What the hell? It was a small cut, but blood ran freely from it.
Blood to blood, Allison.
I didn’t know what he was talking about, or why it mattered. He drew on the magic in the air, maybe used some of the magic in me, and I felt the tight, intimate tingling of a Truth spell spread through me, spread between us.
Zayvion is locked on the other side of death, my father said, and I felt the truth of it like a fire against my bones.
I thought Truth spells were bad on the outside. Having someone inside of my head bonding through Truth hurt. But it was very, very clear that my father was not lying.
I believe I can free him and send his soul back to his body, back into life. If you regain the parts of me Greyson now holds. And if I cross over into death to find him now. His time there is at an end. He is dying.
I didn’t want to hear that, didn’t want to feel that truth burning through me.
We can do it later. After the battle. After we win. You can help me later. I didn’t care how desperate I sounded. He already knew what I was feeling. Truth spells worked both ways.
No, I cannot.
He broke the Truth spell, or uncast it, or did whatever it is a dead guy who can still freaking cast magic from inside someone else’s freaking body can do.
I opened my mouth to curse, but didn’t have time. More and more creatures continued to pour out of the gate. Too many for the magic users to deal with, too many to hope to defeat, too many to let loose into the city.
Victor had carved his way across the field to the front of the gate, his hands lifted in a complicated glyph that would close it. Nikolai, the good-looking Russian Closer, stood next to him, killing the beasts that came too near, holding a Shield of magic so that Victor could do his work.
Close the gate. So that there were no more beasts loose in the world.
Close the gate. And trap Zayvion.
Close the gate. Sealing Zayvion’s death.
Maeve was still on the ground, unconscious, but Sunny knelt next to her, keeping the beasts away with wicked knives.
Shame was also on the ground.
Terric had destroyed everything between him and Shame, and beheaded and de-limbed the Hunger that had attacked Shame. Terric now crouched next to Shame, one hand on his chest, glowing with magic that sank into Shame and poured out of him into the ground, as if Shame were a sieve, broken, unable to carry magic, life, breath.
I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Terric was crying, his teeth bared in fury, his ax raised and crackling with black licks of magic as creatures circled them, came too close, and died on the edge of his blade. The blood on one side of his face was finger-painted in the glyph for life and I knew it had been traced there by Shame.
Shame was dying. Maybe he was already dead. I didn’t have the wrist cuff. I couldn’t tell if his heart still beat.
The gate was about to close. There was no more time to make good decisions. There was only time to make a decision.
Whom to save?
Zayvion had once told me I was not a killer. I’d proved him wrong. I had killed. But right now, it was life I was trying to hold on to.
I ran toward Greyson, caught the attention of too many creatures, and hacked my way through them. Months of training and sheer fury drove me on, Zayvion’s sword drinking down the magic, the energy, of the beasts. It was draining me, but I was pulling on magic from the sky, wild magic that licked and bloomed and caught fire in my blood, my bones, and fed me strength.
I channeled the storm. And now the storm raged in me.
Too bad for the beasts. Too bad for anyone in my way.
Closer, my father said.
I made ground as things born of death’s nightmares leaped at me, tearing at my magic, tearing at my flesh. Something, a claw or a fang, got through, sliced my thigh. Something else raked down my back. I felt the hot pump of blood mix with the hard-falling rain.
Then I was on Greyson.
Still pinned beneath Stone, he was more man than he had been. And I knew why. Chase lay next to him, frozen, her hand clasped with his. She was alive. I thought she was. And she was pouring her life out to sustain his.
Sometimes love made you stronger. And sometimes it made you crazy.
Greyson looked up at me. “There is still hope.”
“Not for you. Give me back my father, you bastard.” I swung the sword.
My father shifted in my head, stretched like electricity crackling behind my eyes. He pushed at my brain, my mind, my head.
My sword halted midswing.
