by J M Thomas
“Don’t tell me what I don’t want to know!” I shouted. Things around us got eerily quiet.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, orright?” Aeron held up both hands, then turned forward again, walking a bit slower. “Yeah, now I fink about it, there’s quite a lot to catch up on. You want me to start at zero, then? Work you up to now? Or is there a question you wanna start wiv?”
I kicked at a pile of wet leaves. Like with Hugo, my mind refused to come up with questions right when I needed to ask them most. “Start me at zero.”
“Orright.” Aeron took a deep breath. “‘Ave you ever ‘eard of a true blind before?”
I shook my head. “Wait… I can’t remember where… but I have heard the term.”
He seemed to puzzle this over. “‘Ow much do you know about ‘ow magic works?”
“Only what we get in school.” I searched my memory. “It starts with the caster’s propensity…”
“Wrong.” He shook his head, his footsteps becoming heavier. “Total bollocks. No, magic ends wiv the caster’s propensity. It starts in the Ovver World, or Sheol, as a few of us still call it.”
I sensed a conversation derailment coming, but I needed to understand, anyway. “What’s the difference which end comes first?”
“Everyfink.” His voice was a low whisper, his gaze straight ahead for a moment. “Because if it starts and ends wiv us, Lessie, fings are much, much graver than I ‘ope they are. But if it depends on the ovver world, well, we play our part and ‘at’s ‘at.”
I fixed him with a hard look.
“And there we ‘ave our zero point.” Aeron shrugged, then straightened. “Orright, from the beginning, then. Class one—magic begins in the Ovver World. Energy channels from dimensions frough astral strands, see?” He gestured with pinched fingers. “Like a rope, or better, electricity frough a wire.”
“Then,” he continued, “it needs a focus object to break the dimensional barrier, right, like the lion in your pocket?” Aeron picked that moment to run out of pebbles in his hand, so he squatted, hunting around the path for replacements. “‘At’s why magic practice was lost so long frough the dark ages. We didn’t ‘ave ‘at frame of understandin’ in ‘ow dimensions work, and before it was all mystical nonsense, nuffin’ practical-like.”
“Completely unlike this conversation,” I deadpanned. “Which is so very practical.”
Aeron laughed, tossing his rocks aside and picking up a half-rotted twig to scratch a couple circles in the loose dirt. “Alright, the very basics, then. Astrophysics and shit aside, you got energy, it flows on a channel, like a wire.” He drew a line. “You gotta ‘ave a converter to make it work ‘ere. Now, ‘ere’s where it gets interestin’!”
He waved the stick, then broke off a piece and set it in the center of one of the circles. “‘Ey probably teach in school ‘at ‘uman beings, we interact with this magical energy ‘cause of our blood. More to the point, it’s a part of our blood we in the business refer to as ‘filament.’ Near everybody ‘as it, but only magicians ‘ave the complete, unbroken compound, yeah?” He erased the drawing with his toe, then gestured for us to keep walking.
“Yes.” That much I followed, if barely. School hadn’t spent much time on the basics, and we hadn’t even been tested on the little we had covered. The trail widened again, growing rockier by the minute, so we hiked side-by side.
“No.” Aeron shook his head again, stepping ahead. “Almost all—’ere’s one or two born every now and anon who we call a true blind. Find your true blind, and you find calamity and all manner of woes and prophecies. Some of it’s rubbish, but…”
My eyebrow raised in surprise. “Alright, that was not in the schoolbooks.” I picked up my pace a little to match his.
“Of course not. Can’t ‘ave normals guessing who’s a true blind and who inn’t.” Aeron vaulted over a log in the trail with surprising ease. “Just normals ‘guessing about’ magic users does in more of us each year ‘an we lose to training, and ‘at’s just for necros.”
I couldn’t argue that point. I’d dealt with enough school kids picking on someone for suspected magic use that I wasn’t even prepared to defend the other normals. It unfortunately got worse instead of better when adulthood rolled around. Staying out of prison was probably many necros’ full-time occupation, and that was just the ones who didn’t get lost to hate crimes.
