Warlock Wolf / Bring The Night / Chapter 12

The ancient Silver Spur wouldn’t do more than fifty-five. Kernohan had the thing pegged, but she was rocking backward and forward in her seat as if that would eke more speed from the ancient vehicle. Leaned far forward on the bench now, getting behind Kernohan’s ear, she said, “Can’t you go any faster?”

Kernohan shrugged, shook his head. It was a stupid question, and she knew it. If it could go faster, it would. God, couldn’t the sorority afford faster vehicles? What about Pris’s car? They should’ve taken that.

She flopped back, face hidden in her hands, and dug fingertips into her brow line. Maddie patted her on the shoulder, saying, “We’re almost there, Lizzy . . . ”

They were going as fast as they could down Royal Armbruster now, towering evergreens on either side of the car flicking past. Pris was up front next to Kernohan, Maddie was in the back with her, and Goody sat on the other side of Maddie.

Goody leaned forward, asked, “Why are you so tense?”

“He’s in trouble. Don’t you care that he’s in trouble?”

Pris said, “He can take care of himself—why would they send somebody who couldn’t?”

She said, “The F.B.I.? You think you can trust them? First the thing with Otterman . . . ” She couldn’t even finish. The last two weeks had been huge and awful, devastating really. It was a wonder anyone expected them to get their schoolwork done.

She leaned forward, elbows on knees, rubbing at her face again. The sword named Heximoth’s Pick lay on her lap, bundled in burlap. Maddie ran a circle over her back. She heard her say, “This is it, that’s the number . . . ”

Now she was bolt upright again, grabbing onto the front seats and peering through the windshield between Pris and Kernohan. The car raced up a narrow pathway, its skinny tires slipping and sliding, the old boat fishtailing but Kernohan had it under control and soon the Rolls-Royce was darting into a clearing where a black outbuilding stood. The F.B.I. Tahoe was there—Otterman’s Tahoe, now Black’s—and she was already pulling the door lever, opening it.

Maddie said, “Don’t be crazy,” and grabbed the hem of her leather jacket and pulled her back. She had one foot out, seeing the snow flicking past the sole of her shoe—

Then they felt it. All of them.

Passage through a membrane of black magic. A powerful and awful feeling, stronger than what she was ever used to. She pulled her foot back in, twisted in her seat to look at Maddie. Her face was pulled in a taut grimace and Maddie couldn’t hide her fear either.

Goody leaned forward, expression worried. “You feel that?”

She didn’t even answer; Kernohan had the car slowed, and she jumped out, sword in hand, already striding, long legs prancing over the snow. Maddie was yelling behind her, “Wait for us! Wait for us!”

But she couldn’t. Black could be in trouble, seconds could matter. Her lover, her everything… The guy she hardly even knew…

She skidded at the outbuilding’s single side door. A ward was there, a simple warning, something intended for magicians. Three feathers, sacred geometry, drawn in blood . . . 

She disregarded it, yanked the door, then was quick stepping through the dim, dry garage, unwinding the burlap wrapping and unleashing the powerful sword. Its blade gleamed in the low light, and she called out in a whispering hiss: “Black!” unable to hide the stress in her voice.

Then the most beautiful, rewarding sound: “Over here.” Black’s voice, calm, assured. Alive.

The flooding wave of relief rose up from her feet like a tidal flood. She stumbled forward, and if she didn’t grab hold of a shelving unit, would’ve fallen to her knees. She felt like crying tears of joy. She’d feared the worst, and the sound of his voice had saved her from what she thought would have been devastating. Why did she feel this way?

Footsteps clomped on the stone, her sisters’ loafers racing to catch up. They surrounded her, put their hands on her back.

“He’s okay,” Pris said, and Lizzy followed her sister’s pointing finger. There he was, her man. Looking handsome and rakish, suit unkempt and his hair plucked up in spikes; he sat with elbows on knees, hunched forward on a wooden chest, stacked on another. The chest bumped and banged underneath him, body jolting from something bashing against the lid underneath his bottom.

