The Black Veins (Dead Magic Book 1)

by Ashia Monet

  “You just said so many words and I don’t know how many I understood,” Blythe says.

  “I’m a mind reader, you got all of them,” Cordelia snaps. “You just don’t want me to stay behind. But you’ll be fine.”

  They fall silent as the knight’s piercing eyes scan the lobby. It must’ve decided the area is clear, because it turns its back as if to return to whatever magical hell it walked out of.

  The Guardians bolt, running as quickly and silently as possible past the check-in terminals.

  “She said to find a security office, right?” Blythe asks as they near the metal detectors. “It should be around here, this is all of the security stuff—”

  Someone grabs her arm. “Stop!” Antonio whispers. His grip is hard as he yanks her down, to the floor, behind a row of seats. It is only when Blythe stills that she hears the echoing, heavy footsteps that are not their own.

  The stark white lighting makes it ridiculously easy for her to peek through the seats and see that there are more oversized suits of armor, stalking through the waiting area, blue eyes scanning.

  “We should crawl,” Antonio says.

  Blythe wrinkles her nose. “You’re kidding,” she balks. He very much isn’t.

  Moving on her hands and knees, Blythe shimmies forward, angling her body through the maze of seating. Fuck this place for having a wide-open floor plan.

  “I see a security door,” Daniel whispers. “On our right.”

  Blythe spots it against the wall—an open counter with a “security ” sign hanging above it and, off to the side, an inconspicuous looking door.

  “Okay, breaking and entering when we’re stuck on our hands and knees, no sweat,” Blythe mutters.

  “Not for me,” says a monotone voice.

  Blythe does not see Caspian move, but she feels his energy surge above the chairs and phase through the door as if it were thin air. Having a ghost thief as a friend comes with some perks.

  Blythe looks over her shoulder. Daniel watches their surroundings with huge, steely eyes. Antonio leans back against the empty seats that shield them, shutting his eyes tight. He must still be in pain. Blythe feels terrible for him—especially since, because he is Antonio, he won’t even complain.

  Blythe can feel the knights moving from the shudders in the floor. They’re getting closer.

  “Caspian, can you please hurry…” she whispers. If he can feel her emotions, he’d better know how badly she’s rushing him.

  Caspian reappears at her side. Empty-handed. “I think I saw it,” he says. “It’s on a slot in a machine. I need to slip something else in there to replace it. I need a credit card.”

  Blythe doesn’t have one. Antonio shakes his head. Daniel doesn’t seem to know what a credit card is.

  There’s a sound like a sword dragging through carpet. It sounds as if it is directly right behind them.

  “Could you use anything else?” Blythe begs. Caspian shakes his head.

  Daniel shifts, reaching into his bag and, after a short tearing noise, produces a blank page of his grimoire. Blythe’s jaw almost drops. She’s never seen Daniel treat his grimoire as anything less than holy—and he’s ripped it.

  “Here,” he says, holding it out. “I-It’s pretty thick paper, especially if you fold it.”

  Caspian snatches it. “If you don’t hear an alarm,” he says, already disappearing. “Suppose it worked.”

  A flicker of movement above the seats catches Blythe’s eye. A knight towers above them, its form filling Blythe’s vision as its eyes flash from blue to stark, blood red.

  “Oh,” Antonio says. “Maybe the red means he likes us.”

  Blythe draws her hockey stick. If she swings, she’ll attract the attention of every other knight within a twenty foot radius.

  But there’s one option she’s never tried before.

  Blythe aims the handle at the gleaming silver of the knight’s chest plate. The hockey stick charges, magic filling until the wood is boiling in her hands.

  A beam of white light bursts from the handle and pierces through the metal, leaving a blackened, gaping hole.

  “That thing shoots laser beams?!” Antonio yells.

  “Holy shit, Rodger wasn’t joking,” Blythe breathes. “Wait a minute, I could’ve been using that this whole time!”

