Renfield Blues: The First Grunt's Grimoire

Prologue

"Guideline Nine: Question everything you read.

Including, but not limited to, these guidelines."

The sooner you admit that you believe in magic, the sooner this is all going to make much more sense. I mean, it's not technically a requirement or anything. This book may be several chapters deep in the nuances of how the Otherworld works, but it's not going to burst into flames or anything just because it's being read by a nonbeliever. Of course, now that I think about it, putting a curse on distributors of bootleg copies may or may not be a legit practice these days, you never know.

But let's be honest with each other, shall we? You believe. You believe in just a little bit of magic, even if you won't admit it to anyone. Even if you won't admit it to yourself. Doesn't matter where you live, who you are, or what you do. I don't care how much of a skeptic you think you are. When push comes to shove and the sun has gone down? There are places you simply do not go. There are things you simply do not do. And there are things you simply accept, don't try to explain, and try not to point out too directly. These are the places where this world meets the Otherworld.

Which is where mages like myself come in. Most ordinary people can sense just enough magic to know what not to do. But ever since puberty hit them, mages have known for certain that magic is not only real, not only all around us, but can be manipulated by those who know the how and why. We've been learning those hows and whys ever since.

For the record, the Otherworld slang term for ordinary, not-explicitly-informed human being is stander. As in innocent bystander. Neither clever nor flattering, but that's the typical Otherworld way of being honest with you.

So how do you know when you have met a mage? Well, there's not a whole lot of hard and fast rules there. Even the traditional loose clothes and pointy hats are regional and seasonal affectations. We come from all around the world, go through all walks of life. Some of us may look a little odd, dress a little weird, and behave a little deviant. But these days, not so much of any of the above that you'd notice outside of a rather insular and homogeneous community. That said, there's two big clues that make us stick out of the crowd.

The first clue is the Otherworld Oath. It deserves the capitalization, trust me.

Word of thy Oath make real, lest the Otherworld redeem thy failure.

This one isn't exclusive to mages, but it is a mark of someone who belongs in the Otherworld. There are quite a few flavors of supernatural and sentient people out there besides mages. A lot of them don't like each other much. And when I say that, I mean they leave behind bloodstains and bones instead of passive-aggressive little notes about your parking spot or your garbage cans. Which got just a tad embarrassing what with humanity going off and developing agriculture, metallurgy, and tax bases while the rest of us were off in the wilderness kicking each other in the head. So at one point, the world and the Otherworld got all the Otherworld folks together, sat them down, and pointed out they were going to need something to keep the bloodshed from interfering with business.

What the worlds came up with was the Otherworld Oaths. The coin of the Otherworld realms is the fulfilled word. Part medium of exchange, part assurance of good behavior. Ever since then, if you had even a bit of magic in you, an Oath was something you fulfilled or the whole Otherworld came down on your head. You back out, and life itself becomes the repo man until you pay up. Bad things happen to Oathbreakers.

And don't think empty pockets were going to get you a free ride either. Otherworld Oaths aren't sworn on balance sheets. They're sworn on any valued medium. A vampire may swear by their blood. A werewolf may swear by their claws. A mage might swear by their magic itself. In times past, even humans who didn't know of the Oaths might find themselves bound by them. By their head, by their heart, by their life.

So if you find someone willing to kill or die rather than break a promise they made? There's something magical about them. They might not be a mage themselves, but they're definitely walking in the same circles.

The second clue is the Law of the Magi. Also deserves the capitalization. It's a short law, but it's noticeable.

We guide. We guard. We never rule.

Say you got someone in town who took the shortcut everyone knows you're not supposed to take, and they turn up missing? Everyone knows it was one of those places you simply do not go, and they went there, and now they're gone. No matter what the police or search parties or anyone else tries, they can't find hide nor hair of them. None of the traditional authorities can or will help.

But then you get to thinking. There's almost always one person in town who's, well, just kind of odd. Maybe they got some weird habits, maybe they give you the creeps, maybe there's just something off about them you can't quite put your finger on. But when an awful day like the one I just described comes? Somehow, someway, deep down, the same sense that told you never to take that shortcut tells you plain and indescribably simply that this one person can find the missing if anyone can. More often than not, they can, and they do.

Chances are, that's the mage.

That's the one side of the coin. Because we do know how to get around in the Otherworld, we got an obligation to help humanity when it suffers as a result of the Otherworld. Sometimes that means going off to find the missing kid. Sometimes that means going off to deal with what's waiting in the dark. Because we're the part of humanity that can.

