Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2)

by Ben Reeder

  “That's good. Because if you're the best he's got, I've got a message for you to give him.”

  My left hand tightened around the TK wand, and I silently thanked Lucas for all those hours spent watching Star Wars, and for the idea for the particular variant of the telekinesis spell I was about to use. He'd even convinced me to practice it on a pumpkin last Halloween. It worked, but the question was, how well?

  “You aren't worthy of his time, mortal.” Boy, Fedora had a case of Master-worship going on with his Lord. And, he'd given me a good straight line to cast my spell. Who was I to waste it?

  My right hand came up with my index finger out, looking almost casual. “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” I said in my best James Earl Jones impression. It wasn't a very good impression, but it was the effort that counted in my head.

  I felt the tingle of magic course through my body and down my arm, and Fedora blinked for a moment as his brain tried to make sense of what I was saying. The skin on his neck dimpled in a second later, as a ring of telekinetic force closed around his throat. Then, his hands left my mother's neck and went to his own. He tried to speak, to yell, but all that came out was a choked gasp as he staggered back against the wall behind him. Mom was out of the chair and moving across the kitchen like a shot as soon as his hand left her neck. As soon as she was clear, I turned and sprinted for the stairs.

  My feet cleared the steps three and four at a time, and I was at the top of the stairs in three bounds and headed for my sister's room at the end of the hallway.

  “Obex!” I hissed halfway down the hall, which got the shield spell up a split second before I hit the door to Dee's room.

  The shield slammed into the thin wood of the door and knocked it open with a bang, knocking it clear of its hinges in the process.

  Time slowed to a crawl as I charged into the room, but all I got were quick impressions. Dee was in her desk chair. A big, heavily tattooed guy in a mesh shirt and black pants with lots of buckles and straps was standing over my sister with a wicked-looking knife. He looked at me with wide eyes, then his knife hand started to move in a vicious arc toward my sister.

  I reacted the way any fifteen-year-old would if his family was in danger: violently. Only I'm an apprentice mage and a reformed (mostly) warlock. When I resort to violence, I do it with a lot of power to back me up.

  “ICTUS!” I yelled, and poured every ounce of magick I could muster into the spell.

  There was a bright flash, then a wall of noise struck me in the chest as the kinetic force of the spell left my hand. Then, there was the memory of the air pressure in the room dropping and rising, a sound like a side of meat being hit with a wrecking ball, and a crunch from across the room.

  When my eyes would focus again, all I could hear was Dee screaming from about a mile away. I was on my butt, and there was a big, thug-shaped hole where Dee’s window used to be. My breath misted in the air in front of me and the walls of Dee's room were covered with a thin layer of white frost. I crawled forward on aching arms to Dee and saw that she'd been tied to her own chair with duct tape. I fumbled my balisong out and tried to cut her hands free without cutting her hands up.

  When she was free, she hit me in a flying tackle and held on for dear life. Words and sobs poured out of her as I tried to stand with her weight in my arms. It took me a couple of tries, but I got my feet under me and staggered to the jagged remains of Dee’s window.

  The guy was lying next to the neighbor's house with his limbs pointing in painful-looking directions. I was pretty sure arms and legs weren't supposed to bend in that many places. And I was also pretty sure I'd have a hard time explaining the vaguely person-shaped crater in the neighbor's second-story siding. Maybe no one would notice. Like, if the police sent over a blind cop with the IQ of an eggplant.

  “Dierdre!” Mom cried out from behind me, and suddenly my sobbing sister was being pulled from my arms.

  She adhered to Mom with an almost audible sound, but the crying stopped almost immediately.

  “Is the guy I did the Darth Vader kung-fu grip on still in the kitchen?” I asked Mom.

  She gave me a nod as she backed away.

  “Call Detective Collins!” I told her as I stalked through the splintered door. “And Dr. C!”

  “All right, son, but why are you shouting?” Mom asked.

  “I'm not pouting, Mom!” Dee said from her shoulder. “I was just scared!”

