Grim Fate (Codex Blair Book 5)

by Izzy Shows

  Panic set in, my lungs began to burn, and all I wanted to do was open my mouth and suck in air. It was only the tiny amount of coherence I had left that stopped me from doing just that, screaming at me that it wouldn’t be air I’d be sucking in and who knew what it would do to me once it was inside me. I had to keep calm.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, stopped my random thrashing about, and focused my mind. I was steadily being dragged farther down, away from the surface, and I needed to counteract that as quickly as possible, before it became impossible for me to get back up. I yanked up the leg the tendril had wrapped around and found that it came free relatively easily—though slowly, as if it was impeded by the substance around me. I spread both my arms above me and started to swim up. It was slow going, and I quickly realised that I didn’t have enough air for this; I was going to die down here if I didn’t do something.

  Those Wizards are trying to kill me.

  Incendium!

  The word reverberated inside my mind as I pulled the magic from inside of me and pushed it out of every inch of my body. The fire swirled around me, propelling me up at the same time it burned a path above me. A screeching sound came from the substance I was destroying, driving home what I had initially realised—this damned thing was alive!

  My head broke the surface, followed by my shoulders, but I didn’t stop the magic, and soon my fire had propelled me up above the pit and deposited me on the ground beside the monkey bars. I burned for another moment or two before I let it drop, bending over to brace my hands on my knees and draw in breath after blessed breath.

  Twenty

  I yanked the blindfold off my head and dragged my gaze up to fix a burning glare on the Chancellor, who conveniently had no expression on his face. He appeared neither pleased nor concerned, certainly not impressed by my narrow escape. I wanted to punch his placid mask in, wanted to beat him until he was black and blue and sobbing for mercy.

  The rage encompassed me for a moment, beating a drum inside my head, and it took far longer than I was happy about for me to recognise that the rage wasn’t entirely my own—it was coming from the mark on my wrist, and it was begging me to wreak havoc on the Chancellor.

  Steady, Blair. That won’t do you any good. If you attack the Chancellor, the First Hand will cut you down before you can do any amount of damage to him, I had to remind myself, but it helped to soothe the rage inside of me. A few more breaths, and I had myself well under control and was straightening up again.

  “Was that part of your test?” I had to know if they were really trying to kill me.

  “Continue to the next trial, Ms. Sheach,” the Chancellor said, not answering my question, and gestured to the wall behind me.

  I stared at him, incredulous, and the rage started to beat at me again. I shoved it down ruthlessly, and turned my back on the group of Wizards, but not before I caught sight of Diego’s ashen face. At least he had the decency to be concerned.

  Although if he was looking like that, the odds were that he hadn’t known that was going to happen. Which meant it hadn’t been a part of the trial.

  Something was amiss, and the High Council didn’t appear to want to do anything about it. Either that, or they were keeping secrets from each other.

  Or maybe Diego just hadn’t thought I would fall into the ick. Maybe it was totally normal for mages to die during these trials, and he’d thought I would get through it without any issue.

  Fuckers, the lot of them. I was starting to regret my decision to be a part of this, to do the trials at all. They hadn’t exactly been optional, though, or at least, the High Council hadn’t made it seem like they were.

  Breathing deeply and counting my lucky stars that I was still able to breathe, I looked at the next trial.

  A door. It was just a simple door. Maybe the trial was on the other side?

  I walked forward and tried the knob, but, no, it wouldn’t open. I rolled my eyes—it was a locked door. The trial was a stupid locked door.

  Crouching in front of the lock, I examined it closely. It looked like your average, ordinary lock, but after everything I’d just been through, I knew that nothing was ordinary about it. I had shut off my Sight at some point when I was under the ick, and I wasn’t eager to open it up again. I was pretty sure it had been a self-defence reflex to turn it off when I went under; there are some things you can’t unsee. And anything Seen could not be unseen. I didn’t want to know what the ick looked like, and I didn’t want to See anymore unless it was absolutely necessary.

  As I wasn’t blindfolded anymore, it wasn’t necessary.

