The Crow and the Worm

I

The clock in the dash only said 9:30 but it was clear that the sun was no great respecter of time around here as it beat down mercilessly on the browning grass and umber cloud of dust before me. The small farmhouse materialized slowly through the haze like a caravan emerging from a sandstorm as I pulled into the yard under the spare shade of a large willow tree.

As I opened my door, I saw the rusted screen swing open and a small man in faded purple overalls shot from the house as though ejected. He walked splay-legged over to meet me as I took off my sunglasses and shook my head.

“Well?” he spat.

“Well,” I began, summoning up all my restraint. “It’s taken care of.”

With palpable relief he slouched toward the ground, swept his straw hat off his head, and wiped the thinning hair from his sweaty brow. “That’s good. It’s those darned kids…”

“I"m writing you up a warning, Thomas,” I told him flatly.

He stopped in mid wipe as though stung. “A warning?! For what? Those kids was trespassing on my property! Why should I get a warning? I have a right to breed and raise whatever I want to raise on my own property!”

I put up my hands to try and calm him. “Thomas, no one is saying that you can’t breed Bunyips. We’re not even saying that you can’t stock your pond with them; do what you want, Thomas. What we are saying is that if you’re going to have a pond stocked with dangerous magical creatures you’re going to have to put up some kind of protection around it.”

Thomas’s eyebrows went all askew like two caterpillars dancing poorly. “Protection? What kind of protection? I got a fence!”

“You’ve got to do better than a fence, Thomas. The law states that magical creatures must be kept in by ‘more than conventional means.’ Try a magical barrier or a ‘No Place Like Home’ spell.” He frowned. “It makes people suddenly need to use the restroom but they only want to go in their own bathroom. I use that one all the time. Works great.”

“I don’t see why you’re not doing something about those kids trespassing on my property, Crow. This is America... and I have rights!”

Now it was my turn to frown. “This is America, Thomas, and you do have rights. You have the right to raise dangerous and predatory creatures in your pond, as long as you take steps to make sure that no one gets killed by them; and I have been doing something about those kids. What I have been doing for the last twenty-four hours is modifying memories, implanting a fear of small backyard ponds, and in one case regrowing a toe. What you need to understand is that everyone else has rights too… even non-magical folk… even teenagers. What if someone would have been killed here?”

His eyes darted away from my own. “Would’ve served ‘em right if they had.”

“Then I’d be arresting you for involuntary manslaughter instead of writing you up a warning for improper housing of dangerous creatures.” I tore off a page from the citation booklet and placed it in his reluctant hand. “Now,” I began anew, a smile on my face. “I’m going to have a Scout come by in a couple of weeks to make sure that your protective spells are up and running, and then you will have another visit later this year just for maintenance.”

Thomas began to mutter under his breath, his thin brushy moustache quivering with indignance. “Dern government, always interferin’ where they got no right tuh…,” his monologue trailed off into incomprehensibility. I gave him a nod and went back to my car.

That’s one of the hardest parts of this job, to me. It’s not the fact that I get shot at more than your average magic-user, it’s not the long hours or the endless traveling, it’s not even the low pay. No, the thing that gets to me is the lack of understanding from people. Nobody loves a cop, I guess.

Pig, Porker, the Five-O, the Fuzz, Po-Po, Wand Cop, Salem Judge, The Man; any way you slice it, it always comes out the same. People need protection, and someone has to do it. Those who do rarely get a smile or a handshake because most of the time the only contact you have with them is when you’re in trouble. Catch 22.

The interior of my 1968 Dodge Charger was cool and comfortable as I ducked into it, my “Cool as a Cucumber” spell working like a champ against the day’s formidable heat. I sat behind the wheel and opened the notation box on the seat next to me. A pen jumped out and hovered above the spare pad, ready and eager to write. “Don’t worry about it,” I coughed, and threw my citation pad into the box. The pen floated dejectedly back into the box and I closed the lid.

The pen is always ready to write someone up. I don’t think that he’s mean spirited; he just loves to write. Every time I open that box, out he comes like a bee from a kicked hive. I’ve known Sentinels like him before: Guys who are just itching to bust somebody. I’ve never been like that. I probably should have cited Thomas. Damn fool has a pond full of Bunyips and only a four-foot cyclone fence to keep them in. It’s a wonder that this whole part of the country isn’t alive with stories of young girls being dragged off into the woods and never heard from again.

If someone gets killed here, it’ll be my fault, and that’s what I tell myself as I pull out of the driveway and head for the highway.

