by SA Magnusson
I brought the sword around and punched with my free hand, sending out a blast of magic into the nearest rune mage. It caught the man on the jaw and he staggered back, giving me a moment to twist my attack, turning my focus to the last rune mage. It was a dark-haired woman with pale skin that stood out in the faint moonlight. She darted off to one side, more quickly than I would’ve expected.
I followed, shifting the barrier, pushing her away from Terrence. He was busy with the other two, and I couldn’t tell if he had finished with them or not.
What sort of rune did she have that gave her such speed?
She moved again, practically flickering, and when she reappeared, she was behind me. I wasn’t going to go on the offensive, not with someone who could move that quickly.
What if I didn’t have to?
Terrence had the other two mages preoccupied, and so I used that moment and wrapped my barrier around her.
I was exposed, but I didn’t have to be.
Releasing my connection to the sword, I erected a second barrier around myself.
It was a strain, and it was nearly more than I could manage, but I held onto it, squeezing the barrier around the woman. She thrashed, trying to flicker, but she couldn’t escape.
I punched through the barrier.
It connected with her jaw, knocking her back. Her eyes flickered closed for a moment, but then she sat upright, looking at me.
She must have runes for healing along with speed. They would be useful, especially when it came to situations like this.
Terrence prowled over toward me, and he growled.
“What is it?”
“He’s displeased with you,” Ariel said, striding over to me out of the darkness.
I glanced over at Terrence. He was still in wolf form. “Why? He was going to die if I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s not why. He wanted to be the one to catch the vampire.”
13
“Vampire?” I asked, looking over at the pale-skinned woman. Against the night sky, her skin seemed even lighter than it had, and it practically glowed softly. I had been around vampires before, but that had been when facing the demon king and I had been too focused on what I needed to do to stop him to pay any attention to the vampires themselves.
If she was a vampire, it explained the rapid movement. Vampires had the ability to move quickly, faster than any human could see, and they were notorious for their great strength. I didn’t know they had pale, glowing skin, though that could only be my imagination. I hadn’t noticed that before.
“Yes,” Ariel said. “Are you having any difficulty holding her inside this… shield, I believe you called it.”
“She’s secure, for now,” I said.
“Good. Then I need you to bring her back to the car.”
“You would have us hold a vampire?”
“Not for long, but you were interested in having someone to question, and now here you go. This is your someone.”
“I was thinking that it would be one of the rune mages.”
“As you said yourself, they have no power of their own. This is something altogether different.” She grinned a dangerous grin, looking at the vampire. “And the fact that she was willing to come out here to the known territory of the council suggest this was sanctioned by one of the families.” Ariel nodded to Terrence and he rippled as he shifted—probably healing himself—before racing toward the car.
“Where’s Jayson?” I asked.
“He’s already returned. He was not nearly as lucky as Terrence.”
“Lucky?”
“Lucky in that you were there to help him.”
“Did he… did he die?” That would be my fault, too.
“No, but he expended quite a bit of himself. It will be quite a while before he’s able to be a part of anything again.”
I looked at the vampire. She no longer thrashed against my barrier, and I released my hold on the one surrounding me, focusing instead on the one around her. “Who are you?”
“Release me and I’ll make it quick.”
“Make what quick?”
“Your end.”
“You’re not giving me much of a reason to release you,” I said. “Besides, I get the sense that Ariel is quite interested in seeing what you might know.”
She needed to know Ariel’s name, and there was a slight twitch that told me that she recognized Ariel. If she knew anything, she would fear her, too, the same way that I feared Ariel.
“Are you scared?”
“I fear nothing, mage.”
I laughed. “You should know that I’m not a mage. Would a mage be able to hold you so easily?” I don’t know what had gotten into me, or why I was taunting her, but it probably had something to do with the fact that she was involved in what had happened to Aron. She had to be. And if it wasn’t her, it was somebody who had been with her. Either way, I wasn’t about to let her escape until I had the answers I wanted.
“You managed to be lucky. If it weren’t for the shifters,” she said, sneering at Ariel, “you would be the one confined.”
“You aren’t here to confine. You’re here to kill.”
“And like I said, if it weren’t for the shifters, you would be the one here.”
I dragged her with me, pulling on the barrier as I forced her back toward the car. Terrence was waiting, back in human form and fully dressed, and I glanced in the backseat to see Jason, his eyes glazed, but he was breathing and thankfully not bleeding. I wasn’t sure that we would be able to get blood out of Jen’s car if it came down to it, though maybe Ariel’s restorative magic had some way of doing that. If so, I could use her in the emergency room.
“What are we going to do with her?” I asked.
“We’re going to put her in the trunk.”
“I don’t know how long I can hold this shield,” I said.
“You won’t have to hold it for long.”
“Why?”
