by Nazri Noor
The pool waters churned, frothing and roiling, disturbed by Luella’s fury. She knelt on the surface, her eyes a darker, more dreadful shade of gray. Threatening. Terrifying.
Chapter 15
“You will not speak of your grandmother that way,” Luella hissed.
“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Bastion shouted, springing to his feet. “She made her choice, offered herself to the Eldest. What could the Lorica do? What could any of us do? We all make our own choices, Mother. It’s time you let me make mine.”
“And let you die for the sake of people who care so little for you?”
Luella’s voice boomed. All the water spurted out of the pool in thrashing waves, breaking for the edges of the room, knocking over furniture. A jet of it caught me in the chest, and I yelped as I fell over, skidding across the wet floor. Sterling, who’d been bowled over by the first batch of waves, was right – the water was nice and warm.
“No,” Bastion said, his chin lifted, defiant. “I only want to help, to plug the gaps in the Lorica’s system. So that no more good people will die. No more Agatha Blacks.”
Agatha Black was Luella’s mother, once hailed as the greatest sorceress of her time, an immensely powerful witch. But pride and ambition seemed to run in both the Black and the Brandt bloodlines, and while mages who live behind the Veil know well enough that a contract with the right entity can offer tremendous arcane power, Agatha sought out the most dangerous entities of all: the Eldest themselves.
I never quite asked Bastion how it happened – nor would I ever dare to – but the Eldest blessed Agatha by locking her in endless, immortal torture, her body as warped as a melted candle, her eyes forever staring at unseen horrors. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen her for myself, kept locked – undying – in a vault underneath Brandt Manor. The thought of it sent chills down my spine.
“No more Agatha Blacks,” Luella breathed. She slumped onto the surface of the water again, her hands planted there, as if she was sitting on the ground.
“No more, Mother.”
Bastion gestured once, and the waters stopped, their flow reversing as they rushed back into the pool, filling it up again. Sterling fell over a second time, narrowly avoiding smashing his head on the ground. God but I always knew that Bastion’s power was terrifying, but seeing two Brandts duke it out? And that was just with water. Like dueling banjos, if banjos could argue, drink, and end the world.
Silence. Luella made a gesture, a towel floating towards her. She rubbed her hand against it, blotting some of the blood.
“I’ll call for the boy to clean this all up in the morning,” she said, the rage suddenly gone out of her. “It will be fine then. Everything will be fine then.”
Her head held high, Luella lifted herself off the water, just as if she was getting up off the ground. The water sloshed as she stepped on its surface, making her way to the poolside as she wrapped the towel around her waist. Her hand left an angry patch of red.
Sterling sat perfectly still, but to my surprise said nothing about Luella’s blood. He’d always been pretty vocal about enjoying the blood of mages, and had been especially curious about the blood of truly powerful ones, like the Brandts. But this time? Not a peep. Huh. Progress.
“Gentlemen,” Luella said, without really turning to look at us. “I apologize for the ruckus. Good evening.”
She pulled off her swimming cap, blond hair tumbling down her shoulders in an uncharacteristic, haphazard mess, weirdly emblematic of how the night had gone.
Sterling held his arms out and stared down at himself. “I’m all wet. This is all leather. Good leather, too.”
Bastion handed me my own towel, and I pushed my face into it immediately, dabbing carefully at my skin instead of rubbing it roughly, the way he himself had once taught me. Because fine, Bastion was who he was, but if he gave me advice on how to keep my face pretty, I was going to listen.
“I’m sorry, dude,” I said, unsure of what else I could say. “I figured this Scion business would be hard on her, but I had no idea.”
“I love her to pieces,” Bastion sighed. “But mainly when she’s sober.”
Sterling and I dried off as well as we could before I told Bastion that we were ready to leave. He’d said his piece, anyway: stay alert, and keep the dog away from harm. We didn’t say much more as we made our way back through Brandt Manor’s many, many rooms, as we walked past the family portrait near the mansion’s entrance.
