Then, I heard what I had been waiting for: inexplicably, I now knew the sound of his magic. The little spark that I had wrestled away from the dark thing sounded in my ears as if a bell was rung, and I knew he was intact.
I sat back on my heels and smiled. “He’s going to be okay,” I said as Seth started to choke and sputter.
Garrison tried clapping his back to help the coughing, regardless of my protests.
“It was a trap,” Seth rasped as soon as he could talk. “Whoever it was, the magician, knew we would try to find him with magic. It was like a black hole. I couldn’t get away.”
Kian blanched while Garrison looked terrified.
“I was going to get sucked in if Gwen hadn’t saved me,” Seth said.
All eyes turned to me.
“How did you do that?” Kian asked me.
I looked away from him and searched the trees for an answer. I didn’t know how to put it and didn’t have the strength to speak more than I needed to.
“You kept me here,” I told him. “You were … uh … holding me and stuff and I just had something to grab a hold of. Like a rope when I was being sucked into quicksand.”
Seth nodded.
Recounting what happened was painful. The dismal feeling of the dark shape that had nearly consumed us stayed with me long after I felt I had escaped. Like a bad taste in my mouth, it persisted in my thoughts and feelings.
Kian and Garrison both looked confused and horrified as Seth and I described the thing. When we were done, I turned on Kian, even though my eyes were drifting shut.
“Why would they do that? Shoot at us?” I asked him. I knew he kept secrets, but I never thought they could be the kind that would put us in danger.
“I don’t know,” Kian said. “The noise and shots are to frighten you. Do you feel any different?”
“Exhausted,” I said. “Why?” My suspicions were growing but I could draw no conclusions. When Kian shrugged, all I wanted to do was go back to the hotel.
“Are you saying the magicians know where we are?” Seth’s voice was still weak.
Kian nodded. “Maybe.”
“Then why don’t they just grab us now and get it over with? They must have more power than that?” I asked. Shivering at the implication, I imagined being dragged into something like that and not being able to get out.
“They could,” Kian replied, not making me feel better, “or they could wait until you are stronger so that you would give them more power. Don’t forget that only you have access to your memories. You will be at your most powerful when you have recovered them.”
The night pressed heavily on me like a dark blanket, stifling my emotions and impairing my breathing. I took little gasps and squinted in the moonlight to see my friends. Something didn’t feel right.
“Then aren’t we doing exactly what they want by trying to regain our memories?” I asked. It felt like a classic scenario of you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. A lose-lose situation.
“Your efforts may be the only thing keeping you alive,” Kian said quietly. “If they thought your power was not on its way to improving, then you would be caught by now. They know where we are, but it’s impossible to say where the attack came from, or how close they may be.”
I felt like a lamb being fed and cared for just to be slaughtered. All we could hope for was a brief moment between getting magician-level power and being kidnapped. Then we could escape, ward off their attacks, and what? I had no idea what I would do then.
I thought of how the bullets were meant for our bodies and the black hole meant for our magic. Suddenly, I felt fragile. We were too exposed. Even if the magicians didn’t succeed in destroying both, our bodies could not function without our magic and vice versa. I felt that to be true and it made me shudder visibly. Kian saw my face.
“You’ve put it together then,” he said grimly. “Your magic is attached to your soul.”
“What’s going to happen?” I asked. Would I ever be able to sleep peacefully again?
Kian shrugged and stood, crouching low. Garrison followed him and they helped Seth stand. He was sweat-soaked and swayed on his feet. I crept behind them, staring into the shadows as if I could actually see anything that might be lurking there. My feet dragged.
“You have shown them your strength,” Kian said as we walked and hobbled out of the park. His voice contained a mixture of pride and resignation. “They will not stop. You just have to keep beating them, until you are capable of ending them completely.”
“But that black hole —” I began.
“Could have been a trap. The guns were a distraction. Probably an illusion.”
In the dark, I huffed. “Probably?”
Kian didn’t answer me.
We came onto the street where the streetlights felt like we had just broken into daylight from a dark abyss. I felt the park at my back, ominous and dangerous. I glanced at Garrison’s watch. It was only one in the morning.
I was paranoid and couldn’t stop swivelling my head uncontrollably as we walked back to the hotel, dishevelled and silent. My feet felt like they weighed a ton and I realized how much magic I had expended. I was exhausted.
At the hotel, Kian pushed a foul-smelling liquid into my hands. The cup steamed as it warmed my hands but turned my stomach. The avocado spread in Oregon had been the first of his medicinal creations. The teas were new.
Kian was under the impression that he could improvise remedies because he had once been able to, but he couldn’t find the right ingredients here. So he threw together a bunch of herbs and whatever looked right to him at the moment and would make me drink the result. If Seth or Garrison saw him putting on the kettle in our hotel room, they would bolt. I didn’t have that luxury.
I looked into the cup. It looked like he had tried to make a disgusting loose leaf tea and hadn’t bothered with the tea bag. The water had barely changed colour.
“Drink it,” he said. “It’ll make you sleep better.”
“Are you sure you got the right ingredients?” I asked, trying not to sound too skeptical.
