Текст книги "Hard Spell"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

  Then inside the pump house a woman started screaming, and suddenly I was running.

Karl was only a couple of steps behind me when I reached the door. As I'd figured, it was steel. I tried the knob, in case Sligo was really confident, but it seemed he'd at least locked the door.

  I backed up as far as I could, looked at Karl and pointed at the lower hinge. Then I said, "On three," and took careful aim at the upper one. Inside, the screaming continued.

  Part of my brain was wondering if I was going to get a face full of ricocheted buckshot as I said, "One, two–"

  The two shots melded into one big boom. The hinge I'd fired at was in pieces, and a quick glance showed me that Karl's was, too. The metal itself had buckled around the impact areas.

  I grabbed the edge of the door where it was protruding and yanked, hard as I could. That pulled it loose from the frame a little. Then Karl got a grip further down, and together we tore that thing free and slammed it to the concrete at our feet with a clang that I could feel more than hear, since I was temporarily deaf from the shotgun blasts.

  As soon as the door came down I became almost blind, as well as deaf. My God, it was bright in there, and my eyes were still adjusted to the semi-dark of outside. But if I stayed put, I was a dead man, so I dived at an angle where I hoped the doorway was, rolled, and came up on one knee – which hurt a lot more than it used to. I felt more than saw Karl do something similar in the other direction.

  If Sligo threw any magic at us in the next few seconds, we'd never know it until too late. But either Vollman was on top of his game, or Sligo wasn't, since nothing came our way as my eyes adjusted. Now I could see that the glaring light came from at least a dozen glowing globes hanging from the ceiling, supplemented by several portable spotlights whose glare bounced off the walls and ceiling every which way. Sligo must have installed all of this; I was pretty sure it wasn't part of the original pump house blueprinte'd at l>

  I didn't take time to gawk around, but your eyes can take in a lot of information really fast, especially if you're as keyed up as I was. As I scanned the room in search of something to kill, I was dimly aware that the usual spellcasting paraphernalia was all over the place: incense burners, gongs of different sizes, tall candles in metal holders, the whole nine yards. But the real show was up front.

  The building seemed at least twice as big as you'd think from looking at the outside, which I assumed was more of Sligo's magic. At the far end of the room, three long tables were set up, forming an open rectangle with the open end facing the back wall. They were covered with cloths of black and red with arcane symbols woven into them, and on top of those were all the tools and toys the modern occultist can't seem to do without: bowls, flagons, more candles, knives, and so forth. But you could tell the middle table was special. That was where he'd placed, in an ornate brass holder, a thick, oldlooking book with a cracked leather cover.

  Looked like I'd found the Opus Mago at last.

  Taking in all that took only a few seconds, and then my attention was riveted to what was dangling from the ceiling. Or rather, who.

  A length of chain was suspended over the middle of the open rectangle, tied around a rafter. From the chain hung, head down, the nude, bleeding form of a woman. Her legs were tied at ankles and knees with rope that sparkled in the light, as if shot through with some kind of metal filings. The same stuff had been used to bind her wrists, and a length of it ran from there to attach tightly to a ring affixed into the stone floor.

  The woman had fallen silent when Karl and I burst in, but it wasn't hard to figure why she'd been screaming. She looked to be bleeding from three points, in a line between her groin and breasts. The wounds were three symbols carved into her body, probably by the silver-bladed knife in the hand of the man who stood nearby. He was giving Karl and me the kind of look that most men reserve for Jehovah's Witnesses who show up during the Super Bowl.

  I assumed the man was the one I'd started calling the Evil Wizard Sligo. But the woman I knew for certain: it was Christine.

  I brought the shotgun up to aim, but Sligo took two fast steps sideways that put Christine's body between him and my gun barrel, using her as a shield. Well, nobody said that Evil Wizards have to be brave. Off to my left, I saw Karl moving forward slowly and at an angle, probably maneuvering for a clear shot. I shuffled to the right, with the same idea in mind.

  Then Sligo shouted a couple of words in a language I didn't recognize and brought enough of himself out from behind Christine to make a quick throwing motion in my direction, before ducking back.

  Motherfucker throws like a girl.

  But I guess form doesn't count for much in magic, because an orb of fire about the size of a beach ball appeared in midair, moving fast and coming right at me. I had just enough time to realize that I was about to die when the fireball dissolved into nothing, about twenty feet from me.

  It seemed that Vollman was on the job.

