Ancient Magic (Stolen Magic Book 2)

by Jayne Hawke

  I exhaled slowly and reached deep into the small pale blue stone with my magical senses. The magic within it was coiled around itself with a distinct sense of order, but the configuration wasn’t stable and didn’t appear to serve any purpose. I’d never seen the like of it. It was possible the exact configuration and so on could serve as some sort of code for communicating simple messages, but there were infinitely simpler ways to achieve the same thing.

  Rubbing my temples, I put it down to take a break for a moment. Marcus’ reaction to Jess taking them showed that they were important to him, which meant they could give us a clue as to what he was really up to.

  “This note has something about the gods. I see the word Huracan,” Jess said.

  “One of these symbols has links to Huracan, too. It wasn’t painted correctly, though. They’ve screwed up one of the lines and made it too wide,” Liam said.

  Castor tensed when he saw it but said nothing. The increasing number of secrets he was holding onto was starting to bug me. I trusted him with my life, and I hated that I was beginning to doubt whether that was a good idea.

  “Share with the class, Castor,” I teased.

  “I’m not sure. I think I’ve seen something like this before. I don’t know where. The fact he has a Huracan symbol painted in his bedroom gives us good ties back to the cult, though,” Castor said.

  “So we’re going to break in and ransack the place?” Rex said a little too hopefully.

  “We need more evidence before we do something that rash,” Elijah said.

  I returned to poking at the magic within the stone. The fact that we’d found ties to Huracan made me wonder if perhaps I didn’t recognise it because it was a piece of Huracan’s storm magic. It was bizarre to have something so powerful bound into such a weak and mediocre stone, though. Usually something like that would be kept in a magically reinforced vial or a fae-made crystal.

  Setting the stone down in front of me, I tried to get into the magic one more time before I gave up and went in search of coffee. The stone started to vibrate when I tugged on the very most central knot.

  “Get it outside. Now!” Castor shouted.

  I grabbed the stone as I felt the magic begin to swell. Sprinting through the kitchen, I tossed it out into the garden and watched in horror as it exploded with a great burst of air and lightning magic.

  “Was that a bomb?” Jess asked in awe.

  “Perhaps. Or it could just have been more volatile than we thought. There’s a good reason why you don’t store magic like that in such a flimsy crystal,” I said.

  As I looked back on Marcus’ reaction and how easy it had been to gather these notes and all, I began to suspect that Marcus had wanted us to. I’d been careful with the magic within the stone. It showed no warning signs. It was as though it was just waiting for the right moment to take us out.

  Thirty-Eight

  “The real question is, what were they doing while they had us distracted with Marcus and this bullshit?” I asked before I poured my fourth cup of coffee.

  “I believe their ties to Huracan are real,” Castor said.

  We’d spent the entire night looking at the notes, stones, and symbols. The notes might as well have said ‘fuck you’ but in a really old language. They were complete nonsense with some words in there to catch our attention. The stones all exploded in a variety of colourful fashions; thankfully I was able to contain the damage.

  That left the symbols, which were genuine as far as we could tell. Through all of it, Cameron remained in the back of my mind. He was out there, plotting the gods only knew what. I couldn’t allow him to continue to exist. As much as it hurt me, I needed to take him out. There was a chance he was involved in this storm pot nonsense. I’d toyed with the idea of trying to interrogate him, but I concluded the risk was just too great.

  “I have to take care of Cameron soon,” I said softly to Elijah.

  He nodded and kissed my temple.

  “Do you want me there?”

  “No, I have to do this alone. I couldn’t bear to have him hurt you.”

  “Can I help at all?”

  “Not really. I need to weave some complicated magic. There’s a chance it’s going to be messy.”

  “Do you know where he is?” Liam asked.

  “No, I was planning on trying a location spell.”

  A flickering darkness caught my attention. Turning, I was surprised to find one of the overminds casually hanging out next to the fridge. It was one of the hyperintelligent shadows that I’d freed into the fae forest after the finfolk stalker incident. I hadn’t expected to see it again.

