Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4)

by Melinda Kucsera

  He stood in a large room with mirrors at one end, the only magic that ever-present wet-dog stench of the lights. Sweat ran down his arms and dripped onto the wood floor of the practice room he preferred.

  No, he didn’t have a mission. Not yet.

  Along the wall, racks presented a variety of practice weapons available to anyone. Algernon preferred the shorter ones.

  “No. It isn’t fair,” Marcus replied. He lowered his practice blade.

  The older, taller man, still fit and energetic despite his advancing gray and years, had dragged Algernon through a full fighting evaluation not long after he’d arrived.

  He’d deemed Algernon capable enough.

  Only when Algernon had asked, at Naya’s insistence, had Marcus agreed to train him. Every day since then, Penny’s husband had spent an hour or four beating Algernon into a true warrior.

  More or less.

  After almost a month of this, on top of all the defensive sword training before his death, Algernon considered himself competent as a combatant.

  Marcus could beat him in five seconds if he tried. Maybe less.

  Someday, Algernon would beat him without resorting to magic. On that day, Algernon would weep. It would mean Marcus had lost his edge and needed to retire.

  The old man held up a rough, weathered palm to declare the session paused.

  Algernon turned and slashed his blade through the air again, wishing Braylen stood before him.

  He wanted to chop up that vile, evil man. If he held a real sword in his hand, Algernon thought he might’ve turned it on himself to end this damnable misery.

  Marcus stayed out of his way, watching and waiting with the patience of a man who’d dealt with similar emotions to those twisting through Algernon’s gut.

  Father would’ve done the same.

  “It’s normal to feel that way,” Marcus said. “Like you were cheated somehow.”

  “I hate it!” Algernon flung his dull wooden blade at the floor like a child.

  The fake sword clunked and slid across the floor.

  He crossed his arms, even angrier because tears rolled down his cheeks. “I hate this,” he sobbed.

  Marcus stood behind him in silence.

  Algernon covered his face, too ashamed of himself to speak.

  He knew better than to treat a weapon like that, even a practice weapon. Every blade deserved respect. Treat it well and it’ll take care of you, as his tutor used to say.

  Form habits with your practice weapons.

  Tantrums had never defeated anything except Algernon.

  “I understand,” Marcus said. “If not for Penny and my healer, I would’ve cracked up a long time ago. And you feel like a choice was taken from you. Not the choice whether to come back or not. The one of life or death in the first place. Someone killed you.”

  Marcus sighed. “It’s a hard thing to accept that someone beat you at the most important thing of all. That you couldn’t scrape the win when you were down. Someone was stronger, faster, sneakier, or just plain more committed than you. It’s factual and it’s rough to swallow that. Probably rougher at your age. Most kids consider themselves immortal.”

  “But you’re not, are you?” Miru said, his voice a whisper in Algernon’s ear. “No one is.”

  Dark, brooding smoke filled his senses so completely that Algernon could think of nothing else. He clawed the air, trying desperately to hold onto a moment that insisted upon slipping through his fingers. Like water.

  Sharp, sudden pain punched into his back. The bloody tip of a sword shoved through his gut. Bright, welcoming blue blood spattered on the crypt niche before him and the bones within it.

  Algernon stared at the blade skewering him. He recognized the etching.

  His own sword. This blade, a lovely gift from Grandma Katona, had fallen into the sea with his home.

  Miru had taken everything from him.

  No, he’d thrown it all away.

  “Everyone dies,” Miru said.

  “You killed me,” Algernon whispered.

  Miru laughed. “You killed me too. I think we’re even. Or, rather, we would be if you’d stay dead like a good little boy.”

  Blue snakes slithered from Algernon’s gut, moving in slow, undulating motion.

  If they reached his mouth, something bad happened. Algernon cringed and held his breath.

  “A crypt is a good place to die, isn’t it?” Miru asked. He ripped the sword out of Algernon’s body.

