“Randy, we’ve been chasing demon portals all over town,” I said in his office a couple weeks later, projecting a big holographic map onto his desk. “Is there a pattern to these things?”

“Don’t know.”

“I plotted all twenty-four instances on a map, and they look evenly spaced. Is somebody checking into this?”

Randy said, “Yes.”

“Do I need to be checking into it?”

“Do you have access to advanced divination magic or a secret informant in Hell?”

“Not yet, and probably not.”

“Then, no. Kovak, stop trying to do everybody else’s job for them. As soon as we find out who’s doing this, you and Minerva will be my first call. And once Carter gets back, we are gonna team you up with him until you have wizard detective shit coming out your eyeballs. Until then, follow Minerva and learn how to punch whatever she tells you to punch.”

* * *

The river monsters took a couple weeks off, and then we got a big one.

We saw the wings first, giant black wings slowly rising up out of the river like they were lifting a huge weight under them.

“Oh my god,” I yelled to Minerva as we were leaping across rooftops to intercept. “Could this be a dragon?”

“No,” Minerva said. “It’s never a dragon. Sometimes it looks kind of like a dragon, but it’s never a dragon.”

I started to ask why, but I knew she would just shut me down again.

The monster was huge, ten feet tall, and maybe three times as long, with an enormous wingspan and three heads, straight out of a coloring book. Like somebody stuck a goat head and a snake head on a lion’s body, leaving the lion’s head in the center. The damn thing looked too on the nose to be real, with its black wings and green snake head, and why include a goat? I would have dismissed it as a bad special effect if it wasn’t swooping down to bite my head off.

“Minerva, this is a classic monster from Greek mythology! Do these fucking things know you’re here?”

Minerva ignored my question and yelled, “Go for the wings!”

I hit the thing with two artillery spells back-to-back, punching big sloppy holes in both wings.

The wings were apparently symbolic, as it just glided down to the riverbank and launched itself at us, snapping tree limbs in the isolated park space Minerva had picked for the fight.

That was standard procedure for monster fights now, trying to provoke these things and draw them into parks, parking lots, or abandoned highways by the river.

The whole area had been abandoned, cleared out decades ago, soon after the monsters started appearing in 2023. There were still some people who tried to work nearby, and always people who were driving or working outside who had to run for the public shelter, a shelter that, in my opinion, was still way too vulnerable to be in use.

“I’m calling anchor for this,” Minerva said. “Stay back and use your ranged stuff.”

“Minerva, I still suck at ranged stuff!”

“Get better!” Minerva shouted back, catching the lion’s head as it tried to swallow her. “This is what I need you to do!”

So, I kept a safe distance behind her and tried to make body shots with my artillery spell while she engaged the heads.

I felt completely useless, until one of my shots finally knocked the monster back, giving Minerva a chance to get some hits in. But then the damn thing swiped its tail at her and took Minerva clean off her feet, knocking her straight back at high speed.

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I was a little to her left, but I caught her body with levitation and threw myself right, angling the spell so I could physically catch her and keep her from crashing into the abandoned shopping mall behind us.

I don’t know what gods are made of, but Minerva was surprisingly heavy. Her skin still felt like skin, I guess, but it felt like her bones were made of steel.

It ended up slightly awkward, with me holding her up with my back against a concrete wall, but she just hopped up and said, “Nice catch. Are you pissed?”

“Not really.”

“Are you scared?”

“A little bit!”

“Good. We’re switching. Nothing fancy, just go in and beat that thing down. And watch out for the snake head, it’s poison!”

Minerva hung back while I tried to figure out how to approach this fucking thing. She had clearly softened it up for me, to the point where the beast seemed dazed and off balance.

I did as I was told, wading straight in to punch a lion in the face. The lion head roared in rage and pain. I was braced for a blast of terrible breath, but all I got was an overwhelming blast of coppery ozone that I associated with the smell of magic, the same thing you can smell around a portal, or when a demon pops in or out of real space.

What the hell did that mean? Were these things even real?

And while I was distracted, wondering about the limits and capabilities of conjured creatures, the fucking goat head gored me in the back.

It didn’t run me through completely, but my nanoweave jacket straight up saved my ass, as the goat head pushed me into the snake head which tried to sink its fangs into my shoulder - again, only stopped by my jacket.

Minerva shouted, “Stop fucking around!” as she distracted the thing with two swipes of her flaming rope. She had been teaching me how to take advantage of distractions, so I did, starting with the head I was most afraid of. The snake head was fast, so I used the distraction to grab that one first, firming my wards up as the goat and lion heads tried to bite into my back.

I was getting into my groove now. Not angry, not surging, bringing in magic fast and steady, just like a real wizard is supposed to. It didn’t look like anything special, and nobody else would understand, but that was the first time I deliberately brought in magic like a professional, controlling my emotions and bringing in power through sheer force of will.

I got a good grip on that snake head and started to twist, while the other two tried to bite my shoulders and head. But my wards were at full strength now, and my confidence was surging as I felt how steady this magic was.

The goat broke its own horn off, and the lion chipped a tooth on my shoulder, as the consistency of my wards firmed up.

I got both hands on that snake head and twisted with all my strength. It resisted me for a good twenty seconds before it finally popped off in a spurt of black blood.

The other two heads roared in outrage and the Chimera swiped me with its tail, sending me backwards at high speed. And this time, Minerva caught me.

“There has got to be a better way to do this!” I complained as I jumped out of her arms.

Minerva just said, “Show me.”

“Distract the heads!”

Minerva started lashing the beast with her flaming whip thing, keeping the two remaining sets of eyes focused on her while I tried to get around behind the monster.

I had the remains of an elevated highway in my way, so I just said fuck it, and launched myself in the air from the monster’s left flank, twisting my body so I could land on its back.

I stuck the landing and started punching that fucking goat in the back of the head until I felt it crack and stop moving. Then I switched to the lion and repeated the procedure, until the whole monster collapsed.

I took a minute to catch my breath before I rolled off it, to see an obviously impressed Minerva grinning slightly as she put her rope away.

“Hey, can you help me test something?” I said, throwing my hands up. “Can you do the strength test thing like Sonny did?”

Minerva said, “Now?” like she was amused by the request.

“Yeah, I need to try this now before I start to feel happy and fuck it up.”

We clasped hands and I said, “Push me over!” digging my heels in the dirt. Minerva started pushing and I could really feel how strong she was for the first time. She was absolutely stronger than Sonny, especially when she put her legs and back into it.

I grunted and strained, pushing back as best I could, raising myself up just a bit, before Minerva adjusted her posture and started to push back for real.

“Okay!” I said, releasing her hands and stepping back. “Thank you, that was great.”

“I don’t get it,” she said. “What are you testing?”

“You’re obviously stronger than me, but I made you work for that, right? You had to put real effort in, just to keep us even?”

Minerva said, “Sure. I think you were stronger at the table, but I’d say your strength level was still top ten.”

I smiled just a little, imitating her. “Minerva, for the last five minutes, for the last two minutes of that fight and the last few minutes here with you, I haven’t been feeling anything at all. Not happy, not sad, not angry, nothing. For the last five minutes, I’ve just been doing my job.

“That’s the real benefit of training with you. You’re not just teaching me to fight, you’re raising my baseline and improving my control. Thank you for coming to Boston, you were the perfect person to teach me this.”