Magic to the Bone

by Annie Bellet

  But not yet. No telling what effect that would have. I decided to wait on that as a last resort. Seeing magic was apparently a dragon thing, not a sorcerer thing. It was a big advantage that I had. Samir could probably detect magic. He’d dodged my spells easily enough in the past, but I bet he had to use concentration to do it. I had for the most part, until my dragon-self had fully integrated. Now I just saw magic if I looked for it.

  “I’m surprised you are here, then,” Samir said. “Not up there, trying to save them. Going to let them all die just like before?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I’m going to stop you.” Keep him talking, and nobody explodes. Time was running out like sand through my fingers. I hoped that Vollan and Alek were ready. I hoped that Cal had made it to the bomb.

  Samir laughed, the sound chilling me far worse than the icy air. His magic coalesced around him, and I knew time wasn’t just running out… it was gone.

  The grenade had collapsed a section of the tunnel just inside the doorway. It must have found some kind of old structural weakness to cause this much damage, Harper thought. She scrabbled at the debris, pulling bits of stone and twisted rebar away. There was no telling how thick the cave-in was or if the stairs behind the door were safe. If Levi was safe.

  She pushed that thought away. No point worrying about him when she had no way to know. At least nobody was shooting at them anymore.

  “This is like that scene at the end of Cabin in the Woods,” Ezee said. He had stripped off his coat and was working beside her.

  “What? Waiting around for the world to explode?” Harper made a face at him in the dim light. She’d been relatively clean before, but digging in rock debris had fixed that.

  “I guess I’m the fool and you are the virgin,” Ezee said, pulling free another chunk of concrete. More dust and rock slid into place in the dent he’d just created.

  “Hey now,” Harper protested. “How do you know it isn’t the other way around? I’m pretty funny. I have antics.”

  “Honey,” Ezee said, his dark eyes glinting in the light filtering out from the boiler room, “I am no virgin.”

  “Neither am I,” Harper said.

  “When’s the last time you had sex?”

  “Whoa now. Just because the Sahara is a desert doesn’t mean it never rains there.” Harper gave up on her section and walked a few steps down the hall. The dead mercenary was still heaped there. It was a testament to how much rock dust must have been in the corridor that she couldn’t really smell the blood anymore.

  She nudged his body with her foot. They were going to die here because of this asshole. It was totally unfair.

  “It’s all fun and games until someone throws a grenade,” she said, punctuating her words with a hard kick to the corpse’s stomach.

  A rectangular piece of plastic shot free of the body and spun into the corridor.

  Harper looked at Ezee. “Radio,” they said at the same time. She kicked herself for not remembering one of the first rules of adventuring. Always loot the corpse.

  Harper snatched it up. Ezee followed her down the hall to the boiler room as she brought it into the light for examination.

  The radio seemed intact. A red light blinked on it.

  “How do we call for help?” Harper asked. “This thing has numbers on it. Must be the channels?”

  “It’s the bad-guy radio,” Ezee said. “They’ll be monitoring the signal. Is it even working? We haven’t heard it.”

  “Volume was all the way down,” Harper said, twisting the nob. “What are the odds that Levi or Cal are near a corpse?”

  “And not buried under that rubble?” Ezee said, his face grim.

  He’d clearly been trying not to dwell on his own fears for Levi. Harper empathized with that.

  “Worth a try,” Harper said. She clicked the side button to talk. “Leviticus,” she yelled into it. “This is Fox paging Leviticus, over.”

  Levi hated his full name as much as she hated hers. Hopefully if he were alive and could hear the bad guys’ radios, he’d find a way to answer.

  The radio crackled almost immediately, making Harper flinch, as she still had it near her face with the volume all the way up.

  “Azalea,” a voice said. It wasn’t Levi’s, but Cal’s. “Channel not clear.”

  “He didn’t say ‘over’ yet,” Harper said as Ezee tried to grab for the radio.

  “I don’t think anyone actually talks like that,” Ezee said.

  “I’m a condemned woman,” Harper said, motioning toward the bomb she was trying not to look at. “Don’t ruin my paramilitary dreams.”

