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

by Lee Dignam

  “I think it’s the only way.”

  “Yeah, to get her killed.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “We also don’t know it’ll work. Call me crazy, but there has to be another way to do this.”

  “No,” Alice said, “There isn’t. This is the only way to make it work. I know it is.”

  Isaac nodded. “I would never put you in danger if I didn’t think it was the only way forward.”

  “I know,” Alice said, reaching for his hand. “It’s a gamble, and I’m betting on you.”

  Isaac took her hand and squeezed it. “We’ll get ready to astral project your consciousness into the Void.”

  “No… that won’t work. I need to go up there. Physically.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. I have Nyx inside me, remember?”

  “And just how are we supposed to send you up into that storm?” Silver asked.

  Isaac cocked an eyebrow.

  “Jesus,” Jim said, shaking his head. “Fine.”

  “Wait, what are you going to do?” Cameron asked.

  “I’m going to do what I do best,” Jim said, cracking his knuckles. “I’m going to bend the laws of physics.”

  “Bullshit. You’re gonna make her fly?”

  “Now isn’t a good time for that,” Silver said. “Focus.”

  “Right. We have to create a circle,” Isaac said to the other mages.

  “If you pull this off,” Cameron said to Jim, “I owe you a drink.”

  “Make it a coffee, but I’m buying,” Jim said.

  Alice stepped into the middle of the circle and looked around, then settled her eyes on Isaac. She nodded, and Isaac nodded in return. “Jim,” he said, “Go.”

  Jim stretched his hands out toward Alice and a number of rings around his fingers began to glow bright blue, the same color as Isaac’s magic bangle. Alice felt her stomach stretch and pull as the space around her body seemed to detach itself from reality, and suddenly she was hovering off the ground. There was no feeling of motion sickness due to the weightlessness she was experiencing—no sudden pull of gravity, either.

  “When you’re up there,” Isaac said, “We’ll deliver our silver chords to you. Tug on them twice, and we’ll know you’re ready for the magic.”

  Alice nodded, and the bubble of magic surrounding her body started to move up, and up, and up, with Jim carefully guiding her beyond the antennae and into the sky. In this sphere of energy, the wind and the rain had no bearing on Alice’s body. It was like being in a glass box pulled through a transparent lift shaft with the elements hitting it on all sides. Silent, calm, and breathtaking. Ashwood started to fall away beneath her, and she was able to keep track of the mages location purely because the rooftop they were on was the only one with any light coming off it, besides a number of small fires dotted around the city .

  Alice turned her head up toward the churning mess of shimmering clouds. Hypnotic shades of pinks and violets burned in the night sky like a firework display. Alice closed her eyes and let the glow bathe her face until suddenly her chest began to vibrate. When she opened her eyes again, she saw a number of dark shapes rising into the clouds all around her. They were each carrying a glittering, silver chord; they were Guardians.

  One of them had the body of a woman and the head of a big, black cat. Her eyes burned like molten gold, dark fur covered her skin, and her fingernails and toes were tipped with razor sharp claws. Another was a kind of bird creature sporting a beautiful set of feathered wings. This one, like the others, was human in shape also, but only because it had two arms and two legs; the similarities ended there. Joining them Alice saw the monstrous form of Bazor, Silver’s Guardian—a tall, thin creature strapped tightly in a straitjacket. The flash of lightning revealed its grotesque Glasgow smile.

  Finally, leading the pack, was the Good Doctor, its cloak billowing with the wind, its beak turned up at the sky, its hat firmly planted upon its head. The Guardian looked at Alice, and for a moment she thought she was beginning to understand something she had never before understood. Some primal, secret truth about the world mages lived in, but the understanding she thought she was about to receive slipped from her before she could grasp it fully.

  The Good Doctor looked up at the sky again and accelerated. Alice’s bubble did too, and soon she was zooming up and into the eye of the storm at a speed that should have made her stomach upturn and empty itself, but all she could feel was the weight of her own anxiety pulling at her insides. Her uncertainty. Her nerves.

