Magic at the Gate

  “I doubt any of us knows what, if push came to shove, magic could really do. Face it, there’s a hell of a lot left undiscovered. Like Animates can be maintained on a scale as large as Stone. That an Animate can store a living soul. That a woman can survive walking to death and back. We just found that all out within the last month. Today, we discovered the disks can be used to make the unliving Veiled alive again.”

  “Is there a point to this?” Shame asked.

  “My point is we haven’t yet begun to scratch the surface of what we can make magic do.”

  Silence again. The huge brick Catholic school passed by on our left. On our right was a concrete wall that appeared to be held together by ivy and moss.

  Finally, Terric spoke. “That’s exactly what your father used to say.”

  I clunked my head on my window and swore quietly. Now I was talking like him. How fan-damn-tastic was that?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shame slowed the car and made his way along the road, taking the first left.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “About?”

  “Is this where we’re going?”

  “We not only know people in low places—we are people in low places.”

  Terric chuckled.

  I didn’t know what else to say. It was so expected. So obvious. So cliché.

  “A graveyard? The Death magic well is in a graveyard?”

  This was one of the oldest graveyards in the city. About three city blocks long and two wide, it was crammed between the Catholic school, a modern apartment building made of wood and metal, and an assortment of houses and squat repair garages and small shops. Inside the cemetery were so many trees, my claustrophobia tickled the back of my throat.

  Graves slid by to our right and left, tall carved pillars, concrete tree trunks, and shiny black marble with ghostly white faces laser-etched into the surface.

  “What’s got your knickers in a bunch?” Shame asked.

  “The wells correspond to the disciplines of magic, right?”

  “Yes,” Shame said. “And the Winter well represents Death magic. So what? Where did you want us to put it? Under a hospital? Powell’s?”

  “As if we could put it anywhere,” Terric said. “The wells were here long before there were bones to bury.”

  “A lot of bones buried here,” Shame said. “Magic doesn’t care.”

  “Magic doesn’t have to. People care,” Terric said.

  I wondered why Terric’s answer had sounded like an apology. Then it came to me: Shame’s father was dead. I had never asked where he was buried. Maybe here.

  Which brought another worry to mind. What if people like Shame’s dad were some of the Veiled, or ghosts being called to whatever war Pike was talking about?

  I wondered if Shame had thought about that.

  He didn’t drive all the way to the end, but instead stopped about halfway, just before the intersection to the right.

  “This?” I asked, looking out at the gravestones settled between a tall steepled crypt surrounded by a black metal fence and a smaller brick crypt surrounded by garbage cans.

  “This,” Shame agreed. “Can’t you sense it?”

  I tugged the void stone away from my chest. “No.”

  “And you thought that rock was just ugly,” Shame said. “It’s ugly and powerful.”

  “No wonder you like it so much. Birds of a feather . . . ” Terric mumbled as he wiped his hand over his mouth.

  “When are you going back to Seattle?” Shame asked.

  We got out of the car, walked toward the crypt. Cold. Nice night, even for a graveyard. Recent rain had left the slight grassy rise where the crypt sat among cedar, holly, oak, and maple squishy with mud that obscured the row of flat headstones sunk in the ground.

  Shame cast Sight. Terric cast something too. They were both looking at the back of the crypt.

  “Holy shit,” Shame said.

  All I saw were rows of gravestones, trees, crypts, and garbage cans.

  I inhaled, tasted the wet soil, moss, concrete, and the hint of teriyaki from a local kitchen. Didn’t taste magic. Didn’t feel magic. Wearing the void stone was like putting blinders over a blindfold.

  The train hooted softly in the distance, carrying over the hush of traffic.

  “Talk, Shame,” Terric said. He was looking at the crypt too. “I see a crypt above the well, and magic flowing up into it. What do you see?”

  Okay, no way I was going to let the boys have all the fun. I set a Disbursement. I was done with headaches and chose a head cold instead. I hated head colds, but I wasn’t planning on using enough magic to do more than give me the sniffles. I drew Sight and pulled magic up through my bones. Magic rose, pushed against my skin, pressed outward until I felt stretched and stingy. Then magic collapsed inward, like a gum bubble sucked in by the stone around my neck.

