Shattered Focus (A Paranormal, Urban, Fantasy Novella) (Focus Series Book 3)

by Alex Bostwick

  This Socratic Method with which Gabriel taught was typical of my education with him. He never seemed to outright lecture me, but instead asked questions, forcing me to answer him until I arrived at the conclusion he was looking for. It was infuriating, but I still learned a lot.

  “Um. Okay. Well, people murder each other.”

  “They certainly do.”

  “They steal, too.”

  “Sure.”

  “And… well, they shouldn’t do that.”

  “Naturally not. And what is your solution to crime?”

  “Solution?”

  He idly scratched one elbow, eyeing me carefully. “What would you do to stop people from killing each other, or stealing from each other?”

  “Well…I can do magic, so, I guess…stop them?”

  “That sounds inefficient, my dear. Would you, perhaps, be wearing a cape while you did this?”

  “Batman does,” I said, my face reddening.

  Gabriel chuckled. “So he does. But the fact of the matter is that Bruce Wayne can do significantly more good in the world than Batman ever has.”

  “Gabriel, sir…he’s Batman.”

  He continued to smile. “Granted, Batman may not be the best example. But the point is that putting on a costume and hunting down criminals one by one is an inelegant, short-term approach.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” I said. “But I don’t understand what this has to do with Spirit magic.”

  “The point, Miss Tress, is that you don’t actually want to change the world. You want to change people.”

  I stared at him blankly once more. “What?”

  He turned in his seat to face me. “I asked you if you wanted to change the world. When I asked why you wanted to change the world, you said that murder and burglary should be stopped. Murder and burglary are not problems with the world, Nora; they’re a problem with people in them. Therefore, you want to change people.”

  He pointed out at the horizon, toward the setting sun. “Should that be changed?”

  I shook my head, feeling dumber than ever.

  “What about the Northern Lights? Or how about things that are manmade, like the Eiffel Tower?”

  “Of course not.” My cheeks were flushed with embarrassment.

  “What about society then? Nine-to-five jobs are boring and usually unfulfilling. Should we do away with those?” He poked a finger between my eyes. “What can that brain come up with to fix people?”

  I bit my lip, uncertain and chagrined. “I don’t know, sir.”

  Gabriel ruffled my hair in a grandfatherly fashion. “I don’t expect you to, Nora. Do you want to know the truth?”

  I nodded.

  He leaned in conspiratorially, and whispered. “You can’t fix people at all, kiddo.” He sat back in his chair, carelessly cleaning his fingernails. “In all honesty, Nora, we can’t truly change the world. We can help people, we can aid the environment, and we can stop particularly bad people from doing particularly bad things. But the true nature of a person, the one that lives here—”he tapped the center of his chest—“can’t be overcome by external influences. A bad man will continue to be a bad man until he decides to stop being a bad man.”

  I understood what he was telling me, but there was a flaw in his logic. “But, sir, Spirit magic can affect the mind. If you wanted to, you could make a bad man a good man.”

  He shook his head. “You would have me unmake a person. Everything that makes that person who he or she is, their thoughts, opinions, their consciousness would have to shift to something that is completely different. How, Nora, is that different from murder?”

  I scratched my chin, deep in thought. “I guess it isn’t.”

  “We have the power, Nora. If we wanted to, we could reshape society at our whim, redirect the path of the world. It wouldn’t even be particularly hard. But we don’t do that. It is not any one person’s—or organization’s—place to choose for other people. What I and others like me do is help allow people the opportunity to choose. When a madman decides to raise a militia and conquer a region, he robs the people within that region of choice. If we stop him, we allow those same people the choices that were taken from them. Do you understand?”

  I thought I got it, or at least most of it. I nodded to him.

  “And you were wondering how this relates to Spirit magic, I believe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He grinned once more. “Peace, Nora.” He tapped the center of his chest again. “You have to feel it in here to use Spirit magic effectively. There are things that you can do to change things, to afford people a new perspective, but the only thing that you will accomplish with impassioned force is stubborn refusal. You need to accept that there is much that you cannot change. And then you need to try a new approach.”

