John woke to a jumbled kaleidoscope of images, none of which made sense. There were strange shapes, jutting and angular, as if they’d been lifted from a cubist painting. There was a skewed perspective, as if said painting had been hung considerably off center. And then there was . . . well his malfunctioning brain couldn’t even try to guess at that last one.
          A gnome? he thought blearily. A mad elf? Someone, at least, with a shock of wild, pale hair and huge round eyes, peering at him intermittently from behind aspects of the painting.
          He thought about going back to sleep or whatever he’d been doing before he woke up wherever the hell this was, but the gnome wouldn’t let him. It was a persistent gnome. And now it was tugging and jerking and dragging him out from beneath what he finally recognized as his kitchen table.
          The angular pieces crowding his vision slowly resolved themselves into chair legs, seats, and the underside of the slab of wood that he used for kitchen prep. Where he’d passed out, John presumed. In a puddle of sick that was currently being smeared across the floor, along with bottles and needles and old take-out containers, the latter from whenever he’d last remembered to eat.
          That had been a while ago, judging by the way he felt. And by the length of beard that met his palm when he dragged it over his face. And by the hoarse, incoherent snarl he let out when the damned gnome bounced his head off a table leg for the fifth damned time!
          “Gah!” John managed.
          The dragging paused.
          “Ah, you’re awake!”
          “Gah.”
          “Good, let’s get you up.” The cheerful comment was accompanied by more dragging, although not by the gnome. He was using some kind of spell in an attempt to wrest John and the table legs apart, which wasn’t working thanks to the trash heap the kitchen had become. The spell kept grabbing things that weren’t John—a waste bin, one of the kitchen stools, a broom—along with things that were, or that were attached to him—a slipper, the belt from his robe, his left hand—and tugging on them equally. Which soon left him slipperless, beltless, and jammed between cabinets and table with the stool smacking him enthusiastically in the side of the head.
          “Gah! Gah! Gah!”
          “You’ve said that, dear boy, and really, all that flapping about isn’t helping.”
          The gnome resolved itself into an image of Jonas Marsden, his one-time boss and current burglar, since John had obviously not gotten up to let him in.
          "Oh, my pleasure, think nothing of it," Jonas said, after John slurred out an accusation. And before he could respond to that, he found himself levitated off the floor and into the air, along with random bottles and paper bags and used napkins, which started following him out the door and up the main staircase of his house. All while he writhed and cursed and tried to hold on to the clothes that were being stripped from his body by that same infernal spell, one he was too damned hungover to counter.
          "Now, now. Language," Jonas admonished, right before John plunged head first into a bath of hot, soapy water that he knew hadn’t been there five minutes ago.
          That was followed by a lot of scrubbing from a suddenly animated and very determined bath brush and a flurry of washcloths. Cursing at them did nothing, an attempted counter spell did nothing, and slashing at them with his arms only summoned more to the fray. Until it looked like he was encased in a pink whirlwind, because his wife had loved pink and she'd bought the damned towels, like she'd bought almost everything in the house because it had been hers. Her house, the one he'd purchased with decades of future wedded bliss in mind, and far enough out in the country that there'd be no neighbors to notice if the two of them didn’t age normally, if those decades stretched into something more.
          Of course, that also meant there was no one to notice when he was dunked again, and came up yelling invective. No one to help when he was scrubbed almost to the damned bone, and then scrubbed some more. And finally dried off by a fierce, warm wind that blew up out of nowhere, whilst simultaneously being attacked by a comb and a truly vicious set of scissors.
          By the time Jonas's animated minions had finished torturing him, John was hoarse, clean, and bleeding from a dozen cuts from the straight razor that had determinedly attacked the fuzz on his cheeks.
          "Y'could have killed me," he snarled, eyeing the shiny blade. And wrestling with a still flirty scrap of pink, which was too busy cleaning his left ear to allow him even to wipe away the blood.
          "You seem to be doing that well enough on your own," Jonas replied from the doorway. "I'll make us some tea, shall I?"
          John cursed some more and threw a spell that turned the damned towels to ash.

~~~

          “Son of a bitch!”
          John awoke for the second time, which was disorientating, although not as much as looking at the world through a field of fire—a very different world. The English cottage with the determined bath accessories was decades in the past, and he didn’t live there anymore. He lived here, in the Vegas hotel room that was currently burning down around his ears, whilst someone yelled: “Get him out!”
          “I can’t get him out,” another, strangely calm voice said, although it sounded a little strained.
          “Why the hell not?”
