Silver Magi 2

by D. Levesque

“I am not sure. I wish we could separate. But I am not sure if you have enough of the Voice to control them as we did with these two. We can’t have someone who is back to their normal self again stumbling around,” I grumble.

  “Yeah, I doubt I have the Voice that you and your mother have. Let’s keep it the way we are doing it. Can you ask Roger how many people are in the house?”

  “Let me ask. Roger, Lina wants to know how many people are in the house?” I say out loud.

  “Sir Stewart says there are another five guards. How many did you take out outside?” Roger asks me after a couple of seconds.

  “Shit, we only took down two so far,” I groan at him.

  “Then you’d better get to work Brandon, we need that book,” Lina says with a grin.

  So for the next five guards, we use the Voice to stop them, and Lina stabs them with a silver needle. It works really well until we get to the sixth guard. This one is in a robe and is looking at a phone in his hand. Somehow he must sense us because he looks up as we approach. I am not sure how, since we are both being so damn quiet. He is about to scream out, but suddenly there is a silver needle sticking out of his chest. He grabs at it and pulls it out, and we notice there isn’t any purple fire coming out of him.

  I use the Voice and say, “Do not move or scream.”

  “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you just pissed off the wrong person,” he growls. This guy is tall and wide. Shit, he reminds me of one of those goons I first met outside of my office. He pulls out a gun and shoots me, I feel the bullet hit me in my lower chest, and the force of it throws me backward.

  “Brandon!” screams Lina in fear.

  I am too busy gasping in pain from the bullet impact to answer her, but what surprises me is when I put my hand to my chest, I don’t feel a wound or any blood. But I can tell I have a couple of broken ribs since it hurts to breathe. I hear more gunfire, and then I suddenly hear a gurgling scream that is quickly cut off. Shaking my head to clear it, I look up and see Lina in her jaguar form standing over the robed figure, or what is left of him.

  He is so bloody and mangled that the only reason I know he is human is because I saw him before Lina got to him. I look over at her. Her mouth is covered in blood, and she is growling over the body.

  “Lina,” I start to say, but my voice is cut off as I start to cough, causing extreme pain in my ribs. Her head turns to me swiftly, and her jaguar eyes open wide in shock. Suddenly she is in her half-hybrid form and is running towards me. She gets to my side and grabs me as I try to sit up.

  “How?” she asks. “He shot you! I saw him shoot you!”

  “Not sure,” I wheeze at her. “But I might have some broken ribs.”

  “Right! Let’s see if I remember this,” she says, putting her hand over my chest and closing her eyes. Abruptly the pain from the broken ribs eases off, and I can breathe normally again. She opens her eyes and seeing me looking at her in surprise, she says, “Yes! It worked!”

  "Now we know both you and Sylvana can do it. Can Johanne do it also?"

  “I am not sure. I honestly just panicked and wanted to heal you,” Lina says with a worried smile. “But how the hell do you not have a bullet hole in your chest!” she asks, putting her hand on my chest to emphasize her point.

  “Not sure,” I tell her, looking over at what was left of the dead person. I assume he was what Roger calleds a magic user, but I don’t get it. Why did he shoot me instead of using magic? Lina must have seen my look and figured out what I was thinking.

  “They don’t use magic as we do, Brandon. They use magical items. Human mages, as they call themselves, use items that have been imbued with magic. They steal most of the items of course, as the Elves do not give items away to humans, ever.”

  “Then what was it he shot me with?” I ask her.

  Getting up, she moves back towards the mangled human, and bends down and picks up a gun. She brings it back to me, but when I get a closer look at it I see that it’s not a gun. I mean, it’s shaped like a gun, but it’s more of a wooden stick with carvings all over it, and around it is a metal frame built to make it look like a handgun. When the robed guy took it out and shot at me,, I just assumed that’s what it was.

  Looking at Lina in confusion, I ask her, “So if it wasn’t a bullet that came out, what shot me?”

  “I am uncertain, but I would say it was a ball of magic that impacted you. It didn’t go through you, so your Incubus skin must have stopped it. But I guess the broken ribs means that you can still feel the kinetic effect of it.”

