Magis

by Sam Cheever

  The soldiers stirred slightly, but not a single one dropped their focus or their weapons. It was a testament to how much fear a giant hellhound could cause in even the most powerful people.

  “Come on, boy,” I urged softly.

  He gave a final, spittle-filled snarl and backed toward me. “Good boy,” I said softly enough that only he could hear. “Don’t turn your back on them.”

  I didn’t need Mitch’s magic chair to see a vision of what they would do to the dog if he turned away. I reached out and placed my hand on his tense, muscular thigh. Nicht jolted to a stop, still staring at the soldiers. His eyes glowed a fierce red in the dark.

  I sent a ribbon of energy into him. His thigh twitched slightly under my hand, but to his credit, he gave no other outward sign that he’d noticed.

  Boyle grabbed the dog’s other leg and leaned his head against Nicht’s hip.

  I looked at him, widening my eyes. Boyle’s sweet blue gaze flared with clear blue light. I flinched in surprise.

  He’d never done that before.

  I sent the fae energy I’d culled from the land beneath Della’s home into Nicht in a steadily growing stream. Beneath my hand, the dog seemed to gain flesh and grow taller. Boyle watched me with an intense gaze, his little body wrapped tightly around Nicht as if to protect him.

  Boyle’s eyes flared again, brighter. I realized with a start that Boyle was sucking in some of the energy I was giving to Nicht.

  “No,” I told him, trying to keep my voice soft.

  He favored me with a sweet smile.

  “Ms. Forester, step away from the hound.”

  I heard chains jangling and knew what they intended. They would chain Nicht, magically muzzle him, and then he’d be helpless against whatever they wanted to do to him.

  That so wasn’t going to happen. With a final push, I sent everything I had into the big hound and screamed, “Go!”

  Nicht launched off the ground and flew at them in a whirl of teeth, claws, and flying spit.

  Horrific screaming tore the night as Nicht ripped into the soldiers, tearing them apart and flinging the parts across the yard before they even had time to react.

  I helped where I could, using my own depleted magic to slow the soldiers on the outside of the vee so they couldn’t overwhelm the hound.

  A tiny woman flew toward me, flinging herself to the ground and flipping to land on her feet with energy coiling around her small fist.

  I shifted forward and her eyes went round with surprise as my knife sliced into her throat just above the black suit. She sagged to the ground and I turned to face the next one.

  Nobody came. Everyone was focused on the big hound. I cleaned my blade off on the grass and slipped it back into its sheath.

  I watched just long enough to be sure Nicht would be all right. Then I looked down at Boyle. “We need to go…” I blinked.

  Boyle was gone.

  Panic sheered a path through my insides, drenching me with adrenaline. “Boyle!” I screamed, my gaze scouring the area for him.

  I didn’t see him. And I didn’t see anyone who could have taken him. There were several soldiers moving in to take the place of their shredded peers against Nicht, but none of them were even thinking about Boyle.

  Then I caught a glare of pale blue shining brightly from an enormous tree behind the Body soldiers.

  I looked up…and up….and up…and… Goddess’s galoshes! “No!” I screamed.

  But the baby ’goyle wasn’t paying a lick of attention to me.

  A horrendous cracking noise rose above the snarling and screaming on the ground. And I watched in fascinated horror as my sweet baby boy ripped an enormous limb from the tree and dropped it on the heads of the soldiers still standing at the back of the formation.

  27

  Victoria was under siege.

  Magic flared bright and hot against the night ─ coming from everywhere at once. I crouched beneath a giant evergreen tree sitting on the boundary between Della’s land and mine and watched for a moment, trying to form a plan.

  Answering magic flared from Victoria, the streams every bit as harsh to the senses, but the numbers of them much fewer.

  Whoever was trying to fight off the Body was badly under gunned.

  Panting behind me, Nicht’s glowing gaze was dimmed by pain, and I knew he needed care. We needed to get inside Victoria so I could tend to him. I reached out and placed my palm on his wide chest. “Hang in there, boy. I’ll get you some help as soon as I figure out how to get inside.”