My father’s ghost stood next to me, his hand blocking my blade. “Taking his life with this blade will kill you,” he said, from outside my mind.
I didn’t care. I had a lot of fury and magic holding me up. But there was also a lot of screaming in the back of my head that had been going on for a while. I knew I was ignoring a lot of pain. Maybe ignoring too much pain.
“Get out of my way,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Allison.” My father stepped closer to me. I caught the scent of him, wintergreen and leather. His voice was gentle. “There is no time for revenge. Not if you want life to win.”
How much time did it take to kill someone?
And that was when I felt it. The storm was passing, the rain lifting. Wild storms ended as quickly as they hit. Soon there would be no more wild magic to hold me up. I glanced up, away at the city, crouched in magicless darkness.
Lights flickered on, blazed. Magic caught again like a flame to a wick, and exhaled life and safety into the city. We had done it. We had channeled the wild magic away from the city. The storm was passing.
More than that, the wells and networks were filling fast. I could feel the deep tingle of familiar magic wrapping up inside me again, a heavy warm weight that stretched out against my skin, all pleasure, no pain.
I could easily access that magic, even out here in magicless St. Johns. But it was obvious Chase, lying still, eyes closed, hand clasped with Greyson’s at my feet, struggled to reach magic. To keep him alive.
My father let go of the sword, and bent over Greyson.
Stone growled. My father paid no attention to him. Instead, Dad traced a glyph in the air, a serpentine line that glowed pure white gold. He caught it up on his hands, where it pressed into place like gauntlets a king might wear. My father glowed with that light, as if the magic wrapped him in its vestments.
And then he pressed his hand into Greyson’s head.
Yes. Into.
Greyson went absolutely still, and Dad said something that sounded like an old language. A blessing more than a curse.
The gold lines of magic grew stronger and filled my dad with more light. He stood, and was more solid than he had been, though I could still see Stone and Greyson through him.
He regarded me for a moment. “Good-bye, daughter.” He turned toward the gate.
A rumble shook the ground. I turned. The gate, trapped by Victor’s spells, began to collapse.
Hayden was cutting a swath through the beasts toward us. He’d be here, on top of Greyson and Chase, in a second.
And out of the corner of my eye, I saw Terric stand and swing his ax, killing another beast, while he poured magic, less than before, into Shame. Terric was exhausted. The easy magic, the wild magic, was nearly gone.
Without it, Shame would die.
I spun, Zay’s sword still in my hand, and ran for the center of the field, for the pile of broken, blown-apart disks that no longer held magic, where the gate still shimmered in the air, growing smaller as Victor wrapped it in massive lines of magic that webbed it so that no more creatures poured out.
I didn’t want the disks. I wanted the crystal. Found it, glowing pink with magic beneath the burnt silver disks. I picked it up and could almost taste the sweetness of the full, heavy magic it carried like a perfume on the back of my throat.
“Terric!” I yelled.
He glanced over. I threw the crystal to him, willing it with
mind and magic to find him, reach him. He caught it with the hand that was channeling magic, life, into Shame.
His eyes widened. And then he was on his knees, his ax discarded at his side, pressing the crystal to Shame’s chest with both hands, as if it were a new heart for a broken toy. He bent and pressed his forehead to Shame’s, whispering to him.
No time.
My father strode toward the gate. Close enough he could step through, but Victor’s lines blocked him.
“He must let me pass,” my father said.
Victor was focused, caught in a trance of sheer will, sweat peppering his face, his arms shaking as he chanted the spell and forced the gate between life and death to close. He was wielding a hell of a lot of magic with very little resources.
He did not see my dad. He did not know he was sealing Zayvion’s death forever.
There was no cavalry to come to our rescue.
But I didn’t need a cavalry to save Zayvion.
I strode over to Victor. My teacher, Zayvion’s teacher, who might even have been a father figure to Zay. I put my hand on his shoulder and used Influence so that he would understand me and obey.
