Cast in Balefire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Mage Craft Series Book 4)

by SM Reine

  “Exactly,” Jibril said. “We’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Then let’s get started,” Marion said.

  Benjamin scooted back, away from her grabby hands. “Isn’t anyone going to ask me about this?”

  “Will you refuse?” Jibril asked.

  “I could refuse.”

  “But will you?” he pressed. “Knowing that the ongoing existence of the court depends upon this procedure, will you refuse?”

  “Sure, but think of all the money I’d make writing a firsthand account of the unseelie downfall.” Benjamin was joking…mostly. He’d have made a lot more money, sure, but his trust fund ensured he’d never have to care about that kind of thing.

  As soon as he saw Marion’s pout, he regretted the joke.

  “No, no, it’s fine, seriously.” Benjamin stumbled over the words as much as he’d stumbled over his gigantic feet while climbing the path to Dilmun. “I don’t want to mess with your knowledge…transfer…thing.”

  Even if it means transferring knowledge through your brain?

  The second voice didn’t sound like Benjamin.

  Nathaniel, maybe?

  How bad can it be? Benjamin wondered silently in response.

  “Hold still,” Marion said. Her fingers encircled his head.

  Benjamin lost all orientation to reality.

  Dilmun? Blue sky? Awkwardly attractive unseelie queen grabbing his face?

  All gone.

  Multitudes of memories assailed him simultaneously—and not all of them seemed to come from Benjamin’s past. He saw burning worlds crashing together. A void that swallowed entire cities without hesitation. A blonde woman—someone’s mother, but not his mother—looking sad on a rainy beach beside an Earth ocean.

  That wasn’t all he saw.

  Marion was in his head, wandering through an overgrown garden with dense trees taller than skyscrapers, a mossy floor, and nonexistent sky.

  She wasn’t the adult that Benjamin knew now, but the little girl who’d grown up with him at the sanctuary—a child-doll dressed in elaborate, ruffled gowns.

  When she spoke, her voice was adult.

  “This shouldn’t be here,” said little Marion.

  “Neither should you.” Nathaniel stepped from around a tree. “I’m glad to see you, though.” He looked more youthful too, barely a teenager. He kneeled down and opened his arms as if to embrace Marion. “It’s been a long time, huh?”

  Marion must have seen something in Nathaniel that Benjamin didn’t. She looked frightened.

  “No,” she whispered, backing away. “It’s not time, is it? I got away.”

  “You got away,” Nathaniel agreed. “But I have to go back, and you have to help me. Knock-knock, Marion.”

  Knock-knock, Marion.

  Benjamin and Marion wrenched free of each other.

  He returned to Dilmun.

  One of the Raven Knights, Wintersong, had caught Marion before she could fall. She clung to the guard even as she stared at Benjamin in horrified wonderment. “You’re not him,” she said, “but who are you?”

  He bowed his head to his hands, resting brow upon palms. “I’m someone with a massive freaking migraine.” Shutting his eyes and relaxing his muscles didn’t seem to help. It hurt so much.

  “What did you see?” Suzume squinted into Benjamin’s eyes from much too close, and he pulled away from her with a groan.

  “There’s something—someone—in his head,” Marion said. “Whoever it is, that person is not mundane.”

  Benjamin opened his mouth to say, It’s Nathaniel.

  A fist closed on his throat. No sound could emerge.

  Don’t tell them. Nathaniel had appeared behind Marion, leaning against one of the college’s pillars with his arms folded across his chest. He didn’t speak aloud, but rather, directly into Benjamin’s mind—and nobody else reacted to his presence. They couldn’t see him.

  I already told her I’ve been dreaming about you. What’s it matter if you’re in my head when I’m awake? Benjamin wondered. Are you bad?

  It depends on what you consider bad, Nathaniel said.

  Marion was still groaning, and the angels were giving him the kind of looks that suggested they were trying to decide if he should be scrubbed off the face of the Earth or not.

  “Wards,” Benjamin blurted aloud. “I’m from a powerful family. They’ve bespelled my mind to limit damage in case of magical assault.”

