“Are you going to tell me what happened to you?”
Chase sat in a ratty armchair, elbows on his knees and a serious expression of concern etched on his face. I could see the wheels turning in his head, and I briefly considered feeding him a lie to protect him from the truth of what I was and what I had to do next.
“Something attacked me,” I finally admitted.
“Like, a dog or something?”
“This is going to sound crazy, but I need you to listen quietly for a minute, okay?”
Chase nodded.
“First off, magic is real.” This was turning out to be more challenging than I’d anticipated. I’d never had to explain any of this to anyone before, and I didn’t really know where to begin. “I’m a mage, and I’ve been working as a freelance consultant, helping people solve problems. Someone hired me to look into the death of her husband, and for the last forty-eight hours, I’ve been tracking a supernatural killer that I’m starting to suspect is really only hired muscle for someone working behind the scenes.”
“Wait a second,” Chase said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Wouldn’t you be a witch? I mean, if what you’re saying is true — and for the record, I’m not convinced you’re not experiencing some kind of psychotic break right now — doesn’t that make you a witch? You know, because you’re a girl?”
I shut my eyes and took a few measured breaths. I reminded myself that Chase was a friend, and that I didn’t have enough energy in me to burn away every hair on his body anyway.
“I’m a mage. Gender has nothing to do with it. Witches work with external forces that they dra— you know what? It’s too much to get into right now. Just accept that I’m a mage, okay?”
“Sure, whatever.” Chase scrunched up his face and thought about what I’d told him. “If something attacked you, then what happened to it? Are we in danger here? This guy isn’t going to track us down here, is he?”
“I don’t think so. There’s a good chance I killed it, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it found a way to escape the fire. Even so, I don’t think it has the ability to track me directly.”
“Fire?” Chase went to his desk and came back with an open laptop. He loaded up YouTube, typed a few keywords into the search box and pushed play on shaky cell phone footage of a blazing inferno at the edge of Chinatown.
“Alex, this isn’t far from where I picked you up. Are you trying to tell me you did this with your mutant powers or whatever?”
“I’m not one of the X-Men,” I growled. “I’m a mage.”
“So you speak Parseltongue and are fighting a Dark Wizard who shall not be named?”
“More Harry Dresden than Harry Potter.”
Chase gave me a blank stare. “Who?”
“Never mind.”
His eyes flicked to the now covered wound across my back, and I could see the wheels turning. Chase was probably my best friend, but dealing with real life was not one of his strong points. He had a near encyclopedic knowledge of geek culture, and he was a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with, but when he’d come into his trust fund at eighteen, he’d essentially decided to walk away from responsibility wherever possible. Chase was the guy you went to when you wanted to forget about your problems and frag Xbox noobs for a while. He wasn’t the guy you called on when you wanted to talk through a tough personal problem.
“Let’s say for a minute you’re serious—”
“I am being serious,” I interjected.
“—what makes you so sure someone is trying to kill you specifically? How do you know this wasn’t a case of wrong place, wrong time?”
“Three people have died because of me already,” I said. My voice faltered a little, and I felt excess moisture collecting in the corners of my eyes. “I watched one of them walk into a trap set inside my apartment door. There’s no way you can convince me it wasn’t meant for me. The guy that died was only there because he was trying to help me. I might as well have killed him myself.”
I tucked my face into the pillow and let slip a few silent tears for the swath of death I’d left in my wake. What had begun as an exciting new case had left me directly to blame for the deaths of three people before two days had even passed. Deeply repressed memories of an eight-year-old girl surrounded by mage fire bubbled to the surface of my consciousness. Much as I tried to forget it, this wasn’t the first time people had died because of me.
I’d been trying to ignore the fact that the mage fire spell in Xiang Wei’s office had been far more powerful than I’d intended. It should have been a targeted blast directed at the creature attacking me, but the last thing I’d seen before fleeing down the stairs was a raging inferno that had engulfed the entire office. Fire crews were going to have a hell of a time putting that thing out, and the thought that my act might have injured or killed innocent bystanders in the area prompted a new wave of choking sobs.
“Hey now,” said Chase. I felt the warmth of his hand on my uninjured shoulder. “It’s okay. Whatever it is you think you’re responsible for, I bet it’s not really your fault. If you’re trying to track down a killer, and people decided to help you do that, they had to know the risks. The fault is with whoever, or whatever is trying to hurt you.”
While that might have been true for Brody, it didn’t make me feel much better about Xiang Wei or Samuel Jenkins. Whoever those two had been as people, good or bad, they hadn’t deserved to die for mere association with me. Or in Xiang’s case, the simple possibility of my searching him out.
Worse, it wasn’t remotely true for the screams that haunted my darkest nightmares. There was no way to rationalize away the responsibility I felt for those deaths. I’d spent years trying to convince myself that I’d been too young and ignorant of my powers. No one had told me what I was. I’d had no way to know what sort of chaos I was capable of calling down around me.
