4 comments/ 26324 views/ 9 favorites And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 01 By: Stultus The First Arc Deco Story Synopsis: When they end up calling the very last private paranormal investigator in the phone book, you know the case is going to going to be trouble. The damsel in distress will be beautiful but not to be trusted, and most of the bad guys will laugh at silver bullets and want to drag you down to some nasty under-hell. Not a good way to spend the Christmas holidays, but it is a living. An "Arc Deco" Universe Story Sex contents: No Sex Genre: Fantasy Codes: Magic, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Slow Posted: 2008-12-21 ******************** And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 01 In mythology, Zephyr was the Greek God of the gentle wind of the west and the interceder between our World, the world of the living, and the Underworld. Zephyr also brought the fresh wind that brought the gentle spring rains that awakened nature every spring. That sums up the majority of my own work as well. The idea of an Underworld is technically accurate but very misleading. Ours is just one plane of existence and some of the residents of other planes aren't especially good guests when they visit. There is no creature too nasty and wicked but what some idiot minor magician won't try to summon one (or ten) to either try to kill their spouse or business partner, or just to impress some friends at a dinner party. Artificement is a tricky but very useful (and lucrative) skill. It allows me to channel and store magical energies into nominally magical items for future use by "Sensitives". That's folks rated a BMA score of between a 0.1 and a 1.9, the vast overwhelming majority of our magical community, encompassing hundreds of millions of people. This allows them a very finite and task specific use of minor magic. There are tens of thousands of commercial applications and products in this genre and most of the really skilled Artificers go into corporate service. I've received offers to work for some of the local Arc-Tec companies but I hate wearing a suit and tie and having a boss, and prefer to remain out on my own. Magic is always uncertain, so the smarter mages bulk up as much as possible with Arc-Tec gadgets so that they always have a surprise or two hidden up their sleeve. Making Artifices is an ideal occupation for a self-employed private Adept. One can never carry too many protection gadgets… it's saved my life more than once. Who cares if your betters look down up on you if just one item helps save your life the next time you walk out your front door. Artifices that are produced by Adepts are more commonly called magical gadgets or 'gizmos', and are held in extreme distain by Wizards… but they get to make Artifacts… Artifices on steroids. Artifacts are insanely time consuming and expensive to make, but are extremely powerful items… and highly regulated by the BMA. Made by Wizards for Wizards, or very rich Sensitives or Adepts that can pay for an appropriate government license for the item. Banishment is pretty straight forward skill, the primary means of dealing with unruly "Visitors" - beings, creatures and entities from planes and worlds of reality other than our own. You just need to know the right words to say and be able to channel enough power into your command to make the offending object go away… preferably back from whence it came from originally. In the old days, "Visitors" used to be taxonomically classified into several big and over generalized family trees like demons, devils, troll-kind, ghosts, elementals, etc., but it wasn't terribly accurate, based more upon physical appearance rather than original Plane of origin. Not every ten foot red skinned critter with horns and a forked tail comes from Hell. Actually, "Hell", in the classical sense is a bit of a misnomer as well, but that's a theological discussion for another day. In any case, the new 'politically correct' terminology is Visitors. One size fits all. Banishment is my bread and butter and probably makes up for two-thirds of my business. I'm pretty good at – and you'd be surprised how many nasty things there are that have outstayed their welcome and that need a good firm shove to go back home. My last specialty, Protections, is also fairly self explanatory. I can set protective wards that can discourage entry onto a property by thieves and other unfriendly types of people. I can also provide self-protection Artifices for Sensitive clients or even play personal bodyguard for a limited, but expensive period of time. There is a lot of corporate competition in this field so because of the absurd fees I charge I don't get quite as much of this sort of business as I would like. The work is usually easy… unless you get a client that is being stalked by greater powered Visitors. Then the boredom can quickly become a few minutes of sheer stark terror. I also have limited Location, Manipulation and very Minor Translocation skills, but not enough to become BMA Certified. Just as well, Location is the primary tool of the divorce and missing persons Private Adepts, and I don't usually do that sort of work anyway. With Manipulation I can perform (with great effort) a minor modification to the physical form of something, for example turning a silver coin into a small silver throwing dart. Material content, relative size and mass must remain about the same. A handy trick when entertaining at a dinner, or your kid nephew's birthday party. No, I cannot turn bad guys into cockroaches and step on them, or transform my older sister's cooking into anything remotely edible. That would require Wizard level magic indeed. Translocation is a very tricky skill that is normally only found among Wizards. With it I can make a very small or light object disappear from one place and reappear in another. This is very hard work for me and I have only a very limited range of just a few feet, unless I'm extremely close to a Ley Line to draw power from. It can be a life-saver though. Making a gun, knife or forbidden magical tome disappear out of the hands of my foe and into mine has saved my life more than once. It's not flashy like Levitation or Teleportation, but it more than gets the job done. As my late Aunt Millie used to say, "Be grateful for the tools you have and learn to use them to their utmost rather than bitch and complain about the powers and skills that other have." I've been experimenting with Matter Projection a lot lately, hoping to someday be able to project out a small protective force field but this hasn't been working out so well. MP is definitely a Wizard-class skill and under most circumstances, I simply can't draw enough juice to hold one for more than a moment. It works at home, Zyphyr Manor, but just barely and not for long enough to be really useful and it isn't of much use anywhere else. Still, I keep practicing, for a couple of minutes each day first thing every morning. Bless my dear departed Aunt Millie for building her house out near the middle of nowhere (long long before the recent real estate building boom in Austin) and located directly at three crossing Ley Lines, an Air, an Earth and an extremely strong Water one from the underground Edwards Aquifer as well. Finding a place where any pair of Ley Lines cross is a luxury; living under an intersection of three of them is massively delightful overkill. My Aunt left me a decent bit of money too, but it was her house that was the real jewel of her estate. No one is ever going to skin this bear in his own den… not with massive amount of near Wizard class Wards that I've set up around here. I think that is one reason I hate leaving home to go work on a job… the intoxication of being able to pull down near limitless power just right over my head. I keep having to remind myself that it won't do any good to pull down the equivalent of a million volts of raw power if your personal circuit breaker is only set for 110v. *************** A little magic and knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. The big shot Wizards, level 5's and up get proper training and have a few nasty people of their own looking over their shoulder to keep them from summoning invisible demons with a taste for human flesh. It's the stupider minor magicians, 2-4's that either got bored in their training (or avoided it entirely) and then read something on the IntraWeb on some dodgy newsgroup or web site that triggers their creative juices… usually avoiding their limited sense of self-preservation in the process. Then moderate to major level entities get let loose to amuse themselves in our world – usually in nasty and unpleasant ways. I won't even mention the poor sods that have found some mystical tome that is far beyond their mortal understanding. The world is full of demented printers more than happy to make a few coins by reprinting dubious old magical tomes that ought to have stayed lost (or burned) and forgotten forever. Nowadays anyone with a computer can find thousands of insanely rare and dangerous books in PDF files all over the Web, and there is always a fool or two willing to give them a test drive. Hell! If you can't find a copy of the Necronomicon, then you're either too stupid for words or you aren't trying very hard! Some damn fool even translated it into Klingon! The last time I did a search, Boogle came up with over 240,000 hits for "Forbidden Magic Tomes". Probably the next time I go into Best Buy I'll find a CD boxed set for sale of "One Thousand Forbidden Books" all included together, with