Kian stopped brushing his teeth and looked at me for a moment, considering. “I had to think of a few substitutes, but it should have the same effect.”
I sighed.
The next few days passed by in a blur. The morning after we were attacked, the news began covering a story of a drought affecting half the country. Scientists were baffled and everyone was yelling that we had to stop global warming. I knew better.
We watched the coverage of dust storms that could have been an apocalypse descending on towns. Drinking water was spoiled and hundreds of thousands of farm animals died. Farms were abandoned. Politicians came out and began blaming each other.
I felt violated. Kian confirmed that whatever trap Seth and I had fallen for probably seeped some magic and gave the magicians strength for this latest disaster. I had to control my shuddering at the thought.
Kian kicked a hockey bag towards me. It looked like it could contain a body.
Five days had passed since the attack. It had taken this long for Seth and I to get our energy back, and Kian wasn’t wasting any time. He had dragged us back to the park, despite our protests.
“They won’t strike twice in the same place,” Kian assured us. I thought he was taking the attack on our lives very well. Still, he showed up one morning with this giant hockey bag and dumped it in front of us.
“What is it?” I asked wearily.
He knelt down to open it, and before we could react, he began tossing various heavy objects at us.
“Hey!” Garrison protested as he skipped out of the way. He then bent down to pick up a metal sword. The sun glinted off of the blade like a strobe light. The weapon seemed out of sync with the crowded park.
My eyes widened as I noticed I was standing in the middle of swords, daggers, and other paraphernalia that made me believe my troubles with assassin magicians were nowhere near over.
“Seriously?�
� Seth asked, eyeing the weapons skeptically. “People are going to think we’re role playing some video game.”
Kian crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing.
Garrison had picked up the sword with both hands and held it up to the daylight. The thing was longer than his arm and nearly as broad. I noticed, thankfully, that the edges were dull. The thick metal hilt was worn from use.
“Where did you get these?” Garrison asked.
“Borrowed them,” Kian replied obscurely.
I doubted that. They looked to be relics stolen from a museum. He had left us for hours the night before.
“Legally?” I asked. He raised an eyebrow and ignored my question.
Garrison tsked and shook his head, putting down the sword. His struggle implied it was heavy.
“This is literally like bringing a knife to a gunfight,” he told Kian. “Look at that tree!” He pointed to a maple that looked as if careless beavers had had their way with it. The bark near the bottom centre was gone and it curved into the middle, dangerously leaning to one side. It was the tree they hid behind days earlier.
“That could have been our heads!” Garrison exclaimed.
Kian placed the sword back into Garrison’s hand. Then he fitted one into Seth’s hand and my own. The steel felt cold against my skin and my arm and wrist began to ache within a minute.
“You won’t win this war with weapons,” Kian said. Garrison opened his mouth to protest but Kian silenced him with a hand. “You need your magic to get stronger, quickly. You’ve been found by the magicians, which limits your time to learn considerably.”
“So what’s with the Highlander sword?” Seth asked. He still looked tired and the bags under his eyes hadn’t disappeared.
“You need to stay in shape,” Kian said simply. “If only to run, but this is something you were once very familiar with.” He looked each of us in turn.
“Swords?” Garrison cut in.
“War,” Kian said. “Perhaps if you fall into similar rhythms, you will regain your memories faster.” He seemed proud of himself for thinking of the exercise, and I couldn’t bear to tell him that I felt nothing from this other than a cold heaviness.
Despite our lack of enthusiasm, he lined us up in a row and began to explain, pointing to various parts of the heavy swords.
“This is the blade.” He ran his finger along the dull edge. “Where your knuckles face is called the true edge, and this will be your striking edge most of the time. The side of your thumb is your false edge. This bar is the cross-guard, which keeps blades from sliding down to your hands. Where you hold the sword is the grip, and that round thing at the bottom is called a pommel. You can hit people with it.”
The rest of the afternoon followed in the same fashion, with Kian spouting information and us listening patiently. He showed us a few simple moves and made us practice until sweat ran down my forehead and into my eyes. They stung, and as I watched Kian shouting directions to Seth and Garrison while they sparred, I saw something come to life within him.
Our group had gathered a small audience that came and went throughout the day. The teenaged girls stayed longest, batting their eyes at Kian while he made us struggle under the weight of the swords. When I complained my arm hurt, he told me it was because I wasn’t strong enough.
No kidding, I thought.
Another week passed. We ate like savage animals after having our lessons with Kian, where he drilled us endlessly and exhausted us to the bone. He kept us so busy that I did not have time to worry about anyone being after me. It was now mid-October, and I consoled myself that only one attempt on my life in a month and a half of travelling with Kian was a pretty good record.
Seth and Garrison had small glimpses of memories, but my mind remained blocked off. I blamed Kian’s rigorous training schedule, but I also felt my own resistance. Since meeting Seth, I was afraid to let myself go. If I opened the floodgates, I was worried I could never close them again.
