it was shaped wrong, moving wrong – rolled, struggling, and I followed their moves with my gun, looking for a clear shot. The man was Tyrell Paxton, a short, compact little black guy, clothes still licking with flame as he rolled with the dog thing. I couldn’t get a shot.
     “Need a hand?” I hollered.
     “I got it!” The dog suddenly lit up a dirty yellow, bones showing a vivid black under skin dancing with arcs of lightning. It threw its head back and screamed like a jungle cat, thrashing and jiving as its hair burned, its skin crisped. Blood and slaver flew from its gaping jaws.
     Another piercing scream echoed from the house. It sounded high and feminine and in a lot of trouble.
     The dog lunged, despite the lightning, and sunk its teeth into Tyrell’s shoulder. He let out a yell and the lightning intensified, brilliant white, burning trails on my retinas. It danced over the dog shape, arcing off the ground, crawling up the trunk of a tree and catching it aflame, and the dog thing hung on for all it was worth, its convulsions tearing Tyrell’s shoulder up something awful.
     “You sure?” I yelled, clenching my cigarette butt between my teeth, still tracking the dog with my gun.
     The back half of the dog exploded in a shower of smoking parts and guts, and the lightning died.
     “Yeah, I’m sure!” He pitched the dog to the side, where it flopped and writhed, and tried to drag itself after him again, jaws snapping. From this angle, I could see its eyes, large, bulbous, faceted, bright red, and its teeth, now blackened, but still two or three times bigger than should fit in a jaw that size. A pile of intestines had spilled out of the remains of the dog’s hindquarters, and as I watched, they tensed, greasy black and ropey, still sparking. They twined out, six long tendrils, heaving the dog up, and it scrambled after Tyrell again.
     “Oh, for shit sake!” He exclaimed, exasperated, rolling and shoving himself up to his knees. He pushed his hands out as the dog thing jumped him, and heat shimmers rolled across the lawn, catching the dog and bursting into lurid flame. The dog screamed again, and kept on coming. “Fucking Jesus!” Tyrell snarled in utter disgust, shoving himself to his feet.
     “Wow.” I said, setting my coffee on the trunk of my car, and flipping the Colt’s drum open. I dumped the mundane ammo into my free hand and stuffed it in a coat pocket, rooting around until I came out with a speed loader. The casings of these bullets flickered a sickening, poisonous red. I slapped the loader home, gave it a twist to release, and snapped the drum shut. I thumbed the hammer back, shoving the empty loader in my pocket and picking up my coffee.
     I had a hard time believing I’d been called in as back-up for this. “Where’d Fido come from?” I shouted.
     “Glyph!” He caught the dog as it leaped, all claws and teeth and flailing intestine tentacles, and another ball of flames rolled up around them.
     What, out of the glyph? That didn’t make any sense. I sipped my coffee, scratching at my head with the barrel of my gun. “Someone made a gate?” I called, thoughtful.
     ”Busy, dammit!” He made a complex gesture, the ground shook, and the flaming tree reached out and snatched at the dog’s tentacles, hauling it up short and flinging it.
     Impressive.
     ”I’ll wait!” I glanced up at another scream from the house.
     ”Go help Brianne!” He yelled.
     Oh, yeah, sure. Send me in to get my ass kicked. I wasn’t exactly known for my mad combat skills. I was more the “hero’s goofy inventor friend” sort. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” I spread my arms.
     Tyrell spun as the dog tore itself free from the tree and leaped at him again. He threw up a shimmering wall of force, and the dog slid across it, flying my way. “Want that one instead?” He snapped, cutting me an icy glare.
     I ducked, and the dog flew over my head, all whipping tentacles, gnashing teeth and howls. The tentacles snagged in another tree and the thing spun, pushed off the trunk with its paws, and launched at me. I scrambled away, and it hit the ground, continuing on towards Tyrell. “No, no, I’m good! I’ll get Brianne!”
     ”You do that!”
