by Lan Chan
The pain in my head was unbearable. Distantly, I heard myself screaming. Something warm dripped down from my nostril. But bit by agonising bit, my alchemy began to make headway. When the pink light of my magic finally ate up the silver and black, I peeled my eyes open. The gasp seemed to come from a different throat. Across my vision was a landscape of all the brightest colours in the world. A network of stars scattered across a midnight velvet canvas. The Ley dimension as Lex saw it. So unbelievably beautiful that I could hardly stand it. And then, I actually couldn’t stand it any longer.
Lex’s blood kicked back, slamming into me and forcing me against the barrier of the circle. It chewed through my magic in an instant, and then exploded in a violent rage that consumed the room. The last thing I saw was Agatha and Hugh’s disbelieving faces as a silver-and-black wave smashed into them.
15
When the rumble finally died in my ears, there was no strength left in my body. I just lay there wheezing. Despair was too light a word for it. That was the result of a single drop of blood. I was kidding myself that I would ever be able to do this.
A warm hand touched my shoulder. Throwing off the Ley sight, I looked up into Noah’s frowning face.
Thankfully, it was unscathed. He searched mine. “You okay?” he asked.
“Not really.” I pushed myself up. Actually, he grabbed my shoulder and lifted me up. The sight that lay before me was barren. “Crap.”
I’d destroyed the room. A ragged cough caught my attention. Hugh staggered to his feet and helped Agatha up. So much for the most fearsome order in mage society. Rather than being grim, they were jubilant.
“Think of what we could do with that blood,” Hugh said.
They could think again. I’d never make the mistake of giving them any or telling them where it was hidden.
“You had hardly any control over it,” Agatha accused me.
“I’m pretty sure I told you that from the start.”
The door opened with a resultant bang. Jacqueline stood in the doorway. “This isn’t what I had in mind when I agreed to lessons,” she said, surveying the damage.
“Are you going to cry over a bit of a mess?” Agatha spat.
Jacqueline’s eyes landed on me. “You’re hurt,” she said. “You should go to the infirmary.”
“She’s fine,” the sorceress shot back.
I was not fine. When I tried to stand up, something was definitely stabbing me in the side. Noah helped me to stand by bracing his arm around my back. As we walked out the door to the infirmary, I heard Agatha saying that if Jacqueline was going to have a fuss about some plaster being broken then we could have our lessons in the fens.
I would have objected if opening my mouth didn’t mean that I would lose my lunch. The infirmary was unusually busy. I didn’t recognise most of the people and some of them were way too old to be Academy students.
Doctor Thorne plied me with ambrosia, and I had to lie down for a while. Noah was quieter than usual. It gave me time to check out what was happening. In between ministrations to their patients, the nurses and Doctor Thorne were busy packing all manner of concoctions and things into drawstring bags.
“What’s going on?” I asked the doctor when he returned and gave me the all-clear.
“We’re helping to make preparations for the upcoming battle,” he said. It was all too calm. “You’re okay now, Sophie. Try not to do that again.”
Easier said than done.
Despite having an extra class than the other students, it was still early when we arrived back at the Reserve. A gaping hole appeared in my schedule. “Do you know if I’ve been assigned anything to do?” I asked Noah.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
We made it to the edge of the portal field. “How am I supposed to occupy my time?”
“Beats me.”
“Okay, well then what are the parameters of my ‘confinement’ then?”
He simply shrugged. “Maybe you shouldn’t have run off on the pack circle.”
“Maybe as a guard, you should have a better idea of what your charge is allowed to do.”
“I guard you at the Academy while Charles is indisposed. Nothing else is my concern.”
He proved exactly that by turning on his heel and marching away. Right. “Do you at least know where Gwen is?” I screamed after him.
He pointed in the direction of the living quarters which probably meant she was off duty. “Nuts,” I said. If I did the polite thing and went to a subordinate, there was every chance I would end up being in the same room as Anastasia. With that alternative, choosing to be an imposing jerk was surprisingly easy.
Guards who chose to live with the civilians usually housed themselves around the perimeter. Even the location of their homes was driven by a need to protect. Gwen lived in a two-bedroom studio around the back quarter. It meant I had to walk through the suburban areas. My concern about drawing unwanted hostility was offset by my confusion at how quiet the streets were. Besides the odd lone animal, shifters were social creatures.
It was almost eerily quiet standing on Gwen’s front porch with not another soul in sight. She came to the door a minute or two after I knocked. Still in her usual skin-tight get-up, the only thing that said she was off duty was that she wasn’t wearing shoes.
“Hey,” she said, opening the door and coming outside rather than inviting me in. Though they were social, their homes were private places, and we were friendly but not that friendly. “What’s up?”
“Sorry to bug you when you’re not working. I just need to run some stuff by you.”
She leaned against her front door. “Why did you come to see me?”
I turned my head to the side wondering if she meant in a general sense or in particular. “Umm…you’re Max’s beta, aren’t you?”
Her cheek puckered like she was holding back a smile. “Why would you think that? Don’t you think Jeremiah or Harris or even Amy would be a better fit?”
“Who’s Amy?”
