Magic Awakening: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Spirit War Chronicles Book 1)

by Stephen Allan

  But before that could turn into anything, the door opened. Carsis stood there, alone. He looked to DJ, who left the room without a word.

  “Brady tells me you aren’t feeling well,” he said.

  “So he’s recruiting others,” I said. “I see that he’s not going to give up on getting me to fight.”

  “Nor should he,” Carsis said. “I told you this downstairs and I mean it, Sonya, you’re incredibly talented and full of potential. You don’t realize even a fraction of your powers yet. You already know how to teleport out—”

  “But I couldn’t against Nuforsa, some skill that was.”

  Carsis’ face turned red with rage, and it was clear the Power angel needed to calm himself before he spoke.

  “I would not measure your skills against that bitch, if I were you,” he said with surprising amount of venom, even in reference to a demon. I didn’t think angels would swear. “She is one of Mundus’ strongest demons, so to have you fall into her capture when you did was a situation that required outside assistance. The fact that your magic did not work with her present means nothing, other than that you need more training and more powers.”

  “Then what would work?” I asked, trying to stay pragmatic.

  “It would take an extraordinary amount of magic and power. You’re talking about one of the Dark Lord’s top soldiers. You can’t just learn all the spells and then use them. You have to know how they work, truly master them, and then outwit Nuforsa, not an easy task at all. No, Sonya, you are already strong enough to take out 80 percent of the grunts and demons Mundus sends your way. I would highly encourage you not to quit, not with the potential you have.”

  I hated that Carsis was this encouraging. He would know. He spoke the truth, I could tell. But still… I just wanted a vacation, damnit. I just wanted to feel relaxed and detached from work. I wanted to not have to pull out Ebony and Ivory again while on this side of the Atlantic. Was that really too much to ask?

  Just start with tonight and tomorrow. Just take it a day at a time.

  “I will think about it,” I said, which was certainly far more than I was willing to admit. “But Carsis, I was beaten down so hard today, I don’t know that I can take anymore. Just for, say, 24 hours, I want to pretend that I’m on vacation. I want to flirt with my hot Aussie flatmate. I want to make new friends. I don’t want to think about demons or any of that. I know I can fight. But…”

  “I understand. Though Mundus is planning to attack, it’s not imminent. He doesn’t have the forces at hand to launch yet. I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll heal you of your wounds and scars. In return, in 24 hours time, so—” he said, glancing at a clock. “At 3 p.m. tomorrow, I want you back here so we can train you. Until then, you will be free to do whatever you want. Just don’t smoke Devil’s Eye. Really don’t.”

  “I’ll actually listen to you this time,” I said. “Deal.”

  “And understand, Sonya, just because Mundus won’t attack yet doesn’t mean other demons won’t try and take you out. You must stay vigilant and aware.”

  “So don’t go through portals,” I said with a snort.

  “Precisely.”

  With that, Carsis crouched beside me.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I did, and I felt his warm hands touch my face. I grimaced as I felt cuts sewing back up, swelling go down, bruises vanish, and other injuries disappear. It was not a painful recovery, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a spa massage, either. The whole thing took about a dozen seconds, but when he finished, I touched my face and felt nothing unusual.

  “Thanks,” I said, in awe of the power that Carsis possessed. I couldn’t think of a more valuable ability than to heal oneself and made a note to ask that that be the next thing I learned.

  I stood up before stealing a glance at Nicholas.

  “Is he going to be OK?”

  “Should be,” Carsis said, standing up. “Nuforsa cast a hell of a spell on him. I’ve managed to remove most of it, but it’s stubborn. I’m about to work on it and should have him back to normal by the evening.”

  “Gotcha,” I said. “But the psychological damage?”

  Carsis’ grimace gave me the sad answer I feared.

  “I can alleviate some of the pain. Erase some of the memories. But the feelings and sensations will be difficult to fight. Our best hope is that he leans into his goofy personality as a coping mechanism against what he will feel.”