  “Well, yeah. That fucking hurt. I honestly thought he shot me there,” I tell her with a sigh. “So, this is one magic-user down. I assume any other ones will have something similar to attack us with?”

  “Yeah, I would-,” she starts to say, but stops when we hear someone calling out.

  “Bill! You out here?” a male voice calls out in annoyance.

  “Can I try the Voice?” she whispers to me quickly.

  “No,” I whisper back, shaking my head. “I am not sure why, but my Voice didn’t work on this mage, as you call him. I would say if this is another robed one, we will need to kill him.”

  “Bill, seriously, if you are listening to that fucking music again with those fucking earbuds, I will kick your fucking ass,” the voice says again.

  At that comment, both Lina and I look at each other in surprise, and she mouths, “Earbuds!”

  Nodding in understanding, I look in the direction the voice is coming from. Maybe that mage didn’t resist me. He just couldn’t hear me.

  Heading towards us through the woods is another robed male, but this one is much older and much bigger than the other one was. Lina stands up quickly and says in a demanding voice, “Do not move, and do not scream.”

  The man stops dead in his tracks. I can tell that the Voice worked, but he is fighting it, and I can see him shaking and plodding forward. Looking at him, I say, “Do not move and do not scream.”

  He stops dead in his tracks this time and doesn’t move a muscle.

  “Well,” Lina says, disappointed. “Good to know it half works.” With that, she disappears and reappears behind the man. She has a silver needle in her hand and jabs him in the neck. As he falls, we don’t see any purple smoke or fire.

  “No smoke?” I ask her.

  “No smoke,” she nods.

  “Why wasn’t he Infected as well?” I ask her curiously.

  “I would say it’s the Organization. They both have that look,” she says, looking down at the dead body and sneering before spitting on him.

  “Yeah, the first one reminded me of the goons who shot at me when I first got introduced to the Organization,” I tell Lina, nodding to her.

  “Does he have one of those weapons on him?” I ask, pointing down to the dead man at her feet.

  Reaching down, she searches the man and comes up holding something that looks similar to what the first man had, but bigger and bulkier. The first guy had something that looked like a wooden stick on a gunstock. This one has rock where the wood was, but the rest is the same.

  “Yep, what should we do with them?” Lina asks me.

  “I would say, give them to Sylvana. If what you said is true and the Elves built them, they should get them back.”

  “Smart idea. I am sure Sylvana would love to give these back to her people.”

  “So do Vampires have items like that also?” I ask her curiously.

  “Of course, but we buy them from the Elves. And magical items aren’t cheap either. While they might sell them to us Vampires and the Werefolk, they make us pay through the nose for them . I would say the two we have here would fetch in human terms, roughly two million dollars,” she says.

  “What the fuck! Are you serious?” I ask her in astonishment.

  “Nope,” she says with a grin. The expression on her face turns serious. “So the fact that the Organization has two of these guys here means it’s planning something big,” she says. “And the
fact that they are not Infected doesn’t bode well. There has to be a reason why the Void didn’t want to Infect these two.”

  “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. We need to get to this Sir Stewart guy fast. Shall we finish finding the guards out here and head in?”

  “Yep, let’s clean up the outside now that we got the mages,” she says, nodding her head affirmatively. Hopefully there aren’t any more.

  Over the next twenty minutes, we find the rest of the guards outside and dispose of them. Or at least dispose of the Void inside them. Like with the rest, the purple flame and smoke emerges as Lina stabs them. We also find out that Lina can use the Voice on them. Once we finish the last one and tell him to sleep, we look towards the large house.

  “All good, Roger? We just took out the last one out here. We are about to head into the house,” I say out loud.

  “Yep. Someone came in, but I took them out,” he says, not elaborating. Knowing him, he bashed their head in, probably with the silver on his ball to kill the Void.

  “So that leaves four of them. Right, let’s get this over with,” I say.

  “I thought there were five in the house?” Lina says.

  “Roger did his head-bashing trick,” I tell her with a grin.

