Alchemy Shift

by Jenny Schwartz

  He’d shut down the mate bond because he didn’t want Delphi to carry even the echo of the burden of what it meant to fight, possibly to the death, and because he didn’t know what their mate bond might be capable of. If she got worried for him, could she shove her magic through the bond, and for what purpose? She would try to protect him if—

  “Hellfire and snake balls,” he swore as he ran with Portia for the rooftop door. There was no time for the revelation that had just struck him.

  On the building behind them, Sven had broken the ward. He would stay there to hold a lock on the building. A lock, Sven had explained to Jet and his were team, prevented magic escaping a location. If Sven could hold this lock—and the guardian would die trying—no matter who he sacrificed, Graham wouldn’t be escaping by translocation.

  But that didn’t explain Jet’s fierce curse.

  Portia questioned it. “What?” She paused beside the door down from the roof.

  “Personal thought. Doesn’t matter.” It did. Oh, it mattered. But it wasn’t something Jet could do anything about. Except…it was vital that he stop Graham here and now. Graham couldn’t be allowed to escape to nearby Central Park.

  Because Jet had belatedly remembered Delphi’s prophecy.

  We’ll be running through the city-wild. Hunter and hunted, his eyrie lost. The books will burn!

  We. The reason his stubborn, loyal, loving mate hadn’t fought to keep open their mate bond when he shut it down to protect her was because she’d had her own intention to protect him. One he’d have objected to. He was one hundred per cent certain that Delphi waited in Central Park, trusting in her prophecy, determined to be there on the chance that she could save him. For Delphi, this investigation wasn’t so much about the capture of an evil man, as protecting those she loved.

  “Is it clear?” Jet demanded of Portia, indicating the door. Was it magically booby-trapped? He couldn’t sense magic, but he couldn’t trust the mate bond changes in his nature, now. Not when a wrong decision could take him out and leave Delphi facing Graham alone in the park.

  But a prophecy wasn’t destiny. Just because Delphi had prophesied that he and she would run through Central Park didn’t mean they would.

  “Clear,” Portia said.

  Jet tried the handle. It opened. No point dramatically kicking in the door if a simple, and silent, action opened it. Reining in his instinct to lead, he let Portia go first. She moved alertly, magics ready, and he followed close, all his senses on alert.

  “Death magic,” she whispered. “Two floors down.”

  Other partnerships of were and mage whispered their progress through his ear piece. Everyone was in the building: one partnership to guard the first floor; one climbing the stairs; and, the third risking the elevator.

  Jet smelled old blood, as if it lay thick and putrefying on the floor, and the stench intensified as they reached the floor where Portia said Graham was. Only two apartments, here. They ran to the one that faced the park.

  Graham would know they—or someone—were here since Sven had broken the ward on the building. It had, reportedly, been a subtle ward, grounded in blood and earth, that the guardians surveilling the opposite building had failed to notice. Apparently, New York swirled with magics, old and new, and that could make discernment difficult.

  Delphi hadn’t seemed to find it difficult to track Graham’s evil when she held Excalibur.

  “Elevator,” Jet warned as he heard it arriving. His radio link to the partnership in the elevator had ceased when they entered. Damn electronics.

  “Shield.” Portia was equally curt.

  Jet wore body armor and had been trained to hostage-recovery levels. He was still glad for the shield he dimly sensed Portia raise. It was a force of magic to protect against bullets. His own were nature ought to protect him from direct magical attack.

  The elevator doors opened. Perez and Martin exited, guns out, eyes tracking everything. Perez nodded to Jet.

  Portia blasted open the apartment door.

  Silence. No, not silence. There was a man’s voice, hurrying and stumbling over Latin words, just on the edge of Jet’s were hearing, and closer, four hearts beat fast. Best guess, one was Ian Lewis and three were Thoreau’s crew. They stood in the outer room, the one the apartment door opened to.

  “Death magic,” Martin said. “Pattern is that of a transmutation in progress…it’s ugly.”

