Righteous Eight: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Words of Power Book 4)

by VK Fox

  “The window…” Jane tried to talk over her pounding heart, sorting the image she had seen with the words Ian had whispered. “Do you ever, um, dream out loud?”

  Ian was quiet for a few heartbeats. “I don’t know. Did you see something?”

  Jane nodded. Oh God, please don’t ask me to describe it.

  “I was having a nightmare.” Ian’s voice was even, but his skin was damp.

  “Isn’t the circle supposed to fix that?” Jane couldn’t purge the hysteria from her voice.

  “I made a different kind of circle tonight.” Ian wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to his side. “I’ve been more worried about extranatural threats than bad dreams. This one is to protect us.” He paused again before turning to study her. “You saw what I was dreaming?”

  Jane nodded. “That wasn’t a prophecy, right? I mean, that’s not what’s going to happen?” Her heart pounded while Ian considered his answer.

  After several horrible years, he spoke again into the silver-tinged darkness. “It was not a prophetic dream, but in a way I am worried it will come true.” Ian drew a deep, broken breath. “I can’t protect them from everything. I’ll fail my children again.”

  “What do you mean ‘again?’” Was he talking about Dahl? Jane gripped the idea like a buoy.

  “I made mistakes. Dahl suffered alone. For years I wasn’t there when he needed me.” Ian’s voice was so halting and unsure he sounded like a different person. “I am so happy we have the girls. So, so happy. All my life I have wanted children and getting to have newborns—I can’t tell you how full my heart is. But I look at them, perfect and soft, and I know one day they’ll hurt. One day I’ll realize what I should have done instead of what I did. They’ll have to learn that the world can be cruel and the good guys don’t always win and people in the right aren’t protected by their rightness. I wish the world was a better place so they wouldn’t have to know these things.”

  Jane couldn’t verbalize her trite reassurances. Nobody’s perfect, you did the best you could, it all turned out alright. What was the point of saying those things except to fill the silence? Jane swallowed and held his searching gaze. “That sucks, and it’s going to be hard. I know Dahl’s life had shitty parts and he’s dealing with the fallout, but I’m still really glad he’s around. I think he is too. Maybe we can aim for that: happy to be here, even with the scars.”

  Ian nodded, and for a few shuddering breaths Jane was sure he would cry. Then he was all around her, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead, holding her like a teddy bear. She lay on his chest and studied his heartbeat, eyes resting on the mirror window.

  The dissidence of the reflection seemed less alarming now. Had Ian been daydreaming of her that day in the mall when the mirror went weird? A thin spot in the barrier, merging a fantasy with reality? In the reflection she was running her hands through his hair, climbing on top of him, kissing him deeply. Ian’s hands were cupping her leaking breasts, squeezing her chubby thighs. Jane frowned. Why was he dreaming about that? She looked down at her lumpy, deflated body and retread their serious verbal exchange.

  “Ian?”

  He startled like he’d been on the edge of sleep. “Mmm?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “You.” Ian’s voice was warm and tender.

  “What about me?”

  “How much I love you. How much you mean to me. How happy you make me.”

  “What you’d like to do with me right now?” Jane didn’t like the waspish tone, but there it was.

  Ian opened his eyes. The mirror window had gone blank. “Does that upset you?”

  Jane didn’t answer.

  “Why? I love you and I want to show you that love. It’s the best way I know how.”

  “Are you kidding?” Jane was bright red. “You were a virgin before we met. Surely you know other ways to show love.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ian’s brow wrinkled. “You’re upset and I don’t know why.”

  “Because we were talking about real things, important things. We were connecting and you moved right along to dreaming about sleeping with me!”

  “Is that wrong?” His voice was injured. Jane hated that she put that hurt there.

  “It’s shallow!”

  “Sex is shallow to you?” He was tense, voice puzzled. “Then why did you want to wait until we were married?”

  Jane huffed and crossed her arms over her swollen chest. Why was she so embarrassed? It wasn’t like she hadn’t fantasized about him during the months of celibacy her high-risk pregnancy required. She just had the good sense to hide it. Ian took one of her hands.

