by Jasmine Walt
I could still hear the fighting, the screams from the Passage, but it was like I’d been thrown behind that magic soundproofing shield again. Every sound muted, save a roaring in the back of my head. Obliterating everything else.
“He must have really hated you.”
The roaring became a crescendo. Forks of reddish-purple lightning burst into life, and I stood, raising a hand, gathered the lighting in my palm and sent it, not at Ellen, but at the road in front of her. She laughed a delighted laugh, but her eyes widened as the magic struck, burning a sizzling hole in the tarmac, then rebounded. The ripple effect sent me staggering back, but it was worse for Ellen. She rose up into the air as if lifted by invisible hands, screaming—and then another lightning bolt descended. She screamed louder and raised her hands, the red lightning reflected in her dark, dark eyes…
And then it dissipated. Like someone had flicked a switch, the magic energy crackling in the air, in me, disappeared. I swayed on my feet, drained of the electric rush, and horrified. Ellen dropped from the sky and hit the tarmac with an audible thud I felt even from a distance.
I ran to her, although I already knew she was dead. The roaring in my ears was painful now, more like screaming.
And then I became aware of real voices. Behind me.
“What a shame,” someone remarked. “I liked her.”
Five strangers had come out of the Passages. All wore magicproof suits like the guys I’d killed on Valeria. One was a teenager with spiked hair. The other three were clearly related. A blond girl followed behind.
And between them was a smaller, redheaded figure with eyes like white orbs, dark pupils in the centre.
Ada.
ADA
Delta’s father was the spitting image of Josef, except his face was more lined and his hair streaked with grey. Unremarkable, anyway. But then, killers weren’t recognisable at a glance, and nor were murdering psychotic businessmen.
“Here we are,” he said. “Central. And we’re just in time.” He laid a hand on my back and pushed me out of the Passages, into the street.
The magic hit me first. It slammed into me with the strength of a boulder, making me sway on the spot. My vision was off-kilter, like I saw the world through distorted glass. Magic pulsed like something living, a cloud covering the houses with their shattered windowpanes, the wrecked cars, the person standing stock-still in the middle of the road—no, now they were running towards a prone body a few feet away.
Oh, God, Kay. And the body was Skyla’s. I wasn’t sorry. I couldn’t afford to be. I needed to get the hell away from Delta and his lunatic family before they used me to blow up Central.
Janice skipped out of the Passages behind me. “What did I miss?” she asked.
“Looks like a magical battle,” Delta said. “Who is that?”
Kay. Get out of here. Please.
“No idea,” said Janice. “That’s the girl who used to visit, though, isn’t it?”
“Skyla,” said Delta. “Hell, I know who that guy is. Walker. He killed her.”
“What a shame,” said Josef. “I liked her.”
Like in slow motion, Kay turned. Looked into my real eyes.
His own widened in shock.
Get out. Please, Kay.
I couldn’t say a word. Not even as Delta’s father shoved me forward, his cousins pinning me on either side. Delta in front. He glanced back at his father. “Are we gonna mow him down, or what?”
“I’d stop there,” said Kay. My heart sank. Of course he’d challenge them. Dammit, Kay.
“Walker, is it?” said Delta’s father.
“Kay, actually,” he answered. Oh, for God’s sake, get out of here!
“I suppose he is a magic-wielder,” said Delta’s father. “And with Skyla dead, we could use the power.”
Where was everyone else? What had happened at Central? Delta’s father had walked through the battle in the Passages like a god through mortals, and no one had dared follow to challenge him. Not when they’d seen my eyes. Not when they’d seen the magic that surrounded me like a deadly cloak of white lightning. Kay could see it, too. But he’d sacrifice his own life before he let them get at Central.
They were going to use me to kill him.
Delta’s father leaned in behind me. He’d strapped a metal-plated contraption to my back. Didn’t take a genius to figure out it was a bomb. No—I was the bomb. And Kay was…
“Get out of here!” I screamed, cracking. “Save yourself! Please…”
Delta’s father backhanded me, knocking me sideways into one of the cousins. Kay swore and took a step forward. Not back. Not away. Oh, God.
