Academy of Magic Collection

by Angelique S Anderson et al.

  Leo... The pain that tore through my chest at the thought of him again flooded everything inside me. Feathers appeared quickly all up and down my arms, and at first I just let them come. I sat on the ground and felt the stabs of heat race up and down my back, over my lips and throat until it became harder to breathe. I knew if I just waited a few more minutes, I'd breathe easier than I ever had just like before, but I didn't want to change. I didn't want to be something else. I just wanted to be myself, in my own body, in my own world again.

  I took a long, strangled breath and tried to channel the prickling sensations to the tips of my fingers and toes, to push the Sylph in me away because I didn't want to have anything to do with them...with any of the Elementals who would rush through the lifted veil and slaughter the human race.

  And it was all my fault.

  I'd led them right to Eve.

  I raised my knees, buried my head in my arms and just let the tears come. It was pointless, but so was everything else I was doing right now. I was lost, and so was everything I'd ever loved.

  Chapter Thirty

  I jumped and scrambled to my feet when I felt something huffing next to my ear. As the fog cleared, Fate and Draco, the huge, black guard dogs from Mr. Burke’s grocery in the grind were both sitting there staring at me.

  “What…” I gasped, then tried to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I wound up poking myself in the face with the feathers that had emerged over my hands again with the shock, and I shook them, imagining the water flowing through my fingertips and out into the nothingness all around us. Was I back? Was I back in The Grind somehow? I dropped to my knees and held my hands out for them. “Come here, guys…” I said, expecting them to nuzzle my hands like they had outside Mr. Burke’s store.

  But that’s not what they did.

  “All is not lost.” A low, male voice came from one of the dogs.

  “Wh—Are you talking?!” I pushed backward from them. “OK…OK what’s happening…is this a raven bird trick or something?”

  “We are Foo guardians,” a female voice came from the other dog. “Do not fear us, Halsey Rhodes.”

  “You’re really talking to me…I saw your mouth move.”

  They exchanged looks and at the same time, began growing until they both towered over me. Their heads morphed into that of lions with tightly curled manes, thick, downcast eyebrows, and their arms and chests both became rippled with muscles. I stumbled backward and squinted as a bright light reflected off the gold pendants that had been their dog tags, now hanging like clock pendulums from thick, intricately woven chains that were also made of gold.

  “This is our spirit form, Halsey Rhodes. Our true form,” the male lion said. “We are entities of the spirit world. You know us as Draco and Fate, and may call us this still.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but it was as if I’d forgotten how to speak standing before them. Their faces were animated like a person’s, their kind, enormous gold eyes and wide, smiling mouths, though each of their teeth were easily the size of my entire arm.

  My wings flew out behind me, making me fall to the ground. Feathers had completely covered my hands and arms, and I forced my eyes closed to push them away.

  “You are more than you know yourself to be,” Fate said, her voice gentle and maternal, and I noticed in that moment her glinting medallion was actually a miniature lion, a baby curled into a little, sleeping ball. Tears pricked my eyes, and I blinked them back.

  “I don’t want to be,” I said, forcing my voice to stabilize. “I just want to go home and have everything go back to the way it was. They’re going to kill everyone,” I said, the tears coming too fast for me to blink them away now.

  The medallion on Draco’s neck detached itself and floated under his paw, slowly turning into a blue globe swirling with clouds. I was mesmerized as they slowly wove themselves into and out of each other like embroidery.

  “There are many holes between our worlds,” he said as I watched the cords create patterns of perfectly knitted, hollow triangles. “But there are also many points that connect them.” The hollow triangles almost disappeared from view as the woven strings of cloud became brighter, and soon, I saw those instead of the hollow places inside.

  “Like us, you are both the physical and the spirit.” Fate’s calming voice washed over me again. “Thus, you may travel as we do. But be warned. To embrace both your natures means you will see the dual natures in others. To pass through the realms, you must accept this as it is, and you must do what you can to restore balance where the scales have slipped. This is the charge of all those with Bright Natures.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. “Are you saying I can just go back? I don’t have to find the tear?”

