The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) (5 page)

“Bah.” Jim waved the thought away. “Dark matter and dark energy aren’t real. They’re just kludges added to physics to force the universe to fit into our current theories.” He equated the two concepts with epicycles—the overly the complex rules for the movement of planets proven wrong by Galileo. As a computer guy, I wasn’t even qualified to have an opinion on it.

“Who cares?” said Dave. “We know the hoodoo exists. It can turn me into a two-ton bear, for Christ’s sake. Once we get the million from the Randi Foundation, we can start a lab or something.”

“We’ve got to start making plans for winning that,” I said.

Jim shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, guys.”

I looked at him surprised and a bit nervous. If he said something wasn’t a good idea, he was probably right. He usually was. “What, why not?”

“Think about it.”

I said, “OK, I’m thinking...hm... one meeellion dollars!...Yep, still sounds good to me.”

Dave chimed in, “It’s easy money, Jim! All we have to do is poke Randi with a pin—Finn fixes him and boom—Bob’s your uncle! We buy a little island in the Caribbean for our secret super-hero base.”

I thought the whole super-hero thing—with or without a base—was pretty goofy, but Jim seemed to have something else in mind.

“What does that mean, Dave?” said Jeff. “Bob’s your uncle?” Jeff rarely missed an opportunity to tweak Dave. The snark was returned with enthusiasm.

This time, Dave gave him an unconvincing scowl. “Shut up, Jeff.”

“Listen guys, think it through,” Jim said. “OK, so Finn heals a pinprick on someone while he’s being filmed. Then what?”

Dave looked exasperated. “He collects a million dollars!”

“Then what?”

Dave clapped his hands together. “We partaaay!”

I just sat back, trying to see where Jim was taking this. He was the smartest of the lot of us—and all of us were pretty smart science nerd types. Jim was self-effacing and completely non-adventurous, but his thinking was usually rock-solid.

“Then what?”

Jeff raised his hand. “We buy a boatload of aspirin?”

Jim scowled at Jeff. “Let me give you a hint. Finn heals this guy, he wins the million-dollar prize, then his name is plastered across the news. He becomes an overnight celebrity. He becomes known as ‘The Mighty Finn, mystical healer’... Am I triggering any brain activity yet?”

Dave looked at him and then shook his head. “Sounds good so far.”

Unfortunately, I was seeing what Jim was getting at. It sucked.

Jeff did, too. “Hmm, yeah, Dave. That could be a problem. Finn would be overwhelmed by people wanting to be cured.”

Now Dave was starting to look aggravated. “So? He’s popular. What’s the big whoop? There are ways to deal with that. Rock stars, Popes, and Presidents do it all the time.”

Jim said, “Okay, if you just look at it that way, how much of Finn’s money is going to go into security? How much will it cost to buy a well-protected house or put a big fence around this one? One million doesn’t go very far these days.”

Damn, he was right.

Dave rolled his eyes. “Hello! It’s his
first
million. It’s not going to be his last! If he sets up shop as a supernatural healer, he’ll be making that every day!”

Hmm, maybe I was giving up too easily.

“Not too many people are going to pay a million dollars to heal something you could fix with a Band-Aid,” Jeff said.

That was true, too.

“Was I the only one listening to Finn these last few months?” asked Dave. “Finn has healed cuts, broken bones, bruises, bullet wounds, snake bites, and demonic possession. He pulled his dad out of a coma for crying out loud—and look at him now—he looks like the Incredible Mini-Hulk.”

That got me out of my waffling and into defensive and indignant. “Dave, I do not! I’ve just put on some muscle.”

Dave looked at me. “Finn, you’ve gone from oblate spheroid to oblate intersecting triangles in a few months. Hell, if you could just do that for someone else, you could charge a metric butt-load of money to be trainer to the rich, fat, and lazy. For a bunch of smart geeks, you guys just aren’t thinking. Listen, how many football players get their season, or career, cut short when they blow a knee or a disk? How many millions would they pay to get it fixed?”

Jim said, “Okay, Dave, let’s say he goes down that road. How long is it going to be before the federal government steps in and declares him a national treasure, then whisks him off to sit under Cheyenne Mountain where he can be permanently on call to heal the president in case of nuclear war?”