“I think you got pretty well acquainted with Amy yesterday.”
“Oh, you mean…” I made a hand gesture by raising my arm above my head as a reminder of Military Woman’s height. Gwen laughed outright.
“That’s the one.”
“Well then no, there’s no way Max would pick Amy to watch his back.”
Both her brows rose. “Why not?”
“One, he doesn’t know her as well as he knows you. Two, she’s a bear from what I could tell. He wouldn’t choose another slow fighter…I mean, slow is the wrong word…you know what I mean.”
She grinned at me, showing all her teeth. “Keep talking. I’m storing all of this up.”
I scowled at her. “Pack Law states that if there’s an alpha challenge he’ll have to fight with his beta. He’d pick someone fast because he’s already got power. That rules out both Jeremiah and Harris. Max would want someone who can think straight because, especially now, he’d be hamstrung by his own aggression. From what I can tell, that’s Ari out of the question. Noah hasn’t been around long enough for Max to get a sense of how he fights.” I swallowed, finding it hard to get the next bit out. “Leadership challenges are only a small part of what’s going on right now, though. Of the remaining females, I would hope he would be smart enough not to pick someone interested in mating with him. Last I heard you have that massive crush on Evan so…I guess the rules of elimination have brought me to your door.”
She gave me a once-over that on a man would have had me prickling. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that last bit about Evan,” she said. “But as to the rest, are you sure you don’t want to mate with him? You know an awful lot about pack politics.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
She pushed herself up. Face-to-face she was a hand span taller. Her limbs were honed muscles whereas mine were slightly too rounded. In a nutshell, she could flatten me in an instant. But when she regarded me, it was with blatant worry. “He’s my friend before he’s my alp
ha,” she said. “Whatever you think should keep you apart, is it worth losing him?”
Yes. But I couldn’t tell her the truth. Or maybe I should. If she knew, maybe she wouldn’t be so quick down this trail. Then again, her loyalty was to Max. If I told her, she’d be in his ear quicker than a leopard on Arcana juice.
Her shoulders sagged. “Under any other circumstances, you’d have come to the right place. But nothing happens with your schedule that doesn’t go through Max. So you might as well speak to him yourself.”
Err, that was what I was trying to avoid. She knew it too because she slipped back through the door and closed it in my face. That was just perfect.
As I made my way back to the Thompsons’, I kept telling myself that at least I didn’t have to have that useless conversation with Anastasia. That didn’t make it any better when I arrived to a figure in a skin-tight mini-skirt bent over the front porch. It was very obvious Charles was home because the light in his room was on.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked, stepping up to the door. Calm. I was a frozen lake. A smooth stone with cool water running over it. I did not want to smash the casserole dish over her head.
“Sure! I was just leaving this for Ma–” Her perky smile dipped when she saw it was me. “Oh.”
“Oh,” I mimicked. She stood there like a statue for a second. Then she reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears. They were ever so slightly pointed at the tips. “I’ll make sure he gets this.” Yanking the dish from her grasp, I swiped the back of my palm over the ward and slid into the tiny crack I opened in the door. Charles was leaning on the bottom of the banister.
“She was Fae,” I muttered.
He beamed. “Yep! We’ve gotten all comers. Even a half harpy. That was awkward. She almost busted our eardrums when she spoke.” He made a grab for the casserole. I was going to play keep-off when I realised if Charles got to it first then Max would never see it.
His fork was halfway into the casserole – tuna, as it turned out – before he must have noticed the same thing.
“Eat it,” I said.
He put the fork down. “Why? You don’t care, right?” With that, he placed the casserole delicately into the cooler. When the door was closed, he banged on it. “Stocked as per your request. My end of the bargain is complete.”
“Is that a hint that you’re hungry?”
“If he’s not,” Andrei’s voice said from behind me, “I definitely am!”
Turning, I couldn’t help the smile that lit up my face. “Blood, please.” I held out my hand.
He flicked my nose. “Hello to you too.” He dropped two new vials into my palm. Wasting no time, I raced up the stairs to lock them up in my ingredients chest. Thankfully, somebody had seen fit to put it into my room.
When I returned to the kitchen, it was to the sight of natural enemies sizing each other up. Though he was drinking blood again, Andrei wasn’t built for bulk. Charles was huge for his age. They were pretty evenly matched.
“So you’re just going to teleport in and out like you own the place, huh?” Charles was saying.
Ignoring him, Andrei glanced at the demon blade. “So you’re just carrying that around like a security blanket, huh?”
Charles’s eyes went gold.
“If you two don’t keep it in your pants, nobody is getting fed.”
It was a terse forty minutes while I prepared dinner. We had only just sat down when the front door opened again, and everyone went preternaturally still. Max stalked through the house, his aura seeming to precede him. He neither greeted nor gave Andrei a second glance. His attention was on the food. “You cooked?”
“Somebody left you a casserole,” I informed him. Charles pressed the toe of his sneaker on my foot when I made a motion as though to cover the steak and chips I’d made.
“I’m not staying.”
“Then why did you ask?”