“Filament means normals can see, interact wiv, and be impacted by magic.” Aeron punctuated his words by flinging the stick against a tree. It splintered into a dozen pieces. “It’s like being a light bulb able to connect in a socket and turn on a light. Most people is burnt out lightbulbs. They ‘ave a filament, but it’s broken, see?” He stuck his now-empty hands out in front of me, putting his two index fingers almost together.
“So they interact wiv the current, but can’t make the connection to flow, see? The magic users ‘ave the attached filament; the current can flow… but it ends in us. It don’t begin there.”
“Got it.” I nodded once. “You’ve got current running from some other dimension, you convert it with an object, and it runs through your body across your blood’s filaments.”
“Quick study.” Aeron cast me a smile. “I say ‘we’ ‘ave filament… you, Lessie, don’t.”
I froze in my tracks. “Me?”
He nodded, then gestured with his chin for us to keep moving. “When you visited ‘at shop wiv the seal, waltzed right up and touched it like it’s nofin, ol’ ‘Ugo, ‘e probably pissed hisself. I come in there the week after, and all anybody’s talking about is the true blind is ‘ere in Wachenta, our Wachenta, and the fuckin’ world is going to end.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
“Yeah, ‘ere’s no stoppin’ it now, might as well know, right?” Aeron gave me a resigned look over his shoulder. “You did want me to tell you.”
I rolled my eyes, then pushed a branch aside so I could pass. “You can’t possibly believe the world is coming to an end because I don’t have a filament.”
His voice softened, a kind of distress coming over him I hadn’t expected. “Not quite. Wachenta City is almost certainly lost, innit? Blood’ll puddle in the streets, mine included, but no.” His grip tightened on the stick. “The world might be fine.”
I couldn’t help but sigh. “Hugo was right, Aeron. Being dramatic certainly isn’t your color.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw again. “Look, I don’t make the prophecies, orright? ‘At’s above my pay grade. And necros don’t exactly get kings, queens, and fuckin ‘eroes in our prophecies. We get deaf and blood, because that’s what we’ve gotten ourselves into, innit?”
What he said next surprised me. “And I want you out of it. I want you to go ‘ome to wherever it is you came from, and start again far away, all the while I know ‘ere’s no way you’ll do it. I’ve been down this road too many times, Lessie.”
“You’re right.” My throat threatened to close over. “I won’t. I’ve invested my heart and soul into this project, these people. I can’t imagine walking away, not without making things better first.”
“I know.” He came to a dead halt, scanning the distant trees. “Me, eivver. No matter the cost to me, I ‘ave to see this frough. I fink ‘at’s why the Ministry started me up wiv the Wards, wiv Lana, so I’d see straight away what it was I was comin’ ere to protect. But I don’t like seein’ what it’s costin’ you, Lessie, not one bit.”
“Let me be the judge of what I’m willing to do and not do.” I folded my arms, still feeling so raw. “So why are you still here, Aeron?”
“I was assigned ‘ere, to this godforsaken city, free years ago, because in free years, the prophecy turns its big one ‘undred. ‘At’s when ‘ey come true. ‘A blind bird sings a love song perched on razor wire coils.’” He seemed to wrestle with his next words.
“Spit it out,” I grumbled.
“Whevver you mean it or not, and now I’ve got to know you, I’m fairly sure you don’t mean it.
But you’re not just in danger, Lessie. You are the danger.”
I was beginning to see the connection, even if it was super hazy, and I didn’t like it one bit. I could see why he didn’t want to tell me what was really on his mind. “I’m not a bird, I’m a grown, independent woman. And I’m certainly not a danger to anybody!”
Aeron shook his head sadly. “Oh, but you are. A little bird flittin’ blindly around in more peril than you could imagine.”
“I dunno.” My arms tightened around themselves. “I can imagine a fair piece.”
“Only none of it ‘arms you! Nuffink befalls you!” He acted like the thought baffled him beyond comprehension. “You can’t even see it!”
None of it harms me? I bristled again. “What exactly do you mean?”
He didn’t seem to catch the additional sharpness to my tone. “You don’t see the magic show the electric mage puts on, nor the ‘undred or more souls linin’ the walls of the hospital storeroom, nor the green smoke pourin’ in from under Alena’s door. Almost like you’re blind to it. ‘At’s cause you’re pretty well immune to magic.”
