Smoke (The Slayer Chronicles Book 1)

by Val St. Crowe

  “I don’t know about this,” said Naelen.

  “Me either,” I said.

  “Well, none of that’s important,” said Eden. “What’s important is basically that there are nine objects, and that they have special powers on their own, without any dragon magic.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And they came from another parallel universe.”

  “Like I said, forget that part if it’s problematic for you,” she said. “If you met Cunningham, you witnessed his use of the objects, I’m sure, but you still may have no idea of their scope.” She picked up a small teddy bear off the ground. It was about five inches tall. It was blue. She tightened her hand around the arrowhead.

  Suddenly, sitting right next to me was a perfect copy of the teddy bear. Only it was six feet tall.

  I jumped.

  Naelen yelled.

  “How did you…?”

  “That’s what the arrowhead does,” she said. “It’s one of the objects in the manifestation class. As you know, magic in this world is limited to what dragons can do, except for a few mages who can somehow turn the compulsion magic inside out to be a little telepathic. One thing that magic can’t do is manifest matter. But there are three objects that can.”

  I touched the teddy bear with one finger. It felt solid and fuzzy and real.

  Eden held up her hand and suddenly, the teddy bear began to twist and deflate, like a balloon. It shriveled down to nothing and then a tiny trail of blue sparks traveled back into Eden’s palm. “It takes a lot of energy to do that. The arrowhead steals from the user’s own energy and converts it to matter. That’s how it works, theoretically. If you overdo it, make too many things, or if you don’t dismantle them, it can really take it out of you. Make you exhausted. Even sick. I’ve got two toddlers to chase around, so that’s why I undid the teddy bear.”

  “We’re not keeping you from your job or anything, are we?” I said.

  “Oh, no,” said Eden. “I stay home with the kids full time. Brian and Jocelyn go to work. But I sent the kids to my mom’s house for the morning so that I could talk to you guys about this stuff.”

  “So, your mom knows that you’re polyamorous, huh?” Naelen said. “She cool with it?”

  “She’s cool with anything that means that she has two grandbabies,” said Eden.

  We laughed.

  “So, there are other objects that can make matter?” I said.

  “There are,” said Eden. “There are nine objects total, and there are three classes, each with three objects. The manifestation class contains the arrowhead, the comb, and the cup.”

  “And did all of these objects just show up here randomly?” said Nathan.

  “I thought that part was hard to swallow for you guys,” she said.

  “Well, I just don’t understand. Why nine objects? Why different classes? What are they here for?”

  “A man brought them here. You see, originally, people in the other world sent criminals to our world. It was a prison world, a place to dump their problems. They chose it because it was empty, and because there was no magic here.”

  “What? We’re like a giant Australia?” I said.

  Eden laughed. “Well, in a way. And we’ve turned out all right, I think. Thousands of years ago, the people of this world rose up and sealed off the paths to the other world so that the people of that world would no longer be able to send anything or anyone here. But the man who brought the objects, he was sent before that. His name was Jacques. He brought the objects so that he would have power in this world. And while he was alive, he used them to do horrible things on this earth. So, he was eventually captured and executed. But before he died, he tied his essence to the objects. Supposedly, if you bring all the objects together and perform a ritual sacrifice, Jacques will come back and possess the person who’s called for him.”

  “Eew,” I said. “That’s horrible.”

  “Do you believe that?” said Naelen. “Do you think some dead guy can possess someone?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eden. “I do know that the objects behave erratically when too many are all in one place.”

  “Why would someone even do the ritual?” I said. “Why would someone want to be possessed by an evil criminal man?”

  “Well, in Cunningham’s case, it’s because he’s very arrogant. He’s sure that he could control Jacques and could use the power for his own gain,” said Eden.

  I groaned. “Of course Cunningham’s trying to do this. Great. Just perfect.”

  “It won’t happen,” said Eden. “There are people who are guarding objects, who will never allow Cunningham to get them. Don’t worry. Besides, it’s enough to worry about with the power he has already.”

  “Right,” said Naelen. “He could compel me. He could compel a dragon. How was that happening? That’s not from manifestation.”

  “No,” said Eden. “I guess I need to go back a bit. Let me start with the different objects and classes. All right, the first class is the invisibility class. It’s pretty self-explanatory. There are three objects that make the wearer invisible. The star, the scarab, and the pendant. Cunningham has one of them.”

  “That’s why he disappeared in the woods!” exclaimed Naelen. “I told you he was just gone.”

  “Huh,” I said. “How strange.”

  “Then there’s the manifestation class, which you know about. Each manifestation object works a little bit differently. The cup allows someone to make more of a mass. For instance, if I had a glass of water, and I was holding the cup, I could make a river. Or if I had a handful of dirt, I could make an avalanche.”

  I nodded. “Okay, I get that.”

  “The comb,” Eden continued, “Allows you to make copies of objects, but they must be the same size as the copy. So, I could make more teddy bears, but they’d all be clones. The arrowhead, however, allows you to make copies and to change features. Make the copies bigger or smaller or change their color.”

