Morgana’s Gift
by Corrupting Power
Prologue — Darkness On The Edge Of Town
The hour after bars close for the night was always the most dangerous time to be out on the road. Driver attentiveness was at its lowest, and the percentage of drunks on the road was at its highest. But Kevin didn’t have any choice. The gig had gotten out, and the rest of the band had demanded he take them out drinking, and then ferry them home. The back of his car was still loaded up with most of the gear, because the band would’ve probably pawned the gear off for drugs given half a chance.
It wasn’t like they were friends of his—but they were his bread and butter, at least until his big break came along, which he’d always assumed it never would. He needed them, to keep himself afloat. Most of his life had been spent just adjacent to the luck needed to see prosperity.
But the world was a funny place.
The freeway was mostly empty, but there was a single car on the road ahead of him, a black Escalade, one of those titanic tanks that clogged many of the streets of California, consuming gasoline like nobody’s business.
Kev was accustomed to seeing them wobble a little at this time of night, but this one was doing more than a little wobbling, so he slowed down some, backing off enough to give the SUV more than a bit of space.
The extra twenty feet or so likely saved his life.
When the right rear tire of the SUV burst, the vehicle swerved wildly, the driver trying to compensate, attempted to turn into it, and instead, the vehicle rolled over and started cycling into the ditch off to the side of the road. The damage was catastrophic, the vehicle in tatters.
Kev pulled his car over quickly. He didn’t have time to think—he simply wanted to see if the driver had survived. He hadn’t even called 911 before he had put his car into park and started sprinting towards the wreck. The Escalade was upside down, the frame of it holding together, although he could see bowing on parts of it. Glass was strewn across the concrete, and gasoline had smeared atop of it.
Only one person was in the car, a woman, hanging upside down, suspended by her seatbelt, the airbags deployed but already deflated, their job done. She hung there, deathly limp, unconscious. Normally, he would’ve just checked on an accident and let the emergency services handle it, but the gas tank was ruptured, and while he knew enough to know the vehicle wouldn’t explode, it could very easily catch fire, which wouldn’t be conducive to the health of the woman.
Kev couldn’t afford to wait, or, rather, the woman couldn’t afford for him to wait.
He reached in and popped the latch on her seatbelt, doing his best to catch her, pulling her from the vehicle. It took some effort, but he pulled her from the vehicle and dragged her away from the wreckage, which had started to burn.
When he had the woman back to the relative safety of next to his own car, he looked back and saw the vehicle erupting into flames. It burned brightly, quickly, and he wondered for a moment if the SUV had been sporting NO2 or some other borderline legal accellerant. The fact that the flames were green entirely slipped his notice.
Behind him, the woman on the ground started to cough. “The fuck just happened?” he heard her say.
“Don’t move,” Kev said. “I’m going to call 911.”
The woman raised a hand and waved it in his direction, and he stopped reaching for his cellphone, not of his own volition. She was in her early fifties, fit but certainly not immune to the rigors of age. She was dressed in a rather atrocious looking track suit, something akin to one of those insipid housewives shows set in New Jersey. Her fingers were covered in rings, gold and jewels, gaudy and borderline ridiculous. Her hair was dyed a deep unnatural shade of red, that of faded blood. She cranked her head up to peer over at the vehicle. “Well, that looks like it would’ve been fatal. And you pulled me out? Saved my life, you did.” There was a spice of accent in her voice, European, British maybe.
Her fingers twitched again and the world shifted.
Kev found that he couldn’t move, and while he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t move, he also didn’t feel particularly bothered by it, which he felt in and of itself should bother him more than it currently did. “What’s happening to me?”
“Oh, I can’t have the police coming and investigating,” the woman said, curling her fingers as her wounds disappeared before his eyes. “That’s the last fucking thing I need, is attention.” She stood up and dusted herself off, looking over at him with a smile. “Be with you in a minute, darling.”
She turned to look over at the flaming wreckage of the SUV and waved her hand, coiling her fingers, as the wreckage shrunk down, both the car and the fire growing tiny, the light cast from it fading remarkably quickly. She walked over to it, a small flickering spot of flames in the grass, and she stepped on it. “There. Wouldn’t want a wildfire spreading on my account. Now, to deal with you.”
Kev shook his head a little bit. “I, uh, I won’t say anything to anyone.”
The woman smiled, almost a touch wolflike. “Oh I know you won’t, darling. I’m going to make sure you don’t ever want to say anything to anyone about all of this. I’m going to do you a favor, something that any number of men on this world would sacrifice a small village for.”
“A... a favor?”
“Absolutely. You’ve saved my life. I couldn’t have it on my conscience, something like that going unrewarded. A being of infinite power like myself, dying on a fluke because of a blow out? I’d be the laughing stock of the magician community if it ever got out. And those sorts of things always get out. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over thousands of years, secrets never stay buried unless you bury them yourself. So, if you could have anything you ever wanted, and I do mean anything, what would it be?”
“Well, I...”
“Hush, darling. If you use your words, you’ll only undersell your true desires, and the price of saving my life shouldn’t be cheapened and sullied so. And I don’t want you getting some insane idea that I’m a genie, or a witch out to curse you by adhering to the letter and not the spirit. Anything at all is within my power, and I intend to give you a gift in equal of saving my life. Just think of it and...”
The woman closed her eyes, cocking her head to one side, placing one hand on his face as a smile started to creep across her on, and then she started to laugh, softly.
“That is simultaneously both one of the most perverse and most ethical things I think I’ve ever seen inside of someone’s mind. I utterly adore it. It will take some time, something of that scale, but your wish is granted, and what a doozy it will be. It’s a shame I won’t be around to watch it all unfold. We will never see each other again, Kevin Bishop, but never let it be said that Morgana Le Fay doesn’t repay her debts. Your life is going to change a great deal over the next few months. Enjoy the ride, my boy.”
A few seconds later, Kevin found himself staring off into the empty night, pulled over at the side of the road, no sign of the SUV, or the woman, but he knew that it was real, it had been real, he’d been certain of it.
He could still smell the lingering scent of smoke in the air.