  “You go, Roger!” Lina says with a big grin.

  “Damn, I knew I liked her for a reason,” Roger says in my right ear.

  “He says thanks,” I tell her with a laugh.

  “That’s not what I said!” Roger says indignantly.

  Instead of answering him, I head towards the house. I know he can see through my eye if he wants to, so I know he knows I am ignoring him on purpose. Once we get closer to the big house, I see that it’s even bigger than I thought. Think of a mansion in the woods. That is what this is. Though, instead of brick and mortar, it’s made out of wood. Fancy wood.

  Knowing that going to the door would not be a smart idea, we look for a lower level window with no lights on. Finding one, I look inside, and even though it’s dark I can see well enough to tell it’s a bedroom. Looking at the bed, I see that nobody is sleeping in it. I try to open the window, but it’s locked.

  “Shit, it’s locked,” I whisper to Lina, who looks at me oddly. “What?”

  She mouths to me, “Shadow Walker.”

  “What? I don’t get it,” I tell her quietly.

  She sighs and shakes her head. She looks away from me and into the room, and suddenly she is gone. I gasp and then look in the room, and I see her looking at me and waving with a grin on her face.

  Shit! Of course. We walk in the shadows. Things like windows mean nothing. So following her lead, I look at the shadow in the room and use it as a doorway to enter the room. I appear next to Lina, who just looks at me and chuckles, shaking her head. I hear her say under her breath, “Newb,” as she turns towards the door.

  She stops and puts her ear to it, and I guess she doesn’t hear anything since she opens it slowly. The door is new, thank God, and doesn’t make any noise. Well, one thing going for us is this place looks relatively new, so squeaky doors and floorboards shouldn’t be a problem.

  I follow behind her. She looks left, so I look right. Not seeing anything, we both step out into the dimly lit hallway. We look at each other questioningly while trying to figure out which way we should go. Lina simply looks at me and shrugs.

  Guess I am in charge. So I point to the right, and we both head down the hallway quietly. Once we get to the end, I hear voices. Stopping just before we get to the corner, I look at Lina to see if she is ready. I hope there are only two of them, since she can take one, and I can take the other. Thinking of that, I point her to the left, and I point to myself and the right. She nods, understanding. I hold up three fingers and point around the corner, and again she nods.

  So I count with my fingers, and on three, we both burst around the corner. As I had feared, there were four of them instead of two. Quickly, two of them end up with silver needles in their eyes, and purple smoke and fire emerges from the wounds. The other two are about to bring up handguns, but both Lina and I say, “Do not move and do not scream,” causing them to stop in a shuddering motion, with their guns halfway up. The other two are on the ground screaming in pain, with their hands over their eyes, which are now bloody. Lina runs up to both of them and pulls the needles out of each of their eyes, putting her hand over one of them.

  Knowing what she is doing, I do the same to the other one. As I heal him and the pain goes away, he starts to relax. He moves his hand away from his face and looks at me, and I say, “Sleep,” and he crashes back down onto the floor, out like a light. I hear Lina tell her guy the same thing, and I hear him thud to the ground.

  Looking at the other two who are still standing in place, Lina passes me one of the two needles she had pulled out, and I take it. Nodding to her, I walk up to one of the immobile men, and I jab the needle into his arm, not bothering to clean the needle first. Trust me buddy, it’s either the Void or any possible disease that guy has, so I would choose the latter. Once the fire and smoke are done, his eyes clear up, and he blinks, confused.

  “Sleep,” I tell him, and I catch him before he ends up crashing on the ground.

  I look over at Lina just as her guard’s eyes clear up, and then they open wide in horror before she says, “Sleep,” as well. Right, she is still in her half hybrid form, so pretty scary looking. She doesn’t catch her guy, and he falls down hard.

  “Oopsie,” she says, putting a hand to her mouth.

  I just look at her and chuckle. “At least heal him in case he has a concussion, babe. His head did hit pretty hard.”

  “Fine,” she says with a sigh and bends down and puts her hand over him.