Jeff stepped in again. “Well, they couldn’t keep him. He could just use his Jedi mind tricks to tell them to let him go.”

It was my turn. It was my future, after all. “No way Jeff, I’ve thought about that one. We’re so not going there. The minute they think I can influence people’s minds, they’ll either try to turn me into an NSA asset, or they’re going declare me a national threat, strap me down, and dissect me.”

“Something else to consider,” said Jim. “If hoodoo
is
real, and it sure looks like it is, where are all the other hoodoo practitioners? It’s not reasonable to assume that we’re the only people aware of it or able to use it. Are there fantastic creatures out there—demons, vampires, angels, unicorns, etc? If there are, why don’t we ever hear about them? Did the ability to use hoodoo get weeded out of humans over the years? If magical people and things exist, then they obviously keep a tight lid on that fact. What do they do when someone tries to bring it into the public awareness?”

“I bet, they turn them into a newt,” said Jeff straight-faced.

That got a chuckle out of us.

Dave shrugged. “Okay, so I can see why secrecy might be desirable. That doesn’t mean we have to be regular working stiffs. After all—every superhero has their alter ego. Finn, you could get yourself a degree in sports medicine, and then use that as a screen for your miracle knees.”

“Dave, I’m not really interested in doing twelve years of medical school. I doubt I could handle the sleep deprivation.”

“You’re one of those doofbag superheroes that just wants to be a normal boy, aren’t you?”

That made me uncomfortably defensive. “Well... no.”

“No, he wants to be Thomas Covenant,” said Jeff.

“I do not!” For those not in the know, Thomas Covenant was transported to a magical world and given amazing powers. It would have been cool for anyone but him. He couldn’t bring himself to believe what was happening, and he just wanted everything to go back to normal.

“So, use your brain, Finn,” said Dave. “You don’t actually have to go to medical school. You just have to find some hacker who works for the university and mojo him into giving you a degree.”

He saw my reaction and waved it away. “Okay, you’re too pure of heart to do that, but hell, find some washed up sports medicine guy and partner up. Go work for Deepak Chopra! He’s already swindled millions out of people with his nonsense... Just use your brain, dude! There are millions of possibilities for you to make millions. You now, officially, have no reason to be poor.”

I hated to admit it, but he had some good points. Despite my initial repulsion, I wondered if I
could
hoodoo someone into giving me a college degree.

“Well, either way,” said Jeff, “it sounds like Jim is right, and the Randi prize is out of the picture.”

“Even that depends on how much you don’t trust our government,” Dave said.

“Or the council of Wizards, Vampires and Fairies,” added Jeff. “If they exist.”

I sighed. I was more afraid of our government than some imaginary council. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t trust the ol’ US of A, but everyone knew there were lots of shenanigans that happened when Homeland Security was involved. They could revoke your citizenship, or declare you an enemy combatant and ship you off to Guantanamo in the blink of an eye never to be seen or heard from again. No one really believed that Gitmo had finally been closed down. It was just too handy.

I said, “Well, at least I have a job that’s better than the Grease Burger. There are still a dozen or more people at Shady Oaks that were infested with shadows. Dr. Anderson is going to pay me $500 per person for everyone I help.”

Dave looked at me in astonishment.

I gave him a superior smirk, but he quickly disabused me of the notion that he was jealous. “You have got to be kidding me, right?”

“No, what’s wrong with that?”

“Finn, Finn, Finn! What are you? A communist? You really need a manager. Five hundred dollars—for putting your immortal soul on the line playing with one of those demons? You told us yourself how much those things freak you out! Jesus H. Muhuntapa Christ, you got one stuck in your head for the rest of your life, Finn. You should be charging twenty times that amount—at least. Come on, it probably costs them over $8000 per inmate per month at that nut-house, and I’ll bet most of it comes from the government or insurance companies, and everyone overcharges
those
guys—even nuns.

“Hell, if you charged them for just one year’s incarceration—”

“Rehab, Dave,” I said.

He waved me away. “Whatever. It would be a deal! Do these guys ever get better without you?”

He didn’t wait for me to shake my head. We had talked about this before. “No, they don’t. This is a life sentence, Finn, and you’re giving them back their life. Be an American—charge what the market will bear. It’s your patriotic duty.”

