by Dan Wingreen
Aidan shuddered and tore his eyes away, trying desperately to get his hard, rapid breathing under control.
He hadn't meant for it to get that bad, hadn’t meant for people to be burned alive. All Aidan wanted was a distraction. Something for the people in the White House to focus on so he could get to Lee with as little fighting—and as little killing—as possible. He couldn’t even tell if those skeletons were DMS agents or ordinary people who were just doing their jobs. His fire was completely out of control. He didn't even know if he'd be able to put it out anymore.
Aidan needed to get Lee and get the hells out of there. Fast.
He looked back towards Bryce, fighting back a feeling of vertigo from looking up too quickly while the spell was active and letting out a relieved breath when he saw that the cop was still heading away from him. Good. Now he just needed—
There! Off to his left was a door and behind the door…
Stairs!
It wasn't close, but it wasn't too far either. If Bryce kept his back turned and Barnes wasn't anywhere nearby, Aidan could make it if he ran. He checked again, and Bryce was still moving away. Now all he had to do was spot Barnes and he could go get Lee and leave before his fire swallowed the whole White House.
Aidan looked around, slowly, trying to separate all the overlapping outlines. His head began to throb, and he felt like he was going to throw up. After this, he was never using this spell again.
Where in the ancient hells is Barnes?
A scuff on the carpet behind him gave Aidan his answer.
"Gotcha, doggie."
Chapter 10
Lee spun.
It was something a lot of people didn't get about magical fighting, the spinning. Most people didn't understand it wasn't just enough to stand face-to-face with someone and fire off spell after spell until one of them managed to get past a shield. That wasn't combat. That was endurance. Real combat magic was all about knowing when not to use magic. It was about saving as much magic as possible, only using it when absolutely necessary, so a person was never too low at that critical, life or death moment.
Mostly what it came down to was knowing when a shield was needed. Which was, of course, easier said than done. It was hard for a person to trample down the completely natural instinct to protect themselves from hostile spells flying at their heads with a good, sturdy shield. It all came down to good judgment. To knowing when a spell could be ducked under, or dodged, or spun away from, and when a shield was necessary. It didn't matter how powerful a sorcerer was or how much magic they had when they wasted it all on throwing spells while their opponent barely touched their magic.
Lee was particularly good at that kind of combat and used it often. It didn't matter that he was usually the most powerful sorcerer in the room. All it took was one time where he wasn't, one time where he got so drained that a little nothing spell he'd been blocking for an hour slipped past a shield that was just a fraction of a second too slow or ever so slightly underpowered, and he'd be dead.
So, Lee spun.
And dodged.
And ducked.
The problem was, Noah was doing all of those things, too.
It wasn't that he'd never fought someone who was trained in combat magic, far from it. But this was different. Noah wasn't just avoiding Lee's spells; he was matching Lee move for move. Lee had spent a long time learning those moves, even longer inventing a few of his own, and Noah knew every single bloody one.
Lee ducked a fireball that had been sailing towards his head and just managed to get a shield up in time to block the dark blue bolt that followed on its heels before firing back a bolt of his own. Noah spun away from it and launched curved, razor sharp wind at Lee, which he barely avoided.
How in all the bloody hells did Noah know everything Lee did? He had to have learned it somewhere. Lee hadn't exactly made it a habit of training people, not anymore, but maybe someone he'd trained had ended up training hunters? Considering everyone he'd ever trained—hells, even the hopeless cases he'd tried to train—were dead, he didn't think that was likely. Was every hunter this good? Or was it just this hunter? And why were none of the DMS agents he'd run into trained the same way?
What he wouldn't give to have Aidan's way with divination.
Or more of Aidan's magic. He dodged a cone of sub-freezing air. 'Cause I ain't gonna last much longer with what I got.