“We aren’t going too far,” Ariel said.
She popped the trunk and I lifted the barrier surrounding the vampire and twisted her as I forced her into the trunk. She began to fight again, thrashing, but I constricted it, squeezing it around her so that she only had so much ability to continue to thrash and fight. When she was shoved in there, Terrence slammed the trunk closed.
“Get back in,” Ariel said.
“Where are we going?”
“I already told you. Get back in.”
I climbed into the passenger seat while Ariel got into the driver’s side, quickly starting the car and throwing it into gear. Rolling along the street in complete darkness was uncomfortable for me, but Ariel navigated down the street before taking a meandering road that led down the bluff.
She was taking us toward the river.
What did she intend to do here?
“What does the river allow you to do?”
“It’s not what allows me to do, it’s what it allows you to do.”
“What do you think it allows me to do?”
“You shared with me that you are able to access the power within the ley lines?”
“I did when I was trying to help Aron, but I don’t know if I could do it all the time.”
“That’s all that matters. You just need to be able to attempt to reach it. And you need to hold onto it long enough to allow me to question her.”
“Why do I get the sense that your method of questioning her isn’t going to be something I’m going to agree with?”
“You want answers, don’t you?” I nodded. “If you want answers, then you can’t object to the method with which I obtain them.”
“I can object. I don’t want to be the kind of person who defaults to violence.”
“Did you object when you were fighting demons?”
“Well, no. They were demons.”
“Do you think the demons are somehow less deserving than vampires?”
“I guess that I do.”
“If you are on the other side
of the Veil, you would feel differently. On the other side of the Veil, the demons have their own realm, and there they are no different than vampires or shifters or mages.”
No different, and yet I had slaughtered them, taking no pity on the fact that they were demons. Or daemons.
Then again, neither had Aron. Wasn’t that part of it? I had simply acted on what I had learned of the demons from him. And maybe they didn’t deserve to die, though it was strange to even make that suggestion.
Ariel started laughing.
“What is it?”
“It’s your face. I can see that you struggle. You wonder if you’ve been killing when your responsibility should be to heal.”
“I’m a doctor. I took an oath. That should be my responsibility.”
“You’re a doctor in the non-magical world. But within the magical world, you will realize that some things are dangerous. Things need to be removed. Not everything is good and sweet and innocent, and not everything is deserving of life. Not everything will respect life the same way as you.”
“I’m not so naïve that I feel that way,” I said.
“And yet, you fear what we might do to that vampire.”
“She’s not from the other side of the Veil.”
“Is that how you plan to make the distinction?”
“I’m not really sure,” I said.
“You had better figure out what distinction you will make. There will come a time when you need to.”
We stopped in front of the river and Ariel looked over at me. “Are you ready?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Good. You don’t have to know, but you do have to try.”
She pushed open the door and I climbed out the passenger side. When she popped open the trunk, the vampire continued to thrash. I hadn’t been aware of her moving while sitting in the front seat, and now that I was in front of her again, I could feel how she clawed at my barrier, but every time she did, the barrier restored itself. It took barely any energy on my part.
Why should I be able to hold on to the barrier so easily around her? Could it be the proximity to the ley lines?
When I had tried to save Aron, I had been so focused on that singular task that I hadn’t paid any attention to the way that magic swirled around me, but now that I was here, down near the shore, I felt it. There was power coming from the river, much more so than I would have been aware of otherwise.
The power within the river rejuvenated me. I was exhausted from everything we’d been through, and by now, I should have long been wiped out, well beyond my limits, but I still managed to hold on.
How much of that was the brief rest I had managed to steal while in Ariel’s den and how much of it was from my proximity to the river?
“Did you know?” I asked Ariel.
“I suspected. Not knew.”
“What is it?”
“It’s part of the city. Some people have the ability to access this more directly. When you had mentioned using the water to help with the archer, I realized you were one who might have such ability.”
“How do I need to use it? Do I need to crawl into the water?” I wasn’t opposed to it, and had been in the river only a few days ago, so if it came down to that, I was willing to, but I would much rather not. There was a chill to the air, and it would be enough to distract me, maybe enough that I wouldn’t be able to hold onto the barrier.
“Not into the water, not unless you want to.”
“No thanks,” I said.
“Just maintain your connection,” she said.
We stood on the shores of the river, me holding onto the barrier. As I did, I watched Ariel. The shifter made a steady circle around the vampire. For her part, the vampire thrashed and twisted so that she could see Ariel. Claws elongated on Ariel’s hand, and she slashed through the barrier, moving incredibly quickly.
The barrier bulged, allowing just the ends of her claws to rake through, and she scored across the vampire’s chest. A strange squeal echoed, and I squeezed the barrier, realizing that I could control what passed through.
