Night and Chaos: An Ashwood Urban Fantasy Novel (Half-Lich Book 3)

by Lee Dignam

  From cursed dolls and mirrors to blessed clocks and garments, medallions of power, wands assembled by ancient mages, bookshelves with no beginning or end, and more weapons and suits of armor that one could count, the vault was an impressive place indeed. Isaac had only visited a few times, always under the watchful eye of a Legionnaire or two, and had only ever retrieved books from the shelves running along the walls. Now he walked along the center ring, a part of the vault restricted only to praetors—and Jim.

  It was Silver’s echoed wolf-whistle that broke the silence. “This place is huge,” he said. His voice returned to him three times over. “How old is it?”

  “It was built by the first generation of mages to settle the area some two hundred years ago, but I’m afraid the tour will have to wait,” Isaac said, “Silver, Cameron; fan out, scan for signs of intruders, and for God’s sake don’t touch anything.” He turned to Jim. “What do you think?”

  Jim, who hadn’t said a word since his arrival, was looking around the veritable museum of magical objects with the keen eyes of a hawk searching for a rodent in the wilderness from high above. He flitted from one display case to the next, zigging and zagging between suits of armor and tables covered in trinkets and items of unknown origin and use. There had to have been hundreds of items in the center ring alone, and thousands of books—maybe tens of thousands. But it seemed Jim was scanning the place visually, without the help of any physical map or roster.

  He turned to look at Isaac, his eyes wide. “Something’s definitely gone,” he said.

  Again he turned and stared at the space between two display cases. Inside one of the cases stood a golden breastplate and a centurion’s helmet; resplendent, shining, and proud. From the other, a puppet of a man wearing a suit and a top-hat stared with eyes that seemed to follow one’s movements.

  “Something?” the praetor asked. “Do you know, specifically, what?”

  “A mirror,” Jim said, and he looked across at Isaac, whose face hardened. “Not just any mirror, either. This one holds the essence of something dark and dangerous; it was used hundreds of years ago to summon a demon, and the people who vanquished it didn’t quite have the power to send it back to where it belonged.”

  “You’re sure that is what was taken?” Isaac asked.

  “I’m sure,” Jim said. “It was right here.”

  “Is that all that’s been taken?”

  Jim spun around on the spot, for a moment unsure, but then he stopped spinning and nodded. “Yes, that’s all. But, I mean, that’s bad enough.”

  An empty silence descended upon them as neither Jim nor Isaac knew exactly what to say. Both mages knew the significance of what had just happened—Nyx had, after all, used a mirror to escape the Reflection the first time she was discovered. But she was already here, she had already crossed over. Why would she need another mirror unless she was going to do something with the demon Jim said resided within it?

  “They were here,” Silver’s voice came floating over the chasm. “I can feel the Void.”

  The praetor turned to look at Isaac and asked the question. “What does this mean?”

  “It means we know who the culprit is and what’s been stolen,” Isaac said, “What we don’t know is why.”

  “Or how,” said the praetor. “How did Nyx breach our wards? Your wards?”

  “I don’t know,” Isaac said.

  “There’s something else,” Cameron said, adding his voice to the reverberating cacophony of echoes.

  “What is it?” Isaac asked.

  “You’d better come over here.”

  Isaac nodded and stepped away; Jim and the praetor followed, their collective footsteps bouncing off the walls and high ceiling in a sound to match the scrambled thoughts floating around in Isaac’s head. Motives, methods of entry, and potential end-game scenarios were forming and washing away like waves on a turbulent shore. Why take a mirror? Of all of the things in the vault, why only take the mirror?

  He slowed his approach as he arrived where Cameron and Silver were standing—a space between two columns overlooking the main storage area. The hairs on Isaac’s arms stood on end, and the magic bangle on his wrist turned cold; deathly cold. His body, too, began to suddenly vibrate softly. It was as if he had stepped through a curtain of cobwebs and onto an electric plate. Isaac turned on the spot, perplexed but also in full understanding.

  “Do you feel it?” Silver asked.

  “This is the point of entry,” Isaac said. “Where they came in.”

  “They?” the praetor asked. “There were more than one?”

  “I’m only sensing one portal, but it would have been big enough for many to come through one at a time.”

  “I do not understand how this is possible. You assured me your wards were strong enough to prevent intrusion. How has this happened?”

  Isaac thought for a moment, putting together fractures of information in the hopes they would form a cohesive whole. Finally, he got it, even if the explanation itself was absurd. He licked his dry lips, took one last cursory glance over at the section of glimmering items and display cases, and then turned his attention to the rest of the group.

  “Tempest born magic,” Jim said, beating Isaac to the punch.

  “Both, in fact,” Isaac said. “A fusion of Tempest Born and Void magic.”

  “Like ours,” Silver put in.

  Isaac nodded. Though their introductions to the power of the Void had been different—Isaac was a mage who had touched the Void, and Silver was a human who had been claimed by a Void-touched Guardian—the end result was the same; Isaac and Silver were Void Weavers.

  “But that’s impossible,” Jim said, “There are only three Void Weavers in all of Ashwood, one who is currently under heavy surveillance. Right?”

