by Harry Nix
“Why not go back and get more?”
“A madman took over my country. We were forced to flee,” Henry said. Alex took a bite of his food to hide his surprise. He’d heard someone else talking like this—Isabella at the vampires’ ball. She’d made some comment as well about her homeland. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
“You’re a refugee?” Alex asked.
“You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. That’s the saying from here, yes?” Henry asked as though Alex hadn’t spoken. Alex once again had the feeling that the conversation had gotten away from him. Xavo was still on his list of burn-their-buildings-down, murder-their-mages. The list titled see what happens when you come and dump silver on our land and attack us.
“Yes, that’s the saying here. Of course it depends whether you want to catch the flies or exterminate them,” Alex said.
“You could burn down some hamburger places, destroy funeral homes. The argument in whispers is still going, and while you should definitely hurt some of them, there are others who will come more readily to honey,” Henry said. Alex shook his head. Just like last time it seemed Henry was talking in code.
“So you say it was Tradinium who’s been silvering werewolf land. I’ve never met a Tradinium mage. Do you know where they are?”
Henry shook his head and then burped before beginning to refill his plate from the containers.
“They are dug in deep. Like the mafia gone legit, they’re old money now, their assets floating in the stock market in blue chip stocks. But they still do own property. Their mages walk the streets and not every enclave likes being under their thumb.”
“Do you know who’s responsible in your enclave for silvering my land?” Alex asked.
“I have my suspicions.”
“If your enclave hands them over to me, I will spare the rest. There’ll be no revenge against the foot soldiers, just the decision makers,” Alex said. Henry nodded as though he was considering Alex’s offer, but Alex could already see from the change in his body language that it wasn’t going to go anywhere.
“I will give you an address. The cost of it is you trade an original spell with me and I will trade one with you. I’ll give you the spell to animate humans or larger beings if you have the space for it, yes?” Henry said.
Alex didn’t answer but kept eating to give himself time to think. Last time he’d met Henry, he’d given him a minor necromancy spell which Alex had used a few times, including to bring weredogs to life after they had died. Although it was said that magic changed you, and if you used death magic soon all you would care about was death, thus far Alex hadn’t felt the effects. Pain magic was dangerous, an addiction like heroin, but even after drawing on masses of dead and using the magic, Alex hadn’t felt any effect from it at all.
“Why do you want an original spell?” he asked. Henry finished eating and took one of the paper napkins he’d laid on the table to wipe his mouth.
“I’m sure you’ve learned by now that original spell creation is incredibly difficult. Mages chew around the edges in most cases. You are writing new and exciting magic and I want you to trade with me one of your spells. Specifically, I believe you have a way to draw silver to you.”
Alex tried to keep his face blank, but his first thought was that there was a traitor either in his pack or Julius’s.
Alex let those thoughts come and go in a moment and then pushed them away. Who knew how Henry knew or even how much he knew? Maybe one of the werewolves in Julius’s pack had talked to some outsider, bragging how they’d cleansed the silver from their land with his spell. Maybe they thought they were helping Alex spread his notoriety and his power, telling the mages it was useless to silver land, because the Werewolf Mage would come in to get rid of it all.
Alex knew if he started thinking about traitors, soon he’d be jumping at every shadow.
“So I get a Tradinium address and that spell. What’s your problem with Tradinium?” he asked.
“I’m sure you understand now the vampires are behind many things. For mages it is Tradinium. They don’t just meddle in the normal world, but in the affairs of all supernaturals. You’d come home and find your power is out and it could be them. You find your friend has lost their job and it could be them. You find yourself under continuous attack and it could be them seeking to murder the Werewolf Mage before he gains the power.”
“So that’s why they’ve been doing it? If they’d just left me alone, I wouldn’t have bothered with any of this. I would have just had my mates and some magic and lived my life,” Alex said.
“And now you have hundreds of werewolves. You took a fortress from Ignis and somehow have assembled werewolves in multiple packs there in harmony. You’ve made alliances and you’re enchanting rings faster than anyone has ever seen, putting spells on them that no one else can replicate. Yet even you don’t realize you have only taken your first few stumbling steps to get to this place. Your destiny is far greater than these humble beginnings and Tradinium is scared that you’ll wipe them from the face of this realm.”
Alex still wasn’t quite ready to accept Henry’s offer. Being able to reanimate humans could be interesting, maybe in the middle of a battle with plenty of dead about so he could provide soldiers that they could throw against the enemy like so much meat.
But he was beginning to think that his original spells were powerful and he should keep them to himself. Besides, he had the leads on three wards already, just in Baxter. Who was to say that one of them wasn’t the Tradinium address?
“I want you to tell me what you get out of sending me up against Tradinium specifically. I want you to tell me why you’re here talking to me, seemingly willing to betray Xavo,” Alex repeated.
Henry gave him a long, assessing look, and then leaned back in his chair, picking up another napkin to wipe his fingers, although Alex was sure they were clean.
