Primal's Wrath: Book VI of 'The Magician's Brother' Series

by HDA Roberts

  "No good deed goes unpunished," Cassandra whispered to me as we left the shade of the gallery. Des walked between my parents with Grommit following close behind, disguised as a black Norwegian Forest Cat (a very large Norwegian Forest Cat). Cassandra and I brought up the rear.

  "Must you rub these things in?" I whispered back.

  "Yes, it's the main reason I spend so much time with yo- Get down!"

  Rather than waiting for me to try, she just swatted me in the general direction of the ground, causing me to end up face-first in a decorative cactus. And let me tell you, just because a cactus is decorative, that doesn't mean that its spines aren't sharp.

  Cassandra had a shield up before I hit the shrubbery, intercepting the first rocket, which detonated in line with where my face would have been before she pushed me out of the way.

  Grommit reacted almost as quickly, and had my mother Teleported to Blackhold an instant after the detonation, leaving behind a little puff of smoke and a crack of displaced air. The explosion was loud and dazzling, but I barely noticed, as I was swearing creatively and trying to pluck three-inch spikes out of my face.

  My father moved to help me, but the Warp Cat reappeared, landing on his shoulder, and transported him to safety before he could make it two steps.

  I finally got the last spine out of my lip and moved to stand next to Cassandra, who was under obvious strain maintaining such a wide shield. I touched her shoulder and took over, layering a stronger shield outside of hers. She relaxed and sagged, dropping her hand before turning to survey the situation. She winced when she saw my face.

  "Sorry."

  "No you're not."

  She laughed and nudged my shoulder before drawing her gun and putting three rounds through the head of a Vampire that poked itself over the top of the roof to the west, a rocket launcher in his hands.

  "I count six left," Cassandra said after looking around us.

  "Seven. And the one you missed is a Magician," I said as the fellow in question came through the entranceway across from us. A pair of Vampires dropped from their hiding places on the roofs and took up positions either side of the newcomer.

  His hands flickering with dark purple power, and I grimaced in recognition.

  Death Mage.

  Grommit returned one last time and took Des away, leaving Cassandra and I to deal with our enemies. Des didn't look like he wanted to go, but the Cat didn't give him the choice. That was for the best, he would have been a distraction in a situation that was shaping up to be rather dire.

  Our enemies had planned this attack very carefully. The Vampires who weren't with the Magician were carrying Spelleaters, and they were advancing on us, using the building as cover. That was a big problem when combined with the Death Magician’s powers. My only useful defence against Entropic energy was a Will barrier, and that was an incredible power hog at the best of times, much less against Death Magic.

  An Entropic attack, added to the neutralising effects of four Spelleaters, would drain my Well frighteningly fast, quite possibly down to nothing, as long as they didn’t interfere with one another. Like I said, this was very well planned.

  They acted as one unit, the Spelleater-toting Vampires emerging from cover and charging us at same time as the Death Magician released his first Entropic Beam. Cassandra opened fire at the ones rushing us.

  My Will barrier sprung into existence around us, saving my life, and I conjured a great mass of Shadows to go straight for the Death Mage in the hopes of throwing off his aim, if nothing else. Cassandra dropped two of her targets with perfectly placed shots to their heads, spraying grey matter all over the mural behind them. She turned towards the next two, but they ducked out of the way and she missed.

  The Death Magician strengthened his attack. My Magic poured out of my Well and into my shield at a horrific rate, but it didn't matter; my Shadows were inches away from turning his torso into Swiss Cheese...

  And then the Vampires guarding him threw a pair of grenades; one at me, one at Cassandra.

  I’d thought them to be of the fragmentation or explosive variety and didn’t bother doing anything about them, relying on my shield to catch any force or shrapnel. But it turned out that they were something different.

  Stun grenades. Otherwise known as flashbangs. Supposedly non-lethal, they released a flash brighter than the sun and a clap of sound loud enough to deafen you.

