07- Black Blood Brother

by Morgan Blayde

  The girls advanced on me, backing me away from Kur. He walked toward the other end of the bridge. Leaving without looking back is one thing dragons have in common with alley cats. I followed his example, turning toward my guys.

  As I stepped off the bridge, the demons cut behind me, blocking the girls. I stopped and spoke over my shoulder. “We’ll find our own way out—eventually.” My mother had walked these paths. A deep-seated, stupid part of me also wanted to walk them. For a while.

  “We have our orders,” Myrrh said.

  “You may follow. From a distance.” I walked, not heading anywhere special, not yet. I would let the beauty of this place speak to my soul. Then I would go out and seek a different kind of beauty. The beauty of death; that would be my gift to those who didn’t know enough to get out of my way.

  I remembered the detail work on the imperial ring: the dragonhead and sword, the ruby eyes... That’s going to look good on my hand one day.

  Around the next turn, I found Colt waiting. He stared up at me. There were tears in his eyes. “You never had a mother.”

  “Not for long, no.” Apparently, no one had shared my past with him. This was coming as a shocking revelation.

  He threw his arms around my waist, hugging me, offering comfort. I let him, knowing he needed to bond to be emotionally healthy. Not a sociopath like his old man, a man who could never really care for others. I held his head against me and patted his back.

  I said, “It’s all right. It’s not like I know what I’ve missed.”

  That didn’t seem to reassure him; he cried harder.

  “Hey,” I said. “This place is kind of cool. Let’s look around a bit. Then we can go get you that Mustang I promised. Hobby Lobby should have model car kits.”

  He jerked back like I’d kicked him. “A Model? I want a real car.”

  “I promised you a Mustang. I didn’t promise you it would be real.”

  He glowered, his red-copper eyes bright as stars. “I’m going to tell Mom on you!”

  “Do you think she’s going to let a nine-year old drive a real car?”

  His eyebrows crushed together as he thought about it. “Well…”

  I said, “You can push it across a table, going ‘Vroom, vroom.’” Same difference.”

  Thorn snickered.

  Colt crossed his arms in front of his shallow chest, frowning in fury. “I even hugged you.”

  I sighed. “I know, but no good deed must ever go unpunished; it’s the demon way.”

  He screamed. “I hate you!”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but at least I’m in your life. That’s got to count for something.” I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him along the path, looking for something that might brighten his mood—loving father that I am. “Another way to look at it is that your disappointment is all your fault.”

  “For trusting you,” he said.

  “For not listening,” I said.

  We stopped by a swamp exhibit where carnivorous plants were snapping giant butterflies out of the air and chewing them up. The butterflies were a pretty blend of lilac and indigo. The hungry plants were a bright, acid green.

  “The butterflies smell the perfume and go in to feed. They’re not watching out for danger. They suffer the fate of the unwary. In this universe, you can be the butterfly or the chomping plant. Your choice.”

  “I don’t want to be a butterfly,” Colt said, “even if they are tasty.”

  “Your Auntie Izumi is a fey princess. The fey never lie, but they don’t always tell the truth. To survive among them, you have to listen for what is said, how it’s said, and for what is not being said. Your survival might one day depend on what I’m teaching you.”

  “So, you’re not just being cheap?”

  “That too.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “At least once, everyone should visit an

  abyss, the dark nothing that screams for life.”

  —Caine Deathwalker

  Wearing cargo pants, steel-toe boots, and a heavy wool shirt, I stared into the distant sky where purple-white light speared upward into darkness: the light pollution of a nearby Villager metropolis. I’d purposely had Chrys bring us to a place in the shadow-dimension where we could loiter without interference. She’d been able to bring me into her world without accessing the Las Vegas portal.

  I sat on a flat boulder in an obsidian hell-zone of fractured spires and slaggy blobs of glass. The ground looked like flint washed with dirty oil. There were no birdcalls, no flutter of wings, no insect sounds, or scurrying animals. The air felt as dead as everything else—but not because death had passed through here. This was the emptiness of an aching promise, a place waiting for life to one day happen. This was a world where people needed magic for everything.

