by K. F. Breene
“I have run three marathons,” Penny said with heat to her voice. I liked it.
“Did someone fail to mention that I have healing magic?” Callie asked levelly. It was rarely a good sign. “Dizzy and I are like spring chickens.”
“As long as we don’t have to spring up from a crouch,” Dizzy amended.
“There’s the tower.” Callie pointed upward.
Over the lip of the cargo lining our way rose a building that had clearly been built to overlook the goings-on of the rail yard. I instinctively wanted to be up at the top. But to what end? It hardly seemed likely the mages would have peeled up the top of their workshop of horrors, allowing me to see inside.
“Then what?” I asked.
“Let’s see. The label says there’s some type of repair shop.” Callie squinted down at her phone. “I can’t read what type. Probably a little building. It’s just a speck.”
“And then?”
“The line of lots we’re in leads to the end of the yard. Then there’s side loader repair.”
I glanced into the crack between two containers to the open road. “Does that road lead all the way back?”
“Yes. It might connect with the freeway, but this isn’t much more than a cartoon map, so I can’t tell.”
After a while, we came to the end of the lots, having passed a couple of small buildings along the way. My hope was fizzling out with each step. Up ahead, the expanse of tracks, many now filled with parked trains, reduced down into a few bare tracks leading out of the area.
“That must be the side loader repair,” Callie said, pointing at a building at the end. “Which is the end of the line.”
I put my hands on my hips and looked around, my heart in my shoes. “He’s not here. I’m screwed.”
“We will find the shifter from the bar,” Darius said, suddenly pressed against my side. “We can ask him for more information.”
“Wait.” Penny leaned over Callie’s arm and pointed at the edge of Callie’s phone screen. “What’s over there?”
Callie scrunched her brow as she worked the screen. “More lots. Another checkpoint, another entrance. More railroad tracks.”
I shook my head, my chest tight.
“Learn from our mistakes,” Darius said insistently. “Let’s check it out, then move on.”
“What happens if we don’t find the demon in time?” Penny asked.
Everyone fell silent. Callie and Dizzy’s heads dipped to the ground. Darius’s gaze turned fierce.
“No one can know for sure,” I said with a thick tongue. “But judging by the number of parties trying to lay claim to me, I’d say my chances of living a quiet, uneventful life don’t look so good.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Hurry, you fools!” Agnon shouted, barely able to hold up the human’s head.
The mages had furnished it with a body. A weak, diseased, aged body that was dying as Agnon crouched within it, feeding off its energy. It wouldn’t be long before the human deteriorated, forcing Agnon to eject and drain precious energy of its own.
The male mage worked his knife, trying to get the correct amount of power to enact the circle.
All Agnon needed was a proper banishing spell. It didn’t have to be much, just powerful enough to shove it in the right direction. As soon as it crossed the line between worlds, it could rejuvenate within the Dark Kingdom until it was ready to travel to its sect.
“Banishing a demon should be second nature to a mage,” Agnon hissed, its voice filling the space. “Why is this taking so long?”
“We need a sacrifice to send someone of your strength,” a woman said. “We need more energy.”
“You need a better circle of mages!” Agnon roared, lying on the ground decrepitly. “You must send me off before she finds us. She will be my death if she catches me on the surface.”
But she would be Agnon’s greatest boon if it could get below. The heir had both elements of the Dark Kingdom’s power—something only the Great Master shared with her. Agnon hadn’t seen the incendium magic, the fire, but it had felt it when her sword pierced its body. Luckily for it, the heir hadn’t yet learned the full extent of her power. She was as strong as the Great Master himself, able to move worlds. Alter time. Agnon had felt that incredible might pulsing deeply within her.
And she was only in her infancy.
If Agnon could’ve giggled like one of those silly, tiny humans, it would have.
Its sect could train her in secret. Help her develop her power. Since she had both elements of the Great Master’s power, they could bring in a neighboring incendium sect, form an alliance, and have two halves of the whole.
But first, it had to get below.
“Hurry,” it yelled again.
“Master, there is no way she can find us. We are hidden from view,” one of those insufferable humans said.
“She is the almighty,” Agnon said. “This shack is not hidden from her eyes.”
“It is not a shack, I assure you,” the lead mage said in an arrogant tone. “But we are in a rural place. She’ll find nothing in my home to point her here. I removed all the evidence of this location. Even if she found this place, she wouldn’t know to come all the way to this removed area. Trust me—we have all the time in the world.”
If Agnon had not needed this disgusting human, it would have killed him right then. How dare he disregard the heir’s abilities as merely human?
“I hope she finds you just after you have sent me below,” Agnon said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“I vote we go,” Callie said. “A quick look. Then we head on. Because really, what choice do we have?”
I glanced at the clock. Middle of the night. Time was flying. Chances were, if it wasn’t here, we wouldn’t find it tonight. Then we’d be hampered by the sunlight. Granted, the magical people could hang, but I needed Darius. He could help me take out the demon, and if not, he could help me keep from losing myself. He might be the end game.
The chances that it wasn’t here were good.
