by J M Thomas
Alena gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “This necromancer is not a member of the guild, but did perform illegal acts of forbidden magic within the city limits, and possibly even committed murder doing so. Per our agreement, I will be handing him over to the Ministry for trial and punishment.”
“I believe we’ll need to hold Lyons ourselves pending word from London on the matter.” The hand’s bright eyes flashed with greed. “There being… some risk of personal feelings clouding the carriage of justice.”
“Are you saying you don’t trust us to do what’s right by the situation?” Alena asked, her upper lip curling in a wry look. “Funny. If Lyons were to take the floor, I’m certain he’d argue your point for you, but to the opposite conclusion. And, of the two, he’d be right.”
“About?” The watchling tilted his head in curiosity, his folded hands steepling in front of thin lips. I’d halfway expected, since he was called ‘the hand’ for him to have one enormous hand, or one scarred one. The worst option remained, chilling me as I took in his lithe, powerful physique.
The hand was the one who’d strike if things went badly.
As bated as every necromancer’s breath was in this auditorium, I got the feeling he had means to make this negotiation difficult… and I might’ve just accidentally ripped Aeron’s last bargaining chip from his grasp when I revealed my identity to Alena. Oops.
I scanned the delegation’s faces, searching for a clue as to what would happen next. They remained impassive.
Alena leaned back in her chair. “I’m fully prepared, if you want to hold Lyons for his crimes, and London comes back with a withdrawal of their backing, to sign off. Execute him yourself. I’ll send the true blind as part of the package deal. We have no cause for war between us.”
Ethan nearly came out of his own skin he leapt to his feet so fast.
Alena held out a preemptive hand. “He’s London’s to do with as they please. He isn’t even a member of my guild, as our anti-maleficium treaty with the watchling faction prevents battle magicians from entry. So, I’m prepared to sign him over to you, if…” She leveled the watchling with a meaningful raise of her manicured brows.
I could almost hear the other shoe dropping as the watchling ceased visibly salivating over the prospect of getting everything he wanted from this negotiation so easily. “Yes?”
Alena gave a casual shrug. “If that will conclude your business with us. Free license to practice according to our satisfactory rules, and you leave Wachenta for good.”
The hand’s eyes darted back and forth across the auditorium. “I can only guarantee no further… inspections… for the remainder of our director’s three-year term.” The watchling spread his hands helplessly. There was nothing helpless about the glint in his eyes.
“Oh, but I think you can do better than that.” Alena fixed him with her coolest evaluating gaze. “Otherwise, I can always send Lyons and keep the location of the true blind to myself.”
The watchling thought for a moment, but even I could see it was an act. He’d had this contingency prepared the whole time. He’d milked the circumstances for all it’d give him and was walking out with a bargain. “Five years. Final offer.”
“Done.” Alena rose. “Sian, please prepare Miss Grantham for transport. The watchling delegation will have brought their own vehicle, I assume?
“We have,” the watcher spoke up. “A refitted ambulance, armored and left under guard. I’ll bring in the gurney for the lady, then we’ll remove the prisoner.”
I glanced over at Aeron, looking for some indication of what to do. Lead already coursed through my veins, terror making my limbs sluggish.
He looked at me with red-rimmed eyes, then flicked his gaze over to Don.
Don gave me a little nod, an encouraging jerk of his chin telling me to comply. But why? Why was the guild letting us go? Why was Ethan not coming to the defense of the man who’d saved his life? Why was everyone so silent in the face of this bully?
Aeron sent me an almost imperceptible bob of his head, his sweat-slick palms still planted firmly on the table. Though no sound came out, his lips formed the words, “slow, deep.”
I took a painful breath against the crunching in my side, nodding back to him as the watchlings brought a wheeled gurney into the meeting room.
Alena gestured to me with one hand, beckoning me to approach even as her attention extended past me to the helpless fighter. “I hope we can hold no hard feelings between us. I don’t want this to be how we say goodbye.” She cast a pleading glance at Aeron.
