Magic on the Storm (27 page)

Lightning flashed and thunder exploded so close they joined.
A drop of rain hit my head. Then another.
Great. Why did it always rain when the world needed saving?
The disks around the circle flickered as rain pattered through the rising
magic.
I looked around, uncertain as to how this was a storm rod that was going to
channel the magic. Unless they intended to channel bits of the magic into the
disks at their feet. Even so, there weren’t nearly enough disks to contain that
storm.
The big, heavy figure of Jingo Jingo lumbered out into the center of the
circle. He carried a sack over his back. Lightning struck, painting him pale as
a horror-movie Santa Claus. A flash of ghostly faces, children’s faces, swarmed
around his body, tied to him, clinging to him in sorrow and desperation.
Darkness returned, snuffing out the ghosts.
But I knew I’d see them in my nightmares.
Jingo swung the bag off his back and upended it.
Disks poured out, dozens and dozens, striking one another in sweet glass tones,
primal music and magic, ringing in song so pure I caught my breath. Disks and
magic poured into a pile, a mountain, a treasure of glittering, beautiful
power.
I moaned softly. I wasn’t the only one.
There it was—the unattainable dream. Easy magic.
Safely contained, safely used. No price to pay. Ready to do what you wanted it
to do. At no cost.
I wanted it to stop a storm. I wanted it to help me open a gate so I could get
Zayvion back.
I looked around the circle, at faces brushed in liquid light from the disks at
their feet. I saw awe, doubt, greed. I saw anger, and fear. All the good things
a human could feel and all the bad, played out across the faces of those
gathered.
The Authority, Zayvion had told me, was on the brink of a war.
And someone had just poured a pile of loaded weapons at their feet.
“Allison Beckstrom,” Jingo Jingo said. “Come forward now.”
“What?” Thunder struck, covering my voice. I shot a panicked look at Shame and
Terric, both of whom looked away from the thrall of the disks and at me. They
looked as confused as I felt.
“We need a focal point,” Sedra said softly next to me. “I had hoped there would
be another way. If Zayvion hadn’t fallen, he would be the one standing here. I
would not have asked this of you.”
“Asked what of me? Explain—” Lightning, thunder. I waited them out, or at least
until the thunder’s volume went down a notch. Tried again, “Explain what you
think I’m going to do.”
She smiled, and it looked out of place beneath her cool, brittle eyes, as if
there were two different people with two different emotions behind that face.
“You are going to direct the wild magic. You don’t need to wield it, don’t need
to absorb it. You simply need to Ground it, into the disks.”
How had she not noticed that I sucked at Grounding? I thought my teachers
reported to her about me. I wasn’t even any good at keeping control over the
magic inside me and never left home without a void stone anymore.
Volatile
was the polite word my teachers used when they didn’t think I
was listening. You’d think someone would have pointed that out to her.
“I don’t Ground.”
Her eyebrows flicked up. “You will do so now. If you are the Soul Complement to
the Guardian of the Gate, then you will be strong enough. We will divert the
wild magic to you, and you will Ground it. Using the disks.”
“I’m a lightning rod? A storm rod?” I blinked back rain that trickled into the
corners of my eyes. “I tapped into a wild storm and it almost killed me.”
“Zayvion wielded all manifestations of magic. It is now your time to prove you
can do the same. Prove that you really are his equal.” This last bit she said
with more anger than I expected. I got the feeling she didn’t like me very
much.
“Zayvion’s had a hell of a lot more training than I have.”
“There is only you. If you don’t channel the magic, the city will burn, magic
will explode, melt the conduits, destroy. People will die. Zayvion will die.”
“What? Why?”
“He has been broken by magic. And only magic—dark and light—can make him whole
again.”
Holy shit. “So if the storm hits, it’s going to kill him?”
“If we don’t control it, yes.” I did not like the pitying smile she gave me. It
looked like she wanted me to fail.
Well, screw that.
The entire conversation lasted all of a few seconds. It scared the crap out of
me. But I was getting tired of standing there getting wet and arguing about
things I knew too little about.
Not knowing what the hell I was doing had never stopped me before. And so far,
not knowing what I was doing with magic hadn’t killed me.
