The Gray Tower Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Alesha Escobar

  We swerved to avoid bike riders and pedestrians strolling down the avenue. We sped up when we heard Agent Klaus command us to stop. I hoped the warlocks would be reluctant to use magic in the middle of a busy afternoon street. If they needed to obtain that Mehmed VI page in secrecy, then an open duel would be the last thing they’d want.

  I skidded and turned on my heel when I heard Cliff yell Izsak’s name. Though the librarian had kept up with us, he decided to take his chances and split from us, making a sharp left into an alley.

  “Cliff!” I took off after him when he and Sadik followed Izsak down the alley. This would be the worst time to be separated from them, not only because I felt responsible for them, but also because being too far away from Sadik would cause my deflection spell to fade away. It would cast aside my facade and reveal my dark hair and green eyes--a description the warlocks’ Master would’ve been sure to give them.

  I came up behind Sadik. He and Cliff had caught up with Izsak. The librarian had finally tired himself out, and he probably figured he wasn’t going to slip through the narrow iron bars just a few feet ahead of him.

  Cliff exhaled heavy breaths as he turned and gazed toward the way we had entered. I also turned, and I saw the real Klaus and Dierk blocking the open end of the alley. Klaus wiped his dark brow while Dierk adjusted his glasses. They paused for a moment, and I could feel their dark magic reaching out to us, trying to read us and gauge our strength.

  I swung my arm out to the left with my silver knife, and, with a flick of my wrist, I laid a Circle of Protection. Its power instantaneously enveloped us and pushed back the warlocks’ probing magic. Dierk stepped forward with caution and extended his left hand.

  “I won’t hurt you. Release your Circle.” Dierk attempted a friendly smile.

  “Be careful,” I whispered to Cliff. “Dierk’s the mentalist.” I could already feel my head throbbing in response to his words. My heart banged against my chest as I felt compelled to lower my defense.

  Sadik stepped forward and stood to my left, gritting his teeth and sending an invisible shockwave toward the men. Klaus stumbled backward, and Dierk doubled over with his head between his hands, as if hearing an unbearable sound. Cliff rushed outside the Circle of Protection and went for Klaus.

  “What are you doing?” I tried to grab Cliff and pull him back in, but he was too quick.

  Klaus moved forward and met Cliff with a right hook. He blocked Klaus’s strike and reciprocated with a punch. It was odd, to say the least, to see Cliff still looking like Klaus’s double and fighting the man. Klaus steadily exchanged strikes with Cliff, both of them matching a few blows and blocking hits. Cliff’s face screwed up in concentration as he worked his calculations to anticipate Klaus’s next likely move. With a gesture, Klaus formed a luminous Fire symbol--a triangle--right above Cliff, and sparks began forming in mid-air.

  My adrenaline pumped even faster as I countered with an upside down triangle--Water. The air around us grew humid, making the burgeoning flames hanging above Cliff disappear. With a few flicks of my silver knife, I laid a Putrefaction symbol and charged it with magical energy. I let out a gasp when someone shoved me from behind and almost knocked me over. I turned to see Sadik struggling with Izsak, the librarian.

  Isabella, Dierk is controlling Izsak’s mind! Sadik clung to the man’s left arm to keep him from swinging at me, and he was almost lifted off his feet. Sadik was determined not to let go and focused on Izsak’s eyes, as if silently communicating with him and trying to break some barrier. Sadik was a mentalist as well, but he wasn’t as skilled as Dierk.

  I turned to see Dierk’s gaze falling on me, and suddenly I saw stars. My entire head hurt like someone had repeatedly pounded it. Whatever remnant protection I had from a previous seal on my mind was now shattered. Dierk attempted to take hold of my mind with a simple order: Kill your friends.

  Cliff shouted a Word, and I could feel him throw a frenzied rush of magical energy into his incantation. A whirlwind hit all of us in the alley, and we went flying in different directions. I flew to the left and hit the wall face first with a smack. As I slumped to the ground, I reminded myself to have a talk with Cliff about using his Words. Calling on the True Names of things when he didn’t fully know how to control them was a bad idea.

