Small Magics

by Ilona Andrews

  "He sacrificed himself?" she whispered.

  "Yes. I remember there was a rush of red, like I was swimming through a sea of blood and drowning, and then I saw this shape floating in the depths. I thought it was my body and I knew if I wanted to survive, I had to get to it. I grabbed it, saw it was John... The pull to live was too strong. I awoke in my brother's body."

  She put her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

  "I killed my brother so I can live," he said. "It doesn't get any worse than that."

  She simply held him.

  A low growl froze both of them. Grace flipped onto her stomach and glanced over the lip of the basin. In the night, the insects had stopped moving. They lay still now, entranced by the spell, their chitin mirroring the grass and weeds around them so closely that if she didn't know they were there, she would've mistook them for heaps of vegetation.

  A lean muscled creature trotted along the edge of the pond. It gripped the ground with four oversized paws armed with sickle claws. Its serpentine tail lashed its dark pelt spotted with flecks of red and yellow. The beast padded down the shore, dragon-like jaws hanging open showing off fangs the size of her fingers. Foamy spit leaked from between its teeth, staining the long tuft of red and yellow fur hanging from its chin. It halted, sniffed the air, and turned to the basin. Four glowing amber eyes glared at her.

  "Sylvester Roar," Nassar murmured.

  Sylvester sniffed the water. His narrow muzzle wrinkled. He looked like he was grinning at them with his monstrous mouth.

  Nassar growled. "No, you young idiot! Can't you see the spell on the water?"

  Sylvester snapped his teeth and snarled in a feral glee. An eerie raspy growl came from between his teeth. "I see you, Nassar. You can't hide from me."

  "Inexperienced fool." Nassar reached for his axe.

  "I'm coming, Nassar. I'm coming for you." Sylvester gave a short ragged howl and splashed into the water. Little waves ran over the surface of the pond. Behind Sylvester the akora swarm swelled. Buzzing filled the air. Sylvester turned—

  Nassar grabbed her and forced her to the floor of the basin, next to him.

  A hoarse scream sliced through the morning, a terrible howl of a creature in impossible agony being torn to pieces. Grace squeezed her eyes shut. Sylvester screamed and screamed, the buzzing of the akora a morbid choir to his shrieks, until finally he fell silent.

  Grace lay still, afraid to breathe. Slowly she opened her eyes.

  An akora perched on the lip of the basin. It sighted her with dead black eyes. Its back split, releasing a pale gauze of wings.

  Sun broke above horizon. Its rays struck the insect. Tiny cracks split its shiny thorax. The insect shrieked and fled, breaking apart over the water of the pond. Grace rose. All around the pond the insect horde fractured and crumbled under the rays of the sun. The air smelled faintly of smoke. She looked beyond the heaps of melting insects and drew a sharp breath. Past the park, to the right, rose a tall heap of rubble that had been a multi-storied building in its former life. Atop the rubble a small white flag fluttered in the wind.

  "The flag!'

  Nassar had already seen it and jumped into the water. Together they swam across the pond. As she waded onto the solid ground, Grace passed a human skeleton, stripped bare of all flesh – all that remained of Sylvester.

  Nassar moved cautiously along the sidewalk, jogging lightly on his feet, axe at the ready. She followed him, gripping her knife.

  He wanted her and she wanted him. He'd forged a connection between them she couldn't ignore. The way he had held her, the way he'd touched her made her want to hold on to him. She had no idea what would come of their connection, but her instinct warned her she wouldn't get an opportunity to find out. Thinking of losing him now, before she had a chance to sort it out, terrified her.

  They reached the rock pile. Nassar paused, measuring the height of the rubble with his gaze. It was almost three floors tall. He glanced at her. She saw the confirmation in his green eyes: it was too easy. He expected a trap.

  "We go slowly," he said. "We must touch it together."

  She nodded.

  They climbed the pile of debris, making their way higher and higher. Soon they were level with the first floor of the neighboring buildings, then the second. The flag was so close now, she could see the thread weave of its fabric.

  The cold magic slammed her. Grace screamed. A lean shape burst over the top of the pile - a half-man, half-demon, surrounded by marrow worms, the summoning stone on his chest glowing with white. The beast hit Nassar in the chest. Nassar reeled, the refuse slipped under him, and he plunged down, rolling as he fell, the dark worms swirling over him.

  Grace ran after them. Below, the beast that was Conn Roar tore at Nassar, all but buried under the black ribbons of worm bodies.

  She wouldn't get to him in time. Grace jumped.

  For a moment she was airborne and falling and then her feet hit hard concrete midway down the slope. It gave under the impact, pitching her forward. She fell and rolled down, trying to shield her head with her arms, banging against chunks of stone and wood. Pain kicked her stomach: she'd smashed into a section of a wall. Her head swam. Her eyes watered. Grace gasped and jerked upright.

  Ten feet away the marrow worms choked Nassar.

  Magic surged from her in a sharp wave. The blast ripped the worms clear. They fled.

  Nassar lay on his back, his eyes staring unseeing into the sky. Oh no.

  She killed the panicked urge to run to him, crouched, and picked up his axe from where it had fallen. Her own knife was gone in her fall.

