Magic Without Mercy (22 page)

Stone’s glyphs took on a vinelike appearance, green and growing, stretching, curling, blooming.

And then the glyph in the bowl folded in on itself, like a flower closing, and a single, black drop of magic fell to Stone’s head.

No, that magic wasn’t black—it was dark. Dark magic.

Holy shit.

Working dark and light magic made people crazy. You had to be trained to use them together for even a short amount of time. And people died who tried to contain light and dark magic to become Focals. I had no idea what
it would do to pour even a drop of dark magic into a gargoyle filled with light magic.

I suppose my dad’s mental stability had been in question before, but using dark magic now, when we were trying to cure magic, didn’t make any sense.

Stone didn’t like it either. He shuddered and growled. Then he howled as the whorls of magic flashed between each of the forms they had taken, spreading, cracking, webbing through him like a net of fire, ash, vines, blood.

Stone,
I said.
He’s hurt. You’re hurting him.

Dad was holding fast, holding a wall between me and my own body, between me and magic, between me and me.

Fuck that.

I shoved at the wall, shoved at him, pounded against the barriers until they cracked and I fell through and was once again very much me.

Magic was so thick in the room, I could feel it brushing hot against my skin, tugging at my hair, prickling my nose and eyes.

But it wasn’t making me pass out. Somehow Dad was still there with me, beside me, equal in my body and mind. And his entire focus was on Stone. He didn’t want me to pass out. He didn’t want me to be hurt by magic because he didn’t want to miss seeing this.

This was important to him. Very important.

Well, it was important to me too, but I didn’t want it to hurt Stone.

The single drop of dark magic on Stone’s head flattened.

Stone lifted his wings, as if to fly.

The drop burned like a flash, joining all the glyphs of magic, fusing them together in one solid pulse of pure, whole magic.

Stone froze.

A sound rang out like a gong, so loud I slapped my hands over my ears. I couldn’t block it out.

The sound came from my bones, from the floor beneath, the walls, the ceiling, and beyond that. The sound came from the world, from everything magic touched, from everyone magic touched, from everywhere magic touched.

And magic filled the world.

For that moment, everything seemed to lift, to grow brighter. Then the world wavered, blurring and bending in ways my mind could not comprehend.

I reached for Zayvion, yelled his name, knew he was reaching for me, calling for me, but we could not find each other, the distance between us worlds away, even though we were standing in the same room.

I heard Maeve screaming, Shame yelling, Victor praying.

And then there was silence.

“T
hat son of a
bitch
!” Dad said through me. “The bastard. Locked it. Put in a fail-safe.”

I pressed my palm over my mouth to make Dad shut up, though he just kept right on cursing in my brain. I didn’t understand what he was saying. Well, I understood the swearwords—the ones in English, anyway.

I was still standing. All of us were in the exact same place we’d been before that hellacious sound had turned the world inside out.

“Did the world just snap in half and come back together again?” I asked.

I hurt from the roots of my hair to the bottoms of my feet.

Zayvion walked up to me. He looked like I felt. But he wrapped his arms around me. I shuddered from the relief in that contact and leaned against him, needing to be reminded that I was alive, real, breathing, and me. Needing to be reminded that he was alive, real, breathing, and mine.

We stood there for three heartbeats, and for those three heartbeats, everything was right in my world.

Man had a way of making me feel like there wasn’t anything I couldn’t take. Made me feel like there wasn’t anything I went up against that he wouldn’t be right there at my side, taking it on with me, hit for hit.

I stepped back. “What the hell happened?”

“You used dark magic,” Victor said with a flat sort of numbness. “Or your father did. Used it on Stone. With all the other magic.”

“Is that what roller-coastered reality?”

No one said anything. Except Dad.

Yes. It was the one way I could think of cleansing magic, putting it all back together again in a small enough sample it wouldn’t completely destroy the world as we know it. But the backstabbing bastard put a fucking fail-safe on it.

“How about less swearing, more specifics?” I said.

Cody Miller made Stone—made this Animate that can house magic. In theory, it can contain all magics, even light and dark. He put a lock on it I cannot pick. He set a fail-safe to shut it down if ever all magics are combined within it.

