Wicked Magic

by Margot de Klerk

  “You’re Benjamin’s son,” Doctor Bourne said. “It’s a pleasure. I’ve worked with your father. He’s an impressive man.”

  What did you say to that? No one was interested in what Nathan really thought. He said mildly, “He is.”

  “You must be proud to be his son.”

  “Oh yes, very,” Nathan agreed without emotion.

  “Are you interested in science, then? We’re always looking for bright young minds.”

  “Oh no, you’re not stealing this one just yet,” Grey put in with a laugh.

  “Shame, shame.” Doctor Bourne shook his head. “Well, you’re welcome to take a look, but I’m afraid the subject appears to be sleeping, or at least feigning sleep. He does show a limited response which means he can probably sense that we’re close to him, though.”

  “Can we show Nathan the interview?” Grey asked.

  “Of course, give me a moment to put it on screen.”

  In the meantime, Grey ushered Nathan over to the bank of monitors. They all showed the prison cell next door. It was a plain grey room, literally a stone box, and every stone was crawling with anti-vampire wards.

  It was fairly well known that it was virtually impossible to keep vampires in prison. If they were at peak strength, they could snap steel bars and punch through walls. There were ultra-high security supernatural prisons built for them, but mostly if the Council wanted to punish a vampire, they killed the vampire. Game over.

  Nathan had never realised that hunters were any different.

  The creature in the cell wasn’t a vampire. Its skin was greyish and decayed, which made it a feral. And yet, it was clothed and sleeping, and it seemed almost human.

  It had shackles on both wrists and ankles and a collar around its neck. The chains ran to loops on the wall. They were all silver.

  Nathan couldn’t look away. It was the most horrifying sight he’d ever seen. Silver burnt vampires. The feral’s skin was charred and blackened around the shackles.

  Bile rose in Nathan’s throat, and he swallowed hard.

  Wasn’t it more humane to just put ferals down, like rabid dogs? This didn’t seem right.

  “Alright, I’ve got it on the righthand screen,” said Doctor Bourne.

  Nathan forced his gaze over to that screen. It was a clip of the feral, but now it was awake, its red eyes darting around frantically.

  “Hello,” said a disembodied voice.

  “H—hello?” The feral’s voice was scratchy with disuse.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “I—I’m hungry,” the feral groaned. “So hungry.”

  “Yes,” the disembodied voice said soothingly. “That’s natural. Do you remember your name?”

  “I—I remember…”

  “What is your name?”

  “I—” The feral shifted more erratically. “Please—I—please—” It began to tug wildly on its chains. “Please! Please! Please!” It couldn’t seem to say anything else. What was it begging for? Nathan watched in horror as it thrashed, wilder and wilder.

  “Enough, I think,” Grey said. The video froze. The feral’s eyes were wide and it was frothing at the mouth.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” Doctor Bourne asked. “It’s the closest we’ve come to a breakthrough, truly. It’s almost as though this feral retained just enough of its humanity to interact. It seems to understand its circumstances.”

  That’s because it’s an animal, Nathan thought, and animals understand when they’re trapped.

  He couldn’t get his mouth to form words. He forced himself to breathe. From the depths of his terror, he managed to summon some kind of sense. “It’s amazing,” he said. “Why—why is this one—different?”

  “We’re not sure yet.” Doctor Bourne smiled gently. “But with patience, we’ll certainly find out.”

  “Wow,” Nathan replied. His heart was racing, and he was sweating like mad.

  “I think we should probably be on our way,” Grey said. “Thank you for the demonstration, Doctor Bourne.”

  “Yeah—thanks,” Nathan added.

  “Any time, any time,” Doctor Bourne said cheerfully, walking them to the door. “Always good to have people take an interest in my work.”

  How strange, thought Nathan, that Doctor Bourne looked so grandfatherly, and yet his smile seemed utterly cruel.

  Then they left. They walked briskly through the facility and back upstairs. Nathan emerged, choking and gasping, into the sunlight. Grey watched him dispassionately, and Nathan realised distantly that he ought to control himself, because Grey was probably going to report his every reaction back to his dad later.