     I strode across the lawn, lightning arcing behind me, and took the steps up to the porch two at a time. I spat my cigarette butt out as I went, draining the dregs of my coffee and tossing the cup aside. I opened the front door. Lurch stood on the other side, tall and white and cadaverous and – oddly enough – dressed in a pale blue golf shirt complete with the little alligator decal and tan slacks. I blinked, startled, and realized it wasn’t the Addams Family Lurch, but something that looked very like him, sans the funerary wear. His jaw fell open and for a second I expected one of Ted Cassidy’s long, drawn-out groans of welcome, but instead, his tongue rolled out.
     And out. And out. It reached his belt buckle, thick and muscular, blistery. He glared down at me.
     “I bet you get a lot of dates like that.” I said, and shot him twice. He staggered back as two neat holes appeared, one in his chest and one square in his forehead. I stepped to the side, throwing an arm up and turning my face away, and there was a shrieky Godzilla roar that shook the house to the foundation. Green flame and wet bits gouted out of the doorway.
     Dragon’s breath rounds. Made of real dragon’s breath. Expensive as all hell to make, but when you absolutely, positively, have to blow a giant freaking hole in something, there’s nothing better. I stepped into the door way. Lurch was scattered in several flaming pieces across a gorgeous entry hall, dominated by wide, sweeping stairs that led up to the second floor, and around up to a third. There was a massive crystal chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, and the floors looked like expensive tile, slate, maybe. Everywhere I looked, there were tasteful hints of class and money, polished hall tables made of golden wood, bedecked in shiny knick-knacks, paintings in ornate frames, the works. Whoever lived here was extremely comfortable, financially.
     I kept the gun up, pulling my lighter out of my pocket and flipping the cap open. I only had four more dragon’s breath rounds, and if whatever the hell was loose in here was as tough as the critter Tyrell was dealing with out front, I didn’t want to waste my shots.
     “Brianne?” I yelled. There was a lot of noise coming from upstairs, bangs, crashes, snarls. I started up the staircase. The first landing emptied out onto the second floor, which looked to be full of bedrooms and opulence. There was a huge family room – I assumed, because of the home theater and flat screen plasma TV dominating the far end. It adjoined to a second room, boasting a bar and a pool table. I gave a low, impressed whistle. “Must be nice.”
     Footsteps pounded down the hall. I glanced, spotting Brianne, a willowy short thing, maybe a buck-ten soaking wet, skin white, hair black, long, and curly. She was wearing a long, flowing black skirt which flapped around her legs as she hauled ass towards me. Her perfect rosebud mouth was set in grim determination as she sprinted away from the thing chasing her, her blue shell shirt missing the sleeve and stained red from the gaping tear in her arm. I looked past her shoulder. It was –
     “What the fuck is that?” I exclaimed as she shot by me. I spun, leveling the gun. It must have used to be a human woman, but I was guessing that based on the color of its skin, a healthy tan, and the long auburn hair hanging around its nightmare face. It was stretched out, once-human jaw hanging open a foot or better, teeth hanging in stalactite points, faceted red eyes bulging like the dog’s outside. It had four or five extra joints in its legs and arms, tan glow marred by a river delta of fresh white stretch marks. It ran on all fours, limbs splayed out spider-like as it bore down on us, hands clutching the walls, the balcony railing. Shreds of designer clothes hung from its skeletal frame.
     I backpedaled wildly after Brianne, her hand latched in an iron grip on my arm, urging me faster. “Run run run!” She snarled, heaving for breath. “Keep it busy ’til Ty gets back!”
     I would outrun her in two steps – I had her by a foot in height, and that was all legs. Instead, I hooked her around the waist and tossed her down as the thing crab-walked overtop us. I aimed up and fired into its chest, throwing up the hardest shields I could manage on short notice. Brianne let out a little squeak of surprise as she hit the floor, and added her – far better – shields to mine.
     The roar came again, the force of it blowing my hair around my face as I knelt over Brianne, and acid green flames washed over us, bringing a shower of blackened gore. Heat buffeted us, harmless thanks mostly to Brianne’s quick shielding, and we were splattered in greasy mess. I saw Brianne’s mouth moving in an exclamation, but didn’t hear a word. The monster’s legs collapsed down before us like a toppling A-frame, a joint of spine licked with green flame sticking out from the twitching hips.
