A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  Darkness was falling, but unlike home where the autumn chill had started to set in, the weather was still fairly decent here in Rome. The garden was lit with strings of twinkling lights, and we could hear faint violin music a few houses over, which might have been cheesy if it wasn’t so pretty. If you ignored the fact that Sveta had spent a good hour warding all the doors and windows, and was currently slumped over her plate like she might pass out face first into her pasta, it would have been the start of an amazing vacation.

  Cameron appeared from inside, having dropped his gear off presumably, and eyed the idyllic scene. “How on earth can you eat that much and still be so skinny?”

  “I’m wiry,” I informed him, and made a show of licking the remnants of my dinner off my fork. “And it takes a lot of food to power this much awesome.”

  “Did you leave any, Mr. Awesome?” Cam took a seat between the pair of us, tilting his head at Sveta in concern. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine,” I said, just as she growled something at him in Ukrainian without raising her head. “The wards drained her.”

  “I saw. They’re impressive.”

  Cam was right. Sveta had laid down the protections extra thick, and if I left my eyes unfocused, I could see the ice blue layer of spellwork across the narrow doorway in the garden wall directly across from us. Of course, the wall was only about ten feet tall, so if something truly bad wanted at us, it wasn’t going to bother with the door. In the interest of my own personal safety and child-fathering capabilities, I hadn’t pointed this out to Sveta.

  “You might wanna go over it, too. Can’t be too careful.” The more magic users involved, the harder it was to bust through the wards. Of course, that hadn’t done a thing to protect my house.

  Cam nodded, helping himself to dinner, which was in truth enough to feed an army, not just the four of us. “I’ll do that after I eat. I haven’t had anything since the flight.”

  Hunh. I hadn’t either, I realized, which probably explained the sudden onset of gluttony. “So, how was your meeting with your bigwigs, or whatever? Any word on when they’ll see us?”

  The priest shook his head until he could swallow his mouthful of food. “No. It’s still being passed up through the channels. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy involved.”

  “Yeah, not like this is an actual emergency or anything.” I ran my hand over my face, scratching at the reddish stubble on my cheeks, and Sveta grunted something that might have been an agreement.

  “They’ll come through, Jesse. I promise. Just…give them time.”

  “So what do we do in the meantime? Sit here with our thumbs up our butts?” Cam gave me a chiding look at my crude language, but I didn’t particularly care.

  “Well, I thought maybe you’d want to do some sightseeing tomorrow. You’ve never been to Rome, right?”

  I raised a brow at him. “You seriously want us to go play tourist?”

  He shrugged, shoveling in another fork full of food. “You want to sit here all day and brood? I have a friend who lives here, and she said she’d meet us in the morning, show us around a little.”

  Sveta mumbled something again, that sounded vaguely like “Can we carry weapons?”

  “What she said.”

  “Well, no. Swords tend to draw the same attention here that they do in the States.” Despite the fact that she was barely conscious, Sveta managed a smirk, and Cam nodded a little to concede her silent point. “So no visible weapons.”

  “We should find a place here to hide the crates. Don’t want anyone getting nosey while we’re out.” I hated leaving my gear behind, but chain mail armor and a katana didn’t exactly blend. “Let’s gather them up, see if we can find a place large enough for three cases.”

  “Two cases. I left mine at the chapter house.” Sveta raised her head and we both looked at him like he’d lost his damn mind. Bad things were coming for me, and he left his sword behind? Cam hunched his shoulders under our gazes. “It’s required. I have to turn it in when I’m here. It’s not like it’s mine, after all.”

  “Whoa, wait, explain that. Your sword isn’t yours?” I leaned forward, resting my arms on the table. My swords were a part of me, like my arm or my leg. It had broken my heart when I’d shattered my first one, and if I lost The Way now, I’d be devastated. Or at least really pissed off.

  “It belongs to the Church, to the Order. Most of the weapons that we use are hundreds of years old, passed from brother to brother. We don’t get to keep them.”

  “So you just like, check them out? Like at the library?”

