Malignant Magic (Medicine and Magic Book 3)

by SA Magnusson

  “He’s here, isn’t he?” He was across from us on the other side of the circle. His Dark Council mages were scattered, staggered with members of the mage council in between. I recognized several of the mage council members, including my grandparents, but there were others I didn’t recognize. Most of them were younger, though I didn’t know if that meant they really were younger or whether they were so powerful they only appeared youthful.

  “He’s here. And because he is here, we have managed to confine this creature, but we are barely holding it.”

  Even with the mages here, the barrier surrounding the wolf shifter was barely enough. Aron joined, taking a place and adding his own barrier, and it scarcely seemed to matter.

  “Did you learn how to send it back across the Veil?”

  “I don’t think we can. That’s what it wants. The Great One was imprisoned and somehow escaped.”

  She frowned at me. “Escaped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting.”

  “As interesting as how the gorgon managed to get across the Veil,” I said.

  Everything we’d seen left me thinking that there was another force—an entity—wanting to destabilize things. And if they succeeded, I had no idea what would take place.

  “What did you find from her?”

  “She said we can’t send it back across. We have to hold it here.”

  “Or kill it.”

  I nodded at Gran. “Or kill it.”

  “We will need more help to confine this creature,” Gran said. “I’ve sent word, but I’m not sure we have enough time.” The strain at the corner of her eyes reminded me of how hard she’d worked fending off the gorgon. Gramps shared in her strain, his shoulders now slumped, and the stoop to his back telling me all that I needed to know about his assessment of our likelihood of succeeding.

  “How can I help?”

  “I’m not sure that you can.”

  “Gran, we need to—“

  A howl came from the far side of the park.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Gran flicked her gaze and clenched her jaw. “We can’t stop what we’re doing here, Katie. If we do, we will lose our hold on this creature.”

  And if they did that, the Great One would escape.

  “I’ll go.”

  “You can’t go alone. If it’s another Great One…”

  “The likelihood of more than one escaping is low.”

  “Kate—”

  I ignored her, heading around the circle. The wolf shifter turned his head, swiveling it so that he could watch me. Did he know that I had been the one to release Ariel?

  I waited for him to attack, but he simply watched.

  I hurried off, heading toward the sound of the wolf I’d heard. With the magic I held, power drawn from Solera, could I confine another?

  If I couldn’t?

  I couldn’t think about that.

  There was a flash of fur, and I raced forward.

  Drawing as much magic as I was, I went much more quickly than I normally would, and soon came face to face with the shifter.

  I stopped, holding a barrier in front of me.

  If I hadn’t, I would’ve been dead.

  The shifter lunged at it, snapping, but this barrier managed to hold better than my normal one had.

  It was the same shifter I’d faced in the basilica.

  What did that mean about the other shifter? Which one was that?

  I didn’t have time to piece it together.

  The wolf continued to snarl, slamming into the barrier.

  “You’ve grown stronger,” the wolf said. He sounded relaxed. Unconcerned.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here because I was released. Centuries of imprisonment ended. I will not go back,” he snarled.

  “I’m not going to let you stay free.”

  “You’re not? You barely have any understanding of your powers.” He tipped his head back, sniffing at the air. “You might have gained a hint of power, but you don’t know how to use it. That much is clear.”

  I pushed, drawing through my connection to Solera’s stores of power, and wrapped it around him. It swirled, drifted, and formed a complete sphere around him. He slammed into it, ripping at the sphere of power with claws and his fangs before settling back on his haunches.

  “Interesting. Even inexperienced, you’ve managed to draw a considerable amount of power. I wasn’t expecting that on this side.”

  “Haven’t I nearly beaten you already?”

  The wolf shifter grinned at me. It was a disturbing thing to see, especially as it forced his jaw to contort in some unnatural position. “Have you? When this is over, I will devour you, and I will feed on your power. You will give me the strength I need to release the others.”

  Had that been what it was about?

  It might explain what had happened to John, though not why the other shifters had followed him.

  Unless they didn’t have a choice.

  “You’ve already freed another one, yet he’s trapped the same as you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “And you won’t free the others.”

  “I think you might be surprised at what I am capable of.”

  The shifter snapped, tearing at the barrier. It was all that I could do to hold on to it and I pushed back, drawing strength from not only myself, but from the source of power I stole from Solera. If he kept up with his attacks, I didn’t know how long I’d be able to hold onto it all.

  I needed to try something else.

  I had injured him before and could do so again.

  Could I hurt him while he was trapped within the sphere?

  I tried pushing the sphere of power in on him, trying to crush him, but his magic pulsed against me, pressing outward. I wouldn’t be able to overpower him that way.

  He snarled, his power surging out at me. It was all I could do to hold on.

  I needed someone else to help.

  No, what I needed was the sword.

  I had to let go of that thought. I didn’t have the sword and I wouldn’t be able to reacquire it, not in time to do anything.