I shook my head and looked back toward the distant parking garage. “There is no way they can hide in the lots. Say they were using a container, or a group of them, and hiding their freaky workshop with a spell. Humans would eventually realize there was an unnatural absence of cargo.”
“Well…that’s not necessarily true.” Penny scratched her nose. “In addition to making something invisible, you could use a spell to distract the human mind so they don’t recognize the gap between things that aren’t invisible…”
“I know, but—” I started.
“The eye wouldn’t notice it, no,” Callie trundled over me. “But the mind, eventually, would catalog it. The mind isn’t so easily fooled as the eyes. It’ll put up with a difference in data for a while, but eventually, it’ll catch on. Then it’ll start forcing the eyes to see. You have to switch the spell, or switch the setup, or switch…something to change things up. Spells wear off, and that isn’t just because the magic escapes. It’s also because human perception gets more intelligent.”
“That. Yes.” I made a circle with my finger, like a coach running out of time. “But now’s not the time to walk the newbie through spells. I think we’re looking for something more secluded. On your map, is there anywhere for a disguised building to go? Or even an electrical station or something? Anything with four walls and a roof?”
Callie brought the phone closer, squinting. “Granted, this probably isn’t to scale. And though it has been accurate so far, that doesn’t mean—”
“Answer, please,” I said.
“It doesn’t look good, but it isn’t improbable.”
“Isn’t improbable. Double negatives don’t save lives, Callie.” I frowned and shook my head, hating how slowly we were going. Feeling the urgency deep in my gut.
As if hearing my thoughts again (he was starting to make me nervous), Darius said, “I can carry you through the park.” He grabbed my arm. “You should be able to detec
t magic at accelerated speeds.”
His insistence made me pause. No doubt he was feeling bad about not pressing at the start of this whole mess.
He’d been right before.
“We all go together,” I said in a split-second decision. “We’ll move fast. If it’s not here, Darius, you run, get the car, and pick us up.”
“How are we going to get across?” Penny asked, staring at the void that was the tracks.
As if on cue, a speck of light came from around the bend. The train became visible shortly thereafter. It slowed as it rumbled into the rail yard.
Callie rolled her eyes. “You’re telling me that a marathon runner can’t dodge a slow-moving train?”
“No, I meant, how are we going to get around all the trains parked in our way? Going through the places where they join together will be tough. And probably greasy. You don’t want to get that velvet suit all mucked up.”
“Hopefully then she’d throw it away,” I muttered. “Come on, we’ll go around the end. It’s not that far.”
Like a bunch of teenagers, we waited until the train passed—one engine and only a few cars—and then hurried across. The lights of the checkpoint blared not far away, since we’d had to cross in a somewhat public place. To save us time, and sneakiness, Darius took the lead.
The guard lay in his booth by the time we walked through, passed out with a serene smile on his face.
That horrible hot feeling rose in my chest again, my reaction to Darius biting someone else. I was losing my mind.
“Let’s hurry.” I started to jog, not caring if I left the others behind. More cargo containers rose up around me, the same as the ones we’d seen before. Already having lost hope, I just wanted to get through here as quickly as possible and move on to the next thing.
A couple of tracks split off, leading off to the side and down the middle of the cargo areas, and both tracks were currently occupied by train cars in different stages of being loaded.
“No magic,” I said, nearing the end. Dread pierced my gut. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Just up here there is an emergency…thing. I can’t make out what kind, though.” Callie pointed ahead.
“Darius, go get the—” A faint feeling of magic tingled my skin as I neared the end of the cargo area. “Wait.”
“I feel magic,” Penny said, just a little behind me. “Evil magic.”
I glanced back at her, surprised.
“There is no evil magic. Or good magic. Just magic,” Callie said in a hush. “It is the caster’s purpose that defines the spell.”
“The caster makes this magic evil,” Penny amended. “It is dark and clingy and…sticky.” She wiped at her arms.
I peeked around the corner. A large space existed beyond the cargo lots before the land became industrialized again. To the naked eye, it was empty but for a small building that sat near the edge of the graveled area. A small, out-of-the-way shack that didn’t seem maintained. Next to it, however, was a moderately sized area cloaked in a heavy invisibility spell, shot through with spider webs of different kinds of eye distractions.
“Holy crap.” Relief and fear washed over me in turns. This had to be it. This had to be the site we were looking for.
And that meant I was about to confront a really powerful demon for the second time.
“Someone put a lot of time and effort into this collection of spells,” I said in a hush.
“What kind of spell?” Callie whispered.
“Invisibility and multiple types and power levels of distraction spells. It has all the bells and whistles. What I don’t understand is how come no one missed the loss of a structure this large?”
“How large?” Dizzy asked. “Does it fill the whole space?”
“About three-quarters of it. You can see where people have been walking around it.” I pointed at the lines of foot traffic in the gravel. I doubted the humans even knew why they didn’t make a beeline to their destination, instead arcing around what they thought was absolutely nothing.
“The moonlight isn’t bright enough to see whatever you’re pointing at,” Callie said. “But a distraction spell would make the fact that something used to be there, and now isn’t, slip by the brain for a while. Something of this magnitude wouldn’t fool people for long. The mages have probably taken down and put up the spells several times, which explains the need for a few mages, even if the summoning didn’t.”
