by Sam Cheever
Art nodded, pleasure infusing his handsome features. I couldn’t help wondering if the pleasure came from being helpful, or because he looked forward to using the hunter.
If it was the latter, I suddenly wanted to meet the woman who could put that spark of pleasure in my brother’s eyes.
18
There was a soft scratching on the front door as I was checking the locks and wards. I placed a palm on the door and tugged on the house’s magic to read the life force of whatever was scratching there. I saw nothing at first, but then I adjusted the sight downward and stopped. There was a tiny, four-legged creature standing on the porch. Curious, I opened the door and looked down at the small black cat. It looked up at me and meowed indignantly. As if it had been standing out there forever and I’d been slow to meet its needs.
Wasn’t that just like a cat?
“What’s up, little boy?” I asked. I had no idea how I knew the cat was a male. It wasn’t like I’d looked.
“Meow!” To my unending shock, the little thing pranced past me and into the house.
“Okay,” I said, watching it bound up the steps all the way to the third floor, it proceeded to disappear into Boyle’s room. I stood there a moment, unsure if I should make it leave.
Magic swirled from the door I still held into my hand, soothing and calm. The dense wood pulled from my grip and softly closed, locks clicking into place.
Victoria had spoken. The cat stayed.
I yawned and set the protections on the door, the multi-layered wards falling into place with a simple Latin phrase that was the key—Nemo potest intrare. None may enter.
Then yawning again, so hard my jaw cracked, I started for the stairs.
I jerked to a stop as the shadows shifted at the top of the stairs. I reached for magic and created a sizzling ball of energy in each palm, my heart pounding.
The shift sorted itself into my brother. I watched in fascination as he descended, looking like he was in a trance, and headed for the basement door.
I let the energy sift away. “Art?”
He didn’t appear to have heard me. His movements were stiff, showing nothing of his usual lithe grace. He stopped in front of the basement door and stared blankly at it for a moment. I mentally kicked myself for not boarding it up. I needed to stop procrastinating on that.
Art stood there for so long, I thought he might not try to open it. He was clearly sleepwalking. But I was reluctant to do anything because waking a person who was in a sleep trance was risky enough. But waking a magic user who was sleep-walking was especially dangerous. If I scared him, he might attack.
I didn’t think my brother had all that much magic. At least he hadn’t cultivated much of it for use if he did. But anything he had could be deadly if applied in the right way to the right place.
A single jolt of magic to the heart was just as deadly as a bullet.
Art’s hand came up and stopped, fingers curled over the knob but not touching it. I stepped forward, not sure what I was going to do, but realizing I needed to do something.
Without warning, his hand snapped in my direction. Energy flared from it, and my legs buckled. I fell, hitting the floor hard enough to send agony spearing up my spine. Shock kept me silent as Art’s fingers grasped the knob and turned.
The door opened. The warding I’d placed on it simply sifting away, and a moment later, Art was on the stairs, closing the door quietly behind him.
“Goddess’s galoshes!” I mumbled, trying to shove to my feet. “What just happened?”
Had Art used the same method I’d used at Mitch’s to bypass my wards?
My legs felt like rubber, and the flesh was numb. Fear sliced through me. What had he done to my legs? Panic made my chest heave and my breathing speed. I couldn’t stand. I feared I wouldn’t be able to walk if I did.
I made a small panicked sound that seemed loud in the silence of the house. The pitiful cry jolted me, causing me to shove panic aside. I had a responsibility to protect the portal. It was more than a job. It was a calling. An obligation. A portal was pure, barely controlled power, which, in the wrong hands, could create untold devastation.
Normally, I wouldn’t think Art was a danger. But he clearly wasn’t himself.
With a jolt, I realized my brother was under some kind of influence. Worse, whoever was pulling his strings didn’t seem to be on the side of protecting the portal.
And I’d brought him into Victoria.
I’d endangered us all.
The thought brought shame spearing through me. Followed by anger so thick I felt it crawling into my face as heat.
I’d screwed up. It would be up to me to fix it.
When I thought of little Boyle sleeping peacefully up in his room, helpless against whatever my brother might unleash, the anger flared brighter.
I tried again to stand and collapsed. Using my arms, I dragged myself over to the couch and used it to pull myself upright. My legs might as well have been rubber for all that I could use them. They collapsed out from under me and I fell, my back slamming into the table in front of the couch.
Pain ricocheted through my middle, robbing me of breath. I needed help. Shoving the rug back, I placed my hands on the smooth wood floor. “Help me,” I implored the magic-saturated house. “I need your strength.”
The wood beneath my palms warmed and pulsed. The floor seemed to roll slightly as tiny static sparks sizzled on the air. As I watched, the silvery sparks of electricity converged above the couch, spitting and dancing with manic energy. The sparks slammed together, forming a single, snapping ball of energy that throbbed like a beating heart.
The wood cooled beneath my palms and the energy ball just hung there. The house wasn’t responding. I wondered with a despondent feeling if Art’s magic had somehow blocked the house from giving me energy.
Disappointment was like a sour taste in my mouth. “Victoria?”
