by Devon Monk
“I mean your Pooh News. Any rumblies in the tumblies?” I gave him a big grin.
He shook his head. “You just can’t let that go, can you? And all’s quiet on that front. Shame too.”
I glanced back at Shame. I might have been sleeping, but Shame looked like he’d fallen into a coma.
“Shame?” I said. “Time to wake up.”
He jerked, then started coughing. When he finally got a couple decent lungfuls of air, he pointed a finger at me. “Do not sneak up on me like that ever again.”
“Shame, we’re in a car. I can’t sneak up on you if I tried.”
“Bullshit. You’re a Beckstrom. You’re made of sneaky.”
“Hey,” Zayvion said. “Watch it, Flynn.”
“Like it’s not true. Nothing personal, Al, but you know it’s true.”
“No,” I said. “My dad might have been sneaky, but I am aboveboard. Way aboveboard.”
Shame scowled and dug in his coat pocket for his cigarettes. “Which is why you cut your hair, put on glasses, and decked yourself out in some ex-biker’s idea of the latest in men’s fashion. Totally aboveboard move.”
“Look who woke up under a little black rain cloud,” I said.
“That’s two,” Zayvion murmured.
I flashed him another smile, but to Shame, I said, “Maybe we should have left you with Terric.”
Shame lit his cigarette and rolled the window down enough that he could exhale the smoke out. “That’s just cold. Wouldn’t be in a bad mood if I hadn’t been snuck up on by a Beckstrom.”
“Shame?” Zayvion said. “Shut the hell up.”
And, wonders of wonders, Shame did just that.
By the end of his cigarette, he was in an obviously better mood, and we were pulling into the parking area just past Multnomah Falls. It was middle of the afternoon, a nice May day, and the place was crawling with tourists. Apparently, even news of a quickly spreading virus couldn’t stop people from driving out to see the falls. I had no idea how we were going to get up the trail to the doorway hidden in the hillside and down to the well without being spotted.
Zay parked the car and we sat there for a bit.
“Plan?” Shame asked. “Storm the castle?”
“Walk in nice and slow,” Zayvion said. “Maybe buy a cup of coffee.”
“I’d kill for a cup of coffee,” I said.
“What, like use a gun on someone? The horror.” Shame swung out of the car.
“Maybe I’ll start with him,” I mused.
“You’d have to get behind me,” Zayvion said.
I would have asked what had really put Shame in such a prickly mood, but it wasn’t hard to extrapolate why he was wound up so tight. There just was nothing fun about strolling off to your own death. And that was pretty much what we might be doing.
We got out of the car, the sound of the highway behind us as we walked the narrow parking lot toward the crosswalk to the falls. We let a car cruising for parking roll past, and then we were crossing the pavement toward the wide ribbon of water that fell six hundred or so feet off the tree-lined cliffs, the arched stone bridge crossing at the lower drop.
Waterfall ahead and slightly to the left, gift shop and restaurant to our right, and coffee stand between the two.
There were plenty of people here, which suddenly seemed like a good thing. If we’d been the only three to come strolling along, there would be more of a chance people would notice us and maybe be able to tell the police they’d seen us if they were asked. As it was, we seemed to blend in pretty well with our fellow waterfall gawkers, and we did indeed stop for an espresso before taking a leisurely walk up to the lower falls, then up the steeper concrete pathway that led to the footbridge over the lower falls.
“Bloody hell,” Shame said. “I hate hiking.”
“But it’s the great outdoors,” I said sweetly. “It’s not only good—it’s great.”
“Don’t care if it’s the sodding magnificent outdoors. Still hate the hiking.”
Zayvion paused once we reached the bridge, and we did what all tourists did: stopped and stared at the upper falls. It was slightly cooler here, the spray from the falls making the air taste like spring rain. Several groups of people stopped to take pictures, but luckily didn’t ask any of us to put our very fingerprinty fingers on their cameras.