  Jibril lifted an eyebrow. “Then we need another vessel.”

  “The information is there,” Marion said. “I’m sure of it. It’s just…it’s not alone.” Tears leaked from her eyes. “Gods. It hurts. I need air.” She flailed a hand blindly in the air until another of the Raven Knights, Dwynwen, took hold of it and guided her out of the college.

  Jibril hurried to help her, leaving Benjamin alone with the angel Suzume and a throbbing headache.

  “Did you see Marion’s spells?” Suzume asked. He nodded without looking up at her. “Then it’s probably fine. Let’s see what we can do about retrieval.”

  “Even though there’s someone in my head?”

  “Yeah, whatever. It can just try to touch me. I’m a fucking angel.” She plopped onto the bench next to him. “This won’t hurt nearly as much as last time you got screwed in the brain. Implantation’s bad, but retrieval is easier than yo mama after a handle of whiskey.”

  She poked him in the forehead again.

  A flash of light lanced between his ears. Benjamin’s mind replayed one of the spells that had been implanted in fast-forward—that thing Marion did with the fistful of lightning when she was in a bad mood.

  Suzume drew her hand away from Benjamin, blinking rapidly. “Ouch.”

  “What happened? Are you okay?” He scrubbed a finger between his eyebrows.

  “I am,” she said. “Are you?”

  Benjamin looked at his fingertip. No blood. He wasn’t bleeding. “Why?”

  “There’s something in there all right, and you know it’s not a protection ward. What is it? Who is it?”

  “It’s definitely a protection ward.”

  Suzume rolled her eyes. “You little lying piece of shit.” She lifted both fists. They crackled with white lightning, brighter and purer than Marion’s. Suzume had a lot more angel power.

  Benjamin leaped off the bench, even though there was no physical distance that would keep him safe from angelfire. “Whoa!”

  “It works.” Delight and the reflected magic danced in her eyes. “Give me another one.”

  He jumped back again. “Don’t touch me with that!”

  “Oh, right.” Suzume flapped her hands. The magic burned out slowly, leaving a moonlight glow simmering over her flesh. “That’s so weird. It doesn’t feel like gaean magic at all. I thought ethereal magic would be more similar.”

  “You know what gaean magic feels like?”

  “I’m not just a great ass. There’s a great brain to go with it. C’mere.” She moved so fast that he couldn’t escape.

  Another hard poke. Another jolt.

  When Benjamin returned to reality, Suzume was already spilling an enchanted mirror from her fingertips, casting a reflection even more true-to-life than the mirrored buildings of Dilmun. It wasn’t like a glass mirror at all. The spell seemed to fold reality into half.

  “Jibril will love this one, vain bastard.” Suzume twisted around to look at her butt in the mirror. “Not bad, not bad.”

  “You’re picking the magic up fast,” Benjamin said.

  “Faster than any other angel will. I’ve got the most magical background, so I got volunteered to pass this shit to the others. Won’t that be fun? Happy happy, joy joy.”

  “Not fun, but necessary to win a war.”

  She shrugged. “Mirrors won’t win wars.”

  “So why don’t you wanna get in on the fight when you’re best at the magic?” Benjamin asked.

  Suzume dismissed the enchanted mirror by sweeping her hand through it. “If
I tell you, will you keep a secret? Just for the next, oh, six months.”

  “Uh, sure, probably.” Unless she was going to tell him a secret that was likely to lead to the end of the world, in which case Benjamin would feel fully justified in breaking his promise to Suzume.

  “You can’t tell Marion.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I’m pregnant,” Suzume said. “So fucking stupid, but I promised I wouldn’t get in any combat scenarios until this thing chutes out of my pussy. It’s the only way they’d let me work in Dilmun, like angels are absolutely meant to do, regardless of their stupid husbands’ opinions.”

  The angel’s language was bad enough without learning that she was pregnant with a baby-angel.

  Even through the shock, Benjamin’s mind churned. “If angels can get pregnant, why do you guys need to nest to regenerate the species?”