But this time it wasn’t just my life on the line. It was Zay’s life, and the
lives of people in the city—Violet’s life, her baby’s life.
If I failed and magic blew out the conduits in the city, thousands could die.
Maybe some of the fear showed on my face.
Victor, who stood next to Sedra, said, “We will guide you. We will be your
hands if you falter, your strength if you fear, your breath if you fall.”
That was good and all, but what I really needed was someone to be my sense of
self-preservation and oh, I don’t know, tell me to run away now and run real
fast.
Since that wasn’t going to happen, I nodded and pushed my fear as far away as I
could. I was good at denial.
I walked out into the center of the circle where Jingo Jingo waited for me.
“You’re gonna do just fine, Allison,” Jingo Jingo said in his low, smooth
liar’s voice. “You were born for this, made for this.” He smiled, but there was
a fevered gloss in his eyes. Even in the rain I could tell he was sweating.
Even in the rain, I could smell his lie.
Or maybe I was reading too much into this. Panic will do that to a girl. I took
a deep breath, and squared my shoulders.
“What do I need to do?”
Jingo Jingo stepped closer to me and ran his hand down my arm, petting my right
shoulder and stroking down to my fingers, which he caught up. It was weird,
creepy, invasive. I gave him a look that let him know exactly what I thought
about that.
“You’re gonna stand here.” He guided me around the pile of disks so I stood
facing Sedra.
Sedra looked calm and cool as an ice sculpture. Which is to say she looked like
she always looked.
Well, that and wet. Lightning flashed, painting ragged glyphs across the sky,
and for a second, less than that, I thought I saw something else in her,
something under her skin that was dark, twisted.
Panic shot through me. I looked at the other users gathered. There was something
wrong with their body language. Too many sideways glances, meaningful looks.
Even Liddy, my teacher in Death magic, looked tense, as if she was waiting for
her cue.
Sedra might be the head of this parade, but I was pretty sure some of the band
didn’t want to march.
“All you need to do is hold this,” Jingo Jingo continued. He bent, dug through
the piles of disks. They were all the same. I didn’t know what he was looking
for. He finally selected one and placed it in my palm. “And meditate.”
Meditate? Oh, yeah. That would be no problem in the middle of a wild-magic
storm surrounded by a circle of users—all better trained than me, all giving
one another hateful looks—with a big pile of free magic at my feet.
Okay, yes, granted, you had to have a clear mind to actually cast magic, and
high emotion destroys the concentration it takes to access magic. But
meditation takes time to do well. So if my ability to meditate was what was
going to save the world, or at least save Portland, then I was pretty sure we
should all think about moving to Seattle.
“Meditate,” I said. “Right, then what?”
Jingo Jingo stood in front of me. I could smell his fear, bitter and sharp on
the back of my sinuses. And something else—the candy sweet of excitement,
anticipation. He licked his lips. He was looking forward to this, anxious,
eager. “Then, you are going to do the right thing, Allison Beckstrom. And you
won’t need me to tell you what that is.”
He stepped back, putting rain and space between us. Lightning flashed again and
thunder broke the sky to pieces. I had zero chance to tell him how incredibly
unhelpful he had been.
Some teacher. Going silent on me when I most needed a clear answer. Bastard.
Okay, I had my disk. It was heavy and cool in my hand. And I had my sword. It
was heavy and cool on my back. It shouldn’t, but just the presence of Zayvion’s
blade made me feel better, like a part of him was with me, telling me, calmly,
to stop thinking so hard, and just kick some ass.
And that was exactly what I planned on doing. I was about to meditate like no
one had ever meditated before.
Yes, that sounded stupid.
I took a deep breath, spread my feet so I wouldn’t fall over when the winds
picked up.
Just as I began to close the outside world away from my senses, the storm tore
open the sky, the air. And the magic beneath the earth rushed into me, and
burned through me.

T
oo hot, too
hard, magic rushed up out of the earth and poured down from the sky to stretch
and fill my bones, my skin, my body. There wasn’t enough room in my body for me
to breathe, wasn’t enough room for me to think.
Meditate
, he’d said.
Jingo Jingo was such a joker.
