The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  I pulled a charm out of my pocket and flipped it to Taylor. It was the one that somewhat resembled Agony, the half-man, half-demon sculpture my father had made that stood in the center of the park. “The night you came? This is what I used on Jakes.”

  Taylor’s eyes widened, and she held the charm more carefully.

  “It’s not going to explode on you,” Devan said. “You’ve got to trigger it, and then you have to suffuse the ink with power.”

  Taylor turned the charm over in her hand as she looked at it. Her brow knitted together as she held it up to the light. “Do you have to do the same with this one?” she asked, nodding to the obelisk.

  “This one is a little different,” Devan admitted. She looked up at me sheepishly, then turned to Taylor. “After Ollie tried to die the other night, I wondered if there was anything I could make that might help him if we got into that situation again. The column just sort of fit.”

  I lifted the obelisk and turned it in my hands. Light caught each of the sides differently, and it took me a moment to realize she’d infused ink into the metal itself, almost as if she dyed it, sort of how Taylor’s hair was permanently dyed. Doing so left the patterns already charged, and the obelisk itself could store any power I wanted to infuse into it. All I would need to do to use it would be release the energy.

  Dangerous. But in the right situation, also quite useful.

  “It took you this long to come up with something I could use?” I said to Devan, then turned to Taylor and grabbed the charm from her, slipping it back into my pocket. She was an artist. Things like the charms I used to augment my power were beneath her.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been such a disappointment to you in the years we’ve known each other,” Devan said. “Maybe you don’t want the others I’ve made.”

  I started into the garage without waiting for Devan and called over my shoulder. “Of course I want the others you made. I just wish you would’ve been a little quicker about making them.”

  Crossing the Threshold changed certain things about Devan’s magic. One was her ability with metals and patterns. Before coming here, Devan had real talent with patterns, learning alongside me as I was instructed by the F’lian, the master of patterns found on her side of the Threshold. But she’d never had such talent with charms as she developed since we crossed over.

  “You’re an ass sometimes, you know that, Ollie?” Devan said.

  She grabbed my arm when I reached the bench and pushed me back. This time, she didn’t worry about my ribs and shoved with a little more force than needed. I grabbed my side, exaggerating my pain for her benefit, but didn’t get any sympathy from her.

  Then she caught me and pulled me close, leaning toward me. “I felt something earlier,” she said softly.

  I glanced back at Taylor, and Devan shook her head. “Not a painter?” I asked.

  Devan’s brow creased as it did when she worried. It was fairly common around me. “Painter, I think, but something else. Be careful, Ollie. We’ve already learned that Conlin isn’t the place you thought it was when we first returned.”

  Devan released me and turned back to her bench.

  I glanced at her, wondering what she might have felt earlier. One of her abilities that hadn’t changed was the way she could detect other magical power. She knew when I worked magic, and she knew when painters worked. Shifters were different, obscuring their magic from her. Some painters were powerful enough that they could hide themselves, too. But what had she sensed?

  Whatever it was had her worried. She might have made the obelisk charm to keep me safe, but the timing of it was because of whatever she’d detected. Damn, and here I wanted to relax and simply drive Taylor back to Arcanus.

  “What are all these for?” Taylor pointed to a row of charms, each made in a similar pyramid shape.

  I scooped up a handful of the charms and shoved them in my pocket.

  “They’re for Ollie,” Devan said, with a stern look at Taylor. “If he’s going to be around you for a little while longer, then he might need a little extra protection.”

  Now that I knew what to listen for, I heard the undercurrent of her concern, as well. “Yeah, and like I said, I’m going to get you back to Arcanus. Can’t have you trying anything stupid.”

  “Just you?” Devan asked.

  “Do you really want to come with me?” I asked.

  I didn’t need the amulet hanging beneath my shirt to tell me that Devan was using her magic. Her usually soft and subtle power now took on a certain horrible beauty.

  “Ollie.” She spoke my name with authority, drawing through the word like I would infuse a pattern I’d painted. “You will not leave me behind with this.”

  Now I knew that she was worried. “I had no intent to leave you behind. Why else did we come to Conlin?”

  “Because you’d be dead if we hadn’t.”

  “Not dead. Just bound to service.”

  Devan punched me lightly on the shoulder, her power fading. “How is it different?”

  “I have the chance to complete my service and eventually be free of him.”

  “Really? You think you’ll live a hundred years?”

  Taylor looked from Devan to me. “Her father would require a hundred years of service from you if you returned? Who is he?”

  “Not who, but what,” I answered. Devan hadn’t seemed too concerned about keeping it from Taylor, not that Taylor could really do anything to harm Devan’s father. “He’s the Trelking. And he’s not too pleased with me for leaving. Or her for that matter.” I turned to glare at Devan. “And it’s not a hundred years.”

  Devan only shook her head. “You’re an idiot, Ollie, you know that?”

  She stalked away, moving to the far corner of the garage, and began to tap at something with a small hammer. I couldn’t see what she was doing from where I stood; her petite frame completely blocked my view. She let me stare at her back, ignoring us as if we weren’t there.

  I touched Taylor’s arm and nodded for us to leave Devan alone in the garage.

