Semi-Magical

by Isabel Jordan

  There’d been times when Mischa had been sure she’d never have kids. When she’d almost died and Hunter saved her by turning her into a vampire had been one of those times. Then a few years ago, she’d doubted they’d be able to adopt because who’d want to give a vampire couple a human child?

  But, as it turned out, the orphanage in China where Lane had been dumped as a newborn and living for the first few years of her life was more than willing to turn her over. They hadn’t had a clue what to do with a deaf child, let alone a deaf child with off-the-charts intelligence.

  Then, of course, there were Lane’s other gifts…

  Mischa pressed a smacking kiss to Lane’s forehead. Do you want macaroni and cheese for lunch? Mischa signed.

  Lane nodded, then pointed to Harper before signing to Mischa, Is Harper going to get the bad man out of jail?

  Mischa glanced over at Hunter, who leaned forward in his chair. He put his hand on Lane’s back so that she’d turn her attention to him before he signed, What bad man, angel?

  Her little hands flew furiously, but her expression remained placid.

  The bad man who let all the demons into the world.

  Harper’s eyes widened as she met Mischa’s equally wide eyes. That was a showstopper of a statement, wasn’t it? And here she’d always assumed that only Haven could strike her speechless.

  Hunter gave his daughter a smile that didn’t quite reach his troubled eyes and signed to her that yes, Harper would stop the bad man. Then he turned to Harper and said, “Get that man out today. We need to have a talk with him. Immediately.”

  Chapter Nine

  Harper handed the binoculars over to Benny as they hunkered down behind the bushes beyond the main gate at Midvale prison with Seven, Riddick, and Quinn. “Four armed guards on the tower. Two inside the gate at the guard station.”

  “There will be at least two armed guards on each cell block,” Seven said. “There’s four cell blocks on two floors, then there’ll also be at least one guard in the infirmary, and two on the psych ward.”

  Benny’s brow furrowed and he started counting on his fingers.

  “Don’t hurt yourself, mate,” Quinn said. “That’s eleven guards.”

  “I never did like math,” Benny grumbled.

  “The math doesn’t really matter. They could have a hundred armed human guards and still be outmanned by three dhampyres,” Seven said.

  “Fuckin’-A,” Quinn and Riddick said in stereo.

  Seven rolled her eyes. “My point is that Harper and Benny don’t have to go in. We can handle it ourselves.”

  “I’m sick of being left out all the time!” Benny whisper-hissed. “If you really want a good plan to bust into this joint, I could shift into my rat, go in through the sewer, and open the back doors. You could stroll in quiet as you please.”

  Riddick shrugged. “It’s not as much fun as cracking skulls and kicking down doors, but I can appreciate its simplicity.”

  “Of course that’s a good plan,” Harper said, trying to soothe Benny, “but I’m not looking to go in quietly. I want to make a shit ton of noise. I want it to look like we had to work to get this shithead out. It needs to be so loud that if my father is keeping tabs on us, he hears the commotion from whatever rock he’s been hiding under.”

  Quinn cracked his knuckles and grinned. “Oh, we can create one helluva commotion, love.”

  “That’s why you and I are here,” Harper said. She jerked her thumb towards Benny, Riddick, and Seven. “These three stiffs are just eye candy.”

  “We’re the stiffs that can keep you fools from getting shot when you’re waving your arms around, trying to make sure everyone notices you,” Riddick grumbled.

  “I don’t need to wave my arms around to get everyone to notice me,” Harper said. “I just have to walk into a room.”

  Benny shook his head. “She ain’t lyin’.”

  Seven sighed. “So, what’s the plan? Storm the gate? Kick ass? Do we even know where this guy is once we’re in there?”

  “Yep. I’m all for storming the gate. And he’s in cell block C, according to Hunter.”

  Riddick grimaced. “That’s where the worst of the worst are left to rot. The ones that’ll never see the light of day again.”

  Harper shot him a smirk. “Then this is his lucky day, because he’s about to see all kinds of daylight.”

