Dragons & Dwarves

  “The engineers and programmers studied our technologies, how to make them work. I studied mana . . .”

  A lot of mana.

  Dr. Pretorious was probably exposed to more mana than any human in history. He had free access to the product of the dwarven mines for his experiments, and over a period of seven years studied how to use it in an industrial setting.

  “Infused into alloys and crystals, wires and circuits—the basis for self-perpetuating machines, enchantments that replicate with no human intervention. Mana concentrated to the point it sustains its own creation.” He stared at the television. “We conceived of things that could make the heavens tremble and the stars fall from the sky. We manufactured means to open the gates of hell itself . . .”

  “Simon Lucas.”

  “The Devil himself,” Dr. Pretorious said. “I don’t talk about that.”

  “You need to tell me, what is he trying to do? What does he want?”

  He continued to stare at the TV, as if he could actually see it. I looked at it and saw coverage of a winter storm in Chicago, headed toward us. The color seemed off . . .

  On the bottom, the scroll blurred and started repeating “I don’t talk about that . . . I don’t talk about that . . . I don’t talk about that . . .”

  All around us, cats began crying. The feline wail became louder and louder, as if we were suddenly in the midst of hell’s own choir.

  “The sign,” whispered Dr. Pretorious.

  The picture on the television blurred into a mass of swirling color, splattered blood, and laughing half-fleshed skulls.

  I shook my head. “No, we’re not close enough to the Portal.”

  I heard shattering glass from behind me. I turned to see a pair of shadows walk into the den. In the ruddy glow of the television I saw raw flesh, stitched over bone with steel wire.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” said Dr. Pretorious as he turned his wheelchair around.

  “What are they?”

  “Our children,” he said, facing the two zombies. One reached for the old man, and I did what was probably one of the top ten dumbest things I have ever done.

  I grabbed for the zombie.

  Not only that, since I’m right-handed and obviously wasn’t thinking, I grabbed its wrist with my injured hand. The words “bad move” are an immeasurable understatement.

  My grip sank into rotten flesh, and I could feel bone and wire—and touching the wire was like touching a high-tension line. The creature didn’t even need to shake me off. When the metal cut through the dressing on my hand, and touched skin, I felt a resonating blow of energy rip through my body. It tore through me with such force that, for a moment, it was as if my perceptions had been blown free of my flesh. I could see my own body fly backward though the air and slam into the remains of one of the bookcases.

  I blinked away phantom images of shattering Magetech and Death from the tarot . . .

  Zombie One grabbed Dr. Pretorious by the neck and lifted him out of his wheelchair.

  The other one headed toward me.

  I tried to push myself upright, but my hands slid on books and cat feces and I couldn’t do much more than push myself a little backward. I heard a strangled gasp from Dr. Pretorious. Then the other one grabbed me by the shoulders.

  Again, terrible forces flew through me, twisting my vision outside of myself.

  Then the impact of a window snapped me back to the here and now. The window gave way around me, the heavy drapes entangling me were the only thing keeping me from being flayed alive by flying glass.

  I landed, stunned, in a snowdrift, in front of the house.

  Every move I made sent daggers of pain through my arm and my back, but I scrambled to get free of the drapes wrapping me. As I did, I heard the sound of sirens coming closer.

  I pulled the drapes free of my face and my upper body, and saw my zombie, framed by the window. Steam rose from its raw flesh as it climbed out of the window, toward me. The sunlight reflected off the metal wrong, as if the metallic stitching holding this thing together was reflecting back a completely different light.

  The air around it was blurry and out of focus, as if I was looking at a heat haze around it. However, I suspected it was more from the concentration of mana powering this thing, than from any mundane energy.

  I half crawled and half rolled out of the drapes, and managed to push myself to my feet. In that time, the zombie was already halfway toward me, and the other one was climbing out of the window.

  This cannot be happening in Columbus . . .

  But it was clear. Magetech had managed to encapsulate the forces flowing from the Portal, and create a self-powering magical effect. Those things were radiating mana, almost as if they were Portals themselves, spewing magical radiation enough to interfere with the doctor’s TV.

  I made a limping dash toward the Lincoln, barely ahead of the zombies. I reached the door just in time for the first police car to skid to a stop at Pretorious’ cul-de-sac.

  “Freeze!”

  I stopped moving, even though I knew that the cops weren’t shouting at me. I heard one of them say, “Holy shit.” And the undead twins shifted their attention to the police. Two uniformed cops took position on the other side of their patrol car, and started firing.

  Bullets tore away chunks of flesh and clothing, but otherwise didn’t impress the two zombies. One of the cops tried to call something in on the radio, but I could hear the mana interference from where I was.

  I dove into the Lincoln.

  These bastards might have unnatural speed and strength, but the physical tensile strength of flesh, wire, and bone had to have limits.

  “Sorry, Reggie,” I muttered as I shifted the Lincoln into gear.

  Now we were a little more evenly matched.

  I fishtailed in the driveway, pointing the nose at the two zombies, and beyond, at the police car. The cops were backing away, reloading, and the zombies were almost at the patrol car itself.