  It’s all any of us can do in the face of evil and danger.

  I checked for my guns. Check. I checked myself in the mirror. Good to go.

  I gave one last look to Nicholas and Carsis, allowing myself a moment of pity. But as soon as I walked out of Room 115, I shifted straight into vacation mode. I would not think about anything other than enjoyment. I was finally going to treat myself to something that I’d only had once on this trip but needed more than sleep and pleasure.

  I needed a goddamn beer.

  Chapter 10

  I bounded down the stairs and headed straight for the bar, which was free save for Brady drinking at the far corner and DJ checking his phone. After my argument with Brady, even though I’d gotten closer to his side, I knew giving him his space was the best move, so I sat next to DJ. He looked up, said “Hi,” finished his text, and put his phone away as I ordered a Guinness.

  I deliberately made it a point not to bring up the conversation in the room, at least not at the start. I knew DJ would probably bring it up, or I would get too curious and start asking questions, but for as long as I could, I wanted to take a mental vacation from hell.

  “So tell me, DJ, where in Australia are you from?”

  “You’re asking the questions now, huh?” he said, to which I just arched an eyebrow and let him continue. “Sydney, yes.”

  “Jealous,” I said. “And how are you able to travel for a whole year?”

  “Well, funny enough, it was gonna be two years, but I don’t think I could manage to be away from home for quite so long,” he said. Christ, two years?!? If I took off work two years… hell, just one year, I wouldn’t get fired, I’d get investigated and hunted. “Yeah, Aussies love to travel. The joke we have is that the population of Sydney is just over four million and the population of Australians traveling abroad is over eight million. Go to any hostel, and you’ll probably run into a bunch of Australians.”

  “No kidding,” I said, realizing that even with all of my experience abroad for the CIA, there was precious little that I actually knew. “I wish I had six months to travel. Or even just four. I—”

  “—don’t get that kind of vacation in America, I’m well aware,” DJ said. “There’s a lot that you guys do right. When you guys want something, you get it all. You lead the world in innovation, both technologically and culturally. But you don’t ever know how to relax. In America, four weeks off a year is considered generous vacation. In the rest of the world, that might as well be a human rights violation.”

  DJ had hit the nail on the head. I had a month off because I’d accumulated that much time at the CIA, not because I was given it each year. Brady was much the same way, except he could afford to take a week off after we returned to America.

  Meanwhile, here was a guy who could just take a year off and travel wherever he wanted. I did feel slightly envious, but only in the positive way—it made me want to be like him, not hate him.

  Fortunately, any qualms I had about the matter got put to the side as my Guinness appeared, with the coat of foam at the top of the dark beer. I sipped on it without lifting it, and then gently tilted it back once I’d made sure I wouldn’t spill any.

  “I’d say you earned that one,” DJ said.

  I knew what he meant, but before I could ask anything else, he continued on.

  “And I would think, also, that you’ve earned a little bit more.”

  Oh God. Is this some Aussie way of inviting me to bed?

  “Sonya, I would like to know if you would like to have dinner with me this
evening.”

  “Dinner,” I said calmly, trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach. Butterflies? Really? Maybe that bitch in hell had a point. “That sounds… intriguing.”

  “Among other things,” DJ said. “I know that your brother will want some space from you. I know that the Brits will need to recover from their little adventure. So that just leaves the two of us.”

  “Does it,” I said, struggling to find the right words. “Very well. But it’s just dinner.”

  “Good, because I already made the reservation at Grasshopper,” he said.

  Wait, you were that confident I would say yes?

  You got some balls, DJ. Some serious balls.

  And you didn’t even acknowledge my conditional statement. You just blew right by it. Bastard.

  “Well, then, what time?” I said once I got over the shock of the moment.

