Black Magic (Black Records Book 1)

by Mark Feenstra

  “It’s not every day a mage and a human destroy Eskola’s fighting ring and then break free from his private mansion. The fae community is buzzing with news of your antics.”

  “What about Eskola?” I asked. “Is he still alive?”

  “Fortunately for you, he lives,” said Viktor. “He’s considerably worse for wear, but he’ll be back to his old form in a matter of days.”

  “Fortunately for us?” echoed Chase “Are you insane? That fucker was about to turn me into a vampire. He was going go kill Alex!”

  “Viktor is right,” I said. “Whatever kind of monster Eskola is, he’s one of the Conclave of Eleven. We’re already going to catch enough trouble for what I did to him, but it would have been far worse had I killed him. The Conclave isn’t usually inclined to let the murder of one of their own go unpunished.”

  With an exaggerated groan of frustration, Chase swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the phone.

  “Who could you possible be calling right now?” I asked as he punched numbers on the keypad.

  “I feel both sick and hungry at the same time,” he covered the mouthpiece of the phone with his free hand. “I don’t know how much of burning in my gut is because I haven’t eaten anything in nearly forty-eight hours, and oh, I don’t know, because I lost several pints of blood? I’m calling room service.”

  “Fine, get me two cheeseburgers and a vanilla milkshake.”

  Chase rolled his eyes at me then turned his attention to the hotel staff on the other end of the line.

  “Where were you?” I asked Viktor. “I went to your house, but it was locked up tight. Until Skreek found me, I’d thought you’d abandoned me.”

  “I am truly sorry for that,” said Viktor. “I tried to get in touch with you before I left, but I couldn’t risk anyone learning of my plan. I did a great deal of research after your visit, and on a hunch, I went to track down Carolus’s grimoire to see if I couldn’t get my hands on it before anyone else did.”

  “You did?” I asked, hopeful excitement welling up within me. If the long lost spell book was ours, it would be exactly the edge we needed. The amulet was powerless without it.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he replied.

  “Which means?”

  “I know where it is, but I wasn’t able to acquire it.”

  “So where is it?” I asked. “How do we get it?”

  “The good news is that it’s right here in town.” Viktor checked his watch. “Actually, it arrived about an hour ago.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “It’s in the secure basement storage area of the downtown public library, packed away in a shipment of four hundred books from a recently discovered cache during the excavation of a housing development in Wales. As luck would have it, one of the foremost authorities on ancient gaelic texts is based right here in Vancouver.”

  “What makes you so sure the grimoire is in that shipment?”

  Viktor stared at me with the default impassiveness always has when he refuses to explain his ways to me. I knew I’d get nothing more from him on the subject of how, so I moved on to the question of when.

  “Tonight,” he informed me. “If I was able to obtain this information, then we have to assume whoever was behind the theft of the amulet has done the same.”

  Chase hung up the phone and tuned back in to our conversation. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Viktor was just explaining how I’m going to have to break into a high security vault located somewhere in the downtown library,” I said with as much lightheartedness as I could muster. “Doesn’t that sound fun?”

  “Actually, that sounds exactly like my idea of a good time,” replied Chase. “Please tell me you’re going to let me come with?”

  Viktor shook his head. “Not tonight, I’m afraid. I brought some herbs to help the process of recovering from Eskola’s bite. You’re in for a difficult night, but it’s important we work this out of your system before you suffer any lasting side effects.”

  It wasn’t a pretty thought, but it did the trick. Chase paled at the mention of ‘lasting side effects,’ and he only nodded his agreement to cooperate by staying behind. As much as I’d valued having him with me at D.O.I., it was too big a risk breaking into the library with him there. I was going to have to be as stealthy as possible, something I was actually rather good at, but in order for me to get in and out undetected, I would need to go it alone.

  “When do you leave?” asked Chase.

  “Right after you’ve eaten,” said Viktor. “Both of you are going to need all of your strength for what is to come.”

  Bright pink probably wasn’t the best color to wear when breaking into a library shortly after midnight, but pulling the hood up over my head at least made me feel a little stealthy. It wasn’t like I had a lot of other options. When you’re on the lam from a Conclave of mages more powerful than any government agency on the planet, you don’t exactly pop out of the hotel for a quick bit of shopping before the stores close. Besides, I was going to mask myself with an electric static spell anyway. With the aid of a charm I’d prepared back at the hotel room, any camera close enough to record me would experience severe technical difficulties so long as I was in the frame. If anyone ever had reason to review the footage, they’d see a pattern of static jumping from camera to camera along a specific route down into the depths of the off-limits areas of the library, but I’d be long gone by then.

  After a quick modification on his part, Viktor had told me the charm would also summon help should I need it, but that I should only activate it in a dire emergency. It should go without saying I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I felt better knowing I had backup on call. Doubly so with my shitty track record over the last few days.

  The streets around the library were fairly empty at this time of night, only a few lights still shining in the windows of neighboring condos. Checking that there was no one around to see, I veered off the sidewalk and went straight to a nondescript gray door on the backside of the building. I swiped the keycard Viktor had given me, and was rewarded with the beep and click of the door unlocking. With another glance to make sure I wouldn’t be spotted, I pulled the door open and slipped inside, tugging it closed behind me.

