Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  “You’re too valuable to truly harm, Jade Godfrey,” Blackwell said.

  He tossed the second spell at me. I stepped into it, thrusting my knife into the sparkling black mass of its magic instead of slashing. It took an extra pulse of my power, an extra breath to collapse this spell. Again, cheap red wine coated my mouth. I wanted to spit to clear the taste, but it wouldn’t be ladylike — so I swallowed and promised myself a dark hot chocolate chaser.

  “Why is your magic black?” I asked. “Shouldn’t sorcerer magic be blue?”

  Blackwell lost the grin. I had that effect on men these days … or this entire year, actually. I just had to open my mouth.

  I could feel Drake moving behind me, near Kandy. I didn’t want the fledging stepping into this fight.

  I lowered my knife, deliberately making myself vulnerable, and smiled brilliantly at Blackwell. “Let me give you a hint. I like it rough and ready. I don’t like to screw around. Make your play or lose me forever. Because when I lay hands on you, you’ll wish you’d shot to kill.”

  Blackwell’s lips twisted and his spell hit from two different directions. The asshole could double cast, which was a real bitch.

  The magic blasted me back to hit the curtain wall — six feet or so of thick stone. Later, I was rather proud to see I’d managed to crack it with my head, except at the time I felt like my skull was crumpling into exploding stars of magic.

  This wasn’t the fog spell that had enveloped Kett. Or maybe it was but it couldn’t find a hold on me, so it left twisting rivers of pain in a wreath around my body as it tried to settle.

  I slid down the wall to my feet, but then my knees buckled. Blackwell’s dark magic swirled around me. Now that I was enveloped in it, I could see that it was actually dark blue edged with black. I hunched over as it seared me.

  “Not so lippy now. Are you, little witch?” Blackwell taunted as he stepped closer. A nasty, thin-lipped smile stretched across his face, but his pupils looked like liquid pools of the same dark magic that swirled around me. I blinked and the effect was gone, but I remembered … I remembered Sienna, and how the black magic had slowly taken over her eyes from the pupil outward.

  I arched back and up as the pain collected all along my spinal column. My breasts and martial arts-slimmed waist were now on full display.

  Blackwell’s smile widened into a toothy leer.

  Then I channeled all his magic into the katana slung across my back. This was the blade’s purpose — aside from lopping off heads, of course. It had been waiting patiently for me to push a spell into it, even as I’d waited patiently for Blackwell to step closer.

  “I missed Halloween, sorcerer,” I whispered. My knife was at his neck before he’d even registered that I’d moved. “Trick or treat.”

  Blackwell covered his surprise and swallowed against the press of my blade. “Treat.”

  I laughed, though I wasn’t actually amused.

  Drake and Kandy stepped up behind Blackwell. Kandy, who was still in human form, wrapped her hand around the back of the sorcerer’s neck. “I owe you,” she whispered up against his jugular vein.

  “Look at the little witch now,” I mocked. “And I didn’t even bother drawing the sword.”

  Blackwell held my gaze steadily. Beaten, but brave. Or overly confident, maybe. He knew we needed him … for now.

  I sighed and lowered my knife. “The vampire?” I asked.

  Blackwell turned to look over his shoulder toward the column of fog that still held Kett. Except his gaze hit Drake and didn’t move farther.

  “W-What?”

  Sorcerers could see or feel magic to various degrees, like I could. They had to in order to exercise their power. They couldn’t just tap into the natural magic of the earth as most witches did … though some, like Sienna, chose to build their power through blood magic. The governing body of witches — the Convocation, of which my grandmother was the chair — seriously frowned on blood magic users. It was the sacrifice part of it that really irked them.

  “The vampire,” I repeated. I was getting ready to prod the mute Blackwell with my knife when a snarling mass of chaos clawed its way out from the fog.

  “He figured it out,” Blackwell said with a shrug.

  I really, really hated it when powerful people shrugged about the workings of magic.

  The snarling mass — all red eyes, fangs, and claws — swiveled its white blond head toward the sorcerer, then leaped at him like a terrifying mutant vampire cat.

