Some time later, I woke up to a pounding on my car’s window. I looked up to see a cop standing there motioning for me to get out. The sun was out, but just barely. It must have been between 5 and 6 am.
“Are you still drunk, son?” he asked. He was roughly in his mid-40s, and like most cops, got off on exercising his power over others.
“No sir; I just needed a little nap,” I replied. I really couldn’t afford to be searched since I had about twenty Vicodins in my pocket, and magic would not have helped the situation. My best bet was to play it off as a college kid that had too much fun last night.
“You wouldn’t have happened to operate this vehicle while inebriated?”
“No sir, I realized I had had too much to drink, so I did the smart thing and decided not to drive.” I could feel the bastard’s ego inflating with the knowledge he could ruin my day at his whim.
“Let me see your license, registration, and proof of insurance.”
I dug the information out of my glove box and handed it to him.
“All right, Dante, I’m going to have you blow into this breathalyzer, and if you’re good to drive, I’ll let you go with a warning.” Thank God. After the night before I desperately wanted to get into my bed and sleep for another few hours before work.
“Yes sir, thank you,” I said as I blew into the contraption.
{Leave me alone,} I imagined myself saying. I went to the place deep inside of me that separated me from the demon. The dam had recovered from last night, but the tide of the archdemon’s power was higher than usual, and the dam was under pressure. Cracks had begun appearing in it, and they were growing. I fortified my defenses repairing the dam and making it thicker, but that required a lot of concentration.
“Triple zeros, I guess that means you’re ok. Now, I better not catch you out here again; it’s good you didn’t drive, but next time get a Goddamn Uber,” Officer Douchebag said unnecessarily loudly. “Are you ok boy?” He could tell I was concentrating though he likely didn’t know I was in an internal struggle with a creature older than our world.
“I’m fine, just a bit hungover. Thank you, Officer,” I said as I got into my car and drove away.
When I got home, I heard a screech from the bushes and looked down to see Numpy; Numpy is an all black-cat (no witch jokes please) with bright green eyes. He’s also about half the size of a regular kitty; the second I put the key in the door, he started frantically scratching to get in. I walked in with him and put some food down; don’t think I abused him; I left food for him outside, but there are a few stray cats that eat that, so Numpy thinks he’s too good for that food. I checked myself in the mirror for injuries; my knee was swollen and purple; pain shot through my whole leg every time I put weight on it. Furthermore, I had purple bruises all over my torso though my face looked fine. You might be wondering how my healing works; well, even since the demon woke up, I heal very quickly but not at Wolverine’s level. I heal roughly 10 times faster than a regular person; for instance, if I cut myself, by the time I wake up the next day, it’s completely gone, but I get stabbed, I have just as good of a chance as anyone else of bleeding out. When the monster’s power is directly flowing into me though, it’s a different story. Then I do have a Wolverine level healing factor; cuts, bone breaks, etc. will heal in front of my eyes. That being said, it still does take time, and I guess I wasn’t in that state long enough to completely recover from my injuries.
I went upstairs and fell into my bed’s warm embrace; right as I was about to fall asleep, Numpy jumped up onto my chest and placed a paw right over my mouth. I thought about pushing his paw away, but I was so tired, I just let him do it and passed out.
Later that afternoon, I walked into Strange Attractions, the magic shop I worked at. It’s a cozy shop in a stand-alone building on the edge of town; it has one large room with 10 rows of shelves, a back office, and a balcony on the upper floor that overlooks the main room with chairs that serve as a reading room. I was disparaging to the place before, but it isn’t all bull shit; in addition to the normal trash you’d find in other such places like blurry pictures purporting to capture ghosts, grave dirt, random magic sounding ingredients for potions, voodoo dolls, etc. there were also real magic books. Books that show legitimate magic sigils, descriptions of magical entities, or cookbooks for potions; these books are very rare, and we have a few dozen though I did stash the more dangerous ones in the back.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Hey Dante,” Cassie said as I walked through the door. Cassie Parker was the store’s owner; she’s tall far a woman, around 5’10’’ with piercing brown eyes and dark brown hair. She is the epitome of the girl next door; she has huge dimples when she smiles, she has an infectious laugh, and every guy that looks at her pictures the life they could have if they settled down together. They might change their minds if they talked to her though: Cassie is… rigid. She has a very black and white view of morality: some things are right, and some things are wrong, and you better not do anything wrong in her presence. A lot of people like that are just stupid, but Cassie is absolutely brilliant; she was working on a master’s degree in chemistry when her mother died, and she had to take over the store.