Borrowed magic drained faster than one's own magic and he could already feel he was getting low. The heavy limbs. The labored breathing. The way his vision swam every minute or so; it never happened when a few seconds of less-than-perfect vision would get him killed, but his luck wouldn’t hold out forever. It didn't help that his body still hadn't recovered from using his personal magic yet either. He thought, maybe, he could call on it one more time if he absolutely needed to, but he couldn't be sure he wouldn't just collapse into a shattered pile of screams and self-recrimination instead. Even if he didn't, he would have to be absolutely perfect and kill Noah with one shot, because there was no way he'd be in any shape to do anything afterward; except pass out.
Or, more likely, I'd just die.
He just barely got a shield up in time to block another deathbolt.
Which is probably gonna happen anyway.
Lee fired off three balls of swirling, razored air in return that Noah absorbed with a shield of his own. This wasn't working. Noah was just as good as Lee, and he had more magic to draw on. Normally in a situation like this, Lee would get in close and start punching, but he couldn't get close to the hunter without risking having his magic drained. He needed to do something different.
This is gonna waste so much magic…
He raised an oval shaped shield that stretched from floor to ceiling in front of him. There was about three feet of space on either side between the curved edges of the shield and the walls, but that was fine, because Noah seemed content to lob spells directly into the center of it. For now, at least. Lee grimaced as he felt his body start to shake with the strain of keeping the shield up, but pushed it aside. It wasn't like he was done yet.
Lee flung his arms out in front of him. Two shimmery, light blue chains with large spikes on the end flew out of his palms, slipping around the edges of the shield and headed straight towards Noah. He saw the hunter bring up his own, much more conservative, shield. It would have been the right move—after all it was stupid to try and dodge two spells at once, except that at the last second, instead of striking the shield, they veered off to either side and embedded themselves deep in the walls on either side of him.
The hunter blinked once in confusion, and Lee shot him a grin before the spikes sprung open into grappling hooks inside the walls and he pulled them down on top of the hunter. Noah let out a surprised shout before being buried under drywall, wood, and a few bits of poorly installed Avalon stone that had been jarred loose by the violent yank of the spells.
Lee dropped his shield, or maybe it blinked out because he couldn't hold it anymore, he wasn't really sure, and stumbled over to the pile of debris. He was surprised he actually managed to tear the stone down too, since his spell would have stopped dead if it had actually touched it, but he wasn't going to complain. He'd happily take advantage of shoddy workmanship.
The pile was already shifting by the time he stumbled, weak with so little magic left, over to it as Noah tried to dig himself out. Lee smirked, and waited, more than happy to let him try. There was nearly as much stone as there was wall, and he'd have to touch a lot of it since magic wouldn't affect it.
After a minute, one of Noah's hands broke free from the pile. Lee almost missed it, as focused on not passing out as he was, but when he saw it, he grabbed it in his own hand and started to pull. He didn't pull on Noah, though.
He pulled on his magic.
It felt like swallowing a cold pitcher of water after a month in the desert. The magic flowed through him, sharpening his vision, making it easier to stand, filling him with power. Even after doing this all his
life, he could still get lost in how good it felt to take in so much magic at once. Especially when he didn't need to worry about hurting someone and he could just take. Which was probably the main reason why he didn't notice the spell being cast until it was too late, although that wasn't really Lee's fault because who would think to cast a spell while their magic was being drained?
Apparently, Noah would.
The hardened air came out of nowhere. Lee barely had time to recognize the ripple in front of him for what it was before it struck him in the stomach, slicing easily through his body and exploding out his back in a torrent of blood and gore.
◆◆◆
Aidan jerked around, almost falling over as a sudden wave of dizziness washed over him. Fucking see-through spell! Barnes was even more terrifying as a blue tinted, skeletal outline. Aidan panicked and cast the first spell that he could remember he was holding.
"Wind!"
The gust of wind only clipped Barnes on the shoulder, but Aidan was scared and inexperienced and, as a result, he'd shoved way too much magic into the spell. Barnes went flying, spinning through the air before crashing into a cubicle halfway across the room. Aidan stared after him like startled puppy.