  I scooted closer to the door and pressed my ear against it, listening to see if there was anything on the other side. No, not that I could hear, and nothing inside the door for me to be worried about, not that I had really thought there would be anything inside of it.

  I leaned back and glared at the lock. What exactly was I supposed to do here? Reach into the lock and, through some sort of magic, move the bolts inside of it to open it? This was ridiculous.

  I straightened up and took a step back. Wizards. Fuck their bullshit tests. I looked back at the group of them, so far away from me with the obstacle course between us, and flashed a confident smile in their direction. They could do whatever they wanted, but I wasn’t going to do what they wanted. I was going to get through these trials my own way.

  “Vis,” I said, then pulled back my leg and slammed my foot into the door. It went down with a satisfying crack.

  And then an axe came out of nowhere, and I barely had the second I needed to hit the floor.

  I rolled to the side and jumped back up to my feet, gawking at the swinging axe for a second as it went back and forth, slowing down.

  “Are you seriously trying to kill me?” I shouted at them, turning to look at them again. “I thought you were just testing me to see if I had the necessary magic! You never said anything about this being life or death!”

  The Chancellor walked forward slowly, his hands tucked into his robes, and his face was very grave. “You have completed these trials in a satisfactory, albeit unconventional, fashion.”

  My eyes bulged, and I pointed an accusatory finger at the axe. “You tried to kill me!”

  If the man felt even a shred of human emotion, it wasn’t evident on his face.

  Do not beat him to a pulp. Do not beat him to a pulp. Do not slam your fist into his face and thrill at the sound of his bones crunching. Don’t do it.

  I repeated the litany in my head for several moments. I couldn’t believe these people were actually trying to kill me, but, apparently, that was how it was going to go.

  Talk about unequal. I couldn’t try to kill them back, and I had never been in such a situation before.

  Fuck this whole thing.

  Twenty One

  “You are dismissed for lunch,” the Chancellor said, looking as calm as ever.

  “Do I get to go out for a burger?” I grinned at him, though it was very much forced. I didn’t feel particularly jovial just now; near-death experiences had that effect on me.

  “You are not allowed to leave the premises,” he said, clearly not appreciating the joking nature of what I’d said. “There is a cafeteria on the second floor that you are permitted to use.”

  I huffed out a breath and crossed the room to pick up my jacket from where I’d tossed it before beginning the trial. As I hefted it off the ground, my phone rang inside its pocket. It was a loud, shattering sound in the otherwise quiet room, and it echoed off the walls. I froze, then forced the tension from my shoulders as I grabbed the phone out of its pocket.

  The caller ID said Mal.

  I turned to look at the Wizards, who were all looking at me like I was the craziest person they’d ever seen. I stared them dead in the eyes as I answered the call and lifted the phone to my ear.

  “What’s up?” My tone was nonchalant, though my heart was racing a mile a minute. Were they going to kill me? Was this against the rules? They’d never told me th
ey had a no-phone policy.

  “Blair!” Lilith’s voice rang in my ear, and a surge of disappointment washed through me. I’d really been hoping that Mal had come to his senses and was going to ask me to meet him somewhere tonight. But no such luck. “What are you doing right now?”

  “Nothing much, just hanging out with some people. Little busy, though,” I said, not entirely lying to her. I was, in fact, hanging out with a bunch of Wizards who were trying to kill me, and I was very busy avoiding getting killed.

  “Do you have a minute to talk?”

  “Go right ahead,” I said, waving at the Wizards, then turned my back on them as I walked farther away, lowering my voice somewhat. “But I’ll need you to make it quick.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, and I heard her sigh of relief. “I just wanted to know when I was going to see you again. It’s been a while since we trained together, and I thought we were finally making progress. I told you, I want to get better.”

  “That’s a little difficult, considering who you live with.” I couldn’t say his name, not here. It was too risky; one of the Wizards might recognise it, and then I’d be toast. In fact, I couldn’t even say her name. They would definitely recognise it. Who wouldn’t?

