by A C Spahn
I would have thought he was a junkie were it not for the bits of black ink on his forehead peeking from beneath the mask. My stomach skipped sideways. I’d seen such tattoos before. “Sir,” I said, “I can help you, but you need to—”
The man dropped his gun and clutched his neck. A wretched gagging noise crawled out of his throat. Something glowed amber behind his teeth.
I barely had time to lower my arms before fire erupted from his mouth. The first blast burned only air, but the second hit a cardboard display of felt, googly eyes, and other craft supplies for kids. Flames leaped toward the ceiling.
Curses filled my mouth. I ducked beneath my counter and yanked a shoebox from the shelves. It wasn’t locked, so nobody would think to steal it, but its contents were infinitely more precious than my cash box. Beside me, Kendall had shifted into her squirrel form and trembled amidst her fallen clothes. Shifters, for better or worse, took on some of the instincts of their animal forms. She’d be no help in this fight.
Another spew of flame ignited the leatherwork display table. I opened my shoebox. Dozens of rings, bracelets, and necklaces lay inside, arranged in plastic trays. I tore off the top tray and grabbed a blue plastic ring I had never expected to use. I stood, jammed it on my finger, and aimed at the blazing tables. Then I tapped into the magic I’d stored inside. Quench, I thought.
Water streamed from the ring in a jet so powerful it drove me back a few paces. It doused the burning displays and soaked the entire entry area. The flames died, leaving only a few smoldering embers. The ring’s power ran out a moment later. I tore it off my finger and snatched another from the box.
The man seemed to have used up his flame for now. His mad eyes turned toward me. I vaulted the counter to meet him and slid the second ring onto my left index finger.
He bellowed a roar and swung a heavy punch at my face. The blow seemed to come in slow motion, and I moved to duck under it. My own body felt sluggish under the effects of the ring. It didn’t do anything flashy, but it was my most complex piece of work. Six layered enchantments, enhancing my five senses plus my perception of time. It couldn’t make me move faster, but it did give me time to react.
The man’s punch went wild, and I came up behind him. I slammed my foot into the back of his knee, as I had seen Desmond do during a few of his practice sessions I’d watched. Again I seemed to move too slow, like my limbs were asleep. But the kick connected, and the man fell to his knees. He groaned, the sound deep and strung out to my enhanced ears.
I was about to grab a charred leatherworking hammer and hit him in the head when he suddenly rose, moving at regular speed. I froze, mouth open in shock. I hadn’t taken the ring off yet. How could he be going so fast, unless ...
He swung another punch at me, and I couldn’t react in time. The blow caught me in the side of the head. I reeled against the burned leatherwork table. Its melted plastic gave way beneath my weight, crashing to the floor in a shower of splinters and slag. The man was on me a second later, straddling my slender hips with his greater weight. His body seemed to crush my chest, my sense of touch magnified by my magic. I struggled to pull the sensory ring from my finger, but I couldn’t reach it with my other hand. The man’s fallen gun taunted me from across the floor. I strained toward it, but my arms came up woefully short.
“Drink,” the man moaned. His mouth showed through the hole he’d burned in his mask. Smoke-stained fangs flashed between his gums. He leaned over me, mouth inching toward my throat. “Must drink … burning …”
Before he could bite, a shout came from the back of the store. Desmond sprinted down the main center aisle and tackled the man off me.
My limbs freed, I ripped my sensory ring off and shouted, “Desmond, no!” But he was already throwing punches, jab after jab with grace born from years of practice. I braced myself for the inevitable, for the masked man to move faster than reality and overwhelm Desmond, but to my surprise, it never happened. The masked man’s limbs were a blur, his movements enchanted beyond normal human capability, but somehow Desmond was always there to block his attacks. It wasn’t that Desmond moved faster than normal. It was as if the masked man’s abilities just didn’t affect him.
