Magic on the Storm (28 page)

So long as the four magic users held their concentration and kept the dome
intact, this would never hit the news.
Inside the circle was a battlefield. Mostly, it looked like the magic users had
chosen two sides. The one against Chase and Greyson and the one for them. With
this many people fighting for Chase and Greyson, it was no wonder Greyson had
escaped.
And with this many people on their side, I considered them against me, and
responsible for Zayvion’s lying unconscious. I knew which side I belonged on.
The side with Maeve, Victor, Hayden, Sedra, Dane, Shame, and Terric.
Chase and Greyson worked together, Liddy standing close by them, and not doing
anything to stop them.
Over and over Chase called up gates for Greyson to leap through. He tore into
magic users, pinning them, and drinking the magic out of them. He was mostly
man now, wearing pants and no shirt, but still a wild thing, all muscle and
pale skin, his hair long, his eyes more human than they had been, but still
filled with an animal’s intelligence. No, the intelligence of a killer.
He attacked La, the other twin. She swung her scythe and magic so hard, it
should have cut his arm off. But it didn’t even nick him. He shoved hands into
her chest like he was digging for bones. He tipped his head back, the disk
pulsing silver green at his throat, and howled over her screams as he sucked
the magic out of her. Her twin, Carl, holding the east side of the dome, yelled
out too, but the dome did not waver. He endured.
Big Hayden was having nothing of it. He wore the bomber jacket, but the shotgun
and broadsword were no longer over his shoulder.
He fired the rifle at Greyson. Missed his head by an inch. Greyson ducked and
rolled, using the unconscious La as a shield. Hayden swung his sword, and a
sound wave pushed against my skin as if a hundred voices were calling out in a
chant, a prayer, a force. There was magic in that sword—I don’t know what kind,
but it was old. It wrapped around Greyson, dug into his muscles as he ran,
slowing him and leaving lines of blood behind. Then there was a gate, and
Greyson was through it.
Hayden was hot on his heels. Before the gate closed, Greyson grabbed a handful
of it—of the magic Chase used to create the gate—and threw it like a hand
grenade at Hayden.
Hayden sheathed his rifle, and caught most of the magic with his hand,
diffusing the magic so that it froze into a cloud of shattered glass that fell
and burned the grass at his feet.
Magic should not do what Greyson and Chase were doing with it. They were using
so much magic, they should be unconscious by now. Someone had to be bearing the
price of their magic use, but I didn’t know who it was, although it could be
the other magic users on their side acting as Proxy.
Or maybe more magic users somewhere else in the city were standing Proxy. How
far did this break in the Authority run? Were they fighting in Salem? In
Eugene? Was there an uprising in Washington? California? Or was this just a
local war?
I glanced at Chase. Stop her to stop Greyson. The flaw of that plan was that
Greyson had now drunk enough Life magic, light magic, to transmute back into
the form of a man. Which meant he had hands, and could cast magic as well as
any of us. But I knew he wouldn’t stay a man for long. Not without a constant
intake of magic.
Chase worked the southern end of the fight. Liddy had shifted to stand behind
her, one hand on her shoulder, the other drawing spells. Liddy whispered and
traced glyphs, pouring magic into Chase, providing her with the magic to give
to Greyson.
Liddy was a bad guy. Great. How was I going to get past the teacher of Death
magic to get to Chase?
We don’t need the Closer
, Dad said in my head.
All we need is the
beast, to take back what is mine.
Wrong
, I said.
We get the Closer, we get the beast. They’re Soul
Complements. They’re one. And she’s going to be easier to take down.
I glanced around for Jingo Jingo. He might be a freak, but he was good at what
he did.
Jingo Jingo was in a deadlock with Maeve. Jingo’s Death magic absorbed the
Blood magic Maeve threw at him, sucked it down like a well with no end. He
strolled toward her, almost as easy as a Sunday walk, nodding as if he
understood why she was fighting him, and maybe would regret killing her. I
think I heard him humming a song, an old gospel about babies and the devil and
bones. Maeve wove spells with blood and blade, not about to back down.
Sedra, nearby, was locked in a cage work of magic like nothing I’d ever seen.
It had to be technology, something my dad would have built.
Maybe it wasn’t just the disks the Authority had broken into the lab for. Maybe
they’d come in and demanded that cage too.
That wasn’t in the lab
, Dad said.
