by Devon Monk
Time has a weird way of slowing down when I’m in high stress situations. I had plenty of time to study my father, to note that, yes, indeed, that was a lavender handkerchief in his pocket; yes, indeed, he turned so he could see into the car; and yes, indeed, he wasn’t looking at Zayvion but at me.
He didn’t look particularly surprised that I was killing him. He just looked very, very disappointed in me.
And then he was close, his face right in front of my face, much closer than should be possible with all the metal and glass between us. And yet he was still standing as if even a speeding car wasn’t enough to knock him down.
I yelled and didn’t hear the thunk of his body hitting metal, didn’t hear anything but the brakes locking up and tires screeching as my dad slipped down somewhere beneath my line of vision, beneath the hood, beneath the tires.
Or maybe I just couldn’t distinguish him from the blur of the city outside the window. I tasted leather and wintergreen on the back of my throat, felt the stink of it smack my skin like a cold sweat.
I heard him, I swear I heard my father’s voice, close as my own thoughts: “The gates open, seek death.” Words that bore the push of Influence, the magical knack we Beckstroms were known for using on people to make them do what we wanted them to do. Influence forced those words into my head until my stomach clenched with the need to follow, to do as he said, even though I was still yelling and had no idea what he meant.
All that, as the car came to a stop in the middle of the intersection.
“What the hell?” Zayvion yelled.
“You hit him! You hit my dad!” I fumbled with my seat belt, the door latch, and then was out into the cold and rain, running back, cars honking and swerving around me, back to where my father must have fallen as we ran over the top of him.
There was no one there. Not a mark across the pavement except for the car tires, not a splash of blood against the rainy, dirty asphalt, not a body. Not so much as a single lavender hanky thread.
I blinked and blinked and could not believe what my eyes were telling me. My father was not on the ground, not wedged beneath the car (yes, I turned and looked), not anywhere.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Zayvion was beside me now, standing just out of swinging range. “Allie?”
I couldn’t stop staring at the pavement. Couldn’t unsee what I know I had seen.
“You need to get out of the street,” he said.
Maybe my eyes couldn’t see what I knew must be there, but I had other ways to sense. Other ways to see.
I took a deep breath and drew a glyph for Sight, Taste, and Smell, and let the magic that pooled in me slip up through my bones, my veins, my flesh, and into my fingers to fill that glyph. Magic pulled like a hood over my eyes and senses.
The world broke open in a wild storm of smells, tastes, colors, and shades.
Old lines of magic cobwebbed the buildings. As cars drove around us I could see smaller spells attached to them like vibrant jellyfish, tendrils trailing behind to link to the people in cars. Sharp-edged geometric glyphs pulsed on the light posts, doorways, edges of alleys.
And there, at the corner of my vision, were the watercolor people. They had no magic tied to them, maybe because magic can’t tie to someone who is translucent-I don’t know. They walked along the street, through buildings and cars, as if the city itself did not exist.
They all paused and looked at me.
Again.
Seriously, I just don’t think I’m that interesting. They moved toward me in slow underwater steps, homing in like sharks scenting blood.
I stayed calm, because magic cannot be cast in high states of emotion. I didn’t flinch, didn’t doubt.
Go, me.
Show me, I thought, my fingers tracing an intricate glyph for Reveal. In any trained magic user’s hands, a Reveal spell would uncover the illusion of a thing, strip away its magical covering and let you see the aged skin, the brown grass, the old paint beneath.
But in my hands that glowed with magic, hot on the right, cold on the left, the Reveal spell intensified the world, showing the hard edges of black, white, color, shape, angle, shadow.
Everything was stripped down. Paint seemed to be composed of hundreds of layers, individual raindrops were sharply outlined, and the tread marks from the tires turned into a mosaic of rain and stone and heat.
I looked at my hands.
Wow.
