Wayward Magic

by Melinda Kucsera et al.

  Will The Watch save the city? And will Felix find his sister before it’s too late?

  Chapter One

  Ragged Edge huffed and puffed as he tried to keep up with his younger pack mates. Warden, his Alpha, was at the head of the charge towards the edge of St. Catherine’s. He would follow her wherever she led. His tall staff thumped on the rough ground as he ran. In his youth, he had been formidable and for a moment he lamented the loss of that energy and exuberance, but he had no time now to indulge in reminiscence.

  His pack mate had been shot. They had all heard the gunshot and felt the impact through the bond that united them as a single unit. Black Rat was healing, but in pain and the rest of them ran back to where they had left him guarding an intruder.

  The decaying city around them was full of threats. Ragged Edge heard the scurrying of clawed footfalls behind the glassless windows of derelict buildings. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and felt as though they were being watched. His pack, The Watch, rarely ventured into this part of Hepethia. Their territory lay to the south of St. Catherine’s and they kept a firm grip on it so it didn’t end up like this place.

  When St. Catherine’s disappeared from the human realm, he had half expected its counterpart in Hepethia to have vanished too. But here it was, left much as it was before. It made the events of the day even more curious. But the biggest mystery of all was how a human had come to step into the realm of shapeshifters. Such a thing wasn’t unheard of, but he had never known it to happen in his lifetime on or so close to his own territory. Ragged Edge was older than he looked and far older than he was ever likely to admit. His grey hair was thinner now than it used to be and hung in a knotted straggle over his shoulders. He had lost some of his considerable muscle as he had aged and now had a bigger belly than he felt entirely happy with. He didn’t really need the staff to walk, but he rather enjoyed giving the impression that he did.

  He had been a member of The Watch his entire life. He had seen five Alphas take their place at the head of the pack and had never fought for the position himself. He much preferred the back seat. He had been a child by modern standards when he changed for the first time, but even before that, he knew what he was and what he was likely to become. It seemed an age ago now that he had lacked the ability to change his form. He barely remembered it at all. The whole world had changed since then. There had been two World Wars, huge advances in technology and even a shapeshifter Civil War. He had seen it all and he had survived.

  His chest ached as he ran, and his breathing became a rasp. It was a huge relief when the pack slowed to a halt at the prone body of their pack mate, Black Rat. Ragged Edge knelt down beside him and checked him over.

  “What happened?” he asked, wheezing slightly.

  “He shot me. He had a rifle.” Black Rat sat up and patted his side. He lifted his black shirt and Ragged Edge saw a red scar, fresh and bruised.

  “That’s going to be sore for a day or two.”

  “Tell me about it. It’s my first gunshot! Fancy a gunman showing up here of all places. How the hell did he get here?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.” Warden was stood over them both, her hands on her hips and a deep scowl on her brow. Her dark hair was starting to fall loose from its bun. Her shirt had come untucked. She was positively disheveled compared to her normal appearance. A hand was extended to Black Rat to help him to his feet and Ragged Edge heaved himself up on his staff. His breathing was almost back to normal, but he still ached. This was a young shifter’s game.

  “He must have followed us through the hole in the veil,” Mjolnir said. He was a tall, broad man with a thick, braided beard and long hair. He was one of Ragged Edge’s closest friends, they were like brothers. Even more so than the rest of The Watch. Ragged Edge nodded in agreement.

  “But how did he get close enough to the hole to be able to pass through it? All of the other humans we observed were turned around by whatever magic caused this chaos.” Black Rat was frowning and rubbing his injured side as he spoke. Realisation dawned on Ragged Edge and he turned his head towards the black, star-speckled sky and let out a low groan.

  “What is it?” Warden asked.

  “Chaos. I’ll bet my life that The Spiral Hand are behind this.” His gravelly voice broke into a strained laugh, although there was nothing funny about the situation.

  “There are no Spiral Hand in Caerton,” Warden snapped. She turned and marched away towards the hole that they had entered Hepethia through.

  The rest of the pack fell into line behind her. Ragged Edge brought up the rear, tapping his staff on the ground with a little thunk on every alternate stride. Warden was the most level-headed shifter he knew. Their kind tended to be hot-headed and impulsive. She never was. But she was in denial about this and he wondered if there would be a price for it somewhere down the line.

  Felix slammed the door to his flat and locked it. He leaned heavily against it and dropped the bag with his borrowed guns onto the floor. He had never shot a civilian before. But damn, that thing hadn’t even been human. It was a wolf when he pulled the trigger and a man by the time he fled the scene.

  “Shapeshifter,” the silky voice in his head told him.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped back.

  “How else would you describe it. Werewolf, perhaps?”

  “Shut up.” Felix pushed away from the door and stormed to the kitchen. He reached for a bottle of whiskey, but hesitated. No. He had come this far without taking a drink. Now wasn’t the time to crumble. He had to keep a clear head. He still hadn’t found his sister, Julie. Was he even any closer? He had discovered the city was playing host to those creatures and that there was some sort of rip in the fabric of reality, one that he had managed to cross through into some other world.

