Diana Tregarde - Burning Water Part 27

Charlie nodded nervously; he had a single stick in his hand; fire licked sluggishly at one end. It was a makeshift torch made of a piece of two-by-four wrapped with oily rags. Doreen had had to turn off the smoke detectors after they'd set them off twice trying to get it lit. Charlie had not allowed Mark to actually watch the lighting of the sacred fire he was rather touchingly relieved that Mark hadn't been offended.

"Johnnie?" Mark made the name a question, turning to where the younger brother sat, held to the bedframe by only one cuff. He was seated in the middle of a warded circle chalked on the carpet of the room, a circle Mark hoped would protect him from some of the unknown "side effects."

"About as ready as I'll ever be."

"Okay " Mark looked from one brother to the other, and hoped he knew what he was doing " let's do it."

Mark got up from the bed and seated himself on the floor behind Johnnie, within the circle. Charlie advanced on the (to Mark) invisible line, with no sign that he might be feeling that this was ridiculous.

That was exactly what Mark was hoping for as Di had told him at least a hundred times in magic, belief was half the power. Both Charlie and his brother believed in this; and as long as they believed, it would work.

He hoped.

Within seconds, he had proof that it was working.

As Charlie reached out with the smoking torch, it suddenly flared up; now it was a clear, steady flame nearly a foot tall, and colored a bright blue-white, like an oxyacetylene torch and Johnnie screamed in mortal agony.

Mark moved with the speed of a striking tiger; grabbing the younger Mountainhawk before he could begin fighting the cuff, gripping Johnnie's shoulders, and holding him steady. "It's not you. Johnnie it's not you. Deny what hurts! Say it! Say it!" He continued to hold Johnnie's shoulders as the young man fought the pain that blocked his voice, fought to concentrate he was willing Johnnie to regain control, to deny that what was being destroyed and what it led to was or had ever been a part of him.

"It's not me." Johnnie gasped out each word, fighting around the pain that made the muscles of his neck stand out like bridge cables, and forced his back and shoulders into an involuntarily arc.

"It's not mine!"

With that last word, Johnnie threw his arms wide and Charlie uttered a cry of triumph.

Charlie snuffed the torch in the bucket of water Doreen had brought from the bathroom, as Johnnie sagged back into Mark's hands and dropped his arms. Then Charlie was on his knees beside his brother, unlocking the cuffs.

And Mark knew that this time, in this battle, their side had won.

Di was startled entirely out of the book she was skimming by a sound where no sound should be.

She suppressed the desire to sneeze; suppressed even the sniff she almost made. She was alone in the stacks; entirely alone, for the librarian had given her the only key. Therefore there could be no one else here.

Except that the sound came again, soft, but unmistakable. A footstep.

Internal alarms shrilled, even as she was closing the book, warning her of danger; deadly, and as near as the next breath.

And something brushed against the edges of her shields, testing them.

She set the book down on the metal shelf before her so softly that she did not even disturb the dust, and stilled even her breath, forcing her awareness and concentration into her senses and toughening her shields to one step below battle-ready.

This was no place to meet danger; all about her were the towering gray-metal bookshelves of the stacks, a veritable maze of them. There was no room for her to meet a physical attack, either close-in or a shooting match there wasn't enough room to use karate, and all that metal made ricochets a dangerous probability.

But when she'd come in here, she'd followed one of her favorite mottos "know where all the exits are" almost without thinking about it. So she knew that to her left and two rows down from this, at the very end of the row, there was an exit. It wasn't one of those that led into the library, though it was one of the fire exits that led to the roof.

She heard a soft whisper of sound, as if someone had inadvertently brushed against the spine of a protruding book; it sounded nearer than the footstep had. That decided her.

