by Ben Reeder
“Yeah, I’m fine, sis. Are you okay?” I asked. My heart was racing, and I suppressed the urge to laugh.
“Yeah,” she said, her tone defiant. “Thanks.”
“Good. Whatever you did, you sure kicked their ass. I’m glad you’re okay. Do you remember where you felt it first?”
“Yeah, my shoulder started hurting. But Chance, you’ve gotta help those people. I could feel how much they’re hurting them. You’ve gotta help them. And one of them wanted me to tell you something.”
“They had a message?”
“Yeah, the pretty one with the dark hair. She said to search your feelings, stupid. But, she didn’t mean it like she was being mean or anything.”
“Thanks, sis,” I said. “Can you give the phone to Lucas?”
“So, was that mage enough?” Lucas asked a moment later.
“Mage enough, brother,” I said, suddenly unable to say more. “Mage enough. Can you put me on speaker?”
“You’re on the air,” Lucas said a few seconds later.
“Thank you, everyone,” I said. “I can’t say it loud enough or hard enough. Thank you.” I sniffled and someone giggled.
“Thank all of you,” Mom echoed. “You saved my little girl.” Her voice cracked, which made the tears roll down my face as well. The surge of emotions I’d felt earlier welled up inside me, and I leaned back in my chair.
“Chance?” Dee said in the awkward silence that followed. “Are you gonna kick their…butts?”
“Yeah, Dee,” I said. “They picked on my little sister. You bet I am.”
“Whatever you do to them,” Wanda said, her soft voice laced with steel, “they deserve it, and worse. So…I lend you Her Fury.” I sat up straight at that. If Wanda sounded pissed, then someone had just earned a special place in Hell. There was a rustling as someone took the phone, and I heard Shade’s voice next.
“Be careful,” she said. “I need you to come back to me.”
“I will,” I said.
“You better. I love you.”
“And I love you.”
“Chance, sweetie?” Mom’s voice came.
“Yeah, Mom.”
“Son, just let the Sentinels handle this. You’re coming home just as soon as I can get up there and pull you out of that awful place. So start packing. And we’re going to have a long talk about some of the things you and Shade are doing, young man. But…I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said.
“You’re not going to let the Sentinels handle this, are you?”
“Would you?”
Mom sighed. “Not at your age, no. And if I thought I could…no, I’d handle it myself.”
“Love you, Mom,” I said before I closed the connection. My emotions were starting to get all tangled and sentimental, but what I needed just then was the cold rage that had helped me beat Dominic King and Dulka and every other threat to my family, not this upswelling of affection for everyone close to me. I shook my head as I tried to reach for the anger that was usually so close to the surface, but it was like trying to blow up a tire with a big hole in it. No matter how mad I tried to get, the feeling just seemed out of reach.
“Search your feelings,” I said. “Right, there’s some useful advice. Why can’t it be something simple like, ‘the bad guys are here, go beat them up’ or something like that?” I said. Then I stopped and frowned. I couldn’t tap my anger, but I was getting all caught up in love. One of the primary emotions cambions couldn’t feed on. But I was a veritable buffet of strong primal feelings that she could feed on. The strange emotional numbness I’d been wallowing in since homecoming wasn’t grief. It was almost like exhaustion.
She’d taken one of her gloves off to touch my face right before she stepped out of the circle. Somehow, she’d been feeding on me the whole time.
Search your feelings, stupid. Desiree had done more than sacrifice herself to save Kiya. She had given me a direct line to her attackers.
Finally, I could go on the offensive.
“Check, assholes,” I growled.
Chapter 16
~ Know the mind of your enemy. Use his own thoughts against him. ~ The Left Hand of Death.
If anyone ever wondered why wizards act like assholes sometimes, it’s because we have to keep secrets all the damn time while still having to be as honest as we can. When Hoshi finally made it back to the room, I had to stop working on the divining spell that was supposed to help me find Desiree’s soul.
