"As long as you don"t drag it out too much. Good night, children."
Darth sneered at me again, pulled the shreds of his dignity about him, and strode to the van. The rest of them followed him like good little darthlings. The van started up and tore away, throwing gravel spitefully into the Blue Beetle Blue Beetle.
Could it sneer at them, the Beetle would have done so. Its dents had dents worse than what that van inflicted.
I spun the .44 once around my finger and put it back into my pocket.
Clint Yun-Fat.
As if I didn"t have enough to do without worrying about Darth Wannabe and his groupies. I went inside, greeted my pets in order of seniority-Mister, my oversized cat first, then Mouse, my undersized ankylosaurus-washed up, and went to bed.
THE MICKEY MOUSE alarm clock told me it was five in the morning when my apartment"s front door opened. The door gets stuck, because a ham-handed amateur installed it, and it makes a racket when it"s finally forced open. I came out of the bedroom in my underwear, with my blasting rod in one hand and my .44 in the other, ready to do battle with whatever had come a-calling.
"Hi, boss!" Molly chirped, giving my blasting rod and gun a pa.s.sing glance but ignoring my almost-nudity.
I felt old.
My apprentice came in and set two Starbucks cups down on the coffee table, along with a bag that would be full of something expensive that Starbucks thought people should eat with coffee. Molly, who was young and tall and blond and built like a brick supermodel, offered me one of the cups. "You want to wake up now or would you rather I kept it warm for you?"
"Molly," I said, trying to be polite, "I can"t stand the sight of you. Go away."
She held up a hand. "I know, I know, Captain Grumpypants. Your day off and your big date with Luccio."
"Yes," I said. I put as much hostility into it as I could.
Molly had been overexposed to my menace. It bounced right off her. "I just thought it would be a good time for me to work out some of the kinks on my invisibility potion. You"ve said I"m ready to use the lab alone."
"I said unsupervised unsupervised. That isn"t quite the same thing as alone." My glower deepened. "Much like having an apprentice puttering around the bas.e.m.e.nt is not quite the same thing as being alone with Anastasia."
"You"re going horseback riding," Molly said in a reasonable tone of voice. "You won"t be here, and I"ll be gone by the time you get back. And besides, I can make sure Mouse gets a walk or two while you"re gone, so you won"t have to come rushing back early. Isn"t that thoughtful of me?"
Mouse"s huge grey doggy head came up off the floor, and his tail twitched as she said, "Walk." He looked at me hopefully.
"Oh, for crying out-" I shook my head wearily. "Lock up behind you before you go downstairs."
She turned back to the front door and started pushing. "You got it, boss."
I staggered back to my bed to get whatever rest I could before my apprentice died in a fit of sleep-deprivation-induced psychotic mania.
FOR THE FIRST time ever, Mickey Mouse let me down.
Granted, being a wizard means that technology and I don"t get along very well. Things tend to break down a lot faster in the presence of mortal magic than they would otherwise-but that"s mostly electronics. My windup Mickey Mouse clock was pure springs and gears, and it had given me years and years of loyal service. It never went off, and when I woke up, Mickey was cheerfully indicating that I had less than half an hour before Anastasia was supposed to arrive.
I got up and threw myself into the shower, bringing my razor with me. I was only partway through shaving when the explosion rattled the apartment, hard enough to make a film of water droplets leap up off the shower floor.
I stumbled out, wrapped a towel around my waist, seized my blasting rod-just in case what was needed was more more explosions-and went running into the living room. The trapdoor leading down to the lab in my subbas.e.m.e.nt was open, and pink and blue smoke was roiling up out of it in a thick, noxious plume. explosions-and went running into the living room. The trapdoor leading down to the lab in my subbas.e.m.e.nt was open, and pink and blue smoke was roiling up out of it in a thick, noxious plume.
"h.e.l.l"s bells," I choked out, coughing. "Molly!?"
"Here," she called back through her own thick coughing. "I"m fine, I"m fine."
I opened a couple of the sunken windows, on opposite sides of the room, and the breeze began to thin out the smoke. "What about my lab?"
"I had it contained when it blew," she responded more clearly now. "Um. Just . . . just let me clean up a bit."
I eyed the trapdoor. "Molly," I said warningly.
"Don"t come down!" she said, her voice near panic. "I"ll have it cleaned up in a second. Okay?"
