Issue 1 Preview: When The Arizona Moon Meets The Arizona Sun
Continuing our previews of the stories within the launch issue of Spectra Magazine, which just went on sale on the Amazon Kindle Store, here’s a look at Brian Dolton’s murder investigation with a magical twist, When The Arizona Moon Meets The Arizona Sun. Find out more about Brian on his website, and don’t forget to stop by our forums where you can chat with the authors and leave us your feedback.
“A murder on an Indian Reservation opens Deputy Sheriff Luisa Morales’s eyes to a world of magic and illusion that makes finding the killer a dangerous affair.”
When The Arizona Moon Meets The Arizona Sun
By Brian Dolton
His movements were slow and graceful. The black wallet that came out of his immaculately tailored suit flipped open to show a badge and seal and card. They looked familiar in general but utterly absurd in the specific.
The card read “Federal Bureau of Magic: Special Agent Antwoine Beech.”
She snorted.
“What joke store you get that from?”
“No joke, Deputy Morales. I’m entirely serious. And please do put the lizard away.”
“The — ” she stared down at her hands. She was holding a beaded lizard, its mouth yawning open, showing the poisonous teeth. Reflexes hit in; she opened her hands, throwing the creature away from her.
The gun landed by a small cholla. Beech bent down and picked it up.
“You can have it back,” he said, and his voice had gone hard, “when I believe you won’t wave it at me, but at someone who actually needs it waved at them. Now, I suppose you want me to explain what’s going on here.”
She was still staring at the gun in his hands, remembering the feel of the lizard in hers. The rounded scales, warm and unmistakable, utterly unlike the familiar sensation of the pistol grip against her sweating palms.
“How… how did you do that?”
“There’s a clue,” and his beaming smile was back in an instant, “on the card.”
“Magic.” She invested the word with a wealth of disbelief.
“Magic,” he agreed cheerfully, as if her sarcasm had got lost between her lips and his ears.
“I don’t believe in magic.”
“No? After what you just saw? Magic is real, Deputy Morales. Real, and in certain circumstances, dangerous. As your colleague here would attest, if one of the Bureau’s necromancers were here.”
She wished she knew what to say. She wished the gun were still in her hand. She wished Derrick Hayden wasn’t dead, and that she could sit with him in El Chaparral later, with a Corona cold in her hand.
Wishes weren’t worth a damn.
“All right,” she said. “Tell me what this is about.”
“Phoenix,” Beech answered. He squatted down again, beside the corpse. “That’s my guess.”
“Phoenix? That’s a hundred miles from here…”
“You misunderstand, Deputy Morales. I am not talking about the city. I’m talking about the bird.”
“The what?”
“The bird. Oh, please, do tell me that you are educated enough that you know what a phoenix is.”
“A mythical bird.”
“Mythical? Ah. Yes, of course. Mythical. Like magic.” He beamed at her.
“What, you’re saying… you’re saying there’s really a phoenix?”
“How do you think the city got its name? This, Deputy Morales — ” he gestured broadly around him ” — is not technically Indian reservation land, though it’s convenient to show it as such on the maps. This is one of only three remaining habitats in the United States where the phoenix still breeds.”
He was crazy. That was the only explanation she wanted to consider. Because if he was not crazy… if he was not crazy, the roots of her world had just been torn up, shown to be nothing more than madness.
“I suppose next you’ll be telling me there are unicorns,” she said, to humor him.
“All too few, though we do what we can. It’s a very difficult business, trying to preserve such creatures. You can see what happens to someone unfortunate enough to get in the way.”
The gesture to Derrick Hayden’s corpse reminded her that, no matter whether Beech was a madman or not, there had been a very real crime. Her fingers twitched. She wished she had the gun back. She sized him up, for a moment; but she didn’t favor her chances of getting it back without his co-operation.
“In the way of what?”
“Of a man named Gabriel Ash. He’s a… dealer. And just as bad as any of the drug dealers you get down here along the border. A very nasty piece of work.”
“So why isn’t he behind bars?”
“Because, Deputy Morales, he’s a very good magician. And very good magicians are extremely hard to incarcerate.”
Luisa looked down at the body of Derrick Hayden.
“If he did this…”
“You’re in no mood to incarcerate him. I understand entirely. But very good magicians are also very hard to kill. And, of course, we public servants are not judge, nor jury, nor executioner. We don’t kill unless there’s no alternative. Remember that, Deputy Morales.”
“Don’t lecture me,” she growled. She had a feeling Beech liked to lecture people.
Beech sighed. “Very well. No lectures; simple facts. Gabriel Ash wishes to acquire a phoenix egg. He came down here a day or two early. Why he killed Deputy Hayden, however, I don’t know. What was your last contact?”
“He said he was following a vehicle. Big shiny Hummer, all tricked out. Sure as hell out of place down here.” She glanced at Beech’s SUV, gleaming, seemingly untouched by the dust that coated everything else in the southern Arizona summer. “What do you mean Ash came down here early? Early for what?”