  He had no idea what it all meant or where his sister had ended up. Crucially, he was damned if he saw any way to get her back.

  “The drink might help, after all.”

  Felix looked longingly at the bottle on the kitchen counter. He had been through some trials in his time, especially in Afghanistan, but this was a whole new level of insane. This voice that had started talking to him made him uneasy, to say the least and he resisted its silky lure. He put the bottle into a cupboard and stalked back to the living area of his small flat. He scooped up the bag of guns and took it into his bedroom. He hoisted up the mattress and tucked the bag into the void under his bed, hidden from sight. He dropped down onto the bed and it groaned under his sudden weight.

  It was late. Later than it should be. Time had passed in a peculiar fashion in that other place, he was sure of it. Felix tugged his phone out of the tight pocket of his trousers and turned it over to see the illuminated display. He had a missed call from Emma. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. Pretty Emma with the red hair and freckles. A frown crept over his brow and he chewed the inside of his cheek while he tried to decide whether to call her back or not. It was nearly 1 am. She would surely be asleep by now. The call had been attempted while he was… away. Clearly there was no phone signal there.

  He sat bolt upright and thought of Julie again. The strange call he had got just after coming back through the hole sprang back to mind. He had been near the hole at the time. Maybe a small signal from that place had been able to get through.

  “You might be onto something there,” that small, sly voice purred.

  Where was Peter through all of this? His phone had rung earlier, unlike Julie’s. But he hadn’t answered or called Felix back. Felix called Peter again now. He didn’t care what time it was. If he was in this world then he damn well ought to be awake and as worried as Felix was. It rang to voicemail. Felix hung up. He called Emma instead and shoved aside that niggle of guilt about the prospect of waking her. It rang a few times before she answered.

  “Felix? What time is it?”

  “I’ve woken you. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I was worried about you. I wasn’t proper
ly asleep yet.”

  “I’m fine. I remembered where Julie lives. Its St. Catherine’s.”

  “Where?”

  “St. Catherine’s, north of Old Town, south of the docks where they build the really big ships.”

  “I don’t know it, sorry.”

  Felix wasn’t surprised. This thing, whatever it was, seemed to be evolving.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “Sure. I have to work in the afternoon. Is the morning okay?”

  “Yeah. There’s this café right in the city centre, small place opposite a shopping centre.”

  “Near the plaza?”

  “That’s the one. Meet you there for coffee at about ten?”

  “Fine. I hope you get some sleep.”

  “You too.” Felix hung up and stared at the display, a dumb smile lingering on his lips. That fluttering was back in his stomach. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Amidst all this insanity he was touching emotions he had long forgotten. He dropped his phone and lay back on the bed his thoughts returning to his missing sister and the weird stuff he had seen.

  Sleep took hold of him against his will. He was utterly exhausted and couldn’t keep his eyes open.

  Ragged Edge downed the last of his black coffee and wiped his lips with the back of his hand to catch the droplets that had caught in his bristles. It had been a long night of work repairing the hole in the veil and he was feeling the effects of no sleep. Every muscle ached and his mind felt foggy.

  “You need to take it easy, old man.” Mjolnir nudged Ragged Edge in the shoulder as he passed by. He let out a throaty chuckle. Ragged Edge grunted in reply.

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  “Warden wants us to find that human.”

  “I thought she might. Two words spring to mind. Needle and haystack.”

  “We’ll need help.” Mjolnir poured a mug of coffee from the pot and began sipping it, his bright eyes watching Ragged Edge. They were standing in the small kitchen of Ragged Edge’s house. It was a small terraced building in the heart of Old Town. It was all narrow passages, low ceilings and exposed beams. It wasn’t much but he had owned it for forty years and it was home. He nodded and stepped out of the kitchen into the narrow hallway. Mjolnir followed him. Ragged Edge moved towards the front door and just before he reached it, he stepped across the veil between the human world and Hepethia. It was a step he had taken hundreds of thousands of times in his life. Mjolnir was a second behind him.

  In Hepethia, his house was recreated almost exactly as it appeared in the human world and the two of them kept walking down the hall towards the door as if nothing had happened. Ragged Edge flung the door open and stepped into the dazzling sunlight of the garden. There were high walls around the tidy little outdoor space and no gate. There was a neatly paved rectangle around the edge of the garden surrounding an empty bed of freshly turned soil. Ragged Edge moved into the middle of the garden and used his staff to draw a circle in the soil. Mjolnir stood by the door, his arms crossed over his chest, watching with a stern expression on his face.

  Ragged Edge moved into the centre of the circle and thrust his staff into the soft earth deep enough for it to stand up on its own. He raised his palms to the sky, which was filled with dark, rolling clouds. All around the edge of the garden little movements rippled out from the edge of the circle. Wisps of air given form, little motes of anxiety and apprehension moved like eddies in the current of air moving up the high walls and away from the ritualist. Ragged Edge focused his thoughts on clearing the area of malevolent forces, pushing them away with his thoughts. The garden was cleared of every hint of spiritual activity and a faint blue light rose up from the circle in the earth to form a dome over Ragged Edge. He lowered his hands and shook away the tingle that had crept into his fingers.