I thought about storming down there with a good hard lecture about the importance of not busting up your mentor"s irreplaceable collection of gear, but I took a deep breath instead. If anything had been destroyed, the lecture wouldn"t fix it. And I had only fifteen minutes to make myself look like a human being and find some way to get rid of the smell of Molly"s alchemical misadventure. So I decided to go finish shaving.
Am I easygoing or what?
No sooner had I gotten bits of paper stuck to the spots on my face where I"d been in a hurry than someone began hammering on the front door.
"For crying out loud, loud," I muttered. "It"s my day off off." I stomped out to the living room and found the smoke mostly gone, if not the smell. Mouse paced along beside me on the way to the door. I unlocked it and wrenched it open, careful to open it only an inch or three, then peered outside.
Andi and Kirby crouched on the other side of my door. Both of them were dirty, haggard, and entirely covered with scratches. I could tell, because both were also entirely naked.
Kirby lowered his arm and stared warily at me. Then he let out a low growling sound, which I realized a second later had been meant to be my name. "Harry."
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. "Today?" "Today?"
"Harry," Andi said, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g. "Please. I don"t know who else we can turn to."
"Dammit!" I snarled. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" I wrenched the door the rest of the way open and muttered my wards down. "Come in. Hurry up, before someone sees you."
Kirby"s nostrils flared as he entered, and his face twisted up in revulsion.
"Oh," Andi said as I shut the door. "That smells terrible."
"Tell me about it," I said. "You two look ..." Well, I would have used different adjectives for Kirby than for Andi. "A little thrashed. What"s up? You two get in a fight with a barbed wire golem or something?"
"N-no," Andi said. "Nothing like that. We"ve had . . . Kirby and I have . . . fleas."
I blinked.
Kirby nodded somber agreement and growled something unintelligible.
I checked the fireplace, which Molly had lit and which was crackling quietly. My coffeepot hung on a swinging arm near the fire, close enough to stay warm without boiling. I went to the pot and checked. She"d put my cup of expensive Starbucks elixir in there to stay warm. If I"d been preparing to murder her, that single act of compa.s.sion would have been reason enough to spare her life.
I poured the coffee into the mug Molly had left on the mantel and slugged some of it back. "Okay, okay," I said. "Start from the top. Fleas?"
"I don"t know what else to call them," Andi said. "When we shift, they"re there, in our fur. Biting and itching. It was just annoying at first, but now . . . it"s just awful." She shuddered and began running her fingertips over her shoulders and ribs. "I can feel them right now. Chewing at me. Biting and digging into me." She shook her head and, with an almost visible effort, forced her hands to be still. "It"s getting hard to th-think straight. To talk. Every time we ch-change, it gets worse."
I gulped down a bit of coffee, frowning. That did did sound serious. I glanced down at the towel around my waist, and noted, idly, that I was the most heavily clothed person in the room. "All right, let me get dressed," I said. "I guess at least one of us should have clothes on." sound serious. I glanced down at the towel around my waist, and noted, idly, that I was the most heavily clothed person in the room. "All right, let me get dressed," I said. "I guess at least one of us should have clothes on."
Andi looked at me blankly. "What?"
"Clothes. You"re naked, Andi."
She looked down at herself, and then back up at me. "Oh." A smile spread over her lips, and the angle of her hips shifted slightly and very noticeably. "Maybe you should do something about that."
Kirby looked up from where he"d settled down by the fireplace, pure murder in his eyes.
"Uh," I said, looking back and forth between them. No question about it-the kids were definitely operating under the influence of something. "I"ll be right back."
I threw on some clothes, including my shield bracelet, in case the murderous look on Kirby"s face got upgraded to a murderous lunge, and went back out into the living room. Kirby and Andi were both in front of the fireplace. They were . . . Well, nuzzling nuzzling is both polite and generally accurate, even if it doesn"t quite convey the blush factor the two were inspiring, I mean, they"d have been asked to leave any halfway reputable club for that kind of thing. is both polite and generally accurate, even if it doesn"t quite convey the blush factor the two were inspiring, I mean, they"d have been asked to leave any halfway reputable club for that kind of thing.
I lifted my hand to my eyes for a moment, concentrated, and opened up my Third Eye, my wizard"s Sight. That was always a dicey move. The Sight showed you what truly was, all the patterns of magic and life that existed in the universe, as they truly were-but you got them in permanent ink. You didn"t ever get to forget what you saw, no matter how bad it was. Still, if something was chewing up my friends, I needed to know about it. They were worth the risk.
