by AR DeClerck
Victor did not laugh. His face betrayed no emotion as he looked at his only son. “I've come with a warning. Do not cross me.”
“You come to my city and wage war on the Grand Coven and expect me to stand idly by?” Icarus kept his voice low, but I could hear the rage simmering. “London is mine by right of bid. Nine of the grand houses signed my pact in blood.”
“I care nothing for your city or your bid. Let me take what I have come for, and I will leave your city in peace.”
“And what is it you want, Victor?”
Navy eyes swung to me. Violence smoldered on the air.
“No.” Icarus whipped off his glove, holding his left hand in the air. It glowed white in the dim light of the carriage.
“Me?” I breathed deep. The Hand burned hot in my palm.
Victor took a step in my direction and Icarus moved between us. “I said no.”
“I don't want your apprentice, boy. I want her trinket.”
“No.” I shook my head and backed away a step. “You can’t'.”
“I can.” Victor narrowed his eyes at me. The weight of his gaze was making my head spin as the scent of roses and rot swirled through the carriage. “This is the key to our failure in Longmoore, boy.”
“Leave, Victor. Leave before I cannot control myself any longer.” Icarus' voice shook at his father's words.
The dark mage slowed at Icarus' warning. I shook my head, trying to clear it.
“The Hand will come to me, girl. As it was always meant to do. Give it up now, or lose that pretty head.”
I screamed as a white-hot lance pierced my hand and the talisman burned the flesh on my palm. Victor held out his hand, and I could feel The Hand straining to go to him even as it warred with itself to cling to me. I closed my eyes and fought it, holding on despite the searing heat.
“Do you know how that talisman was created, girl? A thousand years ago a Druid witch sacrificed her own child for the power it holds. It will always seek out the strongest mage. It was never a tool of the white.”
I doubled over, holding the talisman close to my heart. It pulsed, a fire that burned hotter than any I'd ever felt. I opened my eyes when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Icarus, and he wrapped his arm around me as he held out his fist toward his father.
“Would you really seek to destroy your own father, boy?” Victor's lips twisted, and I could feel the pulsing of his dark magic against Icarus' light.
“Go.” Icarus opened his palm and the energy from it burned a long line across Victor's cheek. The dark mage's eyes widened at the injury, and he backed away a step.
“I've learned a few things since we last spoke.” Icarus kept me close to his side as he backed away. “This is your last warning.”
“Kill me then, boy.” Victor smiled. “But you won't, will you? Not with all these petty mortals about.” He pushed past a young woman and pursed his lips in disgust. He ducked behind a tall grizzled man in heavy denim work clothes as Icarus tried to focus the beam on him again. Victor reached into the man's pocket and removed the smaller version of the orb we'd destroyed in the alley. He hefted it in his palm and then placed it gently in his coat pocket.
“Cora.” Icarus kept his voice low as he tracked his father with his eyes. “Hold on tight. I'm going to teleport us away.”
I wrapped my free hand in his coat, holding tight. “Are you strong enough? Can you do it?”
He cut his eyes to me. “I think I can manage. My anger has outdone any fear I may once have felt.”
I moved closer, knowing that the blistering heat of the talisman would soon burn its way through my skin. “Do it.”
Icarus closed his palm and held it close to his chest. He pulled me close and looked for his father. “The next time we meet with be the last.” he vowed.
Victor stepped from the crowd of non-magics and cast an appraising eye over us. “I could tear you apart and leave no particle intact, but you're the last of my blood and that has saved you thus far. Do not continue to thwart me, son. I will lose my patience quickly.”
“Vantul ma misca,” Icarus intoned. I felt a gust of wind, bringing with it aether eager to do his bidding. It wrapped around us, and as we began to whirl I heard Victor's angry roar. “Good bye, Victor.”
