by Devon Monk
So I was out in the open with a mostly dead guy on my shoulder and a cat stuffed down my bra.
Living the good life, oh yeah.
It took some time to get anywhere. The kid blacked out once or twice, and I had to wait until he came to before moving on again. The good thing was I didn’t see Bonnie, didn’t hear Bonnie, didn’t smell Bonnie. The bad thing was the rain never let up and the cat peed on my shirt.
I’d wanted olfactory disguise; I’d gotten olfactory disguise. I smelled like garbage, cat piss, and somebody else’s blood. Couldn’t have asked for a better cover. A nicer one, yes. But better? Not in a river full of sewage. And I was pretty sure that not even Bonnie would be looking for two people stumbling along the shore like a couple of drunk hobos. She was looking for sporty-me, rich-girl me, long-coat-and-running-shoes me. Not wet, smelly, old-ski-coat-and-half-dead-guy me.
Things were looking up.
Except I was freezing, sweating, worried, stinking, and tired. Hells, I was tired. If even one of the mattresses scattered across the rocks didn’t look like a whorehouse reject, I would have taken some time to sit, lie back, rest. Dead guy, cat pee, or no.
It occurred to me, however, that I hadn’t a clear idea of where the shore went exactly. My theory was to follow it away from certain death and toward the police in shining armor. But as for how long that might take in reality, in crappy weather with a half-dead guy at my side, nope. Not a clue.
I was pretty sure the kid wasn’t going to hold up much longer. He blacked out more than he stayed conscious, and I spent as much time dragging him as shaking him to wake up. I scanned the shoreline looking for another decent tumble of rocks to climb (shudder) or maybe, (please, please, please) a road or alley that wound up to the streets above.
So when a slope of cliff to my left made mostly of flat-topped boulders appeared, I shook the kid awake again and headed toward land.
It was not easy dragging him up the boulders along the embankment, but I managed without doing much more damage to either of us. The going got easier once we got to the top. A narrow gravel road wended away from the river, blackberries and other brambles crowding it on both sides. I could hear cars and buses growling somewhere ahead of us. The constant cry of gulls faded as the road took a bend, leaving the river to the right of us and the rest of civilization somewhere to the left.
Even though I was breathing hard, and the kid wasn’t breathing nearly hard enough, I could smell the oil and dirt of the city, the salt and hickory of hot dogs getting the grill, the pineapple and smoke of chicken and teriyaki.
I could smell something else too—the copper and lye of magic being cast, spoken, chanted, channeled, used, like a blanket that smothered the city, every crack, every brick. There wasn’t a building or person in the city that wasn’t touched, coated, and shaped by the force of magic. It was in our soil, in our air, and in our blood. We breathed it, we ate it, we used it. And even though it used us back, we wanted more.
In my opinion, the fine line between advancement and addiction had been crossed years ago.
I was close to the edge of the city. Close to the train track that divided North from the rest of Portland. Close to magic.
The wind changed directions again, and I caught the black-pepper smell of lavender. Bonnie. Or another woman who smelled a lot like her. And since I couldn’t draw on magic to investigate the nuances of that smell, I had to assume it was probably Bonnie coming to shoot me.
I stopped trudging along and wondered how much I smelled like me. Maybe I smelled enough like garbage, cat pee, and blood to hide in plain sight. Maybe she wouldn’t expect me to be dragging an injured boy along with me.
There had to be something smart I could do. But the only thing that came to mind was getting myself and this kid to a hospital or police station quick. Quick meant car or cab on the other side of the railroad tracks. Quick also meant walking straight over the top of Bonnie if she tried to get between me and a reliable set of wheels.
We were at the end of the line here—the brambles stopped, and a clear and open road continued between some warehouses and into a mix of small businesses and apartments.
I shook the kid. “Hey. Cody. Come on, kid. We gotta get going.”
His head lolled to one side, and I shook him one more time, shifting his weight from where I held him propped by one arm over my shoulders, and my other arm around his waist, thumb tucked tight in his belt loop.
