John Levitt - Unleashed

“Come on! Through the window. Get a move on!”

He came tearing across the street, running at full tilt. Instantly the fake Ifrit was on his heels, no more than fifteen feet behind him. Without breaking stride, Lou launched himself through the air like an Olympic hurdler, making it through the window cleanly. The thing sprang through the air after him, but I hit the gas, and by the time it reached the window, the van had moved far enough so that it hit the side of the van instead, making a satisfying thump.

The rearview mirror showed me its stunned form crumpled in the street. I swung the van around and gunned the engine, aiming for it. Not nearly as subtle as a binding spell, but I’m not picky. I thought I was going to get it, but at the last moment it scrabbled off to the side and ducked behind a parked car. Two seconds later, it was stumbling off through a gap between two houses. Lou was staring out through the open window, teeth bared. He didn’t like that thing at all.

I’d intended to go home and think through what had happened with Sherwood, but instead I drove toward Victor’s. This new development was worrisome. How the hell had it known we were here? And if it could track me so easily, what would prevent it from lying in wait outside my house?

What I needed was not a collection of handy spells; I needed one of Victor’s useful collection of deadly firearms. Not that he would hand one over gladly. He’d taken me out to a firing range in the East Bay a month ago, but he still didn’t trust me with guns.

“You never know,” he’d said. “Magic’s not always the best option. If you’re working with me, I don’t want you fumbling with the slide on an automatic while that rabid creature is busy tearing at my throat.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t as clueless about firearms as he assumed. And it was about time I started taking that thing seriously.

Victor was at his desk, working. He was usually working on something-just sitting around and chilling doesn’t seem to be part of his makeup, even with a bad leg. Timothy was there as well, which was unusual.

“Off work early?” I asked.

He ran his hand through dark, unruly hair. He’d recently added a couple of tiny gold hoops to his left ear to keep the others in it company. Pretty soon he was going to run out of ear, though.

“I quit.”

“Oh? Is that good or bad?”

Tim worked for a dot-com, one of the few that was still in business. Long gone were the days where you could bring your dog to work and get rich at the same time. Mostly, people there were now happy just to have a job.

“Oh, it’s good. I was getting bored. I made a lot of contacts there, though, and I think I can make a pretty good living just doing contract work, troubleshooting and stuff.”

Lou ran over to greet him. Timothy was not a practitioner; he was just a normal person, but he was still one of Lou’s favorites. Tim reached into his pocket, pulled out a Snausage, and offered it to Lou, who accepted it gravely. He was just being polite; he doesn’t really care for them that much. In fact, his attitude toward all things dog food are about the same as mine about tofu-he’ll eat it if he’s really hungry, but it’s no cause for celebration.

Victor looked up from his desk with a quick glance of inquiry. He knew I didn’t stop by for random chats.

“I need a gun,” I said.

“I seriously doubt that. What for?”

I told him about the fake Ifrit showing up at the Columbarium, as well as the vision of Sherwood I’d seen. Eli would have been more interested in the Sherwood story; Victor, ever the pragmatist, was more focused right now on the fake Ifrit. He had a point-Sherwood’s apparition could wait, but the Ifrit was a serious and immediate threat.

“So how did it find me there?” I concluded. “Why hasn’t it appeared before? And how about lending me something that will blow its head off next time it shows up?”

Timothy had been listening carefully. There was a time when I would have been more circumspect around him, since he’s not a practitioner, after all, but by now he was one of the family. I trusted him as much as I did Victor. Maybe more.

“Think a moment. What did you do that was different today?” he said.

“You mean besides calling up a vision of a long-dead girlfriend?”

Then I got what he was saying. Of course. Whatever the vision had been, it had involved some sort of enormous magical dislocation. For a creature sensitive to such things it must have lit up the magical landscape like a fireworks display.

Victor looked over at Timothy and nodded approvingly.

“Good point,” he said. “It was the evocation that drew it to you. And the last place we saw it was at the Presidio. It could easily have been hiding out in Golden Gate Park, right next door.”

“Wasn’t there a family of coyotes living there last year?” Timothy said. “They had to track them down and shoot them when they started attacking joggers, remember?”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “So it’s not going to be hiding behind every bush ready to leap out at me. But I’d still like something more than a couple of illusion spells for protection.”

“Fair enough,” said Victor, after a moment’s thought.

He walked over to the giant safe in the corner of the room and spun the dial a few times. The safe is at least six feet tall and surprisingly deep, and you could cram a lot of stuff in there. Sometimes I wondered if he hadn’t magically enhanced the inside space in some fashion. He was more than capable of something like that, and it always seemed there was way too much stuff in there, even for a safe that size.

Victor keeps his more potent magical tools in there, along with some rare artifacts. He also keeps an AK-47 assault rifle locked away, as I knew from experience.

After fiddling with the dial some more he swung open the safe door and rummaged around inside. Eventually he pulled out a long object swaddled in cloth. I could see a rifle barrel poking out of the top, and recognized it immediately.

“The AK- 47?” I asked. “I thought you didn’t trust me with such things.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’d end up blowing off your own leg.” He reached back farther into the safe and pulled out another weapon, giving a grunt of satisfaction. “This should fill the bill.”

I was disappointed, but also relieved. I’d never shot an automatic assault rifle and a street confrontation is no time to be learning. But I did know how to use the weapon he had in his hand: a perfectly ordinary shotgun.

My grandfather was a man who had possessed quite a bit of talent himself, though I never knew it at the time. But he was also a hunter of small, inoffensive quail and large, strident geese, and by the time I was twelve he had taught me all I needed to know about those weapons. The one Victor held was a standard Remington 12-gauge pump, the workhorse of shotguns.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever fired one of these,” Victor said.

“That Remington?” I said. “What is it, an 870? Actually I prefer the Browning over and under. But that’s more for hunting birds. This one will do just fine, I imagine. Holds, what, five rounds?”

Victor looked at me suspiciously, sure I was putting him on. I gazed back blandly, then took the shotgun out of his hands, pressed the slide release catch, and cycled the pump a couple of times to make sure it was unloaded.

“What do you think?” I said. “Buckshot or slugs?”

For once I had Victor at a loss for words. His notions about me didn’t include my having familiarity with firearms of any sort, even after the session at the range. I couldn’t blame him, but it was nice for once to throw him a curve. Timothy watched, grinning, making no effort to hide his amusement.