“You look a little worse for wear,” I said as he closed the door behind him. His lips were swollen and there was grass in his hair and all over his jeans.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “I look amazing. You’re just jealous because I pull this off without even trying.”
“Your shirt’s inside out,” I pointed out. He looked down at his torso, then hastily grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.
“Great, next thing you know, everyone will be doing that,” he said as he pulled his shirt back down.
“So, how’d it go?” I said, trying to sound casual. “With the water spirit, I mean.”
“I’m…not sure,” Hoshi said, his expression going serious. “I mean, I think it went good. There was this shimmery place in front of her that she talked to for about an hour.”
“But?” I said. There was a hint of loss in his voice.
“She’s probably not going to stay at Franklin. She talked about having to go gather her tools. Walking the Earth is how she described it. Can’t say I blame her. It isn’t like she’s learned much that’s really helped her here.” He sat down on the bed, for the first time since I’d met him not smiling.
“She’s a shaman,” I said as I took the desk chair on his side of the room. “This place trains wizards. I can’t see how Franklin would have much to offer her. For that matter, I’m not even sure what it offers you.”
“Same thing it teaches you. Technique. But yeah, not much on the whole how to live with a fox spirit inside me, or how to control my kitsunebi. Mostly it’s been standard wizard stuff.”
“That’s a load of crap,” I groused. “You need better training than this.”
“There is no better training than the Franklin Academy,” Hoshi said with a smile. “Says so right in the brochure.” I rolled my eyes and made a face at that.
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously, my dad thinks I’m just not applying myself, and my mother keeps telling me that I need to get all the superstition my aunt taught me out of my head.”
“Dude, you turn into a fox! I’ve watched you change.” I shook my head, unable to believe his parents could be so blind. “Your mom’s a kitsune! How does she…never mind, I shouldn’t ask.” Hoshi’s face was a mask of hurt, and I knew I had walked right up to a line and stomped around a little on the other side of it. Face burning, I got up and walked to my side of the room.
“You know, later on, when you try to apologize for this, I’m gonna tell you that you didn’t do anything wrong,” he finally said. “I just wanted to get that out of the way before you said something and things got awkward.”
“I had no business saying that,” I said.
“Man, you just say what I’ve been thinking my whole life. I just never did actually say it.”
“I’m not real sure I even did.”
“No,” he said. He sighed and leaned forward. “My dad’s Japanese but Mom’s Chinese. Chinese kitsune aren’t as…popular as Japanese. Their name, huli jing, it’s like calling a woman a homewrecker in Mandarin and Cantonese. So my mom didn’t tell my dad she wasn’t human until after I was born. He didn’t deal with it very well. So she does everything she can to act like she’s human. I’m not sure if sending me here was to pretend I was a mage or to get me out of sight so Dad would forget.”
“Or both,” I said.
He nodded and leaned back. “You know what I want to do? Call my mom’s best friend and see if she still wants to teach me. If she’ll still talk to
me.”
“Is she a kitsune, too?”
“Yeah. Mom stopped talking to most of her kitsune friends right after I was born, but she made her best friend my kai ma.”
“Kai ma?” I asked.
“It’s like a god mother,” he said. “She asked me if I wanted to learn what it meant to be kitsune one day when I was like nine, but Mom told her no.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I said. “Call her and ask.”
His phone beeped at him, and he smiled when he checked the screen. “Kiya,” he said as he held the phone up, then turned his attention to tapping out a reply. I left him to that and went back to my clandestine plans.
My phone buzzed in my hand, waking me from the fitful sleep I’d been in. I turned it toward my face to see the time, and breathed a sigh of relief. In place of my usual horrors, I’d dreamt at least twice that I’d woken up late, and I’d awakened several times afraid of that very thing, only to check my phone and discover it was still early. The heavy quilt slid off my legs as I got up, still in my cargo pants and black t-shirt. Junkyard raised his head and looked at me from the bed.