  Which meant they were likely right and Graham was transmutating the mobster Craig Thoreau. According to Sven’s calculations, that gave them a slight edge. Graham, once committed to the transmutation spell, had to complete it or Thoreau could be disfigured or even die from the incomplete spell surging through him.

  Jet glanced at Perez. They’d fought together before. Jet went through the door low and fast, and Perez followed. Their were senses told them where their prey waited.

  One of the Thoreau’s crew threw a blade at Jet. It cut through Portia’s magical shield as if it didn’t exist. An enchanted blade? Jet flinched right and fired. People in nearby apartments would hear gunfire, but the hope was they’d be at work. Sven swore he could keep the sound contained to the apartment building. The mission was meant to be low key, but capturing Graham was what mattered.

  A lion-were, one of Thoreau’s crew, also opened fire. But Portia’s shield proved solid against ordinary bullets. The man’s eyes went wide as Jet kept walking and had time to aim and fire. He went down, as did the man beside him, and Perez’s knife found the third man. None were dead, but all were disabled.

  Less than a minute from walking in the door.

  Ian Lewis, who’d watched in frozen terror, suddenly flung his unfired gun at Jet, turned and ran for the back of the apartment. He fumbled with a door, got it open, and stumbled in.

  Jet was five steps behind him.

  A wolf knocked Ian aside as it launched itself through the doorway at Jet.

  Luke Sagan.

  A magical shield couldn’t stop a were.

  Jet fired.

  The bullets bounced off Luke. It seemed Jet wasn’t the only one with magical protection.

  Jet stepped into Luke’s leap and punched hard. He didn’t have time to change form, but he had the power of his bear nature and the benefit of long, punishing training bouts with other marshals, many of whom were wolf-weres.

  He hit Luke in the throat, redirecting the wolf-were’s momentum and putting Luke in Perez’s reach.

  Perez sliced the Achilles tendon on both of Luke’s hind legs. Weres healed fast, but not fast enough for Luke to be a mobile threat.

  Jet headed into the bedroom to back up Portia who’d run through the chaos, intent on Graham.

  “Finish the job.” The mobster, Craig Thoreau, had a gun pointed at Graham Monroe’s heart.

  The transmutation was in progress. Thoreau couldn’t know what he looked like. There were no mirrors in the room. But he must have been able to feel that his face and body were raw meat, surging and shaping strangely under blotchy skin. That he could hold a gun at all testified to his determination or desperation.

  Then again, looking at the horror that was Graham’s face would convince anyone to fight to look normal. The rogue mage’s skin stretched scarred and gaunt over his face except where it bulged over a swelling on his lower left jaw. Graham’s dental problems seemed to include an abscess.

  Jet hoped it hurt like hell. But his bigger concern was to reach a decision. If they interrupted the transmutation now, would Thoreau die? Would it matter if he did? The mobster had committed terrible crimes and ordered worse ones.

  The room stunk of clove oil and fear sweat and the rankness of putrefying blood which must be the mark of death magic since the only blood in the room was fresh. A corpse lay on the carpeted floor between Graham and Thoreau. It was male with thin, unwashed blond hair, and shirtless, xylophone ribs beneath dirty, bruised skin.

  “Martin!” Portia yelled.

  The guardian, their death magic expert for this raid, walke
d in stoically.

  Watching everyone, gun steady on Thoreau and Graham in front of him, Jet smelled fear and desperation. It was there from Thoreau and Graham, and from Ian who stood huddled near Graham, and it lingered stale on the air from the corpse. The desperation also came from the guardian, Martin. Jet’s nose wrinkled at the funk, understanding at last that Martin’s screw-ups had come from his reluctance to face death magic.

  But at the critical point, Martin acted.

  Sven had been right to trust the mage.

  Martin extended his right hand, fingers and thumb wide, the webbing between the fingers stretched. “I command…”

  Thoreau’s gun swung in Martin’s direction.

  Jet fired, aiming and hitting Thoreau’s gun hand.

  “No!” Graham screamed. “Not his blood!”

  “Spell ricochet,” Portia snapped.