“I don’t even know why he would think of putting in that kind of safety catch,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Crazy girl?” Shame said a little hoarsely, “You’re talking to ghosts.”

“My dad,” I said. “He said Stone’s locked. That Cody put a fail-safe on him in case he’s ever used for magic this way. Ever used to join magic, light and dark.”

“He used dark magic?” Hayden asked. “Where? How?”

“I think it was worked in a glyph in the bowl.”

“Well, fantastic,” Shame whispered.

I looked around the room.

We did not look good. Correction, we looked great for just having been through a magical meat grinder. At least everyone was breathing, moving, alive.

Except for Stone. He stood stock-still, half crouched, one hand raised, his face tipped up to a sky his eyes could not see, wings unfurled.

He was silent, unmoving, a strange sort of quiet I’d never seen in him before.

“No,” I said. “Stone? You okay? Stoney?”

I touched his face. He was cold. Unbreathing. Nothing but a statue now. That spell hadn’t locked him. It had killed him.

“Fix this,” I said out loud, even though I was talking to my dad. “Unlock him.”

I can’t unlock him,
Dad said,
which means I can’t unlock the magic in him.

“No. You put the magic in him. Undo the spell.”

“I can’t,” Dad said through my mouth.

Okay, I wasn’t getting anywhere with this. I took a couple calming breaths and tried to look at this problem through reasonable eyes.

Stone was a statue. All the glyphs that I’d seen on him before were gone, faded. He really did just look like a piece of garden decor.

“Allie,” Maeve said softly. She cleared her throat. “Allie, dear. Tell us what your father is saying.”

“Stone’s locked,” I said. “All the magic in him is locked too. Dad doesn’t know how to open him up. He said Cody made it so he would lock up and do this. Turn into a statue.”

Stone looked sad. He looked afraid. He looked like when I’d first met him, chained down by magic that would not let him touch the sky.

I hated this, hated that he was trapped. Yes, also trapped in him was all the magic we’d just gone to so much trouble to secure. But he was my buddy. My gargoyle. My Stone. I didn’t want to lose him. Not like this.

“Cody made him. Cody put this lock on him. We can’t get to the magic, to see if it can be used for a cure, until we find a way to unlock Stone.”

“At least we know what the problem is,” Terric said. “That’s something.”

“Not damn much,” Hayden said.

The door to the room burst in. And six hands raised six different spells that could cause six different versions of pain.

Bea and Jack, two of my Hounds whom I had told to stay away, stay safe, stay out of this, strode into the room.

“Hi, Allie,” Bea said with her customary perky smile. “The police will be here in less than ten minutes. Don’t know what you all are doing, but it’s time to run.”

“H
ow many?” I asked.

Bea shrugged. “I think they emptied out the entire department.”

Shame pushed off the wall he was leaning on. “I say we get the hell out of here.”

“We can’t,” I said.

“Can’t?” Shame raised one eyebrow. “I don’t see why not.”

“We have two unconscious men we need to look after and a two-ton gargoyle who’s frozen solid and happens to be our only chance to cleanse magic.”

“The van’s here,” Terric said. “We could probably get Davy and Collins loaded in it. Maybe Stone too.”

“In ten minutes?” I said.

“Nine now,” Jack noted, his restless gaze taking in all the technology and implements lining the room. His gaze rested the longest at the restraints on the bed, and his mouth pressed a hard line.

Hounds weren’t dumb—he knew what kinds of things happened here, even if he didn’t know exactly how those things happened.

“Are you sure they’re coming here?” Victor asked.

Bea nodded. “We have our ear to the ground on this. Hounds don’t get these kinds of things wrong.” Then to me, “Allie, you
really
need to run now.”

“Where are we even going to run to?” Hayden asked. “Split up? Try to regroup?”

“Hell,” Shame said. “Maybe we don’t run at all. We can take them. Take them here. Look at all this.” He waved his hand toward the equipment that filled the room. Most of it looked like it could do a lot of harm.

“No,” I said. “We will not get in a standoff or shoot-out with the police. They’re just doing their job. They don’t know what’s really going on with magic, and they don’t deserve to die for it.”