“No ‘arm done,” Aeron said, the words rising on his lips with the slightest smirk, his words slow. “You can’t ‘urt me.”
She turned her back to him, either finished giving quarter to his impertinence or trying to hide a wince of pain. I couldn’t tell which.
My arms wouldn’t move to push myself to standing. My feet wouldn’t budge to even slide back from the table. My heart pounded in my ears as the two watchling figures came around behind me to pull me by the arms from where I sat and propel me toward the front of the room.
The gurney loomed, drawing closer and closer, as if it was coming forward to meet me, not the other way around. The sheets were white, straps laying open like centipede arms ready to receive me in an embrace. Alena and the listener were signing documents between them. That greedy glint of the hand’s eyes roved over me as he inhaled deeply, probably searching for the scent of unfilamented blood.
Then I was still, the world spinning around me. Petrified.
Sian pulled his necklace from around his neck. He removed the tip from the winged snake symbol, revealing a long, black, needle-like spike. He slid one arm behind me, holding me close to his side as he whispered, “I’m trusting you. Bring this caduceus with you.”
Before I could ask him what he meant, the fingers from the arm holding me compressed against my collarbone. He lowered them, pressing where my ribs attached to my sternum. “Ouch.” I moved to shrug him off.
With an apologetic shake of his head, he pierced my skin with the needle. Before I could so much as draw a breath with the pain, my muscles relaxed. I sank into his grip, and he released his hold on the necklace to lift behind my knees.
My head flopped as my body collapsed onto the gurney, lolling over to the sight of Aeron, his hair in his hands. His shoulders shook as his sudden movement triggered another shock from his restraints. I wanted to reach for him, but my hand was harder to move than a thousand pounds of stone.
Sian tipped my head back to center, slipping a foam cylinder between my teeth, then running a strap across my forehead. “Just try to relax.”
I widened my eyes at him as if he’d just asked me to climb Mount Everest. Just relax, my foot. See if I ever let you within ten feet of me again. Then I was trembling all over, shakes spreading from my arms to my face. My jaw clenched harder every second, teeth digging into the foam so hard I thought I’d cut through it and break them all.
Sian buckled the straps over the sheet he’d covered me with, working faster as he eyed my state. “It’s alright, just relax. You’re doing great.”
I’m not doing anything. I’m shaking, and I don’t know why. What have you done to me? I eyed the emblem sticking out of my chest, wishing I could move my arms to rip it out. I’d run to Aeron, we’d leave this place…
The last buckle clenched tight over my ankles. Sian checked each one by sliding two fingers beneath it, then cinched the one over my hips another notch tighter. As he leaned over me, his voice whispered words in a language I didn’t understand.
I wanted my mom to hold my hand. I wanted to get up and leave. What are you doing? I wished I could cry, scream, anything, but I couldn’t get into my stupid brain to control my hands or my face.
Two fingers from his right hand pressed on either side of the emblem as his left hand came around to grasp the device like it was a pencil.
“Shh, deep breath now.” Sian inhaled a full breath, then held it.
/> I tried to draw past the pain lancing through my ribs. When I finally got my lungs filled, Sian clamped a hand over my mouth and nose.
“Adiuro hoc animo.”
The needle slipped between my ribs and touched my heart. My god, I felt it the whole way through my chest.
Sian’s face remained impassive as he released his grip on my face. “And... let it out.”
My breath escaped in an almost-silent scream. I came out of that breath, as if I were a cloud of mist. I rose like a helium balloon, floating off the gurney, then turning to take myself in. Something jerked at my feet, and I stopped rising.
“Tether successful,” Sian announced with a huge sigh of relief. He glanced toward Aeron, wiping sweat off his forehead with a pass of his hand. “Immobilized for transport as requested.”
I was staring down at the top of Sian’s head. He had a little balding spot and an aura like a heat wave shimmering over asphalt in the summer. My body below me was still shaking, but that had calmed a lot, and seemed to be subsiding. As my gaze rotated to encompass the room, I wanted to scream in fright.
