Magic Revenge: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Spirit War Chronicles Book 2)

by Stephen Allan

  The easy part was spoken for. The praising of the Paul Stephens I knew.

  Now came the difficult, emotional part. The shaming of myself, Sonya Ferguson.

  “We went to southeastern Turkey, near the border of Syria with the express intent of collecting intelligence on ISIS plans in the area. We were under strict orders to follow extreme caution, because even though Turkey is an American ally, well, it’s not exactly Canada to us. We made rendezvous points under various code names that could easily be mistaken for regular fare—kabobs, turlu, and so on. But… I got lazy. It was easy to speak in code when you’re out in public, wary that someone might overhear you. It’s much harder to do so when you’re in the privacy of your room—or what you think is privacy. Paul kept warning me to stop being lazy, but in my mind, we were traveling in private hotels, what were the odds of eyes constantly watching us?”

  I snorted, disgusted with myself. How could I not have realized there would be suspicion about two very white people in an area like that? How could I not know there would be sympathizers in the area to ISIS and other terrorist groups? I took a deep breath as DJ held my hand. When I had finished breathing, I continued.

  “The key to this story is that we stayed in separate rooms. It had nothing to do with Paul being married or me not being physically attracted to him, but for the same reason that you don’t see the President and the Vice President together that often—if shit goes down, you don’t want all of your resources to go with it. Well, one night, a group of about a half-dozen terrorists came to the hotel. They didn’t do their usual act, though—it wasn’t like they blew up a car bomb in front of the hotel. Someone tipped them off. They went to Paul’s room, two doors down from mine, and a struggle occurred. I woke up. I heard everything. I had Ebony and Ivory in my hand before I’d even kicked the covers off of me. But…”

  I sighed, and my eyes watered.

  “I didn’t go. I tried to justify it by Paul telling me before the mission ‘if one of us gets captured, don’t give them two for one. We can always get rescued.’ But… that wasn’t the case. We’re CIA agents, not soldiers. We operate undercover and get told repeatedly that if we are captured and presented to the world, the government will ‘plausibly deny’ our existence. There was no rescue mission for Paul. The closest that happened was after that night, once I’d escaped out the window, having to use the balconies and move quietly… I had a strong suspicion of where their base was. Even though they’re weaker than us, one person can’t take on an entire base of terrorists. But God, I thought of it. But… Paul… I did nothing.”

  And the first tear of what would probably be many fell. DJ pulled me in close. I sobbed, and though I did not break into hysterics, I definitely shed more than a few. It was actually something of a relief to tell the story—to remember what had happened. In some weird way, I felt like it honored Paul’s memory. I tried not to let the current incarnation of Paul violate that memory.

  “Sonya, I’m sorry,” DJ said. “I won’t pretend to say I understand. I haven’t even written books about that kind of thing, let alone lived to witness it. But if Paul said that to you, and you did what you could…”

  His voice trailed off. Not even DJ could tell me what everyone hinted at, but no one ever said.

  “There’s nothing more you could have done. You have to forgive yourself.”

  But I’d lived my life in finding ways to do more things, things that I should have had no business doing. I’d survived a horrible childhood by scraping when others would have given up upon seeing no obvious routes. I’d managed to find myself a decent job even though I had no right doing so without college. I managed to become a CIA agent at one of the youngest ages ever in the academy, even as I got grief from people who said no one that young should be a field agent. Yet the moment when a friend was kidnapped, tortured, and killed was the one where I couldn’t have done anything more?

  On some level, yeah, DJ and the others who hinted at things were right. But damnit, I was not a girl who let things just happen. I was not a coward. I’d already proved that with Nuforsa.

  The past, however, had less mercy than the worst demons. I could not change it, I could not argue with it, and yet it tormented me like a bully who followed me home every day. It was a brutally unfair fight, and one without a bell to signal the end of it. For as long as I lived, that was a fight that would duke itself out. There was no end in sight, not even if I send Mundus crawling back to the bottom caves of hell, swearing never again to challenge Yevon as the ruler of the spiritual realm.

