by Nichols, TJ
The lead scarlips moved toward him at something faster than a walk—faster than Angus was comfortable with. He turned and ran.
The gravel bit into his socked feet, but they were tough after the walking he did in Demonside. The cold cut his lungs with every breath, but he ran anyway. He used the fear to draw more magic to him. When he wasn’t surrounded by dampeners, it rolled in like fog and gathered close. He used it to make his stride lighter, faster. He could sense the scarlips gaining now, and someone else joined him in running, but they wouldn’t be fast enough without magic. Angus risked a glance to the side and back.
It was Jim.
A scarlips pounced. Angus had time to duck and throw up what he hoped was an effective shield, and the animal went over his head. “Run faster or shield yourself!”
Jim hesitated. That was all it took. One scarlips sensed an easy target and peeled away. Angus dropped his shield and lashed out. The scarlips stumbled, but Angus was too late. It already had Jim, and there was too much blood.
The scarlips prowled closer and circled their prey.
Where were Syg and the other underground members? Had the trainees been left to die or be captured by the college like the scarlips?
Angus’s breath came in hard pants as he glanced around. He couldn’t fight off all the scarlips alone.
People stood around watching, recording with their phones. Some stood on car roofs as though that would keep them safe.
“This was the work of the college. They bring creatures through to sacrifice them for their magic. That’s what’s causing the cold.”
“Look out,” a woman shouted.
Angus glanced to the side as a scarlips leaped for him. He barely protected himself in time. The demon animal didn’t want Jim, who was already down and bleeding. Had he been struck with poison? Is that why the scarlips were ignoring Jim and concentrating on him?
The last group of trainees arrived, and they had something with them.
While he tried to get to Jim, Lizzie and Norah’s wall drew closer and funneled the scarlips pack toward the last group.
Angus was caught in the open. If he didn’t move soon, the wall would reach him and he’d be stuck with the creatures. The animals hit his shield, knocked him over, and circled him. They would wait for him to weaken.
As abruptly as they’d started, they veered off toward a magical cage. Angus could see it but it was partially camouflaged.
Suddenly the scarlips vanished.
His heart beat as though it hoped to break free.
He wanted to be sick, but he got up off the ground. The chill on his skin moved deeper, and the cut on his arm hurt. Angus made his way to Jim, and hoped he knew enough to heal him.
He dropped to his knees. He hated that Jim had taken his father’s money, but he couldn’t hate Jim. First love was hard to forget, and they’d had good times.
The scarlips had slashed across Jim’s chest, and his coat was soaked with blood. Angus put his hands over the wound. It was deep, but he would try to fix it.
Jim put his hand over Angus’s. “Don’t waste your time.”
“Don’t be stupid. I can do this. And you’ll be up in no time.” He tried to sound positive. He started to gather the magic to him.
“It stung me.”
It was then Angus realized that Jim’s breath was short and labored—not from the wound but from the venom. “I’m sure there’s a treatment.”
Why was no one coming to help?
“I’m sorry for taking the money. You never knew what it was like to have nothing.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The blood flow wouldn’t stop. Jim’s blood wouldn’t clot, and Angus couldn’t stem the flow.
“Let me go to Demonside. My death can balance what I’ve done.”
“What do you mean? I don’t care about the money my father gave you.” He pressed harder on the wound, but blood oozed between his fingers.
“You should never have trusted me. I knew how corrupt the underground had become. They wanted me to bring you in. It’s the college with a new name. They only care about power.” His grip on Angus’s hand tightened. “They’re using you. When the time comes, you’re going to be set up.”
“Like today.” The underground had expected trainees to die, perhaps even wanted that result.
“Worse.” He coughed, and red stained his lips. “Please, open the void for me. I know you’re trying to contact other demons. People are worried you’ll defect.”
“To where?”
“To anywhere.” Jim choked and coughed again.
“The demons can heal you.” Angus looked up. “Someone help him.” He shouted, but no one came closer. The bystanders watched and recorded the scene with their phones as the sirens drew closer. If Angus didn’t get away, he’d be caught. He doubted the underground would break him out of prison.
“What are they going to do with the captured demons?” Angus opened the void.
“What warlocks do.” Jim glanced at the cold, black void, and a warm breeze drifted across with the familiar scents of Demonside. “Except you. You get it.”
“If you cross, there will be punishment,” a familiar voice said near him. Syg had finally shown up.
“Heal him,” Angus demanded.
“He’s nothing. An untrained wizard isn’t worth the waste of magic it would take.” The man stepped closer.
Jim wasn’t nothing. He was Angus’s ex, a traitor who’d sold his life to the highest bidder. But he had plans and ideals once, dreams of fixing everything. Angus squeezed his eyes shut. He was supposed to be able to hate Jim for what he’d done. He shouldn’t have to mourn the loss of his life.
Angus leaned close and kissed Jim’s cheek. “Why did you run when you knew the scarlips would chase?”
“Because I didn’t want them to get you. You can do what I never could. You can fix this,” Jim murmured. Then he released Angus’s hand.
