by N. P. Martin
I shrugged. “You would have made it out okay.”
“No, we wouldn’t have,” Brentwood said, walking up to us, his jacket off, probably having been burned by the fire. “Lawson’s right. You saved our lives, Creed. Thank you.”
I nodded at him, unused to hearing such genuine gratitude from his mouth. Normally he was scathing in his passive aggressiveness. “Let’s hope we can stop these flames from spreading any further.”
The firefighters had several hoses pointed at The Roundhouse building as they tried to douse the green flames, but unsurprisingly to me, the water didn’t seem to be having any effect. The flames burned like thermite, melting through even the large blocks of stone like they were Lego bricks. Everyone stood back and watched as the firefighters hit the flames with everything they had, but the green fire just kept advancing, melting everything in its path, including the foundations of the building itself, causing it to sink as the flames burnt into the ground.
“Nothing is stopping it,” Brentwood said.
“And nothing will,” I said. “That fire is supernatural. Only magick can stop it.”
“You’re the Mage, Creed. Can’t you do anything?”
“You want me to use magick in front of all these people?”
"You can go around the back of the building," Leona said. "There's alley. No one will see you."
"Alright," I said, turning to Brentwood. "I'll do my best. Get all these people out of here, though, in case I can't stop it."
Brentwood focused hard on me. “You will stop it, Creed.”
“Sure, no pressure.”
“I’ll go with you,” Leona said. “We can go through one of the empty houses. Come on, before the whole damn street burns down.”
It will be more than the street that burns if I don’t manage to get things under control.
Leona ran to one of the empty houses a few doors down from the burning cinema. Then she raised one of her long legs and forcefully slammed her heavy boot into the door left of center. The door splintered slightly, but didn't open. She cursed at it and kicked it again. This time the door flew open to reveal a dark hallway. Leona rushed inside like she was about to arrest someone and I ran in behind her. The house was stinking, the smell of mold and decay heavy in the dank air. Claws of some sort scraped off the floors upstairs. Probably rats or pigeons nesting in the place, though I didn't have time to find out as I followed after Leona down the hallway and into the kitchen where you could hardly see anything. She tried the door, and it opened, but there was a plywood board nailed over the frame. "Allow me," I said as Leona stood aside and I fired a blast of magick at the sheet of plywood. The board got wrenched from the nails holding it as the magick blast hit and it ended up flying back several feet into the wide alley outside.
"Alright, Creed," Leona said, looking up and down the alley. "There's no one there. Go do your thing."
Using my magick out the front of the Roundhouse in full view of dozens of people would have been disastrous. With so many Sleepwalkers looking on, the effects of the magick probably would have ended up making things worse. I had the feeling that Mr Black knew that when he set the booby traps. He knew the green fire could only be controlled by magick, and he knew I would be the one to try and do it, knowing full well how many people would be around to make things more difficult.
Son of a bitch. What the hell was his beef with me anyway?
I wished I could remember who Mr Black really was, so I could seek him out like I did last time. Now it felt like I was back to square one. God knows how long I had been chasing him the last time, or how many people he killed before I caught up with him.
No time to dwell, however. My main priority had to be figuring out a way to put out the green fire. The flames seemed resistant to anything that might extinguish them, so any water or ice based spells were out. Like any fire, though, this one needed oxygen to flourish and spread. All I had to do, therefore, was cast a spell that would smother the flames, which I had done before, but only on small fires, and not on that supernatural green shit.
"Any time you're ready," Leona said.
"Step off, Leona," I snapped, a bit more harshly than I meant to, but she knew not to rush me when it came to magick. It didn't matter how many times I tried to explain to her the intricate processes that have to be set in motion when casting any spell—the deep focus and conviction required—it never seemed to sink in with her. Leona viewed magick as a skill like any other, like shooting for instance, and as such it could be done at speed under pressure if practiced enough. Which it could in expert hands such as my own, but you still had to be careful you didn't forget something or fuck up the delicate internal processes at work. Otherwise, the results could be less than impressive, and often dangerous.
I got as close as I could stand to the burning Roundhouse building without the heat scorching the face off me, thinking to myself that I was going to kill Mr Black when I came across him again. There was no other option. Letting such a monster live would not be doing the world any favors.
Centering myself as best as I could under the pressure, I dug as deep as I could go and gathered up every ounce of magick in me, drawing it into the center of my body before beginning to infuse it with intent, all backed by the unwavering conviction that the spell I was about to cast would work. Any self-doubt or uncertainty would only weaken the magick.
