Magic at the Gate

  “Oh fuck this.” I drew a glyph for Hold.

  Terric snatched my hand in mid-cast. Something sharp licked hot across my thumb.

  “Ow!”

  He tipped my hand, recited something, and squeezed my thumb until a drop of blood fell into the jar. He had a small blade in his hand.

  “What the hells do you think you’re doing?”

  “Saving our asses. I’m not about to let him kill himself. I won’t give him the damn satisfaction. Suicidal bastard.”

  Terric let go of my thumb, slammed a lid on the jar, and rubbed his own bloody thumb around the edge to seal the lid.

  And then he ran out of the car. Ran. Out. Of. The. Car.

  What the hells?

  I pushed on the door. It wouldn’t open.

  I’ll be damned. There were wards on the car. Wards that locked me in.

  Hated this. Officially.

  Terric ran to Shame, the jar tucked tight against his chest. That had definitely been Blood magic Terric used. I thought he couldn’t use any of the other disciplines since Shame got possessed by a Hunger a few years ago and tried to kill Terric. That had broken Terric, made permanent scars in him. My thumb throbbed. I pinched it to keep it from bleeding all over the place. As soon as Terric was beside Shame, Shame fell into step with him. Shame chanted; Terric, from what I could see, held the jar. Then they both strode to the crypt, Shame’s arms still open. Terric worked a spell with his left hand, and held it there, uncast, his blood tracing a black line down his arm, the jar pressed against his heart.

  The Veiled backed away step by step with them, hovering, stalking. Every time one came too close, Shame flicked his fingers and drank them down to screams and smoke. Death magic was a transference of energy. And Shame was very good at Death magic. But even he had to have a limit.

  The two men walked through an ocean of Veiled straight to the crypt. Terric walked up the two concrete, moss-covered steps, got up on the low stone wall, then grabbed the top of the fence that surrounded the crypt. He heaved and jumped the fence. He jogged to the crypt’s tall arched door. Shame, still outside the fence, flicked the Veiled around Terric to dust.

  They couldn’t keep this up much longer.

  I tried the door again. Nothing. Wondered if the car would go up in a ball of fire if I hit it with magic.

  Terric grabbed hold of one of the pillars carved into the stone beside the door and hoisted himself up on the stone wall. The carved faceless angel with its single wing glowed a soft blue just to one side of him. He pushed the jar onto the small ledge atop the pillar.

  The window above the door had been replaced by a wooden board painted to look like glass. As soon as the jar touched the pillar, the window flared, green, red, and blue, shifting, changing places like a lock tumbling to a close.

  I felt more than heard a thunk at the base of my spine. Something very heavy had just fallen, hit the ground. The gate was closed. And so was the well.

  The Veiled stopped moving. Froze, as if they’d just been unplugged.

  And then they turned away from the crypt, away from Terric. Faced the trees where I had seen the shadow man. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything there. But they did. I was sure of it.

  My left hand went painfully cold. Something more than just the Veiled was out there.

  The Veiled ran. A blur of eyes, faces, shadow, light, and screams melting into the night air.

  Gone. Into the city. Shit.

  Terric hopped down, missed his footing and staggered back, falling.

  Only, he hadn’t missed his footing. A woman straddled his chest, one hand against his throat, the other pulling a knife out of his side.

  Truance. She must have been hiding in the shadow of the doorway.

  “No!” I slammed my hand against the car window. That wasn’t going to do any good. I calmed my mind, recited a mantra, cast a Shield. I didn’t know if I could get it past the wards and around Terric in time.

  Shame was way ahead of me. He didn’t jump the fence. He blew it apart. He ran the short distance to Terric, already throwing another spell at Truance. She flew off of Terric like she’d been hit by a battering ram and was slammed into the door of the crypt.

  He threw another spell at her, and she disappeared. Again.

  Bitch.

  Shame knelt, waved a hand in my direction and released whatever ward had been holding me tight in the car.