I developed it years ago. It was
taken from me years ago.
Like something out of Victorian clockwork, the cage was a collection of gears
and glyphs and metal twisted into the shape of holding spells. It hinged in
every section, as if it could be shaped into any spell, and shaped around any
person.
Holy shit. It was a physical carrier of magic, like the disks, but specific to
single spells.
This was part of what my dad had been working on. Not just the conduits of
magic that could fuel the city. Not just the disks that worked as batteries.
But a metal or some other compound that could be shaped into a spell and
become
that spell until the day the magic died.
Using this would permanently change the world.
The cage was constricting, pressing in on Sedra’s clothes and moving closer. It
was going to crush her to death.
What the hell kind of tech were you making?
I thought at my dad.
Do not vilify that which you do not know. All great things can be used for
war or peace.
The cage had Sedra frozen completely. She didn’t so much as move a hand or
speak a word.
Dane, her bodyguard, was doing what he could to hold a slowing spell around
her. It kept the cage from collapsing in on her, but he couldn’t do anything
else.
Shame and Terric fought back-to-back, moving as if they could read each other’s
minds. It was not just Greyson and Chase and Jingo Jingo and Liddy causing
problems. Mike wore the glowing glyph gloves and threw lightning around like it
was rice at a wedding. Shame and Terric were counteracting his constant
barrage.
La was down. So was Romero. Hayden had finally pinned Greyson back against the
wall of magic where Chase couldn’t get to him. Greyson was no slouch. He cast
magic, light and dark, Life and Death, at the big man. He forced Hayden to
spend so much effort blocking, Grounding, or containing magic, he was not
making any headway against Greyson.
If it hadn’t been real, if it hadn’t been my friends’ lives on the line, this
scene might be beautiful for the amazing skill. Greyson was liquid silver and
shadow dancing with the saber he’d found, Chase, his pale, blood-lipped lover,
feeding him the power to fight.
Hayden, a mountain of power and precision, took blows that would cripple a
lesser man. Dane wove incredible, complicated lacework spells to keep Sedra
from being crushed, while Jingo Jingo supped on Maeve’s Blood magic like a man
with a hunger that had no end.
Maeve’s spells painted quick, sensual strokes of Blood magic that wrapped
deadly vines around Jingo’s soul. Shame and Terric, brothers, Complements,
warriors, blades, ax, magic, shouted curses and synchronized death.
It was Jingo who broke the stalemate between the two factions.
He stopped strolling toward Maeve, stopped singing.
He put one hand over his heart and shook his head. I didn’t know if it was an
apology or a salute. But when he lifted his hand, there was blood on his palm.
And a disk.
He lifted his hand from his heart and pointed the disk at Maeve.
He twisted the spell she had anchored into him, and sent it back on her. Mixed
with his blood. Mixed with Death magic. Mixed with the magic in the disk. All
the souls of the ghostly children who clung to him were set free.
They screamed through the air, rabid, feral, tearing into Maeve like a mob of
crows. They covered her, clawing, biting, and lifted her off the ground.
Jingo slashed the disk downward. The ghosts dropped Maeve to the ground, but
clung to her with tiny hands and hungry mouths.
Maeve yelled. Pain. Agony. She could not move to break the spell. Could not
free herself of the children’s souls. And those souls were drinking her dry.
Shame saw it. Terric saw it. Hayden saw it.
And so did I.
Shame ran for her.
So did Hayden.
Greyson ran too. To Chase. To the gate she opened for him. Closed for him. Then
opened again. Behind Maeve.
Greyson leaped out of the gate and was on Maeve. He drank down the magic around
her, lapped up the children’s souls and all the magic they contained.
Hayden and Shame yelled out. They were almost there. Almost close enough.
Greyson stood, faced Jingo Jingo. And disgorged the children’s magic, and
more—all the magic he had taken from all the people he’d been fighting—straight
at Jingo Jingo.
For a second my heart soared. Maybe Chase had told Greyson that Jingo was a
freak. Maybe they were on the good guys’ side. Our side.
But Jingo Jingo took that magic, all of it, into the disk in his hand, mixed
with his blood, and every discipline and expression of magic. His eyes were
wide, desperate, as if this one thing, this last thing, was his only chance. He
pointed the disk at the pile of disks and the crystal in the center of the
field.
He chanted a spell that made my ears hurt.
