The Cost of Magic (The Ethan Cole Series Book 1)

by Andrew Macmillan

  But the terror in the kid’s eyes was unmistakable as he nodded at Cole.

  ‘Henry’s what they said my name was.’

  The only human beings Cole had killed had deserved it, no matter how much they vied to spoil his sleep. Could he take the chance if Henry Millar didn’t deserve it? There were enough souls trapped in the debris of his past. What was Andrew playing at? Was this kid even a vampire?

  ‘You’re the ravenous Henry Millar? Scourge of humanity?’

  There was no wheezing or rasping as Henry spoke. ‘I don’t know about being a scourge.’ The kid – he can’t have been older than seventeen – stopped his miserable flight across the enormous mattress. Vampires didn’t age; Cole had to watch he wasn’t being fooled. Henry could be taking the piss. Or Cole was being tricked into killing an innocent kid.

  Only one way to know for sure. ‘Show me your chest.’

  Confusion reigned on the boy’s face. ‘What?’ His colour – weirdly natural – drained. Cole’s shotgun insisted mutely. He couldn’t risk dropping his guard. The kid – the vampire; he couldn’t get soft – suppressed a sob. So human-like.

  He’d heard there were some vampires who could pass for almost human, even to siphons like Cole and even up close, but most of them had been put down over the ages. He’d been told Millar was one sadistic bastard, and that was coming from a world-class sadistic bastard. Maybe Andrew had been hinting that Henry was one of those rarities.

  The boy wore a shell suit. Strange thing to notice, but there it was. The suit finally unzipped to expose pale flesh, unmarred by scars, and – what? ‘Are those dog tags?’

  Henry drew back. ‘You don’t like them?’

  This was one weird vampire. Henry’s chest rose and fell smoothly. No telltale flash of absence from the sucking thing vampires called their soul. Damn it. If it was there, he would see it.

  Henry held his hands up. ‘Eh, I don’t want to get shot, but please don’t make me do anything weird?’

  By the gods. What the fuck was Andrew doing sending Cole to kill a kid? Henry’s face crinkled into lines as he stared up. The boy was so frightened.

  Cole dropped the gun. ‘It seems you’re human. You can zip back up Henry; I’m not going to hurt you.’

  The boy melted, sobbing quietly and zipping his top back up. A quick scan of the room revealed no immediate threat. It was surprisingly modern, with that distinctive sameness vibe which surrounded Swedish flat-pack furniture like an aura. Andrew had this kid locked away and had gone to stupid trouble to get Cole to come and do some murdering. If Henry had been less terrified and hadn’t cried so much, Cole would have killed him. His anger spiked. He would have worked it out as the boy’s blood splattered, the way only blood under pressure could. And it would have been far too late. The kid was one hundred per cent human.

  Cole wasn’t going to pull the trigger now. But without the kid gone, Nessie was a dead man walking. So was Cole, not that that mattered; he’d been one since he was born. Cole eyed Henry. Henry eyed him back, and the last of Cole’s adrenaline melted away.

  ‘I’m sorry, kid. I won’t hurt you; I promise. I thought you were a vampire.’

  Cole sat on the bed as Henry wiped his face and sniffed.

  ‘You thought I was a what? And you don’t think I’m one now?’

  Cole shook his head. Who was this weird kid and what in the Pit was he doing here, in a vampire refuge? He couldn’t be food. There had to be a reason Cole had been sent after him with a pack of lies to justify the killing.

  Henry kept his attention on Cole, wary. ‘Do other people think I’m a vampire? Is that why they’ve locked me in here? They won’t let me out. Hey, can you get me out of here?’ Henry reached over and gripped Cole’s arm, the hope in his eyes shining up like headlights. The minutes were passing, figuring out what this was really all about after the fact would be Cole’s funeral.

  ‘Henry, I need you to listen to me closely, and do what I tell you, okay?’

  The boy blinked his headlights.

  ‘The guards, Henry, where are they?’

  His blank look drew sharp words to Cole’s mouth that faded before they were born. Not Henry’s fault. ‘I was told there were armed guards here. Actually, I was told they were your armed guards.’

