that would create an interim firewall in the portal had failed. She knew the spell was possible, though—in fact, necessary—if she was to preserve the portal’s waning integrity. It was a temporary fix, but it would keep her from getting trapped on either side. She had business to attend to in both worlds and she needed to keep the doorway open.
The spell had to be conjured during the black of the moon—just minutes before it turned new—and it required several drops of fresh, clear, unpolluted H 2 0 from both land and sea.
The seas hadn’t been pure for centuries; the once crystal waters of California, with its legendary tubing green waves and endless kelp forests, were gone, along with the iron-blue depths of the Atlantic seaboard and the turquoise lagoons of the Pacific Rim. All the way from the Mediterranean to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef the oceans had become a cesspool teeming with sea-devils.
Nothing’s impossible, she reminded herself.
She took the next side street and squeezed through a gap in a chain-link fence. She had to climb over rubble left from the last quake and avoid a squatters’ camp. People still lived in the slanting shanties that remained, even with walls destroyed and their lives exposed like a twentieth-century movie set. The damage must have been from last year, she thought as she climbed over the rocks. There hadn’t been any major rips through this city since Santa Barbara had gone under.
A dog barked from somewhere within the warrens, followed by the sound of glass breaking and a woman’s shriek.
Good morning, California. Rise and shine!
She could smell the ocean, its fetid waves pounding against the granite seawall, eating away at mortar and rock. Her tongue tingled with the acridity of it. She gritted her teeth and approached the tideline. Waves tumbled in, vomiting their contents—leaving fresh devils in the pocks and crannies. Perspiration beaded on her forehead as she watched the ebb and flow of each set, counting the seconds between.
Go! She dashed forward as the brown water sucked out, draining away to leave only a few puddles. She squatted before one, careful not to let her bottom drop too low, and pulled the stopper from the glass tube. She dipped the vial into the turgid soup, scooping it up almost full. It swarmed with tiny organisms as she held it up towards the pale daylight. She drove the stopper in and ran before the next wave crashed.
She kept running until she reached the chain-link fence.
‘Where you rushing to, Sugar?’
The hairs on the back of her neck stood out. She heard the flick of a cigarette lighter and turned around. Smoke billowed above a shadowed face.
‘I’m clocked off, buddy,’ she said, walking away. ‘If you want something, talk to…’
‘I’m talking to you, bitch.’
She heard a trigger cock and turned to see a gun levelled at her chest.
Her face relaxed and her shoulders softened. She let her eyes lose focus as she took a slow, deep breath. Without warning she struck, her kick connecting with his right arm, knocking the gun to the pavement where it fired into the empty street.
The heel of her left hand drove up under his chin, dislocating his jaw and sending him sprawling backwards. She jumped after him, catching his neckbetween her forearms before he hit the ground. With a twist, she snapped it.
‘Said I was clocked off, arsehole,’ she mumbled under her breath, letting the body drop.
She glanced around before disappearing into the gloom.
In her apartment Kreshkali re-read the incantation by candlelight. The book was actually a text on quantum DNA transmutation and reality shifting, but its language had been couched in a poetic vernacular that Kreshkali found difficult to understand. The few surviving works on quantum magic, as well as hyper-dimensional space, astrology, tarot and numerology, were all written this way, to keep the knowledge occult—to keep it safe. So well disguised not a witch alive has a clue
The spell had to be conjured during the black of the moon—just minutes before it turned new—and it required several drops of fresh, clear, unpolluted H 2 0 from both land and sea.
The seas hadn’t been pure for centuries; the once crystal waters of California, with its legendary tubing green waves and endless kelp forests, were gone, along with the iron-blue depths of the Atlantic seaboard and the turquoise lagoons of the Pacific Rim. All the way from the Mediterranean to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef the oceans had become a cesspool teeming with sea-devils.
Nothing’s impossible, she reminded herself.
She took the next side street and squeezed through a gap in a chain-link fence. She had to climb over rubble left from the last quake and avoid a squatters’ camp. People still lived in the slanting shanties that remained, even with walls destroyed and their lives exposed like a twentieth-century movie set. The damage must have been from last year, she thought as she climbed over the rocks. There hadn’t been any major rips through this city since Santa Barbara had gone under.
A dog barked from somewhere within the warrens, followed by the sound of glass breaking and a woman’s shriek.
Good morning, California. Rise and shine!
She could smell the ocean, its fetid waves pounding against the granite seawall, eating away at mortar and rock. Her tongue tingled with the acridity of it. She gritted her teeth and approached the tideline. Waves tumbled in, vomiting their contents—leaving fresh devils in the pocks and crannies. Perspiration beaded on her forehead as she watched the ebb and flow of each set, counting the seconds between.
Go! She dashed forward as the brown water sucked out, draining away to leave only a few puddles. She squatted before one, careful not to let her bottom drop too low, and pulled the stopper from the glass tube. She dipped the vial into the turgid soup, scooping it up almost full. It swarmed with tiny organisms as she held it up towards the pale daylight. She drove the stopper in and ran before the next wave crashed.
She kept running until she reached the chain-link fence.
‘Where you rushing to, Sugar?’
The hairs on the back of her neck stood out. She heard the flick of a cigarette lighter and turned around. Smoke billowed above a shadowed face.
‘I’m clocked off, buddy,’ she said, walking away. ‘If you want something, talk to…’
‘I’m talking to you, bitch.’
She heard a trigger cock and turned to see a gun levelled at her chest.
Her face relaxed and her shoulders softened. She let her eyes lose focus as she took a slow, deep breath. Without warning she struck, her kick connecting with his right arm, knocking the gun to the pavement where it fired into the empty street.
The heel of her left hand drove up under his chin, dislocating his jaw and sending him sprawling backwards. She jumped after him, catching his neckbetween her forearms before he hit the ground. With a twist, she snapped it.
‘Said I was clocked off, arsehole,’ she mumbled under her breath, letting the body drop.
She glanced around before disappearing into the gloom.
In her apartment Kreshkali re-read the incantation by candlelight. The book was actually a text on quantum DNA transmutation and reality shifting, but its language had been couched in a poetic vernacular that Kreshkali found difficult to understand. The few surviving works on quantum magic, as well as hyper-dimensional space, astrology, tarot and numerology, were all written this way, to keep the knowledge occult—to keep it safe. So well disguised not a witch alive has a clue
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