Stone Cold Passion

-a caroline harper story-

Please visit carolineharper.tumblr.com for more information, and
follow the author, Zoe, on twitter at @zoegmiller

1.

"W-what do you call that again?" He shuffles his wrists against
the bindings in a way kinda makes it look like he's playing it up
for the crowd.

That's the great thing about metrosexual guys, they've always got
a cache of scarves, ascots, etc; whatever the occasion there's
always something handy for tying a boy to a bedpost. Maybe it
makes me a bad houseguest, availing myself of accessory drawer
like that, but James doesn't seem to be complaining.

Well not about that, specifically.

"It's a cantrip. Try to keep up Jimbo, otherwise I'm liable to
get bored." I spread the fingers of my left hand slowly, and the
scintillating orb of light in my palm - sort of like a disco
ball, but one I've summoned from the ether - expands with them.
"You kids are like the worst case of ADD on the planet. What do
they say about mogs? 'never trust one under thirty?' And you're
cusping, what, twenty two?"

"Twenty three," he says, and I can barely see him flush in the
darkness of the room, lit only by my summoned sphere and a weak
street lamp filtering through the window shade. "And don't say
'mog,' that's offensive."

"Offensive? Babe, I think your need for social justice is
inversely proportional to your ability to turn into a tiger." I
rest my hand on his hip and gently press my nails into his bared
skin. He pouts.

"Fine, fine," I say, "'transmogrificational magic user,' that
suit you better?"

"Well i-it doesn't have to be so technical..." His hips stretch
upwards, needily, seeking my hand. It's only an inch or two away,
but I know he can feel my heat, and to him it must seem like a
mile.

"Look, let's just settle on 'shifter' before we spend the whole
night hashing out nomenclature." My nails crawl back into his
skin, digging across his body, desperately close to his...

"Carol..." He says, weakly. His worried arms wiggle their bound
way up and down against the wooden slats of the headrest.

"Ah, ah, ah," I say, slowly digging my nails into his side in a
silent warning. I, of course, remain dressed, which tonight means
dark blue jeans and a button-down. One of my favorite parts of
the game is seeing how many articles of clothing I can take off
of them while seeing how many articles of clothing they'll let me
leave on, and for how long.

"Ms. Caroline," he says, after a moment's pause.

"That's better. Now then..." I splay my fingers wide and the orb
of light shatters into a grouping of dazzling shards, like bits
of broken glass. They float curiously, bouncing off of each
other, trapped by the gravity of my hand. "What were we
saying...? Oh right!" My free hand moves from his hip, fingers
slowly sliding around his rather fierce erection. "I was noticing
you forgot to shift at least one part back after your last horse
escapade."

James doesn't seem to know whether he should focus on the gradual
stroking of my hand, or the private light show I'm giving him.
"I, ah..." He starts, but a firm squeeze of my hand around his
cock dissuades him from any further talking.

Just by rolling my knuckles I've begun to juggle the light shards
off of the tips of my fingers. Each one bounces up and away from
my fingertips with a lazy sway, hovers in a sleepy arc, then
falls in a floaty, feathery sort of way, easy for me to catch and
juggle again. I've [split] the orb into five shards. I've been
able to manage ten before, but that's when my concentration
wasn't otherwise divided. Multitasking, I know, very impressive.
A lot of slow nights at the bookstore gave me plenty of time to
practice.

On the juggling bit, not the handjobs. That's a different
skillset, and not really appropriate for the workplace.

James gives a hint of a gasp as I scoop my hand over the head of
his cock on the upswing. I squeeze down firmly, and am rewarded
with a skotch of a sticky sensation against the inside of my
palm. "Well anyway, if you aren't using that special gift of
yours to cheat," my hand tickles down the subtle bulge that runs
down the length of his dick, "then you should spend an extra
moment tomorrow giving things to whatever god graced you with
this bad boy."

My fingers spool out when they reach his balls, which are
crinkled and feel small as I roll them across my index and middle
finger, but maybe that's just his shyness made manifest. They are
mostly hairless, of course. Any metro guy worth his salt
considers pubic grooming an art form. When I gently pinch the
root of one of them between my fingers I feel a shudder surge
through him that curls all the way down to his toes."

"N-no 'cheating,'" he says, with labored breath, "Shifters can't
change their human form. You ought to know that."

"I do know that," I reply with a sharp smile, and a slightly
sharper slap to the root of his cock, "Mind the way you talk to
your elders, young James." I've only got five years on him, but
it's good to remind him of his place.

My little love tap jerks the desired yelp out of him, and once it
does my fingers sweep in to gently caress the spot I've just
abused. "Now say you're sorry for talking back, and tell me just
how positively sore this little beast is, then maybe we'll see
what we can do about it."

"I'm... I'm sorry for talking back," pants James. And I can't
blame him for stuttering, really, not with the way my nails
threaten to dig into either side of his little piss slit.

"You're sorry and..."

"I'm s-sorry and..."

"You're sorry aaaaand," I say, almost singsonging. His eyes are
flitting back and forth between the deep shadow of my hand
sidling up and down the length of his dick and the juggling act
I've been maintaining with the light shards to keep them
distracted. "Shit, Ms. Caroline, please don't make me say it."

"Oh babe, you don't have to say anything you don't want to." I
smile as I splay my fingers wide, realizing his cock. It wiggles
in an unsteady throb as gravity reasserts its control over it,
heaving itself in a downwards sway that almost, but doesn't
quite, send it slapping against his spectacularly firm tummy.

He emits nothing but a long, languid whimper.

Shifters make the best sounds, don't you think? All that pent up
animal lust, all that magic tied up in their body, their cells
screaming out to turn all beastly. How could you not want to tie
them up? Tease them? Force them to stay subdued, while both of
you share the knowledge that they could break free at any time?

Besides, the bestial passion gig is fun, but you don't always
want to be thrown up against a wall.

Only like... thirty percent of the time, tops.

"Oh, alright," I say, "It's your first time with a mage, after
all, and my New Year's resolution was to help those in need..."

My fingers find his cock again, and twist it downwards so he can
feel the run of my knuckles as I stroke him slowly, upwards, and
downwards, and the joints of my fingers run through his finely
trimmed pubic hair like hunters flushing out game in some
wonderfully wiry, black forest. "You ready?" I ask.

"For what?"

"Just hold still."

I can't keep up the pace of my stroking as smooth and seductive
as I'd like, not when I'm concentrating on maintaining my spell,
but James doesn't seem to mind. On each down stroke I squeeze him
firmly, like I'm milking him in reverse, like I'm forcing him to
keep control, and I can feel the hard rod of his dick like a
deliciously firm chunk of rebar under the spongy flesh.

I dip my left hand lower, until each rock of my fingers, juggling
the bits of light, barely grazes his stomach, slips my knuckles
across his body. Each touch digs a convulsive shiver from his
abdomen. "Your whole body's going to want to change, but don't
you dare. I'm not into fur and all fours. When you feel the
surge, you hold it back; you hold it back, and I'll make it
worth. Your. While~" I chirp the last bit out, so I'm sure he
gets my drift.

"W-what are you going to do?" he starts to ask.

But I've already done it.

I flick one of the shards of light up off the tip of my finger,
into the air, and it drifts down lazily like a feather, inching
closer and closer to his stomach. He squirms. I can see his eyes
flick this way and that in the deep shadows of the room. I can
feel his wrists rattle against the bedframe as he tries to bodily
purge his nervousness. Finally, after what must feel like minutes
to him, the light touches down right atop his belly button and
spreads out in an incandescent pool that highlights his veins and
capillaries for half of a fraction of an instant before his body
absorbs the power. James, to his credit, knows how to follow an
order. His body cants upwards and he moans with a sound that is
so close to pain that I'd be concerned, if it weren't for the way
his eyes roll back in his head. I grip down firmly on his cock,
anticipating the jump of his hips, and use his erection like a
lever to ratchet his body back down onto the bed.

Oh, the way it makes them surge in your hand is my favorite part.

"Again?" I ask.

He can do nothing but tremble and nod.

So I reward him with another flick of my fingers and another
drifting, dawdling shard of light that touches down on his tight
body and spills its energy out into his core.

"What is it," he asks, voice strangled, though one wonders if
it's due to the light show or due to the rather firm way I am
dragging the backs of my nails across the underside of his cock
with each upswing.

"It's the energy of the universe, man. Mother nature, Gaea,
whatever you wanna call it. Though, truthfully, I don't go for
the whole gendered nouns, Earth Goddess thing. Call it whatever
you want, or don't call it anything if it makes it easier."

I dip my hand like I'm going to infuse him with another bit of
light, and his stiffness in my hand surges just so and his hips
raise with their need. But I don't indulge him, not yet. "Just
what do you do in those supe bars anyway?" I ask. "Don't tell me
you spend so much time sniffing after pussy you haven't even
picked up on the basics."

"Not these basics..." He gasps out. James has bit of a six-pack,
close enough for my purposes, anyway. The sweat forms in the
creases of his muscles, and his pale brown nipples have crinkled
to smaller and more needy studs with each infusion of light.

"Well then it pleases me to be the first," I say with a flourish,
which manifests as an affectionate squeeze and pull on his cock,
and my left arm thrown wide, until it seems that the remaining
light shards might spill out of my hand. But I catch them. I
always catch them. It's all part of the act. "What do you say,
stud, think you can handle the rest all at once?"

If the feeling alone didn't send him to wild nodding, then surely
the aggressive pace of my hand up and down the length of him
would. I hook my leg over his, straddling his knees, and lean
forward so we're cheek-to-cheek. Hard to do it with both hands
busy, but I manage (though I do kind of have to throw an elbow
down onto his chest).

