Stillbringer

by Zile Elliven

  Marshall bowed to the air sprite to show respect. The cloud coalesced into a humanoid form and bowed back.

  “Okay, Fzzt,” Clayton made the air sprite’s name sound like something you might hear coming from a broken toaster. “If you would be so kind, please show Guardian Marshall what you showed us.” He began rummaging in the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a bandage, looking victorious.

  Fzzt expanded into a rough circular shape, hovered a few feet off the floor, and an assortment of colorful lights began to shimmer inside him. The effect was beautiful but disorienting, so Marshall sat down in one of the red velvet chairs scattered around the lobby. Randomly keeling over wasn’t something people expected from a guardian.

  Marshall was relieved when the light show became less random and formed an overhead picture of a cemetery.

  “According to Fzzt, he was having a normal day in his part of town, playing with one of the local flocks when something . . . interesting happened.” Clayton’s quirked lip told Marshall that interesting wasn’t the word he would have chosen.

  He watched two figures walk into the cemetery. At first they were too small to make out any details about them, but the air sprite must have found them interesting and gotten closer because the ‘screen’ zoomed in on the pair, showing a tall man climbing down from a tree.

  Marshall could tell right away what piqued the sprite’s interest. The man was dressed in black from head to toe and carried himself like a soldier in enemy territory. As the sprite got closer, Marshall recognized the near-dead, haunted look of a man who has killed more than he can number.

  With surprise, he noted the man’s companion was his complete opposite. She was smaller than the soldier by about a foot and looked like a harsh word would blow her away. Her body curled in on itself ever so slightly—as though she were trying to keep from being noticed. The paper-thin black hoodie she clutched around herself did little to disguise her delicate features, giving Marshall the impression of fairy being forced to attend a yoga class.

  Before he had time to wonder at the unlikely couple, a rust-colored distortion rippled around them, bounced off, and hit the tree behind the two. When he saw the soldier throw himself at the girl to protect her from the blast, he felt respect but tucked it away until he saw the whole scene. For all he knew, the soldier was trying to gain her trust and would end up killing her in order to steal something.

  The debris from the exploded tree made things harder to discern, and the air sprite had a different idea than he about what was interesting enough to pay attention to. Right now, the sprite was focusing primarily on the pattern made in the air by the smoke and blossoms from the tree as they drifted to the ground, but he could tell by the number of colors splashing against them, the couple was pinned down by spell-fire from more than one attacker.

  All magic had a flavor, and it varied from person to person. Those strong enough to sense this flavor experienced it in different ways. Like most magic users, Marshall sensed magic as color. And currently, he could see two distinct colors crashing over the girl and her companion, sometimes mixing together to make some truly spectacular combinations.

  The thing he found most interesting was none of the spells were hitting the pair. They were bouncing off, dissipating entirely, or just coating the area around them, but leaving a neat little hole where the intended targets sat. When the girl moved around, the shield stayed in place, but when the soldier moved, it inched over, echoing his movement. Marshall was pretty sure the shield was centered on the man, which made no sense. It was clear from the beginning the man was a norm. His aura was a pure, unbroken black, and no magic user had weapons like this guy had.

  “Why does she keep doing that?” Clayton’s voice interrupted. “I didn’t notice the first time, but—look she did it again!” He walked over and pointed to a flare of pink that went from the girl to the soldier when she touched him, causing the man to fall over into a lifeless heap.

  “Why would she want to incapacitate the one person who could help her out of there?” Samantha sounded incredulous. “Maybe she’s stealing his essence to power a spell?”

  “No.” Marshall’s sense of magic was better than most, so now that he was paying attention he saw exactly what was going on. “She’s not doing it on purpose, he’s sucking it out of her. And look, it only happens when she touches his skin. I think she’s an empath.”

  “An empath? I’ve never heard of one strong enough to knock someone out with a touch.” Watching the fight had taken away Samantha’s public relations persona and replaced it with who she really was—a librarian who loved a good mystery. “At her age, she should be trained enough to keep from accidentally spilling out into another person like that. Who is she, do you recognize her?”

  Neither Marshall nor Clayton had and said as much.

  “Why is there no sound?” He knew air sprites were able to zero in on any sound for miles in any direction, and Marshall wanted all the information he could get for this investigation.

  Clayton looked at the sprite for a moment and cocked his head, clearly hearing something Marshall and Samantha weren’t. “He said today was a silent day for him. Sometimes he likes to go quiet for a while just to change things up.” Another pause and then he said, “We’ve completely ruined that for him today, and he’s pretty mad about it.”

  “My apologies, Fzzt,” Marshall said somberly.

  At that point, a deep blood-orange had joined the silver and rust that had been pelting the couple, and they all watched in fascination as the air sprite moved out to encompass the whole battle, probably having had enough of spells flying through and around it. The spells wouldn’t hurt it—nothing much could—but they would be irritating.

  The ‘screen’ jerked sharply, and the three watchers could now see who was attacking the unlikely couple. “Stella Blaike!” Samantha exclaimed.

  “And Sterling and little Helen, too.” Marshall confirmed.

