Blood Moon, page 19
part #1 of The Wizard's Journal Series
“Princess, want to blow out light and make wish?”
Thyzil spoke in a colloquial manner that would drive any English teacher crazy. English was his second language, and besides, the way he spoke actually increased his charisma and overwhelming charm.
Alura rolled her eyes and shook her head at Thyzil’s offer, but she was holding back from laughing and he knew it.
“Very well princess,” he said, then turned his hand letting the sparkling powder fall to the floor. “Wizard, you take care of my princess, yes.”
“Sure will,” I replied.
Alura smiled and said, “Transmati Thyzil Keob,” causing her apartment to fill with light and transport her warrior back to Sarila’s lab.
So this pentagram was made for Alura, and like mine, only works for the one who designed it. That’s why it has different symbols.
I now realized why Alura hadn’t invited me to her apartment. Thyzil was not visiting – he was sharing the apartment with Alura. Okay, I may be slow to catching on to the obvious, but I’m on board now. Alura didn’t intend for me to see her smile, and when she looked at me, I scratched my head acting like nothing happened. She punched my arm, hard.
“Don’t give me any sly looks buster,” she said with her eyes narrowed. “Come on you, let’s go outside and get some fresh air.”
I barely could hold myself from laughing. “Sly look? What sly look?”
Alura smirked and locked her apartment door behind us rearming her wards. She had her phone in her hand and called Sarila who was less than happy about Alura not having her phone ready to answer calls. Albeit Togas don’t have pockets, Sarila expects everyone to be on call 24/7. I could not hear the conversation except when Alura got in the last few words.
“Sorry Sarila, you’re right. It won’t happen again,” she said, then looked at me as if I did something wrong and placed the phone inside her pocket.
I raised my hands in the air and shrugged, trying to look as impartial as possible, which I actually was. Alura wasn’t going to see it that way no matter what I told her.
“Let’s go,” she said in a scolding tone. “Sarila wants us to check out something along the waterfront at Sunset Park in Brooklyn.”
“Oh well, there goes our nice stroll on a sunny day,” I said, which Alura completely ignored, obviously still miffed that I arrived unannounced at her apartment.
Sunset Park is located in Brooklyn on the western waterfront shore. Now abandoned for decades and in complete disrepair, it was once a booming business centerpiece of Manhattan. The Dutch first developed the park back in the 1600s, but it didn’t take off until the early 19th century when Scandinavian and Irish immigrants arrived. Once the Bush Terminal was built – no relation to the former president, or more importantly, our domestic beer – manufacturing and warehousing took advantage of nearby railways and water transportation, making it a significant business hub in the city.
While driving to Sunset Park, I told Alura about my hooded monk friend standing in the ally across from my apartment. I also told her that I saw the same character outside my Vegas hotel when she picked me up in her cab.
“They’re Hunter Demons who are drawn to magic like a moth to flames,” Alura said. “They are not particularly harmful unless someone gets in their way or too close, which is why they have survived so long. We never paid much attention to them because they lurk quietly in the shadows.”
“Are they like Kyiel? I mean no real physical form?”
“No, they are solid and use clamor to hide themselves. Wizards can see them easily because their clamor is a very low level magic, like a chameleon that camouflages itself in its natural environment.”
“Damn creepy buggers. Is that all I should know?”
“There is one more thing to consider. If you see a group of them, watch out. This is when a competition chromosome kicks in and they become like sharks on a feeding frenzy. If this happens, they will attack everything in their path, including their own kind.”
“Let’s see. There are watcher birds stalking me, lycanthropes trying to kill me, an ancient race of beings called the Darkzon racing to Earth to enslave all mankind, and now Hunter Demons that dress like monks who want to steal my magic. Does that sound about right?”
Alura laughed. “Heck no, not even close. Did you forget what I told you before? How do humans put it … it’s the tip of the iceberg. Soon enough, as the Darkzon get closer to Earth, we’ll be fighting vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, and all sorts of dark demons trying to mark out their territory. The party has yet to begin dear brother.”
“Some party,” I said. “Sounds like every nightmare possible.”
Alura grinned. “Yup, and it’s a party where our kind are always the guest of honor, in a horrific blood thirsty sort of way.”
I looked out the car window and remained quiet for the rest of the drive. The thought of being a main course at a banquet for dark creatures was unsettling and would take some time to digest – no pun intended.
We arrived at Sunset Park about a half hour later. I have ridden by the park on a train many times, but never saw it up close. There are a couple dozen abandoned warehouses overgrown with bushes and weeds, giving the park an eerie ghost town look. Alura stop her car near the end of the park outside an old building and checked her GPS.
“This is the place,” she said. “Let’s go check out what the big fuss is all about.”
A rusty steel door at the front was the only entrance into a turn of the century brick structure. What were once windows are now bricked over and covered with dead vines giving it that special monster like appeal. As we approached the door, the hairs on my neck stood up telling me something was wrong. Alura felt the danger too, but kept her sense of humor.
“Well brother, are you going to be a gentleman and open that door for a lady?”
