“Aerath is emptying,” Noris muttered. When he looked up for a moment, his glasses slid back up his nose, magnifying his eyes. “The village will be gone in a week, or two. You are welcome to join us in Alfheim.”
“We aren’t going to run,” Darius said gruffly, and I felt a distinct tightness in my chest at the sound of him agreeing with me. It was good to know we were on the same page. Over the last couple of days, we’d kind of become something of a team—yet now that other players were entering the game, I could only hope that bond would last.
“I cannot tell you how to defeat him,” Noris told us, then raised a hand when, right on cue, both Darius and I started to protest. After all, the man was clearly powerful in his own right. I’d felt his magical aura before we even entered his cluttered, smoky, musty house. Noris fixed us with a rather impressive stare for a man his age, pointing hard to something within his huge grimoire. “But… I can cast a potent protection spell to keep you safe while you engage in this foolhardy quest to stop him.” He turned his stare to me. “And it is foolhardy, but I sense stubbornness in you, fae and shifter alike. I am too old to fight stubborn fools in my own house.”
Darius and I exchanged brief looks before Darius cleared his throat. “Thanks, I guess—”
“I’ll need you to gather these items,” Noris insisted, turning the grimoire around and pointing to a list written in tiny, neat scrawl. “It will not protect you from Abramelin himself. He is far too powerful. But it will keep his army at bay, and it will protect you while you make your way to Alfheim’s portal.” I held in a pointed sigh. No way we were running, but out of the corner of my eye, I noted Darius’s head bobbing up and down. Apparently, he had other plans in mind. Noris snapped his fingers at us, then set us to work with a shooing motion. “Hurry now. It is a spell best cast when the sun is at its peak.”
While Noris’s list wasn’t long, it took Darius and I quite some time to sift through all the crap piled up around his workshop. I hadn’t ever sneezed so much in my life as I did digging through cobwebs and mountains of dust, but if the spell worked, it would all be worth it.
As per his instructions, we scrounged up three white candles, sage incense, and then added our signatures to a piece of parchment paper. We were both ordered to stand in the middle of the triangle formation Noris had made with the candles. As soon as we both stepped in, the wicks ignited on their own accord, their flames at least a foot tall at first before simmering down. I shuffled close to Darius, in no mood to be lit on fire in some old coot’s basement.
“So, what’s the deal here?” Darius crossed his arms, clearly unimpressed with the mage’s somewhat archaic spellcasting. I nudged him and held a finger to my lips, to which he sighed pointedly and shut up. Noris, meanwhile, seemed not to notice the shifter’s impatience. He used the candle at the point of the triangle to light his incense, then, much to my surprise—and mild horror—he tucked the incense stick behind his ear, burning end wafting a potent sage scent in our direction.
“I call upon the spirits of this realm and the next,” Noris stated, his voice clear and firm, lacking the effects of age suddenly, “to protect Kaye and Darius from their enemies. May the spirits surround them and guide them until they cross through the Alfheim portal. May they live to see tomorrow’s sunrise.”
“Fantastic,” Darius grumbled. I elbowed him a little harder this time.
Noris leaned down and ignited the parchment piece with our signatures on it with the nearest candle. He then let it drop into the triangular configuration with us, and as soon as the paper disappeared, consumed by flame, a rush of air slammed into us from all sides. I gasped; it was like experiencing a surge of powerful white magic. It was… beautiful, really. Uplifting. A sense of calm washed over me as I embraced the effects of the spell wholeheartedly. Using candles and incense and fire magic might have been old school, but Noris had just proved it worked.
Darius stumbled into me under the force of the spell, but we both managed to keep the other upright until the winds died down the moment the candlelight extinguished.
“There.” Noris clapped his hands together like he was dusting them off. “Protected. And I know,” he spoke over me when I drew a breath, as if sensing what I was about to say, “that you don’t want to run. I still think you should go to Alfheim.”
I made a face. “And hide?”
“And seek out a powerful fae there who can probably be more helpful than I’ve been,” Noris told me somewhat pointedly, clearly sick of my attitude. “The supernatural community call him by the name of Z. He appears to be gathering an army of supernaturals with the express purpose of challenging Abramelin’s power.”
