Low Midnight

Chapter 24

HE DIDN’T park in the same turnout; he figured Layne would have someone watching it and wouldn’t be above just shooting him as he stepped out of the car. Instead, he parked a couple of miles away and left himself enough time to hike to the plateau. He had a flashlight, held it low and out to show his path, but otherwise preserved his night vision.

A wind was blowing, a front moving in. The overcast sky reflected ambient light from the city, giving the world a weird, shrouded glow. A bite in the air threatened snow. Another frustration to add to the list, since the weather forecasters couldn’t decide if the storm was going to produce a mere dusting or a real blizzard. Didn’t matter one way or another, but it would be nice to know what to expect. He could say that about his whole life, he supposed.

Cormac didn’t see any other cars in the turnout; Layne must have had his own parking spot staked out. Cormac knew he couldn’t get to the plateau first. Layne was closer and had a head start. The guy had the high ground, nothing Cormac could do about it. If Layne didn’t shoot him as he left his car, he might lie in wait and shoot Cormac in the back as he made the climb.

He won’t do that. He wants the standoff. He wants to face you and prove how powerful he is.

Either way, Cormac was going to be very careful.

And that’s why we packed ahead of time.

She had a spell, one she’d wanted to use back when they made their foray at Layne’s place, and she was gleeful to be using it now. This wasn’t an amulet or a ritual like many of her other spells—this was a potion, ingredients mixed, boiled, infused in alcohol, and kept in a little perfume bottle. Saffron, dried hemlock, and powdered cuttlefish—which, shockingly, he’d been able to find at an Asian market downtown. Like the Maltese cross–shaped amulet that had brought them out here in the first place, this was more of a charm than a spell. No preparation or ritual needed, no saying the right words in the right order or drawing the right patterns. It was the kind of thing anyone could do, if they knew how. Charms and potions like this would have been passed down in families, from grandparents and parents to children, back when the world was darker and the shadows bigger. Amelia had learned it from an old woman in England’s Lake District.

It seems to me the shadows are just as large as they’ve ever been. But people have forgotten to look for them.

Or new shadows replaced the old. A person could only worry about so many things at a time.

Let’s just worry about the next hour, yes?

One step at a time, same as it had always been.

He poured out a single drop of the potion, used it to anoint himself, a circle on his forehead. And that was that. Walking through the nighttime woods with the charm in place didn’t feel any different than walking without it. He’d expected invisibility magic to act like a cloak, muffling his senses, making the world indistinct around him even as it made him indistinct to the world. Or maybe he watched too many movies.

The charm doesn’t confer invisibility. That’s very powerful magic, too much to waste on this. This—it simply involves perception. It encourages observers to look away. They don’t see you, not because you’re invisible, but because they don’t see you.

Magic by semantics. Sure, why not?

He stopped hiking when he heard something. Snap of a twig, a rustle against a tree branch, a murmured voice. Layne brought friends. The voices only spoke a word or two, but they seemed to be looking for someone. Whoever was here, they hadn’t seen him. Cormac moved as quietly as he could. When he reached the end of the deer path and emerged from the trees, the plateau opened before him, a dried-out stretch. The wind had stopped and the air was still. Sound carried, and he heard a pair of voices calling to each other in stifled whispers. They were among the trees, on the other side of the slope. He wiped his forehead, erasing the spell’s mark, and waited.

“Hey! Where’d he come from!”

“I thought you were watching!”

Layne’s two goons emerged from the trees across the flat space, staring at him, their jaws dropped. They had guns in holsters but hadn’t drawn yet. Whether things stayed that way depended on how much control Layne actually had over them.

Layne himself moved up from behind them to the middle of the plateau, hands at his sides. He wore a sly smile.

“Wasn’t sure you’d actually have the guts to show up,” he said, a predictable bit of bluster. Cormac smirked back.

Flakes of snow started falling, picturesque white spots drifting slowly, as if independent of gravity.

Oh my goodness. I’ve read about gunfights at high noon in the Old West. I never thought to see one.

You ready to draw, then? Cormac asked her.

I don’t know. I don’t like the way he’s smiling at us, as if he knows something we don’t.

That’s the mind game. He’s being intimidating, trying to throw us off. I’m doing the same thing. Remember, winning a shootout isn’t about just being fast, it’s about being accurate.

I’m not sure I can—

You’ve done this before. Against the demon, against Harold Franklin.

But that’s just it, I knew exactly what they could do, exactly where they drew their powers from. I knew what spells to use against them. This—we only have one chance, and I don’t know the right spell. We still don’t know what the amulet does, only that it exists.

The answer popped into his head—you use the strongest one, of course. Just like you used the most powerful weapon you had, and you hit as hard as you could. Make sure you only need to strike once and don’t give the enemy a chance to stand back up.

Amelia knew what offensive spell was her strongest; he felt her confidence. The storm helped; she could chant a phrase and use a talisman to call lightning out of the overcast sky. Fry Layne where he stood. Cormac sort of looked forward to it. At her direction, he found the right talisman, a Thor’s hammer in his left-hand jacket pocket. She could invoke storm magic from a half a dozen cultures, use the energies already brewing above them to strike a blow.

Remember, he told her, you’re a more experienced magician than he is. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

But what if he doesn’t have to?

