Strange Aeons [Book 1]

6. The Lion's Charge

«Qué puta mierda...?» he muttered in disbelief. Boston wasn't Mexico and the climate change wasn't a media invention, but that in the whole zone he was the only snow suddenly materialized on his car, that wasn't normal.

«Oh my God, you're really trying to figure out a logical answer about that?» an incredulous voice called from behind him, and Chico turned, sharply.

Chico knew who he was. They could have been living quite on the fringes of the Order, not interested in most of the things going on there, but everyone knew the Lion's Charge Coven and its members.

«Avalanche.» Chico smirked, trying, quite ironically, to keep his cool.

The tall Jamaican stood there, a pair of sunglasses over his black eyes and long dreadlocks slowly waving in the spring wing. He was facing him with an arrogant smirk and his arms crossed over his broad chest, encased in his green Hawaiian t-shirt. Chico could feel the magic fizzle around him as they spoke. The same magic that had just buried his pick-up in snow.

«My pick-up doesn't like snow. It's bad for the engine.» Chico remarked.

«Wait... I'm here challenging you and you come back with something like that?» Avalanche was quite obviously taken aback.

Chico shrugged.

«Why would you challenge me?»

«But... for the music box! Jesus, you're denser than the rumors make you think!»

«Why should you challenge... oh... verdad...» They thought they had the damned thing. «... of course, the music box.»

«Listen, this is embarrassing. Just tell me where you keep it and I will gladly go away. Hell, I might even agree to tell people we had some epic showdown before you spit everything out. Sure as hell I'm not telling this story.» offered Avalanche, with a magnanimous voice. «Admit you have the carillon, come on.»

«I'm telling you nada!» exclaimed Chico, with the same tone as a bad soap-opera actor caught in a line he couldn't remember. Avalanche frowned.

«Listen, strange guy, I really don't want to drag this. I tried hacking your computers to find information, but the Russian doesn't have one, the Irish's is a 386 that I can't, for the life of me, understand how could still work, and your... God I wanted to gauge my eyes out. What the hell is "chick bondage" man? Can't you even porn like normal people?»

«Wha... ha! Ha ha! You fell into the trap I keep for people who try to peep into my computer! I... I hope you have learnt your lesson! Ha ha! You must be very grossed out!» Chico put his hands on his hips and laughed hard. A little bit too hard to be fully credible, but probably Avalanche preferred to believe this version.

«Stop fucking around and tell me where you keep the music box already!» he shouted, at the brink of his patience.

«Never!» was the proud answer coming from the posed Mexican.

Avalanche sighed, then waved a hand in an arc gesture. A rain of ice shards created on the tip of his fingers and he scattered it in front of him, like a hundred tiny arrows, towards the motionless figure of Chico. If the Mexican hated adding movements and dramatic gestures to magic, one of the reasons was that made it just that little predictable enough to let him avoid the shards by shifting with a long jump on the side. A movement that on anyone else would have looked even athletic but made by his absolutely untrained body looked only gawky. But efficient. The shards hit the snow mass behind him, as Soballende left his physical cat form to become a shadow, fusing with the ones around them, just his two tiny red eyes visible if you knew where to look.

As soon as this happened, something started forming behind Avalanche. With a roar, the huge frame of a polar bear formed growling, his gaze on the shadows as if he was already hunting Soballende down.

«What do you say we keep the familiars out of this? I don't really ache to explain a polar bear to anyone passing by eventually.» offered Avalanche. Chico shrugged.

«I'm not the one with the out-of-habitat beast here.» he said, calmly taking one small step after the others towards the end of the alleyway where they were.

Avalanche took two steps towards and swirled his other hand. This time, a kind of icy wind formed around his body, as he started running towards Chico. The Mexican took the time gap to dip his hand into his jacket and fish out a mean-looking meat cleaver. He rotated it in his hand, as an expert butcher, and looked ready for the clash.

Chico waited for Avalanche to get near and then swung at him, extending an arm with a powerful, menacing snarl. Impressed, Avalanche had to dodge the hit, that landed on the strange windy armor. While Chico was unbalanced, Avalanche charged a fist, around which a gust of icy wind started swirling and tried to land it on the man's face. He hit Chico square on the jaw, sending him flying against the wall. The Mexican stumbled and fell on the ground.

Avalanche went back in a defensive stance, ready for his comeback.

Chico rose, a hand on his aching face.

«Ay ay ay ay! Ok, ok, I'll talk I'll talk! There's no need for all this violence.»

Staggered, Avalanche looked at his fist and then at Chico. It had been just slightly more than a preparatory hit, a mere opening for a much more intense fight. He didn't even put so much strength in it.

«What the hell, man? My grandmother punched me harder than that!» he said, flabbergasted.

«You Americans! Always thinking violence is the right path to follow! All right, all right, I'll bend to your savage methods! I'll talk!»

«Man I'm Jamaican! And just punched you once!» shouted Avalanche, suddenly feeling like a bully in a playground.

«We don't have it, ok? We don't have the music box!» shouted Chico.

Avalanche looked at the Mexican. He was holding his face as if he had broken it in a million pieces, on the desolating background of the snow melting off a dingy pick-up who looked like it just came out from a bad B-movie about illegal car racing.

«Are you fucking kidding me, man? You really think I'd believe this shit?» growled the Mage «you think that this "boo-hoo I'm a defenseless shitty mage, I'll break that easily" will work with me?»

«But I'm telling the truth! We don't have it! Es verdad!» tried to protest Chico, hoping that the beating wouldn't begin again.

«Verdad my big brown ass! You've got to be kidding me! To think I could fall for something like this is beyond insulting, man! At least have some respect for your opponents! Jeez!»

«It's true! We thought we had it, but in the end we discovered we got the wrong one altogether, we never even really had it all!» Chico went on, blurting out a truth that his opponent wasn't absolutely ready to accept.

«Come on man, this is no way to get out from a fight. Stand up and defend yourself, and then I'll question you properly, after having beaten you black and blue!» Avalanche put himself in a menacing stance. Chico just shook his head.

«Stop this I tell you! I have no other information! Please! Stop hitting me!» Chico raised his hands to protect his face.

Avalanche dropped his spells, and even his familiar shrunk down and disappeared.

«You're embarrassing! I'm not fighting with you! We'll find out the truth some other way! But rest assured, we will. And next time you'll be forced to fight me in a worthy way! I mean it!»

With a pissed off movement, Avalanche started rabidly walking away from Chico, the snow already completely melted from the pick-up. The Mexican touched his swelling jaw. Then looked at the direction where the other mage had disappeared.

He put his hands on his hips, again.

«Ha! Yo he ganado!» he boasted with himself, as Soballende left the shadows and went back to be a black cat around his neck. «The power of truth always triumphs!»

He jumped in his car and started fighting with the frozen engine.