  I couldn’t cast magic with this thing on. “I’m taking the void stone off,” I said.

  Terric glanced at me.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll let you know if my dad is trying to take over.”

  “Did we make a hand signal for that?” he said.

  “If I’m acting like a bastard, it’s him.”

  I yanked the void stone off and hooked the leather strap with my pinky, keeping the ugly thing as far from my body as I could.

  “Veiled,” Shame said. “You can’t see them?”

  “No,” Terric said. “Hold on.” He canceled one spell with a slash of his hand and cast another. “There’s a gate. Holy fuck. There’s a gate open in the crypt. Right over the well. I still don’t see any Veiled.”

  “They can see us. Pretty sure they can see us.” Shame took a step back.

  I drew Zayvion’s katana, and cast Sight with my left hand, the void stone swinging in counter rhythm to the spell, but as far as I could tell not affecting it. The graveyard caught fire in pastel light.

  Veiled were everywhere, in the trees, between the graves, moving like a slow river of eyes and open mouths. They pulled out of the ground, out of the graves, out of the smaller crypt. Ghostly, like Pike, pressing closer and closer to the crypt, surrounding it, burying it with their bodies, their needy hands, their hungry mouths.

  The Veiled, men and women, clung to the crypt and pulled the well’s magic out of the stones with skeletal fingers, gulping it down with huge, body-arching shudders.

  Magic burbled out of the ground beneath the crypt like a fountain. It filled the stones of the crypt until they glowed, pulsed dark, and grew bright again.

  “There’s a gate?” I asked, not seeing it.

  “In the crypt,” Terric said again.

  Didn’t matter if I couldn’t see it. That was bad. Real bad.

  “Anything coming through?” I asked.

  “Nothing solid,” Terric said. “Doesn’t mean something hasn’t already come through. And there’s movement on the other side. A hell of a lot of movement. Shame,” he said, “the gate is being fed by the well. It’s hardwired in.”

  “Plum assignment, my ass,” Shame said. “What’d you do to piss off Victor?” He broke the Sight and cast a spell a little like the one he’d used hunting Hungers—no Blood magic involved, just Death magic.

  And the more the Veiled drank, the clearer, stronger, and more solid they became.

  “Does this rate ‘unusual’ enough for us to call Hayden?” I asked. “Or is this standard procedure?”

  “It’s not standard,” Terric said. “I’ve never seen a gate tied in to a well. Do you still see the Veiled?”

  “Yes. They’re all around us. Maybe a hundred. Most of them sucking magic out of the crypt, the rest of them coming up out of graves to join the party.”

  “Do you see anything else? Hungers? The horrors?” He sounded calm as he canceled another spell and cast again. I wondered how much pain Hayden was Proxying for all this magic use.

  I did a three-sixty. Trees, graves, Veiled, road, trees, graves. A shadow, a man-shaped
shadow in the trees, gone before I could be sure I saw it.

  “Maybe that shadow man. Too fast for me to track. All the way out there in the trees. Can’t see it now.” I recast Smell and Taste. “I don’t smell anyone but us. Don’t smell any other magic being used. Don’t smell the disks. Shame?”

  “Back away slowly,” he said. “We’re going to have to Close this thing down, and that’s not going to make them happy.”

  “We?” Terric said. “I’m the only Closer here, Flynn.”

  “You can’t Close it on your own. Not with the well feeding it.”

  “You know I love a challenge,” Terric said. “One of us could be getting the capstone he has stowed in his glove box.”

  “Can we cut the feed?” I asked. “Disconnect the gate from the well?”

  “We can do nothing.” Terric turned, looked at me. “I will take care of it.” His eyes were dark, clear. He didn’t look nervous, didn’t look frightened. He looked like he faced down this kind of dragon every day. Reminded me of Zay. As it should. Terric had almost been the guardian of the gates.

  Terric strode off toward the back of the crypt.