I took my staff coin out of my pocket and raised it toward the door, then said, “Unclass staff,” turning the coin into my staff. The amulet stone on top glowed blue-white, and with one gentle tap on the rusty chained lock, it turned white hot and dripped molten steel onto the ground. I slid the door open and graciously gestured for Alura to enter.
“Beauty before age,” I said, bowing my head in a chivalrous manner.
“You got it backwards old man. It’s age before beauty.”
I thought about it for a second. Yup, she’s right, but I wasn’t about to admit it.
“Well then, I guess your going in first makes sense then,” I said while grinning. “I mean, you’ve been on Earth 100 years longer than me sister, so …”
“You wish,” she said, smirking and shaking her head. “You were on Zeshtune long before I was born.”
The inside of the building had boxes and broken furniture piled up next to old machinery covered with cobwebs and dust. It was dark and difficult to see coming out of the sunlight, so I focused on my staff and said, “Aknor firster,” creating a bright blue-white flame from my staff amulet to illuminate the inside.
We worked our way around piles of junk to a stairway leading the basement. Thick air with the smell of death caused me to gag and cover my nose. Alura stopped and pulled out a magical coin of her own and said, “Unclass blade,” turning it into a double edge razor shape weapon with a handle to wrap your hand around.
“Huh, pretty fancy for someone that doesn’t possess much magic.”
Alura smiled. “Don’t worry brother, you still have a monopoly on all the good magic. Unlike your staff, this spell only works once per coin and is considered low level magic.”
“Well, if you want my opinion, that weapon is certainly easier to conceal than two swords strapped on your back.”
“Perhaps, but I like my swords,” she said and began leading the way down the stairs. “Keep your staff close so I can see where we are going. I don’t want to bump into anything, dead or alive.”
I followed Alura down the stairs hoping we wouldn’t encounter more lycanthropes. Instead, we saw something much worse.
“What the heck?” I said, looking at dozens of human bodies piled up along the walls.
Alura grimaced. “Lycanthropes didn’t kill these people. If they had, these bodies would be torn apart with blood everywhere,” she said, then narrowed her eyes. “Look how thin they are Azul.”
I took a closer look and saw they weren’t thin at all. Their bodies were dried out like prunes with only a thin layer of skin covering their bones. Ribs were poking out of the bodies and some fingers were nothing but bones.
I moved my staff higher to light up the room better and saw a man staked to a wall. He was several feet off the ground with stakes through his hands and feet stretched out as though almost pulled apart. His clothes were drenched in blood and shredded as if claws ran up and down his body.
I grimaced. “There’s a lot of blood here. Do you think lycanthropes kill this man?”
“Not likely. It’s not their style,” Alura replied, then looked at something written in blood on the wall. “What does that mean?”
“It’s Mayan and translates to ‘we come soon’.”
“We come soon … who’s we and when is soon?” she asked.
“I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to.”
There were also symbols written in Egyptian and various other languages.
“This man died a horrible death,” I said and raised my staff closer for a better view. “Why was this guy killed differently than the others?”
“It’s a feeding ground.”
“Feeding ground … for what?”
“That man is a territorial mark. Whatever did this wants anyone who sees this to know they’re trespassing.”
Alura was right. This poor guy looked as though he had recently died. He wasn’t turned into a shriveled prune like the other bodies and his blood was still wet. This man was tortured beyond what most people could even imagine. Alura took pictures of what we found using her phone and sent them to Sarila.
“A feeding ground … and we’re standing right in the middle of it … trespassing,” I said. “Whoever or whatever did this got in here without using the front door, which means there must be another way in and out, which means we could become trapped likes rats down here.”
Realizing the potential danger, Alura began scanning the room with her blade raised to strike.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to the stairs.
There was a large hole in the wall behind the stairs, about four feet wide and tall. I stuck the top of my staff inside and saw an old drainage pipe a few feet inside the opening. A rusted steel grate had been torn off the wall and was half buried in broken pieces of mortar. The drainage pipe was three feet in diameter and probably led out into the river.
“Let’s get the heck out of here,” I said. “If something comes from upstairs and this drain pipe at the same time, we’re screwed.”
“Yea, let’s go,” Alura said. “I have surveillance equipment in my car. We can place a miniature infrared camera inside to keep an eye on this place. If anything with a body temperature comes down here, it will trigger a video stream to Sarila.”
I frowned. “Putting a camera inside here means we have to come back into this death trap. What part of getting the heck out of here don’t you understand?”
“It will only take a couple of minutes. I can place a camera on the side of the top step. We don’t have to come back down into the basement.”
It took a lot less time exiting the building than it took getting to the basement – big surprise. Adrenalin and fear, mostly fear, is a good friend in scary places.
I stood by the steel door while Alura went to her car to get the infrared camera. She came back with two cameras and tossed the first one straight up over my head, sticking it to the outside roof overhang. Alura then stuck the second camera on the first step of the basement stairs.
“What if the thing that did this has no body temperature?” I asked.
“No problem. We will still hear it moving,” she said, then linked her phone into Sarila’s satellite feed.