an easy pronunciation guide for all of those really hard Latin, ancient Chaldean, Egyptian or Phoenician words. I'm almost positive that something similar is already on Home Shopping Network or running somewhere as an infomercial in the wee hours of the morning. There has been far too much weirdness lately, and the meter of my Background Cosmic Weirdness gizmo has been redlined lately very definitely in "Oh Shit – time to take a vacation" territory. It's me that they call… once the screaming begins to die down hours later. I'm particularly good at banishments and have the knack for dealing with these unruly and unwelcome Visitors. I've never had to deal with a 'name level' Visitor… that's what the government BMA is for, the real "Oh Shit" moments. That's why they get the big bucks and get the nice government health benefits plan. Usually the majority of the time it's just dealing with some minor nuisance, such as imps, petty Trolls, Poltergeists, and the occasional Satyr or Willow Woman. Ever wonder what your very curious and sexually active teenagers are up to late at night with their friends? No, you probably don't really want to know. The trivial sexual elementals are usually simple to dispel, but sometimes the more creative and perverse teens can summon more powerful Incubi or Succubi, and then things can get a little too hot and heavy. Usually they don't have a prayer of controlling these entities and the dumb kids end up becoming the puppets instead. This can get very ugly. Last year there was even a brief trend among the adult sexual party circuit of summoning a few of the moderate power sex elementals as part of the entertainment. I had to deal with one case like that last year and once was more than enough. I still remember far too many details revisited in my nightly dreams. Let's just say that unleashed self-willed sex elementals don't respect 'safe words' and continued to sexually torment their victims long after the screaming and blood flow stopped. They liked it here and didn't want to go back home – quietly or otherwise. I ended up pretty much burning the house to the ground in the resulting firefight, and needed six stitches afterwards. Several other nearby houses got caught in the crossfire and nearly burned down as well. The BMA just about took my license for that one and my clients wanted to sue me for the damages since their insurance wouldn't pay for supernaturally caused damage, but backed down when the publicity concerning their unwholesome business and private affairs emerged. My employment contract will never guarantee that I'll get your precious little snowflake back alive, in one piece and/or in their original mental condition. I'll just promise to do my best but there are never any guarantees. Shit happens. Payment in cash and all up front please. No returns – no exchanges. Your mileage may vary. Have a nice day! And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 02 I hate it when it snows here in Austin. Texican's never know how to properly drive in the snow and all of the hills around here make things just that much worse. Too many fools think they can still drive sixty plus in a thirty zone and then get surprised when they brake at the last second as usual and end up plowing into someone or something else less moveable. That's the nice thing about Flyvers… a good flying car avoids most, but not all of those idiots. Too bad they're still too expensive for most folks, and a tad too unsafe in my opinion. I'll just stick to my old Ford Pinto – it's still the most reliable and safest car ever built. It doesn't often snow in Austin at Christmas time, it's usually a once every ten years sort of event around here. I guess there might be something to the Global Cooling panic after all. With over a foot of snow already on the ground and with more winter storms in the holiday forecast for tonight and tomorrow, Christmas Eve, I wasn't about to leave the warm comforts of home for anything less than a full blown crisis. Naturally, the phone picked this time to ring. "Mr. Zyphyr?" A husky woman's voice asked. "Zak will do fine, Mr. Zyphyr was my father. He got eaten by a Greenwoods Troll, but that's neither here nor there." Actually, my father is still alive and well and living with his fourth wife down in Confederate Florida in some dodgy trailer park, fishing all day and running around all night with a vaguely criminal crowd performing minor feats of magic for highly illegal or immoral purposes. A loveable sort of rogue; we talk on the phone occasionally, but I won't pretend that we're close. I like starting off cold conversations with this story; it lets me know if my potential client has a sense of humor and puts them a bit on the defensive and out of their comfort zone. It also helps to separate out the magically knowledgeable from the merely ignorant or down-right fools. The scariest thing in the Greenwood Plane is semi-sentient green apple tree that will talk your ear off and their apples will give you unceasing intestinal distress for the better part of a week. The local Trolls are about the height of my knee, and vegetarians to boot… they love those green apples and consider them a delicacy. "Oh…. I'm sorry to hear that Zak. I'm calling you on a different matter, one of desperate importance. I think my soon to be ex-husband is trying to kill me – sending Shadow Elemental Stalkers after me. How soon can I meet you, and where?" "The Lovett Inn, just off of MOPAC on Hwy 290 West, a bit past the exit for Barton Creek. If you hit Bee Cave you've gone too far. Be there in one exactly hour. I'll be in either Conference Room A or B on the first floor." The Lovett Inn is my preferred place to do business. They have a small conference room that is perfect for conducting business meetings and it is less than fifteen minutes from home. I never conduct any business or meet clients at home. I trust my protections, but the fewer people that know where you live, the better. The house is still registered in my Aunts name, so folks can't find me that way either. Interesting. My potential client knows about Shadow Elementals, but not the Greenwood. Very odd. Although technically true and of nomenclatural accuracy, no one calls visitors from the Shadow Plane "Elementals" anymore. That went out several generations ago. Even more interesting was the fact that she called them "Stalkers"… a very specific and Victorian era term for the nastier critters at the top of the Shadow world food chain. Ergo, my client must be at least a Sensitive and possibly even some sort of minor Practitioner, but one of very haphazard education. Undoubtedly not licensed… possibly even Renegade. Renegades are an Adept level Practitioner (or higher) that have been officially censured by the BMA not to practice magic, but continues to do so anyway. These sorts of troublemakers are not as scarce as they ought to be. Finding and suppressing a blacklisted Renegade is a very good way to earn BMA brownie points. No, you unfortunately you can't redeem them to obtain a real Brownie, one of the rarest and most elusive creatures of Faerie. This was a client who had probably done a bit too much late night reading. Do-it-yourself magical education from antique spellbooks or "Wizardry for Dummies" is a very hit or miss affair. Mostly miss. Half of the instructions for magic in those old books are either inaccurate or blatant nonsense… stuff published by the truckload to pander to the trivially talented hoping for some magical miracle to turn them into a potential Merlin. Mostly all a load of mumbo jumbo, but dangerously deficient in clearly stating what proper safety wards and protections should be used for those occasional magical workings that were listed accurately. Old bookstores and the InterWeb are full of this sort of dangerous misinformation, and I was willing to bet that my client had partaken of this foolish, but not forbidden fruit. Driving in the snow anywhere is a pain in the butt. There are several useful minor spells that will make car tires safer in wet weather, but none of these work worth a damn on snow covered roads. Sure, the Artifice stores are full of gizmos and gadgets that claim they'll help make tires stick better to the road… usually also causing the snow to stick to the car nonstop until it turns into a drivable snowman. This can be hilarious to watch… but not so fun to drive with. I made my trip the old fashioned way – at about ten miles and hour, driving like my late Aunt Millie. Bless her soul. Even after driving like a little old lady, I still arrived at the Lovett Inn about a half hour before my client. In Texas there are a lot of things named after John Lovett, hero of the Texas Revolution and major league world-class Wizard. It was Lovett's finding of the Lost San Saba Gold Mines, also known as Jim Bowie's Lost Treasure, in 1844 that saved the Republic of Texas from certain bankruptcy at its' eleventh hour. There are countless "What-If" books of fiction that speculate that if Lovett had not found this immense lost treasure hoard and freely turned it over to the Republic to pay its numerous insurmountable debts, Texas would have soon sold itself over to the United States in return for debt relief. It is further speculated that with Texas (and all of her vast claimed lands westward that now constitute the GWA) as a part of the Union, the North would have easily won the Civil War, instead of the South, creating one immense government over all of North America, instead of the balkanized assortments of organized states that we have today. An