Casting Shadows, page 22
part #4 of The Magicsmith Series
“If I’m a practitioner,” I called, “whose fault is that?” I pointed one shaking finger at him. “Powers or no, magic must be in your blood.”
He laughed. The sound was cold and hollow. “You think such a weak claim will deter me? If a practitioner father is what you want, so be it. You’re as much a bastard as you are a mongrel—some folly of your whore of a mother. Perhaps that’s why she wouldn’t give you my name when you were born. You’re no daughter of mine.” He raised his sword in both hands. “You’re an abomination.”
He charged forward, mist swirling in his wake.
My mouth went dry. My muscles refused to respond.
The patchwork memory of my father brought his sword down. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t waver. He was going to kill me.
I dove to the side. Steel sparked against stone in the space where I’d been standing.
My roll was sloppy, and I slammed my hip on the hard ground, but I was still in one piece when I came up into a crouch.
The demons pressed closer.
“Call us.” They said with one voice.
“Use us.” They crowded in around me.
“Join us.”
“No.” I flapped my arms at the specters, dispersing them like the smoke they appeared to be.
Wispy maws grinned back at me. “Then die.”
My father turned, prepared for another attack.
“Please.” I lifted my hands, entreating. “Stop this.”
“For the sake of humanity, magic must be purged from this world.” He moved forward again. “Humans belong with humans. Fae with fae.”
He swung, a wide arc meant to take his sword through the center of my chest.
I ducked, rolling once more.
“But you,” he said. “You don’t belong anywhere.” He followed up with an overhead attack.
The tip of his blade tore through my jeans and across my shin as I sprang clumsily away.
“You think the fae will welcome you? Accept you?” He raised the sword again. “They were barely willing to tolerate you when they thought you were just a halfer. Once they discover what you really are, they’ll destroy you as they once tried to destroy the vampires.”
A cold shudder ripped through me as I recalled Kai’s words from the night I’d first learned of the existence of vampires.
Magics don’t often mix. When they do, the results are unpredictable and dangerous. That’s how we ended up with vampires and werewolves in the first place. . . . They are abominations. No fae would help them.
I’d learned the hard way how impossible it was to hide one aspect of my life from another. If I continued to interact with the fae, they would eventually discover the truth. Then what? Would I be hunted? Executed? Or simply abandoned?
Dad straightened, his patchwork expression shifting to one of grim satisfaction. “You will never be welcome among them.”
Welcome.
I glanced at the twisting shadows around me. They were keeping their distance, watching, waiting.
No. I focused on my father, on the sword he held, its tip darkened by my blood. I could fight on my own.
I found the place inside me where my fae magic resided and reached for it, calling it to me.
Nothing happened.
Frowning, I strained harder, but it was as if I was blocked by an invisible barrier. I couldn’t reach my magic.
Desperate, I groped through the twisting tangle of threads that made up my core. I stroked the single silver thread I found there, hoping for advice, or at the very least, comfort. But James’s voice had gone silent. The resonant thrum of I am here was barely a twitch in my questing consciousness.
A cold dread settled through me as I realized why I couldn’t reach him . . . why I couldn’t reach my magic.
Facing my crimes, my fears, and my friends had nearly broken my heart. But the ghosts of my parents pushed me over the edge. I’d locked down my emotions to keep from being overwhelmed, shoved away enough of the pain that I could function.
But magic—my magic—required me to be more than merely functional. It required me to be raw. I couldn’t access my powers without leaving myself open to the full impact of my emotions.
I glared at the specter before me, thinking of all the anger, all the grief I’d felt at his loss. I’d pushed those feelings down deep so I could move on with my life. Was I strong enough to face them now? Or would they overwhelm me?
My father’s mismatched mouth pulled into the semblance of a smile. Could he sense my dilemma?
Of course he could. He was a projection from my mind.
“Poor Alex,” he said. “Still running.”
Taking a deep breath, I tried to settle myself the way I did before starting a new project. Then I approached the door I’d unconsciously slammed shut inside myself. Emotions leaked around the edges like wisps of smoke, warning of the blaze contained on the far side.
I opened the door. The barrier blocking me from my magic shattered. I reached for my power, but a wave of anger hit me first, hot and fierce.
You’re as much a bastard as you are a mongrel . . . an abomination.
I stared at the apparition before me—at eyes so like my own.
It had never occurred to me that my father could be anyone except . . . my father. But wherever my powers came from, the result was the same. I was a freak. Neither human, nor fae, nor practitioner. I was, so far as I knew, unique. And the one thing I knew about uniqueness was that people either feared it or coveted it.
You will never be welcome among them.
Despair slammed into me, cold and deep. It dampened my anger like flipping a switch. Doubt, grief, fear . . . these were the emotions I’d shut down. Anger was like an old friend compared to the drowning sorrow waiting behind it.
The patchwork memory of my father took a step toward me, the bloodstained tip of his sword rising. “Let me end your suffering.”
