Blood Storm Magic

by Jayne Faith

  “He’s ours, Ella,” Damien said. But it wasn’t Damien. My friend was gone. “Just give him to us, and it’ll be over soon.”

  “No,” I tried to shout, but it came out more of a grunt.

  Damien reached for Evan’s arm. I managed to draw a bit of fire magic and spray it like a blow torch at Damien’s face. I felt a sharp snap in each temple and blood started to leak from my ears. He jumped back and ducked, and the red magic blew past him and went out.

  I let my brother fall and stepped in between him and Damien. Lightning quick, my whip was in my hand and imbued with elemental magic. I could only pull weak strands of earth and fire, but I stubbornly flicked the razor chain at Damien.

  He gave me a look that was almost kind, except for the coldness in his mage eyes, with the galaxies glowing in his pupils.

  “Don’t do this,” I said. There was nothing else to do but beg. I was bleeding to death, and I couldn’t pull more power. “Evan is innocent. He didn’t choose this. This is murder.”

  “It’s a sacrifice,” Damien said. “A worthy one.”

  “Bullshit,” I spat. Arch-demons were streaming through the rip overhead, but I ignored the commotion of the creatures and the soldiers as they scrambled to control the situation.

  Damien’s father called out to him, but Damien raised a hand, holding him off.

  “You’re better than this. You’re better than them,” I said, gesturing at the mages. “You’re not a cold-blooded killer. You’re intelligent and curious and kind. You’ve known love. That man in your pictures, the one who helped you in San Francisco. He made you happy, and you did the same for him. I’d bet anything that you felt completely whole in those happy moments. You don’t need anyone’s approval, Damien. You’ve known freedom from all that Order nonsense, from your family’s judgment. That was a gift, and you never even knew it.”

  I was babbling, trying to stall. My head still felt like it might explode, but the pounding had subsided. I had one last burst of magic in me. I just had to wait until Deb and the witches could get close enough to take Evan away. They’d reached the site and were trying to weave through the chaos. They’d gotten stalled somewhere behind me, but I couldn’t turn to look, and I’d lost control of my spies.

  But the mages had recovered. Even Sheila was on her feet again. White magic surrounded them, and they had their sights on me. I swung my arm and my whip arced out. It caught Damien on the chin, so fast he didn’t even feel it coming. He touched it, and his fingers came away bloody.

  I whirled the whip overhead, hollering like a madwoman and swinging the razor chain at the mages. I must have looked crazy enough to give them pause because they stopped their advance. But the reprieve only lasted a few seconds. Then they were drawing magic and closing in.

  Tossing one last desperate look at Damien, I froze for a split second because I could have sworn his eyes had filled with tears. The chill and condescension that had made his face so unbearably placid seemed to have broken. Maybe I’d gotten through? But he wasn’t moving to help. I couldn’t wait.

  I charged. It was my last resort. When I breached the glow of the white mage magic, agony ripped through me. Every muscle went rigid. My whip fell from my hand, and I collapsed.

  I truly believed I’d failed. But there was a sound, far away at first. A low, powerful, primal sound that cut through everything else.

  It was the howl of a hellhound.

  A black form blurred past. Loki. Then another. I thought I was seeing double. But no, there was a whole pack of hellhounds. They were leaping out of the lower edge of the rip and following my dog. In a hurricane of gnashing teeth and hellfire eyes, they raced around me and the mages with barks that seemed to originate from hell itself.

  Something tickled at my memory. When the Manhattan Rip first tore into the world, hellhounds had poured through. They’d herded victims for their demons, causing destruction and chaos until they were captured and destroyed.

  But not all of them. Some had escaped, and that was how my Loki had come to be.

  The pain lessened as I watched my dog lead his pack as they lunged and bit at the mages. The Steins and their Order turned their powers on the hellhounds, but the dogs were either impervious to the magic or didn’t feel it in their frenzy. They kept running, forcing the mages into a tighter bunch. Overhead, arch-demons circled.