Working as a Sentinel, I come into contact with lots of interesting characters. My jurisdiction is known as the Twelfth Ward, and encompasses North and South Carolina, parts of Virginia, and most of Tennessee. There’s a whole lot of history that has to be rolled out in order to really explain how my job works, and that’s something for you to pick up at school, not here. The important thing to understand is that it’s like the Wild West here right now.

In the early days of the Texas Rangers, the Munnies (Mundanes… what we call non-magical people) who did that job were given special powers. They were the law in their particular area, second only to the president himself. There was a saying back then, “One Riot, One Ranger.” That’s kind of the way that things work in the US today with the magical regulation. I’ve got the authority to take care of situations as I see fit, and I always have about a two-month backlog of things to do. Each time that a new emergency arises, whatever I was working on before gets bumped down the list and I hop on the road to deal with things.

Most American wizards already keep a low profile as a matter of course, but there’s always that exception to the rule. Guys like Thomas aren’t really bad guys; they just don’t understand how thin the line is between the Munnies and us. All it takes is one big slip up to make it onto the news, and it’s Hell to pay for the whole magical community.

That day at Thomas’s, it was a pretty simple situation to deal with overall. A few quick memory charms to convince the kids that what they had seen in the field was Thomas’s mean old dogs, and that’s what had taken a chunk out of their behinds. One kid lost a big toe, but after I regrew that for him and convinced him that he was very, very afraid of creepy little backyard ponds, I think that he and his friends will come away with no more than a good story to tell and a propensity to never try that stuff again.

I pulled out onto a little country road and turned right, toward the highway that would eventually take me into either Atlanta or Charlotte depending on which way I went. I was not, however, going to either place… but much farther. I found a small pulloff just before the highway and slowly eased the car into it. I pulled as far off the road as the dusty gravel lot would allow and stepped out of the car.

Walking to the back of the vehicle, I opened the trunk of the car and looked down a long steep staircase that descended into darkness. From the base of the stairs I could hear the chatter of voices and business machines. I looked around to make sure that no one was looking. Cars blew past on the highway above, but no one bothered to look around at what it was they were blowing by. That’s the way that people are here, and that’s part of the reason that we can still manage to exist the way we do.

I stepped into the trunk and closed the lid behind me.

Descending the stairs, I stepped out into a busy hallway full of people. Office administrators and mailroom clerks ran about haphazardly, trying to avoid running into each other in the great round vault of a room. The floor was made of black and white marble tile that shifted from time to time in order to form different patterns. At the time that I arrived in the office that day the floor was a great bichromatic checkerboard with the Bureau of Magic seal in the middle of the floor. As I walked into the room, the stairway and door through which I had come dissolved back into the wall and ceased to be.

I saw the bobbing bun of hair that always announced Jody Krantz coming toward me. Jody was small with thin arms and a narrow face, but she always wore shoes and hair that made her seem taller and longer. She had black glasses with thick rims that made her look more intelligent than bookish. She had a way of always looking over her glasses at you, even if she was looking up. I never knew, but I’m pretty sure that she has some kind of bottomless pit charm on her bun that allowed her to keep a million pencils and pens in there. Each time that I ever needed one she would simply reach into her hair and pull out a sharpened Dixon Ticonderoga #2 that was warm and smelled slightly of shampoo.

“Back again, Crow?” Jody said as she clicked past in her heels, her skirt wrapped around her tighter than a snake’s skin.

“Had to come see what you were up to, Jody. I like to check in from time to time.” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

She never even looked at me, but simply threw her reply over her shoulder. “You should try to actually stop by your mailbox and do some of your paperwork… from time to time.” And with that, she stepped through a frosted doorway marked “Director’s Office” and disappeared.

I walked into the door marked “Squad Room,” thudding shoulders with a young scout as he ran out and into the entryway. Inside the room, long rows of desks stretched out into the distance before me. Many were peopled by scouts and assistants, as most of the time we Sentinels are out in the field; a few desks, however, were populated by Sentinels trying to catch up on paperwork or book in offenders.

In the row across from my desk sat a man who I had come to hate over the years. His name was Salvadore del Cantore, and he was the Sentinel from the Third Ward, New York. Over the years, del Cantore had managed to be named Sentinel of the Year six times, and had received more special commendations from more dignitaries and governments than I care to count. He was always dressed to impress- his closet was probably a whole parallel dimension unto itself, populated by an army of toiling tailors. But, despite all this, was I jealous? You bet your sweet ass I was jealous. The bastard.