  “Ask him if Levi is okay,” Ezee said.

  “He called me Azalea. I’m sure Levi is fine. But he said channel not clear.”

  “We’re on the bad guys’ channel. See those numbers? We have to change somehow, but if you say a number to switch to, they can just switch to listen in or jam it or something.”

  “Not if we use code,” Harper said, her mind racing. She studied the numbers and then clicked the button. “Zerg cheese, I repeat go to Zerg cheese,” she said into the radio.

  “Zerg cheese?” Ezee raised an eyebrow.

  “Cal is a gamer. He plays Zerg. He’ll know.” Harper clicked the dial over to the channel, praying she was right and that this worked.

  “Six pool,” the radio said. “Funny.”

  “Is Levi okay?” Harper asked, relief flooding through her. He’d understood the channel change.

  “I’m okay. We’re pinned down but safe enough,” Levi’s voice came through the radio. “You guys?”

  Ezee fist-pumped and muttered a prayer of thanks to the ceiling.

  “Ezee is here with me. We’re good. Except this bomb.”

  “Um, Harper?” Ezee said, looking at the bomb.

  There was what looked like a circuit board on top of a pile of orange-putty bricks. The board had a line of lights. Lights that had been dark except for a single red one earlier. Now they were green and blinking on and off in a line.

  “The bomb just started blinking,” Harper told Cal.

  “Describe it,” Cal said. “And describe where you are, what tools you might have.”

  Harper took a deep breath and looked around the room, then back at the bomb.

  “Red bricks, maybe twenty of them all wrapped in gold wire? It’s just a block in the center of the room, on the floor. There are wires from a circuit board thing going into the bricks. Two sets of wires with metal at the brick parts. Not much else here. A sink. Some folding chairs. No tools.”

  “I’ll check the corpse,” Ezee said, heading out the door.

  “You ever played that game where you disarm a bomb while the other person has the manual?”

  “I suck at that game,” Harper said.

  “You’re one of the best pro gamers I’ve ever seen,” Cal said. “You got this. Tell me about the bomb.”

  “The bricks look like C-4, but they are orange. Oh, there’s a weird crystal taped to the side, too. Looks like smoky quartz or something?”

  “Do the bricks have numbers on them?”

  “No, writing. Not English.”

  “Cyrillic,” Ezee said, coming back into the room. He had a flak jacket and the gunman’s belt with him. “Leatherman,” he added, holding up the belt. “So we got tools.”

  “Cyrillic,” Harper repeated to Cal.

  “How many red wires?” Cal asked.

  Harper moved closer to the bomb. She bent and examined the wires. They were all white.

  “No red wires,” she said, hoping that wasn’t bad.

  “No red wires,” Cal repeated. Then there was silence over the radio for what felt like eternity.

  Sweat trickled down the back of Harper’s neck, itching in the cement dust and hair stuck there. She was no bomb expert and this was no game. Deep breath, she told herself. Don’t panic.

  “There are two spots the wires go into the C-4?” Cal said, the radio crackling.

  “Yes.”
/>   “Hand the radio to Ezee,” Cal said. “You are going to need both hands.”

  Harper looked at Ezee. He put down his loot and took the radio, giving her a quick thumbs-up.

  “You kill us, at least we don’t die alone,” he said with a forced grin.

  Harper bared her teeth at him.

  Ezee clicked the radio on. “Go ahead; she’s ready,” he said.

  “Okay. Harper. Put both hands on the wires where they join the metal pins.”

  Harper did so and nodded to Ezee.

  “Done,” Ezee said.

  “Now, on the count of three, I want you to pull. Smooth and fast, got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Harper felt the wires under her fingertips, felt the cool metal pins and their slightly rough edges. Time seemed to slow. Just her breath easing out and the sound of Cal counting down from three over the radio.

  Three. Two. One.

  She pulled. The long metal bits slid out of the C-4, leaving Harper crouched in front of the bomb with two probe-like things attached to wires in her hands. She looked at Ezee and raised her eyebrows. The circuit board was still blinking green.

