The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

“Yes?”

“This one here, the bumpkin, says he has the enlightened puissance. And he is of age.”

Grimluk had been trying his best to sidle back toward the door. He winced as the witch Drupe turned her blazing eye on him.

“Does he indeed?”

“I…um…You know, when I said I had the…the…the engorged parlance, I didn’t exactly know…” He ran out of words at that point. This was not the way he thought it would be. It was normal to exaggerate on a job application, but this had turned suddenly very serious.

The witch came to him. Only then did Grimluk notice that one of her legs was as thick as a tree trunk, gray and leathery, ending in stubby yellow nails.

He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the leg.

“It’s an elephant leg,” Drupe said. She shrugged. “It was a spell gone wrong. I’m working on it.”

Grimluk swallowed hard.

“I will give you the simplest of Vargran spells, bumpkin.”

“Okay.”

“Speak the words as I say them. But as you speak, bumpkin, banish fear from your mind.” She waved one hand before his face as though she was pulling away a curtain. “Banish fear and feel instead the blood of your ancestors back through all the generations. Reach back to forgotten time. Summon to you the powers of unyielding earth, drowning water, exhilarating air, and searing, flesh-consuming fire!”

Grimluk didn’t want to do any of those things, but it was as if the witch’s words were worms eating their way into his very soul. As though her words were within him and no longer without. As though his blood truly did flow with all the strength of his ancestors, all the powers of the world itself.

“Gather to yourself the fearsome wolf and the great eagle, the poison snake and the bludgeoning boar, and speak, speak!”

Her face was right in his, her breath on him, her heat warming his body.

Then she opened her hand. And in her palm lay a butterfly. It had been crushed, its wings broken.

“Speak these words, bumpkin: Halk-ma erdetrad (sniff) gool! Halk-ma! Halk-ma!”

So Grimluk said the words. He shouted them with all the conviction he could muster.

The butterfly stirred! Its wings moved feebly.

And slowly, slowly, it rose into the air.

Alive!

And then it fell to the floor. Dead again.

“Good enough,” Drupe said. She grinned at the amazed wizards. “Good enough.”

Twelve

The giant bug arm oozed green-black blood from the stump. It wasn’t heavy. It felt like something made out of brittle plastic, the way plastic gets if you leave it out in the sun for a long time.

“It’s all yours,” Mack said. He handed the arm to Stefan, who hefted it like it might be some kind of weapon.

“My name is Rose Everlast,” the Asian woman said. “I’m with the accounting firm of Hwang, Lee, Chun, and Everlast.”

“You’re an accountant?” Mack said incredulously. “You don’t look like an accountant.”

“What do I look like?” Rose asked.

“Hot. Way hot. No offense,” Stefan interjected. He was fifteen, after all.