"Get ready for the big finish," I whisper, my lips gracing around
the curve of his earlobe. Before he has time to brace himself I
throw my hand downwards, pressing it palm-down into his chest and
sending the remaining shards of light surging through his being.
His gasp is more like a strangled cry, and one imagines I
wouldn't have needed to touch him at all to receive the desired
result.

But where's the fun in that?

I feel the wet, heavy wash of his orgasm spatter against my hand,
still pressed down into his body, and against the fabric of my
shirt sleeve. His head jerks, blindly, seeking my face, and his
breath is a white-hot wash of passion that tickles all over my
neck and sends a jolt of chill down my spine. His fingers
scramble up and down the slats of the headboard seeking me, any
part of me, but finding my hair just barely out of range.

"Oh my!" My fingers around his surging dick lose not even a
fraction of their pace, "That was quick!"

And he is blushing even as he moans, and his eyes can't quite
meet mine, so my lips convince him it's okay, pressing down onto
his with a soft flush of pliant skin, as my hand works the final,
coursing bursts of his orgasm out of him, until his hips unwind
himself and his tight body finally relaxes.

"You made of mess of me, James," I chide as I break the kiss.
Already I can feel him softening under my grip. The light trick
is fun and all, but I've learned it takes a lot out of a boy,
especially on the first go. My hand relaxes its pace, stroking
him in a way that's more like petting, comforting, telling him
it's all right.

Shifters like that sort of thing.

"I'm sorry?" He asks. I guess I didn't really give him enough
time to determine his role in the game.

"Now ordinarily I'd made you clean me up, but I guess exceptions
can be made for your first try." I am smearing the sticky sap of
his cum against his tensed abs, cleaning myself as best I can. I
get most of it off of my fingers and onto him, though my shirt
might be a lost cause. "Will you think of me when you throw your
next girl on all fours and start rutting into her like a big,
dumb animal?"

"Y-yes, Ms. Caroline," he responds, with his eyes tight and
crinkled around the corners.

"And what more can a girl ask for?" I stand and take a few steps
backwards across the floor. James eyes his bound wrists as if the
game is over. "Oh no you don't," I say. I am rocking the heel of
my left shoe against the front of my right one, but they prove
too much effort to remove so I leave them alone. "It's my turn
now. Fair is fair, after all." I undo the button of my jeans and
hook my fingers through the belt loops as I wriggle them past my
hips. I'm not that skinny, and certainly not as muscular as
James's, but I do my best to keep fit. My jeans fall to around my
ankles with a thump and I trot forward on denim manacles, back
towards the bed.

"Now then," I say, as my knees find the space between his
shoulders and his neck on either side of the bed. My jeans spread
across his chest and ensure he stays down, as if he'd even try to
escape at this point. "Scoot down," and he complies. He's staring
right up at my underpants, which are as no-frills as they come -
this didn't start out as date night, after all - but now that my
illuminating orb is gone, how much can he really make out from
the weak light streaming in front the street lights? Shifter
vision is better than human vision, but not that much better.

A Shifter's sense of smell, on the other hand... well, let's just
say any average old human wouldn't mistake just how heated up I
am, not when I'm literally rubbing their noses in the small, wet
spot between my legs. And James the Mog, with his Shifter nose? I
can feel his breath quicken as he catches my particular spicy
scent, cascading its warmth between my legs, and causing my
thighs to tighten around his ears.

"Your turn," I edge out, voice so hot with anticipation that the
words almost caught in my throat. I use two fingers to shuffle
the fabric of my panties to the side, the elastic banjos around
his nose for a second before I sweep it out of the way. I have
exposed myself to his lips... and he is hungry.

Now it's my turn to gasp. My other hand jerks forward to support
me, digs so hard into the slats on the bedframe I swear it'll
leave a mark. James, shy, submissive James, certainly knows how
to use his mouth. Our lightly bondage themed escapades have left
me wet and warm enough that his tongue meets no resistance
slipping into me.

"Fffuuck," I grit my teeth. I close my eyes and imagine the
scenario I'd just placed in his head, of James and some other
girl, any girl, some other shifter, or maybe a were, the two of
them scrambling against each other. James, mounting her, claiming
her. I imagine the taut, flexing muscles of his shoulder blades
from behind. I imagine the seething, plowing motion of his hips.

His tongue scoops upwards, splits my lips wide and finds my clit.
Normally I'd prefer a finger or two, but the heat of the moment
is helping, and the wet, strong muscle of his tongue against my
hidden button seems willing to pick up the slack.

"Shit!" I curse again, and my nails scrape against the unfinished
wood of his bed. "Angh!" My thighs are squeezing him so hard I
swear I'll burst him like a ripe fruit. James, oh lovely young
James, I could forgive all your youthful supernatural ignorance,
all the supernatural ignorance in the whole wide world, just for
another five seconds with that lovely, luscious tongue! He is
shoving me closer and closer by leaps and bounds and I was
already pretty damn close to begin with!

I am scrambling, grasping at the hill of my orgasm like I'm
cresting Kilimanjaro. So close! I can feel myself cresting... I
can feel myself almost tipping over... almost... almost...

And then... BRRRT!

No, if I just... all I have to do is concentrate. My hand around
the bedframe jerks down to James's hair, wraps up in it like a
leash. No, don't you stop now! Don't you st-

BRRRT! It goes again.

Ignore it, Carol!

BRRRT!

Fuck, fine! Fine!

There's only one person who'd call me after two AM on a weekday.
It's Shen, and just the thought of the old geezer and his
whiskery beard has killed any hope of orgasm for the next, oh,
six to eight months? I throw myself to the other side of the bed,
away from James, and sit back so I can scoop my vibrating phone
out of my pocket.

"What!" I shout into the phone as James pants beside me,
seemingly too deep in a lust coma to even speak.

Or maybe he's just reacclimating to the sensation of air filling
his lungs. My legs had a pretty good grip on him, towards the
end.

"Another strange statue," he says. Shen always got a bit too into
the cloak and dagger side of things for my taste. But I guess
what good is monster slaying if you can't have a little fun with
it? "This one in Bay Ridge."

"Bay Ridge?" I ask, "Shit Shen, I'm all the way on the other side
of Brooklyn. You know how long it'll take to get a train out
there at this hour?"

"Come morning it may be gone," he says. "You could always take a
cab."

"Oh? Am I getting a raise? With what you pay me I can barely
afford the MetroCard."

"Bay Ridge," he says. I commit the address he gives me to memory.

James is looking at me with this plaintive puppy dog eyes, but
he's not my first shifter and I'm wise to the cutesy tricks.
"Nobody's more sorry than me," I say, as I stand and shuffle my
jeans back up my legs. I look myself over and notice the quickly
drying wet spatter on my sleeve. "Ungh... mind if I use your
bathroom?"

It's not until I'm halfway across the room that I hear his
helpless rattle against the bedframe. "Uh, Ms. Caroline...?" He
asks.

I stop and turn, where James the Shifter, who could probably turn
into a bear and break the whole bed if he cared to, waits
patiently for me to untie him. "Oh, fine." I say, "But just one
arm, and only because you've been so very good."

2.

I pull my hair back into a ponytail and secure it with a band
around my wrist. It's a Plain Jane sort of brown, my hair, and I
keep it only at about shoulder length, but shoulder length is
long enough to get in the way when you're trying to concentrate
on breaking and entering.

I fumble my lockpick gun three times before I get the door open,
so desperate am I to get out of sight, and out of the hallway,
before some confused neighbor sees me. Thank god Elizabeth
Sinclair, the presumed victim, lived in such a dump out in the
middle of nowhere. If the lock on her door were anything better
than what you could get for five bucks at a hardware store I
might've had to go home empty handed.

I know, I know, look at me: all-powerful enchantress, manipulator
of nature, never figured out how to use an actual set of
lockpicks and has to get by with a cheaty impact gun. Turns out
magic requires a lot less dexterity than B&E.

I'd called Shen on the walk from the subway station to the
apartment building. His cursory googling of Elizabeth Sinclair
turned up the obvious reason for her low-rent digs out in the
middle of nowhere Brooklyn: Elizabeth Sinclair, a young
professional a year or two out of college, had fallen victim to
the creeping trend of unpaid internships.

I turn on the light and take in the living room. The apartment is
small even by New York standards, but it's positively miniscule
for Bay Ridge. I guess you get what you pay for, and "what you
pay for" isn't a lot when nobody's paying you. The coat rack by
the door doubles as a closet, apparently: it's festooned with
clothes hangers holding modestly cheap, but fairly
efficient-looking blouses and suit jackets.

I sigh and try to shake my head out of the clouds. I can still
feel the neediness clawing up from my core, unfulfilled. It's
distracting me. I try to will away the thoughts of James, likely
asleep in his bed now, all safe and warm, while here I am, on the
job.

I get a pen out of my purse and poke my way through the discarded
takeout counters on the table. She doesn't appear to own a TV, so
the loveseat sort of just stares directly at a wall of cracked
red paint and a teeny-tiny window. Nature's television, I guess,
perfect for eating your... ugh, what is this, General Tso's? A
busy schedule is no excuse for syrupy corn starch sauces.

All right Caroline, ease back on the jokes, and maybe the present
tense, too. Odds are, Elizabeth isn't in a position to worry
about her figure, or anything else, ever again.

The living room doesn't hold much in the way of identification,
or any signs of struggle. Neither of the first two apartments had
any obvious signs of violence either, though the first girl had a
backyard deck, and appeared to have been caught unawares while
sunbathing, a half-finished glass of wine still on the table
beside her deck chair.

