Junk magic, p.32
Junk Magic, page 32
I wasn’t sure how much of that was panic and how much was drugs, but I was pretty sure that the latter were in the mix somewhere. Because clumsy I was not, and yet I was quickly turning black and blue after bouncing around like a ping pong ball. And that was before a swinging case that I must have bumped on my way past swung back and almost knocked me off my feet.
And into something else.
I hit a case, palms out and face mushed against the side of the glass. And stayed there for a moment, panting hard. And not just because of the blow.
The case was the floor kind, but taller than me, and held something that would have probably stopped me even without any help. The contents were in the shape of a man, but larger, with areas of stretched out skin as if the musculature of a larger person had been shoved into a too small body. The skin was also discolored, partly by a tat on one arm, the bright colors of which had been smeared out of all recognition as the muscles bulged, and partly by patches of bumpy looking, grayish-black that had eaten up the chest and face. While the lower body . . .
What was left of my brain iced over. Because the creature’s entire bottom half was just . . . missing. Replaced by a mass of gray/black coils, slick and shining under the light, like a spill of oversized intestines. Or like what they were, I realized: a snarl of huge, snaky tentacles, with suckers on the bottom halves, several of which were splayed against the glass like open mouths.
And I finally realized what I found so disturbing about the little shop of horrors somebody was running: it was deliberate. The disruptor had done its thing, but it had been random, like the violence in the arena, like all battles. You were in the wrong pace at the wrong time and you got hit, simple as that.
But this was different. Somebody had deliberately done something to this man, had experimented on him, because that tattoo had not come off some otherworldly monster! This was—this was—
My thoughts cut out, because one of the suckers was moving: slowly, awkwardly, leaving a trail of something slimy behind it. The sucker contracted and relaxed, contracted and relaxed, like a tongue tasting the glass. And then the entire huge tentacle suddenly slammed against it, hard enough to crack the surface and to set an alarm blaring.
I stumbled back as the tentacle tried again, and this time managed to burst through the glass to wrap around my arm. It felt like a python, just a single slab of rippling muscle, unbelievably strong. Which was why, when I tried to jerk away, I went nowhere.
Until fire broke out in the case. Jets of it came from all corners filling the interior with flames, thickly enough to come bursting out of the shattered hole almost as far as me. I could feel the heat on my skin, while inside—
“No,” I whispered in horror, as the body went up like it had been doused with gasoline, thrashing and burning and—
And trying to pull me inside, to take me with it.
I leaned back, putting everything I had into it, which wasn’t much. And then grabbed a jagged piece of glass from the smashed case and stabbed and stabbed and kept on stabbing. Even when the tentacle went limp and the body it was attached to turned to a statue made out of carbon, a blackened, tortured memory of a living being, smoking like a demon out of hell.
My once living bond fell away, and I lurched toward the door. And while I wasn’t any more coordinated than before, I was motivated. I collected a bunch more bruises, but I didn’t care. Didn’t care if I broke something as long as I got the hell out, now, now, right freaking now!
And I did, stumbling out of the remaining maze and into an open area of tile in front of the exit.
Where I noticed a man standing by the doorway, watching me.
A very small man.
And then my tongue curled up on itself and I hit the floor, my body jerking and the cold tile grabbing my naked ass through the back of the hospital gown.
Colors danced across my vision as the hex went on and on, until I was pretty sure that my hair was fried and my insides were medium rare. Then abruptly cut out, as fast as it had come, leaving my tortured body arching upward in a spasm of agony. Until slowly, slowly, I relaxed back against the floor.
I didn’t try to move again, since I wasn’t even sure that I could.
“Get her back on the table,” someone said, and I felt myself being picked up and carried across the room.
I hit the exam table once again, the spell still rattling my bones, and for a moment, all I could see above me was white ceiling tiles. And then a face came into view. One that I didn’t believe, even though I’d seen it just a moment ago.
“Jenkins?” My numb lips somehow managed to form the word.
“You expected someone else?” He pushed his glasses up.
“I . . . didn’t expect any of this,” I rasped, too frazzled to lie.
“Yes, they never do,” he said placidly, while someone else strapped me down. I tried to turn my head to see who, but my body ignored the command. But a moment later, a burly guy came into view, wearing the same crisp white tunic and trousers that the Corps’ medics used, although I didn’t know him.
“Where are we?” I demanded hoarsely.
“Research facility,” Jenkins said absently, accepting a data pad from the medic. “The Corps has several of them, scattered about the desert, working on different things—”
“The Corps didn’t do this!” I said, with more anger in my voice than I should have showed. But I couldn’t seem to keep it out.
“No,” he agreed. “I tried to help them, but every time I suggested anything, I got those looks—you know the ones I mean.” He scrolled upward.
“I gave her the right dose,” the man began defensively. “I know I did—”
“Well, clearly not,” Jenkins said, and made a note with a stylus.
