“While you kept your nose stuck in a book,” Alassa snapped. She sounded jealous, even though I couldn’t understand why. “You refused to help me…”
“You didn’t want a helper,” Aylia said. “You wanted a slave, you, who had twelve slaves already, and turned your ex-boyfriend into a rat.”
“He wanted to kiss me,” Alassa thundered. She raised the staff into a fighting pose. “I can do anything with this, sister mine. If you bow down in front of me, I will spare you the agony of becoming my slave forever…”
Aylia spat at her. “I’d sooner die,” she said, lifting her own hands into a defensive position. “You could never best me at magic, even with father’s help and a score of private tutors. Did you think I learned nothing from doing your homework all the time?”
I spoke before the two sisters could start throwing blasts of magic at each other. “Alassa,” I said, as calmly and reasonably as I could, “you know that using magic causes a strain upon a person’s body, don’t you?” She nodded, never taking her eyes off her sister, even though the giant heartbeat was growing louder. “Tell me, what’s going to happen to you when you channel enough power to kill you?”
Her eyes flashed. “That won’t happen to me,” she snarled. “My patron promised me that I could have as much magic as I wanted and nothing would happen.”
“He lied,” I said, flatly. “You’re not a Faerie, or even an Elf, merely human. The powers you seem to possess now are based on a suspension of natural law, not a permanent change. You cannot become a creature of pure magic, Alassa, and when your patron has finished destroying the Faerie, your magic will be gone.”
“You’re lying,” she snapped. I wondered if she could hear herself. She certainly didn’t sound as if she believed what she was saying. “He won’t do that to me!”
“Of course he will,” I said, not unkindly. She was still a teenager, after all. “You see, the Faerie power depends upon the magic…but then, you knew that already, didn’t you? It was that magic that made them such a threat to the Forsaken – your patron –and it’s that magic that they’re destroying to prevent them from remaining a threat. He’s going to keep changing the world until the magic drains out of it and takes the Faerie out of the picture.”
I pushed forward as hard as I dared. “Don’t you see?” I asked. “What use will he have for you then? If you’re lucky, you’ll get to stay here, in the remains of the Mound. If you’re unlucky, you’ll crumble to dust when the absence of magic catches up with you. Give up now and we might be able to save you…”
“Lies,” she shouted, and threw a burst of magic at me. I threw myself out of the way, just in time. She hadn’t been kidding. A burst of magic that powerful would have burned right through my protections and wiped me out of existence. “I’m going to turn you into a pig and dine upon your hams!”
“Grow up,” Aylia snapped, and threw a burst of her own magic. I think she only meant to paralyse her sister, but the magic caught on the staff and was deflected into one of the walls. It splashed uselessly against the dark burned wall. “Damn you, you unnatural child…”
“Calm down, all of you,” Brother Andrew said. There was something soothing, almost hypnotic, in his voice. I blinked with surprise as I located more cover; I hadn’t realised that a Sensitive could do that! “Alassa, it isn’t really you talking, is it?”
Alassa glared at him. “I am on the cusp of getting everything I ever wanted and all I have to do is keep you away from here,” she snapped. She lifted her staff, threatening Brother Andrew, but seemed unwilling to complete the motion and blast him. I hoped he was getting through to her. I didn’t want to blow up the Mound with us all inside; hell, I had counted on a dragon flight back home. It might have just become a suicide mission. “Of course its me talking!”
“I’ve seen hundreds of cases of demonic possession,” Brother Andrew said, his voice surprisingly calm. I mentally gave him points for facing her without flinching. “The person who is possessed thinks, at first, that he’s going mad, and then that the world is going mad around them. The demon warps their perceptions until they think that black is right, good is evil, and that they can do anything. A week, a month, a year later, they end up doing whatever the demon wants, no longer really aware of what they’re doing. Eventually, the demon drains them dry and departs, often leaving them to explain themselves to the local police.”
I nodded. ‘The devil made me do it’ had been an excuse long before the magic – and the demons – had returned to the Earth. The little demons that possessed humans had nothing to offer sorcerers who wished to summon them, but were quite happy to possess humans who were stupid enough to walk around with open minds and twist them into terrors. The creature Cowboy had caught in New York had probably been a very minor demon, trading amorality for a hint of human life.
He paused. “I can see the fragment inside you and how it works,” he added. “It infected you a long time ago and grew up inside you, slowly extending its control. It stole everything from you; your family, your life, your friends…and your prospects of becoming a great magician. It didn’t understand the laws of this world very well, so it wasn't able to help you learn magic, even though you were capable of becoming at least as good as your sister. You’re just a pawn in a very old war.”
Alassa pointed one long finger at him. She was becoming less human by the minute. I had the sense that something else was moving under her dress, a flickering image I could barely see, seemingly sharing her body. It was disturbing, in a way, because I had seen something like it before. When the Faerie altered a person, it was sometimes hard to perceive them properly, as if part of them was beyond human understanding. The Forsaken Fragment had been alone for so long with nothing, but the ghosts for company. Had it absorbed the Faerie attitude to experimenting on the lesser races?
