by A C Spahn
My mind whirled, trapped in a windstorm throwing me against sharp rocks.
My trust had been broken. Again.
My emotions manipulated to access my powers. Again.
I was nothing but a tool to these people. Never had been anything else. I was only a component in someone else’s project. And it was foolishness for the fabric to resist being cut.
But, whispered the artist in me, whoever said one of them is holding the scissors?
Memories rushed in. Sanding my counter in Crafter’s Haven. The first sculpture I’d ever sold. Paint-spattered jeans and wire-stubbed fingers. Laughter shared with Kendall. Sam’s bright eyes as I showed her new pieces of magic. A lingering kiss, hot and full of promise, in the front seat of Desmond’s car.
No. I may have been no more than a piece of fabric to be shaped, but Geralt did not run the worktable on which I lay. Neither did Harrow. I thought of the cloth sculpture I’d made for the art show, infused with my own sense of self. Bright red fabric standing up straight, unyielding and unafraid.
“I’m leaving,” I heard myself say. “Harrow, I’ll help you get out of here, but then I’m gone. Neither of you can have me.”
Harrow gave a small sigh. Of resignation or relief, I couldn’t tell.
“What I told you ...” began Geralt.
“I’ll reach my own conclusions about what I am and what’s happening,” I said. A thrill surged in my chest. I’d just interrupted Geralt. I’d interrupted the man my childhood had raised me to treat as unquestionable. It shouldn’t have seemed significant. After all, I’d run away from him and spent years resisting his desire for my return. But he was here, in front of me, and I’d defied him to his face.
I herded Sam behind myself and started backing toward the stairs, keeping all the fleshwriters in view. “Harrow, Axel, let’s go.” Then I lifted my chin and addressed Geralt again. “Don’t try to stop me. I’m a match for any of your people here. Maybe even a match for you by now. Let me go, and this doesn’t have to turn to magic.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” said Geralt.
“I understand enough,” I spat. “I want nothing more to do with you. Any of you.”
Harrow took a step toward me, grim resignation on his face. I actually believed he’d been trying to do the right thing. For that, I would help him get out of here. Afterward, I owed him nothing more.
Beside Harrow, Axel shook his head. “Bane. You should have told me.” He hefted his sword.
And ran it through Bane Harrow’s back.
All became utterly still and silent. I watched in mute horror as Harrow slumped over the blade protruding through his chest. Blood soaked the front of his shirt, a dark puddle that spread rapidly down his front. A wretched gurgling sound came from Harrow’s throat. Slowly his head drooped and he stared down with bulging eyes at his lifeblood leaking out.
Axel pulled the blade free and let him fall. Harrow crumbled in a heap on the floor.
He convulsed once. Twice. Then went still.
And one of the most powerful men in the nation died.
I couldn’t rip my gaze from that motionless corpse, who only seconds ago had been not only alive, but seemingly in control of the room. The wound sparkled faintly, flecks of gold clinging to his corpse where they’d worn off from the decorative sword. The fleshwriters seemed paralyzed too, frozen in shock as though collectively we weren’t sure how to adjust to our new reality.
Gradually I became aware of a sound, something throaty and coughing. My eyes rose from victim to killer.
Axel was crying.
He held the sword point down, letting the blood drip off to stain the carpet. He too stared at Harrow’s corpse, as a line of fat tears rolled down his face. “He was my friend,” Axel said, though I wasn’t sure who he was talking to. He still stared at the body. “A good man. He deserved a better death.”
Geralt’s honeyed tones made my hackles rise. “Not everyone can have what they deserve. I’m pleased you’ve chosen the right side, Mister Axel.”
Axel spun to face him. “Your plan. It’d better work.”
“I assure you, it will. Already magic is stabilizing in areas where we’ve removed the anomalies.”
“Anomalies.” My voice was hoarse. “You’re talking about people. Enchanters. Voids. People like me, Axel. People like you. It won’t stop with killing your friends. He’ll want your life, too.”
Axel met my accusing gaze levelly. “To save countless others? Worth it.”