  Henry frowned, indicating the room. ‘There’s locks on the door, like this room’s a bank vault. And there’s no windows, but there’s no guards. Just some horrible old guy I think is in charge. There’s something seriously messed up about that dude though, man. Everyone’s scared of him, you know?’

  Andrew – had to be.

  ‘There’s the servants too. One of them’s called Lucy. She’s nice to me, but I think she’s even more scared of the old dude than the others.’

  No guards. That removed the most immediate threat. ‘She’s not called Lucy, pal. The vampires do it for control; strip them of their former lives. They’re all called Lucy or Tom.’

  He was fast running out of options to get Nessie off the hook. He glanced at Henry, whose jaw was working silently. He wasn’t killing the kid, and even if he could wipe his own memories, that wouldn’t help with Nessie’s. Consequences be screwed. He’d take his chances with the suspicions of the Council.

  He’d figure out what to do with Nessie’s memories later, even if it meant doing something drastic. Survival was always best taken one step at a time, and the first step was to hunt down Andrew Ancroft. No way would Ancroft be hanging around the house he’d sent Cole to – time to withdraw. He’d take Henry back to his, through the portal. Civilians had a way of complicating things, but he had no choice. The scumbag Andrew had sent him after a boy. No one got away with that. The glow that warmed him at the thought of killing Ancroft was the glow of doing right. It was the best he’d felt in months.

  Chapter 9

  An entire day must have passed, maybe more. Natalia had no way to know. There were no windows in this prison – a wytch trap, designed to take her magic from her while she was within its confines. She guessed the passing of time by the meals she was slipped through the door. She had given up pleading to be released or threatening and shouting. Her hands were bruised from battering the door.

  Every time they ignored her protests, they diminished her. They changed the sisters guarding her regularly. Large was out there now. She’d been there for a few hours. Large looked so guilty as she ignored Natalia. But guard duty was pointless – in the wytch trap, Natalia was a mere woman. Null runes written into the room’s stone glowed in pristine lines.

  Luckily for all concerned, Natalia’s innate gift was unaffected by the trap. Her protection held. The wytches were safe from everything but themselves. She could faintly make out runes to suppress siphon magic as well, etched into the walls, but they were near-invisible to her. How in Mixcoatl’s name the Mother got her hands on null runes was a mystery – the Unseen Council was supposed to be the only organisation on the planet to have them, etched in tiers around their prison cells. But then, next to this creepy fortress and the Mournanvil, forbidden runes were going to be the least of anyone’s worries. She thought of Ethan and Nessie. If anything happened to Ethan while she was trapped here …

  From the moment she had woken in the wytch trap, the dull ache – the absence of her magic – had throbbed. She hadn’t known how much it had filled her, how alive it was. Its loss was a bereavement which was fed by the shame of her red-faced defeat at the hands of the sisters.

  The cloying ordinariness of her empty human body followed her everywhere now. She had no respite from the mundanity of life in a tiny room without windows, and no pulse of magic to ease the plainness. A bookshelf of self-help titles and romance novels sat in the corner. She’d rather die.

  No one had spoken to her. Not a word. There was a red-haired sister who had smiled at her once, but then she had turned away when Natalia tried to reason with her. She could still feel the slime of the Mournanvil as it flared to life. The Anvil was fed on vampires by the Sisters of the Orde
r, and the people returned to humanity were discarded like waste.

  Sometimes she’d cried, frustration at herself leaking out, mixed with sadness for the people she knew were being murdered in the same building in which she was trapped, unable to protect them.

  Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts? The Mother’s cause had looked so righteous; in many ways, it still did. But the wytches’ methods were deeply wrong. Nessie had raised Natalia and Cole to know that ends didn’t justify the means. Cole hadn’t paid much attention, he’d been too busy running Nessie ragged, but Natalia had.

  The day passed with too much time for thought. Her introspection threatened to bring up ugly, half-glimpsed truths but, try as she might, she couldn’t stop going back over the events that had got her locked away in here, over and over. She should have played along, kidded on that she was one of them, but Natalia Torres didn’t pretend she was anything for anyone. It was a strength – everyone thought so, didn’t they? So why did it feel like a weakness now? This solitary incarceration would have her nitpick herself to death.