Move!
Aidan blinked and fought off another wave of dizziness. In what had to be some of the worst aiming-related luck ever, he'd managed to throw Barnes between him and the nearest exit, so he had no idea where he was going to move to.
Not gonna get anywhere with this spell on.
He closed his eyes and let it go, relieved when he opened them and the world was back to normal. Aidan turned around to look for another way out.
Just in time to see Bryce cast a deathbolt directly at him from almost all the way down the long, narrow cubicle-corridor they were standing in.
Aidan let out a panicked yelp, but somehow managed to remember to cast the shield spell he was holding just before the deathbolt would have hit him. Bryce didn't even seem surprised, he just fired off another one into the shield and started running towards Aidan.
Which was a mistake. Aidan still had one more spell to cast.
"Fire!"
He barely remembered to let the shield drop before the flames burst from his fingers. An image flashed through his head of blue, spectral flames devouring everything in their path, and at the last second he managed to tighten the inferno that wanted to burst free into a dense, almost white-hot lance of flame. It sailed over the cubicles, thankfully not lighting anything on fire, and struck Bryce's shield.
Aidan's grin melted as he let out a frustrated growl.
Why couldn't ever hit anybody when he was trying?
Although, after a moment, he realized that Bryce's shield was turning dark blue very quickly. Definitely not as strong as Lee's shields, then. Maybe if he kept the spell up long enough it would collapse?
Aidan shoved even more magic into the spell, blinking away the sweat dripping into his eyes, both from the heat and the effort of controlling so much wild magic. He grit his teeth and pushed his magic through his outstretched hand as hard as he could. Part of him, the dark, helpless part that was sometimes still chained to that wall, was salivating at the thought of seeing that shield fall apart and hearing Bryce scream as the fire burned a hole straight through him.
The shifting, rustling sound behind him didn't even register at first. The roar of the flames and the vicious snarl of rage and satisfaction in his head were all that he was paying attention to. Some small bit of him must have heard though, because he frowned and glanced back over his shoulder right as Barnes shoved off the wreckage of the cubicle and stood up, a murderous glare locked straight on Aidan.
With another frustrated growl, he broke off his attack on Bryce, pulled out his book and ripped out another spell.
"Shield!"
Nothing happened. Aidan blinked in confusion. What… Then he saw what was written on the page.
Cut.
He yelped and jumped out of the way right as Barnes unleashed a wave of fire of his own. Where Aidan's was all strength and rage, Barnes' fire was surprisingly graceful. It flowed over and around cubicles, splitting off into two, then four, tendrils of fire. They paused for a moment, twisting in the air ominously, like dogs sniffing the air. Then they stilled and turned towards Aidan.
Shit.
Aidan stumbled back as the flames shot towards him, but somehow managed to keep his footing as he ran away. He ducked down the nearest corridor, then turned into another, trying to put as many twists and turns between him and the fires as possible. Aidan frantically tore through his spell book, looking for a shield spell.
There weren't any. He'd used them all up.
Fuckfuckfuck—
"Fuck!" He swore out loud as he ran into a wall, bouncing off and barely keeping his feet. One of the tendrils nearly hit him as Barnes' mocking laughter echoed throughout the cavernous room. Aidan took off, sprinting down another corridor of cubicles as the fire lapped at his heels, so close he could feel the heat.
Panic clawed at Aidan as he put on another burst of speed and switched out his books, pulling out the purple one filled with blank pages. It was hard to write, run, and keep from smashing into anything while avoiding the fire that chased him, but he somehow managed it. He needed to get behind a shield…
Except, when had that ever helped him? He couldn't hide behind it forever. Eventually it would drop and then he'd be right back where he was. He needed to stop Barnes. Buying himself a few minutes wasn't going to help him, and he couldn't just sit there while Lee was fighting the hunter with only the small bit of magic he'd taken from Aidan. He quickly scratched out the half written 'shield’ and scribbled down the first thing that popped into his head.