  Which was good. I felt a yelling coming on and I preferred my yellings in open air rather than in cramped quarters.

  Shame pressed his hand to Terric’s side, then helped him up. They turned back toward the car, Shame’s arm around Terric to keep him on his feet.

  “Fuck this,” I started. “You do not lock me in a car. Ever. I don’t care what boogeyman is out here.”

  Terric swallowed. Twice. He looked like he was trying not to barf. “Didn’t know they’d kick in. Must be because of the jar.”

  “Blood magic,” Shame said a lot gentler than I expected. “I modded the wards for Blood magic. Since Chase screwed me, I set the car to close down if Blood magic was used inside it. You know that, Terric,” he chided gently. “It was your idea.”

  “Oh, yah,” Terric said. “Forgot.”

  I met them halfway and got my arm around the other side of Terric. It had seemed like low-level magic—stick a jar on a pillar—but they had just done something huge. Plus, they’d had to do it while fighting the Veiled.

  Terric was bleeding pretty badly. I glanced over at Shame, but he seemed calm and collected.

  “Help me get him in the car,” he said with that measured gentleness. “And hand me the void stone.”

  I opened the back door. Shame eased Terric into the car and convinced him to lie down as much as space would allow.

  Terric did not look good at all.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “The knife wound isn’t too deep. She wasn’t trying to kill him. The bitch used Blood magic to tie him to her. She’s drinking down his life. Where’s the stone?”

  I handed him the ugly spud.

  He took it in one hand, and transferred it to the other as if it were too hot to hold. “I’m going to put a void stone on your chest, Terric,” Shame said. “It might sting a little. Or you might want to fall asleep. Sleep would be good.”

  Terric started to say something, but never got to the end of it. As soon as the void stone pressed against his stomach, he was unconscious, his arm falling toward the floor, his chin tucked down. He exhaled, one shivering breath. I held my breath waiting for him to inhale.

  Nearly passed out before he did.

  A switchblade flicked to life in Shame’s hand, the blade a slice of steel and glass and glyphs. “You might not want to watch this.”

  I watched.

  He opened the hole in Terric’s coat and shirt, revealing the wound. Just like the Blood magic that had been used on me, the wound looked like a glyph made out of blue twine had been implanted beneath his skin.

  Shame traced the glyph with one finger, his head tipped to the side as if he could hear what the glyph sounded like. Then he quickly sliced across the beginning of the glyph. I’d done that to myself. I remembered how much it hurt. But Terric didn’t twitch. Shame must know how to keep the area numb.

  He whispered, the crystal glowing in his chest through his coat as he pulled on magic. Even without Sight, I could see the glyph unspooling, rising up and away from Terric like a dense smoke and re-forming in the air between them. Shame nicked his own finger, caught the blood on the blade, then slashed through the glyph, ending the spell.

  It broke with an audible crack, and left the scent of sweet cherries behind.

  Truance’s connection was broken.

  Shame’s shoulders slumped, and he braced one hand on the side of the seat to keep from falling on top of Terric.

  “Shame?”

  “Drive.”

  I didn’t argue. I ducked into the front seat and so did he, but he turned so he could put
one hand on Terric’s wrist, keeping track of his heartbeat.

  “Get us back to Mum’s.”

  I started the car, put it in gear, and stomped on the gas. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “If we get him to a doctor.”

  “Did he close the gate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the Veiled get loose in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Truance?”

  “No.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  I followed the road as fast as I could, and was in sight of the gate when I saw him.

  Detective Stotts, standing next to his car. And all around him, though he couldn’t see them, the Veiled were closing in.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I stopped the car.

  “What the hell?” Shame said.

  “He’s going to be eaten alive.”

  “They’ll walk right past him. Drive.”

  I drew a spell for Sight. Forgot a Disbursement, which meant I was going to be hurting soon, and looked more closely at the Veiled.

  Two deep, three deep possessing the same space, somehow stronger even though they were not solid.

