The Black Veins (Dead Magic Book 1)

by Ashia Monet

  The Black Veins army charged into this city and desecrated it, all because the Trident Republic happened to find a magical stone while digging up a plot of land. It sounds silly as Blythe stares at the wreckage.

  Blythe doesn’t say it, because she can’t even believe it’s true, but she almost doesn’t blame the Trident Republic for starting a war.

  Coming up on the Guardians’ right is a cluster of white tents lined with white-blanketed cots. A shelter. Instead, families huddle together, dressed in plain, uniform-like attire. They aren’t wounded or injured, but each face Blythe can see is grim or lost or painfully blank. They must be the people who once called Electric City home.

  Past the shelter are a row of houses. Or, perhaps they used to be houses. Now they are simply crumbled bricks and debris.

  The house at the end has experienced the worse; its neighbor collapsed into it like a domino, leaving only a third of its remains intact. The only remaining proof of the structure it used to be.

  “His fiancé was still inside when it happened,” says a voice.

  Across the street is a woman. She sits on the pavement, unkempt grey hair kept in a braid. Her large, unblinking eyes are watching Blythe.

  Antonio’s face goes pale, as if the images of someone being crushed alive in their own home are playing in his head. They’re certainly playing in Blythe’s.

  “I’m so sorry they had to experience that,” Jay says. The perfect, polite, neutral response. Blythe can feel his hand on her shoulder, easing her forward gently.

  The woman isn’t done. “I was here,” she says. “I seen it happen. I was in the Quick Mart when I heard the noises. People screaming. Glass shattering. I hid behind one of the stands, too scared to come out. But I watched out the window, watched one of the soldiers toss a bolt o’ lightning through the bricks so hard, every single house lit up white and fell. Like they was made of straw. I stayed there for a while. Saw General Whiteclaw come back too, screaming her name.”

  Blythe freezes. “Whiteclaw?” she blurts.

  The woman nods emphatically. “The general,” she repeats. “Whiteclaw.”

  Jay pushes harder this time. Blythe’s feet move forward, one in front of the other. But she barely registers it. Whiteclaw’s wife was in there. She died in her own home.

  What must that feel like, to lose someone you planned to spend the rest of your life with? To fall in love with someone, to memorize know how they think, to enjoy what they enjoy, to intertwine your existence with theirs, only to have them snatched away in the most painfully terrible of ways?

  Blythe isn’t sure she wants to know the answer.

  Exhaustion starts to spread its tendrils over the Guardians, and Blythe is not immune. They’ve been travelling non-stop for hours. Besides their short nap on top of the truck, they haven’t rested once.

  Electric City doesn’t seem to be boasting any five star hotels, so they make do with an abandoned mattress store sporting a broken window, where people have been taking advantage of its shelter.

  It’s empty when they crawl in, dirty blankets lying wrinkled on the floor and smelling sharp and sour. But it’s the best they can do.

  They agree to rest for two hours; it’ll still be nightfall when they wake, but it’ll grant them a bit of time to recharge.

  Antonio passes around snacks: chips (that have gotten a little crunched up) and (fluffy but crumbled) muffins. Blythe crosses her legs and eats her muffin piece by crumbly piece.

  Cordelia comes to her side. She squats instead of sitting, because she refuses to touch this floor with any part of her that isn’t the bottom of her shoes.

  “You don’t have to feel bad for him,” she says.

  Of course she knows what’s lingering with Blythe. Cheating mind reader.

  Blythe’s not sure if “pity” is exactly what she feels. Or even how she ought to feel. “I know,” she answers. “But I do. I mean, how can I not? He lost his fiancé. Over a stone. It’s a terrible thing to…to experience. He’s been hurt. But that doesn’t mean I forgive him for hurting me.”

  Cordelia nods even though she is studying every shift in Blythe’s expression. “Alright. As long as you’re okay.”

  “Okay” is definitely the right word. She is neither troubled nor apathetic. She is simply “okay”. The Black Veins soldiers took Whiteclaw’s city, took his house, took his fiancé’s life. And then he took Blythe’s family. What a twisted, horrid cycle.

