by K. F. Breene
“Oooh, you’re fast at that,” I commended, giving him a praising downward smile. It was also my thinking smile. I had no idea how he’d done it.
His stare had some of that left over voltage in it. I raised my hands in surrender, “You told me to!”
“When do Stefan and I get to work?” Dominicous asked smoothly.
“Now. I’m going to try the concealing charm and it always creates monsters. Large, fanged monsters.” I drew in my mix of charms, dreading this. I should have used this charm with purple, but I didn’t expect those danged beetles. They were hard to catch, and hurt when they tried to gnaw on your leg. After I’d figured out the goo, bugs weren’t such a problem, but I’d used up the lowest power in my demonstration so my legs didn’t have bite marks.
Six of one, half dozen of the other…
Eyes closed because I knew the feel of the charm, and what happened when I used it, I brought my fingers up and swooshed them back down, as if I were fanning a sheet onto the bed. Gold coated a sapling for a fraction of a second.
Nothing happened.
I groaned. Often, explosions were the safest results to charms and spells gone wrong. As I learned more spells and charms, though, mimicking their application perfectly, I got stranger results.
Always the same results if I did the spell “properly,” though. So that had to be something.
“Here you go, boys,” Charles said with a grimace. “In three, two, one…”
The sapling started swinging wildly, branches flapping like wings, leaves fluttering. It started to grow, upward, twenty feet in the air. Wider now, a huge root stepping out of the ground like a leg, followed by five more.
“Now’s the time to cleave it,” Charles counseled. “It only gets angry from here on out.”
“You do this often?” Dominicous asked pleasantly, not bothering to watch the tree transform into a heinous creature.
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s why I try not to use the higher powers. You’ll see what happens when I get to white.”
That drew Toa’s attention away from the tree-animal, his gaze suspicious. “You can do pure white?”
“Yes, though the effects are…unsettling.”
“Is this directly after you take Stefan’s blood?”
I thought about it. “I dunno. I never mapped out his offerings.”
“But you do take his blood?”
“Yes. And he takes mine. Why? Was that supposed to be a secret?”
“When was the last time you took his?”
I thought back. Then shrugged. “Must be a while now, I don’t remember. Stefan, do you—?ˮ
A howl cut me off. The monster was thirty feet tall now with branch-like arms. A hole in the top suggested a mouth, but no teeth. Lucky for the boys.
Even still, I started to back away. This damn thing would come after me, and by the look of it, it’d have a long reach.
“We haven’t exchanged blood in the customary month before a visit such as this. She has no taint from me, nor I her.” Stefan stood with his neck craned, his face his usual stern leader’s mask, analyzing the monster.
Charles walked over, placing himself in front of me. Adnan stood off to the side. A couple of my sword fighting classmates sauntered in, too. They’d all gotten really great at working together.
My God, I sucked at this. My heart sank. Stefan would be lucky if I didn’t get kicked out.
“Easy, love,” he said in his low, deep voice, turning his back on the monster and facing me. “Have faith in yourself.”
I loved him more than words could express for believing in me, even though I couldn’t show worse if I possibly tried. I pointed behind him. “It’s about done growing. Things are about to get real.”
He winked. The man was crazy!
Another howl, and the monster sighted in.
“Here we go!” Charles crouched, sword out, orangey-gold with my help.
A giant tree-trunk leg lifted in the air, smashing down on the ground ten feet ahead of it. People started to scream or groan, moving or running backward. A few people high-tailed it out of there entirely.
“Can you not suck out the magic?” Toa asked over another catastrophic howl.
“I tried that once. I could only get half the magic back in before I got the warning prickles. When I released that bit of magic, I set fire to the whole thing. Which meant a huge bonfire monster chased us around for half the night.”
“But the magic came from you…”
“Yes, but as I release it, I’m pretty sure the draw isn’t cut off. I think I have to cut off the draw at a certain point, but I don’t know how. No one seems to think that is the right way. But…I don’t know, I suck at this.”
