bedeviled & beyond 03 - bedeviled & beleaguered (13 page)

I glanced at Emo. He shook his head.
He has a point, Astra. He looks like hell. No pun intended.

I ignored my partner’s voice in my head and sat down on the divan, leaning forward so that I could lay a hand on Raoul’s knee. “Tell me what you know about this mist.”

“The mist holds my death,” he responded dramatically, “It holds the deaths of all humans.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged, “I’ve felt it once before...during the great wars.”

My eyebrows flew north, “But you were only a small child.”

“My gift of awareness has been both a curse and a joy. I feel the changes in the magical sphere before they physically manifest...I always have.”

I sat back hard, the air in my lungs exploding out of me in shock. What must it have been like to be eight years old and have that kind of knowledge? The respect that I’d always had for Raoul expanded exponentially. “Shit.”

The room was silent except for the warm crackling of the fire. I stared at the lively flames and came to a decision. Sitting forward again I reached for Raoul’s hand, taking it in mine and giving it a squeeze. “You are much stronger than you give yourself credit for, Raoul. In a way you’ve been preparing for this all your life. You knew about the twisted magic entering this world before anyone else did, your sensitivity to it can help me now. I need you to reach down inside yourself and find the strength to do what needs to be done.”

He shook his head, pulling his hand from my grasp. I frowned. “If you won’t do it for me, then do it for your fellow humans who will die along with you...in madness and pain.”

Raoul seemed to fold in on himself. “It grows worse by the day. My brain feels like it has knives in it.” He looked up at me and I saw the truth of it in his gaze. “I’m holding onto my sanity by a thread, Astra. I don’t know if I can keep it together long enough to help.” He looked down at his hands, which dangled between his knees. “But if you can help me, I’ll try.”

I closed my eyes, not realizing until that moment how much I’d needed to hear him say those words. I don’t know why but I believed Raoul was crucial to us in defeating the invasive force.

I stood up and moved to stand in front of him. “I’d like to see if I can take some of that pain away if you’ll let me.” He stared hard at me for a beat and then nodded.

Dropping to my knees, I placed my hands on either side of his face. I reached for my power and pulled it forward, allowing it to slide into Raoul.

Though I’d tried to insert the healing magic into him in as gentle a fashion as possible, he stiffened when it hit and his eyes rolled back. He slumped in the chair, unconscious.

I pulled my hands away from Raoul immediately, panic slithering through me. I looked at Emo. “Should I stop?”

Emo shook his head, placing a hand on Raoul’s forehead. “He’s just unconscious. It’s probably for the best. Go ahead and see what you can do before he wakes up.”

I nodded, returning my hands to Raoul’s head. I probed with my power and found what could only be described as a clenching in his mind, apparently being fed by an overabundance of electrical activity in his brain. I gently massaged the rigid area with my magic and, when I had managed to loosen it, I gathered the excess energy in the brain and used it to create a barrier that would give him relief for a time.

Then I pulled my power back and stood. I sat back on the divan to wait for him to wake up.

Emo handed me a cup of hot coffee and I looked up at him in surprise.

He had a second cup in his hands.

Raoul stirred after a few minutes and sat up. He looked at me as if he didn’t remember what had happened, then his hand lifted and he touched his temple with trembling fingertips. A slow smile spread across his face.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

I grinned, “Good.”

“Thank you, Astra.”

“I’m glad I could help. Okay, we need to talk about this force. Are you up for that?”

He nodded and Emo handed him the second steaming mug. Raoul took it gratefully.

“First, tell me what you know about this twisted layer?”

Raoul sipped his coffee and sat back, propping his feet on the table in front of us. “It’s like a massive blanket of electrical energy. But it’s more than simple electricity. The electrical components that make it up have been skewed somehow.” He frowned as if trying to figure out how to explain it to me. “When this...thing...hits normal electrical energy it bounces off, initially rejected. What happens then is blurry but I think it somehow wraps itself around the normal energy, choking it off and then realigns it so that it’s compatible. That’s how it continues to grow.”

I frowned, “So it feeds off normal energy?”

