“You didn’t recognize him?” I asked her.
“No.”
The banging on the door intensified, and then I heard sheetrock crumple as something pressed or punched the wall near it.
“Damn government contractors, only using the cheap stuff. They’re coming through the wall. Vivian, you can sense these guys, right?”
“Yes, why?” she asked.
“Life mages and death mages are Yin and Yang. Vassago can tear the life out of somebody; it’s how he kills with a touch.”
“What’s your … Oh…” she said, and a wicked smile lit her eyes.
I looked into the futures and saw Rose was about to be back with bad news.
“If he can tear the life out, you can tear the death out,” I shouted over the loud din of banging and moans.
“I’ve never done this before,” she said, her smile faltering. “If I’m wrong and the spell kills me, I want you to know, I’m really sorry. For everything.”
Her voice was almost lost as there were more crunching sounds as large sections of drywall were torn from the outside wall. She stepped in front of me and, as Rose popped back into the room, Vivian kissed me. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, but it did hit the lips. For a second I was too surprised to divine the future. She stepped backward, her arms raised straight up over her head, the start of a smile on her face.
“I forgive you,” I whispered to her.
I know she couldn’t hear me as the drywall was kicked in and the screams of the undead grew louder, the banging of fists against every surface as they tried to get to us. My guns were already rising to slow down the horde of death coming our way when I saw Vivian pull her arms down, her elbows bent, and then her fists shot out to the sides as she released her magic.
“Duck,” Rose screamed, and I dropped to the ground as a wave of magic seemed to explode from Vivian, shooting out in all directions.
It was like standing at a concert, with twenty feet tall speakers wall to wall, when somebody strikes the first chord with the amps cranked all the way up. I was out of the path of the wave, but the discharge of magic had the hair of my arms stand up, and the fillings in my teeth seemed to vibrate. It almost felt as if my eardrums blew out at the same moment because there was a dull ache in my head followed by utter silence. I sat there stunned, waiting for a face to come through the hole in the sheetrock, teeth gnashing.
I looked down to see Rose sprawled several feet from me, her arms wrapped around her torso. I reached for her.
“Boss, she’s going down,” Rose called, and I turned to see Vivian suddenly wobble, her knees buckling as they refused to hold her up any longer.
I didn’t need to read the futures to see if I’d get there in time. Instead, I used my legs to push off, and I was able to catch her upper body as she fell, keeping her head from bouncing off the hard floor. I laid there, panting from adrenaline and fear and brushed a hand over her face, pushing her long locks of hair back. Her eyes were rolled in the back of her head, and she was trembling. I used my fingers to gently close her sightless eyes and pulled her close as I got into a sitting position.
“She overdid it, boss; do you think she’s going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” I told Rose who’d regained her own feet and was standing now at my knees.
“As soon as I don’t feel like I called Mike Tyson a sissy, I’ll poof out there and see if it worked.”
“Get your strength, whatever she did put a hurting on me too,” I admitted.
“She blasted raw death magic and then pulled it all back in, in one gigantic pulse. She took it all back. I’ve never seen that before.”
“Me neither,” I said and was about to say more when I heard howls and shouts coming from the other side.
They weren’t here yet, but they were getting closer.
“Mind if I rest up here with you two?” Rose asked, “I’m not feeling so…”
Rose slumped, and I was able to catch her in my left hand. I held her up and saw her own body trembling the same way that Vivian’s had been. I would have stroked her back with my right hand’s finger, but it was holding Vivian’s head against me. There was a shudder, a snarl, then another shudder at the doorway. A loud howl echoed, and then the door seemed to fly off its hinges, embedding what didn’t splinter into the opposite wall. A werewolf nearly eight feet tall strode in, its long hands hanging low, its claws barely not digging into its own flesh in clenched fists.
“Wright,” it growled and then turned and bounded out, the top of its head brushing and barely missing the ceiling.
