The Demon's Apprentice (26 page)

“It’s the only way you can stop him, Officer Collins. I think that’s important to you.”

“I want this guy brought to justice. I’ll be here.”

“My parents are gone most weekends anyway,” Shade said softly. “I just have to be there early to get ready for the game.”

Dr. C looked to me.

“My mom has some market thing she wants to go to tomorrow morning. I can come after that,”

“The Farmer’s Market,” Wanda said. “This is the last weekend they’re holding it until spring. My mom’s going, too. Lucas and I can meet you there and give you a ride.”

“All right, then. You four go home, and I’ll see you here tomorrow,” Dr. C dismissed us. We all got up, even Collins, but Dr. C stopped me on the way out.

“We still need to talk a little, Chance.”

“What about?” I asked, as Lucas pulled the door shut behind him. Dr. C came up and put his thumb on my chin. With a gentle pressure, he nudged my chin to the right a little and examined the left side of my face. My cheek felt swollen and hot, and it was probably turning a really ugly color by now.

“First off, we need to take care of this. I’m no healer, but I can lay a glamour on it to hide it.” He made a little gesture with his other hand, and I felt the gentle tingle of magick slide over my skin. “Second, I just need to make things official. As far as I am concerned, you are my apprentice, Chance. I will do my best by you, to teach you and guide you on your new path. Will you accept me as your teacher?” He hesitated for a half a heartbeat before he said the last word, and I knew he was avoiding using the word ‘master’ for my sake. I couldn’t say it or hear it without feeling like I was back on my knees in front of Dulka, and there was no way I could deal with that.

“Yes, sir. I’d like that.” I thought for a second before I spoke again, “You’re defying the Conclave for me, sir. That could get you killed right along with me.”

“I’m willing to take that risk.”

“You’ve seen inside my head. You know they’re not too far off the mark.”

“They’re farther off than you think, Chance,” he said cryptically. “Go home. Be fifteen for a few hours. Come back tomorrow, we’ll deal with the big life and death things then.”

Chapter 16

~ Chance favors only the prepared mind. ~ Louis Pasteur, 19
th
century alchemist

Morning came all too soon, as far as my body was concerned. A night spent on the floor made all of the bumps and bruises I’d collected the day before ache even harder, and my muscles had stiffened up overnight. Between the “football tryout” during the day, the werewolf attack after school, the heavy duty spell-slinging, and the second close encounter with the pack that night, I felt like a mile of bad road. By the time we got to the Farmer’s Market, I felt kinda human, but I wasn’t going to win any beauty contests.

The Westside Farmer’s Market was a collection of colored awnings over the back ends of trucks and vans, set up in the parking lot of an old factory on the western edge of the city. Even though we were here just to kill some time, I decided to do some shopping. As I passed one of the tables, I caught a glimpse of a pair of eyes gazing out from beneath the bumper of the truck backed up to the awning. I kept my gaze moving and tried not to start in surprise, but I was almost certain that it was a brownie. Some farms had them, and some of them even knew about them. Even if they did, though, they never mentioned them to strangers.

I moved on, checking out the stalls as I went along, looking now to see if anyone else had been accompanied by their hearth helpers or garden fae. Once I started looking, I could see dozens of fairies and pixies going by. A couple of the stalls had groups of pixies flying overhead, either chasing off the more mischievous fairies or doing business with other pixies, since the fae didn’t care about the market’s time table. If you were there late, you just had to catch up. I knew that domestic fae tended to regard any garden or field they lived in as much theirs as the humans who tended it with them, so in their eyes, anything harvested from it was as much theirs to trade with as it was the humans’.

It wasn’t long before I found a promising-looking stall. Even from halfway across the market, I could see the glow of pixie wings hovering over it. The hand-painted sign over the front of the green awning read “Dandry’s Herbs & Sundries” in cheerful, bright green letters, with plants and flowers sprouting through the words. The table itself was covered with small baskets filled with herbs, all neatly labeled, in nice, straight rows. The little guy behind the table hummed happily to himself as he set out the baskets, his round face creased with a contented smile. He looked up at me with bright blue eyes and included me in his happy smile for a moment.

I felt the pull of his eyes: the pull only a mage would have. We both looked away, then I saw his gaze slide back to me, his eyes taking on the slightly unfocused look that meant he was aura-gazing me. After a moment, his chubby little face went pasty white, and a fine sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead. In one quick motion, he ran his hand through his thinning brown hair and stood up straight, though it looked more like he was cringing from me, somehow. It was times like this that I hated being me.

“I don’t want any trouble,” he stammered.

“Me, either,” I sighed. “I was interested in buying a mortar and pestle.”

“B-b-b-b-buying?” he stuttered, sounding like a motorboat.