  Algernon fell forward, onto his hands and knees. His guts spilled onto the dry, dusty ground. The slimy ropes pulled the blue snakes off his body.

  Bones rattled and danced on clouds of smoke. Shadows swirled in the back of the nearest niche.

  The devouring hunger crept toward him, drawn by the snakes.

  “Why are you here?” Algernon asked between gasps for breath.

  His belly should have hurt. Instead, his shoulder blazed with fresh agony. The hole in his heart throbbed with emptiness.

  “The same reason you are, Algie.”

  The elegant blade slammed through his back again, this time piercing his heart. That bulbous, pulsing organ stuck to the tip of the sword and slapped against the ground.

  He whimpered, too spent to scream, as he bent with the blade through his body, forced to his hands and knees by the hilt against his back.

  Thick, bloody slime oozed around his heart, sliding down the blade in viscous clumps.

  Algernon sobbed as his heart continued beating, skewered and pinned in place close enough to touch. His shoulder throbbed in time with it.

  The blue snakes writhed and wriggled over each other to reach his heart, hampered by his entrails.

  He needed those parts, didn’t he? Yet he kept breathing, kept thinking, kept hurting.

  This torment belonged to him. He’d earned it. The murders he’d committed had decided his fate. For the rest of eternity, the Creator would torture him again and again.

  “Why are you like this?” he whimpered. “I didn’t want to kill anyone.”

  Miru giggled like a little girl. “I’ll grant that you seemed quite surprised at my death. To be honest, so was I. Dumb, half-trained brat like you? I didn’t think you had that in you. Especially not with those two for parents. I guess we all discounted granny’s influence, hm?”

  Algernon wished Granma Katona could save him. She always knew what to do. Even when everything fell to pieces, she stayed together.

  The snakes swarmed his still-beating heart.

  He batted at them. They slipped through his feeble grip, aided by the slime from his traitorous body.

  “Stop,” he begged them.

  They ignored him.

  “Let me fight or let me go!”

  With one final ounce of effort, all he could muster, he swiped his hands through the snakes.

  They bit his fingers, stabbing through his flesh with twin, sparkling blue fangs.

  He had no way to stop them. Even his last tiny, fleeting shred of hope did nothing.

  “End it,” he whispered with tears streaming down his cheeks. “Let this end. I can’t do it anymore.”

  The snakes ripped his heart into gobbets of meat. While he watched.

  “Algie, please don’t give up,” Naya said.

  He didn’t know anyone named Naya.

  A bright flash slashed through the snakes, shredding them with tiny shrieks. The smoke puffed from the gaping hole in his chest to form a pane of dark, cloudy glass.

  He fell forward. His face smashed through the glass. A thousand shards cut his flesh.

  Algernon landed in a heap on a soft, white rug, his chest a gaping hole filled with agony. He saw himself sitting on a leather couch.

  The moment seemed familiar yet different.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  Naya touched under his chin with two fingers, tilting his head up. Lemon with a touch of mint tickled his nose.

  He opened his eyes.

  Of course he knew Naya.
She stood before him in her simple white dress. Her dark hair hung in a dozen braids, held together at her neck. He’d fled to this sanctuary, not expecting to find her there.

  No, this seemed wrong. Somehow.

  He shrugged his head out of her gentle grip and patted his chest. No holes and no snakes.

  Why did he expect snakes?

  “Is this real?” he murmured. “Am I dead?”

  Naya climbed onto his lap. She straddled his legs and touched his cheeks. “Is anything real?”

  He kissed her hand, the right and proper thing to do. Her skin tasted like her power. “Up is down,” he said, uncertain why, “but only on the strange days.”

  She giggled, her laughter delightful and forgiving. In this place, he could let himself forget.

  Everything faded in favor of this lovely woman.

  “You say the most curious things, Algie.”

  Once upon a time, that nickname had annoyed him. Everyone had used it to belittle him, to remind him he was a child.

  Coming from the lips of the woman he loved, he relished the sound even as he marveled at it.

  He’d thought his heart died long ago.