  I wanted desperately to scramble out of the way, because I knew what was coming. The hellhounds were gathering victims for the arch-demons, and the great winged creatures would dive, transform, and stream into the eyes to take possession.

  But Damien, Evan, and I had been excluded from the round-up. No longer pummeled by mage magic, I struggled to stand. Failing that, I crawled to my brother while Damien tried to help the mages by fighting off the hellhounds.

  Behind me, wheels skidded on the dry packed dirt of the desert, and I whipped around. Deb had made it through. A door popped open on the truck, and witches from my coven spilled out, gathered my brother up, and shoved him inside. The vehicle was surrounded with gyrating lines of magic, a tightly-woven shield of magic. Not only did it have the protection of the witches’ power, it was armored against magical attacks and demons. Once the doors were shut, even Damien couldn’t penetrate the truck.

  Just as they started to come back for me, the agony of a mage magic onslaught returned.

  “Go! Go now!” I screamed. Then I lost consciousness.

  Chapter 25

  WHEN I AWOKE, I was bathed in a white glow and suspended in the air. For a second, I thought I was dead. That guess actually wasn’t so far off.

  In my periphery, beyond the white magic that seemed to compress the air against me, there were licks of neon blue. I’d been raised into the air and centered in the rip. But something was off. I was wearing . . . Evan’s clothes?

  Feeling foggy, slow, and not as concerned as I knew I should be, I tipped my gaze downward. My body seemed frozen, but I could move my head. Seeing Loki in his hellhound form below, still herding the mages as arch-demons swooped in to attempt possession one-by-one, sobered me up fast.

  It looked like I was wearing Evan’s clothes, but I could feel the illusion magic clinging to me. My heart sank. The mages had used magic to make me look like Evan. To everyone below, everyone watching on TV, it appeared the young man who had volunteered to try to close the rips was doing just that.

  The mages had formed a shield that was doing a decent job of protecting them against the diving arch-demons. The creatures screamed in frustration as they tried to get at their prey. Blasts from the Supernatural Forces guns lit up the sky as the soldiers tried to battle the huge ripspawn. It was a fricking miracle one of the blasts hadn’t already hit me.

  Damien still stood outside the ring of hellhounds. Maybe Loki didn’t realize that Damien was no longer our friend. I couldn’t really fault the pooch. I’d thought that Damien was the one holding me suspended in the air, but he wasn’t. Sheila Stein stood in the midst of the dogs and the swooping hellspawn, calm as if she was skygazing on a summer day. The white magic flowed in a split river, one stream leading up to me and the other to Damien.

  Then I understood that Damien wasn’t just a spectator. He was frozen in place, only his blue eyes able to swivel around in his head. Sheila was holding him hostage with her magic, too.

  My heart thumped in panic as I swung my eyes to the spot where I’d left Evan. He was gone. So was the stolen armored truck. They’d gotten away or gotten detained somewhere. It didn’t matter because Evan wasn’t up here. That meant he’d escaped the mages. I had no idea how Deb and the witches had managed it, but somehow, they’d gotten him out.

  Tears of relief flooded my eyes, mingling with the blood that was crusted under my nose and across my cheeks. Evan had escaped.

  Sheila and the mages must have thought that I, being Evan’s biological sister, was a suitable replacement for the magical conduit that would seal the interdimensional tears forever. I was willing to let her think so until the
very last moment, in order to give Deb and the others more time to get to Lagatuda at Supernatural Crimes and get amnesty for Evan.

  When I saw some of the other mages below had begun to draw their pure white power, I knew I needed to make my exit before it was too late. I turned inward, to the reaper who resided within me, ready to let his nature take over and carry us to the safety of limbo land.

  I waited for the shift to the in-between. Instead of fading into the gray mist, my head rang like a gong. It was a horrible vibrating pain and pressure that made me want to claw my eyes out just to try to relieve the growing torture inside my head.

  Shuddering and taking heaving breaths, I opened my eyes. I was still in the realm of the living.

  I tried again. And failed.

  Damien’s brother, standing next to Sheila, smiled up at me. I didn’t even know that bastard’s name, but he was down there gloating as he blocked me from the in-between.

