There were the location sigils, the ones telling a ward where it was and which ward it led to. Just like she’d hoped. It was all making sense. And she knew how to break it.
A shout of rage came from the living room, the sound of smashing furniture. A door opened, the shout moving seamlessly to the room above her. She could hear Jared laughing, throwing some choice taunts at the man chasing him.
Turning her attention to the back door, arms aching, she began to scrub around the frame. But she knew the shapes of the wards, this time. She knew where to look for the sigils she needed. She smiled when she proved herself correct.
Thrusting the bleach to one side and scrubbing her hands clean, she reached for the resin tin by the wall, setting the brush atop it nearby. The cutlery drawer yielded a knife.
She could scrub the ward away, a few scrapes and it would stop working, but that was small thinking. Now she had a brush between her fingers, her hands were steady. Any idiot could destroy a ward. It took someone who knew what they were doing to hack it. Turned out she was one of them.
Working as quickly and carefully as she could, she placed a few applications of resin to the window ward. A few scrapes, a few more changes and she was done.
Throwing the door open onto the dusky back yard, she tossed a mug through the hole in the windowpane and grinned as it flew back through the door, landing neatly in her hand.
A few more minutes and she’d done the same to the back door so that both door and window led to the other in a closed loop. Then, after a few more modifications…
‘Fuck,’ Jared staggered into the kitchen. To her horror, he was bleeding, a wound on his forehead running into his eyes. ‘You got to do it. Whatever you’re doing.’ He almost fell into her arms, but he misjudged the distance, collapsing at her feet.
McKittrick was close behind him, the three of them crammed into the small kitchen. The man looked furious, red in the face, sweating and out of breath.
Snatching up the gun she’d left on the countertop, Michaela levelled it at the man’s chest.
Hands moving quickly, McKittrick performed some cantrips. Jared was jerked from the floor, lifted straight into the man’s arms, spoiling her shot. McKittrick’s arm snaked around the boy’s torso, holding him in place. A knife appeared in the man’s free hand, which he put to Jared’s throat.
‘You have no idea what you’re doing,’ said McKittrick, his voice a hoarse whisper. His eyes were bright with fear.
His plans were still stuffed in Jared’s pockets.
‘So long as it’s fucking up whatever you’re doing, I think that’s a good thing.’ Michaela looked around the room for something to throw.
‘I’m changing the world. The laws here are draconian, someone like you should see that. The police would hang you as soon as look at you. They barely even need a trial. The moment you picked up your first ward plate you stopped being a person in their eyes.’
‘Like your wife?’
His eyes flared at the mention of her, emotions fighting to take root in his expression. ‘Seems you found out everything about me.’
‘It wasn’t hard. So, what, this is all to do with revenge?’
‘Revenge? You think I’m…’ he snorted, tears beginning to brim in his eyes. ‘This is a protest. People need to see that magic users aren’t animals. Melissa was better than any of them. All she wanted to do was help people.’
‘But then they caught her.’
‘And they barely took a day to find her guilty. Because she wouldn’t give up that bitch, Khurana. They hanged her for trinkets and do you know what happened next?’
‘I don’t—’
‘Nothing. No one cared. Her family stopped talking to me, her friends. I wrote to newspapers, I started a blog, I spoke to politicians. I tried to make people see. She was a human being trying to do a little good but they killed her and they vilified her. And they still get away with it. You have to slap people in the face if you want them to listen. You use magic, you’re in as much danger as she was. Look what I needed to do to make you help me.’
‘You didn’t even try asking me.’ Michaela picked up a mug.
McKittrick’s eyes followed her actions. He’d been too angry, too intent on chasing Jared that he hadn’t yet noticed what she had done.
‘You wouldn’t have agreed,’ he said.
‘No, I guess I wouldn’t.’
‘So, you see, I had to do it. I needed your help.’
‘What are you going to do with it? All that bottled grief? You must have something—’
‘You really think I’m going to tell you?’
‘No. But I’m betting what my friend has in his pockets could give us a clue.’
‘Those belong to me.’
Jared was beginning to gather himself. The blow on his head was still bleeding into his eyes, but he didn’t dare lift a hand to wipe them, feeling the blade biting at his throat.
‘You can have them,’ said Jared, talking quietly, afraid of making the knife edge sink any deeper. ‘I don’t want them. I’m not anything to you.’
‘So you can pull a knife on me? I don’t think so.’ McKittrick turned his attention back to Michaela. ‘You really think you can shoot me? This isn’t like the movies. You’ll be a murderer.’
Michaela didn’t reply. She looked back over her shoulder, trying to judge the distance.
‘Put down the gun,’ the man ordered. ‘Then come over here, empty his pockets, and step out that door. I’ll let your friend go. We never have to see each other again.’
‘Actually, I have a better idea.’ Turning, Michaela threw the gun through the broken window.
The thing was too heavy to sail. It barely made it through the window at all. The smell of magic flooded the room, the air around them beginning to crackle. The wards hummed, started to glow, the light spreading from symbol to symbol until the kitchen was dowsed with light. Those in the hall followed, and in moments every room in the house was incandescent.
