To Kill a Sorcerer (35 page)

My father was now in close combat with Guthbert. Marguerite and my mother were holding each other.

“Help, Father!” I screamed at them.

I swung the trunch at Edward’s head, connecting with a satisfying crunch. He dropped to the floor.

Guthbert shoved my father back and drew his sword. He tried to hack at me, but I dove out of the way, rolling on my shoulder and springing back up. Before he could turn all the way around, I lunged and banged him on the shoulder with the club. He staggered but hung on to his weapon.

He jabbed the blade at me. I sidestepped, narrowly avoiding the thrust. He slashed across my midsection, giving me a shallow slice, and then lunged, forcing me to leap backward. I brought the club down in a defensive move, but was only able to deflect the pointed rapier partially. The blade slid into the left side of my stomach, searing me. The pain was so sharp, I nearly dropped my club.

He prepared to thrust again when James leaped on his shoulder. Guthbert tossed him off like a puppy. James hit the floor on his back. While he lay there, Guthbert nonchalantly jabbed the blade into James’s soft stomach.

James gave a startled gasp.

“No!”

I swung the bludgeon and whacked Guthbert on the arm. He dropped his sword. I pounced, slamming my club on top of his head. He grunted but stayed up, swaying. My next blow crashed into his face. He fell like a tree, a great gout of blood spilling from his nose.

I went to James and picked him up. His face was slack, his tunic soaked with blood.

“James!” my mother said sorrowfully.

His lusterless eyes turned to me slowly. “I’m sorry, Sebastian,” he whispered. “I just wanted to protect Mama and Margie like you.”

“You did,” I said.

“Are they safe?” he asked. His eyes glazed and blood welled onto his lips.

“Yes, you saved them.”

“Just like you.” He smiled sweetly at me. The light left his face.

“No,” I said. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Father held his arms out. I set James in them. I wanted to conso—

My back arched. Lightning flashed across my brain. Falling. Twisting. Kanga’s face. Swiftly moving clouds.

My
ti bon ange
raced through the ether, taking me to my enemy.

Friday, December 24, 6:49 p.m.

The world streaked like the colors of the rainbow going by at high speed. My stomach sideslipped sickeningly as if I were falling and twisting at the same time. I extended my arms, in case I really was falling.

This whirling sensation was unlike any of my previous astral travel experiences. Something different was happening.

When my inner ear told me I had stopped revolving, I opened my eyes and let my arms relax. Surroundings came into focus.

A building I recognized stood in front of me. The Knickerbocker hotel. Judging from the cars parked at the curb, it was a version from the past, circa 1955. That accounted for the strange feeling of vertigo during travel—I had gone back in time.

Like the vampire club 49, the Akashic Records are in a different place every time one looks for them, but unlike 49, they are always easy to find.

Built in 1925 the Knickerbocker is an eleven-story hotel on Ivar Avenue, just off Hollywood Boulevard. It’s a senior citizen complex in the present, but in the fifties, it catered to the VIPs of the entertainment industry.

The hotel had the reputation (deserved) of being haunted and, almost since its inception, for being a place that attracted the forces of death. Bess Houdini conducted séances on the roof in an effort to contact her dead husband. I knew it as the most astrally crowded building in Los Angeles, with spirits on every floor, etheric objects in hidden places, and shops catering to “Entities of Refinement.” Elvis sightings were common (he still prefers room 1016). They were also no big deal. More people came to see Alexander (the Great) when he vacationed there.

My spirit knew I had to find Kanga. By homing in on our blood connection, it had taken me here, to the Knickerbocker of the past. That was a good sign as this hotel contained an etheric object that could help me.

The famous lobby chandelier blazed above my head as I crossed the polished floor. The clock on the wall read ten minutes before seven. Twelve minutes to the conjunction.

I was careful not to collide with anyone, living or dead. All of the living people were from the mid-fifties, so some of them were dead in the present, but not this present. The spirits of the deceased included people from the present and the past, but not the people from the past who were alive on this day in the past but deceased now, in the actual present. My head started to ache thinking about the “rules” of time travel.