  Once outside, Taylor spun on me. “So how long would you have to serve?”

  I waved my hand and tried to change the subject. “When we go, you’ll have to be ready. You’ll need inks and whatever else you want to take back.”

  “You didn’t answer,” Taylor said. “She said you’d have to serve a hundred years. How long is it?”

  “Well, he promised me it would only be nine and ninety.”

  Taylor’s mouth fell open, and she shook her head. “I’m beginning to think Devan is right.”

  “About what?”

  “That you can be an idiot sometimes.”

  She turned and headed back into the house, leaving me standing alone, holding a pocketful of pyramid charms and the heavy obelisk in my hand. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to need them all soon.

  2

  The old Ford rumbled with a soft growl, already so different from the last time I’d driven it. Devan had become my own personal mechanic. I ran my fingers over the steering wheel, letting the balls of my thumbs roll over the patterns Devan had carved on it. There were other patterns in the truck, as well, those made with broader strokes, each serving a different purpose, but together were meant to make the truck into something like a rolling fortress. Most of them didn’t even need me to power them.

  Just one short week ago, Devan and I had been sitting together in the truck, readying to return to Arcanus, where I thought Taylor had gone after stealing my father’s book. But we found her right here in Conlin, the night I realized the hunters—nightmares I’d been taught to fear in the night—were both more real and more terrifying than anything I’d read or heard about as a boy. I’d nearly died that night, but Devan had saved me. Like she so often did, she’d given me another chance. Then again, we had returned to Conlin for both of us, and I wasn’t about to let her return to the other side of the Threshold.

  I passed a gas station as I returned from the hardw
are store. Latex paint worked well as a base for powdered ink. Devan might not know what she had sensed, but I wasn’t going to remain unprepared. Now, I had three cans in the back of the truck: red for the potential violence, brown because it might help if I was sucked back into the Trelking’s domain, and black because shit might go down. I had plenty of green ink remaining at the house. I had no intention of being chained to the Trelking for nine and ninety years. Let him take me when I was nearly dead, then it wouldn’t matter.

  A white cruiser pulled out behind me and flashed its lights. As I pulled to the side of the road, stopping in front of an old movie rental place long since shut down, I turned around and saw a large, hulking man sitting in the front seat.

  I hopped out of the truck and walked back to the cruiser. The window was down, and the radio crackled until he turned it down. “Officer Jakes.”

  Jakes was a massive specimen of a man, but then he was more than just a man. He was a shifter, a creature of power and strength, able to draw more magical energy than nearly anything I’d ever seen. Built like a bodybuilder, he had a square jaw and black hair. A small scar worked across his neck, marring his rich brown skin. The scar hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.

  Jakes pulled off his aviator sunglasses and set them on the seat next to him. “Morris. I hear you’re feeling a little better.”

  I arched a brow at him. “Really? From who?”

  “Well, she said you weren’t sleeping quite as much. That amounts to much the same when you’re recovering.”

  I suppressed a laugh. Devan hadn’t bothered sharing with me that she’d been speaking to Jakes, but then, I shouldn’t have been surprised. They were both magical creatures in a way I would never understand. And I’d seen the way she looked at him. Given the reason she left home, Devan understandably didn’t like to speak about things like that. She had no trouble harassing me, though.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked.

  He twisted his arms, muscles flexing as he did, and shook his head. “We heal quickly. I’m fine.”

  That’s not what I meant, but I’d let him grieve in his own way. His father had died during the hunter attack, a man I’d known when I was a child and still living in Conlin, a man who had always been kind to me, especially in the time after I left Arcanus and before I knew Devan. All that time, and I hadn’t known that he and his son were both shifters.

  “I was going to stop by your house later,” he went on. “When I saw your truck, I figured what I had to say shouldn’t wait.”

  “What is it?”

  He opened his door and stepped out of his cruiser. Jakes had nearly seven inches on me, and probably a good fifty pounds of muscle. And that was in human form. When he shifted into his other form, he was enormous, something larger than a lion that looked more like a wolf.

  “We watch the gates around this area,” he said.

  I didn’t need for him to explain which “we” he meant. The shifters. Creatures of massive magical power. It had only been a week since I first learned there was a shifter in Conlin. I thought it was trying to attack me. Only later did I realize it was Jakes trying to stop Taylor from opening the gateway my father had buried.

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “The one in the park is the most dangerous. It’s a gateway that leads to many different places. There’s a reason your father buried it.”

  “You said gates. Where are the others?”

  “You know of one.”

  I did, but hoped he might tell me of others. “I know of one,” I agreed. It stretched across the Threshold into the Trelking’s realm. The Threshold didn’t really lead to a different place, more like layers of reality. “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

  Jakes fixed me with a hard gaze. I couldn’t see what was going on behind his deep brown eyes, the same way Devan couldn’t detect when he used his magical abilities. It was the only time I’d seen her fail with that.

  “Opening those gateways is dangerous. That’s the reason the Elder asked us to watch. Now that I’m the Alpha…” He trailed off, as if uncertain for the first time.

  “I have no intention of crossing the Threshold,” I said. Not only would it risk me, but more importantly, it would put Devan at risk.

