Sand Storm Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Memories

  Stupid Planes

  Bit Hot

  Welcome Home

  A Familiar Face

  A Moment

  On the Road Again

  Bloody Typical

  It Begins

  New Beginnings

  Where it all Began

  Could be Worse

  Bit Ominous

  Not the Best Sleep

  Off We Go

  Tired Already

  Closing In

  Fed Up

  Some Company

  Getting Ridiculous

  Magic Cushion

  That Feeling

  They're Real All Right

  A Waiting Game

  My Prize

  A Question of Motive

  Shocker

  Figuring Stuff Out

  No Choice

  Feed Me

  Another Day

  Aha

  Where To?

  Typical

  A Pleasant Evening

  I Walk

  The Cool of Night

  Not a Nice Heat

  Blame the Old Guy

  More Bad Guys

  The Dust Settles

  Seriously?

  Things Get Dicey

  A Mirage

  A New Friend

  Weird and Wonderful

  Nice Pad

  A Lovely Dinner

  A Bit Awkward

  What a Life

  Bloody Typical

  Time to Reflect

  Stockholm Syndrome

  Hello Stranger

  Some Company

  Surely There's a Way?

  Time's Running Out

  Getting Desperate

  Baked Wizard

  Earth Shattering

  No Way

  Sneaky

  Civilization

  No Fair

  Not Now

  Justified Nervousness

  Good Save

  Decision Time

  Um...

  Keep Going

  The Hunt Is On

  Into the Night

  Getting Ready

  Drama Much?

  Second Thoughts

  Waking the Beasties

  The Gang's All Here

  Memories

  Old Acquaintances

  Ugh

  Damn Annoyed

  Familiar Territory

  Finally

  Fine

  Say What?

  Plane Sailing

  Trouble in Paradise

  Super Annoyed

  Things Get Dicey

  Airport Carnage

  Aha

  The Pros are Here

  Decision Time

  No Remorse

  Home at Last

  Sand Storm

  Wildcat Wizard Book 11

  Al K. Line

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  Copyright © 2019, Al K. Line. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Memories

  The bloodshot eyes of Zewedu spilled spectral tears onto my kitchen tiles. The gaping maw of my dead teacher stretched so wide that his cracked lips split. His crooked teeth, what few remained, tumbled from his mouth silently, like urine-soaked icicles falling from a particularly grubby roof. His fat tongue poked around the cavernous interior as if searching for the yellow canines before the disembodied head let rip with a blood-curdling scream that forced me to cover my ears.

  Penelope dropped a pan of just-boiled potatoes she was about to drain into the sink. Hands on hips, she turned and shouted above the din, "Can you get it to stop? This is utterly annoying."

  "Wish I could," I hollered, meaning it with all my heart.

  Zewedu's ghost, or ghost-memory, spirit, or merely the lingering magical emanations of a once-powerful wizard, whatever it was, screamed again as more ethereal tears fell before he snapped out of existence and the kitchen was ours once more.

  "Ugh, this is doing my head in," I moaned as I grabbed the back of a chair then lowered myself slowly. I rested my elbows on the table and cupped my chin in my hands, mostly just to check my head was still attached and not about to float about the room like Zewedu's.

  "What about me?" screeched my darling wife. "You know all about this stuff, I don't. He keeps coming into the bathroom! He popped out of the bin earlier. I caught that damn head hiding behind the shower curtain yesterday. Scared the life out of me. Can't you do something?" Penelope recovered the pan after scowling at me like it was all my fault. Luckily, the potatoes were still inside, but she had to clean up the mess. She made sure I knew it too, what with all the tutting.

  When she was finished, she came and sat opposite me. I didn't even have the heart to tell her she'd missed a spot. That's how unnerved I was by the whole thing.

  "Arthur, this has been going on for over a week now. I'm all for you doing your tricks and getting into mischief—"

  "They aren't tricks," I protested.

  "But," continued Penelope, "this is too much. I can't have floating heads in the house, it's not right. You need to do something, and today. No more heads," she warned.

  She had a point. It wasn't exactly normal, and it wasn't even abnormal but fun, it was just annoying, a bit depressing, and somewhat worrying, not that I'd told my wife that. George had become fed up with it too, meaning I was getting an ear-bashing from both wonderful ladies almost constantly, and that did nothing to ease my nerves, quite the opposite.

  I knew I had to do the thing I was about to tell Penelope, but I'd been trying to avoid it, to think of another way. Now I knew there was only one course of action left, and boy would it suck.

  "I have to go on a trip," I said with a sigh.

  "What trip? We've only just returned from honeymoon. Weeks, that's all."

  "I know, and I don't want to go, but it's the only way."

  "Arthur Salzman, stop talking in riddles."

  "Sorry. Zewedu is calling to me, I have to go. Something's wrong."

  "You said it was just a ghost-memory thing, that it would go away soon."

  "I know, and I hoped it would. But he won't. So I have to go on a trip."

  "Where? How long for?"

