by N. M. Howell
“Searchers! Open this door!”
“Daddy!” Andie cried. “They won’t go away!”
Eric dropped to his knees and hugged her close, relieved beyond words. Even as the searchers beat at the door and threaten them, he took a moment to convince himself that Andie was safe.
“It’s okay, baby. I’m here now. And mommy’s close. Just stay here and let me take care of this. Remember what we talked about? About how your magic is special, so special you can’t tell anyone other than mommy and daddy, right?”
“Right,” she managed through her tears.
“Good. So try as hard as you can to control it, okay?”
“But what about my eyes?”
“Hey, we change them every day for school, right? So let’s do that now. Come here, and I’ll do the spell.”
But just as Eric raised his hands and began the incantation, the front door came crashing down, and the entire front of the house from the kitchen to the master bedroom, too. Instinctively, Eric covered Andie to protect her. When the dust finally settled, his first thought was to hide her eyes, but it was too late. The searchers flooded the room and, riled by having been ignored and made to wait, kicked Eric in the face. Everyone knew: there was no quicker way to piss off a searcher than to not indulge their fantasies of superiority. Eric was face down, bleeding, and before he looked up, he could already hear the sharp metallic clicks of the guns being primed. He lifted his head to look at Andie, whose eyes were completely hidden by tears. And now he was scared.
“Her eyes!” yelled a searcher. “We’ve got one! Everybody on her, now!”
And as if with a single mind, they all pointed their guns at the six-year-old girl who was too young even to know what she was being killed for.
But Eric wasn’t done yet. The speed charm was still active. In the blink of an eye, he was on his feet, and twenty guns glowed brightly as their target changed. But they’d destroyed his home and threatened his daughter. The first spell hit the searcher before anyone even knew Eric had moved and the next one broke every bone in another searcher’s body. Eric shouted an incantation that caused three searchers to burst into flames. Eric moved, quicker than they could follow and pulled the winds with him. A searcher was snatched from his feet and blown through the steel and concrete of the living room wall. He turned and found himself facing the dark barrel of a searcher’s gun. He’d made a mistake. But before the gun fired, the searcher was lifted off his feet and slammed into the floor, the wall, the island counter and finally tossed out into the yard, lifeless. Eric looked toward where the door used to be. Jane.
Of course, she couldn’t leave him.
Like a furious whirl of nature and might, husband and wife demolished the searchers with an incredible rage. They had never been violent people or relished the thought of taking lives, but every man in the house had seen Andie’s eyes. They couldn’t be allowed to report back to the university. In no time at all, the searchers all lay defeated, and Eric held his family in his arms.
“We have to go, now,” he said. “More will have heard the fight and be coming this way.”
“Come on, baby,” Jane said, picking Andie up. “It’s not safe here anymore.”
Without another thought for their home or the life they were leaving behind, Eric and Jane stepped outside and huddled close. Eric closed his eyes to transport them out, but just as their bodies attempted to make the jump, a hot, searing pain burned across them in diamond lights.
Matrices.
As he crumpled to the ground, Eric wondered how he could have been so stupid. Matrices were an invisible defense against those trying to teleport out of a protected zone; you could teleport in, but never out. The pain was completely debilitating, and Eric could do no more than lie there and watch wave after wave of searchers close in on them. He couldn’t see Jane, but he could see Andie. Unconscious and so beautiful and calm she could be sleeping.
“Trying to escape?” a searcher mocked.
The man walked up to Eric and stomped on his face. More kicks followed, and Eric could hear them beating on Jane as well.
“So which one of you is it?” the same searcher asked. “I forget, you can’t speak until the pain wears off and that could be hours. Well, there’s one sure way to test you.”
The searcher took off his helmet to reveal a young, handsome face. The man, whose only slightly too old to be called a boy, would have looked wholly innocent if it wasn’t for the disfiguration covering almost the entire right side of his face. It looked as if the skin was ripped away, leaving a clear view to the teeth and muscle beneath. It was a face that couldn’t be forgotten. The man looked at Eric’s eyes, satisfied himself, and moved on. He checked Jane next.