“Whatever the reason, there it is, and we need to get going.” I patted my various weapons. “Where to start?”
“Rip that spell off like a Band-Aid,” Callie said, pulling out items from her satchel. “Then we’ll take the mages and you work on the demon.”
It would take too long to slice through each of the components with the sword. No, this required my fire.
“But it’ll take time to get the various parts of that spell unraveled. Otherwise it’ll blow up in our faces,” Penny said, picking at a button on her shirt while studying the spell that she could clearly see. She was one in a million as far as mages went, which worked out for me. She wouldn’t think I was horribly unique. Not for a while, anyway. And hopefully by then I’d be out of the public eye again.
“First I have to kill that demon, though,” I said to myself.
“What?” Callie asked.
I shook my head. “Give me a screen, Callie. We don’t want anyone to see this.”
“It is highly volatile.” Penny was still picking at her button, analyzing the spell. “They did a good job with it.”
“Take one last look, because it’s about to go boom.” I nodded to Callie, who plucked at Dizzy. They walked a ways to the side and started muttering, pulling items out of their satchels.
“Should we get closer so they can make their spell smaller?” Darius asked.
I judged the distance before glancing at Penny. “No. You can withstand the heat, and I won’t feel it, but my fire shield after it takes the spell’s energy would be too hot for Penny if we got closer.”
“Shield?” Penny asked, blinking those luminous eyes.
“Do we need to do all sides?” Callie asked as Dizzy muttered an incantation. A rudimentary sheen of red tumbled down from the sky like a curtain—a unique and somewhat on-the-nose way of enacting that particular spell—blocking the view and probably any sound from the other side.
“No. Just where humans might be wandering around.” Fire filled me in a rush, spreading heat into my limbs. For now, I ignored the pulsing coldness deep in my gut. I would be confronted with that soon enough. “In reality, he did us a favor by putting this thing way out here.”
“We’re sure it’s him?” Darius asked.
“Nope. But we’re hoping for the best.” I waited for Callie and Dizzy’s spell to meet the ground before moving my hands through the air, fingers spread.
Fire licked the gravel around my feet. Penny inched back.
I pushed my hands forward and the fire responded to my unspoken command, crawling toward the structure before pausing at the base. The spell was well rooted.
“This mage definitely knows what he’s doing,” I said, the words no more than a whisper in the hush. “Get ready for some potent and aggressive attacks.”
“I’ve been working on it since I saw you in New Orleans and I can’t seem to come up with a way to make fire do that,” Penny said, having inched up again. “I’ve tried everything I can think of.”
“It’s my cousin,” I said quickly. “In Canada. Experimental spells.”
“Cousin?” Dizzy asked.
“Oh yes, he is crazy, her cousin,” Callie said. I heard Dizzy grunt. He’d probably gotten an elbow to the side. I hoped so, at any rate. “Never does the same thing twice. Totally unpredictable. Don’t try to duplicate that; it could kill you. Reagan lives on the wild side.”
“But you don’t have a casing.” Penny pointed at my empty hands.
I lifted said hands, making the low-heat fire coat the outline of the spell.
“She started with the casings.” Callie cleared her throat. “I’ll explain it all when you come for training. It’ll be fine. Let’s just focus on the here and now.”
I half smiled, because Callie clearly needed some time to come up with a good lie. My humor dripped away, though, as I felt the vibrations of the spell turn angry.
“Here we go.” I increased the heat, crackling through the spell. Like snapping strings on a violin, pieces of it kept breaking away. Pop, pop, pop.
I threw up a curtain of fire in front of us for protection. The protection and concealment spells sizzled violently, unraveled or eaten away entirely by my power. Without warning, they burst, reacting exactly as Penny had predicted. An explosion of magic slapped against my wall of fire. Sparkles of color spread out across the flame curtain before I ripped it to the side, exposing a medium-sized warehouse with blackened windows and a plain door.
The door flew open and a shock of magic blasted out at us.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I caught the attack in fire and ate away the spell, making the mages’ eyes go round in astonishment. My return fire was exactly that: a thin stream of heat-intensive flame directed right at them.
It hit the first mage dead-on. He screamed and patted at his black robe before running off the steps and onto the gravel. Clearly he had forgotten the stop-drop-and-roll technique. The flame grew, about ready to burn him alive.
Gross.
I tore the fire away and jerked my head. “Darius.”
The vampire was there in a moment. Two strong hands wrapped around the mage’s head. Penny flinched at the crack that followed.
“What are you?” one of the mages yelled, staring at me with a slack jaw. Next to him, a female mage bent to her hands, her lips moving. They’d shut the door behind them.
A blast of green shot from the female mage, headed for Dizzy. He didn’t have time to counter, but a sheen of black rose up in front of him like a net, catching the mage’s spell like my fire might’ve. Unlike my fire, however, the sheen of black didn’t eat away the magic, or even unravel it. Instead, it wrapped around the spell, making an outline like a comet. It looked about ready to implode.