by B N Miles
“What are those?” he asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Must be some kind of experimental magic,” Lumi said. “I saw them a few minutes ago and didn’t really understand it, so I walked over and started checking them out. I was calling for you guys, but then you all acted like you couldn’t see me and started off in that direction.” She pointed away from the plateau, over toward a path that ran along the closest ridge.
Jared shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “No, we were walking that way,” he said, pointing at the plateau. “I mean, we were trying to go right toward it.”
“You definitely weren’t,” Lumi said, squinting at him for a moment before touching the wards with her fingers. “Jesus, these are intense.”
“What?” he asked
“So, I think it’s some kind of barrier,” she said. “I can get through, probably because I have Medlar blood, but I’m not really positive why. You guys can’t, and it’s pushing you away from that plateau, nudging you in a different direction without you even realizing it. That’s why it seemed like I disappeared. You guys can’t comprehend that world in that direction.” She pointed toward the plateau.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that before,” Jared said.
“Mind control?” Jessalene asked. “I mean, the magic is controlling our minds?”
“I don’t think so,” Lumi said. “I think it’s more like… illusion work.”
“Tricky stuff,” Jared said.
“I don’t like it,” Nikki said, arms crossed over her chest, her posture straight. “I don’t like it one tiny bit. How can magic make me not realize I’m going in the wrong direction?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Lumi said. “But it definitely works. I mean, watch.”
Lumi stood, walked forward, and disappeared.
Jared took a sharp breath again. He’d seen invisibility spells, but they were usually imperfect and very, very difficult to maintain. Invisibility involved some serious high-level circumstances, from light manipulation to things like air temperature, humidity, and airflow. Most invisibility spells had ghosting effects, blurry outlines, strange artifacting and glitching.
But Lumi was just gone. Straight up gone.
“Okay, let’s test this,” Jared said. He stood and walked forward, aiming right for the plateau. He kept going, stepped over rocks, passed some bushes, and he felt like he was getting closer and closer.
Until Nikki caught up with him and grabbed his wrist. “Jared,” she said.
He frowned at her then looked back at the plateau. It was still in the same position as it had been before.
But now he was closer to the far ridge.
“Holy shit,” he said.
Nikki gave him a serious look. “This is intense magic,” she said. “Really, really intense.”
“I know,” he said.
Lumi popped back into existence. Jessalene let out a little shout then covered her mouth.
“It’s okay,” Lumi said. “Just me.”
“Shit, this is weird,” Jessalene said.
Jared walked back over with Nikki and the four of them stood staring out at the plateau.
“All right,” Jared said. “So Lumi, you can get through. What does it look like on the other side?”
“There’s definitely something out there,” she said. “I can feel it when I cross over the barrier. And I think I can see these like… giant bays carved into the side of the mountain. But I can’t see them from here.”
“It looks just like a mountain to me,” Nikki said. “And I have excellent eyesight.”
“This isn’t going to work if we can’t get through,” Jared said.
“He’s right,” Jessalene said. “You’re strong, Lumi, but there’s no way you can get in there and find Cassie all on your own.”
“I don’t know,” Lumi said. “I bet I could bring down that whole facility.”
“And kill everyone inside in the process,” Jared said.
“We need to find a way to get all of us through,” Jessalene said. “Whether it’s tricking the wards or maybe breaking them apart, I’m not sure what you two can do. But if we can’t all get through, then this plan is dead in the water.”
“I agree,” Nikki said. “I won’t risk sending you in alone, Lumi.”
“How tight are they on the other side?” Jared asked.
“They’re not perfect,” Lumi said. “But I’m not sure if I can break them on my own.”
“We might be able to do it together,” Jared said. “If you work from the inside and I push from out here, it’s possible.”
Lumi poked her toe at the wards etched into the stone on the ground then walked forward and popped out of existence again.
“Shit,” Jessalene said, flinching away from the barrier. “I wish she’d stop doing that.”
“Don’t move,” Jared said. “Let’s wait and see what she says.”
They drank water and didn’t move, Jared crouched down and anxiously studied the wards. They were complicated, but they weren’t incomprehensible. Still, he felt like he was only looking at one half of a very difficult math problem, and there was no way he could possibly find the solution without the full picture.
When he tried to study the space around them through the priori, he saw nothing, just pure emptiness.
Lumi appeared a minute later. “I have an idea,” she said. “Can I get a phone, please?”
Nikki handed hers over and Lumi disappeared one more time. She came back through a minute later and showed Jared a series of pictures she took of the wards on that side of the invisible barrier.
“Clever,” Jared said, studying them. “Very clever. I had a feeling I was only seeing part of the series. The wards are split in half, some inside and some outside, so even if a particularly strong and smart Magi came across all this, there’d be no way to break it open without the markings on the other side.”
“Exactly,” Lumi said. “But with these, what do you think?”
“Maybe,” Jared said. “All right. Let’s get back, get some rest, and study all this.”