interesting theory I have often mused about, but I now had work to do. It is a standard security practice to use neutral third-party locations for meetings, and the Lovett Inn is always my first choice. It has a fairly secure layout with only main entrance inside and its' two conference rooms are right on the main floor next to the check-in desk. The hotel is also a bit out of the way and not normally always booked up so getting a meeting room usually isn't very difficult. They also skimp on their housekeeping, so if I could get Conference Room A, the odds were that at least some of my previously made subtle protections might still be there. With the twenty year old mechanical vacuum that they use, my collection of hidden chalk and salt marked pentagrams and protection circles imbedded in their extremely old carpets might remain there forever… if you know where to sit. Anyone can say anything over the phone, so you can never be sure that your prospective client is going to be of a friendly sort. My first choice, Conference Room A was available, as it usually was, but I couldn't be sure until I had arrived here; I've never seen both A & B in use at the same time, so I didn't need to take a normal guest room to meet my client… and start frantically drawing a few simple brand new protections. This gave me time to check on a few of the minor protective wards already in place around where I would place my chair. This should at minimum stop or significantly weaken the first unpleasant spell or Artifact pointed suddenly in my general direction. Since I also had some misgivings about my client, I added a weak Truth ward around the chair I would have her sit in. It wasn't one hundred percent reliable, but nothing in this world is. I made it weak enough that she shouldn't be able to sense it, but strong enough to just give me a tingle if her story wasn't kosher. The rest of my older existing protections seemed to be fine and adequate and need only minor refreshing. I finished my preparations just in time. My client was early and waiting for me in the lobby… I really hate it when that happens. It's usually a red flag indicator that they're either too worried or scared to obey basic directions, an imbecile, or they might have unpleasant ulterior motives. If the client arrives even earlier than you, this tends to send up even worse red flags and I usually find some excuse to back out at once and immediately decline the case. Never, ever let a potential enemy be in a position to get the bushwack on you. Discretion is always appropriate, as well as being the better part of valor. "Mr. Zak? My name is Gloria." She enquired, looking at me rather quizzically when I greeted her. She did not offer her last name. Very definitely a red flag that she had at least some sort of magical education. I guess she thought that I looked more like a frontier lawyer than a practicing magician. That happens a lot. Ok, so I'm fairly young (not quite thirty yet) and don't really look the part. I almost never wear my robe although I do own the traditional white horsehair wig (well, actually Centaur hair, but close enough) but I can say with pride that it is still pristinely new and has never touched my head since the day I was fitted for it. Adept level practitioners are allowed (and encouraged) to wear a formal black robe of British wool, complete with silver trim and even a wig, as if we were barristers practicing at an English court of law like the Old Bailey. Full Wizards of course have a fancier red silk robe with spiffy embroidered trim and are never seen in public without their powdered but tastefully aged gray wigs and severely old-fashioned buckled shoes. The younger, trendier Wizards even wear capes now, to make the ensemble look even sillier, if possible. It looks absolutely 18th century, as if William Penn, Benjamin Franklin or William Pitt the Elder (or Younger for that matter) could suddenly materialize at any moment and start a tedious conversation about the East Indies spice trade. My normal 'working' attire is a proper Texican gray duster coat and cowboy hat covering a three-piece suit. All specially tailored with extra pockets for placing my arsenal of magical gizmos and Artifices. Try putting even half of the stuff a well prepared Adept needs in the tiny pockets of most robes! A silver handled sword-cane with a blade of cold wrought iron engraved with silver runes completes the ensemble and is potent against both mortal and inhuman adversaries. "Clothes don't make the Practitioner, nor appearances add to the sum of his magic weighed." I quoted from the famous Grandfather of Arcane Deco, the Great (and slovenly) Wizard James Thomson, inventor of the first Arc-Tec calculating machine, the Differential Analyzer, in 1876. Sure, these devices didn't get practical and become the great arc-calc devices we enjoy today until the true Arc Deco period of the 1930's. Still, it worked well enough to help get Ian Quatermass and Professor Challenger get to the Moon (and back) in 1899. What a pair of magnificent bastards… crazy as loons, but brilliant. The real brilliance of Arc Deco magic was the discovery that form could indeed be made to follow and even improve function, and that the esthetic beauty of art was just as important to the function of an Artifact as the amount of power it contains. Properly crafted, an Arc Deco item possesses many times the amount of power of an older Arc Nouveau item, and there were now no size limitations. Super computers that filled rooms, immense skyscraper buildings, fleets of huge passenger zeppelins, and rocket ships to the moon became fact, not fantasy. "Ah… I see. No disrespect intended Zak." She plainly replied, but with unmistakable annoyance and disappointment. Too bad, besides it is much easier for people to underestimate you and make seemingly trivial, but important, mistakes when dealing with a Practitioner that looks and acts different from what they had expected. Expectations lead to assumptions… there is an ass in the word assumption (as in make an ass of you and me) for a very good reason. Once Gloria had seated herself, I held my fingers together in a thoughtfully precise (but magically meaningless) manner and gave my client a good look-over. The superficial appearances were all pleasant. My client seemed to be an extremely attractive woman, perhaps only slighter older than me, of about thirty or so. She was dressed to impress (a red flag) showing a lot of ample cleavage and long creamy thigh (definite red flags also), and hadn't skimped on the makeup (another red flag, but trivial). This was prime lamb groomed to play the wolf in this comedy short, if not Red Hot Riding Hood herself. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy looking at acres of exposed boobage and leg, but these are unwelcome and potentially dangerous distractions in dealing with a client… usually the exact reason a client chooses to appear dressed that way. To force me into making emotional decisions rather than purely logical ones. Too many red flags… but since we were already here and my Protections well established, I decided to feed this fish some more fishing line before I hooked her and hauled her in… or tossed her right back into the sea. "You have some minor magical ability, are you merely just very Sensitive, or can you qualify for Adept, if you choose? Let me see your BMA card, please." It was really not a request, nor were those really questions, as I was pretty sure I already knew her answers, but I wanted to see how far she was willing to go to hide her light under the proverbial bushel. As a licensed Adept, I'd be able to 'read' a card and tell if she'd been trained (and where) and if she'd been in any previous BMA trouble, including being declared a Renegade, or if she had been officially warned against any practicing of magic. "Just a strong Sensitive, I tested at 1.9." Ouch! So close to being able to use magic but just a hair away. These sorts of folks just on the cusp of having abilities are often BMA's greatest troublemakers. They often feel 'cheated' and vengeful, blaming everyone but themselves for their lack of magical success. They're often willing to do nearly anything, legal or otherwise, to find a way to boost their limited abilities, often including using illegal artifacts or contacting other planes to make proverbial 'deals with the devil'. This was a major red flag to me. She handed me her card, which verified her claim. The card had the right emanations and was genuine. There are a lot of clever forgeries around, but nearly all of them are detectable to a properly trained Adept who knows what to look for. They just feel wrong… as did my prospective client, but Gloria definitely wasn't a Renagade… yet. Her BMA record appeared to be completely clean. No training, but also no history of any past practitioning without a license either. If her talents had improved into Adept level she was keeping it on the down low. My lie detection ward didn't exactly declare her statement to be a lie, but it quivered and thought about it for a moment. Technically a true answer then, but she might be augmented to her eye teeth with arc-tech. Artifact level items to boost power were strictly forbidden to all Practioners, and MBA didn't like them much in the hands of Adepts either. Some limited artifice level magic boosters, commonly and vulgarly referred to as Hamburger Helpers, weren't quite illegal in the GWA, but their use by a mere Sensitive to artificially boost their net power into low Adept range is highly discouraged. BMA would confiscate