  I looked my wife, my beautiful, perfect, extremely understanding wife in the eyes and said, "I'm going to the desert, to Ethiopia, and as for how long I'll be gone, I have no idea."

  Hi, I'm Arthur "The Hat" Salzman. Gangster. Wizard. About to get sand in all my crevices.

  Stupid Planes

  Airplanes suck.

  Bit Hot

  After I'd been squeezed into spaces only suitable for tiny children, and forced to sit next to several overfed men who refused to let me use the arm rest even once, and had to breathe recycled air for hours upon end, it was with great relief, and much creaking, that I disembarked from the flying torture device and rushed through the airport, longing for the bustling streets of Dire Dawa. Anything was preferable to the toxic airport, the same the world over. Stinking of perfume, chocolate, and bleach, everything gleaming and fake, so far from a true representation of how the hundred and ten million Ethiopians lived it wasn't even funny.

  It had taken me three flights, two days, and more meals heated by gamma rays than can be good for you to get here, and I felt bloody awful.

  My lips were dry, my face felt m
ore wrinkled than usual, like there were actual creases in it, and some of it was peeling off in long strips. I was like a dried banana.

  But I'd made it, and there had only been a single incident when Zewedu made an appearance on the last flight, much to the surprise then amusement of the other passengers who seemed to think that somehow very realistic 3D holograms had finally been invented and a budget airline was the first to get to try them out.

  Whatever, it was done. I just had to figure out a way to get several thousand miles home without leaving the ground, which was tricky but I was positive there had to be a better way. Certainly one that didn't involve all circulation to your legs being cut off and risking thrombosis.

  I removed Grace and wiped at my head with a bandanna. Flakes of skin stuck to it, which was gross.

  "Fucking Zewedu," I moaned, the heat tearing at my cracked lips. My raspy throat had what little moisture remained sucked from it as African heat wormed its way inside me and I craved a dry sauna for some relief. Damn, how did people live in places like this? Give me rainy England any day. I think this was more me stressing out than the true heat I remembered in the desert. Dire Dawa wasn't even that hot, but after England it felt like an inferno.

  But I had been here before, many years ago, and had stayed for well over a year, learning much of what I now knew, or at least being taught the means by which I could improve my skills over the many intervening years. More years than I cared to think about. Where had the time gone? So much time, so many fights, so many artifacts, so much magic. So many lonely nights, tossing and turning, the mini death never coming, lying in the dark wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life.

  Then George came and things were better than I could have ever hoped, and then I bumped into Penelope and I realized in an instant that she was what I'd been searching for my whole life. It wasn't the magic that made me whole, made me truly feel alive, it was her. She was the missing part of me, she made everything better, even made living bearable.

  Life was perfect now. Sure, there were missing friends and bad guys out to hurt little girls, Cerberus was waging an ongoing war with Ivan and the vampires and anyone else not a regular citizen, and the new leader had surprised us all, breaking Ivan's heart along the way. The magical underworld was in uproar because of it, but that was all par for the course. I was happy, content, and now Zewedu, a dead Ethiopian who had been a pain in the ass when alive, even more so decades after I killed him, was ruining it all.

  Not that it was actually him, of course, he was dead and I presumed buried, I hadn't hung around to find out, but if this headless version of his life force, which was mighty potent, was being so insistent, then I had to interrupt my perfect life to come see what all the fuss was about.

  Memories flooded back, things I hadn't thought about for many years, things that once upon a time had kept me awake at night, not with guilt, but with regret that maybe the old bugger could have taught me more, had secrets still to share. But I'd ended his life as I knew he wanted. There had been an unspoken agreement between us that he had taught me all I could learn and we were no longer master and student, some would say master and servant, but I was if not his equal then certainly after a year of teaching and study well on my way to becoming an adept.

  Zewedu wasn't big on talking, never praised me or told me how I was progressing, something I'd been accustomed to after living with those two people who called themselves my parents but acted like I was a stranger. He was big on hitting, with a very hard stick. We did lots of sitting and staring on the thankfully cool, compacted earth in his tiny but neat and very sparse home carved from the ancient desert rock.

  Desert, all that existed was desert, and us, alone in a cave, me getting the shit kicked out of me day after day, but it had all been worth it for I had sought this out for so long. Roamed the earth in search of answers to questions I didn't even know I had, and he had helped me find the answers and given me more than I could have ever imagined.

  They were not happy times but they were the happiest of times, for I was learning magic and I would have put up with anything, and did, to master such wonders. I suffered, I grew painfully thin, almost as thin as my master. We often starved, we were always sore, or I was, covered in bruises, and the work we did was dangerous beyond belief, for magic is not for the faint of heart. It can tear you apart, consume your mind and leave you utterly mad, which I truly think was the case with Zewedu. But he reveled in his madness, and I loved every hate-filled minute of it.

  A tug at my sleeve, and why the hell was I still wearing my leather jacket? interrupted my reverie.