He nodded. “But it isn’t compatible with it.”

I thought about this for a minute. “Only magical energy?”

“That’s just the thing. It doesn’t look for magical energy. It goes after non-magic sources.”

My eyes widened, “Humans.”

He nodded. “It strips us of our good energy and forces the skewed energy into us. Which is why we go mad. Eventually nothing in our bodies can function anymore, everything shuts down and we die.”

I shuddered. “What’s with these?” I held my wrist up for him to see.

Raoul unconsciously rubbed his own devil’s mark. “These mark us as conduits. But you already know that.”

I nodded.

“What you probably haven’t thought about though is that they also mark us as being dangerous to the veil. You see, once the veil has pulled all the energy from the human population, it will turn its attention to magical energy. But if we can use our power to lock the veil down, we might conceivably be able to use the same power to get rid of it.”

Emo had returned with another mug of coffee, the last bit of news stopping him as he was lowering his butt to sit on the divan beside me. “It will attack you and Astra?” He glanced my way, his handsome face clearly showing his concern.

Raoul nodded. “And all the other conduits, including, theoretically, the Serpent. The Serpent knows that he needs to stop the veil before it reaches that point. To accomplish that he needs to perform a halting ritual.”

“But then why release it in the first place if he’s just going to get rid of it in the end?”

Raoul shook his dark head. “You misunderstand me, Astra. He won’t get rid of it. He’s just going to halt its progress. It will still consume the Earth.”

“Shit!”

“So...do you have any idea how we can stop it?” Emo’s face was pale, his eyes dark with worry.

Raoul held the coffee mug in both hands and stared over it thoughtfully. “As far as I can tell it has only one weakness. That initial rejection when it first reaches out. Maybe we can work with that.”

I frowned, feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead of me. “How long do we have before this thing eats through the human race?”

Raoul shrugged, “Weeks maybe...months...a year at most. It moves fairly slowly but the more violent the humans are in reaction the more quickly it feeds on them.”

Emo sat up straighter, “So violence feeds it?”

“Basically, yes.”

He looked at me. “Then we’re in trouble.”

My stomach churned in agreement. I thought about Raoul’s information for a minute, then I had an idea. “So we can slow it if we slow the violence?”

Raoul scrunched up his face. “I think so, yes. It seems logical.”

Feeling a little better, I glanced at Emo. “We need to engage the guardians.”

He stared at me for a beat before he grinned. “That might just work.”

Raoul sat forward in his chair. “The guardian angels? What can they do?”

I moved to the fireplace and started pacing, thinking my way through the possibilities my mind was churning out. “They’re generally just supposed to watch and only intervene where necessary to keep their charges from traveling to the light ahead of schedule. But they can perform other roles if needed. One of the things they sometimes do is intervene when a charge has become morbidly depressed. They can usually improve the charge’s mood if only for a short time. Humans call their attempts manic depression. Sharp upswings in mood caused by guardian intervention, followed by the charge’s natural depression returning and then the rise in happiness again caused by follow-up intervention. It’s a difficult tactic and there will still be low levels that are conducive to violence. But it should slow the progress of this thing down a little anyway.”

“And the guardians can do this long-term if necessary?”

I glanced at Emo and he shrugged, nodding. “I don’t see why not. It will be difficult but the alternative is ugly.”

I nodded. “I agree. They really have no choice.”

~SC~

As soon as we got back to the office I reached for my cross and placed it on my forehead, saying Flick’s name. I started to sit down behind my desk but suddenly found myself space shifting. Destination unknown.

Locked into immobility, my mind churned. Where the hell was I going and who had grabbed me? Pulling my power forward with a thought, I tried to prepare for whatever I would face when sound and motion returned.

I landed in a world of wispy white. The specific place wasn’t at all familiar but the location was. I saw a clump of something brown and stringy in the near distance. Hair. Very dirty hair.

I was on Flick’s cloud.

I stomped toward him. Stomping in a cloud is decidedly unsatisfying. All I got was a few muffled thumps. “What the hell, Flick? Why’d you drag me up here?”