  A dark shape launched itself at her from the pile. She whipped about, reacting on instinct. Nightmarish jaws snapped, her power pulsed, and Conn Roar bounced from the shield of her magic, knocked back. His paws barely touched the rubble before he sprung back. This time she was ready and knocked him down again, deliberately.

  Conn snarled.

  She backed away toward Nassar's body.

  "He killed my brother," the demonic beast said. His voice raised the small hairs on her neck. "Let me have Nassar and I'll let you live."

  "No."

  "You can't kill me." Conn circled her. He limped, favoring his left front paw, and a long gash split his side, bleeding. Nassar had got a piece of him before he went down.

  "Of course, I can kill you," she told him, building up her magic. "I'm a Mailliard."

  She only had one shot at this. If she failed, he'd rip her to pieces.

  Conn tensed. The muscles in his powerful legs contracted. He leaped at her. She watched his furry body sail through the air, watched his jaws gape in joy when he realized her Barrier wasn't there, and then she sank everything she had into a single devastating pulse. Instead of a wide shield, she squeezed all her power into a narrow blade.

  It sliced him in two. His body fell, spraying blood. His head flew by her, its four eyes dimming as it spun.

  She didn't give it a second glance.

  "Nassar?"

  She dropped the axe and pulled him up by his giant shoulders, sheltering a weak flutter of magic emanating from him with her own power. He was covered in blood. Her chest hurt as if she'd been stabbed.

  "Come back to me!"

  He didn't answer.

  No! Grace dropped and put her ear to his chest. A heartbeat. Very weak, faltering, but a heartbeat.

  She wiped a streak of blood from her eyes with her grimy hand so she could see. She couldn't help him. She didn't know how. But his family would.

  Grace looked at the pile of concrete and rubble, to the very top, where a white flag flailed in the breeze.

  * * *

  Nassar leaned against a tree across the street from a brick office building. Grace was inside. He couldn't sense her, not yet, but he knew she was inside.

  He vividly remembered waking up to the familiar vaulted ceiling. He'd whispered her name and Liza's voice answered, "She's alive. She dragged you out, and I released her and her family, like
you wanted."

  He didn't believe her at first. He knew how much he weighed. No woman could have dragged his dead weight up that heap, but somehow Grace had done it.

  She left no note. No letter, no message, nothing to indicate that she didn't hate him for dragging her into the horror of the game. He thought of her every day while he lay in his bed waiting for his body to heal.

  It took a month for him to recover. Three days ago he was finally able to walk. Yesterday he was able to make it down the stairs unassisted. Now, as he leaned against an old oak for support, his left arm still in a sling, he wondered what he would say if she told him to leave.

  He would say nothing, he decided. He would turn around and go back to the airport and fly back to his life as the cursed revenant of Dreoch Tower. Nobody would ever know what it would cost him.

  He wanted to hold her, to take her back with him. To have her in his bed, to taste her lips again, and to see the sly smile hidden in her eyes for him alone.

  The door opened. Three women stepped out, but he saw only one.

  Grace halted. Nassar held his breath.

  She took a small step toward him, and then another, and another, and then she was crossing the street, and coming near. He saw nothing except her face.

  Her magic brushed him. She dropped her bag. Her hands went up to his shoulders. Her brown eyes smiled at him.

  She kissed him.

  COPYRIGHT

  This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Magic Tests was originally published in the anthology, An Apple for the Creature.

  Copyright © 2012 by Ilona Andrews

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  MAGIC TESTS

  Sometimes being a kid is very difficult. The adults are supposed to feed you and keep you safe, but they want you to deal with the world according to their views and not your own. They encourage you to have opinions, and if you express them, they will listen but they won’t hear. And when they give you a choice, it’s a selection of handpicked possibilities they have prescreened. No matter what you decide, the core choice has already been made, and you weren’t involved in it.

  That’s how Kate and I ended up in the office of the director of Seven Star Academy. I said I didn’t want to go to school. She gave me a list of ten schools and said to pick one. I wrote the names of the schools on little bits of paper, pinned them to the corkboard, and threw my knife at them for a while. After half an hour, Seven Stars was the only name I could still read. Choice made.

  Now we were sitting in soft chairs in a nice office, waiting for the school director, and Kate was exercising her willpower. Before I met Kate, I had heard people say it, but I didn’t know what it meant. Now I knew. Kate was the Beast Lord’s mate, which meant that Curran and she were in charge of Atlanta’s giant shapeshifter pack. It was so huge, people actually called it the Pack. Shapeshifters were kind of like bombs: things frequently set them off and they exploded with violent force. To keep from exploding, they made up elaborate rules and Kate had to exercise her willpower a lot.

  She was doing it now; from outside she looked very calm and composed, but I could tell she was doing it by the way she sat. When Kate was relaxed, she fidgeted. She’d shift in her chair, throw one leg over the other, lean to the side, then lean back. She was very still now, legs in jeans together, holding Slayer, her magic saber, on her lap, one hand on the hilt, the other on the scabbard. Her face was relaxed, almost serene. I could totally picture her leaping straight onto the table from the chair and slicing the director’s head off with her saber.