“Cassie will be pleased to hear your agreement,” said Geralt.
Axel stiffened. Sam’s mouth dropped open. “Cassie?” I asked. “The receptionist? She’s one of yours?”
“She is a Void,” said Geralt, “albeit not as strong as our upstanding citizen here. But she, too, understands the importance of our mission.”
“She’s your spy,” I realized. “She’s the one feeding you information about the other Unions.”
“Impossible,” Axel growled. “She doesn’t have access.”
“Your computer security is sophisticated,” Geralt said gently. “But not unbreakable. Crow–Cassie–found a way in. I do hope this doesn’t damage the growing relationship between you two. She speaks highly of your integrity, and assured me you would choose the right path if presented with the truth. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled she was right.”
Axel gave a noncommittal grunt.
The fleshwriters were forming ranks, turning their attention toward me and Sam. I started to back away, then realized one of them had circled behind me, blocking access to the door. I raised my jewelry-bedecked hands and felt Sam doing the same behind me, her back against mine. “Tell them to back off,” I told Geralt. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“You were always so noble, Adrienne.” Geralt’s smile never faltered. “But you lack foresight.” He clapped his hands twice. “Manifest.”
KADUMKADUMKADUMKADUM!
The itch in my chest exploded into pain, like hot pincers were ripping my heart through my skin. Sweat burst on my forehead, and a shriek forced its way through my clenched teeth. I pressed my hands against my chest, but the pain continued. Threads of translucent mist seeped through my shirt, crawling out of my body. They formed into a head and shoulders, then arms that braced on my chest and pried free a torso and legs. A moment later, the ghost of the dead boy floated in the air before me. A line of pulsing light linked him to my chest. Dimly I felt Sam shaking me, shouting frantic words.
Geralt spoke calmly. “I enchanted Patrick myself, placing the tattoos that would make his ghost rise at the proper time. Imbuing that ghost with instructions and failsafe measures. I didn’t expect him to nearly kill you, but this seems to have worked out.”
My knees hit the floor. The ghost began circling me, eyeing the others warily. KADUMKADUMKADUM went the cord of magic linking me to him.
“You may have noticed,” continued Geralt, “that the destabilization of magic has allowed the undead to draw on the world’s magical field to keep themselves alive. It turns out they can also draw on other sources of magic as well. Patrick must have touched you before you disenchanted his original body. He claimed you as a host, following his instructions to keep himself alive at all costs.”
“It’s syphoning her tattoo?” Sam asked, aghast.
“No. He’s syphoning her own magic, the power that makes her an enchantress. With her tattoo also tied into her own magic, I imagine the process is having some painful side effects there as well.”
KADUMKADUMKADUM. It was like when the shifter’s ghost had tried to latch onto me in the graveyard, only worse. My senses all jumbled, vertigo filling my head and making the world spin off into chaos. My tattoo ached, but the pain itself was a confusion of conflicting senses. Up, down, inside, outside, nothing was definite. I was falling through the window ten feet away, even as I tumbled up to become part of the ceiling, while at the same time drowning because my lungs no longer breathed air.
Geralt clapped h
is hands twice. “Patrick, come here.”
The ghost lurched forward, and a tugging sensation in my chest made me cry out. I slid a few inches across the carpet toward Geralt. Geralt laughed. “And it seems the shade still remembers his original enchanted instructions, despite the change of host body. Fascinating. Were this not a symptom of the world’s ending, I would want to study it. But as it is, I think Patrick has incapacitated you well enough that you won’t be killing anyone, Adrienne.” He waved a languid hand toward me. “Take her. Alive.”
The fleshwriters surged forward. So did Axel, brandishing his sword with a look of grim acceptance.
I tried to force myself to my feet, but my knees wouldn’t lock. I tried to tap the shield enchantment on my bracelet, but my thoughts were slippery. Each attempt to grab one of my own enchantments failed, with my powers sliding right through my grasp unused.