  “Who, Logan?” Cameron asked. “That’s right. He’s always got a pair of Legionnaires with him, and he spends most of his time in lockup.”

  “And he can hardly be called a Void Weaver,” Isaac said. “I only taught him enough to save his life.”

  “For all the good that’ll do us,” Cameron muttered.

  “Regardless,” the praetor said, slicing the conversation in half with all the grace of a butcher with a meat cleaver. “Are you trying to say that only someone with your unique talents, Tribune Moreau, could have broken into our vault?”

  “Not just someone with my talents—someone much more powerful than I.”

  “Could it be Nyx?” the praetor asked.

  “Bullshit,” Silver said, his pale cheeks flushing with blood. “I have Sonia’s Guardian, not Nyx. She can’t use Tempest magic without a Guardian. Without Bazor, Sonia’s body is just a human body.”

  “I agree,” Isaac said, “But the evidence is clear. Someone with access to the magic of the Void and the Tempest, someone powerful enough to literally punch a hole through my wards, broke into the vault tonight.”

  “If you eliminate the impossible,” Jim said, quoting Sherlock Holmes, “Then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  “What’s left, then?” Isaac asked.

  Jim pushed his spectacles onto his nose. “Nyx must have… found a Guardian.”

  “Preposterous,” said the praetor. “Such a thing is unheard of. Guardians of the Tempest would never serve such a vile creature.”

  “Let’s keep our arguments objective,” Isaac said. “For now we can only act on the evidence we have. Do you think you can track the mirror’s whereabouts, Jim?”

  “She’s likely cloaking the thing with magic,” Jim said, “We won’t find it easily, not without extensive ritual magic—and she’ll know we’re looking for it, too.”

  Isaac nodded. “Get started. Cam, help him out. Silver, stay with the praetor—by being here she may have been exposed to Void magic.”

  “Where are you going?” Silver asked, and by the look on his face Isaac suspected his student was feeling the same thing he was, the same coldness.

  “I need to go out
side and make a phone call.”

  “Isaac,” Jim said “We need your help here.”

  “I know. I’ll be back.”

  Isaac rushed back the way they had come, through the ante-chamber, up the stairs, and through the green door which he kept open with his foot. The smell of salt greeted his nose when he emerged. The night air was crisp and cool and silent. The gentle lapping of water soothed the anxiety he had felt as he rushed up those stairs, but only slightly. The mounting feeling of dread had started to build while they were speaking of Nyx and whether or not she had access to the magic of the Tempest, but the feeling, Isaac knew, was entirely unrelated to this.

  The part of him that was connected to the Void was feeling something, some distant, urgent tug, and every time he had tried to push it to the back of his mind it came screaming to the forefront saying one thing over and over and over. Alice. Alice. Alice. Was she in danger? Was she hurt? Cam had said she wasn’t far behind, but he hadn’t heard from her yet. What was she doing?

  Isaac fished his phone out of his pocket, dialed her number, and put it to his ear.

  CHAPTER 7

  Corazon

  “I had a feeling we would cross paths one day, Alice—just not in here.”

  Though the room was cast in darkness, the light coming off Alice’s flashlight was enough to see by. Alice got the impression this woman was beautiful, but also quite severe. Her eyes were almond shaped, her lips were full, and the glow highlighted high cheek bones and the beginnings of crow’s feet along the corner of each of her eyes. Alice’s mind focused on this woman’s appearance because it couldn’t process what was being implied, but when she couldn’t stare in silence any further, she spoke.

  “You?” Alice said.

  It was half a question, but with a slight nod the woman showed she had understood nonetheless. “Me,” she said, “I’m sorry we had to meet like this.” Her thick, quasi-Spanish accent suggested she wasn’t from Ashwood, but from somewhere far—maybe Mexico.

  “You’re her… you left Trapper at my doorstep.”

  “I did; the chest, too.”

  “Why didn’t you… why did you… I mean—”

  “You have questions, I get it,” she said, “But right now isn’t the time. The only important question is why I’m here, and that one has a simple answer. I’m here for the same reason you are.”

  “You’re… hunting?”

  She nodded. “I’ve sensed them, these creatures. I’ve been tracking them for over a month. Longer than that. I told myself I wouldn’t hunt again, but once I realized what was going on I couldn’t just sit around and watch it all happen. I thought you were one of them, so I ran at you.”

  “Wait a second,” Alice said, her mind now finding its edge again. “You’ve known that our city is under attack for over a month? Why haven’t you come to find me sooner?”

  “The time wasn’t right. Tonight wasn’t right either, but here we are.”

  A dark cloud covered Alice’s face. An angry heat was starting to rise into her chest causing her cheeks to start burning. This woman was the second person to ever know about Alice’s condition—Isaac was the first. She had found Alice, and instead of stepping inside for a cup of coffee and a run-down of what her responsibilities would be, she had dropped a bunch of equipment off at Alice’s doorstep and left her to figure it all out on her own.

  “Where were you two years ago?” Alice asked, advancing. “I could have used your help when all of this started, when I had no idea what was going on or what I had become. Do you have any idea how much simpler my life would be right now if you would have just told me what you knew?”

