by K. F. Breene
Silence descended. My breath caught in my throat, waiting.
A blast shook the closet door, and it ripped open for the second time. Light accosted me and the tug on my ribs was back. By this point I was pretty sure that meant something noteworthy, but my mind was twisted into knots by all the hullabaloo. I could figure it out later…if I made it to later.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re not here to hurt you!” An older woman wearing a purple faux-velvet sweat suit put her hands up. “The show is over. All the bad guys are dead.”
“Except the escaped werewolf, but don’t worry about her.” An older man smiled in a good-natured way, lines creasing his face. “She is terrorizing the closest town. We’re but a distant memory.”
I stared mutely for a moment, because what?
“What are you people?” It was all I could think to say.
“How did you create this spell?” The woman made a circle in the air with her finger.
I frowned at the empty space. Though I had no idea what she was talking about, I could guess from the tone of her demanding voice that I’d probably done something wrong.
“I’m Reagan.” Leather Pants stepped into my line of sight and stuck out her hand. “And they are harmless.”
“Penny,” I said, remembering that fire from before. “Are you a witch?”
“No. I’m an asshole. It’s these two you want to talk to.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder.
“She’s not an asshole, she’s strong-willed,” the man said, stepping closer. He stuck out a soot-stained hand to match his rumpled wardrobe. “I am Desmond, but my friends call me Dizzy. Nice to meet you. We were about to head to our house for some dinner. Would you care to join us?”
“I’m Callie,” the woman said. “C’mon, after the night we all had, we need a stiff drink.”
“I don’t drink,” I blurted, not able to get my bearings. A magical battle of some sort had just torn through the church, dead people littered the floor, and I was huddling in a broom closet. They were taking this in stride, but I just couldn’t. I probably needed therapy. Lots of therapy. “My mom doesn’t think it’s ladylike.” I rose slowly, focusing hard on my temperamental third eye. It had tried to warn me of danger before, and if it did so again, that was it. I was running.
“Do you know what’s not ladylike?” Callie grunted as she bent to get her satchel and then straightened up stiffly. “Hiding in a closet when there is danger near. That’s cowardly. Real ladies aren’t cowards.”
“Take it easy,” Dizzy said in a low voice.
“Take it easy my left foot.” Callie turned and stalked for the door. The word Savage cut through the faux-velvet across her butt. “If she wants any hope of controlling her incredible gift, taking it easy is a waste of time.”
Reagan jerked her head toward the strangely clothed couple before following after them. I could tell that was my invite.
In a split-second decision, I hastened after them. My internal guidance was giving me the all-clear, and they had defeated whomever had given the coven directions to turn them into…whatever they’d turned into. These three might not be good guys, but for right now, they were the best I had.
They were also headed for the door. If they turned into baddies, I hoped I’d be faster than Reagan. Because running was about the only option I had left at this point.
“They are the best in this area, and they don’t usually take on apprentices. If I were you, I’d see what they have to say,” Reagan said, sounding tired but completely at ease.
Flutters filled my belly as we walked past the coven. I looked away, not able to bear it. But as we walked into the main room, I staggered with shock. I’d expected chaos, but nothing at this level. Bodies littered the floor, along with great black scorch marks and lingering colored textures and patterns like I’d seen boil out of the cauldron.
“This isn’t normal for Dizzy and Callie.” Reagan waved her hand through the air, indicating the mayhem, before picking up the pace. “This is my fault, sadly. I get into skirmishes far more than is healthy.”
“This is a skirmish?” I asked.
“Well…no. This is a clusterfuck. But you know what I mean.” She held the door leading outside open. “So, what do you say? Fancy some dinner? You can ask questions.”
I hesitated. I’d ended up in the church because of unanswered questions. I’d ended up helping with that potion for the same reason. The smart thing to do would be to walk away right now. Call a cab, get in, and never disobey my mother again.
But that floating fire from before tugged on my memory. Plus, they’d talked about creatures out of fables as if they were real, and I needed to know if there was anything to it. That wasn’t the real reason I followed them, though. I felt the need to figure out the piece of myself that didn’t fit in anywhere else. The missing element that had left me feeling hollow my entire life.
I wanted to know if there was a place I truly fit. If I was at all like my father, and a piece of me wasn’t meant to be caged in the world of the ordinary.
If anyone could answer that question, it seemed like they could.
Chapter Five
Emery stepped through the tear in the worlds, the gateway invisible to anyone without magic. He blinked at the sudden shift in visuals. Deep blue sky stretched overhead. Lush greenery surrounded him, moving in the light wind, alive and wild.
He sucked in a deep breath and stilled for a moment with his eyes closed. Natural energy buzzed through his body and sizzled along his bones. The slight weariness of crossing from the magical Realm to the Brink, the human world, evaporated. Replaced by the wholeness, and goodness, of the natural magic surrounding him.
Home. He’d missed it.
Solas stepped out a moment later, a scarf covering her fire-red hair. Her intelligent green eyes surveyed their surroundings before going skyward. Her arm brushed his and he stepped away.