  The shadow pressed a complete understanding of Cameron’s location into my mind, as if it had sheared off a piece of its memory and put it into my brain. It was learning.

  “Why? Why are you helping me?”

  It pressed the concept of alliance forming through mutual assistance in preparation for joint action towards shared purpose.

  If it helped me, then we’d be allies.

  I didn’t respond verbally, not wanting Castor to think I was turning against his goddess.

  I couldn’t explain why, but I got the impression that we were firmly on the same side. Something was coming, and the overminds would have my back. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t just kill Cameron for me, though, if they knew where he was.

  Images and feelings of deep pleasure and satisfaction as Cameron’s blood covered the floor filled my mind. It was followed by the knowledge that Cameron was awake and alert, where he tended to spend his days, and an assurance that an overmind would be back when the time was right to strike. An elaborate emotional slideshow passed for a goodbye, something I knew without needing to be told was a work in progress, and then the shadows were back to their natural state. The overmind was gone without a trace, no sign of motion or even the perceptible change from presence to absence.

  “I think he’s awake right now, but I can go after him soon,” I said.

  “I’m not entirely comfortable with the relationship you seem to have there,” Castor said cautiously.

  “If it wants to help, who am I to say no?”

  Castor’s mouth puckered, but he said nothing. He was on the goddess’ side, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to be all that kind to the shadows in whatever was coming. Castor had always taught me to be firm with them, firmer than I was entirely comfortable with. What if I would be better viewing them as the apparently sentient creatures they were? I remembered a few times when the shadows had considered fleeing out into the world or testing just how hardy I was. Then again, shifters would do exactly the same thing. And the shadows were clearly individuals.

  “Earth to Lily,” Jess said waving her hand in front of my face.

  “Hm?”

  “You need to sleep before you do something like take on Cameron,” Elijah said.

  I looked down at my latest cup of coffee. He wasn’t wrong. The pack could continue digging into the cult and the students while I got a nap. I’d need to stock up on a few things before I went after Cameron, too.

  We were finally getting close to wrapping this all up now. I could feel it.

  Thirty-Nine

  Cameron was living in what could only be called a safehouse. One room accessible via an unmarked door in the rear of a human-focused homeless shelter, secured behind a ward designed to protect against ritual scrying. He couldn’t have planned for the overminds, though. For that matter, I doubt there were than a few people on the entire earth plane with the knowledge and the brains to plan ahead of the overminds.

  While I waited for the word to come in that he was home and asleep, I prepared. I had spent long hours between our last encounter and this one coming up with a solution to the floating shield that had stymied me so thoroughly. The problem was, I didn’t know what its real limitations were. Bronze, especially a thin layer of bronze backed by wood as comprised many classical aspis, would melt under a very standard fire spell. It would also be pierced by my sh
adow with zero effort, though, which this didn’t, meaning that the same enchantment that gave it the rather lively animation it showed in combat also bumped up its durability. Without testing, there was no way of determining what its limitations were.

  Research into shields matching its description had been fruitless. It was a common modus among deities like Athena and Vishnu who specialized in defensive warfare, unsurprising given how thoroughly effective it had proven to be, and in turn mimicked by any number of other craftsmen. Since it could be any of them, the potential strength ranged from strong to invulnerable. I had to assume the latter. That brought me back to my initial idea of distracting it with an attack from one side while making a much deadlier one from another.

  A shopping trip was in order. I called ahead to a weaponsmith I’d used before and ordered two dozen two-inch steel disks sharpened to an extreme and added a pound of the tiny caltrops that they kept on hand. I stopped through Damien’s and bought several dust devils contained to small jars, the most expensive but crucial part of the plan. I passed through the switchbacks to gather up a little bit of the poison magic from plants there – enough to do the job, not enough to cause an investigation. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t allowed to take magic from the city plants, as they belonged to the fae lady who ruled here, so I borrowed Elijah’s car. Last but not least, I went by one of the few sand beaches in Brighton’s vicinity and filled a few charms with sand magic. With time to spare, I picked up my metalwork, coyly refusing to pay the gruffly, grittily sexy fae-blessed blacksmith with a kiss as I may or may not have done on a few previous visits.