  "You want taxi, mister? I got best in city," said a boy of maybe twelve wearing grubby shorts, green flip flops, and a dirty vest. He looked at me with beautiful dark eyes, hope-filled, and smiled, baring gleaming teeth.

  "You aren't old enough to drive," I said, shaking him loose and removing my jacket.

  "Tee-hee, I'm not the driver, he is." The boy pointed to a man in a sorry looking excuse for a car, an ancient sedan covered in dirt and dust. Someone had scribbled doodles into the crud with their finger, making it look even dirtier.

  "And what, you kidnap me and steal my stuff? No thanks."

  "No kidnapping, just a ride to nice hotel. You want nice hotel? I know plenty. Clean sheets, hot water, even get lady to do the nooky nooky if you want." The child wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  Why is it in every country I go to there is an utterly cliched person of some description there to greet me? Maybe that's why they're cliched, because it really is like this. Kids out to earn extra cash, help out the families, I couldn't hold that against him. He was trying to earn enough so his family could eat. What a different world this was to back home, and I reminded myself not to forget it. This country was huge, had suffered so much it was impossible to comprehend, and life was very different here. A struggle, the whole nation had been struggling for so long they knew no other way.

  "Hey, mister, you do that a lot? You zone out much?"

  "Yeah, now and then," I said with a smile. "Okay, grab this," I handed him my bag, "and don't steal anything."

  "I'm a professional," he said, affronted, then heaved my pack over his shoulder and keenly led me to the "taxi."

  Welcome Home

  I gave the boy a nice tip which he was delighted with, then told the taxi driver where I wanted to go. He took off like a rocket without thrust control and soon we were hurtling through downtown Dire Dawa, that is, until we hit downtown proper, then we mostly crawled slower than I could have walked. He weaved between the throngs, swiped other vehicles, dodged thousands of people riding scooters and motorbikes, most having never heard of safety gear or that flip-flops weren't the best choice of footwear, and carrying long lengths of timber wasn't ideal on a two-wheeled motorized vehicle, and generally added to the pollution as he honked his horn incessantly and hummed happily to himself as the meter continued to roll over.

  By the time we arrived at the small hotel I was ready for someone to shoot me in the head, because the driver had begun to sing along, badly, to Euro-pop from a cassette he was pleased to tell me he'd made himself by recording from the radio.

  I paid him, tipped him, and grabbed my things as he tore away through a gap in the traffic—at least by Ethiopian standards it was a gap.

  I stood on the street and admired the facade of the building. It looked the same. Maybe a few more patches of render were missing, maybe the green windows were a little worse for wear, but the sign still hung same as it always had, and the smells were the same too. Could she still be here after all these years? Only one way to find out.

  A Familiar Face

  I pushed open the ornately carved door, older than me, and walked along a narrow, cool passageway, everything so familiar the intervening years slipped away. I smiled as I emerged into a large courtyard where every surface was covered in tiny blue tiles, the fountain gurgled away happily, and tropical plants reached for the sky. It was shaded by the balconies
above that ran around the perimeter, with places to sit and soak up the muted noise of the city and enjoy the rare damp air.

  So peaceful, so beautiful, so perfect.

  I took a seat and let the frustration of the trip fade away, replaced with fond memories of this place. When it was over with Zewedu, I'd roamed for months in the desert, a nomad with no place to call home, no true friends, no place in this world. A true outcast. I'd isolated myself from what was normal, followed a path to madness, and that madness had taken a firm grip on me once I'd learned my craft. I battled the desert and just about won after wandering the scorched earth until I was black from the sun and a husk of a man, nothing left inside but a thousand spells whirling around my system, crying for release.

  Oh, and what release there was.

  Alone in the freezing desert at night, billions of stars watching, I let loose with unbelievable light shows of magnificent fury. I tore up the sky and gazed in wonder at my own hands, shocked by their ability, their potential for damage. I reveled in it, loved it, and the desert purged me until finally I was clean.

  Then I came back to the city and I found the Oasis, and what an oasis it was.

  "I smell white man," came a booming voice that woke me from a slumber I didn't know had taken me.

  I shook away the sleep and readied for action.

  A smile spread as I stood to watch a vision of loveliness stride with purpose towards me across the courtyard, proud head held high, nose twitching. Sameena's eyes glinted with mirth and mischief, the colorful scarf covering her hair shook as her head wobbled slightly side to side like it used to in the old days. Her face was darker than my cold heart, the skin had ignored time, unmarred and flawless apart from ancient tribal scars given to her when but a child, not a wrinkle to be seen. They say fat people age better, and it was true. She was a large woman by anyone's standards but her own, and I could see that she hadn't lost her appetite, had gained more if anything, and it showed.

  Sameena looked great, awesome in fact. Her huge, swishing, brightly-colored gown like a tent on acid flapped about as if caught by a breeze, rippled as her folds of flesh wobbled beneath. She was the picture of health, a rare sight indeed in a country where so many never knew where their next meal was coming from.