  As I continued trying to draw more and more power, my sphere of power began to fail.

  The moment I lost control over this spell and my connection to the distant store of power was the moment that I would fall.

  The Great One seemed to sense that.

  He continued to thrash, and every so often he rippled, changing forms, restoring himself.

  How was I going to defeat a creature that could recover from any attack?

  There wasn’t a way.

  “I thought I would need his help, but you will do nicely. You might have more than enough power for me to complete my assignment.”

  “Your assignment?”

  “I am the first, but I will not be the last.”

  I shivered. With as much trouble as we had with even a single one of the Great Ones, I couldn’t imagine facing another.

  We had to send him back.

  If only Solera had been able to tell me how, or offer some way of holding him here.

  My power began to fade.

  The shell holding him collapsed. The shifter stalked forward, changing forms, standing before me as a fully naked man with dark hair. He stood as if there were nothing wrong with him being here in the middle of April fully nude. A dangerous grin spread across his face.

  “You have failed.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ll be stopped.”

  “I don’t think so. Can’t you feel it? Your friends have already begun to fail.”

  As he said it, I realized he was right. I could feel it. The barrier holding the other shifter was faltering much the same way my own power was. Mages—and myself—had limits to our magic, something it seemed the Great Ones did not.

  It took all that I could manage to maintain my barrier holding the wolf away from me. Even that was fading.

  In a moment of clarity,
I realized that I was being attacked from more than one direction. Not only was the wolf shifter attacking me, but Solera battled against the circle I’d formed.

  One of them would fail first, but the question was which one?

  It probably didn’t matter. The failure of either one left me completely exposed, and there would be nothing I could do to overpower either.

  I started back, taking one step after another, trying to get away from the Great One. He prowled after me, moving with a languid sort of grace that warned me that he would shift in a moment’s notice, and when he did, I could imagine those fangs and that jaw clamping down on me, sucking power out of me in the same way that John had nearly been devoured.

  And then my magic failed.

  It wasn’t so much that mine failed as it was the connection I’d formed between myself and Solera. When the magic collapsed, I was left with nothing more than my faint connection between the powers, and I tried to grasp for it, but there was nothing there. She had reestablished her control over the connection between the Veil and here.

  The Great One sensed my sudden weakness.

  He lunged at me.

  I drew power, pushing it out into a barrier, but that was all that I could manage. It created a separation between us, but he continued to lunge at it, clawing at the barrier, ripping through it.

  Soon it would fail. When it did, I would be destroyed.

  Not destroyed. Devoured.

  My magic would be consumed, and it would be used to free more like him.

  I couldn’t let that happen, but there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  He stalked toward me, moving with increasing speed, and in little more than a heartbeat, he shifted, changing into his wolf form and jumping on top of me. There was only the space of the barrier between us, barely enough to keep his deadly jaws from ripping my throat out.

  He smiled as he clawed at my barrier.

  And when he tore through me, there wouldn’t be anyone to help me. I had helped the shifters, but who would help me?

  I could imagine being found in the park, my throat torn out. What stories would come from that?

  It wasn’t how I wanted to go, though barely into my mid-twenties, I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to how I wanted to die. There was no reason to. I wanted to live a normal life, away from all of this, and now it seemed that this magical world I had avoided all these years would be the reason I died. Strangely, I had feared the mage council all these years, and now a different part of the magical world would claim me.

  He ripped at the barrier and his claws carved through it, ripping through my chest.

  Pain burned. I gasped and the last of my barrier collapsed.

  His jaw snapped toward me.

  It seemed to happen in slow motion, as if I could see his jaws ready to close down on my face, to tear it away.

  And then he was thrown off me.

  I lay there, trying to catch my breath, when the sounds of snarling caught my attention. I rolled off to the side to see two shifters facing each other.

  They weren’t fighting together. They were fighting each other.

  The newcomer was enormous. Deep gray fur flashed in the sunlight. He snarled, and there was something strangely familiar in that sound.

  It had to be Torn.

  What was he doing?

  He snapped at the other shifter, but the other was larger and simply held Torn at bay, circling around him, continuing to fight. I rolled on my side, trying to hold myself together, and power leaked out of me. Pain across my chest continued to throb.

  The larger wolf snarled, jumping toward Torn. His jaws grabbed onto Torn’s side and shook him. Torn ripped himself free and he shifted, beginning to change shapes to heal himself, when the other shifter attacked again, lunging with claws, his fangs tearing at his flesh.

  Torn growled deep and pushed out with a surge of magic, though it was different than what I’d felt before.

  He rippled, healing. How much power did he utilize doing so? How much did he expend, trying to restore himself with each attack?

  The other wolf jumped. It was a powerful jump and it carried him behind Torn and he clawed along Torn’s flank, sending blood and flesh flying off. Torn yelped, and the other wolf lunged forward, his jaws clamped onto Torn’s belly.

  Cold bloomed along my back.

  It wasn’t the cold of magic. It was the cold of death.

