by Becca Blake
All the weapons I’d purchased before were already enchanted when I brought them home. I’d never had any reason to go to the alchemy lab before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
A bell chimed as I entered a dimly lit waiting room. A young woman who looked to be in her teens sat behind the reception desk. She focused intently on her computer screen, either not noticing or not caring that I’d walked in.
I cleared my throat.
“Let me finish this raid,” she said without even glancing at me.
As I wandered around the empty waiting room, I turned my attention to a pile of magazines in the corner and flipped through the one on top, which had a recent interview with the president. Haygrove isolated us enough from the rest of the country that civilian politics didn’t have much of an impact on us. Hell, I didn’t even know which political party the current president belonged to. The civilians who read this sort of magazine had no idea what was really out there. In a way, I envied them.
A loud curse told me the receptionist finished her game, so I tossed the magazine back onto the pile and returned to the counter.
The woman’s name tag, visible now that she’d turned her body to face forward, informed me her name was Judy. She tapped on the keyboard, and her wandering eyes drifted toward the monitor even as she spoke.
“What do you need?”
“I have a weapon that was dropped off for enchanting, and I was wondering if it was done yet.”
“You could have just called.” Judy minimized her game and scrolled through something on the screen. “Name?”
“Riley Collins.”
“I’m not seeing anything for you in our system, but you can head back and check with Dr. Moran, if you want.”
Judy pushed a button, and the door next to her desk slid open with a loud buzz. She turned back to her monitor, and the clashing swords and growling monsters returned.
The door slid shut behind me, and I found myself in a short corridor with three doors, all labeled with golden script: ENCHANTING, STUDY, and GREENHOUSE.
I tried the closest door, the one that led to the study, first. I had barely pulled my hand back from knocking when the door opened a crack, just enough for a short man to peer up at me. His unkempt, dark hair was highlighted with unruly grey strands that stuck out in every direction, and the thick lenses that rested underneath his bushy brows exaggerated his dark brown eyes.
“Didn’t Judy tell you I’m not to be disturbed? What do you want?” He spoke quickly, blending the words together like a TV announcer rushing through terms the law required him to mention. He blinked rapidly as he waited for my response.
“You’re the alchemist? Dr. Moran?” I asked.
His eyebrows dipped low. “Ed is fine. But, yes.”
I didn’t know what I expected, but I’d always imagined the town alchemist as someone more… professional.
“I’m sorry for bothering you. I was just wondering if you’d had time to enchant my weapon.”
The alchemist groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Did she check the computer system? We’ve got a computer system for a reason.”
“She said I wasn’t in the system, but she seemed a little preoccupied,” I said.
This was met with another groan. “I always tell her there’s no point fighting digital demons when there are real ones out there. She doesn’t listen to me, though. How long ago did you say you dropped off your weapon?”
“Yesterday.”
Ed threw his head back and laughed. “I’m very busy right now. That’s not nearly enough time. I can’t add another weapon enchantment to my schedule for at least…” He counted on his fingers. “Two weeks. No! One month.”
“I’ll be back out in the field by then,” I said. “Commander Orion told me you’d be able to get it done sooner.”
“Can’t do it, Miss. Out you go. Leave it with Judy. She’ll call when it’s done.” He waved his hands at me to shoo me away, then started to shut the door in my face.
I wedged my boot in between the door and the wall to hold it open. “Orion already left it here.”
“Get a different weapon from the armory until it’s done, then.” He shooed me again.
“I already have one. This one is important to me. It’s a gift from my dad.”
The alchemist’s head cocked to the side as he looked me over. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and squinted. “Ah! You’re Owen Collins’s girl, aren’t you? You won’t take no for an answer, I expect. Fine. I owe your dad a favor, anyway. Come along.”
I followed him across the hall to the enchanting room. A shelving unit with glass doors along the back wall held a myriad of tools and vials with strangely colored substances, the contents of which I couldn’t even begin to guess. Five metal disks of various sizes hung from the ceiling, surrounding a pedestal in the middle of the otherwise empty floor. The disks were covered with symbols that I didn’t recognize as part of any human language.
A mounted rack held a variety of weapons, and I picked mine out from the lineup.
Ed took it from me and turned it over in his hands, examining it for several minutes before he set it on the pedestal. “This is a fine blade. It will serve you well.”
He retrieved a small packet from a drawer and replaced his glasses with a thick pair of golden goggles. Without stopping to ask my permission, he cleaned off my arm with a small wipe and punctured my skin with the needle from the packet.
I yelped in surprise and jerked my arm away, but the damage had already been done. He handed me the rest of the packet, then hurried back to the center of the room with my blood. He clicked the syringe into a metal case and added a thick red substance from another vial. Using the device as a pen, he drew a circle and strange runes around the blade with the mixture.