A slightly smaller werewolf in hybrid form came in, and I saw the transformation in reverse. I almost screamed as it tried to pull Vivian from my arms, but I was too weak. I fumbled for the pistol, knowing that the conflagration rounds were made from silver, but I’d lost track of how many I’d fired. I started looking into the futures where I shot—
“Yolanda?” I asked.
The Were nodded and then placed Vivian flat on her back on the conference table as she finished transforming. She turned, and a nude Yolanda stood before me.
“Mage, she’s near death, I can smell it.”
I stumbled to my feet, and when I wobbled, she took two steps and grabbed me by the armpits. The smaller woman steadied me as if she were the parent and I was a toddler. I pulled the healing charm from my pocket with shaky hands and walked over to her, pressing the small orb against her temple.
“You might want to let me go, I don’t know if the effect will…”
I didn’t know. I’d never healed somebody else before. Rose had healed me, but she was Fae and magic worked differently with her. Speaking of Rose, I placed her on the table, out of the way in case Vivian should flop or roll over.
“I’ll catch you if you fall,” Yolanda said quietly, her nose wrinkling as she let me go.
I pushed my will into the healing charm, activating it. I could feel the stored magic working, and Vivian’s body trembles smoothed out until she was laying on the table very still, her breathing slow and deep as if she were sleeping. Immediately, I placed my finger and thumb over the runes to recharge it and started pushing magic back into it so I could use it again if needed. My eyes were crossing. I didn’t get it fully charged, but I was able to hold it over Rose’s twitching form and I activated it once again.
6
“He’s fine, just used up,” a voice said from over me.
I could smell the remnants of smoldering carpet, but what I could smell more than that was antiseptic sharp against my nostrils. I wanted to open my eyes and look around, but it was too hard. Even concentrating on thoughts hurt, and I was so tired.
“If you don’t let him rest, I’ll pix your tits in knots,” Rose said.
“You don’t have to be such a pistol,” a woman with a deep voice said, a hint of anger there.
“Thank you, doctor,” Rasmussen’s voice said, silencing any argument that might have come.
I felt a cool touch on my forehead. The hand was small for a human and clammy as if it had just been pulled from a pot of water. Then a warmth filled me. A jolt of electricity seemingly ran through my body, and I spasmed and sat up suddenly, drawing a deep breath.
“See, I told you he used too much,” the woman’s deep voice said.
I looked up and was sitting in a hospital room. Rose hovered nearby, and Vivian and Rasmussen were sitting near me. A woman in white starched scrubs was standing at the foot of the bed and a woman mage withdrew her hand from me, smiling.
“You’re not old enough,” I said, staring at the girl.
“I’m old enough to heal you,” she shot back, her eyes daring me to counter.
“You’re what, sixteen?”
“Nineteen. What are you, ageist?”
“What’s ageist?” I asked her.
“She thinks you’re prejudiced against young people,” Rose piped up helpfully.
“I just… What happened… I… thank you,” I said.
That’s
when I noticed Vivian was fast asleep in the hospital chair. I’d seen she’d been slumped over, but my mind hadn’t registered the heavy rise and fall of her shoulders and chest as she slumbered.
“So you are ageist. Maybe you’re a sexist, misogynistic pig too?”
“Girl, I’m too old and too old school to even know what that means,” I said.
She grinned, nodded as if deciding something, and put her hand back up slowly, making sure she was slow enough that I saw it coming. I nodded, and she touched my forehead again and closed her eyes.
“Your magic is depleted for a little bit, but your body isn’t fully recovered from the exposure of that blast of death magic. You need to lay low for a few days. I can heal your body, but not your psyche and aura.”
“My what?”
“All mages have auras,” Rasmussen said, sleepily.
I looked, and he had a dried smear of gore on the side of his neck and a spot on his bald head, but he just stared. I knew about auras, but I was lost about why mine was even being discussed.
