“She’ll Fade completely soon, without the Mounds to renew her magic.” Donovan searched the faces of the other two. “How do we get her connected to the earth realm?”
Dawn shrugged. “The earthborns are connected at birth. I’ve never heard anyone even speak of any other way.”
With a sigh, Tiernan leaned back. His head rested on the back of the chair as he stared off into middle distance. “I was Mounds born. So were my parents. I was nothing but a sprout of less than a decade when they chose exile. After we came to the surface, seems as though it just occurred over time, gradually weaning off the Mounds and connecting with the earth realm. Took maybe a decade or two, I guess.”
“She doesn’t have that kind of time.” Dawn sat on the edge of the bed, lightly holding the girl’s frail hand
“And she’s not strong enough to survive what I went through to connect.” Donovan cut a glance to Tiernan. “It’s almost as if the wizards intentionally meant to cause the Fade by siphoning off her magic. We know they were drugging her, even in this state, to extract the Touch.”
“Wizard brew?”
Donovan nodded.
The string of curses from Tiernan was a creative blend of Gaelic and dark elf dialects. He pushed himself up and stormed to the window, glaring out of it. “I’m telling you! These wizards are not just threatening my business and my trade routes. They are not confined to England. And the protections around Ireland are starting to crumble.”
He turned around and propped his bum against the windowsill. His fingers gripped the sill so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Since the Collapse the fey have weakened, but the wizards grow stronger. Now, how is that? They steal our magic to power theirs. And yet they grow bolder and more powerful by the day. How is that? I’m telling you Donovan, this isn’t just my problem. We’ll all be strapped to beds, bald, and bleeding our last drop before this is over.”
“You and I alone cannot defeat them. And the earthborns aren’t ready.”
“Better the bloody hell get them ready!” He shoved himself up from the window, stomped over to the bed, and pointed a shaking finger at the girl. “I don’t wanna end up like this!”
“We won’t.” Spoken with stone-cold determination.
“There’s a war coming, mark what I’m telling you. And there aren’t enough Sidhe to drive the wizards back the next time they swarm Ireland.”
Chapter Four
Leaning on his forearms over the equipment, Malcolm drummed his thumbs on the amplifier for the electric guitar, playing along to the music in his head. Only it wasn’t just in his head. It was in the magic. Echoing weakly.
Getting weaker.
The girl’s magic. The one Donovan saved from the wizards. The one lying unconscious upstairs with Dawn’s constant attention, but who still wasn’t getting any better. The one who was Fading by the second.
Dying.
Malcolm drummed louder, matching her music with his own, as if that might help. Every second, she died a little more. It made him edgy. He drummed faster.
Kieran reached up and squished Malcolm’s hands down flat. “Will you stop already? I’m trying to concentrate.”
Like his concentrating made any difference. For the last three hours Kieran sat cross-legged in the center of a tangle of cables, wires, and threads of magic, surrounded by the sound equipment and enchantments at the back of the stage, and he was still no closer to weaving the magic that Eircheard wanted of him.
Malcolm jerked his hands out from under Kieran’s. Normally, the Glamour Club’s music would have drowned out anything Malcolm might have heard in the magic, but the live band for that evening left early, chased off by the dwarf in charge of maintenance and renovations, so the place was pretty quiet.
“Focus!” Eircheard swatted Kieran on the shoulder with a rolled up parchment. The dwarf’s braided mustache dangled all the way down to his barrel chest and bopped around with his energetic aggravation. “The music through the old enchantments sounds like it’s piped through a tin can in a thunderstorm.”
“I think it sounds like the music in any other club,” Kieran mumbled, earning himself a whack in the head with the rolled paper.
“Tin can in a thunderstorm, laddie! Has snogging all the lassies puddled your brains? Focus!”
After a bunch of frustrated grumping noises, Kieran demanded, “What am I doing wrong?” He wasn’t asking the dwarf, but Malcolm. Kieran stared down at his hands. He couldn’t see his own magic, but Malcolm could. Thin little tornadoes about as tall as a bottle of Guinness appeared, dancing in his palms. Nothing like the threads of magic Eircheard could draw out of himself and weave together into enchantments.