“What looks?” I said, trying to keep the conversation going while my brain sorted itself out. Which would have been easier without the sound of sizzling flesh and the smell of burnt meat from behind me.
“The same kind you get whenever you do anything less than human. Or more than, really.” He shot me an appreciative glance. “Weres are fascinating creatures.”
“It’s the same dose I give everyone,” the medic said.
“Yes, but she’s not everyone. This one is special.”
“Then . . . should I hit her again?”
“Not unless you want to kill her,” Jenkins said testily. “We’ll control her manually until time for the next dose, then up it by 10%.”
“But . . . she’s a war mage,” the orderly said, looking less than thrilled with this plan.
“Yes, a beat up one whose magic is bottomed out and who is drugged off her ass,” Jenkins said, pushing the pad into the man’s solar plexus and starting to walk away.
“Why special?” I asked, my voice a little high.
I didn’t know what the hell was happening here, but I knew that if Jenkins walked out of that door, I never would. You don’t leave your victim alive, and that was definitely what I was about to be. Another in this macabre collection, or else I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be seeing this.
Jenkins paused for a moment, the need for discretion warring with the man’s love of his own voice. The voice won and he turned around with a little smile on his face. “Gather intel, stall for time, apply a distraction . . .” he said, reciting part of the mantra we drill into recruits’ heads. “You know, I forget the fourth one. But you’re a trainer. You should know it.”
“Overpower the enemy and escape.”
“Yes, that’s it. Good advice, but I imagine it’s a little different in practice, isn’t it?”
“No shit.”
He chuckled. “I like that about you. You’re blunt to a fault. No attempts at subterfuge, no double speak, no lies. It’s refreshing.”
“Then answer the question.”
He debated it.
Then he shrugged and ambled back over, before pulling up a stool and climbing on top. It left him slightly taller than me, even with the height of the table, since I was lying down. He seemed to like that.
I guessed it was a novelty.
“Why not? We both know you’re never getting out of here,” he said, equally bluntly.
“And here is?”
“I already told you. One of the Corps’ own research facilities. I just . . . remodeled . . . the lower level. Turned it into my own little lab.”
“Why?” I couldn’t keep the horror completely out of my voice, and he frowned.
“You know that, too. We’re at war. I wanted to help, and my specialty was well designed for it. I could have given us so many advantages, so many new abilities harvested from ancient strains—”
“Like these?” I rasped. I couldn’t see much from where I was, but I didn’t need to. The leftovers of Jenkin’s “experiments” were burned into my mind.
“And more,” he agreed. “We have schools full of people who have somehow managed to hold onto talents that we’ve tried to breed out of us, but which could be damned useful now. I requested the right to do some experiments with them, to see if their power could be enhanced, possibly even brought back to full strength—”
“You wanted to experiment—on children?”
It popped out before I could stop it, and it was a mistake. He bristled. “Do you know how many mages we’re losing in the field every day?” he hissed, leaning in. “We need more men, they say it all the time, but my point was, we need better men. Enhanced ones. Ones with skills the opposition doesn’t have or know how to handle—”
“We have them—”
“You mean those “students” of yours?” he rolled his eyes and sat back. “Yes, and I’m sure we can trust them, after the life they’ve led.”
“So, you want to make it worse by experimenting on them?”
“I want to make it better, for them and for all of us! Do you think the other side isn’t trying the same thing? That they don’t have people working just as feverishly as I have been? This is an arms race, mage, and we were going to be left behind!
“But the Corps said no; that bastard Hargroves even threatened to demote me if I so much as dared to bring it up again. But when we lose this war, when these so-called gods we’re fighting come back and scorch our world to cinders, do you think your precious students will be better off? They will die, right alongside the rest of us!
“But they don’t have to. Those kids are repositories of skills that could save us all, but I wasn’t allowed to touch them—”
“But you’ve been experimenting anyway,” I said, interrupting the diatribe. “How?”
He smirked. “Because I realized that there was another great untapped repository for ancient abilities, one that nobody else seemed to have thought of. The clans.”
“What?”
He nodded proudly, mistaking my shock for admiration. “Yes, I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it earlier. But think about it—Weres don’t trust the Circle, so most of their problem children never show up in our facilities. They get vargulfed instead—” his head tilted. “Is that a word?”
I just stared at him.
“Well, no matter.” He waved it away. “In any case, I realized that I could use the cast offs from your people to mine the old strains. To suss out talents and abilities that were lost to time, except in rare individuals—”
“Weres don’t do magic,” I said harshly, my head spinning.
“Yes, but many Weres have intermarried with members of the magical community through the centuries, haven’t they? Especially in the lower ranked clans, where a mage in the family might be useful for protection or advancement. And as a result, they carry all sorts of interesting abilities, only the Were strain overrides them, represses them. They don’t know they have them!”
“So, when the Corps said no to using the students, you started abducting street kids instead, people no one would miss,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.