Since I had on gloves, a scarf, and a jacket, I was sweating like a hog.
Zayvion looked how Zay always looked. Cool. Calm. Collected. And Shame just looked annoyed by the world, which was pretty much standard for him too.
After enough time for Shame to catch his breath, we headed up the hill again. Being out in the forest, or at least away from the city, was like a soothing balm on my magic-jangled senses. There weren’t very many spells out here—a few on the restaurant, the bridge, and any other man-made structure, mostly for stability and safety. And the lack of spells made me a very happy girl.
“What are you smiling about?” Zay asked as we chugged up the incline, old tree snags and mossy lichens and ferns adding to the lush, moist green of the place.
“No magic.” I moved to walk behind him to let a group going downhill pass us.
He paused so I could catch up with him again and took my hand. “I don’t think it’s the best idea for you to go down to the well with us,” he said quietly.
“Oh, I am so not letting you and Shame down there alone.”
“You might have to,” he said.
“No.”
“Magic makes you sick.”
“No.”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see nothing,” I said. “I’m going down to the well with you.”
“It’s a long way,” Zay noted. “I’d hate to have to carry your unconscious body back up all those damn stairs.”
“Did you just threaten to knock me out?”
“No. Magic can knock you out all by itself.”
Crap. I hadn’t thought about that. Going down to the well, to one of the deepest, purest, and strongest concentrations of magic, might not be a good idea for someone who broke out in hives before hocus got all the way to pocus.
“I won’t get in your way,” I said.
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
We kept walking. Zay might not be worried about it, but I was worried not only that I would go unconscious, but also that seeing might be a problem for me, since the place was likely swarming with spells. I dug in my memory for what the well was like. I seemed to recall the stairs that led downward were lit by electricity, not magic, and were made of wood. That shouldn’t be a problem.
No, the problem would be once we hit those double doors that led to the Life well, and stepped through them into that big underground chamber.
That was, if we didn’t run into Authority goons and have to deal with them first.
One thing was for sure. I’d forgotten how long and steep this stupid climb to the stupid hidden door to the well was.
And where was the hidden door anyway?
Zayvion stopped in the middle of the path. “This is it.”
He pointed at the rocks and moss and fern. Not a lot else. But he knew exactly where the door was, even though I didn’t see any magic marking it, didn’t feel any magic marking it, and there wasn’t any other sign I could see.
“About damn time,” Shame huffed. He stood there, breathing heavily, and looking a little pale and nauseous.
“Ever think about giving up the smokes?” Zayvion asked.
“Sure. I’ve thought about killing you too. Guess which would happen first?”
Zay didn’t answer. He was setting a Disbursement—which formed in front of him like a gray mist, and disappeared into him when he inhaled. It was weird to see every magical step of what he was doing, also weird to see him setting his own price for working magic. Most of the people I knew in the Authority used Proxies for their price of casting magic. Including Zay.
Looked like my lover picked a long, easy pain. He�
��d feel a slight muscle stiffness over the next few weeks probably. I always went for the short, hard pains, so I could stay on top of my game.
Then he drew the spell that would unlock the door.
I heard footsteps coming up the path behind us, and a child’s voice. “People are coming,” I said.
Zay flicked the spell at the wall of green, and a doorway opened. “In,” he said. “Shame?”
“Got it.”
Shame drew a nice, solid Illusion, a Disbursement spell biting at his wrist. I covered my mouth as the Illusion settled around me in rotted stink. Magic didn’t usually smell so bad. Yes, magic had been making me sick since we fought Leander and Isabelle. But seeing it with my bare eyes had only really started after I cast that spell on the Veiled, passed out, and hit my head. I didn’t know why that had changed things so I could see magic and smell it as if it had gone rotten.
Maybe my other senses were making up for the fact that I couldn’t use magic. Maybe it had something to do with the poison in magic. Or maybe it was because I had a dead magic user sharing a corner of my brain.