Another earth quaking step. The monster was indeed heading my way.
Stefan drew his sword, burnished gold, the power right under white. Dominicous drew his. Exact same color. Huh.
“What power do you throw after you take her blood?” Dominicous roared over the thick and low tree groans.
Another step forward, within striking range of the two guys.
They could have been having an idle chat over a cigarette for how concerned they were.
“White tinged with a golden hue. Not quite full white. White’s a big step up from gold. Even burnished gold, where I sit. I had no idea.”
“Hmm. I am gold with white frost when I take Toa’s. Interesting.”
“So, it’s getting angry now…” Charles counseled. “Just FYI.”
And it was. Black mouth gaping, still fangless, the beast howled again, shaking the bones of everyone there. People brandished their swords in shaking hands, just in case.
The monster bent to throw a huge, leafed fist toward Stefan. He danced out of the way, smooth and graceful, perfectly balanced. The bark monster howled in rage, throwing another fist, slamming it into the ground where Dominicous had been a moment before.
Stefan rushed between the stomping feet, aiming for his prey. He slashed at the Achilles heel, then cut through half a leg. Dominicous was at the other leg, following Stefan’s example. The next stomp had the monster stumbling, but not falling. The root foot broke off, the beast now using a stumped foot.
“It is an actual tree,” Stefan shouted, dodging the leafed fist. He slashed at the wrist, chopping some off before rolling out from beneath the tree’s next punch, and then dodging a stomp.
Dominicous jumped, tucking his feet and doing a cool flip. Unfortunately, he landed in the path of an already attacking tree-palm and got knocked to the side. He rolled against the forest floor, kicking up dirt and dust, then hopped to his feet and ran back into the fray, his muscles bunching and releasing.
“I would prefer an axe instead of a sword, I think,” Stefan reflected in a hum-drum voice, moving like a boxer within the swinging and thrashing of the tree-monster. He used his hands to rip away bark as often as he used his sword to chip away, debilitating the monster little by little.
Dominicous, for his part, did the same thing, his tattoos glowing alongside Stefan’s. His movements were jerky and vicious where Stefan’s flowed from one strike to the next in perfect, powerful harmony, but each took down the beast in his own way.
After about ten minutes, both men panting and sweaty, I was able to effectively draw enough power out to render the beast immobile. All that remained in its stead was firewood. Which was a money saver come winter—I informed everyone of that fact.
You’re welcome.
Stefan yanked off his shirt and sopped the sweat from his chiseled, handsome face. His body glistened in the faint moonlight, his animal magnetism drawing me to him, having me rubbing my palm up his chest without realizing how I got there.
“Thanks for the workout, love,” he said, glancing his lips off of mine. “I needed that. It’s been a stressful couple of days.”
“Two more power levels to go,” Dominicous said, stripping his shirt and wiping the sweat off his own face.
I noticed a long, twisted scar up the side
of Dominicous’s chest. White lines zigzagged across his back, as if he’d been whipped. He saw me looking, and let me. Battle wounds, or the reason he didn’t want to attempt emergence—or re-emergence, in his case—into the public eye?
I settled on both. I suddenly knew what he fought for. Which side he was on, and why.
“Which was that, gold?” I asked the growing crowd. “So now white.”
“Does this create larger monsters?” Stefan asked with a smirk. “Because now I’m warmed up.”
“No,” I answered, focusing. “Now I do something a touch more scary. No matter what freaking spell I try, I end up with the same result. I abhor working with white for this reason. Stefan, get ready to catch some magic—otherwise we might stand and blink for an hour before it drifts away.”
Another huge breath. I drew power and readied myself, a tear falling down my cheek. I really, really hated this one.
The spell let loose, a blanket of magic so fluffy and white it could have been snow. It solidified onto the ground in front of us, the trees disappearing as if they’d never been there, the sky going blue, the ground turning from lush brown and green to a hard, cracked plain of dirt. Desert as far as the eye could see. Nothingness. Death to any wayward traveler.