  She moved to the door – Large would bloody well hear her this time – and nearly leapt in the air when it swung open. It wasn’t a mealtime, so what was happening? She was defenceless without her magic. A hooded figure slipped into the room.

  ‘Shhh!’ it said, its movements exaggerated like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Before Natalia could ask any questions, the hood dropped.

  ‘Millie!’ She flung herself on the girl, who stifled a surprised yelp.

  ‘Shhh,’ Millie said again. ‘Great to see you too, Natalia.’

  Her heart expanded in her chest. She looked Millie in the eye. There was something new there. Millie looked back, then reached up and let her hair down, revealing a streak of electric blue. They laughed quietly.

  ‘I stole a copy of a book from the Repentant Sister. The Code of Magic. After what you said, I thought I should educate myself.’

  That book was a good read.

  Millie held her arms out wide. ‘I’ve been chosen!’

  Millie’s excitement shone, but the logical consequence made it hard for Natalia to celebrate with her. ‘You’ll become a sister then, I suppose?’

  Millie looked down. ‘They don’t know I’ve been chosen; I haven’t told them.’

  How Millie was keeping that fact a secret from dozens of other mages, Natalia couldn’t imagine. Mages could see the colours of magic, and Millie’s magic would no longer be the bland hue of the novice.

  Millie spoke. ‘I was uneasy, even before we found out what they did to the people we unbound.’

  Heat flushed Natalia’s cheeks, and she turned away from Millie. It was good to see her friend, but this was not a sanctioned visit. ‘How did you get in here?’

  ‘Astrid – the really tall woman on your door – she let me in.’ Was that so, Large? Guilt could be a useful tool. Millie dropped her tone to a whisper. ‘Astrid and me, we’ve been talking. It’s not right, what’s happening here. It wasn’t like this before. It all changed once they found that thing.’ Millie’s shudder left no doubt what thing she meant. The Anvil.

  ‘We want to get out of here, but the work could save the world. Can the mission be helped by your Coalition? You said you knew people who would help us.’

  Natalia did, but it was pointless, stuck in the fortress. Stuck where she couldn’t fulfil her duty to Cole.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  Millie looked thoughtful. ‘A day and a half?’

  Natalia chewed her lip. She’d been away nearly three days. She had to get back. Nessie would be missing her. Ethan might be in all sorts of trouble by now, and if the Council had noticed her departure … but she had her own problems to contend with.

  ‘Millie, you know they won’t just let you walk out of here, right?’ Millie nodded. ‘And you know they sure as hell won’t let anyone come in and take this show over?’

  Millie shook her head. ‘We can think about that once we get you out of here. Astrid and me, we’re helping you escape.’

  If they could get out, Natalia could rally the Coalition. Nessie, Cole, the knights and mages. They could do this thing properly, in secret. How they would get out she had no idea, but this wasn’t the time for half measures and sitting by. She had a famous name, and now was the chance to live up to it. ‘How do we escape?’

  *

  They waited a full day until Large – aka Astrid – was on guard duty again. The gown they dressed Natalia in was a thing of sadism. The gowns were a last-ditch backup plan; if all attempts at going unseen failed, they were just two junior sisters and a senior, going about their duties. From a distance, they might pass unnoticed.

  As Natalia dressed, Astrid stood outside the prison door and wove an invocation through a key of blisteringly detailed complexity. Thank the gods Little and Large had backed down all those days ago. Astrid was stronger than she’d seemed, but then she no longer wore just the plain white shift of the sisters. Leather armour bulked out her robe, no doubt hung with items honouring her bond god. The language Astrid spoke was difficult to make out, but the harsh, guttural sounds suggested German or Scandi.

  As Astrid completed her obfuscation spell, coloured blue to Natalia’s eyes, a flawless mirror image appeared. The real Astrid leaned back against the wall by Natalia’s door and inspected her nails, barking a single syllable of command and affecting a bored expression. Her doppelganger folded itself onto the wall, laying right over Astrid, and the two became indistinguishable. When Astrid stepped away, the mirror image held place. Impressively, the magical nature of the doppelganger, usually seen in a spell’s aura, was invisible.

