“I guess so.”
“So what if there was a part of the house that required a spell to open it,” he said with a wave of his uninjured hand. “What if the only spell that won’t bounce back at you is the one that opens this thing up?”
“But without knowing the right spell, it could take hours of trying random things and it still might not open for us. It’s a waste of time, Chase.”
“Do you know what an TLT GRM Anti-Lance UL TXTL90 is?”
I gave him a blank stare by way of response.
Chase looked at me like he was about to explain to a toddler where rainbows come from. “It’s the one of the most badass safes available to the public market. These things can tolerate so much nitro that you could blow up the house around it before the casing would split. It takes over an hour to cut through one with a thermic lance. It’s a goddamn nightmare for thieves.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” I asked. “You’re not suggesting we blow the wall up, are you? Wait, you don’t have explosives too, do you?”
“No, I do not have explosives in my pocket. I’m trying to tell you about the time I cracked one in six hours using only an extremely powerful magnetic microphone.”
“Why didn’t you use one of those thermite lance thingies?”
“Because there were counter-measures in place to detect the associated heat output. That’s not the point of the story. What I’m trying to get at is that I did what no one in my crew thought possible because I created a window of opportunity and then sat my ass down to get shit done.”
“This is not an AT&T Turbotron Five Thousand,” I muttered. “Brute forcing magic is a little different than finessing a safe open.”
“Is it really?” asked Chase. “Because I don’t exactly see that we have any other options.”
I grumbled a bitchy response, but turned and faced the wall anyway. The first spell to come to mind was a simple reveal spell that I hoped might at least show me what I was looking for.
It faded just as every other attempt to cast against the house had done.
Working magic isn’t as straightforward as mumbling a few words in pseudo-latin while waving your hands in the air, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an incredible amount of subtlety and variation from one spell to the next. Weaving magic is all about matching your intent to the reality of what you’re trying to manipulate. That means using one spell to melt candle wax while using a completely different one to melt an ice cube. Of course, you could get the desired outcome in either of those cases by obliterating both the ice and the candle with mage fire, but I wasn’t quite ready to jump to such destructive options quite yet.
After fifty odd attempts, I sat on the floor and stared at the wall. I’d tried a number of portal spells, basic reveal hidden object spells, pure force spells, and at one point I’d even gone so far as to try to make my hand immaterial to see if I couldn’t reach through the damn thing. The last one had scared me so much that I’d abandoned it before fully committing.
“I don’t know,” I said more than an hour later. “It’s getting late, and I don’t think I’m making any progress. If this thing is tied to Eddie’s personal magic signature, we’re never going to break through it.”
“Is that a thing?” asked Chase from where he’d been sitting quietly.
“Every mage has their own signature,” I explained. “It’s like reading handwriting, or better yet, like the unique layout of a retina. It’s really difficult to spot, but it’s there whenever you cast a spell. Some mages actually specialize in magic forensics.”
“And you said the whole house is warded with Eddie’s spells?”
“He might have had someone else build the physical stones they’ve been anchored to, but yeah, what I saw coming out of them was most definitely his.”
“What if you carved a piece of his magic out of the wards and tried using it to open the door?”
I started shaking my head, but it occurred to me that Chase might have a point. The simplest way to conceal a door would be to create a trigger that was tuned to your specific frequency. Like creating an impossible to spoof Bluetooth key that worked automatically when you walked towards the front door of your house or car.
I ran outside and used my mage sight to find the closest ward. The small carving had been built right into the stonework of the wall that surrounded the bulk of the property. With so much of Eddie’s power having gone into the making of it, the thing was glowing so brightly it was impossible to look directly at without shutting down my second sight. To my eye, the magic emanating from the ward looked no different than the spell I would have cast to do the same thing. If Chase was right, there was a damn good chance carving a piece of the spell out of the ward might get us into the hidden door.
Isolating and containing another mage’s spell proved harder than I anticipated. It took nearly twenty minutes for me to capture a functioning sliver stone containing his magic in a specially cast vessel I’d had to conjure explicitly for that purpose. Once I had what I needed, I walked carefully back to the house. Keeping the sliver of foreign energy stable was like trying to prevent a candle from blowing out while trying to sprint through a rain storm.
When I was in front of the section of wall, I opened one end of the container, directing Eddie’s magic towards the wall.
Chase let out a whoop of celebration that quickly became a shout of pain as the kryte stormed out of the newly formed opening to slam into him with violent force.
“Not you again,” I groaned as I lit the room up with the brightest white light I could conjure.
This time I was smart enough to also cast a shield spell that acted like high powered sunglasses which protected my eyes from the sudden flare of light. I hadn’t been able to do the same for Chase, and I heard him yell my name as he scrambled blindly backwards, knocking over a chair in his haste to get away from the creature that had attacked him.
My first instinct was to follow the light flare up with a burst of mage fire, but I held back to keep from burning the house down around us. While the lower levels were probably shielded against such a thing, it would take hours for the flames to burn away enough to let us back inside. By then Eddie would surely have used an alternate escape route if he wasn’t already in the process of packing up his things to get out of there.