  “The veil is only as opaque as the strength of the denial we weave…” Draco said, his eyes lowering to the clouds stitching more tightly, covering the blue and green globe underneath until it was completely hidden. “We‘re in denial when we choose to see only our physical self, and only that of others.”

  “I still don’t understand how accepting both parts of myself will help me get home,” I said, studying the disappeared globe, swallowed by the woven cloud strands. Draco stepped back from the globe, and it started to grow as tall as he was.

  “To accept your dual nature is to accept your Bright Nature,” Fate said. “Not one or the other, but two in one. As two strands appear to exist from one. It becomes the filler of empty spaces.” The cloud unravelled, revealing the globe again, and when the knitting was completely undone, there was only a single length of string. It folded over on it self, made loops and darted in and out of them again to create the same open triangles as before. The same connected points of solid triangles.

  I understood.

  “We don’t need a tear…” I whispered, mesmerized by the fabric being woven before my eyes. “We can go between…through the weave.” I looked up at Draco and Fate, who were both smiling at me as they spoke at the same time.

  “If you accept that the two strands are an illusion, because they are one and the same. Just like you, Halsey Rhodes…The Moth in the Flame.”

  The tapestry globe shrank again and returned to the golden necklace that rested on Draco’s chest. Both lions turned around and started walking away, with each step shrinking back down to the size of the dogs I’d come to know. I followed them, and my wings receded, though not because I was fighting for control over them. It felt more like they were healing something in me, just like when I’d burned my ankles on the beach with Leo, which seemed so long ago now.

  When the fog cleared, I was standing on the sidewalk in the middle of The Grind. It was night time—the worst possible time to be in the valley. Draco and Fate walked in front of me, people made way in the distance, but as they passed me, some of their faces shifted on one side to brief flashes of snarling monsters with bared fangs.

  I looked away and saw a man with a normal face sitting near the edge of an alley. He took a small, red vial from his torn and dirty shirt pocket and removed the lid with a shaky hand, then brought it to his lips and drank the contents. When the liquid was gone, he shook the last drops onto his extended tongue just before throwing the empty vial into the dark. He signed and closed his eyes, letting his head lean back on the stone wall behind him. Within seconds, half of his face, too, became that of a snarling beast, its eyes glowing red behind the man’s skin.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and tried to fight the urge to run. You will see the dual natures of others…Fate’s words came back to me, and I remembered the man in the woods who offered me the vials before I left The Grind.

  This has to be what happened to Lauren. The vial gave her Red Fever, and it activated something else in her…something like it had in that man back in the alley. But what about all these other people with half monstrous faces? Did they all have Red Fever but didn’t know it yet? Had they all taken that drug in the vial?

  A smiling man knelt
up ahead as Fate and Draco approached, startling me out of my thoughts.

  “They’re absolutely beautiful. What are their names?” he asked, holding a hand out to the dogs. He looked up at me after a second, presumably waiting for an answer, and I had to consciously stop my mouth from falling open. Instead of the bones of a snarling monster, his eyes glowed a soft, light blue. The color extended all around his head and hands when I smiled back at him.

  “Um, Draco and Fate…” I said, and both dogs nuzzled his hand. He pet the tops of their heads, beaming rays of warm, light blue and now pink light in every direction, and I was filled with a sense of ease and happiness I hadn’t felt for a long time.

  “Those are great names,” he said as he rose to his feet. “Thanks for letting me pet them. I’d say be careful out here, but these guys are probably keeping the riff-raff at bay.” He smiled one more time at Draco and Fate before he nodded at me, then crossed the street and turned around a dark corner.

  Not five seconds later, a group of younger men rose from the stoop of a building like shadows come to life. I couldn’t see their faces right away, but when I channeled the tension I immediately felt upon seeing them to my eyes, my vision became twenty times stronger. It was as if they were just standing a few feet in front of me.