  Antonio seems to be explaining something to Jay, and if his chipper voice is any indication, it’s more bearable than Blythe’s own thoughts.

  “It’s Antonio’s School of Magic,” he says. “Lesson one! My hair isn’t dyed, you said something about that earlier and it’s been bothering me ever since.”

  “It’s not?” Jay asks.

  “No, dude,” Antonio pouts. “Mom says my dad had blonde hair.”

  Cordelia’s jaw drops. “That’s insane.”

  “Caspian is literally a ghost,” Storm says. “And you are flabbergasted by Antonio Torres being a natural blonde.”

  “It happens in magician genes sometimes,” Antonio explains. “It’s like how Jay’s eyes are more silver than grey!”

  Jay’s hand flies, dramatically, to his chest. “You’re waxing poetic about my eyes, getting me all hot and bothered over here.”

  Antonio smiles at him. “They are very pretty.”

  Jay sprawls out in a faux faint that his Oscar-winning-actress-mother would be proud of. “He called me pretty,” he sighs.

  Daniel is the first to fall asleep, head rested on his leather bag. Everyone else follows suit until it is only Blythe, kept awake by the hum of her own thoughts.

  There is more on her mind than Whiteclaw and his fiancé.

  She crawls over to the spot where Storm sleeps, sprawled out on her back. “Storm,” she whispers, shaking Storm’s shoulder a bit.

  Storm yanks her arm away. “What, what…?”

  “Remember when Rocco talked to me? Before he left?” Blythe asks. “At the end, he…he gave me some information on Madame Deveraux.”

  Storm’s eyes open.

  “He said that she goes by Eve when she’s not in the Fae Lands, and that you can find her in New Orleans. Does that make sense to you?”

  Slowly, as slowly as if the weight of the world rests on her shoulders, Storm sits up. “…yeah,” she says. She seems to be thinking. “Yeah,” she repeats. “I know what it means.”

  “Is it…what you were looking for?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “That’s exactly it.”

  It takes a moment for everything to click. The only reason Storm agreed to stay with them was for the information Blythe has just given her.

  Even when they lost the shard, Storm still didn’t have what she needed in order to leave. Now it is not the information itself that makes her hesitate—it is the fact that she now has it.

  Storm doesn’t look at Blythe as she reaches over and picks up her rollerblades. She doesn’t speak. Blythe doesn’t know what to say either. She knew, logically, Storm would leave after this, but a part of her naively hoped Storm, for some reason, wouldn’t.

  Her rollerblades slip onto her feet, quick and easy. Her hands dance through the laces.

  “Long ago, I made a mistake,” Storm says. “And I hurt somebody I cared about. So I tried to cover it up. And I tried to run from it. But that only made things worse. So now I have to fix it.”

  She stands, straightening her hoodie. Blythe doesn’t want to pry, because Storm hates that, but maybe now is the best time to ask.

  Blythe’s voice is soft. “Is that why only one of your eyes lights up when you use your magic?”

  “…yeah,” Storm answers. “But that’s my burden. And I gotta set it right. I made a deal with you, and I don’t…” she hesitates. “I don’t go back on my word.”

  She stuffs her bag with her switchblade, her phone, her tangled earphones. “Y’all will be fine,” Storm continues. “You’re here in the city,
everything’s way more chill than we thought…y’all will be fine. I’d stay if I could, but I gotta do this. I can’t put it off anymore. She could be gone by the time I get to Louisiana, I don’t…”

  “I understand,” Blythe forces a smile. “Deal’s a deal.”

  Storm nods. “I’m glad you told me.”

  “Of course.”

  Storm’s gaze drifts to the others. “Say goodbye to Daniel for me?” she asks. “And, y’know. All of ‘em. Caspian too.”

  Blythe nods.

  Storm starts toward the door. But something makes her stop.

  “It was my mom,” she whispers. “In the picture.”

  The one Blythe found in her backpack. The one where Storm was a small child, but still so much happier than Blythe has ever seen her now.

  Blythe has a feeling happiness isn’t the only thing Storm has lost.

  “I’m sorry,” Blythe says. The threat of losing a family member has hung over Blythe these past few days, but it has never truly dropped. Not like it must have for Storm.