“Wait until I pass through. Then close the gate behind me.”
“Allie,” he gasped. “It is suicide.”
“Zayvion is the guardian of the gates and I am his Soul Complement. No one’s going to tell me I can’t bring him home.”
Someone yelled. I thought it was Shame. He had told me I couldn’t go anywhere without him.
He was wrong.
I glanced over my shoulder. Shame was barely standing, eyes wide in horror or anger, one hand extended toward me. Terric stood behind him, one hand clasped with his, the other arm wrapped around Shame’s waist, holding him up, holding him back.
“Allie,” Shame yelled. “Don’t!”
I didn’t listen. I held up one hand. A wave. A farewell, and I turned away. Shame was in good hands. Maybe the best hands he could be in. Terric’s hands.
If there was ever going to be a chance to bring Zayvion back, it was now.
The shadow of a figure in flight flashed above me. Stone.
The big rock landed with surprising grace at my side.
I sheathed Zay’s sword across my back, and glanced down at Stone, all muscle and wing and fangs. He tipped his head to look up at me, ears perked into triangles.
“Stay,” I said. “I have work to do.”
Stone growled, then crooned like an out-of-tune pipe organ. His wings pressed against his back and he took a step toward the gate.
Fine. I was running out of time. I didn’t know if Stone could walk into death and return alive. Hells, I didn’t know if I could walk into death and come out alive. Didn’t know if I could find Zay’s soul and drag it back with me into the living world.
But I sure as hell was going to find out.
“Are you ready?” I asked my dad.
He frowned. “Where are you going?”
“To save my man.” I put my hand down on Stone’s head. My father smiled. I didn’t know why. Maybe he was angry.
“No,” he said, reading my thoughts. “Impressed. You know you can’t survive in there without me.”
“I didn’t say I was going alone.” I didn’t trust him. Sure, he talked a nice Truth spell, but once on the other side, he might change his mind about saving Zayvion. I wouldn’t chance that.
Dad took his place at my right, and Stone stood at my left. Without another look back, I walked through the gates of death.
Read on for an exciting excerpt from
Devon Monk’s next Allie Beckstrom novel,
MAGIC AT THE GATE
Coming in November 2010 from Roc
Death had seen better days. Vacant, crumbling buildings, a brown-red sky, and slick pools of black oil stretching out along the sidewalk of what I was pretty sure was supposed to be Burnside Boulevard. The city—and it was very clear we were in Portland—looked like a dump. If this was death, I wanted to meet the marketing team that had dreamed up both the fluffy-cloud-golden-harp thing and the eternal-fires-of-burning-hell shtick.
Because this place was broken and empty. Achingly so.
“Allison?” my father, next to me, said.
He was fully solid now, no longer ghostlike at all. A little taller than I, gray hair, wearing a business suit with a lavender handkerchief in the pocket. Death didn’t seem to bother him one bit.
And it shouldn’t have. He belonged here.
He squeezed my arm, his eyes flicking back and forth, searching the details of my face. “Can you breathe?”
Of all the dumb questions. “Of course I can breathe. Let go of me.”
His lips pressed together in a thin line and the familiar anger clouded his eyes. He pulled his hand away from my arm.
There was no air. No air in my lungs, and none to breathe. I tried not to panic, but, hey, this was death. I knew I’d be lucky to get out of here alive. And I had to get out of here alive. Zayvion was here, somewhere, his soul sent here, his body in life, in a coma.
This was my one chance, my only chance, to save him.
The wild-magic storm might have passed, but the very real danger of my never seeing Zayvion’s beautiful eyes, hearing his gentle voice, feeling his touch, set off a sharp panic in my chest.
Well, that and not being able to breathe.
Dad put his left hand in his pocket, tucking away something. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and watched me gasp. Stone-cold, that man.
I shut my mouth and glared. Yes, I was that stubborn. My vision darkened at the edges.
Could you pass out in death? I was about to find out.