I heard gasps and shrieks, watching a giant dinosaur walk toward me from the right. Fear gripped me as I noticed its foot long fangs. As I noticed it, noticing me, I turned toward Stefan, reaching out to him. He stepped closer, his eyes wide in shock, his mouth hanging out.
“What is this?” he asked, his words unsure.
“An illusion. Everyone lives it with me. We can wander around in this place, thinking we are trapped in the desert, and potentially hurt ourselves in real life, which we can’t see or feel. If we stay still, the dinosaur takes extremely painful bites from us. If we run…”
“You could die or badly hurt yourself. Why did you never tell me? How did I not know about this?”
“I did it once in class and was forbidden from ever doing it again. Since then, I’ve tried to work on my own—Charles and Adnan wouldn’t leave my side when they knew—to free up using the white power, but… This happens every time. The illusion goes only as far as my magic reaches, obviously, but that’s plenty far. On a side note, isn’t Toa’s stare really irritating?”
“He can hear you, you know—”
“The scaled monster is upon us. What happens now?” Toa interrupted, staring at a jaw full of teeth. If he was worried, he hid it behind that angelic face.
“Well, we get bit. It hurts.”
“Can you get yourself out of here?” Toa watched the T-Rex step toward us on those powerful back feet, the mostly useless hands half curled at its chest.
“Nope. Not for about an hour. Then I can draw the magic back out.”
“An hour, did you say?” That eyebrow had raised a millimeter again.
“Question: do you change your facial expression during sex?” I asked, sidetracked.
“He does, yes,” Dominicous said, stepping to Stefan’s and my sides. “Will its bite kill me?”
“No.” I hesitated. “Well, it hasn’t killed anyone else, so I don’t think so.”
Dominicous stepped forward, hands waving, right under the T-Rex.
“What are you—?ˮ I stared as the huge mouth chomped down on his body, his head completely in the mouth. We heard a muffled scream before the beast straightened up, mouth still closed, leaving Dominicous on the ground.
He looked down at himself and patted his stomach, his face pale. “That was incredibly painful. I am intrigued. How is this possible?”
I pointed, aghast. “Careful, you’re going to—ˮ
The T-Rex went for a side-hold this time, its teeth clamping down on Dominicous’s whole middle half. It ripped its head away, again, as if Dominicous was in his grasp. Being that it wasn’t more than an illusion, he stayed put, painfully.
Toa touched my cheek with his long finger, peered into my eyes, and then looked back at the T-Rex. Taking the opposite direction of most cowards, he felt the bite next.
“Ooouueeee,” he squealed. It wasn’t possible for him to get any paler, but he gave it a try.
“Well, I can’t be the only one left out.” Stefan let go of my hand, next in line for pain.
“A bunch of idiots,” I mumbled, sitting down.
Usually it was an hour of pain. Charles, Adnan, and I took turns, but sometimes, when I snuck out in the middle of the day and tried on my own, I just sat in one place, feeling the bite over and over until the magic dwindled enough that I could get out.
Toa held up both hands, palms toward the sky. I watched in rapture as his eyebrows dipped down his nose.
“What is it?” Dominicous asked, stepping closer.
“It won’t let me unravel and disintegrate it. There is flux in power at work here. A strange inverse. A crossing in delivery, maybe.”
“Like a frozen computer,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, I’m doing something tragically wrong, but I have no idea what. I can feel the wrongness, too. It makes my heart hurt. But…” I shrugged.
The dinosaur chomped down toward me, distracted at the last minute by Stefan. Stefan took another bite to keep it from me. I wanted to tell him I loved him. To apologize to him for ruining his chance to have a working mate. I wanted him to cure this weird hurt inside me that the magic had caused. I could do none of those things, because the science experiment wasn’t over.
“What happens if nobody moves?” Dominicous asked, analyzing Stefan’s resolute face.
“I get bit a lot,” I explained.
“May I see?”
