Chris Moriarty - The Inquisitor's Apprentice

“No!” Sacha shouted over the din of the music below. “Leave him alone!”

The dybbuk raised its pale face to stare at Sacha.

“If you’re going to take anyone,” he said in a shaking voice that sounded like someone else’s, “take me.”

As if Sacha’s words had been an invitation, a thick darkness began to swirl around the dybbuk. It welled up like fetid water flooding from a broken sewer and poured into Sacha, scouring away every memory of joy and warmth and happiness.

He felt the shadow ripple and rise within him. He felt the dybbuk rummage through his thoughts and take possession of the secret places of his heart. He watched with a curious sort of detachment as the final moment approached — the moment when everything human in him would flare and gutter and snuff out like a spent candle.

Then he felt a stabbing pain like nothing he’d ever known in his life.

WHEN SACHA opened his eyes, the dybbuk was gone. he looked down at his chest and saw blood. then he looked up and saw Antonio standing over him, clutching a kitchen knife.

“I didn’t mean to cut you that bad,” Antonio said. “I only meant to chase out that … thing .”

“By stabbing me? And if you had that knife, why didn’t you use it when you were actually trying to kill me?”

“I remembered something my mother said about pain driving out evil spirits. And I was going to stab you, but it seemed kind of … well … unfair.”

Sacha stared at the other boy, dumbfounded. Then he burst out laughing. “You followed me all the way here in order to kill me, and then you didn’t want to use a knife because you thought it wouldn’t be fair? T hat’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“ I’m silly?” Antonio asked incredulously. “I’m not the one who just offered to let that thing eat me for dinner in!” He shuddered. “Do you think it’s really gone?”

“I don’t know,” Sacha admitted. “I hope so.”

He lifted his shirt gingerly and tried to see where all the blood was coming from. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. The knife had skipped along his ribs, and though the cut was long and ugly, it wasn’t deep. He obviously wasn’t going to die of it. It just felt like he was.

“I don’t want to scare you or anything,” Antonio said, glancing over Sacha’s shoulder. “But I think we should leave.”

“We can’t!” Sacha struggled to his feet. “Morgaunt won’t just give up because you chased the dybbuk off. He’ll have a backup plan.”

“Uh… I think I already know what it is.”

Sacha followed Antonio's gaze and saw that the spotlight operators had now left their posts and were moving around behind the painted canvas backdrop.

“What are they doing?”

Antonio gave him a pitying look. “What do people usually do with matches and kerosene?”

The flames began to catch and swell, licking their way up the backdrop. As Sacha watched, he realized that this was just a diversion — Morgaunt was rearranging the chessboard so that Wolf would have no choice but to make the moves he’d planned for him. But it didn’t matter. The theater was a firetrap, and it was packed to the gills. Any decent human being would race to save the innocent bystanders from the flames — even if it meant leaving Morgaunt free to commit some other crime. There was only one thing to do, even if it was exactly what Morgaunt wanted them to do.

He raised his head, cupped his hands around his lips, and shouted, “Fire!”

At first no one noticed. Then the band stopped playing. Then Sacha saw the white circle of a woman’s face staring up at them. Her mouth opened, and her eyes grew wide with terror, and she started screaming.

It took a while for the people around her to react. The audience was still too focused on Houdini’s mortal struggle. But now the licking flames were beginning to eat at the backdrop. A few more people caught sight of them, and then a few more. Gradually they stopped worrying that Houdini was about to drown and started worrying that they were about to get burned alive.

Onstage, a fireman grabbed the ax next to the Water Torture Cell and smashed the plate glass, freeing Houdini — and several hundred gallons of water, which actually came in pretty handy under the circumstances. Houdini rose to the occasion. And so did Edison, in his own decidedly odd way. In seconds, Houdini had cast off his manacles and begun pushing, dragging, and carrying people toward the exits. Edison, on the other hand, had eyes only for his etherograph. Instead of running for the exit like everyone else, he tried to save his precious prototype.

All the while, Sacha and Antonio were making the slow, painful climb down to safety. Antonio reached the bottom first and helped Sacha down the last few rungs. Finally they were both standing on solid ground. They turned to find their way out through the rising flames — and found themselves face-to-face with a burly fireman in full battle dress.

“This is no place for kids!” the man exclaimed. “Let’s get you out of here!”

Sacha went limp with relief, half collapsing against Antonio. But then, right before their horrified eyes, the man changed.

There was nothing you could put your finger on, no clear moment when the man stopped being himself and became someone else. But Sacha could see the magic flaring and spitting around him. There was no mistaking that steely blue flame — or the hard-as-steel voice that emerged the next time the fireman opened his mouth.

“Come along, boys!” Morgaunt sounded almost cheerful — and Sacha didn’t even want to think about what would make a man like Morgaunt cheerful. “I’ve got a job I need your help for.”

He marched off, and Sacha and Antonio were forced to follow him, though Sacha couldn’t have said for his life whether it was magic that compelled them or sheer physical terror.

“Is that Morgaunt?” Antonio whispered.

“Yes.”

“And he’s the one who summoned the dybbuk?”

Sacha nodded.

“Then I guess it’s him I should have been shooting at.”

“Where is that gun anyway?” Sacha couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. “It could really come in handy right about now.”

Antonio looked shamefaced. “My mother took it. She wanted me to stay home and cry like a girl instead of doing what a proper son should.”

“And right she was,” Morgaunt interrupted, shocking both of them. “Your father was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got caught in the machinery. Only a fool would throw away his future to avenge an accident.”

Morgaunt stopped speaking to clear his throat. It was painful to hear his voice coming from the fireman’s body. It forced its way out of the man like a grindstone relentlessly pulverizing every obstacle in its path.

“Ah,” Morgaunt said as they turned a corner, “there he is.”

They had found Thomas Edison, alone and defenseless, desperately trying to drag his etherograph to safety.

“Can I help you with that, Mr. Edison?” Morgaunt’s voice sounded enough like the fireman’s voice to fool anyone who didn’t know better, and he was already reaching out to relieve Edison of the unwieldy etherograph.

“Careful!” Edison told him. “Grab hold of it here, at the base. and watch out for—”

But Edison never got to say what he wanted him to watch out for. As he bent over the machine, Morgaunt raised the fireman’s ax and hammered the flat of it down on the back of Edison’s head, knocking him senseless.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” Morgaunt said in a satisfied tone. “That man talks enough to kill a horse.”