Malicious Magic: An Urban Fantasy Adventure

by G. K. Lund

  “So, what works against ghosts?” I asked Loki. He seemed to be the only one with any kind of knowledge about this.

  “Did they teach you nothing in school?”

  Okay, so knowledge didn’t make him cozy and malleable.

  “Which school? The one Earthside where magic is almost non-existent, or the Red Kin who wants to eradicate magic?”

  “Fair enough. Iron and salt.” He glanced at his sword. “Steel will do the trick as well.”

  I already had my hand on one of my daggers, but let go at this. They were not made from steel.

  “He seems kind of calm,” I ventured. The ghost was simply watching us. “Maybe he won’t—”

  A metal tankard flew off one table and smashed into the wall behind Loki. Had he not ducked, it would have hit his face. Melleta screamed when more things were hurled our way by an invisible force.

  I saw the ghost of Dekel move then. His arms were stretched out toward us. I didn’t know quite what to call his movements. He walked fast, but his body moved awkwardly like he was in both this and another dimension at the same time. It didn’t look natural.

  Like Loki, I ducked, covering my head with my arms. Plates, cutlery, and glasses crashed against the wall. Books were flung with such force that pages were ripped from the spines. I cried out in pain as things hit me.

  “Poltergeist!” I shouted.

  “What?” Loki yelled back.

  “Poltergeist! It’s a Poltergeist!”

  “We need to get out.”

  I felt him grab hold of my arm, pulling me toward the wall.

  “Melleta?” I looked around but couldn’t see her.

  “The door,” Loki insisted. A chair hit him and pushed him into the wall. I turned to help, and something struck the back of my head. I staggered and saw Melleta lying in a slump. She’d almost made it under a nearby table before something had hit her.

  “Here!” Loki gasped when he got the door open. “There’s no time,” he added in a strained voice, clearly seeing my wish to bring her along. I turned and cried out in shock. The ghost was almost upon me. The crazed eyes, the delayed and silent words on its lips. It looked horrid. I stumbled backward and landed on my ass. Then I kicked backward until I got my feet under me and bolted through the door.

  Loki was already on the other side. The moment I slammed the door shut, he pushed at a nearby hutch. It toppled over and landed in front of the door. The sound of porcelain breaking was deafening a moment.

  “That won’t hold a ghost,” I blurted. Couldn’t they walk through walls?

  A bang sounded. I took a step back. Another bang. Then another. Okay, so this one, at least, couldn’t. “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Just found it interesting it came in there through the other door.” Loki indicated we should move with a quick nod.

  “What about Melleta?”

  “That thing seems more interested in getting through the door to follow us than to get to her.”

  “Didn’t you hear what she said?” I argued yet followed him through another door. We entered some maintenance room. It was filled with gear for indoor and outdoor work. Loki started searching through it.

  “Was it important?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “She called him master. And he doesn’t exactly take good care of his flock considering they’re all disappearing.”

  Loki was rummaging through what looked like garden equipment when he found a brown paper bag. He opened it and smiled. “Rock salt. That’ll do.” He glanced at me and pointed at a nearby fireplace with nothing but cold coal in it. “See if there’s a poker. One of iron.” He then moved on to the next table. “Besides, you should perhaps sweep your own porch first, no?”

  “Sweep my-what?” I grabbed a poker that hung on the brick wall that surrounded the fireplace. It was of a weighty metal, and I spotted some rust near the handle. Good odds.

  “What I mean is that maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to judge her finding a new master when, not ten minutes ago, you yourself talked about your Illustrious Guide?”

  That stopped me short. He was right, which was annoying as hell. Slip of the tongue. That was all it was. Right? Kerwyn Bowden. Kerwyn Bowden! That was his name. I needed to remember that.

  A new bang sounded from the other room, followed by a creaking and scraping noise. The ghost was moving the hutch by shear force. Shear supernatural force. My thoughts were forcibly removed from Illustrious Guide—Kerwyn Bowden. Damn it!

  “What’s the plan here?” I asked Loki. He came around the table with the big bag of salt in one hand, his sword in the other.

