At the Behest of the Dead (2 page)

In my mind
I was creating the warlock version of a golf umbrella. Big puff of black that would expand when tossed into the air. I had the whole thing worked out. A couple of glyphs to control it, kick some elemental ass for the propulsion mechanism, and make them get along with some words of binding.

That’s when I spotted him.

The demon was a little guy. Like someone had taken your garden-variety salamander, made it the size of a fat pug, then tossed it into a lake of slime and hate. There were at least eight eyes angled around its head, and when he snuffled the ground they shifted in every single direction of the compass. I got dizzy just trying to track all his ocular movements. His mouth was a horror that gave him the appearance of a freaky pie with teeth. Skin mottled grey, slimy, and in some places slack. It hung over his back legs, and when he shuffled forward all that mass shifted around his body. It sounded like he was covered in half filled water balloons. If I’d had a dart gun, I could’ve dumped a gallon of demon ooze on the ground.

He lowered his head and sniffed. Looked up and stared at the clouds as if distracted. I held my breath because I wasn’t sure if the little
bastard had nostrils. Rain pelted the bizarre mouth, letting water run out of a pair of gills along its neck.

I held my breath until I got dizzy. If I made a noise, moved a millimeter, it might well become aware of me
, and then I would either be in for a fight or a test of its loyalties. Of course it could always ignore me and continue to hunt whatever it was here for. As long as it wasn’t me, I was happy to let Mr. Shifty Eyes snort bugs and mud for the rest of the night.

I thought relief had arrived when I heard barking in the distance. Mr. Demon on the hunt? Meet your victim. But the evil pug didn’t even need to mov
e its head.

Shit! I decided that breathing was an important part of staying alive and spent a few seconds sucking in air as quietly as possible.

He took a ponderous step away from me, and then one more.

Earlier
, I had pulled down my eyelids and rubbed a thick ointment onto them. It burned like fire and made me want to reach for a gallon of saline solution. But after a few minutes the burning gave way to a dull itch that felt like summer allergies. It sucked, but it was also a small price to pay for night vision. It wasn’t perfect. I didn’t get a crystal clear version of the world like a changer might, but it was at least as good as the goggles the military employ. I knew this because I had tried to sell the army the formula. That didn’t sit too well with the league. There was talk of stringing me up.

Others just wanted to kick my ass.
Arcanist’s have no sense of humor.

The demon didn’t give up. H
e just stared in eight directions while his nose sucked at the ground. I could take my chances with a blast of lighting, or maybe freeze him in place until the morning then try to have a unit pick him up. That would be a funny conversation.

“This is Phineas Cavanaugh. I need a demon picked up at
Alear Park in Auburn Washington. How long until you guys can get here?”

“How long until you can
piss off?” would be the likely answer.

The safest thing to do would be to leave the damn thing alone and get back to my house. Then I could come back in the morning and try to pick up a remnant of
Clarence Whitfield, the dead guy I was hired to track down.

Yep. That would have been the
smart
thing to do.

The problem was I loved a challenge
, and it sometimes got in the way of the common sense side of my brain.

I slashed my hand through t
he air and mouthed words. This would keep my scent hidden. My pinky finger was covered in a potion of dubious design. Something I had developed all by myself. The league didn’t like that too much either. If warlocks were going to be coming up with new formulas, they wanted to profit from it. That’s why they got pissed about the night vision goop, too. It wasn’t that I stepped out of line and spoke out of school; it was because they weren’t getting a cut.

This p
ark was an unlikely place to find a warlock, and even more unlikely to find someone of my calling, a necromancer. We preferred to keep a low profile since no one wanted
our
filth around.
Genus Warlockus Necromanus
were the whipping boys of the warlocks. We got no respect because we liked to dig in the dirt and talk to the dead. But were demonologist any better? I’d certainly never met one that I liked. Who wanted to consort with denizens of the six wards? All demons did was lie and stink up a room. Plus, if you lost your cool or spoke the wrong words they were just as likely to haul your screaming ass back to their fiery pit as look at you.

But you mention
warlock to someone and they get an uncomfortable look. Say necromancer and they suddenly have business in another state.

Even the league didn’t like
necros, though we got officially sanctioned not long after everything went public in the nineties. That was a fine time to live through. The nightly news centered on witches, warlocks, and all manner of ‘Fae’ creature that had kept their asses well and truly hidden for the last few centuries.

Then s
omeone opened their big fat mouth. At first he was a laughing stock, but after making a skeleton not only walk around on live television but also attempt to speak, it became clear that there was more involved than a charlatan’s tricks. He was ostracized, kicked out of the league indefinitely. Warlocks cursed his name and changers crapped on his lawn.

It took me a long time to get back in everyone’s good graces.

But that’s another story.

There was no chance of me finding a trace of blood in this park. I had an idea where the murder had gone down
, but any bloodstain evaporated the second the rain arrived. Even if I had some high tech police spray to squirt all over the ground, I’d need a biplane and a couple of thousand gallons.

The park was a one off. Converted from a cow pastur
e and farm house back in the 70s, now it was mainly used as a dog park. During the day you could bring your golden retriever and work off its energy, if you had a strong enough arm. At night, it was closed and silent.

I
’d spotted a small rise to the east that was surrounded by tall maples. It had made a perfect location to land behind and hide my pitchfork. Then it was just a quick half-mile jaunt that saw me cursing my ridiculous robes. They dragged across the ground and created a soggy mess that soon soaked into my boots, socks, and jeans. I probably looked like a refugee from a renaissance fair.