Don't make the mistake of thinking we're all kindly or heroic about it. A lot of us are jerks, to be honest. Just because we'll do our best to not let you get eaten by a werewolf doesn't mean we won't spend an hour ranting about your stupidity of going into its territory on a full moon. We use what gets the job done, whether that's hot tea and kind words or fire and blood. Or, in my case, a multitool and duct tape.

So we guide, and so we guard. But you will never find a mage on a throne. This has been a hard and fast law throughout all history. Gaining power in the Otherworld means giving up our chance at ruling power in this world. That's the other side of the coin. You ever hear of a wizard king or a witch queen or a shaman chief? Doesn't happen anywhere. Not anymore. The one time it did happen, the nasty results spread worldwide. The Djinn fled to their own realm far off in the Otherworld, the Demons went deeper into the Underworld than they started in, and the rest of us have been hurting ever since. Thank you, Solomon, you arrogant jackass.

You could call me a wizard and be right, but it rubs me the wrong way. Yeah, I'm starting to see a gray hair or two in the beard, but I'm not even forty. That's why I prefer the term mage myself. I'm a Marine Corps veteran. Infantry, to be specific. Which means I'm predisposed to the monosyllabic when I can get it. Being a somewhat gender neutral term in English helps too. On top of that, there's an entire sub-branch of etiquette over who calls who a wizard, witch, conjurer, enchanter, sorcerer, or what have you. Mage fits my personal description and keeps things simple and less than immediately threatening. The weird looks from people who like obscure Christmas stories and play way too many video games are small prices to pay.

The Christmas magi were pretty useless, by the way. Great gifts for a deity, not so much for a traveling carpenter's family. Unless the gold bankrolled the trip to Egypt and everything else was used for the mother of all spa days for Mary, who probably needed it at that point. But a lot of the translations just make it more weird. If they were kings (which they weren't, see the law above), a little diplomatic pressure to ease off the targeted genocide would've been nice. If nothing else, a sit-down talk with some of the more judgy relatives who you know were giving Mary side eye from the moment she turned up pregnant would've been helpful. But no. They show up, drop the loot like a video game miniboss, then haul ass back to parts unknown. This is what you get when you let tea swilling protestants make a special edition re-release of your canonical texts.

But I digress. Get used to it.

Once a mage becomes established to a particular degree, they're encouraged to write a grimoire. A grimoire being a compendium of their magical knowledge and their contribution to the next generation to make their way in the Otherworld. Most don't need the encouragement. Some say it's because written language is one of the earliest known forms of magic to exist. Some say it's to pass on knowledge to younger generations. Personally, I think it's because getting this good comes with a streak of arrogance a mile wide. If you thought guys with a ruler in one hand and their zipper in the other were bad, you haven't hung around mages who lived long enough to get salty about it. While I'm at it, I'd also rather see any younger mages coming across this to avoid repeating my screwups. Making their own screwups is a much more effective use of their time.

Am I established enough of a mage to justify writing one of these things? Hell if I know. It's not like there's a gold standard. I've got some pretty good spots on my resume. I invented the Spartan Shotgun before I graduated high school, and made some refinements to the Strap Ball less than a year later. I survived the Blue River Massacre. I'm considered one of the brighter alchemists of my generation, and only slightly less notorious as a conductor. I've been around long enough to have learned some things the hard way, and here I am, passing the savings on to you.

That said, I don't like talking myself up even when I got an open forum to do it. There's not a lot of double-blind testing in the Otherworld, but there's a lot of quiet and powerful people out there waiting for some smartass to let their mouth write a bad check from the first national bank of their ass.

There are some who would fear this knowledge falling into the wrong hands. Most of 'em are the same some who thought Gutenberg was bringing about the apocalypse by letting all those unwashed peasants read. I've met wizards alive today who think that a grimoire should only be penned in blood-and-wine ink blends on vellum, bound in leather of questionable origins and chained to the shelves of some occult library somewhere.

Well, none of those old farts are training me these days, so the whole gaggle of them can pound sand for all I care. My library is better organized, I have more fun things to do with leather bonds, and I've grown accustomed to writing in a growing collection of pocket size rain resistant notebooks. Screw'em. They're lucky I haven't started blogging.

As a combo measure of pandering to the attention span of kids these days and making sure this is a properly educational grimoire, I've added a useful guideline for life in the Otherworld at the top of each chapter. Did my best to match a guideline by relevance to the chapter following it. So don't get wrapped around the wand if they're numbered differently from each other than you expected.

My name is Travis Wayland the Grunt. This is one of my stories.