When I was about to cast big spells like that, I always entered the Chaosphere first. The Chaosphere is a giant open space inside my mind that is filled with the buzzing, crackling energy of pure magick. It was a place I created long ago, a place where I could access and work with the magick I had learned how to cultivate and channel inside me. Every magick practitioner had their own version of that place. I called mine the Chaosphere because that's what it resembled. A giant sphere of pure energy that was completely chaotic in nature and which required my skills as a Mage to tame and channel it so I could use it to do my will. I stood in the center of that Chaosphere as if standing in the center of a hollowed-out sun, the energy that flowed around me at once terrifying and exhilarating as I began to pull strands of that energy towards me, twisting them this way and that, melding them together, twisting them again, forging them into new forms and shapes, the whole time allowing my intent to infuse every single strand of magickal energy to ensure each one would bend in the direction of my will.
I don't know how long I was in the Chaosphere for. In there, the constructs of time and space ceased to exist. I could have been in there minutes or days at a time, and I wouldn't have known either way. When I was ready, the real world would open up again, and the magick would go rushing out to wherever I needed it to go.
In this case, it was aimed towards the green inferno before me. I cast the magick out like a net, and a bluish-white bubble began to form around the entire Roundhouse building, sealing in the flames that still raged within it. Once I was sure I had covered every lick of green flame, I began to shrink the bubble so that it beat down the flames, suffocating the fire and sealing it in. The expanse I had to cover was so great that it took everything I had to keep the entire area constantly covered, painfully aware that if only one flame escaped then the whole thing could start all over again in a flash.
With both arms out in front of me, I drew them together as if I was physically shrinking the bubble around the fire (which I was in a way, as magickslinging always felt physical). The rippling magick drew ever tighter around the flames, until finally, the green fire became no bigger than a tennis ball in the center of the ruined Roundhouse building. Not that you would have been able to see that small green ball of flame through those thick blocks of stone. I could see fine, however, but on a different field of vision thanks to the connection I had with my magick (my magick and I were separated by nothing, and if I needed to see it, I could, no matter what was in the way).
On that alternate field of vision, I saw a small orb of fiercely hot green energy. It resisted my magick every step of the way, and for a
moment, I didn't think I would be able to fully extinguish it. But finally, the green flames died out for good, leaving nothing but smokey devastation behind.
Completely drained, I fell to my knees, glad the magick had done its job, but gladder still that the whole ordeal was over finally.
Or so I thought, for a few seconds later, the world around me went completely dark, and I was pitched into blackness.
41
Revelations
THE DARKNESS DIDN'T last long before it gave way to a sickly yellowish-green light that seemed to seep in around me like a creeping fungus. My previous surroundings had all but faded to a barely perceptible ghostly outline in the background. As I looked around me, I could make out nothing but endless space. I didn't even appear to be standing on solid ground. It was like I was suspended in the weird greenish light like a specimen in a jar.
Mr Black. It has to be.
"How right you are," a voice said, a deep, almost silky voice that seemed to come from all directions as it echoed around me. Although less distorted sounding this time, I still recognized the voice as being the same as the apparition's that attacked me in the underpass.
"You again," I said, my own voice echoing weirdly around me within whatever dimension I was suspended in. "What do you want?"
Mr Black laughed. “That’s the burning question, isn’t it, August? Excuse the pun.”
No one had called me August in a long, long time. Almost everyone knew me as Creed. A few called me Gus. No one used my full name of August. Only my family ever used my full name. “Why do you use that name?”
“Is August not your name?”
“I prefer Creed.”
“Yes, but that isn’t your proper name either, is it?”
Again, only a few people knew that I had changed my name long ago. Leona was one. Sanaka and my uncle were the others. “How would you know?”
“I know everything about you, August McCreedy.”
It was jarring to hear him say my full name, but I didn’t let it show. “Is that supposed to impress me? That you used your formidable dark power to do a background check? Well done.”
A lightening bolt of pain stabbed through my chest. It only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like a dragon's claw had punctured my sternum and was rooting around inside me. Needless to say, I screamed like a bitch. "Mind your manners, boy," Mr Black said, his voice now reminding me of someone, but I was in too much pain to figure out who exactly.
Only the pain had subsided did I manage to speak again. "What is it you want with me?"
“With you? At first, nothing. Then you started chasing me, interrupting my work.”
“Your work?” A bitter laugh escaped me. “You kill people.”
“Mere sacrifices. Pawns in a much bigger game. You had it all figured out once, Creed. You knew everything.”
"Which is why you erased my memories of you."
“Yes. I didn’t need you breathing down my neck in these crucial final stages.”
“Final stages? You mean allowing a Dimension Lord to come to this world and destroy it?”
“You always did have trouble seeing the bigger picture, August.”
“What?” What did he mean by that? There was something in his voice, something familiar, a note of authority that I knew I recognized but couldn’t quite place. “Who are you? Tell me.”
"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained," Mr Black said, his words heavy in the thick air around me, bringing with them a memory of someone who used to say those exact words to me whenever I dared to question his motives.
“William Blake,” I said in a low voice. “From The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell. My…father used to say…” I shook my head, not liking where things were going, but also desperately wanting to know who I was dealing with, even though, deep down, I already knew. I just didn’t want to believe it. “Who are you? Tell me now!”
