Magic Without Mercy

by Devon Monk

  I have added a barrier between you and magic so you won’t be harmed by what I do. I will strive to only touch magic in the briefest of ways, and not draw it through your body. Does the haziness of the barrier bother you? Dad asked.

  It didn’t. Not really. It’s just annoying. Are you sure your working magic in my body will be different from if I worked it?

  You and I cast magic in very different ways. We come from different teaching. I think I can keep the actual contact with magic to a minimum.

  Want to teach me that trick?

  It wouldn’t work. You will always draw upon magic your way. I believe my style will lessen the impact on your reaction, that is all.

  Fine. Let’s do this.

  “Very well, then,” Dad said through me. Everyone in the room straightened just a little. It was weird. Even though it was my voice, the rhythm, the emphasis, the tone, was all Dad. He shone through clear and strong. Maybe too clear and strong.

  “Please place the samples of magic here on the table, but do not let them touch.”

  Maeve walked forward and placed a metal flask scrolled with glyphwork and glass on the table. “The Blood well,” she said.

  Terric tugged a clay urn out from his coat pocket and set it down directly across from the flask. “Death well,” he said.

  Victor came forward next. “Hello, Daniel,” he said. “What, exactly, do you plan to do with all this magic?”

  “Find a solution to our problem, Victor. An antidote to whatever poison it is that is spreading through the city.”

  “How will you do that?”

  I felt my eyes narrow. “Blending the magic, and filtering it through technology to separate the poison from the magic. I will be doing it right here in front of all of you,” he said. “If you see anything you disagree with, you are welcome to tell me. But time is of the essence. Do you have the sample from the Faith well?”

  Victor drew an amulet out from under his shirt, and pulled it off. He held it for a moment against the palm of his hand, then placed it on the table reluctantly. He stepped back.

  “Mr. Flynn,” Dad said.

  “Yo.”

  I felt Dad fight back an annoyed sigh. “Please retrieve the sample of Life magic.”

  “Get it yourself. It’s in Stone. You want it, it’s right there.”

  “You locked it in a Passage spell—is that correct?”

  Shame just looked at him. “You were there.”

  “Then the magic is held in the Passage spell in the Animate.”

  “And I care because?”

  Dad ignored him and instead walked down along the shelves. “We’ll need something to hold it in. Something clean.”

  He bent—well, I bent. It was a weird sort of feeling that made me want to hold my arms out to the sides to keep from tipping over. I could tell he wasn’t used to moving a body that wasn’t his, but he got the hang of it pretty quickly. He looked at the bottom shelf and finally pulled out a black glass bowl.

  “This will do.”

  I thought the metal swirling through the bowl was looped in a glyph, but couldn’t tell which one. Dad didn’t seem concerned about it.

  “Have you removed that spell, Mr. Flynn?” he asked.

  Shame strolled over to Stone. “I hope you take a nice long look and enjoy it, Mr. Beckstrom,” he said.

  “Enjoy what?”

  “The one and only time I’ll ever do anything you ask me to do.”

  “Shame,” I said as I or Dad, or maybe both of us, put the bowl down on a clear spot on the table.

  “Wasn’t talking to you, Allie.” He looked down at Stone. “Okay, bud. Time to give me the magic.” He put his hand down for Stone and wove a sort of haphazard symbol of Life in the air. It wasn’t strong enough to actually carry magic, but Stone somehow got the idea.

  He burbled and stood up.

  Shame set a Disbursement. I could still see it even with Dad hazing up my eyesight. He was opting for something slow this time, and it appeared as oozing black smoke that pressed against his chest, right over his lungs, and then seeped in deeper and spread out.

  Then he pulled on magic. The lights flickered as Shame pulled the magic through the ironwork of the warehouse and then focused it into the glyph he was drawing.

  He said a single word, and sent that spell into Stone’s chest—but he didn’t let go of all the spell. He held a tendril of it between his thumb and middle finger. Stone held very still, and didn’t look like he was in any kind of discomfort. Shame exhaled, inhaled, then tugged on the string while he was drawing a second spell with his left hand.