  I floored it.

  The wheels whined and spun in the snow under me, and for a moment I thought I wouldn’t move at all. Then the tires bit through to pavement, and the Lincoln shot forward, the momentum carrying it across the snowy lawn.

  At the last minute, as the zombies turned back toward me, I spun the wheel hard left. Across the snow that had the effect of turning the car sideways without any slack in its forward momentum.

  I sandwiched the zombies between the passenger sides of the two vehicles. I heard screeching metal as all the glass on the passenger side shattered. And the upper half of one of the zombies flopped through the front passenger window.

  As it reached for me, I shifted into reverse and floored it. The rear right tire screeched on pavement, and I could smell melting rubber as the Lincoln and the patrol car began rotating counterclockwise.

  It grabbed my sleeve as I frantically shifted in and out of reverse, trying to unlock the Lincoln from the patrol car.

  The rear window shattered, as Zombie Two broke through.

  I floored the accelerator in reverse, shooting backward into the cul-de-sac, trailing the rear passenger side fender of the patrol car.

  I slammed the brakes, and Zombie Two fell backward off the rear of the car. I hit the accelerator again, and the Lincoln bumped up twice as I rolled over the zombie with front and back tires.

  The other one was pulling itself in through the passenger window. I shifted into drive and floored it, over the other zombie, side-swiping the patrol car again. This time the force of the impact tore Zombie One loose.

  I pulled the Lincoln to a shuddering stop as three more patrol cars shot down the street toward us.

  Fortunately, the battle was over. The zombies were still moving, but their limbs were shattered to the point that no one was in any danger unless they came within biting distance.

  From behind me I heard a bullhorn fighting static.

  “Step—bzzt—of the car, kee—bzzt—in sight!”

  I didn’t need t
o hear what they were saying to understand it. I stepped out of the car and, without anyone asking, knelt on the ground, and placed my hands behind my head.

  The first two cops only paid me nominal attention; they were more interested in the impossible piles of dead things that were squirming in the middle of their subdivision. As I waited, I watched cats jumping out of Dr. Pretorious’ house, running away from the carnage.

  It took about four hours for the Columbus cops to process me. The guys were nice enough about it; I’d saved two of their guys from the Night of the Living Dead road show. However, I still was witness to a murder, and I’d committed God only knows how many moving violations in someone else’s car with no actual ID.

  Thankfully, while Reggie was pissed, he wasn’t pissed enough to tell the cops I’d stolen his car. So they fingerprinted me, took a few mug shots, and took my statement.

  The statement was the longest part, and I probably wasn’t quite as forthcoming as I should have been. Not that I was actively untruthful, I was just preoccupied as I began to understand Old Scratch’s motives.

  Hephaestus was half right. . .

  I told the cops how I borrowed the Lincoln because my own car had been stolen. By my daughter. Which was the subject of another police investigation. Yes, I’d seen those zombies, or a zombie like them, involved in another break-in at an auto shop in Cleveland. They could contact Commander Maelgwyn Caledvwlch of the Cleveland Police for more details.

  I left out everything about my meeting with Hephaestus, because I didn’t know how deep Old Scratch’s lines of information went, and the more I thought about it, the more I became certain that the old dragon was the only real bargaining chip I had.

  All in all, I was busy marking time until Blackstone showed up.

  He didn’t disappoint me.

  He marched into the squad room where a Columbus detective was interviewing me, leading a small army of Feds. He waved his ID around like a club. “Okay, Maxwell, you’re coming with us.”

  My detective stood up. “Sir, we’re in the middle of an investigation here.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I need some authority—” The phone on the detective’s desk began ringing.

  “That would be your chief.”

  The detective answered, “Yes. Yes. But—yes. Okay. I will”

  Blackstone waved at me. “Good Lord, Maxwell. What the hell were you trying to do?” He turned toward the detective as the man hung up. “You’ll coordinate with Special Agent Thompson here,” Blackstone waved at one of the interchangeable Feds. “He’ll collect all your case files and arrange transport of all evidence.”

  Looking beaten, the detective nodded.

  “Come with me,” Blackstone said to me.

  I stood up. “You really know how to make a good impression.”

  Blackstone grabbed my arm. “This isn’t a game.”

  “You think I don’t know that? It isn’t your daughter.”

  Blackstone hustled me out of the police station.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  BLACKSTONE threw me in the back of one of their vans and we drove off back toward Cleveland. Blackstone sat in front.

  After a while, when I had firmed up my plans in my head, I asked, “I guess it would be too much at this point to let me go under my own recognizance?”

  “Maxwell, I hope that’s just your sorry attempt to be funny.”

  I stared out at the freeway, where the snow was already becoming heavy. “What do you want, Blackstone?”

  “I want you to go to your hotel room and stay there.”

  I shook my head. “No. Not that, what’s your goal here? What is your ultimate mission . . . ?”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you? We need to bottle up this dwarven smuggling operation, shut it down.”

  “And beyond that?”

  “We’re the first line of defense between the things released by the Portal, and the rest of the country.”

  “Why don’t we pull over at the next rest stop?”