***
Icarus gritted his teeth against the agony of the magic that tore apart his body, casting him about on the wind like grains of sand. The aether held him together, keeping the parts of him from floating away as the wind bore Cora and him away from the Underground and his father. Cora didn't scream, but he felt her pain merging with his own as the magic carried them away. Teleportation was a magic not to be toyed with, but theirs had been an extreme situation. Any wizard who lost his hold on the magic might find himself reassembled in rather unpredictable circumstances. He could feel the power of The Hand buoying his own magic, and it gave him the focus to keep them together on the wind.
They howled down the dimly lit underground corridor, the wind seeking an exit from the stainless steel tombs. Icarus felt the bite of the colder upper atmosphere as they finally came to rest on the surface. He came back to himself in the way of water vapor becoming ice. At first he was billions of pieces of himself, and suddenly he was whole. The air rushed back to his lungs and the pumping of his heart was unbearable. He coughed as the weight of gravity tried to drag him down. He reached for Cora, his hands on her suddenly solid upper arms. She came back more quickly than he, becoming herself in half the time. She was pale and shaking, but she reached for him before worrying about herself. His Cora. Always the nurse. Her hands were icy on his cheeks, pulling his trembling jaw up so that she could look into his eyes.
“Icarus?”
Her voice was hollow, coming from far down a corridor he could not see. He blinked. She pressed her hands hard to his cheeks. He saw her lips move, but the words did not register.
“I should like to kiss those lips again.” he said. He thought his words might be slurred, a result of his sluggish brain, but her face flared with color. The very lips he was fascinated by turned up in a smile.
“And I should like you to.” She leaned closer, until he could feel the brush of them, feather-light, over his. “But we are standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square.”
Icarus recovered his mental faculties as Cora pulled him toward a pair of benches in the shade of a lovely oak. He slumped to the wood with a groan as his battered body ached. She perched next to him and clucked over him like a mother hen.
“While I appreciate your quick thinking, perhaps we should have tried a different means of escape.” She pressed her kerchief to his forehead and touched his neck for a pulse. He pushed her hand away with a grimace.
“I'll recover. We could not let my father take The Hand.”
“Certainly not!” She grimaced as she pulled the talisman from her neckline. “But it surely wanted to go to him. It was glowing as hot as I've ever felt.”
He reached out, but took her hand instead of the talisman. “You've burned yourself.” He rubbed a thumb over the blistered welts already red and painful looking on her pale skin. He closed his eyes and tried to remember as much as he could about healing spells. He felt the magic leave his fingertips and the aether erased the damage to her skin. It left a slight tickle in his thumb when it had finished.
“Thank you, darling.” She closed her palm over his fingers and looked into his eyes when he opened them. “The Hand may have strained for your father's dark magic, but it was fighting the pull, too. I could feel it, Icarus. The Hand wants to stay with me.”
“As it should.” He leaned his head back and let the sun beat upon his face. He was knackered. The aether was swirling about, and it caressed his face. He resented the way he'd been brought to magic, but still it excited him. Even now when he was tired to his bones, he felt his heart speed up at the possibilities the aether provided. Light. Power. Teleportation. Healing. Destruction. Construction. Any idea or bit of imagined fancy could come to life with magic.
Fingers played gently through his hair. This was Cora's touch, but every bit as exciting as the caress of the aether.
“I am tired, Cora.”
“I know, darling.”
He frowned at a gentle tug on his hair. He opened his eyes to see Cora's somber gaze fixed steadily on him. She leaned forward,
“But this war is only just begun, Icarus. Your father...” she shivered as she spoke, “...you father is tainted by great evil. These people who depend on us, depend on you, will not survive if we give up now.”
He felt the heat of her palm through his glove where her hand still held his. Her other continued to stroke through his hair, applying gentle pressure to his scalp. “How is it that you are wise beyond your years, Cora dear?”
She didn't smile with her lips, but with her eyes. “An unfortunate consequence of war. I have seen too much of it in my life, Icarus. Too much bloodshed and horror. Brothers against brothers for the idea of freedom. We have to stop this before magic and non-magic are pitted against one another.”
