Gremlin Night, Dale Smith [easy books to read in english .txt] 📗

gargoyle slinging lighting around. This spell was going to take energy and time but I’d burn more energy, including some of my own, to save on the time. I closed my eyes and remembered what the observation room looked like. Fixed it in my mind. The mirrors on either side of the door, the little table with the basket of yarn and the knitting needles, the window.

The brownie must have gone back there because that was a special place for it. Probably where it had spent a lot of time with Therese.

I drew in mana, streams of it appearing in the air around me, until my binding knife glimmered red-gold, and the reflected light actually cast shadows around us.

The air smelled of cinnamon and heated metal, yet the knife’s hilt remained cold to my touch. It began trembling, reaching its limits. In a moment, it wouldn’t be so cold at all. It would suddenly heat up until it burned my skin.

My bones began to ache.

Alright, Liz, I told myself, time to cast.

I pointed the knife up the stairs, where the brownie lurked.

"You and I are bound together," I proclaimed, the Dutch words sounding harsh in my ears.

I twisted my wrist and released the spell. Golden light shot from the blade’s tip and through the wall. For an instant, the brownie was silhouetted in the brilliant golden light. It stiffened.

"Wait for me," I said, and led Tully upstairs to the observation room.

The brownie stood stock still in the center of the room, staring out the window.

I circled around until I faced it.

It was trembling.

"There's no reason to fear us," I said.

"Therese died." The brownie's words were a high soprano squeak.

"Who killed her?" I asked.

The brownie shook with fear. Brownies were very fearful creatures to begin with. I felt its horror at Therese’s death, seeing its human mistress murdered in her own home. It had experienced her agony and suffering.

I blinked tears away and knelt down beside it. We needed answers. All I had to do was tug on the mana binding us together, and I could have compelled it to speak. But the brownie wasn’t a criminal. It was a gentle soul confronted by wretched horror.

“Please, can you help us?” I asked. “Help us learn what happened to Therese.”

The brownie nodded, its bangs fell over its eyes. Its little pointed cap bobbled and threatened to fall off its tiny head.

“Ravagers,” it said.

I froze.

Ravagers were particularly nasty and brutal newer manifestations that lived only to cause pain and death. The product of the modern subconscious, a noxious stew of modern nightmares, brutality, the internet and hatred of the other. We hunted them down wherever we encountered them.

I shuddered. "Who commanded them?” Ravagers were thankfully rare, and when they occurred, were conjured. I couldn't remember if I'd ever heard of ravagers appearing without conscious manipulation. That was the thing – directly conjuring a permanent manifestation worked by teasing out the dreams, nightmares, and folklore of the collective subconscious, which on its own, could spawn fleeting manifestations, invisible to everyone but those like Tully and me who could see the arcane reality.

The brownie’s answer was almost too quiet to hear. “I saw no one,” the brownie said.

“Why would someone want to kill Therese Sprig?” Tully asked.

The brownie huddled down, looked at me, brushing its brown hair away from its golden eyes.

“Please answer him,” I said.

“She knew many things. She worried so much. She worried about me, about the house, and especially about Sylvas.”

“Who’s Sylvas?” Tully asked.

I nodded at the brownie.

“A great elf. Friend of Therese, and of me. He took care of us.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“Do not know. He had gone out on errand for Therese, to get special medicines. Two sunrises ago.” The brownie lowered its head, rubbed its face. It was crying. I rubbed my wet face with the back of my hand.

I bent down. “She was dying.”

“Yes. She called it, mmm, can-cer. She took human medicine, so much of it. She said she didn’t have much time to live. Sylvas and me-self didn’t want her to die. Ever. She cared about us. Cared about all creatures.”

“But she was dying, and that must have hurt you.”

The brownie jerked its head up, eyes suddenly blazing. “Therese the best of you. Wrong that she should die when so many bad humans go on living and hurting, hurting us and hurting yourselves.”

“Life’s so not fair,” I said, “not by a million miles. It is very unfair most of the time.” Suddenly there was a lump in my throat, and I swallowed heavily. “I’m so sorry.”

The brownie looked at its hands. “Therese told me to hide. Said bad things outside. She turned wards off.”

“Why?” I asked. The wards were tuned to Therese’s command, of course.

The brownie rubbed its eyes. “She said she was sorry, but she had to trap the ravagers.”

Tully and I exchanged puzzled looks. That didn’t make sense. Why would she want to trap the ravagers? And why hadn’t she asked for help from R.U.N.E.? And the wards were turned back on when we arrived. How could that have happened if Therese was dead?

“Trap the ravagers?” I shook my head. It was crazy. Again, why would she want to trap the ravagers? The brownie saw things in a very particular way, even more so than many other sorts of manifestations. Probably because it was a house brownie, and was bound to this place, and the person who had lived here. Depending upon who lived here next, the brownie’s world would change. If no one lived here, it would become “furtive,” almost like a ghost, waiting for someone to come. Brownies were rare these days, despite the influx of mana in the world since the 1960s.

Trying to get information from it was hard, because it just didn’t see things the way we did, nor ask questions. It accepted the reality it found itself in. It was a helper, a companion, but mostly, it was a denizen of the domicile it found itself in,