“Need you to stay here this time, buddy,” I said. He lowered his head to his front paws and gave me the sad puppy eyes, but I shook my head and grabbed my leather jacket and my combat boots. The hardwood floors were cold even through my socks as I slipped out into the hallway. Once I had my coat on, I headed for the stairwell. I didn’t put my boots on until I was out the front door.
Ren flew down and landed on the stone as I was tying the laces on the second boot, his wings muted. “I hate fall and winter,” he said. He pitched his voice softly.
“Fall isn’t so bad in Missouri,” I said, my own breath misting in the cold air.
“So, how do you plan on finding…by the way, what are you even looking for?”
“Souls, one in particular. That’s been what these people have been after this whole time. But it didn’t really hit me that I might be able to find them until I figured out that Desiree was still feeding on me.” I pulled one of the little gemstones from my pocket. I’d attached a length of string to it to make it into an improvised pendulum.
“Really?” Ren said. He lifted into the air and followed me down the steps. “What does that have to do with being able to find them?”
“It means that they’re not consuming them yet. They’re storing them.” The pendulum hung straight down for a moment. When I sent a flow of magick through it, it began to spin in a slow circle.
“But how do you track someone else’s soul?” Ren asked.
“You don’t. I’m tracking mine.” With nothing but my own energy to work from, the stone started to swing in narrower circuits, until one end of its arc pointed across the quad, straight at the Denham Building. “Come on,” I said.
I took off at a jog across the quad, my boots making only the slightest bit of noise as I ran. Ren flew ahead, his wings a whisper in the predawn air. When I got there, he had the door open for me, and I slipped inside. This time, when I dropped the pendulum, the stone began to float the moment I ran magick through it.
“What the…” Ren said, then went silent as it pointed up and to the right.
“Okay,” I said under my breath. “That rules out secret rituals in the basement.”
“I would have known about those,” Ren said. We took the stairs up to the second floor, and the pendulum still shot upward. It did the same on the third floor. On the fourth floor, the angle was more shallow, but it still pointed up.
“Ooookay,” I whispered. “How do we get into the attic?”
“This way,” Ren said. He flew down the hallway and stopped at the door of a classroom. “I’ll be right back.” He sped off, and I reached into the pocket of my jacket to grab my chameleon amulet. I watched the world shimmer once I activated it, and then settled down to wait. A few minutes later, the door clicked open, and Ren zipped out into the hallway. I turned my head toward him, and the world came back into focus. I followed him into the room, and he zipped straight back to the supply closet. Four classrooms fed into the diamond shaped room, with doors opening onto two different hallways. Ren pointed to one wall, where I could see a wooden ladder affixed. I climbed up the ladder and pushed the thick wooden hatch up. It moved with surprising ease, and I grabbed my wand in alarm.
When no one attacked me, I stuck my head up into the room, and saw that the hatch was on a counterweight system. Ren rocketed past me as I climbed up, returning just as I was standing up straight.
“Over here,” he said, then zipped off toward a door. I followed, and found my hand hesitating at the door knob. My heart was beating faster and the bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach as I felt the adrenaline surge through me. When I moved my hand another inch toward the door, every finger began to shake and curl up like claws, and my skin felt like it was trying to crawl up my arm. For a split second, I considered opening my mystic senses, but just making myself aware of them made my stomach turn.
“You feel it, too,” Ren said from over my shoulder. “What in the Nine Hells is it?”
“Nothing good,” I said. My fight or flight reaction was getting worse, and I was having to concentrate to keep my breathing steady. Great, I thought. Fight or flight, and I can barely touch the part that says ‘fight.’ “I need something positive, something Desiree can’t feed on, so I can make myself open this door.”
“Like positive feelings?”
“Exactly.”
“Not exactly familiar territory for you, huh?” Ren mused. “Well, let’s see, there’s confidence, faith, love, compa-”
“Wait, go back,” I said. “Confidence…”
“Faith and love.”