  “Horseshit hero fucking martyr,” Shame swore, striding off after him.

  The Veiled who had been attached to the crypt turned. Stepped away, stepped through their companions.

  And absorbed them.

  Two sets of eyes in one face, like a shadow behind a screen. Two sets of mouths, two bodies filled the same space. Twice as solid as they had just been. Stepping through yet another Veiled, and absorbing them.

  Dead magic users possessing dead magic users.

  Two, now three deep in the space of one body.

  Holy shit.

  A dozen of them, more—headed straight for us.

  “The Veiled are possessing the Veiled and getting stronger,” I said, catching up with them in the slick grass. “They see us, Terric.”

  “Shame. Capstone would be good.”

  “Not leaving you out here alone.”

  “The Veiled.” I pointed with my left hand. A beacon, a green fricking glowing floodlight poured out of my palm.

  And then the Veiled weren’t just walking anymore. They were running. Straight for us. Well, me.

  Shame cursed, turned it into a chant, a song. Terric chanted too—their voices pulling perfect damn harmony. Shame a tenor, Terric a bass, like they did this all the time, like they were meant to use magic together.

  Shame pulled magic up out of the soil, the graves, from the bones of the dead, the crypt itself. He turned his back on the crypt and cast a Shield around us like a dome, his hands pointing downward at the soil, not upward at the sky.

  Terric cast too, pulling on the magic from the well and the gate and the crypt, moving more like Hayden moved, like Zay moved, wide, smooth motions, hands, wrists, arms. He braced and pushed magic into a Containment glyph, flowing rhythms weaving a net. He twisted and threw the net. It flew free of the Shield, sparking as it passed through. It grappled around the crypt and sank through the Veiled gathered around it.

  The spell was still attached to Terric’s hands, which he held about shoulder high, fingers cupped and busy as he pulled and pushed the magic in the spell.

  His eyes? Closed. He manipulated magic blind, guiding it, moving it around the gate inside the crypt by feel alone.

  The Veiled hit Shame’s Shield so hard my ears popped. Neither man so much as twitched. Veiled skittered, clawed, too many eyes in those eyes, too many voices in those throats, too many dead people in those dead people. They screamed out at us, and attached to the Shield like eels, wide, sharp-toothed mouths scraping, throats drinking down the magic.

  Sure, they were alive once, but right now, they were not sane and not human.

  Terric was inside the Shield, casting magic out. Time I did the same.

  Shame and I had used magic together before once. We were Contrasts. Sometimes our magic worked when it crossed, and sometimes it went up in flames.

  Now was a good time to risk an inferno.

  Safety first. I set a Disbursement—head cold again. If I survived.

  I cast Impact around the katana’s blade. My left hand suddenly went cold as hell and black flame tracked down the hilt to the blade, where it mingled with Impact. I didn’t know what that would do, but I didn’t wait to find out. Sword burning with magic and flames, I swung the blade through the Shield.

  A dozen Veiled exploded at the touch of the blade. Watercolor flames flashed to pastel smoke. The spell hadn’t broken the Shield and hadn’t given Shame a concussion. Go, me.

  “Back, back, back,” Shame sang. He might have been singing to the Veiled, but it sounded like a good idea to me. I wanted the car and about a hundred miles between me and anything that couldn’t fog a mirror.

  “Down,” Terric sang. “Down and down.”

  It was great they were all singy and seemed to know what the hell they were doing, but all I had going for me was killing the freaks.

  I cast Impact again, swung again, took out a dozen more. There were too many Veiled taking their place. My left arm was going numb. I couldn’t keep this up.

  New plan. I needed a bomb, a grenade, something that would do massive damage on a three-sixty instead of at sword’s reach. Why hadn’t anyone taught me how to make a magic bomb?

  Time to improvise.

  Shame grabbed my sleeve and tugged me toward the car.

  “Out of here. All of us,” he panted. His other hand was still fingers to the earth, his words clipped as if he were working hard to do three things at once.

  “Terric?” I said.

