His Father's eyes

CHAPTER 14

The coyote’s snarls and the snapping of his teeth reached me clearly in the hallway, reminding me-as if I could have forgotten-how flimsy the bathroom door was. The single-wide quaked with the were’s panicked attempts to escape his prison. I hoped he would exhaust himself before he broke a bone or gave himself a concussion.

I pulled out my wallet and managed to extract Jacinto Amaya’s business card while maintaining my grip on the doorknob. I retrieved my flip phone from my jacket pocket and dialed the number he had scrawled on the back of the card.

He picked up after two rings.

“Amaya. Who’s this?”

“It’s Jay Fearsson. Your friend attacked me, and now I have him trapped in his bathroom.”

“Fearsson? What the hell are you talking about? What friend?”

“Gary Hacker.”

“Hacker attacked you? Is he all right? Did you hurt him?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” I said, my voice rising.

“Did you hurt him?” Amaya asked again. Even through the thin connection, I could hear the steel in his tone.

“I made every effort not to.”

“What happened? What did you say to him?”

“Nothing! We were talking about what had been done to him, and I asked about the man who’s been controlling his changes. And at that point we both felt a pulse of magic. Next thing I know, he shifts and attacks me.”

“He shifted? So he attacked you in his animal form?”

“That’s right.”

“Damn.” I heard Amaya exhale, though the sound was nearly drowned out by the snarls and thrashing coming from the bathroom. “Where are you?”

“We’re in Hacker’s single-wide; I have him locked in the bathroom.”

“The bathroom!” Amaya repeated, sounding angry.

“It’s the one room in his place without a window,” I said.

Amaya was silent for so long, I began to wonder if the call had been dropped. But then he said, “Yes, I understand. Thank you, Jay.”

“I don’t know what to do with him,” I said. “He’s trying to get out, and I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself. I’m also afraid that if I leave, he’ll find a way out of the single-wide. There’s no telling what kind of trouble he could get into.”

“Someone cast a spell to make him turn,” Amaya said, still catching up with the conversation. “How did that person know what you and Hacker were talking about?”

“That’s an excellent question. I have no idea. But he did. Or she. Maybe it was the same woman who spoke to me before Solana’s blew up. Listen, Mister Amaya, I can’t stay here all day waiting for Hacker to pass out or shift back to his human form. I don’t know what to do.”

“What makes you think that I have answers for you?”

“He’s your friend. I could have shot him, or used an attack spell on him. I didn’t. But you set up this meeting, and it’s gone to hell. And you hired me to do a lot more than pet-sitting.”

Another pause, and then, “I’ll send a man.”

“Thank you.” I started to close my phone, but heard him say, “Jay.”

“I’m here.”

“They wouldn’t have been watching Hacker. They control him. They don’t see him as a threat.”

A cold feeling crept down my spine, like a bead of sweat. “Which means they’re watching me.”

“Night and day, I’d assume.”

“Right. Thanks.”

I ended the call and leaned against the wall, which shuddered every time the coyote threw himself against the door. The impacts were slowing; Hacker was wearing himself out. I figured that right around the time Amaya’s man arrived, I wouldn’t need him anymore.

As I waited, I considered what my next move might be. I needed to speak with Namid; with all that had happened in the past two days, I was more alarmed than ever by his failure to materialize the last time I called for him. Had he refused to answer my summons because he knew that others would overhear our conversation? Had something happened to him, making it impossible for him to communicate with me? Days ago, the very idea would have seemed impossible; not anymore.

I also needed to get back to my dad. He was under attack, like I was. But why?

I could hear him in my head. I don’t matter, he had said, so many times that the words lost their meaning. But not to him. The boy is not for you, he had said as well.

Did he know I was in danger before I did?

Sooner than I would have expected, I heard a car pull up outside. Of course, a few minutes before, the noise from within the bathroom had stopped. The coyote was probably sleeping soundly, harmless as a puppy.

The door to the single-wide opened, and Rolon stepped inside. He carried an oversized handgun; I didn’t recognize the model. After surveying the living room, he peered down the hallway and spotted me.

“Amigo,” he said.

“Hey, Rolon.” I nodded toward the weapon he carried. “You do understand that Jacinto wants this guy protected, not shot, right?”

“It’s a tranquilizer. One shot, and Hacker will be out for hours.”

I frowned. “Is that safe?”

“It is if he’s still a doggie. If he’s human again, I shouldn’t need it, right?”

It made sense.

I pushed away from the wall and walked out into the living room. “I think he’s out already,” I said. “But just in case, keep that thing handy.”

He grinned.

I crossed to the door, and as I pulled it open, Rolon said, “Jacinto sent a message.”

I exhaled, turned. No doubt I’d broken some unspoken rule by calling his cell. “Yeah?”