  The knight topples to the floor with a clatter so loud, the other three knights snap their attention over. Every blue light lands on them and instantly turns red.

  “Okay, maybe my plans do suck,” Blythe says.

  Caspian reappears—dangling a keycard. Blythe snatches it. “Go, go, go!” She yells.

  They push to their feet but the tile is smooth—too smooth for running. Blythe fights to keep her balance as she pushes her body to move faster, faster, faster. The suits of armor echo like a cacophony of jangling pots and pans behind them; very large, very powerful pots and pans, carrying very sharp swords.

  “My magic’s not working on them,” Caspian says.

  “They’re Calling creatures and essentially moving statues,” Daniel explains. “They aren’t alive in the first place.”

  Caspian cocks his head to the side, curious. “I’ve been faced with my only weakness.”

  Up ahead is a balcony opening onto a glass bride. Bingo. Cordelia’s next step in her instructions. “Make a hard right, follow me!” Blythe orders.

  She runs onto the bridge without looking at her surroundings—and the boys follow her blindly. Blythe realizes her mistake when hundreds of tiny blue lights echo beneath her feet.

  During its operation, the transport tower must have been used by hundreds of people, because stories below them is the heart of the building: an array of wide space and terminals as large as a football field. Also present below them is a slew of gigantic knights, enough to cover almost every tile on the floor.

  All at once, their eyes switch to red.

  “Uh, hey Blythe?!” Antonio screams.

  Blythe pumps her legs faster. “Don’t stop running!”

  A crack spears through the glass. One of the knights has thrown its sword, which now sticks out of the glass yards ahead. A second sword crashes through the bridge.

  Cracks spread like spiderwebs under Blythe’s feet. “No, no, no,” she stammers.

  The bridge shatters, taking her body down with it. Her heart leaps into her throat as the ceiling fills her view. She is rushing toward the ground, along with a thousand glass shards, where she will probably be skewered, torso-first, onto some magical knight’s sword.

  Blythe is screaming before she even thinks to open her mouth.

  There is a sound she has never heard before, like the entire earth is tearing open and birthing forth something moving fast and determined. She hits something rounded and soft. It is definitely not a floor—or a sword.

  She tumbles over rough texture as her shirt catches on thorns and leaves. Finally, her body comes to a stop. She is in a sea of vines, but not the tiny ones she is used to Daniel creating. These are the bright green plants of fairytales, the ones that are large enough to shoot into the heavens and hold a giant’s weight.

  “Daniel!” Antonio screams from somewhere above. “Holy shit!”

  A few yards below her, cradled in nest of leaves, Daniel lies with his palms outstretched. His face has contorted with so much concentration, he has gone red.

  The vines are still growing. The reach like hands toward the other end of the bridge, breaking through the remnants of glass as they braid and twine into their own sloped path. It is not perfect, but it is climbable.

  Antonio is already starting up, securing his flip-flops against the thorns. Beneath her, Daniel shifts into high gear as well, climbing with less grace but just as much determination. Blythe follows their lead, digging her fingers into the plants’ flesh. Only the sound of Daniel’s gasp stops her.

  He drops, suddenly, body tumbling through the vines. “Daniel!” Blythe yells. Why can’t that boy climb?!

  He lands on his leg—
hard. A scream bursts from him. He is too far behind for Blythe to reach without scaling backward, laid on the smallest vine, barely a story from the sea of knights.

  Suddenly, it goes dark. Every light has shut off. The power is down.

  “Oh no,” Antonio says. They have to leave. Now.

  “Get to the staircase!” Daniel’s voice scratches over the words.

  The knights’ red eyes illuminate his curled body as he clutches his knee in his hands.

  “Daniel—”

  He interrupts Blythe. “I’ll be fine!”

  His grimoire slips from his bag. Daniel watches it fall, landing in the midst of red eyed knights that are slowly realizing they need to scale up the vines.

  All of his work, all of his studying, has just been lost. But Daniel does not flinch.