“Hey Cassie,” I replied. There was something off about her, but I couldn’t tell what.
“Please tell me this isn’t you,” she half screamed as she shoved her phone at me. Oh great, what had I done now? It was a shaky video clearly filmed from a phone. It was late at night outside of the bar I was at last night. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. It was a video of Asshole, Dickhead, and Big Fuck beating the shit out of me; the camera work was poor, but it was plain to see they were trying to kill me or at least critically injure me.
“So, this jack ass decided to film it as some guys tried to kill me?” I joked. I use humor when I’m petrified; it’s my one flaw. I didn’t know if anyone knew I was alive and was looking for me, but there are plenty of organizations that would kill to have a talented practitioner… literally. Maybe the video would cut off? No such luck. In the video, I suddenly jumped up, and unfortunately, the best camera work of the whole video showed the metal pipe Big Fuck had been holding melt in my hand. The guy filming began screaming at that point; I couldn’t recall any screams, but I was a little distracted at the time. The video didn’t end there; it showed me clobbering the attackers and running away.
Cassie took a deep sigh and almost whispered, “It was you then? You used magic against regular people!” Her volume increased with every word, and she was shouting at the end. I looked around, and there were three customers in the store all of whom were staring at us.
“Let’s go into the office,” I suggested. Her nostrils flared, and it looked like she wanted to argue, but she nodded. We walked into the office, and the very second the door closed, she began screaming again.
“What is your problem?” she screeched.
I fought hard to stay calm. “They were trying to kill me Cassie, and you know if I had wanted to hurt them, I could have done much worse.”
Her eyes grew wide as she screeched, “You almost crushed that guy’s skull!”
“And yet I didn’t. I left them before any of them were seriously injured, a courtesy they did not reciprocate!” I was screaming too at this point.
She took a deep breath and turned away from me. I could hear her quietly counting to ten, something she did often.
“Are you ok?” she asked in a more reserved tone. I smiled and chuckled a bit.
“I’m ok, but they got my knee pretty good.” I still hadn’t finished healing, but I had taken a couple of Vicodin that were starting to kick in.
She sighed overdramatically and said, “Let me see it.” Her anger evaporated the moment she saw my knee; it looked like a grape. She wrapped it in some bandages, and we walked back out to the shop. How did she know about magic? Well, Cassie may not have been a spellsword, but she was the daughter of a Wiccan. Like all religions, most Wiccans have no clue what they’re doing, but there are some that do. Not all, in fact not even most, practitioners become wizards, sorcerers, or spellswords. Most live regular lives that use magic sparingly. Cassie knew magical sigils better than I did, but she lacked the pneuma necessary to cast them; however, she still had ability. Cassie was a seer, a psychic, a medium, whatever you want to call it; she can see knows things she shouldn’t. In some ways, this is a very useful talent but in other ways not so much. Seeing the future sounds amazing, but because mortals have free will, any future seen is one of many possibilities. Very powerful seers can see multiple futures, but usually Cassie could only see one; furthermore, the future seen is one of the futures that could happen if that future was unknown so acting on the visions can change things. Seeing the past on the other hand, is quite convenient as there’s only one past to see. She didn’t have complete control over her powers, but she was capable of psychometry: the ability to know the history of a physical object just by touching it.
After Cassie had finished wrapping my knee, we went back to work. A few hours later, Carlos Ramirez entered the store. Carlos was a 15-year-old kid that worked a few nights a week. He was short, a little pudgy, and thought everything was a joke; that may sound like a criticism, but I liked Carlos a lot. He even had a little bit of magical talent; when it was slow, I showed him simple magic, and he had even reproduced a few of them using a wooden staff he’d made from a tree branch with sigils he had carved all over it.
“Hey, Dante; hey, Cassie!” he said amiably. “Are we going to do any magic today? You said you’d show me a fire spell!”
“You better not be doing any fire spells in my shop!” Cassie said sternly.
“We’ll do some more earth magic if we get a chance,” I said smiling. “Cassie’s right, the first time I ever did fire magic, I would have scorched one of my classmates down to the bone if my teacher hadn’t stepped in.”
“Awww, ok,” Carlos replied disappointed. “Let me clock in.” Not much happened for the rest of the shift; Cassie left, and Carlos managed to levitate a few pebbles using his staff.