  “Jane, I know you just had twins. That’s incredible and exhausting: I can’t imagine what it was like. But sometimes I dream of loving you again and I look forward to it. I’ve always shown my love physically. For my children that means hugs and kisses. For my wife I want it to mean something else. Is that okay?”

  Jane’s throat was froggy. “But I’m tired all the time. I have stretch marks and cellulite. Every spare minute I’m holding or nursing a baby. My body doesn’t feel like me anymore. I’ve never been thrilled with the way I look, and now everything’s changed so fast—even the stuff I was comfortable with is different. How can I possibly get in the mood with no sleep and two babies in the room and me like this?”

  Ian’s voice rumbled in his chest. “I think you’re beautiful, for whatever it’s worth.”

  Jane smoothed her nightie over her still-round stomach: the stretched-out wrapper the babies had arrived in. Did Ian think she was beautiful, or were they firmly in I remember when… territory now?

  Curled in on herself, Jane focused on Ian’s side where his shirt had hiked up. The deep, purplish stretch marks from when his body was changed by magic and he gained more than a foot and two hundred pounds. What had he looked like before? Had he been uncomfortable with his new body? Did he miss the old one?

  Here they were: a couple months of marriage, a flurry of passion, and then what? Parenthood? Middle age? Any other category that didn’t fit into a romance novel? Were they supposed to fill their lives with other pursuits, occasionally making time on weekends, anniversaries, and birthdays? Jane chewed her lip. That wasn’t what she wanted at all.

  Jane shoved the tangled thoughts aside and turned to Ian, arms around his neck, mouth against his. He smelled amazing: spicy and warm and male. Her nearness changed him—made his hands shake and his body hard.

  Ian paused mid kiss, cradling her face. “Do you want to—”

  “Yes. I know it’s been a while, but I really, really do.” She was already reaching for him, wrapping a leg around his waist, pulling him closer. “You’re right, it does matter. I want you forever, even if I get mixed up sometimes.”

  Ian’s kiss sent warmth to her core. Jane was quickly losing track of the specifics and getting information in fractured images: nightie pushed up over her hips, teasing fingers between her legs, kisses over her full breasts. Jane reached for him, tentatively at first and then with growing confidence as he moaned. It was a two-hands situation. Jane wanted to draw it out, but desperation got the better of art, obliterating every coherent thought.

  Ian’s hands were on her waist, huge and strong beneath her, like a force of nature. He pulled her closer while they became something bigger than themselves, more than the sum of parts. It mattered. It meant “I love you” in a way that was too vast for words. Primal and divine—universally human and entirely their own: another kind of magic.

  Afterward she drifted in and out of sleep, lulled by the sound of Ian’s breathing, his heartbeat, and the occasional tuneless humming when the babies stirred. The silver window reflected them exactly as they were. Was she looking at Ian’s dreams or a simple reflection? Jane couldn’t wish for more. She was happy either way.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Instead of reading his security level seven file, Dahl watched Blue feed soda cans into her DIY crucible. Blazing from the heart of
a tabletop foundry and already half full of molten metal, she watched each new addition slough into the thick mess. Fitz played with the Tupperware golem in the nursery area—trying to add blocks while the two-quart animate container darted side to side on spindly plastic legs. The creature dodged his squealing attempts to sink a basket about half the time. Fitz had been amused, and Dahl had been stalling for almost an hour.

  Management had ordered the files delivered and had gotten the hell out of dodge, leaving Frost and Palahniuk without a backward glance. Dahl wasn’t sure if he was more surprised that they gave up their agents or their information. If the pair had returned, their outlook at Sana Baba wasn’t good: they’d be suspended without pay and charged with anything from insubordination to mutiny, depending on how pissy Management was after getting its teeth kicked in. Frost and Palahniuk were attached to Everest, and Dahl could use the extra hands. The files and accompanying official recognition of the Suicide Kings as an entity of power was a resounding win. If they survived the next few weeks, they had a future.

  “No new headway on bindings?” Dahl scrubbed a palm over burning eyes as he leafed through the Fiver folder.

