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

by Lee Dignam

  The Good Doctor came up beside Isaac as Silver had done not long ago, only this time there was no talking. Isaac gripped his right cuff and pulled the sleeve of his jacket up to reveal the brass bangle attached to his wrist. He reached with his mind into the Tempest and drew the magic out of that realm of ocean and wind and rage. A phantom wind blew, causing the surface of the water to ripple and the buoy to sway even more wildly.

  Isaac’s magic bangle began to glow with soft blue light that seemed to wisp off like smoke, and when the magic of the Tempest was his he drew the Void out from inside himself and allowed the two to merge. Before him, a ripple in the fabric of reality was beginning to form. At first it looked like a concentrated spot of heat haze, but then the air began to crackle with purple light creating a tear through which he could almost see… a hospital?

  His heart was starting to race. He waited a moment, then another, and another, as the tear continued to open slowly. All he needed was to be able to feel the place he wanted to go to—or in this case, the person. And through his connection to Alice, which was facilitated by the Void, he could.

  The Good Doctor made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and without waiting another instant Isaac reached for the tear and slipped his hand through the portal, but it crackled and flashed wildly, causing Isaac to recoil. The portal pulsed with white light. Isaac covered his eyes, shielding himself from the intensity, and then the portal suddenly collapsed, leaving only a whirling breeze of air.

  “Doctor?” Isaac asked. “Why did that happen?”

  “The Void is unpredictable,” the Good Doctor said, “And its currents are difficult to navigate. I sense the currents are turbulent this night.”

  “I’ll try again, then. I have to.”

  The Good Doctor nodded, and Isaac tried again, reaching out to Alice through the Void. Before him, the ripple in reality reappeared, crackling and pulsing with purple energy. This time, with a clear image of her and a passable image of the hospital he thought she was in held firmly in his mind, he pushed his hand through the ice-cold portal.

  When the portal didn’t collapse, Isaac ducked his head, closed his eyes, and went through the crackling eye of purple light, arriving on the other side a moment later. Standing tall, his body was chilled and his stomach had flipped upside down, but he was where he needed to be at the foot of an old hospital building.

  He saw Alice running up at him, and then saw her immediately stop and jump back, her hands ready to attack, her eyes wide with shock, her face bathed in the violet light from the portal he had just stepped through. Alice stopped dead in her tracks and stared at Isaac, her face grimy and dirty but completely pale, the visage of someone who had just seen a ghost. The portal collapsed in a sudden push of wind which caused a nearby chain-link fence to rattle and clink, and for wet leaves to kick up and fly in all directions.

  “Isaac?” she asked, her eyes wide and alive. “What are you doing here?”

  “Alice,” he said, when the disorientation passed. “Are you alright?”

  “You know this man?” Cora asked.

  “I do, and I’m fine. How did you know to come and get me?”

  Isaac raised his phone. The screen was black now, and the call had ended the moment he stepped through the portal, but seeing it seemed to be enough to jolt Alice’s memory. She fished her own phone out of her pocket and stared at the screen. Her own phone was inert too, but she remembered the call.

  “You called me and I answered,” she said. “You heard all that?”

  Isaac nodded, and though he spoke to Alice, his eyes were probing the other woman standing next to her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. My magic had trouble locking onto you. Who is this?”

  “Who am I?” the woman asked, “Who the hell are you?”

  “She’s like me, Isaac,” Alice said, “The one who left Trapper on my doorstep.”

  Isaac’s eyes fell on Alice again and a coldness far worse than what he had felt when using Void magic filled him. She was hurt. He could see it in the way she was wincing. Her hand, too, was covered in blood, and she had been cradling her right arm. She hadn’t just been in any battle—it had been a close battle.

  “I’m Cora,” the woman said. There was a swagger about her stance, a kind of cool confidence Isaac could appreciate. This woman was wise and experienced, and that made her someone worthy of respect and caution. But what if she had lied to Alice?

