Magic to the Bone (4 page)

A red shape streaked out from the dark underbrush and threw itself between Alek and his prey. A fox, one that turned into a girl even as he twisted to avoid crushing Harper.

“Alek, don’t,” she said, panting. Her green eyes were wide, her skin sweaty, and her hair matted to her head.

Alek growled. What was she thinking? She was supposed to be farther behind him, watching his
retreat to make sure he wasn’t followed. Not nearly on top of him like this. And definitely not stopping him from preventing this wolf from bringing all its buddies to the fray.

Harper turned to the wolf, giving her back to Alek. He growled and moved sideways, ready to strike.

“Shift,” Harper said to the wolf.

To Alek’s shock, the wolf obeyed. A thin young man wearing cargo pants and a black
tee-shirt crouched warily in the snow, his brown eyes darting from Harper to Alek and back again.

“This is the guy who saved me,” Harper said quietly, her gaze still fixed on the wolf shifter. “I owe him.”

“You should both get far away from here,” the wolf shifter whispered, glancing behind him and then again at Alek. Fear thinned his voice and turned his scent sour. He was terrified, but not
of Alek or Harper.

Alek crouched, unable to decide if he should shift. He had questions for this man, but they were still in patrol range of the clearing, and if this wolf had doubled back, who knew what the others might be up to now that they had a unicorn to guard? They were close enough that shifter hearing might pick up sounds of a fight or even of normal voices.

“Go,” Harper hissed. “Go,
and we’re even. You understand?”

“Got it,” the wolf said.

Alek made his decision. He shifted, shivering in the blast of cold as his fur left him and was replaced with a wholly inadequate wool sweater.

“Wait,” he said, as softly as he could. “The unicorn?”

The wolf licked his lips and shook his head. “You don’t want to get involved. Get out. This ain’t a fight anybody can win, believe me.”

“Unicorn?” Harper said, more loudly than she should have.

Alek winced and brought a finger to his lips. She mouthed “sorry” at him.

“Go,” the wolf said, as though he had any say in the matter and it were
their
life
he
was sparing.

Which, Alek thought, was fair enough at this point. The wolf shifter could have raised the alarm, but was choosing not to. The less charitable voice inside whispered
that it was because the moment the wolf called for help, he must know that Alek would kill him.

Alek nodded and reached for his tiger again. Warm fur enveloped him. He knew what he needed to know now. The wolf’s response had confirmed what Alek thought he’d seen. Samir had a unicorn. The wolf’s fear made it very likely the ritual was at hand. He jerked his head at Harper and she shifted, following
him away from the clearing. They took a winding path back to their own camp, careful to leave as little trail as they could.

Alek looked up at the steel and smoke sky, and sent another silent call for his mate. Time was up. Soon, all too soon, it would be too late for Jade to save them.

I thought that I’d been training to take on Samir before, working with Alek and my friends to get stronger, gain more control of my magic. I’d thought wrong. Compared to Ash’s training, what I’d been doing before was more like a toddler waving a piece of grass around pretending it was a sword.

Ash made me
use
my magic. Dawn till dark and often into the night. But it wasn’t just the use of
magic; it was the thinking he made me do behind it. We spent as much time talking as we did with him trying to think up new ways to throw magic at me.

“You have patterns you are comfortable with,” Ash said. “Things you fall back on, things that come more easily to you.”

“Is that bad?” I asked. I was too predictable, apparently. I leaned back in the grass and looked up at the moonless sky. There
was a seductive peace to this place that I fought in my mind. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t tarry. I had to learn what I must and get back to my friends.

“It is, and it isn’t. Think of it like riding a horse. The more you do it, the less you have to think about the parts, about how to stay on the horse, how to communicate where to go.”

“Muscle memory,” I said. “That’s good, right?”

Ash chuckled.
“It is, and it isn’t.”

“Gee, thanks.” I sat up and glared at him.

