by Meg Cowley
Contents
Thanks for Downloading Rogue Magic!
A note from the authors
Rogue Magic
Thanks for reading!
Ancient Magic (Relic Guardians 1): A Preview
About the Authors
Meet Jamie Oxford, wizard and magical relic hunter.
How much is the power to kill the world worth?
Jamie is sure that a magical relic in the hands of non-magical Ordinaries is not going to end well. When Pandora’s Box is discovered, he takes it upon himself to make sure it is protected as it ought to be – with magic.
His plan backfires spectacularly and Jamie finds himself on the run from the law, without the box, and completely isolated.
Pandora’s Box is gone, and Jamie can no longer be sure who is friend or enemy as he hunts for it before it falls into the wrong hands… hands that could open the box, unleash the powers within upon the world, and end humanity.
Can one rogue really stop that?
Fans of Lara Croft and Indiana Jones will enjoy this fast-paced urban fantasy adventure series filled with magic, action and kick-ass characters.
A note from the authors
Thanks very much for downloading Rogue Magic, a Relic Guardians short story. We hope you love meeting Jamie, our cheeky, roguish Magicai!
Happy reading,
Meg & Victoria
Rogue
Magic
A Relic Guardians Short Story
Meg Cowley
Victoria DeLuis
I sipped the coffee in long, slow draughts, savouring the rich flavours that caressed my tongue. It had been a while since I'd enjoyed a cafetière coffee, and not the instant trash that stuffed supermarket shelves.
It was at that precise moment the whine of police sirens disturbed me. I sighed. Never a moment's peace.
"Time to leave!" I said to no one, placing the mug in the kitchen sink like a good visitor should. I had no time or magic to waste cleaning up. It wasn't my house or coffee, you see.
This was an annoying matter, in all honesty, which the authorities were taking far too seriously. I unlocked the back door with one wave of my rune-charmed ring, and by the time the police hammered on the front door, I'd vaulted the garden fence.
I'd borrowed something to illustrate a point, and may have magically hoodwinked a state-of-the-art security system along the way. Some would call it stealing, but I preferred to think I was doing them a favour. I was prepared to defend my actions despite the predicament it had landed me in: on the run. Again.
Perhaps the time to defend myself had passed, since I found myself sneaking through private property wearing ladies' sweatpants. It wasn't a good combination with a shirt, jacket, and tie, but the matching camisole top would have been even more conspicuous, so I opted for damage control.
My clever idea had taken a turn for the worse. MI5 didn't take kindly to being shown up. My plan to stroll in and offer them an artefact (with a contrite, yet smug grin), which ought to be safe in their vaults failed the moment some jobsworth paid attention for a change and noticed it was missing, before I’d finished taking it. How rude.
Triggering a full-scale lockdown was not in my timeline of events. Escaping through a window seemed natural, but, in hindsight, it looked bad to anyone else. Fleeing through central London with my pants ripped from ankle to waist turned a few heads, too.
I hadn't looked at my spoils yet. I was too focused on finding an internet connection and change of clothes. The BBC news website already spewed speculation on the 'situation' at the head of national security. It was unnerving to proceed blind. My smashed phone lay at the bottom of my anonymous host's bin. I heard it took twenty-four hours for mobile signal data to triangulate a location, but that was the only way they could have found me. Now, I was completely lost with no way to contact headquarters.
I collapsed under a park bush. It was quiet. Too late for kids to be out; too early for trouble makers. I activated my runes to cast a seeking charm… Nothing nearby. Perfect.
I pulled the smooth, plastic cube from my pocket. Its white surface caught the remaining light. A hairline crack circumnavigated it, through which blue light pulsed, but I wasn't as foolish as Pandora to open it.