“It’s pointless,” he said. “Central’s been evacuated, so’s this whole area. You really want to kill me that badly?”
Was he telling the truth? It was impossible to tell.
“Actually,” Delta’s father said, “We could use some leverage over Walker in case he comes back. Janice? Take him.”
“With pleasure,” said Janice, skipping forward. Kay watched her, and although he was dead still, I knew he was thinking hard.
“She’s a magic-wielder!” I shouted, earning another slap. I barely felt it. The static charge building inside my veins was unbearable, like it had to escape somehow, otherwise I’d burn to a crisp from the inside out. But that seemed a preferable fate to wiping out half London in a magical assault.
Janice attacked, but Kay was faster. He avoided the bolt of magic and the backlash and sent an equal force back—hell, he was using magic? But I was shaking hard, and my vision blurred more by the second.
“Stop this,” I said, through chattering teeth. “If this magic gets out, it’ll obliterate us along with everything else.”
“On the contrary,” said Delta’s father. “You will absorb the backlash yourself. Surely you knew the clue was in your name? Adamantine absorbs magic. I admit, I didn’t know myself, until Janice told me what you did to her brother. You took second level backlash and walked away without a scratch.”
Crap. I did. But… I was antimagic? I gaped at him, heart beating fast. No. Adamantine was the most unbreakable substance in the Multiverse. It couldn’t be inside my blood. The only place I’d seen it was—
Central.
The building could absorb magic. And no one was in Central anymore.
“Ingenious, wasn’t it?” said Delta’s father, obviously noticing my gaze was on Central. “To force the Alliance to leave the one safe place in the city. I doubt they got far enough not to be caught in the blast. We have time enough to watch the outcome of this, anyway.”
Kay had managed to pin Janice down, but by the tremors rocking the magic in the atmosphere, I could tell both were firing magic at one another. In seconds, one or other of them would be dead.
I ran forward, the movement disturbing the magic. I couldn’t intervene without blowing everything sky-high. But the slight disturbance had sent both of them head over heels—Kay slammed into the pavement, and my heart pitched as I saw his hands had taken the backlash and were burned raw red. Janice was in similar condition. Teeth bared in a feral snarl, she leaped at him.
On his feet in a second, Kay raised a hand. His dark eyes gleamed, the pupils disappearing, almost inhuman. And a fork of lightning shot at Janice. She couldn’t avoid it.
She fell.
“More’s the pity,” said Delta’s father, coldly. “Right. Come, now.” He pushed me forwards. The others moved, too.
“What about him?” Delta jerked his head at Kay, who still stood beside Janice’s body, unmoving. As he did, Kay seemed to come to life again. He turned back and strode towards us. Eyes no longer gleaming, but blank.
Delta’s father let out an impatient noise. “Subdue him,” he told Delta’s cousins. “She’s not going anywhere. Not if you threaten him.”
Dammit.
Josef and Gregor advanced on Kay. They actually looked a little frightened. But they had the advantage of the magicproof suits, and Kay was injured besides.
A sharp pain pierced my chest as I saw his ruined hands. He didn’t seem to acknowledge it, but I knew it had to really hurt. My heart dipped further. Both cousins carried those magic-charged metal plates they’d used on me.
I couldn’t watch. But I did. It was over so fast—one second Kay had pulled a knife, though it must hurt like a bitch to hold it. Next he was disarmed, and Josef struck him over the head with the metal plate. Then he was on the ground, the antimagic shock vibrating through him. I felt it, the agony ripping open my own bones. The magic. I could feel the magic…
No. That was antimagic I could feel, like magic but its stark opposite. And I’d pulled on it, the same way I did with magic.