He shifted to look at me and I nearly screamed. His pale, freckled face was red and scaly and swollen to almost four times its normal size. Stuff bubbled from his nose, dripped from his nearly obscured eyes and leaked from the corners of his mouth.

He couldn’t even lift his head.

He looked for all the world like a stage four. Or five, which is already dead.

“Holy shit! Flick. Shouldn’t you be in unplanned care or something?” I lowered my butt to a chair that I’d conjured with only a thought. That’s cloud magic. All you had to do was imagine something and it appeared.

He opened his mouth and a pale, pasty looking tongue emerged to lick fever cracked lips. It sounded like sand paper scraping over rock. “They can’t do anything. I went this morning.”

I frowned. “Nothing? That’s ridiculous. Are you gonna be okay?”

He shrugged. Anyway, I think he shrugged. His bony shoulders lifted a fraction off his cloud bed and then collapsed back down again. “I’ll live. Eventually.”

I stared down at him. I couldn’t possibly discuss engaging the guardians to intervene with him looking and feeling that bad. Finally he rolled bloodshot brown eyes my way and gave me an impatient look. “Did you come up here just to stare at me?”

I shook my head and a white mug of hot coffee appeared in my hand. I quickly hid behind it, sipping a bit frantically. I had the sudden and uncharitable thought that he might be contagious.

My chair moved silently back a couple more feet at the thought.

He glared at me. “You can’t catch this. It only attacks angels.”

“I’m part angel.”

He shook his greasy head.

I grinned, “How about fallen angels?” Royal Devil type fallen angels to be exact. Dialle’s father and I still had a score to settle with each other. I’d been watching my back for weeks.

He frowned, “I don’t know. Why?”

I thought of how much fun it would be to take a big, fat, juicy germ to Dialle the First’s chambers and plant it on his favorite mug.

I was enjoying the thought so much I didn’t immediately notice that Flick was droning on. Shaking off my musings, I forced myself to focus. “What did you say?”

He shuddered and his top half started to rise. A glass of water appeared in a very shaky hand. He sipped the water through a white straw and I waited impatiently. I really hadn’t liked what I thought I’d heard him say.

Finally he pulled the straw from his lips and the glass disappeared. His bed rotated so he could look at me without craning his neck. “I said...” he scraped sandpaper over the rock again and swallowed as if his throat hurt, “that half the army is down with the plague and it’s claiming dozens more every day.”

I groaned. “Please tell me you’re exaggerating, Flick.”

He glared at me. “I don’t exaggerate, Astra.”

I just barely resisted the impulse to roll my eyes. He did exaggerate, at every opportunity. Which meant that things were probably not quite as bad as he said they were. But they were probably still pretty bad.

And if the other guardians were as big a mess as Flick, my only chance to slow the twisted veil was a non-starter.

Shit!

“What is it, Astra?”

I lifted my mug to take a sip but it disappeared from my hands. I glared at Flick. Unfortunately the thought to make things happen in a cloud could come from anybody. I thought it back into my hands and frowned at him from behind it.

He flopped back to his cloud bed with a groan. “Stop stalling and just tell me so I can go back to sleep.”

I sighed and set the mug on a table that hadn’t been there a thought earlier. “I need to engage the guardians. This magic veil thing is feeding off the humans’ violent inclinations and I need to slow it down until I can figure out how to stop it.”

Flick stared at me for a few beats through squinted eyes. Then he nodded. “That makes sense. Contact Myra and have her engage as many guardians as possible.”

I brightened. “Myra’s not sick?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know but if she is she’ll just have to send you to someone else.”

I stood up to leave, sighing. Obviously he was simply pushing the obligation onto someone else’s cloud so he could go back to sleep. Considering how sick he was that was all right by me. I wasn’t going to get anything useful out of him anyway.

I reached for my cross to leave but a sudden thought occurred and I dropped it. Walking over to stand beside him I reached down and, overcoming my revulsion, placed a hand on his pale, soggy forehead. I pulled my power forward and almost fell over at the intensity of the result. Power surged through me and shot out of my hand with unaccustomed violence.

Apparently my power worked more efficiently in the clouds.