  I took another couple of slow steps, waiting for Sligo to expose enough of himself for a shot that wouldn't endanger Christine.

  Don't look at her. Focus. Focus on sending this bastard to Hell, then you can help her. Focus.

  Sligo stuck his head out from the other side of Christine's dangling form and repeated the throwing motion, with the identical result. The ball of fire flew at Karl, but dissipated before it reached him.

  Sligo wasn't done yet. He made a cryptic gesture at me while muttering something I couldn't hear, and then a dozen knives were in the air, as if they'd been thrown by twelve expert hands, all right at me.

  But then that wave of edged steel suddenly parted, and I heard the knives bounce and clatter harmlessly off the stone wall behind me.

  I was closer to the altar now.

  He sent Karl a swarm of what looked like hundreds of bees, buzzing like a madman's dream – I assumed they were the African killer variety. By the time they reached Karl, the vicious insects had been transformed into drops of water. The only harm he suffered, far as I could tell, was getting a little of it in his eyes.

  Then Sligo dispatched a blast of hurricane-force wind at both of us, which, just for an instant, was strong enough to drive me back a step, before it turned into a gentle breeze.

  Go, Vollman.

  I'd made a couple more steps forward when Sligo's arm snaked out from behind Christine. His hand held the silver-coated dagger, and he placed the point right over her heart.

  "Hold! Both of you!" he yelled. I stopped at once, and saw Karl do the same.

  After a few seconds, Sligo slid out from behind Christine, but the dagger point never lost contact with her flesh. I noticed she was still bleeding from the three wounds he'd inflicted on her earlier.

  Now I got my first good look at Sligo, aka Richard Vollman. He didn't look anything special, but I knew from experience that Evil Wizards are rarely nine feet tall, and they hardly ever have horns and a tail. Sligo looked to be about twenty, which I guess was his age when Dad lost control of his appetite and turned him. Apart from the hair, which was the same slicked-back widow's peak as his old man, I didn't see much family resemblance. He was slim, maybe six feet, dressed in tight jeans and a white dress shirt with the sleeves folded back a couple of times. Guess he hadn't figured that becoming the world's first super-vampire was a fancy dress occasion.

  Sligo was breathing like someone who's just sprinted a hundred yards. He pointed a finger at me, and I noticed his hand was shaking a little as he said, "You! How is it that a couple of miserable fucking blood bags like you two can suddenly work magic? If you had the Talent, either of you, I'd have smelled it on you earlier. How?"

  Then a voice I recognized spoke from behind me.

  "They do not perform magic. But I do."

  Sligo's eyes widened for an instant, before narrowing into slits.

  "I should have known." He nodded slowly. "I should have known you'd interfere, even find some pathetic warmbloods to do your bidding."

  Sligo gestured with his free hand toward the central altar, the book resting atop it like a big, poisonous toad. "But not this time, old man. You can't stop me! And when the transformation is complete, the first thing I'm going to do is come for you – at high noon. I'll find you, cowering from the sun in your pathetic box of earth, and then I'll drag you outside and watch you burn!"

  "No, Richard," Vollman said. His voice sounded as full of sorrow as his son's was full of hate. "It must stop here. It must stop tonight."

  Vollman walked briskly forward, spreading his arms like wings. Sligo withdrew the knife from Christine's breast and began to walk toward his father.

  I realized he'd just given me a clean shot, and I wanted to end this fucker's life more than I wanted my next breath, and I brought the gun up to kill him, but Sligo, even while moving toward his father, made a complex gesture in the air – and this tme Vollman was too preoccupied to block the spell.

  What I can only describe as a blast of pure magical energy blasted me off my feet and sent me careening backward, like somebody in a wind tunnel – until I was stopped by my impact with the pump house wall.

  Karl was hit by the same force, but his luck was even worse. Instead of slamming flat into the rear wall as I was, his body slammed into one of the broad stone pillars that held up the roof, and I thought I saw his spine bend backward with the impact just before the wall of the pump house hit me like a train.

  I'd had enough sense to try to break my impact the same way you break a fall in judo: arms spread, palms flat and a little behind me. Maybe it helped a little, I don't know. But that stone wall hit me harder than I've ever been hit in my life and the shock and sorrow I felt for Karl was lost in the wave of unconsciousness that grabbed me and squeezed me and bore me down into the blackness.