“You’re aware of the imaginary four seats at the table. How it’s meant to be the vampires and mages and witches and werewolves. However the werewolves’ chair is a joke and the witches find themselves outmaneuvered, leaving the vampires and mages to rule. On the mages’ side of the table, it is actually Tradinium who calls all the shots, handing down their edicts from on high. Among the vampires similar things happened, such that it is in fact only a very small group who have been behind every atrocity of virtually the last two centuries. I want to give you a Tradinium address, so you may go there with your werewolves and massacre them the way you did to Corvus. I want you to press on Xavo, to destroy some of my enemies. Maybe the enclave decides to leave you alone or perhaps even sides with you. You saw what happened when just a hundred witches joined your battle. Can you imagine what would happen if the mages decided to support you?”
Alex chewed it over for a minute more. He knew he was targeting hearts and minds and he guessed this is what it looked like in the end. People who perhaps appeared to be your enemy coming to you as a friend, making deals to betray others, opening up avenues.
“I’ll give you the silver cleanse spell and you give me your animate human and the address,” Alex said. He pushed the plastic containers aside and put out his hand. Henry shuffled his chair, the squeal of the metal against the concrete loud in the echoing abandoned factory. Then he placed the back of his hand in Alex’s and their magic connected.
Alex got a sensation of Henry’s magic, pulsing life and death entwined. His spell screen appeared with a spell in it that was several pages long titled animate humanoid+. For his part, Alex opened his spell screen, flicking through it, passing the black rune spell before he got to the silver cleanse.
Connected through their magic, Alex felt a hint of surprise from Henry. He realized Henry might have glimpsed part of the black rune spell. If so, Henry had clamped the emotion down. With the two spells open, they began copying from each other.
Alex was thankful for the compression that had occurred in other spells, because the animate humanoid+ spell took up virtually all the s
pace he had left. He eventually copied it all, taking far longer than Henry who had managed to copy all of Alex’s spell quickly.
They disengaged and Henry reached into his pocket to bring out a pen, writing an address on one of the clean napkins before sliding it across to Alex.
“How did you make this spell?” Henry asked.
“I cut up Find Food and made it Find Silver. Then I cut telekinesis and merged them together. You should be aware it’s quite dangerous as silver will fly towards the caster at high speed,” Alex said.
“I will give you a warning too then. Animated humans are not merely dead flesh. They have their own wishes, their own desires. When you bring them back, your will must dominate theirs. If it doesn’t, you may find yourself their puppet.” Henry stood up, collecting the empty containers and stuffing them into the plastic bags until Alex was sitting before a clean table.
“Until next time, yes?” Henry said. He went out the front of the factory after Alex waved to his pack members to let him go.
As soon as the necromancer was gone, Alex brought up his new spell, flicking through the pages. Small sections he recognized from the other spell he used to animate small animals like chickens or dogs. This new spell, though, had chunks that seemed to be in regard to the mind, understanding the will, similar to the telekinesis spell.
Alex supposed that when you brought a chicken back, there wasn’t much of a fight there. What could it really want except perhaps to peck at food? He’d have to study the spell and share it with Juno and April to ensure that Henry hadn’t set a trap in it, though. He was almost sure the necromancer hadn’t, but again, Henry wasn’t his friend.
And at some point he supposed a trip to the cemetery would be in order.
Alex was walking out of the factory when a werewolf came jogging up. He tried to recall her name, but couldn’t.
“We just caught two mages not far from the main house. They said they knew you,” she said.
“Did you get their names?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, one’s called Harmony and the other one’s Stephen.”
13
Alex sprinted into the house then back out again when he found the mages weren’t there. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he ran next door to the run-down factory. Inside, there were at least thirty members of his pack gathered, as well as Nia, Juno and April. Stephen was mage-cuffed and a werewolf was in the process of tying him to the metal beam where they’d kept their last prisoners. Harmony was standing beside Juno, staring at the floor, shrunken into herself as though she wished she would disappear. Over in the back corner in the shadow of the beam, Roma was peeking out, her arms crossed, watching the whole sorry affair. The moment Alex walked in he could feel the mood of his pack. They were angry. Nia was in hybrid form stalking back and forth, her tail waving dangerously.
Then the kid went and made it worse, smiling in relief as soon as he saw Alex. Nia caught the look and turned, pointing a clawed finger at Alex.
“He can’t stay,” she said and came stalking over. She was moving so quickly, waving her arms around, that for a moment, Alex had the ridiculous thought that she might attack him. He had seen her angry before, but nothing like this. It was almost as if her anger had spread among the pack. Other werewolves were muttering among themselves and Alex had the distinct feeling they were building themselves up to shredding the meat from Stephen’s bones.
“We need to untie Stephen. Where are the keys?” Alex said, putting his hands up, hoping to calm Nia.
“Juno has them but he can’t stay. He silvered our land.”
“I remember, but I need to talk to him. I need him on our side,” Alex said. He saw some of the pack members were listening in and glancing over.
Nia crossed her arms and let out a breath of air. It was as though she couldn’t stand still, not with Stephen nearby.