  “Something like that, yes. We are assigned equipment, based on our level of experience and the duty which we are about to perform. For example, I’m assigned a basic, utilitarian sword. Someone who has been with the Order longer might be assigned one of the true holy artifacts that we have, something with actual power forged into the blade.” When we kept staring at him, he hunched his shoulders a little defensively. “They claim that they have one with a nail from Christ’s cross forged into the hilt, but I haven’t seen it myself. It could just be something they tell novices, for fun.”

  Sveta snorted, managing to sit upright finally. “So you are saying that they do not consider you to be worthy of a valuable weapon.”

  “Well…sort of.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “A year ago, when they told you all to come out and watch over Ivan’s champions, they sent a rookie to protect my ass. Great.”

  The priest shot me a small frown. “That’s not true. I have combat experience. Just not as much as some others. A sword with true power can do so much more in the hands of an experienced wielder. It’s not that I’m not worthy, it’s just that there are others who are greater…” He paused, glancing between Sveta and me. “What?”

  “You are not worthy.” Sveta smirked.

  I nodded my agreement with her. “Totally not worthy.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Cam’s dark brows drew together in annoyance.

  “Say what?” Sveta gave him a sweet grin, so he didn’t even see it until he’d walked into it.

  “I’m not worthy.” The dark haired woman smirked at him in satisfaction, and he sighed. “That’s not… I didn’t say it…”

  “You’re supposed to bow when you say that,” I informed him, demonstrating the universal motion for unworthiness.

  Sveta’s snort turned into a snicker, which made me chuckle, which made her giggle, and then we were both laughing helplessly. I couldn’t even explain now why it was so funny, except maybe to blame it on the jet lag. Even Cam joined in a little at the end, when we’d almost gotten ourselves back under control.

  “I’m totally getting you a shirt that says that.” There, Christmas shopping done for Cam. I felt accomplished already. It also occurred to me that I was treating the priest like I would any of my other buddies. Insults were the same as terms of endearment to us. If I didn’t insult you, I probably didn’t like you. Hunh. When I had I started liking Cameron?

  Perhaps having the same realization I’d just come to, Cameron only rolled his eyes at our jibes and continued to tuck into the amazing food. Sveta finally pushed her chair back and staggered off toward her room, and I wasn’t sure if that counted as conceding defeat, or an epic triumph just for being mobile. Soon, the priest followed along behind her, saying something about starting with the front door. That left me all alone in the pretty little garden, surrounded by the songs of night birds and the scent of some kind of late-blooming flower.

  It was beautiful, and I found myself wishing that Mira could have come with me. A nice Italian getaway, maybe, when this was all over. Something for just the two of us.

  Relaxed and weary as I was, I should have been expecting the soul-sight to wash over my eyes, should have been on guard against it. But the enhanced vision sprang up into my senses without warning, and suddenly the entire garden was awash in star-spangles of light.

  My own arms were wrapp
ed in lacy tendrils of gold, delicate and iron-strong at the same time, and for a moment, I smelled strawberries. Mira… I was never alone, not really. My wife’s touch followed me across continents.

  Once I was able to drag my eyes away from the magic woven around my person, Sveta’s wards on the rear gate were the brightest source of light, fresh and new and almost pulsing with a heartbeat I couldn’t explain. I could see the very fabric of her spells, pick out the razor sharp edges she’d woven into their making. Any person with ill-intent who crossed that barrier was going to be damn sorry. It was a vicious piece of art, lethal and blindingly beautiful all at once. Part of me registered that one corner had frayed, just slightly near the top, and I reached out a hand to smooth the magic down before I remembered that I shouldn’t. The magic in me wasn’t mine to spend, and I forcefully sat on my own hands to keep it from happening again.

  Still, it didn’t stop my eyes from wandering, drinking in every texture, every miniscule waft of night air, every breath of every plant that surrounded me. And as I examined the rock walls that enclosed this sanctuary, I realized that I was seeing magic, embedded deep within the stone itself. That had me on my feet again, and I pressed both hands to the wall, soaking in the sensation of crystalized rock beneath my fingertips.