     Brianne flung a hand up, pointing, and I whirled on my knee. The spidery thing was turning on us. It wasn’t dead. It wasn’t dead. Holy crap! It shrieked to rival the roar of my gun, shooting long white tines from the hanging, dripping remains of its guts, replacing its lost legs with four bony, jointed spikes. As I watched, jaw hanging and wide-eyed, it lifted one spine and sent it rocketing down at us.
     Brianne seized my jacket and shoved, sending both of us to the side. The bone pike slammed down, piercing the floor next to us. I landed on my shoulder, dropped my damn gun, and watched it skitter away, through the balcony railing, and it was gone.
     “Shit!” It hit the floor below and went off, wasting a shot in a screaming ball of flame that took out part of the third floor stairs.
     “Up, up!” Brianne scrambled to her feet, hauling on my arm. She was strong for a little gal. I shoved myself up as the spider-woman jerked at its spine, stuck in the floor, and we took off down the hall as it freed itself and scrabbled after us.
     Brianne turned and flicked a hand out at the spider. I felt the wave of magic, monstrous in its intensity, a rolling wave of solid screaming fear, nothing deft or delicate about this. I was impressed – enchantresses aren’t usually known for their battle skills, and I’d never seen one that could throw a spell that powerful.
     It hit the spider, which let out an unholy yowl, eyes bugging even further out. It turned, a sinuous folding of its torso under its legs that no Earth-born creature could ever manage, and it was swinging away down the hall and into the TV room, still howling.
     Brianne jerked on my arm. “Come on – it’ll only last a second on that thing!” She was panting for breath, even more pale, hair stuck to her cheeks by sweat and ichor.
     “We might be outclassed.” I thought I ought to mention it, just in case she hadn’t noticed.
     “Just have to hold it off until Ty gets here.”
     We pounded down the stairs. I scanned for my gun, didn’t see it, and then we were scrambling over the pile of rubble fallen down from the third floor and headed down a hall into a huge formal living room full of leather furniture. Each piece had probably cost more than my car. I could hear the thing coming along behind us, the slap of fleshed hands on walls, the thunk of its spiky legs driving it along, and it was hissing, snarling.
     Until Ty gets here, yeah, right. He better hustle – without the gun, I didn’t have any booms big enough to be worth the effort of throwing at that thing. We sprinted through the living room, hearing the spider-creature flip furniture and howl as it chased after us, and we were down another short hall, and into a kitchen. My heart was slamming like a jackhammer in my chest, and my breath came in ragged gasps as I regretted every single cigarette I had ever smoked.
     If I were alone, I’d have taken this thing to pieces, called up the shadow, drawn on her power. With Brianne here, I didn’t dare. Things like the shadow will get a gal executed in a hurry. Then again, there was a pretty good chance we might not survive without it, in which case, execution wasn’t the issue, was it?
     Through the kitchen, a dining room with a veranda into the back yard. We burst out the French doors, the spider-creature shrieking down on our heads, and we sprinted down the porch, spider lunging out after us, hands clasping columns to drag itself along. We dove in another set of French doors, back into the upended living room. I had my hand in Brianne’s back, trying to push her along faster.
     “We ain’t gonna make it –”
     “I’ll cover you.”
     I spun to face the spider, cracking the door jamb as it shoved itself in through the French doors. I lifted my hands. My evocations are cherry bombs compared to Tyrell’s TNT, and I couldn’t make them any better without drawing on the shadow. No point in surviving the battle, only to be dragged up in front of the Arcana and summarily killed for dabbling in forbidden magics. Despite that bit of common sense, I could hear the shadow, a separate voice in the back of my head, like the sound of dried leaves blowing across frozen stone. She demanded to be released, lest we both be killed. Slay the witnesses after! she snarled in my mind.
     Sure. Because I would definitely get away with murdering Praetorians. That wouldn’t cause the entire occult community to burst into a torch-and-pitchfork uproar and come hunting us down with all the considerable means at their disposal. Not at all.