  He couldn’t stop himself from turning to face the sun, though. He closed his eyes and absorbed the weak warmth of the autumn sun. It was close to setting, turning the sky red.

  Nathan was, and would always be, a creature of the light.

  “Are you ready to go home?” Grey asked finally.

  “Yes, please.”

  They hardly spoke in the car. Nathan hoped that Grey assumed he’d been shocked at how awful the ferals were, not at the fact that hunters were keeping them captive. Please, please let Grey not realise that Nathan thought the whole facility was abhorrent.

  That night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Nathan fetched his hoodie from his cupboard and laid it on his bed. He unwrapped the knife and stared at it. The serrated edge was starting to catch a bit on the fabric. It looked wicked. He knew it was his second sight, but somehow it seemed to be absorbing all of the light around it.

  It was selfish. It absorbed light and gave nothing back.

  This knife wasn’t designed to be used on humans. Humans were petty creatures with no magic, no power. They weren’t like witches and vampires. No, this was a knife designed by supernaturals to be used on other supernaturals.

  Nathan studied every inch of it that he could see without touching it, committing it to memory. Finally, when he couldn’t take the evil anymore, he wrapped it up again and put it back in his cupboard.

  Hunters thought the most noble goal was to protect humans from supernaturals, but what if there was another, more important goal?

  Who protected the supernaturals who couldn’t look out for themselves? Who protected the supernaturals from each other?

  Who would protect the Monicas and Cynthias of the supernatural world? Who protected kids like Emma?

  Maybe hunters had it all wrong. Maybe the monsters weren’t just the supernaturals. Maybe the monsters were the ones who locked ferals in the basement and experimented on them. Maybe everybody was capable of being a monster.

  Nathan took a long time to fall asleep that night.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SUN SHONE BRIGHTLY on Sunday. Nathan had had a weird night, filled with strange, unsettling dreams. The sun made everything feel a bit more real and grounded. He almost wanted to go and sit in it and just bask in being human.

  The doorbell rang just as he finished breakfast. Jessica managed to get there first. Damn.

  “Nathan, your girlfriend’s here!” she shouted.

  “Coming!” Nathan called, adding under his breath, “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  Cynthia was clad in leggings and a sports hoodie. She had her pigtail plaits again, and Nathan felt an almost violent desire to kiss her.

  “Hey,” he said, trying to remember how to sound like a functional human being.

  “Hey.” Cynthia grinned shyly. “You gonna invite me in?”

  Nathan steered Jessica out of the way and gestured for Cynthia to come in. She stepped over the threshold with no trouble. He shut the door behind her.

  “We’re not staying,” Nathan said. “I’ll just put my shoes on. Jess, scram.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that!”

  Nathan sighed. He sat on the stairs to tie his laces, then led Cynthia out again.

  “Sorry about Jess, she’s in this annoying phase where everything everyone says is wrong.”

  “D
on’t worry about it, I’m quite familiar with that actually.” Cynthia grinned. “So, what’s the deal about inviting people in?”

  “You noticed that?” Nathan smiled at her. She had a freckle on her nose. He could see it in the sunlight, and he wanted to poke it. “We don’t invite anyone in verbally, ever, because vampires have to be invited through the wards. Once they’re invited in, they can’t be uninvited without redoing the wards.”

  “Oh wow,” Cynthia said. “I was being tested for vampirism?”

  “Nah, I didn’t think you were a vampire.” Her aura was a cat again today, the same silver tabby as before. She had the amulet he’d given her on over her jumper. It pulsed with a sort of brown-green-blue-red mixture. All the elements. “What’s your cat called?”

  “Coco.”

  “Cute,” Nathan said.

  “Girly,” Cynthia corrected. “You can say it, it’s girly.”

  “Nah, I don’t think that.”

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Where are we going?”

  “Well,” Nathan said, “I was sort of hoping to kill a few birds with one stone. Monica wants to meet you, for starters.”

  “Monica is…?”

