Fractures Read online

  A hamburger and fries appeared on a white plate in front of me. The Pepsi materialized in a glass bottle, straight out of a vintage 1940s ad. She snapped her fingers and the cap popped off, arcing smoothly through the air and disappearing behind the bar with a tink. “Do you want a glass, lad?”

  “Nah, I’m a barbarian who drinks it straight from the bottle,” I replied.

  Esther’s craggy face split into a grin, the lines around her hazel eyes crinkling as she did. “And that’s the way a real man drinks it, boyo. We haven’t seen you around here in a while. Kinsale has missed ya.”

  “Has she?”

  Esther’s laugh was full. “Oh yes, that little one has quite the crush on you. I keep telling her that you’re more than spoken for with Petra, but I think she’ll be carrying a torch for you for some time.”

  “She’ll get over it,” I said, picking up the burger and taking a bite.

  “I don’t think so,” Esther said. “You saved her life, Vinnie. A clurichaun isn’t one to forget that. And I’m not going to forget it, either, old as I may be. Part of the reason this old bar has done so well is because of her.”

  You’ve no doubt heard of leprechauns. Clurichauns are their lesser-known cousins. They’re best known for their drinking prowess. If you manage to earn one’s loyalty, they’ll guard your supplies of liquor with all their considerable magic. Provided of course, you let them sample it. Kinsale is the clurichaun who protects the Knobby Broomstick. About two years ago, a rival bartender abducted her during the Undercity’s Oktoberfest celebration, and I brought her back.

  Esther smiled again. “Ah, listen to me, an old woman carrying on so. What brings you to me bar today?”

  “I understand there was a presence that materialized here, sort of a glowing wraith.”

  All the happiness vanished from Esther’s face. “There was,” she said. “Cold and dark, that presence was, no matter how much light it was shining. I haven’t felt anything like that before, and bless me stars, I’m hoping I never do again.” She pointed over at the corner. “Popped into bein’ right over there and tried to grab poor Lindsay. Gave the girl such a fright I had to send her home.”

  “Was she hurt in any way?”

  Esther shook her head. “Thanks be, no. But she said she felt cold, like the warmth of the world had been sucked away from her. Best I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with the spot where it happened, but people’ve been avoiding it, even ones who don’t know anything happened. After closing time tonight, I was plannin’ on trying some purifying rituals to clear the place out.”

  “Did it only appear the one time?”

  “Aye, and once was more than enough, believe you me. Do you think it’ll come back?”

  “I hope not. Just the same, I’m trying to make sure this thing doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Anything I can do to help you?”

  I smiled at her. “Esther, you are a dear. I’m just going to sit at that table next to where the wraith appeared and see if I can get any readings that might be helpful.” I hated lying to Esther, but the truth is, not many people know about my Glimpse, and I’d like to keep it that way. “Could you see that I’m not disturbed?”

  “Absolutely, dearie. Once you’re situated, you just give me the nod, and I’ll put up a ward around your table. No one’ll bother you.”

  I thanked Esther, finished the meal, and headed to the table. Seating myself in one of the wooden chairs, I gave a quick nod to Esther, who waggled her fingers in my direction. At once, the sounds of the bar vanished, and a dome that looked like thick red velvet materialized around me. This sort of spell was usually reserved for more intimate encounters than what I was planning, but it would definitely keep anyone from bothering me.

  Now then, Sakave, what’s your story? More importantly, what weaknesses do you have that I can exploit to stop you?

  I concentrated, triggering my Glimpse. I watched time run backward at the table, saw Esther’s enchantment vanish, watched myself walk backward from the table up to the bar. I accelerated the Glimpse, watching people blur in reverse across the floor, dancing and drinking (but with their glasses gradually filling up instead of being drained). Then, a burst of light caught my attention. I slowed the Glimpse down and shifted it out of reverse. Lindsay the barmaid was clearing the table I was sitting at, humming to herself. Dressed in a pair of black slacks, a white top, with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like so many waitresses I’d met over the years. Then a burst of yellow and orange light filled the area, and a glowing wraith appeared, barely two feet from me. Its movements were sluggish, like it was trying to move through a thick fluid, and it reached for Lindsay.

  For her part, the young woman screamed and fell back, toppling over a chair to my left. The glasses she’d been scooping up fell and shattered on the bar’s hardwood floor. The wraith took two halting steps and bent down, reaching for her. Then it vanished. There was no dramatic burst of light like there had been before; the wraith was just gone. Esther hurried over to Lindsay and helped her up. Tears streaked Lindsay’s face, and she was shivering.

  I rewound the Glimpse and watched it twice more, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. When I was satisfied that I hadn’t, I stretched out with extradimensional energy and felt around the spot where the wraith had appeared. Forculus had taught me how to use my powers to sense where portals and gateways that other people created had come from, and now I wanted to see where the wraith had vanished off to. It had been a couple of days since the wraith had appeared, but I found an extradimensional energy signature almost right away.