  “7 p.m. sharp. It’s upscale, so I recommend wearing your finest,” he said, and then he placed a ten euro bill in my hand, nodding at the beer in front of me. I tried to push it back in his hand, but he wouldn’t let me. “Until then, though, I am going to take a nap. You were not the only one who entered into new worlds, Sonya. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

  “Wait—”

  But without another word, he slid off his bar stool and trekked upstairs. His last few words left me with so many questions I felt compelled to write them down in my phone so I could keep them organized out of my head.

  “Had he gone to hell?” I wrote. That seemed almost certain. He would not have said such a thing if he was simply talking about getting high or visiting the museum.

  “What is he?” I put next. He seemed human. He acted human. But Tyrus had taken a human form, and other humans had the form of shifters, which wasn’t the same as being a demon but made them a minion of hell all the same. This was a lot harder to answer than the last one.

  On the one hand, he had incredible charm, seemed to curry favor with the rest of Room 115—except perhaps my brother—and had a backstory that I could easily verify. A quick Google search confirmed that he had, indeed, written many novels. He had produced fourteen books, with titles ranging from the normal “The Pearl of Australia,” to the fantastic “Dragons of Aura,” to the bizarre “The Golden Goldfish.” All of them checked out as real books with real reviews.

  But on the other hand, if demons had existed for this long, who was to say that he wasn’t a demon planted to run into me? If I was as important as everyone seemed to be saying, I couldn’t put it past the devil to have planted such a demon. The seductive demon or demoness was as much a trope in old books as dragons and elves.

  With no clear answer, I moved to the next question.

  “How should I handle him?” I had to do what I’d done this whole trip. Engage in playful banter, yes. Admire his body, yes. Touch him, no. Have sex with him, no. Fall for him emotionally, no.

  No matter how difficult it was becoming to obey my “no”s.

  It was overwhelmingly tempting to run up the couple dozen steps, break down the electronically locked door, and demand DJ explain his connection to hell. I didn’t need to go on a date with someone who would drag me to hell for gelato and martinis. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, albeit with so many red flags up that it looked like a United Nations convention of red flags.

  The fact that I did, given my trust issues from my past, was nothing short of astonishing. Even if he doesn’t have magic, he’s got a spell over me.

  I finished my Guinness, leaving the ten euro bill on the table, and headed back to the room, as Brady had already left his spot at the bar. I nodded to Carsis, who gave me a polite smile, and continued up. I did not break down the door, instead using my key card. I gently opened it and saw everyone asleep—except Brady, who had his headphones on and his phone in front of his face. Despite the headphones, I could still hear “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” by Dropkick Murphys. He didn’t look up at me, which made my decision not to talk to him easy.

  Then, on the top bunk of the bed closest to me, a body stirred.

  Nicholas!

  “What the hell…” he said, his voice scratchy and weak, as if so hungover he had almost lost the capacity to speak.

  I quickly ran over to him and stood by the side. Richard snored loudly. Brady didn’t hear me. DJ kept his eyes closed.

  “You OK?” I said.

  “I just… I went to the bathroom, got knocked out, and I don’t remember what happened, but I feel… terrified. Violated.”

  “You’re fine,” I said. “You went through some rough stuff, but right now, you need sleep.”

  I’m sure Nicholas genuinely needed some sleep and recovery time, but I really said those words more for my sake than his. I didn’t want to revisit the experiences with Nuforsa. I didn’t want to explain what had happened with Devil’s Eye. I didn’t care to say how I had to rely on the good timing of my brother to get out of hell alive with my mind intact. And if Nicholas genuinely didn’t remember what Nuforsa had done to him, that was for the best.

  No, the rest of today was a chance for me, Sonya Ferguson, to have a normal life for at least another 23 hours or so. No CIA nonsense. No hell bullshit. Just a woman who had a date—yeah, that’s what it was—tonight and open plans in the morning.

  “OK,” Nicholas said weakly. “It’s just this feeling, it’s so… real. Like there’s something that wants to kill me, and I don’t know what—”

  “Nicholas,” I said gently. I was not the most compassionate person in the world, but being in the CIA had taught me to empathize better. And it wasn’t always with words—sometimes, tone and body language could do it better than the right words. “Just sleep, OK? We’ll talk more after you feel fine.”

