Blood And Stone: A Novel in The Atalante Chronicles Page 11

  North of the warehouse were two bodies of waters that I could use to summon an obscuring fog. That would be even more conspicuous than a sudden dust cloud. Which left me with only one option. My head sank against my chest when it occurred to me.

  “I’m not gonna like this,” I said, my voice low.

  “Like what?” asked Angela.

  “I go through Sideways,” I said. “They won’t see me. And the distance between here and the warehouse could be shorter.”

  “Sideways? What the hell are you talking about?” asked Angela.

  “The spirit realm,” I told her. “I can step over and step back probably before you’ve even made it to the door.”

  “Nico, from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like a good plan,” said Marks. “Why not just come with us?”

  “Magdelena might recognize me, which could start a firefight,” I said. “Besides, they should be hesitant about shooting cops.”

  “Should be,” said Angela. “That’s reassuring.”

  I handed Angela the keys to my truck. “In case things go pear-shaped.”

  Angela looked to Lester, trying to see if he would veto my plan. To her consternation, he didn’t. She started walking back to the SUV. Lester came up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “How bad will it be?”

  “Bad,” I said, “if my gut feeling on this place is any indication. That’s not the worst part.” I paused and took a deep breath. Lester waited for me to collect myself. “The worst part is I have no idea what will be over there.”

  “That bad?” asked Lester.

  I nodded. “Could be worse. Get going, Lester. Meet you over there.”

  Once Lester was walking back to the SUV, I clutched my cane to stop my fingers from shaking. “I hate this part,” I said to no one.

  Drawing from the ambient power around me, I channeled the energy into the desired effect. “Aversim,” I whispered.

  I took a step to my right and into the other side of the world.

  Chapter 11

  Stepping across the barrier between worlds is a lot like sliding through the narrow space between two walls. My body felt squeezed. The moment passed and I felt free to move. My ribs flared with fresh pain. If I hadn’t had my cane planted in the ground, I would have toppled over.

  It took my eyes a moment or two to adjust. What I saw made my stomach convulse. The field, which had been sun-bleached just a moment before, was now covered in short, vibrant grass. The grass began swaying in a way that grass doesn’t move. Staring at the patch closest to me, I realized it wasn’t grass at all; it was maggots the length of small dogs. They were feeding on each other. I could see some rising up in the midst of their death throes. They sounded like screeching beetles. Slowly, they flowed down as the maggots around them feasted on their flesh.

  Wraith larvae. In places where deaths, particularly violent deaths, have occurred with great frequency, these little buggers congregate. They feed on the spiritual leftovers of those violent acts. And they feed on each other. The field ahead was crawling with them.

  The whole area was cast in shadow. The sky was overcast. Beyond the field of ravenous maggots stood the warehouse, but it was not the same as it had appeared in the real world. What had been a two-story metal sheet building now towered over me as a monolithic stone edifice. The stones were cracked and splintered. Black fluid oozed down the sides of the building like blood from a wound. In the air, a mass of writhing shadows danced about like worshippers at an altar. From the building itself I could hear a continuous, low sobbing.

  I drew in the ambient power of my surroundings. It felt like imbibing grain alcohol, harsh and bitter. I settled the power in my body and started moving across the field as swiftly as my legs could carry me. The sound of maggots bursting under my feet was partially covered by the sound of their feasting.

  The maggots seemed to sense where I was going. A path cleared to the warehouse. I only had to travel a third of the distance I would have travelled in the real world.

  Counting myself lucky the maggots hadn’t turned their carnivorous attentions to me, I picked up the pace. Halfway through my dash across the carrion fields, I felt teeth latch onto my calf and dig into the tissue below. Before I could help myself, I screamed. The maggot attached to my leg was almost the size of a dachshund. Using the lower end of my cane, I pried the creature off my leg. Warm blood flowed down my leg, soaking into my sock.