“Some of them work for the Authority,” Victor noted.

“I don’t care. We protect the innocent.”

He nodded, his approval clear. “So we run.”

“Where?” Hayden said again.

I didn’t know. Didn’t know if splitting up was a better option or if staying together would be safer. “Anywhere away from here, for the moment, will do. Hayden, Maeve, get Collins, see if you can wake him. If not—”

“I’ll carry him,” Hayden said. He and Maeve hurried out of the room.

“I’ll get Davy,” I said. “Terric, can you help me with him?”

“What about Stone?” Shame asked.

“He’ll have to stay here,” I said reluctantly.

No,
Dad said.
He’s the only chance to cure magic. He has the samples.

“We can’t carry him,” I said. “And he can’t move.”

“And we’re running out of time,” Bea said again.

“Gate,” Zayvion said.

I stopped halfway across the room. I hadn’t thought of that. “Can you do it?”

Zayvion turned to me. His eyes burned with molten gold and there was no warmth in his smile. He was burning hard, hot. Asking him to throw such a massive spell
after all that he’d been doing, with no recovery time, might just push him too far into a killing insanity.

“Easy as breathing,” he said with an unconvincing smile.

That was a lie. The possibilities of what opening this Gate might do to him—physically, mentally, magically—washed over me with sticky, cold fear. His fear, my fear. Same thing.

“Maybe Terric or Victor?”

“They can’t hit this jump,” Zay said.

“Maybe—”

He walked over to me and gripped my upper arm. “Go get Davy.” Fear pushed through that contact. So did anger and determination. We had to get out of here, all of us, now, alive.

“Can’t do anything until you let go of me, Zay,” I said evenly.

He let go of my arm and began drawing a Disbursement.

“Terric?” I said.

“I’ll stay here,” he said.

I ran out the door, with Shame, Bea, and Jack jogging to keep up.

“Anything else we can help with the… Gate thing?” Bea asked.

“No. You two need to disappear. I don’t want to see you, hear you, or so much as catch a scent of you. The police have a lot of powerful magic users behind them right now who want a bunch of us dead. I don’t want you hurt.”

“We could help—,” Bea started.

“No,” I said again. “I’ll call you when we land.”

“If we land,” Shame added as we hit the main room. Maeve and Hayden already had Collins, who was semiconscious, off the couch and on his feet.

“We could leave him,” Hayden noted.

“No. He comes with us. Take him to the room. Zay’s going to open a Gate.”

“You let him talk you into that?” Hayden asked.

“No choice. We’ll deal.”

They started off and we hurried down to Davy’s room. Bea and Jack were still behind me. I understood why they hadn’t left yet. Davy was one of them, one of us, a Hound. Last they’d seen him, he was on death’s door.

But they were about to find out that he’d walked right over death’s threshold.

“Davy?” I said as I strode to the bed.

Davy opened his eyes, and thankfully, he was solid. “Hey, boss,” he whispered.

“We have to move. Cops are closing in. Think you can walk?”

He swallowed, nodded. “I think. So.”

“C’mon, now, mate,” Shame said. “You could dance if a pretty girl asked you. Someone like Sunny, maybe. Am I right?”

That got half a smile out of him. “Sure.”

Shame and I helped him to his feet. Davy was breathing hard. I wrapped his arm over my shoulder, and Shame did the same.

We took a step, and Davy lost hold on his physical self, fading to watercolor magic, his feet slipping into the floor.

“Jesus,” Jack whispered.

Bea gasped. “What did he do to him? What did Collins do to him?”

“No time,” I said, giving her a hard look. “Get the hell out of here.” Then to Davy, “Keep your mind on your feet. We can move faster if you’re solid.”

Bea tugged on Jack’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

“This isn’t right, Beckstrom,” Jack said.

“I know,” I said. “Working on it.”

Jack and Bea jogged down the hall, and were out the front door by the time Shame and I had half carried, half dragged Davy through the front room toward the back of the warehouse.

“You’re doing fine,” I said as Davy concentrated on his feet, lifting them and putting them down a little gingerly as if unsure that the floor would be there for each step.

“Freaks,” Davy breathed. “Me. Out.”