“Thank you, mage,” I said, not knowing her name, “Can you explain what happened to the three of us?” I asked, gesturing towards Rose, Vivian, and myself.
“You know what psychic burnout is?” she asked.
“Um… I overdid it?” I asked her.
“Pretty much. You used up all your magic. From what Rasmussen and I can gather, you forgot to turn the switch off when you used the healing charm on Vivian and Rose. Those things aren’t toys, and it used the power it had and took more from you. Then you refilled it again till you thought you’d used it all up and healed the little Fae. You pushed way past your hard limit and almost died from the magical backlash.”
“But he saved us both,” Rose said, pointing at the young mage with her wand.
“Yes. He must have a very big and deep reservoir of magic to have pulled that trick off. There are only two or three life mages I know who can draw that much power.”
“Vassago, of course,” Rasmussen snapped.
“Him, me, and my mother,” the mage said. “Now, maybe you."
“What do I call you?” I asked her, taking her hand in mine, its presence still warm on my skin.
She looked at me holding her hand, her eyes already rolling as she probably thought I was doing something -ist…
“I’m Zania,” she said after a moment and then pulled her hand back.
She looked young, but everyone under twenty looked young to me. Still, I took a moment to take in her features. She wasn’t dressed like a council mage, nor was she wearing a suit. Instead, she wore a Violent Femme’s t-shirt and black jeans tucked into Doc Martens. She looked straight out of the 80s, but she was maybe born in the 90s. Late, late 90s. A green hoop went through one side of her nose, and her short blonde hair was spikey. Even her jewelry and leather wristband screamed punk and grunge. Still, I could tell she was a mage and a damned powerful one, probably surpassing Mage Kiersten.
“Thank you, Zania, thank you doc,” I said, nodding to the woman with the deep voice.
She nodded at me in acknowledgment, and I could tell she was in her mid-fifties. A little rounded, but she was a tallish woman who carried herself with a regal beauty. She had blonde hair and a smile that quirked up at one corner. Somebody the mages worked with, obviously, because she seemed utterly human.
“Rasmussen,” I said, “what happened?”
“Many of us did what you two did, gated in behind them, or so we thought. I’m useless in that kind of fight, so I stayed below. The Weres went through the stairwell like a cyclone, and Mage Kiersten and the others fought for the doorway. A lot of the council is powerful in magic, but in a stone box, you can’t unleash a ton of power like that—”
“Without bringing the building down on top of your heads.”
“Exactly. It seemed as if we were pushing them back when a fresh wave came at us, but your friends from the Solaris pack were already almost topside, fighting to get to you it seems. We were about to be overrun when all of the undead simply dropped.”
“All of them?” I asked, my mouth suddenly feeling as dry as the sand and stone around the Arches.
“All the ones that were left standing. What spell did she do?” Rasmussen asked.
“I told her how life mages like Vassago kill and asked if death magic works the same way. She sent out some kind of wave of magic, then pulled it all back into herself; right, short stuff?”
“Yes. It was like a power pull,” she said and then cackled as there was an explosion of glitter near Zania.
“I love glitter,” the young mage said, and I waved my hand in front of my face, fanning it away and back toward the foot of the bed.
“You know where—”
“It’ll ruin the magic,” Vivian mumbled and sat up.
“Viv, you okay?” I asked her.
“Do you forgive me?” she asked, her eyes opening, and she stared at me until her eyes could focus on me.
“Yes,” I told her again.
“Good, then my answer is the same. I’m just tired.”
“Can you explain to me what magic you did to stop the attack?” Rasmussen asked, turning in her direction.
“I sent my senses out and then when I had all the undead tagged, I sent a pulse of magic out to each of them. For a second I thought I could control them, but when I couldn’t, I ripped my magic back to myself. I hadn’t realized that I ripped out more than my magic until it was overwhelming me. I was only aiming at the doorway. I took in too much death.”