     Against all odds, I still had my lighter in my left hand. I rolled it down my leg to strike it as the spider-woman saw us squared up to face it. It paused, and then its whole upper body jerked, and it made a noise like a huge cat hawking up a hairball.
     “Brianne!” I lifted the lighter.
     “I got you!”
     She was still gasping for breath, although not as bad as I was. I felt her magic waft by, a light touch, like a spring breeze. The spider continued the hawking noise, and I shoved my will through the flame at the same time as it spat.
     The gob of spit landed two feet to our right, splattering. The carpet melted, hissing and snapping. “Acid?”
     “Disgusting!”
     The air rippled with heat, and the spider’s human arms licked with flame. Mages and fireballs. It’s like peanut butter and jelly.
     “Do better!” Brianne snapped, and I felt her magic strengthen, a stiff gust. The spider lunged out with one of its spiny legs, nailing a spot five feet to our right, once, twice, drawing back, slamming home. The floor cracked, splintered, and the spider was still jerking, making that godawful hawking noise.
     “I’m the peon! You do better!” I growled, bringing all my concentration to bear on the flames, feeding my will into them. The creature’s arms burned merrily, the room filling with a greasy smoke and spoiled-pork stink. The spider didn’t appear to notice. It stared at the spot it had pierced, and then its head swiveled on its stalk-like neck, and stared right at us.
     “Shit!” I dove left, Brianne jumped right. I heard her cry out – she’d been just a split second slower than me, and the spider had spat as we moved. It wasn’t a square hit, but some of the splatter had caught Brianne’s leg. I toppled behind an over-turned couch, and missed seeing how bad it was.
     “Brianne! Get down!” Tyrell’s voice rolled through the room like thunder, and just that fast, it was hot, hard-to-breathe hot, and even behind the couch, out of the line of fire, the air was dancing in heat shimmers.
     The whole room lit up orange and yellow with a sound like the world’s biggest gas grill catching light, and a palpable wall of heat washed over me, stealing my breath. There was a short-lived spider scream, and then, save the crackling of fire and our gasping for breath, it was quiet.
     I lay behind the couch for a long moment, arm tossed over my eyes as I caught my breath. Then, finally, “Holy fuck, Ty.”
     “You all right?”
     “Yeah, I’m fine –” I sat up, looking over the couch. Oh. He was asking Brianne. Well, I guess that’s fair. It was her leg splattered with acid burns. I pushed myself to my feet, looking around.
     The French doors were missing, slagged away, soft yellow flames licking up the burned walls, floor scorched and smoking. The remains of the spider thing were charred almost beyond recognition, little more than black scraps on blackened bones. The skull was stretched wildly out of shape, jaw warped and full of jagged teeth like some prehistoric fish, eye sockets big enough to fit softballs.
     “Damn.” I said, at a loss for anything more useful to say.
     “What the hell is it?” Brianne hissed the question out through ground teeth as Tyrell helped her up. She leaned on him, all her weight on her good leg. Her right leg was pitted and smoking in speckles from ankle to knee, oozing something like a cross between blood and puss.
     I glanced over at Tyrell, who wasn’t in much better shape. His shoulder looked like someone had taken a dull knife to a good steak, although it seemed to have stopped bleeding. His long cornrows were matted in blood all down the left side, likely his own, and his burgundy business shirt was singed and ragged. He looked exhausted – probably all the magic on short notice.
     Hey, evocation is work. If it was easy, we’d all be doing it.
     I scanned the room, digging out my smokes. “You guys get to have this much fun all the time?”
     Ty sat Brianne down in an easy chair. He was very gentle about it, I noted. For a second, they met each other’s eyes, and there was a little look that passed between them, something that prompted words like tender or caring, and then it was gone, and they were all business again. Brianne leaned, dabbing at the burns with her now-ragged skirt while Ty turned to me.
     “Well?”
     “Well what?” I asked, lighting a cigarette. I put my smokes and lighter away, running my hands through my hair and palming slime and sweat off my face. The room was full of overstuffed brown leather furniture, most of it scorched. It was a formal living room, though, no TV. There was a fireplace with a marble mantle, decked in family photographs. Seeing them made me wonder how many people lived here.