Stone growled and stepped toward Dad, fangs bared. That’s my boy. Stone’s normally dark gray body was now black, shot through with lightning flecks of blue and green and pink, as if he were made of obsidian with opal running beneath the glassy surface. He shone, his eyes glowing a deep amber.
“Touch the Animate,” Dad said. “You should be able to breathe again.”
Since it was beginning to dawn on me that passing out and leaving my dad conscious might be a really stupid idea, I put my hand on Stone’s head.
Air—good . . . well, if not good, serviceable, smelly air—filled my lungs. I hacked like a smoker on a three-day bender. My lungs hurt.
“You are in death.” Dad hit lecture mode from word one. “A living being crossed into death. There is so little chance you could have survived that, Allison. No one can step into death if they are fully alive. And yet here you stand. It does make me curious. What part of you is dead, my daughter?”
I didn’t know. My sense of humor, maybe? My tolerance for his being a jerk? Or maybe because my Soul Complement was in a coma and his soul was already in death—that counted. I was too busy coughing and trying to breathe to be philosophical.
He shook his head, dismissing the question as easily as he dismissed me. “To survive you will need to stay in contact with something that is neither fully alive nor completely dead. Something that exists in a between state. A filter between life and death.”
“You’re dead.” I finally managed to exhale. “All dead. Why could I breathe when you touched me?”
“That answer is complicated.” He looked up and down the street, then at the building next to us, as if getting his bearings, and started walking down the street.
I followed him, and Stone somehow sensed the need to stay under my hand. There was no one on the streets with us, no wind, no rain. When I glanced up, it was nothing but terra-cotta sky and hard white light.
“Tell me you’re dead,” I said.
“Very much so. That doesn’t mean I’m not without resources.”
Which meant part of him, some of him somewhere, was alive. Great. I did not trust my dad. I never had. For good reason. And that very calm, trustworthy face he was wearing made me twitchy.
“Where are you alive? Why?” I asked. “Who’s helping you?”
“That is not important.” br />
“Yes, it is. What is your angle in all this, Dad? I have lost track of whose side you’re on.”
“I am on magic’s side. To see that it falls into the right hands. My motives are not yours to question.”
“I’ll question your motives until the day I die. Again. For reals.”
“This is real,” he said quietly. “Very real. If you are to survive, you need to put your stubbornness aside and listen to me.”
“Oh, I just love that idea.”
“Love it or not, your options are limited. Living flesh does not travel well in the world of death. I believe if you stay in contact with the Animate, it will filter the . . . irritants of death long enough for you to accomplish your task.”
He made it sound as if he were teaching me the ABC’s and knew there was no way I’d ever make it to Q.
He stopped and glanced back down the street the way we’d come. “Faster would be better.”
He grabbed my arm and propelled me down an alley. I shook free of him, my other hand still on Stone’s head, and looked over my shoulder.
Watercolor people. And not the nice kind. Unlike the other Veiled I had seen in life, these ghostly people barely resembled people. With their twisted bodies and sagging faces, they resembled movie zombies more than ghosts. They also looked solid.
And hungry.
Stone growled.
The Veiled heard him, turned our way, sniffing, scenting, crooked hands tracing half-formed glyphs, as if they could use magic to find us.
“Veiled?” I asked.
“Quiet,” Dad said.
Stone’s ears flattened. He stopped making noise but his lips were pulled back to expose a row of sharp teeth and fangs.
Dad traced a glyph in the air and magic followed in a solid gold line at his fingertips. I wasn’t using Sight, yet magic was clearly visible. That wasn’t how it worked in life. Magic was too fast to be visible. Here, it was slow and fluid.
He finished the glyph. Camouflage glittered in the air like a filigreed screen. He whispered a word and the glyph stretched and widened, creating a swirling shell around us. I swallowed, but could not taste anything. That was different from in life too. Magic didn’t smell or taste here.