He exhaled, and I swear it rattled like he had just blown bubbles in a cup of milk.
Shit. Maybe he was worse off than I thought.
I lowered him as gently as I could and went down on my knees beside him, taking a hard look at his face. Oh, not good. Not good at all. He was white heading toward a horrible pale blue. His eyes rolled into his head and his eyelids flickered. He jerked spastically, his limbs moving like a puppet’s on a string.
“Hey now, you’re going to be okay. Hang in there, guy.” I pulled off Zayvion’s coat. The kitten dropped off my shirt and did not land on her feet, but rather pitifully tumbled onto her side, on top of the kid, and then fell down next to his arm. I tucked my coat over his chest.
What were the emergency things you were supposed to do when someone was dying? A hundred scenes from movies and TV shows flashed through my mind, most of them involving someone beating on a prone person’s chest and screaming at them not to give up.
Old information from high school came back to me, and I pulled off my sweater, leaving me in a tank top, and balled the sweater under his head. I didn’t have anything to wedge between his teeth to keep him from biting his tongue, and I debated the wisdom of that, anyway. He looked like he needed all the room he could get just to breathe.
I put both hands on his chest and tried to press his body down gently, tried to still the spasms racking through him.
What the hell was I was doing trying to dodge a Hound, get to the cops, and take someone to a hospital all on my own?
What choice did I have? My father was dead and this kid might know who did it. Might know who I could make pay for killing the man I wanted dead and somehow couldn’t handle living without.
I wanted to scream, but Bonnie was still out there. If she heard me, she would find me and shoot me. It was enough to make a girl paranoid. Or furious.
I decided to go with furious.
But unless I wanted to pull on magic, there wasn’t anything else I could do. It wasn’t like I could turn bullets if someone pulled a trigger.
This would all be a hella different if I had a damn cell phone.
Or if my father hadn’t died.
Or if I had taken his advice and finished school and gone to work for him.
Or if this kid and his cat hadn’t gotten stabbed.
“P-please,” the kid rasped.
I about jumped out of my jeans. I thought he was way past being able to talk.
“I’m right here, kiddo. Hang in there, you’re going to be okay.”
“H-hand,” he said.
I didn’t know what he wanted, but took both of his hands in my own.
“M-magic.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I couldn’t. Sure the magic was close enough, maybe a couple blocks away at most. But I couldn’t draw on the magic to do so much as add pressure to his wound or make the air he breathed richer in oxygen because Bonnie would spot me. And I certainly didn’t have enough medical experience to save him, with my hands or with any of the spells that could ease pain at an exorbitant cost to the caster. If I drew on magic at all, I was screwed. I could smell Bonnie and the reek of lavender getting stronger by the minute.
“P-please?”
Hell. Screw Bonnie. If she was so determined to kill me, she’d just have to get in line and wait her turn. This kid didn’t have any time left.
I took a calming breath, even though I was freezing and soaked through my tank top and really freaked out. I set a Disbursement spell, deciding, even though I didn’t like it, I should take a long and slow pa
in this time so I could remain functional—maybe something along the lines of a bad sore throat or a recurring stomachache over the next couple weeks. I held tightly to the kid’s hands and thought about the soil beneath us, and below the soil, beyond the train tracks, to the magic pooled there deep under the city, caught and held by ironworked conduits.
I spoke a mantra, a jingle from a cereal commercial, and called for the magic to come over to this side of the tracks, coaxed the magic, invited the magic into my body and into my hands.
To my surprise, the kid managed to pull my hands, still clasped with his, down upon his stomach, over his wounds.
Kneeling next to him, I was close enough to see his eyes, blue, unfocused, looking at me, or maybe through me, close enough to see his lips and see that he, too, was chanting.
Holy hells. Soft as a whisper or the brush of a butterfly’s wing, the kid reached out for the magic I drew upon, and used me like a channel, like an ironworked conduit. He pulled the magic he wanted through me, not through the ground or through the channels. That shouldn’t be possible. People were not conduits of magic. Magic killed the people who held it inside their body for any length of time. Magic could only be channeled by lead, glass, iron, and glyphs.
