Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm
It gave me nightmares to think of what they would do if they fell in the wrong user’s hands.
Zay cast a subtle Illusion spell, just enough that people might think we were digging in the trunk for a spare tire or something. Then he started unloading the goodies.
I got a knife, the same one he gave me every time something like this went down.
“Isn’t that your blood blade?” Terric asked Zay.
“Yes.” Zay handed him a set of axes. Terric took them both in one hand, and finished off his coffee, then crushed the cup in his hand.
“What do you want, Shame?” Zay asked.
“Got a flamethrower in there?”
“Take a look.”
Shame threw his cig on the ground and dragged the toe of his boot across it. Then he stepped up and started digging through the trunk like a kid going elbow-deep in a candy bin.
“Lord, Jones, you’ve stocked up. What’d you think, we were taking down a fucking army?”
That perked Terric’s interest. He stepped up next to Shame. “Well, I’ll be shitted,” he said. “That’s an impressive toolbox.”
Zay shifted out of the way. Shame and Terric gleefully dug around in the weapons. They each proclaimed their finds much better than the other’s, and ended up-I am not joking-doing a round of rock, paper, scissors over something that looked like a cherry bomb, swapped a few other things, and actually laughed a little.
Forget the flowers. Forget the cards, or a nice dinner. Apparently deadly magical things were the best way to bring people together.
And they did look good together. I didn’t know how to explain it. Like shadow and light. They belonged in each other’s space. They even moved in unison, strapping on blades, and tucking other gear under their coats with an unconscious rhythm that echoed each other’s movements.
I looked over at Zay. He was watching them too, a thoughtful, sad expression on his face, like he was trying to solve a puzzle that had long ago lost its pieces.
I stretched my hand out and took his. He didn’t look down at me, but he wove his thick fingers between mine, and squeezed my hand gently.
Our fight suddenly seemed like a small thing.
Think they could at least be friends again? I thought.
All things break, all things end, he thought.
Maybe. But some broken things grow again. Like trees. And hope.
Soul Complements? He wasn’t asking me the question, so much as just asking. I didn’t know if that could ever grow between them again.
Shame laughed, I mean a deep chortle, and Terric hooted along with him. I didn’t know what they were laughing about, but it sounded dirty.
Maybe it never died in the first place, I thought. Maybe they just don’t know it yet.
I felt Zay’s quiet acceptance. His willingness to give them time, to be patient. To hope for them, even if they couldn’t hope for themselves.
It made me love him even more.
At that thought, he turned, looked at me, and smiled.
“What were you just thinking?” he asked.
Since I knew I was blushing, I let go of his hand. I’d had quite enough of thought sharing. “Something about trees.”
We hadn’t said we loved each other yet. On-again, off-again magic had destroyed the likelihood of us ever having a normal relationship. It never seemed like the right time to tell him that I loved him. Or maybe it never seemed like the right time to admit it to myself.
How normal could a relationship be when at a casual touch you could hear the other person’s thoughts?
Zayvion stepped into me, put his hands on both sides of my face, his fingers sliding back through my hair. His palms were warm and callused, and I inhaled the sweet, familiar pine scent of him.
We kissed, letting our lips, our tongues, our bodies, say what our words dared not. He didn’t think anything while we were kissing, and neither did I. We didn’t have to.
He ended the kiss with soft, small kisses at the corners of my mouth, and pulled away, his arms still embracing me. He held me against him a little longer. “Be safe,” he breathed. “I don’t ever want to see you hurt again.”
I licked my lips, tasted the echo of him on me, in my mouth. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
“Oh, for the love of all that’s holy. Get a room,” Shame said, “or I will bring out the ice.”
We stepped apart. “You throw any more ice at me, Shame,” Zay said as he stalked over to the trunk of the car, “and I will shove it up your hole.”
“No, no.” Terric said. “Flynn likes that.”
“Bite me, you flaming prick,” Shame said with absolutely no heat.
Terric grinned, and Shame flipped him off. They were both smiling.
I intended to keep it that way.
“Let’s leave our issues, and ice, at home,” I said. “We have hunting to get done.”
I stepped up on the other side of Zay, and took the machete he offered me. It was a good thing I’d brought my heavy coat, because otherwise I didn’t know how I’d hide this much steel.
And not just average steel. The wicked blade only mimicked a machete. It was really a bladed, deadly length of razor-edged metal and magical glyphs. One swing with this baby, and the right word or two, and you could cut an old-growth oak down with one smooth slice.
Next, I pulled a thin chain over my neck and felt the tongue-on-battery tingle of it rattling down around the void stone and resting against my skin. Not so much a weapon as a sort of enhancer for defensive spells, blocks, wards, those sorts of things.