  Behind half of each of their faces was a deformed, fanged beast with red-eyes—all except for one of them. His eyes and surrounding space just glowed a dark, muddy green, like a bruise trying to heal. I watched him walk backward in front of the others, his hands extended like he wanted them to stop. He started chuckling, trying to cajole them, but they just shoved him out of the way as they turned to follow the man who had just pet Draco and Fate.

  “No…” I said out loud. “They’re going to hurt him.” Draco and Fate turned to me, and I could feel them restraining themselves, ready to sprint off the curb. They wouldn’t move a muscle, but I knew they wanted to make sure I’d be all right if they left—that they wouldn’t leave me if I felt I couldn’t find Eve on my own. Though, I wasn’t alone. I had the eagle. I was the eagle. There were magical, otherworldly things within this world, and I was one of them. “It’s OK, help him!” I said, and in the same second, both dogs bolted across the street snarling and barking like an entire pack of raging hellhounds.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It was hard to see all the people on the streets of The Grind, several of them with faint monsters inside them, others with bright, vivid ones. I didn’t know what that meant, if maybe the brightness correlated to when they might change, like Lauren did, or if they’d even change at all. Maybe the monsters never came out and saw the light of day, and that’s why most Feral attacks happened at night, when they could hide their true forms behind the thin skins of sick people.

  Occasionally, some sleeping on benches or walking aimlessly didn’t have any monsters behind their eyes at all. Only muted colors like the bruise-colored man, drab and cloudy, which seemed to pull the energy right from my bones when I saw them.

  I needed to get behind The Citadel wall before Leo and the others could. As good of a hacker as Bryce was, I didn’t think he’d be able to short circuit the entire system from his stupid tablet…but then again, he had managed to project an astral map of the supernatural tears between worlds into the sky from it.

  Max’s house wasn’t far from The Citadel wall, and I was tempted to turn left and pound on his bedroom window like I did when we were kids and I wanted him to come out and play. I’d lived just a few houses down from him then, with my parents before the wasting sickness took them. I wondered what their colors might have been, or if they had monsters inside because of Red Fever too.

  I heard a pinging sound in my ear, and was confused for a second until I realized it was a queue notice! The communication block from the island was gone, of course! I tapped my temple and blinked to view my inbox. There were half-a-dozen messages from Max, more from my Aunt Alice. I was afraid to open any of them right now because if I did, I knew I’d lose my composure and I had to get behind the wall to warn Eve. When she was safe, then I’d let myself read them.

  I blinked the inbox closed and tapped my temple for an open line.

  Queue Eve Adams, Crisis Management Director, I thought. My heart almost leapt out of my chest when I saw the spinning arrows and the word connecting. I held my breath, hoping I wouldn’t get the same error message I got when I tried to queue Max in the bathroom back at Eden’s Bluff.

  Instead, the queue connected, and I heard Eve’s voice coming through loud and clear.

  “You’ve reached Eve Adams, Director of Crisis Management for the Portland area. I’m sorry I can’t respond to your queue right now, but please leave a message with your name and queue code, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

  The disappointment hit me in the chest and made me feel hollow for several seconds, but at least I could leave her a message.

  The tone sounded, and I started babbling. “Eve, this is Halsey Rhodes. You tried to warn me when you arrested Jennifer Kwan—you said I was on the radar. I didn’t know who you were then or what that meant, but I do now,” I said without taking a breath. “Uriel has sent a group of people to kill you. You have to get out of here right now. They’re coming tonight. They know your name and your job title. Please just get—” I was cut off by another tone, which signified the end of the allowable message space.

  It wasn’t enough to leave her a queue message. I had to find her before Leo and the others did. I doubled back, away from The Citadel gate and the horde of Sweeper droids patrolling it. Maybe I could fly over the side, where it was hopefully less populated. I walked backward to try to get a better look, then turned to run when I was sure of where I needed to go.