Light seared through the air—a hot talon carving a hole through space. Light
burst out of the opening, swirled with metallic colors reflected on my arm. A
gate between life and death opened.
More than opened, the gate had been made real. Solid. It was made of iron and
stone and glass. And magic.
I glimpsed a figure standing in the gate, ghostly thin. A fair-haired boy with
eyes as blue as summer. Cody Miller. The Hand who had pulled magic through my
bones, the boy who was still alive, and currently living with my friend Nola on
her farm in Burns. The boy who had eyes too much like Sedra’s eyes. Too much
like the eyes of Mikhail, the dead leader of the Authority.
It wasn’t all of Cody—his mind had been Closed by Zayvion because he had been
deemed too dangerous to use magic. So while his body, and part of his mind, did
live with Nola, this part of him, a piece of his soul, a piece of his spirit,
his mind, that could use magic, was in this gate between life and death. He’d
jumped into the gate when I had been tested into the Authority. He had
sacrificed himself to keep the gate closed. And to keep Mikhail, the Hungers,
and other horrors of magic out of the living world.
He looked out across the scene. And locked eyes with me.
I can’t
, he
mouthed. I am good at reading lips. His eyes were filled with sorrow, but also
with anger.
I can’t stop this anymore. You have to do it.
He rocked forward, as if something huge had hit him from behind, but all I
could see behind him was a swirl of colors that matched the light from the
gate.
He rocked again. And then I saw what bore down upon him. Eyes. Fangs. Claws.
The Hungers.
He was holding them back. Keeping them from entering our world, just as he had
kept the gate closed. But now the gate was open, and
real
, he couldn’t
hold on any longer.
We’d fought the Hungers before, when the gate had opened during my test. Even
with all the magic users gathered and on the same side, thank you, we’d nearly
lost. I didn’t have any hope we would win this time.
All this, all the things I’d seen, had taken up maybe a minute. But it felt
like years. I was running, to save Maeve, to try to pull Greyson off her. Shame
was still running too.
Hayden got there first. He’d sheathed his sword. Grabbed Greyson by the throat
and tore him off Maeve’s still body. Pinning Greyson to the ground, Hayden
pounded the hell out of him.
Chase yelled out. And Greyson smiled through bloody lips and broken face.
Another gate opened—one of Chase’s gates. Not beside Greyson. Below him. It
swallowed Greyson and Hayden. Chase closed it. I did not see where they
reappeared. I didn’t have time to look.
Shame, at a dead run, threw everything he had at Jingo Jingo. Jingo, his hand
still extended to keep the gate open, staggered.
Shame was good. A master. Even though he had been Jingo Jingo’s student.
Jingo turned, faced Shame. Looked surprised. Maybe he didn’t know that his
student had become so skilled. This would be the end of one of them—that, I
knew.
Shame still looked like hell. He’d added a cut across his cheek and a bruise
over one eye, and his skin was still sunken against bone. He looked like the
walking dead. Like at any moment he would fall. But his eyes told me that it was
not the strength of his body that was fueling him.
Yes, one of them would fall. But from the fury pouring out of Shame, it wasn’t
going to be him.
Shame chanted. He pulled his hands, a blade in each, across his chest, his head
tipped down so that only his eyes burned through the ragged, bloodstained
curtain of his hair. He looked like a dark angel, head bowed in prayer. And
maybe he was. The grass at his feet crackled and seared brown, dead, and began
to smoke. He was drawing energy, life energy, out of everything in his range.
It was the way of Death magic, a transference of energy.
Jingo Jingo knew it too. He’d taught him.
“Don’t, boy,” he shouted. “You don’t know what’s at stake here. You don’t
understand what we could lose.”
“Fuck,” Shame said, “you.”
He pulled his arms open, as if embracing all the life, all the pain, all the
death and magic, in the circle.
I made it to Maeve. I had to pull her out of the way before Shame drank her
down too.
I touched her face. She was cold. Too cold, even in the falling rain. I
couldn’t tell if she was breathing and didn’t have time to wonder whether
moving her would kill her. I picked her up, not easy, but I was in shape, and
adrenaline gave me strength and desperation. Good enough.
I dragged her away, though there was no safe place, finally stopped near one of
the Georgia sisters who was holding the east side of the Illusion barrier. The
sister, the youngest, I thought, did not look down at me. Did not break out of
her hypnotic trance.