  Now for the tricky part. I didn’t want to Open a peephole to wherever the wraith had come from; if it really was Sakave, I might inadvertently let him into our dimension. Instead, I focused on combining my extradimensional energy and the tachyon that flowed around me into my Glimpse. With luck, I’d be able to home in on the wraith’s residual energy to follow it backward in time and see what happened on the other side.

  I waited a moment. Nothing happened. I did what Wheatson suggested, imagined that I was working a chronometer, envisioned the tachyon around me, weaving it tightly in with extradimensional energy. An image of the wraith formed in my mind, and then I was following it backward. My Glimpse kicked in, vibrant and real, like when Courageous had shown me the Urisk killing the dwarves.

  I was standing on a city street in an alien world. The buildings looked like skyscrapers that had been hewn from solid chunks of crystal. Unearthly blue lights hung on poles at twenty-yard intervals, and vehicles that looked sort of like a cross between cockroaches and golf carts hummed down the street. One passed right through me, an unsettling feeling, but not one that did me any harm. The vehicles wouldn’t see me or touch me; I was the wraith here.

  I got my first good look at the people a moment later. They had various shades of purple skin and wore their silver hair in a variety of styles that wouldn’t have been out of place in 1980s Earth. Their clothing looked to be made of silk, and shimmered and swished as they moved.

  I rubbed my chin as I looked around. The people on the street seemed to be going about their business in a normal fashion, no one was screaming or fighting. With how bad everyone kept saying this Sakave character was, I’d expected to walk in on a warzone, something like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan. This looked like a normal street. Maybe I’d used too much tachyon, and looked too far back in time?

  A scream brought my head around. I raced down a nearby alley, toward the source of the screams. Halfway down, I came upon a group of six people. There were three large men surrounding a pair of women and a small boy. The men had obviously thrown the women to the ground and were pointing at them.

  “We told you to give us your crystals,” one of the men said. “Empty your pockets, let’s have ’em.”

  “You can h
ave this,” one of the women hissed, and brought up a silver cylinder, about the size of a can of mace. Instead of pepper spray, a cone of blue energy sizzled forth, setting the man’s clothes on fire. His companions surged forward and brutally beat the woman and her companion. The cylinder fell away, tinked on the ground and rolled to the feet of the boy, who was cowering in the corner. Tears were streaming down his face. His eyes fell on the cylinder, and he began inching toward it. The man who’d been on fire extinguished himself, then stomped over and kicked it out of the boy’s reach. He grinned wickedly as the boy recoiled. The women were on the ground, lying in pools of orange blood. They weren’t moving. The men ripped at the women’s clothing and pulled out bulging pouches. Their purses, I guessed.

  One of the men pointed at the boy. “Get lost, kid,” he said. “But if we see you again, you’d better turn out your pockets or you’ll end up like this.” He stomped on one of the women’s chests, crushing it. Her eyes bulged and blood burst from her mouth.

  “Mom!” the boy cried, and rushed to the woman. The men laughed and walked away, leaving the sobbing boy in the alley.

  To my amazement, the woman was still alive. Her sapphire eyes flickered with a light all their own, and she placed a bloody hand up to her son’s face. “Sakave, my child,” she whispered. Then her hand fell away, and the boy raised his head to the sky and howled. The sound chilled me to my very core. It was the sound of someone’s soul being ripped away, shredded, tearing out everything that made him who he was.

  The young Sakave wept for a long time before some other men, police, I’m guessing, found him in the alley. I watched them help him up, watched medics come and put his mother and her friend in silver body bags. I heard Sakave tell the police about the incident, and learned that the other woman was his aunt. Watching their body language, I got the impression that they knew who the robbers were, but Sakave, wracked with grief and pain, didn’t pick up on it. It was impossible to tell how old he was; I wasn’t even sure what species he was. But he was about the size of a ten-year-old human, so I’d go with that.

  I sped the Glimpse up, stopping periodically to listen to pieces. Men in official-looking robes, wearing medallions had been speaking with Sakave in a police station. “You don’t have anyone else?” the man asked.

  “No,” Sakave said, not meeting his eyes.

  “What about your father?”

  “Left us years ago,” the boy said flatly.

  The magistrate sighed. “Well, son, we’ll find a family for you to stay with.”

  “I don’t want another family!” the boy shouted, surging to his feet. “I want my mom back! Go find those men, that’s your job isn’t it? Catching people who do things like that? Why aren’t you looking for them?”

  The magistrate sighed. He looked tired, and like he wanted to be anywhere else but having that conversation. “We’re going to do everything we can, son,” he said.

  Sakave’s eyes hardened, his expression so intense that the magistrate leaned away from him. “I expect that you will,” Sakave whispered.

  The magistrate left, and Sakave stayed in the room, alone, staring at the wall, pure rage burning on his face.

  I sped the Glimpse up, watching as Sakave aged, growing into a young man. He learned how to fight, spending much of his time in training facilities. One night, he stood atop a roof, clad in a shimmering black costume, staring out over the city. The fabric of the costume rushed up and covered his face like a mask, and then he was dropping down from the roof, attacking a trio of men who were about to mug another man. I realized they were the same ones who had attacked his mother. Sakave was a blur of motion, fists, kicks, dodges, strikes with batons. The first man died with a crushed windpipe. Sakave broke the other man’s knee with a kick, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed the back of his head against the wall again and again until the wall was covered in gore.

