by Taylor Fray
“What is this… thing on my neck? Just tell me,” Morgan asked again, her lips dry and cracked, her voice raspy. She was lying in the passenger seat like she was the one who had been torn open.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be alright.” He refused to say the truth.
“Zak, don’t you know by now… I don’t need to be coddled. Tell me what the hell this thing is.”
“I’m not sure,” he relented. “But I think it might be… it’s a death rune.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some Black Hand sorcerers… they can use their last breath, to curse someone. The rune attaches itself to… the victim… and slowly—”
“How long do I have?”
He looked at her, his heart breaking. Finally, a question he could answer truthfully. “I don’t know.”
Morgan took that in. “Is there a way to stop it?”
“Yes, absolutely,” he answered, quickly realizing he was overcompensating. “I’m driving there now.”
“Ivalia’s?”
“No. Someone more powerful.”
“But can’t she help?”
“I destroyed most of her equipment, remember? Without it she can’t do much. She doesn’t wield magic herself. Not like the person I’m taking you to. Not like Magestros.”
“Ahhh!” Morgan screamed. Zak watched in panic as all the plum-colored veins around the rune began spreading. It seemed like the rune was sprouting black roots.
“Hold on!”
She shut her eyes and craned her neck in pain. “It’s already starting to kill me, isn’t it?” Sweat was beading on her forehead.
“Just hold on.”
The engine roared as Zak slammed the gas pedal, and drove like a demon into the sun.
The Rockies had given way to the arid deserts of Nevada, and the muscle car kept spitting fire.
Morgan had collapsed into unconsciousness. Zak frantically touched her every moment it seemed, and called to her. “We’re almost there, just hold on!”
He had to keep himself from gripping the wheel so hard he would snap it apart. In the state he was in, he would have ripped a cop’s throat open if he had tried to stop him for the 129 MPH he was burning.
Dusk was settling in. Lights were beginning to glimmer all along the horizon. Vegas. He was almost there.
Dust and an aluminum can went flying. The road sign he rushed by rattled. WELCOME TO LAS VEGAS, it read.
He was here. Vegas. Home to one of the most strange and powerful beings Zak had ever known.
Though he was still zooming by other cars, he had to slow down. A car crash or a police siren now would only slow them down. They kept on rushing through the road. They started blending in with more traffic as they entered the rundown part of town. All around them were broken windows, concrete and litter. Here and there, men in weather-inappropriate jackets stood on street corners, smoking and whispering with one another. They stared at the muscle car, now mangled, singed in places with fire, windows shot out, the bumper dangling from its mouth. Zak blinked hard as he tried to remember the exact way to Magestros—it had been years. Finally, he made a turn into a street between two buildings that was so narrow it was almost an alley.
He sped straight ahead, though it was a dead end road. The car hurled right into a solid wall and yet there was no deadly impact. The inside of Zak’s muscle car simply turned dark as it kept racing ahead through darkness, as if he was driving through a tunnel. Then, moments later, he emerged into light again. This time however, he was in a part of Vegas only the supernaturally aware knew about.
The buildings were a mishmash of colorful and drab, of sleek and ornate.
Zak barreled ahead.
The car’s tires screeched as he pulled into the parking lot of a three story, gold-colored townhouse, which was surrounded by concrete apartments.
“We’re here!” He sprung out of the car, slammed the door so hard he finished breaking the window. He propped Morgan up on his shoulder. The black veins were spreading down into her chest. “We’re here! You’re going to be alright.”
Zak ran up the steps of the gold townhouse, then banged on its black front door.
“Magestros! Gorro!” Zak called.
A robust tan-skinned man in a black suit opened the door. He had large features, full lips, deep grooves on his face and a plume of black hair that ran backward on his head.
“Gorro!” Zak said in recognition.
“Skarsgard, what have you done this time?” Gorro said in a baritone voice as he peered at Morgan in his arms.
“I have to see him.” Zak stepped through. Gorro put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
“What is this about?”
“There’s no time for this.” Zak looked him dead in the eye. There was a sudden tension between them. Gorro’s eyes turned reptilian, yellow and slitted. Zak didn’t look away. “This isn’t about me. Even with your cold blood, you must see that she’s dying.”
Gorro hesitated for a moment, but Zak didn’t. He strode in through the door, his steps resounding on the black marble floor.
“Magestros!” Zak called out.
The house was huge. A double staircase leading up to the second floor. All the interior decorations were either black or white, black marble floors, white stone walls, a lot of ivory and suede in the furniture, touches of metallic gold here and there.
“Magestros!” Zak yelled into the cavernous room. Morgan was fading, “Magestros!” he went on.
“Will you stop howling at him?” Gorro said as he caught up to him. “Have some dignity.”
“Magestros!” Zak went on.
Suddenly a door opened on the second floor, and a slim, flamboyantly dapper man stepped out. He had olive skin, jet black hair that was messy and stylish. He wore a fur-lined coat over a maroon suit, and large black sunglasses.
