Magic In the Blood

are just beginning to open. You and I together can keep those we love safe. Alive.”

    Okay, I liked it better when he couldn’t talk. Maybe being so close to his dead body made him strong enough his words carried a little of the old Influence he used to use on me to make me do what he wanted.

    Frankly, everything he was saying just made me want to run like hell.

    “You want to use me?” I said. And yes, that came out indignant. I get prickly under extreme duress. We had a long history, my father and I. And most of it was him trying to use me for his own benefit. “For all I know you set this up. Maybe you’re the one who wants to open the gates. Maybe you’re the one who is hurting those girls and hurting Anthony.” Maybe you’re the one responsible for Pike’s death, I thought silently.

    “If that were true, I would not rely on chance to bring you here. I certainly would not rely on your cooperation for my plan to work. I am not that irresponsible.”

    He had me there. My father was a thorough bastard when it came to planning and executing his desires. It didn’t seem likely he would implement anything, much less something that may involve a lot of magic, a lot of death, and me going along with it all, in such a haphazard way.

    Still, he was dead. Maybe dying had dulled his edge.

    “Fine,” I said. “Prove to me I can trust you. Free Anthony from the Offload.”

    “Who?”

    “The boy being used as a Proxy on the other side of this room.”

    He scowled into the distance as if trying to focus through a fog. “He is nothing.”

    “He’s someone I care about. Someone I have promised to look after.”

    “Allie.” He was getting angry. I knew that tone. “You underestimate the severity of the problem. One boy’s life is nothing to give.”

    “You’re wrong,” I said. “One boy’s life is too much to give. I am going to get the hell out of here, find a phone, and call the police.”

    I took maybe five painful strides away from my father’s dead body.

    “Oh, let’s not ruin a good thing,” a man’s voice echoed from behind me.

    I turned and spotted a movement by the darkest area across the room, which, now that I looked closely, was a doorway.

    That movement stepped forward into the faint light.

    Balding, thin, Dr. Frank Gordon ambled across the wooden floor, his dress shoes making solid clucks that echoed against the rotted rafters. As he walked, he rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows. He didn’t look up at me, didn’t look at my father. His glasses caught the liquid play of light and shadow from the windows, reflecting mercury and ebony. In his hand, he held a vial. A vial of blood. My blood.

    “Do you understand now, Allison?” Dad asked. “This man is a very powerful magic user. He has done this to me. Used me, my death to open our world to magics that will destroy it. And you are going to help me put an end to him.”

    Fuck. How did I get in the middle of a dead-undead magic showdown?

    “To bring the police here?” Frank continued like he had not heard my father, and I realized he hadn’t heard him. So only I could see my dad; only I could hear him.

    Frank pursed his lips and shook his head. “This is too sacred an event to expose to the uninitiated.”

    There was that term again.

    “His name is Frank Gordon,” my father said. “He is part of the Authority. An ancient order of men and women who are the caretakers of magic. Life magic in life. Death magic in death.”

    “I know who the Authority is,” I said to my dad.

    But it was Frank who answered. “Do you? And here I had thought your father kept you ignorant of such things. Protecting you.” He shook his head. “Such an idealist. You belong to us, Allison. To our world. Both worlds. You always have. Even he knew it.” He squinted to look up at me through his glasses. “Even he knew how useful you would someday be.”

    My father swore. Called Frank a dozen names in a dozen languages. I had forgotten how extensive his vocabulary was.

    “My father didn’t know me as well as you might think,” I said.

    Move over, shock. Fight, flight, and adrenaline had just kicked the doors down. My senses heightened; my heart picked up a runner’s pace. Not because I was using magic, but because I was damned determined to get out of here alive. And I was going to take Anthony and the girls with me. I shifted my grip on the dagger, keeping it low, using the table that was still between me and Frank to block his view of it.

    What I needed was a chance to throw a spell at him, something like Containment or Hold. Something to buy me enough time to run. Because unless I could knock him out-and I didn’t think my physical reserves were up to bearing the price of that without passing out myself-my best option was to do just what I’d told my father. Run and get the police, the SWAT team, Stotts, and the MERC down here. Fast.

    “And yet,” Frank said, “blood calls to its own, Ms. Beckstrom, just as magic calls to magic. I have brought you here”-he gestured toward my father’s body with the vial of my blood as if that explained everything-“and you have come. Welcome to the beginning, the birth, of true magic. Life and death as one. As magic, and the world, should always have been.”

    My father’s ghost traced a very powerful glyph that had pain written all over it. His lips moved in words I could not hear. He threw the spell at Frank.

    And absolutely nothing happened.

    Okay, time to do the math. Frank had my dad’s corpse. That made him a grave robber. And if he had my blood, it meant he was in league with Trager. He also had Anthony and the six girls whom I assumed were the kidnapped girls Stotts was looking for. I’d Hounded those hits, so I knew someone had used Pike’s blood and cast the Glamour spells with Pike’s signature. Even as I had Hounded them, I knew something was wrong with the glyphs, something that made me doubt it was Pike’s hand that cast those spells.

    Pike said he thought Trager used Anthony to cast those spells, but I didn’t think Anthony was that good. He’d have to be a Hand-an artist who could forge magical signatures-and I didn’t think Anthony knew magic well enough to do that.

    Frank, however, looked like he might be very good at forging someone else’s magical signature. Looked like he might be very good at all things magical. Hells, even my dead father said he was a very powerful man. Powerful enough to use my father. Powerful enough to be screwing around with the gates of life and death.

    So I had it wrong. Trager was working for Frank, not the other way around. Working to help Frank with this horror-house magical ritual bullshit.

    “He is working dark magic, Allison,” my dad said. “It is forbidden. Magic that has been mutated by death belongs in death. He is using my body,” he growled, “and the magic in it, not the magic beneath the city. He is using my body to open the gates to the dead. To free those who hunger.”

    Holy crap. Zayvion was right. Why hadn’t my dad taught me this stuff years ago? Dark magic. Those who hunger. I didn’t even know what they were, much less what they could do.

    I was so screwed.

    “So now,” Frank said, “I will ask you once, politely, to come here and lie down on this table.” He smiled and pointed to the empty table next to my father’s corpse. “Please.”

    “No,” I said.

    “No,” my father said at the same time. Well, at least we were in agreement on one thing.

    The doctor shook his head. “I am so sorry to hear you say that.”

    He flicked his fingers fast and subtly enough he’d give Kevin a run for his money.

    His spell radiated so much magic-dark, strange, twisting magic that moved on its own like snakes slithering through the air. I could see it, even without the Reveal spell. It was a huge spell. Strong enough it could knock a hole through a brick wall. And Frank had thrown it with no more trouble than flicking a speck of dust from his shirtsleeve.

    From the corner of my eye I saw Anthony shudder in pain.

    What kind of price did dark magic carry? How much more could Anthony take?

    I held up the knife in one hand and wove Shield in the other, drawing magic from deep within my bones and pouring it into the Shield. I braced for the impact.