  I don't know how long I was down there in the dark. I opened my eyes and tried to get them to focus. I was sitting on the stone floor, my back against the wall that had so abruptly stopped my little journey through the air. I hurt in places I hadn't even known I had.

  My vision came back into focus slowly. The first thing I saw were my hands. One was in my lap, and the other was limp on the floor next to me. Both palms were scraped and oozing blood. I remembered something about trying to break my fall, except I hadn't been falling, exactly. Something about judo. Whatever my bright idea had been, it didn't seem to have worked real well.

  I tried to raise my head, and my vision blurred again. A word floated out of the part of my brain that was still functioning: concussion.

  Every street cop gets knocked around some while on the job, and I'd been concussed before, according to a couple of ER doctors. But this concussion, if that's what it was, compared to the earlier ones the way a car crash is like falling off your tricycle.

  I tried to keep my head from flopping back down, and succeeded, more or less. When I could see again, I found that I was looking at Karl. He was lying on his side, maybe fifty feet to my left, one arm outstretched, fingers hooked into a claw. The middle of his body was blocked from my vision by the pillar that he'd slammed into. Karl didn't move at all, and I was too far away to tell if he was breathing.

  I turned my head, which not only caused another loss of focus but brought on a wave of vertigo that was more like a tsunami. I'd have puked, if there'd been any food in my stomach. When had I last eaten – breakfast? Was that today, or yesterday?

  After a while I thought I could see again, but maybe I was just hallucinating. At the far side of the room, in front of that three-sided altar, two figures were struggling. They should have been Vollman and Sligo – I mean, who else could they be?

  But what I was seeing, or imagining, didn't look like the two vampire/wizards – not as I remembered them. My brain must have been scrambled but good, because it seemed like I was looking a couple of Roman-style gladiators, shuffling around on the blood-soaked dirt of some arena, hacking at each other with big, heavy swords and defending with manhole-size shields. Roman fucking gladiators – but their faces were those of Vollman and Sligo.

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to take in any more evidence that I'd gone totally fucking insane. But then I opened them again, and found that I was still seeing things that weren't there – that couldn't be there.

  How else to explain that dusty Western street, with Sligo and Vollman dressed in outfits that belonged in some particularly gritty Spaghetti Western? They stood maybe thirty feet apart, eyes narrowed, tense hands hovering over the handles of their holstered guns, while the wind blew a single, forlorn tumbleweed between them.

  I went away again for a while, and when I returned, it looked like the Western theme was still clinging to my subconscious. That would explain why I could see Sligo, in breechcloth and war paint, razor-edged tomahawk in one hand, locked in combat with a saber-wielding U.S. Cavalry trooper who looked an awful lot like his old man.

  I closed my eyes once more, and started to wonder if maybe I'd died from hitting the wall, and Hell was a series of bad TV reruns. When I looked again, at least the channel had changed, because a U.S. Marine resembling Sligo was desperately trying to drive the bayonet on his M-1 through the body of Vollman, who was dressed as a soldier of the Rising Sun, a samurai sword held high in both hands.

  This series of fantasy visions seemed to go on forever, lending further support to my I'm-deadand-in-Hell theory. I remember Vollman and Sligo, in gray and blue, respectively, going at each other on a Civil War battlefield, then it was on to a bloody no man's land of World War I, followed by a vicious gang fight in some urban jungle, and I'm pretty sure we all ended up at the Alamo, with Mexican soldier Vollman contending viciously with Sligo, who was wearing a coonskin cap and swinging a Kentucky rifle like a club. Then, mercifully, I passed out again.

  I was brought back to reality, if that's what it was, by the scream. I forced my eyes open and saw Sligo, dressed as he'd been when we first broke in, standing over the still form of Vollman. There wasn't a mark on either one of them that I could see.

  The scream was coming from Sligo. Fists clenched, head thrown back, face gleaming with sweat, he stood over the body of the father he'd hated for so long. It went on for what seemed like long time, the scream did; it combined elation with rage and, if I'm not mistaken, a pretty fair dose of grief, too. All in one great bellow.

  Then he was done. Panting, he wiped his face with his sleeve, then looked at his watch. At once, he turned back to the altar.

  I tried to concentrate on what he was doing. At the moment, I didn't give a shit if he became a super-vampire or the world tiddlywinks champ, as long as he didn't do anything more to hurt Christine. But I kept remembering that the other four vampires who'd been material for this ritual all had to die. First he'd carved his magical symbols on them, as specified by the Opus Mago, then he'd killed them. I assume the book said to do that, too.