  “The girl looks a bit like them, doesn’t she?” Clayton squinted. “A long-lost relation, perhaps. Come to take the mantle? I’ve heard Matriarch Elanor isn’t doing terribly well these days.”

  “For the gods’ sake, niña, stop touching the poor man!” Samantha yelled at the same time Marshall said, “And he’s out again.”

  When the three witches huddled together, Marshall knew things were about to get ugly. He found himself rooting for the girl and her soldier and tried to stop. Just because the girl looked small and helpless, it meant nothing. He’d been fooled before, and the price was too dear to pay ever again.

  When the building collapsed behind them, it was clear the witches, at least, were not on the side of the angels.

  “This has gone too far.” He jumped to his feet and began to pace, wanting to do something, but also knew he needed to see the rest of the fight before he could act.

  “What is she doing now?” Clayton was referring to the gestures the girl was making with her hands.

  Marshall focused on the girl. “I would say she’s casting a spell, but there’s no magic behind it.” That wasn’t quite right though. There was something churning up inside the girl, but it was unfocused and kept dissipating before anything could happen.

  When the man scrabbled away from the girl, Samantha cheered. “Looks like soldier boy got the memo!”

  Marshall noted when the soldier pushed away from her, he took his shield with him. But when he saw the pink firestorm erupt from the girl’s body, wild and unconstrained, he lost his train of thought. The girl was definitely not an empath—they were notoriously bad at combat spells. It was starting to look like there might be no good guys in this fight after all.

  Then Marshall thought of the soldier, who might as well have had norm plastered across his forehead, and began to feel sorry for him. If anyone in this mess was innocent, it might be him. But if so, how was the man creating that shield? Marshall had too many questions and needed to get into the field to start finding answers.

  “Wait, can you
pause, Fzzt? Back up to . . . Yes, right there. Thank you.” He walked closer to examine the girl’s face when she saw the devastation her spell had created. She looked horrified at what she had done. “Does that look like the face of a person who knew what she was doing?”

  “She looks like a frightened child to me,” Samantha said softly. “I don’t think she has any training at all, Marshall.”

  “Okay, you can keep playing, Fzzt.”

  The frozen ‘screen’ got sharp around the edges and quivered slightly.

  “Fzzt feels it is important for you to know he isn’t a machine and has better things to do with his time than to act like one.” Clayton delivered the message with the air of a person expecting to be bitten.

  His shoulders relaxed from their position by his ears when Marshall smiled wryly and said, “Of course you do. We are all grateful to you for helping us right now, and I’m deeply sorry for offending you, Fzzt. Would you be willing to stay long enough to let us see the end?”

  In response, the ‘screen’ softened and continued showing the scene.

  They sat in silence as they saw the hole take the entire cemetery and most of the street. Everyone but the sprite sighed in relief when the couple got away.

  When the ‘movie’ ended, Marshall was about to thank the sprite, but it swirled over to the door, blew it open, and left before he had a chance to do more than open his mouth. Firmly closing it again, he went to Clayton’s desk, grabbed a notepad, and scrawled a quick message.

  “Give this to my team when they get here and tell them what happened.” He handed the pad to Clayton who dropped it, caught it, then dropped it again.” Marshall patted his shoulder. “Also, see if you can find any other sprites who might have seen where those two went after the cemetery.

  ✽✽✽

  It looked different than it did the last time he was there—in the late 1800s. Trees that had been newly planted, now towered overhead.

  He was a teenager when his father had taken him to see the cemetery where Paul Revere had been laid to rest. Marshall had grown up on the tales of adventures Revere and his father had gone on together. To hear his father tell it, the Revolutionary War was a big laugh, but sometimes Da would get a look in his eye while telling a story, and Marshall could tell he was editing out the more gruesome details.

  He knew his father would have been angered at the scene that lay before him now. There was nothing left of the cemetery where so many legends had been buried. The hole was deep enough that the bottom was shrouded in darkness. Marshall was grateful the full force of the spell had been focused down rather than out; otherwise the death toll would have been staggering. He needed to find the girl quickly before she hurt someone.

  After sampling the general flavor of the crowd’s thoughts, Marshall discerned no one had any idea what was going on. He cast out further, searching for magic and zeroed in on the top floor of a building on the other side of the crater.

  In order to get there before the next Ice Age, he had to nudge people out of his way. It took a miniscule amount of power to do so and didn’t break the core tenet of the dreamwalkers. Rather than change who the person was on a fundamental level, it merely muddied up their thoughts for a short time, making them highly suggestible. Once they heeded his simple excuse me they went on their way, never knowing anything out of the ordinary had happened to them.

  He felt the fear and anger of the crowd around him, too many of them remembering the bombing of the Marathon in 2013, and had to close himself away to keep from getting swept up in the fervor. When he found out what was going on, he wanted to be able to deal with the person or persons responsible with a clear and level head.

  Once inside the building, he was met on the stairs by a dozen or so people in uniform. He could tell from their auras they were on a witch hunt and anyone they met in their path was going to have a bad day. Marshall had neither the time, nor the inclination to convince them—magically, or verbally—that he wouldn’t make a good scapegoat, so he scooped up their thoughts and told them collectively he wasn’t there. He was forced to squeeze against the wall as they stormed past him to avoid getting trampled. He was tempted to follow in case they found what they were looking for, but he needed to verify for himself the empty hallway he had seen in their minds.