  Not generally dangerous to someone like me, but the light was more than enough to shred my Shadows, as well as blind me. The sound was nasty, too, disorienting and dizzying. I started to cast Mage Sight, but the Death Magician was putting more power into his attack and I had to stop so I could reinforce my Shield.

  Cassandra had made much the same mistake that I had, simply kicking the grenade towards the two remaining Spelleater Vampires, before putting a shield in the way, and she was now in much the same state as me.

  Not good.

  I had to retake the initiative. That meant I had to see what I was doing, but casting Mage Sight would take seconds that I didn't have, so I turned to my Magical senses and did the only thing I could think of.

  I reached out through my link to the Shadows, slid my Will into the nearest sources of darkness (that weren’t inside Cassandra) and fed them buckets of my power (to get past the Spelleaters) before drawing them out and towards me.

  You may not know this, but the human body (or the Vampire body) contains quite a few empty spaces; in the lungs, the stomach, the intestines, just to name a few. These empty spaces were naturally very dark, and thus full of shadows.

  Shadows which I had just made solid.

  There were screams. Lots and lots of screams. The Entropic Beam cut off more or less immediately, and I used the relative calm to cast Mage Sight.

  And yikes, that was a mess...

  The Death Mage was missing everything below the lungs as well as his jaw. The Vampires weren’t much better off, but everyone was alive, if somewhat mangled (Death Magicians, in addition to being horrifically lethal, were also even harder to kill than Vampires).

  I hated to use my Shadows like that. It was certain death for anyone not gifted with an enhanced physiology. Even with those gifts, I could easily have killed them all if I hadn't made sure to pull my Shadows downwards instead of up, or straight out.

  The rule when fighting things that could regenerate (assuming you didn’t want them dead) was to keep the heart and brain intact while making sure not to sever the connection between the two. That was less of a problem for a Death Magician, though. If they were powerful enough, then they could potentially survive as long as the brain and Well remained intact. I'd even heard of Death Magicians who’d rebuilt themselves from scratch after suffering a decapitation (that was actually the origin of the Headless Horseman story that became The Legend of Sleepy Hollow).

  At least the screams didn’t last long (as you needed lungs to scream and theirs were badly damaged), but there was still blood, severed limbs, chunks of shattered bone and gobbets of torn flesh were everywhere. My stomach, already a little wobbly after seeing Cassandra spray Vampire brains over the second level, rebelled at last and I redecorated the same cactus that had stabbed me (which felt poetically just, even if it was disgusting).

  Cassandra was looking a little green herself as she stared at the carnage, and then at the mangled walls. I really had made a horrific mess of that square. There had been plenty of Shadows in the spaces between walls, too, even under that lovely mosaic and inside the columns... the place was now a thorough wreck.

  "Why the hell didn't you do that earlier?!" she barked as I made my way over to the Death Magician.

  "It was an act of desperation, Cassie. It’s not my natural preference to mutilate people, you know," I explained, trying not to be testy.

  She took another significant look at our surroundings.

  "Remind me never to make you desperate."

  "Seriously? You take joy in inspiring my desperation!”

  She thumped
my shoulder and pulled me into a hug, wrapping me up tight.

  "Goddess, that was a close one," she whispered.

  I nodded.

  It was actually quite impressive, when you think about it. They had planned their attack so well that six Vampires and a Death Magician had become a real threat to an Archon and a four hundred year old warrior-Demigod.

  That, alone, raised some rather scary questions. How had they been able to predict where I’d be with enough precision to deploy such a well-prepared, and almost certainly very expensive, strike team? Had they just been sitting on my parents, waiting for me to visit? That seemed unlikely, what with the kind of money we’re talking about. Death Magician mercenaries were ludicrously expensive to maintain; especially the ones willing to throw their lives away by attacking an Archon. And if they had that sort of money to throw around...

  "Get us home, right now," Cassandra said, beating me to the thought, "I don't want us caught out in the open if they had backup."

  "Agreed."

