Magie Noire
By Rurouni Star
Chapter Nineteen
I've got to say, the last thing I was expecting was to feel like I'd walked onto a porno film set.
The kitchen we slipped into was dark and empty, but music echoed from just outside it — the kind of dark, breathy music I imagined teenage goths screwed to. I shook my head, and clutched my borrowed pistol more tightly. The momentary humor wasn't quite enough to distract me from the fact that I'd shown up to shoot a man.
I cleared the kitchen and signaled the other two to follow. Just outside, on a platform overlooking the rest of the lake house, I saw Victor Sells standing before a makeshift altar inside a chalk circle. He had a kind of aesthetic class to him, with his dark hair, his sharp face, and his tailored clothing. He was wearing a sleek leather jacket indoors for some reason, which I didn't wonder too hard at — Victor had already shown himself to be the sort that cared way too much about appearances.
He had a white rabbit tied up in front of him on the altar, its legs bound with red cord. Two candles, black and white, burned on opposite sides of the animal. Violet magic flickered around the circle, underlighting his face. Victor held a vial of some dark liquid in his hand; he was currently dribbling some of it onto the rabbit's head, muttering in a language I didn't recognize.
"Ancient Egyptian," Bob told me, reading my uncertainty. "Bad ancient Egyptian. His pronunciation is awful."
A soft moan drew my attention to the side, where another circle had been set up, maybe fifteen feet across. I blinked, and flushed in spite of myself. A man and woman were inside the circle, fully naked and doing exactly the sorts of things that would make Father Forthill cross himself if he'd been there. It was hard to see their faces, but given the heads-up, I was still able to recognize them from court photos. Greg and Helen Beckitt had once done their utmost to see Johnny Marcone behind bars for the death of their child, but the mobster had ultimately gotten off without a conviction. Once, I'd pitied them — but in that moment, any sympathy I'd once had for them dried up completely. In their pursuit of vengeance, they'd already aided a drug ring and helped facilitate at least three murders. Now, they were about to help Victor murder his wife and further traumatize his kids.
Then again, I had a gun aimed at his back. I could stop him. Right now.
Victor raised what looked like a sharpened silver spoon. The rabbit squirmed.
"Kid," Bob told me. "I don't mean to rush you, but if you're gonna stop him, now is literally your last chance."
I clenched my teeth. I squeezed the trigger. It felt like someone else's hand on the gun, but I knew it was mine.
The pistol kicked in my hand. Victor staggered forward, dropping the spoon and choking on his incantation.
I emptied the clip, from sheer muscle memory. The last bullet felt like mine. I got my head around it, told myself I'd just murdered a man, as Victor dropped to the floor.
A sickening rush of power dispersed around him; violet light leaked out of the circle, licking along every available surface, curling along my body. I knew I should have kept a hold on the situation, started corralling the Beckitts, but my body didn't seem to be working right. I dropped my gun, breathing hard. Don't throw up, I thought dimly. Don't throw up, that's a bad idea, you can't possibly clean it up well enough.
Hendricks stepped past me, fully in-control. He pointed his gun at the Beckitts, started growling at them in an intimidating tone. They weren't in a position to resist him — they were as vulnerable as it gets.
Carmichael closed his hand on my arm. I forced in a ragged breath.
"You should've let the mobster do it," he muttered at me. I heard the tension in his voice. He was looking around at the grotesque ritual setup, glancing down at the violet light that still played along his own gloved hands.
"Only thing more cowardly than shooting a guy in the back is asking someone else to do it for you," I said hoarsely.
"Kid," Bob said suddenly. I heard an urgent tone in his voice. "He's not dead, kid."
I heard a soft muttering from the place where Victor had collapsed in a heap. "...Kalshazzak," I heard him hiss, beneath the pounding music.
The shadows pooled, as they had done before — less certain, this time, as though they were struggling to hold together. I saw the demon take shape for just a moment, snarling — before it fell apart once again, into its component shadows.
Those shadows didn't disappear, though. They hissed and coalesced into a dark cloud… which flung itself toward Greg Beckitt.
"Uh oh," said Bob. I didn't like the sound of that.
I scrambled for my gun. I knew I needed to prioritize targets, but I wasn't sure which one was more pressing in the moment.
Victor snarled something in Egyptian; Carmichael grabbed me and shoved us both to the floor, as a white-hot plume of flame surged toward us.
An animalistic hiss tore across the room, as Greg Beckitt threw himself at Hendricks, eyes blazing that uncanny electric blue. Hendricks calmly squeezed off a few bullets in his direction — but while they punched what should have been decidedly fatal holes in the man, he barely seemed to notice. Greg Beckitt tackled Hendricks, tearing his gun away from him and reaching for his neck with bare hands.
Carmichael and I rolled away, just as Victor yelled out again, his voice high-pitched with hysteria. I ducked behind the wall of the kitchen, breathing hard. Oh god. Oh god, we'd needed the element of surprise, and we'd blown it. We were up the creek without a paddle, just like Bob had said.