My right hand was luminescent, glowing with fire in neon colors. When I moved my fingers, magic poured out in ribbons, hovered in the air, and then floated back down to wrap around my fingers, where it sank in, beneath my skin, coursing through the heavy swirls of colors up my arm, my chest, to the silk-slender neon threads at the corner of my eye.
My left hand was white and black, the bars of a prison, bands of ebony ringing each joint, the flesh between pale as death. My left hand felt numb, cold, dead. A memory, slight but clear-like a faraway radio tune-came to me. Of Zayvion holding my hands.
“Positive,” he said while lifting my right hand. “Negative,” he said while touching my left. “Very sexy.”
And then he had kissed both of my palms. The electric sensation of his lips on my skin made my knees weak.
Oh.
I glanced over at Zayvion.
But I did not see Zayvion standing there-or rather I saw him in a way I never had before.
Even though he was just over six feet tall, Reveal gave him another half a foot, made him appear wider at the shoulders, thicker through the chest and thighs. More than dark, he was a blackness. His skin flickered with blue-tipped black fire, radiating a cold deadlier than the icy air.
Beneath the night-sky flame of his body was something that resembled glyphing.
Spells in ebony, silver, and coal carved elusive against his skin, even with Reveal. His eyes burned Aztec gold shot through with sharp cracks of obsidian.
“What are you?” I whispered.
My words were like a soft breeze, stirring the flames against his skin so that they shifted and flared blue, indigo, black. He reached for me, and I raised my hands to hold him off.
He touched my right shoulder, and the familiar heat and mint of him washed through my body. He Grounded me, easing the ache of the magic I held.
It felt wonderful. It felt right. And I knew instinctively that this was the way magic was meant to be used.
“Allie,” he said, and it was Zayvion’s voice. Straining to stay calm, but still him, still a man. “Your dad isn’t here. We need to go now. Come with me.”
His words were sweet, seductive darkness. I wanted to walk to him, fall into him, let his darkness fill me.
I took a step back, and his hand fell away from my shoulder. “I can’t. I have to see.”
“Allie.” He looked past me, looked at the watercolor people who were closing in, still slowly, too slowly. If these watercolor people were like the ones outside the coffee shop, as soon as they got close enough, they’d start moving fast-too damn fast.
And I was pretty sure Zayvion could see them. Wasn’t that interesting?
The flames against his body washed blue, indigo, black over the silver glyphs of his skin. “Hurry.”
I knelt where my father’s body should be, pressed my fingertips through the standing water until I touched pavement. I whispered another mantra while a car honked and blinding headlights swerved around us. I opened my mouth and breathed in, getting the smell, the taste of the rain, the pavement, car oil, dirt, on the back of my palate.
I sifted scents for my father-searching for the notes of leather and wintergreen. I smelled all the common odors of the city-the chemical tang of cars and oil and waste. And I smelled the strangely antiseptic odor of falling rain. Beyond that, the stink of diesel, the rubber of tires, the heavy pine of Zayvion’s cologne, and my own sweat mixed with the cheap soap I’d used in the shower this morning.
But I did not smell my father. Not even a hint of him.
“Now, Allie.” Zayvion wove a gly
ph-something that was in the Shield family but twisted toward the center in a way I had never seen before.
He pulled magic from the stores deep beneath the city, and it flickered like electric ribbons up into the invisible glyph in front of him, filling it in until I could see the glyph too.
Magic is fast. Too fast to see until it has been cast.
Well, normally that was true. Apparently when I was using Reveal, I could see magic while it was being used.
How cool was that?
Zayvion glanced down at me. The flames over his skin had gone bloodred, tipped with a silver so dark it hurt to look at. I didn’t know if he was trying to keep from casting a spell or getting ready to Shield the hell out of himself.
I stood. Rain and magic dripped from my fingertips and swirled in metallic colors, joining the stream of water pouring into the storm grate. Magic rushed up into me, through me, from deep below the earth, hot and fast, while I remained cool and calm.
“Can you see them?” I asked.