Had I that level of control before, Aron might still be here.
“How long do you think you can withstand me?” Ariel asked, pausing in front of the vampire.
The vampire flashed her fangs.
Ariel only laughed, and her nose and mouth elongated, shifting into her jaws, allowing her to curl back her lips, revealing her fangs. “If you would threaten, perhaps you should do so when you have a little better position.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” the vampire said.
“I know exactly what I’m doing. The question is whether you know what you’re doing. Which family are you with?”
The vampire laughed. The sound was sharp, painful, and it carved into the silence of the night. I suffocated it, trapping it within the barrier.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Why is she delaying?”
“She likely thinks there will be help coming.”
“Do you think there will be?”
“There were too many attackers for this to be without any sort of plan. I’m not entirely certain what her plan was, but it is possible that help will come.”
“Which is why we need to finish this quickly.”
“Do you want to take over the torturing?”
“I’d rather return to the ER.” Even working a shift with Dr. Locks was better than spending time out in the darkness of night with a vampire and shifter. The vampire terrified me. She looked as if she would kill me the first chance she got, and I suspected she would. Ariel seemed to be having far too much fun with her role of tormentor. The longer she was at this, the more I began to wonder if there was more behind her torture of the vampire than she had let on.
“Relax your shielding,” Ariel said.
I eased back on my connection.
The vampire had stopped screaming.
“If you think you can call to the others, you are mistaken,” Ariel said.
The vampire turned her attention to me. “What are you?”
“Nothing but a mage,” I said.
“You are no mage, and you should not be here.”
“Neither should you, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are. Why were you at the council archives?” I asked.
Ariel shot me a hard look. It wasn’t the question she would’ve asked, but it was what I wanted to know. None of this made sense. I thought that the shooter and the rest of the gang had followed me to the archive, but why?
Were they using us to find the council?
I squeezed the barrier back around her more tightly, sealing her within so she couldn’t hear. “Do the vampires know how to find the mage council?”
“The vampires keep to themselves. We don’t allow them to know how to reach us in the Iron Range, either. The council would prefer to keep separate from them. And the vampire families don’t interact with us unless it’s necessary. They view us as a necessary sort of evil.”
“They view the shifters and the mages as evil?”
“They view the agreement to maintain the Veil as a necessary sort of evil. They understand they have just as much to lose if the Veil fails as any of us.”
“We need to get her to talk,” I said.
Ariel glared at me. “What do you think I have been trying to do?”
“We need to know which family she works with, and why she’s here.” A different thought came to me, and I realized that I might have been mistaken. “And we need to know how they are placing these runes.”
“Does the how matter all that much?”
“They’re pulling power from somewhere. Mages have to be involved, but I haven’t heard anything about mages forced to allow these runes to draw from them.”
“There are plenty of weak mages throughout the cities. Many of them have minimal skill, though some have a fair amount of strength even though they are untrained.”
Hedge mages. “They would have to have some power,
especially for what we’ve seen here. That’s more than just hedge mages.” And it could be they targeted dark mages.
I needed to check in with Barden.
I relaxed the shielding and Ariel grinned, slashing through it with her claws, raking them across the vampire.
This time I was ready, and I sealed off the screams before they could escape. The vampire howled, but when it became apparent that her screams were silent, she cut off and stared at me.
Ariel slashed forward again. “You will tell us why you are here.”
“You are an incredible fool,” she said.
Ariel growled. “You’ve seen what I’m willing to do. You’ve seen what she’s able to do. What makes you think that we won’t keep this up?”
“It doesn’t matter. I just have to linger a little bit longer,” she said.
“What does that mean?” I asked Ariel.
Ariel sniffed, tipping her nose toward the sky, and then she turned to the east. “A sacrifice. She intends to sacrifice herself.”
“Why would she sacrifice herself?”
Ariel growled. “She intends to protect whatever secret she’s keeping. Whatever it is, it is significant. I’ve not seen a vampire so willing to go off into the light.”
“This is more than just going off into the light, isn’t it? It would be more like burning off into the light.” And if it was close enough to dawn that the vampire simply intended to wait, I had other issues. I needed to get into the hospital, and with as little sleep as I’d gotten, I would be exhausted. I didn’t dare move, not yet. “Couldn’t we just put her back in the trunk?”
“You said you were limited with how long you could carry her,” Ariel said.
“I can try…”
She growled, a low and dangerous sound. “She’s right. We can’t do much. We either release her or we force her to die. She has us in a difficult spot.”
“You can’t be serious about considering holding her and letting her die.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Because she hasn’t told us anything, and”—I squeezed the barrier around her more solidly once again—“we could track her. Don’t shifters have powerful noses?”
“We do, but vampires have a way of eluding us. It’s why we didn’t know there was a vampire here.”