  Isaac nodded. “I’m Isaac Moreau,” he said, “You’re the other Half-Lich, then?”

  “Is that what I am?”

  “It’s the conclusion we’ve drawn about Alice,” he said. “Do you have a different word you would prefer we use?”

  “No. Anyway, I haven’t called myself anything in a long time.”

  “What happened here?”

  “It was the surgeon,” Alice said, “In the hospital. We… couldn’t finish it. The thing ran off.”

  “It hurt you, didn’t it?” Isaac asked.

  “It did, but I’m fine.”

  “We need to get you out of the streets and somewhere you can rest.”

  “He’s right,” Cora said, “I didn’t heal those injuries with my magic—only numbed the pain. When the power wears off, and it sounds like it already is, you’ll wish you were somewhere comfortable.”

  “I don’t know if I can rest with that thing on the loose,” Alice said. “Who knows where it’s gone?”

  “You can’t think about that now,” Isaac said, “You’ve been hurt. You need rest. I also have something to tell you, something important.”

  Despite the injuries she had sustained, the argument for her need to rest, and the fact that the Pain Child she was hunting had evidently left, Isaac could still sense the want to fight burning inside of Alice’s chest. It was one of the things he liked about her most, but also one of the things she needed to learn how to control.

  “Isaac, you know we have to do this,” Alice said, “We have to find it. Maybe I can ask Jinx—”

  “Alice, please,” Isaac said, “Come back with me. Get some rest. Let me see to your wounds.”

  Alice looked to Cora, and then back to Isaac. Her shoulders relaxed, she exhaled, and then nodded. “Alright,” she said, “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  Isaac took her uninjured hand—felt the sticky, cold blood on it but decided not to say anything—and then turned to look at Cora. “Thank you,” he said, “For helping her.”

  “I didn’t do it for nothing,” Cora said.

  “What?” Alice asked, her voice suddenly taking on a high pitched tone. “What are you talking about?”

  “I want in,” Cora said, “Whatever this is, whatever’s going on, I want in. I can’t just sit around on my ass while something big is going on. Not if I can help.”

  “I don’t believe anyone is truly altruistic,” Isaac said, “There has to be something you want.”

  “I just want my life to go back to normal. That’s it. I want this all to be over so that I can have my life back.”

  Isaac looked at Alice and, with only his eyes, asked her to make the decision.

  Alice nodded. “Tomorrow,” she said, “Give me your number and I’ll call you tomorrow. You probably need to get some rest too, and Isaac is right. There’s nothing more to do tonight.”

  Cora nodded and gave Alice her number. She made a quick goodbye and slipped under a loose section of the nearby chain-link fence. When she was on the other side of it, she put her hood up against the steadily rising wind, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and started to walk. Isaac wondered about her. If she truly was the other Half-Lich, then her knowledge of the Void may be even greater than Isaac’s. But he couldn’t think about that now. He had Alice, and she needed him.

  “How did you get here?” he asked.

  “My car. It’s over there at the end of the street.”

  “I’ll drive you back home. Let me have your keys.”

  Alice did as he asked, and he helped her through the chain-link. A
s they walked toward the car, Isaac supporting Alice’s weight, he noticed her getting progressively heavier. Her face was twisting with pain and she was wincing with every step. Cora wasn’t kidding about the numbing power she had used on Alice wearing off. It was, and right before his eyes, too. Isaac wished there was something he could do, but there wasn’t. He didn’t have the kind of magic necessary to heal her wounds or ease her pain. He awkwardly dialed Cameron’s number, but a voice came back and said the number wasn’t reachable at this time.

  He was probably still underground.

  Isaac helped Alice into the backseat of her Mustang where she was able to find some comfort, and then he drove—carefully—along the cold, wet Ashwood streets. It had started to rain not long after Isaac had gotten into the car, and the rain had forced all but the staunchest and most desperate pedestrians off the streets and back into their hovels. He kept checking the rearview, not for other cars, but for Alice whose face always seemed to be contorted. She was holding in the pain even though it was starting to overwhelm her.