  It was in everything. The rock of the wall, the paving tiles beneath my boots, the cobblestones outside in the street, the very pillars and posts of every house around us. Magic, so old and so faded as to make its origin an unsolvable mystery. Power that had simply soaked into the environment over decades, centuries, more.

  And why shouldn’t it? Rome had been the place of miracles, of religious faith and pagan magics for millennia. No doubt, the land itself was charged with the remnants of so many spells, so many lives and souls, and the moment I had that thought, I was spiraling down through the rock wall, senses seeking, searching for—

  “Jesse?”

  At a very great distance, I heard someone say my name. I ignored it, faintly annoyed that someone was trying to distract me from my journey.

  “Jesse!” It came again, closer, and this time I was vaguely aware that something was touching…my shoulder? For a moment, I struggled to remember what a shoulder was, or why I knew what being touched there felt like.

  “Slap him.” A woman’s voice. I knew that voice. It was ice blue, like the floodlight of magic off to my right.

  “Jess, c’mon man.” Something patted my face, not a slap exactly, but it stung a little.

  It was the pain that brought me back. I found myself blinking, nose nearly pressed against the garden wall that was nothing but rock and mortar after all. Strong hands gripped both my shoulders, and those proved to belong to Cameron. Sensing that I was perhaps more aware now, he gently tugged me back from the wall.

  “Easy…” I wanted to scoff at his concern, but my knees had other plans. They buckled beneath me as I tried to take my first step, and if not for the priest’s quick reaction, I would have hit the ground in an undignified heap. “Bring a chair.”

  There was a gawd-awful clatter as one of the dining chairs was dragged over and I was unceremoniously dumped into it. Cameron crouched down, peering up in to my eyes closely. “You in there?”

  “Yeah.” My voice sounded gravelly, and my throat felt dry. “What happened?”

  Cam glanced over my shoulder to the person behind me – Sveta, I realized, the source of the frosty blue voice – then sighed, rubbing his face with one hand. “Thought you could tell us. I don’t know how long you were there before I found you, but you’ve been standing at that wall for at least forty-five minutes.”

  How long? I frowned, glancing back at Sveta. “What time is it?”

  “Ten thirty.”

  I frowned. That couldn’t be right. I’d stood up to look at the wall, right after Cam left the dinner table, and that had been around seven. “Shit. Three hours. I lost three hours.” What if Cameron hadn’t found me? What if he’d gone to bed, after warding the front of the property, and I’d continued to just stand, lost in the pretty sparkles within the garden wall?

  What if Reina had come, while I was spelunking through ancient magic?

  I raked my hand through my long hair, relieved when it stayed just hair and didn’t devolve into an in-depth study of each individual strand. Damn, that had been a bad one. I hadn’t had an episode that bad since the beginning, when the souls were all still fresh in my skin.

  “How many fingers?” Cameron held up three in front of my eyes, and I gave him a glare.

  “One less, if you don’t get them out of my face.” I shoved his hand away and leaned forward, focusing my eyes on the tiles beneath my feet, taking a few deep breaths. “I’m fine, really. Just…need to sleep, I think.” That was it. It was just the jet lag catching up to me, bringing my defenses down.

  “Help me,” Cam said, and with no more warning than that, I was hauled to my feet, Cam under one arm and Sveta under the other. I tried to protest that I could walk just fine on my own, thank you very much, but once again my legs betrayed me, and left me to be half carried to my room.

  The bed was still as sinfully fluffy and welcoming as it had been earlier, and my eyes closed the moment I was horizontal. “You!” I managed to point in Cam’s general direction, even without sight. “Call Doctor Bridget, or I’ll kick your ass.”

  I heard him snort. “In your condition?”

  I had to concede that point. “Call Doctor Bridget or Sveta will kick your ass.”

  “I will.”

  “Sveta!” For a moment, I wasn’t sure I’d managed to actually speak – things were getting a little gray around the edges – but then the bed sagged near my head as she sat next to me.

  “Yes?”

  “The garden door…spell is frayed at the corner…fix it.” I was inordinately proud of myself for recalling that, salvaging at least one good thing out of my lost hours. “And kick Cam’s ass.”

