Magical Seclusion

by Jaliza A. Burwell

  “But it won’t be as easy to get to them. They’d stay out of the trouble, not wanting to risk it,” Alijah said. “We’d have to fight through everyone.”

  “Then we will,” Dwight growled out.

  “While you do that, we’ll try to tear down the ward on our own.” Even to my own ears, I sounded exhausted.

  Henzie nodded and leaned over to bump my arm with his. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “I hope so.”

  The two of us went silent and kept our focus on the screen, trying to find a solution. Shortly after, Henzie stiffened next to me and leaned forward, closer to me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m so stupid. I should have thought of this sooner. What if we do what you did to get Dwight in, but on a grander scale?” He tapped his fingers on his knee. “What you did wasn’t big enough, but one on a larger scale should disrupt the ward enough to bring it down.”

  When the conversation in the room grew heated, too many people with different opinions, I winced. Once Dwight reined them in, I turned back to Henzie, trying to get my thoughts back on track. The tension and need for violence was growing to dangerous levels. If a solution wasn’t available soon, people were going to start getting stupid.

  “I don’t have anything explosive enough, and I’m low on juice right now,” I said. I ran my hand through my hair, wincing when it snagged on a knot. No way was I going to look in a mirror at this point. I had to look like a mess, probably bloody too. There was a high chance I looked like a living corpse. Shivering, I tossed out those thoughts. Not a direction I needed my mind to go.

  “I think I might have something,” Henzie said. “I’d need to tweak it, but it should work. We’ll need to go down to the labs. With it, we should only need a little bit of your magic.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “An energy-based bomb. It’s designed to temporarily scatter the energy particles, disrupting its flow. The idea was to delay shifters from changing. It’s only a few seconds delay, but magic and energy normally doesn’t mix well, so if we toss that into the ward, I think we can take it down. We’d just need your magic to tune the bomb to the ward so it knows when to set off.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.” Henzie stood up and then pulled me up. I winced and looked down at my bandaged leg. With the amount of damage done to my leg, I was looking at a couple days of recovery and that was with the help of a healer.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What are you doing?” Elliot asked. “You need to sit.”

  He came over and tried to take my weight off of Henzie, but I waved him off. He’d just try to get me back on the couch, and I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to get back up again if he did.

  “We’re going to head down to the labs.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Elliot frowned, looking between Henzie and me.

  “Better than staying as sitting ducks,” Henzie answered. “And we need to do something to help.”

  I nodded in agreement. Henzie and I were probably the most hands-on labbies in the company. We were never ones to sit idly by. That was the whole reason we were stuck in here on a Sunday when most of the other labbies weren’t.

  This was a lot better than sitting around pulling out our hair. We had a plan and now we just needed to execute it. We could do this. I had to believe that we could.

  Chapter Twenty

  We made it to Henzie’s lab fast enough, with Ami, Elliot, and Alijah as our guards. With one of the baddies still missing, we had to be cautious. Dwight created a team to stay upstairs to keep the intruders from getting further down.

  “Here.” Henzie went over to a cabinet and dug inside until he pulled out a box. He opened it to reveal a dark red ball, holding it up to the light so it reflected off of the dark surface.

  “That’s it?” I asked, eyeing it.

  He nodded. “This is it. I just need to make adjustments, but I can do it in your lab while you get everything you need.” He grabbed what looked like a toolbox and then we went over to the door. Alijah went first to make sure the hallway was clear and then Ami went next. Henzie and I followed with Elliot at the back to lock up the lab and bring the massive metal door back down. Our group went down to my lab, and Ami used a special key to raise the metal door as I lowered my ward to let everyone through. Once inside, they closed it up and we got to work.

  Henzie gave me a wire. The idea was to infuse my magic with it and that was going to act as the spark and connection between the bomb and the ward. Now that I had a good idea of how the ward worked, it made the process easier.

  “How’s home base doing?” Henzie asked Ami.