My breath rattled as I released the air from my lungs. Tears flowed over my cheeks. My body suddenly weighed a thousand tons. I didn’t have the energy to move it. Was this place amplifying my emotions? Or was this the result of pushing them aside too long, letting them fester?
James’s presence rushed back along our link, a deafening scream. You can do this! Don’t give up!
I blinked, then smiled.
I didn’t belong with the humans. I didn’t belong with the fae. So what? I’d make a place for myself with the people who could accept me, be they vampire, practitioner, or halfer. I wasn’t the only freak out there.
The bloody blade came down.
My emotions continued to swell and surge within me, but I found I could ride the currents like waves on the ocean—so long as I didn’t focus on the individual drops, it was possible to float on the surface.
I rolled to the side once more and steel struck the place I’d been.
Dad’s eyes—the one thing about him totally in focus—narrowed. Leather creaked beneath his two-handed grip as he lifted the sword once more.
I took a deep breath.
I can do this.
My magic stirred, finally answering my call. I cradled the rosy glow, gathering it to my center. It wasn’t enough. Not by itself.
My father prepared for another attack. He would never stop.
I looked at the demons around me. They smiled.
They had the power I needed. Power I could make my own if I could keep from being overwhelmed. I opened myself up . . . and invited them in.
Glowing blue sparks emerged from the mist like a field of fireflies rising from riverbank reeds. The frosty embers formed strands that trickled toward me—first in streams, then rivers, and finally as a tidal wave that threatened to wash me away.
Dad took two steps toward me, sword raised, but he seemed to be slowing as he moved, like a mechanical toy winding down.
Magic poured through my skin, filling me to bursting. My veins burned. My muscle fibers were tearing apart. It was too much. I couldn’t contain it. I was going to have a burnout—the catastrophic result of a magic backlash when a practitioner lost control. I’d end up a walking husk with my magic and soul seared away. If I survived.
Except . . . part of me wasn’t burning.
The warm core of my fae magic pulsed and mingled with the raw energy coursing through me, and where the two met, the tide was contained.
I focused on the feel of my innate magic, my fae magic. This was the source of my ability to imbue, to create, but it lacked the raw material to be powerful on its own. It was the hammer and the anvil. I considered the chaotic energy pouring through me. This was the raw material, the metal waiting to take shape. One was useless without the other . . . but together . . .
Dad’s sword fell in an arc toward my face, strong and sure, filled with murderous intent.
I channeled the raw energy ripping through me toward my right hand, filtering it through the rosy glow of my fae magic. Purplish light poured into my palm, stretching, forming a blade faster than when I’d made the dagger with which I’d killed O’Connell.
Cold steel slammed into the translucent purple blade gripped in my hand.
My arm tingled from the impact. My muscles strained. I stared into my own warped reflection in the surface of my father’s blade as it struggled to drop the last few inches to reach me.
Father tsked, just as Mom had done. He stepped back, pulling his sword away.
We stared at each other in silence as seconds stretched into minutes.
Then he turned his back on me. “You’re a lost cause, not even worth finishing off.”
He strode away.
My mouth dropped open. He was leaving? Did that mean I passed? Or failed?
I took a step toward him. “What about my trial? Is it over?”
He continued to walk.
“Hey!” I couldn’t tear my gaze from his retreating back. It was an image that had haunted far too many of my childhood dreams. I tightened my grip on the sword of light shining in my hand. “Don’t you walk away from me.”
I moved to follow him, walking at first, then running. I lifted the sword.
“Answer me!”
I swung the bright blade down toward the exposed back of my patchwork memory.
My hand jolted to a stop. Sparks momentarily blinded me. When my vision cleared, an ebony blade of compressed shadows was pressed against my sword edge. Above the crossed blades, I stared into my mirror image. Except for the eyes. The eyes were all wrong. Swirls of black smoke instead of pale-gray sky.
I jumped back.
My reflection did likewise.
“What are you?” I asked.
She lifted one hand. “Can’t you tell?”
Behind her, my father faded farther into the mist. The ache in my chest grew tighter.
“Let me pass.”
She shrugged. “If that’s really what you want.” She shifted her stance, settling lower. “Make me.”
I ground my teeth. I was tired of fighting, but this too must be part of my test. Could I keep going? I attacked.
Our swords clashed again and again. I swung and thrust. She parried and returned. We were evenly matched . . . except I was breathing hard. She wasn’t.
We came together. Our blades locked. My breath stirred the hair around her face.
She shook her head. “How long are you going to chase the past?”
We sprang apart.
Beyond her, clouds roiled. I glanced side to side. I’d gotten turned around in the fight. My chest tightened. My father was gone . . . again.
My other self lifted her blade, using it to point to her right. “He’s over there.”
I frowned.
She swung her sword across her body, pointing it in the other direction. The mist there was a warmer color, tinted by a distant orange glow. “The way out.”
She moved again, this time pointing her blade straight at me. I looked down the length of it, into eyes of swirling darkness set in the face from the mirror.
