Curse of Iron

by D. D. Miers

  “You’ve got, what, three…four new tattoos, Will? Been busy playing with other people’s magic lately, huh?”

  “Hey, Squirt. My tattoos have never bothered you before.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. The shadows pressed in around us, forcing me to expend more energy to stay in the glowing pool of Fae magic. I pushed more power into holding the darkness back and prayed it would hold out long enough to finish and get out.

  “Well, I didn’t know you were a Fae with a grudge before, Will.” I stood in the center of the ring and held out my hands, mirroring his pose. “Can you tell me it wasn’t you in my apartment?”

  He scoffed and shook his head. “That’s what you think of me? Because I happen to have some Fae heritage, I'm automatically the bad guy?”

  “No, Will. I’d give anything for it to have been a stranger, or a witch. But not you. Not the man I admire more than anyone in the world. The guy who taught me to be strong with or without magic, who treated me like family.” I realized my fists were clenched and I forced them open. “I thought you’d have my back, and I knew I’d always have yours.”

  For the first time, a flicker of regret crossed his face. The pressure on my ward of light eased, and I felt the presence of others hidden around us for the first time. Almost as soon as I received the impression, his feigned indignation returned, and shadows pushed in on me again.

  “The witches want you dead, girl.”

  “Can you tell me something I didn’t already know?” He huffed and paced the small shadow he had in the corner. I let my magic build without pushing the edge of the light any closer to him. The gym was his home, his center. I didn’t have to worry about him using the shadows to escape, because I knew he’d just be deposited back in the gym again. I took a step closer, letting him see my pain and grief. “Will? Did my aunt hire you to kill me?”

  “No, God no.” He finally stepped into the light of his own free will, wrapping me in a bear hug. I prayed he couldn’t feel my pounding heart and let him hold me for a moment while I reached out the doors Grayson had broken down. The ward hadn’t held across the open space. It was a common mistake among the uninitiated in the magical world, to think you must place your wards on the doors.

  He’d been given a ridiculous amount of power, but no real training, and with three friends hiding in the shadows, waiting to help him, I prayed his ignorance was enough to tilt the scales in my favor.

  “Will,” I said, when he released me. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “I know.” I clenched my fist and plowed it into his jaw, howling in pain as bones shifted and broke in my hand. “But you killed Gideon, and you tried to kill me.”

  The vines outside slipped through the door, winding around the body I felt closest to them and dragging it outside once it was cocooned. I couldn’t tell if it was someone I knew or not. My plants couldn’t read anything more than "not plant" and my magic had to keep commands simplified to position and shape.

  Will had wiped the blood off his mouth and circled me slowly, looking for a blind spot, a weakness. After all he’d trained me. He knew I was as strong on my left as my right, my hearing was as acute as a natural fox. I didn’t fall for his pacing and refused to watch him circle me, waiting for a breath of air to give him away.

  I didn’t have to wait long, and the attack came from above, a fighter I hadn’t realized was watching from the exposed steel beams directly over us. She dove to the mat and lashed out with a low leg sweep I barely dodged, my attention too divided between trying to control the vines slowly eroding the remaining wards, breaking up the symbols as they grew through the concrete.

  She jumped back as I dropped and rolled away, and I dodged the hit I’d been expecting from Will his fist brushing my cheek as I threw myself to the side. I landed on the ropes and dropped, rolling across the rough canvas mat so I had them both in my line of sight.

  “Will, you don’t have to do this. Just turn yourself in, or better yet, turn in the warlock who put you up to it.” He slashed at me again and kept swinging, backing me into the corner as I tried to avoid him.

  “You don’t understand. I didn’t want you hurt. He said he just wanted you out of the way.”

  “Out of the way for what?” There weren’t any Wiccan events approaching I could disrupt, no changes of power I’d be able to upset.

  “I don’t know. But I can’t disobey him. I can’t tell him no.”

