Free The Stringer by Jeff Somers Page B

like a club until everyone but me was dead. Fallon frowned at me, closed his eyes, and broke off speaking his spell, causing it to collapse around us with a mild explosion of heat and air.
    I sagged in relief as the pain faded. My own cobbled-together spell, keeping the demon frozen within me had snapped, too brittle and fragile for all of this commotion, and I could sense the demon pushing outward again, stretching to reclaim me.
    â€œ Silig ,” Fallon said clearly, almost casually, and Mags froze in place. Fallon took a deep breath and looked at me wearily. “Let us begin again.”
    He started at the beginning as Hiram leaned against the sink with a grunt and a wince. I burst into invisible flame again. I could feel Lugal worming its way into my nerves and muscles, clamping down tightly and sending agony deep into me until it was all I was, just a sack filling with green-yellow acidic agony.
    Fallon cast with a steady, somnolent rhythm and tone, his Words a mumble that only he and the universe could understand. Outside my shell of pain and suffering, I could feel the power of the spell as it grew, as Hiram sagged against the sink, his open wound feeding it one pulse at a time. The spell was all buildup, all mounting tension. I was a Trickster; most of the spells I used were short and dirty, over almost before I finished speaking them. This was all prelude, all grace notes, subtle and interlocking, like epic poetry.
    I could feel the demon panic, twisting and struggling, trying to escape the fate that Fallon was spinning for it, but I could tell it wasn’t going to. The old man had it; from the first Word, the old man had it. When Fallon tied off the end of the spell, the temperature in the room rose ten degrees and I felt like my skeleton was being removed from my body by a giant pair of invisible tweezers. I stiffened, my limbs going out stiffly from my body, and I fell back against the wall with a thud.
    â€œCome, now,” Fallon whispered. “Your resistance is unseemly.”
    Like steam, the pain sizzled off me and I dropped to the floor, limp and soaked through with sweat from head to toe. Even my much darned socks were squishy with it. I was shaking, and then with a roar Mags was back in motion, crashing into the wall next to me and mashing his huge arm behind me and around my shoulders. Then he went still.
    â€œLem?” he said in a small voice.
    I looked at him and patted his knee. “It’s all right, Mags,” I said. “I’m okay.”
    Fallon’s smile was the tiniest movement at the corners of his mouth. “Good! Sometimes there is tremendous damage from such rescues.” He slapped my leg. “Come! There is no time for loafing. You must tell us everything.”
    I looked up at him, moving my head like pushing a boulder up a small hill. “Us?”
    Fallon stood up and clapped his hands. “Come, boy,” he said, shooting his cuffs. “Meet your betters.”

III.

9.
    â€œDESCRIBE HER,” FALLON SAID intensely, leaning over the table. “Describe everything .”
    The golden shit sensation of gas in the air was overpowering, making me dizzy. I’d never sensed so much blood in my life; every single enustari in the place—and I had the firm sense that everyone here (aside from Hiram, Mags, and me) was Archmage and their urtuku (who would be considered saganustari even if their own skill level were just as high)—seemed to have a fat, bloated Bleeder standing around, leeching an open wound just in case a war broke out.
    We were in Jersey, which right there made this a red-letter day, because no one went to Jersey unless they absolutely had to.
    AS THE TOWN Car cruised the streets, we passed buildings on fire, crowds battling cops in riot gear, and the odd neighborhood where absolutely nothing was happening, everything peace and calm, the only sign of trouble the orange glow in the sky. The Old Bat’s Stringers were