Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm

He attacked La, the other twin. She swung her scythe and magic so hard, it should have cut his arm off. But it didn’t even nick him. He shoved hands into her chest like he was digging for bones. He tipped his head back, the disk pulsing silver green at his throat, and howled over her screams as he sucked the magic out of her. Her twin, Carl, holding the east side of the dome, yelled out too, but the dome did not waver. He endured.

Big Hayden was having nothing of it. He wore the bomber jacket, but the shotgun and broadsword were no longer over his shoulder.

He fired the rifle at Greyson. Missed his head by an inch. Greyson ducked and rolled, using the unconscious La as a shield. Hayden swung his sword, and a sound wave pushed against my skin as if a hundred voices were calling out in a chant, a prayer, a force. There was magic in that sword-I don’t know what kind, but it was old. It wrapped around Greyson, dug into his muscles as he ran, slowing him and leaving lines of blood behind. Then there was a gate, and Greyson was through it.

Hayden was hot on his heels. Before the gate closed, Greyson grabbed a handful of it-of the magic Chase used to create the gate-and threw it like a hand grenade at Hayden.

Hayden sheathed his rifle, and caught most of the magic with his hand, diffusing the magic so that it froze into a cloud of shattered glass that fell and burned the grass at his feet.

Magic should not do what Greyson and Chase were doing with it. They were using so much magic, they should be unconscious by now. Someone had to be bearing the price of their magic use, but I didn’t know who it was, although it could be the other magic users on their side acting as Proxy.

Or maybe more magic users somewhere else in the city were standing Proxy. How far did this break in the Authority run? Were they fighting in Salem? In Eugene? Was there an uprising in Washington? California? Or was this just a local war?

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.