Bastion’s father stared down at us with hard eyes, an iron falcon. I never noticed before, but other images lined the top of the great fireplace, more framed pictures and cameos. Out of one of them, Agatha Black smiled at us, her mind and her body still whole, unsullied by the touch of the Eldest.
Onto the mantlepiece itself was sculpted one of the omnipresent lion’s heads that represented the Brandt lineage. It was a reminder of one of the most difficult and important lessons I’ve ever had to learn: that a lion really is nothing without its pride.
I touched the garnet set into my mother’s amulet. It still hurt to think of her, but that night, it hurt just that little bit less.
Chapter 16
The trip back to the Boneyard was chilly. You try hoofing it at night, waiting in wet clothes on a street corner for your rideshare to pick you up. Bastion had mumbled something about letting us use the mansion’s laundry room – because of course, where else would their laundry staff be stationed – but Sterling and I had exchanged glances and very quickly, silently agreed that getting the hell out of Brandt Manor was best done sooner rather than later.
Yet as chilly as it was on the sidewalk, it was quite little compared to the jolting, searing cold of the snowball that socked me right in the face.
“Focus,” Herald shouted. “If that was an icicle, you’d be dead now.”
I was surprised I could still hear him over the ringing in my ears. The hot flush of humiliation and anger quickly melted away the numb, dull ache of being pelted with a face full of ice, but Herald was right. I’d agreed to practice with him, so I had to commit. I curled my fingers around thin air, summoning a missile of my own.
We were on a flat, square platform, suspended somewhere within the quiet cold of the Boneyard’s endless chasm, that infinite space that occupied the bits of Carver’s dimension that we didn’t actually live on. That’s what the Boneyard felt like to me, anyway, a collection of platforms, rooms, and corridors that seemed to just float in an empty, black abyss.
No one had ever walked off the edge of a platform – not that anyone had reason to. With the exception of Hecate, of course, but that wasn’t just anyone. She just stepped off in midair, like the abyss meant nothing to her, but what else would you expect from a goddess of magic? Any other one of us would have just fallen, and kept falling, I presume, into an infinite, uncaring void.
Which was why I was so, so careful not to let myself get backed into a corner, or too far onto the edge of the practice platform the Boneyard had so helpfully carved out for us, what I liked to think of as our new magical dojo. Sure, Herald had agreed to stick to blunt force, using snowballs and chunks of ice in place of the razor-sharp shards he usually favored, but they still struck with enough force that I was afraid one of them was eventually going to knock me off and over.
And sure, perhaps Carver, out of the kindness of his own dead heart, would come and rescue me eventually, but better that he wouldn’t have to. Our undead mentor loved for us to live out our lessons, and a minute of sitting in an empty void would be more than enough for me. I know that’s strange coming from the former master and resident of the Dark Room, but I digress.
Another snowball slammed into me, my stomach, this time, and I doubled over, my breath leaving me in a winded rush. I gasped as I struggled for air, the flames in my hand sputtering. Herald wasn’t playing around.
“This is a sparring session, Graves,” he called out. “I’m not holding any punches, and neither should you.”
Easy for
him to say, he had access to a bunch of useful healing spells. But fine, I had access to them too. And worst case, there was always Asher.
I swung my right hand back, ready to launch my fireball, watching for Herald to react. He did, his eyes focused on the clump of fire in my hand. I smiled, relishing his surprise when I transferred the flames to my other hand, then, without having to physically hurl them myself, ejected a whirring ball of fire directly for his chest.
Herald’s gasp hissed across the room, but he cut it off soon enough as he began to mutter a quick incantation, turning his body sideways and planting his feet in the ground to absorb the impact. His entire right arm and shoulder gleamed momentarily with purple light – a barrier – and while he cried out when my fireball struck home, roaring in a pitch of flame across his shield, it did leave him a little gift. Herald batted at his forehead, a rare glimmer of panic running across his features as he fought to smother a tiny fire that I’d accidentally started at the tips of his hair.