  “…does it get better?” Blythe asks.

  Storm stares out into the night, at the ghostly corpse that is Electric City. “It gets…easier,” she says. “And you adapt, because that’s what you do. When they’re gone, they’re gone.”

  In a fluid motion, muscles flexing, Storm throws on her leather jacket. Her left eye is alight with magic.

  “Unlike me,” she says. “You still have a chance.”

  In a blurred, orange flash, Storm Crane disappears.

  “Where’s Storm?”

  Daniel is the first to notice her absence when everyone wakes. Blythe managed to sleep after Storm left, but only until Cordelia’s alarm went off. Not much has changed since they all fell asleep; Electric City is just as hauntingly quiet as it was an hour ago.

  “She…had to go handle her own stuff,” Blythe says. She’s not sure how else to put it.

  But no one reacts. They don’t get it. “When’s she coming back?” Daniel asks.

  Blythe lets her lack of an answer be the answer.

  Jay scoffs. Cordelia’s brow quirks. “She just left?” she asks. “Now?”

  Even Caspian, who sits transparent and silent on a mattress, arms resting atop his knees, wrinkles his nose.

  “I never really told you guys this, and I doubt Storm did either, but…we had an agreement,” Blythe explains. “Between her mission and my mission, she’d leave to chase whatever came first. And her mission came first.”

  “What?” Antonio asks. “Okay, so she had to leave, that tracks. But she didn’t even wait until we woke up so we could say goodbye?”

  Daniel’s mouth falls open. “She didn’t even want to stay?” he whispers.

  Blythe’s not sure how to twist this in the best way. In a way where the others won’t hate Storm.

  “Storm is...” Blythe’s voice trails off. “Stubborn. She said she didn’t do favors. I think she just couldn’t live with proving herself wrong.”

  Daniel looks down at his hands. His face is flushed red. He may just be trying to keep himself from crying. “We didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

  The words hang in the air for a moment, their team of six awkwardly staring at the ground and the emptiness that now lingers around them.

  “We have to keep going,” Blythe finally says. “Storm…she wanted us to keep going.”

  Traveling feels different even though the city has not changed. Blythe no longer hears the crunch of rollerblades against gravel. When she checks over her shoulder to make sure the Guardians aren’t lagging, it’s odd not to see Storm checking right along with her.

  They’ll just have to make do.

  “We’re two streets away from the prison now,” Cordelia updates, lashes blinking against the bright light of her phone. But Blythe draws to a stop. They’re passing by a surprisingly familiar building.

  It’s the Gilded Wardrobe, the thrift shop they visited in Broughton. It is oddly similar to the Washington store—sad lawn, dilapidated sign and all—with only a slightly different exterior that allows it to blend smoothly into Electric City’s aesthetic.

  With Storm gone, they are down their most experienced fighter. Jay may be powerful, yes, but Blythe has no idea what he’s capable of when he’s not fueled by desperation and panic. They’ll need all the protection they can buy.

  And the Gilded Wardrobe sold Blythe her hockey stick. Maybe they can fix it.

  “Hey guys,” Blythe says. “Let’s stop here first.”

  The bells tinkle as they enter. Blythe has to keep herself from gasping because everything about this store, from its setup to the items on its shelves—the Matryoshka dolls, the silver globe, the glass airplane—is exactly the same as the Broughton store.

  The same curly haired boy even slouches over the register.

  His gaze shifts up to them. “Oh. I remember you,” he says. “Except there’s more shady-looking teenagers with you. And that lady’s missing.”

  “How…” Blythe’s voice trails off. “How are you here?”

  Register Boy sighs, rolls his eyes, and begins a monologue he appears to have delivered a thousand times. “The Gilded Wardrobe has thirty different locations across the country. These stores promise equally amazing items and prices because they are the same items and prices, with the same workers, in the exact same room.” He stares blankly at them. “I’m literally in thirty places at once. Still getting minimum wage.”

  “Wow,” Blythe says. “I actually feel really bad for you.”

  Register Boy shrugs. Sympathy has no effect on him. “Are we done with the interrogation? Are you actually gonna shop?”