  Her fear.

  Guided by an unknown and unknowable instinct, she stretched her arms out and opened her palms. One by one, the Guardians fell in beside her and each placed a silver chord in her hands—two in her right, and two in her left—and she felt something now; the magic, the power, she was buzzing with it. It was in her and all around her. She could hear the roar of the wind again, but this wasn’t a sound she could hear with her ears; it was in her mind, in her chest, in her heart.

  Her mind was reeling, but she had never been more awake or more alive. For as long as she held these glimmering silver chords, she was connected to an energy that was whole and pure. There was no earth, no Isaac, no Silver, and no Void—there was only this energy, this Tempest; the place from which all magic spawned. It was the wave breaking at her back, and she was the surfer trying to ride it.

  The sphere of energy she was in started to quake and tremble as she reached the center of the whirlpool in the sky and the blackness beyond it. Whips of violet light licked the bubble she was in, but failed to touch her body and run her through with thousands of volts. The Guardians fell away as she pushed into the darkness of the sky, but she didn’t feel like she was alone as long as she kept hold of those silver chords in her hands.

  She had done this before, and she had failed to do what was needed of her; she wouldn’t fail now.

  Total darkness pressed around her on all sides. With every flash of lightning, Alice could see shapes moving around her—sinister creatures made of shadow, not unlike the ones she had faced during the riots. They were here. They were all here, waiting for their master to step through and be reborn into the world. They were watching Alice climb, but they made no attempt to attack her or stop her from doing what she was doing.

  Could they sense the essence inside her? Was she fooling them into believing she was one of them? Or was she fooling herself into believing she wasn’t one of them?

  A burning pain, like a cigarette pressed into the skin, began to manifest above her right temple. Alice closed her eyes and winced from the pain, but it was blinding, deafening. Her ears started to ring. She was aware her mind was being invaded, and was trying to resist, but it was like an ant trying to fight against the boot.

  A booming, heavy bass sound filled her mind; a sound so loud it caused her chest to vibrate and her teeth to rattle. She bit her lip to contain the scream bubbling in her throat like acid reflux, but knew she wouldn’t last longer than a couple of seconds if the sound didn’t stop. When it did, it was like taking her first ever breaths of oxygen all over again. Alice’s chest heaved as she sucked in a lungful of air, and then from out of the darkness, a voice…

  “Daughter,” the voice said.

  She opened her eyes again just as streaks of arching blue light lit the darkness. For a moment, she got the impression she wasn’t floating inside a swirling whirlpool of clouds, but a still, dark place where nothing moved and nothing talked except for the lightning igniting the dark, featureless landscape.

  Only the landscape wasn’t featureless; the landscape wasn’t land at all, but the back of a magnificently huge creature rising out of the darkness. Alice couldn’t see its head, its eyes, or its hands, but she was sure it had them—just as she was sure that if it ever touched her, she would be dead in an instant.

  “No,” Alice said aloud. “Not your daughter.”

  “Why do you lie?” it asked, “You are my daughter. I feel your
presence.”

  “You don’t feel anything. You don’t even exist.”

  The shadow creature continued to rise from out of the black. Lightning created a silhouette of its monstrous form, and when it opened its eyes, they were the bright blue of dead stars in a cosmic emptiness. This was the thing she had seen the first time she had entered this place, but something was different now; maybe it was the passenger she was carrying inside of her, or maybe she had been prepared for what she would see. Her mind was hers, her body was hers, and at least for now, her will was hers too.

  “Daughter,” it said, “Where are you? I wish to see you.”

  For a moment Alice thought she could hear… pain… in the booming, heavy voice speaking from the very clouds themselves, but that couldn’t be right. Then something happened that Alice wasn’t expecting to happen. Her eyes were starting to sting. Her heart squeezed, and she felt her resolve crack like dry paint on a hot summer’s day.