The man threw one last punch. Desmond caught it and twisted the man’s wrist, rotating his arm behind his back and driving him to the floor. The man moaned, then coughed up another blaze of flame. It guttered out on the tile floor. The man gave a final groan and went limp, apparently unconscious.
Desmond kicked the man’s gun safely out of reach down one of the aisles, then lowered the man to the ground. He lay there twitching, his eyes closed, his mouth making vague sounds. “Rink … pless … drrrrrr … rink …”
I had a lot of questions for Desmond, but they had to wait. Kneeling beside the man, I yanked his mask off to expose the full tattoos on his temples. Intricate circular patterns whorled from his hairline to his cheekbones, each pattern formed of a single, unbroken line that never crossed itself. I scanned the tattoos, counting the individual lines and feeling alarm as I saw that they continued down beneath his t-shirt. “Over a dozen,” I whispered.
“What is this?” Desmond asked.
“You don’t know?” I glanced up at him.
“I have suspicions, but I think you’re more familiar with this sort of body art.”
I swallowed. I’d hidden myself from Desmond all three years I’d worked here, but fate had decided that time was done. The past that had hunted me since I was fourteen had finally caught up. “Those are enchantment tattoos,” I said. “Lots of them. Someone has placed this man under many different spells. And whoever did it is very, very powerful.”
Chapter 3
DESMOND EYED ME with suspicion. “You’re not a normal. You’re an enchantress.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “You’re not a normal either.”
He didn’t answer, but his weight shifted uneasily.
Carefully, I touched one of the unconscious man’s tattoos. “He was enchanted to move faster than any human could react.”
“You can tell from the tattoo?”
“No, but I saw him do it. And you didn’t have any problem keeping up with him. You might be hiding your own enchantment tattoos beneath your clothes ...” I blushed. “But I don’t think that’s it. You’re a Void, aren’t you?”
Desmond tensed, and he fumbled over his words. “A, uh, a what?”
“Don’t try to deny it. You’re a terrible liar. An enchanter is a locus of magical energy. The world’s magical field congeals around us and funnels itself through us. Voids are the opposite. You’re not affected by magic. It just bounces off of you.”
“That, er, I mean ...”
“Desmond.”
He sighed and scuffed the floor with his shoe. “All right, I’m a Void.”
“A strong Void, from the look of it. That guy’s enchantments didn’t impede you at all.”
“Yeah.” He kicked at the floor again. “I have to admit, I’m surprised to find an enchantress hiding in my own store.”
I swallowed. Neither of us had said it yet, but Voids were also the overseers of the paranormal community. They couldn’t be manipulated magically, which put them in the perfect position to supervise the rest of us. When a vampire started biting people or a shifter went rabid, the Void Union took care of it. Most importantly, they watched for enchanters or enchantresses who abused their powers and created new magical beings like the one lying on the tile before me. Not every region had a Union, but the San Francisco Bay Area’s large population had attracted a number of paranormals. Our Union was the third most powerful in the country. The Union was also the reason I’d chosen to live here. Other enchanters were unlikely to come looking for me where their activities would be noticed.
Desmond crouched beside me and surveyed the twitching man. “Can you fix him?”
“No. The enchantments clashed and drove him insane. His mind is gone. It’s a miracle he was even able to walk.”
“Do you know who did this to him?”
“No,” I said, too quickly.
Alarm flashed in his brown eyes. “Did you do this to him?”
“No!” I pushed myself to my feet. “I don’t enchant people.”
“But you know enchanters who do.”
I couldn’t answer that. Desmond examined the man’s tattoos. “They’re thick. There’s a lot of magic bound up in them.”
“He kept asking for a drink,” I said quietly. “I think the fire was burning him up inside.”
“Poor bastard.”
Kendall ran up to us, tucking her loose tank top into her cargo pants. “What the hell, you guys?”
Desmond studied her as she finished arranging her clothes. “Shifter?”
She paused, then lifted the hem of her shirt to expose a circular birthmark formed by a single unbroken line, similar in style to the tattoos on the man’s face. “Squirrel,” she said.