  The sterility made the presence of Chrys and myself feel unnatural. She stood off to the side in Villager gear, a kind of black-enameled chainmail hung with glossy black-plastic patches of armor. Bands of pink leather on one thigh, pinned a large knife sheath in place. The hilt was blackened steel, secured with a snap-strap. Other pink bands on her left forearm held a computing device with a keypad and a glowing green lens display. It was one of the few sources of light around since the sky lacked moons or stars. I’d brought light of my own: chem-sticks in my cargo pants pocket, and two of my Will-of-the-Wisps floated near me, teal green and yellow balls adding their illumination.

  Zag said: I don’t like this place.

  Chrys asked, “What’s that voice?”

  I pointed at the yellow ball of light. “Zag. The other one is Zig. They’re will-of-the-wisps from Fairy, sworn to my service. I guess they’re letting you hear them now.”

  “Really?” She took slow steps toward Zag. He bobbed in place, but didn’t avoid her. She turned her wrist toward him. The air between her green device and the yellow wisp turned blue, a blend of the two colors.

  “Scanning for lifeforms like a good Trekkie?” I asked.

  “Trekkie?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I’m picking up a magical energy signature, not much else. Do they have internal organs, or are they beings of pure intelligence?”

  “Beings of the highest intelligence,” Zag said.

  “Higher than high!” Zig added.

  “They lie a lot,” I said.

  She left Zag and clomped over to me in her oversized boots. “So, is this the kind of place you’re looking for? Quiet, off the grid, where no one will hunt you down and kill you?”

  “It will do.”

  I slid my backpack off, leaving it on the boulder as I stood. Inside, I had bottles of water, Jack Daniels, a compass that turned out not to work here, Asian rice-cracker trail mix, colored chalk sticks, and a couple fey grimoires for reference that I’d borrowed from Izumi once when she wasn’t looking. I unpacked, laying everything out.

  Chrys pawed everything, making an anthological study out of my possessions. Opening a spell books, she stared. “I can’t read this.”

  “I’m not surprised. Besides being in Elvish, there’s a dyslexia spell on the characters so they look scrambled. You have to recite the book’s master key to see through the distortion.”

  “How do you recite something you can’t read?”

  “The fey are serious about keeping magical secrets. The key is usually handed down verbally to someone when the book is given as a gift, and usually, the new recipient will use the key once and then change it to something new no one else knows it.”

  She leaned over the book, bringing her wrist device close so its green light swept the first page.

  Girl’s a dedicated researcher. When does she find time to manage her father’s financials?

  I picked up a stick of yellow chalk as thick as my thumb.

  Colt plucked it from my hand.

  I stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

  He wrote on the boulder: COLT WUZ HERE. “Leaving graffiti. It’s who I am; it’s what I do.”

  “Gimme that.” I
snatched the chalk back.

  Chrys scanned the chalk writing, then Colt.

  Her scanner caused his eyes to widen. He said, “Cool. I want one.” And instantly, a copy of her device faded onto his forearm. Where her display glowed green, his glowed red-copper, just like his eyes. Drawn by the new light, the two Will-of-the-Wisps drifted over to him.

  “I’ve seen these in Fairy,” he said. “Auntie Izumi’s got bunches of them.”

  I picked up the open book and walked away to a flat stretch of ground. Despite the wet-oil look, the ground was dry. “You guys stay back,” I said. “Once I draw these lines, do not cross them.”

  “Sure,” Colt said.

  “Whatever,” Chrys added.

  I muttered the key spell to read the book. Consulting the index, I located the page number I needed. I turned there and studied the summoning circle. The spell wasn’t much different from those witches use to summon demons. Such spells don’t really work, but I thought I could modify it to match my purpose. The most important element was the surrounding ring that enclosed the circle. The ring was a separate spell for creating a protective barrier.