Hellhounds, dozens of them, stood guard around the edges of the auditorium. The hand had some kind of smoke pouring from him through which the five-foot-tall beasts trod. They were gaunt and bony, some of them with massive hunks of fur and flesh torn from their ribs.
Blue fire emanated from within their bodies, pouring from their nostrils when they breathed and from their mouths when they panted. Their jagged fangs bared, they growled echoing rumbles if anyone so much as moved a muscle. The black chains around their necks dragged in the smoke as they walked, clanking as they disappeared into the cloud.
Terrified, I tilted down to fix my attention upon Aeron. He was alight in a ball of swirling reds and oranges, and sparks flew from him when he moved. Whatever weird drug Sian had sedated me with must’ve given me a bad trip.
Aeron tried to wrench free as the watchling twisted his arms behind his back and locked them there, but there was some kind of magical barbed cage around him. This must’ve been why he was careful to move so slowly before… yes. The barbed aura perfectly connected to the thread wrapped around him. Aeron’s flames spiked in clear pain with every effort he made to resist.
I tried to catch some sound, but my entire being pounded with the last words Sian had uttered, over and over in a never-ending cycle: Adiuro hoc animo. Adiuro hoc animo. Adiuro hoc animo.
Searching for someone who could help me, I spun to look for Don. He’d left, as had Ethan and most of the other necros. Only a few remained, conferring in hushed tones, but they were gathering their things to leave as well. I tried to call out to one of them, but there was no sound. None came to me, and none emitted from me.
A jerk from below disoriented me for a moment. My body was on the move, the gurney wheels rolling through the hallway. We passed through the holding area into Hugo’s curiosity shop.
Everything was bright and moving, like the swirling of a dancer’s skirt as she twirled. A rainbow of colors I didn’t even know existed pulled me in fascination as I whizzed by, too fast to really get a close look.
A weakly-pulsing light caught my eye. The oranges, thrumming with their energy, lay arranged in their bowl. They were magic, exactly as Hugo had described.
It was the last thing I glimpsed before the door shut behind me with a final thud, softened by the gentle farewell chime of bells.
Chapter 28 – Dark and Grim
Even from my bird’s-eye view of the watchlings’ refitted ambulance, I couldn’t tell anything was amiss about it. It looked perfectly normal. How they’d managed to armor it while maintaining its appearance was a mystery.
Then I was jerked inside with my body, and I figured out what they’d done. All medical equipment had been removed. A metal bench was hinged to the wall, suspended from chains so it could fold up. Just enough room remained in the off-center aisle for the gurney and nothing more. They’d taken the space from within, not from without.
I glanced down at my body again. All I could make out beneath the sheet Sian had covered me with up to my neck was the rise and fall of my rib cage. That at least told me I was still breathing. His caduceus necklace stuck out from my chest, a weird lump beneath the white sheet.
A stirring jarred the suspension behind me as the ambulance’s other occupant rose to lock the gurney in place. John was missing part of a front tooth, making his malicious grin jagged when he pulled his still-swollen, stitched lip back. He wasn’t smiling in the direction of my body, nor at the listener, who’d pushed the gurney up the ramp.
The ambulance bobbed under the weight of the next occupant as two watchlings shoved Aeron in. They padlocked his cuffed wrists to a handle bolted behind the metal bench. The ringing spell tolling like a never-ending chime in my soul drowned out most of their conversation, but their exchange was written all over their faces.
Something like “they’re all yours” passed between the three watchlings outside, then John’s grin turned feral.
The door slammed shut, trapping us in the dark with our enemy. The light of Aeron’s magical aura had diminished to a fire smouldering in his eyes. That and a one-foot square of sunlight drifting in through the tiny window illuminated the vehicle as the diesel engine groaned to life.
In the dark, the two mortal enemies locked eyes. Aeron’s jaw twitched as John crossed his arms over his chest. The ambulance lurched into motion, but still they stared each other down.
John made the first move. He rose slowly, staying out of Aeron’s limited range. He pulled the sheet back from over my face, making some remark I only half heard. Then he leaned in closer, as if for a kiss, whispering in my ear.