“You would be in worse shape,” Zania told her, “except from what I can tell, Wright gave you some of his mojo temporarily.” A wry grin took over the young healer’s face.
“My mojo?” I asked her.
“Your mojo,” Zania repeated.
“So I’ve got his mojo?” Vivian asked.
“It appears you have his mojo,” Rasmussen said.
“And with great mojo—”
“Comes great responsibility,” the doc intoned.
We stared at the mundane woman in shock, and she cracked a smile and then gave us a mock salute before turning and walking out the doorway.
“We could have kept that going for another few lines,” Rose said. “We haven’t even talked about my mojo.”
“You got my mojo too,” I told Rose. “You still have an urge to chase down Irish Faeries?”
“No, but I feel so sexually repressed that I want to hump anything that moves,” she said, making obscene hip gestures in the air.
Rasmussen burst into polite laughter and then stood. “You two are off duty for the next week. It’ll take us time to clean up and rebuild, and neither of you is good for anything other than Intel at this point. I can always catch you later. I have to brief Merlin’s assistant.”
“Okay,” I said, confused.
“Sure,” Vivian said and stood, giving Rasmussen a halfhearted and very unprofessional hug. “Thank you, Sigmund, for giving me a second chance.”
“I will be in touch, child,” he said and then took a step as a gate shimmered in front of him.
He stepped through, and it closed behind him. Zania made a whistling sound and walked toward the doorway the doc had gone through. “You two, seriously. At least two to three days bedrest before any magic. If they have to call me out to heal the both of you again, I’m going to be pissed. It’d seriously be bad news. Don’t use magic, two to three days. As it is, I had to work on something weird in your head, Mage Wright, so make sure you come back here at week’s end so I can check on it.”
“Got it, doc,” I told her, utterly confused.
“Mage Zania,” she corrected.
“Mage Zania. And thank you.”
“Suck up,” Rose snorted. “She’s just your type, young, dumb and—”
“Rose!” This time it was Vivian who shouted, and I snickered as the young mage squinted her eyes at Rose.
Then she used two fingers on her right hand and pointed them at her eyes and then back
at the faerie. Rose stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry. Both of them were smiling, and I sat back on my bed, my heartbeat slowing down after the jolt of the healing. I watched as Rose made more rude gestures and faces until I heard the door close behind me somewhere.
“You want to rest up in here?” Rose asked me.
“Where are we?” I asked her.
“University Hospital, the sub-basement where the mages come for patchwork.”
“I’ve never…”
“There’s a lot about the magical world you don’t know,” Rose said.
“We need to fix that,” Vivian said.
“Not anytime soon,” I told her. “I’m beat, and I want to get to one of my hidey holes.”
“Well, you need to learn, and while we’re resting up I can fill you in a little bit,” Vivian told me.
“No way,” I said feeling grumpy. “I want to crawl under the blankets after I’ve eaten three large pizzas and—”
“You’re not going into your mating heat?” Rose asked me seriously, landing on my leg.
I sat up and looked at her. “I’m not a werewolf,” I told her.
“You’ve got weird, freaky feelings and the whole alpha voice command thing. Who knows, maybe me wanting to hump everyone’s leg is because you want to hump everyone’s leg because you’re going into your mating heat?”
“I…” I started laughing.
It hurt, but it felt good.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me this place served as a brothel,” Vivian said as we were dropped off outside of my NYC apartment building.
“It’s a what?” the driver asked.
“Never mind, she’s drunk,” I said to him. “Tell Rasmussen thanks for the lift.”
“Oh… I mean… yeah, sure,” the driver said as I slammed the side door to the old limousine that had probably been built when the Mafia started building up Vegas.
It was old enough that we weren’t going to break it, as modern electronics seemed to fry out around a powerful mage.
“Come on,” I told Vivian and felt Rose land on my shoulder, her small hand holding onto the collar of my pressed white shirt, which had been a gift from the hospital wing.
Second Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Page 5