  When I got home, I found that the car I’d bought had been delivered. It was a hideous Taurus from before the Fall I’d found on a used car website and paid an extra 500 pounds to have the guy deliver. No title transfer meant it wasn’t in my name. It also meant that it was likely stolen, but it’d be in a recoverable state when I was done. I checked that it ran, made sure the tank was full, the fluids were as they should be, and headed inside.

  I laid out everything I’d need. I crafted the hardest of the required spells and placed it in the trinket I relied on for premade casting. I wove the poison I’d gathered into the disks and caltrops along with all the other poison and venom magic I had on hand such that the steel would deliver it to anyone it penetrated, admiring my own work in getting so much poison into them that they practically glowed with the stuff, and slipped them all into a nearly impenetrable sound-dampened sack I kept on hand that had found surprisingly frequent use over the years. Sadly, I couldn’t use my signature forge venom, as applying it to a weapon would destroy the weapon itself almost immediately. If I wanted it, I’d either have to put it in the premade casting trinket – already in use – or craft it on the spot. I didn’t think I’d need it. I hoped to Hel I wouldn’t need it.

  When the overminds gave the word that he was home and asleep, I slipped on a premade glamour, a forgettably mousy girl with cheap clothes and a practical haircut. I wasn’t usually the type to hide in plain sight, but it had been a useful tactic on occasion, and I kept a few on hand just in case. I never used the same one twice, and I never bought them with my real face on display. Glamour sellers could frequently see through glamours, especially those they made themselves, but the fewer people that saw me doing it the less chance of getting caught. If my reputation was as someone too proud to go out in disguise, that meant that on the rare occasions where I needed to do so I’d be the last suspect in line.

  I checked the mirror for any imperfections and fell into a practiced (but rusty) ungraceful, practical, slightly hurried walk that gave the impression of someone who was supposed to have free rein in places like shelters. Volunteers, aid workers, healers looking for some practice and some karma, that kind of thing. I’d never been homeless, and I’d never volunteered at a shelter, but it was the sort of thing that seemed likely to work. If all else failed, I could subdue anyone who insisted on stopping me with little trouble, and as sad as it was there was no enforcement body that protected people like them from people like me. I wouldn’t kill anyone who didn’t have it coming, but there was nothing and no one that would save Cameron from his just desserts.

  Like every glamour I bought, this was more than capable of hiding an array of weaponry, but his aspis made the prospect of an effective weapon difficult. I took several throwing knives, a pair of tonfa blades, and a single last-chance dagger, expecting to use none of them but feeling naked without. I wasn’t going to rely on my shadow weapons after what he’d shown he could do last time. The magical items I’d gathered through the course of the day all found a home in my black battle leathers, I put on all my normal trinkets, and then I was done.

  Of course, the moment I got in the car – I hesitated to think of it as my car, if only because of the smell – I wished I’d had the sense to buy some more serious armour from the smith when I was there. I’d been relying on shadow for so long that the act of dealing with those kind of concerns was as alien to me as hand-washing my clothes. The leathers would have to do. They were enchanted for durability to serve as weak but functional armour. They weren’t up to protecting me from Cameron’s magic, but they’d help.

  I crossed town with uncharacteristic slowness, keeping my proverbial head down. When I reached the shelter, I parked, took a deep breath, and got into character. I got out of the car, slammed the door with a heavy sigh, and put on an intentionally forced-looking smile before walking into the place. I smiled and waved at people, made small talk and asked if so-and-so was here tonight or if he’d found somewhere else for the night, whether thus-and-such was still volunteering at the soup kitchen downtown, and then passed through the main sleeping area to the invisible door leading to the dead man who had taken the risk to talk to a born and bred human sacrifice when no one else would. It wasn’t the time for feelings.

