Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Ugh. I’ll worry about that later.”

  “Ivy.” Isabel’s faint voice made my head snap up.

  “Shit. Don’t move,” I told her. “I’ll get you out.” Magic swirled around me, halting my steps.

  A quiet laugh sounded. “Did you think you could fight us using magic that doesn’t belong to you?”

  A blast of icy air slammed into me, sending me back several steps. Only years of training kept me on my feet.

  “We’re close to life again, Ivy. So close…”

  Close to life. They’d hit me with Winter magic.

  “Vance, they have their elemental magic back!” I warned. Just what we needed—faerie ghosts with all the magic and none of the weaknesses.

  Twin ice crystals sprang up at my feet, damn near skewering me. I leaped out of range, blade flashing as they grew into stalagmite-like formations. Bits of ice flew everywhere, but the spirit had vanished again.

  A flurry of ice shot at my face—not snow, but pure ice, formed into a thousand daggers.

  I didn’t have time to do more than raise my arm before every single one shattered at once.

  Vance stalked forwards, for all the world like a predator despite our obvious disadvantage. More ice daggers materialised, and my magic arrived in full force. I moved with a speed I’d have never normally been capable of, dodging the icy wave and leaping at the spirit. It vanished again, and the ground turned to rock-hard ice. I clenched my teeth together as I fell onto my knees. Blood stained the ice when I stood up. My hands numbed even through the magic. The air turned so cold, breathing hurt. These spirits were drawing on the power of Winter itself. Impossible.

  All the realms overlapped here. Magic was stronger than ever.

  Shivering, I reached into my pocket for an explosive spell, wishing I’d brought a flamethrower one instead. The only counter to Winter magic was—

  A blast of heat shot over my head, igniting the dead husk of an old tree. Vines exploded into life, tendrils creeping over the ground, while the sound of a thousand birds singing crashed into my ears.

  “Make your fucking minds up!” I yelled at the spirits. Surely somebody in Summer or Winter must have noticed their magic being stolen. But if I knew anything, it was that you could never rely on a faerie.

  An icy hand grabbed at my arm. I whirled and snatched it, but the hand went transparent. So did the creature it belonged to—a tall long-fingered half-faerie with a wicked grin.

  “I remember you,” crooned the faerie. “The little girl with the big mouth. Do you remember me?”

  I remembered. He’d been one of Avakis’s guards, who’d taken a particular delight in tormenting me. My teeth clenched together, every part of me concentrating on the here and now. The spirits had no power over me. Words meant nothing. I had magic. Faerie magic.

  I bared my teeth and let every ounce of anger in my body flow to the magic in my hand. Blue energy surged, and this time, the spirit actually fell back.

  But a thousand more had appeared, silent as—well, ghosts. They formed a barrier between me and the circle, and Vance, who fought a dozen of them at once.

  The brief flash of heat faded as icy energy rose in the air in a blizzard that numbed my hands instantly. A shard of ice crashed over my head and I dropped to my front, rolling over to strike another one aside with my sword. Even with my magically enhanced instincts, there were a thousand of them and only one of me.

  Ice formed cuffs around my hands, around my ankles, and when I tried to get up, I couldn’t.

  No. Please, no.

  I fought against the bonds with everything I had, pushed myself to my knees, but all sensation disappeared from my legs and feet, and my hand slipped on the sword’s hilt.

  Not ten metres away, Vance disappeared behind a wall of snow. His blade continued to strike out, but slower than usual.

  I won’t die here.

  I screamed, and energy flooded me, launching me to my feet. I swung my sword and a jolting motion told me I’d hit something solid. The air thrummed with power, but it didn’t come from Vance.

  It came from me.

  The level of energy rose, and with it, so did my power. Around me, faerie ghosts became solid as the power level heightened. I could feel it, humming in my own skin, like a second heartbeat.

  My next strike knocked three of them back.

  They’re solid. You can hit them now.