  Nicht swung around on a snarl.

  Sitting on the ground in front of me so I could keep an arm around him, Boyle jumped to his feet, his eyes glowing in the dark.

  I wanted to cry.

  Now what?

  I stood and turned to face…Della?

  Her form was nearly translucent, her tiny feet hovering above the ground. She beckoned to us and turned, floating quickly toward her house.

  I grabbed Boyle’s hand and followed. Something about Della’s form bothered me. She was much too wispy, considering she’d been inside her home for days. She usually only looked that wispy when she’d been away from the supportive magics built into her house for a while.

  Or when she was badly injured. Like she’d been the night Hawk and I had come to help with the soul swallower.

  My pulse picked up and I hurried to catch up with her. “Have you been attacked again?”

  She turned to me, the bricks on the wall of her ranch home showing through her form. She raised a silvery finger to her lips, silencing me.

  We slipped through the open back door and I turned to set the bolts, feeling the protective wards snapping into place.

  Della floated through the kitchen, heading for a back room. She didn’t gain additional solidity from being inside the house.

  Ice climbed my spine. Della wasn’t well. Something had happened to her.

  I tried to talk to her again but she shook her head, pointing through a door at the end of the hall.

  Warning bells rang in my head. Was it a trap?

  I peered at Della, narrowing my gaze. “What do you want?”

  She pointed again, never speaking, never growing more solid. Behind me, Nicht started to growl softly.

  Della went very still, her head coming up, and she motioned frantically toward the door.

  At the front of the house, a horrendous crashing sound spurred me into action. I didn’t know where the fairy spirit was leading us. But any option of escape behind us had just been blown away.

  I jerked Boyle into my arms and started running, Nicht on my heels.

  We plunged through the door at the end of the hall and it closed silently behind us, a ward snapping into place. It was a powerful ward, fae magic, and it bit at my skin when I moved too close. I moved deeper into the room and saw Della, framed in another open doorway. It looked like a closet.

  With a final nod, she turned and disappeared into…nothing.

  Heavy boots slammed down the hall. Beyond the closed and warded door, wood splintered and glass shattered.

  Voices boomed through the empty house and I recognized the arrogant, insistent voice of the Magistrate. “Find them!”

  I hesitated only the length of another heartbeat and then looked at Nicht. “We have no choice.” I placed Boyle on his back and lifted the baby’s chin with a finger. “Hold on tight,” I whispered to him. I needed my hands clear…just in case.

  He nodded, his round blue eyes as big as saucers.

  And then I ran toward the closet. Something crashed into the warded door and someone yelped in pain, then swore. Energy flared, its silver light sifting through the narrow space at the bottom of the door.

  We were out of time.

  As I plunged into the closet, Nicht trotted quickly in behind me.

  I jerked to a stop inside a black vortex. There was constant movement, but I couldn’t see what was moving. I got the sense that the walls were rotating around me, like an enormous drill
with me at its core.

  Nicht shouldered past and kept going as if he knew where he was. The sight of him disappearing into the blackness with Boyle giggling and riding him like a horse jolted me out of my inaction.

  I ran after them. My footfalls were nearly silent, the ground squishy under my feet. I was cognizant of a soft swish of fabric rubbing against fabric as I ran. The sound seemed to revolve around me like the walls, but I realized after a moment that I was hearing the movement of my own clothing.

  The portal, or whatever it was, displaced sound in a strange way.

  I became aware of a soft light ahead and sped up, thinking it was the end. But it wasn’t the end. I plunged out of the blackness into an enormous cavern. The walls of the cave were steep, jagged with rock formations, and an odd charcoal gray color.

  Scanning the huge space, I spotted Nicht standing in the center, his head down.

  A pale hand rested on his midnight fur.

  Della!

  I cut the distance between us in seconds, dropping to my knees to clasp her cold hand. She looked fully corporeal, her features pale but solid and smooth. There was no color in her cheeks. Her skin was a solid, alabaster white.