  There was no banter, no gloating, no monologing. Sakave dropped the corpse to the ground, then helped the victim up. The victim put his hands up. “Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered.

  “You are safe, so long as you obey the law,” Sakave replied. Then he pressed a button on his suit and scampered up the building like a spider.

  I willed the Glimpse to follow him—

  Someone was poking me in the chest.

  “Vinnie, love, are you all right?”

  The speaker was a two-foot-tall green-skinned female standing atop the table. Her wispy white dress hung off one shoulder, and her bare toes curled over the table’s edge.

  “Hey, Kinsale,” I said, leaning back in the chair.

  She sat down on the table in front of me, brushed her purple hair over her shoulder, and leaned forward, her face just inches from mine. Her violet eyes were wide with concern as she said, “Ye look like ye’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Something like that,” I said. “What—” I cut off as the glowing wraith suddenly appeared next to the table. It was brighter than what I’d seen in my Glimpse, and where before, the creature’s face had been just a blank space, I could just see the outline of features. If this was Sakave, he was getting closer to pushing through into our world.

  A second form appeared next to the wraith. Taller by a foot and a half, the figure shimmered as if it were reflecting the wraith’s light. I could sense a thinning of extradimensional energy around the second figure, and then it formed fully. It stood seven feet tall and looked like a linebacker carved of solid crystal. A rune was etched into its chest, nearly the entire width of its body.

  “What the devil is that?” Kinsale asked as the figure flexed its crystalline muscles.

  My hands were suddenly clammy. “It’s called an envikan.”

  Chapter 8

  The shell Croatoan inhabits has proved impervious to all our scans and divinations. The script etching the lower hemisphere appears to be infernal in nature, but in a dialect we have been unable to translate. Our scholars have hypothesized that Croatoan may be anything from a demon-created construct, to the imprisoned spirit of a demon. Croatoan himself has given several contradictory statements as to his true nature. For the time being, we will have to content ourselves with the knowledge that Croatoan has worked on our behalf several times now, and pledges to continue to do so in the future.

  —From a file on Croatoan, from the Codex’s archives

  The last time I’d seen an envikan was on the Bright Side a few months ago. Treggen had sent a group of them out to the Urisk city, and I’d learned the hard way that they explode when exposed to psychic energy. That meant no telekinesis or pyrokinesis. They also had an ability to focus light into a powerful force beam, which had shattered Petra into a thousand pieces. To say I didn’t like these guys was an understatement.

  The envikan surged forward, swinging a massive fist at me. Kinsale was on her feet, shimmering eldritch characters forming in the air around her waggling fingers. I snapped a portal out in front of me, setting its exit point to the right of the envikan’s head, and the envikan’s fist passed through my portal and out again, resulting in the thing punching itself across the jaw. It staggered to the side, and I Opened another portal right in its path. It fell through and then dropped out the exit point, which I’d placed eight feet off the ground. The envikan crashed through the floorboards and into the basement.

  “Thanum an Dhul!” Kinsale cried, launching herself down after the creature. “If ye’ve hurt any of me whiskey, there’ll be hell to pay!”

  I jumped down after her, telekinetically cushioning my landing. The envikan was climbing back to its feet, debris clattering to the floor around it. Kinsale’s hexes lanced forward, knocking it back, causing it to stumble. None of the casks or wine bottles down here had broken, and I doubted the envikan realized just how lucky it was. It kicked out at Kinsale, but a well-placed portal caused it to take out its own knee.

  It b
uckled to the ground. As much fun as this was, I didn’t know how much time I had. The wraith might try to send other envikan through, in which case, I needed to deal with this one quickly. I snapped a portal behind the envikan, placing the other side right in front of me. I reached through, touched the envikan on the back and Opened it.

  The last time I’d fought one of these, I’d realized the crystalline body was just a container for a life form that looked like a glowing ball of light. Opening the body had released the life form, allowing me to interrogate it.

  It’s nice when things that worked before still work, because a moment later, the envikan’s chest cracked open, and the ball drifted out. The crystal body collapsed into glimmering dust a moment later, as I telekinetically latched onto the ball and held it.

  “So now what do we do?” Kinsale asked.

  I frowned. “Not sure. Last time, I was on the Bright Side when I fought these things. I was able to bless it with speech and the ability to understand my language. I can’t do that here.” And I sure as hell wasn’t about to Open a portal to the Bright Side with the wraith nearby. The last thing I wanted was for Sakave to have an open highway right back to the Urisk.

  “Ye be needin’ a speakin’ charm then,” Kinsale said, waggling her fingers. The eldritch energy spiraled away from the clurichaun and wrapped around the ball.

  “Release me,” it hissed.

  “Not bad, Kinsale.” I grinned. The clurichaun’s violet eyes sparkled as she returned the smile. Then I turned my attention back to the ball. “You need to answer some questions.”

  “I will not betray my Lord Sakave,” The ball said firmly.