When You Assume

We spun back into reality in the ruins of my apartment. Buck stumbled a little, muttering curses under his breath, sitting heavily down on my debris-strewn bed.

            Police tape was wrapped around the outside of the building, visible in the gaps my battle with Beck had left in the walls. It had always been drafty in my room, but open to the elements, the dim apartment was frigid.

            “You okay?”

            “Yeah,” Buck gasped, still breathing heavily. “S**t. You know what, I had been wondering what teleporting was like. I’m not crazy about it, man.”

            “Believe it or not, you get used to it. Ugh,” I groaned, pressing a hand to my midsection. Sharp, twisting cramps wracked my body for a moment, and I suddenly realized how used up I was. My hands were shaking, fingers clenched against a hollow stomach. My mouth was dry and cracked. “F**k. I feel like I’m gonna die.”

            “Wish I’d known, I would have just left you at the bank. What’s wrong?”

            I knocked some sawdust off my old computer chair and sat, coming down a little too hard on diminished buttocks. Ouch. “Using the spells drains energy out of me. Once any extra energy I’ve stored is used up, it starts burning fat, and then muscle, to power the magic. I’m tapped.”

            “We could order some Chinese. Do they deliver to crime scenes?”

            I looked around at the wreckage of my old life. “That’s a good point, we’ve got to get out of here.” My gut twisted at the thought of teleporting again. It had been worse, bringing Buck with me. The other time I’d done that spell with another person in tow, it had been the rail-thin Lee, whereas Buck was almost twice my size, tall and somewhat pudgy as a result of a life of weed and cheeseburgers. I thought it might make a difference how much mass I tried to move. “I don’t know what to do.”

            Buck and I sat and pondered for a moment. As was his habit, Buck sat up straighter out of nowhere. “Just what on Earth was that other magic guy doing at the bank, anyway?”

            “I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Actually, I think he was about to explain, when you brained him with that signpost. Not that I’m complaining.”

            Buck inclined his head in a “you’re-welcome” gesture. I thought, then continued. “When he… killed that girl… he used that thing on his hand to steal her energy. I think he wanted to show me how it worked for some reason.”

            “Her energy?”

            “Life energy. I’m not sure what it really is, but apparently it’s real because I can feel myself getting drained of something when I Read. Nick said it was the same stuff.”

            Buck’s eyebrows jumped up. “Nick? Wait a minute, you knew that guy?”

            “Yeah, I met him at the Nexus. On the moon,” I explained, noting Buck’s confused face. “He offered to take me on as an apprentice. He’s one of those all-business, big-things-are-coming-soon kind of guys. I just thought he was a little bit of a d****e, but he seemed okay. S**t.”

            I pulled the Necromancer’s phone out of my pocket and examined it. “He said, at the bank, he thought I’d be showing up there. And he had me at gunpoint, but I don’t think he was there to kill me. He must have been there specifically to explain the whole energy thing… but why?”

            I tapped buttons on the phone until the screen lit up, asking for a four-digit password. Crap. “This thing’s passworded.”

            “Try zero four two zero,” Buck suggested helpfully. I ignored him, pulling up my sleeves. I thought I might have the right trick for this.

            “Pravi Tacask,” I Read, grunting in pain at the further loss of strength. The spell worked, though. My vision sharpened to a freakish degree, every surface suddenly as rugged and full of gouges and holes as the surface of the Moon. Dust danced in the air, floating on the cold breeze. Buck’s skin was a disaster.

            And I could see the residual oils lingering on the phone’s touch screen, thicker and overlaid in a few specific spots. Spots that roughly corresponded with the glowing numbers on the passcode screen.

            “Should have washed your hands more, f****r,” I muttered, trying the numbers in order. It took a few combinations, but a minute later I had unlocked the device. (The code was in fact 0420, which I refrained from mentioning to Buck. Evidently Nick and I had similar hobbies when we weren’t slinging spells and murdering bank tellers.)

            “Anything good on there?”

            I shrugged. “Looks more or less typical. Let’s see who he’s been talking to.” I found the “Call History” button, poked it, and gasped.

            Ann, Rebecka.

            Ramage, Evageline.

            Ann, Rebecka.

            Ann, Rebecka.

            Weon, Leah.

            I dropped the phone from shaking hands. The Necromancer was working with Conclave. And so was Lee. Glancing down at the device, I scanned the call times. All within the last twenty-four hours.