  He was glad he had. The fight was only minutes old, so the air in the hallway was filled with residual energy. Two areas on either end of the hall had jagged white distortions in the air that could only come from demon magic. Anyone coming in contact with either of those spots would be in danger of possession. Once he was done, he would need to clear them away. One side of the hall had a large dent in the wall, not far from one of the distortions, and the air around the entire area vibrated with power. He could see a faint halo in the air of thwarted spells. Even though they didn’t have much of a chance of doing any damage alone, there was still a chance they could combine into something unpleasant, so they would have to be cleared too.

  He found it interesting that this time the spells were less lethal in nature, unlike the ones in the cemetery. What had changed?

  His partner Jack’s hulking presence loomed over his shoulder, barely giving him a start. Marshall didn’t think to wonder anymore at how, unlike nearly everyone else—Other or norm—Jack could manage to sneak up on him undetected. “Adelle’s downstairs trying to get a trace on the couple in your message, like you asked.”

  “Get her up here. This fight is more recent and easier to get at.” His sister may have been the best tracker in the Guard, but the closer she could get to a scene, the better her results.

  While Jack contacted Adelle, Marshall went to the other end of the hall and saw a smear of red down the wall. This was what had gotten the officers so excited. It looked like the soldier had held his own. Many magic users had little knowledge of norm weapons. It looked like at least one member of the Blaike family had suffered from that ignorance.

  Marshall made his way back to Jack and held out a hand. “Can I get an assist? I could probably do it on my own, but I’d rather not tap myself out at the beginning of a case.”

  In a very Jack-like fashion, he didn’t ask any questions but merely extended his own hand, palm up, in a gesture of trust. If Marshall was asking something of him, Jack would give it.

  Marshall took the offered hand and closed his eyes. Jack’s skin was as warm and grounding as the desert hues it resembled. As usual, his power was always right on the surface and so easy to siphon off. He called the star-flecked rainbow of his partner’s magic into the azure of his own wellspring of power, causing their colors to combine into a pattern that never failed to remind Marshall of a supernova remnant.

  Once he had harnessed and condensed their magics, he shaped the result into a net, which he cast out as far as he could. In his mind’s eye, he now had thousands of tiny, gently pulsing lights under his control.

  Each light represented a person within a one mile radius of Marshall. Most were a simple black, signifying it was the soul of a norm, but a small number were colors ranging from the jewel tones of his partners to black lights with bright flecks of color belonging to those who probably didn’t even know they possessed magic. Passing by Adelle’s warm orange and a familiar, vibrant yellow that spelled potential trouble, he searched for an anomaly—anything that might be the soldier or his young charge.

  He saw nothing.

  Marshall sighed. It would have been nice to catch them now and save himself the trouble of hunting them down later. For a brief moment he thought he felt an odd nothingness on the fringes of his net, but it was gone before he fully registered it.

  He told all the black and color-flecked black lights to find a safe place to sleep—safe according to him, not the person. The last thing he needed was a bunch of zombie-like sleepwalkers wandering all over town, trying to get to their beds. No, the closest clear spot of sidewalk or floor was good enough for his purposes.

  As they slept, he gave them all a simple, but strong, suggesti
on that told them the cemetery damage was caused by a sinkhole, adding in a compulsion to tell anyone who saw them sleeping that they had fallen down due to an aftershock from the sinkhole. Then he perused any memories anyone had of either of the fights. He found nothing but confused impressions and wild speculation, neither of which were helpful in his investigation. He took away any memories that didn’t support his sinkhole story, then went into the minds of the police officers who had passed him on the stairwell and told them all to forget anything they heard or saw in the hallway. His job would be easier if he didn’t have to fight with the Boston PD to get to the soldier and the girl.

  Once he had finished, he woke everyone up with no one any the wiser. Normally, he didn’t need his subject to be asleep to alter memories, but for big things, like the destruction of a major landmark, he needed to go in deeper than he could while the person was awake. If he touched someone, he could do almost anything he wanted, using minimal power, but on such a massive scale, he needed speed over finesse. It had only taken him fifteen seconds to complete the entire spell, cutting down the chance someone outside his net had stumbled across his sleepers.

  Marshall opened his eyes. “Done. Thanks for the boost.”

  “That was quick.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice.” A hundred-plus years of exploring his magic had given him the precision few of his contemporaries had achieved. It was one of the reasons why he was the leader of the most called-upon team in the Guard.

  “Took you long enough to get around to that.” A rich, booming voice with an Irish lilt informed him. “Back in my day, that was the first thing we did.”

  “Back in your day people also regularly died of smallpox, didn’t they?” Jack frowned at the newcomer in annoyance. “But you don’t brag about it, Callum.”

  Internally, Marshall sighed. The only reason he could think of for Callum Lane to be here was to talk to Marshall about becoming the new praetor. “I prefer to observe a situation before I decide to tinker with thousands of people’s minds. It saves time and endless backtracking.”