  My sword flashed out, and the movement relieved the numb sensation in my fingers. My legs remained locked in place. I focused on every ounce of faerie magic I possessed. I can do this. I can fight them.

  Sure, there were a thousand enemies, even if I could actually hit them now. But I’d never been one to let odds deter me.

  Fire burst into life without warning, sending a dozen faerie ghosts reeling back.

  “Need a hand?” asked Drake, walking out of the fire with his cloak swirling around him.

  Finally. The other mages were here.

  Chapter 21

  Drake threw another handful of fire, dispersing the ice crystals lingering in the air and sending half-faeries scattering.

  “You picked a fight with the wrong mage,” he said to the nearest, who trembled and ran, immediately caught up in the crush. You could fit a thousand spirits into a tight place, no problem. However, with solid bodies, the effect was like a dance floor turning into a mosh pit. The half-faeries rammed into one another in an effort to reach me, and every attack aimed at me ended up hitting one of their companions. Flashes of green and blue lit up the air as Summer clashed with Winter. The confused jumble of noise set my senses blaring.

  An explosion of fiery light told me where Drake was. I cut three half-faeries down, trying to see Vance, but found myself hemmed in as a thousand uncoordinated bodies fell over one another. They only half seemed to be there, and occasionally my hand would pass right through one of them. If not for the faerie magic still humming around me, I’d have been knocked down. As it was, it took everything I had to push my way through to a spot where several half-faeries disappeared into nothingness, like someone had swept them out of sight. Only one person could do that.

  “Vance?”

  He kicked a half-faerie aside, his blade gleaming silver. These half-faerie shadows didn’t bleed when cut.

  “Where the hell are the necromancers?” he asked someone over my shoulder. A blast of fire behind me set the half-faeries scrambling away, and Drake strode over to us, fire streaming from his hands. As Vance sent two more half-faeries flying with a wave of his hand, used his hands to direct the fire. Flames separated into two paths, forming a protective barrier around us.

  “Isabel’s still in the circle.” I couldn’t see her over the crush of bodies outside.

  “They’re not in the circle,” said Vance. “They can’t get inside, I don’t think. It’d mess with the energy.”

  “The circle keeps even the dead out,” said Drake. “I’ve never seen one that strong. They must have taken the information right from the necromancers themselves and used those apprentice children to activate it.”

  Vance swore. “Only the necromancers can bind those spirits.”

  “And your magic? Doesn’t it work?”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Temporarily. They’re spirits. They can’t breathe or bleed, and even being displaced isn’t permanent. They’re effectively undead, but not tethered to this realm.”

  “Just what we need,” I muttered. “Those kids—I couldn’t see them in the circle.” Which meant they must still be over the veil, where none but a necromancer could reach them.

  Shouts rang out beyond the flames. Drake hovered by the edge, throwing fireballs at any half-faeries who came near. “Bloody creatures. Half our mages are out there. I warned them not to get too close.”

  The fire flickered, dimming slightly, and a chill went up my arms.

  “Er—Drake, can faerie magic counteract mage magic?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He and Vance exchanged glances. “T
here’s a shit-ton of energy stirred up around here that shouldn’t be. We can’t get near the circle.”

  “That’s necromantic magic, not faerie,” said Vance.

  And they have Isabel. Goddammit, I couldn’t leave her there, even if it was provisionally safer inside than outside the circle with a thousand half-faerie ghosts rampaging around.

  Blue smoke swirled around my ankles, then turned into snow. The blizzard swept us up, dousing the flames. Drake shouted out, but the driving snow blocked my view.

  Even my enhanced speed didn’t help me avoid it—hell, if anything, it made the tiny blades of ice hit harder. I bit down on a cry of pain, gathering my own magic, but I’d never faced Winter faeries like this before. Insubstantial figures flickered in and out of the misty swirl as shards of ice struck my exposed skin. I swore, certain my arms were bleeding by this time, and equally sure the half-faeries were somehow combining their magic. I couldn’t even see Vance or Drake, but the occasional burst of fire told me they were still fighting.