Malcolm leaned over the amplifier. “You keep making sound magic. It’s gotta be the raw stuff.” All the fey had loads of magic inside them, just flowing and filling them up with threads of energy. You had to look real close to see all the detail, otherwise it was just a jumble of color and lights. Leastwise, that’s how it was for Malcolm, who could see the magic like nobody else could. “You’re never going to get it, doing it like you are. Here…” He reached over and caught one of the threads of Kieran’s magic moving close to the surface of his palm and gave it a tug, trying to help him to get it out before he could twist it into a tornado of sound.
“Ow!” Kieran yanked away. “What the bloody, blinking crap, Malcolm!” He shook out his hand like he’d just snatched it back from a hot stove or something. Pain-tears glistened in his eyes as he gripped his palm and rocked back and forth like he was in all kinds of hurt.
“Now you don’t be doing that, laddie!” Eircheard pointed his rolled up parchment at Malcolm’s face.
“What? What did I do?” He drummed his hands on the amplifier, matching the girl’s music again. It was constantly there. Constantly playing in his head. Playing over and over. Desperate. Afraid. Almost too soft to hear. Only just barely there, so he had to strain to catch each note.
“Will you stop drumming already?” Pissed off, Kieran smacked at Malcolm’s hands.
“I can’t stop!” Malcolm pushed up from the amplifier. His insides prickled, knowing that the music was fraying and falling apart. It made him feel icky inside. Twisted and hurting on accounta the music hurt so bad and no one could hear it crying out.
Once he got going, he couldn’t bear to slow down. Panic bubbled up inside, driving him into a full-out run up the steps to the second floor.
The music needed him.
Now!
Malcolm banged against the door to Dawn’s flat. He tried the handle. Locked. If he could teleport, he’d have gone right inside anyway. So instead, he kicked the door. “Dawn! Let me in!”
Malcolm knew good and well that Dawn was in there. Her magic glowed through the walls like shimmering prisms. Donovan and Tiernan were in there, too. And the faint outline of the girl, as transparent as a breath of fog. Almost completely Faded.
Malcolm hammered his fists on the door, rattling it against its frame. “Let me in!”
And he didn’t stop pounding and screaming until she opened it and snapped, “What do you want?”
“I wanna see her!”
“She’s too weak for visitors.” Dawn tried to close the door in his face, but Malcolm braced it open.
“The music is going to stop!”
“Malcolm!” Dawn pushed against his chest. “Stop being weird and go away!”
He poked his finger at her face. “You never listen to me! Are you messing with her, like you messed with me?” And he’d have bet anything that she was. Dawn did that to people. She’d done it to Malcolm, made him sleep for days even when he fought to wake up. Only he’d managed to trick her and escape, elsewise she’d probably still have him trapped in his own head like he’d been trapped in the goblin’s cave forever. Even just knowing that… even just feeling that feeling again… of being trapped like the music was trapped… Of crying out for help when nobody could hear him… set him off in a screaming rage. “Don’t you be making he
r sleep! Don’t you be messing with her!”
Donovan shouldered past Dawn, caught Malcolm by the back of the neck, and steered him away. “Enough with the bickering. Come on, Malcolm. You did your part in finding her. Let’s get the others and hit the workout room.”
“But…” Malcolm twisted around even as Donovan propelled him down the hall. “But the music…”
“Calm down. You found the music, lad. Just give Dawn some time to work her magic.”
Malcolm snarled back at Dawn’s stupid, smug, superior smirk, but didn’t squirm away from Donovan as he marched him away.
Chapter Five
“The one who captures the rugby ball doesn’t have to run laps.” As the four earthborns jostled each other for positions, Donovan hurled the ball high above their swinging hands.
In a pushing and pulling rush, the lads battled each other for the lead. Trip teleported ahead of them and then cast a wall of shadow behind her.
“Magic is cheating!” Bryce shouted.
“Magic is never cheating,” Donovan chided. “Get creative!”
