My name is Jay and over three whole
months ago I entered this universe and bound myself to a magician.
It’s been really weird and strange: I went from being strong to
being tough, from being a weak kind-of vampire to not one at all and
I got to scare a whole army
invading from outside the universe mostly by accident. I am fast and
tough and I can see the bindings that tie people and things together
in ways even magicians can’t. I can see the space where Charlie
left us to travel on her own, though I still don’t understand why
she left. Humans are weird. Sometimes their bindings with each other
break and they remain together, or they don’t break and they leave
anyone and I don’t understand it at all.
The
internet has just made it even more confusing. But from it I figured
out that tonight is New Year’s Eve, and that’s sort of why the
magician left me in the motel and went into a nearby bar to drink and
be with human-people. And probably have sex, which is another weird
human thing. I leave too,
because he bound himself to me and I convince the wards he made and
walked through to let me walk through them as well. I’ve been
waiting for my own night, too. I take my one coat and a small
flashlight and my phone and boots and I wander into the huge park
near the middle of the city.
Charlie
had a monster inside her but she’s gone. So that means I have to
become the monster now. But if I am a bad monster, the magician will
be sad in that way that doesn’t show on his face, so I just walk
into the park and flick my light on after a while and call out,
“Truffie?” since the name sounds small and goofy, like a little
kid would name their dog. I can pass for a ten year old human boy. Or
younger if I have to. I’ve
learned lots in three months.
Acting is easy: you
don’t break bindings as much as bend them, and I slip into the
bend, calling out for the lost dog that doesn’t exist, leaving deep
prints in the snow. It only takes ten minutes to be followed. Just
ten: a human, male, older. A breaker of bindings. I pull out my
phone, poke it, yell at it to work, shove it in my pocket and yell
for Truffie. For a moment I think I’m tried too hard, then I hear
his feet behind me. He smells off, like something gone sour, but he’s
big and wearing Santa-red and has a smile that’s all friendly and
wide.
“Hey, kid. Lost
your dog?”
“Uh-huh. Have you
seen one?”
“No, not yet. I
don’t see any tracks, but we could look closer to the fountain,”
he says, and when I follow his mitten he moves. He has done this
before, a knife to the throat, had over the mouth, a growl to be
silent sounding like an animal in a cage.
It takes more than
a knife to hurt me, but broken knives mean questions. I’m faster
than people and twist, wriggling free of my coat even as he grabs me,
his blade scraping uselessly on my throat. He lunges after, expecting
me to freeze with the cold, his desire only my unbinding. I knew
that, but I had to be sure, so I move to the side, faster than he can
see, and unbind his left leg.
It
takes three whole kicks to break his knee, even hitting it in the
spot the internet recommended. Sometimes being small sucks. He drops,
though, and I’m at the other side, snagging his knife as his grip
flatters, driving it into his right leg. Unbinding blood from flesh.
He backhands me hard across the snow, because I have to slow to stab
him, but the pain takes over after that, his hands flying over his
wound in terror.
If I was human, I’d
have offered a chance or made some kind of speech and hoped to change
him. But words don’t work right for me and I’m not human at all.
I wait until he bleeds out and replace the knife in the wound. I
could do worse. I could leave signs about what he’d tried for
people to find, but the magician wouldn’t want that. Even monsters
have families, and the families might not know they’re monsters at
all.
I walk back to the
motel, humming softly to myself. I’m not Charlie, but I think I can
make a pretty good monster when I have to.
*
“Jay.”
It is morning when
he threads power in his voice to wake me up. I sit up on my bed,
yawn, and grin hello.
“Busy night last
night?”
“I watched tv.
And ate,” I say, as if the wrappers of three subs aren’t proof
enough.
“Uh huh.” The
magician sits down on the other bed and studies me. “We should get
going; the city will be quiet after last night. Grab your coat.”
I reach beside my
bed, then recall the man from last night had in his hands. “I had
to throw it away –.” I pause at something from the binding
between us, a thrum of tension.
“I saw the news
when I got my coffee this morning. Dead man in the park, missing kid
judging by the coat they had as evidence. You didn’t disrupt my
ward just to get subs.” I say nothing. “You also don’t have a
speck of blood on you, Jay.” His smile barely touches his face. “Is
this how it is going to be, now? I take an evening off and you go
murder someone.”
“No! It wathn’t
like that at all!” He just waits, in the way magicians wait.
“Nathen, pleathe,” I beg. He doesn’t like his name being used,
even in private, but I’m too scared not to. I explain what I did,
and why, struggling though esses and stumbling over words until I
finish, panting for air after.
The binding between
us is still and distant. “Jay. Charlie was good at being a monster,
yes. You don’t have to be that.”
“Then what?” I
demand, my voice shrill even to my ears.
He smiles, then, a
smile that is all human and almost not the magician at all. “We can
work on that, okay? You’re good at distracting and surprising; use
that. Be that. Please.”
“But –.”
“We’ll
figure stuff out.” He stands and ruffles my hair. “Now get you’re
clothing. I’m driving, you pick tunes on your phone and we find out
what store is open that is selling clothing. And,” he adds as he
puts his things into a duffel bag he pulls out of the air, “if you
ever disrupt and break through a ward I made like that again, it had
better be done well enough that I don’t sense it.”
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