I’d once torn a minivan sized hole in the roof of a foster family’s house when I’d lashed out in the throes of a nightmare. With no one to teach me restraint, I’d snapped Timothy Renfield’s arm with nothing more than a thought after he’d called me a pathetic orphan in front of our entire fourth grade class. Unbridled power had surged outward at the slightest provocation until I’d been old enough to figure out that I had to find a way to control it.
Bad things happened when I was hurt or afraid, and for most of my childhood I was never not one of the two. Eventually I’d turned to chemicals to numb myself into non-reaction, but the kind of shit that happens to a thirteen-year-old drug addict living on the streets is so fucked up that not even the strongest opiates could keep my growing power from slipping free. Puberty is probably awkward and terrifying for most kids, but for an untrained mage it’s absolute hell. It was like the magic was fighting me for control of my actions. Had I not almost killed myself by injecting so much heroin I could have stopped a linebacker’s heart, I’m not sure what would have happened to me.
It wasn’t until much later in life that I’d learned what fate befalls a magic user who fails to take control of their gift. Those who succumb are almost always rendered insane. The Conclave has agents whose sole job is to hunt down and destroy these so-called aberrations. If I hadn’t woken up in that abandoned building, lying in a pool of my own piss and vomit, terrified into seeking knowledge instead of continued escape, I have no doubt in my mind I’d never have lived to see fifteen.
But Chase didn’t need to know any of that. He didn’t need to see exactly who I really was inside.
“What do we do now?” he asked softly. “What can I do to help?”
I sniffed and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I don’t know. I need to rest.”
“I’m going to get you some water and something to eat, okay? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I nodded and shut my eyes. The ache in my body paled in comparison to the wrenching pain in my heart, and I yearned for any temporary release. There was a good chance Chase had a stash of recreational drugs around somewhere, but he was gone before
I could beg him to bring me something.
He reappeared a few minutes later with a large mason jar full of water and a crinkly package of bite-sized chocolate bars. He dropped a big red crazy straw into the jar and held it up to my mouth so I could sip at it. I appreciated the gesture, but it was annoying as hell to have to suck water through the bends and loops of the straws silly design. The whole situation was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but fight to be the person Chase thought I was. It’s tough to let nihilistic despair swallow you whole when you’re drinking from a crazy straw and watching your friend unwrap a family sized bag of candy.
“Are those 3 Musketeers bars?” Speaking took every once of energy I had left in me, but this stupid banter was my only life raft in a raging sea of depression. I clung desperately to anything that would buoy me against strong undertows fighting to drag me under. “What happened to your no sugar resolution?”
“Like you didn’t eat any candy,” he shot back as he freed a mini bar from its wrapper. “Your sweet tooth is a hundred times worse than mine.”
“Hey, I was totally on track until all of this started.”
I opened my mouth and let him put one of the bars into it. It was awkward chewing while lying on my stomach with the side of my face mashed into the cushions, but the fluffy whipped chocolate was so tooth-achingly delicious I didn’t care one bit. The chewing motion highlighted a knot of pain above my cheekbone and around my eye. I blinked away a few stray tears and tried to force a smile as swallowed the thoroughly masticated chocolate bar
“How’s my face?” I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue for another like a dog begging for a treat.
“You’re going to have a wicked black eye,” said Chase as he popped a bar into my maw. “Not going to lie, it already makes you look pretty badass. Like you’re part of some sort of sexy girls-only fight club or something.”
“Well, at least I’ve got that going for me,” I mumbled around a mouthful of half-chewed chocolate.
A bright light flashed briefly in the center of the room, and whatever Chase had been about to say next caught in his throat as he followed my gaze to the kobold standing on his coffee table.
The kobold eyed Chase curiously for a moment, then leaned forward and let out a loud “Boo!”
Chase shrieked and fell backwards, bumping up against the couch in his effort to scramble away from the thing. Despite all the shit I’d been through, and despite the intense fits of pain and nausea fighting for control of my body, laughter spluttered out of me when the look of sheer terror on my friend’s face morphed into one of confused embarrassment.
“Sorry fella,” said the kobold, offering a friendly smile. “I don’t get to associate with Muggles that often, and I couldn’t help myself.”
“D-d-did that kobold just call me a Muggle?” stammered Chase.
“It’s always bothered me we’ve never had a good term for the ungifted,” explained the kobold. “Besides, you look like the kind of guy who’d get the reference.”
I chuckled again, wincing through pain that arced across my back. Chase’s neck and face had turned a vibrant shade of crimson. He practically vibrated with indignation as he picked himself up.
“Look,” he said when he was on his feet, “I don’t know who you are, or how you got into my house, but it doesn’t give you any right to make fun of me, okay?”
“You’re right, lad,” said the kobold. “I’m sorry for coming off like an ass. My work keeps me pretty busy, and most mages are pretentious pricks who’d rather stab me in the eye with a wand than laugh at a joke once in a while.
“Present company excluded of course,” he added with a wink in my direction.
“Whatever. It’s fine,” mumbled Chase. “But what exactly are you doing here?”
“Viktor sent me to deliver a message.”
The mention of Viktor’s name was enough for me to force myself into a sitting position. “You’ve talked to Viktor?”
