by Nazri Noor
“What were you thinking?”
“I’m glad you asked,” I said, immediately regretting my defiance as soon as the words tumbled from my mouth, but too late. The room felt hotter somehow, and I fancied that Carver’s glare was successfully burning holes in my clothing. “You praised me for quick thinking once, when I threw that lightning bottle at you. This was totally the same thing.”
“On a much larger scale,” he said, his voice alarmingly steady, the kind of steady that implied it was on the verge of transforming into a bellow at any moment. “You unleashed the sun. The collateral damage you could have caused would have been astounding. Sterling is barely alive.”
“He’s fine,” I said, totally unsure of myself even as I spoke the words. “Plus ‘alive’ is probably not the right word.”
Carver’s glower could have ripped my soul from my body.
“Okay, bad joke, sorry. I didn’t hurt Sterling on purpose, okay? I did what I could to help the team. Bastion was the one who did a number on him.”
“Who?”
“The guy who dropped a car on Sterling. The guy you were dueling with.”
“Yes. The boy from the Lorica. That was my primary concern. Do you think that a signal that enormous would not have attracted the entire organization’s interest?”
My blood went cold. I genuinely hadn’t thought of that. A small, self-satisfied grin curled up in the corner of Carver’s mouth. It went away as quickly as it appeared, his features reverting to rage as he slammed a fist onto his desk.
“If you didn’t have it before, you now have their fullest attention, Dustin. And that of the sun goddess as well.”
“Hey, it wasn’t my fault. All I did was throw the mirror. Bastion was the one who smashed it. Let him deal with her getting pissed off.”
Carver sniffed and lifted his nose. “One hopes that Amaterasu will be as understanding as you expect. Somehow I have my doubts.” He narrowed his eyes as he peered down at me, then he shook his head and sighed. “Dustin. This is precisely why I wanted you to develop your talents. If you had alternative methods of attacking this Bastion boy, you wouldn’t have had to resort to such – explosive measures.”
“Magic is hard as shit. Maybe I’ll never be able to make fire. Maybe I’m just dumb, okay?”
“That has been established. Repeatedly.”
“Cut me some slack. I’ve lived twenty-four years of my life not knowing magic existed. And I’ve got less than twenty-four hours to figure shit out.” I folded my hands together and sighed. “That’s why I was so impulsive, okay? We needed to end that fight and get the hell out of there. We need to give the Codex to Mrs. Boules.” I stared at my palms, at the brand on my wrist, my voice softening against my will. “I don’t want to die.”
Carver watched me in silence for a moment. “I understand,” he said, his expression still even, but his tone gentle. “We will broker the exchange of the Asher boy before midnight comes. And then, I promise you, I will come to see Dionysus with you myself if that’s what it takes to lift his curse.” He placed his hand on the back of mine. I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised by the warmth of his touch, or the unexpected warmth of his gesture. “You’re going to live.”
“Okay,” I said, a tiny stream of relief beginning to trickle back into my chest. “Okay.” I fiddled with my thumbs. “There’s something else, though. Something Amaterasu mentioned that I haven’t told you. She said something about my parentage, how I’ve always been tied to the Eldest.”
“Parentage? I admit, I’m not entirely sure what she meant by that. Perhaps there was magic in your lineage after all. I wonder.” He stroked his beard, his eyes going distant. “This might be something that merits discussion with your father.”
“Yeah. About that.”
“I always keep my word, Dustin. When this is all over, I will return my focus to tracking him down.” He leaned back into his seat, steepling his fingers. “And then we will redouble our efforts to teach you the art of flame. I swear I’m going to see you create a fireball if it kills you.”
“I think you phrased that incorrectly.”
“You heard me. Go. Rest for now. Gil should be getting in touch with our contact. I need all of you to be fresh and ready for when we bring Asher to our client.”
I moved to rise from my chair, then stopped. “We’re – we’re not actually handing him over to Enrietta Boules, are we?”
