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.
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.
br /> 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 c
rackled 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.
That kind of focus was crazy. They should have had her Ground for the group. It was a good thing Sedra hadn’t asked me to hold the Illusion. I would have dropped that shit long ago.
I knelt and placed my hand on Maeve’s chest. Flashbacks rocked through me. Of Zayvion lying still, of a fight I could not win raging around me, of watching him cross into death. I tried to push it away, tried not to panic. Maeve’s heart beat, strong and even. She was breathing.
I didn’t know if I could heal her. With the wild magic pouring through the air, I wasn’t sure if I should even try. I might kill her.
I glanced back at Shame.
Things were not going well. Jingo Jingo smiled, a flash of white across his dark face, and I added another image to my nightmare list. He shook his head slowly, pitying Shame.
Shame’s hands shook as he cast the next spell. A spell Jingo Jingo batted aside and countered with something that sent Shame to his knees.
Where was Terric? Where was the cavalry? There didn’t seem to be any end to the storm, to the magic, to the fallen.