Magic on the Storm

enough shape to hunt.

He believed me enough to nod. “If you feel dizzy again, tell me. We’ll be on foot for some of this.”

“Are we wearing wrist cuffs?” I asked.

“No,” Shame and Terric said simultaneously.

Zay glared at both of them. “Yes,” he said. “We are.” He walked over to his car and opened the trunk.

I followed, leaving Shame and Terric behind. That didn’t last long. Even though Shame was hurt, and it obviously concerned Terric, they still didn’t like being alone with each other.

I’d gone out hunting with Zay and Shame only once before. Chase had been there too. We’d hunted Hungers, magic-eating, killing creatures that found their way into our world through the gateways between life and death and preyed on magic users and innocents alike. We’d fought the Hungers and, on the way, found Tomi being used by Greyson, and then Greyson himself.

But that time we’d been tucked away off the main roads, our cars covered by the trees and bushes. It was more than a little strange to be standing in the middle of a parking lot, even this late at night, with an open trunk filled with magical weapons. Most of the weapons could pass off as everyday items.

The machetes, for instance, might pass as yard tools. Lots of wild blackberries and ivy in Oregon meant lots of machetes in Oregon. And the knives could just be knives, the chains, just chains. But there were weird bits in the trunk too. Things that looked ancient. Archaic twists of metal and glass and leather that channeled magic, enhanced magic, did almost anything you could think of with magic, if they fell in the right user’s hands.

It gave me nightmares to think of what they would do if they fell in the wrong user’s hands.

Zay cast a subtle Illusion spell, just enough that people might think we were digging in the trunk for a spare tire or something. Then he started unloading the goodies.

I got a knife, the same one he gave me every time something like this went down.

“Isn’t that your blood blade?” Terric asked Zay.

“Yes.” Zay handed him a set of axes. Terric took them both in one hand, and finished off his coffee, then crushed the cup in his hand.

“What do you want, Shame?” Zay asked.

“Got a flamethrower in there?”

“Take a look.”

Shame threw his cig on the ground and dragged the toe of his boot across it. Then he stepped up and started digging through the trunk like a kid going elbow-deep in a candy bin.

“Lord, Jones, you’ve stocked up. What’d you think, we were taking down a fucking army?”

That perked Terric’s interest. He stepped up next to Shame. “Well, I’ll be shitted,” he said. “That’s an impressive toolbox.”

Zay shifted out of the way. Shame and Terric gleefully dug around in the weapons. They each proclaimed their finds much better than the other’s, and ended up-I am not joking-doing a round of rock, paper, scissors over something that looked like a cherry bomb, swapped a few other things, and actually laughed a little.

Forget the flowers. Forget the cards, or a nice dinner. Apparently deadly magical things were the best way to bring people together.

And they did look good together. I didn’t know how to explain it. Like shadow and light. They belonged in each other’s space. They even moved in unison, strapping on blades, and tucking other gear under their coats with an unconscious rhythm that echoed each other’s movements.

I looked over at Zay. He was watching them too, a thoughtful, sad expression on his face, like he was trying to solve a puzzle that had long ago lost its pieces.

I stretched my hand out and took his. He didn’t look down at me, but he wove his thick fingers between mine, and squeezed my hand gently.

Our fight suddenly seemed like a small thing.

Think they could at least be friends again? I thought.

All things break, all things end, he thought.

Maybe. But some broken things grow again. Like trees. And hope.

Soul Complements? He wasn’t asking me the question, so much as just asking. I didn’t know if that could ever grow between them again.

Shame laughed, I mean a deep chortle, and Terric hooted along with him. I didn’t know what they were laughing about, but it sounded dirty.

Maybe it never died in the first place, I thought. Maybe they just don’t know it yet.

I felt Zay’s quiet acceptance. His willingness to give them time, to be patient. To hope for them, even if they couldn’t hope for themselves.

It made me love him even more.

At that thought, he turned, looked at me, and smiled.

“What were you just thinking?” he asked.

Since I knew I was blushing, I let go of his hand. I’d had quite enough of thought sharing. “Something about trees.”

We hadn’t said we loved each other yet. On-again, off-again magic had destroyed the likelihood of us ever having a normal relationship. It never seemed like the right time to tell him that I loved him. Or maybe it never seemed like the right time to admit it to myself.

How normal could a relationship be when at a casual touch you could hear the other person’s thoughts?

Zayvion stepped into me, put his hands on both sides of my face, his fingers sliding back through my hair. His palms were warm and callused, and I inhaled the sweet, familiar pine scent of him.

We kissed, letting our lips, our tongues, our bodies, say what our words dared not. He didn’t think anything while we were kissing, and neither did I. We didn’t have to.

He ended the kiss with soft, small kisses at the corners of my mouth, and pulled away, his arms still embracing me. He held me against him a little longer. “Be safe,” he breathed. “I don’t ever want to see you hurt again.”

I licked my lips, tasted the echo of him on me, in my mouth. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Oh, for the love of all that’s holy. Get a room,” Shame said, “or I will bring out the ice.”

We stepped apart. “You throw any more ice at me, Shame,” Zay said as he stalked over to the trunk of the car, “and I will shove it up your hole.”

“No, no.” Terric said. “Flynn likes that.”

“Bite me, you flaming prick,” Shame said with absolutely no heat.

Terric grinned, and Shame flipped him off. They were both smiling.

I intended to keep it that way.

“Let’s leave our issues, and ice, at home,” I said. “We have hunting to get done.”

I stepped up on the other side of Zay, and took the machete he offered me. It was a good thing I’d brought my heavy coat, because otherwise I didn’t know how I’d hide this much steel.

And not just average steel. The wicked blade only mimicked a machete. It was really a bladed, deadly length of razor-edged metal and magical glyphs. One swing with this baby, and the right word or two, and you could cut an old-growth oak down with one smooth slice.

Next, I pulled a thin chain over my neck and felt the tongue-on-battery tingle of it rattling down around the void stone and resting against my skin. Not so much a weapon as a sort of enhancer for defensive spells, blocks, wards, those sorts of things.

I didn’t like to carry anything else. Had never gotten the hang of the bladed whip Zay wielded like he was skipping rope. Didn’t like the double axes that Chase, and apparently Terric, preferred. For me, a knife, a machete, and a magic chain were all I needed for a good time.

What could I say? It’s the simple things in life that make me happy.

“Right, then,” Shame said, lighting up another cigarette already. “That’s it. Who calls shotgun?”

“That is not it.” Zayvion pulled a cloth package out of the trunk and carefully unwrapped the contents. The contents were several leather wrist cuffs in small, glyphed boxes that were probably ancient and worth millions. He pulled out four round amulets. They weren’t the same size and heft of the disks my dad and Violet had invented, but I was pretty sure they had given my dad the idea that magic could be contained in something similar to these