  The ground buckled and I fell forward, fetching up against the ground. I looked up, ready to rejoin the fight, but the spirits were—gone. A clear path in front of me led to the summoning circle, and no half-faeries barred the way.

  What…?

  They’d disappeared. Every single one of them, as though the blizzard they’d conjured had swept them away. Chilled air on my back made me spin around.

  Drake stood alone, a circle of fire surrounding him. Other mages were scattered throughout the field, and I glimpsed expressions of bewilderment that their enemies had vanished—before another chilled blast of air from my right drew my attention to the only spot on the field still masked in swirling snowflakes.

  Vance.

  He’d disappeared beneath the blizzard—or what was left of it. Drake took a tentative step his way and I walked forward, too, but the chill blasted against my hands, pushing me back.

  “Don’t get too close!” Drake shouted. “He’s taken all the power into himself, the fool. He has to displace it otherwise it’ll burn him up.”

  “Or freeze him out.” I stared. Damn. “How can he do that?” There were a thousand faeries. Even if not all of them could use magic, for one person to contain that much power…

  A grey film filtered across my vision, and a faint sound of music playing reached my ears. I stilled, looking around for the source, but it played too quietly to tell. Like a piano.

  Shivers ran through me, though the blizzard remained enclosed around Vance. The circle lay undisturbed. A few mages walked nearby like they were trying to figure out how to break it.

  The tune ran like cold fingers on the back of my neck. A whimper rose in my throat, though not a sound escaped.

  “Remember, Ivy?” whispered the voice.

  Did I ever. That fucking piano music. I pressed my hands to my ears, glancing at the others. Thick smoke rose between us, dense and grey.

  And inside were a thousand faces, baring impossibly white teeth at me. Spirits. Half-faeries.

  “You’re dead,” I told them, removing my hands from my ears.

  Small figures appeared between them—frightened faces, wide eyes. Humans. None older than fifteen.

  No. God, no.

  I knew them all. Every one.

  “I tried to save you.” My voice cracked. “I tried.”

  The other prisoners. They’d fled at the same time as I had, freed at the moment I’d killed Avakis. But the spell of the faeries went too deep. I was the only one who’d made it out of the forest, back to the mortal world. They’d died. Faerie had taken them.

  These were the faces that had haunted my dreams for months after I’d come home. I’d saved myself, but hadn’t been able to save anyone else.

  Did they linger on, in the between world?

  Or was this a faerie trick?

  I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry I left you behind,” I said, “but I can’t help what I did in the past. I have a job to do.”

  “If you use Avakis’s magic to open the veil, we’ll be free again,” whispered a voice. “You’ll be free of the guilt, forever.

  I struggled not to open my eyes, but it was like fighting against the wind. My eyes flew open to see smoke surrounding me, punctuated by faces. The faces of the dead. Decomposing before my eyes, crawling with maggots.

  “This is a trick,” I said, loudly.

  Whether it was or not, I couldn’t give in. There were two, maybe three, living children trapped behind the veil. They could still be saved. I wouldn’t abandon them.

  I closed my eyes and walked into the fog. My cheeks were wet from tears I hadn’t felt fall. The grief was still there. I’d had to lock it away or I’d never move on from what happened.

  I bumped into someone solid. Tall. Familiar.

  “Vance?”

  He turned to face me, wearing the same blanked-out expression he had the last time he’d been in the fog.

  “Sarah,” he said, looking right through me, pale as a ghost himself.

  Crap. He saw someone dead, too.

  “Sarah, what are you doing here? Get back in the house. It’s not safe."

  “I’m Ivy,” I said. “We need to go.” I tugged on his arm, but it was like trying to shift a metal post. He was too strong, and even now, his skin burned cold against me. The blizzard. He’d taken in all its power. “Vance, you stopped the magic of a thousand faeries. You can snap out of this.”

  He continued to look right past me in a way that was frankly creepy. His hands were icy cold. I looked down to see black scales covering his fingertips.