“You’re lying,” she said, savagely. “You’re lying and…”
The staff glowed and a wave of fire crashed out towards him. Brother Andrew didn’t flinch; he held up his crucifix and the fire broke over him harmlessly. Alassa shouted a word in a language I didn’t recognise and threw another spell at him, one powerful enough to make my hair stand on end. I didn’t even know what it was meant to do, but it passed through Brother Andrew and did nothing.
“Stop,” Aylia shouted, and threw a spell of her own. Alassa blocked it and threw one back. Where Aylia had stood, there was now a small green frog. Alassa laughed out loud, but a second later the frog shimmered and Aylia burst back into her normal form. She looked dishevelled, her neat hair hanging down from her head as if she’d just had a shower, but she was laughing in delight. “I told you; I learned everything from doing your homework.”
I watched as they threw spells at each other, working on my own spell. Aylia had learned the roots of magic, but most people – including Alassa, evidently – never did. The minor magicians never needed to bother learning; the more powerful ones rarely ran into someone who could use that ignorance against them. She had power, but it was all raw power…and she didn’t understand how to use it properly. She should have been able to trap Aylia as a frog permanently, but instead…
“Bitch,” I shouted, as loudly as I could. Alassa spun around, her face contorted with fury, and threw a whopper of a spell at me. This time, I didn’t duck; I allowed my own magic to dance with hers, channelling the power well away from me. She hadn’t even bothered with any protections beyond the very basics; I dreaded to think what she would look like in a few years. Even novice sorcerers knew enough to set wards and protective spells to prevent the magic from overwhelming them. “This ends now!”
My spell contracted around her and I drew it tight. Her blonde hair seemed to glow as she realised, finally, the trap I’d caught her in. She screamed in outrage and lashed out, but all of her power was channelled helplessly into the web surrounding her. She was actually powering her own imprisonment. I watched as she unleashed enough power to raze a major city to the ground, wondering if even my
wards would hold if she kept pouring out magic at that rate, but the spell held. She couldn’t overpower it and, unless she was smarter and more experienced than I thought, she couldn’t trick it into letting her go. It was over.
“It’s over,” I said, to her. Her blue eyes were glowing with the sheer power she was trying to use, but it was no good. The feedback loop was merely growing stronger. “Don’t try to resist, please…”
“Damn you,” she breathed, her entire face blazing with power. I realised what was about to happen and stepped back as quickly as I could. I could see her bones as her entire body lit up with a blinding white light. She only had seconds left. “Damn you to hell and…”
Her face glowed white hot and exploded. The magic she’d unleashed had fed back on her and torn her apart. I watched as dispassionately as I could, even though she had been an enemy; no one deserved to die like that. I’d seen magic-users burn themselves out or accidentally kill themselves before, but this was different. She hadn’t known what she was doing, not even slightly. In the end, she would have killed herself, whatever she did. She simply lacked the ability to channel so much power for long.
“Godspeed,” Aylia whispered. I spared her a concerned glance. Alassa had been her sister, after all, and somewhere deep inside her perhaps there had been a better person. I wondered if Aylia would blame me for everything, but she merely nodded at me and looked away from her sister. “Now what?”
Brother Andrew leaned forward and picked up the staff. “It knows we’re here now,” he said, grimly. I nodded. The Forsaken Fragment might have unleashed its guard dog, but now that we’d beaten her, it would have to take notice of us. It was hampered because we were right in the centre of its body – it couldn’t just wipe us out of existence without harming itself – but given time it would find a way to destroy us. “Glass, get out the bomb, now.”
I obeyed, grimly. The bomb’s normal Permissive Action Link – the device that prevented the nuke from detonating without the proper security codes – had been removed by the technicians back at the armoury, once we’d known what we were up against. . The modern PAL system relied upon an electric charge to work…and the Forsaken had denied it to us, stalling most of our military machine. The new – actually old – system would trigger the bomb without electricity, but it wasn't anything like as secure. The technicians had objected to altering the bomb for me until they had received clearance from Washington. Anyone, including the Forsaken, could have detonated the bomb.
“Done,” I said, setting the combination lock. It was a purely mechanical system. I didn’t understand exactly how it worked, but the techs had assured me that it would detonate the bomb at the right time. The small clock affixed to the bomb reminded me of my clockwork watch. I set it for ten minutes and stood up. “Brother…”
“It knows we’re here,” Brother Andrew said, his voice very cold. The shadows seemed to be moving of their own volition. I felt a chill running down my neck as I saw them clearly. They were advancing on us like living beings, hunting for us with an air of cold determination. I knew, suddenly, just what would happen if they caught us. We would be absorbed into the multiplicity and that would be the end of all three of us. He held up the staff and motioned with it. The bomb flew off the floor and landed in front of him. “You two are going home. You’ve got your entire lives ahead of you. Me…”
He touched the bomb. I wasn't surprised to see that he could set it perfectly. A Sensitive would be the greatest thief in the world, if he could tolerate working in a profession that caused such harm to people. They could unlock any door, open any safe, outsmart any human guard merely by knowing everything…they were almost unbeatable. We had only caught the perverted one through sheer luck.