  Quinn cringed. “Lord, it makes me nervous when you smile like that.”

  Benny traced a cross on his chest. “No shit.”

  Harper shrugged. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  ***

  Twenty-five minutes later, the great Midvale Prison Siege of 2020 was complete. Riddick shoved Anton—or, Doctor Moreau, as Harper had come to think of him after reading about the experiments he did while at Sentry—into the back of Quinn’s Land Rover. Everyone else piled in along with him, then they were on their way back to Harper’s office.

  Anton wasn’t at all what Harper had expected. She had assumed they were breaking some degenerate fiend out of prison—someone scary and dangerous. But Anton was...not.

  First of all, Midvale must be stingy with the rations, because Anton was about six feet tall, and Harper would be shocked if he weighed one-twenty soaking wet. He was scrawny to the point that it looked like he’d bruise if she breathed on him.

  The deep lines on his skin and the shadows under his eyes made him look a hell of a lot older than he actually was. If she didn’t already know he was seventy, Harper would guess his age was closer to his weight.

  Fluffy tufts of long white hair sprouted from his severely receding hairline, and when he tucked them behind his ears, it made him look like he had a mullet, which had caused Benny to snicker the whole way out of the prison.

  Harper was willing to admit the mullet was pretty funny, but there were two other things that didn’t amuse her in the slightest. The first was the dude’s smell. He was wearing a prison jumpsuit that carried the funk of forty thousand years, and it was strong enough and foul enough to make Quinn roll down all the windows in the Land Rover and make Harper promise to pay for a complete detailing of the vehicle when this whole thing was over.

  The second was the guy’s mental state. Quite simply put, he was not all there. His lips were constantly moving, even when no sound was coming out, almost as if he was carrying on lengthy conversations with himself—or someone only he could see—at all times. And when he did say something out loud, it was pretty much nonsense. Word salad at best.

  “I want everyone’s word that no one will ever speak of what happened in there again,” Benny grumbled.

  Seven and Harper gave their word immediately, and Riddick nodded—but Quinn glanced into the rearview and smirked at him. “You mean when the guard tased you in the jewels and you passed out with your head in a prison commode? Is that what you never want us to speak of again?”

  Harper bit down on her lower lip as Riddick snickered. It had been pretty hilarious.

  Benny glared at both of them and crossed his arms over his chest like a petulant teenager. “At least Seven had my back. Thanks for taking the guy down for me, doll.”

  “You’re welcome. If it makes you feel any better, I kneed him in the nuts for you before I zip-tied his wrists to his ankles.

  His eyes looked suspiciously moist when he said, “Shit, that’s the sweetest thing anyone ever did for me.”

  Seven reached across Riddick and offered Benny her pinkie finger. Benny hooked his own pinkie around hers as she said, “Ride or die.”

  “Jesus,” Riddick mumbled. “Are you two going to make each other friendship bracelets or some shit? Braid each other’s hair and talk about boys?”

  “At least I didn’t get shot,” Benny said.

  Riddick snorted and glanced down at the graze wound on his left bicep. “That’s this douchebag’s fault. If he could’ve done his job and subdued that guard before he got a shot off, I wouldn’t have been hit.”

  Quinn frowned at him. “I was s
ubduing two guards, mate. If you couldn’t keep from getting shot while you took down your one guard, that’s on you, not me.”

  Riddick made a rude noise and gave Quinn the finger as Benny asked, “Isn’t anyone going to address the elephant in the room?”

  Harper narrowed her eyes on him. “That better not be a fat joke aimed at anyone in this car. I’m retaining water, if you must know.”

  He gave her his usual don’t-be-an-idiot eye roll. “The elephant in the room is how you knew how to make a Molotov cocktail that would melt the fucking gate and where you got your hands on a brick of C4 to take down the guard’s station?”

  “I called my mom. Duh.”

  No one asked any questions after that. Everyone knew Tina had a particular set of skills that made her freaking terrifying.

