Ancient Magic (Stolen Magic Book 2)

by Jayne Hawke

  I could feel the energy building, the concentration of moon magic getting alarmingly strong, and I wished I’d had the sense to bring my charms with me. The idea of finally seeing the long-awaited stalker had apparently thrown me more than it should have, and I’d come without taking the time to consider what to do when it inevitably ended in a deathmatch. I wasn’t prepared for the meeting, and I wasn’t prepared for the fight after it. I was flying by the seat of my pants, and his artifacts were making me pay for it.

  I swapped the short sword in my off hand for a shield of my own, the shadow readily changing forms. It was similar to his but made of pure shadow, which meant that it was at least as strong. I tried to remember what I knew of shield combat. It wasn’t something I’d studied in any detail, all but a lost art in the Fae Isles where weapons tended towards the elegant rather than the militant, but I knew the concepts and the basic forms, and I wasn’t going to be outmanoeuvred.

  I charged him, the build-up of lunar power too great to risk a casual advance, and when his shield clashed with mine I thrust over it with my sword, struggling against the press of the artifact to remain in reach of my opponent and realizing that the short sword had been a bad choice. I continued to press inward, crying out my best war cry as both focus and distraction, and pressed the instruction to my sword to extend.

  Before the weapon could respond, a massive flash of blue light shone out in all directions, bathing the space and seeming to reverberate, reflecting in heavy waves that slapped against me from every direction, buffeting me with what initially seemed like harmless power. I felt something cold against my arm and looked down to see that my bare arm was pressed to his flying shield, nothing between me and it. My weapon was gone, too, and so was the shadowy encasement that served as both camouflage and armour. I was in street clothes, empty handed, and he had turned to me with staff in hand.

  Before I could draw the life blade that served more as backup weapon than anything these days, he struck out with his staff, the bottom third of it now a long blade that appeared to be wood but struck like steel. I leapt back, but the shock of losing the shadow that had been at the forefront of my mind and a core of my training for much of my life made my reaction too slow. The tip of his weapon sweeping up from the ground caught my outer thigh and slashed all the way up along my abdomen, snapping a rib before exiting.

  I collapsed backwards, my war cry nothing more than agony and fear, and clutched at my stomach where I swore I could feel my guts trying to escape through the huge wound. He spun the staff in the air, the flourish throwing free a few drops of blood even as the majority of it soaked into the wood, and jogged off into the night. I caught a last glimpse of him under a streetlight that showed him looking back with a pleased smile, and then he was gone and my panic and I were alone in the dark. Maybe he thought he’d killed me. Maybe he was right.

  I reached for the life in my sword, the bodily magic that had saved me time and again over the years, and began to craft a spell of healing as delicately and precisely as I could, knowing that wounds so close to fatal would take immense energy to heal. The struggle to focus, to even stay awake, was overwhelming, but I couldn’t spare even the smallest drop of the life magic I had on hand if I was going to survive this. And I was going to survive this.

  Castor showed up before I reached the end of my magic, and he silently sat at my head and began assisting my healing, his work careful but quick, the mystical battery at the heart of a familiar’s purpose offering far less need to conserve energy than the dab of life I stored in my weapon.

  I had managed to seal the gut wound, which by shadow goddess or luck or both had managed to miss my stomach, but the intestinal damage was yet to come under the mystical knife, so to speak. The beauty of healing magic was that I didn’t have to touch things to heal them, and stopping the whole assemblage from falling out the hole in my abdomen had seemed like the better starting point. The more superficial part of the wound, the part where I’d managed to dodge, was still bleeding, but it was stopping with natural clotting and that was good enough.

  Castor’s presence was calming, and I was deeply grateful that he wasn’t talking to me, demanding to know what and how and who. I’d tell him, I’d tell everyone, but right then I needed to heal and think.

  Twenty-Six

  Elijah had pulled me into his strong arms and gently placed me in his car. He spent the ride home giving health potion after health potion. I felt like I was drowning in them by the end, but more importantly I began to feel like I might make it through the night. He carried me into the pack house, where everyone gathered around me, concern in their eyes.

  Rex gently handed me a magic-imbued slice of apple pie. His mouth was pulled down into a small frown, which only deepened when he saw my blood-soaked clothes. Elijah didn’t let me go as the pack plied me with magic-packed foods including pie, ice cream, smoothies, and candy bars. They barely left my side as I felt the agonising knitting of my body repairing turn into a deep nausea from the overwhelming sense of everything.

  I fell asleep in Elijah’s arms, finally unable to fend off the desperate need to let my mind rest and my body recover from everything that had happened. My dreams were filled with the happy times I’d shared with Cameron as a little girl. The friendly smile on his face, and delight when we discovered a new book to read together. The memories warped into something dark and insidious. He was guiding me into a darkness unlike anything I’d ever seen before. A sharp knife pierced my side, and I watched in horror as my life essence slowly dripped from my body. It didn’t matter how hard I clutched at my wounds, there was nothing I could do.

  I woke with Elijah’s arms around me and my head on his strong chest. My heart was pounding, but his strength and familiar scent helped soothe away the nightmares.