  “She did it,” Ezee said. “Circuit board is still blinking.”

  “Good,” Cal said. “She said there’s a sink? Take it to the sink.”

  “Okay,” Harper said. She kept hold of the pins as Ezee helped cut the tape off the sides of the board. They walked it together to the sink and put it carefully down. Harper set the pins down carefully, too.

  “It’s in the sink,” she said, taking the radio back from Ezee.

  “Turn on the water?” Cal said.

  Ezee and Harper shared a look. They had no idea if the water worked.

  “Here goes nothing,” Ezee muttered. He twisted the tap.

  Water choked and spat and then flowed out in a brownish rush. It smelled heavily of metal and rust, but it splashed down onto the electronics. The lights blinked on and then something popped and sizzled. Water plus electronics when powered was bad. Harper could put that together.

  “It’s wet. Lights aren’t on anymore.” She left the water running.

  “Congrats, you just disarmed your first bomb.” Cal’s voice was full of laughter.

  “Wait, what? That was it?” Harper glared at the radio. “What about the explosives?”

  “This isn’t the movies,” Cal said. “C-4 is very stable. Without the blasting caps and electric trigger, you could light it on fire and cook dinner with it and it wouldn’t blow up.”

  “What about the crystal?” Ezee asked.

  Harper repeated that question.

  “Probably magic,” Cal said, sounding more serious. “Secondary trigger? Amplifier? That isn’t my area.”

  “Let’s remove it,” Ezee said. “We can wrap it in the flak jacket and put it at the end of the hall.”

  “Better than leaving it,” Harper agreed. She relayed the plan to Cal and Levi.

  At the far end of the hall was a set of doors that were long sealed, the tunnel beyond bricked up and closed off. It was weird to think that only feet above her head was a room full of shifters awaiting their fate. In the end, she and Ezee dragged the body down there, too, piling it on top of the flak-jacket-wrapped crystal.

  Nothing exploded.

  “Can you guys come help dig us out? What’s going on up there?” Harper asked Cal as she slumped to the floor, leaning against the cool wall in relief.

  “We’re on an upper floor, pinned down. They have retreated a bit though. We’re going to try getting out and finding some more guns. Levi is a crack shot,” Cal added.

  “Of course he’s a crack shot,” Ezee muttered. “Raised on a rez in Idaho. Geez.”

  Harper grinned at him and shook her head.

  “We’ll be here,” she told Cal.

  Ezee and Harper stared at each other for a moment and then both sighed.

  “So, you wanna go keep digging? Or sit here and stare at a bomb while we talk about my sex life some more?” Harper asked.

  “Digging sounds great.”

  Gunfire crackled through the rising gloom, coming from up the hill. My friends must have gotten to the mercenaries. Time was definitely short.

  Samir stopped laughing and looked toward the noise. He gave a small shake of his head.

  “So you chose to come here, to stop me,” he said. “Stupid girl.”

  Calm slid over me. This was it. It was time.

  “See,” I said, gathering my magic into an invisible shield. I took a deliberate step into the circle, smudging the black line as I went. “You are older than I am, more powerful, way more tricky, but there’s something you just super suck at.”

  “What is that?” Samir tipped his head to the side, watching my slow advance with narrowed eyes.

  “Making friends,” I said. We were less than twenty feet apart now. It would have to be close enough. I threw up my shield, making it purple and sparkly and visible as hell.

  Bullets zinged by me. Three bounced off Samir’s own protections, but the fourth found an angle he hadn’t shielded quickly enough. It cut a deep furrow into his arm, blood spraying in a mist in its path.

  “Traitors,” Samir hissed. He wasn’t bleeding as much as I’d hoped, but he was definitely hurt. Score one for the good guys.

  “Traitors?” I said. I threw an exploratory bolt of lightning at him. He bounced it away with a gesture. “Forced loyalty isn’t loyalty. Not hard to betray someone coercing you. Maybe you should have tried not being an evil motherfucker.”

  A golden lash of power whipped toward me. I sprang back, barely keeping my feet on the uneven ground. His magic fizzled on my shield.

