Strange Magic: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (28 page)

Arjun was sitting at the desk, his back conveniently facing us when the portal from the Way sprang into being. He swiveled toward us in his desk chair, a look of panic cavorting across his features, distorting his lips into a snarl. He tapped into the Vis, gathering raw energy into a shield to defend against bullets or other offensive Vis constructs. It was a smart, solid play, exactly the kind of thing any good mage would do under similar circumstances.

Instead of opening up on the guy or unleashing a wave of flame, I tossed a flash-bang into the room—a small grenade which makes a lot of noise and causes temporary light blindness. Arjun’s hasty shield would stop incoming projectiles, but it wouldn’t do dick against a brilliant blast of light. Most magi aren’t prepared to tangle with Rube weaponry—mostly, they tend to think in terms of Vis constructs, ritual workings, or supernatural goons. Rarely, if ever, do they take into account things like physical combat or the latest in ingenious, military-grade, ass-smiting technology.

Since I’m a mage, they expect me to swing with my best energy punch. But a flash-bang? Never.

I covered my eyes, guarding against the light.

Arjun screeched as the bomb detonated. I also heard the squeal of a small girl—a high-pitch, terrified sound followed by racking sobs. She was the other reason I’d chosen the flash-bang over a typical grenade or just going in all guns a-blazin,’ Rambo style. An urban assault is a tricky bit of work. There’s a lot that can go wrong, particularly when you’re stuck working in a wide-open space like a warehouse, with possible unknown assailants, and hostages. It would’ve been easy for someone to accidentally peg the little girl by mistake.

There was no chance a flash-bang would do her harm, though it would be scary as a shark with legs to an eleven-year-old.

I opened my eyes and moved into the room. The girl was off to the right, chained by her wrists to one of the abandoned metal storage shelves. She was shivering and crying. I could feel her sobs resonate in my chest like a knife wound—Arjun was a fucking grade-A monster for taking her. Some things you don’t do, some things are never worth the price paid to achieve them. Never. But Arjun seemed like an
ends justify the means
kind of guy.

Morse followed me out of the portal, cutting left and back, while McGoon broke right. They were supposed to clear the room of any potential threats while also providing me plenty of space to deal with Arjun. They were back-up—in case things went south—but if they stayed in too close they’d be more of a liability for me than an asset. Mage duels can get out of hand quick; they tend to have a large kill radius for anyone unfortunate enough to be caught too close. If Morse and McGoon were clinging to my back like a couple of wide-eyed schoolgirls on the first day of class, I’d have to divide my attention to keep from harming them.

I flipped the safety off my M-4 and squeezed off a few shots at Arjun, walking forward in the odd, gating, heel-toe movement, which allowed me to keep the rifle barrel on target, even while moving. I dumped fifteen rounds, but they didn’t even come close to touching him. His shield was like nothing I’d ever seen before—instead of rebuffing the rounds, or disintegrating them like my shield would, Arjun created a bubble of silver-glowing magnetic force. The field snatched the rounds out of the air, sending them into a loose orbit around him. Tiny copper planets rotating around a human-shaped sun.

Arjun smiled, his grin was a real
screw you
.

The bullets spun free and fired out of circuit, hurtling at me with a velocity even the M-4 couldn’t have matched.

Damn.

Cool trick.

I’d never thought about doing something like that: metal and magnetism aren’t my strongest suits, but the weave didn’t look too terribly complicated. If I lived through this, I thought I could probably duplicate the construct with only a little practice.

I tossed my rifle aside—I could see it would hinder more than help against a talent like Arjun—and pulled up my friction shield. The shield shredded the bullets, but I didn’t pay them any mind.

I darted left, away from the girl, and in toward Arjun. Wanted to make sure he didn’t accidentally hit her during the course of the duel. Plus, I figured getting in closer would grant me a greater advantage. I’m not much bigger than Arjun, but I’ve been in a shit-ton of fights—I could probably smack the crazy out of his smarmy-ass if I got close enough.

The ground tore free beneath me.