  I looked over at Naelen. “I think I’m starting to have trouble keeping all of this straight.”

  “It’s a lot,” said Eden, “but I’m almost done. There’s only one class left, and that class is the power enhancement class. Each of those objects take whatever power is within the person wielding it and makes it more intense. That’s how Cunningham was able to compel you. His power is bolstered by the stylus. The other power enhancing objects are the knife and the bell.”

  “And which of these objects does Cunningham have again?” said Naelen.

  “The arrowhead. The stylus. The scarab. The comb.”

  “How do you know all this?” I said.

  “I had a girlfriend once who was a captive of Cunningham,” she said. “He told her all this stuff. And she managed to get away. She got this.” She reached into her pocket and took out a leather strap with a tear-shaped pendant hanging from it. The pendant was rough-hewn out of a dull metal. Eden put one finger on the pendant.

  She winked out of sight.

  “Shit,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “What the hell?”

  “It’s the pendant,” came Eden’s disembodied voice. “It’s of the invisibility class.” Suddenly, she popped back into sight and the pendant was hurling through the air.

  Naelen caught it. He disappeared.

  It made him invisible! But wait, she’d had it in her pocket all all this time, and we could see her. “How did you have it in your pocket and still be visible?” I said.

  “You have to touch it to your skin,” she said. “If you avoid that, it won’t work. All of the pendants are like that.”

  “But I had the arrowhead in my pocket, and I could resist Cunningham’s magic—hey, how come I could do that?”

  “The objects don’t work against each other,” she said.

  “But he disappeared in front of me while I had the arrowhead,” said Naelen, still invisible. It was weird hearing his voice and not seeing him.

  “Well, sure,” she said. “But if you’d reached out and touched h
im, he would have become visible again,” said Eden. “Same thing with the manifested objects. Let me back up for a second, though. If you touch an object and then keep it on your person, you still have its power, even if it’s not touching your skin. So, you can touch something and then put it in your pocket and it still works. If it’s close enough, it still works. There’s a sort of, I don’t know, half-foot radius around your person. Naelen, set the pendant down on the couch.”

  “Okay,” said Naelen’s voice. “Huh. Yeah. Still invisible.”

  “Move backward slowly,” said Eden.

  “Okay.” Naelen was suddenly visible again. “Weird,” he said. “So if I’ve touched the pendant and I’m within half a foot of it, it still works?”

  “Yeah, that’s about the way it works,” said Eden. “You two should take that pendant with you. If you have the pendant and the arrowhead, you might have a chance against Cunningham. The only way you’re ever going to defeat him is if you get all the objects away from him.”

  “All we want is my sister back,” said Naelen.

  “Oh,” said Eden. “I guess I didn’t ask why you were doing this. I assumed you were like Logan, running around solving problems, stopping bad people.”

  “We’ll get the objects from Cunningham,” I said. “We will.”

  Naelen hesitated and then he nodded. “Yeah. We’ll do it. You’re right. We have to do that. Cunningham can’t be allowed to do this to anyone else’s sister.”

  “Good,” said Eden. “When you’re done, though, you need to bring back the pendant to me. And if you have all of Cunningham’s objects, we’ll need to find safe places for them. It’s a bad idea to have too many of the objects all in one place.”

  “Got it,” Naelen said.

  “Thank you for everything,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Naelen backed the car out of the driveway of the Hudsons’ house. “So,” he said. “There’s one thing I feel like we’re glossing over here.”

  “Yeah?” I said. I was feeling awkward being around him. Was he going to proposition me again? If he did, I was going to have to put a stop to all of that once and for all. Actually, even if he didn’t, I was going to have to put a stop to it.

  “How the hell are we supposed to find Cunningham?” he said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “The objects are very powerful, right?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “And Cunningham expels lots of power compelling everyone. Plus he’s got other objects. Three of them all in one place, yeah?”

  “Okay,” said Naelen questioningly. He wasn’t sure where I was going with this.

  “Well, I think that kind of magic can be tracked. We’d just need a mage to do a spell to try to discover it.”

  “Oh,” said Naelen. “Just a mage, huh?”

  “I know someone,” I said.

  “A mage is a human who buys talismans made from dragon parts to do magic,” said Naelen. “You want me to go talk to someone like that?”

  “This mage is different,” I said. “All her talismans were inherited.”

  “So?” he said. “So, the dragons that are dead are really old? They were still killed by people who wanted to steal magic from my people.”

  “Look, we don’t have a choice,” I said. “But I promise you that this mage is a good person.”

  “Whatever,” he muttered.

  I was quiet.

  He sighed. We pulled out onto the highway, heading back for the airport. “So, where’s this mage you know?”

  “Back in Sea City,” I said.

  “Really?” he said. “And how long is it going to take to get Cunningham’s location?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But we don’t have any other way to find him. Unless you’ve got a bright idea.”