That’s what’s in my blood. Antimagic. Adamantine. To block magic required a substance which had magic origins itself. The equivalent of the reverse reaction. I had more antimagic in my blood than they did in those ridiculous suits. My hands were free. They couldn’t have cuffed me, because that would have blocked me from unleashing the source. But that meant I could take in the magic myself. Absorb it. Stop the source strapped to my back from exploding… at the cost of taking the magic into myself instead.
Delta’s cousins whirled on me, staring. They’d felt it, too. And from the look on his father’s face, he’d also figured something was up. I couldn’t hear what he said. The charge had built up to unbearable levels. I could hear swearing—the world had broken into fragments—I blinked, but couldn’t clear the film from my vision. It pulsed black, then white, then black again. There was a cracking sound, like breaking metal. The bomb strapped to my back. It fragmented, the plates encasing the bomb breaking away…
I pulled all the magic, all the antimagic, towards me. Took it all in. They couldn’t use it anymore.
My knees struck concrete. Through the haze, I made out Delta and his father, and cousins, and they were shouting at each other. A meaningless jumble of words I couldn’t make sense of. Delta’s father barked something, and the two cousins turned and strode towards me. They looked scared, but had clearly been given an order.
I lifted my head, held up a hand and the magic gathered in my palm, pure white. Sparks shot out and the charged plates in their hands crumbled. Both cousins yelled as the charge went through them. Building higher. Level three.
They fell.
The charge rippled outwards. I could do nothing about the backlash, not when it rippled through the air and Delta dropped to the ground, when his father took one step towards me and fell, too, screaming…
Everything blurred. Kay. Where was he? I couldn’t see if he’d been hit. No…
The backlash struck me. I cried out, every cell in my body screaming. The world blacked out. Lights burst behind my eyes.
Then… nothing.
22
Kay
Three weeks later
“Dammit, Markos, I can open the bloody door.”
“I beg to differ,” said the centaur, and kicked the door to Ms Weston’s office in with one hoof. Rolling my eyes, I closed the door behind me and faced the boss.
Three weeks on, and I was still surprised I hadn’t been fired yet. It had taken a week for them to clean up Central—I’d actually been right when I’d told the Campbell boss the place had been evacuated. Not that it would have made a difference if he’d really been able to use Ada as a bomb.
London had had a lucky escape. So had the world.
“Kay,” said Ms Weston. “I see the bandages are off.”
I held up my barely scarred hands. “See? Back to normal. Nothing to stop me running patrols.” I was going stir-crazy, and Ms Weston knew it.
I already knew that magic burn didn’t leave marks. Not on the outside.
“I’ll let Carl be the judge of that,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I hear you want to bring that girl back in. The girl who caused all the trouble.”
That figured. I only had to casually mention it and it was around half Central. Inevitable consequence of being the one witness at Central to the standoff with the Campbell family. Like I needed any more attention.
“Yes,” I said. “I think she’d be an excellent employee. She has the right skill set, and she’s spent her whole life dealing with offworld matters. She’d be an asset.”
Not that I’d told her—or the council—how, exactly, she’d killed the Campbells. That she could absorb any magic, including antimagic, unlike anyone else on Earth. All anyone else knew was that she was a powerful magic-wielder—and the Alliance had no way of knowing what that really meant. I’d been the only witness, and the last thing I wanted to do was spread word of Ada’s capabilities. Even Earth’s council might take advantage.
Ms Weston apparently thought the same applied to me. She hadn’t said a word about the experiments, and as far as everyone else was concerned, I was just a normal magic-wielder who’d taken advantage of the unusually high levels of magic on Earth to use it as a weapon. Not that it came from me, that it was part of me.
“She’s a liability,” said Ms Weston. “We came this close to losing control of the Balance—this close to total annihilation.”
Yeah. I reckoned Central was still in a state of shock. To say nothing of all the ordinary people who’d had be evacuated from central London. The Alliance had spent the best part of the past three weeks clearing up the aftermath. The remainder of the Campbell family had been imprisoned back on Valeria. Pity they didn’t go in for the death penalty there. Those bastards had almost destroyed the Multiverse.