the items on principle and place the Sensitive on their 'bad boy' list to be watched in the future. Even minimal power in the hands of completely untrained individuals is considered universally to be a very bad idea, and I'd mostly agree with that. Theoretically, a very powerful Adept could even gain Wizard level power using particularly scarce and powerful Artifacts, but hardly anyone ever bothered. Wizards love to sneer down on those below them in the magical pecking order, and "gadgeteers" are generally considered the lowest of the low. Also it's a lot like a career NCO getting a battlefield promotion to 2nd Lieutenant; they may have the rank, but they'll get zero respect in the Officer's Mess and your bosses and peers will all hate you. Most Adepts just accept their place in the established pecking order but I have to admit that I've never cared a bit about being loved or respected by my peers. I'd load myself up to my nose with arc-tech if I thought any of it might someday come in handy. I usually make my own but I'm always looking for something nicer, newer or shinier that might give me an edge someday. "Tell me, why you think that your soon to be ex-husband is sending Shadow Stalkers after you?" She did… and in a bit too much detail. She had certainly seen at some point in her life the creatures she was describing, or at least some of the lesser powered entities. The Shadow Plane is a pretty nasty place, and like many things in the magical world we live in, it's not technically illegal here in Texas or the GWA to contact or summon creatures from that Plane of existence, but it's never a good idea to do it though and it really ought to be illegal. They're too different from us… many would say they're "evil", and I would probably agree in principle. Legal or not, anyone summoning such a creature would find themselves under a BMA investigation, immediately if not sooner. Nothing is ever purely black or white, but the Shadow realm is full of a lot of nasty and vicious things that like to come over here to visit, but rarely make good house guests. At a minimum they'll use the wrong forks at dinner, chip the good china, eat the fine crystal… and your pets, and go after the small children for the after brandy entertainment. There is certainly no good reason to ever want to summon even some of the minor weaker entities… it's always trouble. Actually, the descriptions she gave were all for very minor denizens of that unpleasant and gloomy realm (there is a reason they call it Shadow, after all). Strictly minor league "A" level baseball stuff, but a step up from the Sally League weaklings that most juveniles and overly precocious children end up summoning to torment a disliked nanny or school kid. Trust me - no one holds grudges like school kids do, except for a scorned woman... but that's a different matter. Just the same, no one, except a pathological idiot, sends minor Shadow visitors to perform assassinations. It's like sending a Boy Scout out to cut down a tree with their pen knife when there is a perfectly adequate lumberjack with a chainsaw standing nearby. Oh they can do the job, eventually… but it's pretty messy. Moderate Shadow fiends could be extremely deadly, however… and major Shadow creatures make some of the nastiest executioners known, and aren't at all squeamish about killing a few hundred innocent bystanders in the process. This could really be potentially serious and I now had to treat it as such. And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 02 I didn't trust my client any farther than I could throw her, all one hundred and ten pounds of her soaking wet, but I was willing to entertain the idea of accepting her case, at least for now. None of her answers to my questions were detectable as fibs, but her answers were a tad generic and sounded rather well rehearsed. I made a mental note to triple my usual fees and demand immediate up-front payment. Supposedly, she and her husband were due to be divorced, effective December 26th, Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. At that point, allegedly, the settlement would be final and he would no longer have any motivation to seek her death. Nonsense, there isn't an ex alive that wouldn't want their former partner impaled upon a sharp pole… if they thought that they could get away with it. Her story just didn't quite add up, but I couldn't take the risk. Anything potentially involving anything to do with Shadow visitors was just bad news. The alternative was to contact BMA and promptly dump the matter on them, but then I'd look really stupid if the matter ended up being trivial. Besides, they're not my favorite people in the world, nor am I one of theirs. For now it was better to at least try and evaluate the situation myself. Besides, I was a big boy now and should be able handle anything up to a major visitor without having to run for help. She accepted my contract offer of $1500 per day, two day minimum; plus $300 per day for normal expenses and per diem. Significant itemized expenses and materials extra. First two days payable up front, now – before going to her home. Cash, preferably Republic of Texas tender. Payment in gold was ok too, and silver would be even better still. This was an outrageous quote; I would have laughed in the face of anyone trying to bill me even half of that. No problem. Gloria had it already on hand, with considerably more left over, and it was real, not ensorcelled in any way that I could detect. Payment complete, we then held hands and did a short Contract Oath. I promised to do my best for my client and my client pledged in return not to lie to me (too much), pay my just fees, and try to be a help rather than a hindrance in my investigation. No problems. The Oath wouldn't prevent a client from turning rogue on me or trying to stab me in the back, but if she broke the Oath I'd gain a few subtle, but useful additional protections as a result. Still it made me wonder if I hadn't raised my rates quite high enough. Still two days of work would well cover all of my normal monthly expenses, and if the job was simple, I'd be home on my own sofa for Christmas. If the job turned out to be complicated, well at least I'll be well paid. ****** Gloria's house was up in the wine sipping/quiche eating part of Austin, up in the northwest part of town off of Research Blvd. That's generally accounted to be any part of Austin north of the Colorado River. The southern part of the city, bisected by the Colorado River is generally accounted to be the "bubba" section of town. Bubba's are generally considered to be good for nothing, beer swilling, BBQ eating, inbred daughter fuckers that can be safely relied upon to have at least one car up on bricks in their front lawn. A slanderous exaggeration! I enjoy the quieter life down here in Bubba-ville and I've never seen more than half a dozen of my neighbors ever plant their broken cars up on the front lawn… most more considerately, do this in their back yards. Her house was just nothing special and looked like all the others around it. The neighborhood certainly didn't scream out 'money'. In fact a majority of the neighborhood seemed to be rental properties, such as the two houses on each side next door that were both currently vacant with for lease signs out in front. Good. If I needed to blow something up, at least the collateral damage was likely to be very slight. I almost never get to go full John Wayne and really blow some shit up. Besides, that's the fastest way to get some very unfriendly attention from the kind and considerate folks at the BMA. They're pretty humor impaired about that sort of thing. Still, one can hope. You join the Marines to kill people and blow shit up, and you become an Adept to (mostly) help people and hopefully get to blow even more shit up someday when something or someone nasty really, really deserves it. First, I did a walk-around of the entire house and it didn't take long. It was a small two story structure of fairly modern construction that didn't look like it held a whole lot of square footage inside. There was a single small Earth Ley Line, sort of nearby but a good ways underground, that I could probably tap into in an emergency, but no other significant magic batteries or sources. No pets, no deck chairs, no grill, no car up on blocks… nothing. The snow covered yards were featureless and devoid of any personal characteristics of the owner. No sort of psychic marker or tag saying "mine" to the rest of world. An old school friend of mine and very minor Adept named Gregor could take a glance at any house and give you a nearly complete history of everything that had ever happened there. A full psychic playback of the history of that home and its' occupants. He didn't have any other notable talents and got his governmental release quite early, but I've heard he's made a small fortune as a private real estate inspector, but even he'd probably find this particular house to be pretty much a big fat boring zero. The tour of the inside wasn't much more fruitful. The furniture all appeared to be rented or else had come with the house. There were lots of metaphysical markers from previous owners, but all of them seemed old, and few showed little if any imprints from Gloria, my client who allegedly lived here. Obviously she didn't spend much time sitting on the sofa watching the TV. No… now that I looked closer there wasn't even a TV to be found. The kitchen was nearly as bare and also signal free. Gloria apparently ate out most of the time and didn't cook, as most of the food in