Devon Monk - Magic in the Shadows

I wondered if this was what a mother felt like and quickly pushed that away. Didn’t matter. What mattered was making sure whoever was over here was okay.

Zayvion shut up and followed me. I only knew he paced next to me because I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was walking, breathing, moving, like an assassin again. Silent.

I was not nearly so smooth. I stomped over in my boots, making noise on purpose.

Grunts accompanied the smacking and slurping, and I had a weird feeling there was more than one person back there.

I almost turned back, because, seriously, I had no desire to walk in on some dirty lovin’ going on in the alley. But the whimper, the stink of pain, drew me forward.

“Hey,” I called out once I stepped up on the sidewalk. “Everything okay over here?”

Silence.

The fog in the alley did not stir. There were no lights down the narrow passage, just two buildings standing so close together I didn’t think Zayvion could walk in there without losing jacket, shirt, and an inch of skin off both shoulders. Plus, the brick foundation of the apartment bulged outward at the bottom, sagging under the weight of years and making the alley even narrower.

I could see maybe ten feet into the alley. Something shifted back there. Then an almost-human moan rose to a keen, was muffled, silenced.

The familiar smell of strawberry bubble gum and cheap wine hit my nose. Those scents belonged to Tomi Nowlan. Tough girl, cutter chick, she was a Hound who didn’t like me stepping into the boss job now that Pike was gone.

I didn’t care how much she hated me. She was one of Pike’s pack, my pack, and that meant I looked out for her. Especially when it involved a dark night and a dark alley.

“Tomi?” I called out a little more quietly.

Okay, dark night, dark alley, me with no gun-not that I ever carried one-and Zayvion with no gun, or at least I didn’t think he carried one. All systems go for getting hurt or killed.

Except we both had magic.

I recited a quick mantra, just the first lines of a Beatles’ song, set a Disbursement to choose how I’d pay for the magic-I was going with the tried-and-true headache in a day or so-and drew a glyph so I could pull magic up into my senses of sight and smell. Magic licked across my bones, warm, heavy, and poured out of my skin, filling the glyph.

The world burst into layers of old magic, caught and tangled like slowly dissolving spiderwebs. The ashy macramé hung in the air, snagged on the building fronts, smudged in pastel luminescence among the piles of garbage leaning farther down the alley.

Scents came at me too quickly, bubble gum and booze: Tomi; pine and spice: Zayvion; Diesel, mold, algae, moss, grilled meat, and soap from a nearby dry cleaner: the city.

The other scents were harder to sort from the stink of dog shit that permeated the entire alley. Burnt blackberry, licorice, the chemical taint of formaldehyde, and a burn of copper that tasted like hot pennies on the back of my tongue.

And among it all fear. Pain. Death.

I noted it all with detached interest, not wanting to let my emotions get in the way of casting magic.

I drew one of the most simple glyphs for Light, thinking

small, orb,

and

glow

, as I poured magic out through my fingertips to fill the ribbon and promise of the glyph.

An orb of light the size of a grapefruit appeared in front of my hand and flooded the alley with white light.

Probably should have used a lot less magic. The orb blazed like a searchlight, reflecting off the fog instead of piercing it. Blinded by the brightness, I caught only a vague outline of the figure crouching in the alley.

Hunched over, the size of a thin man or a big dog, the figure was gravestone white. Its head swiveled toward me and was too wide for a man, unless he was wearing a hood. Eyes shone animal green. Human eyes, I thought, but everything else about him was wrong.

He lifted away from the other, crumpled form on the ground. Then he lunged at us.

Fast.

Zayvion grabbed my arm.

The thing’s blood-covered mouth opened on a yell, revealing fangs thick as my thumb on both the top and bottom of his jaw.

My back hit the rough stucco of the antique shop. I exhaled at the impact. Zayvion spun, pressed his back full-body against me. He blocked my view of the thing.

He whispered something that sounded like “Dead” and threw his arms out to both sides.

The smell of butterscotch and rum assaulted my nostrils, filled my mouth and lungs. A second ago, I couldn’t see around Zayvion. Now that he had cast this spell over us, I couldn’t see Zayvion at all. I still felt him, his wide back pressed against me, his hip leaning against mine. Through a wavering, watery curtain around me, I could make out the buildings. But I looked right through where Zayvion should be, where I felt him, and saw only the sagging bricks across the alley in front of me,

Weird, weird, weird.

It was a Shield spell I’d never seen before. Some kind of camouflage.

Zay didn’t move. I could feel his breathing, even and la bored, like he was jogging or lifting weights. I got the feeling he wanted me to be quiet and still, so I did my best not to freak out while my claustrophobia stuck fingers down my throat and made me want to scream.

Just because I couldn’t see any living thing didn’t mean I couldn’t hear.

The thing yelled again, a nerve-burning sound that was half human and wholly something else. The muscles down Zayvion’s back flexed, and he leaned forward a fraction, as if pushing against an unmovable wall.

Sweat poured down my back, trickled between my breasts. I wanted to run, run, like a child from a nightmare, like an adult from a gunman, a killer, death. Instinct told me that thing out there was death. My death. Zayvion’s death. And death to whatever it had been feasting on before we interrupted it.

And then it wasn’t yelling anymore.

It was talking.

“Fear me.”

Its voice was low-a man’s-words mangled by fangs. Those two words crawled under my skin, and I wished he’d go back to yelling.

Okay, yes, I was afraid. Yes, I was comforted knowing Zayvion would stand in front of me and put himself in the way of danger. But I was done being smashed against a wall, unable to move my hands, and therefore more helpless than if I were free and standing beside my knight in leather coat armor.

I drew my hand up Zayvion’s back, felt the tension in his muscles. It occurred to me that with his hands stretched out on either side, holding this spell in place like a curtain over a window, his hands were not free to draw glyphs. He couldn’t cast.

Not a problem. Because I sure as hell could.

I pulled magic up from the stores deep within the earth and it poured into me, filling me, jumping to my call until I burned with the strength of it.

I set a new Disbursement-a little more pain to that headache-and stepped out from behind Zayvion, outside his reach. I stood next to him.

“No!” Zayvion yelled. The spell he cast broke. Butterscotch and rum magic rained big, warm, slippery drops around us.

“Fear this,” I growled at the thing in front of us. I traced the glyph for Impact and poured all the magic I had in me into it.

The thing was a man, I think-heavily modified or disfigured, his arms too long, skin too white, and covered in blood. His legs bones were wrapped in sinew and bent wrong at the knees. He pivoted so damn fast, I didn’t even have time to swear.

He dropped to all fours, dodging my spell. The spell bashed into the brick wall behind him, blowing a hole into the building and sending brick and dust everywhere. Something farther down the alley skittered and ran-the very human sound of footfalls.