  “Coming,” both Terric and Shame said at the same time. He was walking with us, backward, while Shame walked forward. Terric’s eyes were still closed, his hands still manipulating magic as we slipped and slid toward the car. I didn’t think he was singing anymore. He was swearing.

  Since Shame was also being Terric’s eyes, that meant he was concentrating on four things.

  “Call Hayden.” Shame let go of my shirt.

  I dug out my phone, dialed Hayden.

  “Allie,” his familiar deep voice said.

  “We’re at the graveyard. By the crypt. A gate opened over the well. Terric is working to Close it.”

  “Alone?”

  “Shame’s Shielding us from the Veiled.”

  “How many?”

  “They’re pouring out of the gate. Hundreds.”

  “Tell them to cap it. Cap the well.”

  “He said to cap the well,” I said to Shame.

  “Getting there. Tell him to check in with the other teams.”

  “I heard him,” Hayden said. Good ears. I knew he’d make a good Hound.

  “Shut it down before any more get loose in the city,” he said. “Don’t worry how messy it is. We’ll clean up. I’ll check in as soon as I get someone to send out to you. Don’t let them do anything stupid.”

  He hung up before I could point out that I was pretty sure everything they were doing right now was stupid.

  “Ready?” Shame asked.

  “Can’t read your mind,” I reminded him.

  “Don’t have to. We’re going to break for the car. You, me. Then Terric.”

  Terric was still manipulating magic, sweat glistening over his pale, pale skin, his silver hair brushing his shoulders like spun silk in the moonlight. He was breathing hard. Shaking. He chanted a low litany of the same few words in a string, over and over. A language I did not know, knotted and twisted, tugging magic to do his bidding.

  Shame cast another spell. “Take the keys.” Both his hands were holding spells, holding the Shield, holding the Veiled off of us. His head was down, bangs covering his eyes. He was breathing hard in the same rhythm as Terric.

  “Pocket,” he said.

  I sheathed the sword and rushed around in front of him. I patted his back pockets, then front, and slid my hand into his front pocket. He tipped his head up, his eyes slits of pain through the dark swing of bangs. ?
??Lower. Slower.”

  I scowled. Really? He was joking around about sex at a time like this? If that Shield fell, we were going to get eaten alive. Well, at least I was. The Veiled liked to tear me apart.

  I pushed my fingers a little deeper in his pocket, caught the keys and a lot of thigh.

  “Oh, baby,” he cooed.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I said.

  He gave me a flash of teeth, then whispered, picking up the chant Terric was intoning.

  These two worked together blind better than any magic users I’d seen work together with years of training.

  They say Complements can cast magic together. They say Soul Complements can cast magic as if they were one person. It didn’t take a test to tell me Terric and Shame were very much Soul Complements.

  “Ready for the car?” Shame inhaled, exhaled, then, “On three. You’re closer to the driver’s side. Get in, but don’t start the engine yet. Terric?”

  “Three,” Terric repeated. “On three.”

  Shame swallowed, lifted his hands to either side, shoulder high, head still tucked down. “And one, and two, and three.” He drew his hands together, clapping.

  The Shield shattered, blowing outward in a concussion of sound and force. Veiled shattered with it, not every Veiled, not those who were possessed and possessing. But a whole hell of a lot of undead magic users screamed and exploded into pastel smoke around us.

  Hayden wanted messy. That was messy. I was pretty sure it was visible for miles.

  We sprinted for the car.

  The Veiled howled. Their chilling, curdled screech made me want to run, run, run. And run I did. To the car, around the car, keys in hand.

  The Veiled are nightmarishly fast. Faster than any living thing.

  Except me when my life was on the line.

  I opened the door, got inside.

  Terric was half a breath behind me, and threw himself into the front seat, digging for the glove box. Shame was still out there, arms spread wide, face up to the dark sky. He was smiling.

  “They’re on the car,” I said a little too loudly.

  “Wards in the paint. They’ll hold for a minute.”

  “There aren’t any wards on the car,” I said.

  “I know.” He fumbled a stone jar out of the glove box, the black box it had been in falling away. “I just thought it might make you feel better.”