  He cleared his throat and knelt, placing his palms against the cool soil. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers slightly under the loose topsoil. He deepened his breathing and directed his attention to the fae that served him - those of earth and growth. Tiny sprouts of green appeared at his fingertips, breaking up through the ground in little, jerky movements, like a time lapse film of growing plants. They wound their way around his fingers and up his hands, twisting around his wrists.

  “Hello, my old friends. I need your help in finding a human who somehow entered Hepethia last night. Do you know of the incident?”

  “We do,” the shoots whispered back. Their gentle voices a light chorus on the breeze. “All beings here felt it. It was an unprecedented breach.”

  “Are you able to trace him?”

  “No, we can’t sense him now. He is back in the human world, where he belongs.”

  “But can you use your eyes in the human world to locate him?”

  “He is a city dweller, he is beyond our reach. You would do better to talk to our construct kin.”

  “Come on now, we both know how this will play out. We’ve danced this dance a thousand times. You can reach out through the fae and construct network to find out what I need to know. I’ll expect an update in one hour.”

  There was a flutter as the tiny, green leaves twitched all over his hands. Then, as quickly as they had sprouted, the shoots receded, unwinding from his hands and disappearing back into the earth. Ragged Edge stood up, his knees clicking as he did so. He brushed the dirt off his baggy jeans then raised his hands over his head and waved away the dome. It disintegrated in a shower of blue sparks. Mjolnir was leaning in the doorway and he pushed himself away from the wall and looked at Ragged Edge expectantly.

  “Well?”

  “We’ll see what they find. I have a funny feeling about this, though.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Ragged Edge grabbed his staff and yanked it up out of the ground. He kicked the soil over the track he had made, hiding the circle.

  “Over a century with The Watch and I’ve never known anything like this happen,” Ragged Edge said, shaking his head. He stomped onto the paving and kicked the dirt off his boots. “Come on. Let’s see what we can find out over there.” He led Mjolnir back across the veil into the human world.

  Felix cradled his hot coffee between his trembling palms. The café was bustling around him, alive with normality. Cups clinked, the coffee machine bubbled behind the counter, people chatted noisily, blissfully ignorant of the bizarre events of the previous day. Felix could feel the passenger in his brain now, distinct from him but also a part of him. He was like a second head on his shoulder, muttering, chuckling and nodding with approval. It made Felix feel sick and dizzy. He gulped his coffee, hoping that the caffeine would deaden the strange sensation.

  Part of him wanted the thing out of his head, to be left alone to go back to normal life. But he also knew he would never find Julie without help and this thing seemed to want to help him. It had helped him to get away from the weird creatures and get back to his own world.

  The bell over the door jingled and Felix glanced up to see if it was Emma. It wasn’t her. He looked back into his steaming cup, frustration mounting. He had only just met her; he was being ridiculous. She had been kind to him. It had been a long time since anyone but Julie had been kind. He was a sucker. The bell rang again and this time when Felix looked up it was Emma. She smiled right at him, beaming. He felt as though a ray of sunlight had burst from behind a heavy cloud to shine on his face. He stood up and returned her smile as best he could. She made her way between the packed tables to reach him and he drew her into his arms for a firm hug. He needed physical contact, he craved it in a way he had rarely known before.

  “Hey there,” she said, patting him on the back. He released her and they sat down opposite each other. “Sorry I’m late. The traffic was mental.”

  “It’s okay. How are you?”

  “Fine. How are you doing?” She looked into his eyes intently, her expression was full of empathy. “Any word from your sister?”

  “I spoke to her on the phone last night.”


  “You did? That’s great news.”

  “Maybe. She was afraid, she wanted my help. But I have no idea how to help her. I can’t find her, I can’t get to her at all. I tried.”

  “Right. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. What you asked made me uncomfortable.”

  “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “Did you get into trouble?”

  “No, not really. I don’t know that there’s anyone to fight over this really.”

  “That’s good, Felix,” the voice inside his head purred.

  “No, probably not. It is odd, though. Where did you say she lives?”

  “St. Catherine’s.”

  “I don’t know it at all.”

  “Have you always lived in Caerton?”

  “Born and raised here, in Burnside. My dad’s an accountant and his business is there. I left when I enlisted and came straight back when I got back from my last deployment.”

  “Don’t you think it’s funny that you haven’t heard of St. Catherine’s?”

  “Maybe.” Emma shrugged. A waitress appeared beside the table and Emma ordered herself a coffee. Felix ordered a refill.

  “Excuse me,” Felix said to the waitress. “Do you know where the number six bus goes from here?” He indicated the street outside where there was a row of bus stops. The waitress frowned and looked out through the large window at the front of the little café.

  “It’s not one I catch often. I used to take it to see my boyfriend.” She frowned even more deeply.

  “Is it St. Catherine’s?” Felix asked.

  “Where?” The waitress looked down at him quizzically.

  “Never mind.” She turned and went back behind the counter to make their coffee. “See? You aren’t the only one. It’s not that you haven’t heard of it. You’ve forgotten it even exists. So has she.”