  “Live long enough, Jade, you’ll learn that everyone betrays everyone eventually,” he snarled.

  “I almost pity the lonely, sucking black hole inside you,” I said with a grunt as he whipped more power at me.

  Samir changed his attack, throwing magic into the ground at my feet. Stones rose around me, burning with honey-sick power. I poured magic into my shield and charged at him. The stones burst, forming a thick, burning mist. I couldn’t see him anymore. One moment there was field and snow and Samir’s angry face, the next just burning fog.

  I thrust my left hand out, my right gripping my talisman, and sent a wave of force to part the fog, calling up wind to disperse it.

  Samir had moved. I barely dodged the golden whip of power snaking in from my left.

  For a second my concentration wavered and my shield weakened. The burning fog coated my left hand, my skin blackening and blistering instantly.

  Choking back a scream, I grabbed my shield around me again, running to my right, bringing the whirlwind to bear on the fog. It dissipated in time for me to dodge another whip.

  “Running out of time,” I gasped at Samir, hoping to distract him. I was defending myself, more or less. But I wasn’t able to attack. Without offense, I couldn’t end this fight. I’d expended too much magic in the last two days, or maybe never had enough in the first place. I needed an edge, or I was going to lose and fast.

  The moon was rising. I saw a sliver of it over the trees beyond Samir.

  He turned his head, and I threw the power in my shield at him in a slam attack.

  Tricks. Samir was so good at them. My shield rammed through his illusion as the real Samir jumped me from the right, materializing out of thin air. Only my dragon sense of his magic warned me.

  I twisted and threw myself sideways, rolling on the hard ground. Burning golden power, reinforced with actual physical chains he’d thrown, wrapped around my legs instead of my body, as he’d intended. I slashed at it with my own magic, forming purple blades as extensions of my hands, cutting through his power. He yanked, dragging me along the ground toward him. The chain attached to my left leg wasn’t fully cut. I felt my femur bend, then snap.

  Pain shot through me and I caught the wave with my magic, forcing myself not to feel it, cocooning the injury in power. I tried to stand, but my leg would
n’t hold me.

  I was losing. All the magic in the world wasn’t going to save me. He was too powerful.

  Powerful. But predictable. I heard Ash’s voice in my head again. Samir was on his A game, working with the things in his comfort zone. Why wouldn’t he? They had never failed him.

  He’d approach me, just as he was now, moving slowly toward me, gathering his power to him. He would want to gloat, to savor the moment he took my heart. I let my shoulders slump and pulled my own magic in close. It wasn’t that tough to look like I was defeated. I almost was.

  Come a little closer, bastard. I let my right hand slip to the hilt of the Alpha and Omega but didn’t draw it. I didn’t want the motion to catch his attention. Not yet. I wasn’t the using weapons type, which Samir knew. This surprise was best saved for the last moment.

  “You could have been amazing,” Samir said. “You should have stayed with me.”

  “Until you ate me,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Perhaps I would have kept you,” Samir said with a half shrug. His eyes darted to the sky. “Ready to feel your friends die?” he asked. He released power, and the line up the hill became visible again.

  “Not today,” I said. I released the knife hilt and slammed my good hand into the ground. I pictured my magic like a huge scythe and threw it toward the glowing umbilical cord of power. My magic met his and cut clean through it, burning away Samir’s gold with purple vengeance.

  I slumped for real as the power faded. It had taken more than I thought to cut the cord.

  Samir swore and advanced the last feet to me, caution gone.

  “Stupid, meddling bitch,” he said. He grabbed me too fast for me to react.

  My muscles were lead, my magic a whisper in my veins, my left leg screaming in pain. It was like my nightmare unfolding all over again. Another snowy field. Another dusk. Another moon.

  Samir’s hand formed claws as he lifted me up. I tried to push him off with my bad hand and get to my knife with the good one. My ankle was too far away, my body bent unnaturally upward by Samir’s strength.

  His sweater had pushed back and the angry scar, a wound that wouldn’t quite heal, showed on his forearm.

  Wolf had done that.