Magic Without Mercy (38 page)

“So what are we watching?” I asked, stuffing popcorn in my mouth.

Zay had already hit play on the remote and was munching on a handful of popcorn. He pointed at the screen, which revealed a close-up of a bookshelf.

Bright yellow letters appeared.

“
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
?” I asked. “You have got to be joking.”

Zay chuckled. “I couldn’t believe Mrs. Stanley had it in her library. I guess she has a grandson who loves it.”

“We’re watching
Winnie the Pooh
?” I asked again.

“Shh. This is the good part.”

“Your idea of a romantic movie is
Winnie the Pooh
?”

“She didn’t have
RoboCop
.” He took another scoop of popcorn, chewed, and then as the music faded, he recited, right along with the narrator: “This could be the room of any small boy.”

I started laughing. “You do not have this movie memorized.”

“Of course I do. It’s a classic.”

We watched the entire thing, and Zayvion proved his attention to storybook detail by pointing out the differences between the book and the movie. The movie was nowhere near two hours long and after it, we were going to raid Mrs. Stanley’s other shows, but instead fell asleep.

I woke to a sudden cold numbing in my left palm.

Zayvion woke up too, and turned my hand, expecting, as I was expecting, to see a knife sticking out of it. But there was no knife there. Only the black mark, the seal of death Mikhail had left in my hand.

“Why is it hurting?” I asked. And then I knew—we knew. Someone was homing in on it to open a Gate.

We were off that bed in a flash, running to the living room.

Light. Sound. An explosion of magic tore through the room, tore through the house, shaking it on its foundation.

Thunder cracked and rolled.

The hot concrete and salt smell of a Gate opening burned my nose, my mouth, my lungs. This wasn’t any
Gate. This was something huge, something more powerful than I’d ever seen before.

Ezekiel’s Hands,
Dad said.

The Gate that could open across any distance, no matter how far. The Gate even Zayvion couldn’t cast. Opening here, in the center of an old church in St. Johns.

The explosion of light and sound blasted outward, then hammered inward, striking the center of the room with painful precision I could feel ringing down to my core.

Magic cut through the middle of the room, and a golden orb hovered in midair. An orb made of pure magic. Like a lock turning, the orb opened, spiraling wide like a flower blooming, spinning in flashes of magic that burned the air, the space, the reality of the place.

It melted through the distance between here and wherever it had been cast from, creating an archway that flickered, as magic welded the two spaces, the two great distances, together.

And through that doorway staggered a man.

Not just any man. Roman Grimshaw, the ex–Guardian of the gates.

He was bloody, burned, his coat missing. His exposed skin smoked and blistered as if he had bathed in acid. And as soon as he was through the gate, he was on his knees.

“Roman!” I said.

Zayvion and I rushed to him.

“They are coming,” he gasped.

We caught him in our arms. Maeve and Paul brought blankets and made a place for us to lay him down. We did so, propping up his head.

He was bleeding. Badly. From so many places, I couldn’t tell where I should apply pressure.

“Isabelle,” he whispered. “Leander.”

“How?” Zayvion asked.

“They have taken.” Roman inhaled, exhaled with far too little air, and far too much rattling in his lungs.

“Get the doctor!” I yelled.

Davy was already running down the hall to get him.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “Just rest.”

“Tell us,” Zayvion said. “How are Leander and Isabelle coming?”

“They possessed the Overseer,” he whispered. “Killed her. Raised her from the dead. And now they are her. And now they are…”

The doctor rushed in, and I got out of the way.

Zayvion didn’t move. “They’re what?” he asked. “What are Leander and Isabelle doing?”

Roman’s eyes unfocused. He had stopped moving. Every breath seemed more shallow than the last.

The doctor pulled his burned shirt aside and revealed a gaping wound. A deadly wound. I could see bone and muscle and veins and organs. And then Roman stopped breathing.

“Roman,” Zayvion said. “No.”

I watched as Roman stepped out of his own body. The ghost of Roman, the soul of him, the Veiled, since he had been a powerful magic user. A very powerful magic user. He looked like Roman, only unburned and sad-eyed.