If I did, I'd see Pandora's box itself. I could sense its corrosive, malevolent magic through the case. The moment MI5 had discovered it had been recovered by the Great British History Museum, they had confiscated it on the grounds it could not be kept secure enough. It was ironic, unknowingly confiscating it from Magicai protection only to place it somewhere far weaker, but they wouldn't know their folly. It was an opportunity too good to miss. A chance to make a real difference. I would ensure it was kept truly secure forevermore in a way non-magical Ordinaries could not.
The honk of a car horn split the air. I jumped. A black car with darkened windows slid to a halt on the other side of the park's cast iron boundary railings.
"It's about time!" I grumbled as I sagged into the back seat, brushing the dried earth and plant matter off myself.
"We've been monitoring you all afternoon," the driver, my co-worker, Alex, replied, "but when your signal stopped moving we thought you were... y'know. Dead." He grinned at me in the rear-view mirror.
I looked at my wrist in relief, now glad I'd agreed to wear a location transmitter disguised as a watch today. I might have had magic — I was Magicai, a wizard, to put it crudely — but few others knew of my secret advantage. I lived amongst Ordinaries as one of their own; as grey and drab as the rest of them, for all they knew. "So, Cleo sent you out on babysitting duty whilst she does nothing, as per usual."
We shared a mutual headshake. Our boss, Cleo, was famous for her delegation skills, but she was a mastermind, so she had her uses. She was also Magicai, living hidden amongst the Ordinaries. Our organisation sought out ill-protected, secretly magical artefacts and secured them. Our Ordinary colleagues assumed we did it for posterity, altruism… and a nice pay cheque.
Our organisation operated outside the radar of the authorities; anonymity helped us. The red tape entangling our legal equivalents at the Great British History Museum often stopped them being able to act, but we had no such restrictions. They'd be furious at what we had done, naturally, but I'm sure our Magicai equivalents would understand why. I imagine they weren't thrilled that MI5 had confiscated their artifact in the first place. As we reached headquarters, the familiar hum of siphoned electricity and Cleo's latent magic called me in.
"Honey, I'm home!" Alex waltzed in with his usual flamboyance.
"What happened to you?" Cleo said, looking at me. Her eyebrows couldn't have risen any higher into her fringe at my outfit.
"New couture," I muttered. For a small woman, she had a knack for intimidation. Sniggers filtered from behind the wall of computers where my Ordinary colleagues worked.
"I take it you failed." Cleo didn't mess around with chit-chat, either.
"Not entirely." I scrambled to show her the box, explaining the events of the day.
Her jaw dropped and there was a moment of silence before she snatched it from my grasp, cradling it in her hands.
"Nice job," Alex whispered, nudging me.
Cleo swallowed before ripping her gaze away from the gleaming plastic. "Well done, Oxford. No, better than well done. I'll see you get a bonus for this. We need to pack up and ship out, immediately. I don't want to ransom this from within the country."
"Woah, ransom?" I froze.
Nick and Cleo shared a guarded look. Cleo shrugged. The action was uncharacteristic. Suspicious. Cleo never did anything as careless as a shrug.
"We can make a lot more from this deal for ourselves if we sell this," she said.
"We agreed — all of us — that we would destroy it, or protect
it so it could never be found or used," I growled.
"And Nick and I agreed to something different."
"Don't go rogue on me." Cleo would know my warning was aimed at her, for she understood the true potential of the box.
"Don't worry," Nick said, rolling his eyes. "We're still going to take the moral high ground. We'll sell it back to the British where it will be safe… ish. They're too scared to use something like this; not like some other nations, who would pay us far more, it's worth noting. No harm done and we're minted from it. What do you say?"
"I don't want any part in this." I stormed out. I knew arguing would be futile, and the only way I could stop this was to stay one step ahead of her.
I knew Pandora's Box could bring the world to its knees. The result was the same in every projection we ran — a fatal pandemic, mass panic, social breakdown, world war — and Cleo planned to use this to blackmail the government.