I cant shake my off my sour mood. I should've had James ride me
like a fucking bronco before I left. That would've kicked the fog
out of my head and made it easier to stomach coming out here in
the middle of the night.

Living room's clear. I've checked every nook and cranny, in so
much as this place even has nooks and crannies. For a second I
worry that I've come to the wrong place, that I'm thirty seconds
from some enraged Brooklyner cracking me, the home intruder, over
the head with a baseball bat. But Shen's information is never
wrong, and there's an eerie stillness to the air, though that may
just be my nerves talking. I head to the adjoining bedroom and
flick on the lights.  They take a second to stutter on and when
they do I gasp, stumbling backwards and nearly falling flat on my
ass.

There she is, in the flesh (or the stone, as it were). Elizabeth
Sinclair, now modeled exquisitely in statue form.

She's standing in the middle of the floor, halfway between the
bed and the bathroom. The folds of stone on the statute highlight
one of those workman-like blouse-and-skirt-suit combos, her
burial shroud, fresh off the rack from TJ Maxx. One of her stone
hands, slender - girl, eat all the General Tso's you want if you
can keep that figure - has lifted the front tails of her shirt
above her stomach, her belly button just a shallow dimple in the
stone. Her hair is short, and traces the line of her jaw just
about perfectly. She cared more about haircuts than rent,
evidently. About the only thing 'nice' about this whole
situation, I'd say. Her eyes are half-lidded, and you could
imagine a sort of "come hither" look if they were more than just
featureless swells in the stone. Her lips are parted. Only
barely. Less than a centimeter.

Elizabeth Sinclair. Rest in Peace.

She's the third this month. They all fit this sort of profile:
young, business-minded, but otherwise unremarkable, not that
their jobs have anything to do with it. We assumed it was a
Basilisk, and Basilisks don't really care about your tax bracket.


A Basilisk is a komodo dragon looking thing, sized about as big
as a corgi. Their gaze petrifies you, but it takes a few seconds.
They're just all around slow as hell - don't gotta move quick
when your food-source is transmuted into stone - so they're
really only dangerous to people who don't know what they are or
are too squeamish to stomp a twenty pound lizard to death with
their boot.

Thing about Basilisks is they eat their prey. They're stupid
animals. You might find a leg here, an arm there, little chunks
of leftovers, but usually not full statues. The first two cases
felt plausible: they were in apartments with backyard access, and
just a few blocks apart in the Borough Park neighborhood. If a
Basilisk is shocked by some poor sap while it's chilling out in a
mud puddle it could conceivably stone them before scuttling away.


Stranger things have happened.

But Elizabeth Sinclair lives in the second floor of a ten unit
building. A Basilisk can climb stairs if it really wants to, but
they mostly like to hang out in the underbrush. Anyway, how could
it possibly scuttle through the double locked entryway
downstairs?

I am becoming increasingly concerned that I didn't bring my
mirror shades, but I try to put the thought out of my mind.
Gorgons are extraordinarily rare. I've seen only one in my life,
and that was at a menagerie.

A Gorgon? Maybe you know them as Medusas? But that'd be like
calling a tissue a Kleenex, and I am unwilling to let the brand
supplant the generic in my mind.

I trace the butt of my pen around the stony curve of Elizabeth's
hair. That's three, all women, which lends credence to it being
just a really agro Basilisk. Basilisks will stone whatever's
nearby; The Gorgon is a bi-curious beast, at best. Gorgons are
the sorority girls of the supernatural world. If they petrify a
lady, it's because they're trying to impress some dude.

I step around Elizabeth and into the bathroom, still seeking any
sign of a struggle, something that would prove it was a brainless
lizard and not a monster lady with an agenda. Once you get by the
stone gaze Basilisks are about as scary as a small dog. Gorgons
on the other hand are human sized and strong, too, but they don't
need to fight you, not most of the time...

I kneel and run my hand at the floor under the sink. Aside from
the caked layer of dust - Elizabeth, really, spring-cleaning this
place wouldn't take more than an afternoon - I come away with two
almost translucent scales stuck to my fingers. I hold them up to
the light.

Funny thing about Gorgon scales: when they're connected to the
creature their color combines into this greenish, snake-y kind of
hue, but when they're detached they start to break down, they
take on this rainbow sort of pattern...

I turn the scales over in my hands. Shit, yeah. That's a Gorgon
all right. I've never seen one of their scales up close, but it
fits everything I've read in books to a tee. The rainbow spirals
out from the center, but it's almost gone. These still have a bit
of life left in them, which means this crime scene is still
fresh. We're talking hours, and not more than a few. I'll have to
call Shen, and I've got a crapload of reading to do when I get
back to the bookstore...

I'm standing, facing the sink, trying to puzzle the whole thing
out. I look up in the mirror and shake my head. I'm pinching at
my nose between the eyes and trying to blink the last of the
James-induced clouds when I catch the hint of her, it, slinking
down from the ceiling. The Gorgon, in the flesh, maybe even
waiting for me, peeks out like an upside-down prairie dog, from
around the top of the doorframe. She emerges slowly. First I see
the writhing mass of snakes that comprises her hair, then just
the tops of her emerald green eyes, slitted into two hungry
lines.

"Fuck!" I shout, recoiling from the image in the mirror, which
has the appreciably negative effect of moving me closer to the
actual monster.

Gorgons are agile, did I not tell you that? The combination of
human hands and a snake-like torso makes them into adept
climbers. Think mermaid, but wriggling, and quick. She drops
herself, tail-first, to the ground with a heavy thud. She has
caught me by surprise, and she is quick, but I saw her in the
mirror and, as everyone who's seen Clash of the Titans knows,
Gorgon mind-tricks don't work unless they get you dead-on.

She grasps me up by the shoulders, forcibly turning me around. I
squeeze my eyes shut to avoid her gaze, but she has me grappled
before I can do anything more than that. The clinging heaviness
of her snake-half lifts off of the ground, entwining itself
around my legs, and I fall backwards with my hand against the
sink to support myself. "Shit!"

She hisses. Gorgons don't hiss like snakes. When they do it, it
coils off into this weird chattering sound in the back of their
throat. Her talons have me around the neck. It's rare they don't
catch you entirely by surprise, but Gorgons know what do when you
close your eyes. She squeezes me around the throat and I gag. I
can feel her claws digging in, threatening to break skin.

I whip my hand up in front of her face, or at least where I think
her face ought to be. I'm rewarded with the snapping bites of the
hair-like mass of snakes all along my hands and arm, so it feels
like I'm on the right track. Each fang is like a thumbtack,
they're small, but there are dozens of them, and they get in
their fair share of bites before I'm able to cool my
concentration and summon the orb.

The same scintillating ball of light I used on James... it has
other applications.

With my eyes still squeezed shut, and the orb radiating heat into
the palm of my hand, I crush my fingers as hard as they'll go,
and I'm rewarded with a blast of light that pierces through even
my closed eyelids. The Gorgon screams and recoils, falling off of
my body and to the floor with the heavy slap of her meaty, thick
tail against the tile. I stumble backwards onto the sink and open
my eyes. My hand and arm are a wash of miniscule snakebites,
blood seeps through my ruined shirt.

Legends say they petrify you because they're so ugly. That's what
we like to call "revisionist history." Someone with a bone to
pick, or maybe just someone jealous. The truth is Gorgons are
about as beautiful as any creature has any right to be, and it's
not just the sporty tits - no Gorgon ever needed a sports bra,
that's for sure - or the way their hips curve into this oddly
sensual "V" where the flesh of the woman meets the scales of the
snake. It's not just the lewd, obvious stuff, I mean. They have
these high cheekbones and this permanent rosy flush on their
cheeks, like they've just applied the perfect amount of rouge at
all times. If it wasn't for the hair and the, you know, forked
tongue, they'd pretty much have the perfect face.

Of course, some people are into the lizard thing, and who am I to
judge?

She thrashes and roils on the floor, halfway in the bathroom,
halfway in the bedroom. Her tail slaps angrily against the tiles,
just barely missing my feet, as she struggles to right herself.
Thank god: I don't think Chuck Taylors are a great defense
against the hundred pounds of an enraged snake-woman's lower
half. I duck away from her, towards the shower. It only gives me
a few feet clearance, but it's better than nothing.

Gorgon eyes don't just petrify, they enchant. That's why there's
been no struggle at any of the apartments. If a Gorgon catches
you unaware, that's it. Think about it: who wants a cluster of
sculptures all struggling and screaming in terror? Kind of
repetitive, don't you think? No, they enthrall you and then
you're only too happy to sit there and assume whatever pose they
like. Once you're under their spell, and it only takes but a
second, a Gorgon can petrify you at her leisure.

She has her hands over her eyes. Thick treacles of blood spill
down her forehead from where she's dug her talons in, as if the
pain might clear the temporary blindness caused by my spell. It
won't, but her stun also won't last forever. Already she's
slithering, wobbling, to... to her feet? Well, call it "upright."
She's bracing her body against the doorjamb, so she can still
cover her face with both hands, while her muscular tail surges in
a spiral, slowly getting her back to vertical.

The blood... from the snake bites... I can use it. I can use it
to.

I shoot two fingers of my damaged hand up, dangerously close to
the range of her raging head snakes, whom the blast also appears
to have left dazed, but seem no less wrathful for it. They snap
blindly, seeking anything in reach, some digging their fangs into
the doorframe as the creature drags herself upwards. Already I
can feel the blazing numbness of their poison storming up my arm.
Yeah, poison. Say you've got a bunch of mirrors and you can avoid
the Gorgon's gaze during a full-out encounter. "No big deal,"
says the Gorgon, "That's what my paralytic head snakes are for."
If not by guile, she'll incapacitate you by force.