I was eating yet another hot dog in the evening with Seth and Garrison, contemplating time travel, when Kian came back. He had left to talk on his phone, which had been unusually quiet lately. I knew by the set of his jaw that he wasn’t happy.
“We are leaving tonight,” he said.
Chapter Sixteen
Seth and Garrison looked at each other. Though they had abandoned their lives, I guessed that it was a small change since we’d stayed in the city they knew. Now, they were surprised to hear their lives would be changing so suddenly.
“Where are we going?” I asked, feeling like the travel veteran.
“I don’t know yet,” Kian said, “but there is going to be an unexpected hurricane hitting New York in the early morning. We need to leave before they know and start cancelling flights.”
“Unexpected?” Seth raised an eyebrow.
“How do you know?” I asked.
Kian ignored both of us and started to walk away towards the hotel. Grudgingly, I followed him to our room. The evening was spent quietly, packing as I removed my belongings from the hotel wardrobe. We had been here for over a month now and it was beginning to feel like home. I had worried that coming with Kian would mean turning into a nomad, and was beginning to believe that that wouldn’t be the case. My own dark thoughts made me grumpy.
The way Kian had neatly put all of his things away and fitted them all into his small suitcase annoyed me further.
“Why are you being so cryptic all of a sudden?” I snapped at him, knowing very well that cryptic could have been his middle name.
Kian zipped up his bag then tossed it near the door as if it weighed nothing. “You know what you need to know,” he said.
I could have hit him.
Then, without warning, he spun and took both of my hands. His eyes met mine and my heart stopped in its tracks, all of my thoughts tumbling out of my head as if they weighed nothing.
“You need to be very careful,” he said, his eyes imploring.
“Okay,” I replied. It was a stupid reply but I felt like the moment had escalated to something serious between us, and I didn’t know how to handle it.
“I’m serious, Gwen.” Kian brought both my hands up and touched them gently with his lips. “You could be the strongest.”
My eyes widened. What was happening?
When a knock sounded at the door and Garrison impatiently called out to us, Kian dropped my hands as if they had burned him. He got his bag and left the hotel room. I followed him again, still unsure of what had just happened. My hands tingled where he had held them.
When we got to the airport, the sky was turning a strange shade of dark as if someone had turned the dimmer switch down on the western hemisphere. The airport, made of glass and lit brightly, made it feel even more eerie. My eyelids began to droop. After a silent taxi ride, we stood in the international departures hall.
Kian was on edge. He kept checking his little cell phone and looking at the clock. My head felt like it was filled with cotton as the knowledge of a hurricane slowly crept up on me. The weather was giving me a headache and making me sway where I stood.
I turned and realized Kian was gone. I spotted him at a flight desk, paying for tickets. We stood in silence waiting for him, like children waiting for their mother, until he returned and handed out boarding passes to us all.
“I never gave you my passport,” Seth said, frowning.
Kian smiled at him. “You are not the only one with a power for persuasion,” he replied.
“Manchester?”
Seth was looking at his boarding pass. I realized I hadn’t known where we were going either and looked down to find it was England.
“What’s in Manchester, anyway?” Seth asked. “And when do we get to find out why we’re travelling around? Are we looking for someone or is this visit about something else?”
“We should go somewhere,” Kian said over Seth to drown him out.
In the airport, I doubted any one was listening anyway. But we obedient
ly dropped the subject while our group made our way to the baggage drop-off, and I was glad to get rid of my bursting green suitcase.
We filed quietly through security and bought snacks in the shop on the other side. Then Kian led us to the first class lounge, where we showed our boarding passes and walked through to an empty blue room full of empty blue booths.
Kian chose one near the window, where the sky could be clearly seen. It was looking more dangerous by the minute. I sat next to Kian while Garrison and Seth sat across from us. In hushed tones, we discussed finding more of our kind in order to be stronger and fight the magicians.
Time crawled as I kept my eyes on the clouds rolling in. It was nearly midnight when the sky was illuminated by orange as if lit with fiery electricity. I did not yearn to be up in those clouds.
“How did you know about the hurricane?” I asked Kian.
He pointed out the window. “That,” he motioned to the orange clouds, “takes a great deal of magic. Magic they got from you.” I shuddered. “All part of their plan. Soon, you’ll be able to feel it before it acts. For now, you’ll have to trust me.” He smiled at me and it didn’t seem like a crazy request. I had already clung to him for dear life on several occasions.
Time passed and my headache grew. After an orange juice and snapping at Kian for looking at his watch every three seconds — it was making me nervous — our flight was called for boarding. I was surprised to find that Seth was sitting next to me, with Kian and Garrison in the row in front of us.
The sky was nearly erupting with energy.
The flight attendants ran through the safety procedures, checked our seatbelts, and asked everyone to keep their seat upright. The pilot introduced himself and told us that the flight would take six hours and forty minutes. Sitting next to Seth and looking out the window, my tiredness was abated for the moment.
He smiled at me reassuringly, and I saw that he was gripping the armrests of his seat.
“Fear of flying?” I asked.
“Not fear,” he answered, “I just hate it.”
Lives of Magic (Seven Wanderers Trilogy) Page 12