McKittrick gasped, fingers tightening around the knife handle. ‘What did you do?’
‘Feedback loop. Neither door knows which one the gun should come out of. And both now feed off of your power. Let him go or I put something else through.’
‘No.’ She could see him taking the information in, trying to keep a hold of the situation. ‘You have to—’
She threw the mug through and the hum increased. The effect on McKittrick was visible, the man gasping again, blinking as his vision blurred.
‘Best get out of here,’ said Michaela. ‘It’s only going to get worse. You only have a couple of minutes before you’re drained completely. If you hurry, you might get far enough out of range to live.’
‘No. I…’
‘Want me to throw something else? Leave!’
‘Break that ward. It could kill me.’
‘No. Leave. Don’t make me a killer. Get out of here.’
The man cast around in indecision, like the kitchen was going to offer him some way out. His knife was dropping further and further from Jared’s throat.
Choosing his moment to act, Jared brought his elbow around into the man’s midriff. But it was a bad effort, his blow merely glancing off the man’s hip.
McKittrick reacted, pulling Jared back against him and cutting deep with his knife. The boy’s eyes bulged as blood began to course down his front, a waterfall of the stuff running down McKittrick’s arm and onto the floor.
Still holding the sagging boy aloft, he dragged a thumb through the blood. With the grace of a painter, he daubed Jared’s cheek with a symbol. Letting the boy drop choking to the floor, his hand now a sticky red mess, McKittrick slammed it against the nearest glowing ward.
Convulsing on the floor, Jared gurgled as his own inherent power was syphoned into the network in place of McKittrick’s own.
Michaela screamed, a sound that was part surprise, part fear and then dropping down into rage. She lunged at the man, catching him a clumsy blow across the face.
It was enough to make him drop the knife, fold against the wall, his body still weak from the draining.
Wasting no time, Michaela went for the weapon, picking it up and stabbing it down into the meat of his shoulder. As the blade sank in, the metal jarred as it came to a stop against bone. Her hand slipped down the handle and she felt her fingers heat as they passed across the blade.
The pair screamed at one another, noses inches apart, before McKittrick pushed her away. Stumbling over Jared’s body, she gave a grunt as she fell hard onto her back.
The wards winked out, their new power source drained. All of a sudden, the room was hushed. There was a buzzing in the air, the sound of a loud noise suddenly silenced.
They stared at one another, McKittrick grabbing at the knife embedded in his shoulder, pale, out of breath, sweating. His dark eyes flicked to something beside her and she realised it was the gun, rematerialised now the feedback loop was broken.
It was in her hand before she knew what she was doing. She brought it up, but he was already fleeing down the corridor. The front door collided with the wall and slammed itself closed behind McKittrick, leaving Michaela and Jared alone.
Michaela blinked, the gun pointed at the door until it became too heavy to lift. She wasn’t even sure how long she’d sat like that, her brain spinning like an engine out of gear. The drop of the gun brought her back.
‘Jared? Jared!’ She turned him over, but it was already too late. The cut of the knife might not have killed him, but the wards had. She’d thought that she’d been so clever with her plan, but McKittrick had done something she could never have anticipated. ‘Shit.’ She heard the word echo off the walls, heard the tremor in her voice. ‘Shit, I…’ His eyes stared up at her, glassy, unseeing. The wound in his throat continued to dribble onto the floor.
She realised that there was blood everywhere. She was kneeling in it. It coated her hands and face. She’d never thought someone could have so much of it.
Standing, she almost slipped, adding another big bloody palm print to the sink edge as she caught herself. It was then she noticed that her fingers were throbbing. She’d cut herself on that knife, the wounds across the base of her fingertips deep. She closed her eyes as her vision threatened to blacken. Grabbing a dishcloth, she wrapped it around her palm as tight as she could bear.
She didn’t know what to do. She could hear sirens in the distance.
For a wild moment she thought of trying to lift Jared’s body, as though pulling him away would remove the whole crime scene. She was in shock, she realised. This must be what shock felt like.
She was halfway to the front door when she remembered the papers in Jared’s possession.
Hands shaking, tears in her eyes, she folded them hastily, shoving them into her pockets. Another search yielded Jared’s car keys. Was it close? But as she pulled them out, her fingertips brushed something that ran a magical charge up through her hand.
The siren wail growing closer, she tried to find it again amongst the fluff and grit. It was a small metal orb, a little larger than a ball bearing. She could feel the power that had been put into it and the sensation of… something else? The ocean? That couldn’t be right.
Escape.
The thought hit her like a hammer. Squeezing the ball into her hand, she fled out into the street. The sirens were closer now, but the street was empty. The driver must have fled. No doubt Davey already knew that things had gone terribly wrong.
Hands in pockets, head down, she began to walk. No time to find Jared’s car, she had to be away from here now.
The noise of the sirens bounced off the low houses from all directions; she turned left at random, taking the first turning she came to.
Behind, she could hear the police cars arriving. She resisted the urge to speed up.
She needed to get out of here. She was too bloodstained to risk the tube or an Uber. Besides, who knew what the police could use to track her.