As I sat down at my desk and scooted a pile of papers out of the way, I looked over at del Cantore’s workspace. Spotless. He dictated to his typewriter and it quickly spat out every well-enunciated syllable as he spoke it. Seated next to his desk was a disheveled-looking wizard in a rumpled button-down shirt and jeans. A coil of glowing cord bound the man’s wrists as he looked aimlessly at the floor. On del Cantore’s desk lay a silver cylinder that held the man’s wand for safekeeping.

“… with undue force and a lack of restraint which led to a momentary breach in the code of secrecy, del Cantore was finishing. His hair was lying perfectly atop his narrow head and slender face. The man’s cheekbones were so sharply defined that you would swear he had been rough-cut from some kind of rock and never properly finished. All the women in the office stared after him when he walked past, and all the men puffed up their chests when he came into the room. His voice as he dictated was deep and direct, and the typewriter had no trouble keeping up with him.

The wizard in the chair squirmed a bit and stretched his neck back to work out the guilty kinks and point his eyes skyward. Above us, in the air between the brown desert mesas of our desks and the dusty almond-colored sky that was our ceiling, small creatures zoomed to and fro carrying office memos from one department to another. The wizard paid them no heed as he dropped his chin back to his chest once more and shook his head in despair.

Yup, that guy was going away for a long time. That’s one of the reasons that del Cantore was so damn good. His arrests were textbook. His evidence was airtight. I am not aware that anyone he has ever arrested has ever been released due to process error. If del Cantore brought him in, he’s staying in.

I looked at my own desk. Several piles of papers balanced precariously around the periphery of my space leaving a small area in which to work. My own used and abused typewriter sat silently at the corner of my space, the missing keys in his keyboard looking like a degenerate smile. I took my sport coat off and draped it over the back of my chair, heaving a heavy sigh as I did so.

“Don’t tell me you’re tired,” came a small but powerful voice from overhead. I looked up to see a small person descending from the ceiling. This was Dave. His real name wasn’t Dave, of course, but some kind of Faerie gibberish that is unpronounceable with a human tongue. I know some people who can speak Fae, but they all have either forked tongues or multiple rows of teeth, so I’m pretty sure that has something to do with it. I started calling him Dave the first day that I met him, and that seems to have stuck pretty well. They printed his real name on his ID badge, looked like nothing more than a bunch of scratches and dots, but he wrote “DAVE” in with a marker underneath it. I felt like I had helped the guy out somehow.

Dave was about ten inches tall if he stood up straight. He never stood up straight, of course; being a Daemon meant that he stalked around always in a sort of half squat, his hoofed legs seeming to be eternally coiled to spring on someone. His skin was a blackish red with deep magenta hair all over his back and head. A thick underbrush of sideburn populated his jaw line, connecting his dual-pointed coif of hair with his deeply cleft chin. Just above his chin two tiny white fangs jutted out of two black lips.

“Dave,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I need a vacation.”

He settled down on a bare spot on my desk between two tottering piles of papers. His small leathery wings folded carefully as he landed so as not to overturn the stacks and entomb himself in paper. “I’ve seen you work, Crow. Your average day is a vacation.”

I smiled. The little guy was a regular comedian. “If you spent more time working and less time coming up with one-liners, Dave, we’d have no backlog around here.”

He smiled a tiny, evil smile and dropped an envelope in my lap. “Here. Add this to the pile, Crow.” He took a kind of half-skip and flapped into the air over my head, joining the aerial chaos going on up above the lights.

I looked at the envelope he had brought me. It was a small white security envelope like bills came in, nothing very interesting about it, but it was heavier than a bill and had a thick mass in one corner of the package. I looked at the address on the front. All it said was:

Gabriel Crow

12th Ward

Washington, DC

There was no return address, nor any other distinguishing mark on the envelope. I was about to open it when I noticed a scuffle out of the corner of my eye. Coming into the room on my right was a Sentinel from the 8th Ward, out west, bringing in what looked to be an ogre… and an angry one at that. As the two walked through the doorway, it had to magically stretch to allow them entry. The ogre’s wide, scaly shoulders still brushed both sides of the portal as it couldn’t expand fast enough to get out of the way.

“… told you I didn’t DO IT!” the angry creature was braying as Sentinel Robert Drax half pushed and was half-dragged into the room. The magical binding cord around the ogre’s wrists was holding, but its wildly pulsating glow said that it was not going to hold for much longer. Drax was red in the face and kept his hand under his jacket on the wand slung from his belt as he tried with all his might to get the ogre to walk toward his desk.

