Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

Debris rains down on them.

And snow.

Andrew looks back into the yard.

The T-34 tank grumbles out from behind a stand of maples, exhaust farting behind it.

“You okay?” Andrew says.

“Think so. You?”

“Yeah.”

Andrew finds the night-vision binoculars, looks at the tank.

Two figures ride its turret, shielded behind its round hatches.

A very dead man, grinning a skeletal smile.

And a woman wearing a Soviet general’s cap and wool coat.

His long-ago lover, Marina Yaganishna.

From that awful season in Russia.

From the witch’s hut.

Her smallest, most traumatized daughter.

The one who freed him.

She’s not here to help you now.

The turret swivels.

Michael Rudnick looks up into the sky through the new hole in the roof.

Parts of the roof burn, but these snuff themselves out quickly thanks to the fireproofing spells Andrew cornered the house with.

Michael has a very powerful spell bottled up, and thinks it’s time.

He fingers an oddly shaped piece of iron hanging around his neck by a leather thong.

He scans the sky, trying both to see and feel.

Feels several, mostly too small, one too big.

This has to be Goldilocks.

And he has to be fast.

And lucky.

Hears the tank fire again.

BAM!

Feels the house rock, start to sag, knows the living room was blown in, one load-bearing wall.

Interrupts the spell he was working on, now feels where the shell hit; he can’t help the lost furniture and electronics, but he opens his palms like a conductor, causes the blown-out bricks and wood to re-adhere—the house jolts and rights itself.

He sees a stuffed owl animate and fly out the window.

Good—Andrew’s up to something.

He glances at the other wizard, sees him fish a pill out of his shirt pocket, dry-swallow it.

He’s holding together.

Andrew has stronger magic than Michael—the minotaur was mostly him, mostly car-magic.

But weaker character.

They might win if Andrew doesn’t lose his shit.

The tank fires again, but Michael is ready for it: The house shudders, but the fragments from the shell don’t blow out two yards before the structure seems to inhale it all back in. Like an incendiary rose blooming and unblooming in the blink of an eye with an echo like rolling thunder. The fires started by the blast wink out in less than two seconds.

A woman swears viciously in Russian.

They know they can’t knock the house down.

Now they’ll shoot high.

At us.

If it hits the attic, we’re hamburger.

He looks at the sky again.

Snow falling, but no clouds.

Feels what he wants.

Exactly the one he wants, just the right size, as near as he can tell.

Oh, this will be dangerous.

This will be the hardest thing he’s ever done.

He did it once in the Arizona desert, but there weren’t houses nearby, precision wasn’t the issue.

He calls it.

Andrew sends the owl and pops a Klonopin.

Where is Sal? Is Sal okay?

The shelling is getting to him.

Two direct hits on the house.

They won’t survive a third.

Killing the tank is on Andrew.

His nerves are frazzled.

Everything is happening at once.

Marina is atop the tank, pointing at the attic.

The gun elevates.

Andrew says “Get down!” to Michael, who appears to be stargazing.

Michael keeps looking up, his mouth moving.

What the fuck is he doing?

Hurry, owl.

Andrew drops to the floor, covers his head, puts his eyesight in the owl.

Now he sees the yard, the tank.

The bird flies toward it, slowly, struggling to carry the vase.

The tank is going to fire.

I could look at the attic, watch myself die.

No, fly faster, fucking owl.

FASTER!

Then he sees it.

With his owl eyes.

It comes from the constellation of Cassiopeia. It tumbles slowly at first, seems to turn, then hurtles at great speed, fiery, smoking, almost too fast to see.

Throwing mad shadows.

It’s big, big enough to make it through the atmosphere.

Because it’s real, many see it.

It gets wished on by no less than four thousand people.

Let my mother’s surgery go well.

Let me get into Yale.

Keep my love safe in Kabul.

Please please please let Stargate listen to my demo.

Make him ask me to marry him.

Please don’t let this be malignant.

I wish for Stephanie Daley to kiss me back with tongue.

OH PLEASE CRUSH THE FUCK OUT OF THAT TANK!

(that one’s Andrew)

The witch atop the tank turns, sees the meteor coming, spreads a hand at it. Manages to split it so it falls not in one television-sized hunk, but in several the size of footballs and baseballs. Manages to slow them so they don’t vaporize the tank.

She’s awfully strong.

But she can’t stop it.

Them.

One piece hits the turret, stuns the dead gunner, the Soviet driver made from a plastic model-man.

Knocks the witch off.

Another piece knocks the left track and two roller wheels off the T-34.

One misses, fells a small tree.

The noise is ungodly.

The meteor doesn’t destroy the tank, but it does beat the holy hell out of it.

It does buy some time.

For the owl.

The huge horned owl wings toward the tank, clutching the vase in its talons. It barely makes it there; the vase is heavy and its talons aren’t made for carrying such things. It drops the vase whole, hears it pop, turns so Andrew can use its eyes to see the yellow glass stones the vase held glittering all over the hull.

Up in the attic, Andrew shouts the word.

“Bhastrika!”

WHUMP!

A fireball the size of a pasha’s tent mushrooms up over the tank, lighting parts of the woods on fire, lighting the owl on fire, illuminating the snow that has begun to collect in the yard.

Andrew comes back to himself, shakes the arm he thought was a wing on fire, collects himself, looks out the window with Michael.

The fire’s glow on the snow makes him think of Christmas lights, and then the thought goes as quickly as it came.

This is one fucked-up Christmas.

A blackened skeleton is crawling out of a burning tank in his front yard.

A blackened skeleton on fire.

Coming toward the house.

The remaining three Soviet soldiers forming up behind it.

Rushing the house!

Michael, still stunned from calling the meteor, braces himself against the wall, points down the attic ladder.

Andrew goes down to meet the attack.

Marina Yaganishna’s ears are ringing and her general’s cap lies in the snow. The tank is burning, illuminating the maple trunks and the light dusting of snow, vomiting gouts of oily black smoke skyward. A flash of misplaced nostalgia strikes her, but she shakes this off along with the snow on her back and shoulders.

Shooting now at the front of the house.

Pop pop-pop.

“Moroz,” she says.

He appears. Not a lovely, bearded boy anymore, but a man with snow-white hair and the bluish skin of the dead by freezing.

He has found a pair of red polyester track pants.

His bare feet are missing toes.

The Pac-Man shirt persists.

She looks into his white eyes, eyes that look cataracted but are not.

“He will kill the soldiers,” she says. “And then Misha will kill him. Or not. Either way, get into the house while he’s doing it.”