  He parked the car in the dedicated parking lot adjacent to his apartment building and then helped her out of the car. With his arm around her waist he escorted her across the lot, through reception, and toward the elevator. Very few residents walked around at this time of night, but he did get an odd look from Reggie—the on duty security guard downstairs.

  “Night on the town?” Reggie asked.

  “One too many glasses of bubbly, Reggie,” Isaac said, smiling, and he headed into the elevator as soon as it arrived.

  “How are you holding up?” Isaac asked.

  “Just awesome,” she said, though her breathing was ragged and quick.

  “I’ll get you comfortable,” he said, and when the elevator door opened he made his way across the hall with Alice’s weight still on his shoulder. He opened the door, stepped inside, kicked the door shut with the back of his foot, and headed straight for the bedroom, pushing the door open with his hip.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  “Isaac!” Alice said, and his heart jumped into his throat leaving a taste like hot copper.

  There was another man in the room. Isaac backed up with Alice still resting on him, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and fear. “What the hell?” he said, and then he realized. There wasn’t another man in the bedroom at all; he was staring at himself.

  More specifically, he was staring at a reflection of himself inside an ornate looking mirror; a mirror that belonged in the magic vault beneath the city and not propped up in his bedroom.

  CHAPTER 10

  Ockham’s Razor

  Alice looked at her arm again. Cameron had cleaned the wound and wrapped a tight, white bandage around it, but three fine strips of red were starting to appear, running diagonally across it like a claw mark. “The bastard got me,” Alice said.

  She was sitting on Isaac’s sofa. Around her were Cameron, Jim, Isaac, and Silver. Silver was off standing by the window, staring out into the night. Cameron was sitting on the sofa next to Alice. Isaac and Jim were standing, and sometimes pacing, which made Alice a bit nervous, but she had her cat Elvira happily purring and rubbing herself all over Alice’s lap. This made her feel better.

  The mirror, also, was gone, and that helped. Jim had seen to its removal while Cameron was tending to Alice’s injuries.

  “The wound wasn’t like anything I’ve ever dealt with before,” Cameron said, “It was… insidious.”

  “Insidious?” Alice asked.

  “I couldn’t heal the wound with magic. I was able to repair some of the damage to your arm, but the rest will have to heal on its own.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. The wounds on my back didn’t heal for several weeks or more. Insidious is a good word for what that thing does to people.”

  “I’m just glad you’re alright,” Isaac said, “You were fine when I found you and then… things just deteriorated.”

  “I’m happy you came to find me,” Alice said, “I don’t know if Cora would have been able to help like you did. Do you have any idea how that mirror wound up in Isaac’s apartment?”

  “We do,” Jim said, pushing his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose. “It definitely wasn’t an accident.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, now that you’re healed up we can discuss it, right?” Jim asked, looking to Cameron.

  Cameron nodded, offering his approval as the resident magical physician.

  “While you were hunting for the surgeon,” Isaac said, “Nyx broke into a high security vault of ours and stole that mirror.”

  “You’re sure it was her?” Alice asked.

  “It couldn’t have been anyone else. We thought she had a plan with it, thought she may have wanted to use it for something.”

  “But?”

  “She… was playing with us.”

  “What do you mean playing with us?”

  “It’s the only conclusion we’ve been able to come to. She wanted to show us her power, show us what she could do and how easily she could do it.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Nyx I know.”

  “The Nyx you know is different now. We’ve learned something about her that we didn’t know before tonight.”

  “And that is?”

  “When she took Sonia’s body at the graveyard, we watched her wield the power of the Tempest.”

  “I remember.”

  “We also saw Sonia’s Guardian flee Sonia’s body with her soul intact.”