  I opened the Portal home in a single try.

  "Really? Three tries, one of them through a swamp, to get us there, but you get us home in one?" Cassandra said suspiciously as she led the way back onto my front lawn. I had my Shadows drag the remains of the Death Magician home with us, along with the oldest of the Vampires. I would let Demise... have a word with them later.

  "You know I can get us home alright."

  She shook her head and thumped me again, but gently.

  "Matty!" my mother all but shrieked, charging out of the drawing room at the sound of my voice. I covered up the mangled people with Shadows before she could get more than a passing glimpse on her way to wrap me up in a hug.

  "Are you alright?"

  I nodded.

  My mother's nose twitched, "Is that blood?"

  "It's not mine," I reassured her, moving in front of the pile of animated darkness.

  "Are you hiding the bastards that tried to murder our family?" she asked, her voice turning glacially cold.

  "What's left of them, anyway."

  "Let me see them."

  "Mother... it's not a pretty sight."

  "Show me," she insisted.

  I retracted the Shadows from their heads and shoulders. The Magician was still conscious and alert, likely in considerable pain. His powers were functioning on pure instinct, turned inwards just to keep him alive.

  Cassandra was already making calls, reporting this whole mess to the Mexican Conclave (which they also called a Conclave, just with an accent over the 'o'; it was a peculiar part of the world. Peppers for breakfast, for heaven's sake...).

  My mother leaned over the Death Magician. The remains of his face twisted with fear at whatever he saw in her eyes.

  "You know, I may have been wrong about this Magic thing, Matty. It would appear that it does indeed have its uses," she said, glaring even harder at the man, "Let's see the rest."

  "Are you sure? It's worse than that."

  She nodded.

  I dismissed the rest of my Shadows. She grimaced, but nodded.

  She leant down again, "You'd better hope you don't survive what my boy does to you, because what I do will be worse. You went after my sons, understand?"

  There wasn’t a lot of blood left in the man, but somehow he managed to go paler.

  Mother turned her back on him and came over to me, "What happened? Why did these people attack us?"

  "That is a long st-"

  "Matty!" Tethys came sprinting down the stairs, her voice high and shrill. "It's Kandi, she’s under attack! Vampires!"

  "What?! Where?!"

  "The Thornsby Building!"

  I was flying through the air in a cocoon of Shadow before she'd finished her sentence. I actually broke the front doors on the way out. The ancient, heavily Enchanted, irreplaceable front doors.

  At that moment, I didn't care, I was too terrified.

  Chapter 16

  With only limited Magic at my disposal, thanks to the ambush, I fell back on my Shadows. Even under the summer sun, they were the easiest things for me to conjure.

  My cocoon soared across the Stonebridge sky like a black comet, creating a slipstream that shattered more than a few windows between Blackhold and the high-rise district on city’s eastern outskirts.

  At that speed, it was only seconds before Thornsby International’s building came into sight. It was thirty-two stories tall, silver and glass, built into its own plaza, surrounded by fountains and bright stonework. There was a small driveway at the front of the building, where Kandi's black Range Rover was parked. It empty of passengers, but full of bullet holes, the custom gun-ports open and scorched where the defenders had opened fire. My heart stopped as I saw a blood trail leading from the far side doors to the building’s atrium.

  Sheltering behind the wreck were seven Vampires, each armed with some form of automatic weapon, all exchanging fire with the building, which seemed to have sprouted guns in reply. There had to be fifty mercenaries up there, all firing highly illegal weapons of their own. And those weapons were in hands that knew how to use them, too; the bodies of eighteen more Vampires were scattered in a broad line between an open manhole and the Range Rover. Those had already decomposed down to skeletons, mulch or dust (depending on their age).

  A quick glance through Mage Sight showed me that these Vampires had also come prepared, with two more Spelleaters. Thankfully, one of those was on a dead Vampire, and could do me no harm.