  I cushioned my feet with air, limited my magical signature as much as possible, and stepped through a magical wall into a bedroom barely bigger than the bed. I immediately came face to face with the shield, but since I showed no sign of aggression and had no visible weapons, it just hovered there. Its mandate was to stop weapon strikes or combat magic against its master, and I was doing neither. Until I did, it would remain vigilant but not aggressive. Cameron might wish he’d gotten a magical flying sword in a few minutes. That is, depending on whether the afterlife he ended up in left room for thinking.

  I closed the door and used earth magic to turn it to hard stone and meld it into the walls on either side of it until it was at least as strong as the walls themselves. I expanded my air cushion to cover the entire floor. Only then did I look at my target, looking blissful, even smug as he slept in the safest place in Brighton. I wondered if I’d regret killing him and knew it didn’t matter.

  I drew on the magic I’d gathered from the sand and pressed it into the walls in a configuration I’d read about but never tried. They would turn to sand when touched but return to normal and recover the sand when contact stopped. It wouldn’t rebuild the room from an earthquake, and it was only an inch or two thick, but it would keep things from catching in the stone of the basement retaining wall without allowing the wall to crumble away.

  I took out the bottles of sandstorm and touched their magic just enough to give them a last little boost of power. They didn’t need it. I placed a fire stone of the sort usually used as a cheap cookfire on each one with elastic and activated it to a low heat. The vials would melt in about a minute, and the sandstorms would make the entire room into a massive gale-force wind. It would kill a human, probably even a weak fae, all on its own. Cameron... well, no reason to find out the hard way. I counted to thirty and then emptied the bag of metal onto the floor, immediately backing up and casting the spell I’d carried premade onto the wall behind me. As I was pulled backwards into the wall, I saw the shield block the metal shards that happened to fly vaguely in the direction of the bed, ever loyal but outmanoeuvred far beyond its ability to comprehend. The tinkling of met
al on metal was enough to wake Cameron, but before he could check his surroundings I was a good few feet backwards into the stone that surrounded the basement the shelter had carved out for itself, able to see but not be seen. A second or two later, the first hole formed in the first bottle and the sand-filled wind ripped out of it, smashing the other bottles against the walls in a chain reaction. I’d hoped to watch the fun, but there was far too much sand in the air to be able to. I could hear metal tink into itself as it was carried by the wind, could hear Cameron screaming and feel the magic as he tried to use life magic to counteract the poison and the wounds, could feel his life essence disappear into the storm in slow, agonizing dribbles. It took several minutes for him to die, several minutes in which the storm swept blades over and through his skin again and again, several minutes of wounds piling up with every second that passed, several minutes of a dozen toxins pouring through his veins and overwhelming the potent life magic he wielded.

  When he was dead, finally and completely dead, I slowly duplicated the spell I’d stored in my trinket and used it to push myself along through the wall and into the adjoining room. The wards, combined with strong stone door I’d sealed, would keep anyone from going in there anytime soon. I hoped. I wasn’t going to risk sharing his fate to clear up the poison, even if I did have the time to wait out the storms.

  Forty

  I should have felt relief. There was supposed to be a great weight lifting from my shoulders as I walked back out into the city. He was gone. There weren’t going to be any more threats against my pack, or my own life. No more eerie notes popping up in my sanctuary. It was over. And yet I didn’t feel relief. There was just a small quiet hole somewhere in my chest.

  He’d been one of the very few good things to happen to me during those years in the coven. Now all of those memories were tainted by his malicious smile, his cruel plans, and the sensation of his life essence slowly ebbing away. I wasn’t a bleeding heart. I’d killed plenty of people without being as concerned as maybe I should have been by it. He was different, though. I’d trusted him. Maybe I’d even loved him.