“Get in the car, Allie,” he said.
“Can you see them?” I asked again.
I really needed him to say yes, to tell me that I was not crazy, not losing other parts of my mind besides my memory. I really needed him to say, yes, there are a bunch of hollow-eyed see-through people marching our way.
“Allie-”
I blinked rain out of my eyes. That was all the time they needed. The watercolor people broke forward, moving fast, so fast that I didn’t get my hands up in time to cast anything.
Zayvion, however, did.
The watercolor people hit the Shield he cast around us in an explosion of sparks that would have made a special-effects director proud.
They all stepped back.
Then one of them-a man in clothing that looked like it belonged to the previous century-extended his hand toward the Shield.
Zayvion’s Shield, a ten-foot-tall and -wide lattice of blue glyphing that strummed with power, stretched out and out toward the man’s hand. The Shield distorted until the edges became a fine mist, and finally the vibrant blue magic became a watercolor fog that streamed toward the man’s hand like smoke from a chimney.
The man opened his mouth wide, wider, empty black eyes unblinking, and inhaled. The mist that had just been a Shield spell flew forward and filled his mouth. He swallowed in huge gulps, throwing his shoulders back and arching his spine as he swallowed and swallowed.
All the watercolor people moaned, low, hungry, like a hard wind blowing over an empty grave. They wanted that. They wanted magic.
They rushed.
Zayvion drew a second glyph.
I was faster.
I traced Hold spells with both hands (yes, I’m spellambidextrous; have I not mentioned that before?) and threw them at the mob ahead and behind us.
Magic licked up my bones, pushed against my skin, and unleashed into the spell.
The watercolor people froze.
They did not look happy about it.
I, frankly, was hella impressed.
“Good,” Zayvion said, like I was a pupil who had just figured out how to concentrate so that a Light spell will reduce weight, not illuminate.
“Now get in the car.”
I had to give the guy props. He didn’t sound the least bit concerned that my spell was dissolving into mist even faster than his had. Didn’t sound worried that it too was being devoured by our ethereal company.
And, as far as I could tell, he didn’t seem bothered by the large crowd of new watercolor people who were trudging in slo-mo down the streets toward us.
I was pretty sure they weren’t just stopping by to cheer on their home team.
“Car, Allie. It’s safer.”
I didn’t move. Call me crazy, but I was not going to leave him out here to fight these things alone. Hells, for all I knew the car wouldn’t do me any good. These things walked through walls.
Zayvion finished the glyph-an intricate, thick-lined beast of a thing-and began chanting.
Chanting.
Okay, I’d done two years at college studying magic. I’d been around magic and my father for most of my life and had watched him do all kinds of spell casting. Ninety-five percent of the people in the city use magic.
And I had not once ever heard anyone chant.
Chant.
What. The. Hell?
The words didn’t sound like a language I recognized, but the magic-oh, sweet loves, the magic-poured up out of the ground, leaping to Zayvion’s body, sparking the glyphs and symbols on his skin to catch with a secondary fire so they seemed to shift and undulate across his skin. Magic rolled up his body in metallic colors like the marks on my arm, bright against black fire.
The man was raw, controlled power, and I wanted to touch him. Wanted to be that with him. He drew his wrist and palms together and then separated his hands in one smooth motion. He spoke a word. It sounded a little like “not” or “nunt.” My ears stopped working for a second-nothing but white noise and a high-pitched ringing.
Then the air in front of Zayvion became hard-I don’t know how else to explain it. The space around him, around me, turned into a thick glass wall, and in that glass wall, currents of gold mist swirled and shifted. Just as I almost made out the glyphs the gold formed, it would change into another glyph, fluid, flowing.
The watercolor people slammed into the glass wall, grappling at it with fingers that could find no purchase.