          “Because I’m busy! Unless you’d like the deal with this yourself?”
          “This” apparently referred to the gargantuan fireball that was boiling about the air above John’s bed. It wasn’t ascending; it wasn’t descending; it wasn’t dissipating. It was just there, a yellow white ball of flame hot enough to singe the skin of his outstretched hand, despite being several yards away, as if he’d been throwing it at something.
          Or at someone, he realized, catching sight of a slim, dark figure on the other side of the flames.
          Someone who had caught it.
          That would have made him come off of the bed had the spell not glared like a miniature sun, sending tendrils of fire feet out from its core. He stared up at it for a moment in confusion; fireball spells were smaller, cooler, better contained. They didn’t burn like a fallen star.
          But this one did, and kept on doing so as John edged out from underneath, rolled off the bed and dropped to the floor. He hit hard, a disorienting smack that left his limbs jumbled up and his head spinning. And searing light, so hot, so bright, so close, all but cooking his eyeballs. He finally realized that the room wasn’t on fire, as he’d first thought. He’d just been looking at it through the spell, along with the two people glimpsed amid jumping afterimages: a hulking shadow near the door and a smaller one closer up.
          A smaller one who was eating the flames.
          John blinked and tried to get a hand up to shield his eyes, only to have the gesture misinterpreted.
          “Don’t try to fix it now!” The smaller figure—a woman—snapped. “I’m already dealing with it. You’ll just make things worse!”
          John didn’t reply, since his tongue didn’t seem to work anyway. He lay there like some stricken maiden with a hand on his head, watching as the vast field of fire was slowly drunk by a small woman with a neat up do, a fierce expression and skin a few shades darker than the chocolate mocha of the man behind her.
          Caleb, he thought blearily, finally recognizing the shadow of the large war mage, and relaxing a bit. At least, he did until he caught his friend’s expression. John sighed.
          Yes, he’d thrown the fireball; it was his magic boiling around up there. And yes, he must have done it in his sleep, something that hadn’t happened for . . . well, ever. And yes, that was the sort of thing that rookies did, young mages in training with too much power and too little discipline, which was why they were usually housed well away from everybody else, to avoid having them burn down whatever training facility they were attending.
          So, what the hell was wrong with him?
          His memory took that moment to kick back in, and he threw an arm over his eyes, staying flat on the floor whilst the vast ocean of his past beat at him and the fire seared him and the woman—the null witch, he supposed—did what nulls do and drank his magic, slowly returning the room to something like normality. Well, a normality of singed walls and burning curtains and an overhead light fixture that was now a smoking nub in the middle of a charred ceiling, but John didn’t feel like complaining.
          It could have been worse.
          It should have been worse.
          Then somebody grabbed him.
          It wasn’t Caleb, who was still glaring at him from across the room. It wasn’t even the null, who had collapsed onto a chair, her eyes bright and her face glowing with the power she’d absorbed. No, the panicked woman slapping at his smoking clothes and running soft little hands over his torso, checking for burns, was somebody else.
          “Where are they?” The blonde in his arms turned on Caleb, frantic and furious. “How did they get past you?”
          “They didn’t.”
          “You killed them?” She stared around, as if expecting to find a pile of smoking bodies in the corner. Which wouldn’t be that strange around here, John thought grimly, and tried to get up.
          That was obviously not the right move.
          “Stay put!” she snarled, and jumped to her feet.
          John stayed put, mainly because his brain was still trying to remember how his legs worked, but also because memories of the woman above him, what felt like a lifetime of them, were suddenly pouring through him, a cascade that included a great many things, but not her standing protectively over him, blue lightning shielding her hands, and her eyes pale fire.
          Okay, John thought dizzily. I’ve missed a few things.
          And then the ceiling caved in.
 







          “Because I said so.” John Pritkin looked back at the angry faced mage behind him, whose cloak was billowing out in the cold wind, snapping almost as much as his dark eyes. And wondered for the tenth time if it wouldn’t have been better to come alone.
          The “man” was an angry pup, barely out of his teens. He was also the only dark face in a sea of pale, Anglo-Saxon sneers, one eager to prove himself to the mages who hadn’t bothered to conceal their disdain at John’s presence. Or their suspicion: the last thing they wanted on a demon hunt was another demon.
          Or half of one, in John’s case.
          Something that was demonstrated again when the pup snarled: “I don’t take orders from you!” and started forward.
          John’s arm caught him across the chest. “And because Marsden said so.”
