I was crouching at a table in my shadowy kitchen, peeking down at a bottle of Goodie's Farm Soft Lemonade, when a magic flux struck.
My precincts shivered and withered, abandoning my home stripped of its safety. The TV flared into life, unnaturally audible in the desolate house.
I put up my eyebrow at the bottle and wager that another clutching bulletin was on.
The bottle was lost.
"Urgent bulletin!" Margaret Chang announced.
"The Attorney General urges all inhabitants that any endeavour at convening or other activities ensuing in the manifestation of a supernaturally influential being can be hazardous to yourself and other citizens."
"No shit," I told the bottle.
"Local police have been nominated to suppress any such movements with all due force."
Margaret droned on, while I bit into my sandwich. Who were they swindling? No police force could strive to mash every summoning.
It just took a competent sorcerer to scrutinize a summoning in advancement. It required just a half-literate blockhead with a twinge of power and a vague notion of how to utilize it to attempt one.
Before you knew it, a three-headed Slavonic god was wreaking havoc in downtown Minnesota, the skies were squirting winged snakes, and SWAT was wailing for more Ammo.
These were hazardous times. But then in safer times, I had been a woman without employment. The stable tech world had limited use for a magic-touting mercenary like me.
When folks had a dilemma of a magic kind, the kind that cops could not or would not handle, they summoned the Mercenary Guild. If the task happened to plunge into my district, the Guild then summoned me.
I pouted and kneaded my hip. It still hurt after the previous task, but the injury had healed better than I anticipated. That was the first and last time I would admit to going against the Umpala Wormine without full body armour. The next time they better equip me with a level four containment suit.
A frigid surge of anxiety and nausea whack me. My belly lurched, sending acid to garnish the root of my tongue with a bitter aftertaste.
Quivers rode along my spine, and the flimsy hairs on my neck stood on edge.
Something horrible was in my house.
I gobble my sandwich and jab the mute button on the remote control. On the screen, Margaret Chang was engaged by a brick-faced man with a high-and-tight haircut and sights like slate.
An officer, possibly Paranormal Activity Division. I plopped my hand on the dagger that lay on my lap and crouched very quiet.
Heeding. Waiting.
No sound tormented the stillness. A plunge of water skinned up on the sticky surface of the Goodie's Farm bottle and slid down its glistening flank.
Something vast crawled along the foyer ceiling into the kitchen. I pretended not to glimpse it. It stopped to the left of me and was scarcely behind, so I did not have to delude very hard.
The intruder winced, whirled, and fastened itself in the nook, where the ceiling confronted the embankment. It crouched there, draped to the panelling by massive yellow paws, still and silent like a gargoyle in ample sunlight.
I yanked a swig from the bottle and lay it so I could glimpse the creature's introspection. Naked and hairless, it did not clench a single ounce of fat on
its wiry contour. Its membrane scattered so tight over the hard cords of muscle, it threatened to growl. Like a thin coating of wax melted over an anatomy model.
Your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman.
The vampire put up its left hand. The dagger talons minced the bare atmosphere, back and forth, like hollow knitting needles.
The vamp drifted its head doglike and studied me with eyes luminescent with a unique kind of insanity, born of wild blood thirst and free of any thought or discretion.
In a sole move, I dashed around and tossed the dagger. The ebony blade chopped cleanly into the beast's throat.
The vampire froze. Its yellow paws ceased moving.
Thick, purplish blood swelled around the sword and slowly glided down the bare flesh of the vampire's inlet, dabbing its chest and dripping on the floor.
The vampire's details twirled, striving to morph into a distinct countenance. It opened its maw, exhibiting twin fangs, that wriggled like diminutive ivory sickles.
"That was incredibly callous, Alder," Pulisic's vocalist mumbled from the vampire's throat.
"Now I have to nurture him."
"It is a reflex. Heed a bell, get food. See an undead, hurl a knife. Same thing."
The vampire's countenance heaved as if the Master of the Dead regulating it strived to wink.
"What are you drinking?" Pulisic inquired.
"Goodie's Farm."
"You can reimburse for better."
"I do not want better. I like Goodie's Farm. And I prefer to do business by phone but with you, not at all."
"I do not like to contact you, Alder. This is just a social call."
I grimaced at the vampire, wishing I could plop my knife into Pulisic's throat. It would feel extremely nice slashing into his flesh.
Unfortunately, he squatted in a strong compartment many miles away.
"You admire winding with me, don't you, Pulisic?"
"Immensely."
The million-dollar question was why.
"What is it you need? Make it quick, my Goodie's Farm's getting warm."
"I was simply gaping," Pulisic mumbled with dry detachment detailed only to him, "when was the last time you saw your guardian?"
The nonchalance in his voice transmitted slight shivers down my spine.
"Why?"
"No reason. As often, a pleasure."
In a sole vital hop, the vampire segregated itself from the embankment and glid through the open window, taking my blade with it.
I attained for the phone, pledging under my breath, and dialled the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid. No vampire could breach my wards when the magic was in ample swing.
Pulisic had no means of anticipating when the magic would wane, so he must have been gawking at my house for some time, waiting for my protective spells to fail. I yanked a swig from the bottle.