“I would prefer not to. The boy is a human being, after all, not some bargaining chip. This changes everything. I presume that he will be required to perform some magical service for the woman. After that he should be free to decide his own fate.”
That made me feel better, if only a little. Carver was right. The situation would have been different if the Codex really had been an artifact, but to trade away a human being? It just wasn’t right. I figured I should at least check on our guest, so I swung by the pantry since Rosa mentioned something about whipping up lunch.
The table was piled with dishes and serving bowls, but it looked like people had already eaten. I took a whiff of whatever had been prepared – oh God, adobo, and lots of it – and made a mental note to come back to stuff my face with what was indeed the finest Filipino food this side of the Meathook.
I made my way to our quarters, down the hallway where each of our bedrooms was situated. Gil’s door was shut. Sterling’s was, oddly, open, which rarely ever happened. I peeped in, finding Mama Rosa tending to him, holding up a tupperware of steaming, freshly microwaved pig’s blood with a straw sticking out of it.
On the bed – I was slightly disappointed to discover that Sterling didn’t sleep in a coffin as I’d imagined – sat a vaguely humanoid shape wrapped in bandages. It looked like our resident vampire had gone mummy for a bit.
“I love the new look, Sterling.”
Mama Rosa gave me a dagger-stare that felt more like a hail of butcher knives. Sterling’s response came muffled through the bandages wrapped around his head, so much that I couldn’t decipher it. I did easily decipher the very rude gesture he made with one of his exposed fingers, though.
I crossed over to my room, prepared to set down my backpack and possibly stretch out in bed, when I realized that the hallway was longer now. There was another room at the end, where once there had only been a blank stone wall.
Things like this made me question how much Carver really knew about the Lorica. Either there really were some striking similarities in both the Lorica headquarters’ and the hideout’s ability to provide for their own, or they both used the same arcane interior decorator.
I heard voices from the room, which I guessed were Asher and Gil mid-conversation. Maybe Gil’s door was just shut for the sake of privacy. I couldn’t quite make out what they were discussing, but I peeked in anyway, intending to make my presence known. This Asher kid must have been nervous about his new surroundings, and it wouldn’t have hurt to spend a little time helping him ease into it.
But he was totally alone, sitting in a swivel chair similar to mine, his feet propped up on the stone desk that was a mirror of the one in my bedroom. He didn’t stop talking when he saw me, even lifting a hand in greeting.
“Yeah, the guys here seem pretty nice. No, they fed me. Of course they aren’t gonna poison me, come on, mom. These people could have killed me any time they wanted, why bother with poison?”
I peered closer, trying to make out the earpiece he was talking into, but more importantly, getting more annoyed by the second by how no one had bothered to tell me that we could now get cellphone reception inside the hideout.
“Sorry, am I interrupting something?” I said. “I can come back.”
“No, it’s cool,” Asher said. “Come on in. I was just talking to my mom. We’re done now.”
I gestured at my ear, then his. “You don’t have a cellphone though. Plus I’m pretty sure we don’t get reception here.”
His brow furrowed, then his eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, sorry, of course. I shou
ld have explained. I wasn’t on the phone. She was right here.”
“I. Um.” I held my hands up and shrugged, wondering if this was some kind of game, finding myself at a very rare loss for words. “I don’t see her.”
“Of course not. She’s dead.”
Chapter 20
I looked around the room, just to clarify. Was it polite to question the kid’s sanity? Probably not. Maybe it was his coping mechanism for all that trauma we’d just put him through. The obvious way to find out was to ask him, which was what I did.
“Sorry. Did you just say that your mom was dead? And you were talking to her?”
He frowned. “Don’t look so surprised. You do that vanishing thing. You’ve got a werewolf here, and a vampire, so I guess you’re the invisible man?”
Huh. I always failed to consider how shadowstepping looked from someone else’s perspective. He had a point. To an onlooker, all my travels through the Dark Room would just seem as if I’d disappeared and reappeared at different intervals.
“Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. Long story short, I can travel between shadows. Think of it as short-distance teleportation.”
His mouth formed into a little O. “That’s pretty awesome.”
I won’t lie, that made me feel like the cool guy in the room. I didn’t mean to do it on purpose, but my chest puffed out a bit.
“Well, you know. And you. You talk to the dead?”
He tilted his head up at the ceiling. “Something like it. I don’t fully understand it, you know? I can talk to my mom, at least, and I can heal a little. I found out when I turned eighteen.”
“And you’re how old now?”
He smiled flatly. “Eighteen. That’s when all the weird stuff started happening. If something is living, or has ever been alive, I can – do things to it. Like, I can make plants grow super fast, or I can age something up. It takes a lot of work, though.”
I narrowed my eyes. I had to admit, I had no idea what he meant. “Kind of confusing, if I’m honest.”
Asher shrugged. “Deirdre – the woman who took me – she said that I was a battery, like, apparently I’m so stuffed full of life energy that I can give it to others. That’s why she called me the Genesis Codex. She never even referred to me by name, I guess to maintain secrecy or make sure everyone in the house thought she just had an object stashed somewhere, and not a person.” He said the last bit glumly.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“Nah. It’s fine. I was basically homeless when they found me. She said she’d take me in, take care of me. And she did, to a point, but all they did was keep me holed up in my room. I could’ve escaped if I could do what you do. I mean you have, what is it, like shadow magic?”
I perked up and nodded. I like talking about me. “Basically, yeah. There’s other stuff I can do with it.” I thought of the honing, and the mass destruction I caused each time I used it, then decided I didn’t want to scare off the one friend I was almost making by telling him I was a walking slaughterhouse.
“And I get life magic. That’s kind of lame.”
“Don’t be so sure. There’s a reason the Viridian Dawn wanted you.” I spotted the confused look on his face. “Oh. That’s what the people holding you called themselves. They liked to think of themselves as a sort of cult.”
Asher scoffed. “That’s what they were. They thought they were druids. Is that even a thing? Deirdre was the closest thing to it, I guess. She kept going on and on about how technology was evil, how the planet should be returned to nature, which was hilarious because her followers were always on their phones anyway. Apparently the whole point of bringing me in was to use me as an engine to cause some kind of overgrowth, to choke the city.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Wait. As in, to cause so many plants to just overrun Valero? Is that what you mean?”
“I know it sounds silly, but it’s more destructive than you think. You know how when a tree grows its roots through a house’s foundation, it makes some cracks? Imagine that but on a huger scale. She’d hit two birds with one stone – destroy the city, but also create a haven for druids like her.”
It made sense now, how even the enchanted objects her goons were using drew their power from the earth. Hell, even the god artifact they decided to corrupt was so closely tied to nature. I didn’t think hippies could be so theoretically dangerous, but then we had Deirdre.
“I actually had a sense that you guys were coming,” Asher said. “At least when you were still outside the compound.”
“How could you tell?”
He shrugged again. “It’s part of the package. I can sniff out signs of life around me. All the – cultists, did you say? – I was used to the scent and feel of their life force from them hanging around the house so much. The four of you were new, different, and I didn’t feel threatened, really, except for when your vampire buddy started getting cozy with me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s got issues. But wait, sorry. You said that you detected our signals? Could you, I don’t know, use that ability to track down someone specific? Say, someone in this city?”
He shook his head. “No can do. It’s strange. I can sense people nearby, but outside of a house, or” – he wove a hand around the room – “whatever this place is? My range is pretty limited. I guess I’m still new to this stuff.”
That meant he couldn’t help find my dad. I tried not to look too disappointed. I mean, it was worth a shot. It couldn’t have hurt to ask.
“Did you have someone you were looking for?
“Not particularly,” I said, slipping him the lie as easily as I slipped a smile onto my face. “Don’t worry about it.” I extended a hand, finally remembering my manners. “We didn’t properly meet. I’m Dustin Graves. You can call me Dust.”