  Astrid spoke. ‘It will hold for twenty minutes or so. After that, anyone passing may notice the door unguarded. We have to move.’

  Astrid did well to hide her fatigue, but her chest heaved more deeply after the invoking than it ought to have. Powerful, but short on battery. A sprinter. Millie watched in a daze of admiration. Natalia tried to move her robe, so it sat in a way that didn’t scratch her shoulders. She turned to the other women. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  The three made their way through the corridors. The plan was a risky walk under cover of magic. They had to reach the portal out of this place, then the Ways would deposit them back into the city. According to Astrid, most of the sisters were in the central chamber. Another batch of fresh vampires had been brought for unbinding. It was the perfect time to escape.

  The fortress walls seemed more blood-red than Natalia remembered, as though the vitality of murder flowed in the fortress’s veins. After days locked in her small cell, the rank-breath smell of the ubiquitous wind was laden and toxic. Would this place let go of them? What a stupid thought. For all its menace, this was still only a building.

  They made their way down the narrow corridors with their ludicrously high ceilings. The light bindings, hanging on the walls and illuminating the corridors, did their job irritatingly well. Shadows were Natalia’s domain, providing the camouflage of the hunter as she moved among her prey, but here they were hard to find.

  They walked, hurried and exposed, hoping their simple ruse would not fall under examining eyes. After a hundred metres, Millie led them from the main concourse into the shadowy side corridors. From deep within a shadow’s boundary, Natalia invoked.

  ‘Metzli.’

  The power of Mixcoatl flowed like sugar after so long without it. Magic tingled her spine and ghosted through her limbs, gathering the darkness into a solid weave; cloaks of pure midnight formed around them and hung about their shoulders. The cloaks hooded their heads as the mantle of the hunt settled around them. Happy cheating, Ethan called it. It was the thing he asked for most often when they hunted together, and she was always happy to oblige; the mantle was a cantrip-level casting for Natalia.

  Thinking of Cole brought a pang of anxiety to her stomach, but she couldn’t spare him the worry now. She led the two women creeping from shade to shadow down the less used corridors of the fortre
ss, until ahead, a wytch approached. Natalia could hear Millie struggle to control her breathing as they froze. They had nothing more than shadow to hide in. Natalia would never belittle the two women putting their lives on the line for her by claiming it was all on her. But she had to get them out, especially Millie. There was nothing more visceral than the fear of those not used to risking death, and she remembered her own first time keenly.

  The wytch approached; they needed to get past her, but the passage was narrow. She would pass straight over the top of them and no amount of shadow-weaving would stop them being physically touched, or seen, so close up. Natalia considered going back; perhaps they could hide.

  As she turned, a faint tang like smoke ran through the dark. Millie was invoking. The wytch – mumbling distractedly to herself – froze instantly, peering ahead, her eyes lasered onto their patch of darkness.

  ‘Stop.’ Natalia breathed it as quietly as she could.

  Millie’s forearm was close, and Natalia gripped the younger woman, easing their backs against the wall, as the wytch narrowed her eyes and peered at their shadow mantles.

  They were lucky Millie’s power hadn’t given away their position completely. The wytch swept the room, glancing around as Millie’s power dissipated. ‘Hello?’ The wytch’s call sounded loud in the narrow space as she began to advance toward them. Natalia forced low breath in and out. The wytch stopped, turned around and looked up to the ceiling. ‘Hello?’ Millie and Astrid pushed forward behind Natalia, trying to move past the stalled wytch while her back was turned. The shadow was lighter ahead, they had to stay put or go back. Natalia pushed them back, their robes rustling.

  The wytch spun, peering right at them. ‘Who’s there?’ Smoky magic filled the space as the wytch invoked, drawing on her power. They had seconds. At that moment, the fortress’s wind wheezed. A great gust rushed down the corridor into the bowels of the building. A long rasping sound followed, as though the fortress’s foundations were asthmatic lungs. The tension of the wytch’s magic evaporated. Her shoulders sagged, and she laughed. ‘This place. By the Mother’s grace. Jumping at shadows.’