Forgotten Magic (Stolen Magic Book 1)

by Jayne Hawke

  I tossed the phone on the bed, feeling more frustrated than I had a few minutes prior when the bastard had escaped.

  Liam came running in the room.

  “Was that him? On the phone?”

  “Yea. Can you do some tech magic and find him?” I asked.

  Liam grinned at me, a feral savage expression on the innocent seeming fox.

  “Yes. Yes, I can.”

  “Finally, we’re getting somewhere!” Rex exclaimed.

  “I’m going to gather my weapons. I want to make sure he suffers,” Jess said.

  Elijah smiled at me, a distinctly lupine expression.

  “We’ll see how he fares when we break into his home.”

  It felt like we were preparing for a war, and maybe we were. Jess was sharpening her blades, of which she had a lot. The island in the kitchen had been covered in swords, daggers, throwing knives, and a glaive.

  “Who uses glaives in this day and age?” I asked.

  “You never know when it’ll come in handy. It’s best to be prepared,” she said as she put a kris blade away.

  Liam was furiously typing on his laptop with a look of grim determination. Castor was calmly making everyone pancakes for breakfast, while Rex was beating the shit out of the punching bag in the sparring room. Elijah sat next to me with his arm around my waist. His wolf was coiled within him, waiting for the perfect moment to rip someone’s throat out. Everything about him was calm, with just enough tension that would allow him to leap and kill when the time was right.

  “You need to be ready to pull out every piece of magic you have, Lily,” Castor said as she set plates of pancakes down in front Elijah and me.

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “We know that he is very skilled. Blades might only do so much.”

  He was right. I needed to ensure that the pack wasn’t injured any more than was absolutely necessary.

  “Every piece. Even the creatures,” Castor pushed.

  I hadn’t brought the shadow creatures onto the earth plane as anything more than practice before the other day, with the hydra, and that hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park. They gave the sensation of tearing anything to tiny shreds given the opportunity, but I’d never witnessed it to be sure.

  “The creatures?” Jess asked.

  “There are creatures on the shadow plane. I can bring the small ones through to this plane. They’re vicious and nigh on impossible to kill.”

  “Oh, that’s so cool! Can we have one as a pet?”

  “They’re murder machines...”

  “So are we. It’ll fit in perfectly!”

  I got the impression she wasn’t quite grasping the point I was making. Or she was ignoring it. Castor returned to the kitchen to play at domestic bliss. I wanted to grill him about what he knew, what his goddess had planned.

  “I have him! I’ve tracked down his location. It took a bit of research and some stuff you’d never understand, but I have him. He’s hiding out in some cottage down near the sea. There are no neighbours, so we don’t need to worry about people seeing the kill,” Liam said.

  Elijah got up and patted the fox on the back.

  “Excellent work, well done. Now, eat your fill then we’ll move out. We’re going to put an end to this asshole for once and for all,” Elijah commanded.

  Fifty-Two

  Liam had pulled up some images of the cottage on his laptop. It was on the edge of the fae forest with the sea directly in front of it, complete with idyllic little sand beach. Wrapping around the west and northwest was the fae forest. The rest was scrubby grassland which might once have been pasture.

  Castor helped me pull together a ritual that gave a holographic projection of the magic in the area. There was no security system, no traps. It was either hidden beyond my abilities, or he was just that arrogant. I hoped it was the latter.

  “If need be you can pull on the fae magic running through the forest. Be prepared for the possibility of having to release the shadow creatures onto this plane as payment for their role in this,” Castor said.

  I crossed my arms.

  “What aren’t you telling us and why?”

  “I’m telling you that he’s incredibly powerful. Do not underestimate him. And a couple of shadow creatures running through the fae forest won’t be the end of the world.”

  I ground my teeth. That was a fight for another day.

  “It looks like he’s going to see us coming. There’s an expanse of open space between us and the only entrance and exit,” Elijah said.