“Figures.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Desmond rose. “I need to report this to the Union.”
Kendall’s eyes went wide. “Wait, Union, as in—”
“He’s a Void,” I said. “Seems all of us were keeping secrets.”
“They’re going to want to talk to us,” Desmond said. “Especially you, Adrienne. A rogue enchantress is a big problem.”
“I’m not rogue.”
“Then why hasn’t anyone told me about you? Do you have a Union contact? Have you done your monthly check-ins?”
My gaze dropped to the ground.
“Thought not.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, check-ins?” asked Kendall. “My parents pay Union protection fees and we obey all those stupid Union rules, but since when do we have to do check-ins?”
Desmond shook his head. “Not you. Just enchanters. And the rules aren’t stupid. They’re there to protect you. The Union means well.”
“Yeah, good intentions have never led to anything bad. Ever.”
“I wasn’t trying to lie to you,” I blurted. “I didn’t know what you were, Desmond. If I had—”
“You’d have told me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
The mistrust in his voice stabbed me in the chest. “I do know people who would do something like this, but it can’t have been them.”
Desmond crossed his arms and waited.
I took a deep breath. “I was raised by a cult of enchanters on the east coast. They were fleshwriters.”
“Fleshwriters. What are fleshwriters?” asked Kendall.
Desmond shot her a look. “You knew all this time she was an enchantress, but you don’t know that?”
Kendall shrugged. “Adrienne said she was hiding from some bad people, and that was enough for me. Mom and Dad wouldn’t tell us much about enchanters. Said the Voids would keep them away, so we didn’t need to know.”
Desmond grimaced. “Our defenses aren’t perfect. They should have told you, if only so you’d know when to run. Enchanters need to channel the magic that collects around them. Otherwise it drives them insane.”
“Most of us channel it into objects,” I said. “Talismans, charms, wards, that sort of thing. But some enchanters store the magic on their own bodies. Magic stored that way imprints on the skin, looking like a circular tattoo patterned from a single line.”
Kendall’s eyes darted to the unconscious man. She brushed a finger against her birthmark.
“Enchanting requires three things: a target, a channel, and a focus. The focus shapes the nature of the enchantment, the target receives it, and the channel binds them together.” I remembered the enchantment I wove for Mrs. Jacinta: wind chime as target, money as focus, and soft leather as channel. “Using three different materials makes the enchantment safer, easier to control. But fleshwriters use their own bodies as all three.”
“Why would anyone do that?” asked Kendall.
“Power,” said Desmond. “If you give someone a choice between making a weapon and becoming a weapon, many don’t mind the added risk.”
“You can also store more magic in living enchantments,” I said. “It’s dangerous. Only the most skilled fleshwriters survive to old age. Many of them end up like this guy.”
Desmond surveyed the unconscious man. “So which cult of fleshwriters did he come from?”
“He’s not a fleshwriter,” I said.
“You just said—”
“Enchantments don’t last forever. Most of them run out of power if they’re used too often. I just used up a water ring I’d been storing for ages. And we can’t control when more magic will come to us, or how much will be available. So when a fleshwriter wants to keep lots of magic available to use but can’t store it all himself ...”
Desmond’s frown deepened. “He would store it in someone else. This man was used like a battery.”
“More like a fuse.”
“No, a capacitor,” said Kendall.
“Judging by the number of enchantments on him,” I said, “we’re looking for someone with a lot of magic. And ... there might be other victims.”
Desmond blew out a slow breath. “All right. I’m calling the Union.” He headed for the store office in the back.
“Please don’t tell them about me,” I said. My voice sounded hoarse. For all I knew, he’d been going around executing enchanters after the store closed each night. “Please. Let me draw one of the enchantments out of him. Magic retains an imprint of how it’s been used. There might be clues that tell us who did this to him, and where. At least let me try to find them, to prove to the Union I’m not a threat.”
