Bella Flores Urban Fantasy Collection

by R D Martin

  The light faded even as she stared, leaving the entire pastoral scene a pleasant afterimage.

  “Intent with runes is as important as getting them right,” Gar continued. “Runes give magic space in the physical world, but the intent of the caster gives it form.”

  Bella, jaw still open from what she’d seen, nodded. She’d known intent was important, but had seen nothing like this.

  “How… How did you do that?” She’d always believed the rune shaped the magic released, but this, this blew her mind.

  “I just told you, intent. The more focused when creating the rune, the more you can get from it. That’s the weakness of runes. Without sufficient or proper intent, the rune will never achieve everything it’s capable of.”

  Bella turned toward her companion. The lesson had just become more interesting.

  “Show me how you did that?”

  Gar held up his hand.

  “Maybe later. Tell me about guided magic.”

  “Guided magic is the highest level of magic. It’s—”

  “Stop.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re already wrong. It’s not the highest level.”

  Bella’s brow furrowed. “But we’ve just spent a month practicing guided magic. You’ve been telling me the whole time it’s the highest level of magic.”

  “No, no I haven’t. I’ve been telling you it’s a higher level. Not the highest.”

  “Okay, it’s a higher level,” she said, making air quotes. “Guided magic makes it possible for a strong-willed person to direct the flow of magic around them without tapping into it.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It means,” she said, huffing in exasperation at all the questions, “that a caster will never run out of magic because they aren’t using only what’s inside them. And it means they don’t need to use runes at all.”

  “And why is that important?”

  “Because, well. Honestly? I don’t know. Because you said so?”

  Even though Gar remained motionless, Bella could tell he was feeling a little frustrated himself.

  “It means that you’re controlling the very essence of magic. It means that you are shaping everything around you on both a micro and macro level. It means that, if you master it, there’s almost nothing you won’t be able to do.”

  “Well, I can’t seem to do it, no matter how much you tell me about it.”

  “That’s because you can’t concentrate on it. You need to unlearn everything you think you know about magic and relearn it.”

  “Hey, I’m good at magic and you know it.”

  “You’re a poor excuse of a Witch who got lucky once,” Gar snapped back. “You will never be more than an elemental Witch and you’ll never learn what true power is. Why the Finder hired you is beyond me. You are a cow, too stupid to know you’re being raised for slaughter.”

  Each word felt like a physical blow. In the short time she’d known him, Gar had never been insulting like this. Well, not true. He loved insults, but they’d never been mean before.

  “You are an amoeba pretending to be something it’s not. Actually, no. That would give you too much credit. Your intelligence doesn’t rise to the level of amoeba. It must be hard on you, having to split your two brain cells between thinking and breathing. You know, they say alcohol kills brain cells, so stay away from it.”

  “Gar, what—” she began.

  “And another thing. That boyfriend of yours? William? You should be grateful. There can’t be that many males willing to feel so sorry for you they’d stick around after two minutes.”

  She didn’t even think. A red haze enveloped her mind and, facing her palm at the hairy creature across from her, she shouted a word that could only be heard and forgotten. A blue white fire popped into existence, enveloping her hand. Feeding the magic with as much energy as she could, she directed the flame at Gar. With a roar like a jet engine, the fire leaped from her hand, streaming across the distance between them.

  Realizing too late what she’d done, she tried to kill the spell, but was helpless as she watched the liquid flame splash against his chest, crawling up and over him until it covered his entire body. For one small moment, she’d forgotten the Finder’s home wasn’t part of the Circus, but rather its own space. The rule of protection, the great Eye above, wouldn’t keep him safe from the spell. He would die, and there was nothing she could do about it. The horror of what she’d done drove the breath from her lungs while stabbing the depths of her stomach like an ice pick.

  Scrambling back, she watched Gar rise to his feet, shaking his head and muttering something she couldn’t hear above the crackling of the flame.

  It took Bella a moment to realize he wasn’t writhing in pain, screaming while being eaten by the blue-white fire. It was as though he hadn’t noticed the flame at all. Moving to his left, Gar stepped out of the flame, leaving the fire burning in a flickering silhouette of himself.

  Turning, he bowed to the fire and held out a hand. Somewhere overhead, hidden in shadow even her fire couldn’t penetrate, a chord was struck. Then another, and another, producing a melody that reminded Bella of a waltz. The fire Gar curtsied and took the hand offered.

  The ball of horror and fear weighing down the pit of her stomach melted as she watched Gar and his fiery caricature dance to the music drifting down from overhead. Moving in step with each other, they appeared they’d been practicing together for years. Eyes wide and jaw dropping at what she witnessed, she almost missed the duo rise off the ground as though stepping on an invisible platform. On and on they waltzed, rising higher and higher into the air.

  Bella stood, watching with wonder as Gar and her fire danced into the darkness above, accompanied by the music of violins. The longer they danced, the farther they moved and the smaller they became. Squinting, she could just make out the last pinprick of light from her fire when it too disappeared. As it did so, the music cut out, leaving her alone in the giant hall as the last echo of the melody died.