“Stay calm,” I said to Chase as the light spell faded. “The kryte will focus on me first, since I’m the greater threat.”
“I can’t see anything, Alex. I’m fucking blind!”
“That was my fault. It’ll pass in a few seconds.”
A blur of movement streaked from the opening and I pivoted in time to see the kryte speeding towards me. Its razor sharp teeth snapped while it clawed at me with its knife-arm. The force of its attack was so strong that I couldn’t hold my ground despite the shield spell I’d thrown up at the last second. The kryte hammered at me instead of backing away, slashing repeatedly until I’d been forced to the ground and could barely hold myself up against the weight of its persistent battering. The kinetic energy shield would keep it from hitting me directly, but each time I had to absorb the force of the blows, I felt myself weaken. Another few smashes, and I’d be powerless to stop the kryte’s arm slashing right through me.
As I’d done in Xiang’s office, I modified the shield to repel and magnify any force thrown into it. Bracing myself against the counter I’d been backed into, I lay on my side and gritted my teeth, preparing for the blow that would hopefully send the kryte flying backwards.
The kryte hovered over me, staring down with its massive amber eyes, caustic saliva dripping down on me with a splattering hiss wherever it bounced off the energy shield. The beast looked like it hadn’t been weakened in the slightest, and I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to beat it. If it had survived my mage fire, what did I have left to throw at it? Already weakened to dangerous levels from the monumental effort required to maintain an energy shield this long, I doubted that even the last dit
ch spell I’d cast in Eskola’s fighting ring would damage the kryte enough to stop it.
The beast raised its arm for another blow, and I cringed in anticipation of a shock that never came.
Lighting flashed several times, accompanied by rapid thunder claps that at first made me think Chase had cast a spell of his own. I watched as the kryte staggered backwards, clawing feebly at the pinpoints of dark red blood blooming in the center of its chest. It caught a leg an overturned chair, letting out a guttural screech as it as it cartwheeled backwards and fell to the floor.
I let the shield spell drop, picking myself up in time to see Chase walk over to the creature with his gun held out in front of him. Like something out of an action film, he stood over the kryte and calmly pulled the trigger three more times, obliterating the monster’s head and stilling its body completely.
“Chase, that was unbelievable,” I said as I staggered towards him.
My skull felt like a vice trying to crush every ounce of my brain matter, and the smell of gun smoke left a sour tang in my nostrils.
Chase nudged the beast’s leg with the tip of his shoe. “I guess magic isn’t always the answer to everything, huh?”
“I guess not.”
On a hunch I tapped my sight and inspected the body. Each of the bullet holes glowed brilliant yellow, and I saw traces of powerful magic seeping out of the magazine of Chase’s handgun. Either Viktor or Skreek had enchanted those bullets before passing the gun along to Chase, and I made a mental note to thank them for that later.
As for Chase, there was no need for him to know about their assistance any time soon. It didn’t take away from his act of saving my life, and I didn’t see any point in diminishing his surprisingly bold accomplishment.
“Now we take on Eddie,” I said. “Are you okay to keep going?”
“Let’s get this over with,” replied Chase. “I’m beginning to lose my taste for adventure, and I’d really like to go drink a beer or ten as soon as this is done.”
“Agreed.”
I stepped over the body of the kryte and walked through the now open doorway. Once inside, I lit a light spark and turned back to make sure Chase was still behind me.
“Uh, Alex?” he said at the edge of the entrance. “I think we have a problem.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chase banged his hand against the invisible barrier blocking his entry into the stairwell, giving the appearance of performing a rather fantastic impression of a mime stuck in a box. No part of his body seemed to be able to pass through the opening. His hand simply slapped against empty space and then stopped cold, skin squishing flat like he’d pressed it against a window.
I walked back up to the top of the stairs and stepped over the threshold without issue.
“Must be tuned to people with magic,” I said.
“You can’t go in there alone. You said it yourself; Eddie is too powerful.”
“I don’t see that I have much of a choice.”
Chase punched the invisible barrier in frustration. “What am I supposed to do? Just sit here and wait?”
Ever since learning I’d have to face off against Eddie, I’d been trying to think of a way to defeat him on my own. As harsh as it is to admit, I hadn’t expected Chase to make it this far. Although I was extremely happy he was still alive — doubly so after his work against the kryte — his inability to continue the fight didn’t throw me all that far off my game.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t still help me out.
“I need you to do something for me,” I told him.
I went to kitchen counter and took out a sturdy looking knife. I then laid it on the counter where I began weaving magic into it. Enchanting inanimate objects wasn’t one of my stronger skills, yet I was able to imbue the blade and handle with a spell that increased its durability a hundredfold. Once I’d enhanced the knife’s strength, I set to work augmenting it with a spell that could target magic like the power that was emanating from Eddie’s protective wards. As a final touch, I made it glow blue when it was in the proximity of one of these wards.
The spell used up a significant amount of my remaining energy, but if everything went to plan, I wouldn’t need much for what I had planned.
