The Awakened World Boxed Set

by William Stacey

  "Nathan, listen to me. I used magic—without a shade."

  "We guessed as much. It's okay. They fired up their generator and gave you an x-ray and an ultra-scan. There's no tissue damage from the spell. I think this is one of those rare times when we got lucky, you know, you being ... well—"

  "What, Nathan? Too weak to use real magic?"

  His smile faltered. She had embarrassed him. Now she felt like a bitch. But she didn't apologize. A part of her wanted to hurt him as he had hurt her.

  He reached forward and placed his large hand over hers. "I just meant you didn't use enough magic without a shade to cause tissue damage."

  "Nathan, I used hella magic. More magic than anyone I've ever seen. It was impossible, but I did it. Me." Her voice rose, became a touch shrill. "My Shockwave spell blew a man apart and then took down the wall behind him. I should be dead. How certain are the doctors?"

  "You didn't do that, Angie. I know how it looked, but it wasn't you. That was a Nortie hit squad. The police are certain that the man you cast Shockwave at had an explosive device on him, an improvised bomb with shoddy wiring. Your spell set it off, that's all." He smiled, not unkindly but in the manner of a parent admonishing a child. "You're super lucky you were on the ground with a dumpster nearby to absorb most of the shrapnel. Otherwise it would have turned you to jelly as well."

  She stared at him in confusion. A bomb? That makes sense, but... She frowned, sitting up again, swinging her legs over the side of the hospital bed, and waiting until the queasiness passed. He was beside her when it did, his hand on her shoulder.

  "Help me into the bathroom," she said.

  "Not a good idea."

  "Do you have a mirror in your pocket?"

  "No."

  "Then help me into the bathroom."

  His eyes rolled up, but for once he did as someone else wanted, helping her to the bathroom, his strong arm around her waist as she leaned against him. Her legs were wobbly, but they worked.

  Her breath caught when she saw her reflection. The skin around her eyes was brown and yellow, as if she had just gone twelve rounds with a troll. She didn't want to see what was under the bandages over her nose. Instead, she turned her head to the side, gently pulling back the cloth over her ear until she saw the stitches. An involuntary moan slipped from her lips.

  He placed his hands on her hips, gently near her ribs, and leaned past her, cheek to cheek, his beard scratching her skin as he met her eyes in the mirror. "Listen carefully. You are alive. Your wounds will heal. Don't overreact. It looks way worse than it is. Trust me. I've taken way worse beatings in the arena."

  She bit her lip and nodded, and she let him lead her back to the bed. She looked terrible and felt twice as bad letting him see her like this. She eased herself onto the bed, taking care around her ribs, and he pulled the sheet over her legs.

  Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead, his lips surprisingly warm as he whispered, "You're going to be just fine, Angela Harriet Ritter, better than fine. I'm not glad this happened, but it does give me a chance to talk to you about something."

  At that moment, the radio on his equipment belt chirped. He held a finger out to her in a “wait” gesture and removed the small handset before turning away. "Niner," he said. "Go ahead."

  Niner, the radio call sign for the Home Guard commander. That underscored the promotion, but it was odd hearing it. When she had joined the Home Guard as a lieutenant four years ago, he had already been a captain, having been kicked out of Char's school a year earlier. Captain to lieutenant colonel in four years. Remarkable—for anyone other than Nathan. He was the proverbial golden boy and always had been. Little surprise he flew up the ranks. Someday he'd be first councilor—or even president of the entire Commonwealth. He was good at kissing babies—and women. Marshal should watch his back.

  She heard the other end of the radio conversation, distorted, but clear enough to hear that someone had just arrived.

  "Acknowledged," Nathan said. "Send him up."

  He returned the handset to his belt and turned back to Angie, a smile on his lips. "The old man's here. There's a trade delegation from the Western Union in the city, but he still insisted on seeing you. No matter what else has happened, you'll always be like a daughter to him."