  With that done, we head further into the house, and then Roger says, “Head left and then take the second door on the right.”

  “Roger says to take a left and then it’s the second door on our right,” I tell Lina.

  “Thanks Roger,” she says, waving at me. Great, now I am a type of communication device?

  Once we are at the aforementioned door, Lina opens it without a care and walks right in. Following behind her, I walk in and stop and look around. The room is an office of sorts. There’s a big desk, with who I know to be Sir William Stewart sitting behind it. Next to him is Roger, floating. I see he is black, not silver. Interesting.

  “I would assume you are this Brandon that Roger has been telling me about?” the man says in an Irish accent. Yep, that’s William Stewart, alright. I have seen interviews with him.

  “I am,” I tell him, but don’t offer to shake his hand. “Now, what is this about a book?” I ask him, getting right to the point.

  “Yes, I have a book,” he says, nodding at me. “I wish asylum first,” he says.

  “Well, I am sure the Elves or even the Werfolk would be willing to talk to you about that,” I tell him with a nod.

  “No, I don’t think you understand Brandon. I want asylum with you, as the only living Elveesian on Earth, and I am sure the galaxy,” he says intently, not looking away from me.

  I stop and stare at him, and then I glare at Roger, assuming he told him. His next words prove otherwise. “Don’t look at me. I told you he was a Demon.”

  “Which means nothing to me,” I tell him.

  “What’s an Elveesian?” Lina asks. Shit, I didn’t want that name getting out. Looking at her, I debate telling her to forget it using the Voice, but decide if she is going to be one of my mates, she should know.

  “Let’s just say that they were the progenitors of your race, and the Elves and well, to be honest, every race out there that is known,” I tell her with a sigh.

  She looks confused, but then her eyes grow big and round. Turning back to Sir William Stewart, I use the Voice to ask him, “How do you know that name?”

  He suddenly puts both his hands on the desk and I can see that he is trying to fight the compulsion to answer me. His hands, his human-looking hands, are making gouges in the wooden desktop and I
can see a vein in his neck that, well, to me, looks like it’s about to pop.

  “I know,” he growls slowly, “because I am a Demonian,” and then he slumps into his chair, exhausted.

  “Shit,” he says tiredly. “If I wasn’t sure before, I am now. Fuck, I could never get used to that Voice of theirs,” he says, shaking his head ruefully.

  “What? You have met one?” I ask him in shock. How is that even possible? That would make him millions of years old!

  Roger asks the question I was thinking of asking myself. “How is that possible? That would make you millions of years old!”

  “Yeah, well. I am. Sort of,” he says with a sigh. “I was put into cryogenic suspension by one of the Council of Elveesians in case something like this happened.”

  “What? They knew this would happen?” I tell him in disbelief.

  “Well, not this specifically, but I was to be returned to the world of the living if and when the system detected the emergence of an Elveesian once again.”

  “So you have been in this world now for what? A week?” I ask him, confused since I had only come into my power less than a week ago.

  Shaking his head, he says, “No, I came back 32 years ago. But I got caught by the Void immediately.”

  “That makes no sense. I hadn’t come into my power then! I was born 32 years ago,” I tell him, confused.

  “Bingo. The day you were born, I was awakened. But I guess the Void knew about me because it had someone waiting for me, and they were able to take over my body,” he says with disgust.

  “All right, so say I believe this. Why would they awaken you when I was born?” I ask him slowly.

  “Easy, I was to show you how to use your magic,” he says with a grin.

  “Magic? I already know magic,” I tell him. With that, I call up a ball of light.

  Laughing out loud, he looks at the ball of light floating next to me and points to it, and the ball disappears. I don’t mean it just pops. I mean, I can feel the disconnection of the magic to the ball in a physical way. I look at him in surprise.

  “That’s not magic, Brandon. This is magic.” With that, he swirls his finger around, and just as suddenly as my ball of light disappeared, the room we are in disappears, and we are floating in space. I mean, we are actually floating in space, over the earth. I reach my hands up in shock at not losing my breath in space, but I hear him laughing.