“Yes, sir, buying.” If I had floored the little guy by not threatening him, then I just about gave him a stroke when I was polite.

His jaw fell open, then shut, and his eyes went wide. “I…I don’t understand,” he finally managed. “You’re not…you look like a…”

“A warlock, I know. It’s a long story, but really, I’m just here to buy some stuff, okay?”

“Um, sure. But can you wait until the market opens? It’s only a couple more minutes, and if you’ll just let me know which one you’d like, I’ll put it back for you!”

“That’s fine, I can wait.” I smiled and stepped back, and he just stared at me, like he wasn’t sure he could believe what he was hearing.

“It’s too damn early to be awake on a Saturday,” Lucas said, as he and Wanda came up beside me and started eying the little stall. It didn’t take a genius to see him making the mental list of things he wanted to buy.  Wanda’s eyes wandered over the growing array of stuff that Dandry was carefully setting out, too. She had on what looked like a pair of overalls that turned into a ragged skirt. Her only other concession to practicality was the wedge heels on her platform ankle boots, with a pair of black and red striped socks that came up to her knees. Under the overall bib, she had on an artfully slashed Love ‘N Chains t-shirt. It was the pigtails that made me do a double take.

Lucas wore his denim coat and jeans, with a t-shirt that read, “Morning comes too early in the day to be
good!
”

When a fourth shadow fell across the table, I saw Dandry go ashen again, and his smile faded. I looked to my right to see a skinny man in a black western shirt, black pants, and black cowboy boots, standing beside Wanda. His greasy black hair was laid back along his skull in lank strands, leaving his narrow, pallid face exposed in all its pockmarked glory. The only favor he did the world was in growing a thin, scraggly mustache that hid about a square inch of pasty-faced ugly; okay, so he wasn’t doing the world a
big
favor. His hands twitched at his sides, and he watched Dandry like a cat about to pounce on a slow, fat mouse.

My eyes narrowed as I caught the scent of mold and dirt from him, and my mystic senses recoiled in recognition as soon as I sent them his way. This was the warlock Brad had been dealing with Tuesday night. I hadn’t been close enough to catch the signs of necromancy off of him that night, though. Most dead-bangers showed some sign of decay, like this guy’s disease-riddled face, and the scent of grave dirt coming off of him. Plus, some part of my mystical senses caught the aura of death around him. Most people would feel a sense of wrongness about this guy, and they would avoid him without knowing exactly why.

“Mitchell,” the round little mage said with a gulp.

The necromancer smiled and stepped up to the edge of the table. “That’s no way to treat a customer, Roland,” he said. He reached out and flipped one of the little boxes on the table at Dandry, sending bits of green flying. Dandry let out a little cry of dismay, but he didn’t seem to want to attract attention to himself. He looked left and right with worried glances, as if he was afraid anyone might notice his predicament.

Of course, it was too late for that. I already had, and my brain had gone to that cold, calculating place where it went when I wanted to hurt someone. I took a step back and moved behind Lucas and Wanda, trying not to make any noise as I stalked up behind Mitchell. Moving over asphalt, it wasn’t really that hard.

“You’re not a customer of mine,” Dandry stammered, trying to sound defiant. “What do you want?”

“I want what everyone wants, Roland. To be on the winning side in what’s coming. It’s out in the open now, and my master is going to have it.” Mitchell walked around to the side of the stall, out of easy view, and farther away from me. His right hand dipped into his front pocket, and came out with what looked like a pair of slim pieces of wood capped at either end with brass. The metallic half-moon at one end gave it away as a
balisong
: the infamous Filipino butterfly knife.

“I…I don’t know who had it, Mitchell, and I wouldn’t know where it is right now. I’m just a minor mage,” Dandry said quietly. I could hear the desperation in his voice, and my jaw clenched. Dandry seemed like a decent little guy who just wanted to sell his herbs and gardening stuff, and who took a lot of pleasure in the simple, pleasant life he’d made. He didn’t want a lot of power or glory; he just wanted to have his table nice and neat. Mitchell had chosen him because he thought he was an easy mark. I saw a lot of my mom in this pudgy little mage, and seeing Mitchell prey on him really pissed me off.

“Well, I’m a full-fledged necromancer, fat boy, so you’d better come up with something I can use if you know what’s good for you. You’re too small for the Conclave to give a rat’s ass about.”

I wish I could say I saw red, or lost control, or that I just exploded. I didn’t. I knew exactly what I was doing when I picked up the heavy marble mortar and pestle on the edge of Dandry’s table. The mortar went into my right hand, and the pestle was wrapped in my left fist. Dandry saw the movement, but the necromancer didn’t, and I thought about taking advantage of it for a second, but, I didn’t want tall, dark, and loathsome to be able to say I hit him when he wasn’t looking. I
really
wanted him to see this coming.