I lifted my hands and, as if the movement had unlocked a hidden restraint, the ball of sizzling energy shot in my direction, crashing against my chest.
I convulsed beneath it, my body juddering against the floor. My head slammed into the hardwood over and over and over again as the convulsions wracked me. I tasted blood on my tongue and realized I’d bitten it. Pain painted my hand, the knuckles smacking the table hard enough to bruise.
My heels struck the floor repeatedly. Only the heavy socks I wore against the natural coolness of the old home protected them from the assault.
Flame speared my chest. Burning agony came together in a focused area around my heart and slid outward in ribbons of fiery pain. The energy bit, but it didn’t destroy. Finally, it began to ease, leaving behind a cool residue that soothed and strengthened.
Along with a feeling of amazing power.
Before the last dregs of pain had fallen away, I was on my feet, running toward the basement door. My skin still sizzled with residual energy, sparks flaring from my skin as I reached for the knob.
Victoria had given me too much magic, I thought. What I was carrying was overload.
But then I opened the door and saw the telltale flare of energy licking against the rock wall at the base of the steps. And I wondered if it would even be enough.
I flew down the stairs, my feet barely touching them. I was cognizant of a reluctance to use magic against my brother. Yes, he’d used it against me, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t known he was doing it.
Or at least that was what I was telling myself to keep from losing it. Art was the only family I had left.
If he’d gone bad…
I stepped down into the powdery dirt of the floor. My eyes flew to the place across the room where Art stood, his face in profile and his hands outstretched as the rocky wall in front of him rolled and changed.
Heat pulsed against me, drawing sweat from my body in copious amounts.
Beneath Art’s hand, the hole in the wall had stretched into a circle about the size of a grapefruit. The inside of the circle was the colo
r of flame, the surface shifting like fire and the wall around it pulsing as it stretched.
Art gave no indication that he knew I was there. That was good. It would buy me some time.
To do what, I didn’t know.
I crept along the wall toward the siphoning table, my gaze locked on Art as the portal opened far too quickly in answer to his call.
How was he doing that?
I sent my siphoning energy toward my brother, sliding it around him like a cloak to read the magic he was emitting.
I’d never seen that kind of energy before. It was pale orange and formed of a series of octagonal shapes joined together in random patterns ─ like a knitted blanket made up of thousands of adjoining three-dimensional holes.
His magic throbbed against mine, growing more frantic as the first blush of my power gave a test tug on the knitted energy.
I tugged harder, pulling the energy away from Art with unusual difficulty. It came slowly and in thick, sticky ribbons.
Like pulling taffy.
There was no way I was going to be able to sift the power from him in layers as I usually did. The magic coating my brother would have to be torn away in one large, resistant piece.
It would take a lot of energy to siphon—more than I had.
The portal had grown to the size of a hula-hoop and heat pulsed through the basement, the walls shimmering beneath it like heat radiating off an Arizona highway in August.
I watched in horror as the first drop of melted rock slid down its surface.
Art was opening the portal!
I couldn’t let it happen.
I grabbed the siphoning pot and sent my magic into it. There was no time to prep the pot like I usually did. My energy would have to do the job of nullifying the siphoned magic. Moving toward the widening portal, I focused the pot on the roiling fire within the opening in the stone.
Art’s hand reached closer to the fiery gateway, his already reddened skin starting to bubble as the burns dug into the deep tissue beneath his skin.
He didn’t even wince beneath the damage. Though, I knew the pain had to be exquisite.
Something was desperately wrong.
I moved closer with the siphoning pot, and it slammed back against my stomach. My arms shook as energy hit the pot and swirled against it, resistant to the imperative of the siphoning spell.
It whirled like a hurricane on the boiling ocean, circling the edge of the pot and slowly being pulled inside. The pot heated enough to make my clothing smoke. The heat of the portal ate at my skin, pulling copious amounts of sweat from my pores. The moisture evaporated almost immediately, turning to steam in the superheated air.
I moved another step closer, my arms shaking from the effort of holding the pot in position. I’d never felt so much pushback from the portal. It was as if whatever Art was doing was agitating it somehow. Expanding its energy.
I took another step, my entire body shaking under the strain of standing against the energy. It swirled around me, pulsed against me, and pummeled my senses into mush.
It was like standing beneath a waterfall of boiling water.
Art spun around, too fast for my battered senses to comprehend. His hand came up and adrenaline cleared my mind. He was going to hit me with another arrow of the debilitating energy he’d thrown at me upstairs.
There was no time to consider my options. I dropped to my knees in the dust, flooding my hand with Victoria’s borrowed power. I lifted the energy-drenched hand and grabbed the energy as he threw it at me.
It hit my palm and flung it backward, wrenching my shoulder as the impact overextended my arm.
I dropped the pot and fell onto my back. But energy rolled against my palm. Pale violet energy that was quickly drying to taffy against my skin.
I didn’t wait for it to harden. I curled my fingers around it and, as Art prepared to throw another energy wave at me, I flung it back at him instead.
It hit him in the center of his chest, exploding outward in a thousand, tiny purple stars that chipped against every surface they touched.