  If her eyes hadn’t been open and glossy with life, I would have thought she was dead.

  She lay on a pallet covered in pale moss, the center of an enormous wheel carved into the rock. Each spoke of the wheel was glowing, the energy a pale, silvery-white like Della’s spirit form.

  “Della, what’s going on?”

  She smiled. “I never wanted you to see. I didn’t want anybody to know. I’m…vulnerable here.” Her voice was broken, rusty, as if she hadn’t used it in a while.

  I frowned. “Is this your true form?”

  “Yes. I can’t explain now. There is no time.”

  Della’s smooth brow puckered but she went on. “There is no time. You must go to Victoria and close the portal. We cannot let the Body gain access. They are nearly inside, Glynn. They are beating back the home’s defenses and its defenders.”

  She stopped to take a deep breath.

  “No,” I said, squeezing her cold hand. “I want to help you.”

  She shook her head. “There is no help. But don’t fear for me. The Body won’t find me. My home is abandoned. And once they are gone, I’ll return and keep watch on Render.”

  “But why?” I asked, not even sure exactly what I was asking.

  To my surprise, she laughed. “The answer to that would take hours. Suffice it to say that I know why I am here, and I have made my peace with it. Now go! Protect that adorable baby and your friends who are standing against the Body with little hope of winning.”

  She tugged her hand from mine and I stood. I looked around. “But I don’t know how…”

  “Stay safe, Glynn. Be strong.” Della lifted an arm and threw magic over Nicht, Boyle, and me. It drifted downward in silver flakes that felt like snow against my skin. And when the snow fell away, we were standing in Victoria’s living room.

  To my surprise, Hawk and Art were at the windows, they’d barricaded them with bits of broken furniture and one of Victoria’s heavy doors, and were firing some kind of energy weapon through small holes they’d left in the blockade. Hawk’s head whipped around when we appeared and alarm turned quickly to relief. “Thank the goddess. We thought something had happened to you.”

  Art’s gaze swung to mine and held. I saw no anger there for what I’d done to him. I gave him a tentative smile and he returned it.

  Sissy was leaning over the couch, her softly glowing hands gliding above someone who wasn’t moving. I hurried over and looked down, finding the bloody and torn form of her next-door neighbor, Micha Blunt, sprawled across the couch.

  The living room floor held several other blanketed figures in various states of injury. And, in one case, death.

  My heart fell at the sight. I recognized a few more of our neighbors, but there were at least three I didn’t know. I assumed they were Hawk’s people.

  Yanking my attention back to the man on the couch, I pulled on Victoria’s magic and created healing magic, adding the energy to Sissy’s as she tried to repair torn flesh and broken bones. She pointed to his legs. “See what you can do with those.”

  I laid my palms over Micah’s ankles, sliding them slowly up the legs as bones cracked and shifted beneath his skin, returning to the proper spots and sealing the breaks.

  Micah’s handsome face was ashen against the deep red of his hair, and his full lips were pressed into a taut line, no doubt from pain.

  “Why is my brother here?” I asked my friend.

  She didn’t look at me, her attention focused on her work. “If I’d left him at home they would have killed him,” she told me, her voice throbbing with anger. “I gave him a tattoo that is temporarily blocking his energy. I figured that would lock whoever was influencing him out for a while.”

  I frowned at the idea of a magical lockdown but nodded. “Thanks, Sis.”

  “Don’t thank me. If we survive this, we’ll have to deal with it more permanently.” She turned to me, her gray gaze filled with fear. “I have no idea how to do that, Glynn.”

  I frowned. She was telling me I might lose my brother. The thought dug deep, slicing into my heart like an energy-infused blade.

  I shook it off. One problem at a time. I had confidence in my friend. She’d find a way to help Art. I clung to that thought because I had to.

  We worked in silence for a few minutes, as the world outside crashed and flared and generally imploded.

  “What did this to him?” I asked Sissy, jerking my chin toward Micah.