  “Please, Blair?” she said, whining into the phone. “I’ll make sure he’s gone before you come over. He can’t help me the way you do, and I don’t want to get worse.”

  “You won’t get worse,” I said immediately, trying to reassure her. I sighed. “All right. If you can guarantee that he won’t be around, I can come by tonight, and we’ll work on it.”

  “Thank you! Yes, I’ll make sure he isn’t here. I really appreciate it, Blair. I know you don’t have to do this, but I do appreciate you doing this for me.”

  I grinned. She had changed so much since we’d first started. I hadn’t really had faith that she could fight her addiction, but she had so far. I was proud of her.

  “Don’t sweat it. I’ll see you tonight, OK? Bye.”

  “’Bye,” she said.

  I hung up the phone and stashed it in my jeans pocket, which was now a fun mixture of moist and charred all at the same time. I sighed. Another pair of jeans ruined by magic—I spent most of my money replenishing my shoddy wardrobe.

  “All right, gentlemen. We were talking about lunch?” I said, turning to them with a grin on my face. The Chancellor was finally exhibiting an emotion—he looked like he was apoplectic.

  Good. I’d wanted to get under his skin since I’d first set eyes on him.

  Twenty Two

  In true outcast fashion, I sat alone while I was eating my lunch. The cafeteria was littered with small, circular tables. The kitchen was off to one side, and the entire thing was floored in marble. The place was full of Wizards going about their business, but none of them would look at me.

  This wasn’t a new experience for me, but I was much more aware of it now than I used to be. I had grown accustomed to eating with other people. Fred, most days, lunch with Finn once a week, tea and sandwiches with Emily now and again. At some point in time, without noticing, I had turned into a somewhat social creature.

  I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

  Diego sat down in front of me just then, a greasy bag of food in one hand and a drink in the other.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to eat with the High Council? Be high and mighty and all that jazz?”

  He shrugged. “Never really been my thing,” he said.

  “I didn’t know forty-year-olds had a ‘thing’,” I said, smirking.

  He’d been unpacking his food and now paused to flick a fry at my face. “Thirty-four, for your information. What are you, twelve?”

  “Twenty-six,” I said with a haughty sniff before I relaxed into a grin. “You’re not as old as the other guys.”

  “No, I’m not. Most of them are in their hundreds. A few of them are in their seventies.”

  When he didn’t expand on that, I had to raise another eyebrow. “How did you manage to end up on the High Council, then? Doesn’t seem like a young man’s gig.”

  “Oh, so now I’m young?” He grinned, clearly enjoying avoiding the topic. I made a face at him, and he sighed. “All right, all right. It’s simple, really. The High Council has always been predominantly British, but since the Revolutionary War, we’ve insisted on having an American on the Council. We’ve been fighting a losing war with the vampires in the States, and when the last representative died, I was the only one who had enough experience to sit.”

  I dropped my sandwich to my plate, gaping at him. “There’s a war going on? Why are we sitting around going through my shoddy trials if there’s a war going on?”

  “Because it’s very difficult to get the Council involved in things outside of Britain. Believe me, we’ve been lobbying for it for quite some time, and I think we’re getting rather close. I hope so, anyway. I’d like to get home to my family more than twice a year. If I can secure the Council’s assistance, I might be able to do that.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” I said, grimacing. I couldn’t imagine having a family, but not being able to see them more than twice a year if you had one? That had to be painful for him. “Why are you telling me all this? I haven’t passed anything yet. I’m not a member of the Order.” I lifted my water bottle and took a sip.

  He shrugged. “You’re either going to pass or die.”

  I choked on my water and set the bottle down, coughing a few times. “So, you all really are trying to kill me?”

  “I’m not allowed to discuss the trials with you, I’m afraid.”

  I stared at him, disbelieving. How could he say something like that and then not expand on it? I couldn’t die; I had too much left to do. Gods only knew what was going on in London proper right now. There was probably some creature on a rampage, and no one was there to take care of it.

  “What are you allowed to talk about?” I finally asked, once I’d calmed down a bit.