  “You promised me I wouldn’t lose you,” Elijah said softly.

  I looked up at him.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  He held me a little tighter.

  “It was a close call.”

  “I was arrogant. I’m sorry.”

  “You mean a lot to me. I need you to be careful.”

  I stretched up and kissed him softly. It was stupid of me to walk into that situation as I had, and it wasn’t fair on Elijah. I knew how deep his feelings ran. I saw it shining in his eyes.

  “I know. I need to make some changes. My life has changed, and I don’t know what’s coming.”

  There was one thing I was certain of. I needed to put more effort into improving my hand-to-hand fighting without shadow, and make sure that my charm bracelet was packed with every conceivable form of magic. Not to mention actually putting it on before I went out to die. I was never going to be caught like that again. It had been hubris.

  Once I’d made sure that I was completely healed, I changed into a pair of shorts and a cami before I headed down into the sparring and work-out room. Anger at myself fuelled my blows as I began going through katas and pushing myself harder than I’d ever pushed myself before. I’d allowed myself to become far too reliant on the shadow magic.

  I wanted to blame Castor, but it was my own fault. My decisions were my own, and I’d enjoyed using the shadow. It was powerful and fun, and the fact it was so rare gave me an ego boost that I hadn’t really admitted to myself before. As Cameron has so readily demonstrated, it was far from infallible, though, and I’d allowed myself to become weaker because of my hyper-focus.

  My body was screaming at me to stop when Elijah came and pulled me out of the sparring room.

  “We need your head in the game. We still have a dangerous pot to find,” he said as he guided me into the kitchen.

  The pack had prepared the lunch to end all lunches.

  “Guard some food for me? I need a shower first.”

  Jess grabbed some chicken wings as I said that. Elijah was going to have a fight on his hands.

  “Be quick.”

  I raced upstairs to have a shower, or at least tried to race. I was goin
g to need a few bits of magically imbued food to help get me back to fighting form quicker. My muscles were practically jelly as I stepped into the shower. I wouldn’t have been able to fend off the pack when they tried to steal my food, so it was best that Elijah was doing it for me.

  The feeling of defeat and deep gut-wrenching sadness flared up as I was getting dressed again. Cameron had been something special. Of all the people to betray me, he was one of the last I’d have expected. Rex’s uproarious laughter filled the house, and the sadness flickered away into nothing. It didn’t matter what had happened in my past. What really mattered was the pack, my new family.

  Twenty-Seven

  There was no judgement from the pack, not even Rex. We were gathered around the large kitchen table, which was covered in every conceivable type of biscuit. Jess had been in charge of the shopping trip, and it really showed.

  “We’ve been digging into Cameron and what he’s been up to since you last saw him,” Elijah said.

  “He’s been very busy. It seems that he was released from the coven he’d been sold into. The witch he’d been bound to died under mysterious circumstances-” Liam said.

  “Read: Cameron murdered him,” Jess inserted.

  “Yes, that. He then began using the money he had accrued from his connections within that coven to build a small magical supply import business. It was pretty impressive stuff for a teenager. The business imploded when he was 21, though. Some rival cut off his supply lines, and he left Scotland to start fresh in the Midlands. It’s hard to find exactly what he did there. It looks like he sweet talked a couple of court fae and acted like a black widower? Is there a term for a male black widow? Anyway, he seduced these court fae women, took their money, and started up another import business,” Liam said.

  “This is where it gets really interesting,” Castor said.

  Liam finished off the huge cookie he’d grabbed before he continued on.

  “It looks like he got involved in the trade of god artifacts. And he was in Dover at the time of the transport of the pot we’re hunting.”

  “Does that help you figure out what’s going on with the pot?” I asked.

  Liam rocked his hand back and forth.

  “We have something. We’ve been mapping out the sewers and using what we can find online to figure out which group is where. We’ve narrowed down the location of the cult to a mile-square radius.”

  That sounded like a lot of wandering around the sewers.

  “What exactly are we dealing with, here?”

  “That’s the problem. We don’t know.”

  “Is there some way we can at least figure out what they’re a cult of? That would help us know how best to cover our asses,” I asked.

  “We’re working on it,” Elijah said.

  I was growing frustrated, more at myself than anyone. I took a slow calming breath. The pack was working long hours. I shouldn’t have been sharp with them.

  “Ok, what can I do?”

  “Rest. Recover. We need you sharp and on top of your game when we go down into those sewers,” Elijah said.

  He wasn’t wrong, but it was the last thing I wanted to be doing right then.

  “There’s an awesome horror movie landing tonight! We can eat ice cream and watch it together,” Jess said with a huge grin.

  I wasn’t usually much of a horror fan, but I couldn’t say no to her enthusiasm.

  Jess had handed me a pint of ridiculously decadent salted caramel and cookie dough ice cream, and I loved her for it. Elijah and I shared the pot while she curled up in the armchair absolutely rapt by the horror movie she’d chosen. It took a little while to shake off the frustration and the heartbreak at Cameron’s betrayal, but Elijah’s presence helped.

  “Is this the one where they mix up the tropes and the final girl is the bad guy?” Rex asked.