I didn’t like to carry anything else. Had never gotten the hang of the bladed whip Zay wielded like he was skipping rope. Didn’t like the double axes that Chase, and apparently Terric, preferred. For me, a knife, a machete, and a magic chain were all I needed for a good time.
What could I say? It’s the simple things in life that make me happy.
“Right, then,” Shame said, lighting up another cigarette already. “That’s it. Who calls shotgun?”
“That is not it.” Zayvion pulled a cloth package out of the trunk and carefully unwrapped the contents. The contents were several leather wrist cuffs in small, glyphed boxes that were probably ancient and worth millions. He pulled out four round amulets. They weren’t the same size and heft of the disks my dad and Violet had invented, but I was pretty sure they had given my dad the idea that magic could be contained in something similar to these things.
Unlike the disks, these amulets could be used for only one thing-sensing the heartbeat of another person who wore the amulet. They were all carefully carved from a stone that had been found hundreds of years ago in China, I think. It was the stone itself that had been shaped by magic, infused in such a way to make it sensitive to itself and to the living things in contact with it.
Dad’s disks were pure technology that could hold magic, raw, uncast magic, for any amount of time, be used, and then, with the right spell, be reloaded again.
The disks Dad invented would make magic portable. They would allow magic to be called upon out at sea, or in unnetworked lands, and act as a battery for people like doctors and rescue crews who needed to access magic quickly, sometimes in out-of-the-way places, to save people’s lives.
Plus, there was absolutely no price to pay once the magic was in the disks.
That meant I could pay the price of casting the spell to charge the disk-probably something little, like a runny nose, or itchy scalp. But Zay could then use that magic to burn down a house-something that would usually carry a high magical cost.
It was an amazing advance for magic and technology.
And scary as hell.
Zay held out a leather cuff for each of us, and then gave us each an amulet. I snapped the amulet into the circle carved in the leather cuff and it fit into place with a heavy thunk I felt at the back of my teeth. The faintest scent of moss filled my nose. I strapped the cuff to the inside of my right wrist, snug against my pulse.
Everyone else did the same, but I felt only two other heartbeats. Terric and I both looked at each other. We’d never hunted together before, so I, at least, needed to touch him once to attune the cuff so I could feel his heartbeat too.
I stepped over to him. “Mind?” I held my palm out toward his chest.
“Help yourself,” he said.
Charmer. I pressed my palm against his chest and concentrated on the rhythm of his heart. Strong, a little fast. I also caught the faintest hint of his emotions. Anger. Sorrow. I looked into his eyes, and he gave me the convincing, friendly smile. But behind that were a lot of emotions. Emotions I knew were for Shame.
“Thank you,” I said.
He nodded. At the edge of my peripheral vision, Shame stood smoking, his back toward us. If I focused on him, I would feel his emotions too.
One look at his body language told me how he felt.
Terric placed his fingertips lightly in a small circle just below my collarbone, and above my heart. One of the bullet scars I carried was right there, and even though he couldn’t feel it through my thick coat, it still made me a little uncomfortable to have him touch me there.
He smiled, a real smile this time, something that looked a little like an apology, and drew his fingertips away. He’d probably gotten a sense of my discomfort.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Just twitchy about my scars.”
“I know the feeling,” he murmured.
Right, that was more of the issue stuff we weren’t going to get into right now. “Shame,” I said, “give me your keys.”
“What? No.” He turned. “Wait-let me rephrase that. Hell no. I’m driving.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Terric said. “You were unconscious less than ten minutes ago.”
“And you were a dick. One of us got better.”
Terric the nice killer smiled. “A man with a concussion should not drive.”
“And you think a woman who’s having fainting spells should?”
“Wow. Could you two give it a rest?” I asked. “I’m driving.”
Shame looked over at Zayvion like calling the ref in for a replay. “Are you seriously going to let her drive?” Shame asked.
“No.”
Shame flipped his hands out in a told-you-so gesture. “Terric’s going to drive,” Zay said. “Give him your keys.”
At Shame’s look, Zay added, “We don’t have time. Just get in the damn car-your car-and let Terric drive.”
If his words didn’t clue Shame in, Zay’s heartbeat, pounding strong, impatient, would.
Terric held his hand out to Shame.
You would have thought Shame was removing his own spine for the look on his face, but he finally dropped the keys in Terric’s hand.
The keys hit his palm, and Terric glanced down. I caught a glimpse of a man’s ring, gold and silver and glyphed, on Shame’s key chain. Terric’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He looked up at Shame.
Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was more between them. Shame said he wasn’t gay, but that ring could mean something else. A brotherhood-of-magic or class-ring sort of thing.
Shame just gave him a steady stare. The kind of look that started bar fights.
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