“I fear we are too late to stop the movement of science.” He could not hold back the disgust in his words. “Magic will fade for the mechanical.”
“Nothing is lost. There is a compromise in this, there must be. We are not the ones to discover it, but we are the ones who can hold the line until it is discovered.”
“I will destroy my father, that much is certain. Non-magics will use his dark deeds to pull more to their side, and taint the good that magic has done.”
“Then we agree. We press on.” She looked hard at him, the breeze making a curl dance daintily over her shoulders. She was lovelier to him than the day he'd seen her in Gettysburg. She had the same steely look in her eyes now, too. “To Columbia Road Market.”
He stood with her, the aether steadying him as he clung to Cora's hand. It flowed between them, a current of living energy that wrapped around their joined hands. He was still tired. He was still angry. He was still fighting.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Icarus was a strong man. I'd seen him beaten bloody and still be fighting. I'd seen him fall and get up when most men wouldn't. But those times he'd been tired in his body. Now I saw him weary in his soul. He was hounded by memories of his father and his early days as a wizard, times he refused to share with Archie and I. We walked quickly down the streets, avoiding the crowds of the mid-day rush to market as much as possible. Icarus didn't speak, but our hands remained clasped tightly together. I wasn't sure if he held on to me to keep me close and safe, or because I was the only thing that kept him moving forward.
I was scared more by Icarus' melancholy than I had been by the Stygian void of Victor's presence. Icarus was my light. My teacher. Never had I seen him haunted by deeds only he remembered. It clouded the light in his eyes, and made him cold. I vowed to myself as we walked that I would burn that frigid fear from him with every bit of passion I could muster. Was he afraid of Victor, I wondered, of afraid of his own darkness?
The roads became narrower, the buildings closer together, as we neared the market. Throngs of ragged children huddled against the walls of the homes, calling out for food. Wizards moved among them, handing out loaves of bread and fresh fruits, their charity of their own doing and the foods bought with their own wages. A few of the wizards stopped to speak with Icarus in low tones, assuring him that they had seen no signs of his father in the area.
I stopped to kneel before a girl of six or seven with hair that might have been blonde underneath all the brick and coal dust that coated it. From a thin face pinched with hunger two big blue eyes stared at me from beneath blonde lashes. She was so much like Icarus, with her starving eyes and curiously haughty demeanor that I was taken aback for a moment.
“Hello, child.” I took an apple from a wizard standing near me and held it out to the little girl. She did not take it, but watched me cautiously. I shook the apple at her and smiled. “You may have it.”
“I don't care for apples.”
I smashed my lips together to hold back my laughter. This child was surely a brother or sister to Icarus Kane. I returned the apple to the young wizard and took a loaf of bread instead. “Bread, then?”
“Are you a wizard, miss?”
I nodded, studying the small girl. “Yes. I am a magic user.”
“Can I use magic, miss?”
“Would you like to learn to use magic?”
Blue eyes lit with interest, and a pang pinched my chest. So very like Icarus.
“Yes, miss. I feel it, you know.”
“The magic?” I held up a hand and removed my glove, letting the aether coalesce in my palm and glow a bright golden orange.
The blue eyes widened a bit, but the sweet face remained calm. “Yes, miss. I told my brother that it was there, but he didn't believe me.”
“You are correct, there is aether all around us.” I looked up at the young wizard I'd procured the bread from. “Excuse me, young mage.”
He crouched beside me. He was nineteen or twenty, and handsome with hazel eyes and a strong chin recently shaved. His hair was too long, laying against the collar of his jacket. From the crest on his pocket I knew he belonged to one of the nine High Houses, old families who kept scores of their own wizards in their employ, using them to power their businesses. This man belonged to the Desmond Company, the family responsible for lighting nearly all the homes and businesses in London with magical light.
“Yes, Adept Jenkins?” He was respectful, as most wizards knew Icarus, Archie and I from our escapades of demon hunting throughout the city. “How may I assist?”