  The old man, the colonel, First Councilor Duncan Quentin Marshal, the elected leader of Sanwa City and possibly the most influential politician in all the Commonwealth of Cascadia, a loose collection of walled cities and protected zones running along the western coast from what had once been British Columbia, Canada, to the burned-out ruins of Los Angeles. Marshal and her father had served together at Naval Air Station Lemoore, running the underground testing facility now just called “the Bunker,” the base of operations for Sanwa City's Home Guard.

  When her parents and older brother had died, when Angie had been six and in shock, Marshal had taken care of her. Marshal had been there when she first displayed the ability to wield magic. And it had been Marshal who had brought her and Nathan to Char for training after bartering the first Concord between humanity and Fey.

  Since that day, the Concord had spread across the entire commonwealth, even into the neighboring Democratic Republica Mexicana del Norte—the same people who had just tried to murder her. But the Concord held. Fey trained human mages, and humans left the Fey to their enclaves. Without the Concord, humanity probably would have wiped the Fey out by now. Elves and fairies were powerful in magic but few in number. God only knew how many Fey had been slaughtered in the turbulent years following the Awakening and the sudden rupturing of the spell that had hid the Fey from humanity for hundreds of years.

  Nathan rose and crossed to the open door, speaking softly to a pretty young woman in uniform with a bob of short blond hair who looked as though she had been standing guard in the hallway. The cutlass on her hip identified her as a mage, but Angie didn't know her. Must have joined the unit after I left. Were they lovers?

  She pushed herself up into a seated position, propping her pillows behind her back. She’d be damned if she'd meet Marshal lying down. Nathan had said Marshal considered her a daughter, but if so, why had he made no attempt to see her in the last six months as her life spiraled out of control?

  Things change, she mused, watching Nathan give orders to his mage. When the young woman touched his arm, Angie became certain they were indeed intimate, feeling a surprising stab of irritation with the young officer. She was, at best, nineteen or twenty, just a few years younger than she was. Too young for Nathan, but he did like his women young—and under his command.

  After Char's school, at eighteen, she had joined the Home Guard; Nathan had been her superior officer. Two months later, she was in his bed, losing her virginity to the man she had loved for years. He had been her first and had been surprisingly tender, if a bit possessive. But he had awakened within her a delicious wickedness she didn't know she possessed, teaching her things about her own body that would have made Char blush—okay, not that, never that—but he had taught her to enjoy sex, all kinds of sex, in all kinds of places.

  Once, she had even given him head in his office when she was supposed to be getting her first performance report. She went down on him while he leaned back on the same couch his other junior officers took notes at during meetings. And it was surprisingly thrilling, with the echo of boot steps in the hall and the conversations of other mages as they drifted past. There was little chance anyone would come barging into his office without knocking—they were all too frightened of Nathan—but the thrill clearly turned him on, made him super hard in her mouth, turned her on, too, if she were being honest. Pleasing him had been empowering, something she had no idea she was capable of. The face he made when he came had been both alarming and comical, like he was having a stroke.

  Good or not, though, she had accomplished the mission, and later that night, he had returned the favor, another first for her. Her face grew warm as she remembered that night, his strong hands gripping the sof
t skin on the insides of her thighs, pulling them apart, his tongue inside her...

  She gave herself a shake, forcing her mind out of the gutter, her skin flushed.

  Why was she thinking of this now, in a hospital of all places—and after someone had tried to kill her? Maybe she was in shock. Maybe it was that damned nymph from last night. Maybe it was because she was lonely and horny. Maybe it was because he was here for her now when she never thought he could be.

  Maybe she just had issues.

  The blond mage glanced past Nathan's shoulder at Angie. A hard look flashed through her pretty blue eyes—pity or disdain, Angie couldn't tell—but a moment later it was gone, and she nodded, speaking softly to Nathan, her hand still on his bicep. She should prepare herself for disappointment, Angie mused. Nathan went through women like underwear, changing them to fit his mood. He had dropped Angie after a couple of months, telling her it was best they see other people. It had broken her heart, and she thought she'd die. She hadn't. The heart healed with time. It was hard to accept, even years later, but he had never loved her despite how she felt. She had loved him since they were teenagers in Char's school, and a part of her always would, but at best he had only ever been fond of her. His interest in her had dried up after he had taken her innocence.