He didn’t respond, bounding up the staircase. A minute later, I heard the sound of running water. Andrei picked up his knife and handed it to me. “When he comes back down, do you want to finish the job?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“C’mon, cupcake! You’re being a super bitch.”
I almost choked on my own spit. “I’m being held captive in this house! How do you want me to react?”
“Maybe a bit like someone who doesn’t care that there are other women sniffing around. Not like you want to flay him alive for it even though he’s already proven he’s half-mad for you.”
“I…” My nostrils flared. “You know why this is happening.”
He stuck a cherry tomato in his mouth and let his fangs grow, piercing it through the middle. “That’s why this is so amusing. I wonder what the poor bastard might be suffering from that he doesn’t even understand?”
The food in my gut turned to lead. Andrei just grinned harder. I learned this lesson well. Never let Andrei Popescu know your secrets.
Max came back downstairs smelling of soap and cut grass and man. I stopped breathing for a second. That was all the time it took for him to pass by before my brain kicked in and I realised I needed to speak to him.
“Max!” I called out. He turned at the door. “Can I speak to you about my schedule?”
“Talk to Gwen.”
He shut the door and was gone. What the hell?
“Well, I guess that’s the two of you,” Andrei observed.
I ground my teeth. “Why is he making me stay here if he’s not even going to be around?”
“Because he can’t stand the idea of you being anywhere else,” Charles said. Then he made a face.
“What are your thoughts on me summoning here?”
“Not great. Is that technically sinister magic?”
Wow. “Have you ever paid attention in class? Summoning is arcane magic. Not sinister magic.” I made a face at him. “Suddenly I don’t feel like you’re equipped to be guarding me.”
“Well, you didn’t really kill anyone so it’s a pointless conversation!” He huffed. “The answer is still no, by the way.”
“Well, I can’t just sit around for half the day.”
He inspected me. “Are you even recovered enough from what happened with Agatha this afternoon?”
Suddenly it dawned on me why Max might be in such a foul mood. “How did you know about that?”
“Duh. Noah gave me a handover briefing.”
“Right. Is this the same briefing he would have given to Max?”
“You betcha.”
Perfect.
After dinner, Andrei gave me the bad news. “I’m going to be stuck in Seraphina for a while. Astrid needs help working on the defensive barrier around Cardinal City.”
“I can’t believe you’re ditching me here.”
He gave me a smile that was full of fangs. “I think you’ve got enough overprotective men around to keep your hands full. And no offense, cupcake, but the view in Seraphina is more my speed.”
“I hope she runs you ragged.” Red dots bled into his blue eyes for a second. It made me ill thinking about Andrei stalking Astrid. He tapped me lightly on the forehead.
“If that breaks,” he said, referring to the compulsion that kept the malachim from pulling me under their melancholy spell. “Don’t come looking for me.”
If the compulsion broke, it meant he was dead. “Andrei.”
He shook his head. “I don’t do goodbyes anymore.” Not after last time, he didn’t need to say.
“Thank you.”
“Just find her.”
Unable to study and without access to the MirrorNet, I found myself walking the perimeter of the house with my sack of salt in my hands. It felt a little redundant to do this inside the hundreds of protective spells the mages must have placed on the Reserve after it was attacked, but it was mostly sentimental. I sprinkled salt and closed the protection circle, wondering where Lex could be and hoping like hell she was okay.
Maybe it was a coincidence, but I didn’t dream
that night. Instead, in the early hours before dawn, I was awoken by a chorus of howls that cut through my room and dragged me back to the warm air and wood smoke of the Zambian compound. Here, like it had been there, howls in the night signalled that something was very wrong.
16
I ran into Charles in the hallway. He threw his arm out when I tried to get past and just stood there, his eyes golden bright, nose twitching and his focus a million miles away. “Demon attack,” he said distantly. “Southwest sector. They’re on it.”
I needed more details. Like whether his brother was there. “They who? What’s happening?”
He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm. It was only then I noticed he only wore boxers. Definitely on some kind of supernatural steroids. The comical thing was that he had the demon blade slung over his left shoulder. “Vincent’s squad. They’ll be fine. No malachim.”
“How often does this happen?” I rubbed my own arms wondering if I was actually cold or if the presence of demons was making me think I was cold.
“More than it should. At least every couple of weeks now. Every time a malachim emerges, it tears open the barrier and lets other demons pass.”
With that ominous portent, he returned to his room. Sleeping was no longer possible. At around witching hour, I gave up entirely and got dressed. Dragging a throw blanket from the couch, I set myself up on the front porch with a Fae lantern and an alchemy textbook that Basil had found for me.
It was basic. Alchemy in the normal sense wasn’t a field that had been studied much. There were many mages who were interested in transmutation but not many who could do what I did. So I had to make do with their limited instructions and use trial and error with my own learning. It was the reason why I had made so many mistakes over the years. And why there had been so many explosions.
The book said that alchemy was the practice of transmuting one substance into another. For a long time, humans had considered it possible to transmute lead into gold. They’d given up and turned to modern science eventually. Transmuting stuff into precious metals was a cinch. Blood alchemy was something else altogether. It was the practice of transforming the life essence into a form of power.