I had to clear my mind. Had to direct—no, channel—no, Ground. I was supposed to
Ground, and they were going to direct the magic that ricocheted and fractured,
leaping above me, above us, above St. Johns, striking wild, random arcs of
lightning and wild glyphs that would tear us all to shreds.
We might be using magic, but it was going to use us right back.
I cleared my mind. Sang my “Miss Mary Mack” song. Lost the line when thunder
rolled and rolled, and lightning hit so low I felt it in my molars and thought
we’d all go up in a crisp. Picked up at the “silver buttons, buttons, buttons”
line and held tight to the disk, which hummed with magic, in my hand over the
pile of disks.
The wild magic was not me. The wild magic could not change me. It could pour
around me, fill the disk in my hand, and fill the other disks on the ground. It
could follow the marks, the paths, the ribbons, magic had painted in my skin,
my blood, my bones, and use me as a conduit. Magic could slide through me,
soft, gentle, and return to the soil, the stones, the heart of the earth, where
it belonged.
The reason St. Johns had been chosen for this suddenly made sense. St. Johns
was an empty sieve. Magic would flow through it, and into the channels beyond
this neighborhood, and fill all the rest of Portland.
That was, if I could Ground it.
I inhaled, exhaled, tasted the burnt wood and hot ozone of fire. The wind
lifted, buffeting, hot in the cold, cold rain.
Grounding wasn’t a difficult glyph to draw, but making magic follow it, and
standing there, steady, calm, and completely focused while the magic used me,
was what made Grounding hard. I set a Disbursement, hoping to push off some of
the pain for later. Maybe I’d catch a flu in a week or so.
If I survived.
I looked up, at the sky roiling with metallic, psychedelic clouds, stirred by
the winds like oil on water, pushed into new shapes, into unnamed hues and
colors. Lightning struck, and all the colors of magic flashed gold against the
black sky. I’d never felt so much magic so concentrated. At least, not that I
remembered.
Even the rain tasted of the oily, metallic heat of wild magic, striking sour on
the tip of my tongue, and so sweet at the back of my throat.
Lightning struck again. Thunder roared.
Now. I knew I had to cast it now.
I focused, pushed away the awareness of the magic users around me, most of them
chanting over the rush of rain and wind, pushed away my awareness of the storm,
of the rain, of the wind buffeting my body.
Raised my hand.
This one stroke, this one line, this one curve—I cast each part of the glyph
for Grounding with precise, purposeful motion. Nothing wrong, not a tremor, not
a pause.
Then I drew upon the magic from the disk in my hand. It hesitated, and for a
second, I thought I had screwed up and was going to suck all the magic in the
disk into me, into my bones, blood, and flesh. But the magic sprang free of the
disk, and I guided it to fill the glyph for Grounding.
Magic poured into the Grounding, and shot ropes of magic over me. Even though I
expected that and braced for it, I jerked. The thick, cold cables of the magic
clamped over my shoulders and fell like hundred-pound anchors into the soil,
where they plunged deep and hooked. I could not move if I wanted to.
I was now officially Beckstrom the storm rod. And I hated it.
Have I mentioned I am claustrophobic? I tried to push my fear out of the way,
tried to ignore the clamping restraints of the Grounding holding me down.
This is why I am no good at Grounding. I freak out within the first three
seconds or so. Trapped. Too trapped.
I exhaled, focused on the disk in my outstretched hand. I could do this. Not
only that, I would do this. Everything depended on me doing this one thing. One
thing wasn’t hard. I could do one thing.
Magic leaped into the hands of the users in the circle. I recognized
directional glyphs, drawn to attract and guide the magic down out of the sky
and into me—or rather into the framework of magic around me, the Grounding I’d
just cast.
I breathed evenly, bracing for the onslaught.
Magic would not burn me alive. So long as I didn’t take it into me. So long as
I didn’t lose my concentration. These magic users were professionals. They knew
what they were doing.
I hoped.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a figure leap out of the shadows. Two figures.
Magic flared. Glyphs turned to flame. The pile of disks at my feet caught fire,
magic bursting free.
A wall of heat hit me and I yelled, thinking,
Ground, Ground, Ground.
No
, my dad said.
Let go, Allison, let go!
He shoved at me, tried
to take control, but I was nothing if not made of stubborn. I held my place,
kept my cool, even though I was being roasted to the core.