  Taken? Who are you kidding, Angie? You gave it to him, practically forced it on him.

  A flurry of activity in the hallway preceded the arrival of First Councilor Duncan Marshal, the hero of Sanwa City. He swept into the hospital room, flowers in hand. Bald, with large ears and kind, soft eyes, he looked much older than the last time she had seen him, too old for seventy-three, which was already old these days. He had lost weight, and his shoulders were slumped, but he still carried himself with a sense of purpose, a stride in his step, always the former naval officer he had been before the world fell apart. Behind him, in the hallway, waited an entourage of hospital officials, aides, and a cadre of bodyguards armed with short sub guns.

  His smile faltered when he saw Angie, and he shoved the flowers into an aide's hands before rushing to the bedside. He took her hand between his. "Goddamn, goddamn," he said as he squeezed her hand. "I'm so sorry. They'll pay, damned Norties."

  "It's okay, sir," she said. "It's worse than it looks. In fact, I'm told I shouldn't overreact."

  The stern look Marshal gave Nathan was worth it. Nathan sighed and shook his head as he walked over to the window, pulling down one of the slats and peering outside.

  Marshal sat on the edge of the bed, still holding Angie's hand. "I've spoken to the administrator. They're going to keep you a few days, just in case."

  "Sir, are you sure—"

  He shushed her. "Least we can do."

  Nathan came back. "I've spoken to the police chief, sir. He's gonna leave an officer outside her door."

  "Good, good." Marshal bobbed his head.

  "Is that necessary?" Angie asked.

  "I don't know what's necessary," Nathan said. "We've got three dead bodies—two, actually, and parts of another." His face grew serious, his eyes stern as he shook his head. "Nortie assassins in the city—with a bomb."

  "Wait," she said as she pulled her hand from Marshal's. "How many bodies?"

  "Three. The one who blew up, another without a mark on him—concussion, I imagine—and a third with his throat cut."

  "Jesus," she whispered as a chill coursed through her. "There was a fourth, a woman. She must have killed the one I hit with my baton so he wouldn't talk."

  "A woman?" Marshal asked, glancing at Nathan. "That's unusual for this kind of work, isn't it?"

  "Norties, sir," he said in disgust. "They have zero reservations about using people."

  "She was a mage," Angie said.

  The room went silent as both stared at her, disbelief in their eyes.

  "She was," Angie insisted. "I felt her cast. But she used ... different spells. Ones I've never seen. She put darkness over the streetlamp in front of my building and then weakened me with a touch so that I couldn't run. It was like my muscles just gave out."

  As she spoke, she could tell they didn't believe her. Hell, even she could hear how crazy it sounded. The Fey only taught two spells, even to Norties. They insisted it was all humans could work. Even Char, a grandmaster mage with unbelievably powerful nature magic, had insisted she couldn't teach more than that. Had the Fey changed the rules and started teaching more powerful magic to the Norties? If so, that would change all the dynamics.

  Marshal bit his lip and nodded, then patted her hand. "We'll look into that, won't we, Nathan?"

  "Right away, sir. Count on it."

  "Do you think the one that got away, this woman, might be a danger?" Marshal asked Nathan.

  "Nortie assassins are always dangerous, sir, but now it's personal. We'll find her, and she'll hang when we do."

  "She wasn't after me," Angie blurted. "They were looking for Erin Seagrave."

  That got their attention. Marshal's back stiffened, as did Nathan's. They shared a look. "You think this is the Knight?" Marshal asked Nathan.

  "Don't know, sir. Could be, but intel says he's a man—and not a mage."

  "Wha... what's going on?" she asked, her uncertainty rising as she looked from one to the other.

  "Official business," Nathan said.

  "Go ahead and tell her," Marshal said. "This is our Angie. Besides, after last night, she has a right to know."

  Nathan ran his fingers over his short beard, scratching at his neck. "Right. This is delicate. And classified. No shit, Angie, you repeat a word of this to anyone, and..."