Leave it to Dave to equate patriotism with price gouging. It was tempting, but in the end, unsurprisingly, I went with the flow. I’d already agreed to the price with Dr. Anderson, so I didn’t feel right going back on our deal. I kept reminding myself that it was way better than the Grease Burger—probably less fattening, too.

On my first day back as a shadow-scraper, my first patient was Janice. She had been so earnest and so diligent in her attempts to follow my meditation instructions that I couldn’t help but admire her and feel that she deserved the first shot to be free.

We sat in the counseling room facing each other. As usual, her odor of stale cigarette smoke, sweat, and spearmint gum filled the room. My extensive work with her had taken the edge off the unpleasantness, but in any case, my nerves rendered the smell impotent. For her part, Janice seemed a bit apprehensive. Her eyes were wide and her hands, clasped together under her more than ample breasts, kept moving and twitching.

My desert-dry mouth made it a bit hard to get the initial words out. “So, did the doc fill you in on what I’ll be doing?”

Janice nodded. “He said you are going to swami this thing off of me.”

“I’ve done this a couple of times, and each time, after I’ve removed the shadow, the person’s symptoms disappeared. What I haven’t done is try this with someone while they are awake.”

Janice swallowed and licked her lips. “Okay.”

“I don’t know how this is going to feel, but from what I can see, it looks like it’s going to be uncomfortable.”

“You’re just a sweet-talker, ain’t ya?”

I smiled ruefully. “Yep, that’s me. Okay, close your eyes.”

“Why?”

That caught me by surprise. “Why?”

“Yes, why do you want me to close my eyes?”

“Well...” I floundered around for a reason. I quickly gave up. “I don’t know. It just seemed like the thing to do.”

She shrugged. “Good enough for me.” She closed her eyes and said, “No funny stuff while I’m not looking.”

I grinned. “Scout’s honor.” I started to relax into my work.

My sight revealed the blackness fouling her lime-green aura. As usual, the shadow riding her found me quite appealing. It humped up toward me and reached out with small tentacles of darkness. Just the appearance of it was freaky, but now I knew the hunger that drove these things—in the biblical sense, it made the freak factor infinitely worse. I was like an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord to them, and I was going to get up close and personal with another one.

This escaped glob from Satan’s spittoon was actually fairly small. Janice’s long history of mental illness suggested that it had been riding her for a couple of decades. She must have some small innate defense against it for it to be so weak. Maybe. Maybe the illness had come first. I still didn’t know much about any of this.

I brought up an imaginary, scintillating, golden sphere around her. As I had told Janice before, this imaginary sphere, first created to protect me from my night terrors, had very specific properties. It protected against all bad things. Handy to have—if it worked for you.

I applied my will, pulling power from the Caduceus, transforming it and thrusting it into the sphere. It became more and more substantial till it wasn’t imaginary any more. I can’t really explain this transformation. It is like a phase shift or something. Most other people still wouldn’t be able to see it, but it was there, and it was real. For a moment, I admired my handiwork, imagining the opportunity for cool special effects when they made a movie about my life.

Of course, I was stalling. I girded my brain and metaphorical loins for the icky-nastiness to come, took a deep breath, and started contracting the sphere around Janice.

As always, first contact with the shadow was a jolt for me, but the shadow seemed curious or something. Black goo flowed out onto the inner surface of my sphere. Every square centimeter of that contact violated me more. I shuddered as eau-de-rotting-corpse was poured over my brain.

The shadow didn’t react until I actually started scraping it off Janice. At that point, it became quite agitated and pushed against my barrier. The barrier acted like a squeegee clearing dirt off the window of Janice’s soul. Janice groaned.

“Damn, that’s unpleasant,” she said.

“Sorry, I can’t go any faster...”

“Just keep going, handsome.”

I did. When I finally separated the shadow from her physical body, it hung on like a leech and pulled Janice’s aura with it. Think pulling a piece of duct tape off a balloon. This was the tricky bit. Her aura wouldn’t pop so much as tear. I still wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was sure it wasn’t a good thing. Pressure mounted in my mind as I kept pushing the blackness away with steady, slow, and increasing force. Janice’s aura started flaring with the strain. It grew to incandescence. In utter silence, it tore with a flash of light. The vast majority of her soul snapped back to her and she let out a yelp of pain. The small bit that went with the shadow was devoured instantly.