I jumped up and right, just in time to see a chunk of concrete dissolve in a pit of green-glowing sludge. I lashed out with my hand, a thigh-thick lance of flame washed over Arjun. The flame passed right through his middle and I wanted to scream in triumph. My victory celebration was premature, however—the flame didn’t engulf him as it should have with a direct hit like that, but rather disappeared
into
him.

A craggily barrage of ice spikes—about a dozen in all and each the size of a chop-stick—torpedoed at me from the left. An illusion. Arjun had created an illusionary simulacrum of himself, while maneuvering to my side. It never rains, it pours—and usually, for me, it becomes a torrential downpour of shit. I brought up a blue dome of solid energy. The spikes—save one—exploded on impact into a shower of crystalline ice confetti. Hadn’t quite been quick enough, though. That first spike had punched two inches into my left calf before I’d gotten the shield in place.

“
Ass-faced-ice-porcupine
!” I shouted as I went down. Don’t ask me why—sometimes the brain can come up with some wonky stuff when the pressure’s on. Let’s face it, all my smart-ass jokes can’t be comic gold. I’m only human.

I left the ice spike in place, if I melted the thing away it could leave me bleeding out on the floor. So instead, I pumped more
energy into the little construct protruding from my leg. The cold was a sharp bite in my flesh, a railroad spike of pain, but in seconds my calf went numb. Not a good long-term solution, but it would keep me in the rumble. I stumbled back to my feet—my numb leg made it tough going—and hobbled back toward Arjun.

“I am the better mage!” he yelled as he sent another three waves of ice quills at me.

“Maybe so.” The quills shattered on my shield. “But I’ve never been good at quitting—I’ve been smoking since sixteen.” I heated the concrete beneath his feet, fusing the soles of his shoes to the floor, while simultaneously calling up another searing wave of flame, aimed center mass. He tried to dash out of the way, but failed, frustration evident as he realized what I had done to his loafers. Tricky. A shimmering shield of artic ice formed in a half circled around him, meeting the flame with a terrible hiss and a gush of steam.

“
Gladium potestatis
!” I screamed, conjuring my sword into life with a burst of azure-light, lumbering through the vapor, hacking wildly at the space I’d last seen Arjun.

A javelin of wind hit me in the side like a hammer blow, hurling me five feet and disbanding the thick haze.

I scrambled to regain my footing, bringing my sword up to the ready—
chudan
—searching for Arjun. A flurry of green whips, each the width of a finger, lashed out of empty air, another of Arjun’s illusions disappearing with the strike.

I interposed my blade in time to deflect the whip strike, but the attack had been close and well played. Arjun was about eight feet off; in one outstretched hand he held a weapon of pale sickly green flame. The whip was inordinately long—nine sinuous cords jutted from the end, a cat o’ nine-tails. Hadn’t expected Arjun to have this kind of trick up his sleeve. I’d wrongly assumed that he wouldn’t be used to going toe-to-toe with a real live opponent like this. Sometimes it seems like I get everything wrong.

“I admire you, Yancy,” he said, breathing hard. “So much dedication and determination of will. Truly admirable.”

“That’s a one way street.” I circled right. Needed to be closer—as things stood, there was too much distance between us for me to make a clean strike. “I’ve got no admiration for you. A little respect maybe, but no admiration. I don’t get you, Arjun. I don’t get you. You don’t seem so bad—why do this? What’d you gain?”

I struck low with a gust of air, not expecting or waiting for an answer. Charging in on the heels of my narrow jet stream, I dropped my sword low and swept my blade diagonally upward. Arjun struck back, his whip caught my sword-edge with one length, while another shot toward my face with a will of its own. I redirected my wind gust, narrowly avoiding the strike, lurching back a few steps and out of the reach of Arjun’s weapon.

“You can’t win. This is end game,” he said. “I will free the Daitya, who is but the harbinger of the invasion—he will kill and slay, gathering enough Vim to open a permanent Way for his ilk. They, in turn, will spread mayhem and death across this land until they are able to free their Ancient Master, Vritra. Vritra will consume this continent, spread a pox upon your people, and, in return, Vritra will deliver me India and power over those fools in The Guild.”