Angus used what was left of his magic to push Jim through the void. It wasn’t elegantly done, and he had no idea if the demons would heal him or not. But Jim would arrive somewhere near Saka’s tribe.
Angus mended the tear in the void and stood.
The man looked at him with disgust. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“He asked me to. Final wishes should be respected.” Lizzie waited in a nearby car, and Syg shoved Angus toward it. “What will happen to the scarlips?”
“We need the power to fight the college,” the man said.
Angus got into the car. He’d have rather gone to Demonside, and there was nowhere else for him to go at the moment. Nowhere was safe. Jim had mentioned defecting… to another country? Would he be safe somewhere else? How would he get to Saka from somewhere else? Until that moment he’d never thought of calling anywhere but Vinland home.
“So use wizard magic, something that doesn’t make the snow deeper. You can’t fight warlocks with the same tactics. You’ll destroy both worlds.” How could the underground be so blind? Maybe Jim was right, and the underground was just another faction of the college.
“You don’t know the first thing about fighting a war.” The man slammed the car door.
It wasn’t true. Angus was already fighting, and had been from the day he was first taken to Demonside. He just hadn’t realized.
The atmosphere in the house was grim. Lizzie hadn’t said a word. She seemed to have turned to stone. If she’d cried or been angry, that would’ve been something, but she pushed Norah and Angus aside and shut herself in her room. Norah sat on the sofa and stared at the blank screen of the TV. Neither of them wanted to turn it on.
Their faces would be there. The trainees would be labeled rogues like him, even though they weren’t really. Their greatest crime was using magic without the college’s approval, but the college only approved of demon-based magic, not natural magic, the kind wizards used. Wizards didn’t need a demon, and Angus was sure that, with training, they could be as strong as warlocks and a threat to the college.
The college wasn’t about magical studies at all. If it were, they’d encourage the use of natural magic, even for warlocks. It was about control of magic and power. Those that disobeyed got trampled. The only thing stopping that foot from crushing them was the underground.
It was clear the underground had become just a rival college. Their original purpose of training wizards had been erased. Maybe it would all work out if the underground took over, but maybe the underground would see those trained wizards as a threat and be no different from the college. There was nothing weak about a wizard.
The pressure of the dampeners wrapped tightly around him, like a too-warm coat that he couldn’t pull off. He wanted to ask Norah if she felt it, but she wouldn’t make eye contact. So they sat in silence as the room got darker. The heater hummed in the background.
“Is he dead?” Norah’s voice was rough.
“I tried to heal him, but… he wanted to go.” Did Jim’s soul balance the betrayals? Had Jim enjoyed his father’s money while he was alive or was it always tainted?
If Angus had never contacted Jim, never asked about the underground, he’d probably have died in Demonside. No one would have opened the void for him to get home.
“They expected us to die today,” she whispered. They all knew about the microphones.
Angus nodded. “It was a setup. We can never walk free.”
They were reliant on the underground for every breath they took, and Angus didn’t like it at all. He should get up and bandage his arm properly since he couldn’t go outside and attempt self-healing—Saka had warned him that it would be harder to heal himself than to heal others, and here he couldn’t see the magic.
Angus tipped his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes. He needed to find a way out of Vinland.
The day before Angus was due to go back to Demonside, Terrance finally visited. Angus had given up asking to see him just as he’d pretty much given up asking for anything. They were under house arrest. He’d resigned himself to taking the rock back to Demonside. He wouldn’t leave it in Vinland to be found.
When Terrance walked in, Angus couldn’t hide his excitement. “I didn’t think they were going to let you come.” He glanced at Terrance’s hands and was relieved to see he had all of his fingers.
“I was at a training camp.” He hugged Angus. “You’ve been all over the news. I didn’t know if you were going to be here.”
“I’m not easy to get rid of.” But he was. It would be all too easy for Angus to vanish. He needed somewhere to go. If he could get to another country via Demonside, it would be easier than trying to flee Vinland. But Saka didn’t know where to find the other demons. He leaned into Terrance.
Neither of them moved, but Angus didn’t know how long they had, and he wanted to give Terrance the telestone he’d made him and explain how to use it.
“Come on.” He took Terrance’s hand and led him toward his bedroom.
Terrance didn’t resist or ask why, but there was a question in the lift of his eyebrow. Angus hoped there weren’t any cameras in the bedroom—not because he was going to strip off, although he wanted to do more than hold hands with Terrance. He and Terrance had more than magic, though it was magic that had brought them together.
Angus shut the door and leaned against it. “I brought you something.”
“It’s not my birthday, and it’s too early for Solstice.”
“When is your birthday?” Angus should know that.
“Spring, so I may never get another birthday.” Terrance’s lips twisted into a bitter smile at his poor joke.
“You’ll get another birthday.” Angus rummaged through his bag until he pulled out the blue sparkly rock.
“A rock? It’s pretty and all that….” His eyebrows drew together.
Angus put it into Terrance’s hand, moved close, and kept his voice soft. “It’s called a telestone. The demons use it to communicate telepathically across vast distances. This is the first one I made, but I don’t know if it will work here.”