the house was of the simple nuke and eat variety. Once I went upstairs I began to find better traces of my client… and the unmistakable stench of Shadow Visitors. No, you can't actually smell their trace with your nose, just think of them as leaving a nasty oily stain to your magical senses wherever they've been. In her bedroom, where Gloria apparently spent the overwhelming majority of her time, the traces were everywhere. Not particularly fresh, or else these guests were of extremely limited power. Candles were to be seen everywhere, which is not uncommon among the folks with trivial or minor magical ability... or normal women that enjoy long tub baths. Zak's candle rule #1, the more candles you find in a client's private inter-sanctum, usually the bigger the poser they are. Sure, candle light makes magic seem like more fun, but most real practitioners use fire sticks if they actually need light or a flame for their magic casting. There is nothing innately magical about candlewax… and it's a pain to remove from your oriental carpets and hard wood floors. Traces of magic were nearly everywhere. Some of it could have been Shadow contamination, but not nearly all of it. I could also smell chalk, the tool of choice for drawing protection or summoning circles. No bets that underneath the large (and fairly new) rug on the bedroom floor I'd find either one or both kinds. Likewise, I was certain that if I turned on her computer I'd find loads of bookmarks to dodgy practitioner wanna-be websites. No bets. I had thoughts of now asking some very precise and pointedly direct questions when the psychic odor of the room suddenly became increasingly foul and the room began to fall into murky Shadow. It wasn't especially bright outdoors, as the current snowstorm was doing a fabulous job of blocking the sunlight. Still, I opened up the bedside curtains as much as I could. The weak light wouldn't hurt any lurking Shadow creatures, but they might dislike it enough to avoid it. This was indeed odd in several ways; no practitioner with an ounce of sense summons Shadow creatures in the middle of the day. They don't like sunlight for obvious reasons and they are at less than full power. Conversely they're a bit easier to control during the daytime and perhaps easier for a very weak magician to handle once summoned. Nighttime is when they are at their peak of strength and self-will. The whispy forms began to appear more solidly and with more feature definition. There was no mistake, someone had summoned a pair of Shadow Wraiths, a fairly moderately powered creature that would have definitely taken some skill and power to summon, let alone control. Mostly definitely not weak Adept level magic, let alone do-able by a borderline Sensitive, in theory. Nominally, Wraiths are a variety of air elemental without a firm physical form, and although their touch is bone chilling and quite baneful to human flesh, they're not an immediate dire threat to a trained and prepared Adept. They're still Minor League level talent, albeit a good bit further along upwards in power pecking order. Silver or cold iron, usually very efficacious against most material visitors, would be only a vague annoyance here. This eliminated a big chunk of my normal repertoire of self-defense tricks, but by no means all. From out of one of my suit vest pockets I pulled out a small medical ionizer. To all appearances, it looks just like the sort of bronchial inhaler that allergy and asthma sufferers carry around with them all the time in case of a respiratory attack. Mine carries something a bit more potent than decongestants, namely a reservoir of quicksilver capped with an ionized sprayer. Not as potent as silver perhaps, but both metals have very similar chemical characteristics and is effective against nearly all Visitors. Since my attackers were not of solid substance, the ultra-fine mist of quicksilver should have nearly the same banishment effect. Unless I was very unlucky, they wouldn't enjoy this even a little bit. And they didn't. I began pronouncing the Command of Banishment, and the Wraith on my left didn't even bother to wait around for the second verse and Departed post-haste. The second one on my right just got a glancing effect from the mist and decided that Gloria would make a much more promising target than I was. Gloria was making herself quite useless by screaming at the top of her lungs. A second puff of ionized quicksilver nailed the bugger and after a repeat of the Command of Banishment it decided that it had had enough fun for this visit and Departed also. I sent Gloria downstairs to make some tea or find herself something stronger to drink, while I opened up the bedroom windows to air the room out a bit. Inhaling Quicksilver isn't particularly healthy for mortals either. I remained with Gloria in her house for the remainder of the evening and all of that night. Yes, she confirmed it was a recent rental, but I was wondering what else she hadn't told me. I slept on the sofa downstairs as there was no bed in the smaller upstairs second bedroom. Gloria hinted strongly that I could share her bed, but sleeping with clients is never a good idea… especially if your gut instinct is telling you not to trust her. I had taken her money and sworn a Contract Oath to protect her, but I was becoming a bit more certain about the true source of the threats against her. Questioning her further, I received a few more vague unsatisfactory answers to several pointed questions. Yes, she admitted that she had been dabbling with Protection Circles (instructions found on the InterWeb naturally), but had been unable to make them properly work… undoubtedly due to her extremely limited talent as a Sensitive. My query asking her if she had any additional artificial Arc-Tech 'aides' to boost her latent power received a vague and quite meaningless response, after which she tried to change the subject as quickly as possible. Neither of us got much sleep. I thought I detected a hint of Shadow magic a few times, but my checks upstairs revealed nothing amiss. Gloria spent a lot of time in her bathroom, nerves I suppose, and I could sometimes hear her muttering even downstairs. Yeah, I really was that naive… once. And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 03 The morning of Christmas Eve showed some promise of ending the snow storm. For awhile the sun was even out and brightly shining, but it apparently wouldn't last. More snow expected for later this evening, according to the weather report. Still, since there was sunshine for the moment, the odds of another Shadow attack soon were remote at best. Most Shadow creatures don't possess a whole lot of self-will, but they have a strong sense of self-preservation. There isn't a big enough whip to force virtually any Shadow creature to go out into broad daylight. I told Gloria to stay outdoors in the sunlight for awhile so that I could go run an important errand. I vaguely hinted that I was off to find something that should stop any future attacks, and it was only a slight exaggeration of the truth. In actuality, it was time to go pay the wicked "ex" a visit. The sunshine only lasted outside about as far as the first traffic light and by the time I got to my destination the daylight was gone and things were back to being dark and dreary. *********** Donald, the soon to be ex-husband, didn't live that far away. I'd found the address while rummaging through Gloria's mail downstairs on the dining room table last night. He had been a busy boy it seems and had filed several flavors of complaints against Gloria, including a restraining order that included a prohibition for her to use magic in any form against him. Apparently, the ex seems to have been aware of a thing or two and a visit to him might get a few more questions answered. Unregistered magic use was bad; using magic to attempt to murder someone is far worse. The BMA loves these kinds of cases, but there was no indication that Donald had filed a separate complaint with them. Finding the exact house wasn't at all difficult, since at the moment, Donald was having no shortage of problems of his own, namely a menacing trio of Shadow Hulks chasing him down in the snow in front of his house. Looks like I had arrived in just the nick of time! Shadow Hulks are creatures imbued with elemental earth abilities and powers. They're wicked, nasty and foes, capable of suddenly rising out of the ground and attacking without warning. Not quite Major League talent, but darned close. Three of them were going to be a handful for me. One of them alone would be enough to handle any normal human, even in murky daylight. I'd arrived in the very nick of time. I had one good spray left in my ionizer, but I wasn't going to need it for these guys. They're big and strong, but all offense with no defense game. No brains to speak of and not even very fast moving in their material form. One on one, I'd normally just use my sword-cane against them and not sweat about it overly much. Pulling three of them off of a potential victim was going to be a tad challenging though. There is no point in being a self-confessed gadgeteer unless you go to work loaded for bear, and anything else that might cross your path. Most normal mundane PI's will wax lovingly about their .38 Colt Revolvers, and so will I in just the right mood; especially when it is loaded with silver bullets, just like the Lone Ranger (said to be one of Lovett's Rangers during the days of the Mexican Wars, before the Texas Rangers were established years later). Some folks might criticize