  Suddenly, Anton reached over and grabbed Harper’s arm in a vise-like grip, the strength in his bony fingers belying his frail frame. “Children of magic and science,” he spat out urgently, his eyes wider and more focused than she’d seen them since they pulled him out of his cell. “It’s all for naught. Our only hope.” He waved his free hand like he was swatting a fly only he could see. “Yes, yes, I know. Leave me alone,” he said to…no one in particular.

  Harper waited for visions to assail her at his touch…but they never came. Which either meant he was blocking her (which seemed unlikely in his current frame of mind), or he was somehow immune to her power. She’d never met anyone who was immune, or anyone who could block her for any sustained period of time. Something was seriously wrong in Anton’s brain.

  Riddick pried the old man’s bony claw off her arm and looked him right in the eye as he said, “I don’t want to break an old man’s arm, but I will if you touch her again.”

  Anton started rocking back and forth in his seat, rubbing the hand that had touched Harper. Before he started muttering to himself again, Harper said in her gentlest voice, “We don’t know what you mean, Anton. We don’t know anything about children of magic and science.”

  Anton looked especially agitated when he let out a harsh sigh. He pointed at Harper. “Magic,” he said. Then he reached up and slapped Quinn in the back of the head. “Science.”

  Quinn rubbed the back of his head and glared at the man in the rearview. “Bloody hell, mate, don’t hit the fucking driver.”

  Anton ignored him as he tried and failed to slap Riddick, who leaned out of his reach. “I already warned you about the touching, pal.”

  “Science and magic,” Anton spat at him, then made a sweeping gesture toward Seven. “Science and magic. Thick in the veins like mud. Seals the cracks, it does.”

  Well, that all didn’t make a ton of sense, but Harper was pretty sure she saw a pattern. She cocked her head to one side and gestured to Benny, asking Anton, “Is Benny magic or science?”

  Anton glanced back out the window. “Animal that is man. Always magic,” he muttered under his breath. “But they never help. No one can help. Only the science and magic.”

  Benny’s brows crept up to his hairline. “Dude is cracked. He’s not going to help us find your father.”

  Anton turned and pierced him with a sharp glare. “The general helps no one. Only hurt. Only pain. Only death.”

  Benny held up his hands in surrender and rolled his eyes. “OK, dude. Whatever you say.”

  Harper got an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach as she remembered what Lane had said earlier. “Anton…can the children of magic and science stop the demons?”

  His gaze slid to hers slowly and he nodded. “Our only hope. But if the cracks are too big…”

  He trailed off, then made a motion with his hands and an accompanying noise that sounded like he was mimicking an explosion.

  “…we burn,” he finished. “Burn, burn, burn. One and all.”

  Then he started humming Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash, which was…a little disconcerting.

  “Well, hell,” Benny said, breaking the silence after a long moment. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  All bow to Benny, King of Understatement.

  Chapter Ten

  After getting Anton cleaned up—it took half a bottle of antibacterial soap and a full bottle of shampoo to wash the prison stench off him—and settled on the pull-out couch in Harper’s office for the night with Quinn and Benny standing guard, Harper and Riddick went to visit Hunter at the Vampire Council’s headquarters.

  The headquarters building, which was basically an old Victorian mansion, sat squarely in the middle of a huge wooded area just outside Whispering Hope. The ancient cottonwood trees that surrounded the place dwarfed it, providing 24-hour shade for pretty much every room—which was a plus when everyone inside was highly flammable in direct sunlight.

  “Thanks, Jarvis,” Harper said as the headquarters butler let her and Riddick into the council library.

  Jarvis, who was seven hundred and forty-two years old and looked every single second of it, grimaced at her and shut the door behind him when he left.

  “Pretty sure his name’s not Jarvis,” Riddick said casually as he took a seat at one of the pristine solid oak tables in the center of the room.

  “Yeah, I know. His real name’s Ulrich, but that’s not as much fun as Jarvis. I think he appreciates the nickname.”

  Riddick’s head shake indicated that Ulrich most likely did not appreciate his nickname, but she got distracted—as she always did when she visited the council library—by all the pretty, pretty books around her.