“Faith and love,” I said. “She lent me Her Fury.” Wanda’s Goddess had lent me Her wrath once. I couldn’t tap the anger, because it had to come from outside of me, but the motivation came from something Desiree couldn’t feed on. Love. Every amazing, terrible thing that I’d ever done, I realized, had come from that. I’d survived the fight with Dominic King to free Shade and the rest of her Pack. I’d pulled the trigger and killed him to save my mom and my sister. Defied the entire Conclave to save Wanda. And I’d put myself back in my father’s and Dulka’s clutches to protect my friends. And right now, my friend’s soul was on the other side of the door in front of me.
Now, the hard thing was going to be using my hand to open the door, instead of my foot or a magickal battering ram. Flesh still crawling, I reached for the door knob and turned it, ready for any chamber of horrors that might be waiting for me.
The room on the other side was…tidy. Clinical. A circular table had been set up in the middle of the room. Thirteen crystals were set into smaller circles on the outer edge of the table. Seven of them glowed. A set of three chalkboards were mounted on the far wall, covered in writing. The two on the left and right were magickal formulae, while the one in the middle held only one thing on its green surface: a circle. Chalk dust marred the board where parts had been erased and redone. A writing desk had been set up between the chalk boards and the circular table, and I could see metallic sheets laid out on it. On the right, jars held alchemical agents and tools, and on the left…
“Mammon,” I said as I walked toward the altar.
“He’s bad, right?” Ren asked.
“He is the horror Sleeping C’tolsh Moloch serves,” I said as I pulled my phone out. “He was what was waiting in the Abyss when the Morning Star was cast into it.”
“Wow…he’s been around for a while. But shouldn’t you be careful about saying those names out loud?”
“Maybe,” I said as I took a step back from the altar. Now I had several pictures of it, I turned and snapped one of the blackboards and the central table. As much as I wanted to lay waste to the altar, I still had other problems to deal with. Like how to get seven souls back into their bodies. “He was cast into a prison after the Light Bringer took over the Nine Hells. Him and all the things that served him. You c
an’t summon him; not even with a full circle, a sacrifice and a lawyer.”
I turned my attention to the circle of crystals on the table. Each one was labeled, and each one had smaller crystals set around it. I could feel the power pressing against my mystic senses as I got closer, even with them intentionally dormant. The cards by each soul container were written in a precise hand, with detailed descriptions of strengths, date taken, etc. Everything about them as there, except one thing.
No names.
With all of the info presented, the names had been left off. Each one was labeled Subject, and then a number. They’d been stripped of as much of their humanity as possible. Truth was, if I were ripping someone’s soul out of their body, I’d want to avoid looking at what I’d done, and l sure as the Nine Hells wouldn’t want to know who I was screwing over.
An arc of dark purple energy jumped from the crystal I was in front of when I tried to touch it, leaving my right hand numb. I turned my hand to look at it, revealing an angry red welt.
“Their shields too strong, Keptin,” I said in a bad Russian accent.
“Now what?” Ren asked.
“I find a way to get stronger.” I moved around the table until I found myself looking at a subject who displayed high levels of empathy and Infernal magick. Even in my pocket, I could feel the pendulum tug at my jacket. Now it was time to use some of the minor magicks I’d been learning in Evocation class.
“Manus protegat, et absorbuit,” I said softly, then put my now shielded hands toward the crystal. Like before, dark purple energy reached out as my hands got close. Instead of flinching away, I let the variant of the shield spell absorb the energy and put my thumbs and index fingers together, then pulled them apart, creating a sheet of purple in the open space between them. “Dicere intra,” I intoned.
“Chance!” Desiree’s voice came through. Light purple static formed into a rough semblance of her face. “Listen to me. We don’t have much time. I can’t fight my way out of this. There are too many of them holding us in. You’ve got to cut them off from the circle somehow.”