  “You have to get on the elevator,” he says. “You can come back for me.”

  Blythe can’t leave him. Daniel’s not Jay—and there are hundreds of those knights down there and he’s injured—

  “It’s okay, Blythe,” Daniel insists. “I’m not scared this time.”

  Caspian appears beside her. “I can try to find the power source. It’ll shut all of those things off.”

  “Yes, go,” Blythe says. In the blink of an eye, with the smallest burst of black smoke, Caspian has disappeared. “We’ll be right back, Daniel!” Blythe yells. “Caspian’s going to try and shut those things off! Don’t go anywhere!”

  “I think I’ll go running,” Daniel says. “That was a joke, like you guys do. Was it funny?”

  Blythe smiles down at him, this precious boy who has only ever wanted to make friends, this boy who has ventured into the world for the first time and has become so very brave in the process. “Very,” Blythe lies.

  Blythe climbs, leaving Daniel farther and farther behind, to orchestrate an army of vines that pick off an ever-growing number of red-eyed knights.

  At the top, Antonio pulls her up to solid flooring. “This is not how I imagined this going,” Blythe whispers. The Guardians were supposed to be with her, not being picked off one by one.

  At least they’ve made it to the area with the security door. From here, they just need to climb a staircase, and then they’re there.

  The security door is just ahead. White pillars box this area in a square, with a huge window on their right, where the city lies hauntingly dead and dark.

  Antonio’s gaze is unsteady, but he covers it with his voice. “It’ll be okay. We’ll get up there, find your family, and everything’s going to be peachy—”

  The security door swings open like it isn’t made of thick steel. A line of red-eyed knights step out.

  “Yeah, no, maybe be a little worried,” Antonio says.

  Something shrieks outside the window. Blythe barely has time to shield her eyes before a giant creature bursts through the glass.

  It is a Calling creature Blythe has not seen before; its black, oily body is like a floating snake, long and coiled, but its head has a Piranha’s rows of large, sharpened teeth that are sharp enough to rip through bone without a second thought.

  Blythe outstretches her hockey stick. “Antonio…if you can transform into animals…like a really huge wolf or something… and I mean really big wolf…I think now’s a good time to do that…”

  Antonio’s gone pale. “I definitely can, but I have not learned how.”

  Blythe’s hands shake so badly she can’t hold the hockey stick straight. “Can you learn in the next three seconds?”

  An orange blur speeds past them, shooting straight for the floating snake. The creature snaps its jaws against the new assailant, but the blur circles it effortlessly, tossing a rope that coils around its body before tying itself to each pillar, moving faster than Blythe can process, pulling tighter and tighter until the creature only twitches in mid-air, held as still as a museum exhibit as the blur catapults into the knights, toppling them to the floor.

  The orange blur stills in the center of the room. The Harlequin mask has returned to her face, but against all odds, it is still her.

  “So, I was halfway down to Louisiana, right?” Storm begins. “But travelling without magic’s a bitch, so I figured, why not come back, help out a little, then get a free ride? And there was only one building with a whole militia tryna beat one kid’s ass, so I figured y’all were in here.”

  Blythe makes a face.

  “Or,” Storm tries again. Her voice has lost its false bravado. “Maybe I do pull favors.”

  “You came back!” Antonio yells.

  “Alright, don’t rub it in, we all knew it was gon’ happen.”

  Blythe purses her lips. She doesn’t have time to argue or ungrateful. At least Storm’s here.

  “Was Jay okay?” she asks instead.

  “Young boul’s fine. He should probably be back in here within like, three minutes,” Storm says. “And let me just say, fighting with him is way more fun than fighting him.”

  “Good,” Blythe sighs. “Look, Daniel needs your help more than us right now. He’s back there—”

  “Say less,” Storm says, ready to zoom off.

  “But there’s a bunch of knights back there,” Antonio warns. “Are you sure you can handle—”

  Storm sucks her teeth. Her eye blazes orange with magic, the light echoing sharp off of her features. “I’m a superhero, bitch. I can do anything.”

