by S. C. Stokes
Mindful of the fact that Akihiro was slipping away with every moment, Kasey raised both hands and bellowed, “Pêl Tân.”
Fire leapt from her outstretched hands. The blaze closed the distance between her and the Shinigami acolyte. Before the flames could strike their target, an emerald latticework of energy spread before them. The latticework raced outward with the Shinigami acolyte at its center. The latticework spread until it stretched from him to fill the door frame. The Shinigami and his shield now completely obscured the path forward.
Kasey's enchantment washed over the latticework but faded, leaving the shield intact.
"He is blocking the Master’s escape," Sanders shouted above the fray. “We need to break through, and we need to do it now. Agents, give it everything you've got."
Sanders and his army of agents unleashed their arcane might on the barrier.
One agent leveled a bolt of lightning at the barrier. Others sent lances of arcane energy of varying shades. Kasey understood their intent at once. Utilizing a shield enchantment drained the energy of the user. The more energy that was deflected, the greater the strain on the magic user. No wizard could hold out indefinitely. Even the most powerful ward would eventually fail as its caster succumbed to fatigue.
Outnumbered dozens to one, the acolyte’s sacrifice was inevitable. He was fighting a losing battle. It was his life in exchange for his master. Kasey watched as the acolyte began to sweat. Agent after agent blasted away at the barrier, two or three enchantments at a time. Worry wrinkles formed on the acolyte’s brow as the strain of maintaining the spell increased.
Kasey hurled another fireball at the barrier.
The latticework slowly dimmed. The acolyte was shaking visibly and sweat ran down his brow. His smile was gone now. He knew his fate was set in stone.
Seeing the fatigue, Kasey summoned her energy once more and bellowed, “Anymwybodol.”
She hurled the sleep enchantment at the Shinigami. Eventually, the shield would break but Kasey hoped a less direct assault might slip through the wavering ward. The unseen energy rolled toward the Shinigami like an ocean tide. Slowly, inexorably, it moved onward. Then, it struck him.
The Shinigami faltered. His hands dropped to his side. His eyes closed as he teetered on his feet. His knees gave out and he dropped. Before he could hit the ground, the next agent’s spell struck him. The lightning bolt took him in the torso and passed through him, grounding itself at his feet. There was enough power to stop his heart instantly. The Shinigami was dead before he hit the ground.
The shield disappeared completely.
Kasey ran forward. Leaving the agents to deal with the remnants of the Shinigami forces, she raced through the door the acolyte had died guarding. Footsteps pounded behind her, and she turned. Sanders was hot on his heels.
"Don't worry, it's just me. Let’s take him," Sanders said.
Kasey nodded and lengthened her stride. Akihiro was close; she could feel it. The greatest threat the city had ever known, he'd been exposed and now he lay within her grasp. It was time to end him and his plot once and for all.
She sprinted along the corridor. It was unfurnished. Painted bricks lined the walls, an interesting contrast to the old linoleum surface of the floors.
Straight ahead hung a sign: City Hall.
Sanders guess had been right. The Master of the Shinigami was taking the most direct exit and making for the street.
Kasey threw open a steel door. It resembled a fire exit. The door opened onto a landing with a set of concrete stairs leading upward.
She began racing up them two at a time. She panted as she climbed flight after flight of concrete stairs. Reaching the third floor above the Underpass, she came to an unlabeled door. Opening it, she found herself in an office. The room was furnished but a thin layer of dust coating the desk told her it hadn't been used in years.
Sanders was right behind her. The door clicked shut, and Kasey realized it had locked.
Leaving the office, Kasey sprinted down the hall. City Hall was deserted. Together, they made quick progress towards the exit. Reaching the lobby, Kasey stopped dead. The historic and pristine entrance to City Hall had been destroyed. The iconic doors had been blasted off their hinges and lay shattered in the entryway.
The Shinigami acolytes had made a direct assault. The lobby had been utterly destroyed. Bodies lay everywhere. One head had been severed from its body. Another had been cleft in twain. Two of the bodies looked like they had been cooked alive, while another appeared to have been crushed until his entire body had been compressed until it was the same shape and size as a basketball.
"What happened here?" Kasey asked, studying the bodies. “These don't look like the ADI."
They were dressed in black from head to toe and wearing bullet-proof vests. The group carried an assortment of automatic weapons.
"Are they Shinigami?” she asked, bending down to check their forearms for tattoos. There was nothing. “No, whoever these men were, they were not with the Shinigami.”
Sanders crouched over a lifeless body that stared vacantly at the ceiling.
"These are Hades’ men. It seems they set their ambush here, but the Master was ready for them.”
Kasey shook her head at the utter brutality of the assault. “I thought you said there were a dozen. Where are the rest?"
"I'm not sure,” Sanders replied, scratching his head. “They should be here.”
Shouting flooded in from the street. There was screaming, blaring car horns, and what sounded like a veritable stampede of people. Kasey raced through the destroyed lobby of City Hall, headed for the street.
She came out at the top of the stairs. Below, madness unfolded in downtown Manhattan. Two police cars were on fire. Nearby, one of the officers lay dead beside the open squad car’s door.
She darted down the stairs. The ADI agents who had stood guard at City Hall’s entrance lay dead on the ground. Both of them were riddled with bullets. The Shinigami had taken no prisoners in their breach.
All about her, pedestrians were milling about in panic. Kasey looked down Broadway Avenue. A crowd of pedestrians were fleeing toward her.
Beyond them, more than a dozen people hovered in the air.
Kasey tried to push northward up the street, but the throng of people rushing toward her threatened to crush her in the stampede.
A hand on her shoulder pulled her off the sidewalk and out of the path of the oncoming mob.