I opened my eyes and immediately saw the thick bands of power that I"d laid into the very walls of my apartment when I"d built up its magical defenses. Further layers of power surrounded my lab in a second sh.e.l.l of insulating magic, beneath my feet. From his perch atop one of my bookshelves, Mister, the cat, appeared exactly as he always did, evidently beyond the reach of such petty concerns as the mere forces that created the universe, though my dog, Mouse, was surrounded by a calm, steady aurora of silver and blue light.
More to the point, Kirby and Andi were both engulfed in a number of different shimmering energies-the flame-colored tinges of l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion foremost among them, for obvious reason, but those weren"t the only energies at play. Greenish energy that struck me as something primal and wild, that essence of the instinct of the wolf they"d been taught by the genuine article, maybe, remained strong all around them, as did an undercurrent of pink-purple fear. Whatever was happening to them, it was scaring the h.e.l.l out of both of them, even if they weren"t able to do anything about it, at the moment.
The golden lightning of a pract.i.tioner at work also flickered through their auras-which shouldn"t have been happening. Oh, the Alphas all had a lot more talent than Darth Wannabe and his playmates. That went without saying. But they had become extremely focused upon a single use of their magic-shapeshifting into a wolf, which is a lot lot more complicated and difficult and useful than it looks or sounds. But that kind of activity should only have been working if they were actually in the process of changing shape-and they weren"t. more complicated and difficult and useful than it looks or sounds. But that kind of activity should only have been working if they were actually in the process of changing shape-and they weren"t.
I stepped closer, peering intently, and saw something I rather wouldn"t have.
Creatures clung to both of them-tiny, tiny things, dozens of them. To my Sight, they looked something like tiny crabs, hard-sh.e.l.led little things with oversized pincers that ripped and tore into their spiritual flesh-tearing out tiny pieces that each contained a single glowing mote of both green and gold energy.
"Ah!" I said. "Aha! You"ve got psychophagic mites!"
Andi and Kirby both jumped in shock. I guess they hadn"t noticed me coming closer, being fully occupied with . . . Oh, wow. They"d sort of segued into NC-17 activities.
"Wh-what?" Andi managed to say.
"Psychophagic ..." I shook my head, dismissing my Sight with an effort of will. "Psychic parasites. They"ve latched onto you from the Nevernever. They"re exerting an influence on you both, pushing you to indulge your, um, more basic and primitive behavior patterns, and feeding on the energy of them."
Andi dragged l.u.s.t-glazed eyes from Kirby to me. "Primitive . . . ?"
"Yeah," I said. I nodded to them. "Hence the two of you, um. And I imagine they make you want to change form."
Andi"s eyelids fluttered. "Yes. Yes, that sounds lovely." She shook her head slightly and came to her feet, her eyes suddenly glimmering with tears. "Is it . . . Can you make them go away?"
I put a rea.s.suring hand on her shoulder. "I can"t figure out how they would have gotten there in the first place. I mean, these things are only attracted to very specific kinds of energy. And you"d only be vulnerable to them when you were actually drawing upon the matter of the Nevernever-when you were shifted. And"-I blinked and then rubbed at my forehead-"Andi. Please don"t tell me that you and Kirby have been getting down while you were fuzzy."
The bombsh.e.l.l blushed, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her . . . toes.
"G.o.d, that"s just . . . so wrong." I shook my head. "But to answer your question, yes, I think that-"
"Harry?" Molly called from the lab. "Um. Do you have a fire extinguisher?"
"What!?"
"I mean, if I needed one!" she amended, her voice quavering. "Hypothetically speaking!"
"Hypothetically speaking?" I half shouted. "Molly! Did you set my lab on fire?!"
Andi, a distracted expression on her face, idly lifted my hand from her shoulder and slid my index finger between her lips, suckling gently. A pleasant flicker of lightning shot up my arm, and I felt it all the way to the bottoms of my feet.
"Oh, hey, ho-ho-ho! Hold on there," I said, pulling my finger away. It came out of her mouth with another intriguing sensation and a soft popping sound. "Andi. Ahem. We really need to focus, here."
Kirby let out a raw snarl and hit me with a right cross that sent me tumbling back across the room and into one of my bookshelves. I rebounded off it, fell on my a.s.s, and sat there stunned for a second as copies of the Black Company novels fell from the shelf and bounced off my head.
