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

by Lee Dignam

  “For both our sakes, I hope you’re right.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Logan Hodges

  Ashwood was a city plunged into darkness. Isaac and Jim traversed the streets in Jim’s old car, occasionally passing another lone vehicle on the road. They were the only things capable of producing light; the entire city was down. Skyscrapers, Police Precinct, and Fire Stations alike were non-functional. Hospitals, he hoped, would still be functioning, but Isaac was starting to understand now that Nyx had done more than just knock out the city’s primary generators—backups were failing, too.

  This was probably a magic effect she had been able to cloak from his, or any other mage’s, senses.

  “How much farther away is it?” Isaac asked.

  Jim pulled what looked like an old compass out of his coat pocket and checked. “Not far,” he said, “This would have been much easier if the portals were working.”

  “The magistrate must have sealed them when we warned them of Nyx’s activity.”

  “Smart, but it makes getting to this safe house a real pain in the ass. We put it in this neighborhood for a reason.”

  “I don’t think there will be many dangerous types out on the streets tonight.”

  Jim gave Isaac a sidelong, stern glance. “If you think that, then you don’t know this city at all. What’s happened tonight is unprecedented. We’ve never had a storm like this one, let alone a storm and a blackout. Nyx and her kind won’t be the only things having a ball tonight, I can tell you, and you’re going to be the one left to clean up when this is all over. If you ask me, I think we’re making a mistake in going to bust Logan out of his cell. We should be going to your museum and checking the district out, making sure they aren’t killing each other.”

  “As tribune it’s my job to understand the people in my jurisdiction and protect them. I think you’re overestimating its ability and desire to self-destruct.”

  “And I think you’re underestimating it. But I’ll tell you what, if your jurisdiction is still in one piece tomorrow, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “You’re assuming, of course, that we’ll be able to beat Chaos back and send Nyx into the Void.”

  Jim breathed deeply through his nose and let it slide back out with a slight wheeze. “If we fail there won’t be an Ashwood tomorrow. I’m allowed to be optimistic.”

  “We can’t fail. And that’s why we need Logan.”

  Jim grunted. “The guy’s an asshole. What good will he be to us?”

  “He’s the only other mage in Ashwood who can withstand the Void. He may not have the knowledge of a Weaver, but his magic will be just as effective against Nyx as yours or mine, and we need all the help we can get.”

  “I still don’t like it, but I’ll go with your judgment on this one.”

  Isaac nodded. Releasing Logan also made him nervous, but he couldn’t appear nervous on the surface. Whether he had known it or not, whether he had expected things to go as horribly wrong as they had gone or not, Logan’s meddling had put Nyx on the path to claiming the body of a mage for her own. If he and his legionnaires hadn’t gotten involved, the situation at the graveyard may have gone differently.

  They may have stopped Nyx then and there.

  But Logan allowed his ego to get in the way of his responsibilities and his better judgment. His methods had more in common with a righteous zealot than a civilized enforcer of magical law. Still, Isaac wasn’t wrong. They needed his help. As nervous as working with Logan made him, Isaac’s intuition told him Logan wouldn’t try anything stupid. He owed Isaac his life, after all.

  “Here it is,” Jim said. He stopped the car in the middle of the road and looked for a place to pull in.

  Nothing.

  Isaac stared out of his window at the apartment building on the right. “I’m going to have to go up while you wait in the car,” he said.

  “Is that a good idea?”

  Isaac turned to look at Jim. “Do you have a better one?” he asked.

  Jim pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “I’m fresh out.”

  “Then that’s it. I’ll go up and you’ll keep the engine running.”

  “You’ll need this,” Jim said, and he handed Isaac the compass he had been using. The compass was cold to the touch, and strangely heavy. “If the magical seals are still up, this will allow you through.”

  “I’ll be five minutes,” Isaac said, and he unlocked the car and pushed the door open. The wind put force against Isaac’s hands, but he managed to put his weight behind the door and push it open. He squeezed himself out of the car and shut the door behind himself. Invisible hands tried to topple him over, but with a couple of powerful strides he managed to get on the pavement and through the door into the apartment building without incident.

  The wind howled at his back, causing the closed apartment building door to bump and rattle, as if invisible beasts were trying to break in and eat everyone’s firstborn son. Isaac pushed this thought to the back of his mind and proceeded through the dark corridor with his phone in his hand acting as a flashlight. A tiny finger of ice gently pressed into his stomach, causing an odd cold to spread into his chest.

  It’s the dark, he thought, it’s everything. Lock it away.

  When he got to the stairwell he shined his light up through the gap, but while the torchlight on the back of his phone caught every single dust mote and caused it to glimmer, it barely touched the next floor landing—let alone the floors above it. Isaac sighed and walked, smoothing the surface of the compass with his thumb as he went. The building groaned, wooden floorboards croaked under his feet, and windows rattled. Strange, disjointed voices spoke out from beyond closed doors like the whispers of the dead from ancient tombs.

  But it was only the darkness playing with his senses. It was heavy on his body and made the air difficult to breathe, seeming to almost rob him of breath and push against his knees as they each came up to climb the next step. Isaac held onto the rail for support and used it to keep going until, more out of breath than he would have liked, he reached the top floor of the building he had himself spent time in under magistrate custody.