  The warehouse’s sobbing became a terrified scream. Shadowy wraiths fed on the black ichor oozing from the building. They now turned their attention to me. Sharp chills ran down my spine. A cloud of wraiths began to descend on my position.

  I used the energy I’d stored and said, “Adigo.” The concussive blast was larger, spread out to catch as many of them as I could. My spell merely split the oncoming storm. Drawing in more power, I pushed it into the ring on my hand. “Aegis,” I breathed.

  My shielding spell manifested as a shimmering bubble, like a heat mirage. The wraiths did not care about my defensive gesture. They flew headlong into the protective field. The spell slowed their advance to a crawl, but they kept pushing, like flood waters against a dam. As more of them pushed in, I felt the strain of keeping the spell channeled. My arms and legs burned. My temples flared with pain, as if someone were pressing cattle prods in from both sides.

  Looking at the writhing mass of black shrouds, I could see now they weren’t made from cloth. They were necrotic flesh, blackened as if put through a fire, as flexible as living tissue. In a small gap between wraiths I could see the closest wall of the warehouse. There was a hole in the wall, black ichor dripping down from the upper edge like a diseased waterfall.

  Sideways is a realm of magic, fed by the prime reality we live in. For a wizard like me, Sideways makes channeling magic much easier. But in Sideways it’s easy for a wizard to pull in too much energy. The chances of an overload are far greater here than they would be in the real world.

  I pulled in as much energy as I could stomach, feeling the fatigue of maintaining the shield fade away to nothing. I raised my cane up to touch the top of the dome I had created. While my cane was not designed to maintain or create a shield, it was enchanted to connect to magic I channel. The ground under my feet took on a sickly gray pallor.

  “Expulsio,” I said, reversing the shielding spell. The shield condensed around me before exploding outward. The wraiths had been so intent on pushing through that they could not halt their forward momentum. They were blown back and scattered into the sky.

  Taking the opportunity before it evaporated, I ran with abandon. It took only a few moments for the collective of death feeders to regroup. Imagine all the screams you hear at a packed football stadium. Now raise that to a shriek and add in the sound of a death rattle. That was the sound behind me as I drew closer to the warehouse. The ground darkened ahead of me as the wraiths rose like a tidal wave to crash down upon me.

  I crossed the threshold of the warehouse, black liquid thicker than oil drenching my hair. I felt the weight of the ichor, but there was more to it. It felt like I was stepping into a graveyard. With the wraiths closing the distance, I channeled some of the remaining energy I’d taken and said, “Aversim.”

  Crossing back over was sudden and jarring. My back was to a wall made of gray cement blocks. Gasping for breath, I fell to my knees and winced. My ribs were screaming in pain. It took a few minutes for me to catch my breath. Once I had, I used my cane to rise up to my feet.

  “We will be ready for the ritual tomorrow night,” said a sultry voice ahead of me. “Will you have a sacrifice?”

  The voice snapped my senses back to the immediate area. I was standing in a storage space. It was bare but for a rusty filing cabinet. The wall separating where I stood from the larger section of the warehouse had started coming apart in places. The doorway had no door.

  I moved to put my back to a section of wall next to the doorway. I knelt down and peered through a hole in the wall. The building was made from
gray cinderblocks framing sheets of simply plywood. Four windows let in the only light. At each window was a single sentry holding a handgun or a shotgun. They all wore shabby, dirty clothes. All of them looked like they hadn’t showered in at least three days. A couple of them had shaky hands. It looked like some of them were coming down from their highs.

  In the center of the main room stood five granite pillars forming a circle about ten feet around. Each of the pillars was rough and blemished stone, about four feet in height. On top of each one was a wooden bowl.

  To the right of the circle stood two figures. The one who’d been speaking was a woman wearing an ankle-length dress with slits up the sides. The red-apple color of the dress was a pleasing contrast to her deeply tanned skin. The dress clung to her curves like it was wet. She was speaking to a large man, dressed in ceremonial robes of crimson and black. The robes seemed to swallow the light from the windows whenever he stepped into it. His back was to me, but I could see he was wearing some kind of mask that covered his whole head.