I didn't care about any of the stares I got as I vaulted over the ticket barriers and jumped on the next tube. Fifteen minutes later, I scrambled off at Westminster and took the stairs two at once. My heart was pounding, and not just from the exercise. Adrenaline flooded my system as I sprinted past the Houses of Parliament towards MI5. I skidded to a stop as I saw the police cordon.
"Hold it there, sir." A stern-faced, female officer barred my way. "On your way, now. You can't pass."
"Jamie Oxford," I replied, refusing to be chivvied away. The widening of her eyes was almost imperceptible, but confirmed I was on the wanted list. "I mean no harm." I raised my empty hands. "I have highly confidential and time sensitive information for the intelligence services."
She nodded hesitantly, backing away to mutter into her radio. Her eyes didn't leave me. In a moment, guns bristled at me and black-clothed officers materialised. A cacophony of commands assaulted me from all directions as I hurried to lay myself on the floor.
A boot kicked me. "You have thirty seconds to explain why you should keep your pathetic ex-convict life."
For the first time in my life, speech failed me. An array of guns pointing in your face had that effect, as it turned out, especially when I was trying to second guess how serious they were about pulling the trigger.
My mouth gulped for air, but no sound emerged. "Marc?" I couldn't see the speaker. I didn't need to. I knew that voice.
He sighed. "Let's not do this here. Put him to sleep, Bridger."
A hand grabbed and twisted my arm at the elbow. Another sliced the back of my neck. I went out, cold.
When I awoke, I was in cuffs, sitting on a hard, metal chair in a small, windowless room. My neck ached. I opened my eyes, blinking in the harsh, bright light. The guns were gone. Good.
With folded arms and a red face set with fury, Marc Nowak stood before me. He looked much older than when I'd last seen him a couple of years after our university graduation from Cambridge. Back then, we were two promising students, each with a high first class honours degrees in archaeology. Unlike most Magicai, I'd trained in an Ordinary career; my parents were ashamed, but every family has to have a black sheep. They'd probably be more ashamed if they knew what I really did for a living.
Marc had risen through MI5 ranks to mind national security on behalf of the state. I'd become a traditional archaeologist, and then an artefact bounty hunter out in the field. I saw a new way to protect our world from powerful magical artefacts that threatened Magicai and Ordinaries alike, only it walked on the wrong side of the law. Two means to one end. I'd saved his ass more times than he realised, but I'd never tell him. It was a pride thing; and he was an Ordinary.
We were on the cusp of turning thirty, but he looked like another decade had been leeched out of him with his pale skin, deepening wrinkles, and receding hairline. The fluorescent lighting did nothing to help him.
"Jamie Atticus Oxford."
I winced at that. I hated my middle name. Years of embarrassment and teasing had followed my mother's wise choice to name me after an esteemed Magicai, who also happened to be the name of a well-known Ordinary fictional character. "Good to see you, you look terrible. How've you been?" I forced out a smile.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"That I was quite—"
"Clever? Witty? Daring? Arrogant. Idiotic. Selfish." Marc's scathing voice cut over my own. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"
I dropped the bravado. "I do," I said quietly, filling with soberness. "That's why I came back."
"You're lucky you're not in interrogation already. Or dead. The Director General is already on his way in and he's going to want answers." He flicked his hand, inviting me to speak, but his eyes were narrow and I could tell he had a short fuse. Better make this good.
I explained what had happened. Why I'd taken it, who had it, and what they were planning. The non-magical, Ordinary version of events, of course.
"You're an accessory to this, you know," Marc said, his eyes fixed on me. "There's no way you can leave here without a prison sentence. Another prison sentence. Why do you do this?" He raised his eyes to the ceiling.
He always brought up the spear of destiny incident. I don't think he'd ever let me live it down.
"You could have been working here with me, all these years, or even at the museum. You know they have a department for artefact recovery. Good pay, good conditions, protecting the world. Why did you throw it all away to skulk in the shadows, get on the wrong side of the law, and run yourself into poverty?"