Sam blasted a ball of compressed air at a fleshwriter from one of her rings. It left a visible wake, but when it impacted his chest it vanished against a grey-blue shield. A flash of lightning from one of the fleshwriters surged toward Sam’s head. She ducked, letting it fizzle out on the piled furniture. She spun, shooting attack after attack at our assailants. Each attack made one of them retreat, but the others kept approaching. Soon they’d be within reach.
My hand dug under my shirt, to where my enchantment tattoo burned. I had to stop this. I could take them all out. Probably even Axel, who wasn’t the strongest of Voids. But it would also kill me. And Sam. And everyone else on the city block, if I died before I fully directed the magic. Possibly hundreds of people for miles around, if the blast radius from the most recent Void Union attack was any indication. Tentatively I sent my thoughts toward the tattoo, and again they veered off course as my senses continued to reel. Even if I was willing to risk all those lives, my powers wouldn’t cooperate.
One of the fleshwriters broke past Sam’s defenses and sprinted forward. Sam clocked him in the head with her magically-reinforced arm, but the distraction allowed two others to rush in. I struggled again to tap my magic, to access even the smallest enchantments I wore, but they were all inaccessible, out of reach beyond the swirling chaos filling my mind and body. Geralt’s smug smile caught my eye through the haze of pain. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t even draw on the tattoo’s magic to kill myself.
Sam appeared in front of me, kneeling. Her eyes searched my face, and I struggled to manifest words, to tell her to run. But my tongue wouldn’t work, and all I could manage was to breathe. Sam’s eyes went hard, her mouth settling into a determined line. “Sorry,” she said. “You know I’m no good at following directions.”
She planted a hand on my shoulder to balance herself. Then she shoved her other hand into the body of the ghost circling me.
The vertigo swarming my skull doubled. Tripled. I was sure I would throw up, if I could figure out which way my mouth pointed. Through a haze I saw the ghost thrashing in the air, fighting to escape Sam’s touch. It was dimming, its body becoming more translucent by the second. Its tendrils seemed to be vanishing into Sam’s hand, congealing around it like a misty glove.
Sam let out a yell. Something snapped against my chest. The pain and sense of chaos vanished, reality screeching back to its normal stability so fast I nearly fell over.
With a final unearthly scream the ghost disappeared into Sam’s fingertips. The magical pulsing in me disappeared. But through Sam’s hand on my shoulder, I felt a KADUMKADUMKADUM beating within her.
She’d drawn in the ghost, sucking up his magic faster than he could suck it out of me. Now all that power was thrashing inside her, needing to be unleashed. And she had no equipment, no magical gear to use.
“No!” I cried, already knowing I was too late. There was nothing I could do.
Sam fleshwrote.
An enchantment tattoo etched itself onto her hand, circling her wrist and climbing her arm. A rounded pattern drawn of a single unbroken line. She kept that hand outstretched, even as the magic took hold. From her palm, a shield of radiant rainbows burst, a spectrum of crackling light that encircled her and me. The first fleshwriter to reach that shield dropped to the floor, instantly unconscious. The second managed to slow themselves enough to only touch it with a leg. They recoiled, dragging a now unmoving limb. Axel prodded the shield with one finger, wincing slightly as he pulled his hand back to study the numbed finger. When they saw that even the Void was affected, the fleshwriters backed off.
Sam turned her head to look at me.
Her gaze was utterly, completely empty. Not a single glimmer of awareness in it.
Oh, Sam, I thought, I’m so sorry.
I pushed myself up on shaking legs. Sam stayed exactly where she was, arm raised, holding the shield, vacant gaze staring off into space.
Geralt faced me across the field of multicolored light, one eyebrow raised. For him that probably amounted to utter astonishment. I slipped my arm under Sam’s shoulders and guided her with me toward the door. The few fleshwriters still in our way hurried to jump aside.
Just before we reached the stairs, Geralt’s voice called after me. “You’ll come back to me, Adrienne. You can’t turn aside knowing what your existence means for the rest of the world. You’re not that selfish. Conscience will compel you. You’ll return to me, and we will finish this.”