Zayvion spoke another word, and I could tell he was pouring magic through that word. His leaned forward, both palms extended but not touching the wall. He shifted his stance, leaning into something that looked vaguely tai chi, knees bent, one leg stretched back, torso and arms forward, as if he were pushing against a great weight. And still the magic rushed up his body, molding, whirling through the glyphs and flames against his skin, pouring through his hands into the wall. Raw power I had never seen before.
The glass wall darkened in front of Zayvion. A hole-no, a door or a gate-appeared there, so dark, it hurt to look at it. So I looked away to the edges of the wall that were still snaked with gold glyphs.
Beyond the wall, the watercolor people gathered in a huddle. They weren’t moving now, not even their arms. They did not look happy. Worse, they leaned, no, stretched out toward the black gate thing Zayvion was casting, faces and bodies elongating in a manner that defied the laws of nature. Like watercolor flames caught in an updraft.
Another word from Zay, and the dark gates filled with a rushing stream of light, filled with the watercolor people pouring in off the streets around us and funneling into that black hole. Zayvion slammed his hands together in a resounding clap, and the gate thing closed and was gone, leaving the glass and gold wall still standing.
He chanted again and brought his hands together. Another resounding clap that broke the glyph. The wall shattered into a million translucent droplets of magic that fell from above us, around us, and mixed with rain to splash against the street, where it disappeared into the rain, swirling, down the storm drains.
The watercolor people were gone. Sucked into that black door in the wall that was no longer there.
“Wow,” I breathed.
Zayvion tipped his head to the side, working out stiffness. Then he put both his hands in his pockets and turned to face me. Zen Zay. Now that I wasn’t pulling on magic, he just looked like a guy in a knit hat and ratty blue ski jacket.
And he was so damn much more.
“Let’s get out of the street,” he said. “We’re going to get run over if we’re not careful.”
He took a step toward the car, and I did too. My mind wasn’t doing so good keeping up with everything that had just happened. For right now, I decided to cut myself a little slack.
I got into the car, even wetter than I’d been just minutes before. I glanced at the clock on the dash.
That entire altercation had taken less than a few minutes.
Zayvion got in the driver’s side and put the car in gear. Traffic b
ehind us honked, and a car passed on the right. The driver gave us the middle finger.
Zayvion rolled through the intersection, taking the normal street into the normal city, driving through the normal rain.
When we were just a few blocks from my apartment, he spoke. “Are you okay?”
Why did people always ask me that?
“I’m fine. That was some… spectacular magic you threw around back there.”
“Hmm.”
“So what are they? Those people?” I asked.
He double-parked next to my apartment building. “We’re here.”
I glanced at the clock again. I had just over an hour until I needed to be at the Hound meeting. Plenty of time to shower and change. And I was not about to let Zayvion wander off without coming clean about what had just happened.
“Why don’t you come on up?” I said.
He took a deep breath, leaned his head back against his window, and looked at me. “You’re going to grill me about all this, aren’t you?”
“Have I told you lately that you are a very astute man, Mr. Jones?”
“No.” He paused, seemed to be weighing something. “You saw them?”
“Yes, I did.” I gave him a level gaze.
“And you saw your father?”
“Why don’t you come up and we’ll talk about it?”
It took him a moment more to decide. “I want to. How about we make a date of it instead?”
“What?”
“A date. It’s a custom that’s been around for a long time. It usually involves two people going out for drinks, dinner, and companionship.”
“Ha-ha. You’re just trying to dodge me, aren’t you?”
“No.” I knew he was not lying. “There are some things I need to take care of. Appointments I have to keep. I’m free tonight. Does that work for you?”
“No, I’m Hounding tonight. Tomorrow?”
“For dinner?”
I hesitated. Did I have time for dinner with him? I didn’t know what Pike would want to do once I told him about Trager. I didn’t know if I’d be in protective custody. But I didn’t want to miss my chance to get information out of Zayvion, or miss what might be my last chance to be with him.
“Maybe around five,” I said. “You might want to call first.” I made it sound all hard-to-get instead of worried, and apparently, he bought it.