“The choice is yours.” Her dark sword disintegrated, splintering into particles that scattered into the mist. “It always was.”
My own blade split apart, sparks of light darting away. I stared at my empty palm. I hadn’t meant to dispel the magic. I looked up again. Had she done it?
She spread her arms to either side. “Choose.”
I looked from side to side. My father, or the exit. I still didn’t have a true name. Did I have to find and defeat my father to get it? To prove I’d overcome my past? Or had I already lost and I’d just end up wandering this smoky landscape forever if I didn’t escape now?
Not all who seek a true name will find one. My tutor’s words echoed in my mind. And not all return from the search.
I’d entered the trial determined to find some protection against Shedraziel, but if the choice was to go back empty-handed or not at all . . .
The apparition let her arms drop to her sides. “Why do you fight?”
I frowned, thinking back to when all this started. Why had I accepted Kai’s invitation when he showed up on my doorstep months ago? Why had I taken it upon myself to hunt down a serial killer, despite my lack of qualifications, when the police and PTF had failed? Why had I stormed a vampire nest to save James even after the werewolves refused to back me? Or jumped into the middle of Merak’s gathered forces, outnumbered and outmatched, to save Oz, futile though that effort ultimately was?
I pictured Emma waiting by the portal in Enchantment, ready to infiltrate an enemy stronghold with little more than a few weeks of practitioner training and the will to save her sister. She’d be facing a battle-hardened fae so powerful that even other fae were afraid of her, while those strong enough to stop her sat safely on their thrones.
Despite the odds, even without a name, I wouldn’t leave Emma to fight alone.
“I fight for the people I care about, because no one else will.” I turned toward the orange glow.
I took two steps, then paused and glanced at the other me. She stood relaxed, watching. I bit my lip, then asked, “Are you a demon?”
She smiled. “Does it matter?”
I stared at the woman who looked so much like me but for the impenetrable black of her eyes. I hadn’t felt the demons attack when I called for more magic this time, but I remembered the feel of them crawling inside me the day I killed O’Connell, and again when I tried to change James. “Kai said fae and demon magic were antithetical. But if I can use practitioner magic . . . can I be possessed?”
“Fae and demons aren’t as different as your knight would like you to believe.” She lifted her hand, a gold coin pinched between her fingers. “Two sides of the same coin. Order.” She turned the coin. The back was identical. “And chaos. But what happens when you flip it?”
She flicked the coin into the air. It spun end over end, a golden blur. “Can you tell them apart?” She snatched the coin as it fell and displayed it on her palm. “Which side is up?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Magic bends to the will of the user.” She closed her fingers over the coin.
She hadn’t really answered my question. Was she a version of me possessed by demons? Was that the future before me if I continued to use practitioner magic without proper training? But she didn’t act like a demon.
I looked at my own empty palm and closed my fist. The will of the user.
I’d continue to move forward, no matter the dangers. I would face what came.
I moved toward the distant glow, bare feet slapping the cold stones. The woman who might have been me faded into the mist.
The haze in front of me cleared, revealing two stone pillars with blazing tops. Beyond them stood James, Chase, Haru, and Morgan, just as I’d left them.
I paused between the markers and glanced back. Uniform fog billowed behind me. The path was gone. I’d survived my trial . . . but I hadn’t gained a name. If I returned now, it would be as a failure. I’d risked my life for nothing.
With a shuddering breath, I stepped past the pillars.
Chapter 22
AS I CROSSED THE barrier between worlds, a gust of wind ripped past me. And carried on that wind . . . was a name.
I staggered and fell, as every cell in my body was ripped apart and remade within a single beat of my heart. My knees sank into muddy earth. My fingers dug into the cold ground. I gasped, and ice filled my lungs.
Warmth seeped into my back.
I looked up. James’s face was blurred by my unshed tears. He was kneeling in the mud beside me. One arm was wrapped around my shoulders. The other braced my chest, saving me from a complete faceplant.
“I did it,” I panted. “I have a name.”
He pulled me closer until my cheek rested against his chest, his chin on the top of my head. “I knew you could.”
“You were there.” I gripped his arm. “I heard you.”
He hugged me tighter. “I told you, I’m always with you.”
“I must admit,” Haru said, “I didn’t think she’d make it.”
I glanced up, peeking past James’s shoulder. Morgan, Haru, and Chase were standing in a loose line, watching me. I grew suddenly self-conscious of the fact that I was curled up in James’s arms like a child. I wanted desperately to stay there, in the comfort and warmth, but everyone was waiting on me. Emma . . . May. . . . I closed my eyes and forced my muscles to reengage.
James loosened his grip.
I straightened so I was, if not standing, at least sitting on my own. I narrowed my eyes at Haru. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Morgan crossed her arms and pursed her lips, looking me over. “I would have given her fifty-fifty odds. She’s not all that powerful, but my brother says she’s crazy. I figure that gives her an advantage.”