I wasn’t accepting it for a second. “Then why can I be soul trapped? The rug in Hugo’s store caught me, then held my feet in place for several minutes like they were glued to the floor. Was that just a trick then, or is all of this a heap of nonsense?” I navigated my way around a large boulder, heat radiating off my face.
“Ah, yeah, soul traps.” Aeron hopped onto the boulder, then slid down the other side. “The only magic what bypasses the filament entirely. ‘Ey ‘ave the ‘ighest blood cost of all, but so long as you ‘ave a soul, you are susceptible to soul traps. Summoned spirits and creatures from the ovver world, now, ‘ey can’t ‘arm you.”
Aeron grabbed another stick, this time waving it to demonstrate. “Attunement objects like your ceremonial cups or enchanted ink like I ‘ave, you’d ‘ave to bleed on ‘em. ‘Ey can’t be wielded against you to draw against your will. But souls don’t belong to this world or the Ovver World, so soul traps work a bit different.”
The overwhelm was making my head spin again. “So, I’m just being a stupid, blind bird singing about love in dangerous places? Figures.”
An image flashed through my mind unbidden of Hailey dragged into the forest by a strange man, kept in a cabin for months before returning to the world dead-eyed and gaunt. I flinched at the memory, then pulled further away from Aeron on the trail. “But I’m relatively safe, since magic can’t hurt me?”
“Only you’re not.” Aeron’s voice had a troubled edge. “‘Cause now we get to the ones who fink ‘ey can stop the prophecy.”
At that moment, something whizzed past my head and thudded into a tree beside me, embedding in the bark with a thunk.
Aeron shouted, grabbed my arms, and dashed me to the ground.
Chapter 14 – Where Friend and Foe
Aeron’s body pinned mine to the dirt, crushing me to the ground. Rocks cut into my legs. My hands and forearms stung from breaking my fall as he trapped my wrists against the trail. His cheek laid heavily on mine.
I couldn’t move. Terror froze me in place more effectively than he could have.
“I know you ‘ear my foughts,” he whispered, his words barely registering over my heart pounding in my ears. “Parley wiv me, you fucking coward!”
He’s snapped. I am so screwed. I tried to struggle against his weight, to move at all. It was no use—he was far too massive. “Let me go!” I squeaked.
“Shh!” His beard scratched against the side of my face as his weight shifted slightly. He was listening, for what I couldn’t tell. All I could hear was my own heartbeat and my struggle to gasp breath past his crushing body weight.
“Will you speak wiv us?” Aeron called to nothing at all. “Or will your blood be shed?”
Who is he talking to?
A twig gave way with a crack in the distance. He relaxed but didn’t move to get up off me. My terror-blanketed mind wondered if this was how it ended for all those other girls brought out to the woods on the pretense that they were special.
How much pain would I have to endure before I could escape his watch? How much head start would I need before he couldn’t catch up with me?
A twig snapped, breaking me off from my thoughts.
“Get up off her, Lyons. Jeez, you’re scaring her to death. Then, thank your goddamn lucky stars I even heard your thoughts over that infernal racket.”
Like I was trying to think through mud, my brain sifted through voices and names before I realized who was approaching. It was Don! What is Don doing here?
“You swear you won’t make a move to ‘arm her if I get up?” Aeron asked, more commanding than inquiring.
Don huffed once, his footsteps coming to a sudden halt. “I swear it, goddamn. Now are you gonna move, or are you gonna waste my time?”
Carefully, Aeron picked himself up off of me, then pulled me to my feet with a quick tug.
I eyed the trail both ways, wondering if I could make a break for it. My gaze lit on Don, who was smacking his head with the heel of his hand, blinking over and over.
“You can try, but you’ll get about four steps… shit! Sorry, just… damn.” Don held his rifle scope at arm’s length, shaking his head as if the inanimate object had greatly offended his sensibilities. “Are you getting this, Lyons? Or is it just me?”