  A new realization hit. I wasn’t getting away. The in-between had been my escape route, but I could no longer use it. I blinked, trying to absorb the idea of my own death.

  Panic began to rise up as I desperately looked for something, anything, that could save me. I could somehow feel that the illusion magic was even distorting my expression, probably making it appear that I was concentrating, hard at work with my own magic in my effort to save humanity.

  I wasn’t getting away. I was going to die.

  Seeking comfort, my gaze automatically went to Damien. His was the only familiar face below, the only one who had ever been warm or friendly. But there was no comfort there.

  I closed my eyes. “Evan is safe,” I whispered to myself.

  Then I looked down at my former partner again.

  “My mother thinks you’ll be enough,” he said, somehow projecting his voice so I could hear through the din of demons, blasts, and magic. His voice was strained, his words halting. “She thinks they can use you to close the rips, even though I told them it would be imperfect. Likely much worse. She refuses to listen. She won’t let you go, and no one will stand up to her even if they think I’m right.”

  I could tell he was in immense pain by the way he was grinding out the words. He was trying to push back against the magical restraint.

  “It’s okay, Damien,” I said. I spoke the words softly, but I could tell he’d heard. I could see it in his face. I wasn’t even sure why, but for some reason I wanted Damien to know that I could forgive him as long as my brother didn’t die. “Better me than Evan.”

  “I’m sorry Ella,” he said. The magic that held me began to pierce into me like spikes. The pain began to consume my attention, but I forced my eyelids to remain open. I wasn’t sure if I was still hearing his words or only reading his lips, but I was positive of what he was saying.

  He began shaking his head, and his chin trembled. “I’m so sorry for everything. So sorry, so sorry.”

  He kept repeating the phrase, but I could barely see him. The mages were powering up, and the magic around me was growing uncomfortably hot. It was also becoming unbearably bright. My skin began to burn. I had to close my eyes. The fire of the magic seared my lungs. I tried to hold my breath.

  It was so hot I prayed I’d lose consciousness. But the seconds ticked by, and it only got worse. My burning lips parted, and my moans turned into agonized screams.

  Then something slammed into me and I was tumbling. In the split second before I landed, I recognized the signature of the magic that had broken me free of the mages’ hold. It was Damien’s. He’d somehow overpowered the others.

  I thought I heard his voice whisper through my mind, saying, “I’m not the perfect solution either, but maybe that’s not what the world needs.”

  I hit the ground hard, my hip, shoulder, and temple slamming the dirt.

  I had a perfect view of Damien as he hung suspended in the air like a superhero. He burned up in the white-hot magic a split second before the rip shrank down to nothing, swallowing Damien, and the neon blue flames winked out.

  Chapter 26

  Five months later

  I WOKE UP to something wet running across my neck and an unpleasant smell filling my nose. I grinned, though. I couldn’t help it.

  “Somebody did a doody,” I cooed in a high-pitched voice and adjusted the warm bundle in my arms.

  I’d dozed off with Gretchen on my chest. Her face had been tucked against my neck, and she’d drooled.

  Deb’s giggle drew my attention to the stairs leading up to the second floor. “Did you seriously just say doody and smile?” she asked.

  My grin turned sheepish. “Nah, you must have heard wrong.”

  I managed to maneuver out of the easy chair and to a standing position without using my hands.

  Deb came to me with her arms outstretched. “Here, I’ll change her.”

  Before Deb could claim her newborn daughter, big hands swooped in from the side.

  “Nope! Denied,” Evan crowed as he whisked Gretchen away from me and toward the first-floor office where a changing table was set up.

  I could hear him singing to her, and she started burbling back. My smile broadened at the sound of my brother’s voice—lucid and strong. I would never get tired of it. One unexpected benefit of his captivity with Damien was that my brother had gotten clean. He’d done well since the conflux, attending addict support groups and doing outpatient counseling, but I knew there would be ups and downs. He was still fragile in many ways.

  “I swear they have their own secret language,” Deb said.

  I laughed. “I can’t believe my brother loves babies so much.”