  Sligo stood behind the altar and went through the ritual. He read aloud from the Opus Mago sometimes, he rang bells, mixed powders and liquid in bowls, burned incense, and generally looked like he was having a great old time. Big fucking deal.

  Then he picked up the silver-bladed knife.

  That finally galvanized me into action. Or as much action as I was capable of, which turned out to be not much. I looked for the shotgun, but couldn't see where I'd dropped it, even in the glaringly bright light Sligo had brought to the pump house. I remembered the Beretta on my belt and fumbled for it, only to find the holster empty. Must have been knocked loose when I'd smashed into the wall. The pistol had to be on the floor close by, but every time I moved my head in search of it, the vertigo returned and my vision started acting funky again.

  Sligo was holding the dagger reverently in both hands now, reading an incantation from the book in that incomprehensible language. Even in my fucked-up mental state, I figured it was only a matter of time before he'd stop chanting and start cutting – the cutting was going to be on my little girl.

  I fumbled my hands into my jacket pockets, an operation that seemed to take an hour. I was searching for my phone, with the vague notion of calling 911. I couldn't find the damn thing, and part me knew it didn't matter, really. There was nobody I could call who would possibly get here in–

  The fingers of my right hand brushed metal. Not the phone – something smaller, and much thinner. Round and curved on one side, jagged on the other. It felt like... part of a coin.

  Kulick's amulet.

  The one I was supposed to hold while saying his full name five times, once I'd found Sligo.

  The one that he promised would bring him to me.

  Well, I'd located Sligo, at last. Guess it was time to make the call.

  I wrapped my fingers around that slim little halfcircle, and tried to remember. Four names. Okay, Kulick, I knew. First name was... George. That's two. The true name, his wizard name... it had sounded like something out of a science fiction novel. Trasis? No, Thraxis. George Thraxis Kulick. But there was another one, another name.

  At the altar, Sligo had stopped chanting. Squinting, I could see that he had turned away from the book, and was facing Christine.

  Herman? No, nothing so normal. Something a little weird, kind of like Herman, but...

  Harmon.

  George Harmon Thraxis Kulick

  Say it out loud, dummy!

  "George Harmon Thraxis Kulick."

  Again.

  "George Harmon Thraxis Kulick."

  Three more. Hurry!

  Sligo walked toward Christine, the dagger in his hands.

  "Georgeharmonthraxiskulickgeorgeharmonthraxiskulickgeorgeharmonthraxiskulick!"

  I couldn't see the altar anymore, because something was blocking my vision. A leg, a woman's leg in a skirt. It moved now, the woman stepping forward, away from me. I raised my head higher, fought the vertigo, made my fucking eyes focus.

  It was Rachel. Or rather, it wasn't.

  George Kulick had joined the party at last.

  Rachel's head turned back, looked at me, and after a moment, nodded. Kulick's voice said, "A bargain made is a bargain kept. That's the law."

  At the altar, Christine screamed.

  Rachel Proctor collapsed bonelessly to the floor, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. The spirit of George Kulick had left her body, at long last, to go... where?

  I made my eyes focus on Sligo, and almost wished I hadn't. He'd jabbed the silver blade into Christine's lower belly, bringing forth another scream, and now he was adjusting his grip, with the clear intention of pulling the knife upward toward Christine's breastbone, opening her up from groin to chest.

  I closed my eyes. I couldn't watch, couldn't bear it. The only hope I had left was that she would die quickly, become truly dead, and go someplace where there was no more pain, and no more fear.

  And for this I'd "saved" her from leukemia.

  Christine, I couldn't protect you, and I'm sorry, baby, so sorry. But as long as I have breath in my body, I will dedicate myself to taking vengeance on this motherfucker, I swear it.

  I guess I was crying, I don't know, but my head came up at the sound of another scream. Because this one was in a man's voice.

  Sligo had withdrawn the knife from Christine's belly without cutting any further. He had dropped it on the altar, and was clutching both hands to the sides of his head, as he screeched "No! Get out! Leave me now – I command you!"

  In my concussed state, it took me a few seconds to figure things out, but then I knew who Sligo was talking to: George Kulick.

  And now I knew where Kulick had gone when he left Rachel – inside Sligo. He was taking possession of Sligo's body exactly as he had Rachel's – except that Kulick didn't hate Rachel when he'd assumed control of her. She'd been merely a tool. A tool for vengeance.