“Take this,” I told Chase as I handed him the blade hilt first. “It will act like a dowsing rod that’s tuned to the protective wards Eddie has embedded into the stonework of the wall surrounding the property. The brighter it glows, the closer you are. When you find a ward, use the blade to destroy it.”
“And how exactly do I do that?”
“Gouge it out of the wall,” I said. “You’ll know it worked when the knife stops glowing again. It should be easy to recognize the carvings when you’re close enough. You don’t have to remove all of them, but the more you can get rid of, the better my odds will be.”
I walked over to the entrance to the underground lair, wanting to get on with the business of shutting Eddie down before I lost my nerve.
“What are you going to do?” asked Chase.
“I’ll let you know if it works,” I said with what I hoped was a confident grin.
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I don’t think it’ll matter.”
“Awesome.” Chase looked at the enchanted knife and then back at me. “Good luck then.”
“You too,” I said before I ducked into the entrance and out of sight.
Not wanting to use any more of my energy than was absolutely necessary, I proceeded carefully into the darkness. Traces of magic were visible to my sight on this side of the barrier, and I guessed Eddie hadn’t bothered protecting a part of his mansion that no one should have been able to enter. It made it quite a bit easier to scout for hidden traps lying in wait for unwanted intruders, although there didn’t seem to be anything suspicious along the way.
That was, of course, if you were willing to discount the earth-shaking amounts of magic being worked somewhere nearby. Even without the sight active, I’d have felt the currents snaking around me. Magic filled the air thick as pot smoke at a Wiz Khalifa concert, and I felt my own power reacting to it. My knowledge of absorbing and working with environmental magic was practically non-existent, yet I felt myself drawing the ambient energy into my body without even knowing how I was doing it.
With that power came a narcotic euphoria. It pulled at me like nothing I’d ever felt before, begging me to succumb to the siren song promising so much more if I would only give myself over to it. Rather than having to hunt room to room in the dank brick-walled maze that stretched out below the mansion, I was drawn to the center of it with such surety that there might as well have been neon glowing arrows pointing me towards Eddie’s main workroom.
Before I knew it, I stood in front of an open door looking in at a circular room about forty feet across. At the center of the room was a dais with a large wooden table cluttered with every sort of magical accessory you could imagine. Herbs of all types lay stacked in bundles both dried and fresh, smoke drifted from burnt husks smoldering on the coals of a cast iron brazier, and books sat open displaying chicken-scrawled text that had been written by mages who’d died hundreds or even thousands of years earlier.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to show up,” said Eddie from his place at one end of the table.
He wore the Amulet of Duan Marbhaidh around his neck, and he held the same grimoire he’d stolen from me earlier that morning. Unlike the nervously twitching man I’d known, this Eddie stood tall and confident, eyes burning with the brilliance of the wild energy he’d channeled into the room. When he turned to face me, it was with a look of mild pleasure rather than the annoyance or anger I’d expected.
“It took us a while to kill your little pet.” I said. “Otherwise I’d have been here sooner.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw Eddie raise an eyebrow at that. He quickly shrugged it off, though, licking his upper lip and staring at me like I was a perfectly seared steak. It was a look I was us
ed to getting at bus stops and seedy bars, yet it made my skin crawl all the more seeing it on him.
“Would it surprise you to learn that I’ve been expecting you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure anything about you would surprise me at this point, Eddie.”
“Enough with this Eddie nonsense,” he snapped as he set the grimoire down on the table. “My proper name is Edward Bracchus, and as you can see, I’m not the bumbling idiot you thought me all this time.”
“That has yet to be determined,” I said before I could stop myself.
Invisible hands clamped around my throat and lifted me off the ground. I hovered there, legs flailing uselessly while Bracchus’s spell constricted over my windpipe. Spots swam at the edge of my vision, but he released his invisible grip just as I felt myself start slipping into unconsciousness.
Pain shot through my ankle as I fell to the stone floor and crumpled into a heap. My instinct was to lash out with a spell, but I held back. Bracchus was too strong. I knew I’d never beat him in mage to mage combat. Any act of aggression on my part would only lead to his retaliation, and ultimately to my death. Instead, I gritted my teeth against the searing heat in my ankle. My only chance was to keep him talking in order to buy time for Chase to do his thing outside.
“Although we’ve found ourselves at opposite ends of this little game, I’d like to extend a limited time offer to you,” said Bracchus.
“I doubt I’m interested in anything you’re selling.”
Bracchus ignored my remark, instead crossing the room to smile down at me with a surprisingly warm expression. “Join me.”
“What?”
“Become my apprentice,” he explained. “Devote yourself to me in the ways of old, and I will show you how to access the power trapped inside of you. I’ve watched you closely over the last year, Alex; don’t think I haven’t noticed the potential you seem hell-bent on squandering.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “Even if I did believe I had some hidden power I didn’t know about, what makes you think I’d ever join someone like you? I chose the path of Light long ago, and I won’t turn away from that to grovel at the feet of a madman like you.”
Black Magic (Black Records Book 1) Page 27