          “Unhand me mage—or whatever you are!” The unsaid word floated in the air, silent only because Jonas Marsden was respected that much, being head of the War Mage Corps, the military branch of the world’s leading magical authority, the Silver Circle.
          The Corps, a cross between a magical police force and the Royal Marines, supposedly kept order in the supernatural community. The “supposedly” came from the fact that they had been known to make bad matters worse, blustering into situations they knew little about and imposing “order” by cursing the hell out of anyone who opposed them—or looked at them sideways. They had some genuinely talented mages among their number, but that was a two-edged sword.
          People able to control a situation by force were unlikely to have learned any other methods, such as the ones needed here.
          “I haven’t put my hands on you,” John said evenly, reigning in his own temper, which was a feat these days. “But something else might, if you go charging in there—"
          “Damned amateur!”
          “—and there’s no rescue clause in my contract.”
          The boy immediately went from hot to boiling, bristling with so much magic that it threatened to burn John’s skin even through several layers of spelled cloth. He had power, this one; John would give him that. And an honesty the others lacked.
          Maybe he could be useful, after all.
          “Are you threatening me?” the boy snarled.
          John looked up from securing his safety line. “No. I am saying that something else, something unknown, something that has already killed five men, several of them competent mages, is down there.”
          He gestured over the edge of the cliff, where the young war mage had decided to have this conversation and where the wind was threatening to blow them all out to sea. They couldn’t see the dark slit of a cave entrance from here with the night and the crashing surf hiding it. But it was there, two thirds of the way down what the locals called a crag and he called a towering precipice.
          Bloody Cornwall.
          “And you’re going to play the hero and go kill it,” the boy sneered.
          “No, I’m going to find out what it is.”
          “How?”
          “Like this,” John said, and pushed him off of the cliff.
          Of course, John went over, too, with a hand firmly fisted in the boy’s coat, but you’d never know it from all the screaming. And the cursing—of the magical variety—the first of which his new partner tried while still mid-air. The second followed as they hit the side of the cliff and went rappelling down the sheer face, being smashed into the rock every few yards by gale force winds. And a third bounced off John’s thankfully bespelled coat once they landed on a narrow ledge a hundred feet down.
          At which point John slammed the crazy man-child into the rocky wall and wrapped a bit of shield around the lower part of his face, gagging him.
          The curses cut off abruptly. John sighed and leaned back against the cliff in relief. There; that was better.
          At least it was until he had to dodge the fist that plowed into the rocks beside him. One which hadn’t been warded, judging by the pained faces his companion was making. And the renewed curses he was mouthing, all of which were silent—and thereby useless, because the boy had yet to learn the fine art of silent spell casting.
          John rolled his eyes and sent a tendril of magic into the cave.
          He didn’t use the demon variety, of course, which would have been picked up immediately. He didn’t use the human, either. Most of the time, being a mongrel cross between three different creatures—human, demon and fey—was a headache, leaving him more of an outcast than the boy would ever be. But occasionally, it had its uses.
          Like allowing him to employ a type of magic that the demon was unlikely to know, or even to recognize. John closed his eyes and felt the fey spell slither through sea and rock and air. From the brilliant moonlight ruffling the surface of the dark ocean, to the shallow pools littering deeply shaded caves, lit only by the reflection of a reflection, and then into a darkness so vast and so deep that it felt like it went on forever.
          Where are you? John thought, concentrating. I know you’re there. I can feel you.
          And he could. His demon senses were why Jonas had bothered to roust him out of his grief and back into the field, to give the Corps at least an idea of what they were facing. Whatever was in that cave had been having a field day with the local population of sheep and goats, leaving savaged carcasses scattered across the landscape.
          That would have been bad enough, but then the magical version of a local constable had gone to investigate. He was one of the auxiliaries the Circle employed who weren’t powerful enough for the Corps, but who were useful for giving wrist slaps to prank playing children and issuing fines for minor infractions of magical law. A steady sort of man with a wife and three little stairsteps, bluff and genial, but sober and reliable at his job. And missing, until his body was found bobbing in the sea near a local beach several days ago.
          Or rather, part of it was.
          Most of the fleshy bits were suspiciously absent.
          The Corps tended to take exception when one of its operatives was butchered for meat. So, the next time, they sent a war mage—a real one. One who knew the area because he’d grown up in these parts, a somewhat garrulous old Cornishman with enough power at his fingertips to be considered the magical equivalent of a tank.
          He hadn’t come back, either.
          As a result, this time it was a full squad, with a half demon along for the ride because they still didn’t know what they were dealing with. And things that eat humans for breakfast were usually classified as demonic. Or so Jonas had told him over tea, without so much as batting an eyelash.