“Mivvis, you can calm down right now or I’ll put you out! I told you on the way in…” he was yelling. By now several of the sentinels had risen to their feet, and several of the office personnel were clearing the deck.

“RAAAAAR!!” The ogre swung both hands into a filing cabinet next to him, crushing it like a tin can and sending reams of paper up into the air around him. One of the nearby scouts drew his wand and moved as if to stun the brute. Drax drew his wand, but before he could cast a stun spell, Mivvis had grabbed his arm and slung him over a desk and into the oncoming scout. The two of them rolled over and over down the aisle as the power of the attack worked its way through their bodies.

The squad room exploded into action at that point, my hand diving instinctively to the shoulder holster under my left arm and withdrawing my own wand. I flicked my wrist to extend it to its full length and with the same motion swept my arm toward the raging ogre. “Zap!” I cried out, and an arc of blue electricity leapt toward him like a lightning bolt in miniature. From my left, a red ball of energy blasted toward him, turning the room crimson with its powerful light.

My tasing spell hit him full in the chest, and staggered him backward into the wall as the red fireball of del Cantore’s attack struck his shoulder and spun him around to face the other way. I leapt over two desks before landing in the open in front of the stunned ogre in a three-point stance. Mivvis was definitely out of it for the moment, but not yet out of the fight. He dropped to his knees and started to snarl menacingly.

I kept my wand on him and moved laterally along the front row of desks to try and get closer to Drax. “Stay down, buddy!” I called to the ogre. “You just stay right where you are or so help me…”

I wasn’t sure what I was going to say next. I suppose that it doesn’t really matter because I never got to say it anyway. Before I could complete my thought, the ogre spun on us and with one easy motion hurled the twisted wreckage of the filing cabinet our direction. I saw it like it was in slow motion, turning over and over in the air before me as it filled more and more of my field of vision. “BOOM!” I yelled, and a yellow flash from my wand disintegrated the cabinet in mid air, the small smoldering pieces of files forming a great snowy ash cloud around me.

Before I could refocus, I looked up and saw Mivvis only a few feet away, and I realized that I was about to be his next thrown object. His yellow eyes were bloodshot and distant, like the glass eyes of a taxidermy mugsnort. His clawlike fingers reached out to me like hooks about to draw me into his jagged mouth.

A flash of red fire snapped me out of my stupor as two more great fireballs crashed against him like waves of energy. His head snapped backward like a prize-fighter going down for the last time, and this great tree of murderous rage fell thunderously to the tile floor beneath him.

I looked over my shoulder and saw del Cantore standing like a statue, his wand arm extended powerfully toward the prostrate form of Mivvis. I spun around and ran to where Drax was lying on the floor. The scout he had been thrown into was mostly intact, only a couple of scratches and bruises, but Drax had apparently hit something pretty hard with his forehead, and a deep triangular gouge was bleeding profusely into his eyes. I wanted to heal it up for him, but one of the things I learned early on in my education was that I’m not so hot at healing spells. My repairs always end up leaving a huge scar or discoloration in place of the hole. Once, back in school, I tried to heal my buddy’s cheek after a fall, and to this day he still has a small blue oval just in front of his right ear.

“Drax, you okay?” I said, trying to bring him around.

“Mmmmm…” he moaned. “I’m here. Did you get him?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking disdainfully at del Cantore as he put a new binding spell on Mivvis. “What were you thinking? Where was your backup?”

Drax blinked hard against the crimson tide that was rapidly eroding his eyesight. “He was coming quietly at first. He seemed okay, and then all of a sudden, on the ride in, he started to get belligerent.”

Just then, the door to the squad room virtually exploded inward as two more huge ogres in black armor thrust themselves through the widening portal. Their heads were spiked and their countenances were contorted into visages of rage and concern.

“Good timing, Traal,” I congratulated. “Just in time to miss the party.”

Master Sergeant Traal was head of the response squad at the BOM. The RS was mostly composed of ogres, but also contained others who could live up to the strict physical requirements of the post. Their job was to maintain physical security within the Bureau headquarters, but their secondary responsibility was to show up when a Sentinel needed help and was in over his head. Drax should have called them when he first went to get Mivvis, but he hadn’t. A dumb mistake… but one that I myself have made before as well.

Traal looked at the scene before him. Mivvis was laid out on his back, his eyebrows singed from the repeated fireball attacks. His hands were tied before him, a magical tether connecting his bound wrists and ankles in a sort of iridescent manacle. Del Cantore levitated the great moaning hulk off the floor as small still-flaming pieces of files drifted to earth. “What the Hell happened here?” Traal growled.

