On a Razor's Edge

by K. F. Breene

  The door closed behind her, making her jump, before her eyes rose to meet the Regional. Her brows furrowed and her head tilted, meeting his stare not with fear, as one might expect, or even anxiety for her fate, but as though she knew his face and was trying to place him.

  “Please,” the Regional said as he gestured her forward, his voice an octave higher, rising as though talking to a child.

  Vague confusion bled through the link as she took a couple more steps, her curiosity having her glance at the other male in the room.

  “Oh, my God!” A grin lit up her face. “He’s not…?” She pointed at Blondie and excitedly looked at Dominicous. “He’s not a vampire, right? He’s one of you guys? One of your kind, or whatever?”

  Blondie finally had someone new to stare at.

  “What is your name, please?” Dominicous asked in a soft voice. He seemed too damn near demur to her. Stefan expected flat or distant, since she was a human, but this was throwing him for a loop.

  “Sasha.” She tucked a strand of flyaway hair behind her ear.

  “Sasha, I am Dominicous, and this is Toa.” Dominicous extended a hand out toward his partnered mage. “He will be testing you. If you have a certain level of power, he will remain in this area and train you. If not, we will decide what’s next. Does that sound acceptable?”

  Sasha nodded mutely, studying Dominicous’s face with squinted eyes, as if she was looking into the sun and remembering a dream at the same time. “Fire away.”

  Chapter 3

  I watched as Toa stood gracefully, moving his body like a ballet dancer. He glided in front of me, almost hovering. If this guy wasn’t a real vampire the myths absolutely came from him! Porcelain face almost devoid of all color, smooth and soft, he had pink lips and long black lashes. There was an ethereal look about him. His defined body oozed sensuality, almost feminine in its overtones, and definitely feline. Graceful and lithe, I was totally looking for giant fangs stained with blood.

  “Call the elements, please,” he requested in a musical voice.

  I couldn’t get over it! The guy was a vampire. He had to be. Stefan had missed some important details about the magical world, I was sure of it.

  Back on track, though still distracted, I drew in all four elements, stopping at red like I usually did.

  “Fill up, Sasha,” I heard Stefan instruct.

  A look at him had me sighing. Having all that power at my disposal freaked me out, especially because it had to go somewhere, and usually ended up in some sort of creative magical experiment that Charles had to then kill.

  Trusting Stefan, I opened on up, having to immediately fight the elements as they filled me with magical Prozac, my body starting to sing and dance and crave to draw in more. “How much should I draw?”

  Toa stood staring at me, his ice blue eyes reminding me of the middle of a glacier—right before a huge chunk broke off and caused a tidal wave. “All.”

  “That’ll make me pass out.” I let in a bit more, stuffing up all available space in my body. Fighting with it. Needing to bend it, or shape it, or run out of here to release it, or this room would need a serious redecoration.

  “As much as you can, then.”

  Toa was irritatingly calm. Plus, did the man ever blink? It was weird.

  “It’ll make me pass out.” And probably skirt the edges of magic shock.

  “Go until you feel the warning, Sasha,” Stefan helped.

  I hated doing this. Ever since I had to stop Trek, white mage, from killing people by robbing all his—quite substantial—stockpile of magic, I shied away from overloading. But these guys were here for a reason, and this was important to Stefan, so I drew in more until I felt the prickles on my skin.

  “Is that all?” Toa asked in his sing-song voice.

  Scowling, I drew in more until the prickles turned into needles, stabbing my skin and yanking at my hair follicles. “Any more and I’ll have to use Stefan—the Boss, I mean—as an overflow.”

  Toa turned his unwavering stare at Stefan, analyzing him for a few moments before saying, “Show me.”

  “You might save that for last,” Stefan said in a voice filled with steadfast command. “We’ve only done it once and she did, in fact, pass out. It was an unavoidable risk to both of us.”

  Toa stared for a few more seconds, causing my butt to tingle in uneasiness. Something was happening. I had no idea what, but judging by my telltale sign of danger near, I stood in a battlefield of some sort.