He didn’t bother to deny it. “What choice did I have? I was trying to save the world, mage, and I’ve done it.”
He took a small vial out of his pocket and held it up to the light. It was a pale green, and cast a sickly pallor over his face, but he regarded it with wonder. “See this? Such a little thing, but it’s going to win us the war.”
“And that is?”
He blinked at me behind his glasses. “Well, you ought to know. It’s been circulating in your veins for the last two days.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The vial was clear glass, allowing me to see that the contents had little bits of what looked like herbs in it, suspended in a syrupy liquid. It looked innocuous, just another potion in a world filled with them, like a salve or balm. But if that was what I’d been given at the grow farm, it definitely wasn’t.
“It’s distilled from fey wine,” Jenkins said, turning the vial this way and that, to catch the light. “Like punch, only better. Punch wasn’t designed to bring out latent abilities; that was just a byproduct. So, it was hit or miss, not to mention that it often made people too high to think straight. That wouldn’t work for soldiers—”
“And this will?” I croaked.
“You’ve seen the result; you tell me.”
The potion threw shifting green shadows over his face and should have given him a sinister air, even with the Mr. Magoo glasses. Only his expression didn’t allow it. His eyes were bright and his face animated, almost awed. He looked like a child delighted with a new toy; one he couldn’t believe that he’d managed to create.
“Forget crypto zoology,” he said, his voice hushed. “Pouring for hours over old bones, wondering what this or that creature might have been like. This is paleo genetics! And not just bringing back a talent or two, but an entire ancient being. One capable of feats that modern man—including modern Weres—can only dream of. Until now.
“My brew can take any old Were and turn him into—well, what you saw. And even untrained, they’re ferocious. It took the combined power of your entire lineage in the Corps to take down one, newly turned and untrained example. Can you imagine what an army of them could do?”
I didn’t have to imagine. I remembered the way that four of them had carved through a phalanx of dark mages as if they weren’t even there. It had taken seconds, and what they’d left behind hadn’t even looked human.
Gooseflesh suddenly broke out, all over my arms.
“I intend to use it to create a force of my own,” Jenkins was saying. “To deal with this war and the people in our organization who refused to act, even when I put a sword in their hands! But one problem persisted: how to control my new army? How to keep them in line when they are so much more powerful than anything else around them?”
“How do you do that?” I asked hoarsely.
“Well, up until now, I’ve relied on a charismatic leader to keep them in check, using the Were tendency to unify around an alpha. But that has had its own set of—”
“What alpha?” I asked, but Jenkins was on a roll and ignored me.
“—problems, like that damned clan he found for me, to grow the herbs I need. It was too dangerous dealing with smugglers all the time, not to mention the quality you get is often suspect. So, I thought, why not grow the stuff myself? But those bloody bastards started selling some on the side, didn’t they?”
“So, you killed them.”
“Ordered it done,” he agreed, as if admitting to mass murder was no big deal. And then he saw my expression, which must not have been as blank as I’d thought. “Don’t look at me like that! They did the same thing, you know, exiling and then attacking a bunch of their own people who didn’t want to be involved with illicit drugs. Killed dozens of them, from what I understand. So, they weren’t lily white.”
“And the alpha?” I said as casually as I could manage. “Did you kill him, too?”
He looked surprised. “Of course not. I might need him again. I will require Weres for my new army, and they don’t trust humans easily, if at all. I had to find someone they’d follow—but even he got fooled. They played him, didn’t they?
“Or perhaps he played me.” Jenkins scowled. “You can’t trust anyone anymore. But I couldn’t risk brewing my creation here. I was almost caught smuggling in a body a few months back—practically had a heart attack when one of the guards wanted to check my trunk! My trunk—can you imagine?”
“I can’t think why they wouldn’t trust you,” I managed to say without irony.
He nodded vigorously, and then had to push his glasses back up “Exactly; I’ve been here for decades; they all know me. But war! It changes everything. I managed to talk my way out of that one, but what about the next time? I couldn’t risk it. So, I’d go out whenever the clan harvested a new crop and brew up a batch on site, where they were also supposed to store it for me. But I suppose they thought I wouldn’t miss a little here or there, and started their own damned business! And I couldn’t have my potion going to junkies on the street!”
“Junkies like Colin,” I said steadily.
“Yes,” he sighed. “It was inevitable that they’d sell to a Were eventually, despite being informed that it was poisonous to your kind. I told them that to keep them from using it themselves, but I guess they didn’t care about anyone else. Or else they sold it to someone who sold it on to him. And, of course, it brought my new creation to the Corps’ attention.”
“How terrible for you.”
“Yes, it was,” he said, too self-involved to notice the anger in my voice that I could no longer fully control. “Luckily, they turned his body over to me, as it was my area of specialty. And they didn’t have the manpower to put a whole team on the investigation, just you—”