     “You heard her. What is that?” He waved at the smoking crater.
     “Beats the fuck out of me.” I said, drawing in a deep lungful of harsh smoke and savoring the fact that I was still above ground and sucking air. It had been close for a second, there. I studied the pictures, squinting. There were a couple of old wedding pictures, a tall, dark-haired man, and a slender woman with short auburn hair. Lurch and Spider-woman, maybe? “You said they came out of the glyph?”
     “Some expert you are.” His velvety voice carried a full payload of withering sarcasm. It was funny to hear such a deep voice come out of a man his size. Well, he was built like a cinder block, so I guess he wasn’t little, just shorter than I was used to in guys. “The glyph is here. They were with the glyph. Out cold when we got here — got up after I called you.”
     “I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Give me a sec. There’s a lot of shit in the utangards.” It was an old Scandinavian word, utangards, meant, literally, outside the fence. It was usually paired with “innangards”, which means, you guessed it, inside the fence. In the real world, the concept refers to family, the homestead, your village, your community. Usually, the old Norse fenced or walled the village off, for defense. Anything outside the fence was met with fear, suspicion, automatic distrust. Applied metaphysically, it referred to humanity, and anything that isn’t human, reality, and anything outside our reality. “With the glyph? Was there a dead body?”
     ”The children.” Brianne said, her voice quiet, pained. By more than just acid burns, I was guessing.
     I looked back towards the mantle. Yeah, there were kid’s pictures. Two of them. Cute little buggers, too, took after their mother. “Bodies were a big mess, right?”
     She paled, milk white. “Yes.”
     “Utangards.” Ty muttered the word in a dark tone, but there was an interested spark in his eyes. “Those things are Abyssal?”
     “I dunno.” I said, skeptical. “They were kind of pussified for Abyssal entities, from what I’ve read.” Actually, from what I’ve heard. What I was hearing right at the moment, in fact. The shadow was having a small hissy fit in the back of my head over Ty referring to such a “paltry being” as Abyssal.
     Silence reigned for a heartbeat as both Brianne and Ty took in the havoc wreaked by the spider creature. Finally, Ty said, “Pussified?” The spark of interest grew into a definite gleam.
     I shrugged. “Well, you know. Eew, icky Abyss. Home to nightmares that would make Lovecraft piss himself. That thing hardly qualified.” I waved at the charred corpse.
     “If it’s not Abyssal, then what is it?” Brianne asked, her voice strained. Pain pinched at her bright blue eyes.
     “Well, the utangards is more than just the Abyss. There’s plenty of planes out there to pick from.” I rubbed my face. It felt sticky. Next stop: home for a shower and change of clothes. “You said there was a glyph?” The unspeakable glyphs were strictly Abyssal.
     “Upstairs. It was scored into the ceiling over the master suite’s bed. Bed looked like a slaughterhouse.” He paused. “You need to see it?”
     “Was it the same one? Triangle thing with ten dots and four squiggles?” Dots and squiggles are technical terms.
     He grimaced. “Yeah. Same as the last two I found. Same as Brant?”
     “Yeah.” I hit my cigarette and breathed smoke, staring out the gaping hole that had replaced the French doors. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ty exchange another glance with Brianne. His was excited. Hers was cautious. He shook his head, pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, staring at it. It had a certain melted look to it.
     “Either of you two got a phone?”
     Brianne shook her head, and I patted down my pockets and produced mine. “What do you need that for?” I asked, handing it over.
     “Made a lot of noise, here. Somebody’s gonna come check.” He walked a few feet away, punching in numbers. I heard him murmur a greeting to whoever answered, and picked out the words “police” and “Free Press”.
     “What does the glyph mean?” Brianne asked, distracting me.
     “I don’t know. I don’t recognize it.”
     “What of the deputy mayor? How did he die?”
     “Looked like he just keeled over, not a mark on him except the glyph, carved in his chest.” I paused, thinking fast, then decided it wouldn’t come back to bite me on the ass if I fessed up. “He was infested, though, I think. I’m pretty sure.”
