Magic Blaze: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 3)

by Catherine Vale

So, I was supposed to take this as a win-win? Fat chance.

  “Before I agree to anything, I want to speak to Darius.” He must have been worried sick about me. In fact, I was pretty sure he’d rip apart Earth and Alfheim just to find me, but clearly the djinn had me locked up tightly, away from the rest of the world.

  Aden studied me for a moment. While he appeared perfectly still, not even his eyes so much as flickering, I could see that brain of his churning.

  “I need him to know I’m not dead,” I reasoned, softening my tone in an effort to sway him. He snapped back to life with a smirk and one of those yeah, like I’m falling for that looks, but with a swish of his hand and a flash of blue light, a cell phone materialized in his palm. I reached out for it, but he retracted it immediately, sneering.

  “What’s the magic word?”

  I glared. He did not want to know the dozens of magic words I had in mind for him.

  “Please.” I choked out the word like it burned me, which made him snicker.

  “Good girl.” He passed the phone over. “Now, try not to use up all my long-distance minutes. I’m on the worst plan…”

  “I don’t like this, Kaye,” Darius growled into the phone. I ran a hand through my hair, nodding. Did he think I liked this? Not one bit. There was a djinn holding me hostage—a djinn who was probably a psychopath, but for now, I was willing to play his game.

  “I know, Darius, but—”

  “The artifact sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “Well, I mean, probably…” I caught Aden watching me from the other side of the bars, and turned slightly so my back was to him. “But what other choice do I have?”

  “None, really,” the djinn purred, and I rolled my eyes. It was a good thing Darius wasn’t here, because the djinn would definitely be dead—one way or another. My dragon had been so relieved to hear from me when I finally got through to his cell, but that relief turned to white hot rage when I explained my situation. If only I could summon him through the phone, we’d get out of this thing together, just like we always did.

  “Look, we can’t risk not acting if what he says about Jasmine is true,” I stressed, trying to keep us on track. “If she’s coming for you, the clan needs to arm themselves. Tell Catriona to start making wards around the village.”

  “She’s losing her mind over you,” he muttered. I took a deep breath, not wanting to get sucked into the emotion of all this—not with Aden watching me. If the roles had switched and Catriona was the one taken hostage, I’d move mountains to find her—literally. My palms hummed with power at the thought, but I recalled the magic when Aden started clucking his tongue at me disapprovingly.

  “Well, be sure to tell her I’m safe when she gets back.” Apparently, James had been leading search parties all over the place, with Sanctius and Brisbane dragons scouring the skies. Catriona had finally acquiesced to Quinn’s demands, using one of Hogar’s newly completed saddles to ride him as she combed the country for me. Darius hadn’t seen them in a few days, but messengers flitted back every so often with nothing new to report.

  “Kaye, don’t do this.”

  “I have to,” I told him, my voice shaking at the desperation in his. “We don’t stand a chance against Jasmine right now, not without the militia. She’ll wipe you out. I won’t let that happen.”

  “Kaye—”

  “Please, Darius,” I hissed. “Just trust me. We’re still in this together, right?”

  Or not at all. I waited for him to pull out, to demand that I just come home and we’d fight whatever other magical assassins Jasmine had paid to ensure my demise from the mountaintops. Instead, he exhaled deeply, and I could picture him pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration, desperation, and exhaustion.

  “Together,” he agreed softly. “Look, just worry about protecting your own ass, okay? Don’t trust this guy.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Aden waved, then tapped his wrist—apparently, I had a time limit. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  “If he’s lying, I’m going to rip him to pieces.”

  “I’d watch that movie,” I said, forcing a laugh. A pointed throat clearing behind me spurred me on. “Darius, I have to go, I think. I love you. This is going to be okay.”

  “I love you too, Kaye,” he insisted. “Trust your gut instinct. Listen to the, well, inner voices. Be safe.”

  “Always.”

  “Don’t be mouthy with your captor, either. Rein in that sarcasm, for your own good.”

  I smiled, a genuine one this time. “I make no promises.”