  Sadik, I shot out mentally, Get Cliff and Izsak out of here. Now!

  I rubbed my eyes and checked for a broken nose. I heard more physical struggling, a whoosh of magic, and then the scuffling of feet fading. I reached out with my senses and knew Izsak and the boys had made it out of the alley; their presence had faded. Now, it was my turn to leave. I raised myself up on my knees and pushed my palms against the wall to steady myself. Goosebumps covered my arms as I felt Sadik’s sight deflection wear off. My hair fell forward in a dark curtain, and my chest tightened with dread. My separation from Sadik ended my false appearance as a blonde-haired woman with gray eyes. I stared straight at the brick wall, not even daring to turn my head and show my face.

  “It seems your friends have run away and left you with me.” Klaus’s gravelly voice made me shiver. He approached with slow steps from the open end. I felt the sharp energy of alchemical magic being cast. He was forming more alchemical symbols. The luminous triangles, one pointing upward for Air and the other downward, with a line, for Earth, glided toward me. My body froze from the shoulders down.

  “Who are you working for, and why were you trying to steal the librarian from us?” Klaus paused. He was still cautious enough to keep some distance.

  Instead of answering and letting him hear my voice, I slowly fed energy into the Putrefaction symbol I had laid. I kept a tentative hold on it, hoping that Klaus didn’t detect the connection and launch another attack. When he stepped closer, I activated the Putrefaction spell. A blast of poison, as fine as dust, caught the left side of his face. He screeched as his cheek blackened and hollowed. He stumbled to the right and held out a shaky arm against the wall for support.

  I felt my limbs loosen in response to his broken concentration, and I threw myself backward and stood. I kept my face obscured by my long black hair and ran straight down the alley, toward the street. I reached out with my senses to try and pick up a trail for Cliff and Sadik, but I got not a single trace. When I made it out onto the sidewalk, I snaked my way past a few people, who gave me curious looks. I jumped into the first cab I saw.

  “Get me out of here, fast!” I leaned forward to see Klaus through the rearview mirror. He dashed toward us, holding his hand over his decaying, pus-filled cheek.

  The driver sped off and nearly hit two other cars. “This will cost extra,” he said through his thick dark mustache, already gauging my situation.

  “Okay, I’ll pay whatever you want.”

  “Where to?”

  I leaned back in my seat and sighed. “Take me over by the opera house. I’ll tell you where to go next.”

  I tried reaching out once more to Cliff and Sadik, and again, nothing turned up. My shoulders tightened, and I felt a cold lump in the pit of my stomach. What if the other warlock, Dierk, had caught up with them and harmed them? I’d seen what mentalists could do. They erased memories, destroyed minds, and even made people put guns to their own heads.

  Sadik, I cried out with my mind. Can you hear me?

  The only answer I received was a menacing silence, and all I could do was try to reach out again and hope for their safety.

  46

  “Drink this, and stop trying to reach out for the boys, or you’ll exhaust yourself.” Mehara set a steaming mug of tea in front of me and gave me a sympathetic glance.

  I absentmindedly wrapped my hands around the cup, letting its warmth spread across my fingers. It was after 6 p.m., and Cliff and Sadik might as well have fallen off the face of the earth. After going back and forth across town in the cab--and assuring the driver that I wasn’t a psycho--I had spent another two painful hours searching for them while making sure the warlock Klaus wasn’t tailing me.

&n
bsp; “I should’ve just come for you at the tarot parlor,” I told Mehara. “They weren’t ready for this.”

  I had been too desperate to obtain that Mehmed VI text. The only other copy I had possessed was lost at the Gray Tower. The elderly woman who owned the tarot parlor had barged in earlier, crying about Izsak the librarian being arrested. She had explained that Izsak was at the university and had found the Mehmed VI page in the archives. He had been promised fame and fortune by a professor if he agreed to help interpret it.

  I knew this would come back to haunt me.

  The professor who wanted the page was Michael Grey, who had stolen other copies of the text from me. Dr. Grey’s copies must’ve fallen into the hands of warlocks. Klaus and Dierk were hunting for the final page like I was, which was why I had convinced Cliff and Sadik to accompany me to the police station. I had been desperate to grab Izsak before they decided to kill him. Obviously, things weren’t working out the way I had planned.