“Have you been to a blood farm before? It’s not half the hell necros make it out to be. You'll live a long, peaceful life among your own kind.” He locked eyes on Aeron, tip of his tongue caressing his cracked tooth, then continued. “There’s plenty to eat—as much as you want, and the sunny gardens are truly beautiful. Many of the pale ones eventually tell us they’re content. A few don’t even need chains.”
Aeron grunted, trying to rise from the bench to lunge across the narrow space dividing them.
John only laughed, pulling the sheet back further. “What revenge do you deserve, little one, for your part in this? He snatched you away, sure, but you must’ve had some role to play…” His tongue ran along the length of his teeth, then along my jawline. He pulled the sheet back further.
My spirit suddenly went cold with fear.
Aeron yelled something out, some provocation, his body jerking back in pain with his sudden movement.
John’s eyes shifted focus, flicking to Aeron for a moment before his gaze settled back on my body.
I caught the second phrase between repeats of adiuro hoc animo. “‘Ow’s ...bollocks, then?”
John’s face twisted into a snarl. Aeron had him, but he’d just signed himself up for trouble.
He dodged John’s first swing, ducking his head just in time to send John’s fist careening into the metal wall behind Aeron’s face. That might have bought him a second or two, but it enraged John so much the magical vortex surrounding the watchling looked like a black hole. John’s fingers intertwined in Aeron’s hair, then dragged Aeron’s head back, relishing every slow second.
I lowered myself, hovering just over the stretcher, then gazed straight into Aeron’s eyes, watching the flames within him dance.
He met my stare and saw into me. Not through me, he saw me. The fire in his eyes understood me, comprehended me. My soul was laid bare before him, and he locked his eyes on me and smiled with complete acceptance.
At that moment, John’s knuckles careened into Aeron’s throat. His eyes went blank for a moment as his body shook.
Without releasing Aeron’s hair, John struck his cheekbone, his nose, his mouth. Then he smashed Aeron’s head into the wall before backing off slightly to scream something unintelligible into his face. Aeron’s eyes shut with pain, his breathing ra
gged and bare.
The ambulance turned a hard left, unsettling John’s balance. He tapped on the divide between us and the drivers, holding a conversation that gave Aeron a few moments’ reprieve.
I leaned as far forward as I could, straining my reach to caress Aeron’s cheek. Please be alright. My thumb didn’t shift his skin or blood, but he leaned into my touch as his head sagged.
Aeron doubled over, his features contorted in pain as his forehead rested inches from my feet.
Slow, deep breaths, Aeron. Can you hear me?
Aeron nodded, a slight movement.
Do you… feel me? I brushed his cheek with the backs of my fingers.
Again he nodded, raising his head.
My soul kissed him. I felt nothing, passing through him if the ambulance lurched or swerved. But the flames dancing in his eyes told me he’d felt it, and I’d remember forever.
Then John was back to his personal punching bag, this time landing hits in the more comfortable-to-wail-on upper chest and shoulders. Aeron’s muscle became padding for John’s bleeding, swelling knuckles.
Helpless to do anything to affect the fight any other way, I sang the first thing that popped into my mind, a silly tune I’d heard on the radio the morning we met. Beneath blossoming trees...
Aeron’s eyes opened just a crack, his aura warming. It might’ve been my imagination, but his rhythmic swaying to stay conscious leaned in time with the rise and fall of the notes.
I wasn’t sure why that cheesy, morbid song was the one my soul chose to sing. It hadn’t been stuck in my head for months. Perhaps I’d heard it just enough, or the rhythm was just right to play off of the chant still rolling through my mind like waves lapping on a shore.
John’s strikes hit in off-time syncopation, Aeron’s grunts following as air evacuated his body.
As I sang the only comfort I could give, I kept my hand caressing Aeron’s cheek. I didn’t leave him alone in his pain. It was all I could do to keep the song going, to keep him distracted and me calm. If I’m smiling, you’re the reason. I’m your bluebird in the springtime...