            Nick had been on the phone with Beck about five minutes before committing murder. I picked it back up and stared at it, feeling lost.

            “F**k. Oh, f**k. I’m completely fucked.”

            “What is it?” Buck asked, standing up and coming to look over my shoulder.

            “What it is,” I said, trying and failing to keep the panic out of my voice, “Is that every single person I’ve met this week has apparently decided to kill me.”

            “That’s not good.”

            “No!”

            “So… what’s the next step?”

            I looked at Buck in confusion. “How would I know?”

            “Well,” he said reasonably, “Clearly everyone’s decided you need to be dead. Maybe you could like… fake your death or something. Go hide out somewhere.”

            I paused, interested. “Then what?”

            “Then nothing. I mean, your apartment’s blown up, you’re on security cameras as part of a homicide at the bank, your car apparently got stomped on,” he added, glancing down at the tape-circled wreck of my very briefly beloved car. “Just start over. You’ve got the book, it might even be easy.”

            I considered this briefly. “I don’t know. They’re pretty good trackers… they knew I had the book and where I lived within like three hours of me getting it. Maybe sooner.” I slumped in my chair. “I can’t hide from them. They probably know where I am now, really.”

            “So… what? We just wait here to get killed?”

            It seemed like that was the plan. Running wasn’t really an option, not with the Conclave tracking me. If they wanted me dead, they could make it happen. And I wouldn’t stand even a ghost of a chance in a fair fight. A couple of high-power Glyphs had drained me dry.

            Whereas someone like Beck could sling a magical holocaust with relative ease…

            …someone who was in cahoots with the Necromancer, it turned out…

            …the Necromancer who’d used infused me with pure life energy, turbocharging my spells for a few seconds…

            And it all came together. “The Necromancer. He charged Beck up with dead-people power, that’s why she was able to demolish this place so easily. He made her ridiculously strong.”

            She’d completely surpassed my abilities in a matter of days, which was of course in character for her. She had to be the best. Had to be ahead.

            And if some underachiever had to die to fuel her new powers, well, people died all the time. An arrangement with Nick Tripp had put her on top in record time.

            And if Nick was working with Conclave, coming around to us and demonstrating what he could offer us in terms of raw energy on tap… then it made sense, from a warped point of view, that Beck would do anything to prevent me from catching back up to her. She might even try to kill me, if she was that far gone.

            Hell hath no fury, and all that.

            I racked my brain, trying to remember. Nick hadn’t actually threatened me. He’d murdered Courtney, of course, apparently just to demonstrate the power of the Phylactery and show me how to achieve an otherwise-impossible level of strength… for a few insane seconds.

            He wasn’t out to kill me. He was trying to hook me. A supernatural meth dealer.

            “You’ve got an epiphany look, man,” Buck said, startling me out of my reverie.

            “Huh?”

            “I’m an experience stoner. I know the cosmic-realization look when I see it. What’s up?”

            “I think I’ve figured out something. And I don’t think everyone’s out to get me, anymore.” I was starting to think I stood a chance, if I could play my cards right.

            But first I needed something to eat, or something. I stood up painfully, aware of a knot in my stomach and the first throbs of a severe headache. “I’m gonna check the fridge.”

            “I don’t know about that, man, I think the power’s off.”

            I looked around, realizing for the first time that the unbroken lights were off, my clock radio was blank, and the night light I kept plugged in next to the bathroom was dark. “Ms. Dean must have had it shut off as soon as she noticed the place. Typical.” I looked around, bummed. “There’s got to be some calories in here somewhere.”

            For a minute, I looked into the nearly-empty fridge, and briefly debated eating the chunk of chicken parmesean I’d been saving. Eh. Not after a day or two without refrigeration. It would be just my luck to survive a conflict with Necromancers and a psycho ex-girlfriend only to croak from salmonella.

            “Uh, Trick? What about this thing?”

            I pulled my head out of the fridge and looked towards Buck, who was holding up the captured Phylactery. The spiky, eye-bothering geometry of the silver setting was jarring against the perfect, bone-white smoothness of the stone within.

            “What about it?” I muttered, regarding the item with unease.

            “Didn’t that Nick guy store a bunch of ‘energy’ in this? You could, you know… use it.” He looked like he regretted even bringing it up.

            I shivered at the thought. “I don’t know. That thing creeps me out.”