  “Gar? H… Hello?” she called. She knew, or at least hoped, he wasn't hurt, but where had he gone?

  “And that,” rumbled a voice from behind her, “that is why learning guided magic is so important.”

  Bella spun to face the voice, heart leaping into her throat. Rushing forward, she threw her arms around Gar’s hairy torso.

  “I thought,” she started, breath hitching as she tried to choke back the flood of tears threatening to break through. “I thought I’d…”

  “Your concern is… um… touching,” Gar said, pulling her hands from his sides with the ease of a parent pulling out of the grip of a child. “But please, no hugging. It messes up the hair and it takes hours to get knots out.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, stepping back. “I don’t know what happened. You were insulting me and I, I, I just lost it. I’m so sorry.”

  “You didn’t lose anything. Sit, sit,” he said, dropping to his cross-legged position on the floor.

  Bella did the same, though her nerves still jangled and heart thudded so loud in her chest she was sure he could hear it.

  “I…” she tried to say but stopped when he held up a large palm.

  “First, I’m sorry for insulting you, but let me ask. How did it make you feel?”

  “I, well, I was angry. Who wouldn’t be? You called me a cow. And you said…” She balled her fists in her lap as anger bored its way into her stomach.

  “And do you normally try to set people on fire when you’re angry?”

  “I, no. Of course not.”

  “So why did you?”

  “I, I don’t know. It was like I just lost it. I saw red and couldn’t take it anymore. I…” She hung her head.

  “I put you under a spell.”

  “What?” Her head snapped up. “What do you mean? You did nothing. I’m the one who got angry. I’m the one who—"

  “Who did exactly what I wanted you to do,” Gar interrupted. “You wanted a
demonstration of why learning guided magic is so important, right? Well, there you have it.”

  “I,” she started. “I don’t understand. How was that a demonstration?”

  “Simple,” he said, his voice tinged with humor. “You’re sensitive and I used magic to increase that trait. By manipulating the flow of magic around us, I fed it into you. Each insult ratcheted your anger higher than you would otherwise have felt until the dam burst and you attacked. When you did, I already had the flow of magic wrapping around me so your fire never touched me. By the way, very pretty. Did you choose the colors or is it just that way?”

  “It just comes… Wait. So, you’re telling me you used magic to make me angrier, right? So why didn’t I feel it? Magic always has a feel to it.”

  “Outside magic does, yes. But your own magic? For you, it’s just a background noise, something you know is there, but you never pay attention to. That’s why it’s so important to learn it. There are beings and items of great power out there that don’t use magic in the way you understand it. You have to learn to protect yourself against it at all times. If you don’t, you’ll be nothing more than a fly in a sandstorm, tossed about and buried in its fury. So, shall we continue?”

  Though shaken from her experience, Bella nodded. A candle materialized into existence between the two of them and, with a soft pop, the wick burst into flame.

  “All right, now. Concentrate on the flame. Feed everything you have into it, every thought, every feeling. Let the fire become the center of your world until there’s nothing left in it.”

  His voice droned on, becoming smaller and smaller as she blocked out everything but the flame. The small voice, the one in the back of her mind telling her this was stupid, had changed. It no longer told her she couldn’t do it. Now it screamed at her that either she did it or she would die. She wasn’t sure which was worse, but as sweat beaded her forehead as she concentrated on the flame, she fed that voice into it as well. It may have been her imagination, but she thought she saw the small fire flicker as she did.

  Gar leaned against a marble column as he watched Bella rise on unsteady legs and make her way toward the arched doorway, a smile playing across his lips. He should have gotten her angry sooner, but he liked her.

  Shaking his large frame, he pushed off the column and stepped around it, into the darkness. It was a shame, really. She was such a nice creature, setting aside the fact she was human. Why the master wanted to push her along so fast, he didn’t know. Speaking of which…

  Concentrating, he parted the surrounding shadows, revealing a hidden doorway covered with an innate woven rug depicting a scene of absolute carnage. In the center of the bright tapestry, a raging monster threw its head back in a snarl while its black claws dripped ruby red blood. Gar shook his head. They never get the details right, he thought. My claws were never that big and those teeth! How would they expect me to eat with a mouth like that? Pushing the insulting rug to the side, he stepped through into the adjoining room.

  The moment he crossed the threshold, a weight slammed into his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs. Wheezing, stars popping in his vision, he almost failed to notice being lifted off his feet to dangle a foot above the floor.

  “Well?” The thought invaded his mind, tearing through his protections like a dagger through wet tissue paper. “How is she progressing?” Images flitted across his consciousness, none of them saying exactly what he was hearing, but his mind interpreted the foreign thoughts anyway.

  “She’s… she’s…” he started, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come. “Can’t… can’t breathe. Master?” he begged.

  The pressure around his chest eased, though not entirely. Gar sucked in great gulps of air, forcing the darkness at the edge of his vision to recede. Warmth rushed through his frame as his body realized it wasn’t about to be crushed.