“The phoenix hasn’t laid its egg yet. That happens this evening, just before seven.”
“Oh, now you can tell the future?”
The sapphire in his smile sparkled, a mirror of the empty sky.
“Phoenixes are very particular birds, Deputy Morales. Their eggs hatch at the moment of eclipse. There’s a partial one in about three hours.”
“Maybe you should have got down here early, too.”
“Maybe I should. But I was busy. Lots to do, Deputy Morales, and I’m sure you understand about a small department covering a wide area.”
She snorted.
“You and me got nothing in common, so don’t pretend you’re just like me. I still don’t trust you, or this whole line of yours.”
“I know. That’s why I haven’t given you back your gun,” he said, and walked past her towards the SUV. She felt the chill radiating from him as he passed. Son of a bitch didn’t have a drop of sweat on him; like he had his own personal central air.
He turned and looked back at her. “You can ride with me, if you like.”
“I’ve got my own truck.”
“So did Hayden,” Beech answered, flatly. “Ride with me, Deputy Morales, and you stand a chance. Ride on your own, and you’ll end up just as dead as him.”
She didn’t trust him.
She glanced back at Hayden.
“I call shotgun,” she said, scowling. He beamed back at her, as if she’d said something smart.
#
The SUV was blissfully cool. It was, as she had expected, just as clean inside as out. Her shirt was sweaty and her pants were dusty and she felt for a moment as if she shouldn’t touch anything. Then her stubborn distrust won through and she tilted back the seat and put her desert boots up on the dash.
Beech, behind the wheel, didn’t say a thing. His big fingers were delicately working the touch-screen of what looked like a top-of-the-line satellite navigation system.
“So where are we going?”
“That’s what I’m checking,” he answered, his big fingers still operating the screen.
“You don’t check on your phoenixes too often, huh?”
“I’ve only recently been assigned this duty. My predecessor was a man named Gabriel Ash.”
“Ash? But you said…”
“Yes. Every department has its bad apples, Deputy Morales. Ash was one of ours.”
“Deputy here turned bad, oh, about six years ago. Thought he’d make himself a ton of money, running drugs. Got a bullet in his back for his pains.”
“From you?” Beech asked, mildly. He’d started the SUV up; it barely purred as it moved off, and seemed to glide over the ungraded road.
“You think I’d shoot a man in the back?”
“You aimed at mine,” he pointed out.
“But I didn’t pull the trigger on you, and I didn’t pull the trigger on him. He got himself double-crossed on a deal. Now down here, I can understand a man getting tempted, because the pay sucks and there’s big money changes hands over the border. But what makes a man give up a sweet job like you got?”
“We all have our reasons for what we do,” Beech answered. “It’s not my place to guess.”
“Bull! You say this man worked for… your Bureau.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘magic’. “You know him. You must know what made him turn bad.” What made him kill Derrick Hayden, she didn’t add; not out loud.
“Ash didn’t turn bad. Ash is one of those men who’s true to himself.”
“You saying he’s bad to the bone?”
“And beyond,” Beech answered.
She wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“So where are we going? You got some kind of plan?”
“Absolutely.” His grin was back.
“You going to tell me?”
“Absolutely not,” he answered, just as cheerful.
“Then what in the hell am I doing here? I thought…”
“If you know the plan,” Beech said, swerving to avoid a jackrabbit, “then Ash will know the plan.”
“How? He can read minds?”
“Not just read them,” Beech answered. “He can control minds. And a lot better than I can. I can make you think a gun is a beaded lizard, but you don’t know what it took out of me. He can make you think anything he damn well wants you to think. So you don’t get to know the plan. You get to guess.”
“So I don’t know the plan, I don’t have my gun, and I’m supposed to help you? How’s that work?”
“You called shotgun,” Beech answered. “Reach under the seat.”
She had to take her feet off the dash to do it; she was disappointed to see that there were no dusty footprints. The SUV, it seemed, was determined to remain immaculate, just like its driver.
There was a shotgun under the seat; or something that looked like a shotgun. It was clearly hand-made. It had a complex, sliding mechanism under the barrel that seemed to contain three interlocking magazines.
“Man named Michaels built it,” Beech said. “Each magazine is specialized ammunition. The silver one’s for werewolves. Wood for vampires. Shouldn’t need to worry about either of those out here.”
She rolled her eyes.
“And the black?” she asked, sliding her fingers over the stock and mechanism, familiarizing herself with the feel.
“Magicians,” Beech said. She glanced across at him. He wasn’t smiling.
# # #
Continue reading When The Arizona Moon Meets The Arizona Sun in issue 1 of Spectra Magazine. And you can also check out previews of our other Issue 1 stories below:
Wolf-Being, by Kim Falconer
A Distant Sound of Hammers, by S. Boyd Taylor
Songbirds, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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