  Chase had loaded floor plans onto my phone, and I used them to wend my way through the main floor book stacks while avoiding the main walkways between sections. The upside of burgling a library was that there was only one guard on duty at this time of night. It was doubtful any of the staff knew what they had in their possession, and the public library wasn’t the kind of institution that warranted heavy security. Viktor had helped me figure out a cloaking spell that would allow me to walk almost right past him without being seen, and I crouched in a shadow of one of the tall book shelves to begin the complex procedure of casting it on myself. It essentially involved manipulating light in a subtle curve around my body, and it would require a hundred percent focus to maintain as I crept past the main desk to get to the only access point for the lower levels.

  Before I could even begin the process, the guard walked straight past me and right into the restroom, leaving the way completely clear.

  “This is too easy,” I whispered to myself as I ran across the short expanse of open space. Only seconds later I was in the stairwell that would take me down to the archives.

  At the bottom of the stairwell was another door, locked to keep stray library patrons from wandering where they shouldn’t. Viktor had told me the keycard might not work beyond the main floor entrances, and sure enough the little light flashed red when I tried to swipe the card across the sensor. I could see that the door was only locked from this side, allowing anyone on other side to pass through it in the event of an emergency. I thought about using magic to push down the bar that would let me in, but there was too good a chance it would set the alarm off unless someone swiped to deactivate it.

  The only way to get through the door was to shut down that
alarm. Without a keycard, the only way I could think to do that was to kill the power.

  A thing like that wasn’t exactly outside the scope of my abilities, but a whole building power cut was too likely to put the security guard upstairs on a higher level of alertness than where I wanted him. Working alone in the sleepy library, he was relatively harmless to me as long as he thought he was riding out yet another boring shift. Cutting only the power to this alarm sensor might keep the guard from noticing anything unusual, but it came with the risk of breaking a circuit that would sound the alarm anyway.

  In the end, I decided to black out the entire floor on the gamble that it wouldn’t trigger any other alarms. I placed my hand over the security card scanner, and I reached into it for a mental connection to the flow of electricity within. Once tuned into the alarm’s wavelength I sent a surge through it that knocked out the overhead light and shot a few sparks out of a nearby outlet.

  The gamble paid off.

  Standing completely still in the red glow of an emergency exit light, I strained to listen for sounds of alarm coming from anywhere above me. When I was sure all was clear, I conjured a block of directed air to push the door lever open from the other side, stepped through quickly, and yanked it shut behind me. A soon as the alarm sensors on the door had reconnected, I repeated the process with the card scanner on that side, this time sending power back into the floor instead of shutting it down.

  “Like a boss,” I said, pumping my fist in celebration of my own cleverness. “Now where are you, fancy book collection?”

  The secure archives were much larger than I’d anticipated. While the stairwell had been lit by overhead lights, the archives were pitch black. I could easily have flipped the row of switches by the door, illuminating the floor enough to make my search that much easier, but I couldn’t risk the guard wandering down and wondering why the place was all lit up at this time of night. Instead, I cast a small spark spell, letting it hover out in front of me as I went from room to room. Making as methodical search as I could manage, I peeked in every tiny window. If the room was too big to scan from the window, I magically picked the lock to get a better look at the offices and small storage areas.

  With only a small pool of light illuminating the area immediately around me, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was the doomed cheerleader in a B-Grade horror movie. I half expected one of Eskola’s vampire cronies to jump out at me every time I opened a door and sent my spark of light drifting into the darkness. Chase’s unlabeled floor plans weren’t much help, so I played the trial and error game until I lucked into the room I’d been searching for.

  Not far from a service elevator in the center of the main hallway was a large room filled with several long tables, a half dozen computer terminals, and twenty odd crates containing what could only be the latest shipment of books waiting to be received and catalogued. I slipped inside, staring at the shipping containers and trying to figure out where to start. My mage sight revealed no hints of which crate might contain the grimoire. It seemed it’d have to come down to plain old manual labor.

  The job of opening the crates and sorting through their contents would have been easier if I’d been able to turn on the overhead lights, but I pumped a little more power into my light spark, and set it floating above my head while I got to work on the topmost crate in the pile. Viktor had supposedly managed to get a glimpse at a copy of the shipping manifest, and he’d warned me the grimoire hadn’t yet been identified or labeled. It would be up to me to identify the long lost spellbook, a process further complicated by the fact that it would likely have been disguised and would only reveal its true nature to a mage.

  I unpacked book after book, opening each to the front matter and casting a handful of spells that I hoped might reveal the grimoire for what it was. Each book took several moments to process, and the night wore away while I worked my way from one crate to the next. Again and again, I cast examination and reveal spells on the cover and first few pages, looking for any indication that the historical text in my hand was actually Carolus’s personal spell book. Even the thought of being near such a powerful object made me giddy enough to press on from one disappointment to another.