  “It’s complicated.” Nathan grinned. “Monica’s a witch. She was also Jess’s babysitter for a few years, which is how we met. And she happens to be the pet witch of one of the Council members. So our lives are pretty entangled.” He shot Cynthia a sideways look. She was frowning. “There’s nothing between Monica and me,” Nathan promised. “She’s like a sister to me.”

  “Okay,” Cynthia said hesitantly. “And what else?”

  “Well, I promised you a self-defence lesson, and I promised you could meet a vampire, and as it so happens, I know someone who’s a vampire and an expert in self-defence, so I figured I could introduce you.”

  “It’s broad daylight.”

  “Yeah, don’t take the whole ‘creatures of the night’ thing too literally,” Nathan said. “As long as vampires drink blood, they can go out in sunlight.”

  Cynthia’s eyes widened. “What does work against vampires? Crosses? Garlic?”

  “The cross thing is a misappropriation. Vampires aren’t afraid of crosses, they’re afraid of the Cross family.”

  Nathan paused significantly and waited for her to figure it out.

  “…As in Delacroix?” Cynthia asked.

  “Exactly. We’re one of the original hunter families in Europe. We’ve been going strong a long time, so we got a bit of a reputation. Vampires are fine with garlic, holy water is just water. Silver burns all magical creatures, but I’m guessing you already know that.”

  “Yeah,” Cynthia said. “No silver for me.”

  “Weres and witches are also repelled by silver,” Nathan said. “Most old buildings, especially churches, are warded, and that’ll keep the majority of vampires out, but don’t count on it.”

  “So nothing stops them?” Cynthia asked.

  “No, but the Council controls them,” Nathan said. “It’s illegal for vampires to kill their victims.”

  “You mentioned the Council before,” Cynthia said. “Is that a hunter thing?”

  “We call it a triumvirate. Three vampires, three witches, and three hunters make up the Council. They sit here in Oxford, and they oversee all supernatural activities in Europe.”

  “Wow.”

  They turned down Monica’s street, and Nathan gestured to her house. “This is it.”

  Cynthia looked at the house. It was perfectly normal, not dissimilar in design to Nathan’s house. Monica’s was a little smaller, with only three bedrooms instead of four, and a single garage instead of a double. “A witch lives here?” she asked dubiously.

  “Three witches live here,” Nathan corrected. “Well, two witches and a warlock. Come on, I promise Monica will be mostly nice.”

  “Reassuring,” Cynthia said under her breath, but she followed him up to the front door. Nathan rang the bell and a moment later the door flew open.

  “Hiya!” Monica said with a grin. She was back on form from the last time Nathan had seen her, in her expensive skinny jeans and oversized pullover. She hugged Nathan, then turned to Cynthia. “So, you’re Cynthia.”

  “Hi,” Cynthia said.

  “Wow, I see what you mean about the cat,” Monica said. She stepped back. “I don’t invite in, for obvious reasons.”

  Inside was also perfectly normal. Monica’s foster parents were witches by night, but by day she was a writer, and he did market research. Cynthia was cross-examining everything, looking for signs of the occult, and Nathan caught Monica grinning.

  “Don’t tease,” he said.

  “Aw, I’m the nicest of your friends.”

  “No way, Lily wouldn’t hurt a fly if it hit her first,” Nathan said.

  “She’d hurt a fly if it hit Damien first,” Monica replied. Game, set, and match. Nathan had no argument for that.

  “You can relax,” Monica told Cynthia. “If I wanted a human for spell ingredients. I’d use Nathan. He doesn’t have magic.”

  Cynthia’s eyes went wide, and then she scowled. “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “Sorry,” Monica said. “It’s just a little tease. You want something to drink?”

  “I’m alright,” Cynthia said.

  “Kay, just let me pop upstairs.” Monica took the stairs two at a time. Cynthia turned to Nathan.

  “She’s tall,” she whispered.

  “I know, for ages she was taller than me and she used to make fun of me all the time,” he said.

  “This place is so normal.”

  “Witches aren’t doing spells all the time.” Nathan shrugged. “They have normal lives, too.”

  “I’m not sure the ones I’ve encountered before do,” Cynthia replied.