  “Nothing big, or I’d have been shouting it from the rooftops.” Blue was clad in coveralls, a heavy apron, safety goggles, and thermal protective gloves. Her dark hair was swept into a polka-dot kerchief as she hefted a box of empty soda cans onto the table. “Everest’s second sight is still unreliable, and we haven’t had any success without it.”

  “I don’t understand.” Dahl’s wandering focus wouldn’t catch. “Everest accomplished this already. You know all the factors. Why can’t he replicate the same result the way he can when he’s opening the gate?”

  “Weeeeeell.” Blue blotted a thin sheen of sweat from her forehead and flushed cheeks. “The easiest way to think of golemancy is like an equation. Word, plus golem body, plus implement, plus anointing liquid, equals binding. There is a total we need to reach by adding the factors. If any one of the factors is off the mark a bit, the others have to compensate by being better to make up the deficit.

  “However, looking only at the materials involved is a bit of an oversimplification because there’s also an X factor: the golemancer. I call that variable conceptive talent: the finesse to use those tools to make magic stick. Two golemancers could use the exact same set of tools and achieve different results. Everest’s aces when he uses his second sight, but without that he’s just a guy with a few months training. Breakthroughs so early are rare. I struggled for years before I had my first success.”

  “So you need to improve the other factors of the equation to compensate for his lack of experience without second sight?”

  “Yeah, scrawling the bindings on with Sharpie is likely part of the problem. Carving is tried and true, so we’re shifting his method of application.”

  Dahl’s eyes skipped over the text in his file, not absorbing any of it. The Sharpie binding had been painful and unsettling, more than he had admitted to Blue or Everest. Carving something into his flesh would be fucking miserable. How would Everest handle cutting his skin? Would he pass out? What if the binding didn’t take? Trying to imagine Everest standing over him with a scalpel made Dahl’s stomach twist. It was too close to Mordred. The scars on his arm itched.

  Blue continued chatting as she sorted cans. “He’s also been using sweat as an anointing liquid—most golemancers do, because it’s on everybody’s hands and sweat is a good, personal liquid that usually works. But there are more powerful options, and a lot of the effectiveness varies golemancer to golemancer. We’re taking a structured approach today and testing other anointing liquids. I have water, ink, and blood. I’d like to test tears, something with a more intimate connection to the golemancer generally works better, but we don’t have any on tap. Everest says the Sumerians were big on spit, fingernail dirt, and semen as the sources of life, so he’s bringing those.”

  Dahl raised his eyebrows. “Ah, great. Could he, ah, chop onions or something? For tears, I mean?”

  “Nah.” Blue tried to hide a grin. “You can’t trick the system. Tears from an emotional place are different and, unfortunately, Everest isn’t a crier. Which would make them even more potent if we could get our hands on them. Damn.” She lapsed into contemplative silence.

  The way Blue talked about conceptive talent was familiar: personal and deep, similar to forming a link. Dahl’s memories of his magic hurt like a phantom limb, conspicuous by its absence—something he’d utterly taken for granted because it was a part of him. When he focused on the loss, the reflexive reaching in his mind for the threads of magic left him stumbling and chilled—the mental twin to rubbing his numb, scarred shoulder.

  Dahl cleared his throat. “What was it like? Your first breakthrough, I mean.”

  Blue grinned. “Like an epiphany. The scales fell from my eyes and all that. Like something building and building finally broke loose and poured through me. An instant of complete, intuitive understanding about what to do: instinctive and out of control but perfectly right.”

  Was it her tone or choice of words that sent a flush creeping up his neck? Putting the folder aside, Dahl fumbled in his pockets, fishing out a pack of M&Ms. Fitz was instantly there, summoned by the crinkling packaging. Dahl grinned at the little guy and dropped several light brown ones into his open hands. He always ate those first.

  “Keep working the problem. You’re making progress, and we still have time.” Dahl reopened the folder. “And keep me posted on any new developments.”

  “Okay.” Blue lifted the cement foundry lid and a wave of heat washed out.