Desmond paused with his hand on the doorknob. “You said you were raised by fleshwriters. Do you have enchantments on your body?”
I hesitated. Memories tried to claw into my consciousness, but I locked them away with the ease of long practice. “None that I put there.”
Desmond’s eyes widened. He glanced between me and the poor man twitching on the floor. “Let me call in,” he said. “Then we’ll try to track down the monster who did this.”
Chapter 4
DESMOND WAS ONLY on the phone for a minute. I heard his side of the conversation, and to my eternal gratitude, he didn’t report me. He returned a moment later with his keys. He locked the front glass door and flipped the hand-painted sign from open to closed.
“They want us to leave so they can move him without witnesses. They’ll also take care of hiding the gun. They’ll probably want to talk to me later, but I left you two out of it. We have about twenty minutes until they get here. What do you need?” he asked me.
“I won’t know until I get the magic out.” I took a deep breath, then placed my hand on the tattoo over the man’s left temple. His chest rose and fell, but he was deeply unconscious. I wasn’t sure what the Void Union would do with him, but I hoped they would be able to at least make him comfortable. For my part, I could try to figure out who’d done this to him. Removing one of his enchantments probably wouldn’t fix his condition, but there also wasn’t much more harm it could do. I breathed in, drawing the magic out of him. The markings on his skin began to recede, shrinking until they vanished into my hand.
Magic filled my mind, thrashing and burning. I’d picked his fire enchantment. This magic had not been channeled well; it was smears of paint on unsanded wood, buttons glued haphazardly on tattered fabric. No artistry, none of the care I put into my own work.
“Wow,” said Kendall, her voice distant. “Can she do that with any magic?”
“Yes,” said Desmond.
“Even mine?”
“It would probably break your brain.”
“Too late for that,” Kendall said cheerfully.
I blocked out their banter and probed the magic with my thoughts, feeling it for any imprints of where it had been channeled, what environment had birthed it. Flashes came to me: a strand of hay. A horseshoe. Smooth water. Dilapidated wooden sign. Chipped paint on a metal lette
r K.
The magic started to ache in me. I had to find a safe way to store it, quickly. It was wild, tempestuous. It needed a solid enchantment to hold it, or it would overwhelm the materials and destroy them. Then the magic would follow me, pressing on me until I figured out what to do with it, or it drove me crazy. “Get me a hammer, a coil of steel wire, and a weight.”
Kendall ran off for the beading section, but Desmond hesitated. “A weight?”
“One of the ones you have in the woodshop, to hold your projects down. The heavier the better.”
When they brought me the items, I set the weight on the tile floor. I placed the hammer atop it, then wrapped the wire tightly around both, binding them together. I took a deep breath, planned my words, and chanted them in my mind.
Be strengthened. Be firm. Be unyielding. Be contained.
I guided the magic into the weight, swirled it around in the metal’s stability and strength, then channeled it through the wire into the hammer. It resisted my guidance, trying to break free and continue to batter me, but I repeated my enchantment, my thoughts rigid. Finally the last of the magic allowed itself to be channeled. I sighed in relief as the pressure in my head eased. Fatigue washed over me, and I braced my palm on the floor to keep from falling over.
“What’d you make?” Kendall whispered.
The wood grain on the hammer’s handle was now a deeper shade of brown. It looked completely natural; if I wasn’t touching the hammer and feeling the magic pulsing in it, I wouldn’t know the dark grain was a mark of enchantment. I untied the hammer and handed it to Desmond. “I made it unbreakable. No matter what you do with it, it should never crack or dent. But the magic was angry. I think the hammer will always hit a little harder than you want it to. If we give it a month and I draw the magic out again, I might be able to tame it further, but ...”
“No, you’ve done enough,” said Desmond. He took the hammer, his brow lined with concern. “Are you okay?”
My eyelids wanted to droop, but I pushed my weariness aside. There was too much to do. “I’m fine. And I think I can find where this man was enchanted.”
