Heart pounding, I ducked into the service entrance of the office building and opened the cap on one of the plastic tubes from my rucksack. I carefully sifted the shimmering black powder until it spread across the walkway behind me. Almost instantly it began to dissolve into what looked like a cloud of smoke. As the smoke changed into roiling darkness and before I could recap the vial, the narrow walkway behind me was filled with a masking darkness of solid shadows. Quietly I picked my way up the dark tunnel until it widened into a proper alley.
There was no light to see by. This was the Shadow, the part of the spirit world closest to the mortal world and acted as its dark twin. It was always twilight, so I didn't even have a moon to guide me, and electricity didn't work, for the most part, so the iron lamp-posts of the nineteen-twenties version of the city stood dark and useless. I did my best, then, to navigate with what little night vision I had.
An iron door off to my left was the only hopeful escape from the long and spare alley and it would have to do. Slowly I drew up power and concentrated on the door, let my mind's eye open and take in its structure. My knuckles creaked around the tall length of my staff, but the tension didn't distract me. I intoned the words of my spell and let energy flow into the shape my mind called up as noise came from that narrow alley entrance behind me.
Click.
With a distressing grinding noise the iron door opened on rusty hinges and I slipped into complete darkness. I prayed that nothing had claimed the building for its lair. With a half-vampire gang chasing after me, I didn't have much choice other than jumping into the unknown.
Silence...and the smell of rot.
In the quiet I heard my panting before feeling my heaving chest. My rushing blood thundered in my ears. Then I listened.
It would have been impossible for my attackers not to notice the sound of the lock resetting, if they hadn't already heard when the door had opened, and I know that would have given away my location just as I began to realize I'd trapped myself. I'd be dead if the vampire lackeys found me.
Slow breaths, I told myself. Stay still and slow your heartbeat.
That mantra helped.
Noise outside the door froze me in place and I had to continue the slow breaths to keep from bolting.
My attackers slowed and I was almost sure they'd smell me or use some vamp senses to realize I'd entered the building. That must not have happened because after a few moments I heard them continue on.
Sigh.
After minutes had ticked by I finally slumped against the door in relief. Once already I'd been attacked. That time it had been by a human in the Shadow. If it had been in the mortal world I might have been taken out by a sniper or something, so that at least was a stroke of luck. Because of the strange physics of the spirit world, gunpowder was rarely combustible and thus my attackers were restricted to more medieval weapons. There would be no snipers from a mile away.
That hadn't prevented the crossbow bolt that had cut open my cheek, or the poison I could feel starting to take effect. It was sobering. They'd gotten too close to killing me and I had no real idea who these new assailants were other than being partially turned vampires.
As a magus, a mage, I was able to sense the taint of the vampire on my attackers. I could also tell they had not been fully turned. Knowing that wasn't at all comforting. Years before, as an apprentice in Oxfordshire England, I'd had several encounters with the undead. They were things of nightmare under any circumstances. Without having much skill with combat magic, though, they were especially terrifying.
Only a few vampires lived in the Twin Cities, the name for the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota. From what I knew they were all independent, some having small coteries, and none having any issue with me. Since my master Arthur Pennington had died, and since I'd become a full member of the Covenant, the order providing both governance and social interaction for magi, I'd kept out of politics. I decided to move back to Minnesota where I was raised. I'd taken over a spare room in the basement of my parents house and transformed it from dank storage into something comfortable. I became a recluse.
The first attack may have been a mugging, but the second was a concerted attack. That meant I had an enemy. What I'd done to earn an enemy I didn't know. I was going to find out.
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