  Stotts carried something in his hand that drew them.

  It took me a second. Then I knew what it was. A disk. A disk filled with magic.

  Holy shit.

  They would shred him to get that.

  “He has a disk,” I said. “Charged.”

  “Allie—”

  I got out, slammed the door.

  “This is why I don’t let people drive my car,” he yelled.

  “Paul, don’t use the disk.”

  He camped back on one foot, his hand with the disk still in his pocket. “How do you know I have a disk?”

  “I can see it, smell it. You need to give it to me. Now.”

  His thick eyebrows rose. “Allie, I’ve been looking for you for over a week. And Nola tells me you called her and talked to her this afternoon. About me.”

  Shit. I had forgotten they’d Closed him and he wouldn’t remember he’d found me in St. Johns.

  The Veiled approached him slowly. I wondered if the disk was warded. Because I was pretty sure if it wasn’t, they would be on top of him, devouring the magic it held.

  “And now,” he said into my silence, “I find you in a graveyard while on my way to investigate a hot spot in the network. A hot spot that flashed, then went cold just about the time you came driving over the hill. What’s in your hand, Allie?”

  “What?” I stupidly, instinctively, opened my hands. The Veiled saw the mark on my left, the burning green beacon.

  They howled, and rushed me.

  Two choices came to mind: do nothing and get clobbered by the Veiled or cast a Shield—the kind that people like Detective Paul Stotts did not know about—to save our asses.

  “Don’t move.” I ran to him, stopped about three feet away, turned my back on him, even though I was pretty sure he was reaching for either a spell or a gun. Probably both.

  Turning my back on someone about to pull a gun on me was as much trust as I’d ever extended to anyone. He’d better treat Nola right.

  “That disk attracts creatures. Echoes of old magic, like ghosts, but mean and hungry for magic.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “You won’t have to. You’ll feel them real quick and real bad.”

  I set a Disbursement and cast Shield, pulling the magic up out of the ground and into my body, my bones, then out of my fingers and into the spell I traced in the air. No black flame this time.

  The Veiled hit the Shield like a wall of bricks. Holy shit. I felt the impact in my skull. How had Shame maintained a Shield against them for so long?

  “Give me the disk,” I said.

  There is one thing I like about cops. They have great instincts when it comes to if and when they should believe a crazy person isn’t talking crazy.

  And there is one thing about cops that is troublesome. That they are hella good at fact-checking.

  Stotts drew Sight. He cast right-handed, keeping his left, unmagical hand around the disk in his pocket.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Regular magic users can’t. The marks you wanted to know if they were left on me by magic? Yes. And they make it so I can see magic in ways most people can’t.”

  It was true. I’d never seen Zayvion in his black-flame and silver-glyph warrior glory until I had magic pounding through me. And I’d never seen the Veiled before Cody had pulled magic through me. Well, actually, I first started seeing the Veiled when my dead dad touched me, opening me, I think, to a sensitivity to the dead. But that would take a lot more time, and sound a lot more crazy to explain.

  “The Shield?” He was not as impressed as I’d thought he would be.

  “Is keeping them from attacking us. You. The disk. Paul, I am not screwing with you. You know there’s a lot more going on with magic than most people know about.”

  He made a huh sound.

  The Veiled pressed their mouths against the Shield and sucked on the magic. It felt like I’d just been covered in leeches. My skin stung as blood was drawn out through my pores.

  Damn it.

  “I can’t hold this for long.” Honestly, I was pretty surprised I could keep my head clear and calm enough to continue Refreshing the spell to keep it whole. And I knew Shame wasn’t coming to my rescue, because he was in the car trying to keep Terric alive.

  “Give me the disk or throw it as far as you can.”

  Stotts took the disk out of his pocket.

  The Veiled broke through my Shield. Clawed at me, bit, tore. Did the same to Paul, from the sound of it.