“The wonders of modern medicine!” he said while he worked. “No more dirty blades to the palm like they used to do for these rituals. A dreadfully painful place to make a cut, by the way. I never quite understood that. But we have these sterilized needles now—much better!”
“What was that for?” I found a cotton pad in the packet and held it against my arm to stop the bleeding. “I didn’t have to do this for my last enchanted weapon.”
“Oh, this isn’t typical.” He stayed in constant motion, bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet, even when he stood in one place. “I don’t do this for everyone. Mostly the commanders and Council members.”
“You don’t do what, exactly?”
“A soul binding. This will bind the blade to you, help it guide your strikes—very useful trick in combat.”
With the remaining blood, he drew more intricate details within the circle to create symbols similar to the ones on the disks above us.
I inched closer. As annoyed as I was about the invasive blood draw, curiosity about the process got the better of me. I knew next to nothing about how alchemy worked. “Where did you learn how to do all of this?”
Ed removed the empty syringe from the metal case and tossed it in the trash can, ignoring my question. He closed the door and dimmed the lights, then paused his work for the first time since we entered the enchanting room.
“Ms. Collins, do you know why humans can use magic?”
“Of course,” I said. “Controlling our emotions lets us harness the energy—”
“No, no, no. No. Not how. Why. Why we have the ability to channel that energy in the first place.”
It had been years since I learned the fundamentals of magic in training, but I’d never wondered why humans could use magic. We’d only been taught how, and since that was all I needed to know to do my job, it had never crossed my mind to ask for more details.
“Of course you don’t.” His grin looked devilish in the low lighting. “No one talks about it. It’s not a secret or anything. People just don’t care about the ‘w
hy’ of it anymore.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. I was sure he was putting on a show for dramatic effect, but that didn’t make it any less creepy.
“Magic is not native to this world,” Ed continued. “It can’t be found naturally on our plane of existence. It all comes from elsewhere. The magic we use as Arbiters, the dark magic used by Oathbreakers and cultists—it all shares the same origin: dragon blood.”
“Dragon blood,” I repeated. It didn’t sound any less ridiculous coming from my own lips. This had to be an elaborate prank.
Ed ignored my skepticism and nodded enthusiastically. “When the rift to our world was first opened in ancient times, the dragons came through first. Before the demons. They could change their shape to look like us, to live among humans. And as you can imagine, some of them were… curious.”
“Curious?”
He chuckled like a middle school boy who just told a dirty joke. “Yes. And their blood has been passed down for thousands of years. At this point, most humans have at least a little. You can’t do anything with it without training, of course. Like a muscle you don’t know you have unless you’re shown how to use it. But the ability is there for just about everyone.”
“Assuming that’s all true, what happened to the dragons?”
“Gone. Dead. Left. Doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that we have their blood, and no matter how diluted it gets, it gives us their magic. They were the ones who showed us how to enchant our weapons and fight back against the demons once they arrived.”
I was starting to regret asking him for details. Not ten minutes ago, the man had been trying to get rid of me. Now, he was taking the time to tell me fairy tales as though they were a history lesson.
“What you’re about to see here today is a rare gift. I don’t take the time to show this to many. Hope you’re ready.” He dusted a sparkling powder over the pedestal and turned the lights all the way off, flooding the room with darkness.
A shudder rippled through my spine as the alchemist began chanting in a language unlike any I’d ever heard. The noises were sharp and rasping, sprinkled with guttural grunts. An echo followed his voice.
I gradually became aware that the echo was my own voice, somehow forming the same strange noises. Horrified, I tried to stop speaking, but the attempt was met with a sharp pain in my throat.
The disks on the ceiling glowed with red light that came from the carved symbols, and the blood on the pedestal took on a similar glow.
I looked down and realized that the blood in my veins glowed the same bright red beneath my skin, burning me from within. My scream caught in my chest as I pressed on with the foreign speech and continued the alchemist’s chant. I wanted to run, to leave the alchemy lab behind, but some invisible force locked my legs in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop chanting, no matter how much I wanted to.
Between the panels above us, a cloud the deep color of blood formed. Within it was an unfathomable world, filled with blood and fire and screaming.
Beside me, Ed appeared unaffected by the horror above, his expression almost serene. He picked up the sword and closed my fingers around the hilt. He guided my arm upward until the blade was fully immersed in the cloud.
Until even my hand crossed the threshold into the cloud and the heat of flames licked my skin.
He let go.
Burning vibrations rushed up my arm and traveled through my entire body with a fiery sensation that tore me apart from within. The pain would kill me.
Just when I was certain I could take no more, it was all over. The scream I had been holding in clawed its way out of my throat. I fell to the floor, gasping for air. The burning sensation stopped as soon as the portal disappeared, but the searing memory of it tingled in my veins.
Ed turned on the lights and knelt beside me. “Are you alright?”
“What in the hell was that?” I asked.
