Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm

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.

He looked out across the scene. And locked eyes with me. I can’t, he mouthed. I am good at reading lips. His eyes were filled with sorrow, but also with anger. I can’t stop this anymore. You have to do it.

He rocked forward, as if something huge had hit him from behind, but all I could see behind him was a swirl of colors that matched the light from the gate.

He rocked again. And then I saw what bore down upon him. Eyes. Fangs. Claws.

The Hungers.

He was holding them back. Keeping them from entering our world, just as he had kept the gate closed. But now the gate was open, and real, he couldn’t hold on any longer.

We’d fought the Hungers before, when the gate had opened during my test. Even with all the magic users gathered and on the same side, thank you, we’d nearly lost. I didn’t have any hope we would win this time.

All this, all the things I’d seen, had taken up maybe a minute. But it felt like years. I was running, to save Maeve, to try to pull Greyson off her. Shame was still running too.

Hayden got there first. He’d sheathed his sword. Grabbed Greyson by the throat and tore him off Maeve’s still body. Pinning Greyson to the ground, Hayden pounded the hell out of him.

Chase yelled out. And Greyson smiled through bloody lips and broken face. Another gate opened-one of Chase’s gates. Not beside Greyson. Below him. It swallowed Greyson and Hayden. Chase closed it. I did not see where they reappeared. I didn’t have time to look.

Shame, at a dead run, threw everything he had at Jingo Jingo. Jingo, his hand still extended to keep the gate open, staggered.

Shame was good. A master. Even though he had been Jingo Jingo’s student.

Jingo turned, faced Shame. Looked surprised. Maybe he didn’t know that his student had become so skilled. This would be the end of one of them-that, I knew.

Shame still looked like hell. He’d added a cut across his cheek and a bruise over one eye, and his skin was still sunken against bone. He looked like the walking dead. Like at any moment he would fall. But his eyes told me that it was not the strength of his body that was fueling him.

Yes, one of them would fall. But from the fury pouring out of Shame, it wasn’t going to be him.

Shame chanted. He pulled his hands, a blade in each, across his chest, his head tipped down so that only his eyes burned through the ragged, bloodstained curtain of his hair. He looked like a dark angel, head bowed in prayer. And maybe he was. The grass at his feet crackled and seared brown, dead, and began to smoke. He was drawing energy, life energy, out of everything in his range. It was the way of Death magic, a transference of energy.

Jingo Jingo knew it too. He’d taught him.

“Don’t, boy,” he shouted. “You don’t know what’s at stake here. You don’t understand what we could lose.”

“Fuck,” Shame said, “you.”

He pulled his arms open, as if embracing all the life, all the pain, all the death and magic, in the circle.

I made it to Maeve. I had to pull her out of the way before Shame drank her down too.

I touched her face. She was cold. Too cold, even in the falling rain. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing and didn’t have time to wonder whether moving her would kill her. I picked her up, not easy, but I was in shape, and adrenaline gave me strength and desperation. Good enough.

I dragged her away, though there was no safe place, finally stopped near one of the Georgia sisters who was holding the east side of the Illusion barrier. The sister, the youngest, I thought, did not look down at me. Did not break out of her hypnotic trance.

That kind of focus was crazy. They should have had her Ground for the group. It was a good thing Sedra hadn’t asked me to hold the Illusion. I would have dropped that shit long ago.

I knelt and placed my hand on Maeve’s chest. Flashbacks rocked through me. Of Zayvion lying still, of a fight I could not win raging around me, of watching him cross into death. I tried to push it away, tried not to panic. Maeve’s heart beat, strong and even. She was breathing.

I didn’t know if I could heal her. With the wild magic pouring through the air, I wasn’t sure if I should even try. I might kill her.

I glanced back at Shame.

Things were not going well. Jingo Jingo smiled, a flash of white across his dark face, and I added another image to my nightmare list. He shook his head slowly, pitying Shame.

Shame’s hands shook as he cast the next spell. A spell Jingo Jingo batted aside and countered with something that sent Shame to his knees.

Where was Terric? Where was the cavalry? There didn’t seem to be any end to the storm, to the magic, to the fallen.

I didn’t know what to do.