“I’ll take a few more pictures, just to be safe.”
She popped back over, and ten minutes later, they hiked back the way they came.
Jared studied the pictures as they walked. He’d never seen light and air wards so intricately wrought together before, and it almost made him despair. If the Medlar could create and maintain something like that, he had a hard time believing that they had any chance of getting inside that facility.
“This thing takes huge amounts of energy,” Jared said. “We’re talking massive amounts of priori just to hide the place.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Lumi said. “Question is, where does that energy flow come from?”
“Batteries,” Jared said. “Lots and lots of batteries.”
Lumi bit her lip hard and Jared shared her uncertainty.
That was some serious magic back there. And it was just an outer fence.
Whatever the Medlar had inside could be much, much worse.
34
Jared hunched over a worn, round wooden table. Lumi sat across from him, with several pages of lined notebook paper sprawled out between them. Lumi scribbled another rune with a black pen and jabbed at it.
“If we use this to break the initial seal—”
“Too much energy,” Jared said. “We’ll have to at least match whatever they’re dumping in.”
“We can handle it.”
He shook his head. “We might be able to manage it, but once we’re inside, we’ll be so consumed and spent with Need that we’ll be useless. We need to break through these wards and still be able to think once we’re inside.”
Lumi grunted, crossed out the rune, and leaned back in her chair. The notebook pages were covered in runes drawn in Lumi’s tight scrawl and Jared’s more florid round shapes, but each rune was crossed out, scribbled over, or otherwise deformed and destroyed.
/> They’d been at it for hours, and Jared was exhausted. The lights in their room were bright, a harsh contrast to the low orange glow from the streetlamps outside.
Izzy and Jessalene rested on their stomachs at the end of a large queen bed, watching reruns of The Office on cable. Nikki was at the opposite end of the bed, her back against the headboard, painting her nails a bright pink she’d bought from the drugstore next to the hotel. Wade sat on the floor against the far wall, his arms crossed over his chest.
The carpet was a dark blue and the walls had that weird textured paper covering them that large chain hotels tended to prefer. Everything was neat and clean, at least on its surface, but entirely bland and almost ready to fall apart. The paintings were of nondescript landscapes, and the curtains were ever so slightly frayed at the ends.
They had two rooms, one with a queen bed just barely big enough for Jared, Jessalene, Lumi, and Nikki, plus another room with two twins for Izzy and Wade. Nikki had gone out to get everyone dinner, which was authentic Mexican, per Jessalene’s very insistent request, and the remnants of the meal were stacked up on the dresser next to the TV.
“I need a break,” Jared said. “We’ve been at this for three hours.”
“We have to figure it out,” Lumi said. “Cassie’s in there. I just know she is.”
“We’ll do it.” Jared stood up and stretched. “I just need some air, all right?”
Lumi waved him off as he walked through the room. He saw Jessalene’s eyes follow him as he reached a set of glass sliding doors. He pushed aside the long red curtain and pulled the door open, stepping out onto a concrete balcony with a single chair in the corner.
He leaned against the low concrete wall and stared out over the city. There wasn’t much to see, just a strip mall to their left, a busy street down below, and more buildings with twinkling lights spreading out in front of him. Beyond all that, invisible now in the night, the facility sat pressed into the base of that mountain, and Jared was determined to get inside.
But so far, they hadn’t made any progress. They were spinning their wheels and kept coming up against the same problem. If the Medlar’s defenses were running on priori-powered batteries, that meant they had some serious power to work with. Jared and Lumi could call on more priori than the average Magi, but that still wouldn’t be enough.
Jared ran his fingers along the top of the concrete wall and breathed the crisp desert air. The world seemed cleaner this far out west, and the breeze was almost comforting now that the sun had set. He stared over the buildings and wondered if Cassie was okay, if they were treating her well, if she was safe.
The sliding door opened behind him. He expected Jessalene, but instead Wade stepped out.
“Hey,” Wade said.
“Hey.” Jared looked back at the city. He didn’t have time to deal with Wade right now.
“Looks like you and Lumi are sort of, uh, struggling over there.” He walked to the chair in the corner and sat down.
“Power differential,” Jared said. “Keep coming up against the same roadblock.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Wade said.
“What can I do for you, Wade?”
“Just thought we could talk for a second.” He fidgeted in his chair then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands laced in front of him.
Jared turned and leaned his back against the concrete half wall.
“All right,” he said, forcing himself to be patient. “Let’s talk, then.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said in the car.”
“And what do you think?”
“You have no reason to trust me,” Wade said. “I mean, I don’t blame you, you know? I came here to convince Cassie to leave, and you guys clearly care a lot about her.”
“We really do,” Jared said.
“Yeah, I get that. At first, I thought you guys were just a bunch of… I don’t know, weirdos. This whole thing seemed so bizarre to me. This whole world seems like a real mess.” He leaned back, spreading his hands out wide, then dropped them down. “I was pretty confused for a while, you know? Just trying to figure out what the heck to do. I tracked Cassie, but then I had to find something to eat, and people freaked out when they saw me in my shifted form, and nothing here makes any sense.”