He sat up, calm and assured, rubbed his face, fingers digging into his cheeks much like she’d done in the back of the Rolls. He slipped off the chest, stood, sighed heavily, said, “I hope you girls brought a couple of those scrolls…”

*

Proud of his victory, he stood posed casually hip-cocked, elbow on the wooden chest, hand on hip. But when his eyes met Lizzy’s, his heart began to thud, and it eroded away his cool. Whatever it was about this girl, when he saw her his heart soared. The hand on his hip turned to a fist, and he burrowed two knuckles into his hipbone. He gritted his teeth, held back the urge to rush and meet her. She was with her schoolgirl friends, after all.

Lizzy practically gushed. “You’re safe? You’re okay?” he could see tension in her pose that told him she wanted to rush to him. It was like both of them wanted to embrace. But that would be a bad idea. Even now, he was sure her friend Maddie was studying her behavior. Were they on to them?

Goody stepped forward, looking around. “Did he say scrolls?”

Maddie nodded, eyeing him. “He said he hoped we brought scrolls.”

Pris said, “What scrolls?”

How many kinds of scrolls did they have? He jerked a thumb to the chest. There was banging from within, hissing sounds, too. He said, “Got a couple of those dolls for you. Need extinguishing.” He displayed his palms now to show he was unarmed, saying, “I’m fresh out of magical swords.”

Lizzy said, “Dolls? . . . They’re in the box?”

“They are,” he said, and showed them the screwdriver he’d shoved into the hasp to keep the lid locked. The lid rattled. The dolls wanted out.

All four girls came to him, gathered around the chest. It was made of oak planks, metal on the edges; the thing was ancient. Not something you’d pick up at a discount store, this thing would probably weigh a hundred pounds; if you tried to lift it, you’d tweak your back.

He thumped the lid with his fist like he was trying to quiet down the tenants. “Shut up in there,” he said sternly, showing off.

Lizzy said, “How did you get them in there?”

The softness of her voice whispered pass his cheek; he smelled her toothpaste and wondered if she’d brushed before coming despite the emergency, knowing she would see him. It made him smile to think she might be affected the same way. Even now he had to thrust his hand in his pocket to prevent it from slipping around the small of her back and pulling her close.

He ran the tip of his tongue over his lip, cleared his throat. “Got professional. Came in here, right away figured this place was the toymaker’s . . . ”

Maddie said, “Why’d you come here?”

“Paperwork in the toymaker’s office showed raw material deliveries being made to this address.”

Lizzy looked at him with worry. “You came out here alone?”

“Didn’t think it would be a big deal,” he said, shrugging, playing it up. “Anyway, I get in here, the place is guarded by two of those devil dolls.”

Pris had her hands spread out on the chest’s lid. “Are you sure about that?”

“Sure about what?”

“That they’re devil dolls.”

“Oh, they’re devil dolls, all right. They freaked out when they saw me. Came flying at me, definitely wanted to kill me.”

“Wow,” Lizzy whispered, biting her lower lip and staring at him with wide wet eyes.

“I didn’t have anything with me, you know, to take them on, so I climbed up that shelf there,” he said, pointing at it, “and they followed me right up. Looking for my blood. Seriously, I thought they were going to come for my fingers and eyeballs, and you know…” He left ‘my testicles’ hanging in the air unsaid, but made a fanning gesture between his legs. “Anyway, they come scrambling up the shelves after me, I jumped up onto the rafters up there,” he said now pointing higher.

Maddie’s neck craned to look into the angled mesh of ceiling rafters. “You jumped all the way up there?”

“Yeah,” he said. And now that he was looking, it did seem like quite a distance.

