Magic Without Mercy

  He tipped his head up, looked over at Davy. “I thought I’d lose him. My skills… well, they aren’t what they used to be since the Authority Closed me, are they?” He gave Zayvion a sardonic smile.

  Zayvion cracked his knuckles, a promise to bruise up the other side of Collins’ face if he didn’t get on with the explanation.

  “This warehouse is built to focus magic,” he said.

  That would explain the girders and ornate crisscrossed metal rafters.

  “And that was something I could work with to help Davy. So I made a decision.”

  “Without me,” I said.

  “I couldn’t find you. And even if I had told your Hounds to find you, it would have been too late for Davy. I had a matter of minutes to do what needed to be done, Allison, not a matter of hours. It was because of you that I did what I did. You were my inspiration. The magic that marks you”—he pointed toward my right arm, to the ribbons of color, of magic, there—“suggested I could do this.”

  “Do what? Turn Davy into a… into a…”

  “Living Veiled?” Collins suggested.

  Shame exhaled a curse. I just nodded. “Is that what he is now? A dead man? Half ghost, half alive?”

  “No. Not exactly.” Collins took a step toward me.

  “Stay where you are,” Shame said.

  Collins glanced at Shame’s gun, then crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “I created a Containment spell, drew magic into it, filtered through several layers of spells and tech, and cast it around Davy and myself. I also reconfigured the equipment, drawing upon several delicate spells at once. Dozens,” he added quietly. “Dozens of spells.”

  I suddenly realized he was more than just bruised up—he was exhausted. He had paid the price of pain for each of those spells he’d used on Davy. I was actually impressed. When the Authority had Closed him, they’d taken away his memories of how to use magic. Everything he did with magic now, he had had to learn from scratch. And I had to admit some of it was pretty genius.

  “I had to reroute the paths the magic was already burning through his body. Draw it out of his vital systems, and give it a place to flow. It had to have a place to complete its task, and I needed to give it that place.” He paused, staring at the bed. I didn’t think he saw Davy there. Or maybe he saw him in a way none of the rest of us ever would.

  “Feed a fever,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Fever,” he said. “Extinguish it with ice, or burn it out with fire. Ice wasn’t working; stopping the magic wasn’t working. So I poured magic into Davy, forced it to burn, to run its course as hot and quick as it could. But not the course it had been choosing to sear through his body, his organs. I forced it to follow pathways of my making. Pathways I carved into him.”

  Okay, crazy man was freaking me out now. “You carved spells into him?” I asked.

  His gaze pulled away from some far distance and he studied my face, my mouth, my forehead, and finally met my eyes. “Yes.”

  I turned and pulled Davy’s shirt up. The black tentacles of tainted magic still traced beneath his skin, just like they had since Anthony bit him and infected him. They began on his shoulder in a solid black-and-blue bruise and snaked out from there, across his back, then around his ribs and up over his shoulder, digging down along his collarbones, and his chest.

  They had been reaching for his heart. I knew that. They had been reaching for his stomach, his liver, his lungs. But not anymore.

  Scars decorated his chest. Thin, morbidly beautiful strokes and lines, some wide and still red, some thin, glossy pink, others white and crinkled. All the lines, the scars, created a design that reached from just beneath his collarbones and tapered down to the edge of his waistband. Through those scars, and trapped between those scars, magic flowed.

  I just stood there, staring, trying to get my head around the reality of this. Of what this was. Of what it meant.

  Dad pushed forward in my head, looking through my eyes.

  Ah, he said in a tone filled with wonder. Magnificent.

  I didn’t think it was magnificent. I thought it was horrible. I couldn’t even tell what spells he had carved into Davy, nor how Davy had survived it. People can’t hold magic in their bodies—it killed them. And now Davy had it permanently pulsing through him.

  Collins had sentenced Davy to death.

  “Shame,” Zayvion said from so near me, I jumped. “Put the gun away. Collins,” he continued, “tell us what you used.”

  I heard Shame holster his gun. Collins walked across the room and stood on the opposite side of the bed. Shame strolled over to the foot of the bed.

  “Well, shit,” Shame said. “Better talk fast and talk sweet, Eli.”

  Collins sighed. “I cannot tell you how tired I am of being treated like an enemy and prisoner. I saved his life. Which is what you hired me for, Allison. To keep him alive, using any means at my disposal.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “And he’s still breathing. He was conscious too. That’s something. Just tell me what the spells are. Please.”

  “It’s… technical,” he said. “I cast Containment, Flow, Passage, Shield, more. Many more. I thought I’d need only a few—Containment, Transference, Flow—but each spell I cast opened up new routes the magic tried to take. His life…” He paused, then nodded. “His life was unraveling stitch by stitch like a string pulled on a sweater. But I managed to stay one step ahead, one heartbeat ahead of it all. And when I saw my chance to close it off, to block magic from spreading through him, I cast Lock.”

  “And End,” Zayvion added.

  Collins swallowed. “A version of it, yes.”

  I remembered that spell. My dad had cast it when I was first learning how to use magic with Maeve. Maeve had said it was an old and very difficult spell to use.