I dipped a little nearer—I
needed
to close the distance. His whip struck like a friggin’ cobra, a live and sentient thing, attacking the second I drew within reach. Each length moved independently, each on a slightly different trajectory, pushing my abilities to their utmost limit: an overhand block, a lunging block, a wave-counter and a dive, a furious riposte.

I gave Arjun some distance. This fight was taking a toll on him as well, he looked relieved to have a little breathing room.

“Okay,” I said, panting. “Let me see if I have this right. Your plan is to release the supernatural Legion of Doom, so that they can what—get their boss out of the clink? Then half the world burns, but you get India? Arjun, if you’re after Hindutva, or whatever, I’m not sure you’ve thought this thing all the way through. This seems like an awfully screwy way to bring about world peace or India’s new golden age.”

He feinted right, dodged left, and came at me with his whip. I was outside his effective radius, but the attack had been a distraction. The real threat was the wall of cancer-green flame sprouting up from the floor to my right, a terrible inferno that would roast me like a spitted-pig if I misstepped. I forced a quick construct of air into place, smothering the flame and robbing it of the oxygen it needed to survive.

We circled, first left then right, a slow deliberate dance, giving us both a chance to catch some air.

“It’s hard for an unbeliever such as you to understand the complexities of the events unfolding this day,” he said. “Nearly impossible to understand why this tragedy
must
play out in the broken lives of men and women, children and innocents. But it must be so. Even you Westerners understand that sometimes the forest must first burn before it can regrow into something healthy and whole. All I have done here is burn down the clutter on the forest floor—I started the cleansing with riff-raff: prostitutes, drug dealers, gunrunners. They will not be missed. Did not God flood the earth of all but a handful of righteous men and women so that humanity might start again, fresh? This is no different!”

“You’re not God!” I shouted. “You’ve got no right to pick and choose!”

“I have the power, thus I have the right! I will be God,” he shouted, sprinting forward to strike at my flank, all nine-tails of his whip flying at me. I couldn’t deflect so many incoming threats, not with my sword. I let the construct evaporate and called my shimmering blue dome of power into being, catching the fiery lengths along its surface—

A crack of power, as thunderous as a gun blast, resounded through the air on impact. Instead of falling limply aside, as any normal whip would, Arjun’s weapon twisted and writhed, wriggling along the surface of my shield. Each section exploring my domed working, like some terrible multi-headed hydra.

Damn, the guy had more tricks in his bag than a traveling sideshow magician.

His weapon exerted a tremendous weight on my barrier, a hairsbreath more and I wouldn’t be able to hold the defense. My shield flickered and faded in places, losing the energy it needed to resist the attacks.

Arjun’s wall of jade-fire sprung up once more, encircling me, pushing against my domed defense on every side, sending a terrible wave of heat coursing through the thin protective barrier. Son of a bitch. There was no way I could hold out for long under that kind of stress. The combined pressure of the probing whip and the firewall was too great a strain on my fragile and overworked shield—it wasn’t meant to withstand this kind of assault and I didn’t have the reserve of will for it.

Time to roll the dice and play a little fast and loose.

I gathered air around me, compressing more and more oxygen molecules within the confines of my faintly glowing dome. The stress mounted and mounted, I could feel the weight of the air strain against my eardrums—I’d manufactured my own hyperbaric chamber. At last, when I knew the chamber must either burst or crush me, I collapsed the defense outright, propelling the air outward in all directions. The explosion created a vacuum that momentarily stole my breath, but which also robbed the life from the surrounding wall of flame and Arjun’s whip. Both promptly sputtered and died.

The subsequent sonic boom knocked Arjun back a step and hurled me in his direction. Fine by me. I hit him around the center like ‘Mean Joe’ Greene—four-time Super Bowl champion, defensive lineman for the Steelers—and we both collapsed to the floor in a heap. I reached into my pocket and fumbled out my last surprise, courtesy of Morse: a can of military-grade OC spray, the shit could put down a charging bear. I sprayed a full pump right into Arjun’s eyes, nose and mouth. Of course, being in such close proximity meant I dosed myself too, but that was okay.