Old Magic insert - an urban fantasy mystery thriller

 

 

I felt his hand before it clamped over my mouth.

Something about sleeping on the ground always kept me in that lucid phase of a waking dream, more snooze than rem.

It was a change in the heat near my skin, or maybe the faded smell of wood smoke and a thousand nights in a flannel nylon sack.

Either way my eyes popped open before he covered my mouth.

A universal sign of stay quiet.

I couldn’t see anything inside the tent, but the faint glow of the campfire embers outside made the front wall of the dome glow.

Shapes were impossible to define, but there were shadows, pieces of space darker than the surroundings.

That’s how I knew Matos crouched over me, facing the opening.

I tapped his wrist so he took his hand off my mouth and sat up to stare with him.

We watched in silence, frozen as we listened.

Waited.

The snap of the charred wood still cracking and smoking was the only thing I heard, but the hair on the back of my neck stiffened.

It wasn’t hearing so much as feeling.

There was something out there.

I reached for the zipper that held the enclosure hold and Matos grabbed my wrist, held it in a fierce grip.

Whatever was out there, he didn’t want me to go out to see it.

It knows we’re in here, I wanted to say, and wondered for a moment why my mind went straight to it.

Not an animal, my brain was screaming.

Something older.

Something sinister.

The noise came next.

A growl, like the combination of a lion’s throaty rumble and the sphincter clinching grumble of a ten foot grizzly bear.

Both sounds primitive and ancient when alone.

Together, they were mind numbing.

The wall of the tent stopped glowing as something moved in the narrow space between our campfire and tent wall.

We were done.

Over and gone.

Something so large as to eclipse the fire, something so ancient it froze every muscle in my body.

It could kill us with a swift blow.

I expected a paw to swipe through the micro-thin fabric of the tent wall, expected the singular moment of terror between movement and action before the blow landed and wiped out the spark of life.

The darkness inside the tent deepened, and I wondered how it was even possible for that to happen.

Like every star in the sky winked out, as pitch black as the deepest cave.

My muscles felt like jelly.

I could hear Matos huffing, struggling to breathe, like a heavy blanket was falling on us in the dark.

It roared.

Everything inside me wanted to let loose, let go. Tears and piss and screams and anything else.

I didn’t.

I put a hand on Matos shoulder.

“Surge,” I said it soft.

Said it aimed at the campfire behind whatever it was outside the tent.

Said it low and infused with willpower, fueled by fear and terror and anger.

Rage at myself for being so scared, for wanting to curl up and cry and die.

Tucked it all in nice and tight into a tiny little spell that drilled through the tent wall in an invisible quantum laced string of magic.

It spilled across the embers like gasoline on a forest fire and the blaze raged up in a spurting wall of super hot flame.

The thing roared in surprise and pain and the shadow blocking the fire leaped to one side of the tent.

That massive paw I expected landed, but off center.

Giant claws ripped through the nylon, shredded it and Matos was moving.
He vaulted through the tears in the tent wall, ripping it wider still as he rolled up and out.

I followed as fast as I could, landing on my knees as my boots got caught up and fouled up in the opening.

“Back!” Matos shouted in his native magical tongue and shot a spark of blue toward the thing that was stalking us.

The light illuminated the clearing and I could see what it was.

Giant was an understatement.

It was tall, nine feet or more, but larger still because of the horns.

Like someone had taken a minotaur and modified it for the Great American Plains.

An elk head rested on a massive human torso, ringed eyes glowing with supernatural life.

It had cloven hooved feet, and sharp claw tipped talons where it’s hands would be at the end of oversized arms that hung to the ground.

“Wendigo!” I screamed at Matos and sent another small surge of fear inspired magic toward it.

My sparkle was half the color of Matos, half the size and none of the impact.

“Charlatan!” he screamed and stood up beside the fire.

He raised both hands as the elk head tilted toward him and roared.

The voice sounded unnatural, almost fake and I think I knew what he meant.

This wasn’t a true Windigo, but some version created by dark magic from someone who wanted people to think it was one.

“Fake!” I screamed and shot off a few sparks at it again.

Trying to get the thing’s attention so Matos had time to work some Shaman medicine on it.

The Elk-atuar wasn’t buying it.

Could I even call it that? Taur meant bull, so maybe it should have been Minoelk?

I almost babbled it out loud.

Didn’t matter that it was fake.

Didn’t even matter what it was, or what it was supposed to be called.

It was tall, evil and deadly, and at that particular moment, running straight at me.

The hooves dug into the dirt as it bounced toward me on muscular legs.

I was surprised.

Not frozen in fear, at least not in the retelling of it.

Matos was the stronger magic, the bigger threat.

Why was it trying to gut me on the tip of the horns glistening in the firelight?

It bounded closer, and I danced to one side, trying to get out of the way.

My boot caught in the tent decided I needed to be on the ground instead.

I bounced into the wreckage of the collapsed dome and fumbled to cast a spell.

Matos hit it on the side.

Not with a spell, but his own shoulder.

He must have infused his run with magic.

It was like watching a deer meet a diesel.

My magical friend plowed into the side of the Mino-elk, or Elkataur with a blue explosion of light and sparks.

Pieces of the beast rained down around me as the head whipped one way and the body the other, while the legs kept going.

It was whiplash to the tenth degree and the weight of the horns against the speed of Matos ripped the head off the body.

It landed with a wet thud next to the fire as the legs took a few more steps then collapsed on top of me.

I scrambled back from under the soggy weight of them and hopped up to check on Matos.

He stood wavering at the edge of the circle of firelight, one big hand rubbing his shoulder.

“That is going to leave a mark,” he said as I reached him.

“You don’t have his headache,” I nodded toward the elk head next to the fire.

“Do not make a joke about losing his head,” he warned me.

I didn’t.

I turned toward the darkness instead and wondered who had sent a magically constructed assassin after us.

“Think he’s still out there?” I asked.

“What makes you think it’s a he?” Matos asked as he stared with me, watching for the next threat.

“He could be right here,” said a voice from behind us.