  “Your daughter is gone,” Alice said, her voice wavering enough for her to notice. “I killed her.”

  “Lies,” said the voice. “You lie to me!”

  “No,” Alice said, “I killed her, and then I ate her.”

  “You must bring her back,” it said, “Bring her to me and I will spare you and your world.”

  Alice swallowed hard and realized her throat was dry. She thought of Isaac, Cameron, Jim, and Silver—who were all waiting for her to tug on the chords and release the magic they were preparing to send into the Void. She then thought of Ashwood and its people, some of who were guilty only of wanting to live and let live, and doubt crept into her mind.

  What if the magic didn’t work? What if Chaos came anyway, somehow stronger, despite Isaac and the others’ best efforts? Was it possible Chaos was telling the truth? Would it spare the planet if Alice delivered Nyx to it? Could she release Nyx even if she wanted to? This wasn’t something she had ever tried to do before, but if she could, and if Chaos was willing to trade its daughter for a chance at freedom from the Void, would she give Nyx up?

  This concept was all too human, all too real. Until now she had been dealing with entities that had nothing on the human condition; no concept of it, and no empathy for it. Guilt stabbed at her stomach and she winced as if she had, herself, been physically stabbed. But she couldn’t feel guilty. This thing that was talking, this voice, wasn’t human, and its daughter hadn’t been human either. Its daughter was a thief and a murderer, and Alice was glad she was gone.

  “If you want her,” she said, “You’ll have to come and get her, you son-of-a-bitch.”

  Alice pulled her hands together and joined them, though she struggled with the weight of the shimmering silver chords. Another flash of lightning came, this one whipping along the creature’s front, and Alice saw, for the first time, it’s horrible, monstrous mouth filled with row upon row of giant, jagged, copper colored teeth.

  The creature roared, and then lunged toward her; a mountain that had decided to pull itself out of the earth and hurl itself a great distance. Alice’s heart leapt into her throat and began to beat so hard she thought she would pass out, but she held firm and stared at the monster barreling toward her. She shifted the chords to her left hand and stretched out her right palm, opening her fingers to their full extension. Then, using what felt like a gargantuan amount of strength she didn’t think she had, she tugged on the silver chords once…

  Twice.

  The pulse of energy that rushed up the length of shimmering silver chords was instant; a hot, bright, avalanche of sensation that poured into her, sending her mind and body into overload. The power of the Tempest entered her body, churned with her own essence, and exploded out of her right palm in a burst of silver light that entered Chaos’ open maw and struck it where she thought it would be most vulnerable.

  Magic or no, light or no, Chaos’s massive form bowled over Alice like a tidal wave of shadow, and then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 31

  Free Fall

  A magnificent detonation occurred in the clouds above creating a light show so bright Isaac and the others had to shield their eyes. Thunder rumbled off in the distance, seeming to carry the light with it in all directions. As Isaac watched, he could have sworn he had seen something—a large shape—almost start to emerge from the dark eye in the clouds, now that the light was gone, he could see there was no more dark eye in the clouds.

  “She’s done it,” Isaac said, his eyes wide and cast upward. “She’s done it, look! The eye is gone.”

  “Holy shit,” Silver said, “That was one hell of a flash. The whole city must have seen it.”

  “Jim, tell me you have her,” Isaac said.

  Jim’s neck hadn’t once dropped to come eye to eye with Isaac, but where his magic rings had been glowing a moment ago, they weren’t anymore. He lowered his head now, and shook it. “I lost her just before the explosion,” he said.

  “No,” Isaac said, “No, you couldn’t have lost her. She has to be up there, still.”

  “Even if she is, I can’t see her anymore. I would need to cast the spell again, but I need to see her.”

  Isaac raced to the edge of the skyscraper where he was better able to get a view of the sky without the antennae in the way. Alice was still up there, but against the darkness floating over Ashwood she would be almost impossible to see with the naked eye. He closed his eyes, pushed an image of Alice into his mind, wrapped himself in that memory, shot a ball of light into the air from his right hand.