  “Unless we went through the fae forest,” I said.

  The pack looked at me as though I’d lost my mind.

  “The forest will leave us alone. I used enough of its residents as combat practise that they won’t come near me now. His cottage backs right onto the forest, and the fae magic will hide us until the last second,” I said.

  Elijah gave a nod.

  “We’ve hunted in there enough we’ll find our way through quickly,” Elijah said.

  “No one’s fool enough to go in that part, though,” Rex said.

  “I’m game,” Jess said with a grin.

  “Lily’s good enough,” Castor said.

  “Hey, I didn’t say I wasn’t wolf enough,” Rex said.

  “You did imply it...” I said.

  He strapped a great sword to his back while staring me down.

  “Are we going to stand here all day or what?” Rex demanded.

  It felt as though the forest was paused, everything within it frozen, waiting. There was a small sensation as we passed into the more dangerous part. It was like a delicate spider web pressed against my magical senses for a partial moment before fading again as quickly as it had come.

  The forest that the pack was familiar with had been quiet, almost peaceful. Broad trunks in shades of black, grey, and blue. The soft songs of fae birds that threatened to lull unwary wanderers into a hazy dream-like state. This new area was a stark contrast. The trees became a stark white and blood red with deep gouges running down some of the trunks. Electric blue sap left marks trailing down the smooth bark like silent tears. It all glowed in the moonlight, a casually lurid display in a place that had long since deposed what was once known as nature.

  “I don’t want to meet something with claws that long or sharp,” Elijah said with a nod to the gouges.

  “It should be sleeping at this time of day,” Castor said.

  Rex muttered something behind us. We continued on through the forest keeping our wits about us. I knew from past experience that the beings contained there were far more dangerous than anything you’d find in the human wilds. I began to sense magical signatures around us, powerful magical creatures shadowing us. They weren’t stalking, not that I could tell. They were just keeping us in sight. Maybe they wanted to see what we were doing. Maybe they were protecting something and wanted to make sure we passed through. For that matter, maybe they were worried about our being eaten by something even worse.

  I kept an eye on them as they kept an eye on us. I only caught one direct glimpse, and what it showed seemed more like the embodiment of an abstract concept than an actual animal. I wondered what it ate, if it ate. If the pack noticed them, they said nothing. We passed into what would have been a clearing except for a mass of tiny saplings that seemed to be growing before our eyes. I’d heard that the fae forests weren’t naturally grown, that they were placed with magic and sprang up in hours rather than centuries, but to watch the spell play out in front of us was eerie. The gentle whoosh was almost too quiet for me to hear. I formed a long shadow sword without thinking and prepared for an incoming attack. There was only one thing that moved like that.

  “Why do I smell butterscotch cookies?” Jess asked.

  Everyone smelled something different when the dragon came by. It was always something pleasant and soothing. I smelled the salt air with a touch of hay.

  We slowed our pace, the pack had drawn their weapons and were looking around for the
predator.

  “It won’t bother us,” Castor said casually. “Just skirt around the saplings.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. He simply shrugged in response. I didn’t like how much he was hiding with this experience. It was feeling a little too much like the goddess was toying with me. He’d been my only friend for eight years, but a quiet voice was starting to ask: Just how much could I really trust him?

  “What the fuck is that?” Rex growled.

  We looked up and caught sight of a shimmering white dragon, or perhaps more a winged snake. Its feathery wings were long and slim, allowing it to tuck them flush against its long body and weave between the trees. I wasn’t convinced the wings were there to help it fly; it was moving some thirty feet or more above us without any movement from those wings. The dragon-snake looked down at us with violet eyes, eyes which showed startling intelligence. A delicate snort from its nostrils was the only sound it made.

  Its head was as big as I was. I knew its mouth was full of long sharp teeth, perfect for sinking into the huge bear-monsters that rambled through that forest at dusk and dawn. The dragon circled around the tree closest to Castor, keeping its attention on my fox as it did so. Then it was gone with a sinuous flick of its feathered tail.