  “We subdue that thing, then get the hell out of here. Whatever’s going on, they have bigger problems than a gemstone.”

  There was another bang and then we could hear the hutch scraping against the floor. It was being pushed away to allow for an opening in the door.

  “What is a poltergeist anyway?” Loki asked, his voice hushed now, his eyes on the half-open door into the utility room.

  “Didn’t you learn anything watching TV?”

  “I find reality TV quite fascinating.”

  “I bet you do.” I huffed my disapproval. All that conniving behavior would be right up his alley.

  “Are poltergeists likely to appear in such shows?” he asked.

  “Only their living, horny cousins.” But speaking of the dead kind, where was this one? I stepped closer to the door. If it had gotten through the barred door across the other room, then why wasn’t it running for us in that odd manner it had before?

  “What are you doing?” Loki asked.

  “Something feels off.”

  “Really? Hadn’t noticed.”

  I hefted the poker in my hand. “What’s there to worry about? I have my spear, you have your spices. I simply want to see…”

  I heard Loki sigh behind me, but moved forward nonetheless. The door was so close. A few steps, a couple more, and I reached out, poker at the ready, and pushed it fully open.

  The room behind it was empty of both the living and the dead. The door on the opposite end was open, with a big enough gap for a man to pass through. I turned back toward Loki, already with half a shrug and froze. Loki moved his head then, like he knew someone was behind him, but it was too late. Dekel loomed behind him, his robe billowing despite being indoors and standing still. His hands pushed toward Loki’s head, fingers splayed, small flickering bolts of lightning emanating from them and shooting straight into his head. Loki made a choked sound, and then Dekel’s hands closed the gap. I ran forward right when Loki threw the salt back over his head. The small crystals sprayed everywhere but to no use. Before most of them had fallen, and I was close enough, I saw Dekel fade, and then he was gone.

  The sword fell from Loki’s hand and he stumbled forward and ended up in a half-kneeling position, one knee to the floor. Air was forced from his lungs and his cheeks puffed out. I noticed the gap in the door behind him. The ghost had tricked us. How stupid could we be?

  “Loki?” I lowered the poker and stared at him. Maybe there was something about his physiology that had forced the ghost away? I thought ex-gods became human or whatever equivalent shape they had as gods, but maybe I was wrong? Maybe—

  Nope, I was wrong. Wrong-ish, at least. I still had no clue about ex-god physiology, but when Loki looked up, he was not himself anymore. His face was all wrong, the skin and muscles drawn and moving like someone was using him as a mask that didn’t fit right. His eyes had the same disoriented and crazed look as the ghost, and his mouth was moving slowly like he was speaking on a different frequency that couldn’t get through.

  Great. Now my reluctant partner was possessed. Super freaking fantastic. And the entity was fully focused on me.

  I backed up a step. Loki, or Dekel now, arose, his movements stiff and awkward. His pounce forward was fast, though. I startled and dropped the poker before bolting through the door behind me. I grabbed the door and pulled it with me, but it never slammed into its
frame. A thud told me it hit Dekel instead. I dared a glance back and saw him rip it open before stumbling into the room.

  “Not good, not good,” I panted. I ran for the overturned hutch and the door we’d escaped through minutes ago. I jumped on the hutch, the cabinet door creaking under my feet before I scrambled through the door.

  The sight in the room I reentered stopped me short a moment. Melleta was awake now, and she was walking backward, clearly intimidated by a dark-clad man, a hood over his face.

  “What?” I began and then felt my feet lifted. I cried out in shock as I fell, my hip hitting the edge of the hutch, my arms banging onto the door on my way down. I glanced back and felt my chest tighten at the sight of Dekel moving on the other side of the door. He let go of my feet and stepped up on the hutch. I wriggled desperately to get through the door. There was a cracking sound behind me and then the crushing of porcelain. I glanced back to see Dekel sink into the hutch when the weak cabinet door gave way under his weight.