“He says, ‘When the time comes to fight, don’t go in alone. Call and you’ll have backup.’”

Better than what I was expecting. I nodded once. “Tell him, thanks.”

I left the single-wide, climbed back into the Z-ster, which was oven hot, and drove out of Buckeye, intending to make my way to Wofford. There was no direct route to my dad’s from Hacker’s place, and the closer I got to Phoenix, the worse the traffic would be. So I took the scenic route, hoping it would prove quicker. I wound up on a lonely stretch of road known as the Sun Valley Parkway, which cuts northward through the desert from I-10 a couple of miles west of Buckeye, before heading east back toward the city on the north side of the regional park. In another ten or fifteen miles it would intersect with the Phoenix-Wickenburg Highway, which I could take to my dad’s trailer. The parkway was popular with bikers of all stripes-cyclists as well as motorcycle enthusiasts-and it was one of the prettier stretches of road in the Phoenix area.

Huge saguaro cacti stood like sentinels beside clusters of palo verdes and catclaw acacias, desert creosote and brittlebush, barrel cactus and several species of chollas. Beyond the cacti and shrubs, the White Tank Mountains rose from the desert plain, their peaks and ridges like the cutting edge of a bread knife. Ravens soared overhead, black as coal against the azure sky, and a hawk circled in the distance, nearer to the mountains.

I had passed a couple of guys on fancy road bikes in the first mile or two outside of Buckeye, but after that I had the highway to myself, and once more I thought about the attack at Solana’s, what was being done to my dad, and, now, my encounter with Hacker. It all came back to Flight 595. I was sure of it. But why, and how?

Maybe ten miles out from Buckeye, a car appeared in my rearview mirror, coming up on me fast. It was a silver sedan, not a make or model I recognized. And I knew every make and model there was.

The windshield glass was tinted top to bottom, which was illegal in this state. Then again, there was no plate on the front of the car, so I didn’t know where it was from. All I knew was I couldn’t see the driver at all, and that made me nervous.

I floored the gas and the Z-ster leaped forward. Still, the silver sedan continued to gain on me.

And then the magic hit.

Dark mystes, I’d learned when battling Cahors, liked to go for the heart. That’s what this one did. It felt as though someone had reached a taloned hand into my chest, taken hold of my heart, and squeezed with all his might. This was what it must have been like to have a heart attack. I clutched at my chest and eased off the gas. My car shimmied, slowed, and drifted off the road, through the shoulder, and into the sand and rock and dry brush that lined the highway.

The sedan slowed as well, pulling onto the shoulder and halting.

I wasn’t going to sit there and let them finish me. Despite the agony in my chest, I stepped on the gas again. The wheels spun, spitting up rocks and sand before finally gaining traction and fishtailing out of the desert back on to the road, a cloud of red dust in my wake.

The sedan glided after me, and whoever was gripping my heart seemed to give a good hard twist. I gasped, afraid I was on the verge of blacking out.

Namid had once told me how to block attacks like these. I grunted a warding spell. The pain, my heart, and a sheath of magic around it.

The crafting hadn’t worked very well when I tried it against Cahors, but I’d gotten stronger, more skilled. As soon as I released the magic, the pain in my chest vanished. And before the bastard could attack me again, I cast a second spell, encasing the car in magical armor.

The moment I released the magic, the sedan sped up, until its front end was right on my bumper. Literally.

I’d had enough of him, too. I slowed, forcing him to do the same, and then I punched it. That sedan, whatever kind it might have been, was more than a match for the Z-ster, but I did manage to put a few yards between us. And then I cast a third time.

As simple as you please: the road, his tire, a nail.

I heard the blow-out, watched in my rearview mirror as the sedan swerved and slowed. The driver managed to stop without flipping over or going off the road, but by then I was doing one hundred and ten, with no intention of slowing down.

I chanced a grin, knowing that this one time, I’d gotten the better of these dark sorcerers who had been screwing around with me for the past several days.

“That was well done, Ohanko.”

I practically jumped out of my skin. The Z-ster veered dangerously, and I slowed down.

“Damnit, Namid! You can’t surprise me like that when I’m driving!”

“I am sorry. Should I leave you?”

“No! Where have you been? I tried to speak with you, and you didn’t answer, not even to tell me that you don’t like being summoned.”

“I do not.”

“I know.”

“When was this?”

I hesitated. “Yesterday afternoon.” Had it only been yesterday?

“Why did you summon me?”

“Because Billie and I were nearly blown up by a magical bomb.”

I chanced a peek his way and found him staring back at me, his waters placid, his eyes as bright as searchlights.

“All right, she was nearly blown up. It seems I wasn’t in any danger at all. Not then, at least.”

“You are now.”

“So I’ve gathered. What is this about, Namid?”