Cursing the necessity that had her wearing a suit instead of her usual jeans, she carefully slipped off her shoes and stowed them in her purse. Pulling the bag off her shoulder, she made a loop in the strap and slipped it over her wrist, closing her hand in a fist over the strap. Now she had a weapon of some reach; one that could, in fact, be slung with no little velocity into someone's face, if the need came. She eased her way along the bookshelf, stopping every time she came to a join and crouching to pa.s.s below line-of-sight, so that she wouldn't flicker the light that leaked between each bookcase. When she reached the end of the row, she crouched again to peer around it. She was not going to use her arcane abilities to probe ahead of her, not after that little brush by her shields. That would be as bad and as stupid as shouting her location. She had no illusions about avoiding a confrontation; she just wanted it to be on ground of her choosing.

The way was clear, she sprinted for the door, easing it open and shut again, then began the run up the staircase to the flat roof of the library.

The stairs were metal and anyone in shoes was going to make a racket on them; even sneakers would make some kind of sound. She strained her ears behind her, but heard nothing by the time she reached the locked door that led to the roof.

The lock itself was no challenge; it wasn't even a deadbolt, it was the kind a kid could open with a credit card. Which was exactly what she did.

Unfortunately this door wasn't opened too often; its hinges shrieked in three separate keys, like three d.a.m.ned souls, and the screams echoed down the staircase and back up again with ear-piercing shrillness.

"Dammit!" she cursed, scooting through the door, then getting shoes and gun out of her purse and slamming the door behind her. Well, he knows where I am now. Could have been worse, I guess. I could have set off an alarm, and gotten innocents into the line of fire.

The tar-and-gravel-covered roof was no place for bare feet; she got her shoes back on and secured her purse around her waist by slipping it over her shoulders and cinching the strap like a belt. If it came to an arcane fight there were things she needed in there....

It was a moonless night, but not dark; enough light was reflecting from the clouds and coming up from the streetlights for her to be able to see quite well once her eyes adjusted. She ran across the roof to a wind-turbine, one angled to the door, rather than straight ahead. Once there, she crouched in its slight shelter, and waited, gun in hand.

The door shrieked open; light poured from it. Something leapt out, almost too fast to make out only that it was there one moment, and not there the next. It rolled into the shelter of another wind-turbine, and the door swung slowly shut of its own weight, seeming to scream even louder as it protested moving yet again.

Diana waited, gravel digging into her knee, but nothing happened.

Mexican standoff. In all senses, I suspect. Whose patience is better, buddy yours, or mine?

She watched, and waited and listened. There was no breeze tonight, so the only sound was coming from the air-conditioning plant behind the rooftop door and the elevator shaft behind them. Although that was enough; it covered just about any other sound anyone could produce, short of a gunshot or a shout.

After a considerable length of time had pa.s.sed, a shadowy silhouette of a man rose from behind the structure, answering her question.

And as soon as he stood completely erect, his hands began to glow with a flickering orange light. He stood there for a moment, as the light strengthened and steadied, then drew a glyph in the air that flared redly and hung there for a full minute.

A challenge. One she dared not refuse.

She replaced the gun in her purse, and pulled out two rings and a necklace by feel, donning them even as she stood and moved away from the shelter of the wind-turbine. By the time she stood in the open, her hands were glowing as well although the light was blue -violet, rather than orange. She answered his glyph with one of her own; green. It remained in the air a fraction of a second longer than his.

She couldn't read the meaning of his glyph, but she doubted that he could read hers, either. It was just the formal prelude to a duel arcane; challenge, acceptance.

This was not the chief bruja; she could sense it in the crude qualities of his shielding and the simplicity of the glyph he had drawn. But he might well make up for lack of technique with sheer, raw power She raised her shields to full just as he let fly a levinbolt that bid fair to prove her guess was right.

Glory that one's so strong it's in the visible range! she thought, startled. The bolt hit her shield and actually penetrated a good bit before she could deflect it, splitting it up into a shower of harmless and quite non -arcanely noticeable sparks. She staggered back a little under the blow. If he keeps that up, the normals are going to wonder who's shooting off fireworks up here!