He took my hand and shook it. “Asher Mayhew. You can call me Ash.”
It was stupid, but the two of us chuckled over it anyway. Ash and Dust, like some kind of paranormal law firm, a supernatural detective agency, maybe even a fantasy novel.
“You’ve had something to eat, right? Looks like you totally destroyed what Mama Rosa prepared for you out there.”
“Dude, I love adobo, man. She makes good lumpia too. The spring roll things. I miss the way my mom made stuff.” He waved a hand by way of explanation. “I’m half Filipino. Nothing beats some good old home cooking.”
I smiled wanly, a pang of loss settling in my chest when I realized I couldn’t even remember what my own mother’s cooking tasted like.
“Well,” I said. “I’m bunked in the room next door. Knock if you need anything.”
“Appreciate it. I guess I’ll just wait around for Carver?”
I nodded. “Help yourself to the amenities until then. Your bathroom should be fully stocked. I suggest a nap.”
He gave me a salute, then turned to his knapsack, busying himself with whatever he kept in there. I ambled over to my room. Nice kid, I thought, just as I realized that we really weren’t all that far apart in age. I shut the door, stripped off my shirt, and threw myself on the bed, raring for a nap.
Except that my mind was whirring with so many thoughts, so much new information to process. It was exhilarating to be so close to throwing off the yoke of Dionysus’s curse, and this whole thing about making friends with an actual human being inside of the hideout was pretty cool, too. Fancy that, the Genesis Codex turned out to be a totally decent kid I could see myself hanging out with.
But it kind of sucked that he couldn’t help with finding my father. It still worried me not knowing where he was, and as much as I tried keeping it out of my head, that thing Amaterasu said was still gnawing at me. Typical entities, being all cryptic, just like Hecate. I needed answers. First order of business, just as soon as we sealed the deal with Enrietta and got rid of my death tattoo, was to find some way to track down Norman Graves, even if it meant going over Carver’s head.
I tossed, forcing my eyes sh
ut, then I turned, growing steadily annoyed with my inability to fall asleep. Ugh. Never mind, then. Maybe I could find some other way to pass the time. Maybe I could try and make something happen on a magical scale. I was tired, sure, but if I couldn’t sleep, then I figured it couldn’t hurt to route my energy in a more productive direction. The incident with Romira and the others was as clear a sign as any that I needed to make myself useful in arcane combat.
I did as Carver instructed. I emptied my mind, focusing on the very basis of what I was trying to do: generate heat. He’d said that visualization could help, so I started with that. I’d tried visualizing a candle, a convection oven, hell, even Sterling’s Zippo. But I decided I was going to work with the nervous energy thrumming through my body, to welcome the electrical tangle of confusion, and dread, and excitement. Fuck it. I closed my eyes, and in my head, I was a dragon.
And magic, as Carver said, wasn’t simply a matter of the mind. It was all these things in concert: emotion, imagery, mindset, all of it tied together with something verbal, and something physical. I’d once opened a gateway to a goddess’s dimension by reciting the marketing copy off of a pack of doggie biscuits, after all. If I could connect our reality to Hecate’s domicile, then I sure as hell could make fire.
Burn. That was all I repeated in my head. I was a dragon, and that was all I knew to do, was to burn. Burn. Burn. I held my hand out towards the ceiling, cupping my fingers around the ball of flame I was willing to appear. Something was happening, I was sure of it.
The sheets against my back were so much warmer, my neck glazing with sweat. I was there, so close, and in the spaces between my fingers I swore I could feel the beginnings of something hazy, of the kind of distorted warmth that rises from the asphalt on a summer day. It was working. It was finally working.
My eyes flew open in excitement, but there was nothing there. My hand was still cupped around thin air, and just as soon as the disappointment of reality set in, every other sensation vanished. The fire that I knew was building inside of me melted away like candle wax. I stared at the ceiling accusingly, grumbling to myself, until I spotted something shining, orange, and glimmering above me.