stung, beat on beat, in time with Zayvion’s pounding pulse.
I pulled my wrist up to my chest, pressing it close, trying to ease the ache behind my ribs.
Zayvion was alive.
Shamus chanted, a soft singsong whisper that reminded me of a lullaby.
Even though he was singing a lullaby, things were going to hell over there. The beasts’ mouths gaped, muscled shoulders bunched, ready to jump, rip, devour. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t attack. And then I knew. Even without Sight I could tell they were draining the magic out of the spell he was chanting. Draining him.
The nightmares grew more and more solid, and Shamus stood there, head bowed, hands at his chest, humming a childhood song, while his heart pounded a slow, almost meditative beat. He was enduring the drain of magic. Enduring the pain, just as he had endured the Proxy I’d set on him.
The Hungers were no longer translucent at all. They were solid, slathering beasts, heads too large for their compact bodies, skin mottled with scales. Thick veins snaked beneath the mottled skin.
Magic, no longer just shadowed, but now black and thick as tar, pulsed through those veins. Magic that Shamus had just fed into them. Magic that pounded Shamus’ body and mind. Magic that punished him, drained him. And made the beasts stronger.
The beasts moved forward. Shamus swayed.Another step. Shamus’ song faltered. He licked his lips and sang on. Another step. Sweat or maybe tears dripped from the edge of his jaw. Even from across the field, I could see him tremble.
I couldn’t just stand there and watch him get eaten. I took a step away from the shed.
Just then, Shamus looked up. But not at me. He stared at the beasts in front of him. Then smiled and opened his hands, palms upward like he was pushing something up to shoulder height.
He stopped pulling on magic.
The beasts lunged.
“No!” I yelled.
I traced a glyph for Sight, filled it with magic, and drew the glyph for Hold so I could throw it at the beasts and stop them, even though Zayvion had told me not to use magic at all. I threw that spell at three of the beasts tearing at Shamus. As soon as I cast Hold, I remembered Zayvion had said it wouldn’t work.
Hells.
Shamus was still standing, still grinning, though I could not fathom how.
Hold hit two of the beasts. It locked down on one of the Hungers, clamped like a black-legged spider that latched on and pulsed, injecting the paralyzing venom of Hold into the beast’s flesh. For a second, I thought it might work. But instead of freezing, the Hunger stretched and absorbed the Hold spell like a gutter sucking down rain.
The beasts turned. Three of them. Toward me.
Bigger, faster, more solid. Their eyes widened, burning with unholy, bloody fire.
Right. Screwed up. Big time. Wondered if I’d live long enough to apologize to Shamus about it.
The Hungers charged.
, my father said.
In that second, with that one word, I saw the lines it would take to cast the Camouflage glyph. Where the beginning and ending twisted back to parallel one another, so the spell fooled the eye, ears, senses.
Screw the Disbursement. Screw trying to clear my mind. I drew the glyph for Camouflage as fast as my fingers could move and poured it full of magic, as much magic as I could get my hands on, as much magic as I had in me.
Hot, sweet, slippery, the taste of butterscotch stung my eyes to tears, snapped at the back of my throat and burned.
Still the beasts ran. Three yards away, two, one. I pulled the knife out of my belt and shifted my stance to brace for impact. I was really wishing I owned a gun right about now. Or, yes, that I’d started those damn self- defense classes Violet insisted I take.
No time to worry about that. Not while the bulldozers of gonna-fuck-you-up bore down on me, butterscotch coating and all.
A solid wall appeared in front of me and blackness slammed down. I yelled at the sudden absence of light and jerked back. I couldn’t see anything but blackness. I also couldn’t smell the creatures, couldn’t hear the creatures.
I was about to die, and I’d gone blind.
This sucked.
The wall reverberated with three heavy impacts that shook the ground like small earthquakes. The creatures, I think, slamming into the wall again and again. I stepped backward and traced a Blocking spell blind, from memory alone. I didn’t know how long before the Hungers pounded their way through that wall of darkness.
But before I put the last twist on the Blocking spell, the pounding stopped. For a second I stood there, wet, panting in the dark, too silent, too cold, too hot. Too damn blind. The heartbeats on my wrist thumped, three different drums in three different beats.
Then the wall exploded into smoke. Standing in front of me was Shamus.
He was pale. I didn’t know white could get that white. Through the heavy hang of his hair against his face, I noticed he had freckles I’d never seen before. His eyes burned green, carved beneath and above by black smudges. But he was not bloody or bruised. He just looked really, really angry.
“Didn’t I tell you not to use magic?” he growled. “ ‘Get back,’ I said. And did you? No.” He shoved my shoulder-my injured left one-so hard I yelped and stumbled. He palmed me ruthlessly toward the rusted metal building. “Stupid. Stubborn. You’re fucking trouble. Fine, if you want to die on your own. There’s fucking four of us out here.” Another shove, and my back hit the metal wall.
“I-”
“Shut it. Watch.”
He faced me, so close I could smell his sweat, feel the heat rise off his body. He kept his back to the open field. The way he stood, it was like he was a wall between me and the beasts. And since I had not let go of Sight (which was amazing, considering. Go, me) I could see the low glow of light caught in the folds on his clothes where only shadows should be. The air around him seemed thicker, as if glass stretched out to either side of him.
The grasses and weeds at his feet were already yellowed by winter, but the longer he stood in one place, the browner they became. A slow-creeping circle of dead grass and weeds extended out from his boots as he sucked life in to feed the exchange of magic.
, my father whispered. And I caught a hint of him being impressed by Shamus’ skill, a hint that he hadn’t thought the boy he once knew would ever sacrifice enough to become a master in the art.
Shamus very calmly pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lit it, letting the match fall to die in the wet, brittle grass. When he slanted me a look, his eyes burned a green so dark, it was almost black.
That boy was pulling in some heavy magic.
Master indeed.
I didn’t know how he did it, but he really had become a wall, and was accessing a hell of a lot of magic in this magicless part of town to hold it in place. I briefly considered pouring some of my magic into his spell to support it, but we were Contrasts, unpredictable and explosive when mixed.
I looked past his shoulder. Zayvion, in his ratty blue ski coat and black beanie, strolled through the middle of the field, heading uphill and toward the base of the bridge. His head was bent, his hands loose at his sides. He looked like a transient, watching his feet and hoping to find a discarded miracle lying in the dirt and weeds.
But with Sight I saw not only Zayvion the street drifter, I also saw Zayvion the warrior.
Seven feet tall, his body was alight in a symphony of black fire and silver glyphs that whorled like tribal tattoos down his arms, torso, back, and legs. The black fire flickered with silver blades of light.
The beasts followed the light and darkness that was Zayvion, as if they could taste the magic he held, caught