“This the place?” she asked, her gaze now sweeping the trees.
He patted his pockets before bringing out a Brink phone, a piece of human technology that didn’t work in the Realm. He pushed the button to turn it on, frowning when it wouldn’t fire up. He’d have to plug it in. Right after he found a place to stay.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and took out a map instead. “I think so,” he said, starting forward.
She followed him without a word, content to let him take the lead. When this was through, he’d likely never see her again. She was here to repay a favor, nothing more—they weren’t friends. He didn’t have any of those anymore. Or anyone constant in his life at all. He was a drifter now, or near enough. It was better that way. Safer. There was less to lose.
An hour’s walk and they reached a ramshackle office at the end of the sleepy, unimpressive town of Middlebrook. He’d spent a year searching for his former mentor, following vague clues and surmounting near-constant name changes. There was no denying Isaias had a gift for hiding. A gift that he had, in part, taught Emery. But in this, like in all things magical, the pupil had surpassed the teacher. His mentor couldn’t hide from him any longer.
“You can stay out here,” Emery said, his heart heavy at the thought of the coming confrontation. It was long past due, but that didn’t make the prospect any more pleasant.
“What, and miss the show?” Solas chuckled and stepped to the side, waiting for him to open the door for her like the royalty she someday hoped to be.
“I should go in first,” he said by way of apology. He tried the handle and heard a distinct click. A magical warning most people thought was the handle or lock.
It seemed this old dog hadn’t learned any new tricks.
“You’re tensing,” she said. “Will he attack you, then?”
“With certainty. You’ll want to stay clear.”
Solas slid her hands into her trouser pockets, unmoving and completely unaffected.
A grin threatened his lips. Clearly a worn-out mage being hunted by a Natural wasn’t enough to shake he
r. It was her fire and fearlessness that had intrigued him when they’d first happened on each other in the woods of the Realm a while back. When she got her chance to stand in the coliseum for the Placement Games, a series of bloody and brutal battles magical folk participated in to win a few choice seats within the Realm hierarchy, Emery had no doubt she’d snag one of the top spots. She wasn’t favored by the sponsors, and her family did not have a lot of gold, but her people were from a warrior class almost as majestic and ruthless as the fae. From what he’d seen of her practice sessions, her spark and her passion pushed her above anyone else he’d met from the Realm. She was a wild card. An ace in the hole.
“Suit yourself,” he mumbled, digging through his pockets for the right elements. He was sure he had a few within easy reach.
“Most mages carry a satchel.” She watched him with a steady, assessing gaze.
He stuffed a piece of flint into the door’s keyhole before glancing at his feet. After lifting a boot, he scraped off some dirt. He sprinkled it onto the door handle. “Most mages also need to travel with a recipe book and all their ingredients.”
“And you are not most mages.”
“You knew that.” Naturals could draw the materials they needed from their environment—they were not limited to the supplies they could carry on their person.
“I meant, both in and out of bed, you are not most mages.”
His face heated. She was trying to bait him with innuendo, but he wouldn’t bite. No, he needed to focus on the elements before him. The metal of the door, reacting with the flint. The earth holding them together. The wood pushing against them.
He willed the elements into a tight weave that would form his intended spell.
Black fog clouded his vision. An image took over of the handle exploding off the door and punching a hole through his chest.
He took a step to the right. Problem averted.
Spell finished, he pushed out a small bit of power to finish it off. Immediately, his premonition came true. The handle burst from the door, flying over the small walkway and out into the cracked and crumbling pavement beyond. On the other side of the door, the handle hit the ground with a dull thud.
“Open sesame,” Solas said with a smile.
He shoved the door open and stepped through quickly, the wood slamming against the interior wall. A blonde woman stood at a tall desk, dead center in the cramped lobby space, with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. She shrieked and threw up her hands.
Magical components called out to him throughout the room, almost as if they were begging to be used. He’d tried explaining this to a non-natural before, and the best explanation was that he could see the potential elements waving to him from their sources. Almost like they had little translucent tags. He grabbed out five—velvet from a chair, paper from a magazine, plastic from the fake plant, dye from the woman’s hair, and the dirt still lingering on his shoes. He willed them together and pushed with his power.
The woman’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell behind the counter.
Directly ahead, on the other side of the shabby check-in desk, waited a closed door draped in shadow. Behind that, a dingy hallway led to a bathroom and another office, unoccupied since Isaias, operating under the name Jonas Smith, had taken over the lease.
“That is surprising.” Solas wandered in behind Emery and filed off to the side, utterly fearless and unruffled. “I thought you said you didn’t kill without reason. Has your sordid life in the Realm changed you?”
Emery kept his voice down. He’d revealed his presence to Isaias, but he didn’t want his former mentor to know anything else. “She’s not dead. She’s knocked out. She’ll come to in about an hour.” He dug out more flint from his pocket and picked up objects as he worked his way to the visible door, the wood lined and faded.
