Blood Magic

TWENTY-TWO

HE was calling himself Johnny Deng these days. He liked the juxtaposition of East and West, and Johnny was a friendly name, much more so than John. He considered himself a friendly man.

Over the years he had had many names. He often used one of the characters from his original name in some form, for it is good to remember one’s roots. Often, but not always. His current surname spoke of those origins only in the most general way.

At times he missed China, but it wasn’t the China of today he missed, so he didn’t indulge in nostalgia often. No point in making himself unhappy, was there?

He’d liked Europe. They had some appreciation for the past there, and the open borders and jumbled web of law enforcement agencies had made it easy to engage in his trade. But his beloved could not be happy in Europe while her enemies lived and prospered in the U.S. When the Turning hit and the level of magic began to increase, she had needed to put her plans in motion.

He didn’t begrudge moving here. There was much to appreciate about the U.S. and California and the modern world. He loved video games, especially Grand Theft Auto. While he might have preferred San Francisco to San Diego, there were enough people here to feed his beloved, even now when she remained attenuated. There was a large enough Asian population for him to blend in, and he could make use of the established gangs. His profession gave him an in there.

If the public transportation wasn’t up to the standards of London or Paris, it was adequate to his needs today. There was a bus stop right at the hospital, though he did have to make two changes to get there.

When the bus slowed to a stop he climbed on board carrying what he needed in a white grocery sack. After some consideration, he’d chosen to play it safe. His target had already confounded him once, proving resistant to both knife and spell. He couldn’t assume his other spells would work on lupi as beautifully as they worked on humans. Nor could he assume the sorcerer was too unwell to set proper wards. He ought to be—but then, he ought to be dead, too.

He purchased a day pass from the driver and took a seat. The bus was crowded, and the woman sitting beside him wanted to chat about the weather. Johnny agreed that it was very hot, then took out his phone with an apology and pretended to make some calls.

It was all very well to be friendly, but it would not do to be memorable.

Besides, the woman was too tall. He didn’t like tall women. Once the city was his, he wouldn’t allow any woman over five foot three in his presence. He’d considered doing the same with men above a certain height, but that wasn’t practical. He accepted that some of his subordinates would be larger than he.

Johnny prided himself on his practicality. Practicality, patience, and tolerance—those were his chief virtues. He did not, after all, become angry at the woman for being tall. Poor thing, she couldn’t help her height. Instead he cheerfully anticipated the day when women of her excessive inches would not be part of his daily life.

But then, he was a modest man. How could a man achieve success if he did not understand his limits? He knew, for example, that he was not unusually bright or brave. Neither was he stupid or a coward. When he was young, he had thought one must be one or the other—bright or stupid, brave or cowardly. Now, he knew those were poles—signposts, one might say—at either end of long paths. Most people fell somewhere between those signposts, rather than at one end or the other. One might move slightly closer to one signpost or the other as life proceeded, but one would not greatly alter one’s natural position.

He also understood that he was exceptional in two ways. Some quirk of ancestry had gifted him with the ability to see and use magic. Obviously, sorcery was both rare and valuable, but he took no credit for possessing this skill, just as he laid no blame upon himself for lacking great intelligence. He had not achieved the one nor failed at the other. He had simply been born as he was.

Johnny’s other exceptional trait was less obvious—indeed, it was invisible to most people, and was commonly held to be twisted or perverse. A limited judgment, of course, but most people were sadly limited. They wanted good and evil painted in black and white so they knew what was what. Very few grasped the essential elasticity of those qualities. Moral behavior was contingent, always contingent, upon circumstances.

This should be obvious to historians, if not to the dreaming majority. In how many ages and cultures had it been considered acceptable, even correct, to torture one’s enemies? In some cultures the eating of animal flesh was abhorred; in others, the hunter was elevated. And how many variations existed on proper sexual behavior?

Yet people clung to the idea that some acts were inherently good and performing them made one good. Other acts were inherently evil, committed only by evil persons.

And wasn’t English a clever tongue in some ways? This thought had come to Johnny many times since he learned the language, and it never failed to amuse him. One committed to evil, not good; good was simply a performance. Acting as if you were good might make it so, at least in the eyes of others.

But men are always more comfortable thinking themselves like their fellows. Even now, with the fascinating things they were learning about the brain, scientists persisted in viewing abnormalities in the brain as flaws, failures, a problem to be fixed.

Johnny was naturally curious about such things, given the nature of his second exceptional trait. He had read many popularized accounts of brain research and psychology. Happily, he’d been able to conclude he was not what experts called a psychopath. Whatever might be wired differently in his brain, it didn’t prevent him from making meaningful connections with others. Clearly he had a deep and loving connection with his beloved.

Psychopaths were also said to lack empathy. That was certainly not true of him. How could he take such pleasure in giving or receiving pain if he were unable to sense the feelings of others?

No doubt he would have shared the common view had he been born “normal.” Johnny chuckled as he climbed down from the bus with his white grocery sack. Had he been born without his other exceptional ability, he would also be long dead. His Beautiful One would not have fallen in love with him had he been unable to appreciate the exquisite pleasures she offered.

Johnny sat on the hard bench to wait for the next bus. So many had failed his Beautiful One. This was not their fault, for they could not help it if their brains didn’t make the connections his did between pleasure and pain. But it was sad, he thought, that his second gift was so rare and so unappreciated.

Not by the one who truly mattered, though. She loved and valued him as passionately as he did her. He owed her so much. She said that debt had no meaning where there was love, but she wasn’t human. Johnny adored her, cherished her, and feared her, but she was not human, and she sometimes misjudged or underestimated what humans could do.

That’s why he was here today without her. One of his beloved’s less human traits was her manner of sleeping. While asleep, she attenuated, losing her grip on the physical—though that would change, she told him, when she fully manifested. When first they met, she had slept most of the time. Now she needed less sleep than did he, but did not know when the need for sleep might strike, or how long she would remain asleep when it did. She might sleep for a day or an hour, then remain awake for a day or a week.

She slept now. When she woke she would be angry with him, oh yes, and the thought of her anger made him tremble. But she was wrong, that was all there was to it.

The sorcerer could not be left for later. From all Johnny had learned, the man was far too good with fire.