And then there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
My body felt as if it was being pulled in every direction at once, spinning, stretching, and collapsing all at the same time. The room before me melted to infinite blackness, so devoid of light I wanted to weep from the absolute emptiness of it. I lost the connection to my body, and worse, to my magic. Nothing of me but my consciousness remained, floating in that empty abyss for minutes, or hours, or years. With nothing to focus on, nothing to hold on to, I felt madness rush over me. I was something less than a single atom in a grain of sand resting on an endless beach. The insignificance of it all was so painful I’d have wept if I’d still had a body. My existence had been reduced to nothing more than a floating consciousness lost in an empty vacuum.
The passage of time had become a foreign concept. I don’t know how long I floated in the abyss. I wavered between experiencing every emotion more keenly than I’d imagined possible, and slipping into the complete absence of feeling. Memories flitted around me, teasing me as they danced just out of reach. The ghostly faces of everyone I’ve ever loved or hated shimmered at the periphery of my observation, fading to nothingness when I attempted to reach for them. Despite the absence of any physical form, I suffered extreme heat and cold. Alone. And then together. Eventually these sensations abandoned me too. The longer I existed in this black purgatory, the less of Alex Black remained.
Then I was back in the makeshift lab.
Montgomery glared at me, hands raised to strike. Completely spent, I threw my hands up in a pathetic attempt to protect myself against what I knew was enough voltage to reduce me to a pile of ash.
Nothing happened.
I lowered my arms and looked again. Montgomery was gone.
“Alex!” Trey shouted from the other side of the room from where I’d seen him last.
No sooner had I locked eyes with him than he flickered like a bad television signal before reappearing on the ceiling. Standing quite normally, if upside down, he stared at me with bulging eyes, clearly as confused as I was.
“I was so close,” Montgomery said from behind me. “One more second and I’d have had it.”
I spun around to face her, only to find myself in the room outside the lab. The lights were off, the dim red light of an emergency exit the only illumination. There was no sign of the makeshift airlock. No cubbies or benches lined the walls. No racks of clean suits sat waiting for technicians. A single chair lay on its side in the corner, a thin film of dust coating the seat and backrest fabric.
The next room was just as empty. The quantum computer and all of its accompanying diagnostic machinery were gone. No ribbons of cables adorned the ceiling. In fact, there was no sign that anything of the sort had ever been set up. It was as though I was seeing the room as it had been before Montgomery had ever repurposed it for her lab. I didn’t know how it was possible, but after the nothing I’d already experienced, it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. If I’d actually been launched back in time through some sort of quantum rift, maybe I could stop all of this before it even started. If I could find Chase and Karyn, I just might have a chance at saving them from becoming ensnared in their respective positions.
I turned to leave, and without any obvious flicker of transition, the room was brightly lit and once gain full of electronic equipment. Worse, Montgomery stood blocking the exit. Even more confusing, I saw myself crouched at her feet, preparing the spell that had gotten us into this mess. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw another Montgomery still working on her spell inside the computer housing.
“You interrupted me as I was attempting to manipulate the subatomic particles within the computer,” doorway-Montgomery said, a touch of panic in her voice. “I don’t know what happened when I lost control, but your action caused a rift in the very fabric of space and time.”
“That can’t be possible,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “Manipulating something on that level would take an extraordinary amount of energy. I may not know as much as you, but even I know that.”
Montgomery winked out of existence only to appear slightly behind me. I spun to face her. The room was dark again, but this time it was a burnt out husk. The walls were black and broken, the ceiling a gaping hole displaying the night sky above. It was only when I saw my own dead body lying across the room that I realized I’d jumped too. What was left of the lower half of Johnny’s torso was at my feet, the area just above his chest an open cavity spilling charred organs onto the floor. There was no sign of Trey.
“The particles were already in an agitated state,” Montgomery continued. “It shouldn’t have been possible, but here we are.”
Blinding white light shone from the heart of the machine, obliterating everything in the room. I saw multiple images of Trey and Johnny framed as silhouettes before being engulfed. The flash burned into my retinas, blinding me and sending me tumbling once more into anchor-less darkness. I spun lazily on the axis of my hips, tumbling ass over head through the void.
“How do we reverse it?” I shouted.
“We don’t.” Came the disembodied reply. “This is our reality now. This is what you’ve doomed us to.”
I clenched my eyes as tight as I could manage, willing myself to reappear inside the lab as it had appeared before everything had gone to hell. After the complete emptiness of the abyss, my magic now burned in my blood with the heat of a star gone supernova. When I reached for it, it flared so brightly it threatened to engulf me. The ecstasy of it obliterated my ability to think. It was a greater rush than any drug I’d ever taken. Crystalline in its purity, it lifted me to heights that threatened to shatter my heart with the intoxicating energy coursing through every molecule that made up my shell of a body.
It was so perfect I almost gave in to it. I almost let myself burn away. The magic offered to consume me, relieving me of every pain I’d suffered, erasing every hurt I’d brought to others. It offered me the complete and total obliteration of self. There was no promise of eternal bliss or damnation. There was only nothingness. One blissful end to every burden I’d ever been forced to bear.