  “You don’t know if your life would have been simpler,” she said, “Only different.”

  Alice bit the inside of her lip to choke the spite out of her words before they could leave her mouth. “Did you do that in the corridor? Did you move all the furniture?”

  The woman nodded.

  “Good,” Alice said, moving to get past the woman standing at the door, “Then you can find your way out and leave me to my hunt.”

  The woman put her hand out and stopped Alice from leaving. “You’re confused,” she said, “And I’m sorry about that. I want to explain everything to you, but we’re only going to get through this if we work together.”

  “I’ve taken Pain Children down on my own many times before.”

  “Pain Children… is that what you’ve been calling them?”

  “I haven’t been calling them that, it’s what they are.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” she mused.

  The stranger took a step back and out of the room. There, in the corridor, a faint sliver of moonlight was filtering in through a broken window, and Alice realized she could now see the face in front of her. This woman was beautiful, but there was a set of long scratches along her right cheek, and her lip was busted and had been bleeding. The fire in her eyes was present though, singing the battle cry of the warrior living inside of her.

  “It got you,” Alice said, her defenses melting as sympathy bubbled up. She knew all too well what it was like to be hurt by one of these things.

  She nodded. “It’s nothing. I’ve been scratched before, but this one hurts more than it should.”

  “They do that.” Alice paused, swallowed. “What’s your name?”

  “Corazon,” she said, “But my friends call me Cora.”

  “Cora. You really wanna stay?”

  She nodded again. “I owe you, for what I did that day.”

  Hearing those words caused Alice’s cheeks to run hot, but she couldn’t let anger get in the way of what she had come here to do. “Then we’d better start looking for it,” Alice said, “If our prey didn’t already know something was up, it knows now.”

  Cora stepped aside and let Alice walk into the hall. “How many of them have you dealt with?” she asked as the two women padded along the dark corridor.

  “More than my fair share,” Alice said, remembering the gasmask man, the poltergeist, and the three screamers—the dark shapes with the copper teeth. “They used to just be spirits, but now they’re something else. I still don’t entirely understand them or how they can do the things they do; all I know is that I have to find them and destroy them.”

  “You’re gonna want to destroy this one,” Cora said. “This one’s a real piece of shit; gotta watch out for those razor fingers, learned that the hard way.”

  Razor fingers?

  The sudden forceful, thrumming sound of heavy boots thumping on the ground stole Alice’s attention. Fear like hot iron leapt into her throat and she sucked in a startled breath of air. The footsteps were close, maybe directly above her—maybe even on this floor. Alice and Cora exchanged glances, and then advanced through the corridor to the T junction up ahead. The flashlight tried to pierce the darkness, but the darkness wouldn’t budge and Alice couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her.

  A slow, drawn out scratching sound that dug into the brain like a spear of ice rent the corridor in two, chilling Alice to the bone. Her heartrate reached fever-pitch, not because of what she had heard, but because of all the pieces that were now starting to fall into place.

  A hospital.

  A pain child.

  Razor fingers.

  Before the thought could fully manifest, the darkness split apart and something came screaming out of it. Alice threw herself against a wall but lost her footing and hit the ground just as a set of sharp, deadly, gleaming talons went sailing past an inch away from her eyes. It had been so close she could almost hear the thing’s fingertips slice the air itself to ribbons, and in that moment of closeness, she saw it—the surgeon—and her old nightmare came flooding forth like lava from an active volcano.

  The surgeon screamed, and its metallic, gargling cry filled the halls and made them shudder. Alice turned her head and saw the entity about to strike her again, but she was still frozen. She put her hand up to protect her face and sharp talons bit into he
r flesh through her leather jacket. Alice screamed now, too, adding her own voice to the discordant cacophony, but the sound was distant, as if she were hearing herself from the end of a long tunnel.

  Her arm throbbed and pulsed with white hot pain and her mind went reeling. It took her back to a time when this same entity had cut her back into tiny strips and peeled the flesh apart one incision at a time, for no reason other than to hear her agonized cries. She was on lock-down, shut away from the world around her and unable to move or act. Trapper was at her neck and she knew she had power, now—the power to hurt it back. But she couldn’t think, couldn’t act, and could barely even hear the commotion happening all around her.

  The hall fell slowly silent, and a pair of hands grabbed Alice’s shoulders.

  “Alice?” Cora asked. She had asked twice, but Alice hadn’t registered the first attempt.

  Alice lowered her bleeding, throbbing arm and stared at Cora, wide eyed with panic.

  “You have to get up,” she said, “You have to fight!”

  “I… I…” The words wouldn’t form. With the corridor now dark and empty, Alice had a chance to reconsider what she had tried to do earlier. Run. Only this time she wouldn’t head to the reception area and mount a last stand—she would crawl through that window, head into the rain, call the mages, and have them tear this fucking place down with that thing still in it. She knew that as long as it remained physical, it could be hurt. What better way to hurt it than to bring a building down around it? But it wasn’t here anymore; it had left this corridor.

  Cora slapped Alice across the cheek.

  Alice blinked and, for the second time tonight, her mind realigned itself. “It’s gone,” she finally managed, “Why has it gone?”