by SA Magnusson
With another push, the wand exploded.
She tossed it off to the side and swirled her hands in a quick pattern. Sparks burst from them and streaked toward me.
Summoning my barrier while connected to the power of the Veil was much easier. Whatever spell she had drawn slammed off my barrier, bouncing away.
She hadn’t used the wand for that. It was her magic. And I hadn’t felt it.
I needed to know what she was. She wasn’t a mage, not like those of the mage council or those of the Dark Council, but what was she? How was she able to use such power? How could she face two powerful dark mages and me at the same time?
She reached my barrier. Her hands pressed against it and where she touched it, sparks flew.
“You draw power that you know nothing of,” she said.
“I know enough about it to stop you,” I said.
“I don’t think that you do,” she said. “I’ve seen mages like you who think too much of themselves. They think that with a little training and a connection to the other side of the Veil, that they can become something they are not. Unfortunately, most of them fall, and often painfully so. Will you fall in such a painful way?”
“I don’t intend to.” I pushed power through the end of the sword, though I could already feel the connection to the Veil beginning to fade.
I wanted to look back at Barden and see how much longer he could hold out, but this summons was difficult for him, even when he was completely well, and that power was difficult to maintain for any length of time.
I needed another push.
The mage continue to press her hand on the barrier. It took effort on my part to resist, and eventually, even that would explode.
Then I would be forced to confront her.
We might not even be able to defeat her, but maybe there was something else I could do.
Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and I stared at her, determined to avoid drawing attention to it. As Darvish neared, I waited, trying to let him get close enough, and when he was, I pushed outward with my barrier.
It created a little bit of separation, just enough for me to shout, “Darvish!”
He lunged, catching the woman on the shoulder.
Racing forward, I reached the spell she had placed. I focused on it, drawing all the power that I still had left, pushing out through the sword, and dragged the tip of my magical sword across the ground, creating a mishmash of patterns that would disrupt the flow.
The sword met resistance. Pain flowed through me, the kind of pain that I wasn’t expecting, and power exploded back against me.
I fought through it, holding onto the link that Barden had forged, taking the last bit of power that I could from the Veil, and carved across the spell.
As it was disrupted, I was thrown back.
I landed near Barden. He rested on his knees, his neck bowed, and he rolled his head to look over at me.
“I broke up the spell,” I said.
“She’ll only make another one,” he said.
“Maybe, but Darvish will—”
“Darvish won’t do anything,” Barden said.
I lifted my head and saw Darvish lying with his body at a strange angle.
Only then did I realize the cold along my spine. In the midst of the fighting, I hadn’t paid attention to anything other than trying to defeat the mage, disrupt her spell, but now I noticed it. It was distinct from the remnants of Barden’s spell.
Death.
The mage stood over top of him and brought her foot back.
“No!”
I lunged, pushing off with everything that I had remaining.
I collided with her and drove my fist into her stomach, bringing my knee around to crash into something—possibly a shoulder—and forced my forearm underneath her neck.
I held it there, my body trembling. As I did, she laughed.
“Do you think you’ve stopped me?” She didn’t even sound breathless, which caused anger to build within me. The cold raced along my spine, and the power from Darvish’s near death tempted me. I could use it, but I refused. There might be something that could be done. “You’ve only delayed me. The three of you were never a real threat.”
More cold tingled along my spine.
I pushed, forcing my forearm down.
“It’s not just the three of us.”
Spells began to burst around me. I didn’t recognize any of them, but the frequency told me that more mages had arrived. It was possible they were from the mage council, but it was just as possible that they were from the Dark Council, summoned by Barden when he had made his call.
She tilted her head, still somehow unfazed by the fact that I held my forearm up to her throat, crushing her.
With a surge of power, she kicked, sending me flying off her.
I got to my feet, but she was gone.
A dozen or more mages now occupied the park, and I ignored them as I staggered over to Darvish.
Blood pooled along the back of his head, and I checked to make sure that his airway was open before straightening his body.
His eyes stared blankly.
Checking for a pulse, I leaned in, listening for any signs of breathing.
He was not.
My medical training raced through me, wishing that I had some way of assessing him, but out here in the park, in the darkness, with a man who had likely sustained multiple injuries, there wasn’t anything that I could do with traditional medicine.
It had to be magic.
I had used so much to try and fight off the mage, and I wasn’t sure that I still had any strength remaining, but what choice did I have? I wasn’t about to let Darvish die. He was the reason that I had managed to disrupt the spell, and though he had come willingly, sacrificing himself, I didn’t want to be the reason that he died.
Was there anything that I could do?
I didn’t know, which angered me more.
Drawing upon power, I sent it flowing into Darvish, searching for signs of his injuries.
