Gremlin Night by Dale Smith (top 10 non fiction books of all time txt) 📕

some fun, all kinds.” When he said all kinds, my stomach churned. The implication was blindingly obvious. He undressed me with his eyes.

Yuck.

I hesitated for another instant, then started, finally to pull the trigger.

So, of course, that’s when the gremlins showed up.

A dozen of them popped into existence around us.

I fired three rounds at Rudy. Well, I tried to. But the pistol jammed.

Curses. I cleared the jam. Lifted the pistol. It jammed again.

Rudy watched me with amusement. “See? I told you. Give up now. My offer still stands.”

I wanted to throw up at his words. “You are a nasty man,” I said, clearing the jam again. The gremlins ran around us in a circle, singing hee-hee to the tune of Ring Around the Rosy.

I pointed the pistol at him once more, but this time the pistol fell apart in my hand.

Fine, then I’d have to do things the hard way. I jammed my right hand into my jacket, finding my blood magic amulet, and slashing my fingers on it. One more time at the well wouldn’t matter. I was already out of R.U.N.E. if Farlance or Wu learned I’d been doing blood magic.

I pointed the binding knife at the nearest dancing gremlin. “My command is your obedience,” I chanted. A silver beam shot from the tip of my binding knife and stabbed the little pointy-headed nuisance. The gremlin jerked and stopped dancing. The others continued. I pointed the knife at the spell Rudy held on the trickster fox. “Break the link,” I commanded.

“You can’t do that!” Desperation shivered suddenly in Rudy’s voice. He was stuck. Holding the trickster took a lot of concentration. With a resident manifestation like the fox, probably at least a level 4, a simple sorcerer couldn’t banish him. That took a ritual, and Rudy hadn’t had the time.

“Buddy, you are in a ton of trouble,” I said. The gremlin I’d spelled squirmed. “Slippery dude, aren’t you?” I twisted the knife in the air, trying to get the spell centered on the gremlin’s essence.

That was when I noticed a faint trail of golden light splitting off from the torrent of magic surging from Rudy to the ancient trickster. The faint off-shoot snaked over to the squirming gremlin. I bit my lip. Rudy had a lot of power if he could maintain two spells at once. Why hadn’t we heard of him? This wasn’t sorcery, it was wizard-level stuff. Wizards could do more than one kind of magic at once. They could also potentially cast more than one spell at the same time. R.U.N.E. kept lists of sorcerers and wizards, just like Dara Kind’s A.S.A. did.

Rudy’s little side spell had to be a Sever. A simple spell, but I couldn’t do it, because, you guessed it, I was a binder.

My only counter to it was to double down on the binding I cast on the gremlin.

That I could do. With a twist.

Faint tendrils of gold spread from his magic cascade to the dancing gremlins.

My shoulders tightened. He was running three spells at once. Panic rose in me. Controlling gremlins and a trickster with two different spells, a passel of gremlins at that, was mind-boggling. Where did he get the power?

The air around him flickered for an instant, like racking the focus on binoculars. His walking staff looked different, taller, covered in carven sigils of magic. The sigils glowed silver. The staff was topped with a silver snake’s head. The sculpted body ran in a spiral down the length of the staff until reaching a silver cap at the bottom of the staff. A torrent of purple and blue mana flowed into the spaces around the sigils on the staff’s body, like rivulets of water running into grooves in a table.

Rudy’s clothing had changed, too. He wore a tall, stove pipe hat, with a band that glowed silver with magical light, and a frock coat the color of raven’s wings, like the skeletal trickster form. Each of his fingers wore silver rings studded with rubies. His face was filled with leering, triumphant arrogance. He radiated incredible magical power. That staff wasn’t only dragon forged, it was serpent magic as well, combining two ancient arcane traditions.

My breath caught. The staff was the siphon. It was also a magical cloak; the cloak Tully and I had speculated about. I sliced the ring finger of my left hand against the blood magic amulet I held. I needed more mana to fully reveal the arcane.

Spider web-like structures appeared in the air around us, glowing bright purple, connecting to the train cars, to the gremlins, intertwining with the golden threads from the super-magic staff. The purple spider-webs were mana lines. Above us a huge cloud of mana had gathered. The staff was a siphon, a mana well, and cloak. An impossible artifact, yet he wielded it.

The image flickered again and the staff returned to looking like an ordinary crooked walking staff. Rudy no longer looked like a better-dressed version of the tall trickster from earlier, he was dressed in jeans, pull over and winter jacket.

I felt my magic ebbing away. I had to boost it. I ground the blood amulet into my palm, crying out from the white-hot pain that shot up my arm.

I twisted the knife again, like a corkscrew. Sparks flew from the blade’s tip.

The gremlin’s face contorted. The golden light from Rudy’s Sever spell bounced off the gremlin, which was now surrounded by silver sparks from my blade. Ha! I shouted silently. My arms shook from the strain. Sweat ran down my back. Just maintaining one spell on the gremlin took everything I had.

“Break the spell” I ordered, gesturing at the magical torrent spewing from Rudy’s fingers.

The gremlin shuddered, and then my binding finally took hold. The gremlin pivoted, and ran at the spell line, “Hee-hees” erupting from it as it charged.

The golden light turned silver, thickening in the middle like a python that had swallowed a cow.

“No, damn you!” Rudy yelled. But he was stuck. He couldn’t stop casting the