  I scrambled to get away, pulling myself through by grabbing the door frame. With my feet inside the room, I reached up for the door handle and pulled the door shut. Not that it would help for long against the ghost.

  “Help me!” I shouted at Melleta and the stranger. I looked back and saw the man had stopped advancing on her. They’d been staring at my exceedingly elegant entrance, no doubt. At my direct order, the man cast Melleta a look I couldn’t see under the hood before he turned and ran. I stared in disbelief when he bolted and disappeared through the door where the ghost of Dekel Chiron had first appeared. That brief moment of confusion was all it took for the ghost to gain entrance. The door was kicked so hard from the other side I fell back on my ass and instinctively began crawling backward to avoid more than a collision with my foot.

  “Melleta, run!” I shouted when Dekel strode into the room. Well, strode was exaggerating slightly considering he looked like he was trying to push through an invisible wall as he walked. There was nothing natural about his stilted movements. He didn’t seem to care about Melleta, but he was between her and all the doors in the room. There was nowhere for her to go.

  I scrambled to my feet, keeping distance between myself and Dekel. I had no weapons but my daggers and they wouldn’t help. I grabbed a random plate from the floor. A part of the edge had been chipped off in Dekel’s primary attack.

  “Loki? Can you hear me?”

  Nothing indicated he had any control over what was happening. I glanced back, seeing the wall approach way too fast. I had no choice. Banking on the ghost now being corporeal, of sorts, I threw the plate like a Frisbee. It spun in the air and hit Dekel right in the forehead.

  “Sorry,” I managed, biting my teeth together. The ghost reacted to the physical collision to its borrowed head. Dekel stumbled forward and fell. Unfortunately, there was no more room between me and the wall. I tried jumping back but was caught between it and the ghost as he fell and grabbed my legs at the same time. Considering his awkward movements, he was remarkably swift and strong.

  “Let go!” I cried, fighting to get my legs free from his hold. The dead eyes stared at me, his mouth moving like before like he was trying to say something.

  “Get off!” I freed my right leg and immediately kicked toward the ghost, hitting him right in the face. His grip on my left leg loosened a bit, and I pulled free. I forced myself up on my knees and drew both daggers. I had to defend myself. But I hesitated. That was Loki, not merely a dead spirit attempting to kill me.

  Its eyes stared at me, the mouth talking on and on. It was like staring at a corpse trying to communicate something. Which it was. A gurgling noise escaped its throat, then: “Aayavelonn…” The voice sounded like it came from underwater.

  “What?” I pulled back, shaking my head, ready to knock Dekel’s hands away.

  A bright light, orange and piercing my eyes, slammed down around the ghost’s stolen hands. I shut my eyes because of the sting, and when I opened them, I saw magical cuffs encircling Dekel’s hands. Loki’s body had gone still. It was like the ghost was in a trance. Melleta sat on her knees next to us, not quite meeting my eyes.

  “Magic?” I tried staying my quick breathing, but my heart was pounding on overload. “You have magic?”

  Melleta got to her feet and backed up. Since she showed no worry regarding Dekel, I didn’t either. I moved sideways a little and then got up from the floor. I sheathed my daggers and took a moment to gather my thoughts. I drew a couple of deep breaths. “Did Illustr-Kerwyn know?”

  A mix of a sob and a laugh escaped her. “Of course he knew, Emery. Why do you think I was even in the Kin?”

  “I don’t…”

  “To prove I didn’t need it! To be better than that. Like we were all supposed to be.” Her hands hung down by her sides, seemingly relaxed, but her clenched fists said otherwise.

  I glanced back at Dekel, or Loki, as it were. The cuffs had the color of molten lava but didn’t seem to hurt either of them. They seemed to have ended up in a catatonic state, at least the ghost had. If Loki was even conscious in there was beyond my understanding. Melleta’s magic inhibitor was doing the trick though, and that was what mattered now.

  “Who was that man?” I asked her, thinking of the man with the hood.

  A light seemed to go on in her eyes at that. She checked the room as if to see if we were still alone. “He can’t have gotten far.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a thief.” She stepped closer and took my hand, urging me to come along. Broken shards of a ceramic mug crunched under her boot, but she didn’t seem to notice. “He’s the one responsible for all this.”

