“I swear, Mage,” Lash moved to kick Aderyn’s leg away from the gas pedal again, “I will saw your leg from your body if you don’t—GEEZ!” The car swerved again as Lash worked to take one of the otherwise gentle turns that the road took. “Of course we come across one of the only bends in the road now,” he grumbled.
“T-try…pay-ing…atten-tion…” Aderyn croaked.
Lash growled under his breath. “Is he really copping a ’tude with me right now.”
Groaning and finally getting the bulk of Aderyn’s upper body into the backseat, albeit at an awkward and likely uncomfortable angle, she began working to clear the rest of the driver’s seat for Lash.
“Given the circumstances,” she called ahead around grunts, “I’m going to have to agree with him. This isn’t pleasant for anybody, but if you don’t focus then we might not get through this.”
Growling, Lash threw the car into neutral and worked to stand to pull the rest of Aderyn’s body into the backseat. Then, free of the burden, he dropped himself into the seat, adjusted the back so that it was in place, set the car back into gear, and began to slow the car while taking them onto the shoulder.
Panting, Lash threw the car into park and glared over his shoulder. “He’d better be dying back there,” he declared, brandishing his Bowie knife for effect. “Because if he ain’t, he’s about to be.”
Chapter 13
“Too far…from th-the others,” Aderyn tried to explain.
Lash shook his head. “You know,” he said with a sigh, “it’s really annoying to try to make sense of what you’re saying with you talking that way.”
Aderyn glared at him, the pain making his stiff body shake.
Ana was reminded of tree branches in a breeze.
“Stick that knife of y-yours…into your b-belly,” Aderyn said, every syllable sounding like an excruciating effort. “See…how you…sound.”
“Enough,” Ana snapped, holding up both of her hands for quiet. “Neither of you is helping.” Then, looking down at Aderyn, whose head was cradled between her knees so he could look up at the two of them, she said, “Too far from the others? The mages, you mean? Is this happening because you’re away from them?”
Seeming relieved that he wouldn’t have to say all of that, Aderyn nodded.
“Why should that matter?” Lash asked.
“Mages…strengthen…one another,” Aderyn explained. “Cl-closer, stron-ger; f-fa-farther…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lash nodded. “Farther, weaker. I get it. But why you going catatonic on us? We just left that pocket place.”
Ana bit her lip. “We might have just left,” she said, “but the city’s not right there,” he nodded back toward the stretch of empty desert they’d emerged from. “That city wasn’t even a part of this world; not being in it, who knows what sort of distance that must be like all at once.”
“C-can’t be…measured in…di-dist-ance,” Aderyn’s voice had gone from deep and strained to high-pitched and whimpering.
“God.” Ana set a hand on his forehead and, though she’d expected it to be burning up from the layer of sweat that had begun forming, she found it cold, like touching a frost-coated window. “I think he’s dying.”
A clap of desert lightning lit up the sky in the distance. No thunder came. Nobody seemed to notice.
But Aderyn did move.
A little.
“N-need to hurry,” he said, sounding, though still incredibly pained, better than he had.
“What the…whoa.” Lash held up his hands to stop Aderyn as he started to stand. “All this”—he waved his hands at Aderyn and his still-stiff body—“nearly got us killed, and now you want us all to climb back into the car? No. No sale. You either lie back down and die like it looked like you were about to”—he ignored Ana as she hissed “Lash” at him for that—“or you start looking, like, a lot better than you do right now. I’m not letting you risk Ana’s life again.”
Both Ana and Aderyn looked up at that.
Lash blushed, but managed to maintain his stern expression.
“I’m not,” he repeated, ignoring their looks.
Aderyn, letting out a pained chuckle, gave a single nod. “Alright, cowboy,” he said, settling back into Ana’s lap, his mask of pain relaxing as he did. “Then you drive.”