Bryce rose to the challenge with a scattering of flares that burned through the shadows.
As Trip scrambled to catch the erratically bouncing ball, the ground beneath it punched upward, sending it spiraling away despite her squawk of protest.
Just as Donovan’s magic had coiled to strike, Malcolm cut to the left, running not to where the ball was, but to where it was going to be. Kieran spotted his change in direction and leapt onto Malcolm’s back, stumbling him and sending them both to the ground in a heap. An inelegant and ineffective maneuver that entangled both of them.
Bryce and Trip jostled each other as they raced to the corner where the ball rolled and wobbled, waiting to be claimed. They tackled it together, then struggled to wrench it free from the other, gouging and kicking, wrestling like wolf cubs and with as much success. Too often the earthborns’ instincts reverted to physical prowess instead of magic. They’d have to do better than that if they were to have any hope of besting a wizard.
“Match your enthusiasm with finesse. You’re warriors, not children.” Donovan used a tentacle of earth to jam the end of the ball and squirt it free from them.
Malcolm slipped away from Kieran. In his scramble after the ball, he stomped all over Trip and Bryce, who shouted at him. Someone caught his ankle, bringing the bloodhound down hard.
Kieran cut to the right and reached out his hands. With a hollow whooshing sound, the ball suddenly skittered and bounced toward him. But before Kieran could snatch it up, Bryce flicked a fireball at it and sent the ball bouncing off to the end of the room.
To cross the roomful of obstacles before the others could cut around them, Malcolm vaulted over the weight bench and rolled under the balance beam. His wily, quick maneuvers put him in the lead. Under pressure, the boy demonstrated some considerable fey agility. It wouldn’t win him the challenge this time, though. Diving, Malcolm shouted “No!” even before Donovan made the ground beneath turn into quicksand just long enough to swallow up the ball.
The others hadn’t seen the ball vanish and group-tackled Malcolm. No one heeded his screaming protests as they pried beneath him for the prize that wasn’t there. And they didn’t even notice when the ball popped up again across the room. Malcolm saw it, though, having tracked the path of the magic through the ground. He reached for it, even though it was a good fifty feet away.
And then Malcolm wasn’t there.
The pile flopped down as he vanished from beneath it.
Reappearing across the room, the lad snatched up the ball and pumped it over his head in triumph. “Ha! Got it!”
“Malcolm! You teleported!” The earthborns cheered him as they disentangled themselves. Bryce shouted, “Way to go!”
Malcolm laughed as he swayed.
Then he changed…
Donovan saw it first.
The sudden paleness. The loss of expression. The whites of Malcolm’s eyes as they rolled back. The boneless slump as he dropped.
Donovan teleported just as the lad began to collapse. He reappeared in a crouch, catching Malcolm’s head before it could bash on the ground. As soon as he had a grip on Malcolm’s limp body, Donovan transported them immediately to the healer’s flat. “Dawn!”
She rushed from the bedroom and knelt on the carpet next to them. Her thin fingers pressed to Malcolm’s wrist just above the leather band that hid his ligature scars. “Thready pulse. Tachycardia, too.”
Donovan lightly slapped at the boy’s face, causing his head to lull about. “Malcolm!”
The boy’s eyelids slit opened, but the dilated pupils didn’t focus.
The three other earthborns teleported into the flat. They stayed back, huddling and watchful. Looking like the uncertain teenagers they were, at a loss over the fall of one of their own.
Dawn’s hands slid over Malcolm’s chest and then down to his stomach. The unique qualities of her magic were able to evaluate as well as heal the body. “He’s nothing but bones. Starving. Anorexic?”
Donovan smacked Malcolm’s face harder, getting those dark eyes to focus on him. “Malcolm, when’s the last time you ate?”
“Um…” His eyes closed and then fluttered open again. “Like… food?”
“When, Malcolm?”
“Um… Um…” He blinked a couple times, struggling to recall. “Pizza?”
Kieran whispered, “That was three days ago.”