  I gulped at the thought that I might have just made my sister deaf, and my ears popped. Mom's almost frantic-sounding giggle was a little clearer, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The overpressure from my spell had probably done the same thing to Dee. It was a lot like a change in altitude. Now I could talk to Fedora without distraction.

  I went back to the kitchen and found him still struggling on the floor. If I'd been much longer coming back, he probably wouldn't have been struggling at all. As it was, his lips were starting to turn blue and his eyes were starting to look a little glazed. I squatted next to him and tried not to let him see how painful that was. A wave of my hand released the spell, and he sucked in a gasping lungful of air.

  “So, you're the best he's got?” I asked again.

  Fedora's right hand was on my throat before I could even see it moving. It felt like a band of iron strapped to my neck. He flowed to his feet and held me up off the floor, and it was my turn to start choking. He'd caught me being overconfident and stupid. Dr. C would never let me live that down.

  “I am indeed,” he snarled.

  I smelled the coppery tang of blood mixed with the moldy odor of grave dirt as I tried to get air into my lungs. I'd completely underestimated Fedora. He might have been a living person, but that didn't mean he couldn't bench press a house. Hell, I had the hots for a werewolf; I should have known that.

  “And I will take word of your insolence to my Lord. That you are a mageling will not matter to my Lord one bit. Your mother and sister are still going to suffer for a long time before I give them the death they're going to be begging for when I'm done with them. And you will wa-AHGH!” he yelled as I stuck the point of my balisong into his armpit and settled the score between us.

  He dropped me, and the knife slid free as I fell. I reversed the blade in my grip and slammed it into the top of his foot, then staggered to my feet. I left the knife sticking out of his shoe, but it didn't pin his foot to the floor and he came after me. His hands fell just short of my throat as I lunged back. I ended up against the wall next to the fridge when he came at me again. My left hand slammed the freezer door in his face and knocked him back. Blood ran freely from his nose as I closed the freezer and kicked him square in the privates. I had yet to meet a living being that didn't double over when I hit them there. While he retched and moaned, I grabbed the collar of his trenchcoat and dragged him to the back door, then opened it and thrust him a little ways ahead of me.

  “You never threaten my family!” I yelled. Then I slammed the door on his head.

  He brought an arm up, and I slammed it in the door a few times instead. When it was bendy in places an arm shouldn't be bendy, I stuck his head back against the door jamb and brought the door against it a couple of times, then shoved him out into the back yard. His hat was on the floor next to the door, and I flung it out to land next to him. He rolled onto his back and snatched my knife out of his foot and threw it at me. It went wide, but it stuck deep in the door.

  I came off the back porch with a growl that started deep in my throat. He was already scrambling away when I hit the grass, and he was in a staggering run before I could get to him. That should have told me some scary things about him, but I was too pissed off to care just then.

  “Tell him that, asshole!” I yelled after him. “Never!”

  He disappeared down the alleyway, and I stood there for a few seconds, wondering what to do next. Mom and Dee were safe, and the bad guys were taken care of. I vaguely recalled something important was going on inside, and that I needed to be there instead of
on my knees in wet grass. And when did the part about not standing happen, anyway? For that matter, my fuzzy brain was wondering why my hands were shaking and why I was cold all over. It was warm inside, the part of my mind that handles things like that reminded me. My monkey brain had its own set of priorities, and at the moment, monkey brain made sense. I got to my feet and staggered toward the house. Somewhere along the way, everything got really bright and my head felt like it was going to float off my shoulders.

  If I had just passed out, the next hour or so would have been a lot more pleasant. Instead, I was pretty much aware of being nauseated, cold, sweaty, and generally in shock. All my brain could handle was impressions. Dr. C laying me down on the couch, cops and paramedics going back and forth, a light shining in my eyes, and something liquid, cool and sweet, being poured down my throat.

  “It's the body's natural reaction to a disruption of its normal processes,” I heard Dr. C saying a queasy eternity later. He was sitting on the coffee table with a cup of something red in his hand. “Expending so much of his personal energy like he did caused a reaction that's like a combination of heat exhaustion and shock. Plus, once his personal stores were depleted, the spell drew most of the kinetic energy out of his body before it drew from the room around him.” That explained the frost on the walls.