Lash blinked down at him. “Drive?” He looked back toward the steering wheel with the same face that Ana would have expected him to show a rattlesnake that he’d stepped on. “You want me to…”
“You do know how, right?” Aderyn challenged.
Lash’s head whipped around to face him. “Hey. I’m the one that kept this wheeled toilet on the road, wasn’t I?”
Aderyn raised an eyebrow at that, but finally resigned with a shrug and closed his eyes. “Then I don’t see a problem.” Though he was still shaking from pain and weakness, he raised an arm and pointed it in the direction that car was already facing. “That way. Don’t stop until you start seeing something that isn’t sand.”
“You mean the city?” Lash asked.
Aderyn raised his hand again, this time to plant the pad of his index finger to the tip of his nose.
“Jerk,” Lash muttered, settling into the driver’s seat and starting the car.
As the car pulled away from the shoulder, Ana looked down at Aderyn, his eyes still closed. Despite this, she saw he was still awake, his nostrils flaring with controlled inhales then, after his mouth moved to count—one…two…three—his lips remained parted to exhale. Slow and precise. The entire process, simply breathing, was more purposeful and calculated than most actions Ana had seen people commit to in a single day.
Just breathing, Ana thought.
It looked like so much more, though.
We could stop it, the dark thoughts rose. Stop it altogether. We’d likely be doing him a favor. See how much pain he’s in?
Ana frowned at that. Since when are you the sympathetic sort?
We’ve always been the sympathetic sort, the thoughts corrected, which is probably why you’re so eager to not be sympathetic.
Am not. she cringed at the thought.
Oh? We might be the same mind, but we can see that this magic—our magic—isn’t usually so quickly accepted by the new host. That our body is adapting so easily must mean that our mind is—
My mind, Ana corrected. I can’t see a damn thing about this awful mark, and that you can proves that you aren’t me. There is no ‘we;’ no ‘us’.
Or maybe sympathy blinds the part of our mind that still considers itself you. But it doesn’t matter. Just look at him.
Ana did.
He’s suffering.
He was.
He needs to focus everything—all of who he is—even to breathe.
He did.
He shouldn’t have to suffer like this.
He shouldn’t.
We should do it. We should free him from this pain.
“Sir.” the voice that yanked Tybalt from his sleep might have startled another person. Another person might even have been angered that, after the day that Tybalt had had and the limited sleep he’d already been going on, it was being interrupted.
But Tybalt wasn’t another person.
“Report.” He was sitting up and ready for the intel with a fluidity and speed that, despite having worked for him for years, had the man stumbling on his own words.
The hotel room that he and his crew had spent several hours turning into a makeshift base of operations no longer looked anything like what it had. Maps and charts covered the walls. The television was attached to a small laptop, turning it into a viewing screen. Every conceivable surface was covered in equipment and wires and weapons. The only thing that hadn’t gotten the “military treatment”—as his men tended to call it—was the bed, which Tybalt had left unoccupied for its intended purpose.
He had been tired, after all.
Shifting his gaze—and only his gaze—to take in the startled man, Tybalt repeated “Report�
�� in a tone that told anybody within earshot that there was a strong likelihood somebody was about to be losing their head.
The man gave the report.
“About fifteen minutes ago, psychic scouts detected a burst of energy out in the desert. Of three signatures that emerged, one of them was a match.”
“And the other two?” Tybalt asked, reaching blindly for his coffee. It wasn’t there.
Hurrying to hand him the steaming cup, the man said, “Sorry, sir, they just got done brewing it,” and then, seeming to think it’d help, added, “It’s fresh.”
“You want a medal?” he asked before taking three hard gulps that emptied the scalding hot liquid down his throat.
“No, sir,” the man answered, shifting uncomfortably. “A-anyway,” he started.
“Hmm?” Tybalt looked up. “Was that not all?”
“Uh,” the man wiped his face, seeming to doubt his own words before speaking them. “We’re not sure, sir. You see, that signature—the one we’re looking for—emerged with two others about fifteen minutes ago, but another one emerged after it about eleven minutes ago.”