  “No, we cannot keep one as a pet,” Elijah said to Jess.

  “It wouldn’t even fit in the house! It must have been a hundred feet long,” Rex said.

  Jess huffed, and we continued on, giving the growing trees a wide berth even though I desperately wanted to at least stay and watch the spell play out. I wasn’t going to kill a dragon over it, if I even could, and we had places to be. The edge of the forest was almost within sight, and time was ticking. The sooner we took out the stalker the safer everyone would be.

  Fifty-Three.

  The more secure he felt, the better. If we could get to his side before he had reason to think anything was amiss, we could finish the fight before it started and eliminate the risk to the pack. Even if he did spot us, every step we made without being noticed was a second off his time to prepare and react.

  When we reached the edge of the clearing that contained the last house my stalker would ever see, we all paused. Elijah, the only member of the pack still in human form, made a series of gestures that probably had meaning to his people, and then they rushed off in several directions. I kept track of their magic and thus their location in the back of my mind, but trusted, as I couldn’t but, that they would do what needed to be done.

  We had made it to striking distance without being seen, and that meant we had the advantage of initiative. That would disappear as soon as we were spotted, but as long as we were careful we could strike at our leisure. I took the opportunity to begin forming what I envisioned to be a small but loyal retinue of shadows to give us the edge we were at risk of losing by fighting on his turf. When I reached into the shadow realm, I found some sort of union there, a cacophonic mass of intelligences ranging from superhumanly brilliant alien megaminds to asentient qubits.

  I jerked back, my mind reeling from the overload of images and sensations, and clutched at my head as I tried to clear it. Just as I resolved to go in without my army, I felt three shadows reaching across the barrier to me. I would have jerked back if there was any physical location to get away from. I’d never had a shadow reach out to me before, only the other way around. Did this mean these shadows were that dimensions equivalent of shadow walkers? Instead of speaking in images mingled with emotions, they spoke in precise thoughts. They pushed a willingness to trade service for freedom in our realm and a question of what I had come to ask for. I sent back an image of the stalker and cabin in front of us being devoured by shadows. They returned a certainty of ability, an impression of the union of shadows I’d been unwittingly assaulted by earlier, and an image of three shadows blending in with the shade of the trees and being gone while I turned my head away. I sent back the idea of the union going back to the shadow realm after the fight, and they returned acquiescence. A tendril of power reached for me, and I realized they were asking for a hand getting onto our plane of existence.

  Pushing down a worry that I was about to doom the entire earth plane, I grabbed onto them and braced as the three of them pulled themselves, along with the entire mass of shadows they had promised, into our world, an entire army filling the open area between us and the cabin. They made no sound, but the projection of their minds was beyond deafening. A glance at Elijah showed that I wasn’t the only one feeling it, and that meant the stalker officially knew we were here.

  I pushed KILL along with an image of the stalker to every shadow in range, then reached for the bond with Castor and started trying to put together a spell to block out the shadows. There was no way we could fight this way, and I wasn’t going to rely entirely on the shadows to do our job for us.

  “We need to isolate ourselves from the minds of the shadow creatures,” I said to Castor, hoping he knew more than I did, since my ideas began and ended at coating our brains in shadow and seeing what happened.

  Before Castor could respond, the three megaminds I’d initially dealt with pushed understanding out of nowhere, and then there was beautiful, magnificent silence. The shadows pressed in on the house, a mass of sharp angles and terrible, impossible purity. Since there was no point in pretending we weren’t there any longer, I decided to open up the playing field a bit. Pulling flame magic from a trinket at my waist, I poured it into the little structure in front of us, confident that the shadows would remain unharmed and wanting a better view of what was happening inside.