  The other shifter would overpower Torn and destroy him. And then… then he would turn his attention to me.

  With the sense of Torn’s impending death, power began to flow through me. It was a strange sensation, one I’d felt before, and odd that it would power me in such a way. I hated that I grew stronger when death neared, but I pulled on it, letting it flow through me, not ignoring it.

  The pain in my chest began to abate, and I got my feet.

  The other shifter snapped at Torn, tearing strips of flesh free. Every time he did, Torn attempted to shift, to restore himself, but was growing weaker and weaker with each attack.

  When he was done, Torn would be gone. It would leave me exposed.

  And it would leave me with questions. Torn had saved me—twice.

  Maybe he hadn’t done so intentionally, but I had to wonder if perhaps he hadn’t known what he was doing and wanted to help.

  I ran forward before I thought better of it and drove my heel into the back of the shifter’s neck. Magic flowed out of me, and it took a moment for me to realize that it came from the dying Torn.

  The other shifter yelped and he began to ripple, his shape turning from wolf to man.

  “You will provide much strength,” he snarled.

  I ducked as he attempted to claw at me. I brought my fist up, driving into his chest. Magic exploded from me. His sternum cracked, and for a moment I thought that might be enough, and that I might have succeeded in overpowering him, but he shifted, changing back into wolf shape once more.

  He snarled and jumped at me. It was all I could do to roll out of the way. I landed next to Torn, whose glassy eyes looked over at me. His chest still moved, but it wouldn’t for much longer. He was dying and nearly dead.

  The profound sense of cold rolling through my spine told me that as much as anything else.

  Surprisingly, it didn’t make me nauseated the same way it usually did. Most of the time when there was someone powerful dying, I was overwhelmed by the nausea that came with it.

  The shifter lunged at me and I backed away, holding my hands out, drawing power out through myself—and through the sense of death.

  How was it that the sense of death somehow granted me increased strength?

  It shouldn’t.

  And yet, I had felt it before. I had experienced the way that the connection to death had strengthened me and given me greater power. It was similar to what I felt when I had stepped in the circle on neutral ground and similar to what I’d felt while drawing from Solera, yet this was power that came from me, at least from my own source of strength.

  The shifter jumped at me and I used that power and pushed out.

  If I had it, I would use it now and figure out what it meant later.

  He tore at it, and this time his claws did nothing against the barrier.

  I glanced down at Torn. There remained the sense of his death, but he was not yet gone. Could I be drawing off the last of his strength?

  I didn’t like that idea. Was I some sort of parasite? Could I be no better than the gorgon?

  The Great One tore at the barrier, shifting again.

  I couldn’t hold him. I knew I couldn’t, regardless of what I wanted. I had no idea how to send him back across the Veil and back to his prison.

  That left only one possibility, but how was I going to kill him?

  Had I the sword, I would have been able to cut through him.

  Could I use magic like a sword?

  I tried to think about what it had felt like when holding the sword, to remember what it was like when I had grippe
d the blade, the way magic flowed through it.

  Aron had taught me how to visualize and then attack.

  I visualized a sword.

  Power exploded from me in a beam of light. A glowing sword of light—made entirely of magic. I gripped it in my hands and sliced at the Great One.

  It cut through him the same way the sword would have cut through him. He rippled, trying to come back together, but it didn’t work.

  He howled and started to back away.

  I needed to take this opportunity to finish him. Using the power coming out of Torn, I wrapped him in a barrier.

  Cold surged along my spine as Torn took his last breath.

  Normally I would vomit, the nausea I experienced from a magic user dying too much for me to bear, but holding onto power the way I did, funneling it into both the barrier and the sword, I felt powerful.

  I lengthened the sword and stabbed it into the center of the shifter, carving through his belly and bringing it up toward his neck.

  He howled in pain.

  There came another surge of power, and this time it came from the dying shifter I was destroying, and not from Torn.

  Could I be somehow feeding off him?

  The shifter started to ripple and the wound along his stomach began to heal.

  The cold started to tamp down along my spine.

  I had to end this before he managed to recover.

  Withdrawing the magical sword, I swept through his neck. The sudden cold flowing through me from his impending death gave me even more power, and I continued the motion, severing his head.

  As he died, his power left me, leaving me exhausted. I collapsed to the ground, ending up lying next to the fallen Torn. I could barely keep my eyes open, and I watched the other Great One, worried that somehow he might be able to shift himself back into a whole, but he didn’t.

  I sagged back on the ground, staring up at the cloudless sky. My heart pounded.

  I had done it. I had defeated the Great One.

  I should feel better than I did.

  But… What was I?

  17

  Someone grabbed me and helped me to my feet. I managed to open my eyes and looked over as Aron held my hand. The stench of blood mixed with the disemboweled shifter reached my nostrils. The gentle breeze blowing across the park did nothing to remove it. Cold filled me, though it wasn’t a cold from death or magic, it was simply a chill from the air.