Words required too much thought right now. So instead I lowered my head and kept walking, half-dragging Sam with me. Just before the stair door closed behind us, I heard Geralt say, “No one must find evidence of tonight. Set fires in every corner. We burn the building down.”
Five fleshwriters lay dead on the ground when we emerged onto the floor where our ill-fated ambush had been set. Desmond stood over them, tense, but relaxed when he recognized me. A haunted look made his face seem wan. “What happened?”
“Harrow’s dead.”
“What? How?”
“Axel killed him.”
“What?”
“No time. We need to get out of here.”
Kendall emerged from a nearby cubicle. “I locked out the first wave of their hackers, but more came on. I couldn’t stop them all. So I corrupted all the data in the system instead. Nobody will get any intel from these guys.”
“At least that’s something,” I said. My voice sounded hoarse. I felt like I could lie down and never get up again.
Kendall and Desmond noticed Sam’s vacant stare at the same time. “Oh no,” Kendall whispered. “Is she ...?”
I nodded.
Desmond swallowed, sheathing his sword. “We have to get out of here. Any suggestions where?”
“I know someone who might help us,” I said, thinking quickly. “He owes Sam a favor, and he has connections.”
“Then let’s go,” said Desmond. “Quickly.”
We raced down the remaining stairs and out one of the side doors, ignoring the alarms that blared to life when the door opened. Side streets and sharp turns quickly took us several blocks from the building.
I looked back once, from atop one of the big hills that rolled through the city. The Void Union building was a small one on the skyline, barely noticeable beneath the shadows of more noteworthy structures. But I could just make out its top floor beneath the clouded moonlight. Smoke poured from the windows.
Desmond’s arm circled my shoulders. Kendall slipped her arm around Sam, helping me support her.
Together we retreated deeper into the city as sirens began to wail.
Epilogue
THE WOMAN STOOD before a glass door, staring at the hand-painted “closed” sign. The store’s curtains were drawn, its lights dark. Still the woman stood, and stared. Wind ruffled the upraised hood of her jacket, carrying the faintest smell of smoke.
Another figure approached out of the darkness, her shadow cast long by the distant parking lot lights. She wore dark clothing and combat boots, her brown braid tucked into the back of her jacket. A slight limp distorted her gait, and her skin bore the scratches and bruises o
f battle. Janette, Void Union hunter, stopped beside the woman peering in at the sign. “You won’t find them here, you know.”
The hooded woman inhaled sharply, but didn’t speak. Janette noticed her fists were clenched.
“I’m surprised you called me,” said Janette warily. “Or that you were able to call anyone. From what I’ve heard, your condition was supposed to be permanent.”
Still nothing. A hint of smoke clung to the air, though the fire that took headquarters had been put out days ago. Not that much was left by that point.
Janette folded her arms and shifted her feet. “Look, I’m only here because of our past friendship. But it’s chilly, I don’t trust you, and I’ve had a really bad week. If you want to say something, say it, but otherwise I’m leaving.” She turned to go.
A hand shot out and closed on her wrist. The grip was strong, stronger than a human’s grasp. Nails dug into Janette’s skin, so sharp she thought they might be claws. She resisted the urge to check for blood, instead forcing herself to look into her assailant’s face.
Maribel peered out of the hood. Her eyes, once vacant, now gleamed with a feral light. “My memories are still fuzzy. But I remember a few things. That night, you came to kill the enchantress.”
Janette ground her teeth and tried to shake off the other woman’s grip. “It didn’t work. And don’t talk to me about enchantresses, not after I looked up to you, when the whole time you were hiding your own–”
“I’m not an enchantress.”
A pause. “What?”
“She framed me.”
Cracks formed in Janette’s harsh façade. She swallowed a hard lump. “Can you prove that?”
Maribel stared straight into her eyes. “I will. You will work with me. We will hunt the enchantress, together.”
An ache opened in Janette’s chest. A desperate desire to believe, to cling to something solid in the current storm. “Even if you’re telling the truth, she’s long gone. The fleshwriters have control of the city. What makes you think she’d stay nearby?”