  “He'll be all right soon, won't he?” Mom asked, though I thought it sounded more like a demand.

  “Yes,” Dr. C said. “It's nothing permanent. In fact, if he'd remembered to use his touchstone, he probably wouldn't have exhausted himself so badly.”

  “Oops,” I said softly.

  “Chance, honey,” Mom said softly as she came to my side, “How are you feeling?”

  “Like a train wreck,” I managed as I struggled to sit up. For a minute, the room spun and my head pounded, but I figured laying back again would just give my head an excuse to explode or my stomach enough reason to heave my ankles up through my teeth, so I sat there and waited the worst of it out. “Isn't this where someone was supposed to tell me not to sit up?”

  “Experience is the best teacher, my young apprentice,” Dr. C said, sounding sage and a little Sithy.

  “Ah, Darth Smartass. You are strong in the Dork Side of the Farce, my Master,” I shot back at him.

  “He'll be fine,” Mom said levelly. “If he learns to watch his language.”

  “What did you tell the cops, Mom?”

  “The truth. That I didn't see what happened upstairs. By the time I got there, he was already outside. And if they ask you about it, I expect you to tell them the truth as well.”

  “That I cast a spell and knocked him thirty feet?” I whispered.

  “That you ran into the room, yelled at him, and he left through the window,” Mom said with a crafty smile. “Let them come to their own conclusions about how he managed the rest.”

  I looked at my mom with a whole new level of respect. It was the absolute truth, but it didn't reveal anything. The police would explain away what didn't fit, and no one would even think about magick. Of course, that begged the question of the example we were setting for Dee. Which brought my thoughts to wondering where my little sister was.

  “Telling the police about the bad man in her room,” Mom told me, when I asked.

  About then, one of the paramedics came over and checked me out, and gave me a clean bill of health when I didn't seem to be on the verge of collapse. Once he was satisfied that I had just been coming down off of an adrenaline rush, he closed up his bag and made for the door.

  That just left Collins and his partner in the house. Simms came out of the kitchen with a frown on his face and gave me a glare.

  “He's your informant, you talk to him,” he said sourly over his shoulder.

  Collins appeared in the doorway behind him and gave him a curt nod. Simms didn't waste any time getting out of the house.

  “So, what really happened here?” Collins asked, his notepad disappearing into his coat pocket.

  Dee’s head appeared around the corner, then she darted to Mom’s side and clung to her like Velcro.

  “Off the record?” Dr. Corwyn asked.

  “Yeah, off the record.”

  “Pretty much what we told you,” I said. “Except there was magick.”

  “So the guy in your sister’s room didn’t jump out the window,” Collins said dryly.

  “No, I threw him out of it with a TK blast. And I got the other guy with a kind of choke hold.”

  “What kind of blast?”

  “Telekinesis. TK for short. Same thing I used at Camp Werewolf last October. They told me to stay out of their master’s business, but I don’t know who they work for. I think they were talking about Crystal’s disappearance, because they asked me why I shook Julian down Friday night. They already knew he was dead, and they thought I was still a suspect.”

  “We haven’t given the press any names,” Collins mused. “Wonder how they knew that?”

  “Maybe he saw you bust me. One thing’s for sure. He wasn’t a normal guy. I got a blade into him twice and he still didn’t slow down.”

  “So they were trying to get you to back off,” Collins said with a smile. “Means we hit a nerve. Okay, here’s the deal, we’re gonna get you, your mom, and your little sister in protective custody, get you set up in a safe house or somethin’. Then we’re gonna keep pushing this.”

  “No way,” I interjected. “I have stuff I have to do. And I can’t help you find this guy from a safe house.”

  “You can’t help us find him if you’re dead, either, and no way I’m lettin’ that happen.”

