Magic on the Storm

I glanced at Chase. Stop her to stop Greyson. The flaw of that plan was that Greyson had now drunk enough Life magic, light magic, to transmute back into the form of a man. Which meant he had hands, and could cast magic as well as any of us. But I knew he wouldn’t stay a man for long. Not without a constant intake of magic.

Chase worked the southern end of the fight. Liddy had shifted to stand behind her, one hand on her shoulder, the other drawing spells. Liddy whispered and traced glyphs, pouring magic into Chase, providing her with the magic to give to Greyson.

Liddy was a bad guy. Great. How was I going to get past the teacher of Death magic to get to Chase?

We don’t need the Closer, Dad said in my head. All we need is the beast, to take back what is mine.

Wrong, I said. We get the Closer, we get the beast. They’re Soul Complements. They’re one. And she’s going to be easier to take down.

I glanced around for Jingo Jingo. He might be a freak, but he was good at what he did.

Jingo Jingo was in a deadlock with Maeve. Jingo’s Death magic absorbed the Blood magic Maeve threw at him, sucked it down like a well with no end. He strolled toward her, almost as easy as a Sunday walk, nodding as if he understood why she was fighting him, and maybe would regret killing her. I think I heard him humming a song, an old gospel about babies and the devil and bones. Maeve wove spells with blood and blade, not about to back down.

Sedra, nearby, was locked in a cage work of magic like nothing I’d ever seen. It had to be technology, something my dad would have built.

Maybe it wasn’t just the disks the Authority had broken into the lab for. Maybe they’d come in and demanded that cage too.

That wasn’t in the lab, Dad said. I developed it years ago. It was taken from me years ago.

Like something out of Victorian clockwork, the cage was a collection of gears and glyphs and metal twisted into the shape of holding spells. It hinged in every section, as if it could be shaped into any spell, and shaped around any person.

Holy shit. It was a physical carrier of magic, like the disks, but specific to single spells.

This was part of what my dad had been working on. Not just the conduits of magic that could fuel the city. Not just the disks that worked as batteries. But a metal or some other compound that could be shaped into a spell and become that spell until the day the magic died.

Using this would permanently change the world.

The cage was constricting, pressing in on Sedra’s clothes and moving closer. It was going to crush her to death.

What the hell kind of tech were you making? I thought at my dad.

Do not vilify that which you do not know. All great things can be used for war or peace.

The cage had Sedra frozen completely. She didn’t so much as move a hand or speak a word.

Dane, her bodyguard, was doing what he could to hold a slowing spell around her. It kept the cage from collapsing in on her, but he couldn’t do anything else.

Shame and Terric fought back-to-back, moving as if they could read each other’s minds. It was not just Greyson and Chase and Jingo Jingo and Liddy causing problems. Mike wore the glowing glyph gloves and threw lightning around like it was rice at a wedding. Shame and Terric were counteracting his constant barrage.

La was down. So was Romero. Hayden had finally pinned Greyson back against the wall of magic where Chase couldn’t get to him. Greyson was no slouch. He cast magic, light and dark, Life and Death, at the big man. He forced Hayden to spend so much effort blocking, Grounding, or containing magic, he was not making any headway against Greyson.

If it hadn’t been real, if it hadn’t been my friends’ lives on the line, this scene might be beautiful for the amazing skill. Greyson was liquid silver and shadow dancing with the saber he’d found, Chase, his pale, blood-lipped lover, feeding him the power to fight.

Hayden, a mountain of power and precision, took blows that would cripple a lesser man. Dane wove incredible, complicated lacework spells to keep Sedra from being crushed, while Jingo Jingo supped on Maeve’s Blood magic like a man with a hunger that had no end.

Maeve’s spells painted quick, sensual strokes of Blood magic that wrapped deadly vines around Jingo’s soul. Shame and Terric, brothers, Complements, warriors, blades, ax, magic, shouted curses and synchronized death.

It was Jingo who broke the stalemate between the two factions.

He stopped strolling toward Maeve, stopped singing.

He put one hand over his heart and shook his head. I didn’t know if it was an apology or a salute. But when he lifted his hand, there was blood on his palm. And a disk.

He lifted his hand from his heart and pointed the disk at Maeve.

He twisted the spell she had anchored into him, and sent it back on her. Mixed with his blood. Mixed with Death magic. Mixed with the magic in the disk. All the souls of the ghostly children who clung to him were set free.

They screamed through the air, rabid, feral, tearing into Maeve like a mob of crows. They covered her, clawing, biting, and lifted her off the ground.

Jingo slashed the disk downward. The ghosts dropped Maeve to the ground, but clung to her with tiny hands and hungry mouths.

Maeve yelled. Pain. Agony. She could not move to break the spell. Could not free herself of the children’s souls. And those souls were drinking her dry.

Shame saw it. Terric saw it. Hayden saw it.

And so did I.

Shame ran for her.

So did Hayden.

Greyson ran too. To Chase. To the gate she opened for him. Closed for him. Then opened again. Behind Maeve.

Greyson leaped out of the gate and was on Maeve. He drank down the magic around her, lapped up the children’s souls and all the magic they contained.

Hayden and Shame yelled out. They were almost there. Almost close enough.

Greyson stood, faced Jingo Jingo. And disgorged the children’s magic, and more-all the magic he had taken from all the people he’d been fighting-straight at Jingo Jingo.

For a second my heart soared. Maybe Chase had told Greyson that Jingo was a freak. Maybe they were on the good guys’ side. Our side.

But Jingo Jingo took that magic, all of it, into the disk in his hand, mixed with his blood, and every discipline and expression of magic. His eyes were wide, desperate, as if this one thing, this last thing, was his only chance. He pointed the disk at the pile of disks and the crystal in the center of the field.

He chanted a spell that made my ears hurt.

Light seared through the air-a hot talon carving a hole through space. Light burst out of the opening, swirled with metallic colors reflected on my arm. A gate between life and death opened.

More than opened, the gate had been made real. Solid. It was made of iron and stone and glass. And magic.

I glimpsed a figure standing in the gate, ghostly thin. A fair-haired boy with eyes as blue as summer. Cody Miller. The Hand who had pulled magic through my bones, the boy who was still alive, and currently living with my friend Nola on her farm in Burns. The boy who had eyes too much like Sedra’s eyes. Too much like the eyes of Mikhail, the dead leader of the Authority.

It wasn’t all of Cody-his mind had been Closed by Zayvion because he had been deemed too dangerous to use magic. So while his body, and part of his mind, did live with Nola, this part of him, a piece of his soul, a piece of his spirit, his mind, that could use magic, was in this gate between life and death. He’d jumped into the gate when I had been tested into the Authority. He had sacrificed himself to keep the gate closed. And to keep Mikhail, the Hungers, and other horrors of magic out of the living world.