Chapter one

"Guideline Four:

If you need a little of your own blood,

get it from the back of your non-dominant hand.

Slicing palms is for amateurs."

The vampire blood hangover turned out to be the least of my problems.

Not that I appreciated it at the time. I'd definitely woken up in worse places than my own bed over the years. Soccer fields, strip club parking lots, and on one memorable occasion handcuffed to a gurney in sickbay aboard the USS Ashland. Let's just say I never made Sergeant for a reason. I still haven't returned to that part of France.

It was an unremarkable and partly cloudy midday in July when I brought to a finale my all-snoring revue of, I'm alive, but everything hurts. You'd think a veteran of mundane and supernatural shooting wars would have their act together in a more coherent fashion. But no, there I was: an akimbo pile of drooling, unshaven meat. The ribs on my right side felt like someone had hit me with a baseball bat the other day, an act which I did not remember. Nor did I remember a jaw that hurt surprisingly bad for someone who still had the bulk of their teeth. Point of fact, I didn't know what the date was. It was warm enough that I had a ceiling fan swishing tirelessly away beneath the haint blue paint and stipple-textured plaster of the ceiling.

Unless you've lived in the South, you've probably never heard of haint blue. It's a pale shade somewhere between teal, sky, and robin's egg. The Gullah people of Georgia and South Carolina and the conjurers that lived among them would paint the underside of porch roofs with a special mixture, using indigo for the dye. The color would ward off unfriendly ghosts from the house. White southern mages, who understandably had problems with angry ghosts, stole the secret of haint blue during the zombie wars back in the 1870's. Along with any other supernatural life hacks they could get away with, if I'm gonna be completely honest. Now, in southern homes with mage occupants, the color is commonplace for ceilings indoors and out. Below the ongoing breezes of the air conditioning, I had only a thin sheet of questionable thread count to curl up with and occasionally drool on. The marginally thicker blanket had been banished to the floor among the dregs of my bachelor laundry. But I lived in Atlanta, where the hot and humid weather anywhere between April and October can easily justify such things.

I was woken up promptly at noon by my phone, which I've rigged to record and wake me up with the latest Otherworld Overlook podcast. Yes, the supernatural community has podcasts. What, did you think I was some sort of rebel iconoclast dead set on embarrassing the entire supernatural community? Bob the Night Owl has a voice like expensive whiskey, but hearing him go off about whatever act of stupidity poked humanity this past week never fails to wake me up. Thus my slumber was broken to the call of, "...is on fire, along with the walls on multiple levels. Atlanta fire crews claim the blaze started in the early morning hours after closing. If you're a longtime listener, you know what this means. Two words: vampire hunters. Let's face it, a city starts having a bloodsucker problem, step one is to find the proprietor of the local late night watering hole and chuck a bulb of garlic right upside their head. I'm not saying it's inevitable, but I am saying that it saves a lot of time."

My arm lurched out and turned off the phone alarm instinctively. Scraps of dream passed my mind as I came out of REM sleep: The chiming of small bells. The smell of old books and mint tea. A woman's sapphire eyes, lined with kohl. A thin blue scarf moving in a gentle breeze. A cheerful alto voice saying, "follow yellow to know."

As my brain started to boot up like a work computer riddled with unrestricted malware, I took inventory of the world as I knew it. Fingers were all present, accounted for, and appeared to be in working order. No new rings were currently being worn. Toes were in a similar state of affairs. Wedding tackle present and seemingly none the worse for wear, though I had no inclination of engaging a full function check. No new tattoos, scars, or piercings that I could see from my supine position. All of the old tattoos and scars were right where I'd left them. My dark brown hair was still long, and at that stage of the morning was not so much unkempt as had been used for a postmodern art project by a band of renegade hairdresser faeries. My full beard was still scraggly, with shorter stretches around the cheekbones and neck to show that I hadn't bothered to trim for some time.

I had a nasty headache that wouldn't let me fall back asleep if I tried. And yes, my tongue felt the tingling coppery sensation of vampire blood. It's a sickly-sweet narcotic taste; like rare steak, dark rum, the tingle of lingering Novocaine and the pheromones of an excited lover all at once. Once I realized that, my brain threw up a red flag. I'd never drank vampire blood before. How did I know what it tasted like? I filed the thought away for future reference.