  “Leave it, Toa,” Dominicous ordered, his eyes on me. “He is responding like a male to his mate. We’ll deal with it after we assess…the matters at hand.”

  My body filled with warm fuzzies before I could force them away. Holding a crap load of power like a washer woman would a basket of laundry and three squirming kids took all my concentration. I met Toa’s stare again and cringed when he said, “Release it.”

  “Can you open a window?”

  I got him to blink! I must’ve confused him.

  “I don’t want to blow anything up. It’s sometimes easier to just shoot it out a window… Although, someone would have to go kill whatever crops up.”

  Toa put his hands out in front of him, palms facing each other, and said, “Do this.”

  I felt a swirl in the air, like static electricity fizzing along my skin. If I was in a thunder storm, I’d look skyward, wondering if a bolt of lightning was about to strike me. Him drawing power? It must be, though I’d never felt anyone else do it, including Stefan. Which was weird, since Stefan and I had that link.

  Between Toa’s hands glowed a lovely white ball, so white and pure it looked solid. With all the magic filling me, I could make out the tiny fissure marks where the magic didn’t gel into the spell perfectly. As I watched, the lines became cracks, which became holes, until the whole thing kind of vibrated into nothing. The magic swooshed back around me.

  “Weird.” Sweat beading on my brow from holding my max magic for so long, I did as he had done, putting my palms together in front of me and creating something like a tube to direct the magic from my body into the air between my hands.

  All hell broke loose.

  The magic exploded from my body, knocking into Toa like a solid mass and flinging him backward, his lovely locks flying as haphazardly as his limbs. Stefan had a burnished gold shield in front of him, worried that might happen, and Dominicous had a grin and a new hairdo.

  “At least it was benign,” Dominicous said with a chuckle, smoothing his hair.

  Toa was not amused. Gliding back in front of me like a fallen angle with a vendetta, he squared off with that icy stare once again. “Your control needs work. I need to see the color of your power.”

  “That almost sounds scandalous,” I muttered. “Okay, I think I can make one of those protective boxes—it worked when I didn’t want it to, when we battled that caped idiot. It might blow up, though. Oh—I can turn my blade black…”

  Toa shook his head. “The coloring is marred by the blade. That is the chief reason for the power-level confusion.”

  I stuck out my lips in the strange “thinking pout” I was known for. And made fun of. “O-kay, let’s see.”

  “Can you not do spells or charms?” Dominicous asked with disapproval.

  “I can attempt a great many spells and charms, but they always turn into something unexpected and usually not very fun.”

  Dominicous leaned forward. “Show me.”

  I scanned the room. It housed the usual finery; expensive oil paintings, porcelain knick-knacks, quality and plush furniture. “Probably not wise right here. We should go outside. And you guys will want your swords.”

  As we exited the room, Charles jumped up with a men-at-arms kind of blank expression. Seeing me, his brow furrowed.

  “What ha—?ˮ His gaze swept to my followers. He peeled away to the side without another word.

  I marched forward, anxiety-ridden, knowing in another three minutes I’d make a boob of myself and probably embarrass Ste
fan. There was nothing for it, though. I just wasn’t getting this magic stuff. My spells never worked out how I planned, no matter what level of power I used. I could swing a sword decked in magic, but more often than not it blasted magic out the business end like some Sci-Fi movie.

  I stopped about one hundred yards away from the mansion in the backyard. If I was supposed to use black, I needed a lot of room to work with. “Okay, let’s aim for something not too…cumbersome.”

  “Oh, no, I would prefer the gamut, actually,” Dominicous said softly.

  I turned to him with a new scowl. “What do you mean by, the gamut?”

  “Give me a sampling, if you please. I want to see how you both cast, and then deal with your problems.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t deal with the problems. Usually I run, and Charles and Adnan, or someone else that knows what they’re doing, deal with it.”

  “Well, then, a little practice for Stefan and me.”