  “It’s brilliant,” Zayvion said simply. He looked up at me. “He saved his life, Allie.”

  “So what does this mean for Davy?” I asked. “Will he have to carry magic like this forever? Will the spells break? Will they kill him? Why is he ghosting out on us?”

  Davy jerked in his sleep, then exhaled, the magic pulsing through the lines and the scars in a wash of crystalline hues similar to the colors on my arm. It was almost pretty.

  “Let’s talk of this in the other room, shall we?” Collins asked. “He does need his rest.”

  I pulled Davy’s shirt back down and covered him with the blanket. “Will he be all right alone?” I asked. “He won’t get sucked into the bed and smother or anything, right?”

  “When he’s sleeping or unconscious, he seems to default to a physical state,” Collins said. “So, no, he won’t suffocate. It’s just when he’s awake that things seem to get confusing for him.”

  We walked out into the living room and I sat on the couch. I didn’t know about anyone else, but I was suddenly exhausted.

  Collins lowered down into one of the chairs, and was silent for a bit. He really did look tired. The bruises and bandages made some sense. Using that much magic carried a hell of a price. He was probably lucky to still be alive.

  “What, exactly, is Davy?” I asked. There was probably a better way to ask that question, but I’d be damned if I knew how.

  “He’s still human, still a man,” Collins said. “But the spells carved into him and the magic flowing through those spells seem to allow him to shift closer to death without losing his life. When he’s awake, he struggles to remain flesh and blood, to not become only the embodiment of the spells and magic coursing through him.

  “I had not anticipated the incorporeal state he slides into,” Collins said. “It is fascinating, and I’ve documented it, but I certainly hadn’t expected it. I did combine Death magic spells with Life magic spells, but there are plenty of studies in the viability of that approach that suggest it should not have made him lose his solidity.”

  “It’s not Death magic that’s the problem, mate,” Shame said as he poured himself anot
her whiskey—a lot of whiskey. “It’s the taint in the magic you’re using. Throws off the spells.”

  “That could be,” Collins said. “Have you done any investigation into the wells yet?”

  I nodded. “We were able to reach the Life well for a sample.”

  “You have a sample?” He suddenly perked up. “That’s wonderful. Where is it?”

  “In Stone.”

  “What stone?”

  “Stone is my gargoyle. It’s in him.”

  Collins caught his breath and held it, thinking. “You have a stone gargoyle?”

  “He’s an Animate,” I said. “Followed me home one day.”

  “Isn’t that… convenient?” Collins mused. “An Animate gargoyle who can contain magic. A lucky break you had him at your disposal.”

  “Not lucky enough unless we get samples from the other wells.”

  “What are you hoping to discover?” he asked.

  “If the wells are tainted,” Zayvion said. “If the poison is spreading to them or if one of them is the source of the taint. And if we can make an antidote from tainted magic.”

  “So far,” I said, “all we know is that there seems to be some contamination in the Life well, but not much.”

  “You’ll need samples from each well if you can,” he said. “At least three to test. And if we want to try to filter the wells, we’ll need a sample from all four.” He looked up at Zayvion. “That is the eventual outcome you’re looking for, isn’t it? To cleanse the wells if they are tainted?”

  “Yes. And to use whatever information we can for a cure, a real cure,” he added, “for this epidemic.”

  “Well then.” Collins stared at the wall for a bit, sorting through things. Finally, “There are theories. The same sorts of filters that were laid in place in the man-made cisterns that hold magic could be modified for the natural wells of magic. But we’d have to know what kind of contamination we were trying to filter. Tests.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “A lot of tests. The quicker, the better.”

  “Can you do that?” I asked.

  “For the right price.”

  Shame just chuckled. “Seeing that you get paid for every damn thing is always on your mind, isn’t it?”

  “A man has need to keep his investments secure.”

  “A philosophy near and dear to my little black heart,” Shame agreed. “But what say we just beat you until you give us what we want?”

  “You still wouldn’t know what to do with the information I give you. I assume none of you have been studying and experimenting with magic and tech advancements for the last decade?”

  “We know people,” Zayvion said.

  I didn’t know whom Zayvion was talking about, but if it was Violet, I was adamantly against getting her involved in this. We were on the wrong side of the Authority right now. Hell, the police were looking for me for the embezzlement charges Bartholomew had trumped up. I didn’t want her hurt, and everything about my life right now added up to trouble. “How much?” I asked.

  “It isn’t money I want, Allison,” Collins said. “I want to be Unclosed.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Oh, hell no,” Shame said. “There was a reason you were Closed, Cutter.”

  Zayvion didn’t say anything. Neither did I. If I were in Collins’ position, that’s exactly what I would have asked for too.

  Collins just opened his bandaged hands and then folded them carefully together. “That is my price. If you think finding a way to cleanse or filter the magic is worth me having my abilities back, then I will be happy to help.”

  “And if we decide not to risk it?” I asked. “What happens then?”

  “I will honor my current agreements with you, Allison. I will monitor Davy until he is fully able to care for himself for the price you and I already negotiated. But that is all I will do.”

