Hard Case Read online

  "Because I'm too stubborn to stop."

  Saripha raised an eyebrow in a playful 'you said it not I' manner.

  "So what was it?"

  "If what you saw had an independent existence, in that context, I would be cautious about it until we know more. It could be the source of Janovic's power."

  "An angel?"

  "We don't know that. This is the land of appearances and lies."

  A wind gust caught me hard in the face. I felt a sudden shiver. I realized what had started out a sunny morning had, while we talked, turned dark but I hadn't noticed. Saripha apparently hadn't noticed either, because she stood now, startled, unsure how to react.

  "Something's wrong." she whispered.

  The sky was an angry gray swirl of clouds. No rain fell yet, but the air turned sharply cold. The focus of the clouds was directly over Saripha. Lightning, tinged with purple, hit the ground with violence and, had I had time to think about it, the presence of that color would have worried me. The lightning was also closing in around Saripha, ringing her in.

  Kyo ran out onto the porch, her hair unkempt, which was unusual for her. She and I both bolted at the same time for Saripha. Both of us were stopped by arcing purple bolts that threw us back to the steps of the tower. A tornado hit out in the field, spinning counterclockwise. Even as it rushed towards Saripha, she was being pulled towards it. If she had any power to fight what was happening, she wasn’t getting a chance to use it, although she did finally manage to anchor herself to the ground as the tornado twisted towards her.

  Then I saw it. As more and more energy built up around the tornado, a pattern emerged in the spinning funnel, an image of Janovic’s face. He was after Saripha.

  I lunged to charge out to her, but a wall of wind had formed, too strong to push through no matter how much I tried. The horror of watching Saripha’s plight, and yet being unable to do anything about it, was overpowering. Saripha was firmly rooted on one patch of dirt, but the tornado was almost on her. Something black oozed up at her feet. It looked like oil at first and began spreading. The black ooze became textured and then burst into feathers. Swarms of ravens exploded from the ground and formed spirals completely enveloping Saripha. The ground itself was shaking. Despite the roaring winds, the ravens fanned out skyward as the clouds began to recede.

  Saripha was gone!

  The tornado suddenly unwound clockwise and disappeared into the ground, pulling the purple licks of energy in with it.

  And like that, all was stillness. The emptiness left by Saripha’s disappearance was startling. Kyo and I pulled ourselves up out of the dirt.

  “Janovic!” Kyo spat the name.

  I nodded. "I was a fool. I should have never let her expose herself."

  “Why Saripha? Why didn’t he come after you?” Izzy asked.

  “First, he must have realized she was the one who took him down the first time. Second, he doesn’t attack directly. He depends on having power over his victims. He wants her to limit my options.”

  “Or to force you to find him,” Kyo added.

  “If he discovers she is still human…” Izzy started to say. I stopped him. The completion of that idea, given Janovic’s pathology, was too awful to give voice to.

  “There was… something else.”

  We all turned to Rox. She was hugging herself, trying to deal with the terror of feeling Janovic so close.

  “I felt it towards the end. I don’t know what it was, but it was different than Janovic. Something...”

  “…Alien.” Kyo completed the sentence.

  “Yes.”

  “So, we now know Janovic is a lot more powerful than he was before.” Izzy spoke what we were all thinking.

  "I've been getting stupid, just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Things only happen in this place when I run at them. We have to find Janovic. We have to take him down for good."

  “But we don’t know where he is.”

  “We know someone who does.”

  “The manitor?” Kyo asked.

  “I have to make him tell me where Janovic is.”

  “He sounded like an agreeable sort,” Izzy offered. “Maybe he will be helpful.”

  “Maybe. But he didn’t fall over himself telling me where Janovic was before. I also don’t think anything much goes down that he doesn’t know about. I find it hard to believe Janovic could do something like this without someone’s permission and Guido is supposed to be the boss.”

  “So what happens if he doesn’t choose to help?”

  “Then I have to take him on.”

  Taka grinned. "Paul won't be happy about this."

  "Good. I'm usually on the right track when I make him unhappy."

  Taka was right, of course.

  "You...” During the palpable gap in speech, Paul's face went through several stressful changes looking for the right word. He couldn't find it. "...can't!"

  We had returned to Rockvale to fill in Paul, Zeon and Sidney. Paul found Saripha very grounding, so he was already off balance just hearing the news of her disappearance. In the abstract, he would do anything for Saripha. Nonetheless, in reality, my proposal of confronting the manitor was unthinkable to him.

  Zeon sat back, mildly amused, feigning disinterest. He knew the danger we were in, but his reaction to stress was the opposite of Paul’s. He just stopped thinking about it.

  We were sitting in the large room that served as our town council room. We all sat at a wooden table. Sidney had made some tea and now nervously played solitaire while we talked.

  "Paul, you propose we do nothing?” As usual, I was impatient.

  "I propose there are other things to do. We don't even know for sure the manitor knows where Janovic is."

  "He knows,” I countered.

  "So you charge in there and do what?"

  "I'll ask him to help save Saripha.”

  "And what do you think he will say to that?"

  "’No’ would be my guess."

  "And what will you do about that?"