  The Celtic knot picture-frame-like spell lifted out of Stone’s chest, and I could once again see the Life well magic flickering there. Shame inhaled through his nose and exhaled a hard stream through his lips, as he pushed the spell to open, to grow bigger.

  He pivoted, the spell still in his hands.

  I grabbed the bowl and stood in front of him. “It’s right here,” I said. “There’s a glyph on the bowl; pour it in here.”

  Shame tipped the fingers of both hands down over the bowl and the magic stopped spinning. The knot-work spell also tipped, and Shame ran a finger across the corner of the spell, breaking it, but keeping enough of the spell intact to still hold.

  Holy crap. I’d never seen anyone manipulate magic like that.

  And from the startled response I felt from my father, he hadn’t seen it handled that way before either.

  Just not for a very long time, he thought to me.

  The magic poured out into the bowl, a stream of silver and white with golden threads running through it, and flecks of tar black.

  Once it was all poured out, Shame broke the spell completely, and I took the bowl and placed it back on the table.

  “These are the four wells in Portland,” Dad said. “Four wells in one city is powerful. Unusual. If there is a chance of cleansing magic, we’ll find it here. Now, Stone,” he said. “Come.”

  Stone pulled his lip back from his teeth and growled.

  Shame laughed. “I don’t think he likes you.”

  Allie? Dad asked.

  “Come here, Stone,” I said. I patted my leg. “Come on over.… Where do you want him?”

  “Here,” I said to myself, or rather Dad answered. “We’ll want a little space in case there is a backlash of any kind.”

  “All right. Come here, Stoney,” I said.

  “Weird,” Shame said. “Just fricking creepy. I can tell when it’s you and when it’s your dad. Everything about you changes, even your… I don’t know…”

  “Soul,” Zay said softly. The first word he’d spoken since he came into the room. He was sitting on the foot of one of the cots now, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands folded lightly together. Gold eyes burned, weighed, judged.

  “I was going to go with ‘body language,’” Shame said. “But I suppose you’re closer to the thing of it.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This isn’t permanent. I’m subletting out of necessity.”

  Stone finally walked over toward me, sniffed at my foot, then sat.

  “Good,” Dad said. “This will do nicely. I would suggest that you all leave the room, but I know that you won’t. Step back, please, and have a Block spell at the ready. This might flash a bit.”

  Everyone moved to stand closer to the walls, creating a circle around the open area between tables where Stone and I stood. The samples from the well were in easy reach.

  Dad waited until each person had drawn some kind of Block. There was no magic in any of the glyphs, but if they each decided to throw those spells, we’d all probably pass out from the concussion.

  Well, I knew I would.

  Don’t reach outward, Allison, Dad thought. I’ll shield you as much as I can, but you might want to step back as far into your mind as you feel comfortable.

  I’m comfortable here, I said, standing my ground.

  Very well.

  Dad sang a soft song, a lullaby I thou
ght I’d heard before, while he wove a pattern in the air in front of Stone. Stone stood, and tipped his head sideways, his ears perked up, his wings lifted off his back.

  Then Dad cast a Disbursement. Looked like I was going to be running a hard line of body aches and bruises by the end of this.

  He cast a spell that was a variation of Unlock. But there were strange dark lines echoing through it. The glyph filled with magic, and a shadow of magic traced behind it. That wasn’t how magic was supposed to work.

  I tried to blink to clear my vision, but Dad was in full control of my eyes.

  What are you doing? I asked. Dad?

  Hush, he thought softly. It was taking every ounce of his energy and concentration to do what he was doing. And I wasn’t sure if what he was doing was magic, in the strictest sense.

  I wanted to say something to Maeve, or Shame, or Zay, but Dad had the mouth too. I could fight him for it, but if I got control of my body right now while working with that much magic, I’d just pass out.