“Like a resistance?” Darius asked, though Noris quickly shook his head.
“Resistance implies Abramelin is the ruling party. I would call it more of a militia. A much-needed militia, who can stand up to a rather ruthless, and powerful bully.”
“A murderous bully,” I muttered under my breath. I felt a little light-headed when I stepped out of the triangle, a hand clutching Darius’s arm to keep my balance. I did the same when he followed me a few seconds later. Once the feeling dissipated, I racked my memory for any mention of a powerful male fae in Alfheim who could do something like this, but quickly drew a blank.
But then again, if he was rallying fighters against Abramelin, a man who has literally been wiping out magical villages, I suppose you’d want to keep that quiet. No sense in alerting the enemy to your presence before you had the numbers to put up a proper fight.
“So now we have to go find a fairy named Z?” Darius asked, sounding just as skeptical of the whole thing as the rational side of me felt. I planted a hand on my hip to back him up, peering at Noris through the dimly lit workshop.
“And what’s to say this Abramelin guy won’t just enter Alfheim, root out this supposed army forming against him, and then wipe them out? If we all come together, we risk becoming sitting ducks.”
“Magic is strong together,” Noris said. “Fairies, witches, mages, elves, nymphs… even shifters—”
“Thanks for being inclusive,” Darius grumbled, but Noris seemed not to hear him, as he prattled on.
“—stand a chance when they combine their power, their gifts. No chinks in the armor. No holes in the metaphorical shield wall, sort of speak.” I pressed my lips together, not wanting to outwardly agree, but knowing the mage was right. Strength in numbers. Clearly Darius and I weren’t strong enough to take on Abramelin by ourselves, and based on all that Noris had said, the guy didn’t seem like he’d give up on something until it was dead, if he was as crazy as the rumors suggested.
“It really is our only option,” Noris said, more to himself than to us.
I sighed. Apparently, we were running—to Alfheim.
Chapter Ten
Alfheim had many portals spread throughout the globe. The United States had one, or two, in every State, which ought to say something about the size of the supernatural community. However, the current data indicated that humans still outnumbered us by about half, so you always had to be on your guard not to let any human eyes catch you using one of those portals.
The portal closest to us was at a train station back in New York. So, after a somewhat awkward lunch with Noris, we were back on the road. I hadn’t wanted to touch a single piece of food that came out of his dusty old kitchen, but I’d also been raised with manners, and refusing to dine at a man’s table was a mortal sin in many communities. So, I ate. And I still felt the urge to gag every so often on the road when the memory of the dead spider I’d picked out of my sandwich flashed across my mind. A shiver ran down my spine, recalling the crunch and surge of foul taste in my mouth. It had been a freaking huge spider, hairy and plump, its blood staining my whole wheat.
“Still thinking about your extra protein at lunch?”
“Shut up,” I grunted, shooting Darius a look that only made his smirk expand into a full-blown grin. As much as I hated to do it, I let him tea
se and have his laughs at my expense. Normally I wasn’t so generous, but my dragon had been on edge about crossing the portal to Alfheim for the last hour of our drive. He wouldn’t admit it, of course. Darius struck me as a man who refused to let anyone see his weaknesses; obviously, given his refusal to tell his family about his wing situation and the fact that he had abandoned his alpha duties—maybe, I had yet to confirm—because of it.
When it came to Alfheim, shifters were on the lower rung of a society that professed not to be a ladder. While there were a few shifter clans that called the realm their home, many preferred to live topside with the humans, rather than face the prejudices of the supernatural community. I couldn’t blame him for being on edge, and as we pulled into the train station parking lot, I decided to use the other distraction I had up my sleeve, one that wasn’t just poking fun at my mishaps.
“I want to give you my clairvoyance again,” I insisted, as Darius set the car in park. There was another New York portal in the city—in Manhattan, down in the subway tunnels—and I’d only been to this one once before. I chose it now because it was in the middle of nowhere, between two small towns with barely a notable population count. There was a bathroom and a vending machine on the platform on either side of the tracks, but that was about it. Just a stopping point for commuters, really. Usually, it was empty—and the fact that we’d arrived post-work rush guaranteed we’d be the only ones there.