“Well, what do you know?”
Eric’s heart broke. Jane had been keeping her true eye color hidden for years, but the matrices weakened her too much. He heard them dragging her away. He wanted to scream, to cry, but he couldn’t. The searcher moved from Jane to Andie, and Eric knew it was his last chance to save her. Reaching further into himself and his magic than ever before, he managed to raise his hand as the searcher raised Andie’s head. Eric stretched his fingers, and the Searcher opened Andie’s eyes. An eternity passes. Then the searcher smiled.
“Look at this,” he said, with a sickening grin. “You get to keep the little girl.”
And as relief washed over him, followed swiftly by the terror and sorrow of Jane’s discovery, Eric closed his eyes.
Andie opened her eyes. She was confused, terrified, in pain. She looked over and saw her father in the grass. He wasn’t moving. The matrix caught mostly her parents and only grazed her, leaving her virtually unharmed. Someone called her name and made her jerk to attention in the other direction. Her mother. There were tears in Jane’s eyes as she was dragged away.
“Stand in the light,” her mother said. “Don’t be afraid.”
Then a gun rushed into her mother’s face and she went limp. Jane was thrown into an armored truck. She disappeared forever.
Andie was so scared she could hardly breathe. She turned over and crawled to her father, who still wasn’t moving. A man with a horrifying face came over to her. He smiled in a way that she knew wasn’t safe.
“Let’s end this, little one.”
He turned to the house and cast a spell. Every picture, every memento, every piece of clothing or souvenir that ever represented Jane disappeared. Her face left the walls, her belongings left the drawers, and anything in the house that even remotely had any connection with her was just gone.
“You see, this is the fun part,” the half-faced man said. “We take the blood traitor, torture them, kill them, and erase any memory that they ever existed. Except of course for the archives in the university dungeons, but no one will ever see those. And here’s my favorite toy.”
He pulled out the gun and put the barrel against Andie’s head.
“You have no idea what these things can do. You can’t even imagine the different functions and methods of destruction contained in this. So many different ways it can kill you, ages ahead of the simple lead-firing contraption it used to be. What do you say? Want a lesson in destruction?”
Andie broke down in angry, bitter tears. The searcher toyed with the trigger. He lowered the gun.
“I’ll settle for erasing your memories. Wouldn’t want you to grow up and cause problems.”
He waved his hand over Andie’s face.
“That’s better. Goodbye, little one.”
The searcher stood and left. His truck and others pulled off into the night, leaving the six-year-old girl alone in front of her destroyed home. But what the searcher didn’t know was that Andie was more powerful than the average sorceress. The dragon blood was strong in her. Her memory hadn’t been erased. And this pain would never be forgotten.
Book 1 Sneak Peek
Marked by Dragon’s Blood
Chapter 1
She was flying. No, not just flying, but soaring high above the
gold and rolling fields of Michaelson. Not too slow or too fast, but at that perfect speed that allowed her to feel exhilarated, while still giving her the presence of mind to see and feel and need her surroundings. Soon, she left Michaelson behind and was so high that she couldn’t follow her shadow on the ground. The farther she was from home, the higher she flew until she was nearing the edge of Arvall City, and the clouds were nearing overhead.
She felt so good, so unlimited, that she thought her heart would burst as she soared in the soft, iridescent glow of the evening sun. There was no wind, no friction on her skin, and nothing whipping or rolling in the breeze. And even though she knew this was odd, she liked it: the feeling of flying and being still at the same time. It felt like she belonged.
She was only just nearing Brie when she was swallowed by darkness. Then there was no wind, no light, no sound, no sensation, or movement at all. There was only a nameless, formless pain—an anguish so vast and terrible that it wasn’t just in the darkness. It was the darkness. She couldn’t tell if it was coming from some other source or from herself, but it was crushing. Maddening. But then she heard it. It was even worse than the anguish. Screaming.
