Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He pulled the cig out of his mouth. The cherry trembled and jumped as he tried to push his hair out of his eyes. “Just. Fucking tired. I’m okay.”

And that was when I smelled the pain on him, and the blood.

“Bullshit. She hurt you, didn’t she? Where? How?”

He gave me a considering look, noticed I was fuming mad. He exhaled. “My gut. I’m fine.”

I gripped his elbow tighter and dragged him back to his car. “No, you’re not.”

“What part of the language don’t you understand, Beckstrom?”

The very fact that I could actually force him to walk with me told me just how badly he was hurt.

“You need a doctor?”

“No.”

“Stitches?”

“No.”

We passed through the Illusion he had cast, the slippery green scent of aloe filling my nostrils and throat. I opened the front door of Zay’s car. “Get in.”

“For Christ’s sake,” he started.

“Duck.” I pushed on his shoulder at the same time I shoved him into the car.

He gave in, or more correctly, his knees gave in, and he folded down into the seat. Groaned.

“Let me see.”

He turned his pale face in my direction. “I’ll call my mum. Honest.” He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. “You go make sure Z. and. . Make sure Zay’s okay.”

He looked sick, greenish even in the low light. Casting that spell must have exacerbated his wound.

“How badly are you bleeding? Don’t bullshit me, Shame.”

“She stabbed me once. With a knife. I remember that.” Dead serious. What did you know? The man could tell the truth without going up in flame. “The bleeding isn’t too bad. She planted a Blood glyph and when I cast that spell, it started bleeding. It’s not enough to kill me-you can trust me on that, Beckstrom. But she is seriously fucking up my fun.”

“Show me.”

He scowled. Gave in. Lifted his jacket. Even in the low light, I could see the glyph of Blood magic spread out across the width of his flat stomach, just catching on his hip bone. It bled-not badly-from one edge, probably the entry of the wound. The rest of the glyph snaked out under his skin, like deep red ropes. Blood magic was strange stuff. The glyph formed itself to the caster’s will like a time-release capsule after the incision was made.

He pushed his shirt back down.

“You’ll call your mom?”

He held up the phone again. “Go. No one’s gonna find me under this Illusion, and if they do, I’m not without weapons. And a phone.”

I nodded, and shut the door. Shame tipped the seat back a bit, and I saw a brief flash of the phone’s blue light against his cheek and jaw before I was out of the umbrella of the spell, and then couldn’t see the car at all.

I started off in the direction Zayvion had run, concentrating on the heartbeats at my wrist. Shame’s was slow, labored, but even. I was glad he’d stayed behind.

I shifted my focus on Terric’s heartbeat, fast, like he was running. His emotions: angry, but calm.

Then Zayvion. His heart beat in the steady rhythm of a marathoner or an athlete. Someone who was used to this kind of exertion. But his emotions hit me like a brick wall falling. Surprise. And fear.

Something was wrong.

I broke out of my jog and into a run. The concrete beneath my feet gave way to soft soil, well-tended grass wet from all the storms and the night’s dew. Zayvion was near. I could feel him, like a heat beneath my skin.

And he was in trouble.

I broke out from between the buildings to the grounds in the back. Trees and outbuildings cut my view into bits.

The acrid scent of a Confusion spell burned like black pepper at the back of my sinuses. I couldn’t tell which way I should go. Didn’t even know which way I had come from.

Okay. This wasn’t the first time I’d been hit with Confusion. I knew what to do.

I stopped, closed my eyes, because you can’t do anything if you’re staring at Confusion. I took a deep breath to calm myself. It didn’t matter how good I was-there wasn’t anyone who could cast magic in high states of emotion. Even Zay, whose fear I could feel in the tattering heartbeat at my wrist, still gave off a calm focus and determination.

Sometimes casting magic meant you had to be of two minds, or two emotions, at once.

I set a Disbursement-I was tired of muscle aches and went instead for a headache. I muttered a few lines of a coffee-commercial jingle to clear my mind. With my eyes still shut, I drew Cancel with my right hand and Sight with my left.

Cancel should wipe out the Confusion. Sight should show me what other magic was being used.

I opened my eyes. Cancel worked wonders. I didn’t even smell the pepper anymore.

Sight showed me magic burning like carved fire on the buildings around me. I actually hadn’t made it all the way through the alley between the buildings, even though it felt like I’d been running for blocks.

Confusion spread a sticky spiderweb between the structures, but now that Cancel was in effect, hovering like a shield over my head, the tendrils of Confusion were no longer touching me.

I took a second to focus on the heartbeats again. Zay and Terric were near. Very near.

I walked past Confusion, and stopped short.

Just on the other side of the spell and buildings, the grounds opened up. It was too dark to see how far back the grounds reached, but somewhere back there were trees and shadows, and flickering lights in the distance.

What I could see, very clearly, was the battle.

Terric glowed like a slice of moonlight, his hair gone silver, his skin pure white except for where dark glyphs shifted and moved across his features. His eyes burned an eerie blue while he chanted, the words falling from his lips in a lyric prayer. He had his feet spread, hands out to either side, holding a Containment spell that covered a twenty-yard circle.

And in that Containment spell were two people: Zayvion and Chase.

I’d never seen them even spar before. Chase hadn’t been around during any of my training sessions. And the only time I’d seen her fight was when the gate opened during my test. She’d been fighting Hungers then, beasts from the other side of death.

Now she was fighting Zayvion.

Even with Sight, watching them hurt my eyes. Still, I didn’t let go of the spell. Zayvion was a seven-foot tower of black flame, silver glyphs whirling over him in liquid ribbons, glowing the same metallic shift of wild colors as the marks magic had left on me.

He wove a spell with his left hand, heaved it at Chase like it was made of lead, and lunged, the machete in his hand pulsing with dark jeweled lights, a different kind of magic, dark magic, coursing through the blade.

But Chase was good. Unlike Zayvion, even through Sight, even throwing magic around-and she was throwing a shitload of the stuff around-Chase looked like Chase. Pretty, a little gaunt, pale-skinned, dark hair pulled back in a braid, black jeans, and a black turtleneck.

Except for one thing. Her eyes glowed red. It wasn’t just the light from magic. It was something else, something more, something dark, like the Hungers, like the Necromorph, burning out from within her. And it was not human.

It scared the hell out of me. Instinct told me to run, to leave this place, to go somewhere where magic didn’t do what they were making it do.

Yeah, well, instinct would just have to suck it.

Chase, knife in one hand, caught the weight of Zay’s spell on the edge of her blade and tore it apart. She re-drew and recast that magic into something else, flicked it low at Zay’s feet.

He dodged. The spell burned after him. He tucked and rolled over the spell, sliced it apart with the machete, and was on his feet again.