  “Kaye…”

  “I love you,” I repeated, “and I…”

  The phone disappeared from my hand, dissolving into nothing but blue smoke that tickled the back of my throat. I coughed, trying not to inhale it, and whirled around at the sound of the cell door sliding open.

  “We’re on a deadline,” Aden stated, tossing a backpack at me that I only just managed to catch. “Things to do, places to be. Time to go.”

  “Where?” I demanded.

  “Why…” His lips spread into a familiar twisted smile, the kind that made my insides turn. “Alfheim, of course…”

  Chapter 5

  “What part of kidnapping do you not understand?” Aden snapped, his playful demeanor fading fast as we traipsed through the long, thigh-high grasses of an Alfheim field. “No, you cannot go see your brother. Honestly, it’s like you’ve never been someone’s captive before.”

  I cast a forlorn look back over my shoulder to Alfheim’s Core. Despite the distance, I could make out the buildings that were being rebuilt. The smoke and ash of Abramelin’s destruction was gone, and in its place, was the Alfheim I had known my whole life. In such a short time, Zayne and his people had managed to breathe life back into this place. With the sunlight beaming down on it, the city was like a paradise calling me home. Unfortunately, Aden was hellbent on dragging me in the other direction.

  “But… But maybe he can help,” I reasoned, a warm mid-morning breeze tossing my loose locks this way and that. Sighing, I faced the djinn again and folded my arms over my chest. “And I’ve never been someone’s captive before, thank you very much.”

  “No wonder you’re doing such a piss-poor job at it.”

  “Hey.” I planted my feet firmly, refusing to walk one more step if he was going to be a raging asshole. “We’re on the same team here, apparently, so how about dropping the attitude?”

  “Who are you, my mom?”

  When I didn’t answer, he finally slowed to a halt and looked back, and threw his hands up, groaning.

  “Fine, I’ll behave,” Aden called out to me, “but only if you do… and that means no detours to the Core to see Zayne Allister in his ivory tower.”

  “Whatever, man, fine.” I rolled my eyes and trudged after him with my arms still crossed. “I just thought he could help.”

  “Help you, I assume.”

  “Help us,” I countered, fixing him with a glare. “I thought we were a team. I thought we were working together, not that I was still your prisoner.”

  Aden looked toward the Core, lifting his dark gaze and grinding his teeth. He had been kind enough to let me pass through the portals without any sort of chains; I’d just assumed we were on even footing at this point. My mistake.

  “Jasmine’s spies are everywhere,” he grunted after a terse pause. “I can’t be too careful. You’re my prisoner, whether you’re bound or not. If I wanted, I could make you docile—”

  “Cool.” I pursed my lips, nodding. “Go fuck yourself then—”

  “And they know that,” he added under his breath, shooting me a narrowed look. “Just… Play the part, for goodness sake.”

  With a brusque wave, he motioned for me to follow him toward the trees. I sighed, planted my hands on my hips, and did a quick scan of the area with my enhanced sight. As far as I could tell, we were the only ones out here. Either the djinn was paranoid—or just really good at his job. I was hoping for th
e latter, but that didn’t mean I trusted him. I did, however, appreciate that we were headed for the elvish forests rather than the ominous, foreboding death trees on the other side of the Core. But then again, it seemed more likely that elves would accept some top-secret artifact from a gang of unwanted hybrids than whatever lived in the dark forest would. Demons. Vampires. Ghouls. That wasn’t a place to go strolling through without being one of them.

  Forcing the scowl off my face, I jogged after him, not bothering to waste a burst of fae speed just yet. After all, I’d only eaten a small meal since waking up—as per the doctor’s orders—and I wasn’t confident in the white magic I had in my reserves. For now, I needed to conserve strength, not spend it unnecessarily.

  The tall grasses, a vibrant green peppered with shades of gold, brushed against my thighs, now covered in a pair of comfy, well-worn black jeans. Aden had told me to picture an outfit before we left, and suddenly I was wearing it: jeans, a cotton tee, a thin jacket, and a pair of durable walking shoes. Since I had no idea what I was in for with the search for this artifact, I wanted to be prepared for everything.