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said, trying to put space between DJ and myself.

  “Sonya,” he said, leaving much unsaid but his meaning as clear as a cloudless night.

  But I wasn’t in the mood to think about it. I had bigger issues at hand right now. I could deal with the past when the present and future didn’t have so much chaos.

  “You heard me,” I said.

  But DJ didn’t let me go. He kept his grip tighter and yanked me back to his chest.

  Honestly, for once, I was glad he didn’t accept my orders. I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and he cuddled me close. I calmed myself by listening to the gentle beating of his heart.

  “I can’t make you forgive yourself. But I honestly believe it would do you a lot of good. Just because you’ve adjusted to the weight on your shoulders of his death doesn’t mean you wouldn’t benefit by having that weight removed.”

  I smiled, so grateful to have him around for the Europe trip. The guy could fight, was intelligent, and pretty damn hot. There were certainly worse people than he to deal with. Maybe, just maybe, I could see this guy sticking around after the trip ended.

  But for right now, we had to fight.

  I yanked on DJ’s arm with a smile and we walked inside. I nearly gasped at who awaited us at the kitchen table.

  Chapter 13

  “Greetings,” Carsis with a smile.

  He had a few cuts on his arm and had caked blood in his hair, but he didn’t look worse than DJ. If his scars affected him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t grimace, groan, or sit awkwardly.

  “Impressive, managing to escape the dragon in that dark alleyway,” I said.

  “It helps when you’re an angel and know the ins and outs of the spiritual realm,” Carsis said. “A few tricks up my sleeve, you know, the usual. In any case, however, we have an immediate and obvious obstacle. The dragon.”

  “To say the least,” I said as I took a seat across from him while DJ sat to my left. “As we are right now…”

  “No, there’s no way, Sonya, let’s just shoot it straight,” Carsis said. “You can’t defeat the dragon as is.”

  Just because I could internalize it beforehand didn’t make it any easier to hear from Carsis. Especially since Brady was still in the hands of Paul.

  Oh, right, and Berlin might get engulfed in the flames of hell if I don’t act quickly. There’s that whole thing too.

  “But, it probably won’t surprise you to hear you can become stronger and defeat it.”

  “Anything can be beaten. Even Mundus.”

  To my surprise, Carsis recoiled at that statement. He didn’t seem to disagree with it, just more surprised that anyone would have the audacity to say it. How could Mundus not be defeated? Anyone could. Even Yevon.

  Anyone except me. It’s not egotistical, it’s necessary to think like this.

  “In any case,” Carsis said, stumbling a bit over his words. “I can teach you some spells for binding parts of the dragon some. It will effectively paralyze whatever region of its body you focus on for as long as you can hold the spell. The issue, of course, is utilizing the spell—and, on top of that, how we will fight once you hold the monster in place.”

  Carsis turned to DJ, who gave the cocky smile that I’d slowly come to enjoy.

  “I take it you’ll want me to get some revenge on the motherfucker,” DJ said.

  “Short answer, yes. Longer answer, it’ll be a grueling
battle, because the dragon will probably go in and out of a paralyzed state. Longest answer… in order for you to really make a dent in that, you have to truly lean into your dragon side, as it were. Up to this point, perhaps out of fear of permanently becoming a slave to Mundus, you’ve kept control of your mind even as you change. It helps you stay human and true to your principles but also makes you weaker than you could be. If you let yourself go, then you will be stronger, more aggressive, and capable of battling the dragon before you. But. As you probably guessed, the risk is that you lose your mind.”

  “Temporarily, or permanently?”

  The answer scared the shit out of me, and I’m sure it scared DJ.

  “I can’t say. Truth be told, I’ve never really seen a spot like this where a shifter was able to control his or her powers.”

  Damn, how long have these shifters been around?