He evidently realized that himself, for the bolt that followed right behind it was apparent only to her Othersight. This one she did not deflect; she caught it and sent it hurtling back at him, following it with one of her own.

The first he captured and absorbed d.a.m.n. I was hoping he didn't know that trick.

The second staggered him, sent him stumbling back two or three steps before recovering.

He spread his hands wide, then clapped them together and she had a split second to decide if the snarling thing with the head of a jaguar and the wings of a bird was an illusion or a real manifestation Because if she guessed wrong, the illusion could hurt her as much as the manifestation could, because she would believe it could.

But if she guessed that it was an illusion, and it was a manifestation it could penetrate her shielding and ravage her before she could turn it. If she could.It was the complexity of the thing that convinced her that it was a manifestation one who accidentally let fly a levinbolt that fluoresced in the visible range would never be able to control, much less build, an illusion that was so complex she could count the scales on its tail All this she decided in a fraction of a second, and reacted with a manifestation of her own; calling out of her left-hand jade-set ring the ally that wore the guise of a golden Imperial Dragon, and pulling on the power-pole on her right-hand amber ring to give it strength.

The two creatures met in the s.p.a.ce between the two magicians. As the dragon fastened its claws into the serpentine body of the jaguar-bird-snake, Di felt a moment's rush of relief that her guess had been right.

But the jaguar opened its jaws in a soundless squall of fury, and sunk foot-long fangs into the dragon's neck. Di (as she knew she would) was the one who felt the pain.

She willed power to her ally, enduring what seemed to be the lacerating of her own throat; pain so real that the unwary would put a hand to the neck and expect it to come away red with blood.

And that was another trap; for if she allowed herself to believe that it would happen.

For this was what was tested in a sorcerer's duel of manifestations: the testing of control, the testing of will, and the testing of concentration were as important as the manifestations themselves.

The dragon had wrestled the jaguar-creature to the ground, and was gaining the upper hand. The jaguar-creature responded with long, desperate rakes of its claws, trying to reach the dragon's belly.

But the belly of an Imperial Dragon is as well-armored as its back; the claws made no dent in the thick armor plates. The jaguar-creature bit at the dragon's legs, finding the weak place in the join of leg to body where there was no armor. Di bit back a cry of hurt and continued to will strength to her ally.

The jaguar twisted with the writhing of the dragon, trying to maintain its hold and exposed its throat.

The dragon closed its jaws in a stranglehold on the jaguar's neck; and now the cat-snake-bird was no longer trying to attack, just escape.

Its struggles grew weaker then ceased altogether.

The dragon threw back its head in a soundless roar of triumph, and vanished. The jaguar-creature faded out, dissolving slowly. Behind it, visible now, was the brujo, bent nearly double in pain and gasping for breath. Although he was scarcely more than a shadow, Di could feel his angry eyes on her.

Her dragon would fight again, though the power she had expended to give it strength was gone until she could recharge the amber of her right-hand ring but he had lost a valuable ally and a great deal of stored power.

In fact, he had lost enough so that the outcome of the duel was forgone, unless he had something extraordinary up his sleeve.

He did.

A gun.

Breaking the one and only rule of a duel arcane no physical weaponry.

It was the glint of the streetlights on the blued metal of the barrel that warned Di, and just barely in time. She flung herself frantically back into the dubious shelter of her wind-turbine as his first shot rang out.

It ricocheted off the metal of the turbine, whining. Di fumbled in the purse at her waist for her own gun, and winced as a second shot rang out and the magician crumpled to the asphalt of the roof.

Maybe Mark wasn't primarily a sensitive, but he figured he'd have had to be headblind altogether to miss the fireworks going on up on the roof of the library. A paranormal display like that could only mean one thing: Di had gotten cornered and forced into a magic duel.

Good G.o.d, that's the second one this evening! he thought in amazement, even as he whipped the Ghia into a parking s.p.a.ce with a shriek of tires and a horrible stench of burned rubber. Where are these guys coming from?