  “Well?” the images asked again, though there was an undercurrent of impatient annoyance with them this time.

  “She’s learning,” Gar wheezed between gasps. “She needs to master herself before she can master the magic, but she’s learning.”

  “How long?”

  “I,” he began, but stopped. There were only a few ways a slave could defy a master without punishment, and he’d tried them all. A thousand years was a long time to be under the lash of another, and most of his defiance was long gone. But he liked her. Could he throw her to her death so quickly? “Maybe six months? Maybe a little longer, but at least six months.” That should give him enough time. Maybe she could escape.

  “Too long.” The image of an ice age passed through his mind. “Contact the Queen. Let her know we’re ready to start.”

  “But Master… The girl, she’s not ready yet.”

  “She’ll have to be.”

  2

  Dropping her bag by the door, Bella stumbled into her apartment and fell face first onto the couch. Energy drained and every inch sore, she was almost amazed to make it home.

  “So,” purred Cat from his perch on the arm of the couch. “Long day at work?”

  She moaned and considered taking a swipe at her furry tormentor, but was too exhausted to do even that much, so she settled on blowing him a halfhearted raspberry instead.

  “Shame. I bet William would like to see you. He’s been waiting for you in the other room. I guess I’ll just have to go tell him…”

  She didn’t give her familiar the chance to move before pushing up and launching herself toward the guest bedroom. Heart thumping in her chest, she thrust open the door and stumbled in, half expecting to fall into his arms. He’d been gone for so long, on a job for his uncle, seeing him would make her day. Hell, it would make her week.

  Bella’s head whipped back and forth, but the excitement she’d felt drained away as she stared around a room containing a spare bed, a desk and dresser, but not William.

  “Cat! I’m going to…” she started, turning around to storm out and give her familiar more than just a piece of her mind.

  “Bella? Is that you?”

  The voice caused her to jerk around, banging into the door in the process. It was his voice, but where?

  Scanning the room again, rubbing her shoulder, she still didn’t see him.

  “William? William? Are you here?”

  A light breeze rose from nowhere and sifted through her curtain of hair as it traveled into the room, carrying motes of dust that danced in its swirling eddies. The breeze circled the room, moving faster as it did, tightening its movements until converging on a spot above the desk. Round and round it spun, creating an orb of air that sucked the pressure from the room. Just as her ears were about to pop, the wind pulled in on itself, releasing its grip on the room’s pressure in an explosion of white and green sparks.

  Hovering above the desk, outlined by a halo of dancing sparks, William’s image stared at her. Even though the spell only allowed her to see his head, her heart pounded as though he stood in the room with her.

  “Hey,” he said, flashing his thousand-watt smile. The fringes of his hair drooped in the just-crawled-out-of-bed way he preferred to style it, and his face sported a perpetual five o’clock shadow. Wherever he’d been for the last three weeks, the climate agreed with him. His skin had the golden complexion of someone spending hours a day under a tropical sun. The combination of his tan mixing with the deep-sea blue of his eyes made Bella’s heart flutter in her chest.

  “Hey,” she replied, almost at a loss for words. Striding across the room, she lowered herself onto the foot of the bed and stared at his floating head. She wanted to throw her arms around him, pull him in tight against herself, but she’d have to deal with the floating head. “You’re looking good. Where are you now?”

  “Not sure,” he said, brow furrowing. “I think it’s Brazil, but it could be Bolivia.” His head moved, suggesting he shrugged his shoulders, though she couldn’t see them. “Still jungle regardless. We met up with the locals yesterday. You should see them. Eight legs and almost two fe
et tall. They communicate by clicking together their pincers.” His hand appeared in front of his face and made a pinching gesture.

  She shivered as she imagined it. William’s uncle had wrangled him into accompanying him on a trip to negotiate a trade deal between his company and the Aranea. The Aranea were a species of spider capable of spinning webs that passed between dimensional barriers, allowing them to move from one place to another instantly. The webs acted similar to the spell used to travel to the Circus, but with no magic needed to activate them or a doorway to travel through. Amazing as the webbing was, it still involved spiders, which meant Bella was glad not to be there.

  “That’s great, hun. Glad to know you’ve made it. How long until you get to come back?” She didn’t want to sound less than supportive, but she missed having him around.

  “Sorry, love. That’s what I was calling about. One of our guides stepped into a buried nest. Didn’t destroy the eggs, but the Aranea don’t breed often, so they’re taking it as a huge insult. Uncle is trying to smooth things over, but he says we’ll be out here at least another three weeks.”

  “Three weeks?” she squeaked. “You should be on your way home already and now it will be another three weeks?”

  “I know, babe. I’m sorry, but I need to be here.”

  “Really? You need to be there? Why can’t your uncle take care of it himself? What does he need you there for, anyway? What are you doing?”

  “I told you, hun. He’s training me to take over the business when he retires. This is how—"