  The other Guardians take that as a cue to disperse, inspecting the wonders displayed on the Gilded Wardrobe’s shelves. But Blythe approaches the Register Boy.

  “Um, I was hoping you could help, actually,” Blythe says. She places the two pieces of her hockey stick on the display case. “It broke. I mean like, snapped.”

  Register Boy eyes the snapped bits. “Thank you for clarifying; I never would have known that’s what happened.”

  “Anyway,” Blythe ignores him. “I wanted to know if you could, like…fix it?”

  Register Boy gives a resigned sigh. “I would if I could, but I just work here. I’m not magic, I’m just me.”

  “But it still works!” Blythe insists. “The magic is still in it.”

  “Did you try clapping your hands and believing?”

  When Blythe cocks her head to the side, annoyed, he sighs again. “We have some…tape. It’s basically a white duct tape that never peels off. That’s it. That’s all it does. I could slap that on there.”

  “Yes! Please! Thank you!”

  He rummages below the display case. “I’m just giving you tape, I don’t think I deserve adamant thanks.”

  Blythe holds it steady as he wraps it around. The magic wakes, slowly, through the wood, rising from a spark to a steady electric flow, like a heartbeat pulsing against her skin, as if the hockey stick can sing to her again.

  A smile spreads on her face. The Trident Republic won’t know what hit it.

  “Thank you,” Blythe repeats.

  “There you go again.”

  Antonio rushes up, all smiles and energy. “Is this a shield?!”

  He holds up a dome-shaped object that isn’t fashioned out of wood or metal, but layers upon layers of porcelain scales.

  Register Boy taps his glasses. Rows of lens slip out and stack in front of his squinting eyes. “It’s called a dragonshield,” he says. “It is made from the shred scales of a breed of dragon that sleeps beneath Japan—”

  “I want it,” Antonio blurts.

  Register Boy stammers. “—oh, um, okay.”

  “Great!” Antonio says, and throws it on his back like a knapsack.

  “It’s fifty-six dollars,” says Register Boy.

  Very slowly, Antonio’s gaze slides to Blythe in a desperate call for help.

  “Um,” Blythe
begins. “We don’t really, uh. Have…money with us….”

  Register Boy’s dark brows furrow. “You expect to leave with items despite having no money?”

  Blythe puts on her most convincing smile. “We’ll pay you back, I swear.”

  “And,” Antonio leans on the display case. “We can, y’know.” He winks, wiggles his eyebrows. “Slip you a Washington or two later for the favor.”

  Register Boy looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel. “Washington is on the one-dollar bill.”

  “You heard him,” Blythe says.

  Register Boy glares at her—and then closes his eyes and sighs. “Y’know what? I don’t need your horrible bribes. You can take the stuff, I’m sure no one cares.”

  Daniel creeps up to Register Boy. “Do you have knives?” he asks.

  “Daniel!” Blythe yells.

  From the back of the store, Jay yells, “Daniel snapped!”

  Daniel jumps, clinging his hands together. “T-They’re for Storm,” he explains. “What if she comes back?”

  Blythe doesn’t have the heart to tell him that Storm won’t be joining them. Not anymore.

  “Okay,” she says instead. “Go ahead.”

  Register Boy sets him up with a set of four obsidian throwing knives which look, admittedly, quite impressive.

  “Does your demonic possession want anything?” Register Boy asks next.

  Caspian fades into view just enough for Blythe to see his unamused expression.

  “No, he’s fine,” Blythe answers.

  “How did you see me?” Caspian asks.

  The only voice that can rival Caspian’s constant unenthusiastic monotone is Register Boy’s disinterested underpaid drawl. “I see everything,” he says, nonchalant. “Anyone else want to steal some valuable items from me? Better take ‘em now, while I still have a job.”

  Cordelia and Jay approach the glass case, Cordelia acting as if she would rather be anywhere else in the world, Jay raising a hand.

  “I’ll take something,” he says.

  Mr. I’m Not A Magician wants a magic item? “You will?” Blythe blurts.

  Jay shrugs. “When in Rome.”

  “Get him a bow,” Antonio teases. “We’ll turn him into Legolas.”