  This hall, like the others, was as dark as the bottom of a well. Isaac’s loafers echoed with a sound like a metronome running at a fast pace as he walked along the corridor with conviction. When he reached the door at the end of the hall, the first thing that hit him was a strange smell, almost metallic in its properties. There were sounds coming from the other side of the door, too. Tapping? Scratching?

  The unmistakable caw of a crow pierced through the darkness causing Isaac to jump and his hackles to rise. His heart was beating fast, but he couldn’t identify the reason why. Hastily he pressed the compass up against the door. Several sparks of light shot out from under it at the moment of impact. All around the door, magical sigils of warding and protection were starting to glow into existence.

  When the sigils reached the peak of their glow, the door made a click and unlocked. Isaac removed the compass and put it in his pocket, and then he reached for the door handle, turned it, and with his heart pounding in his throat, pushed. But when the door opened, the smell that emanated from the room beyond it overpowered him and caused him to turn his face away in disgust and alarm.

  Isaac’s hand flew up to his nose, and he turned his head to look through the open door. Without warning, a flock of black birds raced out of the room toward him. On dark wings, they came; dark beaks, and shiny eyes, and raking claws, the crows cawed and squawked as they came to peck and nip and scratch at Isaac’s face.

  He summoned the Good Doctor without thinking and the Good Doctor came, with a shield up to protect against the onslaught of crows. The tall, beaked figure stood in front of Isaac, its hands stretched out to either side of its body, the silhouette of its hat and cloak sticking out in stark contrast even against the darkness of the room.

  Isaac’s magic bangle flashed bright blue, a blinding pulse of light and energy, and the crows retreated, flyin
g gracefully into powerful winds and disappearing into the night.

  When the cacophony ended, the Good Doctor stepped aside and let Isaac through. The soft blue glow from the bangle lit the contours of the room, and Isaac saw what these crows had been here for. It was Logan. He was naked. His arms were stretched wide, like Christ on the cross, and tied at the wrist to fixtures on opposite walls. His head was low, his knees touching the ground. Flies were buzzing around—so many they could still be heard despite the wailing of the wind coming through the smashed in window. There was blood on the jagged edges of that smashed window—blood and black feathers.

  “My God,” Isaac said.

  “Not God,” the Good Doctor said. “Goddess.”

  “How?”

  “Nyx retained all of Sonia’s knowledge and memories. She knew this place well.”

  Isaac approached Logan’s ragged, pecked at, and scratched open corpse. “He’s been dead for hours,” Isaac said, more to himself than to the Good Doctor. “You deserved a lot of things, but you didn’t deserve to die like this.”

  Logan would have to be dealt with, but right now they had a more pressing issue to deal with. Isaac walked up to the broken window, inspected it, and then gestured with his right hand. One by one, each piece of shattered glass began to hover up and off the floor. The shards floated in formation toward the broken pane and slotted themselves into position—from the largest shard to the tiniest sliver.

  When they were all locked in, the windowpane flashed soft blue, and the wind stopped coming in. So long as the room remained magically warded and sealed, no human would randomly find it, let alone Logan. He stepped away from the window and strode across the room, exiting the way he’d come in. Jim was waiting downstairs, so he began his descent with the Good Doctor drifting silently by his side.

  “The other legionnaires, those who called him their friend, could also be in danger,” the Good Doctor said.

  “This was a message. She knew Logan would be here and went after him knowing full well we would find this. She knows our infrastructure; who we are, where we go, how we do things. We’re running out of time.”

  Isaac burst out of the apartment building and stepped into the blustery night. Jim was still waiting exactly where Isaac had left him, the car idling on the street. He heaved the passenger door open, pushed himself into the car, and rested his head on the backrest. Jim looked at him and then into the street.

  “Logan?” he asked.

  “Dead,” Isaac said.

  “Dead? How?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  Jim got the car moving again. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “I doubt we’ll be able to get to her over the phone, but we need to get back to Alice. She said she’d be at her office, so that’s where we’re going.”

  “And Cameron?”

  “I know how to get to Cameron, even if what I’ve just seen the crows doing makes me never want to deal with them again.”

  CHAPTER 23

  On The Trail

  Alice’s Mustang rolled up alongside the door to the office and slowed to a halt. A moment later, the car slipped into an available parking spot like a hand into a satin glove. She killed the lights and the engine, and the steady hiss of rain surged in volume like a crowd rising to applaud. With the wipers off, the windshield became a swaying, blurry mess of dark shapes. In the distance, a store alarm blared.

  She was about to step out of the car with her keys in her hand when she turned her head over her shoulder, looked at Silver, and said “You’ve never been in my office.”

  “I haven’t,” Silver said.

  “When we get in there, don’t touch anything.”

  “What am I going to touch?”

  “I just want to make sure you know. No matter how tempted you are, don’t touch anything.”

  “I’m not six.”

  “Good. Then let’s go.”