Both Chase and the kobold stared at me with mouths agape. I stared back with confusion until I remembered I was completely naked from the waist up.
“Oh get over it,” I snapped. “Like neither of you have ever seen boobs before.”
“Well, I can’t speak for him…” the kobold said as he waved in Chase’s direction.
“Shut up,” snorted Chase. “I’ve seen plenty of boobs.”
“Are we talking real life, or just girls on the computer?” the kobold shot back.
I took advantage of their idiotic banter to grab a pillow to hold in front of my bare chest.
“Guys, focus,” I said. “What did Viktor want to tell me?”
“He says he apologizes for not being able to let you know he was leaving town. He can’t explain exactly why he had to go so suddenly, but he’s sorry he wasn’t there when you came by his house. He then said to tell you the creature you’ve been looking for is called a kryte, and that you should do your best to avoid it.”
The kobold eyed my battered face and the bandage peeking over the top of my shoulder. “I see I might be too late for that last part of the message to be of much use.”
“A little,” I said. “What the hell is a kryte? I’ve never heard that word before.”
The kobold dropped into a seated position, his tiny green legs dangling off the edge of the coffee table without reaching even halfway to the ground.
“A kryte is a subterranean creature that feeds on living flesh. Viktor said to tell you the kryte’s saliva can cauterize a wound as it bites through flesh and bone. That’s why there was no blood around any of the victims.”
“So the kryte bites pieces off people, keeping them alive so it can continue to feed? Everyone we found was dead. Why weren’t any of them still alive when they were discovered? Jenkins couldn’t have been like that for more than a couple of hours before I found him. Shouldn’t he have been alive still?”
I checked on Chase and saw he was either taking this all in stride or he’d become paralyzed with fear and confusion. Either way, it didn’t look like he was in any immediate danger of having his head explode from the crazy things he was learning all at once.
I turned my attention back to the kobold.
“Viktor thinks this kryte is being controlled by someone,” he explained. “The behavior patterns don’t match up with anything commonly known about krytes. It’s rare to see one outside of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and parts of northern China. Viktor is pretty sure a Dark mage brought the kryte here to use as an interrogator of sorts. If that’s true, this mage could have used any number of proxy spells to ensure that the victims didn’t live to tell anyone about what they’d gone through.”
“Did he say anything about how to kill it?”
“They’re tough to kill,” said the kobold. “If the fire tearing through Chinatown is your fault, then you were probably on the right path. They’re light sensitive, so a bright flash will stun them briefly.”
“I already figured that out the hard way.”
I hugged the pillow tighter and tried to think of how I could use this information to my advantage. As grateful as I was that Viktor had managed to contact me, I hadn’t learned anything I could really use to fight back against the kryte next time I went up against it. I’d be kidding myself if I thought I wasn’t going to have to do that again anytime soon.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes. He’s not completely sure, but Viktor believes the amulet that was stolen from Weathersby is something called the Duan Marbhaidh. It’s gaelic for death song.”
“Does he know what it does?”
The kobold shook his head. “Not yet, but he wants you to know he’s trying to learn that very thing as we speak.”
“I suppose that’s something at least.”
“Viktor did send along something else,” he said.
The kobold hopped onto the floor and climbed up onto the couch next to me. He dug around in the leather bag at his hip and came up with a glass jar filled with murky b
lack goo.
“Spin around a second,” said the kobold.
At a certain point, you don’t turn down offers of aid from fae creatures. If Viktor had sent this kobold, it was good enough for me. I didn’t hesitate in letting him peel away my bandages one by one.
“Did you clean this up?” asked the kobold, his eyes on Chase.
Chase nodded dumbly.
“Nice job, Doogie,” he said. “I think we can speed the healing along a little though.”
He unscrewed the cap on the jar and scooped out a handful of the thick sludge. A smell of home baked cookies left to soak in an algae-infested aquarium for three months filled the room.
“What is that?” asked Chase.
“Unicorn crap,” replied the Kobold.
Chase looked at me.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said. “Most people know unicorn blood has healing properties, but it’s not only the blood. Their saliva and feces are pretty potent as well, provided they’re prepared properly.”
“And this is the good stuff,” said the kobold as he smeared it down the length of my wound. “Well, as good as unicorn shit gets anyways.”
Movies always make healing salves look like soothing balms that make everything magically okay without any side effects. A salve like the one being applied to my back was extremely effective, but it also hurt like bloody hell when it took effect. Muscle and skin began knitting itself back together, and the gut-wrenching pain I felt in my skeleton meant the kryte had slashed into the bone of my shoulder blade. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks, and I clutched the pillow in front of me so tightly I heard stitches rip open.
Chase watched for a second before dropping into his armchair to rub his eyes as though expecting to wake up at any second. “This is unreal.”
“Pretty cool, huh?” said the kobold.
He finished his application and then stepped back to admire his handiwork.
“You’re going to need to rest a while. Try not to do anything stupid until that’s fully healed.” He held up a finger covered in the thick creamy substance. “I can’t do anything about the shiner on your eye, but I can cure up that lip if you want me to.”
Black Magic (Black Records Book 1) Page 13