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

of her league.” It laughed sadly. “How will you manage to destroy these gremlins? There are so many of them, you are out of spells.” His voice was gloating.

I gritted my teeth. The trickster had a point.

“I take it you have a way to deal with them.”

The trickster’s smile widened. “Of course. Give the spell to me and I’ll make sure you and the bridge survive, intact.”

“This was the plan all along, wasn’t it?” I demanded.

It nodded. “You can’t be faulted for failing to see it. You aren’t a supernatural, after all.

“You’re doing this for Rudy Gott.” The mystery wizard of the hour, once David Marks, who obviously wanted power, and lots of it.

The trickster shrugged. “I aid him.”

Time to stab with a verbal knife. “I thought true ancients served no one.”

The trickster’s eyes widened and it lifted its chin. “I serve no one.”

“Not from where I’m sitting.”

“The lady has a point,” another familiar voice said beside me. The fox stood next to me.

I narrowed my eyes. “How can you be in the same place at the same time in two guises?” That was supposed to be impossible. Manifestations couldn’t do it any more than people could.

“I’m not.” The trickster-in-top-hat-and-frock-coat leaned toward me, ignoring the other voice. It didn’t seem to register the fox at all. “You’ll die if you don’t give me the spell.” It pulled out a brass pocket watch, dangling on a chain from a vest pocket, and checked the time.

I rolled my eyes. Talk about a flair for the melodramatic.

“One-minute left for you to live. One-minute left to decide,” it said.

I looked at the fox, raised an eyebrow.

“I’m the free part of myself,” the fox explained. “Gott couldn’t hold all of me.”

A purple glow grew in the sky over the hillside above us, eastward, in the direction the gremlins were coming from. They had to be racing quickly.

I turned to the trickster-in-top-hat-and-frock-coat. “If I give control of the spell to you, then you give all this oncoming chaos magic to Gott.”

It shrugged, the top hat bobbling. “That’s not for you to worry about.” It reached a bony hand toward me. “All you have to do is hand me your knife, and I’ll take over.

I glanced at the fox.

“There’s another way,” the voice of the fox said in my ear.

Sparks began jumping from the tip of my binding knife. The air was hot, filled with onrushing power, like the feeling you get right before a thunderstorm hits and the skies open up. The power cables overhead began to spark, an electrical echo of the arcane sparking from my knife. The golden ribbon was now a net.

“Looks like the gremlin express is about to roll into the station,” I said.

“Give me the knife!” The trickster-in-top-hat-and-frock-coat commanded.

“Strike me,” said the fox’s voice in my ear.

Street lights popped. The houses around us plunged into darkness as their lights went out. A car alarm began playing what sounded like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Another car joined in, then a second, until there were at least a dozen alarms all playing that.

“At least it’s not soft rock,” I said, trying to sound glib. My palms were slick with sweat.

The purple glow broke over the hillside above us, now a violet blaze of mana, as the gremlin wave rolled down the hill, blue-black figures racing toward me.

Forty at least. That had to be a record for an outbreak in one place.

A tree split in three. A lamppost popped off its base and hopped for six feet before toppling to the ground. The gremlins passed hurricane fencing, which came apart like tissue paper.

My stomach had turned to lead. The chaos magic surrounding the gremlins strobed green and purple. It looked powerful enough for the bridge to crumble. The gremlins swarmed closer. A half dozen abandoned shopping carts hurled after them.

“Give it to me!” The trickster-in-top-hat-and-frock-coat thundered.

The air wavered, like water. The fox had rolled over on to its back, exposing its chest.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

I held the knife in my hand, then plunged it into the fox, and let go of the hilt, jumping away.

The trickster-in-top-hat-and-frock-coat’s mouth formed a huge ‘O’. Blue smoke poured from the open mouth and its ears, and the manifestation dissolved into nothingness.

The knife was buried in the fox, the golden ribbon now a net connecting the gremlins rushing at us. They pelted into the fox’s body. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the resulting arcane flash was an actinic flare that left me blind.

A wave of mana went through me and I gasped, stumbling. Then it was gone, leaving me gasping for more air. Rattling sounds grew close, followed by clattering and crashes, then silence.

I blinked, trying to see.

Finally, my vision returned.

A black cloud rose, shot through with purple lightning, like an arcane version of a mushroom cloud, fading moments later.

“Thank you,” the voice of the fox whispered in my ear. “In death, I am free at last. Perhaps, I will be reborn. Someday.”

I lowered my head, blinking at the tears. The trickster had been a prisoner of Gott, who never should have had the ability to capture an ancient. Yet he had. Somehow. I needed to meet up with Tully, find Gott, and stop him before his actions wrought more destruction and death.

I felt a shivering against my hip. The shadow slug had survived.

“I’ll bring you to justice, Rudy Gott,” I whispered. “I swear.”

I trembled with the force of my vow.

14

I left Cathedral Park and drove up to Richmond and the deck of the St. John’s bridge. I needed to get to the R.U.N.E. garage in Northwest quickly and use the relay there to contact Tully. I needed to find out what he’d learned, and tell him what I’d discovered about Rudy Gott and the mana harvesting.

Turns out things were even worse than I thought.

When I’d returned to my Ducati, got in the saddle, and, almost as an afterthought, checked my watch, what I saw hit me like a lightning bolt. What seemed like a half hour