my use of a revolver, preferring instead the extra stopping power and clip capacity of a .45 APC or 10mm automatics but they would be wrong. Kinetic stopping power is certainly useful against normal people, but against Visitors it is the silver grain weight that is of much more importance. Also, revolvers do not automatically eject shell casings everywhere, and sometimes you don't have time to stop and pick them all up. Sometimes, it can be very important not to leave strong traces of where you have been. A very skilled enemy could use a spent shell casing I'd recently handled to be able trace my movements and whereabouts, thus it is better to never leave any. There is nothing quite like the bang of a gun, the smell of gunpowder, and the agonized cry of a Visitor just discovering for the first time the joys of an acute case of internal silver poisoning. I could have dropped one for good with three or more shots, but I decided to play conservatively and popped a pair of slugs into all three, just to get their complete and undivided attention. Their previous goal of pounding poor Donald into a mush was now quite forgotten. I probably had plenty of time to back up and reload, or draw one of my secondary weapons, but they were moving slower now towards me, fighting off my Commands of Banishment, and facing me in a staggered line, approaching one at a time. Damned vanity… I pulled out my silver runed sword cane and performed a good bit of directly applied chastisement to their rapidly shrinking and dissipating forms. A minute later and all three had been Banished and made to permanently Depart. These specific guys wouldn't be returning anytime soon for a repeat visit. The more powerful an entity is, the more it damages their internal essence to be 'killed' on this plane, and forced to Depart for home with their tail between their legs... figuratively and literally. There are lots of other nasty fish in the sea, but these three good sized fish won't be paying anyone, anywhere a visit for at least five to ten years, at minimum, plus they would be too stupid to remember me and hold any particular grudges. The grateful ex, Donald, was more than happy to forgive my last second appearance to save his hide and refrained from commenting on the products of my misspent youth, spent watching entirely too many Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn movies. He was willing to swear to any great number of Oaths, and soon did, that he had never in any way threatened his wife… and certainly never by magical means. His BMA card demonstrated exactly how impossible this accusation was. His score was a flat Zero. Null. Naughta. Not a chance in seven hells that Don was trying to off his wife, at least by this means. Heck, by this point I was about willing to hold her down myself so that he could strangle her himself with his bare hands… but I had a still valid Contract Oath that would last until she intentionally directed some harm at me. Since I was not the original intended target of this particular summoning spell, my options remained fairly limited still. After swearing a limited Contract Oath with me, my new client Don wasted no time filling me in on the particulars of their settlement. He had all of the money in the marriage, and if he were to die before the settlement was finalized in two days, his estate would still entail to her. In short, pretty little unhappy Gloria had about ten million dollars worth of reasons to lie and wish her husband dead – and fast! Time was now starting to run out. By the terms of the two Contract Oaths, I was required to protect the lives of both clients, but I could not actually at this point forcibly restrain or prevent Gloria from performing any more summoning against Donald. I had to keep frustrating her attacks until she decided on her own that I would make a better target than her ex. The moment she launched a direct attack on me, either in person or via another summoning, the Contract would be broken and the kid gloves could come off. Magic has a lot of karmic rules and there are reasons for a good many of them. Smart mages learn to work with the system and that sometimes involves waiting for a long time on the defensive when you'd rather be on the offensive dishing out some payback instead… but the long term rewards are usually worth the delay. Gloria apparently had gotten her greedy little fingers on a full blown Artifact with more than enough oomph to summon and control anything up to a major level entity. By all rights, I could have stopped right then and there and picked up the phone to call in a crisis report to BMA, and let them deal with her. That was the safe move. I wouldn't win any hero points but no one would be (openly) second guessing me much either. On the other hand, our local Austin BMA office was relatively small, and the minor Wizard technically in charge of Major Banishments there wasn't all that much more capable than I was, in my own opinion. Most of our big guns are either at the Imperial Spring Residence of Galveston, the School of Wizardry at Lovett, or the six main field offices in Dallas, El Paso, Elkart, Houston, San Antonio or Tulsa. Plus my ego really wanted the credit for handling this case for them. Someday there would be likely to be a really big "Oh Shit!" in my official records. Weird and nasty stuff happens. I decided that having a few "Attaboys" in the file wouldn't hurt for when that day comes. I girded my loins and mentally prepared myself for battle. ********* I had two choices now. My first thought was to take the time to build an elaborate Protection Circle (with lots of light) for Donald to wait inside of safely while I settled accounts. Tactically sound, but I just wasn't sure how much brute force the demented woman could muster. If she tossed safety to the wind in a fit of rage or insanity and summoned some Major entities, or heaven forbid a 'Named' extra-planar personage, those protections could be brute forced. The alternative was to just stay with Donald until the divorce became final, but this wouldn't stop her from summoning. Who knows what she'd do next… or where it would go. If she summoned more Hulks and released them to go eat the neighbors, it would be me who would probably get the final blame after all of the investigations were completed and the paperwork stamped. It was going to be on my head now regardless of what happened. I decided that I really needed to confront and stop her now, hopefully by getting her to break our Contract Oath first. The next issue was how best to protect Donald. I could take him to my own home 'panic room', which I was 99% sure could hold out against anything I could think of, or else I'd have to bring him along with me for the ride, and a not so pleasant probable altercation with the ex-missus. My own need for privacy and internal security won the debate, and Don hopped into my front passenger seat for the ride to Gloria's. I thought about giving him my reloaded revolver, but decided I couldn't trust the nervous git to not to shoot me in the back by mistake if things got exciting. He did look extremely stressed out and would likely try to shoot anything that moved. I have several minor armor spells enforced in my suit that ought to stop a .38 slug, but I wasn't about to risk my life on that theoretical assumption. We drove back to Gloria's rental house without even slowing down for lights or stop signs. The snow was picking up again and the sky wasn't going to get any brighter anytime soon. I didn't think there were any red light ticket cameras out in this neck of the woods, but this was sort of an emergency. Besides, that's a very justifiable expense anyway that I could collect from my clients, or their estates if things didn't work out so well today. I parked near the street entrance to her small residential cul-de-sac. Close enough to see the house fairly clearly even through the snow, but more than likely safe enough out of the way if things went kaboom! I locked the doors and gave Don extremely firm instructions to "Stay in the car and don't get out of the car – no matter what happens!" I repeated this order three or four more times for good measure just on the off chance that Gloria's stupidity had infected Don in any way. I think he got the hint. Walking towards Gloria's house I immediately noticed at least one new change. A grouping of five fresh, newly made snowmen lurking and sulking on the front lawn. Yes, Virginia, magical snowmen can sulk and these specimens were oozing menace and annoyance out of every pore of their icy bodies. I didn't even need to extend my magical senses in that direction to detect the foul taint of fresh Shadow magic. I was going to need a better plan… or a much bigger gun. Ideally, a shotgun with silver buckshot was the preferred way to deal with these guys, but mine was at home. I made a note to myself to file the damn concealed carry permit paperwork so I could tote the damned thing around with me in the future. I had plenty of room for a good small barreled shotgun inside my duster coat. Really, there is very little taxonomical difference between these sorts of Greater Shadow Hulk elementals. If you've seen or fought one, you're pretty much ready to handle any of them. Instead of earth, these Hulks were composed of snow, i.e. they were basically water elementals. They would be big and slow, just like their earth-made cousins, and share the same weaknesses more or less, with the exception that these guys wouldn't like fire very much at all. Fire magic isn't really one of my specialties, and