  “I will see to it. Sleep.” The bed rocked a little, and I assumed she was gone.

  I heard a brief discussion at my door, knew that Sveta or Cam would be coming to check on me every few hours, and I simply didn’t care. Darkness came, and it was blessedly free of magical stars.

  The problem is, the darkness never stayed dark for me anymore. Things waited for me there, with glowing red eyes and sharp fangs. Claws raked over my body, spilling my blood in a hot flood, ripping out my guts to land with disturbingly realistic plopping noises at my feet. Hordes of tiny scrap demons swarmed over me, devouring me cell by cell. A gaunt figure bounded from somewhere above me, missing one entire arm and her opposite hand, but blunt teeth closing around my throat all the same. A grotesque, mutated thing lumbered through my vision, madness and murder in its once-human eyes. And the looming white-furred Yeti howled just out of my sight, promising that its turn was coming.

  Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t pull myself out of my night terrors, and so they went on and on and on for what seemed like eons. At least it was just me, and not my family. My pain I could stand, but theirs…I think it might have driven me insane to be trapped like that, watching them die in front of me.

  When the tunnel dream arrived, it was almost a relief. At least there, I knew I wasn’t going to be torn to shreds every time the cycle reset.

  As always, I stepped out of the tunnel, the ground beneath my feet changing from concrete to hard packed earth. Behind me, the air reeked of desperation and despair. Before me, the field – or whatever it was – spread out, empty and barren. There was no light, no moon or stars that I could find, and yet I could see with startling clarity. At the far end of the expanse, there was nothing. I was alone.

  And I stepped out of the tunnel, walking a few feet forward, and the other end of the arena – Arena? When did I know it was an arena? – was occupied by a lone figure, tall and slender but swathed in shadows. I’d known it would be there, or that it wouldn’t, and couldn’t tell if this was good, or bad. Behind me, the air stank of pain and fear.


  And I stepped out of the tunnel, onto an empty plain of solid earth, the tip of my sword scratching a tiny furrow because I was simply too tired to hold it up any longer. The sky overhead was black in a way that I had never in my life seen, and the silence pressed on my ears until it hurt. There was no one waiting at the other end of the field, and while I wasn’t surprised, I was disappointed.

  And I stepped out of the tunnel again. And again and again and again, as if someone kept hitting the “back” button and playing the clip over. Sometimes, the mysterious figure was there, more often, it wasn’t, and neither outcome seemed to offer any better result than the other. I could never see well enough to tell who or what it was, and I was never able to turn around to see what was behind me that drove me from my place of shelter, time and again.

  Dawn came, the sun crested the horizon, and my eyes snapped open like I’d had an alarm set. The room glowed with a white light that emanated from my own skin, my bare chest covered in white soul tattoos. (When did someone take my shirt off, and why don’t I remember that?) By that light, I surveyed my surroundings, finding them unfamiliar, but safe. Gradually, my mind recalled the bed and breakfast in Rome, the weapons case stashed under my bed, the suitcase in the corner. Italy. I was in Italy. I took a few deep breaths, calming my racing heart by sheer force of will, and the protective souls slowly receded back to their proper places on my back. Bit by bit, the light dimmed, until I was left with just the faint traces of morning sun, creeping like mist through my single window.

  Raising a hand, I rubbed at my face, partly to reassure myself that it was still there. Narrow nose, slightly lumpy from a long-ago break? Check. Beard-stubbly jaw? Check. Rock hard skull? Got it.

  What a gawd-awful night. If anything, I felt worse now than before. Nothing like running marathons in your dreams to start your day off on every single wrong note.

  Mira was right. We couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t keep doing this. If nothing else, the PTSD was going to have me lashing out with magic in my sleep, and not only would someone near and dear to me get hurt, but one of the souls within my body would get burned up, killing whoever it belonged to. Two hundred and seventy-five souls could cause a metric fuck-ton of damage, as I’d been given to understand, not to mention that it was a helluva lot of murder. I was a ticking bomb, just waiting for the right detonator. These things had to go, and sooner rather than later. For everyone’s safety.