  “Do you have an updated timeline for the mirror project?” Blue had cobbled the foundry together from cement, steel wool, and scrap pipe sections, but the curing process put them a day later than his original projection.

  “Hold your horses. We’ll get there soon. I’m pouring Mr. Mirror’s legs and body today. He should be ready tomorrow. I may have to cut a few corners, but it’s function over beauty, right?”

  “Yes.” Dahl forced his focus to the thick pages, glancing over information. Access to agents files was basic—something he should have had before day one. It was his duty to read them, to be informed about his agents. That was the reason he’d asked for the files and read them cover to cover. All except for one.

  Dahl smothered his rising nerves and began at the top. The Fiver program enrolled premature or failure to thrive infants and then isolated them through early childhood. Later in life, one or two carefully selected friendships with independent, charismatic, capable agents were encouraged.

  Dahl’s stomach turned. The names had been redacted but the dates matched: Adam and Everest. How much of Everest’s life had Management nudged in one way or another because it suited his bond?

  Did it matter to Everest? Did Dahl really want to know?

  Two paragraphs in, and he already couldn’t handle it. The room was snug and smelled of hot metal. Fitz was laughing. Dahl’s skin smarted where Everest had sucked bruises onto his stomach, and pressing them brought him sharply to the moment. He’d been wearing love marks under his shirt in stages of purple, green, and yellow for months. He’d wear them forever if Everest let him—his own gold ring. Blue was mopping sweat from her flushed brow. Dahl cleared his throat. “Do you need any help?”

  “I’m okay!” Blue chirped. “Some days I wish Mercy was here to assist, but this is easy stuff.”

  “Are you going to rebuild Mercy?” If Blue did, she’d better make some cosmetic changes, because the Mercy who became a vessel for Mordred still haunted his dreams: fingers in his mouth, pinned against the wall, airways closing.

  “I plan on it. I was able to collect all of my ancestors’ remains. Well, with any luck I got them all.” Blue skimmed the top of the sun-bright metal with a paint stirrer, removing impurities on the surface of the full crucible. “I’m hoping Everest will help me. He was so attached to her, and I hated that she was used against him. I know he’ll want
to redesign her to have a more realistic face. You know, it creeped him out that she didn’t have features anyway.” Blue was babbling nervously and lapsed into silence as she took a large pair of metal tongs in her thickly gloved hands. Lifting the crucible, she poured liquid metal into a small opening in a bucket of sand. Dahl couldn’t see the foam blank, but smoke hissed out as the metal burned it away, instantly filling the space in the exact shape of the now-dissolved foam.

  Blue’s lower lip was trembling as she replaced the crucible in the foundry.

  “Are you upset?” Dahl studied her face.

  Blue didn’t meet his eyes. “Yeah. I mean, the whole trapping Mordred thing didn’t go smoothly. I feel sick when I think about what might have happened… and what did happen. I should have trusted you more. I’m really sorry.” Blue’s eyes were clouded. “I also miss Mercy a whole bunch.”

  Dahl watched her for a few heartbeats as she snapped back to work—feeding more cans to the belly of the foundry. “I’m sure Everest would like that project. It’s kind of you to include him when Mercy is so important to your family.”

  Blue grinned. “Good. I’ll ask him. Hey, do you know why he has an aversion to blank faces? He’s always kind of danced around the subject.”

  “He’s had recurring nightmares since he was a kid.”

  “Okay, then. Oddly specific.”

  “And yet it keeps coming up. But he said the dreams started when he was around eight years old, so before he linked. The time frame likely discounts any prophetic notions.”

  Blue flipped on the hairdryer to oxygenate the coals, pushing air through a length of metal pipe inserted in the side of the foundry, fanning it back to a scorching heat. When Blue cut the dryer, she continued where they left off. “Was he always a sensitive? Like, able to sense weird things through natural-born talent?”

  Dahl forced himself to consider the idea instead of dismissing it out of hand. Everest was one of the deepest links Sana Baba had created in his generation. Could he have an inborn ability in addition to his linked powers? “I don’t know. I’ve never seen compelling evidence for natural magic.”