only know just enough on the subject to make me dangerous. In fact I'm pretty awfully weak at handling fire at all. I've really only managed to learn one fire spell that can in theory focus some fire up close and personal. Unfortunately I have serious problems controlling it and if I screw up bad (again) I could break out the equivalent of a tiny tactical nuke that would torch the house for sure, and probably both of the two empty rentals next door. This is more or less what happened during the Incubus/Succubus disaster last summer when I just about torched the entire block. I decided to save that option for a tighter emergency, but I really didn't like these odds. The odds didn't improve much when the first Shadow Snow Hulk turned its head to watch me as I approached the walkway to the front door. I stopped – it stopped. We exchanged baleful glances, but they didn't move to approach me as long as I stayed in the street. I guess Gloria had given very precise orders for them to guard the front door. That's alright, I decided that I'd be a lot happier if I were to become her backdoor man, instead. I walked down a few houses and went into their backyard and started to climb fences until I could look over and see Gloria's back yard. No Snow Hulks there. Not really a surprise, even with her artificial boosts, this was a great deal of summoning done in a rather short time. She may have made most of her preparations alone the previous day, but this was still a tremendous strain on her resources. I for one would never have attempted this myself, but I rank self-preservation unusually highly. I had good, but very firm teachers in school and took good notes during the 'discretion is being the better part of valor' lesson. With no threats in this yard, I moved right up to the back of the house and listened hard for approaching angry hopping snowmen, and was pleasantly delighted to hear none coming. The door was locked, but unlocking spells are childishly simple to use and it was the work of a moment to open her back door. Also, this spell being considered as non-offensive magic, this would not cause me to default on our Contract. Soon after I opened the door, I greatly wished I hadn't. The stench of Major Shadow powers was overwhelming. I just prayed that I was in time to stop something that everyone was otherwise going to regret. I wasn't. The only minimal good news was that Gloria was no longer going to be a threat to anyone. Our Contract was indeed now most definitely null and void, and that Don could consider himself a widower effective immediately. The bad news was the huge Shadow Stalker that was mating with her quite dead but still quivering nude body. The really bad news was that he saw me almost as soon as I stuck my head into her bedroom doorway. Oh, Holy Crap! I didn't even bother to fire off the .38, it would only annoy it. Running first, then thinking of a suitable Plan B sounded like a really good idea. Those fuckers are fast! I think I just jumped straight down the rest of the stairs and made it out the front door with their vile breath breathing down my ass. No way in hell I was going to outrun it, but I'd already thought of a suitable temporary roadblock. The Snow Hulks! Shadow Stalkers are as big, mean and nasty as anything on the Shadow Plane gets, or so I hope and pray. Definitely Major League talent that normally requires a group of Wizard level Practitioners in order to Banish. Allegedly, these guys are the enforcers of their world, serving the very top brass "named' guys. They're nearly impossible to Summon, and even harder to control. Obviously, Gloria somehow managed the first, but failed miserably with the final controlling part. She'll have a long time to consider that problem while she's forever imprisoned on the Shadow Plane. Supposedly these guys are able to take and devour souls, and it undoubted did this before it got too carried away with its other fun. Probably once she arrives at her new home she'll get put into a new body and will be made to do nasty and unpleasant things for a very long time until that body is destroyed and it's time for a new one… rinse, wash, repeat ad infinitum. More pity to her, but she brought it plainly upon herself. I wasn't going to have a prayer of taking this guy out. Fortunately, I could count on my unexpected new allies to help me out in a pinch. The Snow Hulks got one look at the Stalker hot on my ass and went proverbially nuts. They let me run past them without a scratch as they charged their mortal enemy. It's apparently a very dog eat dog world, the Shadow Plane. No one has any friends, no nice dinner parties, and definitely no fluffy bunny stuff where everyone sits around a fireplace on Saturday nights holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya' . The strong prey upon the weak… mercilessly, except when the weak have just enough friends around to sort of even the odds. If I had dropped my biggest fire bomb spell now, no one, not even the highest BMA enforcer, judge or executioner would have faulted my judgment the least bit, even if I did blow up half of the neighborhood, again. Still, my curiosity bug just had to make me wait and see if five angry Hulks were up to the job of at least slowing down a full grown Stalker… or at least long enough for me to help pump it full of six rounds of silver bullets and as many reloads as I could manage. It might take awhile, but the toxicity might get to it, eventually… hopefully. Actually, the odds were working out better than I had hoped. Snow Hulks were being ripped apart right and left, but not before leaving bloody marks of their own upon the Stalker. He looked a bit the worse for wear with one of its arms dangling uselessly, but the two remaining Hulks were in worse shape still and wouldn't last more than another few seconds probably. I'd emptied my revolver twice and was out of reloads. I had more ammo in the car, but I didn't like the odds that I would make it there in time and be able to finish off the Stalker before it finished me off instead. The last Snow Hulk was going down and the Stalker was now looking me over to be his next dance partner. There was a Plan C I was considering, but I didn't like it very much. Sure I had pockets full of nasty things of my own, but not one of them was probably going to really hurt the Stalker very much, let alone kill it. I'm a pretty good Artificer, but this guy really needed Artifact or Wizard power magic to bring down. This thing, even badly wounded, was way out of my league. It was really a fairly desperate plan, and I only had about twenty seconds or so to implement it before the fucker would rip off my head and then shit straight down my throat. I ran over to the west side of house, next to the outside brick wall of the house chimney, where there was the most ambient sunlight. I grabbed on to the local underground Ley Line like a drowning man would a life preserver, and focused my very limited Manipulation skills to modify the handful of silver coins I had in my pocket into a narrow tapered silver spike, sort of like a stiletto dagger. And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 03 With my sword and its silver runes in one hand and the silver stiletto in the other hand, maybe I'd be able to either keep it at bay or hurt it enough for it to want to Depart all on its' own. Maybe I'd even get lucky and hit something vital before it ripped out all of my own internal organs and turned me into a rather messy (and incomplete) jigsaw puzzle. The last battle dance didn't start terribly auspiciously. The Stalker got in the first strike and damn near tore my own left arm off. My suits protective armor spells just barely held, but another strike on that side could be fatal. A swift sword strike of my own drew blood along its side, but was hardly mortal. We circled each other in slight grudging respect for the others skills and each waited for the other to make the first and fatal strike. I was mentally exhausted and scared half out of my mind, but the Stalker was badly hurt, perhaps very badly. The twelve silver bullets inside it were slowly sapping its strength and weakening its connection with the Shadow Realm. It would be moving a little slower perhaps now, its wounds sapping its strength and blinding speed. If I could make one good telling blow, the contest might be decided. The Stalker made its move first. They're smart bastards, not just cunning. They've made it to the top of their food chain by out thinking and out fighting everything else around them. In this instance, the Stalker completely out thought me. He (well it was raping Gloria's mangled body with something rather large and menacing) feigned a stumble to his left, then easily dodged my mistimed frantic sword swing and moved in close to gut me. I hadn't a prayer… until the sun came out from behind the storm clouds at that moment for just a nanosecond, long enough for him to raise his good arm to protect his eyes instead of slicing through my gut, which left his chest open for a massive sword thrust. I plunged the sword forward so hard that we tumbled together against the brick chimney as my sword emerged out the Stalker's back and imbedded itself into the brickwork of the chimney. Still entwined together I used my last strength to impale him through the throat with the silver stiletto with my other hand while his razor sharp claws ravaged my back. I hadn't the strength left to withdraw my weapons and suddenly the bloody snow at my feet seemed like the perfect place to take a very long rest. ******** CHAPTER 4 At first