Sometimes the legends get it right.

My hand is a mess of tiny cuts. Perfect, the blood is a crucial
component in the spell. I flick my middle finger vertically in
the air, and then I draw a line with my index finger like a
horizontal 'v,' bisecting the first line. The air flashes, takes
on a pink tint, and I feel a hit of gravity sucking against my
hand like a vacuum. "Compel!" I scream inside my head. The spell
has no verbal component, though. That part is more like an
'attaboy' to convince yourself that you're doing a really, really
good job at magic.

I snap my hand away before the snakes can reach me, just in case
the spell fails, but almost immediately they cease their
thrashing. For a moment, for a sweet peaceful moment, the
snapping and the hissing of the snakes stops. All there is
between us is my ragged gasping and the Gorgon's howls. She has
recovered enough that she can put one hand against the wall. She
has finished dragging herself upwards. She is opening her left
eye.

Then, just like that, the snakes reach an internal consensus.
There's a hit of confusion as the spell takes hold of them, then
they all decide on the proper course of action.

The proper course of action, suggested by my spell, is that they
all bite the fuck out of their master's face.

The Gorgon wails as her hair turns against her. She stumbles
backwards into the bedroom. Her talons grip and pull at her head,
tearing out two or three snakes at a time, screaming in abject
pain as she mutilates herself to stop her own body from biting
her over, and over, and over. I can only imagine it; like ripping
off your leg to escape a bullet wound. Should I be horrified or
relieved? Right now my stomach is kind of seesawing between the
two.

I have stolen another few seconds, but the Compulsion spell, way
more complicated than my illumination cantrip, is about ten
levels above my pay grade. I won't get another bit of magic out,
not even the orb again. Glancing around the bathroom, the closest
thing I see to a weapon is the shower rod.

The Gorgon writhes and bucks on the floor, overcoming the snakes
gradually, bit by bit. Her screams have transmuted to those of
pure fury, not pain. Great. I've done an excellent job of pissing
her off, if nothing else I turn towards the tub and leap forward,
balancing on the porcelain side of it and grabbing the shower rod
with both hands. It's screwed into the wall on either side. I'm
probably not strong enough to yank it out, but...

I throw myself backwards and down, leaping down to the ground and
letting my weight do the work of tearing the rod from the wall. I
almost fall flat on my ass, again - twice in one night, not good,
Carr - I take two or three stumbling steps backwards before I get
my balance back. I turn myself towards the bedroom, trying to
keep the Gorgon in the corner of my eye. Maybe her seduction gaze
won't work as well on peripheral vision.

Yeah, good luck with that.

The Gorgon's head is a patchwork mess of stumps, and streaming
blood, and the few snakes who escaped her wrath. She slithers to
her feet again, though her movement is unsteady. Blood spills
down from her face, forehead, cheeks, anywhere the fangs found
purchase. My left arm is flagging as the venom finds my
bloodstream. Already I can barely curl my fingers. This may be my
only shot.

I charge forward just as she's standing. The shower rod proves to
be a better weapon than I expected, the ragged edge from where my
fall sheared it from the wall punches squarely into the Gorgon's
chest, and I swear I push against her so hard it ought to come
right out the other side. Did you ever see that jousting movie?
The one with Heath Ledger? Where he's a knight and it's medieval
times, but all the peasants sing "We Will Rock You" at the
tournament?

It's like that.

Or... at least it felt like that.

I only get it in an inch or so and that brings me into striking
distance. One of her flailing arms hits home and she nails me
with a strength that doesn't really jibe with her waify little
limbs. I rebound against the wall and end up in a pile on the
floor. Her swerving tail slithers her forward in dense, muscular
strokes and her left hand curls around the shower rod, which has
stuck right into her. Her eyes meet mine and I know,
instinctually, her gaze has taken hold. I feel it grip around my
brain and, all of a sudden, it's like I want to be the perfect
statue for her.

I am standing, very slowly, getting into the position she desires
of me. Her forked tongue hisses angrily out of her mouth, she
salivates over the blood nearest to her lips, and she jerks the
shower rod away, out of her body, and hurls it against the wall
where it rings out with a hollow clatter. The walls in this place
are probably paper thin. The neighbors have almost certainly
heard the commotion. Hell, half of Bay Ridge must be stirring by
now.

She positions me with one hand at my jaw, so two of my fingers
are scooped under my ear and the others rest on my cheek. Her
hand is almost gentle as the talons clasp around the band in my
ponytail and work it out, freeing the hair to spill out over my
face. I am scrambling to find any place in my head where the
magic might be, but again and again I come up empty. Her eyes
scintillate and spread in the dim bedroom light. The irises
transmute from green to yellow to orange and my breath begins to
slow...

A gout of flame bursts out from behind her, and the light arcs up
around her head like a halo. She screams in fury and turns
towards the source of the blaze, and I have a clear view of her
singed back, and the snarling, serpentine muscles of her
shoulders as she throws her arms backwards, out behind herself at
an angle, and roars at the new aggressor. Her tail seizes, and
she aims to hurl herself forward.

The source of the fire-related assistance is this tall asshole in
a black t-shirt and blacker jeans. He's got mirror shades on.
Guy's stupid enough to cast his shitty fire magic indoors, but at
least he remembered his aviators.

I'll have time to be embarrassed later. He's backing away, at
least for a second. Fire magic isn't easy to control. You have to
be a pretty powerful mage to do it in the first place, and even
then you'll only get a couple shots before you're completely
spent. He doesn't have time to get out another blast.

Lacking other options, I heave myself to the floor and wrap both
arms around the meat of the Gorgon's tail. Her momentum jerks her
body forward, but my weight sends her smashing face-first to the
ground before she gets the sense to wriggle out of my grip. She
doesn't bother getting up, her claws against the floor and her
tail writhing are more than enough to close the couple feet
between her and the mage.

To my surprise Mr. Fire Mage spools up a second burst. He throws
a hand across his body and the spray flicks out into the air,
sailing ponderously like refined spheres of white-hot magma. When
they impact, whether against her or the carpet, they burst into
arcing trails of flame, singing the Gorgon's face, and lightning
up a good bit of the carpet and the nearby bedframe.

My chest seizes from the spectral force reverberating through the
room and I roll myself onto my back, unable to clear my head and
stand. My head is spinning, maybe just because I've been yanked
out from under the Gorgon's control. I've... I've never seen
anyone produce that much flame all at once. I've heard guys brag
about it, sure, but this guy just tore lava out of the fucking
ether.

The beast flails onto her back on the carpet, thrashing her tail
just inches from my head. She whips her hands in front of her
seared face, trying to protect herself from the heat and fire.
But the damage is already done, and the choking smell of burnt
meat fills the apartment.

Have you ever eaten snake? I did once, when I was eight. My dad
made me try it. We were on a camping trip in Arizona. It's
actually not that bad. The smell, though...

She roars a final time and surges herself back upright. She has
had it. Seething body hurtling forward, the Gorgon barrels right
into the guy, slamming him to the side, almost knocking him off
balance as she storms past him in a hail of arms, snarls, and the
snapping of the few head snakes that escaped destruction by her
talons, the flame, or each other. He almost seems... surprised,
when she barrels past him, her momentum throwing the statue of
Elizabeth Sinclair, placed right in the middle of the Gorgon's
exit strategy, into his arms like a fainting damsel, and he
catches it with an insane fumble that leaves him on the floor,
and nearly crushed by the weight of poor Liz. There's the crash
of glass from the other room. I can't see, but I assume the
Gorgon has found a way to fit through the living room's postcard
of a window.

"Idiot!" I say, as my brain catches up with reality. I stumble
for the bathroom and grope behind the toilet, where Elizabeth
Sinclair has stored her New York-standard fun-sized fire
extinguisher. My brain is mine again, but my body is still
surging with the toxins. I move back into the bedroom with a
lurch. I barely have enough acuity left in my fingers to pull the
pin on the extinguisher. From there it's just the brute force of
holding down the handle and spraying wherever I can. Already the
flames are eating through the thick carpet in waves, seeking the
infinitely more flammable hardwood floor underneath.

Who puts a carpet over hardwood floors? Fucking Bay Ridge.

The blaze is fairly contained, thank god for that. To his credit,
Mr. Tall, Blonde, and Nordic cheekbones has been stomping one of
his stupid clompy boots over one of the remaining patches of
flame. I throw myself backwards against the wall, for support,
after I've put out the worst of the flames and the extinguisher
falls with a clonk onto the carpet. I pant, and grip my
bite-riddled arm against my chest. "You moron! You want to burn
the whole damn building down??"

"Not even a thank you?" He asks, sliding those ridiculous mirror
shades up his forehead and looking at me with eyes colored like
crystal at the bottom of a deep pool. If his expression weren't
so deadpan he'd come off as sarcastic.

I lean against the wall near the bathroom door and grip my
wounded arm at the elbow. "Next time try to do it without the
third degree burns, dick! What the hell are you doing here
anyway? Who are you?"

"I'm saving your life, apparently." He grins at me, just tweaking
up the left side of his mouth, and dusts at his shirt, where
Gorgon blood spattered across the side of it. It's not very
visible against the dark material. He could fix it with a cold
wash. "I could ask you the same question, but first I'd have to
ask why you thought it was a good idea to hunt a Gorgon without
even bringing a pair of sunglasses."

"Because nobody told me it was a Gorgon, that's why! And I'm here
because it's my goddamn job!" I get back on both feet and head
for the bathroom once the room stops spinning.