“More’s the pity,” he rasped, his voice scratching at my mind, just as Shame’s voice had done.

“What are Leander and Isabelle doing, Roman?” I stood, faced him.

Zay looked up at me. The doctor and everyone else looked over at me too. At the crazy woman who could see magic and hear dead people.

Two pretty handy skills at the moment, thank you.

“They are coming to kill you, Allie. They are coming
to kill Zayvion. They will eradicate the Soul Complements in this world. Starting with you. So they can rule magic. So they can rule the world.”

“How?” I said. “Are they using Gates? Are they coming now?”

“The possession of the Overseer has tired them. They cannot use magic yet. But they will, and once that is so, they will come for you. They will bend all the world, and all the minds they need, to destroy you. You, and Zayvion.”

“Just because we’re Soul Complements?” My heart was pounding. Pounding too fast.

“No. Because it is within you both to stop them. Here, on this hallowed ground. They know what you are, Allison Angel Beckstrom. They know what you have been made to be. And they mean to unmake you.”

“Do we have days?” I asked. “Hours?”

“Three days at the most. They will try the gates. If they are locked, they will try to travel by conventional means. I will give you all the time that I can.”

“How?” I asked.

Roman turned and walked into the gate that was still open in the middle of the room. He stood, arms to his side, stance set wide. Even though he was no longer alive, I could see pain wash over his face. He tipped his head down, bearing the pain and holding the Gate open, as if by sheer will alone.

I had ever seen only one other person, one other soul, stand like that in a gate. Cody’s spirit, when he had leaped into the gate, not to open it, but to hold it closed so that nothing could get through. And nothing had; not a single gate had opened until Cody finally stepped out, exhausted, and had been tied to Mama.

“You will know their weakness,” Roman said. “For it is their strength.”

And then he spoke one hard word. The gate closed with a roar.

I stood there, shaking, sweating. Burning with cold. Roman was dead, the kind of dead you didn’t come back from. I could not bear to turn and see his bloody, lifeless body behind me.

But I did.

Zayvion was still on his knees, holding Roman’s hand even though the doctor had already leaned away and was no longer touching him. Zay bowed his head and whispered, “To keep magic safe, and the lives of the innocent. You have upheld your vows with honor. Safe journey, Guardian.” Then he folded Roman’s hands on his chest, and stood, the sorrow all too clear in his eyes.

“Hell of a way to wake a man,” Shame said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“Is it the end of the world already?” Terric whispered.

We all turned to look at them.

Collins, Dr. Tullis, and Maeve all rushed to their side.

I studied Shame’s face from where I stood. Too pale, too gaunt. There was a darkness to him that I had never seen before, as if a deep shadow covered him in a shroud. Then I looked at Terric, who was glossy with sweat and running a hell of a fever. He almost glowed with a silver white edging, as if there were light trapped inside him. They had changed. But they were alive.

“I didn’t expect you gentlemen to be awake,” the doctor said. “Not with the beating you took. And the blood loss, the magic overload, the… well, everything. This is a good sign.” He looked at Maeve, then Zayvion, then me. “A very good sign. Let me wash my hands.” He left to do so.

I glanced at Zayvion. The sorrow was still bare on his face.

“I’ll help you with Roman,” I said. “We can talk to Shame and Terric after the doctor’s checked on them.”

Zay nodded, and Paul came over to help. Then I spent the next few minutes trying not to think too hard about helping them pick up a dead man and take him to one of the back rooms. We lowered him onto a cot, where the nurse who had stayed the night drew a sheet over him, and told us she’d make a phone call.

No more waiting. No more resting. We had a lot to take care of and very little time to do it all. Leander and Isabelle were coming. And we were in no shape to stop them.

Yet.

As we walked back into the living room, a plan was beginning to form in my mind, even though I was shaken, frightened.

Zayvion had pulled his calm Zen mask back into place. “It’s not the end of the world yet,” he said. “We still have time.”

“And we’re still standing,” I said. “Davy, would you call in the Hounds? Any who are still on their feet. Any who still want to help our fight. We’ll need to let them know everything that’s been going on.”