Art’s eyes rolled back into his head. His knees buckled. And he slumped slowly to the ground in a boneless heap.
Behind him, the portal stopped growing. The fire within seemed to dull and lose energy. And the opening in the rock began to shrink away until it disappeared.
I shoved slowly to my feet, though all I wanted to do was just sit and rest. I felt like someone had beaten me with a bat, and I was tired.
So tired.
Stumbling over to Art, I dropped to my knees beside him. Panic sluiced through me. He wasn’t moving. And, at first, I couldn’t see his chest rising and falling.
Goddess! Had I killed him?
But then he stirred, groaning as he opened his eyes. He looked up at me in surprise, blinking rapidly. “What are you doing here?”
I laughed with relief. “What am I doing here?”
He shoved up to one elbow, rubbing his eyes. “Yeah. Why are you in my room? I had such a nightmare. And my head is killing…” He stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widening as he realized where he was. Art frowned. “Glynn, why am I in the basement?”
I expelled air and shoved to my feet again. “That’s a long, confusing story. How about if we go upstairs and I’ll make us some tea?”
19
Art hadn’t come down yet when Boyle and I headed out to see Hawk at dusk. I wasn’t surprised. He’d looked like I’d felt that morning when we’d huddled around the table in my kitchen, filthy from rolling around in the dirt of the basement and exhausted from expending so much energy.
“I didn’t know you had the portal protector’s power,” I’d told him.
“I don’t,” he’d insisted. “You know I don’t, Glynn. If I had, do you really think I’d have left?”
His response hadn’t eased my concern one little bit. I’d seen a lot of evidence to the contrary.
In the end, I hadn’t gotten into the details of the night before with Art. I wanted to think about what I’d seen. I wanted to consider my options.
We’d both gone to bed confused and, in my case, concerned. But I’d called Sis as soon as Art stumbled back to bed. The door to the basement was getting a special ward on it as soon as Sissy could get to Victoria. And I was leaving it on until Art went back to Indy. The ward would be built with magical energy that he couldn’t manipulate on his own.
Witch magic.
The black cat trotted out of the house and headed into the yard with a soft “meow!”.
“Bye, kitty,” Boyle said, waving.
I locked the front door and set the ward with a wave of my hand. I waited until I saw the telltale golden glow spring up along the door and walls before I took Boyle’s hand and started toward the old firehouse across the street.
The baby dawdled beside me, stretching my arm to its full length so he could kick at rocks and pick ugly weeds to present to me like flowers.
I smiled and thanked him but otherwise stayed silent. My mind was full of thoughts about the episode in the basement. My brother was scaring me. Not only was he messing with the epically deadly energy of the portal, but he didn’t seem to know he was doing it. Which made the situation so much more dire. If someone was riding his mind…affecting his actions…Art had become an extremely dangerous tool in that person’s hands.
A dense row of enormous, overgrown trees nearly hid the front of the firehouse building. The red brick of the old building was still solid, though its face had aged with a black patina that spread to the concrete sills and coated the windows in a dingy film. It was magic residue, a remnant of the battle fought between Magical Indy and the Render magic users of the past. Several years past, a corrupt few magic users had gotten it into their heads that they should rule the land. Through coercion and promises of power, those few had managed to convince many other magic users to join them.
They’d come together to try to control those who had no magic.
Thus began the Disruption, as it wa
s later named by those who’d been on the receiving end of that power grab.
The Disruption had engaged a marshaling of forces into the city. Where it was believed the close proximity would create an impenetrable axis of power that people without magic wouldn’t be able or willing to breach.
Unfortunately, that particular blade had cut both ways. In typical human fashion, those who were driving the runaway train called Magic had decided that all magic users must comply with their edict to relocate to the city.
Anyone who didn’t favor being told how to live their lives became just as much the enemy as those who, by nature of their lack of or limited abilities in magic, were automatically considered hostile.
The battle spread across the country, infecting most of the major cities in most of the states. Many of the non-magic ran into the countryside around the cities, preferring to struggle and scrape for a meager existence of their own making, than to become fodder for the magic or turned into virtual slaves by magic users.
Those of us who’d wanted to remain in Render had either gone deep underground until the focus left our unprepossessing little town and we’d all been forgotten, or had fled deeper into the countryside to make a new kind of home amid the abandoned homes and buildings.
Those months had been particularly trying for me, and I tried not to think about them. I’d had Victoria to protect. And the portal. So I’d had to stay close enough to do my job, while staying out of the eye of the roving bands of Magic Indy soldiers.
Sissy had put a spell on Victoria that made her look like a fallen-down corpse of a building. Empty and uninhabitable. And I’d warded myself in the basement, leaving only rarely, when my stores of food and water had been depleted.
After a while, the soldiers lost interest in Render. And those of us who’d stayed behind had slowly come out of our mouseholes and reestablished our lives. But the event had scarred us. Deeply. We were a private bunch. Suspicious and borderline unfriendly.
But we were living under our own directives. Surviving under our own rules. And for most of us, that was enough.