  Martin had both arms out in front of himself, straining with something Jet couldn’t see. However, Jet could sense the storm of magic. It was thunder and the burn of lightning. Ozone stung the air.

  “Fix this,” Thoreau snarled at Graham.

  From beside Graham, Ian ran to the window. The former drug gang’s logistic man opened the window, picked up a hunk of metal and threw it through. It was one of those portable escape ladders that people terrified of fires installed.

  Jet didn’t care what he did. Ian Lewis was a minor player. The team outside would pick him up or the police could at their leisure. Once free of Graham, Ian was negligible.

  Graham did something. Jet couldn’t see what. But he felt the shift in the room as the magical storm focused and hit Martin. The mage convulsed and Portia dived for him, pulling at the air as if hauling on warm toffee.

  Thoreau fell off his chair, comatose or dead.

  Graham stared at Jet.

  Prey and predator.

  Jet fired. The gun spat bullets that hit a shield or ward, and melted. Didn’t matter. This could be—was—personal. Jet lunged for Graham.

  Abruptly, the death magic stench was subsumed by the green, sunshiny scents of spring. It was what Jet had smelled when Delphi put her anti-death magic protections on him, which meant that Graham had attempted a death magic spell.

  It failed. Graham threw a chair at Jet and used the stolen half-second to stagger to the window. No, not to the window: to Ian. Graham grabbed his sidekick and slit Ian’s throat. Blood coated the rogue mage’s hands.

  A ward kept Jet at bay. He beat on the air, feeling it rough and bruising like bricks. He could see Graham within reach.

  The death mage’s eyes widened. He choked and looked around in apparent shock.

  Chances were he’d attempted the same translocation spell that had gotten him out of the Hunts Point warehouse, but here, Sven contained the spell. The elder guardian’s lock held. Graham had sacrificed his sidekick for no purpose.

  Graham abandoned magic and climbed out the window and down the portable fire escape.

  “Graham’s out the back window. Duane!” Jet said for his team. Duane and his guardian partner would have to stop the death mage. They had to stop him where Jet had failed.

  Hellfire! Jet couldn’t break through whatever barrier Graham had put between them, but there were other ways out of the building than the window.

  Martin gasped and wheezed, gulping in air as if a pressure had been relieved. Portia no longer pulled at invisible magic, but she looked unsteady on her feet. She was steady enough, though, to contain disabled prisoners until back-up arrived.

  She met Jet’s gaze and nodded. “Go.”

  Then he heard her voice echo in his earpiece, calling up the partnership in the lobby.

  Jet caught up with Perez as the cop ran down the stairs, leaping recklessly, using his balance and a hand on the railing to go faster and faster. Metal clanged and clattered under their feet.

  They burst out onto the street.

  Duane was down, bleeding, lying in front of a car. “Pushed me into its path. Tanya collapsed.” His guardian partner lay in a crumpled heap.

  “Sven?”

  “Here.”

  Jet spun. He’d expected a voice in his ear, but Sven was behind him. Anticipating that he’d be needed, the old man had moved. So did Jet, leaving Sven to handle the situation. If, frustrated in using the power of Ian’s death in a translocation spell, Graham had used it instead against Tanya, the mage would need expert help: mage-level healing. Jet’s role was to stop Graham hurting anyone else.

  The smell of fear, death and clove oil hung on the air in a trail any were could follow. And it was headed for Central Park—where Delphi likely waited, hoping to save Jet.

  Damn prophecies. Jet sprinted.

  Chapter 11

  Delphi stood against an oak tree in the North Woods. A gentle look-away spell brushed human and technological gazes aside. She tried to stay grounded, but found that drawing in her attention didn’t move it comfortably to her center, but to Excalibur. The sword seemed alert.

  That made two of them. They were keeping vigil.

  Anguish and warning punched down the mate bond.

  Delphi had the sword raised and ready to parry before a conscious thought formed.

  The sword tugged west.

  “Wait,” Delphi told it. She needed what the mate bond could tell her.

  Jet had re-opened it for a reason or because intense emotion had broken his control. She tried to sort through the urgent command to run or hide. Was he hurt? But she couldn’t feel pain from him, only worry, frustration and determination.