  He rose from the chair, and stepped to the edge of the porch, gazing once more toward the setting sun. “The one thing you can always change is yourself. Rather than make me see a rainbow, simply convince me that there is a rainbow. Then you allow me the opportunity to either see it or not. It becomes my choice, even though it is nudged by your will.” His eyes twinkled as he turned to look at me again. “If you’re convincing enough, it will work.”

  As unaccustomed to conversations that felt more like Philosophy 101 than lectures as I was, the lesson resonated with me in a way that his previous instructions hadn’t. I stood up, resolute, and focused once again.

  I felt a tingle down my spine as I drew in my will, the sensation familiar enough to escape my notice now, a decade and a half later, but still novel to my preteen self. In my last attempt, I had strained with all of my might, brutally assaulting my mentor’s consciousness, trying to force a rainbow to blossom before his eyes.

  I took Gabriel’s advice this time, however, and sent my magic questing gently toward him, invisible tendrils reaching out—or so I imagined. Back then, my skill with magic was rudimentary at best, and much of my results were due to intense visualizations. It was inefficient and took up a lot of unnecessary time and effort, the metaphysical equivalent of training wheels—unwieldy, it slowed me down, but provided useful stability until I was ready for bigger things.

  Rather than a sledgehammer, I hit Gabriel with a feather. I teased his thoughts, my magic whispering softly to his subconscious mind. I took my time, letting the suggestion build, focusing my will on convincing Gabriel that my view was the right one, and that my view included a rainbow on the horizon.

  After five minutes of silent work, Gabriel finally spoke.

  “Ah,” he said. “There we are.” He turned to face me, grinning in delight. “That was very well done, Nora.”

  I wiped the few beads of sweat from my brow with the back of one hand, smiling in triumph. “Thank you, sir.”

  We sat down, and the old man poured me a glass of lemonade from a pitcher on the table beside his chair. I reached out for the offered glass, still awash in pride from my accomplishment.

  Suddenly, the dream took on a different tone. Everything quickly distorted slightly, as though I was looking at everything through waves of heat rising from asphalt on a hot summer day. The hand I had stretched toward Gabriel no longer belonged to an eleven year old girl, but to a young woman. The old man in the chair across from me had similarly aged in an instant, additional lines and wrinkles creasing his face. His eyes still held that same spark of intelligence and wisdom, however, and when he spoke, I listened intently to his wavering voice.

  “Nora, you must be extremely careful.”

  I nodded. “I know, sir. I wish that we still had you with us. Things would be so much easier with your help.”

  He shook his head gently. “No, Nora. I’m no longer there to guide you or protect you. And I shouldn’t be, in any case.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  He sighed. “I’m not the one needed now. My time had passed years before I was killed. Honestly, I was just hanging on until I was able to appoint a successor.” He jabbed a
finger at me. “I had hoped it would be you.”

  “Me?” I asked, incredulous. “I haven’t even gone through the Bonding yet. I haven’t even decided which faction to join.”

  “The Bonding,” Gabriel continued, his tone surprisingly venomous. “I sometimes wished we had never even come up with the damn thing.”

  “Sir?”

  He cracked his aged knuckles, flexing his fingers. “Damn arthritis,” he muttered. “The Bonding does little for the individual, Nora. It wasn’t supposed to amplify our power, but to constrict it.”

  “But…Gabriel, the Bonding takes our abilities and…well, it focuses it.”

  “Hence the name of our organization,” he said impatiently, flapping one hand. “Yes, yes. But the original intent was to create a process that limited power. Manipulation of the elements, the ability to bend Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit to a single individual’s will, to heal or burn as we saw fit…” he trailed off. His eyes distant, he continued after a moment. “There is a reason that witchcraft was so reviled for millennia. The Bonding was created by a coven of so-called White Witches. The idea was to limit the extent of the damage a single individual could do, to tie and bind all of their power to a single element, rather than range across a wide spectrum of destruction. And it worked, of course. They were able to devise a process by which a wizard could be bonded to one branch of magic. But there were unforeseen side effects.”