“Bring something for him to eat.” Donovan scooped up the bloodhound, supporting him behind the back and beneath the knees. The boy weighed almost nothing. He’d been thin when he came to the Glamour Club, but not emaciated to this degree. The loose clothing disguised his weight loss.
Donovan situated him on the sofa and drew the throw blanket over his chilled body. “Why aren’t you eating?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Don’t get hungry.”
That made sense. The goblins had fed him scraps for that year they’d enslaved him. Ignoring hunger would have been the only way to deal with it, until his mind just stopped recognizing it altogether.
“Give me your phone.”
Malcolm dug it out and handed it over.
As Donovan set the alarms, Kieran returned to the flat, carrying a tray with a fish sandwich, a heap of chips, and a can of Coke. Bryce and Trip scooted closer, but Donovan waved them off. “He’s fine. Just needs rest and food. Malcolm fainting doesn’t get you lot out of running laps.”
“I thought he’d forget,” Bryce mumbled. He laughed when Trip elbowed him.
Kieran set the tray down for Malcolm and then chucked him playfully on the chin. “Congrats on the teleportation, mate. I knew you could do it.”
Malcolm shoved Kieran away with the rough playfulness of a brother. “Go run your laps, Kie.”
After the earthborns left, Donovan returned Malcolm’s phone. “When this alarm goes off, you eat. No excuses unless you’re on a mission. Magic requires a lot of energy, especially teleportation. Don’t eat right and you’re stunting your abilities.”
From the concerned flash in Malcolm’s dark eyes, Donovan knew that jab struck home. For the earthborn who felt he possessed the ‘suckiest’ power, magic meant a lot to the bloodhound. Moreso than to any of the others. He’d only just begun to get a handle on what he could do. And he’d no idea of the danger he could become.
Malcolm ate the sandwich with one hand, glancing at the phone with the other. “Three times a day? Seriously?”
“Seriously. And you aren’t limited to that. Lad your age should be a bottomless pit. From now on, you weigh in before each workout. If I don’t see improvement, you’re going to get grounded from missions. Am I clear? I can’t have my team passing out in the middle of combat.”
“Yeah.” Malcolm pushed himself up a little and then grabbed his head. “Whoa. Spinning.”
“Lie back and eat. Then stay put until that food’s had a chance to get into your system. You hear me?”
Chapter Six
After Malcolm began to eat with purpose, Donovan and Dawn returned to the bedroom where the girl rested.
Malcolm kept his head down while he ate, aware of the few times one or the other of them glanced back out at him. The food felt heavy in his stomach, but he didn’t complain. Just ate what had been given to him. It didn’t particularly interest him, though.
Not when he could hear the music again.
The music made him ache inside. Much more than not eating ever did. It needed… the music did. It needed so much that it pulled at him.
Malcolm set aside the tray real quietly, so no one noticed. And then he crept toward the open doorway in a wide arc so they wouldn’t see him coming.
Just outside the doorway, Malcolm closed his eyes. His soft humming didn’t come from his throat so much as from that place inside that got all excited about magic. Right in the middle of his chest. It felt bigger inside him now, this aching feeling. This need to touch the music.
Not just to touch it with his hands, but to Touch it with his magic.
Malcolm peeked into the bedroom.
Donovan, who missed nothing, looked right at Malcolm as he poked his head in.
“I just…” Malcolm tapped on his breastbone and then reached toward the bed with his fingers spreading. Sometimes, when stuff was too big or too complicated for words and it washed all over Malcolm, all he could do was grunt and make the shape of things with his hands. But Donovan always understood. He was cool like that.
Dawn twisted around and sighed with the exasperation of someone sick to death of arguing. “Malcolm…”
“Let him in.” Donovan didn’t even need to raise his voice.
She frowned. Not so much like she was just hating on Malcolm, which he thought she did sometimes, but because things were already bad and she thought he’d make them worse. So Malcolm crept past her into the bedroom, silent so he wouldn’t disturb the uneasy quiet. The room had a muffled, depressed vibe, like a deathwatch or an old crumbling and dusty tomb.
Remnants of Magic (The Sidhe Collection (Urban Fantasy)) Page 29