Lupi 08 - Death Magic

Deborah too often felt guilty.
    Yet he was still here. In spite of a clever and determined enemy’s efforts, he was alive this night. Tonight’s death had been a dream.
    Ruben glanced at the clock. 4:05. How appropriate. Four A.M. was the traditional dark time of the soul, wasn’t it?
    Slowly Ruben eased away from the woman at his side. Deborah slept on. He smiled at his sleeping lover, wife, dearest friend . . . Deb had always slept like a child, sunk so deep in dreams that the alarm seldom penetrated. Nor did other sounds. Touch her feet or her face, though, and she woke instantly. Other physical sensations could shift her up toward consciousness, bringing her close to awakening.
    So he shifted carefully. He didn’t want her to stir and ask what was wrong. He didn’t intend to tell her, so there was no point. Deb knew about the other dreams, where he watched destruction and devastation rain down on so many all over the country. She didn’t know about this one.
    Ruben rose with nary a twinge of pain. That remained a wonder to him. After years of increasing weakness, of aching in every joint, he could stand so smoothly now, and walk. Even run, if only for a short distance and in a lumbering manner that ought to make any bystanders giggle.
    It had been metal poisoning his body all along. Who could have guessed?
    Most families had their little myths, stories passed down through generations that held a kernel of truth, if not a fistful. On his mother’s side, the story was that some unknown ancestor had been sidhe—an elven lord gone walkabout, according to the tale, who’d encountered a young Jewish maiden drawing water at the family’s well back in the Old Country.
    The nut at the heart of this tale was true. The elven lord might not have been a lord. The maiden may not have been maidenly. And there was no saying if a well had been involved, or even if their meeting had taken place in Europe rather than after his people immigrated. But sometime, somewhere, an elf had dallied with one of Ruben’s ancestors. He had a trace of sidhe blood.
    Not enough to gift him with any of the wondrous abilities the sidhe possessed, but enough to have complicated his life tremendously. And saved it. If not for that smidge of elf in his makeup, the potion he’d been given last month would have killed him.
    Folktales about the sidhe and cold iron possessed that kernel of truth family stories often do. Not all sidhe were allergic to metal; of those who were, sensitivity varied greatly. And not all metals affected them.
    Iron was the most common allergen, however. The tales were right about that, but they never mentioned aluminum . . . the metal used in the wheelchair where he used to spend so much time. And which he turned out to be more sensitive to than iron. The gnomish healer who’d diagnosed his condition had tested him with various metals. They’d learned that, in addition to iron and aluminum, he needed to avoid tin and lead, though they weren’t quite as toxic for him. Silver, gold, copper, nickel, and zinc were fine.
    And so he used real silverware these days. They’d replaced doorknobs, switched out the bathroom fixtures to brass—an alloy of copper and zinc—and ate virtually no processed food. The cans weren’t a problem, but he couldn’t eat food cooked in steel or aluminum pots. Deb had doubled the size of her vegetable garden and switched to glass pans. Cars were unavoidable, but Ruben wore gloves when he left the house. Also when he used the computer. And Deborah had become preoccupied with finding out where on his family tree that trace of sidhe blood had flowed into his genetic stream.
    Why did it matter? She didn’t seem to know herself, yet matter it did. Perhaps her preoccupation was born of her own heritage. Old money, old bloodlines, an inbred interest in ancestry . . . or perhaps she just wanted to feel in control of something. Anything. The last month had been terribly hard on Deb.
    Ruben moved away from the sleeping woman.
    Their bedroom was at the back of the house. Ruben stood at one of the two tall windows on the back wall, looking out on their large, rolling lawn studded with flower beds and artfully placed outcroppings of rocks, trees, and shrubs that created subtle paths for the feet and the eyes, bounded at the rear and along the east by the dark sentinels of the woods. On the west side, moonlight glimmered off the long pool they’d put in when Ruben first began experiencing symptoms.