I hope this works.
"Water!" he yelled, spinning around as he tore out the page and thrust his hands out.
Four tendrils of water shot out, two from each of his palms, meeting the whips of fire right before they would have slammed into his face. Steam hissed through the air as fire met water, then the water raced along the lines of flame, eating them up as eagerly as the fire on the floor below had devoured the skeletal outlines that had gotten too close. They reached a startled Barnes, slithering over him like snakes.
Aidan pushed more magic into the spell until the officer was completely covered in a bubble of water, then raised the bubble up, Barnes and all, on the tendrils so he was floating a few feet above the ground. He gasped for air and desperately tried to claw his way out, but it was like…well, trying to dig through water, actually.
Barnes' eyes met Aidan's, and even as far away as they were, Aidan could see the panic in them. The pleading. Drowning was a horrible way to go, after all. Almost as bad as burning alive. For all that he came off as the dumb brute, Barnes wasn't stupid. Aidan could see that he knew full well that he was at the mercy of someone whom he'd tormented, and he knew exactly what that meant; revenge, poetic justice.
A horrible death.
There was only one problem with that reckoning, though.
"I'm not you," Aidan whispered.
He froze the bubble of water on the end of the tendrils into a solid ball of ice and smashed it against the floor, shattering it, and Barnes, into a thousand pieces.
Deep inside Aidan's darkest fears, a small, scared wizard felt one of the shackles on his wrist disappear. For the first time since the night he'd met Lee, that part of Aidan almost felt safe.
It was too bad the larger part of him had completely forgotten about the other shackle.
◆◆◆
Lee stared down at the hole in his stomach, wondering how in all the hells he could be so stupid and mourning the damage to the back of his jacket. Then, the pain hit, and he couldn't think about anything else. He collapsed to his knees with a scream as blood poured out of his wounds, turning the ugly beige carpet around him into an even uglier reddish black. He pulled at his magic, struggling to keep it from slipping through his fingers. Stolen magic always took a few seconds to settle
properly in a new body since it had to mix with the magic already there.
The problem was, Lee didn't have a few seconds. Noah's air blade had just barely missed his spine, but he'd lost a lot of blood even before his injury, and healing magic could only replace so much at a time. He needed to heal, now, or he'd pass out. And then it was a toss-up for what killed him first, the blood loss or the hunter.
Finally, after what seemed like two separate eternities, Lee felt the new magic catch on what little remained of his magic and the magic he'd taken from Aidan. The ragged hole in his stomach glowed with a bright white light, then began to close, slowly. Lee screamed again as the pain of being stabbed was multiplied a dozen times. Healing spells usually numbed the pain, and worked a lot faster, but healing spells also usually didn't draw on three different kinds of magic that barely had time to settle in together.
When the pain finally died, Lee was on his side on the blood-soaked carpet, breathing heavily.
Noah was standing above him, his clothes, face, and hair covered in drywall dust.
"You took my magic," he said, his normally flat voice sounding slightly unsteady.
Lee blinked. He wasn't all that sure why Noah wasn't killing him, but he wasn't about to complain.
"Aye," he said, his voice sounding ragged to his ears. "Only fair, I think."
Noah didn't answer. He just…stared at Lee, like he wasn't sure what was going on. Lee smirked as he realized what his problem was.
"You ain't ever had your magic taken before, have you?" he asked. Noah blinked, and Lee took that to mean that he was right. He laughed. Big, bad hunter freaked out about a simple little thing like getting his magic siphoned, how could he not?
It was, of course, not the smartest thing he could have done. Noah was talking, not fighting. Lee should have been trying to keep that going as long as possible to give his magic more time to settle, but he found that he didn't really care to. He wanted to crack for good the stone facade Noah hid behind, and then he wanted to crack open his skull. It had been a long time since he'd wanted to destroy someone, since his magic burned with the need to kill, but it was as comfortable to him as slipping on an old pair of shoes.