  "Ask pretty please."

  Izzy and Zeon grinned at each other.

  "Oh dear God, Quentin, be serious. You are being utterly selfish and stupid! He could no doubt wipe us off the map if he so chose."

  "I generally find worrying about what might happen to interfere with general ass-whooping activities."

  "He will simply kill you."

  "Paul, I'm already dead. But Saripha isn't. I have no choice. I don’t know anything about Janovic’s whereabouts and the manitor does. I have to try to get her out of there, no matter what happens to me. Or us. The hopelessness of the mission doesn't matter. I have to do it. I owe Saripha that."

  I thought Paul was about to explode, and he probably was. Then something came over him and he let go of the anger. He got up, almost like he was a very old man in pain.

  "Yes, Quentin, I suppose you do. You will do whatever you will do and nothing I say will change your mind.” He stepped over to the door and looked back one last time. "Therefore, there is no point in my participating in this. Let me know if I can help, but otherwise my emotions will get in the way.” Paul left.

  "How are you going to find him?” Kyo asked.

  "I think I have an answer for that." Izzy smiled as I looked at him.

  "You know where the manitor is?” I was a bit surprised.

  "No. But I believe I have a way to find out."

  "Izzy!”

  "Sorry, but I don't know all the answers yet. We'd better get over to the lab. Taka is there."

  Shortly, I was standing at a table in Izzy's lab with Izzy and Taka. On the table were the platform and several sheets of woven grass paper that Taka had sketched on. The sketches were of sigils and designs such as those that had appeared when we used the platform before. Kyo stood just behind Taka, curious. Rox stood further back behind Izzy, quiet, not completely fitting in with us. Izzy had insisted she come.

  Izzy began. "Luckily, Taka is a very talented quick sketch arti
st. He was able to sketch out the designs and changes in the designs that appeared when you, Saripha and Rox used the platform as a...” Izzy paused, searching for a term.

  "Psychic conduit.” Kyo said without much inflection.

  "Okay, good a term as any. Although you didn't physically travel anywhere, your psychic travel, we believe, was reflected by changes in the pattern configurations."

  "Believe?" I looked at Izzy.

  "Yes, believe. This is a theory, and while we do have data, it hasn't been tested. We could be wrong."

  I smiled. "And I'm your test subject."

  "Looks that way.” Izzy returned the smile. "We believe that the arrangement of patterns has regularities, that they are like printed circuits that are dynamically reconfigurable."

  "And those configurations... produce predictable effects?"

  "We believe so, but we don't know what configurations produce what effects or whether there are illegal configurations, like bad lines of code that produce only errors. However, we have one set of configurations, which Taka sketched in real time—meaning we have all the state changes involved—that previously resulted in taking you to the manitor."

  "Can I point out that we only went there in our dreams?"

  "We might have to settle for that, but I'm thinking that was because that’s how Saripha channeled it. We think the platform itself can be piloted with the same configuration and state changes."

  "I might also point out that last time I ended up with a play date with Janovic.”

  Izzy hesitated a moment. "Mostly that was Janovic, not the platform. It’s too bad, because if it had been the platform, we might have the state changes needed to find Janovic."

  "But you don't know?"

  "It's a theory."

  "So is this magic or science?”

  'I'll refer you to Sir Arthur Clarke on that one. This is engineering. We see a pattern and we test it. I have no idea the nature of the forces we are manipulating here."

  "Oh, goody. So we set this thing, hope it goes on autopilot and flies where we want it to go.”

  "Good plan, huh?"

  "What if I fall off and it goes on without me?"

  "You'll be closer than you are now and you'll know what direction to go in."

  "Wow. Win win. I like the plan where I find somebody’s ass to kick better. How do we start this thing up? I remember we needed Saripha to do that last time."

  "We need an energy source."

  "And that would be what?"

  Izzy's eyes were avoiding me. That wasn't usual for him.

  Taka looked at me, then back at Izzy. He spoke quietly. "You didn't tell him?'

  Izzy shook his head, but his half smile indicated he was more amused than uncomfortable.

  'The energy is not a what. It’s a who."

  "Me,” Rox blurted out. She walked up to the table, looking directly at me. Her expression was a strange mixture of firmness and amusement. There was a fire in her eyes. More and more, I was catching glimpses of the old Rox in her face and mannerisms. Despite all my other feelings, the old attraction was there. "I'm the energy source. We have to travel together."

  "We discovered, and Saripha confirmed, that Rox is a source of psychic energy that can amplify the energy of the platform,” Izzy continued. "She was working with Rox to give her better control. Saripha thought you could do it too, but had trouble unleashing it. However, you are the only one that can control the platform. If the platform is a locked container for what’s inside, you are the key. It is attuned to you."

  "Why?” Why would this platform be tuned to me?"

  I walked over and touched the platform. It immediately glowed and the gossamer curtain of signs and sigils spread out in front of me like wings, sketched in blue light. I picked it up and set it on the ground and stepped on it. It didn't even hover. I tried to will it. It just sat beneath my feet, softly humming.