  The reason could be readily deduced: Graham had escaped.

  Excalibur had tasted Graham’s evil last night. It had tugged toward the warehouse and it had eaten Graham’s translocation spell.

  In her prophecy she and Jet had run through the city-wild hunting their prey.

  She wasn’t a hunter or a warrior, but Jet was both and she was his mate. Slowly, cautiously, she followed where Excalibur pointed and sent an emotion back along the mate bond. I’m safe.

  Jet’s frustration escalated, pulsing through their bond.

  She got it. He didn’t just want her safe. He wanted her safely away.

  After Graham’s stopped, she thought.

  Excalibur led her off the path and into the undergrowth. Few people were out. A storm was blowing in, the cold wind first, carrying the promise of rain. Leaves shivered from the trees. The sword whirled and pointed up.

  Delphi re-centered her attention in the sword and out through it. The Central Park of the twenty first century slid away like a skin shed to reveal the pulsing truth of a wilderness. The park was earth and trees, waterfalls, still water and wild creatures. The rogue mage running panting through it was an abomination.

  Death magic clung to Graham.

  Delphi couldn’t see the man, but through Excalibur she had an awareness of the sporadic and fraying flare of death magic. And through her mate bond, she sensed Jet tracking Graham but being kept at a car’s length distance by the death magic Graham wielded.

  Which meant Graham had learned how to shape his magic so that it affected the world rather than aiming it at a were who couldn’t be stopped by direct magical attack.

  Dear God, the death magic feels foul.

  Why had Graham run into the park? He could have hidden himself among the buildings and people—

  “Where is it?” she screamed the question at Excalibur. The sword wasn’t sentient, she knew it wasn’t sentient, but the command in her question cut through the sword’s focus on Graham to swing as a lethal dowsing rod in the direction of the Great Hill.

  Earth and blood. Death magic could produce many terrible things, but perhaps the worst was a golem. It was made from dirt and clay and brought to life with blood. It was…it was as if the earth made a lumpen robot and gave it a soul of hate.

  Graham had traded in curses and banned books before he’d moved on to trading in death magic spells and sacrifices. He’d have had access to the knowledge necessary to construct a
golem.

  Now that she’d had the thought to direct Excalibur to ignore the “noise” of all the evil enacted in New York and seek out a golem, it was there. So close! The creature lay inactive, quiescent, in the woods that fringed the hill.

  Delphi turned her back on Graham’s crashing progress through the woods. Did she hear it or was it a sense communicated to her brain as noise, but really existing as Excalibur’s uncanny awareness of Graham? Did it matter?

  As she ran, fury churned in her stomach. It was self-directed anger. Her disgust for death magic now proved a devastating handicap. What was the exact process for making a golem? How could it be unmade? Most immediately important, why was Graham racing to it? Couldn’t he call it to him?

  “Blood!” Delphi gasped the single word of comprehension. Graham must have keyed his own blood to the golem. If he bled on the clay figure, it would live—for a certain, terrible definition of life.

  More information on golems woke in her brain; information she must have read incidentally, while researching other things. Golems could be created as ancient magical robots; that is, as servants to labor unceasingly and with unthinking obedience. They were powered by death magic, but such deaths could be that of many animals—unpleasant, cruel, but not murder. Or even fueled by a willing human sacrifice. Such things had been done in ancient wars. But the worst golems, the type of golem she’d first thought of because this one’s creator was Graham, a death magic rogue mage, these golems were influenced by the murder that had created them.

  If Graham bled on his golem, it would wake to malevolent life.

  Delphi ran out of the woods and into a clearing, not a lawn carefully clipped and tended, but a patch of death in the woods. The death magic swirled thickly in the air, slamming against her personal wards. She dropped to her knees, plunging Excalibur into the earth to stop from falling further. The thought of falling to lie over the golem buried so shallowly made her skin crawl.

  Graham burst into the clearing opposite her. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t hesitate. He had a knife in his right hand and he sliced his left forearm.