  The orange blur speeds out of their sight.

  A chuckle bursts from Blythe—not one of amusement, but complete shock. The Guardian of Time has returned at the eleventh hour.

  The staircase behind the security door is a concrete tower of silence. Blythe can’t say she isn’t thankful for the momentary peace it gives them.

  Antonio moves slowly, taking each stair one at a time. Blythe keeps pace with him. Jay was right—Antonio is limping.

  “At least Storm’s back. How do you feel now?” Antonio asks, because of course he’s worried about her.

  Blythe takes in a long breath. “Worried. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Storm’s a major asset. But I still pictured this going a lot smoother and with less…incapacitations. How are your wings?”

  Antonio reaches toward his back, squinting. “Honestly?” he asks. “I’ve never hurt them this badly before. So, I don’t…I don’t know.”

  The building shakes. At this point, it could be from anything—another set of Daniel’s vines, Caspian trying to find the source of the security system, Cordelia hacking the whole transport tower or something. Blythe doesn’t even bother to look.

  Antonio does. “Oh cr—”

  He grabs Blythe, wings already sprouting from his back, and jumps into the air. Blythe holds him as tightly as possible as he flies. What did he just see?

  She looks behind them—and straight into the mouth of the snake creature’s jowls, sharp teeth snapping far too close to their feet.

  “Antonio!” Blythe shrieks. The thing chomps through stairs like fucking Pac-Man, flying just as fast as they are.

  “I know, I know! Don’t worry, I got you!” But Antonio is speaking through gritted teeth. He won’t be able to fly for long.

  Blythe can’t even aim the hockey stick behind them—not if she doesn’t want to risk Antonio dropping her. Her only aim is up.

  Antonio flies around the spiraling corner, just a hair away from hitting the wall. The creature isn’t as lucky. Its body slams a hole into the concrete.

  The top floor is fast approaching, the concrete roof right above it. “Shoot through the ceiling for me!” Antonio orders.

  “What? Why?”

  “Please, just do it!”

  Blythe aims the hockey stick’s handle. A beam of light cracks through the concrete; Antonio flies right through the pieces of debris that rain down upon them. They are soaring toward the night sky.

  Blythe doesn’t understand. The entrance to the top floor is on their left. There’s no reason to go outside.

  Then Blythe realizes. “Antonio, don’t you dare.”
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  He is barely keeping afloat. “Don’t worry about me.” His dimple appears in his cheek as he smiles. “Just go find your family, okay?”

  “Antonio--!”

  He throws her into the doorway. Her body hits the ground before she can even fight back. Antonio shoots out of the ceiling with the creature’s curved teeth on his heels. It doesn’t even glance in Blythe’s direction, which is, of course, exactly what Antonio planned. It only travels up and out.

  The world is quiet. The only sound Blythe can hear is her own heartbeat. She used to love the sound of lonely silence. Now she is not so sure.

  All around the transport tower, the Guardians are risking everything to ensure she gets to her family. The gratitude in her chest is so strong that it aches.

  Blythe really does owe these kids her life.

  Behind her is another double security door, this time with a card reader on its left. Blythe swipes the keycard and the doors click open.

  She walks into a rounded space, the likes of which she has never seen before. It almost resembles a loading dock, but it really just looks like a room with a bunch of jet-shaped escape pods embedded in the walls.

  Their doors and windows face inward, but everything else is already outside, poised to burst into the night with the flick of a switch. Blythe counts about thirty of them, a crescent shape of tiny white jets sized more like luxury cars.

  Blythe heads to the nearest tiny window and peeks inside. Through the darkness, she can make out two rows of white seats, not counting the cockpit. It looks…cramped. Blythe realizes, with a hitched breath, she has seen the inside of these jets before. Her family was forced into one.

  She checks the next few jets, cupping her face against the windows. They are empty. Her family is not here.