Panic was beginning to rise again and she stamped it down. Parts of her brain were clawing at her, demanding attention. Her fingers were throbbing. She was covered in blood. Her pockets were stuffed with evidence. She’d left blood all over the kitchen. Her friend was dead. She hadn’t stopped McKittrick. She hadn’t even been able to find out what he was planning. The mission had been a complete and utter failure and it had cost her more than she’d thought possible.
She walked a few more streets until she felt confident that she’d taken enough turns to be far enough away from the police. The last of the daylight was draining from the sky, the streetlights sucking up the colours. She kept her bleeding hand close to her body, out of sight.
It wasn’t long before the events of the last hour hit her all at once, the pressure of them too forceful to be denied.
There was a small park across the road with enough trees to afford it an air of seclusion.
The tears came the moment she sat down. Wave after wave, they ran down her face to drip off her nose. The salt bit at the graze on her cheek. She’d forgotten all about it.
‘Come on,’ she said, pulling herself together.
Holding her phone carefully, she did her best to clean her face in the nearby fountain. The graze had stopped bleeding at least.
Her hand was another matter. The dishcloth was bloody, the inside of her pocket a red mess. She needed stitches for sure.
Then there were her clothes. There was nothing she could do for her jeans or her jacket. No amount of water would clean the blood from them.
She could feel the papers she had taken trying to unfold in her pocket, bursting to be read.
The strange metal ball was covered in her blood now, she’d hidden it in the same pocket she’d used to conceal her bleeding fingers. Again, when she touched its smooth surface, it radiated strange sensations. Ocean? Glass? Somehow she could feel someone whispering, like a tingle at the base of her skull.
Looking it up on her phone, it didn’t take long for her to figure out what it was. Was this how McKittrick had been communicating with her mother?
Steeling herself, she put the thing into her mouth.
Hello?
Chapter Nineteen
McKittrick was late.
It was a strange way to perform a murder, Amanda kept thinking. Sat cross-legged, looking out across the lightning-strobed ocean, waiting to send the right thought.
To kill the man would put more blood on Steph’s hands, push the young woman further down a path there was no coming back from. But to try words and fail would leave her daughter in danger.
But as time drew on, she could feel her resolve to protect Steph crumbling, her rhetoric disintegrating, as she imagined McKittrick’s anger that she hadn’t delivered what he’d demanded of her. She didn’t have a choice. She really didn’t have a choice. She had to kill him. She—
She stiffened – strange sensations beginning to come through. There was panic, running, confusion. A jolt of magic hit her like a bolt of current, making Amanda jerk; the ward on the scryball let out a small surge as it prevented her from swallowing it.
Taking another breath, Amanda went through what Steph had taught her. She could feel herself doing it, practising the motions and mental gymnastics.
Then it was time. She could feel it, the orb at the other end, another surge of power; McKittrick was picking up the ball, charging it with his blood.
Do it. Do it. Do it.
Amanda was almost sick with anticipation, sweat crawling down her back.
‘Hello?’
Amanda struck.
She gathered her power, made the cantrips with her fingers—
‘Mum? Is that you?’
Her daughter’s voice hit her like an arrow. Her hands spasmed so hard that they hurt, a feeling like ice water over her brain, cutting off her thoughts.
‘Michaela?’
Amanda put her hand to her mouth, tears springing to her eyes. It was her daughter’s voice, but it wasn’t. Not sound that carried but something other, but i
t was her daughter, she could feel her presence, a missing part of her suddenly completed as it hadn’t been in years.
She’d almost killed her daughter. Another second and…
She shuddered, the thought too hideous to contemplate. Falling onto her back, she curled into a ball, her hands to her face, tears running down her cheeks. Nausea swept her in waves, adrenalin running rampant, crashing through her body.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes.’ It came out as a croak. She picked herself back up. ‘Yes it’s me. I… I mean… what are you doing? Are you OK? Is McKittrick…?’
‘Mum, I’m in so much trouble.’
The words rushed out of her daughter. The fear of when she’d been caught by McKittrick with all of his evidence. The strain of working under Davey. The tension of breaking into McKittrick’s house. The thrill of coming up with the plan and the horror of what had happened next. Michaela wasn’t as disciplined with her communication as McKittrick had been. As she spoke, errant emotions and sense memories threaded her words. Without realising, Amanda had clenched her right fist, feeling the wound across her daughter’s fingers.
‘I’m not like you, Mum,’ Michaela finished. ‘I don’t think I can do what you did. At least the people you had to deal with were decent.’
There was a flash of trees and benches, a small park.
‘I should have been there for you,’ said Amanda. ‘I shouldn’t have… Michaela, I let myself get caught on that job. I knew what I was doing. I was mixing with worse and worse people and then you left and I didn’t know how to find you. You hated me and I knew I deserved it for everything I had done to your father and to your brother and sister and to you. I knew the job was bad and I did it anyway because I wanted to be punished. I knew it’s what you wanted.’
‘Mum, it was never what I wanted. You kept accusing me of hating you, but it was all in your head. You were the one who hated you and every time I tried to tell you, you pushed me away. All you wanted to do was start fights and force me to prove that I hated you.’
Strange Ways Page 28