“Skarsgard,” he said, his voice silky, like a pack of luxury cigarettes. “I told you you’d be back here. Every time I turn around cats want something from me.” He spoke that last part with a bitter irony, hinting at the history the two shared. As he spoke he walked with swagger down the steps. He was tall and lanky, a lithe figure with a certain smoothness about him.
“She’s dying.” Zak motioned to Morgan who he was holding in his arms, clear off the ground. Magestros stepped closer.
“Another one huh?” Magestros looked at him in disgust.
Morgan blinked, on the edge of awareness. Zak pulled her hair back to reveal the spreading black veins. “I think it’s a death rune.”
“That it most certainly is.” Magestros inspected her neck with his long, thin fingers. “Gestaffos,” he uttered the name with resentment.
“How did you know?”
“You can tell a sorcerer by the runes they cast. Like a signature.”
“Can you help her? I’ll trade anything for it. My life—anything.”
Magestros’ lips parted, like the question had been a bullet to the chest. He shook his head. “What did you just say?”
“I said I’ll trade anything, for her life.”
“No, no, no, not like this!” He paced, wringing his hands over his head like he had fallen into desperate grief. “Not like this!”
“What? Magestros, please! Get ahold of yourself.”
“Destiny is written by some mad god.” He spoke as if to himself, as like a poet musing, or a man speaking to a memory. He crouched, placing his hands over his head, flinging off his sunglasses. Mumbled something unintelligible. “But a promise is a promise. Maybe it’s right. Maybe it’s right this way. You were always wiser than me, stronger than me… But how many years have we labored? How many years? Decades? You have to understand. Tell me what to do…”
“What are you talking about?” Zak had seen him this way now and then, but usually he could at least figure out some kind of reason behind his sudden mood swings. Not this time. “Magestros, please! Can’t you see she’s dying?”
Magestros looked up at him. He shook his he
ad as if shaking off a mad reverie. He breathed, flexed his jaw. “Do you love her?”
“Why the hell does that matter? Help her!”
Magestros stepped closer to him. “I wouldn’t be asking you if it didn’t. Now you have to answer me, because I’ve got something that can help her. But it will. Only. Work. If you love her. If you truly, to hell and back, love her.”
Zak looked down at Morgan, her hair cascading below his arm as he held her. He had felt something for her since they first met. Love, who knew? Magestros was being eccentric as always. He just needed to go along with his games to get him to help her. He would have said anything just to save her. Wasn’t that a kind of love? “Yes. I do.”
“Alright then. Look, you have to do as I say. I’m going to cast something powerful. I won’t waste time explaining what it means, for me to do this, but it is a spell I’ve never cast in my life, nor will I ever again, so you better be ready to give me something in return.”
“Yes!” Zak yelled, angry that they were wasting precious time on this. “What do you want?”
“Your service. Any jobs I have for you, you take care of them. For ten years. No questions.”
“I agree! Now will you just help her!”
“Swear it!”
“I said yes! I’ll do anything, alright—just no innocents.”
“Oh, you have a conscience now?”
“You know what I mean! Now hurry the hell up!”
“Calm it down,” Magestros said. “It’s me we’re talking about here. Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? Alright, take her upstairs. The second door on the left. Set her down in the bed. I’m going to start preparing the spell.”
“Magestros,” Zak called after him as he was walking away, and looked at him with utter desperation. “This has to work. You can’t be playing any games.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” he said, walking back toward him as if he were offended, his voice becoming melodic and angry at the same time. “Trust me, I’ll deliver on my end. I’m gonna give it to you—magic like you’ve never seen.” He looked Zak right in the eye. “So you best ask yourself your own questions, because what her life is riding on is what you feel for her. I wasn’t kidding about my question, about how you feel. Now if you are just saying that because you want her to live, tell me now. Don’t let me waste this.”
Zak only stared at him. “I’m sure.”
All the melody went out of Magestros’ voice. “If I waste this spell on you, I will kill you on the spot. That’s a promise.” There was a slight madness in his eyes.
Zak could only stare as Magestros walked back up the stairs. One of the most strange, one of the most powerful. He followed, carrying a fading Morgan in his arms.
Morgan felt the gentle bobbing as Zak turned down the hall, to the second door on the left. He carried her into the plush room. The sheets were a velvety red. The walls were patterned in black and gray diamond shapes. As Zak laid Morgan down, she was comforted by the feel of the soft and cool bed beneath her, but the pain of the death rune flared as if jealous of losing its hold on her. She grimaced as the pain seared through her body. The pain came unevenly, giving her moments of teeth-grinding pain, then easing to a tolerable fever-like ache.
Zak sat by her, a helpless expression on his face. Her eyes cracked open.
“You’re worried,” she whispered to him, her voice weakening.
“No,” he shook his head.
“Yes, you are.” Morgan looked at him, and with an irony that hovers around death, she pitied him. She was beginning to think, that perhaps surviving the ordeal of the last several days had been too much to ask. Perhaps it had been too much to ask, to be loved the way he had loved his wife. After all, what were a decade of memories compared to a few days of misadventure? Still, the irony clung to her. “If I die, that’ll be two women you have to torture yourself over.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Though really, I think one of them…” Even the strongest of people, when confronted with enough pain, when confronted with the door of death, must let their frailties speak. “I think one of them will always torture you more… the one that was first… and best.” She coughed, and a dark substance spittled out from her mouth. She remembered how back at Ivalia’s lab, the pain of losing his wife had overcome the hope of their future together, and he had given in to his beast. That was the truth, he loved his wife more, and always would.