  That was completely true, even if unsatisfying. But Nicholas accepted it with a short nod and closed his eyes.

  With a few hours to spare, I decided to take DJ’s approach and pass out. I didn’t realize it until I settled into the incredibly comfortable bed, but I hadn’t slept enough after my encounter with Nuforsa. It only took me about ten minutes before my mind went from imagining the evening ahead to going into dream land.

  ***

  Around me were screams from all directions. It was the screams of the tortured, the mourning, the weeping. To my left was a canal of blood, with bodies floating, drowning, or failing to escape. To my right lay slain bodies and skeletons on a dirt path. I could hear the battle cries of war from above me. I was on my knees, my head was bowed, and I barely had the strength to raise it.

  “Pathetic, isn’t it,” an all-too-familiar voice said. “You claim to be a CIA agent, one of the greatest that they have, and here you are, on your knees, begging for mercy from someone you can’t even lay a finger on.”

  I felt a strong, pointed kick to the right side of my rib cage and I lost my breath, gasping as I rolled to my back, taking in the red and black sky. My breath came back slowly as Nuforsa laughed maniacally.

  “Here lies Sonya Ferguson, first on all fours, then on her back, surrendering like a bitch, unable to fight,” she said. “Do you see now? This is who you are. You are not a woman. You are a child, a child in the body of a 20-year old, a child who will never grow up. A child who will never know love.”

  I bit my lip. I could feel tears forming in my eyes. I would not cry in front of Nuforsa. I would not do it. I would not fucking break. I had never broken, and that would not change, even as I stared death in the eyes.

  “The closest you come is your brother, yet he only loves you because he has no one else to love. He can’t love anyone else. He is too broken. He says he loves you, but that is because he wants to cling to the notion that he can still love. And yet, when he dies in the line of duty, he will go to the grave knowing he never loved anyone. All he can do is fuck and call it making love. And you will be the same way, Sonya. You—”

  “Stop!” I screamed as I staggered back to my knees, but when I screamed, tears flooded out.

 
But the tears were not normal human tears. They were tears of blood, and they splattered to the ground, forming a puddle that reflected me back. It showed me my younger self, at 13 years old, depressed and in tears because I had no parents and no friends and seemingly no way of making the latter. It showed the scars I had from when I had to resort to cutting myself just to feel something, anything. It showed the bottle of Oxycotin lying spilled out on the ground, the lone sign of when I’d tried to end it all. I tried to close my eyes, but all that did was put the vision in front of me instead of in the puddle.

  “Stop!” I screamed once more as I thrashed violently.

  Nuforsa just laughed maniacally, taunting me as I could only see her feet before me.

  “This is your fate, Sonya. This is your future. The same as your past. All it takes is to swear your soul to the Dark Lord. Do this, and he shall ease your pain. Do this, and he shall reward you for eternity. Do this, and your life and future from here on out will be joyful, full of pleasures, and an endless ecstasy. Refuse, and you will suffer like the girl you see before you.”

  “STOP!”

  ***

  I awoke shivering, my eyes damp, and the covers kicked off of me. I breathed heavily, trying to get rid of the nightmare that I had just experienced—a nightmare that contained so much more of reality than I ever wanted to admit. I wanted to think that I’d gotten past what had happened in those days, but Nuforsa had unlocked the worst of my mind. It had been so long since I’d thought of those… days that I’d gotten so close to permanently forgetting them.

  That would not happen, though. I now saw the battle ahead. It would not involve gunfights and fistfights, but in breaking the spirit and mind of others.

  “Sonya?”

  I rolled over, sniffling, to see Brady crouching in front of my bed. I didn’t see DJ or anyone else except Nicholas in the room, and since he was asleep, I didn’t bother to suppress my sniffling and tears too much.