  My kingdom in Fairy had a crystal Tie that bonded me to my land, a magical awareness. I hoped to summon the Villager’s equivalent of this dimension. Anything could come. Whatever answered might be very dangerous.

  “Do I really want to know what you’re doing?” Chrys asked.

  Colt grinned at her. “Trust me. This is going to be so cool!”

  She said, “I hope so. I’m missing a manicure appointment.”

  I said, “If you need to run along, don’t let me hold you up.”

  From the green glow that glazed the rock around me, I knew she’d turned her wrist device on me.

  “Making a record for posterity?” I asked.

  She said, “It’s the least I can do. After all, these could be your last moments alive. You apparently think you can master a force that took all my people to bind to our will.”

  There it is, finally emerging, the arrogance of the Villager. Nobody can do anything better than they can.

  “I appreciate your confidence in me. Now go play in heavy traffic.” I worked with great concentration, drawing the lines of my spell using the yellow chalk, then, switching to the blue and red as Zig and Zag hovered over the pattern. Their light helped, not so much their comments to each other.

  What’s he doing? Zig asked.

  Digging a grave? Zag answered.

  With chalk?

  With chalk.

  Couldn’t find a shovel?

  Grand’s too hard for a shovel.

  Ground sucks.

  Ground does suck.

  I muttered, “Put a cork in it ass-wipes.”

  Corking, Zig said.

  Double corked, Zag confirmed.

  I finished the summoning circle and went to the green chalk for the containment part of the pattern.

  “This is boring,” Colt said.

  Very boring, Zag said.

  I’m weeping, I’m weeping! Zig said.

  “I’m fine,” Chrys said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  There was a slight slur to her voice that caught my attention. I stood, stretched my back, and turned back to her. She sat on the boulder next to my backpack. She held my bottle of Jack Daniels. It was open. She’d been drinking. Heavily.

  I walked over and loomed over her in my most menacing fashion, but smiled with gentleness, using a mild voice. “Enjoying my whiskey?”

  Chrys slurred. “Great ssstuff.”

  “Get drunk if you want, but don’t expect me to carry you home if you can’t walk.”

  Letting her portal me back to Earth is inadvisable. Good thing Colt popped in.

  Colt stood. “I’m going to go play with my not-real Mustang.”

  “Hold on,” I said.

  He vanished in a blur of red-copper light.

  Too late.

  I sighed. And snatched the bottle away from Chrys. “That’s enough for you. You need to sober up. Someone could trip over us at any time and we’d need to bail.”

  She reached for the bottle in my hands. “That’s mine! I found it first.”

  I held the bottle out of reach. “You can get as drunk as you want—when my ass isn’t on the line. Get yourself together.”

  She struggled to put together a cross expression on her face. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

  I paused. And gave her back the bottle. She had the power—and loss of judgment—to shatter every bone in my body. “Fine. Finish what you started, pass out, and get fucked in the ass in your sleep. We’ll call it a win-win situation.”

  She took a heavy drag off the bottle, then clutched it to her plastic breastplate. “Hah! I made this outfit out of shadow. No zippers. It comes off when I say it comes off.”

  Keep telling yourself that.

  I went back to my containment spell, hunkering down to add the protective symbols, but I thought about what Chrys had said. She’d solidified shadow for clothing and she didn’t seem to need to keep feeding energy into the outfit to stabilize it, yet my Villager brother—old Freak Face—had been weakened by direct manipulation of shadow magic. “Why the difference?”

  Don’t know, Zig said.

  Don’t care, Zag added.

  My inner dragon stirred in the back shadows of my mind, opening his golden eyes. The device Chrys is wearing. It’s doing the work for her.

  “Some kind of tap into the shadow magic reservoir the Villagers found in this dimension. Her version of a grimoire.”

  My dragon said: That would be my guess.