Whatever it was that had changed magic, or me, to this level, it was getting annoying.
I walked through the darkened doorway to the platform at the top of the stairs, Zay right behind me and Shame right behind him.
Shame broke the spell, closing the door.
“Did they see us?” Zayvion asked quietly.
“No,” Shame said. He flicked on the light switch. “They were still far enough off, they couldn’t have seen us.”
In the low glow of the single lightbulb above us and smaller lights scattered beneath the stairs that spilled out below us, we each unpacked weapons. I went for sword and knives. Zay chose sword, and Shame opted for two guns.
“Let’s do it,” Shame said quietly. “Z, you taking point?”
“Yes. Allie, I want you to stay behind us.”
He stared at me for a long time until I finally said, “What?”
“I thought you’d argue about it.”
“I’ll stay behind you as we walk into the room. After that, all bets are off.”
He nodded. Shame tapped the tiles on his bracelet, then cast the softest Light spell I’d ever seen. Zayvion’s bracelet glowed slightly in the dark.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Three, one, five,” he said.
“Which is?”
“Third page,” Zayvion said, “first sentence, fifth word: ‘coming downstairs now.’”
“Seriously?”
“Look it up,” Shame said.
“No, I’ll take your word for it. The others will know what you meant?”
“They should,” Shame said. “They knew we were going to the Life well, and they have the books if they need to check. But they won’t have to with that simple code. There are a few we use a lot. That’s one of them.”
I had severely underestimated how good this code system was. Of course, if anyone from the Authority captured one of us, or all of us, and found the books, it wouldn’t take much to figure it out.
“How many people have it memorized?” I asked quietly as we started down the stairs.
“Me, Zay, Terric, Mum,” Shame said. “Probably not Victor or Hayden. But they have the book. They can look it up.”
Walking down the stairs took more time than I remembered, and my legs were already tired from our climb. Another indication that we were not at our best. I didn’t used to be this out of shape—or this worn down.
I didn’t know how Shame was managing.
We got to the bottom of the stairs. No goons. We’d been quiet enough, our soft-soled shoes on the wooden steps making no echoes against the walls, that I was pretty sure if there were people actually in the well chamber, they wouldn’t have heard us coming.
Zayvion stopped in front of the big double doors, and Shame stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
I stayed behind them, like I’d promised. And since I couldn’t throw magic, I resheathed my long knife, and pulled out the gun instead. I slapped a clip into it, and Shame gave me half a glance over his shoulder. He was smiling.
Bastard.
Zay drew the spell to open and unlock the door. It looked like brass ribbons of magic spun out from his fingertips and clicked into five different places in the carvings on the doors.
The doors opened.
Magic lashed out, and wrapped us in an inferno of pain.
Chapter Five
Zayvion broke the attack with a clean slice of his katana, chanting a spell for Impact that grew like a wall of bullets in front of him.
He pulled magic into the spell and sent it singing into the room.
Shame went with a more direct attack and unloaded his gun into the room while Zayvion pulled a Block out of the ground like a liquid net of energy around Shame, me, and him.
Yes, it smelled like hot hell. But since whoever in there casting couldn’t break the barrier, I didn’t care what it smelled like.
We strode into the room. No use hiding. Whoever was in there had already seen us, had already decided we were dangerous and worth the fry-by-magic, ask-questions-later treatment.
Screw that.
Shame dropped the clip and reloaded without breaking stride. He might have looked sick and exhausted before, but he looked like someone you would not want to fuck with now.
I caught the movement to the far left of the room. “Two men, left,” I said. “Three right.”
“Shame, left,” Zay said. “Allie, right.”
Zay heaved back and cleaved the spell he was holding with his sword, catching the magic of the Block in the black and silver glyphs that swirled down the blade. He yelled and swung again, this time throwing all that magic, like a spray of hot bullets, out to both sides of the room, where they struck and burned.
He ran to the right—so did I.