I looked up to see Kirby seize Andi by the wrist and jerk her back behind him, placing his body between her and me in a gesture of raw possession. Then he balled up his hands into fists, snarled, and took a step toward me.
Mouse loomed up beside me then, two hundred pounds of s.h.a.ggy grey muscle. He didn"t growl at Kirby, or so much as bare his teeth. He did, however, stand directly in Kirby"s path and face him without backing down.
Without blinking, Kirby"s body seemed to shimmer and flow, and suddenly a black wolf nearly Mouse"s size, but leaner and swifter looking, crouched across the apartment, white teeth bared, amber eyes glowing with rage.
Holy c.r.a.p. Kirby was about half a second from losing it, and he had the skill and experience to cause some real mayhem. I mean, taking on an animal is one thing. Taking on an animal directed by a human intelligence with years of experience in battling the supernatural is a challenge at least an order of magnitude greater. If it came down to a fight, a real fight, between me and Kirby, I was sure I could beat him, but to do it I"d have to hit him fast and hard, without pulling any punches.
I was not at all confident that I could beat him without killing him.
"Kirby," I said, trying to keep my voice as low and steady as I could. "Kirby, man, think about this for a minute. It"s Harry. Listen, man, this is Harry, and you"ve just blown your willpower check, like, completely. You need to take a deep breath and get some perspective here. You"re my friend, you"re under the influence, and I"m trying to help you."
"Harry?" Molly called out, her voice higher-pitched than ever. "Acid doesn"t eat through concrete, right?"
I blinked at the trapdoor and screamed in frustration, "h.e.l.l"s bells, what are you doing doing down there?!" down there?!"
Kirby took another pace forward, wolf eyes bright, jaws slavering, head held low and ready for a fight. Behind him, Andi was watching the whole thing with a wide-eyed look that mixed terror, l.u.s.t, excitement, and rage in equal parts, her impressive chest heaving. Her hands and lower arms had already begun to slowly change, sprouting curling russet fur, her nails lengthening into dark claws. Her eyes traveled to me and her mouth dropped open, revealing fangs that were already beginning to grow.
Super. In a fight against Kirby, I was worried about him not surviving. Against Kirby and and Andi, in these quarters, it would be Andi, in these quarters, it would be me me who was running against long odds. who was running against long odds.
But I try to be an optimist: At least things weren"t going to get any worse.
Above and behind me, a window broke.
A length of lead pipe, maybe a foot long, capped at both ends with plastic, landed on a rug five feet away from me. Cheap, Mardi Gras- style beads were wrapped around it.
A lit fuse sparked and fizzed at one end of the pipe.
It was maybe half an inch away from vanishing into the cap.
"But this is my day off off!" I howled.
I know things looked bad. But I honestly think I could have handled it if Mister hadn"t picked that exact moment to leap down from his perch and go streaking across the room, acting upon some feline imperative unknown and unknowable to mere mortals.
Kirby, already on the edge of a feral frenzy, did what any canine would do-he let out a snarl and gave immediate chase.
Mouse let out a sudden bellow of rage-for crying out loud, he hadn"t gotten that worked up over me me being in danger-and launched himself after Kirby. Andi, upon seeing Mouse in pursuit of her fellow werewolf, shifted entirely to her own wolf shape and flung herself after Mouse. being in danger-and launched himself after Kirby. Andi, upon seeing Mouse in pursuit of her fellow werewolf, shifted entirely to her own wolf shape and flung herself after Mouse.
Mister rocketed around my tiny apartment, with several hundred pounds of furious canine in pursuit. Kirby bounded over and around furniture almost as nimbly as Mister. Mouse didn"t bother with nimble. He simply plowed through whatever was in the way, smashing my coffee table and one easy chair, knocking over another bookcase, and churning the throw rugs on the floor into hummocks of fabric and fiber.
I leapt for the pipe bomb and picked it up, only to have my legs scythed out from beneath me by Kirby as he went by. Mouse accidently slammed a paw bearing his full weight down onto me as he rumbled past in pursuit, and got me right where the d.a.m.n dog always gets a man. There was none of that delayed-reaction component to the pain, either. My t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es began reporting the damage instantly, loudly, and in nauseating intensity.
I had no time for pain. I lunged for the pipe bomb and nearly wet my pants as another explosion shook the floor-only this one was followed an instant later by an absolute flood of bright green smoke that billowed up from the lab.