Free Devil Sent the Rain by D. J. Butler Page A

arm under the desk. His fingers found the shelf, but where he thought he would feel the cool sliver of volcanic glass that his uncle called the Eye of Agamotto, instead there was a warm meatball.
    He’d been a sorcerer too long to be easily disgusted. Adrian wrapped his fingers gently around the object and pulled it out.
    It was an eye. An actual eyeball, moist and spherical, and it lay in his palm and stared up at him. Its iris was brown, but colored with streaks of gold. It was so wet and lifelike, Adrian half expected it to blink or say something.
    “Son of a bitch,” Adrian said.
    “Don’t resist,” his uncle answered, and Adrian felt a hand on his lower back.
    Adrian bucked. He kicked and thrashed his way out from under the desk, like a dog finding a hornets’ nest in its bowl. He smacked his own shoulder and cheek on the desk, and when he had rattled to his feet and turned around, it was to see a changing scene.
    Young dream-Adrian was opening the door to leave. His clothing was disheveled and he stared at the floor as he moved, tears coursing down his face. Elaine Canning in the shape of Mouser stood to one side, weeping into the balled fingers of one hand and reaching out in the boy’s direction with the other, but rooted to where she stood.
    Against one wall of the room, the wolf sank its teeth into Eddie’s arm. Twitch and Mike banged on its back with fists and sticks, but it ignored them and Eddie screamed. Where were Yamayol and Semyaz? Adrian wondered. Why weren’t they hearing all this commotion? Or were they?
    In front of it all, Adrian’s uncle stood up. His brown eyes flashed fire and he held out his hand, palm up.
    “Isn’t it time you joined me?” he asked. His tone of voice mocked Adrian, and a tiny smiled curled up one corner of his mouth. Impossibly, and not even knowing what his uncle could mean, Adrian felt tempted. His uncle was powerful— had been powerful, and power was what Adrian wanted.
    He ripped his gaze away.
    Adrian looked down at the eye he held in his hand. Idiot, he thought, you’re looking at it for a facial expression or some other message, hoping it will tell you what to do. But an eye all by itself won’t tell you anything. It can’t even cry.
    Not all by itself.
    Adrian reached up and popped the disembodied eye into his own eye socket. It shouldn’t have fit, since he already had an eyeball there, but Adrian felt his own eyelids reach out like hungry lips to wrap about the fleshy orb, sucking it into place.
    And then he saw the scene differently again.
    Uncle-wolf stood tall and tongue-waggingly before him, paw out and ears perked at the ceiling. A pool of shadow trailed out behind him, melting upwards and coalescing into another Uncle-wolf shape, pounding sharp-nailed fists into the other members of the band. The band had all changed. They wore their usual jackets and leather, like they would anytime they went on stage, but he saw them now split into multiple images, like he’d see them in physical space through his Third Eye, but with fewer parts.
    Adrian squinted. He saw their bas, he thought, and pools of darkness around each of them that must be their shadows. Each wore a tag on his chest that must bear his name—in physical space, that would have been very hard to read, or would have appeared as just a glow, but with the body and the ka out of the way, Adrian thought if he looked close enough he could see each of the band member’s true name. Only they were moving too fast.
    They moved too fast because they were fighting. Twitch dove left and right to avoid blows, and Eddie managed to catch a lot of them on his forearms, but Mike was taking a beating.
    Adrian’s ankles felt cold and wet—looking down, he saw that two inches of water flooded the floor of the study. It sluiced in sluggishly from the vent from which he and the rest of the band had emerged only a few minutes earlier.
    On the other side of the room, someone slipped out and the door closed.