  Mine too. Zig flew circles over my head, sending my shadow spinning around me.

  Mine three. Zag took up the chase, joining the game.

  My dragon said: We need to steal that device of hers.

  “We already did,” I said. “Colt made a copy, remember?”

  It might not do more than glow in the dark, my inner dragon said. He has more power than finesse. Remember the silver dragon you asked him to move? Part of the tail got left behind.

  “Good point,” I said. “Let’s not piss Chrys off until after she gets us back to Vegas.”

  Finishing my drawing, I went back to the boulder with my stuff spread out on it. I put back the chalk, and book, stuffing everything back into the backpack except for the bottle. All but passed out, Chrys still had a death-grip on the whisky bottle. She lay curled on her side, softly singing a rhyme in her near-sleep:

  “In darkest heart of deepest earth

  The Mother lies with closed eyes.

  She feeds her children with her blood.

  Wearing weeds grown from the mud.”

  “Fuck, imagine kids jumping rope to that little ditty.”

  Fuck, Zig said.

  Bad word, Zag added.

  “Shut up,” I said. “And don’t fly over the spell circle. You guys could get trapped inside with whatever answers. It might eat you.” The barrier wasn’t designed to keep outside things from going in, but to keep whatever arrived trapped inside. Things that get trapped tend to get cranky.

  Zig and Zag flew over the boulder, dropping down to hide behind Chrys.

  Like she’s in any shape to protect them.

  This diminished the level of light on my circle, but my non-human eyes weren’t inconvenienced. I went just outside the outer ring I’d drawn, slowly circling it, checking my work. Magic left no room for error, not if you wanted to survive using it. It was why I’d had the tattoos, instead of drawing each spell from scratch every time I used it. One wrong word, one sloppy symbol, one missing line—and a spell backfires, usually with lethal results.

  “Okay, looks good. Time to add the catalyst to the spell and see what happens.”

  The spell was dark fey in origin, with a few touches of demon magic thrown in by me. That meant it was hungry to live, and required a taste of blood. I pulled shadow, making it a knife, and drew a cut across my left forearm. A line of crimson formed. Drops of my hybrid bloo
d dripped onto the outer edge of the pattern. The colored chalk turned monochromatic; the red of blood. Dust spiraled around the pattern. The air chilled even more. I felt the inrush of shadow magic flowing over my body.

  And then something small hit me in the back. I turned toward Chrys. She was still out of things. Zig and Zag had climbed high above her, and had failed to give warning of an intruder. Not that I’d specifically ordered them to. Sitting on the boulder next to Chrys was my so-called brother, sheathed in black, a white ceramic mask still hiding his face. The expression on his mask was a sinister grin. Standing back behind the boulder was Donner. He had a wrist device on, standing there with his arms crossed, a cold expression in place, and his eyes like cobalt ice.

  They’re working together. I wonder if Chrys knows her brother is a fink.

  My colored chalks were out of the backpack, floating in the air. That’s probably what he hit me with. Magically speaking, Chrys was mistress of calcium. Apparently, my brother’s element was chalk. Not particularly threatening. He gestured and the pink chalk stick blurred at high speed, smacking me in the chest, exploding, leaving a chalky stain behind. I probably had one on my back from being hit there, too.

  He took off his mask, setting it on the rock. The face he showed me was identical to mine except for a scar on his chin. He spoke for the first time, and his voice sounded like mine as well. “I’ve done my research. I knew you’d try something like this. I’ve had regular reports on your activity.”

  I stared at Donner, giving him a look that promised death. “I bet you have. You think the two of you can beat me?”

  My brother laughed. “Oh, I’m just here to see your spell in operation. I have no intention of stopping things.”

  Donner looked at him. “Huh?”

  My brother got up off the boulder and came toward me, the floating chalk following him like friendly puppies. He stopped a yard away from the edge of the pattern, staring at it. “This really is intriguing. I had no idea you were so accomplished at melding dissimilar magics together.”