“It makes some things your go-to plan, and lets you do them quickly. It also means you are predictable. I know that no matter what I do, you will likely use a shield to ward off an attack and then try an offensive that is built on raw power, lightning or fire.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I’ve been trying different things. I
nearly knocked you out of the sky with that cyclone I made.”

“Except you were too focused on it, so it made you slow. Practice it a hundred more times, and perhaps you can do it when the pressure is on.”

That spell had taken a lot out of me, especially multitasking to keep my defenses up and manipulate time around me in small ways to speed my body and reactions. I was glad that I could still
do that, that I still had Tess’s memories to guide me. No more full on time travel, though. She’d been right about that. I felt way more powerful than I ever had, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try that shit again.

Though I would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant stopping Samir from killing everyone. Again.

Hopefully it would never come to that.

“I don’t have time. Besides, when do I get
to turn into a dragon? Then I can just eat him.” I grinned.

“You can’t,” Ash said.

“I can’t be a dragon?” I hoped I was misunderstanding him. He’d said I was a dragon. He’d said I could transform when I was ready. I felt pretty fucking ready.

“You can choose a dragon form here in the Veil,” Ash said, holding up a hand to stop my further protest. “But out there, in the mortal world, you will
not be able to transform.”

“You were planning to tell me that when?” Okay. No dragon form. Damn. There went my brilliant plan of eating Samir, heart and all.

Ash sighed. His dark eyes glinted in the light shining out from the open cabin door. He was quiet for a long moment, something I was growing used to. My father liked to think things through. I’d learned not to interrupt. There was no point
in being impatient with Ash. It was about as useful as wishing the tide would come in more quickly.

“I tell you things as you need them,” Ash said. “Focus. You have what you are good at. You are not unique in this.”

I started to ask what that meant and then closed my mouth. I had things I fell back on, things I did because they came more naturally. Shielding, throwing more elemental magic around,
pulling ideas from the D&D spellbook and morphing them into my own thing. I was not a creature of finesse or subtlety, not like…

“D’oh!” I said. “Right. Samir has his habits, too.” I knew this, of course; I just hadn’t really thought it through. It was how I’d almost beaten him the first time. Using his weaknesses, his predictable desire to personally destroy me to get close to him.

I could
have killed him then, even as my heart beat in his hand. It just would have cost everyone I loved. Too heavy a coin.

Saving them had still cost me too much. Steve. Max. Harper.

“Fight Samir,” Ash said gently. “Not yourself. What is he good at? What will he fall back to when the pressure is on him?”

I closed my eyes and made myself face my memories and all the sneaky emotional demons lurking
there.

“He likes to make things,” I said. “He’s very good at objects, putting power into things. He uses people and his vast wealth, too. He doesn’t like to fight head-on unless he’s utterly sure of victory.”

“And when he is left no choice? When he fights face to face?”

I bit my lip as I wrapped my arms around my knees. In my mind, Wolf roused and growled, pacing the silver circle around my
deepest memories.

“Exploding stones, weapons. That dagger, the Alpha and Omega, was originally his, though he only had one half, thank the Universe. He’ll always fight with back-up and weapons. He doesn’t believe in the concept of a fair fight.” I opened my eyes and looked at my father.

“We’ll practice your defense against objects, then.” Ash nodded to himself. “You’ll have to try to anticipate
what he’ll do, where to get to him, perhaps remove his allies.”

I couldn’t decide if the tightness in my throat was from wanting to laugh or to cry.

“Fat chance,” I muttered. “He’s always one step ahead, at the least. Why can’t you come with me? He wouldn’t be able to predict you.”

I’d asked that question already, and I knew that Ash’s response wouldn’t change. But damn it would be so much
easier with his help.

“Kiddo, you know I can’t. I’ve interfered enough. I shouldn’t even been in the mortal world. Every moment I spend there with my full power weakens the Seal.”