  “Something tried to cross to this side,” Jakes said. “And…” He hesitated, as if unwilling to say anything more.

  My heart fluttered slightly. Was that what Devan had picked up on? The Trelking wouldn’t risk the crossing, would he? It would change his magic, potentially weaken him. I’d never known the Trelking to do anything that would weaken him. If the gateway was being opened, it wasn’t by him.

  “We have it secured. None will open it without our knowing.”

  “Like you did the other gate?” I shouldn’t have gone there. His father had died defending the gate.

  “The other gate was under the protection of the Elder. He had placed more protections around it than we could manage.”

  After seeing the kind of power Jakes could manage, that was saying a lot.

  “Do you know what’s trying to get through?” I asked.

  I hadn’t given much thought to hunters trying to come through the gate, but it was possible, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the reason Jakes and his kind guarded them in the first place? If the hunters could come through one gate, why not another?

  Devan had never heard of the hunters when I met her. I’d taken that to mean the hunters couldn’t feed on her kind—their magic was different, after all—but maybe the real reason was because hunters hadn’t reached the Trelking’s domain. And the crossings around Conlin led straight to the heart of the Trelking’s realm.

  “It is not them,” Jakes said. “They have a certain power, a reflection of what exists in this world. That was how we knew the other gate had nearly opened before. Your friend was careless when she opened it.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “But she’s not the only one who was careless. There’s a door there—an actual door, nothing like what I crossed here—that led to other doors. I doubt the masters can comprehend what would happen if they crossed the Threshold.”

  “One of them did, if she tells the truth.”

  “Yeah. There’s that.”

  “You think he still lives?”

  “Probably not, but unlike most in Arcanus, he studied patterns that might have kept him alive.” Arcane patterns, those they called unnatural in Arcanus. Hard studied them, but at a level that would be considered childish across the Threshold. Patterns that had been difficult for Hard were some of the first, most elementary patterns the F’lian taught. “Had he crossed… and stayed alive, I think I would have heard.”

  Jakes considered a moment. “You will take her back?”

  I assumed he meant Devan. “Devan can’t return. She’ll come with me when we return Taylor to Arcanus.” Jakes waited for me to explain, but I wouldn’t. Not to Jakes and not about Devan. That story wasn’t mine to share. “Taylor wants to cross over. She thinks she can find him.”

  “Is that wise?” Jakes asked.

  I snorted. “Not where the Trelking is involved. She’ll likely end up owing some sort of service. I tried to tell her that I didn’t hear anything about another painter while we were on the other side, but she seems convinced that he still lives.”

  Jakes studied me a moment. “You would like help.”

  “Can you carry us to Arcanus?” I asked, laughing at the image of me riding atop a shifter in wolf form. “Because I intend to take her back there—drag her, if necessary. Anywhere but here.”

  “And if she continues her search there?”

  I’d thought of that, but there was nothing I could do that would prevent Taylor from searching. Whether she did it here or in Arcanus or any other place where there might be a crossing. It wasn’t that Conlin was the only place to cross the Threshold, just one where it was easier.

  “When will you leave?”

  “Soon. I’m afraid that if I don’t, she’s goin
g to try to resume her search.”

  His eyes twitched as we discussed Taylor. How much did the shifters blame her for what happened? As far as I could tell, she hadn’t known the hunters would try to push through the gate, but had she known, would she have done anything differently? I had to think she would, but what did I really know about Taylor? She was an artist, but she was also determined and stubborn and surprisingly skilled in ways that most in Arcanus were not. Probably why I was so attracted to her, but reason enough to be careful.

  “Travel safely, Morris. And find me when you return. We have much to discuss.”

  I eyed him carefully. I didn’t like the sound of that. It almost made me consider taking Taylor across the Threshold. Who knew, we might have found Hard before the Trelking found me. Not likely, but it was possible.

  * * *

  “That’s your plan? This is more than a drop off.” Devan planted her fists at her sides, staring at the collection of items I was grabbing. She had a slender knife clutched in one palm, with the blade pointed behind her back. She fixed me with her “don’t fuck with me” eyes. I’d seen them before and knew better.

  We stood in the garage, with the soft glow of a single overhead light. She’d flipped the fluorescent lights off for the day. She probably didn’t really need them, anyway; her eyesight was beyond excellent, especially in the dark. I think she left it on for my benefit.

  I leaned against the front of the truck. The warmth of the engine seeped through my thin shirt as I looked at her. “I’m going to grab whatever I can of the Elder’s that’s still there. I need to know. It’s the reason we came here.”

  “Learning from the Elder is the reason you came here. I came for a different reason altogether,” she said.

  I snorted, and she shot me an angry stare. “Yeah, well we’re running out of things to learn here in Conlin. This is an opportunity to find out a little more.”

  “Is it, Ollie?” She pulled her hands off her hips and waved the knife at me. There was no threat to it; at least, I didn’t think there was really a threat. “We’ve only been back for a couple of months and already you want to sneak back there after what they did to you?” She took a deep breath and lowered the knife. “You know what happened the last time you were there. After what you’ve learned—”