            “Yeah, me too, but… dude, you look like you’re about to die. No offense. I’ve seen rough, you’re ten steps beyond that. At this point, I think eating normal food might actually hurt you.”

            I thought about it. If I was really as fucked up as I felt, and apparently looked, there was only one person I could think of who could help me. And the Phylactery’s stored energy would shield me from killing myself with the powerful Glyph I’d need to get to her.

            “Goddamnit. Give it here,” I grumbled, holding out a trembling hand. Buck slowly placed the awful thing in my palm, and I spent a minute figuring out how to secure it to my hand with the fine silver chains hanging all over it.

            “There’s a woman at the Nexus who I think can help me, and I know she’s tight with Lee. If anyone can get me back on my feet, and maybe fill me in on the situation, it’s her. I’m gonna try to get to her before… well, before they get to me.”

            When the last chain was clipped together, I felt a disturbing sensation of… intimacy. Whispers filled my mind, at the edge of comprehension, to the degree that I couldn’t determine if they were real or imagined.

            I felt as if a crowd was standing behind me, and fought the urge to look over my shoulder.

            “You should go home,” I told Buck, taking a deep breath. “If I don’t come back…”

            “Come on, man, don’t even talk like that.”

            “I’m just saying. You’ve been a good friend to me. We’ve had good times. And…” I was close to losing my composure. “…nobody’s ever had my back like you. I love you, man. For real.”

            It was a mark of our friendship, than Buck didn’t smirk at that. I certainly would have. “Likewise, Trickster. But you’ve gotta go into this with a positive attitude. You’ll be all right. Right? S.S.D.D.”

            I laughed shakily. “Dude, this s**t is radically different. But thanks.” I sighed and tried to calm my shaking hands, pulling up my sleeve. “I’ll see you soon.”

            “Goddamn right. I know you smoked about an eighth of my Metatron. You owe me.” He smiled benevolently and headed towards my front door, whistled at the devastated remains of my porch, shrugged, and began to clamber down like a monkey.

            “Be careful,” I said.

            “You too,” he replied, and vanished from sight.

            I squared my shoulders, took a couple of breaths, and felt the eyes of the invisible crowd on my back. Suddenly I felt ashamed of what I was about to do… which, I suppose, is why I could never be much of a Necromancer. I spoke aloud to what remained of Nick’s victims, trapped in the Phylactery, utterly at my disposal.

            “I’m sorry for what’s happened to you,” I said quietly. “And I’m sorry, because I’m going to use this energy for myself. But I promise, when I’ve sorted my own s**t out, I’m going to find a way to break this thing, and let you free. This is wrong.”

            The invisible crowd said nothing. The dead don’t speak to us. But I thought I felt a shift in the intimacy, perhaps a lesser coldness. I chose to believe the trapped lives approved of my contrition.

            “Let’s see what happens,” I said to myself, and Read the words that would bring me to the Nexus.

            And whatever awaited me there.

Reviews

[UponATyme]

I like the explanations, but I still don't think the situation at the bank holds up. The whole spectral drug dealer thing is cool, but it makes the public murder even more awkward. It seems like more of a private meeting thing. Him showing up at the bank, shooting some chick in the head in front of a bunch of people, just to explain something to Tyler, wouldn't really go down in real life. It would be way too chaotic. There's no way he'd expect Tyler to actually listen to anything he was saying, nevermind comprehend it. I think the bank scene is gonna be a little hard to sell if you want to keep it.

[EarthExile]

You're probably right, and it bears re-tuning.

What I am going for with Nick, and to a lesser extent the entire supernatural community, is that they don't perceive the value of the lives of 'lesser' people, and have absolutely no fear of conventional justice because of their complete separation from our society. It's a (possibly clumsy) metaphor for the class divide that does exist - celebrities, politicians, CEOs and bankers aren't subject to the same laws and expectations that lesser people are.

For instance, did you know that Congressmen are exempt from insider trading laws? Sounds crazy, but there you go. People with power see things differently; money, laws, and even human life.

I will put some time into making the bank scene a bit more... believable, I suppose. Nick's intent was to shock Tyler, sure, but it was meant to be a seductive display: "Look what we can do, without fear of reprisal, because we're so awesome." He's sending a message by doing something that would get any normal person a life sentence, and calmly carrying on a conversation the whole time.

It needs polish.