And, apparently, me.
Like a breeze stoking a flame, the small magic I carried within me flared to life and the magic the kid drew upon mixed with it. I filled with magic, more magic than I’d ever held before. Like an artist mixing paint beneath my skin, the kid guided the magic to blend and move, connecting the magic beneath the city to my flesh, to my bones.
This couldn’t be good.
But it felt good, very good. Magic shifted and changed in me, and I realized my eyes were closed. Instead of darkness, I saw lines of magic that pulsed in jeweled colors, connected in contrasts of sharp angles, and softened like a watercolor. I could suddenly see so many possibilities in magic, so many things I could use it for. Things I’d never thought of. Like a balm to soothe pain, or a thread to stitch flesh.
“Oh,” I whispered. I didn’t know it could be so easy to heal someone with magic.
But I did now. I used one hand and drew a glyph for health—the sort of thing that might reduce the effects of a head cold, or revive a wilted plant. I could see how the glyph would fit around the kid, and how it would sink inside him, like a tattoo of color and magic on his bones. It would stay there too, supporting him, healing him. I worked the magic inside of me out into the glyph and then directed the glyph down over his body—inking it above him from his skull to his toe, magic that urged healing, health, life.
I’d never seen anyone use magic like this before. I’d never seen anyone try. But I could do it. Of course I could do it.
So I did.
Magic spooled out of me and into the glyph. I let go of the kid’s other hand so I could catch the power and guide it, weaving and bending the force of it like ribbons of light, of heat, some rough, some slick and smooth, all fast, faster, falling out of me and into the glyph, then over him, then into him, wrapping around his bones, webbing through his muscles, arcing across his tendons.
Heal, I thought. And the magic soaked through him, filled up his wounds, and followed my will, my intent, my glyph, my spell.
The boy gasped, and part of me wondered if this might kill him, and whether it might kill me too since I’d never channeled so much magic before, and sure as hells had never tried to play interior tattoo artist with it. But if I stopped, or worse, if I freaked out, I wasn’t sure what the magic would do. Would it stop, collapse, explode? I was pretty sure it would do more damage to him than it was doing now.
I worked on creating an end to the spell. But magic rushed through me like a river raging free of its banks. I didn’t know how to cut the ties of magic between me and the ground, or me and the kid. How did you stop something you didn’t know how to do in the first place?
I didn’t want to disengage too quickly, in case the wild rush of magic lashed back on the kid and left nothing but a burned and charred mess. But I had to let go soon. My ears were ringing and the sheer force of channeling so much magic had gone from feeling good to making me dizzy. I couldn’t feel the wind anymore, couldn’t feel the rain, couldn’t smell the garbage.
This was bad.
I tried tying the strands of magic into knots, to stem the flood, but magic still rushed up through the ground, into me, then out of me into the kid, and then completed the circle by exiting him and wrapping around my hands again. My fingers were getting full, stiff with magic that tangled and wrapped and constricted.
Clearly, I sucked at this. That was no surprise since I had no friggin’ idea what I was doing. Knots unraveled, twisted, tangled. I caught at strands of magic and wound them around my fingers, through my fingers, to try to hold them all. But no matter how fast I spooled up the magic, it came faster, rushing up through the soil, through me, into the kid, healing, painting muscle, bone, sinew, his and mine, and then back out through him to wrap around my hands again.
I was about to be in a world of hurt. I could not control this much magic. The magic pouring out of me and the magic pouring out of him collided in my hands, tangled, and burned. I jerked away from the kid, rocking back on my butt, but I wasn’t fast enough. Magic crackled, hot, bright. It burned up my right arm like fire in my skin following lines of gunpowder.
I held my right arm away from me and turned my head away from the heat and pain coming closer to my face. Heat licked across my jaw, up my ear, and arced across my temple. I yelled, “Stop, stop, stop!”
