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.
Hayden and Shame yelled out. They were almost there. Almost close enough.
Greyson stood, faced Jingo Jingo. And disgorged the children’s magic, and more-all the magic he had taken from all the people he’d been fighting-straight at Jingo Jingo.
For a second my heart soared. Maybe Chase had told Greyson that Jingo was a freak. Maybe they were on the good guys’ side. Our side.
But Jingo Jingo took that magic, all of it, into the disk in his hand, mixed with his blood, and every discipline and expression of magic. His eyes were wide, desperate, as if this one thing, this last thing, was his only chance. He pointed the disk at the pile of disks and the crystal in the center of the field.
He chanted a spell that made my ears hurt.
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.