  Somewhere deep into the fourteenth crate was a book that felt different from the others as soon as I picked it up. The dark black animal skin cover was unnaturally warm beneath my fingertips, and it responded immediately to the first charge of energy I called up. Scarlet threads of glowing light appeared on the cover, tracing out the Celtic knot pattern Viktor had instructed me to keep an eye out for. There could be no doubt that this was Carolus’s grimoire. I couldn’t believe I was the first mage to hold it after so many years.

  I set the grimoire aside, and I began repacking the books into their respective crates. It was important no one realize I’d been there until a thorough inventory had been done. Even then, Viktor had guessed that the library staff might chalk it up to an error on the manifest. Since I hadn’t been sure if I’d need to re-test any of the books I’d already sorted through, the contents of each crate sat in piles on the long tables. As much as I wanted to grab the grimoire and get the fuck out of there, every of them had to be put back before I could make my exit.

  A glance at the clock on my phone told me I’d already spent far too much time in my search. I set about repacking the crates, working as quickly as I could. Sparing a bit of magic to speed the process, I replaced the books in the exact same order I’d removed them. Once a crate had been packed as I’d found it, I replaced the wooden lid, using a simple directed kinetic force spell to reset the shipping nails. I even went so far as to reseal the labels that had been placed across the seams of each lid to ensure no one could open the crates without breaking the security seal.

  I was so focused on the work at hand that I barely registered the light flickering on in the hallway.

  Reacting on instinct, I snapped out my spark spell and grabbed the grimoire. There was only one way in or out of the room, and the footsteps of someone approaching from that exact spot meant I wasn’t going to be running that way. Instead, I ducked behind the stacked crates, making myself as small as possible while rushing to cast a half-assed cloaking spell. It would only work if I didn’t move. Even the rise and fall of my chest as I breathed could give me away if someone shone a light right on me.

  The door opened with the faintest squeak of its hinges, and someone flipped the bank of light switches. It took a moment for the overhead fluorescents to flare to life, but I had the cloaking spell in place before they could properly warm up. If I was lucky, I could hide in the room until it was safe to leave, but I didn’t get the feeling the dice were going to roll my way.

  “Your spell looks like a goddam fireworks display from here,” said the voice of a man standing on the other side of the crates. “You might as well hand me the book, Alex. There’s no need for this to get ugly.”

  “Who are you?” I asked as I stood up and let the spell slip away.

  No point in wasting energy trying to hide myself from a mage. With the complexity of even my toned down version of the cloaking spell, he’d probably been able to see my spellwork before even entering the room. I’d have been safer had I just crouched there and hoped for the best.

  “That’s not important right now,” the man said.

  He wore the kind of robes you’d expect an evil mage to wear at a cover shoot for D&D Monthly. He even had his hood pulled forward far enough to cast a mysterious shadow across his face.

  “Where’s your staff?” I snorted.

  I know. Probably not the best time to make jokes, but I was nervous as hell, and it sort of tumbled out before I could stop it.

  The mage lifted a hand and waved it at me in a dismissive motion that set every muscle in my body into a painful spasm. Unable to stand, I fell to the ground. I could feel every individual fiber of my muscles contracting and releasing, triggering a full body convulsion that had me twitching on the floor like someone who’d been shot with a dozen
TASERs. It was all I could do to not choke on my own tongue as I flopped around like some kind of pathetic dying fish.

  “You kids today,” clucked the mage, “so disrespectful.”

  He bent down, unzipped my hoodie, and plucked the grimoire from where I’d tucked it into my waistband. Even that close to me, I couldn’t see into the darkness of his hood. I had no idea who he was, but with how easily he’d cast such a crippling spell on me, it was an simple leap of logic to guess that he was the Dark mage I’d been looking for all this time.

  I tried calling out to to him as he walked away, but my words distorted into choking gurgles. The pain lancing through my body was unbearable, but I fought it as best I could. As powerful as he was, I had to believe my attacker wouldn’t be able to maintain his hold on me once he left the room. All I had to do was grit my teeth and hold out a few minutes. The further away he got, the more his power over me would lessen.

  The lights flickered and went dark. I heard the door close. Seconds or minutes or hours passed, and still I lay helpless. I used every trick I knew to relax my muscles enough to keep the spasms from cutting off blood flow and killing me. The longer I struggled, the more exhausted I became. Tears flowed freely from my eyes. Blood trickled from my palms where my fingernails had dug themselves deep into the flesh. Saliva dripped from between my lips, hanging in foamy threads as I thrashed on the floor.

  I don’t know if the Dark mage ended the spell himself, or if I somehow managed to break the hold it had on me with my own powers, but eventually my body unclenched and relaxed. Lying in a heap, I gasped for breath. The strain on my body had been so intense that I was left nearly paralyzed, my magic almost completely exhausted from the effort of preventing the spell from killing me.

  For a long time, I simply laid there, wondering what to do next. I kept hoping I’d regain enough strength to pick myself up, but I never managed to do more than roll onto my stomach. My lungs burned with each inhalation, and when I saw the lights come on in the hallway once more, I glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was nearly nine in the morning.