The walk wasn’t bad and went a long ways toward waking me up. I should have been in bed
, but the widow had been very specific about the place where her Chucky had passed while walking their Pomeranian. It made me suspicious of his death. Pomeranians? Really? A man can only take so much – maybe he jumped in the river.

I slid from behind a tree and motioned again to nullify my scent. The potion worked bu
t only in five minute spurts. And I wondered why it’d been a financial failure.

I slid a potion out and worked at the cork top with my fingertips. The bottle itself was a hundred years old and had seen more action than a roman statue. It was thick and the cork was in there deep and tight. I season
ed my corks over several months to remove any traces of water before they spent time in a humidor. The last thing I wanted was some of the crazy concoction spilling while I’m was a thousand feet in the air.

Frogs were making an unholy racket somewhere to the south. I thought there might be a small pond in that direction. This time of
year, it, and the area around the water, were probably a swamp.

The demon grunted and stared straight at me. I froze in place
, reasoning that if I’d already stood here for close to an hour, I had time to blend in, become one with the shadows.

Another no
te to self, “I’m no damn ninja.”

“Oh crap,
” I muttered and worked at the cork with my fingernails.

It came up on hind legs that were severely disjointed. One kn
ee pointed toward me, the other knobbed and jointed in the opposite direction. Bumps dotted its limbs like giant pockmarks. I thought the beast was small, but it had been keeping its form in a tight ball. Its body expanded, tripling in size as if filled with air, or something it was tapping into on the other side of the cusp.

Two arms stretched and moved up and down
, as if trying to sense me. The little cuss had a third limb that was folded close to its chest. This one opened up like a praying mantis preparing to strike. It was long, serrated along its forepaw, and ended in a massive hook that looked deadly even in the poor light. I had to assume it was welded in place because I’d never heard of a demon born with knives. Claws the size of goats, sure. Actual metal hooks? That was a first.

The rain let up just as I took a step back and got my foot stuck in yet another puddle. Water and gunk rushed to suck my foot into the ground.

It moved faster than quicksilver. The main problem with demons was their inability to focus on anything else once they had a target. I’d made the mistake of assuming it was hunting something else. That it’s presence here was purely coincidental. Last note of the night to myself, “You are an idiot.”

“Bad demon. Y
ou’re off my Christmas list.” I panted and did the smart thing.

I ran for my life.

**

I swear I am going to get in shape.

How many times have you said that and actually done something about it? There was no way you’d find me at the gym, because no one wanted to see a pasty white warlock on a treadmill. Oprah? Yeah. Me? Not so much.

I huffed and puffed as I took off at my idea of a sprint. That was, legs
pistoning as fast as they could. While my arms worked like a broken windmill that was already two sheets to the wind.

I had to be realistic. My fork was too far for me to make it before the demon caught up. I didn’t have a chance in the hells of going toe to toe. To make matters worse, the vial wasn’t cooperating. My guess was that initial panic had caused me to jam the cork all the way inside the
tube.

If I had known I was going into a fight tonight
, I would have brought a different set of potions and maybe a giant crossbow or three, with a small army to carry it. I should have asked my changer friend Frank Two-Feathers to watch my back, but I thought he was watching the back of a cute little falcon out in Edgewood.

I sh
ould have been armed with Draco Dracaena and Ash Laurel. The latter for psychic protection, the first for physical. Instead I had a few doses of frankincense and periwinkle. This helped me focus and see through the fog that separates us from the cusp. I knew a warlock that used to smoke pot to get the same effect. He crashed his fork while staring at the moon and, if the story was true, howling a Peter, Paul, and Mary song at the top of his lungs.

I cut to the right and sacrificed a breath to get my teeth around the cork and was rewarded with it sliding halfway out.

Feet thumped behind me. I risked a glance over my shoulder to confirm what my sense of self-preservation was already telling me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I swear I felt the demon’s breath playing across them.

I nearly stumbled over a rock
, but righted myself and pounded over the grassy ground, hoping to avoid any leftover dog shit. It would be just my luck to hit a pile of St. Bernard crap and go flying. Then it would be just me and the demon, mano a demon-o a manure-o.

I got my other hand around a wax paper pouch with a small mark burned into it. I was trusting to my system because there wasn’t enough light to see
, and even if I relied on my warlock sight there was no way to steady the pouch as I ran.

So I sniffed it and would have smiled except my lungs hurt too much.

The glass vial in one hand, packet in the other, I dumped the two into one palm, clapped my hands, and then tossed the mess into the air with a quick flurry of words. That should confuse the demon, make him want to stop and talk to himself for a few hours before the confusion wore off.

The spell helped bind the ingredients and also spread the ensuing mess to the wind. The flakes rose in the air, spread out and were immediately doused by rain. The clouds had decided to open up and
drench now of all times. Sometimes I think someone up there doesn’t like me, or someone down
there
, on the other side of the cusp.

**

I sped over the ground and cursed myself for not coming more prepared with at least my imbued chest piece. It might not stand up to a couple of slugs from an assault rifle, but for a warlock it was as strong as wearing a shield straight out of a science fiction movie. I should surely have a blade with me. Probably a silver dagger with a couple of glyphs, nasty ones, to slice through armor or demon and find a heart, no matter where it lay in the creature’s body. I once fought a demon that looked like a wildebeest. Damn thing ran me down like a toreador without a red cape. My chest piece saved me, and when it came back and leapt toward me, I slid forward on my butt and sliced it from neck to groin.