  “It certainly speaks a lot to your internal fortitude that you can do so, but it also leaves us with a lot of gray area in which to operate. So I don’t know.”

  I squeezed DJ’s hand under the table, for whose reassurance I didn’t really know. I had faith that the guy could handle himself well, but faith didn’t make a difference—only DJ’s control over his mind would. And DJ probably didn’t even know the answer to that, either.

  Anyone could lose their mind. But could they recover it on command?

  “Well I do know that I’m in to fight,” DJ said with complete conviction. “But I need to know anything you can tell me, Carsis. Anything.”

  Carsis sighed.

  “It’s all conjecture, so if I were you, I would minimize my time in the animalistic state you will reach. But my guess will be that it’ll be similar to when Sonya became a demon. You will enter a bloodlust state where all you want to do is kill your opponents and gorge on his organs. You will become powerful, but you’ll become blind with rage. An enemy that is intelligent could bait you, but at the same time, an enemy who fights on strength alone will stand no chance. I don’t believe that the dragon we see on the other side of the portal is that intelligent relative to us, but you never know what else is awaiting you when the dragon falls.”

  Like Paul.

  “And it’ll probably only get worse.”

  “There’s worse, sure, but don’t give the dragon too little credit. There aren’t a lot of beasts as terrifying and huge as that thing, even in hell.”

  I felt a little bit better hearing that. I knew war was coming, but at least we were seeing the equivalent of fighter jets here instead of handguns in the army of hell. If we could take down their F-18s, I would feel a lot better fighting their infantry units.

  “In any case, Sonya, you and I need to go and train.”

  “And me?” DJ asked.

  Carsis snorted.

  “You can come if you want. Might be better for your safety to have all of us there. I don’t think we’ll encounter anything on the way over, honestly. If Paul wants to unleash demons tomorrow night, then he’s going to keep them back to prevent the ‘surprise’ from being spoiled. But I’ve been wrong before and I’ll be wrong in the future. Keep your weapons close, Sonya. We’re walking to be safe.”

  That went without saying as I patted the guns on my hips. I would sooner amputate a foot or hand than lose those guns.

  We left the house and headed for the same church I’d trained at… this morning? Damn. It really felt like it’d occurred a week ago. Maybe the most unbelievable thing of all today was that I hadn’t fallen asleep standing up yet

  The walk over went exactly as Carsis suspected. No demons made themselves visible. I was sure that more than a few demons watched us from afar, perhaps disguised as a human as Tyrus was, but as long as they didn’t bite anyone, I could’ve cared less what they did. I had to let small shit go to deal with the big shit.

  The inside of the church was completely devoid of humans and demons. Unlike before, when I suspected (and by suspected, I mean knew) that one of the demons watching us had stolen our car, we had nothing to worry about. I had my guns and there were no civilians nearby. With those two factors in mind, we were good before training started.

  We descended into the basement. Carsis once more said the words I still hadn’t figured out, and we entered, reaching the spiritual realm where my guns would have unlimited ammo and DJ could shift without worry.

  “Now, first, I’m going to show you what this magic is capable of before I teach it to you,” Carsis began. “I want you to do something that feels weird. I want you to shoot me.”

  “Sure?” I said.

  I would only ask it once. After the way Tyrus had just picked the bullet out of his skull like it was dog hair on his shirt, I assumed that more powerful spiritual beings could handle human realm bullets with ease.

  “I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think I couldn’t handle it.”

  So be it, I thought. I raised Ivory, clicked the trigger, and watched a blue energy shot fire from my gun. But then, something strange happened.

  It remained in place where I’d fired it, hovering about two feet in front of Ivory.

  And then, even stranger, my arm felt locked in place. Whenever I tried to twitch my shoulder or bicep, my arm just would not move. I could still twist my head and move my legs, though the awkward positioning kept my range of motion limited. From the side of the blast of blue energy, Carsis emerged, one hand up, but a smile on his face.