I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t feel for anything—other than the emptiness. That much was clear.
And I had experienced that sense of emptiness far too many times. I knew exactly what it meant. His life was slipping away.
There was one thing I could try, but the last time that I had done so, I had brought Aron back in an altered state. Would the same thing happen to Darvish if I brought him back?
Maybe he could be revived, but if he was, would it be the same person? Or would he be changed, no longer the man that he once had been?
Barden touched me on the shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“There’s something that I can try.”
“Dr. Michaels—”
I ignored him. Reaching for that power of death, I used it, wrapping it around the emptiness. That was what I had done with Aron before, and it was how I had saved the vampire familiar. It would be how I would save Darvish now.
The cold filled me. I didn’t take that power for myself. Instead, I used it on the person who offered that power.
Continuing to draw on it, I let it surround that emptiness, sealing it off.
And then with a sigh, I sank back on my heels.
“What did you do?” Barden whispered.
“Maybe nothing,” I said. Fatigue filled me in a way that I hadn’t known since nearly losing Aron. And when that had happened, I had been exhausted already. Maybe the combination of trying to reach across the Veil and the use of my own magic combined with drawing upon this magic of death had overwhelmed me.
I sat back, staring blankly.
“Is he…”
I couldn’t finish.
There came a gasp and I shook myself, blinking at Darvish. Could it be him?
His chest rose and then fell. I reached for his arm, feeling for a pulse, and it was there. Faint. Thready. But there.
I lost track of time. I watched and his wounds began to close, somehow his power hea
ling himself. After a while, he rolled his head to the side and looked over at me.
“How?”
Barden crawled over to him, an actual smile on his face. There was warmth in his eyes that I didn’t always see. “It seems that Dr. Michaels is much more of a healer than even I had realized.”
A part of me expected Darvish not to recognize me, or even not recognize Barden, something that would suggest that he was lost the same way Aron was lost.
“Did you stop her?” Darvish asked.
“For now,” I said.
Darvish breathed out heavily. “What kind of magic is that?” he asked, glancing from me to Barden.
I could barely even shrug. “I don’t know. It’s not any kind of magic that I can detect, so… I don’t know.”
My mind raced. Not only had Darvish come back, but nothing seemed off with him, at least not yet. I would have to check him later, but for now, I wondered why he would recover but Aron had not?
“This pattern means nothing.”
I swiveled, looking up and seeing the pale face of Roland Vangalor. When had he gotten here?
“I disrupted it,” I said.
“I thought you said it couldn’t be done?”
Barden helped pull me to my feet, and together we brought Darvish to his feet. There was a part of me that screamed against that, warning me that getting a man who had very nearly died up to his feet so soon was a mistake, but another part knew that it was just as much of a mistake to remain lying on the ground near a vampire as powerful as Roland Vangalor.
“I didn’t think that it could be done,” I said. “But we managed to disrupt it. The woman who cast the spell had returned, and she intended to undo the containment the council had placed. We had to do something.”
“And do you know who this woman is?”
“No,” I said.
Roland glanced over at the now-disrupted spell. “Then we can help.”
“You could—”
I never had the chance to finish. Roland disappeared with a flicker of movement, taking whoever he brought with him away.
I looked around, realizing that there were several fallen bodies, and wondered how many of them came from the mage council and how many were Dark Council mages who had been slaughtered as the woman had escaped. Surprisingly, I hadn’t felt the passing of death from any of them.
How was that?
And I had saved Darvish, but there wasn’t anything I could do for the others. It was too late—and I was exhausted.
I sank to the ground, staring at the fallen bodies, feeling nothing but emptiness. This time, it was from within me.
15
I didn’t say anything on the ride back to my condo, and when Barden offered to walk me up, I shook him off. It was late, and everything hurt. Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me and I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to last. I could barely keep my eyes open as it was.
“We will let you know what we discover,” Barden said. “We will keep looking into the runes and see what we can find out. If it involves us going back to the Vangalor mansion, then we will do so.”
“I could go with you,” I said, repeating what I had told him before.
“I wouldn’t go without you,” Barden said with a wide smile. He looked as tired as I felt, and both of us looked as if we needed to rest. Darvish sat in the backseat of the van, his head leaning back along the headrest, eyes closed. He hadn’t moved since we’d gotten into the van, but I was reassured by his steady breathing that he still lived.
“We have to be ready for the next time that she places a spell like the last one.”
“We will be ready, but there may not be any way of preventing it,” Barden said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“We could go back to Roland,” I said. Had I already said something like that? I couldn’t keep track.
“Roland has already shown what he’s willing to do. The vampire wants nothing to do with this.”
“He wants to know the nature of these runes, if only so that he can replicate them.”
“Which is reason enough for us to exclude him.”