He summoned up the protective magic that every mage was born with. It required no ingredients outside of the mage’s own body. No power or energy other than what was stored. It was the magic of survival, ingrained.
Most mages didn’t know how to manipulate the power. It was a blunt tool called up as a last resort, used on instinct. But most mages hadn’t spent years running for their lives and hiding in places no sane person would willingly go. A man developed a certain affinity for staying alive when he was forced to struggle for existence every moment of his life.
He dropped the ingredients he’d collected, leaving them in a pile at his feet. Working the elements he needed, he half built the weave before anchoring it to the doorway. The black fog came and went in a flash.
The walls blew out.
Emery smiled to himself. Isaias had been expecting him. He’d built spells into the walls in anticipation.
Did he not remember Emery’s natural gift? How had he hoped to hide that particular surprise?
Shaking his head, Emery thought about creating a spell to soak into the wood of the wall, countering Isaias’s spell and causing it to disintegrate. But what a waste of time…
He pulled on the magical threads he needed for the protection spell, entwining them with his survival magic for an extra kick, and wove his work along the surface of the wall. The dirty white paint dissolved into blood red. The color stretched to the corner before wrapping around. He’d covered the whole door.
“He was notorious for wasting his resources,” Emery muttered, anchoring the spell. “Just around the door would’ve been fine.”
“Maybe he feared you’d bring an army,” Solas whispered, thankfully quick at picking up the situation.
“I did.” Emery glanced at her. “Oh, you meant more people?”
A pleased smile curled her lips before red crept into her pale cheeks. She looked away in delighted embarrassment.
For all her hardness, the planes and angles of her personality, she wasn’t immune to flattery.
“We’ll need to get cover just in case he has more power than I expect. The reception desk should be enough.” He gestured for Solas to take cover.
“I was content to watch you work, as I find it fascinating, but I am not going to hide behind a dirty desk in a filthy establishment. I may not be from much, but I do have some standards.” She flicked her hand. The door handle clicked, but not in the warning way of before. It was the click of the lock.
Emery frowned as anticipation built.
“I didn’t know you had control of metal,” he said, still for the moment.
“Any Elemental worth their practice grounds has a secret. Some small talent they keep close to the chest. This particular ability can be useful.” She paused, her eyes steady on his. “I trust I can count on you to keep this to yourself?”
“Given how tenaciously you’d try to kill me if I passed it on, I’d say so, yes.” Emery slowly reached for the handle.
“And given that I know your location…and your enemy.”
“That too,” he muttered. “It looks like his spells aren’t dependent on the lock.” He paused before reaching out to touch the metal. “The spells are dependent on that door opening without the correct element to render them dormant. If I just push it open, my protection spell won’t help us. The walls will still blast.” Something occurred to him, and he spun, looking for the woman he’d put to sleep.
“What element do you need?”
“Not an element in the sense of the ones you wield. I mean…the properties of natural items. The building blocks that make up nature. Sometimes it’s part of an object near me, like the cotton in my shirt or rubber on my shoe, and sometimes it’s the object as a whole, like dirt, flint, or wood. I draw the energy out of the material and weave it into a spell.”
“That is not usual for mages—or anyone. Correct?”
“No, it’s not, unless you are a mage with the highest level of magic. Even if you’re a natural, you still have to learn to harness the ability. You have to practice and train. That was something my brother and I did together. And we’d still be doing together if this…” He gritted his teeth to keep
from exploding in rage.
Thankfully, Solas let it go.
Pushing the emotion away, he bent to the woman lying in reception. Elements called to him from each item making up her wardrobe—all except for one. An item from her pocket. A plain gem keychain pulsing with power.
He snatched the keys and headed back to the closed door, his heart heavy. Once there, he paused, staring at the handle in trepidation.
“You do not seem like a man who fears battle.” Solas’s low, feminine hum drifted to him through the heavy silence.
His heart surged in his ears, nearly drowning her out. “It’s not the attack that I’m afraid of. It’s my past.”
He swung the door open before ripping his hand back behind his protective spell. Not a moment later, a stream of spells flew at him—mottled red, brilliant blue, and one orange-yellow. They hit his dual pane of protection and flashed brightly before fizzling into nothing.
Unable to stall any longer, he stepped across the threshold, seeing the undulating strands of magic surrounding him, ready to be used.
Emery’s stomach flipped and lead filled his shoes.
There he was, with deeper lines in his face and more gray in his hair.
Isaias.
The man Emery had met as a boy. The man who had recognized potential in his brother, then him. The man who had trained them through the grief of losing their parents, past the rebellion of their teenage years. The man who had shown Emery how to become a dual-mage with his brother, two naturals of the highest caliber entering into one of the most powerful pairings in the world.
The man who had betrayed them. Then disappeared.
One question had been burning in Emery’s mind these last few years, begging for an answer.
“Why did you do it?”
Isaias’s shoulders straightened for a moment, but then sadness crossed his features and he hunched back down on himself. He didn’t bother getting up from the rickety old chair behind his busted and decrepit desk.