  Nathan didn’t have an answer for that. He took Cynthia into the lounge and they sat on the sofa. The lounge had a bay window looking out to the front, which had been added to the house after it had been built. Nathan had always liked it because the sun shone in in the mornings, warming the whole lounge.

  Monica returned wearing ankle boots and with her hair in a messy bun. “Here,” she said, thrusting a wrapped package in Nathan’s face. “I forgot to give you this the other day. From Morocco.”

  Inside was a Berber basket in black, red, and white. As was typical of Monica, it had wards worked into the middle.

  “Nice.” He traced the wards. They were live, but not strong. “Not sure the wards liked flying.”

  “No,” Monica agreed. “I’ve never met a ward that likes flying.”

  Nathan stashed the basket in his bag, and they headed out.

  “Where are we meeting the douchebag?” Monica asked.

  “Hinksey Park,” Nathan replied, well used to Monica’s hatred of Adrian.

  “I can’t believe you invited him.”

  “The only other vampire I know is Damien.”

  Monica made a face. “I guess that’s true.”

  “Who’s Damien?” Cynthia asked.

  “Lily’s father, terrifically dangerous, also the oldest vampire I know,” Nathan said. “Whilst we’re on the topic, I doubt Adrian’s going to try anything funny with you, but as a precaution—don’t look in his eyes.”

  “Why not?”

  “Spooky mind control powers,” Monica said. “Hey, do you think that we’re wildly in breach of Council regulations, telling her this stuff?”

  “I don’t think the Council have regulations on educating species that were formerly considered extinct,” Nathan pointed out.

  “Hmm, that’s true,” Monica said thoughtfully. “It just occurred to me that I might have to make a report to Jeremiah.”

  “Can you postpone that?” Nathan asked worriedly.

  Monica shrugged. “I’m not supposed to see him whilst I’m in town. If he doesn’t ask, I won’t tell.”

  They turned into Hinksey Park. The back of Nathan’s neck tingled, and then Adrian was there. Old jeans and tee-shirt, leath
er jacket, sunglasses. Adrian’s dark hair curled around his ears and flopped over his forehead, and his eyes glinted with mischief. Adrian never changed.

  He couldn’t change, because he had died in 1974.

  “Adrian,” Nathan greeted.

  “Hey, kid,” Adrian said. “Long time no text. Thought you had forgotten me.” His eyes flitted to Monica, and his gaze turned wary. “Monica.”

  “Adrian,” Monica said coolly.

  Nathan glossed over the moment by adding hastily, “This is Cynthia. Cynthia, Adrian. My uncle.”

  Cynthia gaped. “What?”

  “Yeah,” Nathan said. “Though if anyone asks, we’re cousins. But actually, he’s my dad’s older brother, and he’s been officially dead to the family since 1974.”

  Cynthia’s shoulders drooped.

  “Nate, you’re a git,” Adrian said. “You should have warned her.”

  Nathan put his arm tentatively around Cynthia’s shoulders. She was shaking a bit.

  “Vampires,” she mumbled. “Like, actual vampires.”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Nathan said.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Please don’t panic,” Nathan said. “I promise Adrian isn’t going to hurt you.” He shot the man a glare, just in case. Adrian snorted.

  “Lucky you, teenage girl isn’t really my type,” he said carelessly. “Thought I’d sink my fangs into more feisty prey today.” He gave Nathan a pointed look.

  “Over my dead body.”

  “You should stop invoking death so often,” Adrian said. “Might come back to bite you.”

  Nathan couldn’t stop himself from thinking of the ferals he’d seen yesterday. He shuddered. “I’d kill myself before that happened, and I’d kill you if you bit me. Keep your taint away, thanks.”

  Adrian leered. Cynthia trembled. She took a couple of deep breaths and steeled her shoulders, before pulling away from Nathan.

  “Do you really have fangs?” she demanded.

  “Sure,” Adrian said. He opened his mouth and showed them off. Vampire fangs could elongate when they needed to drink, but otherwise they just looked like particularly sharp canine teeth. Adrian let his slide out and flicked his tongue against one of them, before shutting his mouth.

  “You’re a vampire,” Cynthia said.