“No,” Stefan interjected reflexively.
“It’s fine.” I winked at Stefan. “This isn’t my first dance. Clear away and let the miracle that is my suckery happen.”
Just like when I was alone, the mystical dinosaur bent to me in a rush, jagged teeth bared. All went dark as its head engulfed me, its teeth clamping down on my waist. Like knives digging into my sides, chest and back simultaneously, I gritted my teeth against the sharp, dizzying pain. When it lifted away, I took a steadying breath. Automatically, I said, “One.”
“How many have you taken?”
“Between fifty and sixty in a sitting. About one a minute for an hour. It helps keep time.”
“You’ve endured that pain for—ˮ Stefan cut off as the image cleared away, Toa having disbanded the spell.
“Yeah, but, let’s be honest, guys—there is no way that hurts more than childbirth, and it’s only an hour. Right?”
Toa wavered, reaching for Dominicous to brace him. “I will need to think on that. That severely taxed my energy levels. I had not realized it was so dangerous.”
“Bet your magic tests never went like this before.” I jumped up and rubbed my hands together. “I’m a professional at strange paranoia. Okay, on to black, finally.”
I drew once again, sucking in deep, curing the failure of white with the bliss and glory of black. I sighed in relief and eased a protective box into existence, the only spell I’d tried in black lately, knowing that it actually worked. As I’d hoped, a large black box, almost solid, materialized in front of me, capturing air.
“Alas, the one I can do right.”
The spectators gasped, leaning forward to look at a square.
“It isn’t much, but at least it won’t try to kill me.” I was tired. I wanted to go lie down, mocking smirk from Toa or no.
Toa and Dominicous approached the box slowly, probably terrified it would grow arms and bite. Dominicous walked around the outside, his arms crossed over his chest. I used the stare-free time to lean against Stefan, closing my eyes when his arms came around my waist. He kissed me on the head and squeezed.
Dominicous reached out a hand to touch the box.
“Don’t,” I warned. “The shock is worse than when Toa touched me earlier.”
He continued reaching.
Like a bug zapper, a life-sized buzzing blared, flinging Dominicous flat on
his back. He lay with his arms out, eyes open in shock. Charles wheezed out a laugh he couldn’t stop in time.
“Can you get rid of this?” Toa asked, still analyzing the box, easing a dagger from his pocket.
“I think so. Or I can blow it up.”
Toa pushed the very tip of a glowing white blade toward the box. As soon as it touched a lesser buzz sounded, having Toa flinching back with a, “Eeeeah!”
“Let’s move back into the house, shall we?” Dominicous suggested, hauling himself up slowly. “As men, we love an explosion, but maybe just disengage it, if you can.”
I got to work unraveling, something I could do easily with black. If I wasn’t terrified of what would happen when the spells went wrong, I’d use black way more often.
Chapter 4
The procession entered the same room we’d been in earlier, but this time Charles was allowed to sit in the corner. I think Stefan and Dominicous had had enough with pain, monsters, and workouts. Not that they would admit it. The way they went about it, Charles was there for moral support.
“We now need to test your human vulnerabilities,” Dominicous started, sitting gratefully. “If you are to be mage, like Stefan hopes, you have to withstand our influences. Our pheromones.”
Stefan tensed slightly but said nothing. I just nodded. I’d been through this with Luke, the clan’s best at mental manipulation. I’d gotten turned on for a second, I’d gotten a quick dose of fear, and I’d gotten pissed when he touched my boob. He hadn’t been expecting the slap.
Toa drifted in front of me, his appearance like one fresh out of the powder room. If I hadn’t just seen him electrocuted, thrown around the dirt, chased in a clearing, and shocked, I would’ve suspected he’d just arrived at the mansion. Amazing.
“You can close your eyes or keep them open, as it befits you.” Toa waited for me to nod.
He knew humans.
A tingling erupted at the bottom of my sternum. The flight reflex. He was trying fear first.
My limbs got jittery and my breath shallow. My body tensed.