Mercifully, there was a half-empty bottle of water on the nightstand, decorated with a battered sticker displaying the insignia of my old Marine unit. I managed to sit up, ignoring the creaks going throughout my muscles as I swung my feet over the edge of my California King-size bed. I could feel my pulse pounding against my temple, each heartbeat sending a hammer down on a spike of pain firmly lodged in my head. About half of my joints were demanding to speak to the manager, and some of the more colorfully bruised muscles were muttering about unionizing. I opened the wide, screw-on cap of the bottle and started sipping the relatively cool tap water. There were faded yellow-green bruises on my knuckles, and what looked like cuts healed just enough for the scabs to have fallen off. I didn't remember being in a fight last week.

Dehydration partially averted, I left the empty bottle on the nightstand. The pulse in my head hadn't abated, but at least it hadn't gotten worse. I stood up, ignoring the noises a body my age really shouldn't be making as I walked past my bed into the master bathroom and got a good look at myself in the mirror. Long hair, dad bod, old and broken-in tattoos and scars, those were all familiar in reflection as they were at first glance. My oldest tattoo, a barn owl on my left pec, sat impassively judging me. A massive green and yellow bruise on my right side still ached. From the look of it, I'd taken a solid hit in the chest with something heavy duty some days ago.

As I splashed some water on my face, something about the mirror made me get a closer look. A few moment's gazing led me to turn on the faucet again, cranking the hot water all the way up. Steam took its sweet time to rise. However, it rose in a pattern that grew more clear by the moment. I mimed the motion with my left hand, then nodded to myself. Yeah, I'm a southpaw. Sometime recently I had decided to write the words FOLLOW and YELLOW on the condensation on my bathroom mirror. Same thing the lady in my dream said. I didn't remember going to Oz either. Or sending anyone else there, for that matter. I really am a wizard. Sending someone to Oz would be a bit pointless. That was filed away in the mental notes before turning off the water.

As the wet heat dissipated into the house, the smell of fresh brewed coffee brushed past my nose. My eyebrow raised in curiosity. Coffee was new. I was not the sort of person to invest in a coffee pot that activated itself in time with an alarm clock. Nor was Shrapnel, my cat, likely to have begun brewing herself, talented and clever a feline as she was. Ergo, someone else was making coffee in my kitchen.

I spread open my hand on the bathroom wall, feeling the smooth old paint under my fingers. Closing my eyes, I began to breathe the drying, cooling air. In through the nose, out through the mouth, just as I'd been taught before I discovered magic existed. The skin on my fingertips began to tingle as I continued to actively breathe, extending my senses through the walls of my home. I could feel the walls, brick and sheetrock holding a sandwich of studs and insulation between them. Water pipes and electrical cables, paint and flooring and carpets. In the kitchen, I could feel the familiar feline energy of Shrapnel. And near her was a human form I didn't recognize. I didn't have regular human company. My theory of coffee was confirmed.

Along the doors and the windows, I could feel my wards. A home is a sanctuary from all manner of supernatural critters by virtue of being a home. But for those of us who deal in the Otherworld as a matter of course, some home defense upgrades are in order. Some wards just warn you when something ill intentioned arrives. Others make it harder for said ill intentioned to enter, one way or another. Mine were a combination package put together piecemeal for decades. The house itself had been in the family since my grandparents bought it during WWII. Nowadays, it officially belonged to my Uncle Mac. Mac, a wizard himself, lived a nomadic life these days and had left me the house in all but name. So long as I kept up with the maintenance, utilities, and property taxes, Mac was content to leave his own stuff in the Mother-in-Law suite in the basement and let me arrange the rest of the house as it suited me. Being a dutiful nephew, I'd kept up my end of the bargain.

Only you couldn't tell it from the feel of the wards. They felt weakened, worn, and faded. Which made no sense. It was early July, and I'd just done a warding ritual at Midsummer. I might be missing a day or two and gotten in a fight, but nothing I knew of would have degraded wards like this so fast. Worried, I gently withdrew my connection to the house and opened my eyes. I worked a lot of nights, so the blackout curtains prevented me from seeing the more-or-less accurate time of day.

I sat down on my bed again, opening my nightstand. I reached for the small gun safe inside before noticing a weird reflection in a drawer where I didn't remember putting anything reflective. After a moment I picked up a pair of what looked like test tubes. One was full of what looked like venous blood, only it had an odd shiny purple look to it you didn't normally see. The other tube had a few drips and dregs of the same stuff. I sniffed the stopper on the second tube, and the heavy scent of vampire blood filled my nostrils. I still didn't know how I knew, but I was convinced.