  "You're scaring me."

  "You should be scared. These are scary people."

  "Frankly, we're all a bit worried," Marshal admitted. "But go on, Nathan."

  "We've been tracking a new Nortie assassin, a real piece of work that styles himself ‘the Knight.’"

  "I've never heard of him," she said. As the S2, she’d had dossiers on most Nortie operatives, including most of their combat mages, the Brujas Fantasmas, or “ghost witches.”

  "Neither had we," Nathan continued, "up until about two months ago. Then we started hearing a lot more. Just bits and pieces at first, but then we started getting intel from multiple sources, good sources, A-1 sources."

  "Really?" Human intelligence sources were rated on an A-to-F reliability scale, with A being the most reliable. The 1 meant the source's intel had been confirmed by independent sources. An intelligence officer rarely ever saw A-1 intel.

  "Really," Nathan answered. "Our sources really wanted to tell us about him. They thought something bad was coming."

  "And what were they saying?"

  "That he's responsible for at least thirty-seven kills during the last four years. Most of those we didn't even realize were kills. The guy's a ghost, in and out. Never even gets seen. Made the killings looked like accidents. I'll be honest with you, Angie. This is a bad dude, and he worries me. We need to run him down fast."

  "What has this to do with Erin?"

  Nathan looked down and rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uneasy. When he looked up, he stared into Angie's eyes. "We have a problem. Two nights ago, we lost all four of the Seagrave brothers in a direct action that went bad."

  "Holy shit," she said, forgetting herself in front of Marshal. The room seemed to constrict on her, and she felt like she might throw up. "All of them? How?"

  The Seagrave brothers—Rowan, Lewis, Casey, and Jay—were legends in Sanwa City. With their enhanced senses, speed, and strength, they had led countless operations against threats to Sanwa City, ripping through feral gangs as easily as Nortie troops. The Norties absolutely detested the family of werewolf soldiers.

  Nathan's face paled, his voice grew soft, and he looked down as he spoke, unable to meet her eyes. He hated failure, she knew, and probably took personal responsibility for their deaths. "We had intel the Knight was close, that he was staying on a farm near the border, planning a strike on a target here in the city."

  "
Me," insisted Marshal. "He was coming for me. Bastards have never forgiven me for taking their gasoline fields. I'm telling you, they're going to try to take them back."

  "You're probably right, sir. At any rate, we mounted an operation and sent the Seagraves in on a capture-kill mission. They rappelled onto the farm’s roof from one of the Shrikes with my mages waiting in support. Everything seemed to go by the numbers. They breached the roof and went in hard." He paused, staring away. When he spoke again, his voice trembled so much that Angie wanted to embrace him. "Three seconds later, the entire building went up with enough explosive to … no way anyone could have survived, not even them."

  "The Norties set a trap," she whispered.

  He nodded, still unable to look at her. "The goddamned Knight set a trap."

  "It wasn't your fault, Nathan."

  "Sure as hell wasn't," said Marshal with more heat in his voice than she had ever heard from the normally stoic man. "It was that assassin."

  A cold layer of perspiration coated her skin. "And Erin?"

  "Wasn't on the mission," said Marshal. "She was in the city. Here of all places, in the hospital."

  "Why?"

  Nathan sighed. "She broke her forearm four hours before wheels up for the op. Stupid damned accident. Million-in-one shot, really. She was in her quarters in the Bunker, taking a shower before suiting up, and she slipped coming out, came down hard on a dumbbell on the floor, right on her forearm. Seems even the Seagraves can break bones if they fall hard enough. She still wanted to go, but I insisted she sit this one out and come here for an x-ray."

  "Nathan," said Marshal, his voice soft, carrying an undercurrent of concern. "Your loyalty is commendable, but no one was in her quarters when she fell. Now Nortie assassins are looking for her? It's time to start considering the unthinkable."

  Angie gasped, realizing the implication. She shook her head. "No way Erin would betray her brothers. I never knew her that well, but her brothers were her life."