Goody said, “You jumped that distance?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and looking, puzzled. Then he clarified: “Not from the floor,” then laughed. “From the top shelf . . . ”

Pris still had her palms on the lid but looked over her shoulder, she said, “Pretty impressive anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I played a little basketball.” Hardly. “Anyway, they couldn’t make that distance. I called for you guys, then”—this was where he wanted to appear bold —“figured I needed your help, but didn’t want you walking into my mess.”

Lizzy’s eyes twinkled, saying, “You took them on.”

“I did. They’re fast and motivated, but not really that smart. I tricked them each into a box, then I put the smaller boxes into this big box,” he said and thumped a fist on the chest proudly. “Sounds like they got out of the smaller boxes though, doesn’t it?” The lid bounced again in perfect punctuation.

Pris said, “I don’t think they’re devil dolls.”

“Well, I sure hope I didn’t trap some real children in there,” he said and chuckled.

Pris looked at him, and he saw there was something working through her. Her hands spread on the chest were doing more than supporting her weight—she was doing something . . . 

“So what are you saying?”

She said, “I’m saying they’re not devil dolls. Not black magic—though it’s crazy rich in here, none of it’s coming from the chest.”

“They were plenty mean,” he said defensively, “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Oh, no, they’re magic,” Lizzy said and touched his arm. Her slender graceful hand curled just above his elbow. Both of them stopped. She looked at her own hand where it touched him, stroked the fabric of his suit with her thumb. His heart raced at the feel. She cleared her throat. “Yeah, uh, they’re magic all right . . . Just not like the ones at Rijkdom.”

“What does that mean?”

Lizzy wanted to answer, but she looked at him in awe, and his own breathing went deep and hard and he wanted to take her so fucking bad right now . . . 

Maddie said, “I don’t know what it means. I think maybe they were the toymaker’s. But they weren’t here because of the other magician, the one who sent the spirit into Rijkdom looking for a doll to possess.”

“So the toymaker has his own dolls,” Black said, nodding, “these dolls are what he can make come alive.”

Pris said, “It makes sense. These are his dolls he keeps here to watch over the place.”

Lizzy finished: “And they’re not related at all to the assassin magician.”

Black sighed. “Wow, this shit gets complicated. So what does this mean . . . ? We don’t need a magic scroll to capture their souls or whatever?”

Lizzy shook her head.

“So what we do with them?”

Pris shrugged. “Destroy them. I don’t know . . . ”

“How?”

Maddie said, “Probably just bash them.”

“I don’t need a magic weapon?”

Lizzy’s hand on him was driving him crazy, and she still gawped at him. Light glinted on the blade of the sword held at her waist and it flashed in her eyes. “No, I don’t think you do.”

“I could’ve just shot them with my gun?”

“Yeah. I think they’re just toys brought to life. Just animated dolls, not possessed ones.”

“You make it sound like that’s not a big deal,” he said and threw his hands up, exasperated. “All that effort to get them trapped in those boxes, then into the chest . . . ?” You know how fucking hard that was? They nipped at me every single time. I tore a hole in the knee of my suit doing it. I could have just shot them? . . . 

Lizzy stroked his arm then brought her hand back, caressed where she’d been touching him, rubbing her thumb over her palm.

“Great,” he said, drawing his pistol. “Well, now I’m going to shoot them.”

*

It took two minutes to dispatch the dolls. Since he was using his firearm, he had the girls step back and stay out of the way, wanting to make sure they were kept safe. He popped the screwdriver from the hasp, lifted the lid. First little face that came into view, he shot. The doll’s head burst into shards and it fell back. When the other one came to see what was up, he showed it. Pop, pop. There was still a clattering noise in there, and when he lifted the lid higher, he saw the broken doll bodies scrambling on the floor, one of them on its side and going around in circles with his legs running like Curly from the Three Stooges.

He holstered the pistol, said, “Hand me that crowbar,” someone did, taking it from the forge, and with one hand holding the chest’s lid open overhead, he leaned in and bashed the doll bodies into useless parts. Lid closed, he returned the screwdriver through the hasp. That was that.