  Alice opened the door into the aggressive winds and heavy rain, stepped out into it, and closed the door before too much water could get into the car. She hurried along the sidewalk, reached the door of Werner Investigations, and unlocked it, but the door caught again. Déjà vu suddenly struck as Silver walked up to the door behind her and asked about the hold up. Alice cursed, pushed, and slipped into the narrow gap she was able to force open.

  “Hurry up in there, will ya?” Silver called from the outside.

  “Relax,” Alice said, “Its only rain.”

  The boxes market bedroom and kitchen had fallen down again, only this time the kitchen box had burst open and spilled its contents all over the floor. Forks, knives, plates—one of which had broken—now lay scattered in front of the open box. The other box, which was marked bedroom, had also fallen, but had thankfully remained shut tight.

  But it was her Chest of Haunts, which lay with its mouth propped up to reveal the graveyard of Polaroids inside, that was causing Alice to stand incredibly still. She stared at the Chest and wondered where the padlock was. It wasn’t attached, and she couldn’t see it on the floor. Strange things were prone to happen around the Chest, but this? Then the thought struck her like a punch to the gut that sucks the air out of the lungs.

  Did someone break in?

  Alice spun around in a wide arc, her body prickling all over.

  “Alice?” Silver said, “Getting a little wet out here.”

  But Alice didn’t reply. Instead she marched toward the only closed door in her office—the bathroom—and pushed it open hard. The door flew open and slammed the wall, but the bathroom beyond it was empty save for the toilet, the sink, and the cabinet above the sink. Alice spun around again, her heart thumping in her chest, her senses sharp and alert, and scanned the room, but could see nothing else out of place.

  When she convinced herself that no one had broken in, she walked briskly back to the front door and cleared the box that was blocking the entrance. Silver rushed in and slammed the door the behind him. His jacket was glistening from the rain and his hoody was soaked. When he pulled it down, it slapped against the leather of his jacket and revealed a wet head of dark hair.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I thought someone had broken in.”

  “And?” Silver asked, shaking excess water out of his hair with his fingers.

  “Nothing. But this shouldn’t be open.”

  Silver came up to the Chest of Haunts and stared at it. Immediately he recognized the runes carved into the underside of the Chest’s lid. He crouched before it and stared for a good minute, and then he stretched out his hand to reach for one of the Polaroids. Alice pretended to clear her throat, and this seemed to catch Silver’s attention.

  “What did I say in the car?” Alice asked.

  Silver pulled his hand back. “I can’t look at even one of these?”

  “What do you think you’ll find on them?”

  “I don’t know, but that’s the point. If I could just have one I could—”

  “Let that come later,” Alice said, “Right now we have a job to do, and our main priority should be to find Nyx.”

  Silver stood and checked around the floor. He picked something up and handed it over to Alice. It was the Chest’s padlock, but the top part had snapped off. It hadn’t just opened—something seemed to have had the strength to separate the u-shaped bar with the locking mechanism. The padlock was cold to the touch, too—ice cold.

  Alice tossed the lock aside, closed the Chest, and grabbed another padlock from inside her desk drawer. This wasn't the first time a lock had broken, but it was the first one that had practically snapped in half. As she fastened the new lock into place and secured the Chest, she wondered if the Void storm was causing the dormant spirits inside the Chest to stir, but quickly pushed the thought out of her mind.

  One thing at a time, Alice thought.

  Silver went about the task of collecting the contents of the kitchen box and placing them back inside. He was about to tape the box shut again when someone banged on the o
ffice door three times. They were loud bangs, but they had to be if they wanted to get past the constant drone of static noise just outside.

  Alice and Silver stared at the door for a moment. Silver’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. She looked at him; he nodded at the door, and then at her. She approached, pressed her eye against the peephole, and saw Cora standing on the street holding an umbrella up against the rain.

  “It’s okay,” she said, and she opened the door.

  Cora stepped into the office with her hands in her pockets and sighed, relieved to finally be out of the cold. Silver stood down, letting his grip on the sword relax.

  “Cora,” Alice said, “What are you—how did you know we were here?”

  “I’ve been all over,” she said, “When the lights went out and the phones died I went to your boyfriend’s apartment, but that was empty, so then I made my way over here thinking this would be the next place you would go to.”

  “That was one hell of a wild guess, wasn’t it?” Silver asked.

  Cora pulled her hood down and let her chestnut locks tumble over her shoulders—untouched by the rain. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Alice could have been anywhere.”

  “My guesses are better than some people’s facts.”

  Alice didn’t like that Silver was questioning Cora, but one glaring thought wouldn’t leave her mind. Cora didn’t know where this place was; at least, Alice didn’t think she did. The office was called Werner Investigations, and Alice’s last name was Werner. The idea that Cora had figured this connection out by Googling Alice’s name was quickly dismissed by the idea that Cora knew more about her than she had originally let on.

  What else did she know?

  “It doesn’t matter how she got here,” Alice said, “The fact is you’re here, and we need your skills… did you find her?”

  “Nyx?” Cora asked. “No, but I think I was able to zero in on the surgeon. At least, I’ve narrowed down the place it could be hiding.”

  “Narrowed down by how much?”