  I continued to encourage the flames, the magic growing on its own as the fire consumed the wooden cabin, only fast forwarded by my guidance. Within less than a minute, where the cabin had been was only a footprint, and I could see the shadows standing around in it with nothing to do. Either the stalker was already dead, and I knew I wasn’t that lucky, or he’d escaped.

  I pushed a sense of questioning to the contacts I had made with the union, and they returned it. I had told them there was someone there, they had gone in, and there wasn’t. I couldn’t exactly blame them. I was about to shout the all clear, instincts be damned, when I heard Elijah’s sword clear the deadened leather sheathe. I turned in time to see him make a broad slash at the air, blood flying off the tip of the sword as he did.

  “Illusion!” I cried, an accusation as much as a warning to the others.

  I saw movement as Jess, Liam, and Rex moved quickly to our position, not wanting to be caught unsupported. I felt for the magic of the stalker and found nothing. I pushed my understanding of the situation to the megaminds and hoped they had a solution. They pushed back the idea of a shadow with nothing casting it. I pushed again, a simpler version that merely said there was someone invisible and we needed to find them. They sent the same thing back again, only with an image of a field of shadows cast by nothing. I realized they were trying to understand the concept of invisible. In their world, things existed when they cast shadows. Invisible things didn’t cast shadows, so they simply didn’t intersect with their dimension at all. It was a concept they couldn’t understand.

  I sent back a person-shaped light on a field of shadow, the inversion of his image zoomed down to one individual. I moved the light around, making it walk and jump, and then slowly lit the shadow until all that was left was light. I pushed the idea of the light still moving and dancing, only with the image remaining static.

  They sent back confusion mixed with frustration and the idea that I might be crazy or stupid. I resisted the urge to send a jolt of power at them out of spite and just sent back the need to wait for something mean to show up. That, at least, was a concept they could latch onto, and they spread themselves out around us, ready to strike as soon as something that existed in their sense of things showed its face.

  I sat and listened for any sound of movement, scanned our surroundings intensely as if searching for one atom in particular, ran my senses over the magic again and again looking for the t
iniest warp, the tiniest kernel misplaced, but there was nothing. His illusions were so perfect they made my shadow walking seem like a parlour trick, but Elijah had picked up on it. I looked over and found he had his eyes closed, his face shifted into wolf form. I realized that he must have been smelling for the stalker. I hadn’t even bothered to think about working with him. I wasn’t a pack girl, at least not yet.

  I reached out with one hand and touched his chest, and when he didn’t flinch I pressed my magic into him, pulling what little life energy was left in my reserves and using it to enhance his sense of smell, pushing it higher slowly so that he had time to adjust to the new sensory inputs. It took almost a minute, but I felt him tense as he caught what he was looking for.

  Sword in hand, he charged across the open space, passing between shadows as he launched himself at the enemy only he could sense. His pack went to follow him, but he shouted to them to guard me. I bristled at the implication but pushed it down. I needed to work complex life magic at a substantial distance, and I didn’t have the sense of smell to see the stalker coming even if I had my full attention. It was ok to accept help from the pack.

  I closed my eyes, sat cross-legged on the ground, and tugged at the bond with Castor, not having enough focus to ask nicely. I felt him turn into his fox form and connect with me, pressing life energy into my hands. He would act as a battery for as long as he could hold out, which was a staggeringly long time, another hint that he was more to the goddess than he let on. While he did that, Jess, Rex, and Liam would watch my back, I would buff up Elijah’s sense of smell so he knew what he was fighting, and the great alpha dog of this mismatched affair would strike down the most gifted illusionist alive.

  I was terrified. I knew, to my very core, that I could kill virtually anything. Sword to sword, mind to mind, will to will, I had beaten every single opponent I’d ever faced. What I’d never done was help someone kill something, put my safety in their hands. If the pack failed, I wouldn’t know it until I was already gone. I pushed it down, focused on the building feeling of trust in Elijah and on the connection I’d formed with him. It was time to go to work, and I needed those feelings to do it.