  “The intruders are about to break through the door, and then they’ll be making their way down. Once they’re through, we are officially trapped inside unless we can get around them.”

  “I still have some juice. We can teleport if need be,” I said. My hand hovered over the wire, the magic gathering in my hand.

  “Only in an emergency. You can’t keep pushing yourself like this,” Elliot said.

  “Alijah, can you grab me one of those dark blue vials in the mini fridge?” I asked.

  “What is it?” Ami asked.

  “Just a booster. We don’t have the option right now for anyone to rest. Now shush, I need to focus.”

  I was too busy to see it, but it felt like there was a lot of a silent conversation going on in the room before I heard Alijah move toward my mini fridge. My magic curled out of me, the lavender tendrils reaching for the wire as my hand grew warm. When it reached the wire, it curled around it before seeping down into it with the simple directions to act as a trigger upon impact.

  The simple direction and the images in my head fed into the magic and it calmed into its new role easily enough.

  I sighed and straightened away from the bench. “This better work.”

  “It will,” Henzie said.

  “Has no choice but to work,” Ami added.

  I grumbled. “No pressure.” Stretching out the tension in my arms and shoulders, I asked, “How do you suggest we get out of here?”

  “Lombardi is going to clear a way for us,” Ami said.

  “I could transport out.”

  “Not going to work,” Alijah said, staring down at a small tablet. “Six are breaking through the ward, plus the one missing, and two of them are now patrolling outside. The moment you pop outside, they’ll know.”

  “And we don’t know what they are capable of doing so it’ll be hard to combat them. Those two haven’t been identified yet,” Ami said. “We’ll have to break through. Lombardi will open a path for us and while he deals with the rest of the people, you’ll be able to break the ward.”

  “Fine.”

  We left the lab, and I helped lock it up before we headed to the stairs. I inwardly groaned at the fact that we had to climb seven flights of stairs to get to the ground floor. My thighs were already aching at just the thought and my leg was ready to give out on me. Gritting through the pain, I pushed forward, not wanting to slow everyone down.

  About halfway up, we ran into trouble. The first clue was when Ami was thrown backward, taking Henzie with her as they fell down. Alijah moved quickly, pushing me to the side so I didn’t go with them.

  A growl escaped his throat as his focus narrowed on a dark figure at the top of the stairs.

  “Shadowsmith,” Alijah seethed. The man said nothing and charged forward. Alijah ran toward him, and the two of the smashed into each other.

  Elliot grabbed my arm and moved me away from the fight. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them. Energy clashed as the two of them went at it, moving at speeds almost too hard to follow.

  The shadowsmith was tall, lean, and deadly. His body was honed to be a weapon, every strike meant to hurt or maim the target. He went for all the weak spots on a human body, trying to take Alijah out.

  “We need to go,” Elliot said.

  I nodded jerkily, my
heart pounding hard. When we got to the platform with Ami and Henzie, we helped the two of them out. Something hard smashed into me, and I dove forward into the wall, my shoulder taking the brunt of the damage.

  “Laila!” Elliot called out, and I moaned, turning around just in time to see that my name had distracted Alijah enough to give the shadowsmith the opportunity he needed. The air shimmered before him and an explosion of energy smashed into all of us. I screamed as I was shoved into the wall again, Elliot’s weight pinning me against it. We slumped to the floor and another scream echoed against the cement walls.

  Ami.

  Elliot jumped to his feet and dove forward, toward the shadowsmith. Alijah was at the bottom of the steps and Elliot jumped over him as he tackled the shadowsmith. My heart went into my throat as I was reminded of the time with the syphon. He was only human. He was going to get hurt.

  I wanted to grab him, jump in front of him, but Ami grabbed my arm and tugged me further away from the fight. Blood dripped down her cheek, and I didn’t understand how one shadowsmith could do so much damage. He wielded energy like I wielded magic and with four of us in the small stairwell, we were easy targets for him. He didn’t have to be careful not to hurt anyone.