  I wanted to beat him senseless for his stupidity. “Well, duh. What in the hell did you think? Someone was just handing out free magical power with no agenda?”

  “Says the girl who went to see the Broker today.”

  “Says the woman who turned the Broker down, today.” He feinted, and I braced against the turnbuckle and kicked out with both feet as hard as I could. I felt life beneath my feet when I landed and knew my plants had reached me, waiting below the mat for my command.

  Will came at me again, both fists swinging. I blocked the first, ducked the second, and was nailed by the snap kick I didn’t see coming. As high as I was on the ropes, it carried me over them and I landed on my feet first and then dropped on my ass right in the middle of the shadows.

  The light disappeared from the center of the ring, plunging the room into a thick, oppressive darkness, and a hand grabbed my ankle, flipping me like I was made of paper. My plants came to my aid, and my landing was soft, vines wrapping around my legs and arms and setting me upright. I held out my hand in the dark and a stem slid into my palm, hardening into a staff before it snapped off its parent branch.

  Footsteps rushed toward me and I prayed to Dana to guide my hand as I swung the staff in a wide arc around me. I connected with the first attacker, but the second lashed out with a kick so hard I felt the air move and dodged it, falling on top of the guy I’d struck.

  “Oof. God,” the guy gasped, and I stiffened. I knew his voice, had trained with him, helped him when his mom got sick and he needed a break from the medical bills.

  “Terry,” I hissed in his ear. “You need to get the hell out of here now, and don’t ever come back. This place will be burned and salted before I let Will keep peddling dangerous magical influences on kids.” I brought the staff down on the arm I could feel grasping at my leg and rolled off him. “Just go.”

  I singled out a branch near my side and sent it after him, grinning despite myself when I heard his screams of sheer terror as it grew and rushed him out the doorway through the congestion of vines. Before I could fully appreciate the way my gifts had grown, something hit me from behind and I went skidding across the floor on my side, clutching my staff in one hand.

  I whipped more branches up from the tree I was growing, searching it to see what the seed had been. I saw a vision of a great oak in my head and silently thanked the goddess I could work with something stronger than morning glory.

  My flailing didn’t stop me from catching the back of my head on the base of a sparring dummy, rapping my skull, and making stars shoot across the insides of my eyelids. He didn’t wait for me to get up, and if he hadn’t been wearing enough cologne to choke an elephant, I wouldn’t have moved away from the axe kick he aimed at my head.

  Instead, I swept him with the staff and knocked him to one side. Will was still somewhere, hidden, and I didn’t know how to expose him. I listened and moved to where I heard rustling, only to find my own vines whispering against each other. Two of Will’s fellow acolytes were gone, but he and the other two remained, and the darkness was overwhelming me.

  There was more leafy rustling as my sapling oak grew through the morning glory vines, and I poured my magic through them, pushing the thin tree to grow and expand as though years were passing instead of seconds. For a moment I wished I wasn’t alone and Grayson was watching out for me with his were-cat vision. If there was ever a time to believe in the prophecy, it would be now, I thought as I felt the top of the tree straining against the industrial mate
rials of the gym. I can’t die today, if I’m meant to bring down the witches in the future.

  I clung to my thin, rebellious hope and strained harder, until the metal above me bucked, screeched, and gave way. The oak tree grew, ten times bigger than any tree I’d ever seen, forcing its way through the roof of the building, and letting in the pink light of the setting sun.

  Even though it was getting late in the day and the light was weak, after the magically augmented dark, I had to blink to clear my eyes. The darkness retreated, but clung to the corners, where every time I looked I saw eyes glowing, staring back at me.

  That’s it. Gods, you are slow sometimes, Morgan. I sped up the growth of my morning glory until the gym looked like a hundred-year-old abandoned building, overgrown with trees and wildflowers and weeds of every kind I’d called from the surrounding earth.