“What do you think it is about?”

If I’d thought it would do any good at all, I would have pulled out my Glock and shot him. I hated it-hated it-when he answered my questions with questions. He reminded me of a teacher I’d had in high school, the most annoying geometry teacher on the planet, who had responded exactly the same way to all of our questions. I couldn’t stand the guy. Learned a helluva lot of geometry, though.

“I think I’m caught up in a magical war between dark sorcerers and whatever you’d call people like us.”

“I am a runemyste,” Namid said in a voice like a hard rain. “And you are a runecrafter. Or a weremyste, if you prefer. It is these others who should bear names of a different sort.”

I glanced his way. “So you admit that there are others.”

The myste frowned. “Would it not be foolish of me to do otherwise? I have said many times, have I not, that my kind guard against the use of dark magic in your world.”

“Yes, you’ve said that, but . . .” I shook my head, the frustration of the past few days spilling over. “But you say it in a way that makes it sound like dark magic is a random occurrence, that you’re here to guard against men like Cahors, who present a threat that’s real, but isolated.”

“And so I am.”

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

“I do not understand what you are asking.”

I couldn’t tell if the myste was being purposefully obtuse, or if this was simply the hazard of communicating with a centuries-old being who saw the world in a fundamentally different way. On most occasions, this would have been when I threw up my hands and surrendered. Not today.

“I’m asking why you’ve concealed from me the fact that your war with dark weremystes is ongoing. I’m asking why you’ve effectively lied to me for more than seven years.”

“I do not believe I have,” he said, his waters riffling as from a scything wind.

“There’s a war going on.”

I looked at him again, though I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road for too long. I could imagine dark sorcerers coming after me in a whole fleet of those sleek silver sedans.

“Yes,” he said after a long pause.

“And it didn’t occur to you to mention this to me until now?”

“It occurred to me many times. I did not believe you were ready to know the entirety of this truth.”

“I’m not a kid, Namid. I know I’m not as skilled as you’d like me to be, and I know that I disappoint you more often than not. But I took down Cahors, and that should have earned me some modicum of consideration, of respect.”

“You have my respect, Ohanko, and have for longer than you know. Why would I expend so much time on your training if I did not respect your crafting and your mind?”

This was without a doubt the kindest thing he had ever said to me, and yet it served only to make me more angry.

“You’ve got a pretty twisted way of showing respect.”

“I am sorry you feel that way.”

We fell into a lengthy silence, until at last I said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Bloody hell, ghost! Are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”

“I still am not certain you are ready to hear all of it.”

“I don’t give a god-damn! Somebody’s trying to kill me. Someone came within a hair’s breadth of killing Billie. Someone is tormenting my dad. And that doesn’t even begin to get at the stuff I’ve been hired to find out. Whether you think I’m ready or not, I’m in it now. And I want to understand it-the risks and the stakes.”

“I should have asked sooner. How is Billie?”

I felt much of the anger I’d directed at the myste sluice away. “She’s better, thank you. But I almost lost her. And I’m afraid I’m losing my father. I need your help, Namid.”

“And what do I get in exchange?”

He couldn’t have surprised me more if he had asked to borrow money from me. In spite of everything, a small laugh escaped me. “What do you want?”

He appeared to consider the question for a few moments. “I am not a ghost,” he said. “You know this, and yet you insist on referring to me as such again and again. I would prefer you did not.”

I laughed again, shook my head. “Wow. Okay. I’ll . . . I’ll try to stop calling you a ghost.”

“You will try?”

“Some habits are hard to break.”

Again he weighed this before nodding. “Very well.”

We lapsed once more into silence, until I wondered if he expected me to ask more questions. But eventually he began on his own.

“You know the history of the runemystes,” he said, his voice as deep as a mountain lake. “How we were sacrificed by the Runeclave so that we might forever be guardians of magic in your world. Often omitted from that history is the fact that some in the Runeclave saw a different path for those skilled in runecrafting. They wished to make war on the non-magical, to become dominant. When the Runeclave created the runemystes, these dissenting weremystes sought to do something similar.

“Theirs, though, was not an act of sacrifice or self-abnegation. They used blood magic to take immortality for themselves. They became immortal as well, and their powers are similar to ours. And so some might say that there is little difference between us. But there is an inherent darkness in what they are and in their crafting. They are corrupt in the truest sense of the word. I have heard it said that they rarely appear to humans or even to ordinary weremystes, because the stench of decay clings to them still, even after so many centuries.”

“So, you’re telling me that there’s a war between the runemystes and these other . . .”

“My kind call them necromancers: beings who have taken power from the realm of the dead. And yes that is what I am telling you. Surely you knew much of this already.”