  Aden waited for me at the edge of the woods, and we crossed into its shadow together. Trees similar to maples towered over us, only their trunks were fatter than any old maple found on Earth, and the undersides of their huge leaves shimmered with different colors when the breeze caught them. Every so often, we happened upon a willow tree—or whatever the Alfheim equivalent was—and I heard faint whispers of an ancient elvish dialect within. A welcome song, sweet and pure. Aden heard it too, judging from the snap of his head in the tree’s direction, but he carried on gruffly, stomping across underbrush and shoving branches aside—clearly on a mission. I, however, ran my hands across the weeping branches, feeling the white magic within me swell each time. The forest had a healing touch, intentionally or not.

  “So, tell me,” I said after the silence had dragged on for what felt like hours. “You mentioned trials before?”

  “Three trials,” Aden told me over his shoulder. He stopped so abruptly that I ended up stumbling into him, and although I expected a sneer or a lewd remark, he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he looked left, then right, then left again—then made a hard right. Whatever map he was following seemed pretty specific, even if it was only the map in his mind.

  “And I’m the only one who can do it?” I clarified, hurrying to his side. Someone giggled in the willow a few trees down, and I caught a flash of movement in my peripheral. Elves didn’t concern me. If I felt a darker presence, I might’ve stopped. Elves, for all their legendary tales in human folklore, were the supernatural pacifists of our world. Mischievous, but then again, so were faes.

  “They were crafted so that only a hybrid could find the artifact,” Aden explained, yanking a low hanging leaf from a tree and shredding it as he walked, leaving bits behind him like breadcrumbs. “If anyone else tries, I assume nothing will happen, or something terrible will happen. I didn’t want to waste my time going there either way without a hybrid.”

  “And these tasks—”

  “Trials,” he countered, throwing me a smirk as I rolled my eyes.

  “Trials, whatever.” I really wished that I’d imagined my hair tied back too. I seriously needed to invest in a whole tub of hair elastics one of these days. “What do they entail?”

  “I’m not sure of the specifics, but there are themes,” he explained, sounding slightly bored. “Strength. Wisdom. Will. You’ll need to show all three traits if you want to complete the trials.”

  “That’s all you’ve got? The theme?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, there are no written records. Much of what I’m going on comes from an oral tradition. Storytellers. Legends. But,” he held a hand to silence my protest, “we djinn are stuff of legends too. I believe it. All of it.”

  “Great.” I sighed, hoping he heard the undertones of annoyance on my breath. He had no idea what I was walking into either. So much for trying to mentally prepare for what was bound to be some bullshit. “So, beyond legend and gossip, what do you know?”

  “I know a great many things, hybrid,” he remarked, stopping again before banking hard to the left. “I’ve been alive a long time.”

  “Well, let’s narrow it down to this in particular.”

  “I know the hybrid culture has been around for as long as there have been supernatural beings,” Aden insisted. “And that hybrids, in many respects, are better than their supernatural or shifter components, as they often exhibit the strengths of both species. Their power is extraordinary, and I suspect that was why they were persecuted so mercilessly. It was fear, not a need to cleanse the bloodline, that sent their enemies after them. Hybrids, in my opinion, are the perfect creatures, and as such, they knew how to hide their artifact so that only one of their own could find it and use it.”

  For a few moments, I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. In my limited experience of being a hybrid, no one had ever said I was the perfect creature. I was a mongrel, a dog, an abomination to my enemies. And to my community, my mixed heritage was ignored—like I’d spent my entire life walking around with a huge piece of spinach in my teeth that no one cared to point out. Aden was the first person, beyond Catriona’s comforting words and Darius’s unflinching love, to praise what I was, and in that moment, I started to soften toward him.

  But I put a halt to that really fast. No way was I letting this guy trick me into lowering my guard. I was still his prisoner, after all, and just because he felt something other than hatred for hybrids didn’t change that.