  With every inch of real estate my plants took over, I felt Will push back against my magic with his own. I was expending as little as I could, renewing my energy constantly with the life force of the plants themselves, and Will had to draw on his limited supply of borrowed power.

  I felt the magic shift, lessen, and figured I’d drained him. I saw the door and using the staff to pull myself up to a standing position, I made a break for it. Less than twenty feet from freedom, I was hit from behind, sending my staff clattering off in the wrong direction.

  Something wet slid down my side and when I touched it, my fingers were covered in blood. The pain didn’t really set in until I saw the thick red stuff coating my hand. Even then it was a dull ache, compared to the excruciating pain I expected.

  I tore off an exposed root and tied it around my waist like a belt, putting pressure on the cut, and crawled towards my only weapon. Hands grabbed at my ankle and I kicked wildly to break the hold. I connected and was rewarded by a feminine screech of pain and fury as I scrambled to get away from her.

  “My boss is not happy with you.” I could see the glow I was looking for, all Will’s tattoos gleaming blue between the branches demolishing the metal staircase to the upstairs offices.

  “Will,” I coughed. “Why don’t you climb on down and we can settle this like men?”

  He leapt down to my side and sneered down at me. “You were just supposed to spend some time in jail until the new alpha was chosen, but you had to get involved.”

  “If that’s the problem, why did you involve me in the first place? I’d never even had a conversation with the alpha before you left him in my goddamned bed, you idiot.”

  Confusion fluttered across his face, tattoos glowing brighter and the hard mask dropping again. “No. He spoke of you. He wanted you, to bring hybrids to the shifters, strengthen their clan with your dual magic.”

  “Well, I’d never been told, so thanks, Will. I believed in you. I let you in closer than anyone. Don’t you think I would’ve said something to you? Come to you for wisdom, if I’d suddenly been told I was about to be a pawn for someone’s power struggle?”

  “I was trying to protect you. He said the witches would kill you if you crossed over to the shifters.”

  I managed to get myself in a sitting position, and a now-familiar hum of magic was gathering in me. The shifters were close. Grayson had brought them for me, but my Fae power kept them outside just as much as whatever Will was channeling did.

  But Will didn’t know his wards were crumbling, either. I pushed as much energy as I could into crumbling his dream around him, using the wall to brace against so I could stand. The wound in my side had finally reached full pain volume, and without the wall, I wouldn’t be able to stay upright.

  “You drove me straight to the shifters, Will. Now they’re here for you.”

  For a split second, I thought he’d call my bluff and rip my heart out of my chest. His face turned red and veins popped out all over his forehead and neck as he reached out toward me with clawed hands.

  Outside, a howl sounded, followed by another, followed by roars and snarls of every kind. I tried to grab him, but Will was melting into the shadows before I could get a hold of him, leaving me just a piece of his shirt for my trouble.

  “Fuck.” I gasped and quickly surveyed the room for signs of the others, but they were gone too, and I was left alone with a stab wound and a mountain of explaining to do, but no real answers.

  Twenty-Two

  “Grayson, this isn’t about me at all,” I was shouting by the time he broke through the vines I wasn’t strong enough to move. “Will said Gideon was going to recruit me for the coalition. He… he wanted my power, somehow.”

  He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, he wanted to see if he could mate you to one of ours, make hybrid baby shifters. It was an important thing for him, and your mother, once upon a time.”

  I groaned and sank to the floor. “I’ve got nothing left, Gray, and he got away. I didn’t even get the name of his so-called ‘boss’, and I don’t have enough magic left to track him.”

  “You can run out of magic?” His voice was coming to me through a heavy fog, sleep was inevitable.

  “Eventually, everyone gets too tired, Gray. I need to sleep.”

  He picked me up and carried me through the door, where several shifters, some I recognized, were waiting for us. One young guy touched my hand as we passed, and I saw his animal, a lion, pacing just under the surface of his human self.

  Every shifter I got close to, I knew instantly, not who they were as people, but what their beast was, and where they belonged in their pack. Moreover, my energy grew the longer I was surrounded by them, until I felt almost healed from the fight.