Tybalt narrowed his eyes at that. “A second signature emerged from the pocket?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And where’s it headed?” he asked.
“Best as we can tell, sir,” the man glanced back to confirm his thoughts before continuing, “they’re, uh, following the first.”
“And the first?” Tybalt handed off his empty coffee cup to one of his men who happened to be occupying his periphery at that moment.
They said nothing as they took the cup. A moment later a new cup of coffee was handed back to his waiting hand.
“The first—the anomaly and the two other signatures traveling with her—appear to be heading in this direction, sir.”
“Good,” Tybalt stood up and, in another few gulps, emptied the new cup of coffee. “Keep me informed of any changes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ana wasn’t proud of how close she’d come to killing Aderyn.
No, she corrected herself. How close it came to killing him.
Still not learning, it taunted her.
Ana trembled and thought, Heaven help me.
The dark thoughts taunted her—Do you think they meant to help when they gave us these powers in the first place. Her trembling alerted Aderyn, who was still resting on her lap, of her turmoil. Ana caught sight of his eyes opening and shifting to look up at her, and she found herself struggling to suppress the awful urges of the dark thoughts to rid both of them of the burden of his pain while trying to not let him see how troubled she was.
“Sour,” he whispered up at her.
Lash shifted in the front seat, but said nothing.
Ana figured he’d been startled to hear the first words come from the mage in who-knew-how-long. It felt like they’d been driving for hours, but if that had been true the sun would have already risen. Besides, the city couldn’t have been that far away.
As if reading her mind, Aderyn glanced toward the front of the car and asked, “How long have we been on the road?”
Lash shrugged. “Twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes. Last sign said the city was about ten miles away. That was about a mile or two ago.”
Ana wasn’t sure if what she felt was embarrassment or fear. Confusing such a short time for several hours? Maybe she was losing her mind.
“You’re sounding a lot better,” Lash added. “You think there’s a mage out there in the desert or something that you’re connecting with?”
“Doubt it,” Aderyn groaned and pulled himself up so that he was seated beside Ana.
She blushed at realizing she missed the warmth of him.
“Can’t say why I’m not being drained anymore,” he added, “but I’m not going complaining, either.”
“So how’s that work, anyway? I mean, back in the city—your city, well, their city, at least—you were, like, some super-mage. You copied that other one’s spells, one-upped them and all, and you both kept going on and on about you being some kind of loner. Why you suddenly so, well, not a super-mage?”
“Your powers of speech are truly inspired,” Aderyn shook his head. “As for why?” he shrugged. “It’s probably because I’m a loner who’s spent all my time training to be a ‘super-mage’”—he air-quoted with his fingers and rolled his eyes—“that this is happening. Magic, our magic, is like…well, I guess there’s two parts of it. One’s like a radio signal, and the other’s like a bank account.”
“I’m already sorry I asked,” Lash groaned.
Ana moved closer. “What does that mean?” she asked.
Aderyn looked over at her. “Mages’ magic is shared among their tribe. It can be added to and grow in limitless ways—like a bank account—but access to it relies on one’s proximity to the others.” He held up four fingers with his left hand and a single one with his right. “Together,” he wagged the total of five fingers together, “they all get to enjoy access to the joint ‘account,’ though the amount they can access reflects on their personal ability as a mage, but apart”—he started to move his right hand and, with it, the finger away from the others—“there’s no ‘account’ to draw from. Like a car driving out of range from a radio signal, I’m too far out of range to use any of the magic I’ve grown up connecting to.”
“So why should that kill you?” Lash asked. “I mean, sure, I can get how that’d mess up your ability to cast spells and such, but why should it be hurting you?”
Aderyn sighed. “Mages grow up with magic being a part of everything. Crawling, learning to walk, talking, everything is learned with the energy of our people playing a part in it. Imagine if half of what made everything possible for you suddenly vanished. My body’s trying to figure out how to do everything with a fraction of its normal resources.”