  I heard a knock at the door, and then it swung open.

  “I thought you said you lock your door,” I said.

  Collins shrugged. “I said I take precautions.”

  “What kind of precautions?”

  “I have cameras. I know who’s approaching.”

  “So who’s approaching?”

  “Mrs. Flynn and Mr. Kellerman.”

  Maeve and Hayden. I hoped they got the message from Shame and were able to get a sample from the Blood well.

  Zayvion walked out into the other room to greet them.

  “All this blackmail is making me hungry,” Shame said. “Do you have any food in this joint?”

  “The kitchen is just off to your left,” Collins said.

  “Get you something, Allie?” Shame asked as he walked off that way.

  “Sure.”

  Once Shame was out of earshot, Collins asked, “How much did your father talk to you about his plans?”

  “Not much,” I said honestly. “More now, but back when he was alive, we never spoke.”

  “More now?” Collins asked. “Now that he’s dead?”

  Ah, hell. I forgot he didn’t know my dad was possessing me. And I wondered if I should tell him.

  Dad? I asked.

  It may be… useful for him to know, he said. But it is your choice.

  I tried to think it through. Would knowing my dad was in my brain change how Collins treated me? Would it change our deal of him looking after Davy? Would it open up a can of worms I didn’t have time to unwriggle?

  Maybe half a truth would work better.

  “He’s not completely dead,” I said. “There was a magic user who tried to raise him from the dead. Things didn’t go right.”

  Collins’ puzzled look shifted over to disbelief and took the corner straightaway to laughter. “That son of a bitch,” he managed to get out. “He’s alive?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Where is he? How do you know he’s alive?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that. But trust me when I say I can get messages to him.”

  He wiped at his mouth, but was still smiling. “And he can get messages to you too, can’t he? He is an amazing man, your father. Even death didn’t get in his way. I assume he has some set ideas of what he wants you to do for him?”

  “For him?” I asked. “Want to be a little more specific about that?”

  “Oh, not really.” He bit down on his grin. “I think it’s something you and I could discuss in a more… private setting.” He was looking at my lips again. Like he’d seen me naked, and was more than happy to repeat that circumstance.

  I wished I didn’t have holes in my memories. Most of my college years were gone. For all I knew, I’d met him and dated him back then, even though he told me we had met for the first time when I’d asked him to take care of Davy.

  I gave him a bored stare. “I wouldn’t go somewhere ‘private’ with you if the world depended on it. Got that?”

  “I suppose that might be up to discussion if the world actually depended on it.”

  “No,” I said. “It wouldn’t.”

  “Never know what a person would do when everything is on the line.”

  “I know one thing I wouldn’t do. You.”

  “Problem?” Zay asked, walking into the room.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Maeve was behind Zay, and Hayden rumbled up behind her. They didn’t look any worse for the wear. The tightness in my chest released a little. I’d been worried for them. Was still worried for Victor, Terric, Violet and Kevin, and a whole slew of other people. And that reminded me. We needed to check in with everyone.

  “Didn’t think any of these old warehouses had been rigged for focals,” Hayden said. “Thought they were all torn down in the old days.”

  “They were,” Collins said. “A friend of mine likes to do historical renovations.”

  “Hell of a fine job.” Hayden stared up at the weave of metal rafters.

  “Thank you,” Collins said, surprised at the compliment. “You should see the center. It’s inspired.”

  “
Thing would trip the networks all to hell and back again if it was used, though,” Hayden said as he helped Maeve sit in a chair.

  “Not so. It’s very well insulated and has its own storage of magic to pull from.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Hayden said. “Your friend really does do it old-school.”

  Okay, I didn’t have the faintest clue what they were talking about. The only focal I knew about was when Dad had said it would take a Focal, a person who could contain dark and light magic long enough, for magic to be brought back together again. And that was assuming dark and light magic could ever be joined again, since the Authority had broken it hundreds of years ago to try to stop Isabelle and Leander’s killing rampage.

  A rampage they seemed more than happy to pick up where they’d left off.

  I wondered if Roman was having any luck convincing the Overseer that Leander and Isabelle were in this world, and trying to find a body to host them so they could destroy the Authority and rule magic as they saw fit. I wondered whether he had convinced her that poisoned magic, not a strange virus or a breakdown in the technology that supported magic, was causing the epidemic. We really needed someone on our side, someone with global reach.

  “Have you heard from Victor?” Maeve asked me quietly while Hayden and Collins argued about accessibility to bleed lines and other things I had never heard of before.

  “No. Wait,” I amended. “Once. Shame said Victor reported that Violet and Kevin are safe. But we need to get a message out to him. To let him know to find us here.”

  “Ah,” Maeve said. “He knows. When any of us send information on the cuffs, it goes out to all of us.” She leaned her head back against the chair. “It has been a long day, hasn’t it?” she said. “And it’s not half-done, I suspect.”

  “How did it go at the Blood well? Did you have any trouble getting a sample of magic? Was anyone from the Authority there?”