“Kaye, you don’t have to—”
“I know,” I said with a quick shrug. “I want to.”
He turned off the car and handed me back my keys. “I don’t want your pity.”
“When you have my pity, you’ll know it,” I told him dryly. “This isn’t that moment. I just want to ease some of your anxiety.”
“Pity—”
“So you can focus,” I stressed with a slight eye roll. “Really. I want you alert when we get to Alfheim. That’s all.”
After unbuckling his seatbelt and half getting out of the car, Darius plopped back down in the driver’s seat, grumbling under his breath, and conceded to my rather generous offer. I made sure to remind him that it was generous gifting someone a piece of my power, to which he muttered his thanks before I touched a finger to his forehead.
Clairvoyance transferred, I settled back in my seat with a weary sigh. My white magic had regenerated fast after Noris cast his protection spell, but I still felt like I’d climbed the staircase to my sixteenth-floor apartment: winded, and a little shaky.
“So?”
“Gargoyles,” he told me, his eyes glossy and distant. “They’re waiting for us at the platform.”
A rush of anxiety shot through me, one I tried to get a handle on immediately. “Outcome?”
“Noris’ spell protects us.”
I ran my fingers through my hair and cast a wary look to the train platform, which appeared empty for now. “Let’s get this over with then.”
The portal was actually under the platform. There was a service door that came up to my waist and required a drop of supernatural blood to open. Darius’s, unfortunately, wouldn’t cut it. There were more than a few bigoted portal doors, and I knew some fairy friends who protested that fact around council buildings in Alfheim.
Although I just wanted to get the gargoyle fighting part over with, Darius forced us to sit in the parking lot for about twenty minutes while I recovered from gifting him with temporary foresight. Once I felt like myself again, we parked the car under the shade of some maple trees near the edge of the parking lot, next to the dumpsters. I then cast a quick bout of invisibility over us and my faithful vehicular transport; the spell, fueled by a surge of white magic, paired with an incantation for hidden objects in an old fairy language that I didn’t understand, would cloak Darius, myself, and the car from human eyes, but it left us vulnerable to supernaturals. Most were encouraged to cast something similar when entering a portal to Alfheim, no matter the location, but there were some supernatural beings who were less preoccupied with the rules of our society, and more dedicated to where they needed to get to now.
A bit like my Manhattanites, honestly.
Bags and gear in hand, we crossed the parking lot, empty, save for two cars, then passed the gate and climbed the few stairs that led us up to the train platform. All was quiet, except for the rustling of the breeze through the trees, and the distant rumble of the nearby town’s early evening traffic. Not a gargoyle in sight.
My frown matched Darius’s in a flash. Surely the clairvoyance wasn’t wrong.
“You saw what was going to happen today, right?” I adjusted my backpack’s weight with a wince, the straps biting into my shoulders. “I mean, the gargoyles aren’t going to get us tomorrow and you just didn’t realize it, right?”
“I know what I saw.” His eyes ran up and down my figure quickly, a motion that made me blush faster than I wanted. “We were both wearing the same clothes.”
“Maybe we haven’t had a chance to change.”
“And we were on this platform.”
“Maybe we were coming back?”
“Kaye—”
A roar filled the air, one that rattled the wood platform beneath our feet and sent a few candy bars tumbling from their shelves in the nearby vending machines. Darius and I whirled around, my dragon dropping his bags, and our eyes widened at the sight of gargoyles swarming up from above.
“They must have been in the trees,” I grumbled, tossing my stuff aside and lifting to the balls of my feet, ready to call on fae speed to avoid the onslaught. There were more of them than I’d imagined—or Darius had cared to mention. Ten, by my count.
I raised my fists like I was ready for the fight of my life.
Fuck.