  “I can walk, Grayson. The shifters need to know what’s going on. They won’t listen if you’re cradling me like an infant.”

  “Or a damsel in distress,” came a scoff from nearby. Shenna rolled her eyes and snarled at me. “No one should listen to a non-shifter about shifter business.”

  Grayson set me on my feet and with only a little wavering, I managed to stay standing on my own. “There is a warlock trying to stop you from choosing an alpha, or at least stop you from choosing the best shifter for the job,” I called out to the group surrounding me. “They knew if I aligned myself with you, other Fae would follow, and you would be made stronger.”

  Murmurs started near the back and I saw a couple of wolves nod in agreement. “You think they’re right?”

  I shrugged and managed a smile. “I think the shifters have been very carefully kept from their full potential.” Grayson gave me a small shake of his head, so I didn’t say anything about the power boost he and I had shared. “I just wish I’d gotten the name of the guy behind it all. Maybe I could’ve convinced the police I was innocent.”

  Grayson led me to his car and I stopped to look back at the warehouse. It was a thing of beauty, covered in flowering vines wrapped around the trunk of a tree big enough to be Yggdrasil, the tree of life.

  “I made that, Gray,” I said as he pulled away from the curb. I stared at the giant leafy monster I’d created until it strained my neck to turn back. “I fucking made all of that by myself.”

  He laughed at me, but I felt his animal swell with pride. As far as the jaguar was concerned, I was already pack. But Grayson didn’t seem to have the same idea. He stopped outside of Tell’s and waited for me to get out.

  “Sorry, Gray, you’re stuck with me this time,” I told him. “There’s a warlock interfering with your selection process. I’m not leaving your side until I know he isn’t out to get you…or working for you.”

  He pulled over and jerked to a stop. “Do you think I had anything to do with this?” he asked, looking me straight in the eye.

  “No. No, I really don’t. But I wouldn’t have guessed Will would ever take orders from a supernatural, either.”

  Rough, callused fingers caressed my cheek. “You’ve got your color back. You must be nearly healed.” I nodded, his touch making me too breathless to speak. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be for him, divided from what makes him Fae.”

 
; “Dragonkin were too destructive and often not even on purpose. As humans populated more of the continents, there was no where they could be safe.” I thought for a moment. “They gave up their magic, but not their destructive nature, it seems.” My heart ached over what I’d done to the gym. Will had loved his place and had given so many young fighters a chance to be great. Why wouldn’t he just name the warlock?

  “We’re going to the Piedmont. You’ll be safe there.” Office buildings gave way to tall, narrow row homes and apartments and still I couldn’t shake the feeling we were being followed. I watched the mirror, giving up on subtlety and craning my neck in every direction, looking for a magical signature, or police presence. He glanced at me a couple of times before he finally asked who I was looking for.

  “The police never came, Grayson. They should’ve shown up to shut us all down.” I peered down the cross street as we paused at a stop sign. “Have you seen a single car since we left the gym?”

  He looked both ways and back at me. “Shit.” Pedal to the floor, he screamed off the line and boosted it up the hill, not stopping for another light or a stop sign until we reached the shifter's den.

  I had the door open before he got it into park, and we were halfway up the steps before I felt a hasty ward snap into place, but my forward momentum took me straight into it. It was like crashing into a brick wall. I rebounded off it and flew backward, landing on my ass with a pained grunt. “Watch out, Gray!”

  He’d seen me crash into the invisible wall and instead of hitting it with his face, like I had, he used it, running up it and landing on his feet. “Are you okay?”

  I made a rude noise and winked at him, shuffling up to the ward and rubbing my ass with both hands. “Show off.”

  I startled a laugh out of him and he tugged me to his chest, planting a quick kiss on the top of my head. “I smell them, five humans, one witch,” he whispered into my ear. “The witch was at the party the other night.”