“Will do, boss,” Davy said.

“Sunny, could you contact Carl and La and tell them we need to talk to them and any member of the Authority they trust who might be in a decision-making position? We’ll need to meet. Later today would be best. Tomorrow, at the latest.”

“Sure,” she said.

Sunny paused halfway out of the room. “What should I tell them the meeting is about?”

I looked up. “Tell them now we have a real war to wage.” I stood where the gate had opened, staring down
at Roman’s blood on the floor. Zayvion moved beside me, his hand wrapped around my waist, gripping my hip tight. He was still hurting. So was I. We all were. But there was only option left to us. Take out Leander and Isabelle. Hit them before they hit us. Or we’d all be dead.

S
tump Station wasn’t much more than a collection of shacks built precariously into the pockets and wedges east side of the Bitterroot Range. So barren and out of the way, even the vultures risked starvation. It was the perfect sort of place to attract those members of society who preferred to remain unnoticed by others. Hard men and rangy women who spent most of their days waiting for the right wind to carry them up to the glim grounds, where they could harvest their fortune.

Glim, more precious than diamonds or gold, used to power ships on air, water, or land. Used to heal the sick, cure the blights, turn the tides in wars, and make anything and everything stronger and longer lasting. Glim was even rumored to extend a man’s life well beyond his years.

Rare and desired, glim. And as hard to locate as Hades’ back door.

Some said glim could be found underground or out at sea. But the only place glim was known to occur was up in the sky, high above the storm clouds, floating like nets of soft lightning. Difficult to find. Deadly to harvest. Most ships couldn’t launch that high, last those storms, or lash and land without killing those who flew them.

So it was no wonder glim fetched a high price in the legitimate markets and a king’s ransom in those markets less savory.

Captain Hink counted himself among his own kind out here in the rocks. Outlaws, prospectors, glim pirates, soldiers of luck, fools, and the foolhardy—brothers all.

Not that he wouldn’t drop a brother at a thousand paces if he jumped his claim, stole his boots, or touched his airship, the
Swift
.

But then, he supposed any of the rock rats who ported, docked, or launched at Stump Station would do him the same.

“Problem, Mr. Seldom?” Captain Hink asked as his second-in-command ducked through the canvas tarp that hung in place of a door in the tumbledown Hink called home.

Seldom was a wiry-built redheaded Irish who looked like he’d snap in half if he sneezed too hard. Most people thought he got his name from how often he spoke. But Captain Hink knew he went by Seldom for how many times he’d lost a fight.

Hink figured he and Seldom didn’t much resemble each other. Hink scraped up a full six foot, three inches, and had shoulders that took the sides off doorways if he wasn’t mindful. Yellow hair, skin prone to tanning, and eyes the gray of a broody sky set in a face that women had never complained about, Hink might have been considered a catch if he’d grown up in the social circles of the old states instead of the bastard child of a soiled dove.

And whereas Seldom looked old for his thirty years, Hink looked like a man in his twenties, and that was no lie.

Seldom stabbed one thumb over his shoulder, stirring the wool scarves around his neck and jostling his breathing gear, which hung at the wait near his collarbone. “Mullins.”

Captain Hink put the cup of boiled beans that passed
for coffee up here in the stones down on the edge of the map spread across the buckboard that served as his desk. He leaned back in his chair, enough so his Colt was in easy reach. He wasn’t expecting Les Mullins to come in and shoot him dead. But he wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what the captain of the big—and recently crashed and burned—
Iron Draught
hoped to accomplish.

Especially since Mullins had to patch up that old mule of a steamer the
Powderback
to get around.

Mr. Seldom stepped to the corner of the room and faded into the woodwork like a stick in a stack.

The canvas tarp whipped aside and in strode Les Mullins. Big man. High forehead under stringy black hair and a face permanently burned red from flying too long in the cold upper. He looked mad enough to chew coils.

“Just because I don’t have a door,” Captain Hink said, “doesn’t mean a man shouldn’t knock.”