“This child would like to learn magic. Doesn't Desmond House run a school for magical children?”
His face creased in a smile, and he was even more handsome with strong, white teeth and a dimple on the right. “We do. We convene our new term with a celebration in Trafalgar Square in only a few day's time.” He looked at the little girl. “What's your name?”
The girl looked to me, and I nodded at her to speak. She was uncommonly intelligent, and I knew she would go far in the magical community.
“Cassandra Melissandre McIntyre.” she said proudly.
The mage from Desmond House held out his hand, shaking with the girl. “Cassandra Melissandre McIntyre, I am Grayson Trimble.”
“My brother calls me Cassie.”
Grayson's smile grew. “Very well, Cassie. What's your brother's name? Would he like to learn magic as well?”
She pointed to a boy of ten or eleven who stood away from the others, a glower on his face. “He's afraid.” she whispered to us.
Grayson stood, holding out one hand to me and one to Cassie. I took it and allowed him to assist me up as Icarus joined us. His eyes locked on my hand in the young mage's, and I hid a smile behind my hand.
“Grayson Trimble of Desmond House, this is Icarus Kane. And this is Cassie.”
Icarus cast a cold look at the young mage, but his face softened when his gaze moved to the small girl. He bent at the waist and they stared hard into one another's eyes for a long moment.
“You will be a very strong wizard one day, Cassie.” Icarus murmured. The little girl drew up proudly, her small shoulders going back.
“I know.”
I laughed. “Grayson will see you're taken care of at Desmond House, Cassie, but Icarus and I would like to come visit you there sometime. May we do that?”
The little girl nodded and tugged on Grayson's hand. “Can Davey come?”
Grayson nodded. “Even if your brother has no love of magic, there is much he can learn. Let's go get him, shall we?”
He scooped up the small girl in his arms and nodded to me. “Pleasure to meet you, Adept Jenkins.”
“And you, Mr. Trimble.”
As they walked away Icarus took my hand in his and we walked toward the entrance to the market. “I didn't realize you had a softness for children.”
I kept the humor from my tone as I replied, “Cassie is a lovely child. She's very a
ttuned to the aether.”
“The mage is quite young as well.”
“I suppose, but he's very kind.” I cast a glance at Icarus through my lashes. “He's very handsome.”
Icarus had developed a twitch in his eye that I had never noticed before. “Most mages wet behind the ears are handsome. They have the luxury of youth and inexperience to keep them so.”
“I suppose so.” I knew it was wrong to tease Icarus so, but his jealousy made me giddy. “I do look forward to seeing Mr. Trimble again, though. These mages come here on their days off to bring food to the needy. That's very compassionate.”
“I can be compassionate.”
Icarus' low grumble made me chuckle, and he glared at me. In turn, I laughed harder.
“I don't see the humor in this. I am extremely compassionate.”
“Icarus, darling, I know you are!” I grasped his arm in mine as we rounded the corner into the belly of the market. The smells of fish and refuse assaulted my nose. “You do understand that I'm teasing you?”
“I have no claims on you, Cora. If Trimble is acceptable to you...” he trailed off as I pulled up short.
Anger rolled from my stomach to my tongue on a wave. “Icarus Kane you're a bloody fool!”
His mouth dropped open at my profanity, but it was far from done.
I stepped closer, poking him hard in the chest with my finger. I felt the aether swirl around me as it picked up on my anger. “I should curse you. I should turn you to a toad for such behavior!”
“Now, Cora---”
“Don't now Cora me, Icarus Kane!” I poked him again. “This behavior must stop. You are not an ignorant man, so stop acting like one.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand, stopping him before he could speak. I looked around, a frown stealing over my face. “Icarus, where are all the people?”
He turned from me to see what had pulled my attention away so suddenly. The entire market, filled to the brim with people only moments ago, was now empty. He moved to my side in a flash, his body taunt and on guard. I stepped closer, pressing my side to his.