Ground, Ground, Ground.
Look
, Dad said.
Look around you. Look at the battle.
Battle? My ears were already ringing from the pounding thunder and magic. I
couldn’t hear him over all the screaming.
Wait. Screaming?
I hesitated. I was not good at doing what my father wanted me to do. But there
was something very wrong.
I looked away from the disk in my palm, holding my concentration in the
Grounding spell.
Chaos. The circle was broken. And it wasn’t because of the storm.
Magic user fought magic user in a blur so confusing, I couldn’t make out who
was where.
I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision. Magic poured over me, hot, heavy,
cold, biting, rushing down the cables of the Grounding spell that I somehow
still held.
Go, me.
But all around me the Authority battled.
I searched for Shame in the melee.
And instead saw Greyson and Chase.
No, no, no. Absolutely no. They could not be here. Who would have told them we
were going to be here?
Greyson was more beast than man, on all fours, wide head, fangs, and claw, bone
and sinew for legs and arms, and burning eyes. Chase cast magic for him, with
him, his Soul Complement and his hands. She was tall, but thinner and paler
than just a day ago. Working magic with Greyson, or maybe being Soul Complement
to a man who was half alive and half dead, carried a hard price—her humanity.
Her hair hung around her shoulders like a black cape, glimpses of her skin
flashes of moonlight in a dark night. Her eyes and her lips were bloodred. She
no longer wore jeans and flannel, but instead had on a black dress that skimmed
her knees and black boots with heels low enough to make running easy. Or
fighting.
And that was exactly what she was doing.
And doing very well.
Just like back at Officers Row, Chase was chanting and weaving glyphs in the
air and filling them with magic she pulled out of the storm. Multicolored
ribbons wrapped down her fingers and up her arm, where tendrils shot out to
anchor in Greyson, feeding him. He was headed my way.
Romero, the family-man killer, launched himself at Greyson, the machete in his
hand a blur of magic channeled from the sky.
Greyson fought him, fangs bared, then unhinged his huge jowls and sucked down
the magic Romero threw at his head.
Chase clapped her hands together once and a gate sprang up. Greyson leaped
through it. Chase slammed her hands together again, and the gate disappeared in
a blast of black smoke.
I didn’t know how she was doing it. Those gates weren’t allowing any of the
creatures that haunted the other side, the Hungers, to break through. But
Greyson used them as easily as stepping though an open door.
One more clap, and the gate was open again, this time on the other side of the
circle. Near Sedra and Maeve. And me.
Greyson tore out of the gate, and ran fast, too fast, a nightmare of bone and
fang and claw. He launched at Sedra.
Sedra stood, cool and angry, hands raised in a block I’d never seen before.
Greyson hit the block, and I swear I felt the thrum of that impact at the base
of my skull, over the thunder, over the wail of magic in the storm, over the
sounds of battle.
Maeve stepped up to Sedra’s defense. She wielded a long knife in each hand,
blood covering her fingers and the blades as she cut glyphs into the air. She
threw magic at Greyson. It wrapped him in dark lightning, filling the air with
the sweet smell of cherries. Greyson sucked the magic down. Which was exactly
what Maeve had wanted. Still connected by blood to her blade, and her will,
Maeve yanked on the spell, tearing a brutal scream out of Greyson.
Greyson stumbled. Gave up his advance on Sedra and turned on Maeve instead. He
leaped.
“No!” I yelled. I tried to take a step. The Grounding spell rooted me,
anchored. I couldn’t let go of the spell, couldn’t break it.
Come on. Let go, undo, leave me now, go away, go away, stop.
Lightning struck, so close, rain sizzled. Thunder popped an ear-busting
explosion and I tasted blood at the back of my throat.
Wild magic filled me, licked across my skin, catching fire down the ribbons of
my arm and hand. Wild magic grew roots in me, different from the Grounding
spell. I had felt this before. I suddenly remembered it now. The last time I’d
tapped into a wild-magic storm and nearly died.
The crystal
, my dad said. Or I think he said it. It was hard to hear
anything over the thunder, the yelling, the fighting—worse because someone, I
think the Georgia sisters, was supporting the dome of magic, keeping all the
sounds we made inside.