“Hey, corpse-humper,” I growled.

Mitchell turned toward me with narrowed eyes. “Go away, worm,” he sneered, and I felt the edge of a compulsion in the command. I’d been keeping a demon lord out of my head for years, though, and no two-bit necromancer was going to lay a charm on me.

“No, you carcass-banging loser.” I smiled when his eyes went wide. Finally, he got that I knew what he was.

“You really should’ve minded your own business, boy,” he hissed.

He started a complex set of moves to open the
balisong
, and I laid the mortar across his left temple. He took a staggering sidestep into the stall before his knees gave out and he went down on his butt. As soon as his ass met the pavement, I stepped up and swung with my marble-weighted left fist. The punch hit him across the jaw and laid him out flat on the asphalt. The knife fell from limp fingers, clattering a few inches away from his hand. I put the mortar and pestle back on the table and scooped up the knife before Dandry could do more than gasp in shock.

“Wanda, keep an eye out for anyone coming our way, Lucas, help me get this guy out of sight before whatever he was using to cover himself wears off,” I ordered.

They stared at me for a few seconds, then shook their heads and moved into action. Lucas and I dragged the limp Mitchell back into the shadowed space between Dandry’s brown van and the white panel van next to it. Around us, no one seemed to notice that I’d just slugged a guy and dragged him out of sight. Wanda and Lucas’ lack of reaction told me that dead-boy had some sort of
neglenom
charm on him to make people ignore what he did unless he let them see him. It made sense, since I didn’t feel him until he was actually beside me. Odds were, it wasn’t a spell he’d cast on himself, since more complex and delicate enchantments like that were beyond most necromancers. Charms and enchantments didn’t cast well with the energy most necromancers put off, and most of them didn’t bother to study them anyway.

I propped him up against the side of Dandry’s van and ran my hands along the side of his neck, hoping to find an amulet, and sure enough, I found the black leather cord. My fingers tingled when they touched it, and I let it be. For the moment, it was doing us as much good as it was him.

Dandry followed us, making worried noises with each step. “What have you done?” he asked, his voice rising near panic. “He’s going to be mad when he wakes up, and he’ll take it out on me, I know it!”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I told him. “Can you wake him up?”

He nodded, then stretched his arm as far as he could and touched a fingertip to Mitchell’s shoulder for a half a second. The spell fell from his lips in a rush, and he leaped back as soon as the words left his mouth.

Mitchell flailed his arms weakly for a second, then his eyes focused on me, and his face curled into a sneer. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“The guy asking the questions, Mitch. Who do you work for?”

“I don’t have to tell you, boy. If you run away now, you might not ever find out, and believe me, you really
don’t
want to know who my Master is.” His voice carried a casual contempt for anyone who wasn’t him. I slapped him, and a little of that contempt slipped.

“Okay, I tried asking nicely,” I said as he shook his head. “Let me speak a language you can understand a little better.” I shifted mental gears, and asked the next question in Infernal patois.

“Whose bitch are you? Whose hairy ass do you kiss, hoof-licker?”
It was about as pleasant as Infernal got. Behind me, Dandry gasped, and I could feel Lucas stare at me. Infernal patois is a harsh-sounding language, even at its best.

“How…how can you…” Mitchell asked incoherently. “You can’t act against another servant!”

“I’m not a servant. Now, who do you serve? Who owns your sorry ass?” I slapped him again, this time adding a backhand as well.

His eyes went wide as he struggled to understand what I was saying. “Synrhodi’ir!” he snarled back at me. The haughty look in his eyes told me he thought I should be really scared by hearing that name. I’d heard of Synrhodi’ir, and knew he was lower in the ranks of Hell than Dulka. Where Dulka was a noble among demons, Synrhodi’ir was more like a clerk in Hell’s Hall of Records.

“What does he want?” I asked.

“Your ass on a platter!” he sneered.

I grinned as I opened the
balisong
slowly and put the point under his right eye. “Okay. Question and answer time’s done,” I said cheerfully as I pushed the point against the thin skin of his cheek until blood flowed, and he cried out in pain.

“What are you doing?” Dandry asked fearfully.

“He’s not going to cooperate,” I answered, sounding bored and resigned. I turned to Dandry and pulled the bloody point of the knife just far enough away from Mitchell’s face that it was right where the necromancer could see it. “At least, I
hope
he’s not. He’s useless to me now, so I’m just going to take his eyes. I’ve got a neat new spell that calls for the eye of a necromancer. I just can’t remember if it’s the left or right eye, so I figure, why take chances? I’ll just take ‘em both, and keep the other one to hex this poor bastard with later. After all, the eyes are the window to the soul, right?”