"And you're the only monster hunter in the city?"

"Eat shit," I say as I begin rifling through the medicine
cabinet, throwing things like floss and ibuprofen to the floor.

"Your arm." He says, behind me, "You'll live?"

I snipe back at him over my shoulder. "He knows to bring
sunglasses, but he doesn't know shit about Gorgon venom. I can
take care of myself." My left arm is completely dead at my side.
The effects of the venom aren't permanent, but they'll knock you
out for a few hours if you don't catch it in time. You can make a
pretty effective Gorgon anti-venom out of a few household
objects, and Elizabeth Sinclair kept better stock of her medicine
cabinet than the rest of her apartment led me to expect.

"Good," he says.

I grab up a big brown bottle of peroxide and turn back towards
the bedroom, but he's already gone.

Asshole.

3.

Shen looks up as the bell above the door to the bookstore clangs.
I wave to him with the gauze and Band-Aid mess that is my left
arm. Tending to the bites on the fingers was the worst. I don't
think I'll get a good curl out of my hand for a week.

"You didn't call..." he starts.

You have to concentrate to navigate Shen's store. The space is
wall-to-wall bookshelves, but that only covers about a third of
the stock. Brooklyn rent is ticking up and up, especially in the
Slope, and the magical tome business isn't exactly booming, so
mostly we just organize the leftovers in piles on the floor as
best we can. There is room for about one and a third person on
any given walkway between the three-to-six foot tall piles of
ancient and archaic works (and a few of the standard trashy
vampire books, you know, to draw in the kids).

"Aw, did I worry you? I would've texted, but I was too busy
throwing myself into a taxi cab and fighting off paralytic brain
poison to say goodnight. I kept the receipt, by the way, so break
out petty cash."

"Poison?" Shen asks, "Then..."

"Yup. We got a Grade A Genuine Gorgon in our little borough."

"Caroline, girl, this is no good. This is no good."

Have you seen Gremlins? Remember that racist caricature of a
magic shop owner? Shen, who is short, 60s, Chinese, and could
probably stand to lose a pound or two (but not too many, I'd miss
those ruddy, pinchable cheeks), affects the "wise old Asian guru"
bit for the customers, but he's 100% Brooklyn-bred. He's got a
silk hat he wears on days when he's feeling particularly
prankish, and he does the wispy goatee thing on months when he
doesn't feel like shaving, but Shen's barely left the city, let
alone the country. I asked him once if he even spoke Chinese. He
babbled at me for about a minute in something that convinced me
he did, but what do I know? It could've just been part of the
shtick.

"You're telling me," I say, wriggling my hand's worth of war
wounds in case he's forgotten.

"Carol, I'm gonna ask you again: find yourself a gun."

"Yeah right! New York's changed since you were a kid, Shen. It'd
be a hell of an end to my illustrious career to end up in jail
for possession of an illegal firearm." I step around a pile of
tomes. New delivery, I think; they haven't had time to gather
dust. "Besides think of the logistics. Silver ammo, wooden
ammo..."

Shen leans forward across the counter and fixes me with this
fatherly eye as I get close. "I'd rather imagine you in an orange
jumpsuit than a funeral gown."

"I dunno, I'd look pretty good in something all frilly and
mournful, don't you think?" I grin and beckon with my fingers,
trying to be all coy, but the pain in my hand makes me wince. "Oh
well, it's good to hear that, at your age, you've still got
enough verve to imagine a girl in anything at all."

"Caroline..." he says, in a stern tone reserved for willful
poodles and impetuous 20-somethings.

"Well if it'll make you feel better, I'll get a squirt gun and
fill it with holy water." I raise the fingers of my good hand,
cock them, and fire. "P-chah!"

He frowns. My feigned disregard for my health and wellbeing is
not as charming and/or infectious as I'd hoped. I turn towards
the shortest stack of books on the counter. "Heraclitus's Digest,
huh?" I ask, carefully flipping open the cover. "First
Renaissance printing?"

"Of course." Shen says, crossing his arms after adjusting the big
blue sleeves on his work "costume," "You saw the new Jaguar
outside, didn't you? It's parked right next to my private jet."

Okay, so I laugh.

"This one's 18th century at the latest. Some suspicion it's from
one of Franklin's printing presses, but I think that was just the
vendor giving me the hard sell." He shrugs, dismissing his
charity, "I took pity on the kid."

I lean forward and put my elbow on the counter, giving his
wrinkly cheek an affectionate pinch, "Aw, Shen! Look at you, you
old softly."

He grimaces and steps away, rubbing his cheek where I assaulted
him. "Caroline, you're changing the subject."

"Oh fine. Hey, funny thing, and by funny I mean annoying as fuck:
just as I'm about to get eaten - did I mention I almost got
eaten? - this Nordic looking motherfucker shows up outta nowhere
and saves my ass with this real whizbang fire magic. You wouldn't
know anything about that, wouldja Shenny?"

He doesn't try to mask his surprise, and I've never known Shen to
lie to me. "No, I..."

"Who's been feeding you these tidbits anyway? I mean, I dig the
whole Deep Throat thing, I just wonder..."

"You wonder why a Gorgon has petrified three separate women and
left them where they stood."

I tap my fingers against my temple before indicating him. "You
and me, Shen, you and me." Then I shake my head and smile, "Not
that a girl minds being saved from time to time, I'd just like to
know where to repay the favor. Like maybe I could spray the
carpet with a flamethrower while he's struggling within an inch
of his life and see how he likes it."

"Fire magic?" says Shen. "You've made some impressive friends,
Caroline."

"Hey, don't call us buds, douchebag didn't even tell me his name.
Anyway, what do you figure the odds are your Deep Throat told my
Fire Mage about Victim #3? Guy's on some whacked out shit. Like
is there a magical equivalent of steroids? Because, no fooling, I
saw him whip about a square foot of magma out of thin air."

Shen snorts and the curls of his goatee twitch as he purses his
lips. "Impossible."

"Hey man, I saw it."

"The poison. You may not have been thinking clearly."

I shrug. "Rationalize it however you want, but I saw it."

The door chimes and we both turn to look. In comes this mousey
girl with coke bottle glasses and a frumpy sweater. Probably here
looking for some flavor for her next Dungeons and Dragons
session, we get a lot of those types. They're not so bad. They
buy more stuff than the window-shopping Goths.

Shen swoops into his bookstore persona. "Welcome," he chimes, in
his affected 'aah, soo' accent. "How may the humble Shen assist
you today?"

She seems indecisive for a moment, like she can't tell if he's
pulling a joke on her. But the wizened Chinese sage act tends to
work on the tourists and the college kids.

"Shen," I ask, "Gorgons?"

"Oh, yes Caroline." He says in his most obsequious, nose-scraping
way, "Paracelsus's Analytics. Volume VII."

"I'll be in the back..."

***

A few hours later Shen has stepped out for a pack of cigarettes
and to pick up his dry cleaning. I'm sat behind the desk, still
poring over the master works of Theophrastus Bombastus von
Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, while I scarf my way
through my second chicken parm and a large soda. Shen would
probably have a shit fit if he saw me keeping greasy Italian food
this close to such an old book, even though it's a third
generation copy, but I'm doing my best to eat with one hand so I
don't get any smudges on the paper.

That's the thing about magic: it's hell on the calories. Burns
more fat than cardio kickboxing, that's for sure. I'm a little on
the weak side, as far as mages go, I specialize in cantrips and
other light magics - like the ball of light, or gusts of wind,
that sort of thing - but even something as relatively complex as
a Compulsion spell shouldn't have taken this much wind out of me.
I write it off to the crap sleep I got. Life or death situations
tend to keep you up at night.

The shop bell chimes and I look up, expecting Shen. I'm already
working out my "sorry about the greasy sandwich" apology.

But no, it's Mr. Tall, Norse, and Cocky.

I drawl out the standard greeting without a hint of my boss's
flair. "Welcome to Shen's Oddities."

"I'm not here for the books," he says. He's changed his clothes,
but he obviously pulls from a fairly limited wardrobe. Black
wifebeater, black jeans. Sneakers this time, not boots.

I roll my eyes. "No shit. How'd you find me?"

"How'd you find the Gorgon?"

I flip my book shut and clear away some of the crumbs from the
counter. "Maybe this'll go better if we stop answering each
other's questions with questions."

"We have a source in common." He approaches the counter, stepping
easily around the piles of books. "Beyond that, I think you know
as much as I do."

"All right. What do I call you, then, or does that kill your
carefully crafted mystique?"

He's taller, close up, now that I have the time to think on it.
He's gotta be like 6'4, and the sleeveless tank top just
highlights his lean frame. You might even call him lanky, if his
arms weren't lithe and sinewy and dense with understated muscle.
A lot of ladies like a nice, tall man, and at my prodigious 5'7
I'm taller than the average girl, but damn if I don't feel like a
pipsqueak compared to him.

"Alexander," he says, plainly.

"Fine, Alex. And I'm-"

"Caroline Harper."

"Well," I say, "I guess now I know as much as you do. Good to
know our mutual source is telling you my whole life story."

"I've found the Gorgon's nest."

Straight to business, huh? "Well thank god you came rushing right
over to tell me! What's the matter, big ole fire mage can't get
the job done?"

"You're coming with me." His voice is deep, and his speech is
slow, but purposeful. If we were hanging at some club I'd write
it off him playing hard to get.

"Oh, I am?" I drop my elbow atop my book and lean across the
counter. "Hey man, remember that awesome part of the 60s where
all the ladies got together and burned their bras? I don't gotta
do what you say just because you crook your little finger at me."