“I know, I know. Magic apocalypse bad. It still sucks. I don’t know if I can play his game, if I can beat him when he’s the one always calling all the shots.”

“Don’t like the game? Change the rules,” Ash said with
a loose-shouldered shrug. “Be predictable, until you aren’t.”

“Know what would be unpredictable?” I said with a sly smile. “Turning into a fucking dragon.”

Ash laughed. “Irrepressible kid. Ain’t going to happen, not with the Seals in place, which is a damn good thing. But perhaps you are ready to pick a form here, and perhaps we can figure out a way for you to incorporate some of its strengths
into your abilities outside the Veil.”

“Squee!” I said, jumping to my feet.

“Squee? Who says that?” Ash shook his head.

“Me, so focus. How do I turn into a dragon?” I was so ready I couldn’t even come up with a simile in my head for how ready I was.

“You have to pick a form first. Solidify it in your mind. Once you turn, you’ll only ever have the shape you pick, and your human one, of course.”

“Can it be any dragon?” Images flashed through my head, from Disney-style Maleficent to Ash’s own more Asian take, and everything between. I knew dragons. Like any proper nerd, I was obsessed with dragons.

“Doesn’t even have to be a dragon, if you really want something else. The more complex, the more difficult the transformation, however.”

“Wait, I could be like a wolf or a tiger or something?”
I tipped my head sideways and made a face at him. “Where’s the point in that?”

“Dragon is a concept. A word given to our kind by mortals. It has no more meaning than why we call apples apples or think the sky is blue,” Ash said.

I held up a hand to forestall another long conversation on the nature of magic and what Ash called the Pattern. Apparently that was what I’d glimpsed in my poison-vision,
or at least, from how Ash explained it, what my mind had interpreted the data to mean, because what I’d seen was the very foundation of the entire universe and the magic coursing through it.

That magic-theory stuff made my head hurt. I couldn’t do anything with it, in the end, except the magic-using part. But thinking about it as a tapestry wasn’t useful. I preferred to stick with my feeling
of magic, the sensation that it was more like water or electricity pulsing through my veins. I was no weaver. I couldn’t even knit.

“So you chose your dragon form?” I asked.

“No,” Ash said. “I was born that way. I took the form of my mother, as you took the form of your mother.”

Oh. That actually made some kind of sense. It was weird to think of him as having a mother. Weird to think I had
a grandmother who was a dragon. I wanted to ask about her, but pushed the questions aside. Knowing about extended family wouldn’t help me defeat Samir.

“So this,” I said, waving my hand up and down to indicate his current human shape, “That’s the form you chose, the way I have to choose my alternate shape?”

“Yes. I look much like the first human I met who didn’t run from me in fear. He told
great jokes and was very wise. Human form seemed useful in many ways, and I liked humans more than most of our kind. So when I chose a form, I modeled myself after him.”

“Good thing you didn’t get fascinated by a sheep, eh?”

“Funny,” he said. “It’s late. You should rest.”

“Take the bed for once,” I said. “I’m gonna grab a blanket and come back out here.” I had to think, and I wanted the dark
and the quiet.

Ash, being Ash, seemed to understand this without needing clarification. I grabbed a blanket and went a little distance from the cabin. It wasn’t cold in this place, but the warmth of the blanket was still comforting and it kept the grass from poking me in the butt.

So I wouldn’t be able to transform outside the Veil. That was pretty disappointing. I’d gone my whole life so far
without being anything but me, so I guessed I could get over it.

Still. I wanted to pick a form. To come fully into whatever I really was. I lay back in the grass and thought about my favorite dragon-y things.

Prismatic dragons were pretty boss. I mean, I could be epic level at this point, right? When adding a template, why go half-assed about it? But I didn’t really want to be a European type
dragon. They seemed clunky, plus I was kind of not European. By that logic though, I wasn’t Asian either. But I had precedent for that, since my father had a more snakelike form. With that cool wolf-type head.