*

Now they were perusing the contents of the toymaker’s workshop. All of them walked the perimeter, and all of them very aware of the large tarp-covered hump in the middle of the space. It called their attention, but it was like they were all reluctant to approach. There was nothing else out of the ordinary to be discovered, and eventually all five of them found themselves gathered around the workshop floor’s main and foreboding object. They stared dumbly and fearfully.

He said, “Well, I guess . . . this is it. Should probably see what’s under there.”

Whatever was under there, it bothered him. And he wasn’t the only one. He could see it on all the girls’ faces. No one made a move.

He said, “Your guys’ driver here?”

Goody asked, “Kernohan?”

“Yeah. He here?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he wants to come in and help.”

“We don’t need his help,” Maddie said, not removing her eyes from the hidden but frightful object. “We should just do it.”

“Good,” he said, stalling. “You guys feel it?”

Pris said, “I feel it.”

He told them: “I got a nosebleed when I pulled up outside. I really felt it.”

Lizzy said, “It’s powerful.”

At the sound of her voice, he nodded, strengthened. “I’ll do it,” he said, stepping forward, grabbing a tattered edge of the old canvas tarp. He’d intended to snap it away, do it quick like removing a Band-Aid, but his body had a sudden overwhelming enervation. His legs turned to lead, his feet were like cement blocks. He trudged like his grandfather when his grandfather was on his third round of chemo. He wanted to throw up. That drone had returned to his ears and as he slowly tugged the tarp away, its incessant buzz began to take the shape of voices. He made out phrases like What are you doing? Are you sure you want to do this? This is probably a big mistake . . . Friendly voices, but thick with threat . . . 

He put a hand over his stomach, started to worry that maybe this thing was nuclear. That this feeling coming over him was some sort of intense radiation poisoning. If it were, he’d be at the lethal dose already.

Something roused inside him, his forearm flexed, the muscles turning steely, and he whipped his arm, snapped the tarp up and whisked it away. It fell heavily to the floor with a leathery bat wing flap and brought up balloons of dust, motes sparkling in the air.

The urge to retch came strong. He put his forearm over his mouth, his hand formed in a fist, and he growled into his suit fabric. He bit his own arm.

The removal of the tarp had uncovered the front half of an enormous iron toad. Its eyes were black blank metal, open but unseeing, its mouth curled in a sly and knowing smile; knobbed warts as big as baseballs coursed its metal hide . . . 

He retched, swallowed, and clenched his teeth tighter into his arm. He turned to see the girls, making sure they were okay. All four of them slouched over, wincing, grimacing, but trying to keep their eyes on the object. Tears streamed Goody’s cheeks.

Maddie burped, said, “So . . . powerful. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

Acid burned in his esophagus. He made his way counter-clockwise around the toad, whisked away more of the tarp. On the toad’s side was a hatch like a submarine portal, big enough for a human to pass through if they stooped. It was operated with a wheel lever, like the insides had to be airtight or watertight, or maybe was under pressure. Before he could consider the safety, his hands were spinning the wheel, throwing the mechanism, metal scissoring and levering inside the frog’s belly. The wheel stopped hard, the door clunked and shifted out of its frame.

Pris whispered, “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Maybe you girls should wait outside,” he said, still covering his mouth and nose with a forearm. An awful smell hit him, something dank and utterly foul exuding from inside the frog. “Oh, God,” he said as a particularly nasty ball of something lurched up from his stomach. He kept it down.

The girls stood their ground. “Go wait outside,” he said in a growl.

Lizzy said, “You need us here.”

He cranked the door open, and a stench fell out around his feet and came up in a tickling cloud of heat. His knees went woozy; he put his hand out to steady himself, resting on the cold metal of the frog’s door frame. He gathered up a corner of his suit jacket, put it over his mouth and nose and peered inside the darkness within.