  “How did I die?” he asked. His nightmares left him questioning which version reflected reality.

  Naya smirked at him. “You tell me.”

  He shook his head, not wanting to play a game over it. Not this time. “I don’t remember.”

  She raised her delicate black brow. All traces of amusement fled. “You forgot again?”

  “I lost it.”

  Like threads of a tapestry holding him together, his memories unraveled at every opportunity.

  Which did he keep and which did he forget?

  “I’m worried about you.” Naya shifted her hand to his forehead.

  Lemon with a minty undertone washed over him as she flexed her power. Chill soothed him until she touched the icy, empty wound in his chest.

  His shoulder ached.

  The world flashed with blue and he caught a whiff of smoke.

  She stopped before he had to beg.

  “But you’re not sick. You’re never sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with you.” She leaned close and rested her forehead against his neck.

  “I’m dead,” he murmured as he wrapped his arms around her.

  In ten different ways.

  His shoulder still ached, sharper and more real. Emptiness pulsed through his body, pumped by a dead, void-filled heart.

  “You’re alive to me,” Naya said.

  She kept him together. Like Grandma Katona had. But he couldn't remember Grandma Katona. The old woman never killed him or damned him.

  “Am I warm?” he asked, certain he knew the answer.

  Naya nudged under his chin, a sign her patience waned. The woman had a near-infinite supply. Yet he still managed to spend it every few days.

  “Help me rest,” he whispered. “I think I’ve pushed too much today.”

  Naya kissed him. She breathed smoke into his mouth.

  “Wake up,” Penny whispered, patting his cheek. “The caravan is coming through.”

  He didn’t know anyone named Penny.

  Telling her that sounded like a good way to earn a slap across the face. Of course he knew the formidable mage on this first mission with him.

  Algernon rubbed his eyes until they streaked with blue, wishing his stupid brain could stay on task. Her pine scent smothered a fleeting whiff of smoke.

  Every Fallen had to adjust. If he wanted his soul back, he needed to focus and attend. Follow directions. Accomplish mission goals.

  If he wanted his soul back. It seemed useless to him.

  They walked along the side of a dry, dusty packed earth road. Trees flanked it, dappling their path with hundreds of splotches of shade and offering a perfect place for an ambush.

  Penny had pointed that out.

  He’d never examined scenery this much before.

  Tiny pinpricks of color hunched among grasses kept in check by numerous horses. Birds chirped their annoyance with two travelers unwilling to explode into seed for them. Real pine, from trees instead of his mentor, drifted on a warm breeze. Leaves rustled. Squirrels darted from trunk to trunk, tracking them as if expecting treats.

  “Listen,” Penny said.

  Algernon breathed in her pine scent and focused on his ears.

  The birds quieted. A moment later, buzzing he’d ceased to notice stopped.

  Wood creaked in the distance. Chains jangled. Hooves clopped.

  When the sounds drew closer, he turned to look like anyone would.

  Two large horses pulled a cart covered with a peaked white tarp. A man in bright green clothes sat on the driver’s bench, holding the reins.

  Behind the first cart, a second and third trundled along. Men rode horses alongside the wagons.

  Penny squawked as she stumbled into the road and fell. Thin, weak mud spattered her dress and covered her hands.

  The driver yanked his reins and shouted. “Stopping!”

  She’d given him plenty of time to keep the horses from trampling her. Not that they would. Algernon knew better than that. They might have reared or hurt themselves to avoid her, though.

  Algernon did his part. He rushed to her side. “Are you all right, Mother?”

  The riders drew weapons and peered into the trees.

  They wouldn’t have picked this spot if they’d had a choice. Timing had hampered them, or so Penny had said. They had one chance to catch this caravan, and it happened to fall within a forest too suspicious for words.

  “Who are you?” a rider asked.

  He seemed familiar, though Algernon couldn’t place him. The sword and armor this man wore kept Algernon from having to pretend his caution, at least.