          John really, really wished he’d been able to take offense at the casual comment.
          But the plain fact was that Jonas was probably right. And his men were probably going to get eaten, possibly alive, if they went in there with only human magic and human hubris. John had therefore reluctantly allowed himself to be talked into going along.
          After all, who better to fight a monster than another monster?
          The only problem was that this monster might recognize him, or at least, what he was. And while that could result in an attack, it could result in the opposite, as well. If the murderous beast slithered away somewhere, who knew where it might turn up next, and how many horrors it might commit along the way.
          No, this ends here, John thought, concentrating. And slowly, slowly, slowly, he began to get a picture. Of something powerful . . . yet not; of something old . . . yet not; of something familiar yet alien, but not in the way he’d expected. But almost as if . . .
          The boy broke his concentration by suddenly grabbing him, which was bad. And by throwing a curse through a gap he’d made in the improvised gag, which was worse. But it was still manageable, because John was, of course, shielded.
          Unfortunately, the cliff face wasn’t.
          A chunk of it shattered, sending cracks up the already jagged rock, and a large piece above their heads started sloughing off. The falling slab only missed the two idiots who’d been clinging to its surface a moment before because they weren’t anymore. John had thrown the two of them backwards at the last second, sliding into the cave mouth on a moving stream of chalk and rock that felt almost as liquid under his feet as the ocean outside—and as slippery.
          He also somehow kept hold of the boy, raising a shield around them both and expanding it outward to the size and shape of a large bubble. One tough enough to cushion the mass of blows they took as they bounced and slammed and rolled and jarred, all the way to the bottom of a steep ramp inside the cave. And hit a wall at the far end where the shield burst apart, dumping them onto a floor that was wet and salt encrusted and rough as a cobb.
          The amount of bruising he’d taken might have occupied John’s mind more, but at the same instant, a wild, blood-soaked figure lunged at them out of the darkness, arms raised and teeth bared, an unearthly howl emanating from between its lips.

          “John!”
          “Fuck!” John yelled and jerked around, one hand outstretched in a defensive posture that caused his shields to snap into place. The other was laced with a barely contained fireball that he couldn’t see well enough to throw, because of the migraine blurring his vision.
          It felt like someone was striking his head with a mallet.
          A very determined someone.
          With a damned big mallet.
          After a moment, he managed to focus enough to notice his surroundings, which were neither a salt encrusted cave nor a burning hotel room. What slowly came into focus instead was a cavernous space with a general air of dilapidation. There was flaking paint on some exposed piping beside him, industrial tile under his feet, and the whole thing smelled of body odor, magic and . . . mouse droppings?
          “John!”
          His head snapped up when the voice came again, and agony lanced through his skull. He went down to one knee at the violent, almost shocking pain. Over the sound of his fireball spell sizzling out against the cold tile, he heard the thud of running boots.
          “Get back!” someone barked, as several nearby figures converged on his location. He couldn’t see them—the pain was blinding—but he heard them pause whilst the runner did not. And the next second, strong hands were gripping his arms.
          Or trying to. The hands actually gripped his shield instead, which permitted them through the surface, like plunging into a cold pool. Only to solidify immediately after, trapping them under a watery scrim. And allowing John to spin and slam the offending body against the floor.
          It wasn’t easy, even with all the adrenaline pumping through his system, the body being huge and heavy with muscle.
          And not fighting back, John realized, after a moment.
          “Right on the sciatica,” someone sighed.
          For an instant, John saw again the boy he’d dragged over a cliff: a narrow, coffee-colored face, suspicious brown eyes, and a thatch of wild curls. Only to have the face change and age as his eyes managed to focus: the neck broadening into maturity, the hair disappearing, the eyes—the most recognizable feature—acquiring a few obvious crow’s feet. It was still Caleb, but this man was teetering on the cusp of middle age, if a well-preserved and handsome version of it.
          John wondered why he’d been dreaming about his old friend, and such a weird dream, too. Jonas had come after him, that much was true, to shake him out of his downward spiral after the death of his wife. But that strange foray into Cornwall wasn’t what had followed.
          Was it?
          “You gonna kiss me or let me up?” Caleb asked dourly.
          John let him up.
          And then sat back down abruptly, as the room spun around him.
          “You hurt?” Caleb asked, as more people started gathering around. And then dispersed just as quickly, when the cranky war mage commander sent them off with a few well-chosen words.