It wasn't the first time we'd had this argument, and I suspected it wouldn't be the last, either.
"You know I don't want that," I said. "I don't want to settle down with my two point four children in some leafy suburb and commute to this dump of a city to work my nine-to-five job, Marc. What I do pays well enough and, more importantly, it gets the results better and faster. With no red tape, we can do what needs to be done, when it needs to happen. You have no idea how liberating that is."
Marc put his head into his hands with a great sigh. "I'm glad you're not one of the bad guys, Jamie." He looked at me with exasperation. "But you're an idiot."
I had to take that one. I'd been stupid to trust Cleo. I was furious with myself. I knew she followed her own motives. I should have realised they would be selfish. Nick's betrayal smarted, though. He might have been an Ordinary, and he might have had no clue about half of what I truly did, but I'd counted him a friend.
"Let me go after Cleo. I can fix this."
Marc snorted with derisive laughter.
"You've made enough of a mess of this! Give us all the information you can on her haunts, her movements, and what she might have planned. I'll see if we can reduce your sentence. It's the best I can do."
"It's not good enough!" I said. "There's no way you'll get close to her. Think of how many years she's given you the slip. She's called ‘The Ghost’ for a reason. I'm the only person who can get close, be accepted back into the fold."
"I doubt it. We scanned you when you came in." He tossed something to me. I caught it on a reflex, managing even with cuffs on.
"Ah. I forgot about that." It was the tracker watch; I’d forgotten to take it off.
We were both thinking it. Cleo would know I was here and she wasn't stupid. I put the watch back on, thinking, as I completed the catch with deliberate slowness.
"If I destroy it, there's no chance of her believing I'm not being coerced. If I keep it on... I might just be able to convince her that I managed to avoid cracking."
"Yes, you might," agreed Marc, suddenly affable, but then his voice dripped with disdain. "However, I'm not that stupid. You'd run straight back to your ring of crooks and it would be the last time I saw you."
"I'm not the bad guy here." I scowled at him. "I've never screwed the state before, and I don't intend to start now. We take down crooks, we stop dangerous and precious artifacts from being misused or exploited, and we protect the people. ‘For the greater good' was our motto and that's always been our goal until Cleo took over
management. It still is my goal.
"Let me find her. If you follow her, she'll run to the ends of the earth and go so far underground you'll never catch her. You might even push her to sell it back to the wrong buyer. Do you want to start a pandemic? A world war?" I had him. He covered up the flicker of indecision upon his face, but I'd seen it. I pressed him.
"You know I'm right." I held out my cuffed hands.
After an eternity, he huffed and unlocked the handcuffs. They clattered to the floor.
"Come with me."
He whisked me through corridors until I was lost — I'm sure that was his intention — and we entered a pure white, sterile lab.
"This won't hurt," he said, fiddling in some drawers with his back turned.
I raised an eyebrow. That statement was always a lie, whether a doctor or a senior manager in MI5 spoke it.
"Take off your jacket. Hold out your arm."
I did. He walked up to me, concealing something out of sight, and jabbed it into my arm. I cried out. It was painful, yet over in an instant. I was right, though. He had lied.
"Tracker of our own," Marc said.
I examined my arm. The tiniest red puncture mark spotted my bicep, which stung when I flexed it. I put on my jacket again.
"It's damn near impossible to remove, by the way. Don't try anything stupid," Marc said. I wouldn't. Not yet, but it was something I could easily destroy with magic. He looked me up and down, shaking his head. I really needed to ditch the terrible pants as soon as possible. They were not doing anything for my credibility.
He took me through another maze of corridors and ejected me onto an unlit alleyway. We hovered for a moment on the border between dark and light.
"Good luck. Make sure you succeed. I don't need to tell you that my job is on the line — and billions of lives. No pressure." He cracked the tiniest smile. There it was: the remnant of our friendship. How different things could have been had we stayed on the same side of the law.