  “Inadequate biodiversity. Too much inbreeding is inevitable when you’re starting with a small population, so you have to get magic in the mix to birth angel-babies from the aether. Most angels are also halfway to sterile, so it’s hard to get knocked up even if the incest angle doesn’t freak you out for some reason.”

  “You managed to get pregnant,” he said.

  “This thing was fathered by a human, one way or another.” Suzume poked herself in the belly button. There was no outward physical sign of her pregnancy at the moment. “It’s going to be Gray, like Marion. Half-human. Which Leliel would kill me over, literally.”

  “So Leliel doesn’t just want to bring her people back,” Benjamin said. “She wants a pure race.”

  Suzume snorted. “Heil Leliel.”

  He didn’t laugh. “That’s a really inappropriate joke.”

  “Leliel’s inappropriate. Anyway, don’t tell Marion. Don’t tell anyone I’m expecting until I squirt out this nauseating abomination so I don’t get assassinated over it.”

  “Marion wouldn’t assassinate you.” Not for that reason, anyway.

  “She wouldn’t take it well,” Suzume said. “Even a half-angel is gonna be angel enough to hate watering down the blood. It’s just an angel thing. They’re shitheads.”

  Benjamin couldn’t resist. “You’re an angel.”

  “Are you saying I’m a shithead?” She punched him in the arm—not particularly hard, but at just the right angle for the knuckles to give him a twinge. Her aim was impeccable. Benjamin’s whole arm numbed.

  “Ow!”

  “Now hold still so I can suck your brain-juice.” Suzume gripped his head in both hands while he was still rubbing his bruised bicep.

  She scraped, she learned, and Benjamin ached.

  Marion recovered from her visit to Benjamin’s mind slowly. She rode out the headache sitting on the edge of Dilmun, feet hanging over the edge and her hair swept into her face by intense wind.

  From that perspective, she could see the sand storms whipping across the stone, and a demon encampment on the desert floor a kilometer below. She could see endless clouds. She could see the sun rippling as it dipped below the horizon.

  She couldn’t see the statue of Metaraon at her back, nor could she see Benjamin.

  “Is he safe to allow in Dilmun?” Jibril stood at Marion’s back, and she wished he’d move into her view so that she wouldn’t fear him pushing her over the side. “Is he possessed?”

  “Benjamin? Possessed? No, I don’t think so.” What Marion had seen inside Benjamin wasn’t demonic. She’d have preferred demonic possession to the overwhelming sense of other that had taken up space within the writer.

  Marion had glimpsed a young man with light-olive skin and blue eyes like her own, who could have passed for her cousin, just as Benjamin looked like Seth’s cousin.

  Confusion piled upon confusion.

  Later, once he wasn’t wrestling with Suzume, Marion would need a closer look at the annals of Benjamin’s mind.

  “We’ll give you what you need to hold the unseelie courts,” Jibril said. “I’ve already begun reaching out to those I trust not to follow Leliel. You may kill us in this pursuit, but at least we die for one of our few daughters.”

  They’d walked far enough away from the college that an entire building stood between them and the tribute to Metaraon. The image of Marion’s father was distorted by the shifting light on the glass.

  “You all hated my father,” Marion said.

  “Some did. Some didn’t. We can acknowledge that the man contributed enormously to the world as we know it now, regardless of whether that influence was good. Even in death, his blood remains linked to the most powerful mage craft to have ever existed.”

  That didn’t exactly say whether Jibril was pro or anti-Metaraon. But his glare had softened when he turned it on Marion again. “We’d never blame you for the sins of your father. You are one of us.”

  “I’m something else now.” Marion smoothed her hands along the bones of her leather bustier.

  “A force to be reckoned with. That’s what you are,” Jibril said. “The best hope for the salvation of our race rests with you, and when the time comes, I’ll stand with you—not Leliel. I hope you’ll choose to stand with the angels too.”

  Marion glanced at the Raven Knights. They were close enough to hear the entire conversation, which meant Konig would hear it too. She couldn’t make any promises without running them past him.

  “Your cooperation has been noted. Has the vampire arrived?” Marion asked, extending a hand toward Jibril. He helped her stand. Even in boots, she fell short of the other angel’s height.