  I kept expecting the novelty of hanging out at home and helping with Gretchen to wear off, for Evan to start dating or get interested in music or video games or any one of the number of normal things he’d missed out on. But he adored Gretchen—the feeding, the diapers, the tiny clothes, all of it. It seemed to do him good to focus on caring for someone else. When he wasn’t hanging out with the baby, he was exploring his magic. The charm my mother had put in place so long ago to conceal his unique powers had been removed by the mages right before the conflux. Evan didn’t have strange magics like I did, but in addition to being a natural low Level III, he could do crazy things with his power, like make the strands of magic invisible to other crafters. Distance seemed to be no barrier for him, and he could cast his magic remotely to places that were miles away, as long as he could adequately visualize the location. He was working with a mentor Deb had found, and it seemed every week he was discovering some new trick.

  Evan’s mentor was one of the few people we’d met since the conflux. We didn’t have much to do with anyone outside our immediate circle. My name had been cleared and all accusations dropped, but there was still a lot of media fallout over the conflux, what the press called the Cataclysm. I had no desire to follow any of the coverage. The media had called for my head once, and it had soured me forever. I’d only watched one report since the Cataclysm, the one that aired when news of my uncle Jacob Gregori’s arrest broke. Apparently, Phillip Zarella’s information had been good. Jacob would most likely spend the rest of his life in prison. Zarella seemed to have disappeared, but I didn’t expect him to stay in hiding forever.

  Insulated as we tried to be, we couldn’t completely ignore the effects of the Cataclysm. By some miracle, Damien’s sacrifice had closed the rips. But because he wasn’t Evan, there had been some side effects. The Cataclysm had sent shockwaves through the magical world and changed magic in ways that weren’t fully understood yet. I felt the shift every time I drew power. The elements were intermingled now. Level Is and some lower Level IIs were no longer able to draw only a single magical element—if they pulled magic, they pulled some of everything. Powerful crafters could separate the elements with some concerted effort, but those without enough power to do this basically had to relearn magic. I hadn’t spent much time playing around with it. I didn’t have a lot of need to sling magic since the Cataclysm, and I didn’t really
want to. For one, it was safer if I didn’t. I had damage that no healer could undo, and using magic was painful and affected my short-term memory. And, the changes in the ways magic worked were still too sharp a reminder of Damien’s death.

  In the time since the Cataclysm, I’d gone through the full range of grief emotions, much as I’d tried to resist it. I used to have flashes of anger at Damien. But I’d realized I wasn’t truly angry—just grieving. Those had mostly subsided, and in their place was a poignant, sorrowful loving gratitude that made my chest ache every time it snuck up on me.

  I was content to sink into the company of the people I loved. Deb and I had found a much larger house to rent, which was made possible after I sold the rights to my official biography. Deb and I had discussed moving into Rogan’s house, but it only had two bedrooms and one bath and so wasn’t much better than my old place. Plus, I didn’t want the constant reminder of his death. The book advance I received was more money than I’d ever imagined, even after my agent took her cut. I never would have pursued a book deal at all, if not for the need to provide a home and treatment for Evan and the desire to help ease things for Deb. I got the payout before Deb’s new coven charter went through—yep, she was a Moon Priestess and I’d decided to join her—so I wasn’t obligated to put it into the organization’s coffers, but I made a big donation to the coven’s account to get us started.

  I could have bought a house, but we’d decided on renting instead because we’d all had the sense that our current arrangement could be fleeting.

  Chris Lagatuda had started hanging around more and more after the Cataclysm—even my notoriety wasn’t enough to drive him away from Deb, it seemed—and the two of them made googly eyes at each other over Gretchen pretty much constantly.

  As it turned out, we were right about impending changes. A week prior, Chris had asked me to meet him downtown alone, which had seemed incredibly odd until he took me to a jewelry store to show me a diamond ring and ask me if I thought Deb would like it. He’d also asked for my blessing as a stand-in for Deb’s parents, who she’d never known. I’d wiped away a tear as I’d given it, and Chris got a little choked up, too.