I helped Drax to his feet. “One of your cousins there got out of control and we had to put him down.”

Del Cantore looked accusingly at Drax. I knew what was coming. “Where was your backup?” he asked with rebuke.

Drax touched his forehead painfully as if to make sure that he really was bleeding, even though shimmering rubies were dropping regularly from his nose-tip and spattering onto the cold tiles. “I didn’t call for any.”

Del Cantore frowned like an angry big brother. “I know that. Why didn’t you? Regulations clearly state-”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “Could you wait until after we staunch the bleeding here to start your lecture on proper procedure?” Cantore scowled at the interruption and then pointed his wand at Robert Drax’s forehead. He spoke a quiet charm and a faint light emanated from his wand. At once, the sides of Drax’s wound reached out for one another and joined hands, sealing his cut instantly and without trace. The bastard.

“There,” del Cantore said with satisfaction. “The bleeding has stopped, now the lecture can begin. Sentinel operating procedure dictates that whenever a sentinel enters into a situation in which the apprehension of a subject may lead to the endangerment of others it is his duty to call for backup. Did you even call in deckuties?”

Drax wiped the still viscous blood from his eyes and spat small bursts of it from his lips as he spoke. “I didn’t think I needed them.”

Cantore smiled without humor. “Well, I guess you were wrong, huh?”

“Who’s the judge?” I spat.

He looked at me in confusion. “What judge?”

“The judge of whether or not an apprehension is likely to endanger others?”

“The sentinel.”

“Robert, at the time of your apprehension was there any reason to think that your boy here was going to give you any trouble?”

Drax had succeeded in clearing most of the blood from his left eye, but his right was swimming in crimson pools, stinging him and making him wince. “Not a one.”

“There, you see?” I said happily. “He did follow procedure.”

Del Cantore crossed his arms and glared at me. “You don’t think that the apprehension of an ogre is worth calling in backup for?”

I looked at Traal and his partner who were carting away Mivvis behind del Cantore’s well-tailored back. “Are you saying that all ogres are dangerous? Just because someone is going to talk to an ogre, they should have their wand at the ready and a response team ready to go?” Traal straightened up to his full eight feet and looked over Cantore’s shoulder for his reply.

Del Cantore thought for a moment and swallowed hard. “I’m just saying that if he had then this wouldn’t have happened!”

I helped Drax cross the room to where the RT ogres were. “Yeah,” I laughed, “and if I had just blasted him when he walked in the door then this wouldn’t have happened either. Lots of possible outcomes to the day, my man.”

Del Cantore almost couldn’t control his anger. “You almost got crushed by a filing cabinet! If I hadn’t…”

“But you did,” I interrupted. “We all live to fight another day. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get my friend to the infirmary.”

Traal waived a giant clawed hand in a fingerless glove. “I’ll take him, sir. We’re heading that way,” he rumbled.

“Thanks, Traal,” I said. “You know that guy?”

“Not him. Know of him. Know his family.”

“Are they all as pleasant as him?”

Traal shook his close-cropped gray-black head. “No,” he said finally, the word resounding like a tympani at the last note of a great fanfare. “He comes from a good family. I hear that he got into some bad business here lately; went downhill. Sad. Real sad. Hear that he got into Manna real heavy.”

The other RT ogre placed a giant arm across Drax’s back to help steady him. Drax interjected, “That’s what I was arresting him for. His mother turned him in and said that he needed help.”

Del Cantore exploded. “Hecate’s Bloody Crossroad, man!! So not only an ogre, but an ogre who’s a Manna-head? And you didn’t think you needed backup?”

I looked at him as if to burn a hole through his face. “We are done talking about procedure, Salvatore.” I held my gaze for a moment longer and then turned back to Drax. “Robert, get better. Good luck.” And with that, the RT ogres, Robert, and Mivvis were out the door and into the hall.

Del Cantore looked after them as they left and then turned to me. “You know that Internal Investigations is going to tear him a new wand pocket for this.”

I walked away without looking at him. “He made a bad call. It happens.”

“They might have his badge for this.”

I turned. More than anything in the whole wizarding world, I wanted right at that moment to hex his face off. I wanted to disfigure that pretty façade and knock him on his athletic little ass. Instead, I smiled. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He returned the smile. “What I’d like is to see more people do their jobs around here.”

A pause. Silence.

“Do you want to write up this report or should I?”

He cast a quick look at my desk, now even more catastrophic than before. “I will. You look like you have a bit of a backlog. You can look it over and sign off on it before I turn it in tomorrow.”

“Good deal,” I said, and went back to my desk.