  Stefan’s eyes left me for a second to take in Dominicous. He gave a nod that seemed to act as a bow.

  I took a large breath. “Okay, here we go.”

  I opened up to draw in the elements when I felt a presence beside me. Toa stood nearly arm-to-arm, staring at me across his body.

  “I need to monitor how you control the power,” he said in reply to my raised eyebrows.

  “So, I’m not great at this. A little room to maneuver would help…”

  “Battle leaves you no room to maneuver.”

  “Dealing with that stare is a battle all right…” I muttered grumpily.

  Take two.

  I drew a perfect balance of elements, mixing them around just so, and then paused. “Should I do black, or a different color?”

  “Can you work in other powers?” Toa asked softly.

  “Speaking so I can barely hear you doesn’t make you any less in my space. And yes, I can work in all other powers, but not very well.”

  “The gamut,” I heard behind me.

  I had no end of sighs for this whole experiment. “Brace yourselves.”

  I tried to focus a binding spell at a dead tree in a lovely shade of blood red, my default. As expected, the tree burst at the base of the trunk, the top crashing down toward us.

  “Run!” I yelled, already having started moving with the initial blast.

  The procession scattered, a crowd having shown up when we got outside. Two guys got confused on which way to run and kinda shuffled back and forth with their arms out and their eyes wide while the branches fell on top of them.

  “That’s why they aren’t in the Watch.” Charles chuckled as he climbed over the crackly dead limbs, trying to fish the two guys out.

  “Okay, next.” I took a step down in power level, knowing it would show as green. I tried to work an informative spell, which could be left behind so someone treading in your footsteps would alert you with a vibration in your chest. Apparently. I could do it about half the time, and it gave me a shock so bad my teeth chattered.

  I mentally called up the chants, not knowing the sounds but understanding the working of power—which seemed to amount to the same thing with me—and moved my hands as though I lay a blanket of feathers on the ground. The green smoke sparkled for a brief second before settling.

  I took a giant step back, dragging Toa with me. “Sometimes it shoots fireworks. Pretty, but be ready with water because it’s been known to set things on fire.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Shit.” I braced myself.

  Toa stepped forward and waved his foot over the spell. The resulting shock nearly fused my teeth together.

  “Stop—it works, it works!” I gasped.

  Toa turned back to me quizzically. I knew this because one eyebrow was a millimeter above the other, overlaying that familiar stare. “How long does it take to dissipate?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll show you how I deal with it. Stand well back.”

  Everyone that had ever shared a class with me jogged backward. Toa once again came to stand by my side. “Here we go, a magic attack block. Supposedly. This one never works. Darla tried to teach it to me to prove some sort of point. Joke was on her.”

  A thin blue jet arced out from my body, first appearing like a mighty force field. The large, translucent blue shield started to contract the closer it got to ground zero, the blue becoming more and more solid, until finally, it covered the area in which the green spell crouched.

  Nothing happened.

  “Shit.”

  “Boss, get up there, quick!” Charles urged, rocking forward on the balls of his feet.

  Adnan jumped in front of me, his blade whirling a deep red, as a hive of insects burst from the ground, all a sharp, navy blue.

  “They’re growers!” Adnan shouted, in his customary ninja attack position.

  “It’s okay, I got this!” I pushed my palms forward. Purple oozing out in a thick glob, spilling across the ground. The magic rolled and boiled, growing in gooeyness to match the growing of the beetle-like insects. When the two collided—the insects had always started running back at me—the bugs got caught, steam rising from their many legs.

  “Okay, Adnan, get in there,” Charles shouted, chopping at the bugs, twelve in all, caught in the sticky purple fly trap.

  The boys had the bugs cut down with their swords and much stronger power before Stefan or Dominicous could even step up. I sucked in the purple magic, the least power level and therefore not a big deal to reel back in. Although, that stare was back.

  “What’s up?” I turned to Toa.

  “That magic did not dissipate, is that correct? You drew it back, like a yo-yo?”