“So it’d be like this for any mage?” Ana asked.
Aderyn shrugged. “Sort of. I wasn’t sure how fast it would take hold or how severe it would be, and I, uh, well…”
Lash glanced over his shoulder. “What?” he asked. “You what?”
Aderyn groaned and wiped his face. “The spell I used to fix the car when we first crossed over basically drained my reserves.”
“Your reserves?” Ana repeated.
“Yeah,” Aderyn nodded. “It might have been enough to keep me…well, not like this for a few days, at least, but…”
“But your dumb ass wanted to show off?” Lash said with a scoff. “Slick, mage; real slick.”
“Lash.” Ana glared up toward him, “That’s not—”
Aderyn shook his head. “No. He’s right. I’ve been brash my entire life. I’ve gotten warnings for as far back as I can remember, and I’ve never learned. After everything that happened tonight,” he shrugged, “I wanted to feel like I had something over them even after being banished, and it was stupid.”
Ana stared at him for a long moment, thinking on this, and then looked away. Staring out the window, she found herself conflicted, though for the first time that day it had nothing to do with the dark thoughts.
“So why are you getting better now?” she asked.
Though she couldn’t see him, she felt his gaze as he turned. “I wouldn’t say I’m getting better,” he said. “Though I’m not dying.”
“That’s an understatement,” Lash scoffed again. “I liked you better when you couldn’t talk.”
Aderyn surprised them both by chuckling at that. “Well that,” he said, “is different from not dying.”
“So you never answered Ana’s question,” Lash said, and Ana turned her head in time to catch sight of his eyes glancing back at them in the mirror, “why are you getting better now?”
“I guess it’s like what you said,” he offered with a shrug, “there’s gotta be a mage out there somewhere that I’m connected to just enough for me to have access to a magical reserve.”
“Is that going to be enough?” Ana asked.
Aderyn shrugged.
“Enough to live? For the time being, I guess. Enough to cast a spell?” he shook his head.
“So what happens if-and-when we get access to the spell we need to reverse what’s happened to Ana?” Lash demanded.
Aderyn thought about this for a moment and then looked down.
Lash growled at the silence. “So you’re basically useless to us now, is that it?”
“Lash,” Ana defended.
“I guess it’s fair to say,” Aderyn spoke up, “that I might never have been useful to you in the first place. This curse is, even according to almaealij alkabir, some big, big league magic. Even he—a wizard-class mage; the sorts that inspired tales of Merlin and Gandalf—wasn’t exactly spilling over with ideas to fix it.”
“I’ll say,” Lash spat—literally—“he practically said that Ana was as good as dead.”
“I’m aware,” Aderyn sighed, shaking his head. “And I’ll thank you not to spit in my car. But, yes, he couldn’t even help us, so—while it’s flattering to think that I impressed you back at the camp”—he offered Ana an apologetic look— “I don’t know that there was ever anything I could have done. And now…” He looked away, leaving the rest unsaid.
“What’s stopping me from kicking you out of the car and carrying on without you?” Lash asked, sounding so casual it took a moment for Ana to realize it had been a threat.
Aderyn glanced up at that. “Aside from the fact that it’s my car? How about this? Even forgetting that it would very likely kill me, I’d have no reason to avoid ending your life before you made it back to the driver’s seat.”
“You’re saying you’d kill yourself to keep us from taking your car?” Lash was looking in the rearview mirror again.
Aderyn shook his head. “No. I’m saying I’d fight to the death to keep anybody from taking my father’s car.”
A silent moment passed.
“Your old man mean that much to you?” Lash finally asked.
Aderyn scoffed. “Actually he was a total ass. Like you,” he jabbed teasingly toward Lash. “Got himself banished, too, though nobody was thinking fondly of him when it happened. But he was still my dad, and he had great taste in cars.”
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