  At a glance, I’d say that the entire group of about twenty-five Vampires had tried to rush Kandi’s car, but had been spotted before they could get anywhere near it, at which point they were fired on. I couldn’t know for certain, but a rush like that suggested that the Aurelia wanted Kandi alive. If they'd wanted her dead, she'd be dead, they could have done any number of things to blow up the car, or kill her as she walked to and from the building.

  I shuddered at those thoughts and pushed them away. Letting myself get distracted by what-ifs wouldn’t help. As I arrived above the battle, I pulled my cocoon into a slow orbit. The situation was, at least, somewhat stable; a stalemate. The Vampires weren’t going to be able to get any closer to the building, but the mercenaries couldn’t flush the Vampires out of their rather solid cover without heavy ordinance, which I knew they didn’t have (assault rifles were one thing to slip by the government, but explosives were quite another). Without that equipment, no Pureborn in their right mind would try to rush a Vampire, especially not a cornered one, and Kandi’s Wardens couldn’t either because of the remaining Spelleater.

  I suppose I could have, if push came to shove, but I’d used a lot of power getting us out of Mexico, and it would have been a risk with such low reserves. However, if there was one thing I'd learned over the years, it was creative ways to bypass Spelleaters, from simple tricks of light and sound that caused disorientation and unconsciousness, to dropping heavy objects on people from a very great height (guess which one was my favourite?).

  So, after a moment's thought, an evil smile crossed my face... and I opened a Portal.

  Far, far above the Vampires, and well out of range of their Spelleaters.

  I'd given some thought to making that Portal that connected to the Earth’s mantle, about a hundred kilometres straight down, which would have essentially covered them in lava. I'd seen Hopkins do that a couple of times, and it was always impressive. Alas, that would certainly have killed them, and wrecked half the plaza into the bargain (lava doesn't mix well with... anything, really, as you might imagine).

  Instead, I made a Portal to the bottom of the ocean. Well, to a very deep part of the ocean, about three thousand metres down in the Pacific. Water at that depth was under immense, colossal pressure, enough to make a fire hose look tame, and the hole I made was five metres across.

  There's a joke about itsy-bitsy Vampires climbing water spouts here, but I'm too classy to make it.

  Thousands of gallons of high-pressure water slammed down on those bastards a
nd hit the ground like a high explosive. Three of the Vampires were catapulted straight into the Range Rover, which was itself flattened into even more of a wreck. They ended up pinned into the metal as ton after ton of water dropped on them, breaking their bones and tearing at their skin.

  And they were the lucky ones.

  The other four were thrown clear, their bodies damaged but not shattered. They probably could have run... if they hadn’t also come back into the line of fire of the building’s marksmen. They shot those Vampires as thoroughly as I’d ever seen someone been shot, with heavy rounds caving in skulls and chests like they’d been hit by sledgehammers, it was horrible.

  It would not have been my preference for so many of them to die, but Kandi’s people were so fast and accurate that I didn’t even notice what was happening until after the Vampires were dead. The only reason the last three survived was because they looked dead and weren’t moving. Luckily (for them) they also were unconscious, so it wasn’t much trouble to slot Coma Hexes into their heads and slide them behind the wreckage of the car.

  I took one final look around for threats (there weren’t any) and I dropped towards the front doors of the building as fast as safety would allow. They opened to reveal a dishevelled, but otherwise unharmed, Kandi.

  I let out a breath.

  Behind her, the lobby was full of armed men, including Kandi’s two Wardens. One of them was using a little Flesh Magic on a mercenary in a dark suit who’d taken a bullet to the arm (he was the source of the blood trail from the car).

  Kandi threw herself at me and, because I had exactly no upper body strength, both of us ended up on the marble, with me on the bottom (ouch).

  She planted one on me (which made the slightly broken coccyx absolutely worth it) before squeezing me hard enough to throttle me (again, absolutely worth it).

  "What took you so long?!" she said, swatting my arm.

  "I was in Mexico!"

  "And why do you smell like dried swamp?"

  "That's not important."