  “What? Why? How?” In my confusion, I allowed her to pull me along, toward the door the thief had escaped through.

  “If you want your friend back, and that gem, that’s the man you want,” Melleta told me. Loki’s inanimate state drew my gaze, and then I stopped struggling and followed her through the door.

  Chapter Seven

  I followed Melleta into a hallway that ran parallel to the rooms we’d just been in. As we ran back in the direction of the utility room and further ahead toward the antechamber, a row of smaller rooms appeared to our left. Some doors were open, revealing small cell-like rooms with beds and not much more. The order was looking more like a convent at this point.

  The hooded man was in none of them. I opened the closed doors to be sure.

  “Come on!” Melleta insisted. She rushed through the open door Chiron had used into the utility room where we’d found the salt and iron.

  “What the hell is going on?” The salt Loki had thrown scraped under my shoes.

  “Listen to me!” Melleta whirled around, making the ridiculously yellow robe flow around her. “You came here looking for a gem, right? That’s what your friend told Helios.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this is all about that damn gem.”

  “So it’s here?”

  “The gem is magical. It caused all this. But that thief, he has it.”

  “The hooded man?”

  Melleta nodded her confirmation. “We need it back to end all the—” her eyes caught something through the window and she ran over. “There he is!”

  I followed her and saw she was right. The hooded man was coming out from the door leading into the antechamber. He glanced around and then headed toward the fountain out there.

  “Emery, can you—”

  I didn’t need to hear it all. I was already running. With the lack of a door leading outside, I ran back through the rooms for the third time that day. This time I passed over the hutch with more grace, though. I noticed Loki/Dekel still on the floor, the glowing cuffs keeping them subdued, and then yanked open the door that led outside.

  The hooded man had passed the fountain, and the sight of me rushing out toward him had him speed up. He wasn’t running toward the closed gate. It would take too much time for him to get it open before I caught up. Instead, he ran toward an area of t
he wall a few feet to the side where several crates and barrels stood.

  “Stop!” I shouted for some inexplicable reason. It wasn’t like he was going to listen to me, was it? Of course not.

  I skidded to a halt, a cloud of sand whirling up around my feet. I would not catch up. I grabbed one of my daggers, aimed, drew a deep breath, and then threw it after the man. The weapon did one flip in the air and then plunged into the back of his thigh.

  “Aahhh!” He stumbled, yet controlled his fall by dropping to one knee with one hand out for support in the sand, his wounded leg stretched out. He looked down at the dagger sticking out of his thigh, then glared back at me. I could barely see his face, but there was no mistaking that look. To my surprise, though, he didn’t remain like that. He took hold of the dagger’s hilt and pulled it out, eliciting nothing but a pained groan as he did so.

  “What? No!” I yelled and started running again. I was too far away. He forced himself up, limped back a couple of steps, and then ran for it, toward the crates. He leaped onto them, crying out in pain when he did so, and then jumped further up. He caught the top edge of the fence. Something told me he could have done it better had he not been injured. It didn’t seem to matter. Even with my dagger in one hand, he heaved himself up on the fence before he disappeared down on the other side.

  I stared after him, dumbfounded.

  “Well, that didn’t help, did it?” Melleta said. She halted beside me, her breath heavy from running. Her comment reminded me why we’d never been close friends while in the Kin. “And now he’s got your knife,” she added with a huff.

  I could only smile. “You let me worry about that.”

  “I—apologies.” Melleta shook her head and closed her eyes a moment. “You have no idea how it’s been in here.”

  “No, but I don’t think you should stay here.” I peered at the door to the antechamber. It was closed now. Had the thief done that while escaping? Or had Helios done it? And why wasn’t he out there with them?

  “I can’t leave. You know that.” Melleta showed no emotion. This seemed to be a long-known fact to her. The odds of her escaping through the Veil without being noticed were minuscule. No, she needed to bide her time. I, of all people, understood her plight.