“Alex!” a voice cried from somewhere within the light. “Snap the fuck out of it!”
The name evaporated on my lips when I tried to speak. I knew the voice, wanted to acknowledge it, but it sounded so far away.
“Alex!” it cried again.
Trey. The man responsible for drugging and kidnapping me. The one who’d sacrificed innocent lives in pursuit of his own power. If ever there was an example of the kind of morally-corrupt criminal I never wanted to encounter again, it was the person on the other end of that voice.
But rather than give me the final shove into the beautiful and tempting abyss, his voice reminded me of what I’d be leaving behind. Along with all that hurt and suffering came love and joy. Greater still was the sense of obligation. Leaving Chase and Karyn would be a selfish act. An end to my pain would only lead to an increase of theirs. It would mean abandoning Viktor to whatever trouble he’d been so determined to hide from me. It would mean ignoring the fact that millions of people in this city would be left with one less person who chose to fight for them. Someone who would at least try to protect them from the abuse of fiends like the dark mage Bracchus or the vampire crimelord, Eskola.
Digging all the way into my what little willpower remained, I fought against the temptation to surrender. I wrestled against the narcotic effect of having such a surplus of magic flowing through my veins. The blackness around me pulsed and shook. The fabric of this alternate reality finally tore open at the seams, letting in a flood of light that eventually resolved into the computer lab it had snatched me from.
The ragged edge of my previously sloppy casting was gone. I now wielded my magic with the keen precision I’d been lacking ever since my link with Karyn had been broken. If anything, it was stronger and more focused than ever before. I dissolved the containment spell and sent a stream of magic flowing into the processor itself. My po
wer mingled with Montgomery’s, the two streams entangling and competing with each other until I somehow managed to overwhelm her.
Before she could turn on me, I flooded the processor with a violent torrent of energy. Working magic into the machinery itself rather than the isolated particles Montgomery had been targeting, I forced enough energy into the computer to overload it to the point of exploding. The blast buckled the metal walls of the computer housing, a ball of flame and molten machinery belching from the opening with enough force to scorch the interior of the lab. Intense heat washed across my face, warming me even through the heavy magical barrier I’d cast to protect myself.
Using the last bit of excess energy I’d gained from my journey outside of time and space, I flushed the room with a violent blast of kinetic energy. The blast swept the room so thoroughly, it created a vacuum in its wake. Deprived of oxygen, if only for a second, the flames guttered and flickered out. The resulting clouds of acrid black smoke vanished quickly, sucked into the high powered filtration system still humming overhead.
I climbed over the debris of smashed computer parts to check the inside of the quantum computer housing. What was left of Montgomery’s corpse was too scorched to be recognizable. She’d caught the full brunt of the blast before she’d been able to draw a shield of her own. As powerful a mage as she’d been, her body was nothing more than flesh and bone. She hadn’t stood a chance against the explosion.
“Johnny, wake up, man,” Trey said from the edge of the room. “Come on, asshole. Wake up.”
A jagged piece of metal from the computer housing protruded from Johnny’s chest. Blood had soaked through his shirt around the wound, crimson trails disappearing down his side. His glassy eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. I tried to take strength in the hatred I felt for the kid and everything he’d done to me, but seeing Trey’s irrational attempts to revive his dead friend made it impossible. In his grief, Trey’s young age was more apparent than ever. Gone was the person who’d unflinchingly committed several downright evil acts over the past few months. Left in his wake was a teenager reduced to little more than a blubbering mess. He cradled Johnny’s head in his lap, stroking a shock of black hair back from his dead friend’s forehead while rocking back and forth and shaking his head in denial.
If I was going to kill him, now was the time. I had plenty of energy left. It would be a simple matter of wrapping my will around his throat to choke him where he sat. If I did it quickly enough, he probably wouldn’t even feel a thing. A sliver of energy slipped free from my outstretched hand. The thread snaked out towards Trey’s neck, curling around it like a shimmering white garrote. If he felt its presence against his skin, he did nothing to struggle against it. All it would take was a flick of the wrist to tighten it, collapsing the fragile cluster of tendons before crushing his windpipe and snapping his spine.
I considered the alternative. He’d overdosed me knowing full well I was a mage who could probably fight back against it. I couldn’t very well blame him for attacking me at the port given that I’d set myself against him by jumping into the service of his former employer. The business of using humans to channel energy from the power nexuses was grisly and unforgivable, but was I really the right person to play judge and executioner? I hadn’t been there when Montgomery brought him under her wing. I knew better than most how enticing that kind of temptation could be.
With Karyn’s help, I could probably erase his memory of all of it. He’d lose the last half year or more of his life, but he’d also lose awareness of the kind of power he’d once wielded. He’d forget Johnny and the rest of his crew, hopefully returning to whatever mundane life he’d led before Montgomery had found him. I couldn’t exactly turn him into a downy innocent who’d get straight A’s and go off to university to make something of himself, but he was just a kid. Didn’t he deserve a second chance?