  Drake stepped into this projection of fury — his movement a blur even to me — and snatched the insanity out of the air, slamming it to the stone at his feet.

  “Jesus … Mother of God,” Blackwell breathed.

  “You’ve got that backward, asshole,” Kandy said.

  Drake pressed his foot to Kett’s chest. The vampire, who apparently had some sort of beast form like the shapeshifters, writhed and snarled. His claws shredded Drake’s leather pants.

  “Stop that!” I snapped. “You’ll hurt the fledgling!” Yeah, I was suddenly everyone’s mother … well, all the monsters, anyway.

  Kett stilled and closed his blood-red eyes. He shuddered and recaptured his humanity … or at least his typical ice-carved countenance.

  My heart was pounding in a way that it hadn’t during the confrontation with Blackwell. I had momentarily thought Kett had gone rogue — not that I knew whether rogue vampires took that form — and that we’d have to put him down. He might have torn Blackwell and maybe even Kandy apart if Drake hadn’t been here to intervene.

  “There’s a reason for everything,” I murmured.

  “So you have been listening during your lessons with Chi Wen, warrior’s daughter,” Drake said with a grin. “Nothing happens without purpose. It is just the why that is obscured.”

  I grinned back at him, crazy pleased that he was here, but not wanting to admit it and reinforce his rebellious behavior. He didn’t need to think that every choice he made was fated.

  “Warrior’s daughter,” Blackwell echoed. He was obviously trying to put everything together, but I wasn’t interested in helping him out.

  Kett opened his ice-blue eyes and locked his gaze to Drake’s, who kept grinning as if this was all a game … and it probably was to him.

  Drake lifted his foot off the vampire, who — in one fluid movement — stood at my side.

  We three turned to look at Blackwell. Kandy still had her hand wrapped around the back of his neck. It was probably dangerous to be touching the sorcerer skin to skin. Kandy would risk death to avenge Jeremy, though, so I didn’t caution her. Blackwell seemed neutered, his eyes constantly shifting between Drake and me.

  “All right?” I asked Kett under my breath.

  He nodded, but then shuddered again as if remembering something. I gathered that the fog had a psychological component. Impressive spell. Dangerously simple. Blackwell’s finesse with magic just pissed me off more.

  “Do we actually need to ask the questions, Blackwell?” I said.

  “I will not provide information if my life is forfeit.”

  I sighed. I hated it when the Adept got all wordy and formal. There was magic in words. Words that I wasn’t particularly versed in.

  Kett inclined his head, agreeing to something. Blackwell nodded in response, but he still didn’t speak.

  “Sienna!” I snapped. “She’s not here.”

  “No,” Blackwell answered. “And I do hope it stays that way.”

  “Do you know where she is?” I was even more pissed that he’d made me ask. It sounded too close to begging once the words left my mouth. I also didn’t like how much anger I was capable of, and that my capacity for it kept growing. I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t like it for one second.

  Standing before Blackwell was the next step in killing my sister.

  “No,” Blackwell answered.

  I felt relieved, then felt guilty over that relief.


  “But,” the sorcerer continued, “if you are as powerful as you seem, I can give you a clue.”

  “What is the price of this boon?” Kett asked with a sneer. I don’t think I’d ever seen the vampire sneer before. None of us liked the sorcerer playing us … and yet here we were trading moves.

  Blackwell smiled, and I saw something in his face that reminded me of how Kett had said that the sorcerer would make a good vampire.

  Blackwell would give me the means to hunt my sister, but in exchange I’d have to — somehow, I just knew — make him more powerful in return.

  I met Kandy’s gaze. The green-haired werewolf nodded her approval, though her rabid anger was evident in the sharp lines of her unnaturally elongated jaw — her wolf was eager to follow through with the kill.

  “Show me,” I said. And that was all it took to make the deal. I felt the magic hanging between us, making me itch. “But next time we meet, Mot Blackwell, all deals are void.”