Listen to me, Allison, Dad said in my head. This battle is not the war. Those who fall will be remembered. But there will be more, many deaths, hundreds. I saw a flash of Davy’s face, of Bea, of Violet, of Stotts, of Zayvion, then a blur of people whom my father knew, some of his ex-wives and business partners, and for one brief, sweet moment an image of my own mother’s laughing face; then the images were gone. Thousands could die if you do not listen to me.

I’m listening.

Leave Maeve. She is alive. Leave the others. You must release the Hand, Cody, back into this world. He was never meant to hold the gates between life and death closed.

The Authority will kill him. Destroy his soul if they find out, maybe even kill the living Cody too, I said.

No. There is one who will keep him hidden.

Who?

My dad pointed in my head-a strange feeling that made me want to scratch the roof of my mouth. I looked up to the right.

Mama stood on the other side of the wall of magic, all five-foot-nothing of her. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she wore a secondhand raincoat that was two sizes too big, the green hood tightened around her face like a corn husk.

“Mama?”

She couldn’t hear me. She was outside the Illusion. Wait. What was she doing there? From her perspective, she was standing in the middle of the field at night in a downpour. Why would she do that?

She owes me a favor, my dad said.

Okay, that was fucking creepy. I didn’t know how my dad had gotten her to show up. Didn’t know if he’d left something about it in his will, or if he was somehow talking to people when I didn’t know it. Like at night when I was sleeping or something. I tried to think if I had done any sleepwalking and came up with nothing.

You are not the only vessel I fill, he said. You are not the only one who can hear me.

Holy shit. Could he get any more creepy?

Who? I asked. Greyson? Oh, I hoped I was wrong.

It has not been easy, he said. The beast fights me, but I found a way. He sounded proud about that.

It made me want to barf.

Dad, or Greyson, or some combination, had somehow talked to Mama. Which meant she knew my undead dad was undead. And she’d agreed to do him a favor.

I didn’t know if I should break through the shield and tell her to go away somewhere safe fast, or if getting my body, and my possessed brain, closer to her would let Dad jump the ship. He was stronger here, with the wild magic and the disks. Stronger ever since Greyson had attacked Zayvion.

Was he a part of Chase and Greyson’s betrayal?

What do you want? I asked him. Cold sweat washed over me, and I shivered in the rain, even though it was tropical hot inside the shield. Fear, of him manipulating me all this time, of the frighteningly real possibility that he was the one behind the attack on Zayvion, made me want to run far and fast.

But how could I escape that which was inside me?

I want magic in the right hands. And I want immortality.

Two things he’d told me before. If they were lies, they were lies he was sticking to.

Why should I trust you?

Do you want your friends to live?

I looked at Shame again. He was still on one knee, the other foot braced, his hand sunk deep to clutch the grass, the soil, the other raised toward Jingo Jingo, so much magic pouring through him that Jingo was having to take hard steps backward, even though he leaned with all his strength, with all his bulk, into Shame’s spell.

Shame shook with fury. He wasn’t chanting. He was cursing. And every word drew blood from Jingo’s thick skin, sending Jingo’s blood to pour down with the rain, and into the soil, where Shame drew the energy and strength out of Jingo’s blood, draining Jingo’s life energy and throwing it back at him to cut him again.

Holy fuck, that boy was ruthless.

I didn’t need my dad. I didn’t need to do what he wanted. Shame was taking care of Jingo Jingo. Dane still held the cage from crushing Sedra, though he hadn’t broken it yet. Victor was hot in battle with both Liddy and Chase, and Terric had knocked Mike out-with fists, not magic. I couldn’t see Greyson or Hayden.

I needed to deal with Cody and close the gate so the Hungers couldn’t get through.

Jingo Jingo yelled.

Shame was on his feet now, magic still hammering Jingo’s Shield. But Jingo wasn’t yelling in defeat. He swung his huge arm to one side and directed the disk and magic at the gate.

Cody screamed. The incorporeal shrill felt like someone had shoved hot peppers in my eyes. His voice, his pain, filled the dome.

For a breath-just that long-everyone stopped.

Except me.

I stood. Ran. Straight at the gate. And caught Cody’s spirit as he fell free into this world again. Caught him, not in my arms, but rather, confusingly, horrifyingly, in my mind.

For a moment, I was three people, three lives, three memories. I remembered painting with magic, carving with magic, creating beautiful, beautiful things that broke barriers between life and death, ways for magic to be all disciplines at once.