  “The bitch’s organs weren’t harvested correctly,” growled the man in the robes. “I have a new sacrifice in mind.”

  “Red King, a car’s coming up,” said one of the junkie sentries. “What do we do?”

  Magdelena turned her attention to the double doors behind her. “Police, most likely.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “My fucking brother.”

  “Vega?” said the Red King. “How would he know?”

  The vampire didn’t respond immediately. Her tongue darted out in quick series of jabs. She turned and looked directly at the wall I was hiding behind.

  “The wizard,” she said.

  There was a knock at the double doors. Magdelena started making her way to my position. The Red King turned to face my direction as well. The mask he wore sent a chill down my spine. It looked like he had taken the orbital bone of a human skull and attached it to a mesh of metal plating and wires. Where the mouth should be were metal teeth worked into a grill-like framework.

  “Move,” he said. Magdelena obliged.

  “Help! They’ve got guns in here,” I shouted, hoping the two deputies could hear me at the far end of the warehouse. I channeled energy into my ring and stood in the door frame.

  The Red King was a barrel-chested man. He raised both hands and began uttering a language I’d never heard before. When the last syllable was spoken, I felt the air in the warehouse grow colder. Three bursts of flame the size of tank shells shot forward from the Red King’s outstretched hands.

  Chapter 12

  “Aegis,” I said, barely able to get my shield up before the flames reached me. The spell affects the local gravity, increasing the resistance an object must traverse to reach me. It works great for bullets... but fire doesn’t work that way. I reversed the spell effect instead, causing the bubble of protective energy to push back a projectile rather than slow its movement.

  My shield deflected the flame shells in different directions. One round hit the wall to my left, splashing against the wood and setting it aflame. Another round went up and through the aluminum roof, melting a hole through it before disappearing. The last one splashed against the door frame to my right, setting the whole frame on fire. Each hit pushed me back a step until my back was against the external cinderblock wall.

  Upon bursting, the spell fire acted like napalm, spreading flames across the surface of the impact zone. I felt the heat on my skin and regretted wearing my trench coat. It got harder to breathe as the fire grew in intensity.

  The meth head sentries got jumpy and made for the main doors. A shotgun went off on the other side of the door, blasting away the lock securing the entrance.

  “Sheriff’s Department! Put down your weapons!” said Lester, taking the lead with his service weapon drawn and levelled. He covered the right while Angela brought up the rear with her shotgun and to cover the left. Two of the junkies fell backwards onto their asses, dropping their guns and putting their hands up.

  The other two decided to try bravery. They both raised their weapons. Lester and Angela fired off a round each, taking both down with center-mass shots. The pair who had surrendered started screaming and crying, begging the deputies not to shoot them.

  I smiled at the robed figure. “Escape route cut off. Stand down.”

  Magdelena smirked. “We don’t surrender,” she said.

  Lester trained his weapon on the vampire. Angela aimed as well with her shotgun. Magdelena spun away from me and kicked off her heels. She ran with inhuman grace at Lester, who began to fire. The vampire ducked and weaved around the bullets, none of them finding their mark.

  I channeled the ambient energy and said, “Adigo.” The blast of green concussive energy hit Magdelena in the back, launching her forward into the wall.

  The Red King muttered another spell and three more gouts of flame flew at me. I slammed my cane into the cement floor and said, “Claustrum.”

  The floor rose upward in front of me, forming a wall of cement about two feet thick. My head swam from the effort of casting the spell. I clutched my cane to keep me stable. The fiery shells slammed against the barrier I’d created, cracking the stone in a few places.

  “Nico,” said Lester, firing at the Red King.

  “Get out of here, Lester,” I said. I peeked around the burning wall and saw the Red King had turned his attention to the deputies. He had one hand extended. Sparks of crimson energy appeared before his hand. I realized these were the bullets hitting some type of shielding spell. “Lester. Angela. Stop shooting.”