  Then, suddenly, I felt Rox pressing her body to mine from behind, reaching around me, pulling me against her. It was probably the only way we could both stand on the platform. I felt an oddly arousing mixture of thrill and repulsion, but before I could react I felt a surge of warm energy passing through me, wrapping around me and moving up my spine. Rox and I were enveloped in a bright blue aura of light and the platform rose up to a foot off the ground.

  "Did the ground move for you, Quentin?” Rox teased.

  Taka held up his sketches. 'Quentin, match this configuration.”

  I looked at the sigils in front of me and looked at Taka’s sketches. The curtain of sigils in front of me looked fragile, like spider webs reflecting morning sun. "How?"

  “Just reach in and turn them with your hands," Izzy answered.

  "Relax. Stop thinking. Just touch them, they will do what you want.” Rox whispered in my ear.

  I reached out my hand. I could feel the energy rushing through me. As I touched the web of sigils, they wrapped over my body like tattoos. Nothing was happening. I caught myself getting a bit agitated, so I took Rox's advice and started breathing deeply to relax myself. As I did so, not quite by plan, I started thinking of Guido. The sigils began to change and realign.

  Suddenly, we were no longer in Izzy's house.

  22.

  It was different this time. We were riding the platform, but it was in some manner a physical journey. There was no sense of thrust or momentum, which was good because changes in thrust or shifts in balance might have thrown us off our precarious perch. Clearly Janovic had floated on his for show. Whatever this device was, it wasn’t really designed for comfortably floating even one human at any speed, much less two.

  Instead, we floated inches off the ground while the landscape itself moved out of our way. There were no forces acting on our bodies, though, much like a forced POV film, we reacted sometimes as if there were. We journeyed out of Rockvale, through a gap in the mountains and then across open plains. It became night, darkness surrounding us, which made me a little nervous. Two moons appeared in the sky, one nearly full but dim high up in the sky, the other very bright, but only a crescent, near the horizon. I hadn’t noticed the moons much before, but then I didn’t do a lot of wandering out at night.

  We followed a small road—well, trail really. Luckily there wasn’t anyone on the road, because I don’t know what would have happened if there was something in our path. There were startling sights off to the side of the road. There were shuffling humanoids covered in fur with tapering snouts. Rox, who acted as my tour guide whenever something unusual came up, referred to these creatures as Anajins, people who withdrew even more than members of the mass and took on animal characteristics. They were often used as domesticated trained animals and livestock by various races in Hell. The most shocking sight was what Rox called shimmers. They took different forms, but along this road, they appeared as human torsos with brass lanterns as heads, lighting the path for us. Shimmers were lost souls so completely submerged that their glamours were incomplete and made up of inanimate objects. I asked about the brass, as I saw little metal in Hell. Rox pointed out that anything could be represented in a glamour, even if it didn’t exist in Hell. However, it would have properties more similar to flesh than to the metal whose appearance it had. I realized there was still so much to Hell that I had no idea about.

  There were much more hostile threats in the countryside: bands of demons, packs of strange feral dogs with boney spikes protruding from their flesh, and other carnivores. Sometimes they were devouring lost souls or other wildlife or fighting amongst themselves. If they noticed us, they weren’t very interested. I had the feeling the platform in some way protected us.

  We finally drifted into a largely deserted city. It didn’t quite look like anything I had seen before, but if I were to try to compare it to Earth cities, it looked vaguely Middle Eastern with walls and tall, slender turret towers. Spreading out from the center were terraces that stepped up to the walls. Dwellings were rounded domes. There was a tribe of Azaroti, like Tweedledum and Tweedle
dee, camped out in the inner courtyard of the city. They watched without showing much activity or excitement at our passing as the platform rolled up to a back door of the jazz club at the center of the city. It was actually built into the side of a cliff. The platform came to a stop and was inert again. Rox and I stepped off and I picked up the platform and tucked it under my arm.. We stepped through the door which led to the kitchen. No one was there. We walked out into the bar.

  Guido sat as he had before, in his booth. He was still, not even appearing to breathe. His lids were low over his eyes. He didn't even notice us. That annoyed me.

  "Guido!"

  His eyes opened, but there was no startle in his response. He smiled, which was always just a bit creepy as he had a dog-like snout with canines.

  "Case."

  He looked at Rox a moment and made a very slight bowing gesture with his head.

  "Rox.” His voice, though soft and deep, managed to inflect up in acknowledgment.

  The door to outside, whatever outside was, was still open. As before I couldn't get myself to look at it and there was a sense of danger that emanated from out there. That’s where the cliff should have been, but, as usual, nothing was what it appeared to be when Guido was around.

  "Where is Janovic?"

  “Ah, good, you are ready to find Janovic.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “All you had to do was ask.”

  “Do you know he has taken Saripha?”

  "She is not your concern at the moment." His calm was really starting to bug me. I sprang forward and was across the jazz club floor in two leaps, almost on top of him when I ran full bore into the wall at the opposite side of the room. It was brick covered over with plaster. Some of the plaster gave. The brick didn't. I crumpled to the floor, amazed that my body could find new ways to hurt.

  Rox had come over and was picking me up. My pride wanted to shake her off, but my body didn't mind the assist. I felt the pain ease a bit as she touched me.