  “Like a yo-yo…yeah, I guess. I can’t do it with the higher power levels—it needs to find a home. Or else I need Stefan around to brace me, but otherwise, yeah, I try to suck it back in when it isn’t trying to kill me in some horrific way.”

  “Although, the bugs were making their way back to you…”

  “Yeah, they do that. I give them life—accidentally, obviously—and they try to kill me. Ungrateful bastards.”

  “Yo-yo. Please.” He made a large sweeping motion with his hand, indicating I should move on to the next stage. He stepped next to me again.

  “Okay, well, now we move into the more serious power levels. Stefan and Dominicous, you might step closer. Things will probably get interesting…”

  “Can she do anything right?” I heard to my far right.

  The answer was no. I’d cried about that fact on Stefan’s chest so many times I couldn’t count. I had no idea what I was doing wrong. I could follow the spell exactly, mimicking the teacher or student identically, applying power just the way it was described, and while someone else got a happy little dog that waited by a gate, and then ran to its owner with a magical message of some kind, I got a killer wolf trying to kill me. It wasn’t the power level, either. I still got a giant, man-eating dog when I used purple, the lowest level I could possibly use. Stuff just didn’t work right for me.

  The overall consensus was that my magic was weird because I was human. I had long started to agree, regardless of what Stefan said.

  I took a cleansing breath, trying to focus even though that blue-eyed stare could throw the most experienced off track. If the guy would just blink once in a while it wouldn’t be so bad. Or else, I dunno, move a finger or something!

  “I am going to attempt…oh man, what do I want to attempt?”

  I thought for a minute into the quiet of midnight. The darkness permeated my awareness, sifting through my fingers and sliding past my skin. I sucked in power, feeling the glow in my chest and the tingle in my limbs. “No one touch me.”

  A long delicate pale finger slowly reached into my line of sight and poked my bare arm. A blast of magic burst into Toa’s skin. A resounding, bone jarring shock rocked him backward. He made a, “Whooee,” sound as he shook his hand.

  Not able to help my chuckles, I said, “I told you.”

  “What just hap
pened?” Dominicous asked, stepping forward and peering around a once again staring Toa.

  “She electrified her skin somehow,” Toa explained in his musical tone, leaning forward to look at my arm, his hands at his sides. “I’ve never seen that before. Fascinating. Her magic, or a new spell?”

  “How did you do that?” Dominicous asked, suspicious of something.

  I shrugged, still trying to think of something to try that wouldn’t result in a lot of crushed people. “I feel the darkness around me, and then my chest and limbs get hot. Physically hot, I guess, because whenever someone touches me other than Stefan they get a shock.”

  Toa’s stare found Stefan. “Why aren’t you affected?”

  He shrugged, heat of a different kind filling our special link. “She calls to me, and I to her. I always thought it was because of that, somehow.”

  “Proceed,” Dominicous said suddenly. “I am eager for this portion of the testing to be over.”

  “There’s more after this?” I whined before I could help myself.

  “Are you tired?” Toa asked softly, almost mockingly.

  I looked at him in confusion, completely unsure why he insisted on talking at the very lower end of his volume level. He looked back—as usual—but this time his gaze was condescending.

  I crinkled my nose. “Just wait and see Mr. Marathon.”

  “Don’t do it, Sasha,” Charles warned.

  “Yes, do it,” Toa challenged.

  Fine.

  Orange, a step above my default red. It wouldn’t hurt for very long.

  I drew in a nice, big shot of air, mixed it with fire, added just a touch of earth so it would linger, and summoned up a thickening spell tinged with a furnace flare. The object was to solidify the air around an opponent to slow them down. Mine produced one hell of a shock as it did so. It took a lot of energy to execute, like physically holding someone still that wanted to run, but in this instance, it would be worth it.

  I left my hands at my sides, because I didn’t need those, and flashed a grin in Toa’s direction. “Surprise!” I let the magic settle down onto him.

  “Aaaeeeee!” Toa convulsed for three seconds before the orange haze started crackling with white and disintegrated into the harmless air around him.