Before walking into the bar, I lit a cigarette.

The room was softly lit and cozy, with overstuffed lounges and couches arranged around tables of varying size. The walls were wood-paneled and stained glass lamps provided splashes of color. The place exuded a casual elegance, with its dark green leather chairs, gold-upholstered love seats, and hardwood floors.

There were about twenty customers, and it was getting difficult to stay out of people’s way. Sliding past two men playing backgammon, I reached the bar and stepped through it to the business side. I took a last drag off my cigarette and tossed it away. It disappeared.

I began searching through things at the back of the bar. It had been here in the forties, and these kinds of items rarely changed location. Etheric objects were easy to spot—they were always brighter than those in the physical plane, as if they were illuminated by a different light source. The easiest way to tell if was in your reality was to touch it. If it felt like something, it was where you were. If your hand passed through it, it wasn’t.

I moved to my left, stepped into the bartender accidentally, was briefly bombarded by thoughts of the money I had lost in the fifth race at Santa Anita today and my fear of explaining it to my girl, then I moved clear of him, and continued exploring the shelves underneath the bar. I finally spotted what I was looking for behind two glass jiggers and a silver martini shaker.

The figurine looked like it sat outside on a sunny day rather than tucked behind mixers at the back of a dark shelf. It was a British bulldog, about twenty-five centimeters high. As soon as I pulled it out, the dog shook to life. I set him carefully on the bar, next to a woman’s wineglass.

Tan and white, with a squat, thick body, rolls of fur at his neck, he had a squashed, scrunched face with a big, panting mouth. He stretched, scratched his ear with his back paw, sat down, and looked up at me.

“Montero?”

“Hello, Photon.”

“By Jove, it is you,” the miniature pooch said in his clipped English. “It’s been quite a while.” Photon had helped me track targets in the forties. I hadn’t seen him since ’51.

“Yes, it has.” I realized I had missed him. He was a very good dog.

“Are you here on one of your cases?”

“Yes. And I may need your help.”

He pricked up his ears. “May? You always need my help.”

“That’s true.”

“Well,” he said, trotting across the bar to look at a woman’s hand more closely, “what sort of blighter are we looking for this time? A ghost? Another witch?”

“A conjurer. A dangerously powerful one.”

He sniffed the woman’s hand carefully and set his paw on it. “This bird’s excited. Just got her first acting role.” Photon loved everything to do with Hollywood and the movie industry. It was one reason he stayed at the Knickerbocker. He barked in delight. “She’s in
Revenge of the Creature
! Poor thing. Well, someone has to act in those B horror flicks. And I love them. You know—”

“Photon . . .”

“Ah, yes, sorry,” he said, bulldog jowls shaking. “Do you think your man is already here?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s a living astral body, like you.”

“He’s not exactly like me, but yes, he’s alive.”

He walked over, took a closer look at me. “I say, that’s what’s amiss. I haven’t seen you in sixty years, yet you look the same.” I hadn’t expected this. Photon obviously remained aware of the actual date, even though the “current” period was much earlier. “Are you projecting a more youthful image of yourself now?”

“I don’t think so,” I said evasively.

“Are you one of the Eternals?”

“Who are they?” I was intrigued and hoped he had met some of them.

“A legendary group of men and women who live forever.”

“Legendary. So no one has ever met one of these people.”

“Until me,” he said, giving me a sly look.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Humph. Nobody tells me anything. No wonder I’m man’s best friend. All I do is bloody listen and obey orders. Who wouldn’t like a friend like that? Righto, let’s start with the lobby, see if we can pick up a trace.” He jumped off the bar. I walked through it, careful not to brush against the young actress. The bulldog led the way, darting around people’s feet and legs, never allowing anyone to touch him. That’s why his name is Photon. He’s light-speed fast.

In tracking Kanga, Photon could automatically eliminate all scents of deceased spirits and only track those living spirits in the building at this moment. That often narrowed the search down to one person.

Not this time.