  “If hybrids are so perfect, why are there none of us around anymore? Why am I such a taboo subject?”

  He shot me a look over his shoulder, brow furrowed. “Weren’t you listening? They were stamped out. Persecuted out of fear. Do you really think they would stick around? The supernatural community is massive these days. With crazies like Abramelin and Jasmine surfacing, in what universe do you think a hybrid community, if they did still exist, would show themselves? Use your brain, Kaye.”

  “Okay, rude,” I snapped. “I’m still new to this. You don’t have to be a dick.”

  “Pretty sure that’s my family motto,” he said with a chuckle. “Being a dick is in my blood.”

  “Fine, change of subject then.” I wanted to regain the upper hand here, and clearly hybrid lore was this djinn’s special interest project, though I couldn’t understand why. To me, he was full djinn. Was it the power thing? Maybe he wanted a slice of it. With Aden smirking back at me, I cleared my throat and lifted an eyebrow. “What did Jasmine take from you?”

  In a heartbeat that victorious smirk fell, and in its place…contempt. Aden turned away and quickened his stride.

  “It doesn’t matter what she took from me,” he growled, and I noticed his fingertips pulsing a faint blue color.

  “Well, it kind of sets the tone for this whole thing,” I insisted, running to keep up with him. “Right? I mean, is this a vengeance mission, or are you genuinely interested in saving shifter clans from the awful that is Jasmine?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “But we’re a team, so technically, it is—”

  “I have no interest in sharing my personal details with you,” he snapped. His right hand, curled in a tight fist, had turned completely blue at this point. I wasn’t an idiot, nor did I have a death wish, so I backed off, hands up in surrender.

  “Fine. You don’t have to tell me if it upsets you that much.”

  We continued walking for a few paces before he started to slow down. Finally, he glanced over at me, his hands no longer glowing with djinn essence, and nodded. “Thank you.”

  I frowned. It had been a long time since I had struggled this hard to get a read on a person. Even Darius, despite all the ways he drove me nuts when we first met, was easier to read than this. Alpha male with wounded pride. Protective to a fault. Born leader. He had all the classic traits—and I loved him for it. Aden? Maybe he fell in
to the mythological trickster category, but there was rage simmering just below the surface.

  And at that point, as we trekked through elvish territory in a tense silence, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to poke the sleeping bear or not, just to see what might become of it.

  Oh, who was I kidding?

  Give me a stick already. Of course, I was going to poke.

  Crouched at the edge of the glittering pool, Aden trailed his fingers through the water, then looked back at me with a grin. “I’m going to say… no iron.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Why would I feel the need to bullshit you?” he asked, wiping his hand on his trousers before standing. His trench coat hem grazed the water’s edge, and he hastily yanked it out of reach.

  I crossed my arms, staying back at a good distance and eyeing the pool suspiciously. “Because you think it’d be funny to watch a fae interact with iron? I don’t know. Pretty sure you’ve done it before.” I held up my wrists, a very faint red ribbon of burned flesh still wrapped around each, to emphasize my point.

  “Half-fae,” he corrected, his grin turning a little wicked as I exhaled sharply. “And why would I want to weaken you? Night’s coming. Darkness is fraught with all sorts of beasties, even in elven lands.”

  My gaze darted skyward. Sure enough, the sun was on its way down, and we had spent the better part of the day hiking. I’d asked repeatedly why we couldn’t just fly there—djinns were known to materialize out of nowhere, so I had to assume there was some magical transportation up his sleeve that would be faster. Aden had merely countered that he didn’t want to miss the entrance of the tomb, which made me feel fan-fucking-tastic. Not only were we hunting an artifact that we weren’t totally sure existed, and not only were there three trials that only I could supposedly solve, but we were going to desecrate a supernatural tomb too.

  Not exactly my idea of a good time.

  “Oh, for goodness sake,” he groaned, stalking toward me. “The water is safe.”

  “I don’t—” Before I could express my rightful doubts, he flicked his fingers at me, spraying whatever water was left at my face.