“Then how do we think that we can stop her?”
“We need to find where she’s gone.”
“Would one of your tracking spells work?”
“At this point, I don’t know whether they would or not. I’m not sure how they would work against someone like her, who has as much power as she demonstrably does. In that way, she is something like you, Dr. Michaels.”
I hadn’t met anyone else with a power like mine, and didn’t know if that were even possible. The nature of her magic was unique enough that I wasn’t able to detect it, and I didn’t know if I would be able to detect my own sort of magic. What if that was the answer? What if she did have the same sort of power that I did?
Maybe that was why I hadn’t picked up on the sense of death from the dying mages. Could she have drawn on it?
“Get your rest, Dr. Michaels, and like I said, we will let you know what we uncover.”
“You should involve the mage council.”
“The mage council want nothing to do with us or our kind of magic,” Barden said.
“The mage council worked with you on this already. Even if they think they can continue to influence events, they don’t have the necessary power in order to do so.”
Barden smiled. “Don’t let your grandparents hear you saying that.”
I breathed out heavily and trudged into my home, dragging myself up the stairs and to my room, and pressed my hand on the door. As I called on my magic, sending it surging into the protective spells, I felt a tingle of familiarity. At least my magic had truly been restored. I hadn’t tested it enough to know whether I would have the same sensation as I had the time before, but the protections parted, allowing me to open the door and step inside.
Jen lay on my sofa, blanket covering her. She breathed heavily, slowly, and I closed the door as quietly as I could, feeling it once again protected with magic.
As I made my way into the kitchen, Lucy rubbed up against my shins. I leaned down and scratched her cheeks. “You don’t want to ignore me now?” I whispered.
Could she have recognized that my magic was off before? I would be an impressive ability on her part, and if so, it would indicate that she was attuned to how my magic should be.
She meowed and I scooped her off the floor, bring her with me into the kitchen.
I froze.
I wasn’t alone.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Aron sat at the table, his hands pressed on the surface, staring straight ahead. “I was asked to keep an eye on you, but you have been gone for quite a while, so I haven’t been able to protect you as I was instructed by the council.”
“I’m fine.”
He eyed me up and down. “You don’t appear to be fine.”
“Well, I am.”
Why was I reacting this way to Aron? I cared about him, and he didn’t deserve this sort of antagonism, though I couldn’t help but wonder why he had not recovered the way that Darvish had. Was it because he had been closer to death? Had I needed to drag him farther than I had with Darvish? I didn’t remember all that it took, only the panic that had set in when Aron was dying, so I couldn’t recall how much I had done with him.
And maybe there wasn’t anything different that I could do. Maybe this was all that remained of him.
If so, I needed to come to terms with it, and I had to stop behaving as if he would return to the man he had been.
“We went looking for information about the rune used in the spell along the Mississippi River.”
“Where would you find that information?” Aron asked.
With this Aron, everything I told him would get back to the mage council, unlike the Aron I had known before. This Aron would report like a dutiful soldier. “We went to the Vangalor family.”
“Vampires?”
“They used runes like that spell in
order to summon power and siphon it from mages. If anyone would have known anything about a different sort of magic, I thought that maybe it would be the Vangalors.”
“And did they?”
“I don’t know. If they did, they weren’t willing to reveal it.”
“Why does it look as if you’ve been fighting?”
“Because I have. There was a dangerous mage. She attacked. She’s the same one who was involved in placing the spell in the first place.”
“And you fought with her again?”
“Not because we wanted to, but she was there.”
“Did you defeat her?”
“We stopped her. And we disrupted the spell she had placed on the Mississippi.”
“That was more than what the council was able to do.”
“Yeah, well I have a different sort of magic than the council.” I leaned over my sink, shaking my head, hating the way that I was talking to Aron. He deserved so much better than that. “Is there anything more? Is there a reason that you’re here, other than the council telling you that you needed to keep an eye on me?” I had little doubt who among the council had made that request. My grandparents worried about me, but they needn’t have. I was fine.
Aron stared at me for a long moment before turning his attention to my kitchen. “I’ve been here before.”
“Yes. You were here before. You came with me, and I tried to help you realize that the two of us know each other, but it doesn’t seem as if that did any good.”
Aron glanced over at me before shaking his head. “That’s not what I mean. I have been here before then.”
I froze, my entire body tensing. In all the times that I had been working with him, all of the times that I had been praying that whatever had triggered the amnesia would eventually resolve, he hadn’t shown any signs of recovery. It was incredibly frustrating, but I suspected it was equally frustrating for Aron.
“You’ve been here many times, much like I told you.”
“Do you miss the person that I was?” he asked, turning his attention to me.
“Very much,” I said in a whisper.
“Why?”
“We’ve already gone through this.”