  Oh, shit. He’d told me to back off if he shifted, but he was the only solid thing in this forest of smoke. I shoved him in the side, bruising my elbow.

  “Vance, snap the hell out of it! For god’s sake, you’re the freaking Mage Lord.”

  No response. The faeries had him, and I never figured out how to get around their mind tricks. If I hadn’t experienced them before, I’d have fallen, too.

  I slapped him across the face with a deafening crack that sent him stumbling back a few steps. My hand stung, but his gaze dropped to the floor, and the blankness in his eyes shifted aside.

  “Ivy?” Vance shook his head, wearing a dazed expression. “What…?”

  “Faerie tricks,” I said. “They can make you see things. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes. “Blasted creatures. Did you hit me?”

  “Didn’t know what else to do.” I looked into the fog. “I can’t see the others.”

  “I’ll find them.”

  “Who’s Sarah?”

  There was a pause. “My sister. She was supposed to hide the night of the invasion, but she ran outside when the faeries stormed the wall down.”

  Oh. “Sorry.”

  He moved, the sword appearing in his hands, but the fog didn’t shift when he swept the blade down in a motion that would have easily cut an opponent in two.

  “Whatever spell this is, I can’t break it.” He watched me, his eyes the same colour as the fog. “Can you?”

  What? “No.”

  “You’ve never tried to use your magic to break a faerie’s spell?”

  “I use it defensively.” When it cooperated. What with the glimpse down memory lane, the temporary effects of the magic had faded and I was back to normal, human speed.

  “We work on defensive magic first when training new mages, but I find the offensive mode of a mage’s ability is effectively a reflection of the defensive spell. Perhaps it’s the same for you.”

  Huh? This didn’t seem the time for a magic lesson. “Maybe, but this magic—it’s not mine. I stole it. I can use it to defend myself, but it seems to need that trigger for me to use it at all.”

  “I’ve seen you use magic when angry,” he said. “Would you say it needs an emotional trigger?”

  “Maybe. But we have bigger problems.”

  “We do,” he said. “But I just took on the power of a thousand Winter faeries
, magnified by Death, and the magic looked and felt very similar to yours.”

  Huh? “Winter? My magic isn’t—I guess Avakis was originally a Winter lord. Faeries lose the essence of their magic when they’re exiled, though. Then they fight over the scraps. I don’t know how Avakis rose to power, but I’d guess it involved stealing magic from others.”

  The sound of a car’s engine cut through the silence, as did a stream of piercing light. The fog parted, and Vance spun around.

  Several necromancers walked towards us, towards the circle. Finally.

  Chapter 22

  “About bloody time,” I said.

  Two robed figures marched across the grass—or what was left of it. They made right for the summoning circle, as if none of us were there.

  “Hey!” I ran after them. Isabel was still trapped in there. If she got hurt by accident… “Hold on. Nothing can touch that circle.”

  “It’s only a summoning circle,” said one of them.

  “Only?” How clueless could you get? “There’s a thousand half-faerie spirits watching you. That place is supposed to be a gateway back to their own world.”

  “What?” Both of them stared at me.

  I didn’t have time for dealing with sceptical necromancers. “Trust me when I say there’s worse than undead behind there.”

  “She’s right,” said Vance, from behind me. “Don’t open the circle unless you’re certain you can deal with what’s hiding there. You need to take it down without using too much power. The energy levels are unstable.”

  “How dare you tell us how to do our jobs,” one necromancer said. “We were told to abandon our own territory when the undead are rising on our doorstep, because apparently helping your incompetent colleagues is more important.”

  “It might have escaped your attention,” said Vance, in his most dangerous voice, “that this is the crux of the energy disturbance. The faeries are planning to rip open a doorway through the veil. I’m assuming they learned how to do it by questioning your traitor colleagues.”

  “How dare you—”

  A half-faerie appeared before him and thrust its hand through the necromancer’s chest.