  He was quiet.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Oh, come on. You know that you’re always the one with ideas.”

  “Guess it’s a good thing that I’ve got some other skills besides just making you want to jump my bones,” I muttered.

  “What?” He shot a glance at me. “You know that’s not true. You have all the skills. Hell, that’s probably the reason that I want to jump your bones. But I’m guessing that’s off the table now.”

  I rolled my eyes at the ceiling of the car.

  “What?” he said.

  “Look,” I said. “Despite what you may think of me, I am not one of those sluts who will crawl into your bed and then beg you for scraps the next day. I demand a little more respect than that. I’m not going to have some casual fling with you. I’m not wired that way. Sex means something to me.”

  “Yeah, you said that last night. You think it doesn’t mean anything to me?”

  “It obviously doesn’t. You’ll jump into bed with anything that moves.”

  “Hey, I do have standards.”

  “But those women are nothing to you. You don’t care about them. You only want to use them.”

  He sighed. “I want them to use me too. It’s very mutual.”

  “It’s not mutual with me,” I said. “That’s not what I want.”

  He gripped the steering wheel tight. “Oh, you want me all right. You’re lying to yourself if you think you don’t.”

  “Whether or not I have a physical reaction to your advances is irrelevant.”

  “Irrelevant? Sex is all about the physical. It’s all about feeling good. It’s natural. It’s positive. I don’t see how putting a box around it and saying you can only do it within certain boundaries does anything except make everyone frustrated.”

  I glared at him. “You can’t argue me into bed.”

  He sighed again. “I suppose not. But it is a shame, Clarke. A real damned shame that you won’t reconsider. We would both have a very good time, I swear to you.”

  “That’s not what it’s about.”

  “Right,” he said. “It’s about denying your desires and making yourself stymied and frustrated.”

  “It’s about doing it with someone who I care about, so that the whole experience isn’t hollow and cheap and tawdry.”

  He laughed. “Nothing about me is any of those things.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I don’t want to revisit this conversation again. And I don’t want you to try to sleep with me anymore.”

  “Really? I can’t even attempt to seduce you?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Message received,” he said. “I will never try to touch you ever again.”

  “Good,” I said. But when he said those words, I felt a small pang.

  * * *

  We left to go visit my mage directly from the airport after landing in Sea City. The mage’s name was Robin Harris. She lived in an old lighthouse at the border of Delaware and Maryland. That far north in the city was dragon country, but Robin didn’t mind. She was fearless. She gave tours of the lighthouse during the busy months of the season. She was a good person, not a bottom feeder like a lot of the other people in Sea City.

  She greeted us at the door to the lighthouse. “Hey, Clarke. Glad you called ahead of time, because I was going to book a tour of the lighthouse.” She was a wiry woman with dark hair—I could never tell if she dyed it black or if it was that color originally—and a big tattoo of a thorny vine with roses on it that curled over her shoulders and collar bone. She wore a white tank top and a pair of black jeans.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to be a problem.”

  “You said it was important, right? What can I do for you?” She opened the door wider to let us in.

  We stepped into the first room of the lighthouse museum, which was all decked out like it was the 1800s.

  “This is Naelen,” I said. “Naelen, this is Robin.”

  Naelen nodded at her coldly.

  Robin took a step back. “What’d I do to you?”

  “I’m a dragon,” said Naelen. “You steal magic from my kind.”

  Robin�
�s lips parted. “Hey, buddy, I don’t steal anything. My order is ancient. We’ve always been friends to the dragons. In times of need, we were called upon for help. Every talisman we own has been passed down over generations, and it was freely given to us.”

  “Sure it was,” said Naelen.

  “Your family keeps artifacts from your ancestors, right?” she said. “You know how to make talismans out of them yourself? Who do you ask to help if you want one made? Someone like me, that’s who.”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “I guess it’s true that there are members of my family who have talismans. And I have heard of using our ancestors remains for that purpose, but I’m not really that much into that magic stuff.”

  “Don’t act as if I’m part of the riffraff,” said Robin. “If you’re going to disrespect me, you can leave.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, glaring at Naelen.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “We need your help,” he mumbled.

  “Oh, you do?” said Robin. “Well, then maybe you could try asking me nicely instead of insulting me in my own home.”

  “Hey, he’s sorry,” I said. “He’s really sorry. Right, Naelen?”

  Naelen nodded, staring at his shoes.

  Robin sighed. “Sure. He looks just wrecked over it. What can I do for you, Clarke?”

  “I need a spell that will track power. A big concentration of it.”

  “How much power we talking here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…” I looked at Naelen. “Give me the arrowhead for a sec?”

  He hesitated, but then pulled it out and handed to me. “This times three,” I said, giving it to Robin.

  Robin touched it and then dropped it, letting out a funny strangled noise. “What the hell is that thing?” she said.

  I picked it up. “It’s an arrowhead.”

  “Yeah, okay, I see that, but…” She shook her head. “Damn, girl. You do get yourself into the craziest messes, don’t you?”