“Look, I get that you needed him before to help with the spell writing, but you don’t need him now. You made that silver cleanse spell all on your own. Let’s send him back to Xavo in pieces,” she said under her breath to him. She had a challenging growl in her voice, a kind of wild violence, and Alex could feel it pulling at him. It wanted him to join in. The rage he’d had over the territory being silvered, Bish being killed and later Jem, was still there. He’d just pushed it down, convincing himself he needed Stephen more alive than dead. Nia was making sense. He had created a new spell all on his own. Maybe things would be slow without the necromancer, but he had silvered their land.
It was only when he glanced away from Nia that the anger suddenly ebbed. Juno had put her arm around Harmony’s shoulders, and the teenager looked like she was trying very hard not to cry. Seeing her like that brought the truth slamming back. The two of them were just kids, forced to obey.
“I just need to talk to him,” Alex said and touched Nia on the arm, but she flinched away.
Alex walked over to Juno, who had pulled away from Harmony and was studying her with a curious expression on her face.
“You’re the one who was hiding in the Corvus basement, aren’t you?” Juno said.
Harmony nodded, tears dripping off the end of her nose. She wiped them away and then sniffed. That was when Alex saw her hands: she was now missing both of her little fingers, cut off neatly above the joint.
“What happened to your fingers?” Alex asked.
“It was punishment,” Harmony said, staring at her feet. Alex felt that anger again… not the same that was directed at the mages, and specifically at Stephen, but the fury at the mage enclaves, the vampires. These groups who’d hurt and killed and maimed to get what they wanted. He’d worried when he let Harmony go that something bad would happen to her, and now those fears were being confirmed. She’d been mutilated, her fingers cut off as a nonsensical punishment.
“Was that because you didn’t kill me?” Alex said.
Harmony nodded, still not speaking. Behind him, he heard more werewolves muttering, and when he turned, he saw that the group had come in closer to Stephen, who was still bound to the metal beam. His relief at seeing Alex was gone, and he looked stricken with terror, on the verge of crying. He also looked dirty and thinner than the last time Alex had seen him, as though he had been living rough.
“Juno, keys,” Alex said, holding out his hand. Juno handed them over, still watching Harmony as though she wasn’t quite sure what to do about her. Alex caught April’s look as she nodded towards Stephen. He needed to take control of the situation and quick, before something bad happened. Alex’s pack parted for him as he made his way over to Stephen. He untied him and then removed the magecuffs. As they came off, he felt a prickling sensation running up his back, as though he could feel the displeasure of every werewolf standing there. Stephen went to speak, but Alex just held up his hand, shutting the kid up so he wouldn’t say something stupid.
He realized in that moment that his connection to his pack had grown stronger; he wasn’t even holding the thread that he could feel nearby, and he could directly sense the mood of the werewolves.
Alex mentally reached out and grasped it, and it was like grabbing something hot. Although many of the werewolves there hadn’t even been in the pack when the territory had been silvered and attacked by Xavo, they shared the pack’s anger over the crime… which had possibly been exacerbated by learning that other packs had now been silvered.
He could feel Nia, her rage and sadness a white-hot flame that was steeped in deep black. Although the attack on Julius’s pack hadn’t killed a single werewolf, and Alex had managed to undo the silvering with his new spell, he realized he hadn’t been as attentive to Nia as he should have been. He had been too focused on trying to fix the problem to realize the deep anger she was carrying around over her father’s pack and her former territory being silvered. Any conversations they had had about it had been about what to do next, steps to take, Alex making plans and chewing over them. Now that he thought about it, he realized he hadn’t even asked her how she’d felt a
bout the attack.
As Alex explored these sensations, he realized his earlier assumption was true: Nia’s fury was feeding back into the rest of the pack, being amplified. It was like the blood and body following when one werewolf shifted, pulling others along with them. Alex had experienced it himself, being pulled into wolf form involuntarily if enough werewolves around him shifted all at once. It was as though the pack had a mind of its own, a meta mind that floated above it and within it, derived from the emotions and feelings of the werewolves in the pack, but then feeding back into it.
Right now, most of what he could feel was rage, anger and despair. Some of the werewolves were only a few moments away from leaping across at Stephen and tearing his throat out… whether Alex was standing there or not. Although he could feel the rage working on him, he could still hear Harmony sniffing, the sad sound of the teenager breaking through the floating emotions of the pack.
Alex took a firmer hold of the thread, the werewolf power. Calm, he thought, pressing on it. It resisted, almost slipping out of his grasp, bucking one way and then the other as though it was something alive. He thought calm, again and again, exerting a little more pressure, and finally, he felt it beginning to work. The werewolves on the edge of the pack, the ones who were angry but not quite ready to jump to murder, were the first to flip, muttering to themselves and then turning away. This fed back into the mood of the pack, flipping the next ones, and Alex could feel it, not quite a wave of calm coming over them, but enough to disrupt the anger. It was still fighting against Nia, who was like a bonfire, but soon her influence wore away under Alex’s power.
“These mages have come to us for help and are now under our protection. Go back to your business,” Alex said. He didn’t push it with an alpha growl, but his voice had a clear command in it, and although he got some challenging looks, the pack soon began to melt away.