  Blackwell stopped smiling. “I shall endeavor to not cross your path … warrior’s daughter.” He tested out the title, which seemed to scare and excite him at the same time. Then his gaze flicked to Drake.

  The sorcerer was a devil in deep disguise. I just hoped what I was about to hand him didn’t come back to bite me in the ass … or harm anyone else.

  I sighed.

  Blackwell inclined his head and stepped toward the central tower.

  Magic vibrated off Kett and Drake. They, at least, were having a blast. The vampire had a short-term memory tonight, probably by choice.

  “Don’t touch anything,” I said.

  Kett laughed. Jesus, he was changeable. He was already anticipating laying eyes on Blackwell’s collection. It was probably the only reason he was here. Forget rescuing Mory.

  The fledgling dragon was just as excited about going inside the castle. He was hard to impress but easy to please.

  “I want to break his neck,” Kandy muttered as she stepped up beside me.

  “Next time,” I said. The words came from some place deep within me. I’d just voiced some bit of fate. I was half-dragon after all. Fate was a dragon thing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The central tower of Blackness Castle was larger inside than out, which I was coming to understand was not unusual in the Adept world. Or at least not unusual in the world of the Adept I’d seen over the past three months in Europe and Asia. The castle’s magic was old. Not as old as it had tasted in the dragon nexus, but way older than Gran or even Kett’s magic tasted. Yeah, I could identify magical age by taste now.

  Blackwell led us through an inner magical ward that looked like it was embedded in the stone walls — they glistened blue — rather than just coating the outer edges. The entranceway appeared to vault all the way to the roof of the tower. Oil paintings lined the wide, stone stairway that branched off from the main doors and curved up to the second floor. A massive magically suspended glass chandelier spiraled into the center of the room. I was already getting tired of being impressed by the evil asshole even before he opened a large set of thick wooden doors that were strapped width-ways by tarnished metal. He did so as a grandiose gesture that wasn’t unfounded, because spread out beyond the doors was a museum’s worth of magical items.

  More chandeliers suspended by magic flared as Blackwell stepped into the gallery. The room was round, but every few feet an alcove — some curtained but none empty — jutted out like a tooth on a massive gear.

  As I stepped into the room, I had a sense that we might not actually be in Scotland anymore — or, more specifically, that this room might just be a cog in a great machine that could start twisting and rolling at any second.

  Yeah, it wasn’t clear to me either.

  I think it was the magic that threw me. I’d become accustomed, though not comfortable, to the constant magic surrounding me in the dragon nexus. So much so that the presence of Kett, Kandy, Drake, and Blackwell beside me now was completely manageable. The extra shielding of my necklace helped, of course.

  But Blackwell’s treasures — totaling maybe hundreds of artifacts — were a different type of deluge. Each painting, statue, or piece of jewelry was carefully hung, placed on a pedestal, or grouped together on shelving units. Each one was protected by a micro ward, for lack of a better way to describe it.

  I stepped toward the pedestal nearest me. Runes flared blue along the edges of it, perhaps in response to my magic. A small box crusted with emeralds and diamonds sat on a velvet cloth in a warded circle.

  Gran also used runes on some of her wards. Specifically, on the complex wards that protected the entry to my bakery. They were complex because they had to read a person’s magic and allow them to pass or not, then were doubly complex because they had to adapt quickly whenever I granted entry to an Adept.

  Runes were usually used in the writings of sorcerers, as a way to anchor their spells or pass their knowledge along in written form.

  Anyway, the point was that each of these artifacts emitted a hint of magic — and a hundred hints of magic, each subtly differently flavored, was a lot to absorb.

  Kett stumbled when he entered the gallery beside me. It was the first unintentional ungraceful thing I’d ever seen the vampire do. His cheeks infused with red. He was blushing like a human. I looked away from his dismay, completely uncomfortable with this sudden appearance of humanity. As always, I preferred to know what to expect with Kett. His distant coolness and his fugue-like states were uncomplicated and understandable. Now, here, he’d been overwhelmed by the sensation of magic as I was. Somehow, perhaps because I tasted magic more adeptly than the vampire, I was able to hide my reaction better.