The little dog became a white-and-brown blur as he shot back and forth over the lobby in a precise search pattern, sampling the entire area with laser quickness.

“Three possibles,” he reported when he came back.

I glanced at my watch. Five minutes to the conjunction.

“Pick one, and let’s run it down as fast as possible,” I told him.

“Keep up,” he warned, and bolted toward the elevator. He rose through the shaft, and I followed. We exited on the third floor, and he sprinted down the hall, stopping in front of room 316. He waited, wagging his tail.

When I got there, we proceeded through the door together.

The unmistakable sounds of lovemaking greeted us as soon as we were inside. I shook my head and turned back, but Photon looked around the corner at the bed and stared for a few moments before coming with me.

“Disgusting,” he said as we drifted through the floor and back to the lobby. “I can’t believe these movie stars can still get living girls.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, come on, don’t
you
start with that filth, Montero. It goes against nature.”

A loud shriek filled the air. Photon shook.

“What was that?” I asked.

“New spirit. A barmy woman. Chased me all over last night.”

He sniffed another trace and took off running, this time taking the stairs. I stayed on his tail, so to speak, and we quickly rose to the top floor.

“Goes all the way to the roof,” he remarked, looking up. “Does that sound like your man?”

“As a matter of fact, it does.”

“Then come over here.” He led me into the eleventh-floor hallway. “If we rise from this spot, we’ll come up underneath the sign. It’s near the edge, so he will probably be on the other side of it.”

“Good thinking.”

We ascended through the ceiling. The moon, planets, and stars came into view. The big red neon sign that said “The Knickerbocker” glowed brightly above us.

I glanced at my watch. Seven o’clock. Two minutes left.

Photon and I peered through the latticework supporting the lofty letters.

Kanga stood there, in the middle of the roof, peering raptly up at the sky.

“Bloody hell,” Photon said.

The sorcerer wore long white robes and baggy white pants tucked into white boots, an overflowing white shirt, a white scarf knotted at his throat, and a bedouin’s white turban on his head. He looked like a figure out of history.

He was waiting for the precise moment of the close planetary alignment. Fifteen seconds left.

Kanga lifted his arms and began chanting. I am fluent in over a hundred languages, but his words were unknown to me. It was clear from his pose, however, that he was reciting an invocation, calling something to him.

He reached under his robes. When he raised his arms this time, his hand clasped something shaped like an obelisk. Half a meter long, the thing blazed blue-white.

The Key of Akasha, the most powerful magical object in existence.

Friday, December 24, 7:14 p.m.

The Key of Akasha did not look like a key. In fact, it had as much shape as a police officer’s baton.

It did, however, shine brilliantly from an internal power source, an indication of its supernatural origins.

Kanga made the sign of the cross with the object. He spoke more words, repeated the motion, and then did it a third time.

An electric rip filled the air. Space itself seemed to be opening in front of Kanga, and coming out of the tear was a glowing, golden altar. The familiar book that was the history of the cosmos rested atop it. I had accessed the Akashic Records before, but never like this.

“Well, Montero, what’s the plan?” Photon said, growling. “It looks like he’s doing whatever you didn’t want him to do.”

I drew a blank. Should we attack him? Kanga would not have the same advantage he had in the physical realm. Conjurers did not take their magical powers into the ether.

The key was an unknown factor. Did it give him powers here that were similar to his earthly ones? Another unknown, perhaps the more important one: would attacking him disrupt the ritual?

The golden altar slowly settled at Kanga’s feet. He had ceased chanting and stood motionless. The large white book bathed him in a bright glow. He set the key upon it and stroked the book’s cover.

The Akashic Records are infused with potent energy, but they are neutral, and like most magical objects, can be used for good or evil. Attempting to draw power from an object as formidable as the Records was extraordinarily dangerous. If something went wrong, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Kanga opened the book and began flipping through the pages. He bent at the waist, absorbed in his search.

“Okay,” I said to Photon. “I am going to try and get as close to him as I can, and then I’ll attack him. If you see an opening, bite him.”