After a second, I focused my senses. Magic can be sensed intuitively, but focusing can tell you more than you'd expect. It feels weird the first couple of times you do it, like intentionally crossing your eyes. But after a while it's something you can do almost reflexively. It's kinda like closing your eyes to listen to music better, or smell something you're cooking. Only instead of blocking one sense to focus on another, you're focusing all of them.

Focusing on the blood in the tube, it was like looking at a lit cigarette with night vision goggles on. It couldn't just be seen, it glowed with raw power. There was only an ounce or so of blood in that tube, but it was saturated with magical energy. If it had been gasoline, it would have been enough to drive my SUV for weeks. No wonder vampires have some serious mojo in most of the known lore.

I caught myself staring at the tube for I don't know how long, then took a breath and unfocused. Another red flag came up in my mind. I'm as interested in a compact power source as much as any mad handyman, but I'm not one to obsess over it. I was, however, well aware that a human who drank vampire blood became a renfield: a mind-controlled servant with dubious prospects for their future mental health. Me having a blood stash wasn't alarming, but it was concerning.

The tubes went back into the nightstand. I could deal with them later. First, there was the matter of the mystery coffee brewer. I punched in the code to the gun safe. A Beretta M9 lay in the bed of foam padding, the grip and slide both worn with use. A quick check found the magazine full and a round in the chamber. A sniff of said chamber told me I'd fired it recently. While it was possible that, for once in my life, I'd simply gone to the range and not cleaned everything when I came back, it was more likely that I'd been shooting in the relatively recent past.

Vampire blood, mysterious bruises, a recently fired weapon, cryptic notes in the mirror, and more mysterious coffee. Clearly, some excitement had been had the night before. A thought came to my mind, and to test it, I crouched over my bed, sniffing the pillow I had not visibly been sleeping on. No unfamiliar scents accompanied the familiar ones of laundry detergent and dozing cat. Whoever was making coffee at the moment, they had probably not been overly familiar company recently.

Stretching my fingers for a moment, I reached for the slim black cellphone next to the water bottle like it was a claymore mine emplaced by the new guy in the platoon you're not sure of yet. A light tap of the power button showed it was just after noon, and a long stack of missed calls, voicemails, and other mess was waiting. I ignored all of them to look at the date, then looked again with narrowed eyes.

It was July second. That couldn't be right. I'd left the house the evening of July second and it had to be late morning at least by now. Then I squinted at my phone, which still insisted it was July second. Specifically, July second of next year. As I thought about it, the more I was sure. It was still July, just a year later. That was another mental note made. The more my thoughts came into clear prominence in my mind, the more I noticed: a year of my life was effectively missing. Of course, it was possible that someone had mucked around with my phone, but given the state of the wards, something told me that wasn't the case. Even more disturbing was that last night, or rather, a year ago tonight, I'd reported to Chittenden. Chittenden was the vampire lord of Atlanta. I owed him a year and a day of service, per the terms of an Oath I'd sworn.

According to my phone, it was a full year later. I'd been in some sort of nasty fight, had samples of vampire blood in my nightstand, and my memories were missing. And if my phone was accurate, I still had until midnight tomorrow to fulfill my Oath. Something had definitely gone amiss. Time to make introductions.

Pistol in hand and pointed down at the floor, I padded heel-to-toe down the hallway of my home, towards the kitchen. The paneled wood floors thankfully still didn't squeak. The hallway to my bedroom was short, opening up to an open staircase that led down to my front door and further down to the basement. Past the staircase, there was an open L-shaped area that housed a dining room, kitchen, and living room. The end of the L in the living room sported a large fireplace with a modestly arranged mantle. Altars weren't quite my style, but if you can't put candles, incense, and various knickknacks on a mantle, where can you? On my left I passed the guest rooms and bath, glancing inside each as I moved from a combat glide into a more casual walk.

Standing in my kitchen was a woman I didn't recognize, but seemed annoyingly familiar. She was maybe five three, built like an athlete that didn't mind the occasional indulgence. Young enough that in other circumstances I'd ask to see ID. Black hair pulled back in a ponytail and a corvid cast to her pale features. Dark circles under her green eyes, but I couldn't tell if they were recent additions or old friends. She was wearing an oversized black tshirt advertising a band I didn't recognize, and a set of black yoga pants that flattered her previously mentioned indulgence. She gave me a demure smile and a little wave when she looked up from stirring some additives into a coffee mug. On her wrists were a distinct set of bruises. She'd been wearing leather restraints relatively recently, and she'd struggled in them hard.

I checked past her into the living room, gave the corners a quick eye scan, then let the gun down completely by my side in one hand. I have to work at smiling, after several decades of having resting war face. I gave what I