“Sorry,” I called out. “Super sorry.”
Herald bared his teeth at me, rearing his hand back again. I crouched, prepared to dodge another snowball, or a volley of those stupidly painful ice cubes he was suddenly so good at throwing.
“There are plenty of less passive-aggressive ways to tell me that I need a haircut,” he growled.
I watched for the salvo of frozen missiles he was preparing, but it didn’t come. Instead a sheath of ice shot up from the base of his wrist, building into a huge shard that terminated in a wicked point. Ah. One of his ice swords. Great. He was pissed.
And the thing with Herald – apart from being a talented sorcerer, an alchemist, an amateur demonologist, and a level thirteen barbarian in his weekly tabletop game – was that he was at the peak of his physical fitness. He dashed towards me, no doubt imbuing his movement with a pinch of magic. I yelped, barely spinning out of the way as the air zinged with the cut of his blade.
“Hey,” I said. “That thing’s sharp as hell, careful.”
Herald answered by doubling back and slashing again. I cried out when the sword made contact, slicing a shallow cut in my chest. Fuck. Time was that I could sink into the shadows, retreat into the Dark Room to regroup, then spring out and stun him with a Sneaky Dustin Special.
I looked down at myself. It was barely a scratch, really, but I was going to milk it for all it was worth. Plus part of my chest was exposed, the injured skin and my ripped clothing frosted lightly at the edges with tiny particles of ice.
Great. So he’d ruined my shirt. Again.
Chapter 17
“Ouch, time out, time out.”
“No time outs in real battles, Graves,” Herald growled. “You want to get a better grip on fire magic? This is how.”
I held out my hands, arranging one vertically and the other horizontally in the universally recognized symbol for “Fucking stop for a minute.” To my surprise, Herald did.
“No, for serious, that smarts,” I whined. “Also. You’re constantly ripping my clothes off.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration.” Herald lurched, swinging forward as a series of tiny icicles launched from his fingertips. I hissed as they grazed my side, the sudden chill coming not from the frosty projectiles, but from the fact that my shirt, yet again, had been torn open.
“I can’t help that I’m so hot,” I said, hurling my own little batch of flaming missiles. Without missing a beat, Herald twisted around, threw up one hand, and erected a shield made entirely of ice. It even had a crest on it, in the shape of a snowflake. Showoff. My little fireballs collided with his shield, sizzling and fizzing into nothing.
“Listen,” he said. “You’re making such a huge deal out of this. You ruined your clothes all the damn time when you still worked your magic with the Dark Room. All those cuts opening all over your body. You were drenched in blood half the time I knew you.”
And all those little scars, I heard his voice say, in words left unspoken. On some nights he’d trace them with his fingers, saying nothing except for the forlorn expression on his face. He thought of them as trauma, I knew, but sometimes I look in the mirror still and think of my scars as tiny medals, trophies earned in battle, every cut a mark of my arcane evolution.
But I said none of that, naturally. No one had to know how perversely I still felt affection for the Dark, most of all Herald.
“Point taken,” I said, loosely clutching another fireball in my hand. “But that was then. This is now.”
I tossed another fireball, this one larger, this one smashing his shield to pieces. Herald’s eyes went wide, his glasses misting over with steam.
“Okay,” he said. “Color me impressed.”
I clutched my knees, bending over and panting. “Fucking great. Because I’m exhausted. Can we call it, finally?”
“Yeah. Okay, fine. We’ll pick this up some other time.”
“Plus we need to get dinner. It’s late, and I’m starving.” I panted again, though this time I felt a little spark of energy return to my body. The promise of food always did that.
Herald pushed his hand through his hair, nudging it out of his face. I didn’t know what he was thinking with that accusation about setting his hair on fire. I liked it that way, a little floppy and longish.