"The fire last night, that was partially your fault."

"The hell it was."

His eyebrows raise. He almost seems taken aback. A first. "Do you
honestly not know what I'm talking about?"

"Hey, can't hurt to be specific."

"You're a Conduit."

"Like hell I am!"

Conduits are dangerous. They'll suck the life out of you as you
sleep.

Conduits are weak. They couldn't conjure ball lightning during a
thunderstorm.

There's a lot of differing opinions about Conduits.

What's a Conduit? Someone people don't tend to like. A Conduit is
a parasite, depending on who you ask, but in reality it's more
like they're just really good at shuffling energy from one place
to another. That just happens to include moving energy into and
out of human beings. This can make them dangerous, but it can
also make those around them incredibly powerful.

Think of it like a power schematic. A mage takes in energy and
decides where it needs to go. But the world's got a lot of
energy, and magic takes a hell of a toll. Most mages, even with
the easy stuff, operate with really crap efficiency. They burn
out quick. Me? I can do little things, like my light sphere,
until the cows come home. I'm like a perpetual motion machine of
low-grade tricks and illusions, but if I try for anything bigger
than a sideshow attraction, like that Compulsion trick, it
completely wipes me out.

But being efficient with your wimpy magic doesn't make you a
Conduit. I'm almost thirty. I guess some part of me thought I was
in the clear, like if I was a Conduit I almost definitely
would've known by now.

Alex is looking at me with lowered brows. "Give me another
explanation for what happened last night. I'm an accomplished
mage, but I'm not that accomplished."

Talk about pretentious! The way he says 'I'm accomplished mage'
summons visions of stuffy libraries and expensive scotch and red
velvet smoking jackets. I almost parrot the phrase back at him,
just to let him know how it sounds coming out of his dumb mouth,
but I think better of it. Instead, I say, "Been on this blue
marble for nigh on three decades, Al, don't you think I would've
noticed by now? Anyway, a lot of guys can't control their output.
You shouldn't feel bad about it."

My diss goes over like a limp balloon. "I'm telling you what our
mutual friend told me. If you have any objections direct them at
him."

There are ways to avoid letting your Conduit-ness manifest: don't
cast a lot of spells near other mages, keep your head on straight
in tense situations, don't eat food after midnight.

Okay, the last one is from Gremlins, but it's still a good rule
for general life.

I've spent my entire life conscientiously following rules like
this, so if I am a Conduit that nobody would ever, ever know. But
magic manifests in weird ways. It's tricky. The way my adrenaline
was kicking last night the energy was probably sheeting out of me
in waves anyway. If a mage wasn't expecting an extra boost I can
see why he might accidentally go a little overboard with his
flame discharge...

"Fuck..." I say, resting my elbow on the counter and cupping my
hand over my face. "Next time Shen picks up the phone I'm going
to give this buddy of yours and his an earful. What else did he
tell you? You wanna list off my top ten embarrassing first
dates?"

"The Gorgon will be more ferocious in her den. She will have
healed, and if she hasn't already, she will soon go on a rampage
to regain more of her strength."

"Look at Mr. Encyclopedia! With you around," I pick up the text,
Paracelsus's Analytics, Volume VII, and wave it lazily about, "I
probably don't even need this."

"You must have sensed it last night. She is not an ordinary
Gorgon. She is feeding off of something nearby, a source of
power, a ley line, maybe."

"A human ley line." I continue his thought. "She's making the
statues for him, all the pretty young girls, but she's leaving
them at the scene. Why?"

"Fire won't been enough, not even with your assistance. It will
stun her, but we need something that will-

"Seal the deal?" I sweep some of the books, and the rest of my
lunch, over to one side of the counter, so I can open my text and
turn it towards him. "Quicksilver, aka mercury. You were awake
that day in Chemistry class, right? They used to use it to make
mirrors. Get my drift?"

"Yes." He says, shifting on his feet. He's becoming impatient.
Maybe he gets it, or maybe he's just acting like he does.

I assume the latter, but partially because I think it makes me
sound pretty smart. "Gorgons and mirrors are like oil and water."

"Slathering ourselves in mercury will be counterproductive."

I almost laugh, but the sting of the Conduit talk still sticks in
the back of my mind, so I hold it back. "That's why I'm the
brains of this operation. Listen, alchemists love mercury. They
go crazy for it." I cup a finger to my ear, really play it up for
the crowd, "What's that you I hear you saying? 'Why's that
Caroline?' Well I'll tell you! Because this stuff-" I tap a
lovingly detailed drawing in the text "-with the proper
application of a Fuse spell, will bond with just about any magic
anything, and that includes the very magical innards of a certain
Gorgon."

"Good," he says. "Then tonight, before she can crawl back out
into the world."

"When?"

"Before sundown." He takes the receipt paper from next to the
register and writes an address down on it. "Will you need
reagents?"

"I travel light."

"Good," he says again. "Good." Already he's turning towards the
door.

"Thanks so much for helping, Caroline!" I sing-song after him, "I
would've never gotten this far without you!"

He looks back at me over his shoulder with those blue eyes set in
a colossally lame stare deep under his dusty blonde eyebrows.
This is like de rigeur for him, I guess, wandering into people's
places of work and shifting their entire sense of self like it's
no big deal. What a dick. Doesn't he know I'm supposed to be the
quippy, nonchalant one?

"Tonight," he says.

"Tonight," I intone back, deep as I can muster, so he knows I'm
mimicking him.

Then I go back to my sandwich.

4.

Shen has his misgivings about me going out after last night, but
I ply him with a bunch of 'think of the children!' lines about
the next possible victim, or string of victims, and he eventually
relents and gives his blessing.

And access to his cache of materials, which includes the mercury.

The address is a burned-out factory in the middle of nowhere-land
in the northwest corner of Dyker Heights, far from any subway
access (another taxi receipt), but centrally located to all the
previous murders. Alex is waiting for me across the street.

It's after sundown by the time we've finished our preparations.
"Gorgons have the worst sense of style," I say, eying the rows
upon rows of smashed-out windows. It's gotten colder. I brought
my leather jacket. I also picked up a pair of cheap-o reflective
aviators from a dollar store on the way over (actual cost: $3.99,
thanks inflation). I look like a douche wearing them, so I keep
them propped up on my head for now. My hair is already tied back
in a ponytail.

Alex has not dressed for the weather, he's sticking with the tank
top. Hey, if I had gymnast arms like his, I might show off a bit
too.

"Just one?" he asks, when I show him the case with the mercury
syringe in it.

"Hell yeah just one. It was hard enough to get this shit into the
syringe without getting it all over my fingers and receiving an
extreme case of mercury poisoning. Just make sure you don't waste
it."

"When I draw power from you..." he begins, but trails off.

"Aw! Who's shy all of a sudden?"

He fixes me with this steely gaze. I try to grin through it.

"Look, let's act like it's no big deal, okay? You cast your
spells, I'll get in tune with the spirits, and everything will
work out... I mean, probably. Just try not to burn the
neighborhood down in the process."

He nods.

I say it's not a big deal, but I spent most of the afternoon
researching it. Shame there isn't a Google search filter for 'hey
I'm probably this really weird species of mage that nobody likes
to talk about.' Like a puberty book for Conduits. "Can you do
anything besides fire?" I ask.

"Yes," he says.

Fine. I didn't want to know anyway.

"I spent all afternoon practicing," I say, like it'll cut the
tension. "How do you feel on your magical prowess vis-à-vis a pet
rat?"

"What?" Alex asks. I think I have finally shocked him.

"Shen's rat, Rupert. He didn't seem to mind when I grabbed him up
and channeled the 'power of the Earth Goddess' or whatever, into
him."

"I am not a pet rat."

I grin. "Well I've never known Rupert to sling any fireballs, but
it seemed like he enjoyed it. I mean he squirmed a bunch, but
like I was tickling him. Will you tell me if it tickles?"

He doesn't even bother to reply. I put a check mark in my mental
victory column.

The factory is barred by a heavy steel door, which is painted
black in the places where it hasn't rusted through. It takes both
of us to open it. The Gorgon has probably been using the second
story windows.

It's dark inside, and Gorgons have excellent night vision, so
there's no risk of me giving us away by summoning my light. As it
is, she's probably caught our smell already.

The factory is a wide-open floor space. Most of the equipment has
been removed, either by the previous owners or by bums looking
for scrap to sell, but you can still see the rusty patterns in
the floor where the hulking machines once stood. I step around a
collapsed pile of broken bricks. In the distance I can hear the
plip of water from a leaky roof.

"I don't like the idea of putting on these things on in the
dark," I say.

"Can you float that light to leave your hands free? You won't be
any good in a fight while you're holding it."

"Not without a shitload of concentration." I put my shades on and
he does too. There's enough ambient moonlight to see, but just
barely. Next time I invest in one of those keychain flashlights.
"Listen, you're the big, strong fire mage. I'm going to just
stand behind you and make sure your booms are as everything they
need to be." My something rustles against my shoe. I squat down
and the beacon's light illuminates the floor.

It's a carcass, a rat or a squirrel maybe, stripped to the bones.
When I look up I see a trail of them leading across the floor. We
follow it in silence, with me in a half-squat so I can keep the
path lit. The mess of pulped animal ribcages lead us to a pile in
the corner, where a mass of significantly larger bones, some of
which are probably cats and small dogs, some of which are
definitely human.

"Do you hear that?" I ask, in a whisper.

"It's water, from the pipes."

"No I-"

What I heard was the chattering noise of the Gorgon's hiss as she
slunk through the rafters above us. Before I can finish my
sentence she descends like a boa constrictor, falling bodily on
top of me, knocking the wind out of my lungs and crushing my ribs
against the hard concrete floor. My light shorts out the second I
lose my concentration.