Chapter 18
The cameras were working well. I could see the Porsche parked in front on one side of Alura’s cell phone screen and the basement in complete darkness on the other side. I waved my hand outside the window and saw it on the phone’s screen.
Now that’s the way I like to track monsters – far away where it’s safe.
Alura took off at her usual wheel screeching speed while I again held on to the door handle for dear life. I was about to ask her if she wanted to come over to my apartment for dinner, but before I had the chance, she answered.
“Sure, dinner sounds great. I’m famished.”
“Will you stop doing the mind reading thing for Pete’s sake? It’s a little nerve racking.”
Alura smiled and kept her eyes focused on the road. She had told me back on Keob that her skill wasn’t actually mind reading. As she puts it, ‘it’s a heightened sense of awareness predicting thoughts’. What’s the difference? This gift of prediction seemed to have skipped over my gene pool. I had enough difficulty predicting my own thoughts, never mind someone else’s thoughts.
When we got back to my apartment, Sally was sitting next to the door with her leash in her mouth as usual. Alura wasted no time hugging her and saying how much she was missed. I scratched my head wondering if Sally had some innate mind reading talent of her own.
“Looks like you’re not the only mind reader around here,” I said while taking the leash out of Sally’s mouth.
Alura laughed and Sally woofed.
“Alright, let’s go for a walk before dinner.”
The three of us started headed out to the Magical Herbs shoppe. It was 5:30 PM and I knew Melony would be closing up soon. I think Sally also knew this because she dragged me along faster than usual.
“Maybe Sally’s trying to tell you something brother.”
“Yea, like she wants an herbal snack.”
“Maybe something else too,” Alura said with a mischievous grin.
“What … oh come on, don’t be silly. Melony and I are only friends.”
Alura arched her eyebrow and cleared her throat, then muttered something under her breath.
“Give me break Alura. Melony and I are just friends.”
Alura laughed. “Sure you are. I didn’t say anything otherwise, did I?”
“No, but you were sure thinking it.”
“Nonsense. Who am I to interfere with the personal life of my big brother?”
“Exactly,” I said, then Alura laughed again, shaking her head as I smirked at her. “Fine, believe what you want, even though what you believe is nonsense.”
“’May be nonsense, may be true.” she said.
“Whatever,” I replied and said nothing more about it, but Alura grinned the entire way to Magical Herbs – annoying.
Melony was wiping down the counter top when we arrived. I tapped on the window and waved. She looked up and motioned with her hand to come in, which made Sally woof. Alura began browsing right away and held Sally’s leash so I could say hello to Melony.
“Hi Daniel. Back so soon? You must want another cup of my special tea.”
“Not right now, but thank you. I’m taking Sally for a walk and I think she believes Magical Herbs is her second home.”
Melony laughed and looked over to Alura and Sally. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell by her expression she was curious who Alura was.
“Oh, let me introduce you to someone,” I said, then waved at Alura to come over. “Melony, this is my sister Alura.”
Melony’s smiled and her eyes sparkled. “I didn’t know you had a sister Daniel,” she said and extended her hand to greet Alura. “It’s nice to meet you Alura.”
“Same here Melony,” Alura said, then she smiled at me like I did when finding her and Thyzil at her apartment dressed in togas. “Now I know why my brother keeps coming here and started dinking tea,” she said, causing Melony to laugh and blush while a customer called out for assistance.
“Don’t go away. I’ll be right back,” Melony said and went to help an elderly lady read some labels on products.
“You know she’s a witch, right?” Alura asked, grinning ear to ear.
My mouth dropped open. “A witch, are you kidding?”
“Nope, she’s a real witch. Don’t worry brother. She’s a white witch, a daughter of the Earth.”
I had no idea what Alura was talking about and she was amused at my reaction.
“She’s a good witch Azul. If she were a bad witch, her aura would be a dark grayish color. You know that.”
“A good witch doesn’t sound so bad,” I muttered. “Good is good, right?”
I narrowed my eyes to focus and took a hard look at Melony. Her aura was definitely white and swirling around in gentle motions.
“Don’t stare Azul. She doesn’t even know she’s a witch and is under our protection. We hired her to keep an eye on things so nothing could harm her.”
“We hired her?”
Alura grinned and winked at me.
“Did I forget to tell you ZWC owns the Magical Herbs Shoppe?” she asked while thumbing through pages of a book. “Oops, it must have slipped my mind.”
I looked at Sally and shook my head.
“I suppose you knew this too, didn’t you?”
Sally wagged her tail, which was in effect an admission of guilt. It figures.
Alura placed a couple small boxes of herbs on the counter. Melony, still wearing a beautiful smile inspected Alura’s selection and tapped on top of one box with her finger.
“I see you have good taste and are familiar with special herbs,” Melony said. “My customers can’t get enough of these. You must be very much in love with someone.”
Alura smiled and nodded her head. I picked up the box that Melony tapped and read Anise and Balm on the labels. Never heard of them. I lifted the box to my nose and took a whiff, then sneezed. Alura and Melony laughed and gave each other one of those looks that girls give when saying something about guys without using words.