“I know” Jared said. “Cassie’s told me a little about your world. Magi aren’t common there, right?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I mean, I know they exist. But Humans are kind of…”
“Kind of what?”
“Servants,” he said. “You know, like, not slaves. We don’t do slavery.” He said it like he was trying to convince himself, and Jared didn’t argue. “But generally, Humans work for the great Were and Shifter clans. I had a few Human friends, growing up.”
Jared arched an eyebrow. “Good for you,” he said.
“But this place, it’s upside down,” Wade said like he hadn’t heard the condescension in Jared’s voice. “Magi running everything, and the whole separation of Humans and Metas. It’s insane, it just makes no sense at all.”
“The Accords happened a long time ago,” Jared said. “At the end of a great war that almost destroyed Humans and Metas.”
“I know, I mean, that’s what Izzy told me. I’m just trying to understand why Cassie would want to stay, but I think I’m starting to get it.”
“Maybe you can explain it to me, then,” Jared said.
“She’s got you guys,” he said. “I mean, if I came here and had nothing and nobody, I’d want to go home. That’s what I thought she’d want too, at first anyway. But now I realize she must be really happy here. I mean, I don’t have anybody that cares about me like you guys care about her, not even back home.”
Jared took a deep breath and let it out. He forced his impatience aside and tried to think about this from Wade’s perspective.
“That must be hard,” he said.
“That’s life in the Grim family,” Wade said. “There’s always a competition, always a fight for pack dominance. We can’t really help it, you know? The competition is built into our blood. It’s fun sometimes, but mostly it’s really lonely. Cassie was one of the few decent people in the whole family, even though we sort of drifted apart as we got older. I always looked up to her.”
“Did you have anyone you could talk to?” Jared asked.
“Not really,” Wade said. “I have an older brother, but he’s an asshole. Used to kneel on my arms and headbutt me in the chest until I cried.”
“Sounds like an average older brother.”
Wade didn’t smile. “Some of the other cousins aren’t too bad,” he said. “But they all want better positions in the family, more responsibility, more power.”
“Is that why you agreed to do this?” Jared asked.
Wade stared at him then his eyes moved away, down to the off-white concrete floor. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought it would help my parents. I thought it would help me earn a little respect. But now I just think they chose the most eager idiot, not too stupid that I’d totally screw it up, but just dumb and desperate enough to climb into that hole.”
“That must be hard,” Jared said.
“It’s whatever.” Wade tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Anyway, I just want you to know, I get my situation, and I’m trying to accept it. I don’t want this to be my reality, but I can at least understand why Cassie might.”
“Thanks,” Jared said. “I appreciate that. But I still don’t trust you.”
“You don’t have to,” Wade said. “I’m just along for the ride.”
He went to stand, but Jared cleared his throat.
“When I first left my family, the world felt pretty strange to me, too,” he said.
Wade hesitated, half-risen from his chair, then sank back down. “What does that mean, left your family?” he asked.
“Magi are born into families,” Jared said. “Just like your pack. I left my family, decided I didn’t want to be a part of them anymore, a
nd I had to find my own way in the world. Those first few years were disorienting and probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“Did you have help?” he asked.
“Not really,” Jared said, but then he thought of Wyatt and the Marshal Service. “Well, I had a little help. I had some small measure of purpose. But for the most part, I was lost and trying to find my place in a world that didn’t really make much sense to me anymore.”
“That must have been hard,” Wade said. “I can’t imagine ever leaving my pack.”
“What you’re dealing with now is worse,” Jared said. “I know that, and I can empathize with you, at least a little bit. Lumi left her family, Jessalene’s been apart from her clan. Cassie, well, you know all about her. Even Izzy’s an Independent for her own difficult reasons.”
“You all lost something,” Wade said.
Jared nodded. “That’s right. We’re a little gang of misfits.”
Wade gave him a tight smile. “Sounds nice.”
“It is,” Jared said. “I’m not saying you should stay, but at least while you are here, you should know that you’re not totally alone.”
Wade took a deep, slow breath then let it out. “Thanks,” he said. “I think I needed to hear that.”
Jared nodded. “Good. Now look, if I’m hard on you, it’s not because you’ve done anything wrong. I’m just…”
“You miss Cassie,” Wade said. “I get it.”
“Yeah.” Jared looked back out over the city. “She’s out there.”
“You’ll get her back.” Wade stood then. “I’m sure of it.” He moved toward the door.
“We’ll get you home,” Jared said. “If that’s what you want, we’ll do it. I promise.”
“Thanks, uh, that means a lot. I think I’m going bed, if that’s cool.”
“Yeah, sure, grab the room key from Izzy.”
Wade pulled open the door and stepped back inside.
35