  But I crashed directly into someone, nearly knocking us both to the ground. Strong hands gripped my arms, steadying me.

  “Whoa, are you OK?” he said, and I stopped breathing.

  I looked up into his blue eyes, which widened and glassed when he saw me. “Halsey?” he whispered.

  Draco and Fate trotted to a stop at either side of him. I beamed my widest smile at each of them, hoping they could feel how grateful I was. Max’s eyes glowed a soft blue-green, brightening into a turquoise when I nodded at him.

  “It’s me,” I said, barely able to get the words out. “I’m back. I’m back and I have so much to tell you, Max.”

  Heat radiated through me, channeling to my shoulders automatically as I’d practiced so many times now, but I didn’t stop it this time. I felt the weight of my wings slowly unfurling behind me, and I took a step forward so I wouldn’t fall.

  Max let me go and stumbled backward, his bright, glowing eyes dimming.

  “Halsey…” he whispered, clearly in shock. Draco and Fate moved quickly to him, pushing their heads into his hands. He started absently petting them and dropped to his knees as both dogs wedged under his arms as if to hold him up.

  “Like I said, I have so much to tell you,” I tried to laugh, but it came out like a hiccoughed sob.

  “How?” was all he could say, and I understood that feeling all too well.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I need you to come with me right now, OK? We need to find Eve. Remember her? She’s not who we thought, Max. And she’s in trouble.”

  “But she tried to…” he trailed off and scrubbed his hands over his face.

  I looked at Draco and Fate. “Can you make sure my aunt and uncle are OK? Can you keep them safe?” I asked. Max looked at me like I was insane, then did a double take when both dogs barked in reply and took off running. Max got to his feet and took a few more steps away from me. “OK,” I nodded, then moved toward him. “Do you trust me?”

  He gaped at me, then shook his head quickly as if to clear a fog. “Halls, why do you have wings? Why did you just talk to those dogs like people? And why did they answer you?”

  “I’ll tell you all of that, but I need to know right now if you trust me, Max?”

  His eyes
brightened again, and the turquoise light started to glow all around him. “Always,” he said, then swallowed hard as he nodded. “I trust you.”

  “OK, then hold onto me.”

  I wrapped my arms under his and jumped, pushing the air with my wings until the ground fell away.

  “Halsey, shit!”

  “It’s OK, just hold on!”

  “Yeah, not gonna be a problem!”

  We rose over the side of The Citadel wall, which seemed about a hundred feet high. A platform around the top held multiple cameras and laser trackers, and I was utterly amazed that the Sweeper droids didn't see us. I focused my eyes and saw several sets of emergency doors at different intervals surrounding the interior city, Sweeper droids stationed at each one just like at the front gates.

  I landed in the shadows on the platform ledge, my arms still wrapped around Max's ribs as I looked up at him.

  "Are you all right?" I asked, his turquoise glow mixing with rays of red now. He moved his fingers over the feathers on my shoulders like he didn't believe they were real, then met my eyes.

  "Yeah," he said, his voice cracking a little. He immediately cleared his throat. "What are we doing again?"

  I smiled at him. "We have to find Eve Adams."

  "Why? She wanted to arrest you."

  "Let me tell you when you have your feet on the ground, OK?" He opened his mouth to say something, but only wound up blinking at me several times before he shut it again and nodded. I hugged him, resting my head on his chest for a second before I moved another inch. "I missed you so much," I whispered. His hands moved through my hair as he leaned into me, kissing the top of my head.

  "I missed you more, Halls," he said, then took a deep breath and let it out, slow and controlled. I looked up at him, and he ran his thumb over my cheek. "I thought you were gone, and I—.”

  An ear-splitting alarm sounded, which startled us both off the ledge. We were falling forward toward the interior of The Citadel wall, the glaring lights in every direction making it hard for me to tell which way was up and which was down. I held on tightly to Max and just started flapping my wings, but we'd fallen too far and too fast for me to stop our momentum entirely. We crashed to the ground, but not hard enough to keep us there.