I shook my head, blew out a long breath. “I thought there were weremystes who were dabbling in dark magic. It never occurred to me that they would have allies as powerful as you.” I tapped a finger on the steering wheel, thinking. “So then Cahors was one of them?”

“No. As I told you at the time, Etienne de Cahors was a runemyste, but he chafed at the limitations placed on my kind by the Runeclave.” Namid paused, appearing uncomfortable. “What I did not tell you then is that he was lured into disgrace by the necromancers. He was to be their prize. He could have told them much about our craftings and how they might be overcome.

“They gave him aid at the beginning, instructing him in the uses of blood magic. But he soon tired of their control. He wished to be beholden to none, to be free of the Runeclave and also of the dark ones. But he was important for other reasons.”

Something in the way Namid said this caught my ear. “What reasons?”

“They invested much in him: decades of wheedling, secrets of their evil magicking, their darkest aspirations. When he abandoned them, they were enraged. Their one consolation was that my kind were even more enraged. Their loss was great; ours was greater. We were thirty-nine. When we lost him we were thirty-eight. This pleased them, and more, it gave them a glimpse of a possible path forward from their failure. Equally important, they took note of how he died. And at whose hand.”

“Mine,” I said.

“Just so.”

“This is why they’re so interested in me. Because I killed Cahors.”

“Because you are a weremyste who killed Cahors. The necromancers long were contemptuous of weremyste power. They have subordinates of your kind-weremancers, we call them. But they have never considered them more than servants to their cause. Your victory over Cahors has forced them to consider the weremancers anew, to imagine a new role for them in this war.”

“And what role is that?”

The myste shook his head. “This I do not know.”

I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure that I did. He’d kept too much from me over the years.

“Do you know who was in the car that came after me right before you showed up?”

“I know it was a weremancer, but that is all.”

“So a weremyste was able to attack my heart that way?”

He shook his head. “No. I felt a second presence as well: a necromancer. It was she who attacked you. I believe the weremancer was here to . . . to finish you, as you would put it.”

I found this comforting in a strange way. I couldn’t have seized another person’s heart with magic the way the necromancer seized mine. I didn’t want to think there were other runecrafters like me out there who could. “I warded my heart from her attack. If her magic is comparable to yours, I shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“You may have surprised her with your warding. Or she may still be familiarizing herself with your craft. Do not count on such spells working a second time.”

I nodded at that, my mind already turning in a new direction. “It’s necromancers who are hurting my father, right?”

“I do not know, Ohanko. I believe it is possible, assuming that Leander Fearsson’s suffering is not-forgive me-the product of delusion.”

“It’s not.”

“You know this?”

“I feel it,” I said. “I’m going to see him now. You’re welcome to stay with me and see him for yourself.”

“Thank you. Perhaps I will.”

We drove in silence for a minute or two. I had more questions for the myste, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to ask them, not because I thought he would refuse to respond, but because I didn’t think I’d like his answers. It didn’t take long for the cop in me to decide this was a piss-poor reason not to ask.

“Since the day I met you, you’ve been telling me that you and your fellow mystes are forbidden from interfering in our world.”

“And we still are.”

“Even now?”

“Our laws have not changed.”

“But circumstances have. You can’t expect weremystes to fight off these necromancers without help.”

“Our expectations are irrelevant.” I started to argue, but he held up a translucent hand, stopping me. “We are what we are. Our laws help to define us. To ignore them out of expedience diminishes us, makes us little better than those you would have us fight on your behalf. We can help you, prepare you, guide you. But we cannot intervene. To do so would compromise too much.”

“You intervened with Cahors,” I said, knowing what he would say.

“This I have explained to you as well. Cahors was an anomaly, one of our own who escaped our notice. He acted on your world in large part because our vigilance slackened. We did what was necessary to undo some of the damage he wrought. This is different.”

Not the answer I had been hoping for, but I had to admit that there was a certain logic to what he said. That logic was likely to get me killed, but, hey, at least the runemystes were sticking to their principles.

“You’re putting a lot at risk,” I said. “They may be your laws, but it’s our lives you’re wagering.”

“Not yours alone.”

I frowned, looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

“Think, Ohanko. What is it the necromancers want?”

I shrugged. “Power?”

“Yes, of course. But what lies in their path to power?”

I thought about it for all of three seconds before the answer became obvious. The runemystes wouldn’t intervene directly, but what other beings would the necromancers fear? Weremystes could fight them; many of us would. We didn’t stand a chance, though, without the runemystes doing all that Namid had said they would: training us, preparing us, guiding us.

What did they want? They wanted to destroy Namid and his brethren.

“It’s you who are at risk,” I said. “I’m sorry I should have understood. The necromancers see the thirty-eight of you as the only obstacles they have to overcome.”

He nodded, solemn and slow. “That is our belief as well. You should know, however, that there are now but thirty-seven of us left.”