  “He can stay with me,” Dr. Corwyn said quietly. He turned to my mom. “If that’s acceptable to you, Mara. My home is warded, and I can take more precautions while Chance stays with me.” Mom gave him a hard look before she answered.

  “I’m still not happy with you, Trevor, but Chance is right. He can’t hide and still do what he needs to. If I had any other option, I’d take it.”

  Dr. C lowered his eyes and turned away. “I know.” Dr. C wasn’t the kind of guy to use two words when he had another fifty that sounded better. Something about this whole thing was eating at him.

  Mom took Dee up to get some stuff together, and Dr. C sent me upstairs to do the same. I stopped at the doorway to my room, and my mind just kind of locked up. Since October, this had been my safe place, the first place that I could call ‘safe’ for years. Up until then, everything I had in the world fit into a gym bag with room to spare. Mom barely made ends meet, and I didn’t have a lot of stuff, but I didn’t want to leave any of it behind. It was mine. Hairy monkey brain pounded its chest in defiance for a moment, until I tranq’d it from a distance and started thinking over its prone form.

  Since things had to be taken care of one way or another by midnight Wednesday, I only grabbed enough clothes for that long and my stuff from the bathroom, including my favorite towel. Finally, I dug my stash of magickal gear out of the hiding spot just inside the door of my closet. Almost six months of scrounging had netted me enough foci for half a dozen spells, and I had all of them primed and ready to be charged.

  As I pulled the meager supply of magickal gear out of the hole I had made in my closet, a tarot card and a slip of parchment fell to the bottom of the hidey-hole with a soft tap. I flipped the tarot card over to see the Page of Swords facing up at me, and Mr. Chomsky’s last message. I tucked them into my back pocket as bits and pieces came together in my head while I stowed the rest in the hidden section I’d made months ago in the bottom of my Truman high school gym bag. Finally, I dumped my clothes and stuff on top of it all.

  “Grab a couple of books,” Dr. C said from my doorway. “And don’t forget your laptop.”

  “I’m not very good at this,” I told him as I tucked the computer into its case. “You’d think I would be, you know. I’m half Romany; most of our history is one long journey.”

  “You shouldn’t have to be, Chance. You’ve been adrift too much as it is. We�
��ll get you back home as soon as possible.” He took my bag and computer and headed downstairs.

  I spent a few seconds looking around at my room. If things went bad, I was never going to set foot in here again. It was a thought that really, really sucked. It stayed in my head as I went downstairs and into the kitchen.

  There was blood all over the place. Bloody footprints smeared the linoleum and a trail of round drops ran beside them to the door. Another smear of dark brown covered the freezer door where I’d slammed it into Fedora’s face. There were bits and pieces of him all over the room, more than I needed to track him. I’d told him that threatening my family was a bad idea. Now it was time to show him why.

  I met Dr. C out front with my duffel bag over my shoulder and a handkerchief with Fedora’s blood on it in a plastic bag in my jacket pocket. Mom and Dee were loading their bags into the trunk of an Essex County Sheriff Department patrol car as the door closed behind me, and we met in the middle of the lawn.

  “Be careful, Chance,” Mom said sternly. “Listen to Trevor, and find that sword. I want you back home before your birthday.”

  “I will, Mom,” I said. I wanted to promise her I would, but promises had extra weight behind them when a mage made them; even an apprentice like me had to be careful about giving my word. The consequences for failure weren’t pleasant.

  Dee put her arms around my middle and squeezed tight for a full minute. “’m scared,” she muttered into my stomach. “What if someone else comes?”

  “No one will be able to find you. And someone will be with you all the time.”

  “Don’t want anyone else. Want you there.”

  My eyes stung and my chest went tight with that strange rush of feelings I’d been starting to get used to again over the past few months. I knelt down so our eyes were almost level with each other.

  “Dee, I want to be there so much,” I told her. “But I can’t be. The people who came today . . . that was my fault. They came because of me. So you and Mom have to go somewhere . . . away from me for a while, okay?” My voice broke, and Dee’s eyes welled up with unshed tears. She held up her hand with her pinky crooked, and I hooked mine through it.