  Or worse. Dad had said it might flash. Which meant it was a pretty safe bet whatever he was doing was explosive as hell.

  Shit.

  The best thing I could do, the only thing I could do right now, was try not to distract him and hope that he knew what he was doing.

  Dad picked up the Faith well amulet, and held it over Stone’s head. Stone, for his part, straightened his head and locked his legs, standing on all fours, ears up, mouth slightly open, showing his teeth.

  Whatever song Dad had sung him, Stone responded to it like he had been trained to obey. Weird.

  Dad said a few words in a language that sounded like Latin, then pressed his palm over the amulet and twisted, opening it.

  He poured the magic out of the amulet on top of Stone’s head, right between his ears. Stone lit up, lines of neon pulsing through the concrete gray of him as the glyphs carved under his skin suddenly flared to life.

  Stone was an amazing piece of sculpture, but this changed him, made him look even more beautiful, otherworldly.

  And I wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Beautiful,” Shame whispered.

  “Savant,” Victor said softly. “There has never been another like him. Before, or since.”

  He wasn’t talking about Stone. He was talking about Cody. Before Cody had been Closed, he’d been an amazing artist with magic. A savant. A Hand. Someone who could turn magic into art, and make it do things never before imagined. Things like Stone.

  Dad reached over for the flask of Blood magic, spoke a short phrase, then ran my left thumb over the flask stopper, which was razor sharp.

  Ouch, I said even though I couldn’t feel it.

  Dad rubbed blood into the spell on the flask, triggering the spell to open it. He poured the magic on the same place on Stone’s head. The glyphs carved into Stone shifted and flowed into new glyphs that burned bloodred.

  No one said anything this time, but I could feel the press of magic in the room. Heavy, charged. It was like standing in the middle of a lightning storm that was about to break.

  Dad placed the empty flask back on the table and picked up the clay urn.

  No soft song this time. He just smashed the urn on the edge of the table, scooped up the dust and ashes, and poured it on Stone’s head. The dust soaked into Stone’s head and the glyphs shifted again, gray and cracking through him like fissures in concrete.

  Stone grumbled a little but didn’t back away.

  Dad reached for the last container of magic. The bowl from the Life well. He picked it up, and even though I couldn’t feel much sensation right now, I could tell my hands were shaking, my arms, fatigued. Even my voice sounded rough as I ran my fingers along the outside of the bowl. The bowl shivered with the sound of bells, and glyphs spun open along the inside of the bowl. He then spoke three words, and poured the magic out of the bowl, magic that was a lot darker than it had been just moments ago, rushing down over Stone’s head.

  The Life well’s magic never looked dark. Was it the taint changing it? Or was I seeing something else? Something like dark magic?

  Stone’s glyphs took on a vinelike appearance, green and growing, stretching, curling, blooming.

  And then the glyph in the bowl folded in on itself, like a flower closing, and a single, black drop of magic fell to Stone’s head.

  No, that magic wasn’t black—it was dark. Dark magic.

  Holy shit.

  Working dark and light magic made people crazy. You had to be trained to use them together for even a short amount of time. And people died who tried to contain light and dark magic to become Focals. I had no idea what it would do to pour even a drop of dark magic into a gargoyle filled with light magic.

  I suppose my dad’s mental stability had been in question before, but using dark magic now, when we were trying to cure magic, didn’t make any sense.

  Stone didn’t like it either. He shuddered and growled. Then he howled as the whorls of magic flashed between each of the forms they had taken, spreading, cracking, webbing through him like a net of fire, ash, vines, blood.

  Stone, I said. He’s hurt. You’re hurting him.

  Dad was holding fast, holding a wall between me and my own body, between me and magic, between me and me.

  Fuck that.

  I shoved at the wall, shoved at him, pounded against the barriers until they cracked and I fell through and was once again very much me.

  Magic was so thick in the room, I could feel it brushing hot against my skin, tugging at my hair, prickling my nose and eyes.