  Pulling in more energy despite my fatigue, I pictured the effect I desired.

  “Columna,” I said.

  The column shot out of the floor and slammed into the Red King’s midsection. It wasn’t as thick a column as I’d conjured the night before. This one was only a foot across. I had hoped his shielding spell covered only one direction. I was right. The column snuck in from his left, toppling him to the ground.

  “Get over here,” I said to the deputies. They ran full tilt for me, ducking through the flaming wall and stepping behind the barricade I’d summoned.

  “What the hell is he?” asked Lester. He ejected a spent magazine and inserted a fresh one into his pistol. “How the hell is he stopping the bullets?”

  Angela didn’t ask any questions. She quickly reloaded the shotgun, pushing in shells with calm precision.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I peeked around the wall of stone and saw the Red King was rising.

  “Shouldn’t we have run for the door?” asked Angela, loading in the last shell and racking the pump.

  “He’d have roasted you alive before you made it,” I replied. The Red King stood and stared at the wall. “He’s pissed,” I added.

  “The only exit is behind him,” said Blackwell.

  I smiled at her. “There’s always another exit when you’re a wizard.”

  I walked over to the wall, which felt like it was 300 yards away. My eyes were stinging from the sweat and the heat. When I reached the wall, part of me wanted to just rest for a moment and catch my breath. Summoning up some power, I said, “Comminuo.”

  The blocks beneath my hand crumbled, reduced to a pile of gray dust. A space, large enough to crawl through, was left behind. Both of the deputies stared at me before grinning.

  “We’re not burning to death. Now go,” I said, motioning for them to use the new exit.

  Lester pointed at Angela, then to the exit. Begrudgingly, the younger deputy took the hint and crawled through the hole. Three more blasts of fire splashed against the barricade. The already oppressive heat intensified. I could see the barricade beginning to melt under the assault.

  “You’re next,” I said, pointing at Lester.

  The sergeant didn’t bother arguing with me. He dove through the opening and army-crawled the rest of the way out. I prepared to follow, clutching my side.

  “Coward,” called Red King after me. I could picture him practically vibrating with anger. �
��I thought wizards could do better!”

  Pride has a way of making anyone an idiot. Pride was the gasoline that fueled my idiocy. Staying meant death, pure and simple. The journey into Sideways had not been one of my better ideas. My body felt like I’d just run a marathon. I knew the best I could manage would be to give him a black eye. Pointing my cane at the wall, I channeled what amounted to a car battery’s worth of power and said, “Adigo.”

  My concussive blast hit the rapidly disintegrating wall, spewing fiery debris in the Red King’s direction. The blast snuffed out the flames around the door. The chunks of cement crashed into the masked man’s shield. I couldn’t tell if he was smirking, but it felt like he was.

  Realizing my mistake, I turned and dove through the hole in the wall but couldn’t manage to get through completely. A pair of small hands grabbed the shoulders of my trench coat and pulled. Angela grunted. I managed to get my knees under me to push the rest of the way.

  We stood and took a deep breath. I nodded my thanks. Angela returned the gesture.

  Then the wall exploded behind us.

  We went down. Angela took the brunt of the broken cinderblocks. Lester appeared at her side, shaking her by the shoulders, trying to help her shake off the effects of the blast.

  Magdelena walked through the opening as I turned onto my back. She gazed at us the way a starving person eyeballs a buffet. Lester picked up Blackwell’s shotgun. In the heartbeat it took to turn the gun on the vampire, Magdelena had closed the distance and taken Lester by the throat.

  “Mortal,” she said, her voice hissing and seductive. She lifted Marks up to his feet, his face nose to nose with hers. “You shouldn’t interfere with your betters.”

  Marks punched her once, twice, right across the jaw. Magdelena licked the blood off her lip. She gripped his neck tighter and lifted Lester off his feet. Barefoot, the vampire stood only five and half feet tall. If Lester weren’t in so much danger, it would have seemed absurd.