  I eyed Blackwell, who was smiling at me like a proud father showing off a talented child. I scanned the room, noting the different flavors of magic that created the individual wards. Blackwell’s treasure hunting was obviously a hereditary trait. Many of the wards were constructed not by him alone, but by Adepts who shared his underlying magic.

  “It’s an impressive collection, sorcerer,” I said. “I assume it’s one of your newest additions you want me to look at?”

  Blackwell nodded, but before he could indicate the way, I stepped by him through the first rows of artifacts and moved toward the center of the gallery.

  I could taste Blackwell’s magic up ahead — the rich, earthy cabernet he emitted, not the day-old cheap wine of the fog spell. The difference was worth investigating but wasn’t on today’s to-do list.

  Drake scanned the gallery almost systematically as he followed behind Kett and me. There was no hint of his ever-present grin on his face now. Dragons weren’t big on this sort of accumulation of power. Blackwell was lucky that Pulou, the treasure keeper, wasn’t with us. I wondered what rules the dragons followed. Could they just seize Blackwell’s collection, or did they need cause to do so? And if they could, why hadn’t they done so already?

  Kandy stayed by the entrance with her arms tucked behind her back. Smart wolf. She couldn’t see magic like Kett, Drake, and I could. I imagined she didn’t want to tangle with any more of Blackwell’s spells. She still had the silver burns that I’d seen on her skin in the guardroom. They were fading now, but she usually healed much more quickly.

  Blackwell had a dark edge. If he decided to not be gentle while surrounded by these many magical objects, we’d definitely be more than bruised.

  Something caught my attention, and I paused to stare at a curtained alcove to my far right. A few statues of various origins and materials stood between it and me, but I could clearly taste the pulse of magic hidden within the alcove — stronger than anything outside it. Blackwell’s magic overlaying something …

  “Here,” Blackwell said. He rested a prompting hand on the back of my shoulder. I slowly turned my head to look him in the eye. His nose was even with my forehead. He didn’t remove his hand … in fact, his smile widened.

  I felt my own smile spreading deliberately across my own face in res
ponse. Then I did something I’d never done aggressively before. I reached out with my alchemist power and grabbed a bit of Blackwell’s magic from where his hand rested on my shoulder. I gave it a tug.

  My stomach churned as the taste of red wine flooded my mouth. But Blackwell’s reaction was worth the nausea. He blanched and snatched his hand away from me.

  My don’t-touch-me point made, I raised an eyebrow and inclined my head to indicate I was ready to move forward.

  Blackwell rubbed his thumb across his palm and looked at me thoughtfully. That little power play might have been a bad idea. I mean, he must already get that I wasn’t just a witch with an affinity for dowsing, but maybe it wasn’t a great idea to display unusual powers to a collector. I was already on Kett’s shelf. I didn’t need Blackwell’s rapt attention any more than I already had it.

  “Just here,” Blackwell said as he stepped by me to draw my attention to a long wooden table in the very middle of the gallery. A circle was carved into the stone floor all around it. A straight-backed chair — also made out of solid, chunky wood — stood at one end, but this wasn’t a dining table. It looked like a workstation. Or, rather, a place to collect bits and pieces of objects, jewels, and other knickknacks.

  My fingers immediately itched to surf the magic of the broken items, to pluck out the glimmers that called to me and make them into a new whole.

  Cool fingers brushed against the inner wrist of my left hand. Kett, cautioning me. I looked up from the table to find Blackwell watching me far too closely.

  “Your magic is very intriguing, Jade Godfrey,” the sorcerer said. “I do wish we were convening under better circumstances.”

  I opened my mouth to rip his head off over those ‘circumstances’ but Kett brushed his cold fingers against my wrist again.

  I clamped my mouth shut and clenched my hands. It was interesting that the sorcerer could see my magic, as I couldn’t. I often wondered if I tasted more like my mother’s witch magic or my father’s dragon magic, or if I was some unique taste altogether.