  His magic bangle began to glow as the ball soared into the sky. He watched it fly straight for a moment, and then slowly start to change direction as, he hoped, it locked onto her signal and angled itself toward her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cameron leap onto the metal antenna and start climbing it, not stopping until he reached the top. Isaac lost track of the ball of light, but Cameron pointed.

  “I see it,” he said from atop the pointed metal structure. “It’s starting to come down. I think it has her.”

  “I can’t see it,” Jim said. “Fuck, Cameron, I can’t see it!”

  “Just be ready with the magic,” Cameron said. “You won’t have a lot of time—she’s coming down fast.”

  Isaac’s heart was hammering. The worst part wasn’t that Alice was in a free fall; it was that he couldn’t do anything about it. For all his magic, for all his capabilities, this was something he had to entrust to others. And while he genuinely believed the others would work to the best of their abilities to get Alice down safely, the powerlessness he felt in that moment was enough to cause him to freeze and simply watch on bated breath.

  The ball of light Isaac had thrown into the air slowly came back into his line of sight. Cameron was right. She wasn’t just falling, she was plummeting.

  “I see her,” Jim said, and he stretched his hands out to where she was. A moment later, his rings started to glow with soft blue light, and the magic of the Tempest began to work through him. But something was wrong… Alice wasn’t slowing down.

  “Jim?” Isaac asked.

  No reply.

  Isaac walked briskly to where Jim was standing. “Tell me you can get her,” he said.

  “I’m trying, but she’s moving too quickly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means I’m having trouble picking her up, dammit.”

  “I’m on it,” Silver said, but Isaac stretched out his hand.

  “What are you going to do?” Isaac asked.

  “I’m going to teleport to where she is, then grab her, and teleport back.”

  “No,” Jim said, “I can do it. Just give me another minute.”

  “She doesn’t have a minute, Jim!” Isaac said.

  “Just let me do it… got her!”

  Jim’s magic rings flashed bright blue as the magic took hold of Alice’s falling body. Isaac felt like the stone golem that had been sitting on his shoulders since he saw her go up into that sky had finally gotten up and walked off. He could see
her now, her body only a suggestion against the dark sky, illuminated only thanks to the glow from the orb of light he had conjured. She was falling, still, but her fall was controlled and gentle. Delicate.

  And it needed to be a mild descent, because she wasn’t standing upright; she wasn’t even conscious.

  Isaac watched as Jim slowly guided Alice’s unmoving body onto the roof of the Century Tower. He took a step back and let her body come over the ledge to where the men were standing. Cameron had come down from the antenna by now, and between he, Silver, and Isaac, they were able to snatch Alice out from midair and set her down on the floor.

  She’s cold, Isaac thought, dear God she’s cold.

  “Alice,” he said, tapping her face.

  No response.

  He checked for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Her lips were blue, her skin was pale, and her lungs weren’t inhaling or exhaling. Isaac removed his wet jacket and placed it under her head. His hands were shaking, his throat felt like it had shrunk to the size of a pinhole, and his heart was pulsing against his temples, but he had to act. He had to do something. She wasn’t dead—she couldn’t be dead.

  “Let me,” Cameron said, kneeling next to her. He placed his hand on her collarbone and held it there.

  “I don’ see any injuries,” Isaac said. “Do you?”

  “No, I don’t, I think her injuries are internal.”

  “Internal? What do you think could have done this?”

  “Probably whatever it was that almost crawled out of the eye,” Silver said. “We all saw it.”

  “She’s not responding to magic,” Cameron said, “I’m going to try to revive her. Give me some room.”

  Isaac shot him a look of incredulity, as if he had just been told to cut his own arm off with a butter knife. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  “You have to,” Cameron said, “Otherwise I can’t do what I’m supposed to do.”

  Jim grabbed Isaac’s arm. “C’mon,” he said, helping to get Isaac on his feet. “We’ve done all we can—let Cameron do his part now.”