  But it wasn’t making me pass out. Somehow Dad was still there with me, beside me, equal in my body and mind. And his entire focus was on Stone. He didn’t want me to pass out. He didn’t want me to be hurt by magic because he didn’t want to miss seeing this.

  This was important to him. Very important.

  Well, it was important to me too, but I didn’t want it to hurt Stone.

  The single drop of dark magic on Stone’s head flattened.

  Stone lifted his wings, as if to fly.

  The drop burned like a flash, joining all the glyphs of magic, fusing them together in one solid pulse of pure, whole magic.

  Stone froze.

  A sound rang out like a gong, so loud I slapped my hands over my ears. I couldn’t block it out.

  The sound came from my bones, from the floor beneath, the walls, the ceiling, and beyond that. The sound came from the world, from everything magic touched, from everyone magic touched, from everywhere magic touched.

  And magic filled the world.

  For that moment, everything seemed to lift, to grow brighter. Then the world wavered, blurring and bending in ways my mind could not comprehend.

  I reached for Zayvion, yelled his name, knew he was reaching for me, calling for me, but we could not find each other, the distance between us worlds away, even though we were standing in the same room.

  I heard Maeve screaming, Shame yelling, Victor praying.

  And then there was silence.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “That son of a bitch!” Dad said through me. “The bastard. Locked it. Put in a fail-safe.”

  I pressed my palm over my mouth to make Dad shut up, though he just kept right on cursing in my brain. I didn’t understand what he was saying. Well, I understood the swearwords—the ones in English, anyway.

  I was still standing. All of us were in the exact same place we’d been before that hellacious sound had turned the world inside out.

  “Did the world just snap in half and come back together again?” I asked.

  I hurt from the roots of my hair to the bottoms of my feet.

  Zayvion walked up to me. He looked like I felt. But he wrapped his arms around me. I shuddered from the relief in that contact and leaned against him, needing to be reminded that I was alive, real, breathing, and me. Needing to be reminded that he was alive, real, breathing, and mine.

  We stood there for three heartbeats, and for those three heartbeats, everything
was right in my world.

  Man had a way of making me feel like there wasn’t anything I couldn’t take. Made me feel like there wasn’t anything I went up against that he wouldn’t be right there at my side, taking it on with me, hit for hit.

  I stepped back. “What the hell happened?”

  “You used dark magic,” Victor said with a flat sort of numbness. “Or your father did. Used it on Stone. With all the other magic.”

  “Is that what roller-coastered reality?”

  No one said anything. Except Dad.

  Yes. It was the one way I could think of cleansing magic, putting it all back together again in a small enough sample it wouldn’t completely destroy the world as we know it. But the backstabbing bastard put a fucking fail-safe on it.

  “How about less swearing, more specifics?” I said.

  Cody Miller made Stone—made this Animate that can house magic. In theory, it can contain all magics, even light and dark. He put a lock on it I cannot pick. He set a fail-safe to shut it down if ever all magics are combined within it.

  “I don’t even know why he would think of putting in that kind of safety catch,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Crazy girl?” Shame said a little hoarsely, “You’re talking to ghosts.”

  “My dad,” I said. “He said Stone’s locked. That Cody put a fail-safe on him in case he’s ever used for magic this way. Ever used to join magic, light and dark.”

  “He used dark magic?” Hayden asked. “Where? How?”

  “I think it was worked in a glyph in the bowl.”

  “Well, fantastic,” Shame whispered.

  I looked around the room.

  We did not look good. Correction, we looked great for just having been through a magical meat grinder. At least everyone was breathing, moving, alive.

  Except for Stone. He stood stock-still, half crouched, one hand raised, his face tipped up to a sky his eyes could not see, wings unfurled.

  He was silent, unmoving, a strange sort of quiet I’d never seen in him before.

  “No,” I said. “Stone? You okay? Stoney?”

  I touched his face. He was cold. Unbreathing. Nothing but a statue now. That spell hadn’t locked him. It had killed him.