"Give me your gun," I rasped at Carmichael, who'd settled behind the other side of the doorway. I pulled out the sports bottle and rolled it quickly across toward him. "You need to get to Beckitt and dunk him in this stuff. Got it?"
Normally, Carmichael would have been full of smart-aleck questions. But surrounded by insanity, when every second counted, he took me at my word. He snatched up the bottle and skidded the gun my way instead. We nodded at each other quickly, mentally counting down.
I ducked around the corner, raising the gun. I'd intended to cover Carmichael's charge, but instead, I found I was only able to manage a single haywire shot before another blast of fire came for my face. I leapt back, and saw that Carmichael had been forced to do the same.
"Shit," I breathed. "This isn't working. I can't give magical cover with a fucking gun." Another crazy thought rose to mind. "Bob," I said. "Can you work that bracelet?"
Bob was leaning against the wall next to me, oddly nonchalant for someone in the middle of a literal firefight. "I'm not a wizard, kid," he said. "Heck, I don't even really have magic. I'm kind of made of some of the same fundamental stuff, but—"
I raised my wrist, shoving the bracelet into his face, even though some part of me knew he wasn't really there. "Bob!" I said. "Can you, or not?"
Bob blinked. He squinted at the bracelet. "Oh," he said, surprised. "You know what, I… I bet I could. It's mostly air magic. It's even kind of my style." He paused uncertainly. "Won't work for long, though," he said. "That thing's like a Christmas light, and I've got a lot of voltage going, if you know what I mean. It's gonna overheat quick."
"Good enough for me!" I told him.
I turned the corner again, holding the bracelet out in front of me. I felt Bob mentally scrambling to apply himself; the electrical tingle underneath my skin surged toward my wrist, wrapping around the silver bracelet there. This time, as Victor's fire spat toward me, I held my ground and continued toward him, mentally praying that Bob had a handle on things.
The bracelet crackled. It wasn't a healthy sort of sound. Electricity arced along its Celtic weave. The skin of my wrist hissed and burned; I smelled it in the air, but for some reason the pain didn't register. I saw the air in front of me harden against the fire like a shield, angling it upward toward the roof. Glass shattered. I heard Carmichael sprinting past me for Hendricks and the Beckitts. Gunshots popped from that direction, but I didn't dare to turn and watch.
Victor's eyes widened as he realized too late that I wasn't changing course. I slammed into him, jamming my knee somewhere guaranteed to be very uncomfortable. As he doubled over in pain, I hit him with a solid punch to the throat for good measure, choking out anymore bad Egyptian spells.
Bob cackled next to me. "Sedjet is just a noun, you moron!" he laughed. "Neser is the verb!"
I made a mental note to help Bob with his trash talking skills later.
Victor didn't hear the spirit, obviously. As the wizard staggered back from me, I saw that the bullets that had been meant for his back were scattered across the floor. Somehow, his leather jacket had stopped them.
I raised my gun toward him. I didn't hesitate this time — he'd just come within inches of charbroiling me, and though the bracelet had cooled, I could see where the metal had warped against my skin. I still couldn't feel the pain for some reason, but I knew it was going to be awful when I did. I couldn't afford to moralize.
My first shot slammed into the jacket again. It wasn't a clean shot; I was shooting with my left hand, given that a good portion of my right was deeply out of commision. The bullet hissed against some kind of barrier on the leather, and I saw Egyptian runes flare with a fiery light, before it tumbled to the ground. I raised my shaking aim, cursing, but the next bullet just skimmed his ear, taking a good chunk of the cartilage with it.
Another series of bangs sounded through the air. I felt something slam into my leg. Again, no pain registered… but the bullet must have compromised something important, because I felt my leg buckle and I soon hit my knees.
I crawled backward quickly, glancing around for the source of the shot. My eyes fell on Helen Beckitt, standing naked next to a table. In the panic of her husband's possession, the other two had lost track of her; she'd grabbed a gun from god-knew-where, and shot at me from across the room. Her aim was terrible — but even a novice can hit a target if they shoot enough bullets.
The gun clicked a few times in her hands, and she threw it away with a grimace. Her intervention had been enough, though — I heard Victor gasp out a single word from the floor. I cringed, fully aware that I was nowhere near cover.
But no fire came.
Instead, I saw a dark, shimmering veil hiss into being behind him. The wizard staggered to his feet and snatched something up from the ground — the vial, I realized. The vial that probably held Monica's blood.
I forced myself to my feet. It made me lightheaded, and my leg wasn't right, but I found I was able to move anyway.
"Don't do it, kid," Bob said quickly. "You don't want to go where he's going—"
"I do," I gritted out. "I have to. You can stay, Bob. You've done enough."
Victor threw himself through the flickering veil of power. And I jumped in after him.