Not being able to cast magic was seriously pissing me off. But the anger was good. Anger, I could use.
I took the first man. Shorter than me, built like a brick shit house, he met my sword with an ax, and a handful of magic. The impact of both set my bones on fire.
Yes, I had the gun in my left hand. No, I couldn’t make myself raise it and shoot him.
Zayvion didn’t hesitate. He threw enough magic to kill an elephant. All three men dropped, and were still.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I was pretty much not all right. I was dizzy, nauseous, and in a lot of pain from that last attack I’d cleverly blocked with every bone in my body. I thought about listing my pains, but decided it would take too much lung power.
All I got out was, “Swell.”
He strode over to Shame. Not that he needed to. Shame had both men on the floor, flat on their backs unconscious, one of them, at least, bleeding heavily.
Shame stood over them, lighting a cigarette.
“Bartholomew’s,” he said. “Likely. Might be it’s time for a change of guards down here or for them to check in. We don’t know how much time we have left.”
Zayvion glared at the men. “One way to find out.” He crouched down next to the man who was very unconscious but very not bleeding. He moved his sword into his left hand—not a handicap for him, I knew for a fact; I’d been on the sparring mats with him plenty—and placed the palm and fingers of his right hand against the guy’s forehead.
He spoke a word, and even though I didn’t know that word, I knew it was a Disbursement spell. From the glyph that flared in the air in front of Zay, and just as quickly flashed out, I knew it was a short, brutal pain he was going to pay for this magic.
Then he began whispering. Soft, sibilant, the words slipped out like a hush of rain. Zay said one last word. A glyph blazed bloodred in his hand, between his palm and the man’s forehead, and then sank into the man.
Even unconscious, the man stiffened. Even unconscious, he screamed.
Zayvion was still whispering, a rush of words, half-caught phrases, like someone had hard jacked an
information stream into his head.
No, not information—Zayvion was reading, whispering, ripping through the man’s memories. Zay’s voice grew louder and he straightened his elbow, somehow pressing the spell deeper into the man’s brain, then twisting it like a knife.
The man yelled out again and went still. Unbreathing. Dead.
Zayvion drew his hand away. Inhaled, exhaled, and stood. He was sweating.
“So dead guy have anything interesting to tell us?” Shame asked.
“They were sent here by Bartholomew. Have been here for three days. Don’t know that he’s dead.”
“Well, that’s good news for us,” Shame said. “Did he know when his replacements were coming?”
“No.”
“And there’s the bad news, right on schedule.”
“You killed him,” I said a bit belatedly.
Zayvion arched a look at me as he knelt next to the bleeding man. “Yes.”
“You took his memories and killed him.” I felt like I was stuck in a loop. I mean, I’d seen Zayvion kill things, beasts that crossed through the gate of death, the Veiled, who were not really people anymore. But he’d put his bare hands on an unconscious man, sucked out his brains, and left him dead.
“Yes,” he said again.
“Why aren’t you paying the price?” I finally asked. “Death for a death, that’s what magic makes you pay. If you kill someone with magic, you have to pay the same price: death. Unless you have some weird Proxy setup I can’t see?”
Get enough Proxies linked up and you could spread the price of a death across enough people that everyone except the target would walk away. Hurt, but still walking.
“No,” he said. “No Proxies.”
He put his hand on the next man, and whispered a spell. I saw the harsh Disbursement flare again and Zayvion’s shoulders jerked back and down like he’d just stuck his finger in a light socket. He was breathing a little heavier now, but began whispering again.
“Shame?” I said quietly.
Shame was in mid-inhale on the cig. “Mmm?”
“Is he going to kill him?”
I didn’t know why it bothered me. It shouldn’t. Bartholomew’s men would have killed me in a second. Killed Zay. Killed Shame. Done more than that. They would have turned us inside out if they got the chance. They had just tried to kill me, all of us, as we walked in here, as a matter of fact.