  “It amplified what they could do within that element,” I offered, understanding.

  “Yes. Suddenly, an Earth wizard who had been barely able to make a hole in the ground was capable of leveling a city with an earthquake. A Fire wizard who couldn’t have done more than light candles was able to burn London to the ground.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “What?” Gabriel asked, distracted.

  “Did a Fire agent burn London to the ground?”

  “How am I supposed to know that? Pay attention when I’m lecturing, Nora,” he chided.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s all right. Anyway, the Bonding allowed that group of wizards to bring the others born to magic under their control, by and large. Armed with new weapons against them, they were able to monopolize magic, in a sense. They created Focus with the intent to use these newfound powers granted by the Bonding to make the world a better place. And it worked for centuries. We were able to stem the tide of violence and destruction for a long time. Until now, anyway.”

  “Stell,” I spat.

  “Yes. Louis Stell. A cancer had been growing in Focus for years, and nobody noticed. Except for Jason, of course,” he added, a wisp of a smile returning to his face. “He is a good friend, but he’s a more terrifying enemy. The man is a dog with a bone, relentless and deadly.” He shook his head. “But Stell is something worse. He’s managed a coup that could not have been carried out more readily and completely. He took out all of Spirit in a single stroke. Now there is nobody who remains that would be able to break the hold he has over his…minions? Subjects?”

  “Flunkies? I’d call them flunkies, sir.”

  “‘Flunkies’ works. He has managed to bend hundreds to his will through a mix of Spirit magic and manipulation. What’s worse is that he was able to do it on my watch, with over a hundred Spirit agents who should have picked up on his betrayal. He’s only out in the open now because of you and Jason.”

  “And Rick,” I added, maybe a little defensively. My skinchanger boyfriend had brought intelligence to me that had convinced me to join this fight. Although he had done so while stalking me, intent on assuming my form to infiltrate Focus and ferret out the bad seeds himself, after he had kidnapped me and held me prisoner.

  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we have a complicated relationship.

  “And Rick,” Gabriel agreed. “A capable man. I wish I could have met him while I was still. You know. Breathing.”

  “Me too, sir.”

  “The point is that Stell is an incredibly dangerous enemy. He’s not terribly sane, but he is smart. He knows that you will be coming for him. He will be ready for your attempt to stop him.”

  “Good,” I said. “I want him to be afraid of what’s coming. After what he’s done to those kids, to you… he’s a man who’s earned some old-fashioned justice.”

  Gabriel shook his head again. “You don’t understand. He doesn’t fear you. In his mind, he’s already won. If you do strike a blow against him, it will be because he doesn’t think the hit will matter in the long-term. He’s been planning this for years, planting seeds of discord with time and quiet effort, and has only just begun to harvest now. You rattled him a few months ago when you brought Jason in on your investigation, but his preparations had been nearly complete at that stage anyway. Thus far, you’ve only managed to survive—which isn’t a small feat,” he added hurriedly, “but isn’t a solution.”

  “We’ve got irons on the fire, sir,” I said hotly. “We’ve rallied all of Fire to our side, and a mix of other agents has joined up once word got out about the Spirit massacre. We’re hunting down his operations, and Nick has been coordinating the search for the missing students. Once we’re ready, we will be the ones to attack for a change.”

  Gabriel was silent for a few moments, apparently considering what I had told him. “I will admit, Nora, that I don’t know much about war. I dedicated my life to finding solutions that didn’t end in conflict. When the time for a real fight came around, I handed the task off to Jason. He knows what he is doing.”

  He rose from his seat, and faced me squarely. I copied him, standing a couple of feet from my old mentor. He placed one hand on my shoulder, gripping it tightly, wincing slightly as the effort from the gesture made the joints in his fingers creak in protest.