  “Christ, Maxwell, you think—”

  “We need to talk.”

  Blackstone looked at me, then at his driver. After a moment of thought Blackstone told him, “Do it.”

  Blackstone led me away from the idling van until we were standing next to the main building of the rest stop. The snow was heavy enough that the Interstate was invisible from where we stood, and the noise from the idling van was nearly inaudible.

  “What?” Blackstone snapped, his voice coming out in a puff of fog.

  “Look, I know you’ve been trying to keep a lid on the Portal for a long time. But you saw what happened in Columbus. The genie is out of the bottle.”

  “If we get a handle on this type of trafficking—”

  “Those things were self-powered. This goes beyond the dwarves and their magic dust. There’s a technology out there that could let anything walk free of the Portal and go anywhere . . .”

  “I’m not an idiot, Maxwell,” Blackstone said. “I saw that mess. What are you getting at?”

  “What if you could do more than shut down the dwarven operation? What if I could hand you the company responsible?”

  Blackstone laughed. “You have an inflated sense of your investigative prowess. You think I don’t know where this is coming from? You think I can just walk in the lobby on your say so? Your friend Dominic Mazurich wasn’t the only politician paid off by Magetech. Unless you can give me something ironclad, I don’t think we need to go on.”

  “What if you had someone inside, who would give you everything?”

  “Define ‘everything.’”

  “Evidence against the dwarves, testimony against Magetech, and the specs on their research.”

  “Did Dr. Pretorious tell you something?”

  “Are you interested?”

  “What are you asking for?”

  “Twenty-four hours without an escort.”

  Blackstone stared at me. “How do I know you’re not bullshitting me?”

  “You don’t. But am I asking too much?”

  “I’ll give you . . .” Blackstone looked at his watch. “Until nine AM tomorrow morning.”

  Not quite twenty-four hours, but I wasn’t about to push it. “Okay,” I said. “Now, does someone have my clothes from the hospital?”

  Blackstone was as good as his word. By three, I’d gotten my own clothes, my wallet, my cell phone, and the keys to my rental car. Once I was back in my rented Solara, I scanned through my messages.

  Three from Margaret, two from Reggie, one of which was mostly profanity, and one from Dr. Shafran asking if we should meet again.

  Yes, I thought, we should.

  But not before I met with someone else.

  First, I called Margaret back. For the most part I let her cry on my shoulder since that meant I didn’t have to go into much detail over what was happening here. I kept it short and vague—the Feds were still waiting for some kind of contact, and I was about to call someone who might know something about Sarah’s whereabouts.

  By then, I had driven around to the West Side technology park where Magetech housed its corporate headquarters. I didn’t want to actually walk into their buildings again—a blackout would be a bad thing at this point.

  I pulled my Solara to a stop in the parking lot of a small windowless bar that looked as if it predated the technology park by a few decades. The place was called “Slapp-Happy’s” and looked as if it had just opened for the day.

  I walked in and glanced at the television over the bar. The zombies had made the national news. I saw CNN running pictures of Dr. Pretorious’ development. The video only started going funny when they approached one of the zombie parts or the battered remains of Reggie’s Lincoln.

  Great . . .

  I didn’t need to hear the audio to see where the story was going to go. The idea that the weird stuff in Cleveland was no longer completely confined would burn through the national news like a California brushfire. Paranoiacs
like Blackstone would suddenly seem a lot more credible . . .

  I was beginning to understand the point of the zombies.

  The point was what was airing right now through one of Magetech’s electronic satellite filters.

  I took my cell phone, but I made a point of walking back to the pay phone nestled back by the bathrooms.

  From there, I called Magetech.

  Ten minutes later, Mr. Lucas slid into a booth across from me. “You look surprised to see me, Mr. Maxwell.”

  I shook my head and drank my club soda. “No, it’s just your appearance is so . . .”

  “What?”

  “Mundane.”

  “How should I look, Mr. Maxwell?”

  “I think we both know what you are, Mr. Lucas. Can we skip the pretense otherwise?”

  “You have me at a disadvantage.”

  “I don’t think so.” I sipped my club soda. “I want my daughter.”

  Mr. Lucas leaned back in the booth. “I am sure she is quite safe.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure. She wouldn’t be worth anything to you otherwise.” Lucas stared at me, and I could see the hint of the Devil in his expression. Though I was probably imagining it.

  “It took me a while to figure out what you wanted,” I continued. “What you were trying to do with me. Sure, use me to sacrifice the dwarves and—posthumously—Mazurich. But why threaten me to do something I would have done for you with the right information? But that’s how it works. I agree and you might let me see her, but it isn’t over then, is it? You want an advocate, someone in the media. You’ll hold her hostage as long as you think I’m useful . . .”

  “Mr. Maxwell, why are we holding this conversation?”

  “Your plans are coming together nicely. Spread the mana and you spread your influence. The dwarves were nickel and dime, weren’t they? You don’t need them anymore. Magetech has gone beyond the mines, hasn’t it? You have the means to create mana now, and how better to spread that as far as possible than to have it fall into the hands of the U.S. government?”