  Mehara went over and sat at the vanity table, peering into the mirror as she removed her headscarf and jewelry. She had arrived from the tarot parlor a few blocks down, where she posed as Madame Veduny, a gypsy fortune-teller. “Cliff and Sadik survived the attack on the Gray Tower. You should have more confidence in them--they’re not children. Not anymore.”

  I took a sip of tea and nodded, but then I just grew anxious again. “Dierk is probably as strong as you, and Klaus is a skilled alchemist. What if Cliff projected that I’d get desperate and would use my Drifter abilities? What if he threw himself in the middle of our fight because he knew I’d do it?”

  I had decided that I would only use those abilities when absolutely necessary, but at times I felt frustrated because I could do so much more as the Drifter than with my secondary ability of alchemy. Only, there was a terrible pitfall that kept one hand tied behind my back: tinkering with Time tore rifts between this world and the next, and it often allowed demons to slip through. The only thing I could do without opening these time rifts was my Zaman’s Fire--an intense burning flame that could even harm elemental wizards. This was exactly why I needed Izsak to interpret that Mehmed VI page for me. It explained how I could control my abilities and close time rifts caused by previous Drifters. Most importantly, I believed that this was the key to defeating Octavian Eckhard and his coven of warlocks. This would win us the war.

  Mehara sighed. “Stay with the plan and go meet Brande at the pub. I’ll search for the boys.” Mehara joined me at the table, her hair flowing loosely down to her waist and her day dress exchanged for gray pants and a black blouse. She would no doubt perform her own deflection spell when going out as someone other than “Madame Veduny.”

  I shook my head. “I asked them to come with me. I should go look for the boys...”

  “I’ll do it. Besides, if you run into Klaus and confront him, he’ll end up identifying you as the person he saw today.”

  I pointed to my dark tresses. “Which is why I asked you to help me with this.”

  She went into our tiny kitchen and returned with the thick paste I had helped her make. It was made of cosmetic clay, some alchemical powders, and natural herbs. The scent of peppermint wafted toward my nose as she began applying the dye with careful strokes. When I rinsed and dried, my hair turned out a light chestnut color with browns and subtle hints of red and blonde. I argued with her for nearly ten minutes when she insisted I should cut my hair as well, but I finally gave in and let her trim it to shoulder length.

  “It fits you perfectly,” she said, grabbing her sweater and heading toward the door.

  “I hope so.” I was still a little sour about the drastic change. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and frowned.

  “Sadik may not be answering you because he’s hiding. He doesn’t want the warlock to pick up his trail. That’s a good thing, yes? It means they’re somewhere safe.”

  I knew she wanted to make me feel better, but I still felt crappy. “They had the librarian with them, and he said Jakab had stolen the Mehmed VI page.”

  She grimaced. The crime lord, Bela Jakab, came to her parlor for tarot readings. We had only been in Budapest a little over a week, yet Jakab was her most frequent customer. He was as superstitious as the women coming in for love matches.

  “We’ll get the page, Isabella. As for now, I’ll forge a mental connection with you and let you know as soon as I find Cliff and Sadik.”

  But how do you know they’re even alive? I asked in my head.

  “If they were captured, Klaus and Dierk would’ve been at our doorstep already.”

  I nodded in agreement, though I still felt like a worried mother hen. I wondered if this was how my own mother felt whenever I’d stay out past curfew or when I had left home for the first time. I didn’t even want to think of how she had felt to hear about the Gray Tower being destroyed. “Be careful, Mehara. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Take care of yourself.” She left and shut the door behind her.

  “Who would name their pub The Coven?” I asked the cab driver as we passed the railroad tracks and headed north toward the establishment. Although night had fallen, the city seemed more alive now than during the day.

  I nearly missed the driver’s shoulder shrug because his head didn’t make it over the steering wheel. I wondered if he threw a brick beneath his feet to reach the pedal. “Jakab and his brother bought the pub a few years ago. They say he’s into the occult.”