     Concern replaced pain in her eyes. “Infested with what?”
     I shook my head. “Dunno. Sure wasn’t going to let it hatch to find out. Maybe more of these things?” I gestured around the room. That sounded about right. Something incubates in the kids, bursts out Alien-style, takes over the mom and dad. Oh, and Fido, apparently. Fantastic.
     She drew in a hiss of breath, lips pressed tight. “Do you know who lives here?” She asked after a long moment, glancing at Tyrell. He was still busy using up my daytime minutes.
     I lifted my eyebrows. “Should I?”
     “Read the paper, much?”
     I shrugged.
     “Prissa Franks lived here.” She watched me.
     I shook my head, clueless, noting the past tense. Prissa Franks, the redhead in the wedding pictures? The spider creature?
     “Owned the Pandora’s Box, in Greek Town?”
     The name didn’t ring any bells, but I sure knew the Pandora’s Box. It had opened last year, and it was the hottest place to go at the moment. I wasn’t much for the club scene, myself, but I knew about it because it was giving Gianna’s clubs a run for their money, and I’d heard her complaining. Although, come to think of it . . .
     “Wait, wasn’t there a scandal last year? Something to do with the liquor license?”
     “Yes. Rumor had she bought the license illegally, and the mayor’s office was involved.” Brianne watched me, intent.
     “Huh.” And now she and the deputy mayor were dead. How very strange.
     “Indeed. What do you make of it?”
     Devon Brant, deputy mayor. Prissa Franks, scandalous businesswoman. Both dead. Four unspeakable glyphs, that we knew of. One body infested with some utangards horror, destroyed, two more – infested with similar horrors? Oh, and apparently the family dog, or something, too.
     The unspeakable glyphs indicated something Abyssal.
     The critters were not Abyssal.
     “Hence, something Abyssal is drawing the glyphs.” I finished out loud.
     Brianne looked pleased with me. I frowned, not sure if I liked that. In the city’s occult pecking order, the five councilors who sat on the Arcana were the five most powerful mages in Detroit. These were people who broke reality just by waking up in the morning. Ranking just below them, and not by too damn much, were the Praetorians, Tyrell and Brianne, here, and one more, Damien. Tyrell Paxton was an evocator of immense power, an old school, fire balls and lightning kind of mage, and Brianne Perry was an enchantress, specializing in the kinds of magic that befuddled minds and emotions. Damien Torrence was a thaumaturge, probably holed up in his home trying to scry out the location of their killer. There was very little in Motown that you could throw up against this team that they couldn’t handle. They were our cops, our internal affairs department, our clean-up crew, and our dogs of war. As such, I wanted to escape their notice as much as I could, while still staying on their good side.
     It was a catch-22. They were powerful people, and it was good to be useful to powerful people, but at the same time, I didn’t want to hang around them too much. I might slip up. They might notice something. That would be really, really bad.
     While I was busy worry about the Praetorians, the shadow had continued following my train of thought, and was now snarling savagely in the back of my head. A cold chill rolled down my spine at her wrath. The likeliest thing to be running around Detroit carving out Abyssal glyphs would be . . .
     “An outlander.” I said. Check that. Another outlander.
     Tyrell snapped my phone shut and tossed it back to me. I caught it without thinking. “That’s what we thought.” I started to put my phone back in my pocket, and he stopped me. “Hey, do me a favor. Erase your phone history.”
     I paused, glanced at my phone, up at Tyrell. Dammit. Well, I guess you don’t get to be a Praetorian by being sloppy, right? Grudgingly, I flipped the phone open and erased the call history. He stood over my shoulder and watched me do it.
     “We should get out of here.” Tyrell said. “We’re covered.” He told Brianne.
     What, just that easy? He’d swept this mess under the rug, kept it off police rolls and out of papers? Jesus, it must be nice to know people. I shook my head, standing and crushing my cigarette out on my boot heel. I tucked the butt in my pocket.