  Penny had helped Algernon disguise himself enough to avoid recognition by casual acquaintances. Just in case. She knew far more than Algernon about tiny adjustments to appearance, things he could maintain over several days without help or magic.

  Like the clips holding his hair over the floppy points of his ears. A few streaks of mud had changed the apparent shape of his nose. She’d glued bits of brown fluff into his eyebrows and daubed his chin with a cosmetic to suggest the start of a beard he hadn’t yet begun to grow.

  Thank goodness for her odd knowledge.

  “Just travelers, sir,” Algernon said. He ducked his head like he expected a kick or a swat.

  Or a sword through the gut.

  That had happened to him before. Hadn’t it? How did he die?

  No, he didn’t have time for that kind of confusion. Not now. It didn’t matter anyway.

  “I’m so sorry,” Penny said as Algernon helped her stand. She sounded like a local. “I’m not used to this kind of travel. We’ve been walking all day and it’s wearing on me.”

  She peered at the wagons. “I don’t suppose you have any room to spare on one of those carts? We have some money. I can pay for it.”

  The man kept his sword ready and paid a thousand times more attention to the woods than Algernon or Penny. “If you can pay for it, why didn’t you book passage on a wagon in the first place?”

  Penny huffed. “Because I’m a damned fool,” she said. “I didn’t realize how far it is. We’ve never left our home before. This whole world is so much bigger than either of us realized.”

  Her pine scent intensified as she flexed her will to convince the man to believe her.

  Algernon did his part by doting on her. On this mission, she would teach him many things. Among them, how to stage a friendly ambush.

  He already knew how to be polite.

  Their interrogator checked the caravan and sheathed his blade. He patted his horse’s neck.

  None of the beasts stamped or snorted, which he probably took as a kind of reassurance. Algernon certainly saw it that way.

  “You can talk to the caravan master,” he said. “Follow me.”

  Algernon helped Penny as she affected a fake limp in the rider’s wa
ke.

  As they passed the first wagon, he caught familiar yet strange scents. The magic inside it teased him with memories of pleasant things drifting out of his reach.

  Nothing happy remained with him. All those moments had vanished forever.

  He still couldn't picture Grandma Katona. Her warm, wrinkled hand touched his and nothing more. What color were her eyes? She had gray hair, right?

  More than once, she’d smiled at him. He knew it had happened. Yet he couldn’t remember any such moments.

  Penny spoke to the woman in charge. Algernon kept his mouth shut.

  The woman in charge took Penny’s coin and let them ride in the rear wagon.

  Three people, all careworn travelers like Penny and Algernon’s facades, sat in the wagon. They shuffled enough for the newcomers to take space and otherwise ignored them.

  Algernon sat beside Penny and tried to separate all the warring scents he’d noted in the first wagon. He wanted to sort through everything.

  Someday, he hoped to understand why magic smelled the way it did. Penny thought they could sort it all in time.

  He closed his eyes and battled pine to recall the rest.

  Minty lemon bathed Algernon in its sweet embrace.

  How had he shoved aside the pine that much? Had Penny left?

  As he opened his eyes, blue slashed across his vision like a piece of paper tearing in half. Smoke teased his nose, too fleeting to disrupt anything.

  “What did you do?” Naya asked. She wiped Algernon’s hand with a damp cloth, cleaning blood from his palm. Her fingers moved slowly and methodically, brushing at his distress.

  Algernon stared at his whole, unmarred hand, trying to remember a wagon. The moment flopped on the floor like a live fish not ready to give up.

  Then it plunged through the surface and out of sight.

  Blood on his hand. How had he gotten blood on his hand?

  Yes, he remembered.

  “The knife slipped.” Algernon sat in a plain wooden chair, one of several at a round table in a room full of round tables with chairs.

  A few dozen Fallen agents, healers, and servants chattered over meals in the dining hall. Their different scents mashed together, creating a miasma Algernon wanted to banish before it made him sick.

  A servant pushed a squeaking cart full of dirty dishes through the swinging door to the kitchen.