  I stumbled back into Paul, who stumbled back into the bed of rosebushes, but didn’t fall. I furiously cast Camouflage. The butterscotchy spell closed in around us.

  The hands, the mouths, the pain, stopped. Camouflage was officially my newest favorite Shield spell.

  “Shit,” Stotts whispered. “You doing this?”

  “It’s a variation of Shield,” I said. “Can you drain the disk?”

  “Why?”

  “They want the magic in it.”

  I felt him shifting behind me, just his arms. Another thing I liked about cops. They knew when being quiet and holding still was a good idea. We were pressed together, my back against his chest. I could feel his heart beating fast. Camouflage might be good, but it wasn’t unbreakable.

  “How much magic does it hold?” he asked.

  I’d never asked Violet for the specs. “Enough for one spell, I think.”

  “Something big?”

  “Don’t leave a drop of magic in it.”

  I could tell he was thinking, his breath caught. “I’m going to step back on three. You drop the Shield. One . . . ”

  I felt the fingers of his left hand slide across my shoulders as he began drawing a glyph.

  “Two . . . ”

  I braced for it.

  “Three.” He shoved away. I broke Camouflage and it pelted down around us in slow-motion butterscotch drops.

  I threw my hands over my face to ward off the Veiled.

  Stotts closed the last line of the glyph and threw the disk into the trees like a seasoned quarterback. An explosion of light poured out in midair. Then darkness swallowed us.

  And the Veiled were gone.

  I heard the distant thud of the disk hitting the ground.

  “Anything?” Stotts asked.

  I cast Sight to be sure, keeping my left hand closed so the mark did not shine. “No. They’re gone. Are you okay?”

  He walked over to me. Even in the patchy light of the moon through the heavy tree limbs, I could see the blood on his forehead and cheek.

  “I’m fine. You?”

  I nodded. “Bruised.” And I was. Everywhere the Veiled had stuck their fingers, a burning bruise was left behind. I’d been here, done this. I knew the bruises would heal.

  “We need to get the disk
,” I said.

  “Who’s in the car?”

  God. Terric. He needed a doctor. The fight with the Veiled had only taken a minute. Maybe two. I had to get him to Maeve’s fast.

  “Allie?”

  I could use Influence on him and make him go away so I didn’t have to deal with this. But he was my friend, and Nola’s boyfriend. He had already lost his memories because of me. There must be a way to explain this without endangering him or the Authority.

  “Shame and a friend of his. I’m Hounding a case for them.” Lie. When the truth just isn’t good enough.

  “In the graveyard at night?”

  “People do weird magic things in lots of places. Especially at night. I need to get going. Good luck with the disk.”

  He gave me a hard look. Might have believed me and let me go. If Stone hadn’t picked that minute to come trotting up with the disk between his fangs.

  Stotts pulled his gun. I would have too. Stone was a brute.

  “Don’t,” I said. “He’s friendly.”

  “Now that I know what mood he’s in, would you mind telling me what he is?” He didn’t put the gun down.

  Shame got out of the car, cupped his hand, and lit a cigarette as he strolled over to us.

  “Hey, Detective. Nice night.”

  “Mr. Flynn.”

  “What do you think of the art?” Shame exhaled toward Stone.

  “This is yours?” He did not sound convinced.

  I worked on an isn’t-that-interesting look, because I had no idea where he was going with this.

  “I’ve been doing a little art on the streets lately. Crashed the sidewalk art and magic tour a little while ago, and thought I’d bring Stone out here to see how he worked. What do you think?”

  “What is he?”

  “Stone mostly. Some gears in there. I modded a couple storm rods, have a small storage basin in his belly. He can keep a magic charge for over an hour. But that’s about all the pain I want to pay to keep him going.” He gave a wicked grin. “Unless I get picked up for a showing at a good gallery. Then maybe I’ll bring a few hot Proxies who are into that kind of thing onto payroll.”

  Stotts looked at me, looked for Shame’s truth to be reflected in my face.