I pushed my left hand into my pocket and pulled out the crystal. Deep fuchsia,
the crystal was hot, glyphs carved inside it fluctuating with the magic I
carried. I didn’t know how the crystal was going to help.
Direct the magic into it; use it to Ground. It is organic, unlike the disks
,
Dad said.
It can act as a Grounder.
Okay, so all I had to do was recast the Grounding spell onto the crystal. One
crystal to handle what me and a hundred disks were barely managing?
It’ll explode
, I said.
It will hold long enough
, Dad said.
Long enough?
For the storm to pass.
Maybe that was his idea of success. As a matter of fact, it probably was. I
didn’t know what his stake in this was, except Violet’s safety.
Put the crystal on the disks
, he said.
And that made sense. The excess magic in the crystal would bleed off into the
disks, and they could help carry the load of wild magic.
But the Grounding spell wrapped me in concrete. It took everything I had to
bend my knees and hold my hand out over the pile of disks. I opened my fingers,
tipped my palm. The crystal fell, tumbling down and down. It struck the disks
and a sweet, harmonic tone echoed back from the rain.
And then the world exploded.
My hands flew up without thought. Well, without my thought. Dad took over and
cast a hell of a Shield spell. That kept me from burning to the bone. But it
did not keep me from being thrown back ten feet, and landing flat on my back.
Someone above me, in the light, shadows, rain, wild magic, held a hand down for
me.
“Move!” It was Victor, my teacher, Zayvion’s teacher. He grabbed my hand and
rocketed me onto my feet.
All the training I’d done on the mats came into play. I found my balance and
footing in the wet and confusion, and got out of the way fast. Victor had
pulled me to one side of the battlefield.
I hurt—my skin stung from the magic burns, or, for all I knew, from lightning
strikes. But even with all hell coming down, I did not draw Zay’s blade and go
in swinging.
I didn’t know whom we were fighting, other than Greyson and Chase, and I didn’t
know why. Everyone was throwing magic and weapons around. This had gone from a
fight against the storm to a fight against one another.
“Stay out of the way.” Victor turned and ran into the fray.
I wasn’t going to do anything until I knew my hands, my body, were my own. I
shook my hands, making sure my dad was not using them. It creeped me the hell
out when he did that.
You’re welcome
, his sardonic voice said in the middle of my head.
Shut up. And leave my body alone.
This isn’t your battle
, he said.
There is so much more you were meant
for. So much more you and I could do to make this right. Death isn’t the end,
nor life the beginning.
Save it for the encore
, I thought.
I am a part of this. My friends
are in there.
You do not know who your true friends are.
I ignored him because, really? Busy trying to figure out how to lend a hand
here, and the last time I’d let him tell me who my friends were, I was six. I
set a Disbursement, headache, and traced a glyph for Sight. The entire field
opened up like I’d just flipped the switch on a floodlight.
The scene was gruesome.
Several things were happening at once. On the compass points of the field, four
people had backed off, and now stood with their hands above their heads and
forward, feet spread for balance, in some kind of weird yoga pose that was
actually sustaining the flow of magic into the shield. The Georgia sisters were
three of them—I could tell because they each stood with one hand on their
staff, and one extended skyward—and I think Carl, the brother twin, was the
other. They were wet, shaking, and chanting, though I couldn’t hear their
words, and held their focus and concentration with grim robotic determination.
Inside that circle that reached to a domed height maybe six stories above us,
at least as high as the trees, was magic. Wild magic pounded in the sky beyond
the bubble and fluttered around the bubble like a bee to nectar.
I didn’t know what it looked like on the outside, but I could guess. I guessed
that it looked like a storm, a regular thunderstorm. Even the best magic users
wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to tap into the wild magic to cast spells like
Sight. So all they’d see was multicolored lightning rolling across the sky in
vaguely glyphlike shapes. There were probably strikes in other parts of the
town, caught by the Beckstrom Storm Rods, but the flow of magic here would be
mostly invisible. Magic is so fast, it cannot be seen by the naked eye. And
with plain old ordinary lightning blasting through the sky, I doubted anyone
even knew what was going down behind the dome of Illusion in St. Johns.