"Wake up, August!" Mr Black shouted. "You know full well who this is."
“But it can’t be…”
"Did you think I was gone forever, August? That my soul could be kept down? A man of my power?"
“No…no…you’re…you’re dead…”
A wind blew around my head as if a spirit form was on the move. "You know better than that, boy. Death is for Sleepwalkers, not the Enlightened. There is no death for people like us, only change. Didn't I teach you that?"
I grabbed my head with both hands like I was trying to stop it from exploding. “Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it. You’re lying, you’re not him. You can’t be.”
“Why not, August? You know in your bones it’s me. You’ve always known. You just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Know what? What are you talking about?”
“That is was me, August. That I killed them, your mother and brother and sister. That I sacrificed them all to the demon.”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
“It’s time to face the truth of your past, August—”
"No--"
“I let you live, August. You were supposed to join me, be by my side—”
“NO!”
"LOOK AT ME!" The voice boomed inside my head, rattling me to the core. I froze in fear just as a figure materialized in front of me. A tall figure of a man in a dark suit, with broad shoulders and thick, graying hair. I didn't have to look into those intense and frightening gray eyes to know it was him.
My father.
Christopher McCreedy.
His ephemeral form floated right up to me placed both hands on my shoulders, and suddenly, I was a kid again, staring up at my impossibly tall father, scared to look into his stern face. “Leave me alone,” I said, my voice sounding childish and afraid now. “Please.”
"Look at me, son," my father commanded, leaving me with no choice but to obey his command like I did when I was a kid. "I am your father, and you will obey me. Is that clear?"
I found myself nodding, unable to resist him. “Yes.”
"You have hidden from the truth for too long, August. It's time you remembered."
He placed one of his large hands on my head
then, and that's when the memories were unleashed in me like a pack of wild dogs who had been locked away in my mind up until then, snarling and slavering as they went about ripping my mind to pieces.
And I had no choice but to let them.
42
Growing Up
I PROBABLY GAVE you the impression before that I had an idyllic, privileged upbringing in Ireland, what with the big house by the lake and all my father's wealth to keep us pampered, and that because there was all that cool magick around, the family home was like Hogwarts, with spells and fun times had by all. Well, there were spells and magick (a lot of it), and occasionally my siblings and I managed to have some fun, but mainly my memories of that house and my upbringing, in general, were not what I would call happy ones, and this was mostly due to my father's constant overbearing authority and strict discipline. He made our home into a magick bootcamp where the priority was always exercising discipline and studiously learning how to channel and wield magick without causing disaster (unless causing disaster was the goal, which it was on a few occasions).
Most of my memories start around age four or five. I don't remember much before that. I had the sense that I was a loved child and this was mainly down to my mother and older brother and sister who always had a smile and a hug for me (or a punch to the shoulder in my brother's case).
My father remained aloof for the most part. When I did spend time with him as a child, it was never to play, but to be instead exposed to the concept of magick.
The first time I saw any kind of magick was when my father conjured a small sphere of dark blue energy in one of his large, long-fingered hands. The swirling blue energy was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen at the time. When I went to touch it with a curious but tentative finger, my father slapped my hand away, the sting of the slap bringing tears to my eyes. "
Not yet," I remember him admonishing me. "Only when you are ready."
“When father?” I would say back.
He would stand over me, tall and domineering. “When I say you are.”
As things went, he thought I was ready by age five, and I joined the regime my older brother and sister were already on. My brother, Fergal, was eight years old and my sister, Roisin, was seven. They were both experts in magick already, or so it seemed to me at the time. They could do things with magick that I couldn't do yet. I barely knew what magick was at that point. That all changed, however, when I had to start getting up every morning at 5:30 a.m. If my father were around (which he usually was), he would lead us around the grounds of the house and through the neighboring forest on a long run, believing as he did that a good Mage needed to look after their physical body because it was the conduit through which their magick flowed. The morning runs were hateful and grueling for the first couple of months. Though because I was so young, my father allowed me to walk whenever I got tired while he and my brother and sister carried on running. This usually meant that it took me a long time to make it back home for breakfast. And it didn't matter how wet or cold it was outside. We never missed a run. If I was late getting back for breakfast, I had to go without (although Roisin always saved me a piece of bacon or sausage if that happened, for which I always loved her). Needless to say, I soon learned to keep up if I wanted a full breakfast.
The rest of the day was structured around various classes and tutorials as we were home schooled at my father's insistence because that's always the way it had been in his family. My mother Brenda, a beautiful looking woman with long, curly red hair and kind blue eyes, handled the standard education that most kids get, teaching us literacy and numeracy and a whole host of other subjects, including art, which I always loved (and still do to this day). My mother's classes were usually relaxed. She tried to make learning fun for us, and even though we were all at different levels, she did a great job of educating us.