  “Nora Tress. We’re not supposed to have favorites, but you were mine. I’m no longer here to guide you, to protect you from this mess. I’m not even here now; I’m just a recollection, a construct of memories you’ve conjured up in a dream.”

  I nodded, biting my lip as tears came unbidden to my eyes. God, I missed this man, his counsel, his mere presence.

  “The time has come for you to stand on your own. I prepared you for the world as best I could. You have the tools you need, and the strength and will necessary to use them. There is a solution to Stell’s influence and power, a counter that you can use. You only need to seize it once it presents itself.”

  I nodded once more, blinking away the tears as best I could. “I miss you, sir.”

  “I miss you too, Nora.” He tightened his grip on my shoulder for an instant before he released me. “I’ll see you around the bend, Miss Tress.” He locked his gaze on mine, his familiar, soulful blue eyes as piercing as I remembered them. “Be careful.”

  ***

  “Nora, wake up,” a familiar voice whispered, as someone shook my arm. I yawned, blinking away the remnants of the dissolving dream, and sat up in my bed.

  The sun still hadn’t risen, and the small cabin Rick and I had been sharing was awash in shadows and darkness. I rubbed my eyes vigorously, waiting for my brain to catch up with my waking state. Once it did, I acknowledged the silhouette of Nicholas Stone crouching near my side of the bed.

  “This better be good, Nick,” I said, stifling another yawn. “That was the first good night’s sleep I’ve gotten in weeks.”

  Through the gloom, I saw the Water agent grin, his white teeth glinting faintly. “Sorry, Nora. But we’ve found them. We’re planning the extraction.”

  I immediately sobered, my eyes snapping wide open at the news. I reached over and poked Rick’s snoring form in the ribs. He grunted in protest, but didn’t wake up.

  I sighed.

  “Nick, go on ahead. We’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t start without us.”

  “Got it,” he acknowledged, rising from his crouch and heading for the door.

  “And, Nick?” I called after his retreating back. He paused. “Good work.”

  H
e didn’t respond beyond a flick of his head that was a little too forced to be casual. I knew that he felt a profound sense of pride that his efforts had paid off. The little bespectacled man had spent weeks working his fingers to the bone, organizing searches, making sure the right people were placed in the right places, poring over documents ranging from grocery bills to land deeds. Since Jason, Rick, and I had tracked down and pulled his parents out of a hostage situation, Nicholas had focused all of his substantial wits on the task at hand. Though nobody—including Nicholas—had said a word about it, we all knew that he was trying to make up for his betrayal a couple of months ago.

  A guilty conscience is a good motivator.

  He left without another word, gently closing the door behind him without a whisper of sound. Once we were alone, I turned my attention back to Rick’s snoring form beside me.

  The skinchanger was massive, his arms and chest layered with pretty bodybuilder muscles. Dark brown hair that fell carelessly around his ears topped his head, matching his dark eyes perfectly. He had a jawline that would send most Hollywood actors to the plastic surgeon out of jealousy if they ever saw it. And when he moved, it was with the casual, loping grace of a wild animal. He was more than a match for anyone I had ever met, physically, and he knew it.

  Maybe that was why he was also exceedingly gentle. In my experience, the bigger men were, the more careful they had to be. He treated everything around him as though it were made of delicate porcelain, including me—though sometimes I preferred it a little rougher than that.

  Oh, and he was also capable of literally transforming his entire body into virtually anything a rational mind could conceive, from an impossibly large eagle to an eldritch horror straight out of Lovecraft. I’d only ever seen him shift into animals thus far, but that was only because they were easier, according to him and everything I knew about skinchangers. It was part of what made him extremely valuable to Focus and our efforts against Stell and the Unfocused.

  But it wasn’t what made him valuable to me. I cared about his nature, the smile that he would favor me with that could light up a room from twenty yards out, the way that we bantered back and forth despite the seriousness of our situation, and the fact that, if anything ever happened to me, Rick would literally tear the world in half to either come after me or to avenge my death. He would do that because, for Rick, nothing less was warranted. And he knew that I would do the same for him.