“Ma’am?”
Andie woke with a jolt, her books slipping from her lap. She turned toward the voice and saw a stewardess.
“Ma’am, are you okay? Bad dream?”
“I’m... I’m fine. Yeah, bad dream. I’m sorry, was I too loud?”
“No, not at all,” the stewardess said, suddenly smiling. “You never made a sound. It’s just that ... Well, the spellglass.”
She pointed toward the window and Andie followed her finger. Spellglass looked like regular glass, yet anyone with magic in their blood could control its shape and density with only a thought. The spellglass had totally transformed, becoming opaque and protruding like knife points in some places, while in others, it flowed like liquid. It was like a tesseract that could feel, that kept collapsing on itself and rebuilding in the same instant. With just one thought, Andie calmed the spellglass. It returned to its normal state.
“Is there anything I can get for you, ma’am?”
“No, I’m fine,” Andie said, embarrassed and not wanting to seem like a charity case. “I’ll try to stay awake.”
The stewardess smiled and walked away. Andie took a deep breath and looked out the window. Most of her life was passing her by: the mayor’s fields, the coal mine, the Forest of the Orange Pines where the poorest farmers lived, and the little twin creeks snaking their wet bodies through the fields with impunity. She had lived in Michaelson her entire life, and though she had been in Arvall City almost regularly since she and her father stopped going into Taline years ago, it still felt as if she was doing something adventurous and new.
She bent forward to pick up her books, still shaken by that beautiful and terrible dream. All of them were there; everything she needed for her first semester of classes at the University. But there was one she couldn’t find. It wasn’t for school, and in fact, she shouldn’t have even been reading it on the train. She was never supposed to take it from the house, let alone be seen with it in public. As she told herself to stay calm, she started to panic anyway. She tried not to think of what her father would say if she had lost it. He’d be furious, or worse—disappointed. Suddenly, a blonde head peeped around the seat in front of her.
“Lose something?”
“Oh, yeah.” Andie forced a small smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s just that I lost one of my books and I thought it might have slid under your seat.”
“I think you mean... this!” the girl exclaimed, flourishing the book like the end of some corny magician’s routine. She clearly didn’t care if anyone saw the title of the book. From Dragons to Men.
“Oh... Uh...” Andie fumbled, anxious and baffled.
“This is pretty heavy. Someone has a lot to say about... er... dragons and men. Ooh, sounds exciting! Here.”
She handed the book to Andie as if it were just a thing, maybe a leaflet from the Church of Stone and Sea. Andie took it, thanked the girl, and quickly tucked the book away into the bottom of her bag, where she planned to keep it safely hidden from prying eyes until she was locked away in her new apartment. She gave the girl another smile and then gazed out of the window, turning the spellglass into a double-paned latticework that transformed the early morning light as it streamed in the train compartment. The girl was still peeping around the chair, eyeing her curiously. Andie felt uneasy, but she didn’t want to be rude so she did her best to smile back and then turned her attention back towards the window. She wasn’t in the mood for talking and definitely didn’t want to encourage the very thing the girl did next.
The trains in Noelle were golden, sleek, and narrow. The seats were arranged in single file, with a moderate walkway running parallel. If someone wanted to talk to a friend behind them, they’d have to press a button to swivel the chair around, which is exactly what the blonde girl did, nearly tripping a steward in the process.
“Oh, no! I’m so sorry. I’m such a cub sometimes. So,” she said, turning her attention to Andie, oblivious. “I’m Tristtle.”
“Andryne,” Andie said as she extended her hand. Her eyes then widened and she quickly corrected, “I mean, Andie. Please.” She extending her hand, hoping the girl wouldn’t latch on to her real name. She cursed herself for letting it slip. She didn’t even know why it had slipped from her lips, as she hadn’t gone by that name since her mother had died. No one outside her family knew her by that name. The girl beamed back at her.