  “Is that why he goes to Madame Veduny and the Black Witch?” I couldn’t tell if he nodded or not, but the top of his head seemed to move.

  “He gets warlocks to place curses on people. And they work. Each one has turned up dead or disappeared.”

  “I heard Jakab was upset about his ship.” I smirked.

  Brande, Cliff, and Sadik were responsible for sinking the crime lord’s ship in the Danube River. Although the Nazis didn’t occupy the city of Budapest, it still cooperated with them. Jakab took advantage of the wizards seeking refuge after the destruction of the Gray Tower. Those who had been caught by Jakab’s men were forced to wear imperium collars around their necks; they were thrown on Jakab’s ship and sold to the highest bidder. When Jakab came in for tarot readings, Mehara would read his mind. That’s when we had found out about the kidnappings. He deserved to have his ship blown up.

  The cab driver tsked. He didn’t share my amusement over the crime lord’s misfortune. “Whoever did that is going to regret it. Better to stick an ice-cold poker up the devil’s ass than to anger Bela Jakab. The ship-sinkers are going to get a curse placed on them.”

  He parked in front of the pub entrance. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the warlock Klaus leaning against the wall next to the pub’s front door. He wore a half-mask that covered his mouth and jaw area. Either he was looking for Jakab because of that Mehmed VI page, or he was looking for me.

  “Thank you,” I told the driver in an unsteady voice. I prepared a spell in my mind.

  “Staying long?” He turned and accepted a few bills from me.

  “I’m meeting my sweetheart. I won’t need you again tonight.”

  “Have a good night, miss.”

  “Goodnight. Keep the change.” I erected an invisible shield.

  I stepped out of the cab and approached the entrance, almost stiffening under Klaus’s gaze. If he didn’t recognize me, then swell--but if he did, then I was ready to finish off the rest of his repugnant face. I pretended to ignore him and went straight for the door. I felt a sense of relief when three patrons swung the door open. They came out of the pub laughing and reeking of liquor. I slipped past the drunken revelers and was almost through the doorway when Klaus grabbed my wrist and pulled me aside.

  “Forgive me for being so bold, but I believe I might have seen you before.” His voice was surprisingly clear despite the half-mask. He loosened his grip, but didn’t let go.

  “I...don’t think so.”

  “Have we met somewhere?” He eyed me with a cold glare. I tried not to foc
us on the half-mask which hid the blood and pus that must’ve still oozed from his cheek. Putrefaction spells weren’t easy to recover from.

  “Sir, I don’t know you. Now, if you please...” I tried wresting free, but this time he squeezed even tighter.

  “Or else what? Tell me, what can you do against me?”

  I gritted my teeth. I knew exactly what he was trying to do, but I wasn’t falling for it. I was about to take a gamble, but I needed to explain why he sensed a magical aura around me. “I won’t do anything against you. I’m the woman they call the Black Witch.”

  I had little interest in tarot, and I couldn’t read minds like Mehara. I would just sit with her in the incense-filled parlor, wearing a widow’s black veil and dress, looking mysterious. The women who’d visit began calling me the “Black Witch,” and whispered speculations about whether I was beautiful or hideous beneath the black veil. It was all part of our cover since walking into the city and revealing we were refugees from the Gray Tower would’ve garnered persecution instead of pity.

  Klaus arched an eyebrow and looked me up and down. “So, the widow-in-black sheds her mourning attire and goes out at night dressed as a trollop. How amusing.”

  That would’ve earned a kick to his head on any other day. I wore a black velvet dress with a low neckline that clung to my figure, but I was more self-conscious about my light chestnut hair. I hid it beneath a blue fedora made of felt and wool.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m here to meet my sweetheart.”

  He finally let go of my wrist. “Is that why you’re here? To meet some man?”

  I nodded. “I remember you now. You were outside of Madame Veduny’s tarot parlor this morning, looking for Jakab. Did you find him?”

  He ignored my question. “Perhaps...if I had asked you to tell my fortune, I would’ve known that some alchemist woman was going to destroy half my face today. You’re an alchemist, too.”

  A chill ran down my spine. “We gypsies don’t use such labels. If that is what you want to identify me as, then so be it.”