“Apt word choice,” he said with a soft chuckle. “There’s no way to prepare someone for the intensity of the infernal plane, so I’ve found it’s best not to bother trying.”
He held out his hands for the sword again, and I passed it over. Turning it over as he had before the ritual began, he examined it. He hummed his approval and handed it back to me.
“Good, good. Passing through the infernal plane will allow the blade to strike demonic forces, of course. I added a pinch of magic for you so civilians won’t notice a big sword when you’re walking down the street—better to avoid attention, yes? And the blood magic binds this weapon to you—only to you. You did well, Ms. Collins. Consider me impressed. Most can hardly function after seeing the infernal plane for the first time.”
I took the sword back from him. It looked just as it had before, but it felt different somehow. It belonged with my arm.
“Well, um. Thanks for your time,” I said weakly. It seemed such an inadequate thing to say to someone who had just shown me hell as a personal favor.
“Don’t mention it.” He gave me a dismissive wave. “No, seriously. Don’t tell anyone. I don’t have time to do a blood ritual for everyone who walks in my office—I’ve got too long of a to-do list already. I’ll never have time to myself again if I start blood binding every weapon that comes through my office. Tell your father we are even.”
***
I kicked off my boots and rested my new sword against the wall in the entryway. After the day I’d had, I couldn’t wait to throw myself on the couch and find something to spend the night binge watching. I turned into the living room and realized with a heavy sigh that I’d forgotten about Jacob Thorne, who I found sprawled out watching some obnoxious conspiracy theory documentary.
“There’s space on the recliner over there,” he said, not even bothering to turn in my direction.
“I really don’t want to watch this crap,” I said. I didn’t have the energy to argue with him, so I moved on to the kitchen.
Orion sat at the kitchen table, a book in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. “Figured I’d come over and see how the two of you were doing.”
“I picked up my sword from the alchemy lab today.” I tossed bread and lunch meat onto the counter. Bologna sandwiches—my favorite gourmet meal.
“Oh, yeah? So what did you think of our resident alchemist?”
“He was… interesting.”
Orion chuckled. “Well, you don’t gaze into the infernal plane everyday like he does and come out of it mentally unscathed.”
“He did some sort of weird blood magic with me. Kinda freaky.”
At that, Orion dog-eared a page and set the book down on the table. “Ed did a binding ritual for you?”
I nodded.
“He must have really liked you.”
“He said it was a favor to Dad. That reminds me—have you heard from him since he left town?”
“Nothing yet. It’s not like Owen to not check in like this.” He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. “I’m sure he’s fine, though.”
If that reassurance was for my benefit, it didn’t do much to convince me. Dad never went more than a couple days without checking in when he was out on a hunt, and Orion and I did the same. It was one of the unspoken rules of our family.
I threw the bologna back in the fridge and slammed the door shut. Before I could join Orion at the table with my sandwich, someone pounded on the front door.
“Sit. Enjoy your lunch.” Orion disappeared down the hallway.
Without bothering to set my plate down, I followed him to the entryway. Something about the urgency of the knocking didn’t feel right.
Orion opened the door to find Marcus Thorne standing on my porch.
“Commander Orion. I wasn’t expecting to find you here tonight.”
“Your son’s inside. I’m assuming that’s why you’re here?”
“I heard about h
is head injury from the staff at the clinic. I hope he’s recovering well. But no, that’s not why I’m here.” Marcus folded his hands together in front of his stomach and looked over Orion’s shoulder at me. “Ms. Collins, there’s something important we need to discuss.”
“No,” Orion said, his voice barely above a whisper as he wrapped his arm around me. His hand was a heavy weight on my shoulder.
My hold on the ceramic plate tightened. Council members rarely made house calls. Had he heard about the way I used dark magic at the warehouse? Did he know Orion was covering for me? My heart pounded as all of those fears raced through my mind.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
His gaze flicked to Orion, then settled on me once more. “We learned today that Owen Collins has fallen in the line of duty. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
The plate in my hand crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces I could never hope to repair.
Chapter Nine
There were no bodies to burn. Instead, poster-sized photos of Owen Collins and the three members of his team were framed, and on display outside for their joint funeral service at the cemetery.
I stared at the photo—at the familiar laugh lines around my father’s eyes, his easygoing smile, and the striking green eyes I inherited from him. It was surreal looking at the printed image and knowing it was supposed to represent my dad’s corpse.
Marcus hadn’t been very clear on the details. All he told me was that Dad’s team died while on a mission, and their bodies weren’t able to be recovered. Whatever happened, it was above my clearance level. Not knowing how my father died made his loss hurt even more. I hoped Orion would at least talk to me later if he learned more details.
Part of me wondered if they held the truth back from me so I wouldn’t rush off to seek vengeance. And, in all fairness, they wouldn’t be wrong. Whoever—or whatever—killed my father, I wanted them dead, and there was no doubt in my mind that I’d run off without the Council’s permission if I had to.