"Fuck!" I say, with the last of my breath, as her claws flail
against the thick leather of my jacket. The Gorgon's tail slaps
eagerly against the backs of my legs. Her claws strip through my
jacket, but she hasn't drawn blood yet.

A flare of light blossoms through the room for just an instant.
Not an attack, but Alex's own sort of cantrip, a nanosecond of
flame meant to scare the Gorgon, as if she were a skittish
woodland creature.

Gorgons aren't smart by any means, but they operate on more than
just instinct. Still, the fire does its job and she swerves away
from my body, taking up a defensive position a few feet away from
us. Alex has a flame in his palm, now, a small orb of rolling,
molten fire, like a tiny sun, and it is slowly growing. Lit by
the flame, the Gorgon's seared and mutilated face is made
visible. She's the same one, as if there were any doubt, but she
has recovered admirably from last night's damage. Her strength,
certainly, hasn't ebbed one bit.

I jerk myself upwards with a handhold onto Alex's jeans. I pat
the pocket of my jacket to make sure I've still got the syringe
case.

The Gorgon is sliding herself backwards and using her arms to
shield her face. In her defensive pose, she looks almost fragile,
and between her bared breasts is the fresh wound where I jammed
the shower rod into her.

The orb in Alex's hand quakes and shivers. His control over it is
fluctuating. Normal mages aren't made for this kind of precision.
"I need you," he says.

Every girl's dream, the guy who says that. That's
Tom-Cruise-in-Jerry-Macguire level talk.

But he doesn't mean me; he means what I can do. So I grip down on
his bare arm, the one not holding his flame, and I concentrate on
letting the power seeping into my body, up from the ground and
through my shoes, flow through me and into him. As it's my first
time trying, I don't know what to do other than let it happen.
The tingling in my feet winds its way upwards, through my body
and out of my arms and... and...

Well shit. I didn't expect, when I was feeding myself into him,
that he'd go and start feeding back into me.

I get these flashes in my mind, flashes from his brain. Not just
fireballs and magic spells: pictures, thoughts, memories, dozens
of them, hundreds of them, but so many it's like looking at
someone's grade school magazine collage. I slap my hand against
my forehead and over my eye. The dip of his magic pushing back
against me makes my limbs seize up. His magic and mine stare down
each other's ethereal eyes. The world stops for a second, and the
power builds and builds and builds inside of me, roiling about
and lighting up every inch of me, flowing up through the earth,
filling me up, but it hasn't found an outlet... not yet.

Then... it does. His magic spreads wide and lets mine in. All
this happens in, like, a second, but it feels like a million
minutes and my concentration shatters in a thousand directions.
My knees buckle when the buzzing in my veins gets to be too much.
Fuck!

My distraction causes me to lose control over the swell of the
power, and it flows through me like a firehouse. I stop myself
from falling to my knees by grabbing tighter around his arm and
biting my nails into his skin. Through the line of power that
connects him and me I feel his body tense and his teeth grit. The
orb shivers and quakes, and he's barely able to chuck it away
before it doubles in size. He tosses it with a clumsy sideways
hurl, like he's never pitched a game of baseball in his life. It
impacts the ground just in front of the Gorgon's lower body and
billows out to four times its size and draws fresh screams out of
the best. The searing heat that rolls past us and Alex and I have
to shield our faces. The room goes almost completely dark once
the spell is cast, but there remains a faint glow from the
quickly cooling lava dribbles spattered across the concrete. Even
with that I can barely see through my shades, but I can't risk
taking them off.

"Rorarrr!" screams the Gorgon as she throws her arms backwards
and hurls her body towards us in a shaking charge, the handful of
head snakes that remain sneer and snap at the air, threatening
even as they paradoxically beg us to come closer. Alex covers his
eyes with his arm and my nails bite down into the skin at his
elbow. He throws his other hand out and across, and a swell of
flame spills out of his palm in a ballooning semi-circle aura.
Its range is only a foot or two, but it casts out just as the
Gorgon is in swiping distance and catches her full on. She
recoils, once again scrambling to protect her seared face.

Alex falls to one knee and nearly drags me with him. I gave him
too much. The fireball alone probably took a week off his life.
"Shit!" I shout, jumping backwards to keep myself upright.

"The mercury!"

"Yeah!" I fumble for the protective case. I get the syringe out
and uncapped and leap for the Gorgon, who is covering one half of
her face with one hand while she swipes the talons of the other
this way and that.

Nothing for it. I charge and, against all odds, manage to stick
her right in her curved, porcelain, perfect neck.

Before I can depress the plunger her flailing arm knocks me
backwards. I keep my hand on the syringe, somehow, but the
levering motion of the needle against her collarbone nearly
wrenches the whole thing out of my grip before my tumbling away
yanks it out of her.

The Gorgon lashes herself towards me with her claws raised for a
killing strike,. Screaming out a cry that is part fear and part
pain and part just to psyche me up, I stab the syringe forward
with both hands, jamming it up and into her stomach just as she
slaps the glasses away from my face with swipe of her claws that
draws a diagonal slash across my the top of my nose, right
between the eyes. I bear down through the pain and squeeze the
plunger, sending the payload of liquid metal right into her gut.

I keep both my hands on the syringe like if I let it go I'd fall
right off the face of the earth. The air is still for a second.
We look each other eye to eye, both of us struggling for breath.
Her arms go limp at her sides. I don't feel any compulsion or
seduction pulling at me. We are looking at each other like two
human beings, me with the blood from my lacerated nose spilling
into the corners of my eyes, her from eyes green like crystal,
set in behind the charred, flaking flesh of her cheek and
forehead. She blinks and I blink.

Then the wail comes out of her in a 'roawrrrarr!" and she digs
her talons into the spot where I have injected the poison. When
that fails, she throws her arms up towards the heavens in a
plaintive pose. For a second I can almost imagine her as a statue
of her own. Then the puppet strings of her body are cut, and she
crumples to the floor in an inert pile.

I am standing with my hands at my side, gasping, when Alex gets
back to his feet and stands beside me, taking in the kill. "It
worked," he says.

I still haven't regained my breath. "How... observant... of you."

"Then we're done. You can leave." He kneels by the slain beast,
moving her arm away from her face. He tilts her chin upwards and
her head lolls back. Her eyes are open, staring at nothing.

I bend forward and use my shirt to sop up the blood streaming
from my nose. "The body..." I say.

"I need to collect the reagents while they are fresh. I will
bring your share to the book store."

I'm too tired to argue. He's produced a small knife and is
angling it at the Gorgon's face. I stare at him, and when he
realizes I'm doing it he looks back up at me. He stares back for
a second, then says, "Watch, if you like."

I drag the side of my hand against my nose, clearing away
whatever blood I can. "What, no celebration? You don't want me to
buy you a beer? Nothing?"

He shakes his head and returns to his work. There is moonlight
streaming in from the tall windows, now. Enough light to work
with, I guess. The knife digs in under her eyes.

My mouth feels dry. I spit across the floor. "Mages, god. Didn't
anyone ever teach you how to have any fun?"

5.

James opens the door with a hit of surprise on his face. "Carol,"
he says, "You didn't call..."

"I don't call," I say, "Not usually." I step closer to him. He's
shirtless and in these plaid pajama bottoms. Clearly he wasn't
expecting company. I curl my finger across his bare chest, roll
it around one of those small nipples.

The past twenty-four hours have been all charge and no release,
and a couple drinks by my lonesome weren't cutting it. Might be
nice to feel something that wasn't fear, or confusion, or pain, I
thought. Might be nice to get thrown up against a wall...

"Your nose..." He says.

"Oh this old thing?" I ask, with a slurred smile. "I've had it
all my life." My body presses forward, into his, and he puts an
arm around my shoulders more on reflex than by desire. "I can
smell her on you," I say, "A were. What was she? A wolf, a
panther?"

He is taken aback, and his response is, "...I can smell the beer
on you..."

I grin, and my hand on his chest, wedged between our bodies,
strokes gradually upwards, across his neck and onto his earlobe.
"Was plenty of beer in me the other night, too," I say, as my
grin widens and my eyes lowered, "I figured you'd want a little
payback. Come on now, invite me in."

And he does.

He only gets as far as the couch before I shove him down and
throw myself into his lap. He doesn't stop me, even when I've
thrown my sneakered feet up onto his clean cushions. "Tell me
about her," I ask, tilting my head towards his neck, drinking in
his scent. And hers too? I might just be imagining it.

"Carol, I don't think that's-"

"I'm not the jealous type, Jim," I say, as my flat, human teeth
work against his neck, pressing strong bites against his soft
skin. I smell the lotion on him, and the sweat. "I am the needy
type, however."

"Should I get the scarves?" He asks. His strong, wide hands grab
me up about the shoulders and massage my skin firmly against the
bone. The tension I didn't even know I was holding on to begins
to slink away...

"Ah," I moan, despite myself, and I retreat from his neck. "Not
tonight. You've been so good, haven't you? You've been very
patient, James, and patience gets rewarded."

His hands can't decide where to take me - though honestly I
would've let them stay at my shoulders all night - so they claim
everything, all at once. He digs his fingers under my bra, but
over my shirt. He finds the needy, flat rise of my nipple through
the fabric, pinches it eagerly, even as his other hand digs
between my legs, grabs me by the inside of my thigh and squeezes
the giving flesh for all it's worth.

"Now you've got the spirit," I say, slowly. My head is filling
with haze, and not just from the beer.