  Eyes still on Elliot, heart in my throat, pain in my leg and shoulder, Ami drew me down another flight before the thuds of someone falling down them paused us. Elliot was rolling down the stairs, Alijah back at it with the shadowsmith.

  “Elliot.” I yanked out of Ami’s grip and ran to Elliot, my leg buckling just as I got to his side, the strain too much for my wound to hold. I didn’t care as I checked his pulse and felt the strong steady rhythm. His eyes fluttered open, and he sat up quickly, his eyes slightly dazed. He shook his head before looking at me.

  “Get out of here,” he snapped and jumped to his feet, ready to go another round. I bit my lip, wanting to help, but knew I had more of a chance at hitting Elliot or Alijah if I did that.

  “Come on,” Henzie said grabbing my arm and pulling me away from them. We went down another flight of stairs when the shadowsmith popped up in front of us.

  “Shit,” Ami said and threw her hand out, magic flowing out of her and into the shadowsmith. Something shimmering wrapped around him and it deflected the magic attack, sending it into the wall.

  He held his hand out and sent his own attack at us. Ami and I lifted our hands at the same time, reacting and throwing up a shield. It should have worked.

  It didn’t.

  His energy went right through both shields and hot pain smashed against my chest, pushing me back. I barely stayed on my feet. Confusion rippled through me. The shield should have worked. This guy had something extra, and I didn’t know what. Ami was on her knees, struggling to get up.

  The shadowsmith gave us a cruel smile, his nearly blue lips twisting into a sneer of contempt and hatred. His hand came up again.

  “No!” I threw magic at him, but a shield appeared and disappeared the moment my magic connected. The air shimmered around him as he gathered another attack. Energy was sucked out of the air and whirled toward him.

  I didn’t know where Elliot or Alijah were and desperation clawed at me. I threw more magic at him, my chest tightening as the strain of magic usage proved to be too much on my weakened body. Anything I threw at him was easily deflected. I tried to follow how he was doing it, but the panic made processing hard. I couldn’t calm down.

  He was ready to throw everything he had at us, and I couldn’t let him.

  I curled my fingernails into the palm of my hand hard and drew blood. I gathered as much magic as I could in such a short amount of time, only having moments to do it, and then I threw it at him. Beads of my blood went with the magic, enhancing it. All I had left at this moment was hope, but hope was never enough. I knew that.

  And so did Fate, because the exact moment I threw my magic, he released his energy.

  The two collided and exploded.

  The floor shook all around. Henzie yelled out Ami’s name as pieces of cement rained down on us. Someone jumped on me to protect me from the rubble. Ami screamed, and there was a cry of pain.

  Once everything settled, I pushed away from whoever had wrapped themselves around me to see exactly what happened.

  It was like time slowed down into snapshots.

  Alijah had the shadowsmith pinned down, his claws digging into the man’s shoulders as he snarled into his face, his beast so close to coming out.

  Elliot was the one who had covered me. His back was covered in blood, his shirt shredded.

  Ami was screaming, Henzie wrapped around her, nearly the same way Elliot had protected me. She pushed him off, and he slumped to the floor, his body unmoving.

  Numbness spread through my body as I tried to process the scene. I just couldn’t. Tears were falling down Ami’s dirty, bloody face, her hair a wild mess around her head. Her gray eyes were wide as she shook Henzie’s body.

  He wasn’t responding.

  Why wasn’t he responding?

  I crawled over to them, a whooshing noise drowning out all other sounds other than the ones Ami made, as if her noises were the only important ones. I never knew what keening sounded like until I heard it coming from Ami. If Elliot or Alijah were yelling anything, I couldn’t hear it. Not over Ami’s pain, not over the devastation I saw in the shaking slope of her shoulders.

  My focus switched to Henzie. To his body. I knew. I just knew without having to touch him.

  Hands grabbed at my shoulders, and I shook them off, moving closer. Ami rocked Henzie, her grip tight and frenzied. When I got close enough, it only reaffirmed what I thought.