  “Lucifer hasn’t been sighted, and nobody was contacted to make transportation arrangements into the heart of the Ethereal Levant,” Jibril said. “I believe you have been, as they say, stood up by your blind date.”

  That shouldn’t have been a surprise. Vampires were so unpredictable that they might as well have been demons.

  But Marion was surprised. What she didn’t feel was disappointment.

  Onoskelis’s first labor had said that she needed to ask Benjamin to contact Lucifer about darknet access. It hadn’t told her to speak to Lucifer herself, nor had it specified that she needed to actually obtain that access.

  She’d received a second labor, and it didn’t mention Lucifer at all.

  Pray over the palantír.

  Marion teetered on the edge of the city, brushing hair out of her eyes so she could look down at the encampment. “Do they still chip at Dilmun’s base?”

  “I haven’t seen them attacking our pillar in months. I expect they were distracted by invading the Autumn Court at first, but I don’t know what their excuse is for the laziness of recent weeks.”

  “Their leader, Arawn, was killed in the Myrkheimr assault,” Marion said. “They’re regrouping.”

  Jibril arched an eyebrow in serene disbelief. “You killed a Lord of Sheol?”

  She hadn’t done it personally, but… “Yes. He’s dead.”

  “How, pray tell?”

  “Balefire.” That damned eternal infernal flame. “A friend of mine sacrificed himself to push the demon through a wall of balefire.”

  “Arawn’s physical body was burned?” Jibril was clearly getting toward something, but she was sick of waiting for him to reach the end of his twenty questions.

  “So what?”

  “The Lord of Sheol’s spirit was likely fine after one dip into balefire. Unless someone followed him back to Sheol to finish the job…” He leaned over the side of the city to peer down.

  Marion had already considered the fact that Arawn wouldn’t be so easy to kill. She’d seen him shed his human-like form to turn into an enormous Hound.

  The sun finally dropped low enough that it no longer shined in Marion’s eyes. The upper floors of the glass city reflected a brutal orange glare into the sky. At the base of the pillar, there was little more than shadow. Lights flickered among the encampment.

  Marion shifted the weight of the long bow across her shoulders, and she fingered the fletchings of the arrows at
her belt. Between the arrows, she could feel the corks of slender glass bottles. Marion eased two of them into her palm. “Who of you will be going back to the Autumn Court to provide protection?”

  “I’ll protect you personally,” Jibril said.

  “Then go ahead of me to Myrkheimr,” Marion said. “Tell our plans to Konig. He’ll ensure Leliel meets justice.”

  Jibril frowned. “And you?”

  “I’m going to pray to a palantír,” Marion said.

  Before anyone could react, she hurled one of the potion bottles at the feet of the Raven Knights.

  It exploded into smoke.

  The knights covered their mouths as they coughed violently, but it was too late to avoid inhaling the vapor produced by Ariane’s sleeping draught. They fell one by one in quick succession.

  Jibril remained awake. The vapor drifted past him, leaving his pale eyes to cut through to Marion’s.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  Benjamin must have realized Marion was doing something. He shouted from the college, and it may have been her name.

  She didn’t linger to listen. Marion flipped the cork off of the other bottle and drank it dry. “See you,” she said to Jibril.

  She dived off the edge of Dilmun.

  19

  Marion was great at messing with Benjamin’s head. First the whole kissing thing that was better left unmentioned, and then attacking her own bodyguards, and now with the jumping off of a cliff that was a whole kilometer above level ground.

  Nuts. She was nuts.

  What happened the instant after she willfully flung herself into space, however, was a lot more nuts, because that was when a tide of demons came crashing over the opposite side of Dilmun.

  It was a small city, so Benjamin could see both sides—the one where Marion had just vanished, as well as the one where the demons had appeared. The city felt unbalanced in Marion’s absence. Raw power packed into the forms of demons descended and there was nobody to face them in combat.

  Nobody except Suzume. “Well look at that.” She stood from the bench as though in no rush, lightning fizzling between her fingers.