Terrance pulled up his sleeve to reveal the dampener. “And even if it does, I won’t be able to use it.”
“You don’t need to use magic to use it.” He still had his hand over the stone. “The magic is in the stone. I spent days making it. I brought mine too. I thought that we could try.”
“And if it does work, then we aren’t relying on the underground to bring us together.” Terrance’s eyes widened, and he grinned. “That’s the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever been given. Thank you.” His kiss was slow and deliberate, as though he didn’t want it to end.
Angus was quite happy for the moment to last. It lightened the weight that had filled his soul, but at the same time he didn’t want to test the stones and find that they didn’t work on the human side of the void. If they didn’t, he’d given Terrance the pretty rock that had given him a bloody nose.
Heat coiled through Angus’s body. It would be easy to forget about the stones. He hadn’t been with Terrance since that one quick fumble, and their relationship was moving slower than the glaciers creeping down from the north. But part of him liked that they weren’t rushing. The rest of his life was rushed as he pushed himself to learn more and learn faster so he could bring down the college. Their relationship was comfortable and safe.
“Did you want to try before they take me away?” Terrance’s words were punctuated by kisses.
Angus wasn’t sure if Terrance was talking about the stones or something else. And from the way Terrance’s body was pressed against his, it was clear that something else was on his mind.
“How long do we have?”
“They never tell me. I don’t think they’ll come barging in here.”
Angus lifted one eyebrow. He didn’t have that much faith in the good manners of the underground. He’d searched his room for a camera or listening device and had come up empty, but there were some in the kitchen and living room, which made sense. The underground wanted the trainees to chat about what had happened in Demonside.
“All right. Maybe they will. They won’t let me stay the night.” Terrance sighed. “I’d like to.”
“At least they let you come.”
Terrance nodded and stepped back. “So how do we do this before I get completely distracted and we end up naked?”
Heat rushed up Angus’s throat and settled on his cheeks. He knew Terrance was only partially joking. Where he’d once doubted that a man like Terrance could be interested in him—sportsmen could take their pick, and Angus had never thought of himself as anyone’s first choice—they clicked in a way that wasn’t just about magic.
It would be nice to get naked, to feel Terrance’s touch, and have sex with no magical consequences. There would be other consequences, though. Of that he was sure, but he pushed aside those thoughts. There’d be time later, when Terrance was free.
“Let’s sit on opposites sides of the room.” He wasn’t going to aim for a big distance, not yet.
“And then what?” Terrance asked as he sat.
“Then I’ll try to reach you.”
“And how will I know?”
“You’ll think of me and feel a pull.”
Terrance smiled at him. “I didn’t need a stone for that.”
Angus’s lips twitched. He’d forgotten what it was like to smile for no good reason. Demons didn’t have lame come-on lines. They were much more up-front. “Close your eyes and relax.”
When Terrance shut his eyes, Angus reached out. He hoped the stone would cut through the dampeners because he wasn’t working magic—it was stored in the stone.
He picked up his much plainer black-and-blue rock, which he had also filled with magic so it would act as a focus. Saka said they would eventually need to be refreshed, but only after years of use. That was true in Demonside, but Angus had no idea how long they’d last in Vinland.
But if he could put magic into a rock, it was possible the college was doing something similar to store their stolen mag
ic.
Would he be able to use his telestone to find out where it was stored?
Angus’s heart kicked over at the idea.
“Nothing’s happening.”
Angus glanced at Terrance. He had to prove the stone worked on the human side of the void first, so he let his consciousness seep into the stone and thought of Terrance. The door was much easier to nudge open this time. He pushed through, but he immediately hit another door—one not of his making.
He’d reached the door to Terrance’s mind. That was the furthest he’d ever gotten in making a connection. “How about now?”
“I’m getting a headache. Is that meant to happen?”
“You need to let me in. I can feel you.”
Terrance chuckled. “If you want to do it that way.”
Angus bit back his own laugh and retreated away from Terrance’s mind, even though he wanted Terrance to throw open the door. “Next is a bloody nose. I was warned that doing too much can rupture blood vessels in your brain.”
Terrance opened his eyes. “You tell me this after we start?”
“I didn’t say it was safe.” He was as bad as any demon for not explaining all the risks.
“Do it again.” Terrance closed his eyes.
“Are you sure?”
Terrance nodded. “I know what it feels like. I just can’t grab it.”
“I see it as a door to be opened. That might help.” Did Saka feel it differently?
“It’s like a hand or a rope in the darkness, I need to grab it and then… and then I guess that’s how I answer your call.” Terrance picked up the rock. “This is just a focus. We should be able to do it without.”
“But then we’d need to draw magic to us.” He glanced at his own stone. “They might drain faster here.”
“I’ll keep it in the places where magic naturally gathers. I can still sense it, even if I can’t use it.”
“Does the dampener bother you?”
“No. We have to wear them when we play rugby anyway, to make sure no one is cheating.”
It was just Angus who felt the pressure on his skin and the itch in his veins that made him long for the freedom of Demonside.