  She shook her head. “The Body has all sorts of horrible things out there,” she said, rage throbbing in her voice. “They’ve been going house to house. They got Edna…” Her voice broke on the name, and tears glimmered in her eyes. “They…killed her because she had no magic,” Sissy breathed out. Her chest heaved with emotion, and I leaned against her for a moment in shared mourning. Edna Backus had been a non-magic resident of Render. She’d been married to a mage who’d abandoned her a decade earlier to go to Magical Indy. The last I’d heard, Festu Backus was calling himself Fox and had somehow managed to scrape decades off his age. The man was a selfish cad. And if I found out that he was behind Edna’s death…

  My pulse pounded in my temples and I suddenly found it hard to breathe.

  Hawk appeared behind me. “Do you know how to close the portal?”

  I looked at Sissy and she nodded, sniffling. “I’ve got this. Go. Do what you need to do.”

  I grabbed Hawk’s arm and pulled him away. “I have it all set up. But I need to go through the portal to close it, and once I close it, I’ll be…” I forced myself to say the words. “I won’t be able to come back.”

  Hawk’s gaze held mine. “You can’t do that, Glynn.”

  “I have to,” I told him. “We have no choice.” I thought of Della and fought a wave of renewed sadness.

  “Then I’m going with you,” he said.

  I started to shake my head but he grabbed my arms and yanked me close, his gaze intense. “You’re not going to Outvald alone, Glynn.”

  Something sparked between us. Something bright and needy and warm. But I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to examine it. I pushed him away. “I don’t have time to argue with you. Can you get the others away?”

  Beyond Victoria, the night suddenly ignited with golden flares of energy. I ran to the nearest barricade peephole and peered out in time to see bodies across the street flying into the air, surrounded by an aura of pure golden energy.

  More blasts of pure power flared into the night, bringing screams of pain and flinging more dark-clad bodies into the air.

  Hawk ran to the door and placed a palm over the thick, wooden surface. The door rumbled in its frame, and the knob jittered as another flare of energy blasted the night to pieces.

  He grasped the knob, opened the door about ten inches, and reached through to grab somethi
ng on the other side.

  He yanked a woman through the narrow crack, his hands grasping the back of her black leather jacket. She had an enormous black energy gun clutched in each hand, and she kept firing until the door closed in her face.

  Alina.

  Hawk slammed the door closed. Victoria sealed the ward back into place. He turned to Alina. “Did you get them out?”

  She nodded, stumbling to a chair and collapsing.

  I hurried over to her, yelling at Boyle. “Get her some water!” The little gargoyle took off, running full speed into the kitchen.

  Alina was covered in blood, but I didn’t think much of it was hers. She mostly looked exhausted, and she had some superficial cuts on her face and throat. I tugged more healing energy from Victoria, feeling her stores thinning, and ran my hands over Alina’s cuts. They closed quickly.

  Boyle handed the Hunter a large glass of water and she took it, gently tousling his orange hair. “Thank you, young man.”

  Boyle beamed up at her with stars in his eyes. He looked like he was meeting his favorite hero for the first time.

  All right, I thought. That’s enough of that. I shoved jealousy away, and tears burned in my eyes. If I went through with my plan, I would have to leave Boyle behind. I couldn’t take him to Outvald. It was too dangerous without Victoria serving as a safe space.

  The realization cleaved my chest in two, burrowing into my heart with ruthless savagery.

  I was going to lose my sweet baby boy. I reached out and yanked him to me, enclosing him in a fierce hug that made him squirm. “Glynnie, let go!”

  I held on another minute and then kissed his forehead. “Stay close to Sissy, okay?”

  He nodded.

  Sissy and I locked gazes, hers darkening with sudden understanding. She stood up and walked over to us. “Hey, Boyle, can you get Mr. Blunt some water too?”

  When the baby bounced away to do as she asked, Sissy stared at me, crossing her arms over her chest. “You can’t, Glynn.”

  I sniffed, scrubbing the heel of my hand over my cheeks. “I have to, Sis. Promise me you’ll keep him safe?”