  A dark angry gash ran along his neck in a mocking smile, blood seeping out of it. There was also a bloody mess on the side of his head and it took a moment to put it all together, to realize that the mashed mess was his brain being exposed to the world.

  Bile rose in my throat.

  “No,” I whispered and grabbed his hand, already cooling to the touch.

  “Fix him,” Ami said and looked at me, her desperation burdening itself on me.

  I grabbed what magic I could and shoved it into him, demanding my magic to heal him. It came back to me, not latching onto anything. There was nothing there to fix. Not in death. One thing magic couldn’t do was bring someone back. Not like how she wanted, not as a living being.

  “I can’t,” I croaked out.

  “Fix him!” she screeched, and I winced. She cried again, and my heart tore apart at the scene. She never let on. He never let on. And now this. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know.

  I didn’t have a fucking answer.

  “We need to move,” Alijah said, coming to my side and grabbing my arm, pulling me to my feet.

  My thigh didn’t want to carry my weight, and when he realized this, he picked me up.

  “The shadowsmith?” Elliot asked, his voice husky. I turned my head so I didn’t have to look at the scene and so I could see his expression. Tears pooled in his eyes. I closed my eyes and tucked my head into Alijah’s neck.

  “Taken care of. We need to keep moving.” He turned. “Elliot, get Ami moving.”

  Alijah carried me up the stairs, and I gripped him hard. “I don’t understand,” I whispered.

  “There is nothing to understand. It happened.” He pulled me closer, and I tried to bury myself into his body. I still felt only numbness. Like pieces of a puzzle were missing and they were the most important.

  “I don’t understand.”

  His hand went up my back for comfort and then traveled down to my thighs to keep me pressed against him.

  “I know,” he said. “Don’t try to understand it right now. We need to keep moving. We still have too much to do. Afterward. When this is all over. Take all the time you need to. But for now, we need to keep working. We need to keep surviving.”

  I nodded into his chest, my body feeling like slush. I could hear Ami crying behind us and heavy breaths. When I could finally lift my head to peek over Alijah�
��s shoulder, I met her eyes. The anguish in them stole my breath. Her expression was hard, her cheeks blotchy, all tears gone, skin tight over her features, but her eyes screamed her pain. One I didn’t understand.

  My breath hitched, a sob ready to break through. Elliot stepped between us, breaking our eye contact. “We’re almost to the top.”

  “We need to keep going forward,” he said, voice soft.

  “We do,” I replied.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I wasn’t sure what happened. I just knew we were in the stairwell and then we were outside. I could hear the fighting, but I blocked it out. If someone got hurt, if another life was lost, I didn’t want to hear it.

  Alijah and Elliot stayed at my side. Ami disappeared. I wanted to disappear too.

  “You can do it,” Alijah said.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, my voice empty even to my ears.

  “Lombardi is keeping the fight up here the best he can. But the pressure is taking a toll. They’re a lot stronger than we expected.”

  I nodded. Despite understanding that they were strong, we still managed to underestimate the baddies. Henzie paid the price.

  My body jerked, and I had to shove that thought away.

  Alijah and Elliot were right. Now wasn’t the time. I wasn’t sure how they did it, how they kept moving forward when friends and coworkers around them were hurt and dying. My body didn’t want to listen to me. Even when I told it exactly what I needed.

  “We’re about seven feet from the ward,” Elliot said.

  “This is close enough,” Alijah said and put me down on my feet. “Honey, I need you to do what you need to do to get that ward down. Can you do that?”

  I nodded. I didn’t have a choice. Not unless I wanted more Henzies killed. More dead bodies. Elliot passed over the red ball, and I stared down at it, at the way the sunlight reflected off the red, making it look like a glob of blood in my hand. Henzie’s blood. There was a smear of something wet blending into it, and when I ran my thumb over it, staring at the red that covered it, a small sob broke out. I bit down on my cheek.