  “The magic of binding,” he said. “The ability to freeze things in place, from living, breathing organisms, to inanimate objects, to even ephemeral, barely-defined energy like the one you see emerging from your gun here. It’s a highly useful tool, one that you can use as a weapon in conjunction with something else, a defense tool to allow you to escape, or a chance to buy some time. Once you become powerful enough, you can use this with your teleportation and gun-charging powers and become quite the fighter.”

  I became enthralled at the possibilities that could come from this. And the ease with which I could toy with my enemies?

  Oh, priceless.

  Just one problem.

  “That’s cool, but do you think you can let me go?”

  Carsis smiled and dropped his hand. The blast of energy slammed into the far wall, as if never held in place, traveling at the same speed. My arm felt no different than before, except now I could move it. Magic, indeed.

  “Understand, you probably will not be able to control what I can, for I have centuries of experience,” he said. “But that is not our goal right now. Our goal is to get you to hold the enemy dragon’s head or neck in place long enough to allow DJ to strike.”

  Well, sure, but…

  “And how does going from controlling my arm to a dragon the size of a government building seem doable for someone with no experience?” I said. Not that I didn’t have faith I could do it—I just wanted to know how.

  “Simple. The dragon is a solid creature with defined size. He cannot melt or take on a new shape. He is not like a gas or nebulous energy. He is an organism, and as a result, you can control it. It is far easier to control what is defined than what is not. Besides, you are not trying to control the entire monster, but rather focus on its neck or head, effectively rendering it inoperable.”

  It was a figure of speech come to life. I knew “cut the head off and the body dies” and had always understood it symbolically. Now, the spirit realm made it literal.

  “The flip side of this, of course, is that you should probably not try to bind its fire, for that is too amorphous a substance for you to control at this point. Although it wouldn’t be the first time you surprised me. In any case, let’s go over how to do this. You can practice with DJ.”

  Hmm, hold DJ in place. I suppose there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

  DJ walked about ten feet in front of the two of us, standing at the ready. He showed no discomfort with being our crash dummy. It was best that he didn’t know that the last time I’d practiced magic, I’d killed a bunch of demons.

>   “I want you to concentrate all of your mental energy on keeping him still. I want you to hold out your arms—the conduit of your magic—and think of him as you would a statue. Not just picture it, but see it. It’s not a photograph, but an active experience of seeing him still.”

  I shut my eyes, raised my arms, and felt the usual warmth rushing through them, a semi-pleasant tingling energy. But unlike last time, I did not feel a rush of energy shooting out of my hand as I had with the portal or when charging my guns. It sort of just… dissipated.

  “DJ, try to move,” Carsis said.

  To my disappointment, I heard him take a step. I opened my eyes and dropped my arms.

  “No! You—ah, well, I guess the step confused you, that’s fair,” Carsis said. “You actually had frozen his upper body successfully, but you had not controlled his entire body. Tell me, Sonya, what were you thinking about when you froze him?”

  “I… to be honest, nothing really. I just focused on the sensation of the magic in my body and imagined him standing still. It was weird that the magic did not project out of my body.”

  “It is more of a manipulation of matter than it is a creation of something, hence why you feel nothing manifest. But as you now know, that doesn’t mean that it won’t work.”

  I nodded and tried again. Once again, I closed my eyes, but this time, I took a more active role in my head trying to imagine DJ frozen in place. I didn’t just keep him frozen. I imagined strafing him, walking to and from him, and pushing him, all while keeping his body perfectly motionless. It would ensure that he would not move no matter what I did.

  I didn’t ask how I was doing. The magical feeling gushing through my body had become close to overwhelming, leaving me with no room to think about how I was doing. Or DJ, for that matter. I didn’t think he was frozen. I didn’t assume he was frozen. I just knew he was frozen.

  Finally, just before the feeling of controlling DJ became too much and I would collapse, I let go, my body leaning forward as I gasped for air. Carsis patted my shoulder and handed me one of his bars, while DJ gave a short clap.