  Jess threw her spoon at his head.

  “Don’t spoil it!”

  He settled himself down in his usual spot on the other couch and said nothing. Castor and Liam tapped away on Liam’s laptops until the moment when we first saw the monsters. Then they came and joined the rest of us. Slowly, the agitation slipped away and was replaced by the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing I wasn’t alone. They’d come running when I needed them, and there’d been no judgement. I had to admit they were better than me on that front, but I was learning.

  Rex gestured animatedly at the screen when the virginal girl slit the blonde girl’s throat. I hadn’t seen many horror movies, but I knew what he was getting at. Jess pointedly ignored him.

  Castor went to say something when the blood gushed out of the blonde’s throat like a geyser. He crossed his arms when the magic shield they’d woven to try and protect them from further attack mysteriously flickered and died. I could feel him itching to point out that it wouldn’t have worked like that.

  Jess leaned over and clamped her hand over Liam’s mouth when he went to speak.

  “Sshh, we don’t care about accuracy. We care about the thrill,” she said soothingly.

  “I can’t do it,” Liam hissed.

  He walked out of the room.

  “He can’t stand when movies get really over the top and far from reality,” Elijah explained.

  While I understood Liam’s need to nitpick and point out the issues, I was actually enjoying the way it was so over the top. The special effects had clearly employed a lot of flashy magic to make everything bigger, brighter, and just more. There was something to be said for that. The reduced realism took away the tension that ran through me as flashes of past encounters with people burst into my mind.

  Everyone cheered when the bad guy, who was in the fact the virginal girl, was defeated. It was the girl screwing three guys who walked out of it with her head held high - and still firmly intact.

  “I told you!” Rex said to Jess.

  “You still can’t spoil shit for everyone else! This was a big moment. It was Lily’s first horror movie with us.”

  “You put too much weight on little things,” Rex grumbled.

  “No, you don’t put enough. Our horror movie viewings are important. They bring the pack together with glorious ice cream. Don’t underestimate that,” Jess said.

  “I just have to say that there were so many things wrong with that movie! That shield was supposed to be powered by moonlight which she’d drawn that night, but it was a new moon! And the blood was so ridiculous, she wouldn’t have had that many pints of blood in her body to start with. And the girl didn’t even trip at an inconvenient moment!” Liam said in a rush.

  Twenty-Eight

  I was woken by a soft shaking of my shoulder.

  “You were having more nightmares. Do you want to talk about them?” Elijah asked softly.

  A glance at my window showed it was still dark out. I could feel the nightmares waiting for me if I tried to close my eyes again. My mind had combined James’ traps with the magic and betrayal from Cameron. Together they formed nightmares full of darkness, agony, and heartbreak. I tried to grasp onto my anger, but I was too damn tired to find it.

  Elijah softly stroked my hair from my eyes.

  “It’s only four. Do you want me to stay? Maybe a little company will help. We can put on a cheesy movie or something,” he spoke in soft soothing tones.

  “I’d like that.”

  It pained me to admit weakness, but I didn’t want to be alone. Scooting over, I pulled the blankets back and made room for Elijah. He settled himself down and I pressed myself against him with my head on his chest. He stroked his fingertips up and down my upper arm while I flipped through the selection menu on the TV and movie streaming service. I needed something light, fun, distracting.

  “What about that teen witch show? The one where she rights wrong and whatever?” Elijah asked, pointing at the TV.

  It wasn’t my usual thing, but it sounded pretty good in that moment.

  “I’m not going to tell you that I’ll keep you safe. I’m pretty sure you’d remind me of ho
w capable you are. I will say that you’re not alone,” Elijah said.

  “Thanks.”

  It was a sentiment that had been echoed a lot over the past few days, but I needed it. Cameron had been my last tether to that coven, my history. He’d been my last friend, and it’d shaken me. I appreciated Elijah’s gentle affection.

  I was woken by my phone buzzing with a flurry of texts. Groaning, I cursed the phone and whoever had dared wake me. Elijah kissed my temple and smiled down at me. It was the first time I’d started the morning in someone’s arms like that. Normally my bed was my own, and I didn’t engage in the trust and sentiment exercise that was sleeping with someone. It felt so right, and easy with him. And he had kept the nightmares away.

  Reaching over, I looked at the phone and saw the texts were from Sasha.

  “Looks like the cult is tied to Huracan. People aren’t happy about their presence down in the sewers.”

  “That might mean that people are more likely to help us find them. Cults tend to interfere with business, especially when they get into sacrifices,” Elijah said.

  “Why would a storm god want sacrifices?” I asked as I got out of bed.

  Elijah shrugged.

  “I don’t think most of the gods cults dedicate themselves to want sacrifices. It doesn’t seem to stop them.”

  “So, we need to speak to the smugglers down there and see if they want to be useful,” I said.

  We’d already tried getting them to talk and hadn’t gotten very far.

  “Liam thinks he has something. He’s been looking into the pattern of storms and how they relate to the layout of the sewers. He thinks the cult might have tried to put themselves in what appears to be the ‘eye of the storm’ in the sewers’ layout.”