     “You think it’s an outlander, too?” He asked, eying me. Was there a little suspicion in his expression, or was I being paranoid? I wasn’t sure.
     The rumors abound about me, naturally. Mages are the worst gossips, worse than old women at the laundry mat. No one outright calls me a black magus. I’m not powerful enough for that, at least, not that anyone knows. No one calls me an Abyssal mage, either, because if I’m not powerful enough to be your standard evil sorceress, I certainly can’t be utilizing the wild energies of the vast, starving Abyss. Still, I’m well known to have an unhealthy interest in things like the utangards and unspeakable glyphs, and that engenders distrust, at the least. I suppose I could have been quieter about my interests, but that word had gotten out back when I was young and stupid, and now I was stuck with it. If only I knew then the things I know now, and all that.
     “Well, outlanders are supposed to be rare.” I hedged as we headed back out into the foyer. Tyrell supported Brianne. She refused to let him pick her up, though, and I respected her a bit more for that. “Could be something else.”
     “Like what?”
     “I dunno. When I find out more about the glyph, I’ll have a better idea.” I spotted my gun laying under a hall table, and bent to retrieve it. It didn’t look like it had been damaged in the fall, despite the misfire. Good old Pythons. Hell of a hardy gun. I tucked it back in my holster, and saw a broken stick laying on the floor. I picked it up. “What’s this?”
     Brianne found a picture on the wall intensely interesting. “It’s mine.”
     “And when you gonna know more about the glyph?” Tyrell demanded.
     I studied the stick. A tickle of magic still clung to it, making me think it was a broken artifact. It looked like a slender dowel rod, made of willow, possibly, a little over a foot long. A very small hole had been drilled down the center. No wonder the damn thing broke – I would never make anything this shoddy. The hole had been stuffed full of something. I picked at it.
     “Could take days.” I said, sighing. I had a lot of old books to go through, and I kind of doubted that would even get me anywhere. I drew some stringy bits out of the – wand? — and glared at them. Looked like hair. A little more digging gave me the remains of some kind of feather.
     “Days with an outlander loose in Detroit. Christ, Alice.” Tyrell was, justifiably, wide-eyed with horror at the idea. Horror, which was covering excitement, I was sure of it. Tyrell was dying to pit himself against something as reputedly scary as an outlander.
     Outlanders — Abyssal entities that had, one way or another, made homes for themselves in our reality, forced their way in, bargained their way in, been called in. For that, the entity needed a human. Our reality enticed them, but it was as strange and alien to them as they were to us. Abyssal entities, the Elder Ones, the First Gods, warped terrors, one and all, riding around in a human avatar. I knew a lot about outlanders.
     I am one.
     “You could ask Owen. I’m sure he knows.” I said, pensive and thoughtful. There’s making deals with the Devil, and then there’s making deals with Owen, which is a whole different level of dangerous. Although, on second thought, Owen would know too damn much, might tell Tyrell just enough to get him worried about me. Can’t be having with that. “Hell, I’m supposed to be the expert, right? Why don’t I ask Owen, and let you know? Then we both find out.” And, I could filter the information. I studied the feathers and hair, the hollow willow wand, and a terrible realization came upon me. “What the hell is this piece of crap?” I demanded, holding up the wand. “Who’s been reading all the Harry Potter?”
     Brianne had the decency to look embarrassed. “I got it from Thomas. Thomas Faulkner?”
     I tossed the wand down. “That hack in Flint? Bad enough you take your business out of town, but you went to him?” I crossed my arms, insulted, muttering, “Get what you deserve, going to him. My stuff sure doesn’t break.” An awkward silence ensued while I fumed, and rightfully so, because it was rude for Brianne to be going to an out-of-town artificer when I was practicing in Detroit.
     “So, you’ll go see Owen?” Tyrell said after a moment.
     “Harry-fucking-Potter. For fuck sake. Yes, I’ll go see Owen, call you back tonight.” With a final disgusted glance snapped at the wand, I led the way out.

Black Alice by Marci Sischo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

SiteMeter.com:

Playing the Popularity Game:

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 1:41 am and is filed under Black Alice, Original Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.