Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

“Traveling backwards in time is. Or, at least, no sorcerer I’ve heard of has ever cracked it. Some adepts say they figured out how to move forward in time, though it’s more like putting yourself off to the side in an extra-dimensional stasis, set to re-enter normal space-time at a later date, unaffected by the passing time. But not many try to do it, since there’s no way you can go back again after seeing the wondrous future.” She took a leather pouch over to the alleyway and emptied it, dumping a dozen thumbtacks and pushpins — all augmented with charms of snaring and paralysis — across the courtyard’s only exit, just in case.

“Seems like it could be a good trick for waiting out the statute of limitations,” Rondeau said, in the tone of voice that meant he was contemplating casino robberies.

Marla snorted. “Any sorcerer capable of going forward in time would have more elegant ways to avoid being arrested for something, Rondeau. It’s bigtime mojo. I couldn’t do it, and I can do damn near anything I set my mind to.”

“Too bad. It’d be nice to skip the occasional boring weekend. Okay, so my second question: isn’t sending the beast of Felport to the future kind of a dick move? Getting rid of your current problems and leaving it for your descendants to deal with?”

“Yep,” Marla said. “Everett Malkin was, by most accounts, a nasty piece of work. A badass sorcerer with a knack for violence and the interpersonal warmth of a komodo dragon—”

“Doesn’t sound like anybody I know,” Rondeau murmured.

“—but, to be fair, the guy was in kind of a bind. The story goes he used charms and protective circles and various kinds of exorcism and banishment and eventually even tried appeasement, by which I mean human sacrifice, to keep the beast of Felport at bay, but it was all just temporary. The thing kept coming back. He couldn’t kill it, couldn’t drive it away, just failed and failed, and his little settlement was on the verge of permanent disintegration. So one day he sucked it up, gave his dagger of office to his apprentice and chosen successor, and went out into the woods to finish things once and for all. And, apparently, he left this letter explaining his plan to send the beast into the future, to be delivered to whatever poor sucker happened to be in charge four centuries later.” Marla shrugged. “Malkin never came back, but the beast never troubled anyone again, and now we’re waiting for … whatever.”

“Maybe he didn’t send the beast into the future at all,” Rondeau said. “Maybe they just, like, killed each other.”

“We can hope,” Marla said, but the words had barely been uttered when the courtyard suddenly got a lot more crowded.

A hard wind blew, making Marla squint, and a brown hairy thing the size of two gorillas fighting over a tractor tire appeared about three feet in the air, then slammed to the ground hard enough to crack the stones. There was an impression of tusks, snout, and hard black eyes, but it was hunched and crouched and twisting and moving too fast for her mind to encompass it. It stank like the sewers under a slaughterhouse. Marla began speaking words of binding and tossed a handful of charmed stones, but the rocks just bounced off the thing’s matted hide — disappointing, since they should have respectively burned, frozen, and turned it to stone — and then an arm swung out, long as an extension ladder, and smashed Marla against a brick wall. Rondeau went in manfully, baseball bat cocked, but the thing swatted him aside like an annoying fly.

Marla stood up, about to reverse her cloak, to make the soothing white exterior switch places with the bruise-purple lining and unleash her most deadly battle magic — when the beast flung something slightly larger than Marla herself through the air, straight at her.

That’s a person, Marla realized, and then about two hundred pounds of human body — dead or alive, she wasn’t sure yet — hit her square in the chest and knocked her flat. She grunted, shoved the guy off her body, and struggled to her feet, all the wind knocked out of her.

The beast of Felport took a moment to consider its handiwork, and Marla thought, Run for the alley, fucker, get caught in my bear traps, and then the beast crouched, leapt about fifteen feet in the air, grabbed a jutting chunk of brick wall, and went up the side of a building and over the rooftop, like a gecko climbing a garden wall.

“That’s bad,” Rondeau said, picking himself up and taking out his cell phone. “Guess I should call the Chamberlain.”

“It’s her neighborhood,” Marla said, “and I sent her a message before we left telling her there might be some shit hitting her fan this afternoon. Damn it.”

Rondeau looked toward the roof where the beast had escaped. “Yeah. Who knew anything so big could jump like that?”