“Don’t engage them unless you have to,” Darius shouted to me over the battle cries of ten obnoxious gargoyles, their wings pounding the air with each stroke, sending up gravel and leaves in the parking lot as they crossed over. I looked at him, ready to ask if he saw us both fighting or not, but he was already off, sprinting for the little metal roof over the trio of benches. My jaw dropped as he leaped onto it—the roof, not the benches—like he was hopping up a few measly stairs, and then it happened: Darius shifted.
Although he couldn’t fly, Darius threw himself into the air, using the tin roof for footing, and shifted midair. One moment he was a man, a muscular gorgeous man, and the next he was a glorious dragon. His figure elongated—and just kept going, and going. He was red and orange, like the most stunning setting sun, neither color more prominent than the other. His scales rippled along with his movements, so agile and graceful for a creature his size. I couldn’t help myself. My arms fell to my side, limp, as I full on open mouth stared at him in awe.
I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life. And I had no issues referring to a very masculine, muscular dragon as beautiful—because that’s exactly what he was. The size of a city bus, he slammed into the oncoming gargoyles and dragged them to the ground, probably crushing the few cars that were in the lot in the process, if the crunch of metal and muted car alarms were anything to go by.
When he disappeared from view—though definitely not from earshot—I realized my eyes had filled with tears. I blinked them away hastily, wiping a finger under each eye to catch the few that had fallen. Why was I feeling like this? Sure, Darius’s dragon form was exquisite in every sense, but I didn’t need to be…emotional. A tight fist locked around my chest, and my lips couldn’t figure out whether they wanted to twist into a beaming smile or quiver with emotion. With want. With need. With… I shook my head and blinked hard, fists up again as two gargoyles plummeted toward me with all the precision of a runaway tanker truck.
While all I wanted to do was gawk at Darius’s dragon, I knew I had to run, to fight. Still, my thoughts were set solely on him in that moment, gargoyles and all.
Red! I hadn’t expected red. Maybe blue or dark green. But red was so vibrant and warm. Inviting. I suddenly yearned to trail my hands across his scale
s, across the black spikes running down the nape of his neck and fanning around his enormous face. Would they prick my finger if I touched them? They certainly looked sharp.
Thankfully Noris’s protection charm spared me from the first two blows, but the gargoyles refused to let up; they were programmed for destruction, and I couldn’t let them stand. Darius had eight of his own to fight, so I dodged the next two hits, knowing the few that landed would have fractured bones had it not been for Noris’s spell, and firmly told myself to put Darius out of my mind for now.
Who would have thought a dragon could be such a distraction?
Using my fae speed, I ducked and rolled, managing to get out from between the two snarling gargoyles. They followed faster than I’d expected, grabbing at my hair’s tight ponytail and yanking me back. I felt a tingle of pain—a fraction of what it would be otherwise—and used the momentum against them. Jumping up, I twisted in the air and scaled the nearest gargoyle before he had a chance to grab me and slam me into the cement platform.
In the distance, I heard the distinct cry of a train horn. Knowing I’d never beat them on my own, and unsure if I could hold them off without Darius’s help, a plan formulated—and fast.
“Hey, hey!” I shouted, clapping my hands and snapping my fingers as I jogged backward to the far end of the platform. The pair lurched after me, sickly yellow eyes blazing, and I knew I had them. It was a game of cat and mouse until the train was in sight, with me ducking and weaving and diving out of the way. My legs burned, displeased with all the fae speed I inflicted upon them, but I pushed on, knowing the timing was critical. The train didn’t seem to be losing speed. It wasn’t making a stop here.
Perfect.
I zipped to the edge of the platform, then braced myself for impact. As soon as the nearest gargoyle was within reach, I body checked him as hard as I could, throwing my elbow in firmly for good measure. The force managed to make him lose his footing and careen back into the gargoyle behind him. I then darted around both, pushing my fae speed to the limit so that I was just a blur to even the supernatural eye, then shoved both unstable gargoyles toward the train tracks. I threw in a pulse of white magic, just to be sure I had enough force behind me, and my careful timing paid off. Both gargoyles tumbled onto the track just as the train whizzed by. There was a crash, and I turned away, eyes closed, as the dust of broken gargoyles flew back at me, little bits of rock scratching my face like claws.
Magic Fire: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 1) Page 11