He turns me so that I face the couch, presses my head down into
the arm of it, and jerks a hand underneath my hips to scoop my
ass up into the air. His thighs enfold mine, he leans his body
forward and his teeth, closer to fangs than I've got, work around
my earlobe. His breath is hot. My jeans are thick, but his
pajamas are barely a barrier at all, and I can feel the steely
press of his erection slipping across my ass.

"Like this?" He growls it, and his tongue slips around all the
places his teeth dug into my ear. "This is what you imagined,
isn't it? This is what you think I did to her?"

"Yes," I gasp, and bury my face against the couch, "Yes."

His hand grips me by the roots of my hair. He pulls my head up
and I can't hide my face anymore. I moan when it's become clear
that he's yanked his bottoms down, when I can feel the scrambling
press of his bared cock against rough denim. "I thought of you,"
he says, speech nearly replaced by grunts, "Like you asked. I
thought of you the whole time."

I thought of you too, James, this morning, in the shower. It
wasn't enough. It wasn't anywhere close to enough.

A trail of discarded clothes as we wind our way to the bedroom.
He has me by the upper arms from behind. He is almost marching
me, and he grabs me by the hips every few steps and forces my ass
into his want, whenever he wants, until I think we might just
give up and do it right there, against the living room wall. He
has my jeans down around my ankles. He is rutting up against my
underwear, dick smearing its sticky precum against the lower
curve of my ass, imbuing its heat into me.

He jerks me around, facing him. The wall clonks hollowly when he
throws my back up against it. He is panting and I am panting. My
fingers scramble against his cheeks and along the line of his
jaw, tickling across his tiny hint of stubble. I push my heels up
and grip his face, drag his lips to mine. I focus on kissing him.
I focus on spearing my tongue through his lips, and he does the
rest.

The hardest part is getting my legs apart, and getting him
between them, with my jeans tight around my knees, and my
underwear jerked down to join them as quickly as I could manage.
His hand is cinched tight in my hair, tugging at my head,
gradually easing me away until our lips break apart. His palm
against my mouth, "Lick," he huffs. And I do. I close my eyes and
sweep my tongue around the inside of his hand. My shoulders
shudder at the salty taste of his skin.

I can feel his hand, wet with my saliva, wedged between the two
of us, working himself up, making himself ready for me. I look up
at him. I look at him in those Shifter eyes. He stares back at
me, lips slightly parted. I am nodding. Over and over again, I am
nodding.

There's barely any resistance at all. He works his spit-slick
cock into me and my pussy, wet and starving with my need, sends
screams up into my stomach so hard I can barely think. His hips
cram against mine, my legs still barely able to spread. His
thrusts are rugged and labored. My head bobbles with each one,
and I pull myself into his body, wrapping my arms around his
shoulders and struggling to give him whatever he needs, silently
begging for just another inch, just another centimeter, whatever
I can get.

He's fucking me so hard, even in this awkward position, that my
feet are barely touching the ground. The whole of my body weight
focuses directly down on my clit, forces it into his stubbly
public mound and he's bucked and writhed against me for barely
another instant before I shout. "Shit, James!" And my arm sweeps
around his shoulder for support. I dig my nails down into his
shoulder blade. My orgasm is intense, but instantaneous. Even
though it only lasts a microsecond it drags a thousand pounds of
pressure out of my body. He feels it. I know he does because a
moan spills out of him. My forehead stings; I've clenched my eyes
shut as far as they can go. He jerks himself out of me and my
stomach sucks away from the vacuum where once there was his
wonderful, warm, firm, fucking cock.

He flips me around without ceremony. I'm facing the wall again,
my sweaty cheek is smeared against it. Again his girth finds my
ass, slips between, against, my cheeks. "Gunh..." I moan, and my
nails slip and slide over the smooth wall, looking for purchase,
looking for anything to hold onto, anything. His hips flex and
squirm, and his cock shuttles eagerly through the tight space
between our bodies, as if rutting against these plush, pliant
parts of me could actually be enough to satisfy him

I push both hands against the wall. "No," I say, and he stops
like I've said a dirty word. I turn back to look up at him,
almost tripping over my jeans, sweeping hair out of my face,
clumsily kicking my shoes off. "Not here, I mean," I say, when
the worry creases along his forehead, when his basic human
decency outweighs his animal need. I am panting. Words are too
much. Too much work. Not worth it. Save it. Save the energy for
what you want. What you need.

I want the bedroom. I want the dark, where I can close my eyes
and just... and just...

It's just a few feet away, his bedroom, but we barely make it.
His hips are flush against my ass, and I can feel his searing
heat spilling into me. My nipples are freezing, they shrink away
from the cold touch of the windowpane. I am wedged between him
and the sill. He is strong. His hand is in my hair, wrenching my
neck backwards. It hurts. I'll have to teach him some etiquette,
but... not now.

He is tall. I have to stand on my toes to allow room for his
pistoning. His cock claims me, fucks its way into every inch of
me. Lucky James, pretty James. Isn't it fun when the shy ones end
up so... gifted?

I have my hand between my legs. My wrist rebounds against the
hard wood of the windowsill. It hurts, but I've hard worse. I
find my clit with one finger and rub it frantically, forcibly,
without finesse, through the thick skin of my pussy lips. I gasp
as his thrust rebounds my head, my whole body, against the
window, and I see stars for a moment. My clit shouts at me, sends
a scream through my whole body, forces me to pay attention to it
once more, to drag myself upwards, further, and further, and
closer...

He groans and whimpers like an animal, and I can feel every
smooth, fleshy inch of him seizing up inside of me. "Not yet," I
say, "Not fucking yet. You wait. You wait."

And young James complies. To his eternal credit he doesn't break
his stride, not even for an instant. The window creaks under the
weight of our combined fuck. My cunt stretches, I ache with the
need, and the sharp, muscular line of his hips slaps against me
with such fervor that I'm sure I'll have bruises the next day,
that I'm sure I won't sit - not comfortably - for the foreseeable
future.

"Nnngh!" I shout. "Fuck!" As my finger slips through my hood and
bears down too hard on my exposed clit. I squint my eyes tight,
almost closed, and I watch the light of the stars, what little
stars you can see in New York City, glimmer through the clouds,
as the tears of my much-needed orgasm force their way out of the
corners of my eyes. "Agah!" My whole body quakes while my arms
become rigid, and a shudder rolls through the core of me.

It's about as subtle a cue as James is equipped to understand. He
finds some hidden intensity left inside of him, finds the
strength to shift the gears of his hips up one last notch. When
he arches his feet, and nullifies the advantage of my own
tiptoes, I scream from the deep, full sensation of his cock
punching into me. His hard, fucking shaft finds uses for my body
that I never anticipated a boy like James would never need.

For a few agonizing, wonderful, beautiful seconds, I am a puppet.
I am a body of meat for James's need, and when his hot spunk
spills into me, and through me, the intensity of his fuck and of
his moans eke out a third quiet - almost an afterthought, really
- orgasm of my own.

We stand sweating and panting and leaning against each other,
neither of us speaking. It feels good - great, even. His arms
wrap around mine. I'm still pinned between him and the wall,
though now his body enfolds me in a protective way. I close my
eyes. I relish in the warmth of his embrace and the gentle pull
of his softening cock as it shrinks away from me.

Eventually, after our breathing has slowed, and when I begin to
feel the tickle of his spunk down the inside of my leg, I excuse
myself to the bathroom. I spend my time sitting on the toilet
obsessing over the weird, frantic need that led me to have
unprotected sex with a guy who was probably playing Pokemon cards
on the schoolyard while I was graduating high school. It's not
pregnancy... one of the fringe benefits of magic is having an
intense and particular control over the machinations of your
body. Doesn't work like that for STDs, however. James is a good
boy, though, and I trust him, and we all slip, once in a while.

When I come out, he's sitting on the edge of the bed, and even by
the weak starlight I can see him kind of sulk. "See you later?"
he asks.

"Aw!" I say, inwardly charmed, "Does James need some after-care?"

"I just thought-"

I plant my fingers across his lips. I smile. "It's cool, babe." I
grip him at the back of the head by his short hair and paint a
kiss onto his forehead. "I've got a couple hours worth of cuddles
in me, I think."

So we lay there, with him spooning me, in James the Mog's queen
size bed, though he only has two pillows so we each only get one,
and I stare at the wall for long minutes after he's fallen
asleep. The hard line of his stomach swells and falls against the
small of my back, and I know for sure he's out when his hand
around my waist begins to gently twitch, and his leg shifts
against me, trying to find the right position. I scoop my hand
backwards, to cup around his strong shoulder, and I stare at the
wall. I summon the orb with my free hand, though I keep its light
muted so it doesn't wake James. I watch it rotate and shine in
silence, I hold my boy, and I think.

~END~

Next in the Caroline Harper series:

"Must Love Hellhounds"

The phone rings, you pick up the phone, the voice on the other
end tells you where to go. That's how it's always been, that's
how it is for every monster hunter, as far as I know.
Though it's not like I know many offhand.

I prod my shoe at the fire-charred floor of what was once
probably the quaint parlor of a charming little Brooklyn
three-story. The room, and its adjoining, have been seared black.
Gouts of concentrated magical flame have blackened every bit of
wall, floor, and furniture in sight, but the house is still
standing.

Most magical fire sticks around long enough to roast flesh and
wallpaper and that's it, but Hellhounds have enough juice to take
out a whole building, if they actually care to. Judging by the
circular hole in the wall where the flaming breath burnt clear
into the adjacent building, this little fella is teething
something fierce.

If Alex were here I'd rub it in his face so bad!

Now Available on amazon.com!

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