  I don't know why Kulick was able to invade without any resistance, unless Sligo had used up all his psychic energy in destroying his father, and had none left to protect himself. But Kulick was in there now, and Sligo was clearly losing the battle for control over his own body. He dropped to his knees with the strain of trying to expel Kulick from inside him, then fell over on his face. But after, I don't know, a minute or two, Sligo's screaming and writhing stopped. He stood, slowly. I thought I could see something different in his face, but I was too far away and too fucked-up to say for sure.

  I know for certain what happened next, though. Sligo's hand slowly reached out to the altar for the silver-bladed dagger. I had a moment's panic, thinking that he had somehow defeated Kulick, after all, and was planning to take the knife to Christine again.

  I needn't have worried. He never even looked toward Christine.

  That's not to say that the dagger didn't see a lot of use in the following few minutes – all of it upon the person of Richard Vollman, also known as Sligo.

  I don't think I want to tell you all the things Kulick made Sligo do with that blade. In my job, I see a lot of blood and sadism, but this would have made Satan himself throw up.

  Karl told me once about an article he'd read describing Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Paris. I gather that back in the day those sickos used to put on performances that were the ancestors of our modern-day splatter films. What was going on at the front of the pump house was like that – except none of the blood was fake. And there was a lot of blood.

  After a while, I couldn't look any more. You'd think I would be full of vengeful satisfaction over what was happening to that motherfucker, who'd tried to kill me, my partner, and my little girl. At first, yeah, that's pretty much how I felt. But the things Sligo was being made to do to himself with that knife – before I looked away, I actually started to feel some pity for him. Not a lot, but some.

  I assumed this was all going to end by Sligo plunging the silver dagger into his own black heart, achieving true death, and by then glad to get it. But I'd underestimated George Kulick's appetite for revenge.

  Kulick didn't make Sligo kill himself. Instead, when the last full measure of vengeance, short of death, had finally been extracted, he forced Sligo to fling the dagger out of reach – probably so that he couldn't use it for self-destruction.

  Then Kulick just – left.

  I happened to be looking at the precise moment when George Kulick's spirit left Sligo's body. I saw a brief ripple in the air just over where Sligo lay on the blood-soaked floor, and I thought that might be Kulick's departure. Then Sligo started screaming, and I was certain.

  I call it "screaming," but what Sligo was doing sounded more like loud croaking, and it just went on and on. It's hard to scream when you don't have a tongue, or lips or... well, you get the idea.

  I don't know where Kulick went, except that he never returned. He'd saidsomething, back at the parking garage, about being intrigued by the afterlife. I guess he went off to see for himself.

  Fuck both of them. I needed to reach Christine, who was still tied and hanging upside down from the ceiling, bleeding from the stomach puncture as well as the three symbols carved into her flesh. I had to get her loose, and find help for her. Hell, everybody left alive in that room needed help, including me. I tried to look for my cell phone, but every turn of my head brought the vertigo back. Fuck the phone, then.

  Karl still lay in the position he'd landed in. It didn't look like he was still among the living , but I needed to know for sure. I tried to stand, and fell forward on my face. Tried again, with the same result. I'd decided to crawl, all the way to Karl and then to Christine, when I saw Rachel Proctor stir.

  I hadn't even been sure she was alive.

Rachel moved her legs a little, then a little more. Then she gave the kind of groan you might hear from somebody waking up after a three-day bender. I managed to croak, "Rachel." Even that much made my head throb.

  She started at my voice, then slowly rolled over until she was facing me, from maybe ten feet away.

  Her eyes were open. They were Rachel's gray eyes, and they were open and they looked sane. I felt my heart lift a little, for the first time since I'd burst into this accursed place.

  Rachel blinked a few times, then her gaze went vague, as if she was listening for something. "Kulick," she whispered, looking at me. "Is he really...?"

  "Yeah, Rachel, he's gone… For good, I think."

  "Thank the Goddess," she said, sounding like she meant it. She sat up slowly, and looked around the part of the pump house that was in her view. Fortunately, her back was to the altar area and the atrocities it contained, and she hadn't turned that way yet.

  "Where are we, Stan?" she asked. "And why is it so damn bright in here?"

  Sligo had stopped his inhuman bleating a little while ago. Maybe he'd passed out from blood loss. But now he gave another of those hoarse-sounding croaks that were his version of a scream.