          A bunch of smart “sir, yes, sirs!” echoed through what John finally recognized as the Corps’ temporary Vegas HQ. After the previous one was destroyed in the current war, the Corps had taken over an old warehouse complex on the outskirts of the city that had looked like it was about to fall down. And still did, since they’d been more concerned with functionality than appearance. None of which explained—
          “What the hell are you doing here?” Caleb demanded, as John pulled himself back to his feet.
          Exactly, John thought, memories swirling around him like a hurricane, or like those damned washcloths Jonas had set on him, all those years ago. But he couldn’t grasp them. They slipped through his mental fingers and danced away, and when he pursued them, they turned into demon sprites who laughed and laughed, taunting him from just out of reach—
          “John!”
          “I’m fine,” he said hoarsely, answering his friend’s previous question, and promptly staggered into a wall.
          “Of course, you are.” The tone was unamused.
          John stared around blearily. “Did I set anything else on fire?”
          “Were you trying to?” Caleb asked, and grabbed him.
          That led to John looking down, and blinking in confusion.
          “The hell am I wearing?”
          “That was my next question,” Caleb said, pulling him off the wall and over behind some sandbags. They were shoulder high, delineating an exercise area that was currently empty. Another set behind them created a pathway which led to a bank of lockers along a wall.
          John located and then fumbled with the dented metal cabinet assigned to him, finally managing to get it open and to pull out the only clothes it contained: a set of ancient gray sweats that he kept around for workouts. They were worn and threadbare, but clean. And better than the t-shirt, boxer briefs and pale gray bathrobe he was wearing for some reason.
          Probably because I’m supposed to be in bed, he remembered.
          “Damn it, John! You’re supposed to be in bed!” Caleb echoed his thoughts in what he fondly believed to be a whisper.
          “I’m aware of that—”
          A meaty hand grabbed his shoulder. “Then what the devil are you doing here?”
          “I don’t know.”
          “You don’t know?”
          All this repetition was starting to get on John’s nerves, which weren’t in great shape to begin with. Much like the rest of him. The small, square mirror on the inside of his locker showed him back a thin, pale face that he barely recognized, one with dark circles under bloodshot green eyes, a three or maybe four-day growth of beard, and a shock of blond hair sticking out haphazardly, as if trying to form a halo around his pounding head.
          He grimaced at the irony and pulled on the sweats. That worked out all right, but his hands shook slightly. And, of course, Caleb noticed. His bull-in-a-china-shop routine masked a more than competent investigator, and a damned fine mage.
          One who was going to drag him off to the medics if he didn’t start making some sense.
          “I swear to God,” Caleb snapped. “If you don’t start making sense—”
          “Cut it out!” John said, and then paused, wondering. He looked at Caleb, his eyes narrowing, which caused the other man to make an abortive movement toward his side holster. One he stopped halfway, although he didn’t lower his hand, as John slowly and deliberately reached out—
          And poked him in the chest.
          “Something wrong?” Caleb asked dryly.
          John grabbed his friend’s shoulder and squeezed. He felt real. Solid. Not like another damned dream. The repetition was probably down to the fact that there were only so many things someone would say when a friend showed up at work looking dazed and disheveled, in his underwear, and proceeded to slowly poke you.
          John ran a hand over his eyes. “I’m . . . not feeling well.”
          “I gathered that.”
          John sat on one of the benches in front of the lockers in order to put on his trainers. Caleb settled beside him. For a moment, nobody spoke.
          “What’s the last thing you remember?” Caleb finally asked.
          John assumed he meant in the real world, although for a second it was hard to tell the difference. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Concentrate, damn it!
          “Dante’s,” John said hoarsely. “I’d just woken from a dream and thrown a fireball spell. There was a woman there . . . she caught it—”
          “Tami. A null witch.”
          John nodded.
          “She’s been helping me babysit,” Caleb informed him. “Cause sometimes you throw weird fey spells I don’t know how to counter. But her abilities absorb them just the same.”
          “Fey spells?” John looked up at his friend. “Then I’ve . . . done this before?”
          “’This’ meaning walk across town in your bare feet while apparently zonked out of your mind? Or ‘this’ as in try to burn down the hotel? Which this are we focusing on here?”
          John contemplated that for a moment. At least it explained why his feet were cut and bruised and filthy. He tried cleaning them off with his socks but it didn’t help much, just smeared the dirt around. He finally put the shoes on anyway and leaned his head back against his locker.
          “I guess you’ve had an interesting day, haven’t you?” he asked Caleb.
          “Not really.” Caleb said, eyeing him darkly. “The fireball incident was a week ago.”