“Morgan, please, save your strength.”
“I don’t want to die quietly,” she said. “I want to die shouting.” She laughed at herself, as best she could, though the pain was turning so sharp it made her hands shake. Sweat made her hair oily. Redness ringed her eyes.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“And if it does, are you going to keep holding on to your guilt? Is it going to keep holding you back from living your life, from reconciling with your family, is it going to keep you on a suicidal one man war?” Her toes went numb and cold, just like her hands. “Because if it is… tell me now…. I’ll punch you in the face, so you can snap out of it.” Morgan coughed and smiled. “You weren’t responsible for your wife’s death… or my sister’s… or any of those people…” Zak just shook his head at that, and she went on. “I speak for the dead, because I’m… because I’m joining them. We free you from your debts, Zak Skarsgard.”
“Morgan… stop!”
“I… don’t want you to feel sorry for me.” Morgan couldn’t help but tear up, because she felt she was dying… and because she couldn’t bring herself to say that what she did want from him, was his love, the love he kept shut away in a prison of guilt and regret, of fear and pain. “But, I’ve always told the blunt truth. And I’m not stopping now.”
“It’s time. It’s time for a reckoning,” Magestros said, entering the room with a beautiful brunette in a white dress following. She held a goblet with flower petals inside. Magestros spread his arms out, his coat swinging out like a curtain. He had a wand in his hand, and readied it like a maestro.
“Hurry!” Zak said as he turned.
“Get ready, this spell hasn’t been cast in a hundred years, and it won’t be cast again for that long, you hear? You only get one chance at this. It draws on the only energy that can bring back the dead, true love, my prince. It’ll draw that energy from you, and use it to break the rune. So if you don’t really love this girl, speak up now because this is the only chance to save one of your lives at least.”
“Do it,” Zak said. There was uncertainty in his voice, but he felt there was nothing he could say otherwise. Morgan had saved his life, if he died by Magestros’ hand because he tried to save hers, then it was worth it.
Magestros nodded. He began invoking the melodious spell. Though the language was an arcane one that none but sorcerers knew, it flowed like music. Purple wisps of magic began fluttering around the goblet. The petals turned incandescent, and soon there was on orb of rose-colored light that began shining in the room.
Magestros pointed his wand at Zak. In a spark of light the energy from the goblet began streaming into Zak, surrounding him in an aura of the rose colored energy.
Zak began looking almost ethereal. He was rejuvenated, all the blood was lifted from him, his cuts and bruises healed. He looked straight into Morgan’s eyes. He moved a wet hair from her fevered forehead.
As he drew closer to her, the aura of rose that surrounded him clashed with a wall of darkness. It was the rune. Responding like a threatened snake, the rune had summoned up a cloud of its own energy. Black tendrils now enwrapped Morgan. She fought through the cold feel of the darkness. She looked back at him, seeing that with every ounce of his being he was trying to save her. He was a wild man, half beast, but gazing at her he seemed all too human, like the shy high school boys that had pursued her in her youth. Mixed in this love there was the passion that makes lovers drunk and mad for one another, a hunger to be as close to her as their bodies would allow. There was also an aspect o
f the protector in his eyes, and yet there was so much remorse, so much fear that he carried, that he wouldn’t be enough, that he wasn’t fit to be forgiven. And in that, she understood him, and she loved him.
“Listen,” Morgan said, fighting through the pain of the black veins. “You saved my life once already. I don’t think a girl can ask for more than that.” She caressed the coarse stubble on his face as she spoke. Rose and black energy clashed against one another, creating a storm of light and shadow around them. “No other man has ever saved me even once. No other man has stopped himself sleeping with me because he cared about my heart. No other man has tried to conquer his demons, for me. So as far as I see, you’re still ahead of all of them.”
Zak took in her words. They felt like a soothing balm on his heart. It was so fulfilling, to have made her feel that way. In that moment, his doubts began to melt away. He thought back to that moment, when he had been under the Red Rage, ready to kill her, and she had laid down her weapon and reached out to touch him.
“You think I’m letting you slip away, the one person who hasn’t turned away from me, even when you saw the horror I can become? The one person who accepted me no matter my sins?”
“Now you know, now you know that you can control yourself even in that state. You can return to your clan. You’ll find someone…” her voice rattled and faded.
“Morgan, hold on. It’s working. You’re getting better!”
Morgan only smiled back. He was a terrible liar. It was an endearing quality. He didn’t realize it, but it wasn’t his flaws, it was his struggle against them that defined him. He didn’t realize, how human it made him. He didn’t realize, how much she loved him. Her head fell back into a tomb of black tendrils, and the life slipped from her breath.
She felt her body slump. It was a joyful peace, to be free of the weight of one’s body, feeling one’s consciousness slowly expand into the air, like water that had spilled from a pot.