“She’s cut,” Aeron explained, pointing at my arm while I tried to dust off most of the dirt and debris that’d clung to my clothing. “The most powerful blood buys the most powerful magic—and true blind blood is a miracle for payin’ costs. Your attunement lens is magnifying our foughts to you.”
I glanced down at my scraped up palms and elbows. There, on the right forearm, a stone had opened up a tiny, barely-bleeding gash. “I… I don’t…” My teeth chattered when I tried to talk. My arms and legs trembled, so I bit my lip to keep myself together.
“See, Lyons? What’d I tell you?” Don waved in my direction. “She was already terrified you were luring her into the woods before you even tackled her. She barely knows friend from foe.” He wagged the scope at Aeron like it was a finger he was waving at a naughty child. “That’s your cue to apologize, you oaf.”
“If we ‘adn’t ‘ad this little scrape, ‘ere’d ‘ave been no need!” Aeron’s brow furrowed in indignance. “I shielded ‘er to save… what the fuck?” Interrupting his own defense of himself, Aeron whirled to stare wide-eyed at me.
Bewilderment painted his features. As he took a long look up and down me, he seemed to come to his senses. He stood down from his aggressive posture he’d been aiming at Don, pulled off his jacket, then laid it over my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Lessie. I swear, I ‘ad no idea. Do you need anyfink?”
I tensed as he got close, then the soothing weight and heat from his jacket relaxed my shoulders as he stepped away to give me space. The jacket was heavy, far heavier than it looked. Aeron’s borrowed warmth made me shiver harder.
I will not fall. I will stay on my feet. I am brave.
“Damn.” Don set his scope a good six feet away like it was physically hurting him to be so close to it. “That’s better. Man, if I’m going to be working security for you, we’re going to have to do something about that freeze response. I’m surprised you haven’t started training it out of her already.”
“I ‘ave, just… still some work to put in on it.” Aeron said with considerable resignation. “I just wish we ‘ad more time for trainin’.”
Don held up a hand, either oblivious to my feelings or uncaring. “Before we go any farther, my retainer is five grand, USD, per week. After that, it’s twenty large per head. I’m yours for the duration of the mission, under the Ministry’s guidelines, yada yada, you know where to send the forms.”
Aeron whistled low. “‘At’s steep, mate. I’ll ‘ave to get special permission.”
“I figured you would, but don’t dawdle on it. I’m scheduled to hear another offer at oh six hundred tomorrow. As yo
u can see by the little demonstration I prepared for you...” He pointed at the tree where the bullet had embedded, a proud smirk creeping up one side of his face. “I’m worth every penny.”
Aeron examined the trunk that’d thudded earlier. A target had been sprayed on the bark with silly string. The bulls-eye sported a bullet embedded in the dead center. I couldn’t have done better myself with a .22 and squirrels at home, and I was the crack shot of the family.
He seemed massively impressed. “No need to ‘ear the other offer. I believe you don’t up the cost once you’ve engaged, yeah?” He pulled out his wallet, then handed Don every dollar he had in it. “‘Ere’s the down payment. I’ll wire the rest to wherever you choose, ‘owever you want it, mate.”
“Good, smart move.” Don pocketed the cash. “Sorry about the scare, Celeste, but it was on purpose to make a very important point. If that bullet had been meant for your head, you’d be dead now.”
Don’s stern glance encompassed me and Aeron at the same time. “And it’d be because you were both being idiots about security. You always assume you’re safe until it’s too late, and that’s over, right now. And you always assume your little place you go to when threatened is safe, because that’s where you feel safe. That, too, is over right now.”
I gave him a blank look. Somehow, I was beginning to register the combat fatigues and boots, the military green shirt, and the camouflage face paint as being part of a picture, but my mind wasn’t putting the whole thing together.
Don heaved a frustrated sigh, shifting the weight of his gun case off his shoulders. He held out his hand to me. I shook it, woodenly.
“Let’s start over. I’m Don Schmitt, USMC retired.” His quick, curt nod convinced me he had military written all over him more than his announcement did. “I’m a tactical sniper who does contract work with government agencies and, occasionally, private freelancing.”
“You’re… a…” I squinted my eyes shut in a long blink.
“Hey, stay with us, here.” Don gave my cheek a gentle tap with the flat of his hand.