I thought I was dead, but everything hurt just too much for that notion to be believable. I cracked open an eyelid expecting to see my death blow incoming, but instead everything seemed peaceful and quiet. I had run my silver runed sword so hard through the Stalker's upper chest that he was now solidly affixed to the side of the chimney and couldn't break himself free. The silver stiletto had also impaled the creature firmly into the brick as well. Major silver poisoning was now wrecking his system and his power was rapidly evaporating. The creature had visibly shrunk enough that its powerful legs could no longer reach the ground as it now hung trapped against the chimney. I was nearly as helpless at its feet, but I was just out of reach of the pinned monster… and safe. I should have completed the rite of Banishment at once, but I couldn't resist one final taunt of my defeated foe before his forcible return to his own home. In one of my vest pockets I keep a couple of very old medieval English silver pennies. I use these occasionally at a funeral for a friend or colleague, placing a silver penny in the dead person's mouth so that they will have the means to pay Charon, the Ferryman, in the unlikely event that their paths should cross in the afterlife. Ok, it's very unlikely, but one never knows and it never doesn't hurt to be prepared for everything. Dodging one last feeble swipe at me, I pried the Stalker's huge fanged jaws open and chucked the coin deep into his mouth before uttering the Command of Banishment with a confidence and firmness that belied how little strength I actually had left. That he was extremely unhappy was a severe understatement, but he was very obliging and Departed anyway. Good. I didn't have anything like the energy to repeat it all over again. Besides, silver is expensive – almost as expensive as gold these days and really old good silver coins are really worth their weight in gold. Properly Banished, it would probably be at least a hundred years before the bastard will be able to return and go hunting for me out of revenge. It was even more likely that after returning home severely weakened from being slain and Banished, that it would be very unlikely to remain for long at the top of their food chain. Failure is certainly not rewarded in any of the darker Planes of existence and the strong most very definitely prey upon the weaker. The husk shells of the five Snow Hulks and the Stalker remained. The BMA would undoubtedly want to take a look at the scene and they probably weren't too far away, as the approaching sirens of a government Flyvr grew closer. You can't battle a Major Visitor and a truckload of lesser ones without setting off some sort of alarm somewhere. They'd be ready for battle, but probably they'll be happier just handling the after action cleanup and paperwork instead. Speaking of cleanup, I decided to stagger upstairs one last time before the smart boys in the cute red dresses showed up to steal all of the glory, and handed Donald, who miraculously was still waiting in the car like a good boy, a few last minute souvenirs and a parting gift for the winning contestant, me. And the Stalker was hung from the chimney with care… A Merry Christmas present to the BMA from the Zyphyr. ************** And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 04 The BMA wasn't at all delighted with the mess that had been dumped on them, but couldn't find anything upon which to fault my actions or put any of the blame on me... but it didn't stop them from trying. They roped off the house for about a week and had lots of arc-tech gearheads going over everything with a fine toothed micrometer. They paid especial attention to her computer, where I'm sure they found all sorts of unwholesome things. No one could possibly doubt that poor misguided and now mangled Gloria had done the unthinkable for a mere 1.9 Sensitive. If they wanted more answers they could get a good Necromancer to have a talk to her corpse... too bad her soul was now off in Never-never Shadow Land with her lost Shadow boy playmate, so she'll be unlikely to answer any questions ever again. At least they had brought along a good Healer who knew what she was doing and fixed me up rather nicely and only a few of the massive claw marks on my back should leave any kind of minor scarring. If I never see another Stalker again, it will be far too soon. It took me weeks to get my sword cane back and my best duster coat and suit were a complete loss. It took me over a month to finish the protections on my replacements and they don't fit half as well. I eventually got a terse Letter of Appreciation from the Deputy Director of BMA in Galveston, which was about as much of an 'attaboy' as I was apparently going to get, but it was still better than getting nothing. They couldn't burn me for this episode but they were equally disturbed that a 'mere Adept' could handle a house full of Hulks and a Stalker. To the high and mighty Wizards living in their ivory towers, this was a major affront to their egos and placed me firmly on their 'watch list'. No good deeds ever go unpunished. Quietly and very privately, I did claim a Rightful Oath of Compensation when I claimed Gloria's matching pair of uber-grade Artifacts that had boosted her latent power well into Wizard ranges. Items, especially very magical ones, don't like to be removed from their owner, dead or otherwise, and there is a sort of magical taint that briefly marks the items after any 'irregular' transfers. By making my Oath of Compensation, I claimed that I was owed by the deceased certain lawful expenses, per our Contract Oath, for the damage to my own personal magical Artifices, i.e., my protective suit and loss of blood on her behalf, and claimed in reparation her only apparent equivalent items of value, her illegally obtained Artifacts. I told you there were subtle benefits to becoming the screwie in a breeched magical Contract! Her bracers, a pair of oversized wristbands that were the source of her augmented power, had nearly every magical gem in them cracked and burned out. She had sucked this baby down to the bottom of the batteries summoning her last otherworldly assassin. Eight of the large gems, very high grade Major Arcana Stones, in particular were going to be major pains in the rear to replace, especially via normal legitimate channels. I could probably replace a couple of them now, with the massive largess I was about to receive from Donald, my very grateful client. He was very generous indeed, but even so, buying just two suitable replacement gemstones would end up costing me most of it. With my own Artificing skills, I could probably make one myself... after about ten years worth of work. Much less time perhaps if I had access to a decent Corporate Arc-Tec lab. These stones themselves are definitely Artifact level magic. Maybe it wouldn't hurt my dignity too much to do some part time consulting in return for some lab time and materials... or work something out in trade. Arc-Tec corps go through Arcana Stones like candy and sometimes some 'gently used' surplus ones eventually end up on the resale market. ******* Donald remains a happily widowed and very rich man. He has promised to recommend me to other well-heeled potential clients, for which I'm sort of grateful. I can certainly now use the money, but rich clients are also usually morally ambiguous clients. Odds are I'd end up protecting some utter asshole against some little guy he'd squashed earlier like a bug. Outraged husbands, screwed business partners, and so forth. I think I'll take this potential career move a bit slowly and not just rush into things. I was a bit slow to heal up to 100% but I've been spending most of my recent free time consulting for several local Arc-Tec computer firms. The pay is good, but the fringe benefits are better. I've already replaced two of the destroyed Major Arcana Stones and have a deal in place for six other 'slightly imperfect' stones if I can complete an artificement design project for powering a new consumer product on schedule, by the end of this summer. This has cut into my public Adept work, but the rewards are so totally worth it. It really didn't hurt all that badly to roll up my selves, do a bit of work and collect a few favors in return for first dibs on some leftover goodies! With eight functional stones, wearing my Artifact should make nearly any Major Visitors run for home, squealing like a spanked schoolgirl. BMA will most definitely not like it, but they can suck eggs. Neither of us has any real clue why Gloria went through all of the hassle of faking Shadow attacks on herself and bringing in a professional licensed magician to witness it. Our best guess is that she expected me to believe the minor summons against herself were valid and legitimate threats caused by her husband, so that her later major attacks against her husband later could later then be believably blamed upon him as well, that he had failed to control his summonings. Believable I suppose; BMA certainly wouldn't have thought twice about it, but they're overworked and bureaucratically lazy and would always take the path with the least amount of paperwork. I guess I'm just more suspicious by nature than the average Adept or Wizard. Hopefully that means I might get to live a bit longer, that would be good... I like this job and enjoy using my powers to be able to help people, and even the twats at BMA on occasion. THE END ********** Author's Note: The sequel, "Banish all the World" has been completed and will be posted here soon.