The comment made him pause, and he tilted his head as if listening. Quickly he brought his gaze back to Layne, and wondered what the other man made of the gesture. Only a handful of people knew about Amelia. To everyone else, Cormac had just suddenly become a powerful magician. Part of the legend, right?

The snow remained scant, occasional flakes rather than a real snowfall. Not enough to interfere with his line of sight. But the clouds thickened, billows like cotton batting gathering overhead. His hair stood on end, from static cracking in the air.

Layne stood like a man invincible, who could not fail. He knows something, Cormac thought.

Amelia had retreated into herself, pondering. Cormac nudged her.

What if he doesn’t have to do anything? she repeated. A powerful offense is unnecessary if your defensive capabilities are strong enough. What if, what if …

“I thought you were badass, Bennett! Show me what you’ve got!”

He’s provoking us. He wants us to attack.

It did seem that way. He’d set some kind of trap, and if they attacked him outright, they’d walk right into it. Cormac was raised to be a hunter; he was a patient man. The longer he stood and glared at Layne, the more flustered the man would get. He had time. More important that they figure this out.

Blue and white streaks of light flashed in the clouds, lightning waiting to be summoned. All Amelia had to do was say the word and call down a bolt to smash Layne.

He’s not a magician, Amelia said, her thoughts racing. All he has is the amulet.

That was it. The key to it all.

“I’ve got it,” he murmured, at the same time Amelia realized, I’ve got it.

That was what the amulet was, what it did—somehow, it used a magician’s attack against him. The original Milo Kuzniak didn’t have any magical ability, just smoke and mirrors and a notebook filled with folklore, but when Augustus Crane attacked, he died. And when the younger Milo Kuzniak attacked, he died.

It’s a mirror. The amulet is reflective. I call down lightning on Layne, I’d only be calling it down on myself. I can’t do anything to him, Cormac. Through him, she made a gesture, dropped the Thor’s hammer back in his pocket. The static charge in the air dissipated, the lightning overhead faded. He breathed out like he’d just left a minefield.

Well then, he thought, I guess it’s up to me. He started walking.

Amelia said, We’ll need to take care of those men with guns.

Give them a light show, a flash or a bang or something. Won’t need much to scare them off.

Fortunately, she’d brought along some of her reliable standbys—one of them was a thumb-sized quartz crystal, charged with magic to give off brilliant light. And simple, non-magical packs of gunpowder, good for making noise. Surprising, how much of this was just stagecraft.

Layne’s eyes widened in surprise, and Cormac kept his slow pace forward, his gaze focused. His grin showed annoyance.

One of the henchmen called out, “Layne—Layne what’s going on, you want us to—”

“Just hold it,” Layne called back, brusque and clearly nervous. His hands flexed at his sides, as if reaching for a gun. Regular Old West gunfighter. To Cormac he said, “You better watch it. You don’t want to end up dead like Kuzniak, do you? You watch it, Bennett, wait a minute—”

When he was just shy of arm’s reach, Cormac moved fast, left hand flashing out to grab Layne’s collar while his right hand punched hard into his nose.

Layne choked out a cry and tried to stumble back, but Cormac kept hold of his shirt, keeping the guy upright while he stepped in for a hard knee into the groin that dropped him like a rock. This time, Cormac let him fall. Kicked him in the gut for good measure, then fell on him, putting a knee in his back, twisting his arm to immobilize him.

“Layne!” His guys called out, but it had happened so fast they were dumbstruck.

Keeping hold of Layne with one hand, he reached into his pocket for the quartz, which he threw straight up. It lit up with the glow of a sun, a flash like a bomb going off. There were a couple of shouts and screams, and the sound of a couple of grown men tearing through the underbrush, fleeing as if chased by devils.

Cormac gave Layne’s arm an extra twist and waited a moment to see if he was going to struggle. He didn’t. The guy’s face was smashed into the ground, and his breath came out in crying wheezes.

That, Amelia said. That was lovely.

The plateau had gone still. The snow was already slacking off. Just a late winter flurry. Kind of peaceful. Cormac wanted to get the hell out of here. Get inside, get warm, have a drink.

He searched Layne’s pockets, jeans and coat, and found it in the inside coat pocket. Spared little more than a glimpse at it—a Maltese cross, a couple of inches across, made of highly polished bronze, exactly the right size and shape to match the imprint in the book—before slipping it in his own pocket.

He slammed Layne’s face into the ground to stun him before getting up and backing off.

Slowly, Layne rolled to his back. Blood ran down his face from a couple of wounds, a scrape on his forehead and a cut lip. Not to mention that smashed nose. He curled around his gut, moaning in pain and swearing with every breath.

Some coherent phrases broke through. “You can’t take that! That’s mine! It’s mine!”

He was beat up, not broken, and his guys would crawl back to check on him soon enough. All Cormac had to do was be gone before they got brave. He was done here.

“Some advice,” Cormac said. “There’s no gold up here, or if there is you aren’t going to get it out with magic. Magic’s not going to make you rich, and it won’t make you strong. You mess around with it long enough, it’ll make you dead. Especially if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Go back to your black market and your drug running or whatever the hell it is you’re doing. And leave me alone.”

Layne didn’t say anything, just lay there groaning, spitting curses. Cormac walked away.