  "Aaah!" Rachel jumped, if you can jump sitting down, then started turning to look behind her. "What the fuck was–"

  "Rachel! Look at me!"

  She turned back quickly. "What is it Stan? What's wrong?"

  "Don't look back there, yet. Please."

  "Why? What's–" She started to turn again.

  "Rachel!"

  God, that made my head throb.

  She looked at me again, eyes wide with concern.

  "What, Stan? What's the–"

  "Rachel, I'm not... tracking too well. I'm concussed, pretty bad. Maybe I can't... explain stuff as well as normal, okay?"

  "Sure, but if you're concussed–"

  "Will you fucking listen to me?" Bad idea, yelling. Oh, God, my head… "Sorry, I'm sorry, but there's something... behind you, that I don't... want you to see, yet. It's what's making that... sound. There's no danger, honest."

  "All right, Stan. Whatever you say." Rachel spoke in the soothing tones you use with a lunatic. Who knows – maybe she was right.

  "Short version: we're in the pump house, Lake Scranton Dam. Sligo... guy Kulick was after, was gonna do some big ritual, become a super-vampire."

  "A what? A super... what?"

  "Later. This is... short version, okay? When ick got here, he left your body... went into Sligo's. That's the guy... tortured Kulick, remember that?"

  "Remember it? I lived it, through Kulick's memories."

  "Right, sorry. Okay, so Kulick left you, then... possessed... Sligo. Took control. Then – payback time."

  "You mean, he...? Oh, dear Goddess, no!"

  "Yeah. He made Sligo... use a silver knife on himself. It's bad, Rachel – real bad. Then Kulick split... left Sligo still alive. That's him you hear. I think he's trying to scream."

  "Stan, we've got to help the poor man–"

  "Might not say... 'poor man,' if you knew… But we'll help him, in a minute. First, think you can help me... sit up?"

  "Sure. Come on." Rachel got one arm around my shoulders and lifted. I assisted as much as I could, and then I was sitting up again. The vertigo came back, but then receded. Progress, I guess.

  "Now, check on Karl," I said. "Please."

  "Karl? Your partner?"

  "Over there." I pointed. "Behind the pillar. I think maybe he's…" I couldn't finish the sentence.

  Rachel said, "Can you stay upright by yourself?"

  "Think so," I said. "If not, doesn't matter. Not far… to fall. Now go."

  She hustled over to where Karl lay so still. I saw her press two fingers against his neck, frown, then try another spot.

  No pulse. He's gone. Jeez, Karl, goddamn fucking–

  "Stan? He's alive."

  With an effort, I pulled myself out of my wallow. "What? You sure?"

  "I'm getting a pulse, but it's weak, and fast. He's hurt bad, Stan. I think his... back is broken, and he's been bleeding from the nose and mouth. Internal injuries. He needs a hospital, and quick!"

  "See if you can find my phone," I said. "It's around here... someplace. Gotta be. Must've been jarred loose, when I hit the wall."

  Rachel started casting about the floor, looking. At least, it wasn't hard to see in there, with all of Sligo's fucking lights.

  "I don't see it, Stan. Are you sure you had it with you?"

  "Yeah, I had it... oh, shit." I just remembered that I'd slipped the phone into my right hip pocket. It was so thin, and I already hurt all over anyway, I didn't even notice I'd been sitting on the damn thing. I reached back and pulled it out with clumsy fingers.

  The phone had taken the full impact of my body against the wall. It was nothing more than cracked and broken junk. "Fuck!" I threw it aside, then looked at Rachel.

  "Can't you do some... I dunno... healing magic, get him stabilized, until we get... paramedics here?"

  She shook her head sadly. "I've got none of my gear with me, Stan, and no spells prepared in advance. For the moment, I'm all out of magic. I'm sorry."

  "Shit." I tried to think, but my head hurt so much, and the vertigo kept coming and going, coming and going.

  "Rachel."

  "Yes?"

  "My weapon's... here someplace. Two weapons, actually – pistol and shotgun. See if you can find the pistol, okay?"

  "All right."

  Rachel got slowly to her feet, tottered for a few steps, then began to walk around this part of the room, eyes on the floor. "Okay, found it."

  "Bring it over here, will you?"

  In a moment she was kneeling next to me. She handed me the Beretta, and I checked the loads. Silver. Good. That was what I'd thought, but I wasn't trusting my memory for anything, at the moment. I replaced the clip, then worked the action to bring a round into the chamber.