  He pursed his lips, thinking about it. “Technically? Nothing.”

  “What about Aidan?” I sorely hoped he would tell me more about Aidan.

  “I can tell you about Aidan,” he said, his features softening. “He was a great guy. I’m really sorry to hear that he’s gone, but I knew something bad had to have happened for him to just disappear on me. We hadn’t been in much contact of late, what with the war in America, but two years was just…strange. I should have known better.”

  “That’s partly my fault, I think,” I said, frowning down at my sandwich. “I didn’t tell anyone he was gone.”

  “Who would you have told? Aidan certainly didn’t keep a notebook full of the people he talked to. You didn’t know how to contact the Order. No, it’s not your fault we didn’t know about him. It’s our fault for not keeping a better eye on him.”

  “I asked him to reach out, to ask for backup…”

  “And in true Aidan fashion, he refused,” he said. “He never wanted to admit he needed help with anything. I remember he got into this one scrape with a Warlock, and the guy practically blew his house up. I happened to be popping by for a visit, on business this side of the pond, and I saved his hide. That’s how it always goes—went—with him.”

  “He asked me for help,” I said quietly.

  His eyes widened. “He did?”

  I nodded. “He said he’d been cursed, that he didn’t have his normal firepower and he needed someone to help, and that case was supposed to be his last.”

  “Still, to ask an untrained mage to help him—that was reckless, even by his standards.” He trailed off, staring behind me for a moment. I could tell there wasn’t anything behind me that had caught his attention. His eyes were unfocused, and he seemed to be thinking. “He must have seen something in you.”

  Now it was my turn to widen my eyes. “No, you’re crazy. He didn’t see anything in me.”

  But then I remembered the night I’d met him, when he’d attempted to control my mind and I’d t
hrown him off.

  You shouldn’t have been able to do that.

  I could still hear his voice inside my head, as if he were sitting right there next to me. I had never given it much thought; it was such a small comment compared to everything else that had happened that weekend, but maybe it had more significance than I had realised. Had Aidan seen something special in me? Was that why he’d wanted my help?

  Gods. I’d already known I’d let him down by not using the power Mal had given me sooner, but this made it so much worse.

  “Blair, I don’t think you need me to tell you that you’re something special. What you’ve been doing in London, untrained and unguided—it’s not normal. You’ve caused quite a stir in the Order, and not too much for your own benefit. There are quite a few Wizards who’re unhappy that you made it through your hearing, who wanted your head on the chopping block. If Aidan asked for your help, then he saw that in you. He would have wanted to train you himself.”

  I busied myself with taking another bite of my sandwich to avoid answering him. The entire conversation made me uncomfortable. It was just so cliché—you’re special, he saw something in you, you’ve done things you shouldn’t be able to do. No one said that in real life, so, clearly, I shouldn’t give it any real weight. Diego was probably just blowing smoke up my arse so I’d have the confidence I needed to see me through the trials.

  Yeah, that was all it was.

  Still, it left me unsettled. I swallowed the bite of sandwich, then put what was left back down on my plate.

  “Were you good friends with Aidan?” I changed the topic as soon as my mouth was empty, eager to move on to something else, something safer.

  Diego looked at me oddly for moment before he allowed the topic to change. “Yes. I suppose it didn’t make much sense, but we went through our training around the same time. I was brought to London by my parents when I turned fifteen, but the Order had been aware of me since I was born. That’s how it’s normally done: your parents register you in much the same way as you are with the mundane authorities. Everyone is catalogued and tracked, and when you come of age, you’re brought in for the trials. They aren’t always the same trials, but a few of them are kept in every batch. I know that now. Anyway, once I’d passed my trials, Aidan and I were mentored by the same Wizard. He was a hellion, always getting into trouble and pulling this prank or that one. Always got me into it, too. I could never resist him.” He smiled fondly. “We put a toad in our mentor’s bed once. It was classic. Just your typical juvenile stuff, of course. He didn’t make the best student of the practicalities. Didn’t want to do the reading.”