Theoretically the fire escape that led from the roof couldn't be reached from the ground but that was theory, and as any cop would, Mark knew better. Before too many minutes had pa.s.sed, he was easing himself up the metal structure as noiselessly as he could.

Maybe she won't need me he told himself but then again maybe she will. Might and right don't necessarily mean squat if the other guy decides to break the rules.

The battle was mostly wasted on him; when he poked his nose over the edge of the low parapet surrounding the roof, all he saw were some amorphous swirls of colored light that were twining and twisting about each other in the s.p.a.ce between the two magicians, and the back of a strange man. The guy near him was slowly doubling over in what looked like pain, though; and Di (at least he thought the shadow over on the other side of the roof was Di) wasn't, so he figured it must be going her way. Then the orange swirl sort of flattened out, the gold-colored one flared up, and vanished. And Mark saw the man before him reaching under his coat.

G.o.d d.a.m.n! I sure called that one! he thought, as his own hand went for his piece, drew, and fired almost simultaneously with the stranger.

The man dropped like a stone And that was wrong; Mark hopped up onto the roof and walked slowly toward the body, sorely puzzled.

I shot to wing him, not ice him! My aim isn't that badly off!

"Mark!" came a cry bright with relief and joy from the far side of the roof. He waved absently and advanced on the unmoving body.

Better be careful he might be faking But no As Di came pelting up, he prodded the body indisputably a body, there was no sign of life with his toe.

"d.a.m.n I didn't mean that," he said slowly, hardly aware that he was speaking.

Di was already on her knees beside the body. She did something then that she seldom ever did she called up light a ball of visible light in the palm of her hand.

"You didn't do that," she said, finally. "Look for yourself."

And he did so, seeing with amazement what she had seen in the few moments before campus security came pounding up the staircase with a flashlight and she hurriedly extinguished the light.

There was one bullet-wound. In the gun-arm of the corpse.

And it showed no sign of blood whatsoever.

"Right," Mark said into the receiver, and hung up the phone.

He turned to Di, who was nursing a double Scotch, stretched out in one of his flip-chairs, which was half unflipped into a lounger.

"Seems I won't be facing a board in the morning after all," he said, not at all sure of what he was feeling, but quite sure that he wanted exactly what Di was drinking. He reached for the bottle on the stereo shelf and another gla.s.s, and poured himself one.

"Why?" she asked bluntly.

"Because I shot a corpse. Nothing in the rules covers that."

"You what?" she exclaimed, sitting bolt-upright and not spilling a single drop of Scotch.

"I shot a corpse. The guy I shot he wasn't American, he wasn't legal, and he wasn't alive when I shot him. Mexico City police say he was buried six months ago, Immigration says they have no records on him, and Forensics says he was cold meat when my bullet hit him. So I'm off the hook."

She stared at him, looked at her gla.s.s, took a large swallow, and stared at him again.

"n.o.body's going to be saying anything about it," he continued. "It's too bizarre. The official word is that this one gets filed with the little green man cases and forgotten. The campus fuzz is former Fort Worth PD he's agreed to keep his mouth shut. The Chief is entirely weirded out."

"That makes two of us," Di replied. "Zombies, I know; they're natural, and they're mindless. In no way would a zombie be able to handle magic on his own. This is a new one on me."

She settled back onto the backrest, crossing her arms at least so much as holding the gla.s.s would permit and took another large swallow."I'm still thinking," she said, finally. "I've been thinking ever since the professor shook my memories loose. You know the old phrase, 'What goes around, comes around?'"

"Yeah," he said, "I thought it was new, though."

She shook her head. "Old as the hills. Older. You know, arcane things, magic things, never just stop.

They echo, sometimes for centuries. And there's too much going on for all of this to be coincidence.

Too d.a.m.ned many coincidences are piling up on top of each other. Like was there any real reason for you to get interested in the Texas Ripper?"