A wild thought of stop, drop, and roll before my hair caught on fire flashed through my mind. I flung myself to the side, not caring that wet gravel and blackberries were the best landing I could hope for.
But before I hit the gravel, I hit a very solid chest. A set of arms closed around me and held me tight, my burning arm tucked between them and me, the heat of the fire lessening, cooling, leaving not heat, but pain behind.
I couldn’t tell who held me, couldn’t smell who held me—as a matter of fact, I couldn’t smell anything. I freaked out about that, then freaked out when I realized I also could not see.
Well, not completely true. I could see something. Everything was really, really white, like someone had just dumped a mountain of snow all around me, or set off a bomb. As a matter of fact, I felt cold and numb, like I was buried in snow, which annoyed me. I’d thought a little bit about how I wanted to die, and freezing to death in an avalanche wasn’t even on my top-ten-favorite-ways-to-bite-it list.
Ten involved chocolate and sex. Not one in one hundred involved snow.
And I seemed to remember that I was not in the mountains surrounded by snow, but in the city surrounded by rain. With the kid. Doing magic.
My brain turned over like a cold engine, gave up, and went blank. Then I tried to think again. I was doing magic. Wasn’t I trying to avoid magic? Why was that?
“Allie?” A man’s voice spoke through the white and I tried to answer, but couldn’t feel my lips or tongue.
But the man’s voice had punched a hole through the whiteness so I could hear again. Sounds of a city. Sounds of a man breathing hard, like he’d been running. Sounds of rain falling against concrete.
I knew these things should smell like something too, and hoped I might smell the man who was speaking and get a clue of who was with me, but all I smelled was a sort of germ-free disinfectant odor that masked everything.
This was beginning to worry me. I tried to move my hands, tried to blink my eyes, tried to focus.
“Don’t fight me, Allie. It’s hard enough as it is. Relax.”
And that last word brought back to me the owner of the voice. Zayvion.
Color me equal parts amazed and confused. I did not remember being with him. But I had been with a man. A boy. The kid. Cody. I wondered if he was buried in the snow too.
Like a industrial flamethrower in the blizzard of my brain, the memory of Cody and the magic I had used on him burned through
my semiconscious mind. I had, or he had, done a substantive draw on magic. I had tried to use it to heal him while a Hound was tracking me. Wasn’t that clever of me?
I had to tell Zayvion. He should know a crazy blonde with a gun was headed this way.
“Bon—” And that was all that came out. After that single syllable, my mouth stopped working and I felt like an explosion, or thunderclap, or something loud and nasty had gone off just inches away from my face. That loud nasty sound drenched me in the prickly cool of mint. I could suddenly feel my body again, smell again, see again, think again, and what I thought was that everything hurt.
“Can you stand?” Zayvion asked.
Oh, hells no. With prompting, and some support, I might be able to puke.
I blinked until I could make out his face above me and gave him the dirtiest glare I could muster.
Zayvion scowled. Then he looked up, away from me, and the muscle where his jaw and ear met tensed and his nostrils flared, like he was scenting the wind.
Yes, I was hurting. Yes, I felt sicker than the worst hangover I’d ever had. That didn’t keep me from appreciating the fact that Zay was stepping in to help me, and the kid with me, probably at great risk to himself. Plus I couldn’t help but notice that Zayvion was a good-looking man. If I’d been up to it, I might even have licked the edge of that jaw to see if he tasted like mint, or what he would do if I bit his ear.
“We have to go, Allie.” He looked back down at me. His eyes were brown and warm and understanding. They were also flecked with gold, like back at the diner when he’d Grounded me. I had never seen anyone’s eyes look like that, and wondered if it was magic or me that caused it.
I wanted to tell him not to worry. We’d make this work out somehow. I had a good feeling about us.
Had I just said that out loud?
Zayvion’s eyebrows notched upward and he lost the serious Zen look. “I do too,” he said quietly. “But tell me about that later. We have company.”