In answer to that question, I jerked my wrist hard, yanking the thread of magic tight around Trey’s neck. A whoosh of air escaped his throat, becoming a weak gurgle when his windpipe collapsed. I released the tendril of energy and he slumped sideways. His eyes were closed, cheeks wet with tears. If I ignored the unnatural crease in his throat, he looked like he’d simply fallen asleep, Johnny’s inert form still in his arms.
“It was necessary,” Karyn said from the doorway behind me.
I hadn’t heard her come in. I looked around for Chase.
“Chase is going to be okay,” she continued. “And so will you. It won’t seem like it for a while, but you will.”
I chewed my lip and surveyed the carnage around me. Trang wouldn’t be happy I’d destroyed his prize, but the world was better off without that particular fusion of magic and technology. Someone, maybe Trang himself, would pull off what Montgomery had been so close to achieving, but that was a problem for another day. Hopefully for another person.
Karyn crossed the room and put her arm around me. She turned me away from the bodies at my feet, guiding me towards the exit. I walked silently alongside her, happy for the warmth of her hand on my arm. I still felt slightly untethered, as though part of me was no longer anchored to this world. My thoughts were hazy and grim as we descended the stairs and made our way to where Chase sat waiting in the passenger seat of Trey’s car. He got out and ran to me when he saw who was approaching, pulling me into a tight bear hug. His squeezing made the bullet wound in my shoulder hurt like hell, but I didn’t care.
“You’re okay,” he said into my hair. He stepped back, hands still on my shoulders while he beamed down at me. “We didn’t know what the hell was going on up there. Karyn did some crazy witch magic that almost completely healed my hands, and before we knew it the the lights in the building started flickering on and off. There was an explosion that ripped through the ceiling like a mini A-Bomb, and then all of a sudden the smoke cloud was gone and everything was fine again.”
Sirens wailed somewhere off in the background.
“Go,” Karyn said to us. “I’ll clean up here.”
She stalked back to the building while we climbed into Trey’s car. Chase had already stripped the wires beneath the steering column, and he twisted two of them together to start the car. He lurched out of the parking spot at high speed, accelerating away from the scene while babbling on about everything that had happened while I’d been dealing with Montgomery and Trey.
As we rounded the last corner, I caught sight of flames in the rearview mirror. Montgomery’s lab was completely engulfed when I twisted in my seat to look back. The fire burned with unnatural intensity. Not quite mage fire, but something very close. I knew the fire and police investigators would find no traces of the bodies I’d left behind, nor would there be anything to indicate the building had housed billions of dollars worth of cutting edge computing technology. They’d probably write the incident off to faulty wiring in an old and unused office building, closing the case without a second thought.
Chapter Thirty
The sun was up and the day was already warm enough to make the hoodie I’d stolen from Karyn feel too warm. As anticipated, Trang hadn’t been happy to hear about the loss of the machine. With no evidence to prove otherwise, I’d explained how Montgomery had taken it out in one desperate act. I’d used the same story to cover the deaths of Trey and Johnny. Trang had reluctantly agreed that I’d upheld my end of the agreement to the best of my ability, acknowledging Karyn’s crucial role in turning on her employer, thus sparing her from retribution.
Vague threats about my future involvement in any of his business were made, then Quan escorted me out. I didn’t bother tying to assert myself. If Trang wanted me to stay out of his way, I was happy to do it. He was powerful enough that even the Conclave wouldn’t dare risk angering him for fear of starting a war they might not be able to win. As secretive as they were about their membership, their numbers were limited to humans and humanoid creatures like vampires and shifters. There was enough power in the Conclave to take on an army of mages like me, but who knew what k
ind of ancient beings Trang would call to his side at the threat of conflict.
“We good with Mr. Trang?” Chase asked when I slid into the low slung seat of Trey’s car.
We’d have to ditch it soon, but for now it beat the hell out of taking public transit back home.
“Good enough for the time being,” I told him.
Chase turned to face me. “What about you? You’ve hardly said a word since we left Montgomery’s lab. Are you okay?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.” I couldn’t bring myself to look directly into his eyes. I focused on his chin instead. “Some things happened tonight that I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about just yet. I may not be ready for a while.”
I expected a protest, but what I got was a nod of understanding. Chase started the car and backed out of his parking spot. We drove in silence for fifteen minutes and were nearly home when Chase finally spoke again.
“You hungry?” he asked. “I don’t remember the last time I ate. Think there’s a pizza place open at this time of morning? There has to be, right? If people can order pizza at, like, three o’clock in the morning, they must be able to order it at seven a.m.”
My stomach growled at the thought of food. My throat was so raw and dry from such heavy use of power that I could barely swallow. I could probably drink two liters of cola without stopping for air.
“Pizza does sound good,” I said. “Let’s get home first. I’ll order and pay. You ditch this car.”
“Deal.”
We pulled up in front of the house and I got out alone. Chase sped off again, tires squealing around the corner before I even reached the front door. Whatever Karyn had done to heal him had given him one hell of a burst of energy, and I was glad for a moment of reprieve from the barrage of questions I knew he was barely holding back. I loved the guy, but I needed a few minutes alone.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 29