  Kate usually dealt with things by talking, and when that didn’t work, chopping obstacles into tiny pieces and frying them with magic so they didn’t get back up. The sword was her talisman, because she believed in it. She held it like some people held crosses or the star-and-crescent. Her philosophy was, if it had a pulse, it could be killed. I didn’t really have a philosophy, but I could see how talking with the school director would be difficult for her. If he said something she didn’t like, chopping him to tiny pieces wouldn’t exactly help me get into the school.

  “What if when the director comes in, I take my underwear off, put them on my head, and dance around? Do you think it would help?”

  Kate looked at me. It was her hard-ass stare. Kate could be really scary.

  “That doesn’t work on me,” I told her. “I know you won’t hurt me.”

  “If you want to prance around with panties on your head, I won’t stop you,” she said. “It’s your basic human right to make a fool of yourself.”

  “I don’t want to go to school.” Spending all my time in a place where I was the poor rat adopted by a merc and a shapeshifter, while spoiled little rich girls jeered when I walked by and stuck-up teachers put me in remedial courses? No thanks.

  Kate exercised her will some more. “You need an education, Julie.”

  “You can teach me.”

  “I do and I’ll continue to do so. But you need to know other things, besides the ones I can teach. You need a well-rounded education.”

  “I don’t like education. I like working at the office. I want to do what you and Andrea do.”

  Kate and Andrea ran Cutting Edge, a small firm that helped people with their magic hazmat issues. It was a dangerous job, but I liked it. Besides, I was pretty messed up. Normal things like going to school and getting a regular job didn’t hold any interest for me. I couldn’t even picture myself doing that.

  “Andrea went to the Order’s Academy for six years and I’ve trained since I could walk.”

  “I’m willing to train.”

  My body tensed, as if an invisible hand had squeezed my insides into a clump. I held my breath. . . .

  Magic flooded the world in an invisible wave. The phantom hand let go, and the world shimmered with hues of every color as my sensate vision kicked in. Magic came and went as it pleased. Some older people still remembered the time when technology was always in control and magic didn’t exist. But that was long ago. Now magic and technology kept trading places, like two toddlers playing musical chairs. Sometimes magic ruled, and cars and guns didn’t work. Sometimes technology was in charge, and magic spells fizzled out. I preferred the magic myself, because unlike ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-whatever percent of people I could see it.

  I looked at Kate, using a tiny drop of my power. It was kind of like flexing a muscle, a conscious effort to look the right way at something. One moment Kate sat there, all normal, or as normal as Kate could be, the next she was wrapped in a translucent glow. Most people’s magic glowed in one color. Humans radiated blue, shapeshifters green, vampires gave off a purple-red. . . . Kate’s magic shifted colors. It was blue and deep purple, and pale pearl-like gold streaked through with tendrils of red. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. The first time I saw it, it freaked me out.

  “You have to keep going to school,” freaky Kate said.

  I leaned back and hung my head over the chair’s back. “Why?”

  “Because I can’t teach you everything, and shapeshifters shouldn’t be your only source of education. You may not always want to be affiliated with shapeshifters. Down the road, you may want to make your own choices.”

  I pushed against the floor with my feet, rocking a little in my chair.

  “I’m trying to make my own choice, but you won’t let me.”

  “That’s right,�
� Kate said. “I’m older, wiser, and I know better. Deal with it.”

  Parenting, kick-ass Kate Daniels’s style. Do what I say. There wasn’t even an or attached to it. Or didn’t exist.

  I rocked back and forth some more. “Do you think I’m your punishment from God?”

  “No. I’d like to think that God, if he exists, is kind, not vengeful.”

  The door of the office opened and a man walked in. He was older than Kate, bald, with Asian features, dark eyes, and a big smile. “It’s a view I share.”

  I sat up straight. Kate got up and offered her hand. “Mr. Dargye?”

  The man shook her hand. “Please call me Gendun. I much prefer it.”

  They shook and sat down. Adult rituals. My history teacher from the old school once told us that shaking hands was a gesture of peace—it demonstrated that you had no weapon. Since now we had magic, shaking hands was more a leap of faith. Do I shake this weirdo’s hand and run the risk that he will infect me with a magic plague or shoot lightning into my skin or do I step back and be rude? Hmm. Maybe handshakes would go away in the future.

  Gendun was looking at me. He had sucker eyes. Back when I lived on the street, we used to mob people like him, because they were kind and soft-hearted and you could always count on some sort of handout. They weren’t naive bleeding hearts—they knew that while you cried in front of them and clutched your tummy, your friends were stealing their wallets, but they would feed you anyway. That’s just the way they moved through the world.

  I squinted, bringing the color of his magic into focus. Pale blue, almost silver. Divine magic, born of faith. Mister Gendun was a priest of some sort.

  “What god do you believe in?” I asked. When you’re a kid, they let you get away with being direct.

  “I’m a Buddhist.” Gendun smiled. “I believe in human potential for understanding and compassion. The existence of an omnipotent God is possible, but so far I have seen no evidence that he exists. What god do you believe in?”