We dropped by the kitchen for some water, where we found Sterling spread across his favorite red sofa, catching up on his telenovelas. I peered closer at the television, realizing these weren’t the Spanish ones he typically followed. They were Filipino. I guess Mama Rosa must have turned him on to some new shows.
Gil’s bedroom door was open when we passed by, and we spotted him and Asher playing with Banjo. Gil was still taking a slightly reserved approach to interacting with the corgi – understandable, considering its erratically explosive nature – but Asher seemed perfectly happy to play-wrestle with the dog. Banjo returned the favor by slobbering all over Asher’s face. I frowned, partly out of jealousy. Okay, totally out of jealousy.
“That’s the exploding dog?” Herald muttered.
“Yeah,” I said. “Listen, when we go out for dinner, remind me to pick up some Puppy Yum biscuits.”
He arched an eyebrow at me. “Is the corgi running low?”
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go with that.”
When we got to my bedroom, I realized that this would be the first of possibly several sparring sessions I would have with Herald. I was just about to ask if he wanted to drop by his apartment on the way out so he could grab a shower, seeing how sweaty the both of us had ended up.
“So,” he said, lightly running his finger along the ragged edge of the shirt that he’d so skillfully torn open. “How big is your shower, exactly?”
I gulped. A thrill of excitement ran down my back. I’d just had a glass and a half of water, but somehow my mouth was dry again.
As if alerted somehow, Carver walked by right that very moment. He had one eyebrow raised, and I swore I caught the amber glow of his false eye fading. Had he been watching us?
“Is everything quite all right here?”
Herald sprang away, leaning against one of my stone bookcases, his gaze suddenly on the floor, then the ceiling, anywhere but me. “Oh, totally fine. We were just – you know, breathing. As people do.”
“Yes,” Carver said. “Of course you were.” His eyes narrowed as he turned to me. “Dustin? Do keep your door open.”
“I – sure, okay, I will.” His house, his rules. Carver had never felt like more of a dad than in that moment, making sure that me and my little boyfriend wouldn’t do anything untoward behind closed doors. “It’s just that – ”
“Stop,” he said, holding out a hand. “I do not wish to make this conversation any more awkward than it needs to be, but you know that my eye can see everything. Normally, it’s a simple matter of shutting it off. But the combined magical signature of your bodies burns far too brightly. I could shut my eyes and it would still be blinding.”
The heat crept up the back of my n
eck. I had no idea – let’s keep it classy – that ardor could stoke the magical fires that strongly. I nodded at Carver in silent agreement, watching him walk away, and swallowed thickly, avoiding Herald’s gaze.
One of the stone shelves scraped. Vanitas’s garnets flashed red as he spoke. “And don’t forget, Graves. I’m right here. I can bloody well sense everything that you do.”
“Right,” I said out loud in a choked whisper, my mind racing as it tried to make a checklist of the few times Herald and I had ever done anything bordering on inappropriate in the Boneyard. The list wasn’t very long, but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing.
I looked up into Herald’s face at last. He was bright red. We were very careful to shower separately that night.
Chapter 18
“My mouth is on fire,” I told Herald. I sipped in the cold night air of Little China, but that only made the spice worse.
“Which is why we need to track down a Happy Boba,” he said. “You should know by now, water just spreads the heat around. Milk is really what you need to take the edge off.”
Right, I thought, my brain shutting down as Herald tried to explain the science of it. Milk worked best, or a big spoonful of plain rice, or, as I read somewhere, some bread to help soak up the oils that make spicy food spicy. Granted, Herald was right. We’d just eaten the best Sichuan food I’d ever had in my life. By God did the Chinese know how to do spicy food. Dried chilis everywhere. Like, everywhere.
“The tofu was great though, wasn’t it?” Herald said.
“Oh, everything was awesome,” I said. “But my mouth is still on fire.”
“Hmm.” He held a hand up to his chin. “I’ve read kissing helps, too.”