by Lizzy Ford
* * *
“Let’s try this again,” Yully’s father said. “You must focus on controlling your breathing and keep your eye on the target.”
Yully drew a deep breath, like she did when she was shooting clay pigeons. She focused on the target, a plate above the hearth. She’d never suspected the depths of her father’s strange power, and her first attempt to channel it was the reason the house was now lit with candles. She’d shorted out the electricity.
“Breathe in, take what you can, and hold it,” he instructed. “It’s the same thing you do to change an object into another, only normal objects have far less energy to control.”
She braced herself and pulled his power into her, struggling to control it while panic rose. It wanted to roam around her body instead of staying at her core, where she wanted it.
“Good,” her father said. “Don’t fight it. It can’t hurt you. You’re like a vase and the magic is the water.”
Yully forced herself to relax. Her grip on his hand tightened, while she loosened her grip on the foreign magic in her body.
“It feels so weird,” she said. “Hot and cold mixed together and almost like it’s raining inside me. I can’t describe how strange this is, Father.”
“Does it obey you?”
She concentrated hard, her eyes on the plate across the parlor. Instead of answering, she raised her arm and steadied her breath, as if she were holding a handgun. She willed the magic to hit its target. Lightning streaked from her fingertips, and she felt the magic sucked from her. It flew across the parlor, and the plate exploded.
“Very, very good,” he said, an odd glow in his eyes as he gazed at the place where the plate had been.
“I understand what I’m doing, but I don’t understand why.” She chose her words carefully. “Of what use is this type of talent?”
“There are many things I’m forbidden from telling you.” Her father released her hand and gazed at her for a long moment. “The world is becoming a more dangerous place for you, and I’d hoped we could wait until the winter solstice to perform the rite. However, the Guardians are growing more aggressive, and they now know where you are. We have one chance to save humanity.”
He was lying. She felt it. Yully cleared her mind to keep him from seeing that thought and nodded.
“You are like an empty vessel. You can be filled with water from any source. You can be filled with water from multiple sources. The same skill you’ve learned this morning, you can use against any Guardian or a whole group of Guardians. Let’s try this,” he said. “Stand before me.”
Intrigued by his words, she obeyed and stood before him.
“Close your eyes. I want you to sense my magic without touch.”
Yully’s eyes closed, and she focused hard on feeling something other than Jule, whose presence still lingered in her body. The harder she concentrated, the louder Jule’s heartbeat grew, as if their bodies were pressed together again.
“No, Father,” she said with some frustration.
Her father touched her arm, and fire tore through her. She gasped.
“That should unlock the rest of your gift,” he explained. “I’d hoped not to have to do this, but I can’t wait for you to figure it out.”
Jule’s brand on her soul was even more intense, enough so that she physically ached for him. Muddling through the sensations, she sensed her father’s magic. It was like standing in front of a bonfire.
“I feel you,” she breathed.
“Good. Pull the magic into you. This time, don’t blow up one of my antiques.”
There was no resistance this time as she drew his magic into her, gathered it, and focused it. She sent a chair sailing across the room.
“I always knew you were the one,” her father said, showing excitement for the first time since she could remember. “Come with me. One more thing, and I’ll let you rest. We only have a couple of days until the autumn equinox.”
His power moved through her like a wind in a forest. Everything in the room radiated some sort of subtle energy, and she waded through the energies, marveling and confused by them. Yully followed him out into the cold, rainy afternoon. He didn’t pause for their coats, so she bypassed the cloak room and crossed her arms as she exited the warm house.
The energies of the things in the house were replaced by new energies coming from the ground. They were faded and distant, and she looked down as she followed her father. He paused in the middle of the lawn that stretched between the house and the massive garage.
“Can you feel them?” he asked, facing her.
Shivering, she nodded, puzzled. It was as if small objects had been buried in the ground, and their weak magic was muffled.
“Is this a test, Father?” she asked, anxious to get out of the cold rain. “Did you bury things out here to see if I could feel them?”
“Yes,” he replied. “And you do. Can you draw the energy into you?”
She walked in a circle until she found the strongest of the energy patterns in the vicinity and paused above it. The magic crept up through her shoes and into her legs, warming her body as it went.
“I can, Papa,” she said.
“Try more than one. They’re scattered all across our lawns.”
She closed her eyes and concentrated again. She sensed Jule, her father, and hundreds-- no, thousands!-- of tiny signatures surrounding them. The energy came when she opened herself. Yully struggled to control the energies into her body, still leery of the invaders.
“You’re glowing,” her father said in a hushed tone. “I’ve been waiting for you for so long, Yully.”
She opened her eyes and looked down. She didn’t seem to glow to her own eyes, though she suddenly realized the rain no longer fell on her. Holding out her arm, she was fascinated to see the rain arc to avoid it.
“This was all I needed to know,” her father said. “Now, into the house, before you fall ill.”
He strode to the house, and she trailed, fascinated by the sensation of stepping over the energy sources. She released the energies, and they returned to their sources.
“How long did it take you to bury all these things?” she asked.
“Ten years or so,” he replied.
“So you just randomly took things from the house and buried them?” She couldn’t help her smile. “I can’t see you in the rain digging a hole for a toaster.”
“My dear, these aren’t toasters,” he said and echoed her chuckle. “They’re Guardians and guardsmen who would’ve seen you dead. I didn’t send their souls to the immortal realm, because I’d hoped you’d be standing here one day, able to drain the magic from them.”
She froze, the warmth of the magic leaving her as fear replaced it.
“Father, there are thousands,” she said, looking around her. She tried to assess how many there might be. “Tens of thousands.”
“I guess I’d forgotten how many there were. The more the better. We’ll need all their magics on the autumn equinox.” He disappeared into the house, and she stayed where she was, horrified.
Guardians. He’d killed and buried Jule’s kind. Jule, whose soul had somehow lingered in her body when she’d touched him, and who had become the only man she’d ever felt safe around. Even her father’s magic was gone when she expelled it.
… you seem to think a Guardian of humanity is your enemy, Darian had said.
Her replacement cell phone rang, jarring her. She answered it with numb fingers.
“Hey,” Jule said.
“Hey,” she answered.
“I hear it in your voice. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t talk about it,” she replied in a tight voice. “What do you want?”
“We’re having a wake for Sean tomorrow. I thought you’d like to say goodbye.”
Yully squeezed her eyes closed, relieved the bartender wasn’t buried in her backyard with the others.
“I don’t think my father would approve of me seeing you,” she managed. �
�I mean, of me going.”
“Sean would probably appreciate it if you came. His death wasn’t a pleasant one.”
She didn’t want to imagine what her father was capable of. Her gaze went to the lawn around her. She owed it to the dead to attend one Guardian’s wake.
“I’ll do my best,” she said at last.
“Noon tomorrow, on the cliff opposite the cottage.”
Yully hung up. She wanted to scream, cry, or flee. The same part of her that recoiled at draining dead men’s magic also understood one truth: she was no match for her father, if he decided to bury her with them.
With a deep breath, Yully left the graveyard and returned to the manor, determined to find a way to leave for Sean’s wake.