“I knew from the start that I wouldn’t be coming back,” he said. I stared at him. For all the talk about destiny, I hadn’t really grasped his meaning. Had he really known that coming with us meant certain death? I hadn’t brought him here to let him die. “Go. Have a good life together.”
“I can’t let you do this,” I said. I didn’t want him to die, damn it! He was a good person, living a good life, and deserved better than to die in the heart of our enemy. I had brought the nuke knowing that I would have to use it. I had expected to send Aylia back and detonate the bomb myself. “It’s my duty to…”
“Idiot,” he said, softly. I stared at Aylia, hoping she could find the words to convince him not to kill himself, but she had nothing to say either. “This place is quiet, perfectly quiet, even with the ghosts. How can I go back into the normal world and hear everything? How can I tolerate it when my gift makes me aware of everything? I know every lie, I know every secret…how can I live? I knew that when I came with you that it would be the end of me. With this” – he brandished the staff – “I can send you home and push the ghosts onwards to their final destination. You can’t do that…”
He lifted the staff as the shadows crawled towards us and waved it in the air. A mighty force caught Aylia and I and threw us away from him, right through the walls of the Mound. I heard the Forsaken Fragment screaming in rage – and perhaps relief at coming to an end – as we flew away…
The last we saw of Brother Andrew was his smile before the world went white, and faded away to nothingness.
Chapter Forty
They say humanity only gets one chance at the carousel's golden ring. But the carousel goes round and round, and round and round. And the golden ring is not going anywhere.
-The Phantom Stranger
I could hear the demon laughing.
I could hear someone screaming in pain.
I could hear a child cry out as it discovered that the world wasn't safe.
And then I woke up.
“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice said. I opened my eyes and sighed in relief. “Back to the land of the living, are we?”
“Granny,” I said, dazed. My head felt as if I’d been through Hell and back. “Where are we?”
“My cottage,” Granny said, and winked at me. I should have known. Nowhere else I knew was decorated in a style that would only appeal to elderly grannies. “You’ve been out of it for a week, ever since they found you two wandering around in New York. They’re all very interested in knowing what happened to you and her.”
“Aylia,” I gasped, remembering. “Where is she?”
“Next door,” Granny said. She tilted her head slightly, listening to voices only she could hear. “On the verge of waking up herself, so if you’ll excuse me…”
She tiptoed out of the door and I smiled, before carefully pulling myself out of bed. My legs felt weak, but firm, although they threatened to buckle under me as I pushed myself away from the bed. I refused to allow them to beat me and drew on the magic field to heal. The field felt slightly different, but I could still use it. I staggered into the living room, scaring away the cats as I walked, and sat down in a large armchair. A moment later, a cat jumped onto my lap and insisted on being petted.
“Occupational therapy,” Wilkinson said. I looked up in surprise. He was seated in one of the other armchairs, stroking a cat himself. It was a large white pussycat that eyed me, perhaps daring me to try to distract him from his real task. “How have you been?”
“Never mind me,” I said, quickly. “What happened in New York?”
“The draining field, or whatever it was, snapped off as suddenly as someone throwing a switch,” Wilkinson said. “The Forsaken Army simply stopped in their path. A good thing too; they were on the verge of breaking through our lines and advancing onwards. The shells didn’t deter them at all and the President was considering the nuclear option. Apparently, it was politically impossible to make any deal with them.”
He smiled, rather thinly. “The Army rushed into New York as soon as the field collapsed and restored order, although not easily,” he added. “Half the city was wrecked in the anarchy, or the fires that burned out of control, or even battles between magicians in the Magical Mile. The…thing in Ce
ntral Park just collapsed into a pile of goo, which everyone has been keeping well clear of. It all seems to be over.”
The cat made a protesting noise. He ignored it. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. My head was starting to ache again. It was hard to remember everything in chronological order; every time I thought I knew what had happened, I remembered something else. It all seemed dreamlike, as if we’d gone into Faerie, but different. “Brother Andrew sacrificed himself to save us all.”
“The Sensitive,” Wilkinson said. “You’ll be pleased to know that the Vatican isn’t happy about his disappearance and there have been Frank Exchanges of Views between Washington and Rome. It may lead to a diplomatic crisis, even though the Templars in the Magical Mile fought bravely against the rising tide of chaos. You may have to visit Rome and testify to the Pope, telling him exactly what happened to him.”
“Not until my head feels better,” I said, wryly. “Is there a reason why we have to abase ourselves in such a manner?”
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