  Alice’s mind was pulled back to the moment when she saw the dark shape leaving Sonia’s body and float off into the night. She hadn’t known what it was then, but when the Guardian, Bazor, showed itself to her again later on, in its full—gruesome—glory, she learned the truth of what had happened and why. Since then she had been able to see the Good Doctor, the being wearing the plague mask, whenever Isaac summoned it from the Tempest. And whenever Silver did magic, she saw Bazor; the monster with the fixed stare and Glasgow smile.

  Her eyes floated over to Silver, and she wondered for a moment what it must be like to have such a creature wrapped around your soul. It was a thing of nightmares, the sight of which would have driven any human in a Lovecraft story to madness, and yet it was the source of his power. She tried to figure out what was worse— having to live with a monster, or having to eat souls to survive. This was a question to which there was no easy answer.

  “Bazor,” Silver put in from the corner of the room.

  Everyone looked at him, and he turned his head slightly to look back at them.

  “Its name is Bazor,” Silver said.

  “Right,” Jim said, “So, when Bazor left Sonia’s body, Nyx disappeared with it. We think she triggered a teleportation spell before losing the ability to do magic—maybe she knew the Guardian was leaving and decided to make a quick getaway.”

  “She was also outnumbered,” Alice said. “She wouldn’t have won.”

  “Maybe not,” Isaac said, “In any case, after speaking with Logan, we determined that the spell she used to make her escape was one the legionnaires had prepared before we had even arrived. A contingency for—”

  “When they had me,” Alice said.

  “Yes, exactly,” Isaac said. An awkward pause hung in the air. “We know for a fact that, at that point, Nyx had lost the ability to draw magic out of the Tempest.”

  “Sonia’s body would have been about as magical as a cheeseburger,” Cameron added.

  “But when we scanned the vault tonight,” Isaac continued, “We discovered that magic from the Void as well as magic from the Tempest had been used to breach our wards. The only conclusion we’ve been able to come to is that she is somehow able to use magic from the Tempest again, and the only way she could do that is if she found another Guardian.”

  Alice felt her body temperature drop a couple of degrees. “How can you be sure of that? Maybe she was acting with other mages.”

  “It’s possible,” Jim said
, “But we’re going with Ockham’s Razor here.”

  “Ockham’s Razor?”

  “It’s the scientific principle that states when you’re presented with many possible explanations for something, that the simplest is most likely the right one. It wasn’t just the kind of magic she had used, but also the amount of power she had produced. I know of only a handful of mages in Ashwood who have the kind of power necessary to breach a magic vault, and they’re all accounted for.”

  “So we agree that Nyx now has the power of a mage,” Alice said, “Great.”

  “It sounds bad,” Cameron said, “But I think this gives us something we can use against her.”

  “What do you mean?” Alice asked.

  “She has the body of a mage now, and the powers of a mage. If there’s even a chance this sudden shift in her power has made her arrogant or cocky, then she’s become more predictable. From what I understand, Nyx is a being from the Void. The Void is shapeless, but it wants to have shape and substance, so it has the ability to change itself. I think every human Nyx inhabits changes her psyche a little bit; they make her more human.”

  “Sounds like that story you told me about Lich, doesn’t it?” Alice asked.

  Isaac nodded. “Lich brought the Void into the world, and it changed and killed him… for the second time. When he died, that part of the Void he stole returned to the Void, but it changed too. It could think and feel.”

  “That’s a mage folktale,” Jim said, “I hadn’t thought about it until Isaac mentioned it to me, but it sounds like it fits.”

  “If she had the power to break into your top security vault, though, then why didn’t she trash the place?” Alice asked. “Or take something more valuable? More powerful?”

  “We don’t know,” Isaac said, “We’re still trying to figure out if anything else was stolen, but Jim has searched that vault from stem to stern and hasn’t found anything out of place, not even a missing book.”

  “That isn’t good. She was able to break into your vault and then break… in here… to, what, scare us? Toy with us?”

  “Scare tactics,” Silver said, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere outside, “It’s what I would do if I wanted to get into someone’s head and throw them off their game before making my attack.”