  The library was the heart of the multi-floored headquarters building, and dark-stained cherry bookshelves lined the room—which was twice the size of Harper and Riddick’s entire apartment—from floor to ceiling. Rolling ladders were in place to help visitors reach the upper levels, and there were four spiral staircases with intricate, wrought-iron railings—one in each corner of the room, leading to the top floors of the building.

  The place smelled like old paper, expensive leather, and knowledge. It was a bibliophile’s wet dream. Harper, who’d never been to Disneyland because Goofy had always freaked her the fuck out, liked to think of this room as the happiest place on earth.

  Harper jumped up on one of the rolling ladders and turned to Riddick with a flourish, holding out an imaginary skirt. “Come on! You know what you have to do.”

  He gave her a stern look. “I’m not pushing you on the ladder so you can pretend you’re Belle in Beauty and the Beast.”

  Sure, he said that now, but he always eventually caved. “You’re no fun. Are you afraid of getting into trouble with Hunter?” She punctuated her statement with clucking noises.

  That would’ve worked on any other dhampyre. None of them would admit to being afraid of anything. But not Riddick, who simply smirked and said, “No, not Hunter. Mischa.”

  Hunter chose that exact moment to come in. He used his telekinesis to open the door, then close it behind him.

  Show off.

  “Harper,” he said, “get off the ladder. I’m not pushing you so that you can pretend you’re Belle again.”

  “Ugh.” She jumped down. “You guys suck all the joy out of the happiest place on earth.”

  Hunter perched on the corner of the table where Riddick sat and gave Harper a palms-up gesture. “So, what did you manage to find out about Anton?”

  “Well, he’s fucking crazy,” Riddick answered. “We found that out pretty quick.”

  Harper couldn’t really argue with that. “His time in solitary really didn’t do him any favors. But he had a few lucid moments.”

  She took a moment to explain the bit about “children of magic and science” to Hunter.

  When she was done, his brow furrowed. “Children of magic,” he murmured. Then he raised his hand, and a second later, a book from somewhere on one of the top floor’s shelves flew through the air and popped into his hand.

  “I’m so jealous of that it’s insane,” she muttered. “I have to get a stepstool to get my blender out of the cabinet above the microwave, and mean
while, you can do that. It’s just not fair.”

  “You don’t get a stepstool,” Riddick reminded her. “I get the blender for you. Every time.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is that I’d need to get a stepstool to reach the blender. You can get it just because you’re tall. Short people get screwed, that’s all I’m—”

  “Enough,” Hunter barked, holding up a hand to silence them. He pointed to the book in his hand. “It’s all here. Children of magic, at least.”

  Harper glanced at the book. It was a battered, hand-bound brown leather volume with pages so old and delicate they were practically transparent. There was a gold symbol on the front that Harper didn’t recognize, and she wasn’t sure what language the book was written in, but it sure as hell wasn’t English. “What is that?”

  “Ancient mythology,” Hunter said. “Dates back before my time. No one is sure who wrote it, but it hints at the origin of vampires, shifters, and all forms of magic users.”

  “What kind of magic users?” Riddick asked.

  “Witches, empaths, psychics, telepaths…you name it,” Hunter answered, still thumbing through the delicate pages. “It says that there are places where the veil between the world of magic and the world of the mundane is especially thin. Some people who live in those areas can become infused with what is basically run-off magic from the other side of the veil. They’re called children of magic.”

  “Why some people and not all people in those areas?” Riddick asked.

  “No one is sure,” Hunter said. “One hypothesis is that some people have a genetic predisposition to magic and others don’t.”

  Harper processed that for a moment before saying, “So, I’m a psychic. That’s why Anton called me a child of magic.”

  Riddick added, “And he said I’m a child of magic and science. Seven, too.”

  Hunter nodded. “That makes sense. Your mother was a child of magic because she was a telepath. But you and Seven gained your dhampyre status from the experiments at Sentry. Science.”