“Wow, super old-fashioned. Andie. So cute. Totally blue. I didn’t know people still shook hands. I’m not a germaphobe or stranger-phobic, or even phobic at all, but it’s really... vintage. Blue, you know? Anyway, so I’m totally on my way to see my uncle. He’s a total boss. I’m going to see him eternally and I’m not sure why, because I don’t really like him, but I’m here like flow. Between us girls, it’s really his money I’m after. I’m not a bum or anything—and I’m completely not bum-phobic—but he’s got money on top of money. I should probably keep things like that to myself. I’m such a cub. But he’s this really big architect who designs all kinds of buildings and stuff, and now he’s working on the tallest tower in Vall and he—”
“I’m sorry, where?” Andie said, not wanting the answer so much as a break for silence.
“Vall. Arvall City? They’re saying this thing is going to be a monster, which is okay, I guess, even though I thought it was going to be a little baby business building—super cool, super blue...”
Andie had her mother’s unfailing kindness, and so she listened to Tristtle talk and even made a genuine effort to focus on the conversation. Yet her mind wandered to Arvall City and all the things waiting for her there. Towers that touched the sky, standing closer together than dogs in the field. Strange powered vehicles floating through the city in dense, angry waves, with the mist from their crystals trailing in soft pastel clouds. Trains that ran vertical, up the sides of buildings. Red Ravens, which had been given civil liberties in Arvall City, just as they had been in Taline. And, of course, the Academy. She’d seen all these things before, but never as a student. Never as someone who belonged there.
The Academy was the department of the University that instructed students in their first year. It was the second most rigorous year of the program—the most demanding being the last year. First year students went to classes year-round, with only ten breaks of ten days each. That meant that for three hundred of the four hundred days of the year, Andie would be in class. To her, it was as daunting as it was thrilling. She longed to learn, to discover, to grow. And, more than anything, she desired greater control over her dragon magic before it got her killed.
After almost an hour, the train finally pulled into the station.
“So, promise to look me up sometime?” Tristtle asked.
“I’d love to,” Andie said, thinking that Tristtle was kind of sweet in her own way.
>
“Super blue. And I’ve totally been eyeing your books the whole ride. Are you going to the University?”
“Yeah. I start at the Academy today.”
Tristtle was silent for a moment; Andie didn’t think anything of it until Tristtle looked like she’d stopped breathing.
“Are you... still alive?” Andie asked.
“Yes. Yes!” Tristtle said, suddenly full of life. “I just can’t believe I’ve been sitting here with a sorceress this whole time. Hey,” she said, leaning closer. “Ever used your magic at home?”
“Of course not,” Andie lied. “It’s illegal unless you’ve graduated the University.”
“Of course. I’m such a cub. Anyway, I hope I see you again soon.”
When she was gone, Andie breathed a sigh of relief and packed up the rest of her books, making sure Dragons was on the bottom. She left the train and before long was heading down Avenue 204. The whole city was laid out in a perfect grid: numerical avenues running from north to south and magical herb names running from east to west. She was seeing the city through new eyes. The air here was thinner, cooler. In fact, Arvall itself was on the mountain, only much lower than the University. Truth be told, Brie started some one hundred kilometers before the incline became noticeable. The city was vast and Andie knew the avenues went up to at least one thousand.
She shook herself and tried to focus. She was a couple days later than she’d intended to be, but what had delayed her was unavoidable. For some time, she’d been caring for her father—his illness was part physical, but, more than anything, it was the result of a broken heart and crushed spirit. The tragedy that had hit their family had fractured him and he would never recover. Andie knew that.
Now that she was starting school, she had decided to hire a healer to live with him. It didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t what she wanted, but it was paramount that she learn to control her magic. Just days ago, the healer had disappeared, totally unreachable.