“It's no good, Kasey,” Sanders said. “If you try to fight that, you'll be trampled to death. That, or you'll have to blast your way through innocent people.”
Kasey studied the figures twisting and turning in the air and realized what they were. Several of them were the missing men from Hades’ hit squad. At least three of them were wearing police uniforms. Others appeared to be innocent bystanders. All of them danced and turned in the air like puppets on a string.
Kasey felt for them. She'd been caught in the same enchantment only minutes ago and knew the utter helplessness of their situation.
Akihiro was terrorizing his way through downtown New York. The throng of traffic fleeing from him was too great. They would never catch up to him in time.
Kasey watched as the poor bystanders were caught in the brutal display.
With a collective scream, the floating figures plunged to the ground. They struck the road with a sickening thud.
The crowd cried out as it ran in every direction.
As the stampede thinned, Kasey and Sanders fought their way through the last vestiges of the mob. It was like swimming against the tide.
At last they found themselves at the intersection of Broadway and Chambers Street, where the bodies of those who had been tortured by Akihiro lay broken and discarded in the center of the street.
The Master of the Shinigami and his followers were nowhere to be seen.
Kasey and Sanders stood shaking their heads.
"Where is he?" Kasey asked.
"I have no idea,” Sanders r
eplied. “Doubtless he escaped in the chaos. There were thousands of people here. We need to face the truth. He's already gone.”
Kasey slammed her hand on the hood of a parked taxi. They had been so close and yet he'd slipped through their fingers once more.
Sanders put his hand on her shoulder. "It’s alright, Kasey. We’ll get him yet. He's lost the council and he's been severely weakened. It's not all lost. We'll hunt him down."
"We're running out of time." Kasey dropped her face into her hands. “Any day now, they will destroy the city. Now that they know we are after them, it could happen any day. For all we know, it could be today. We need to stop him now!”
Sanders shook his head. "No, Kasey. Believe it or not, we have a bigger problem than the Shinigami."
Kasey looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that.” Sanders pointed to a half-dozen youths who stood filming the intersection on their smart phones.
Kasey's heart sank as the realization set in. The Shinigami’s slaughter had happened in the middle of Manhattan in broad daylight. Not just the youths but doubtless hundreds if not thousands of others would have captured it on their cell phones. Any moment now, the footage would be all over the Internet.
The World of Magic was no longer a secret. Everyone with a screen and an internet connection would soon know about it. Their way of life, their society, everything they knew, had been exposed by the Master of the Shinigami in his sudden flight.
Today it was New York, but soon news would spread to the entire world. If the chaos unfolding around them was any indication, the world was not ready for wizardry.
"What do we do?” Kasey asked.
"There is nothing we can do. Even with the resources of the ADI, there is no way for us to stop it now. All we can do is try to contain with the fallout.”
"New York City is a tinderbox on the best of days,” Kasey replied. “Akihiro just struck a match and set it alight.”
"So it seems,” Sanders replied. “The Shinigami are more than willing to watch the world burn along with everyone in it. New York and the world as we know it, is about to draw its last breath.”
Kasey shook her head. "No, Sanders. I won't give in. Not now. Not when we are so close. I'll take that last breath and hunt him down. Him, his cabal of murdering sociopaths, his plot to destroy the city. I'm going to end it all. Even if it's the last thing I ever do."
Book 6 One Last Breath, the thrilling conclusion to the series will be available shortly. Join my Fantasy Fanatics for the new release announcements.
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A Note From The Author
Fellow Fantasy Fans,
I hope you got a thrill out of One Last Breath. It was certainly one of the most challenging novels for me to write so far. The decision to bring the World of Magic into the open was not one that I took lightly, but one I feel will expand the world in ways you are yet to even imagine.
The exciting conclusion to the Conjuring A Coroner series, Until My Dying Day will see Kasey on a collision course with her nemesis, The Master Of The Shinigami. Kasey may no longer be a fugitive, but time is running out fast. Can Kasey stop him before he sets the city ablaze?
I guess you’ll have to wait and see.
Until next time!
S. C. Stokes
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“Oh yes, Durales told me about your little trick with the fire,” the slaver answered. “Unfortunately for you, those chains were forged by dwarven folk with a talent for rune work. You aren’t the first magician we’ve bound, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Save your strength, you’ll need it for the slave pits. Don't worry, if Eleen blesses our voyage, we’ll be there in less than a month.”
Syrion could not contain himself. Despite the pain, he burst out laughing so hard that he staggered in his cell. The slavers looked on in slack-jawed amazement; in all their years they had seen newly captured prizes react to their lower station in many ways: fear, anger, uncontrollable weeping, they had even been spurned and spat upon. Never had they been laughed at.
The first mate Durales turned to the captain: “Perhaps I hit him too hard and he’s gone mad. It’s happened before.”
“It’s possible,” the Captain mused. “Boy, what is so funny? Care to share it with the rest of us?”
Syrion endeavored to compose himself but contented himself with getting out a few syllables between bursts of laughter. “You said Eleen . . . bless our voyage,”
Durales began nodding, content that his assessment was correct, and Syrion had indeed been rendered witless by the blow to his head.
“I did,” replied the captain. “Pray tell, why is that so funny?”
Syrion answered, his countenance slowly changing from mirth to menace: “It’s just the goddess whose name you invoked, you called her Eleen, the Patron Saint of Sailors, right? Mistress of the Wind, Soul of the Storm and the embodiment of Nature’s Wrath— that Eleen, right?”
“Aye, one and the same, boy. Still doesn’t explain the laughter.” The captain grunted.
Syrion met his captor's gaze, “Her name is rendered differently by the Valaar. They call her Elaina, and she is my mother. When she discovers I am missing and tracks me to this ship, your blessed voyage is going to come to a world-shattering end.”
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