“That may be,” I said, “but if anything like this happens again—like it or not, with magic, it’s always a possibility—then we might need her. Besides, I doubt all the Alliance’s guards could stop her from helping the Enzarian refugees.”
“Yes… about that. You’re very lucky the council was amenable.”
Lucky they hadn’t forgotten the Walker name. And as they were the only people to know exactly what had happened in the standoff with the Campbells—even if I hadn’t been able to give Ada’s side of the story—they listened to me.
No one could deny the situation in the Empire needed looking into, especially after the information about the hidden shelters in London got out. And I knew how my father’s mind worked, so I knew exactly how to get around the noninterference stance and take the offworld transition points under Alliance control before anyone shut them down. That was a matter for the Law Division, seeing as they involved doorways that were listed in the Alliance’s records as defunct. Plainly, someone had tampered with the records to enable the refugees to use doorways the Alliance didn’t know about. Because nobody knew who’d actually done it, they were the Alliance’s property by default. I’d marched into the council office ready to throw the book at them, only to find they’d caved under pressure from the offworlder communities.
I had the feeling part of that was Ada’s guardian, who was a one-woman force of nature. Two guards had come back from a “meeting” with her in a state of absolute terror. Sounded like she’d scared them into dropping the charges against her family and agreeing that saving the Earth from a magical apocalypse probably merited exemption from the usual consequences of breaking out of jail and attacking the Alliance guard team. Not to mention the trespassing.
I couldn’t stop them closing down the shelter, but I’d damn well try to. I owed it to Ada. At the very least, the Offworld Aid Division had agreed to send application forms on so they’d have a shot at reopening legally. And I’d spent half the past week talking to Simon’s superiors at New York’s Alliance about opening the new Passage to the offworld transition points, allowing the refugees still waiting to get through. Arranging that was pretty much the only thing that had stopped me from going batshit insane stuck in the office all the time. And it was about the only thing I’d managed not to fuck up since arriving at Central.
All I’d done to earn their respect was almost die at the hands of a magic-wielder. I didn’t plan to make a habit of it, and I wasn’t naïve enough to think there wouldn’t be hell to pay fur
ther down the line if the other allied worlds objected. But God knew the Multiverse owed me one small victory.
I hadn’t seen Ada once. Not since she’d been in the hospital. Her guardian had told me in no uncertain terms to leave them the hell alone, and only family were allowed in to visit her. I knew she was alive, and that had to be enough. After she’d fallen, knocked out by her own backlash, I’d honestly thought she was dead.
I’d got off easy. Especially considering I’d been inches away from being caught in Ada’s final attack. The one that had killed all four of the Campbells. And almost killed her.
The memory of that was hazy. I’d been half-concussed at the time, but I could recall it in flashes. Waking from the magic shock to see Ada, eyes glowing blinding white, surrounded by crackling white lightning. Then black lightning. Then she’d screamed, and the light had pulsed outwards, knocking two of the guys out. The backlash had taken care of the other two. And when it had hit her…
I’d run. Not fast enough. She’d fallen to the ground, and the light had gone out entirely. Next thing I remember, guards had surrounded us, had pulled her out of my arms—when had I picked her up?—and taken her away. I’d tried to stand up but gravity didn’t seem to want to cooperate… tried to reach her but my hands fucking hurt, like fire flared along every nerve. And then I was being hauled off to the hospital while she was God only knew where and I had no idea if she was even alive.
No one was supposed to absorb so much magic energy. What the Campbells had done had nearly destroyed her. But she’d survived. And once I found out she was alive, the first thing that struck me was deep, horrible guilt that I’d been at least partially responsible for her landing in this situation. Because it had been through the Alliance that the enemy had learned about her ability—if we’d just let her go…
Even Ms Weston’s keeping my secret didn’t seem to matter. Ada had reason to hold me in contempt. Logic told me I should stay away from her, not screw her life up further. But I at least had to tell her that the new Passage was ready to open, that she’d finally be able to help everyone from her homeworld. Once I had Simon’s confirmation.