Runaway Magic, page 2
The kid let out a harsh laugh that was completely at odds with their small body, and Fourteen had a strong feeling they were likely to be a he. “Sure, they’ll take care of me. They’ll take care of me so well that no one will ever hear from me again.” They shifted in the garbage and pulled a tin can out from under their backside, trying to get more comfortable. “I appreciate what you’ve done, but we should part ways here. You need to get out of here before they find us.”
“You don’t need to worry about the cartel. Most of them were killed in the explosion, and the rest are probably more interested in vanishing before the police show up than they are in finding us.”
The odd look on the kid’s face made Fourteen think he was missing crucial intel on his current situation. He realized he hadn’t been listening to the kid up to now because he’d been so fixated on getting them to safety. What had they been running from?
“I’m not worried about your enemies,” The kid said. “Whoever they are, they have nothing on my family.” They propped their elbows on delicate knees and cradled their head by fisting handfuls of hair on either side. “Listen, you really need to get out of here, mister. So do I, for that matter, but we need to go in opposite directions. It won’t take them long to find me, even though your explosion was a really good distraction. Thanks for that, by the way.”
The fluttering Fourteen felt in his chest earlier was getting stronger. Before, it had been like a butterfly. Now it was more like a large bird beating its wings against a cage, but instead of trying to get out, it was trying to get in. “Kid—” he began.
“I’m not a kid,” they interrupted. “According to society, I’ve been a man for more than a year.”
Well. That answered that question.
“Sure, kid. Whoever is after you hasn’t met someone like me. I’m not exactly off the clock right now, but I can give you a hand for long enough to get you somewhere safe. Where do you want to go?”
Fourteen had no idea where this was coming from. He wasn’t this chatty, and he never took on side projects. He worked the job and got paid. Unless he had wounds that needed time to heal, he would move on to the next mission.
He liked to keep busy, anything to keep him out of Storage. This situation was new to him, and he didn’t like new. It shouldn’t be difficult, though—there wasn’t much chance a kid could be in enough trouble to tax his skills.
The real challenge would be going dark on The Company for a few hours. They were going to want to debrief him soon.
A jagged, broken space in his mind flared to life, reminding him exactly what it felt like to have The Company unhappy with him. Rather than heed the warning, he allowed the desensitization training he’d received to force the space to vanish.
He could take whatever they came up with. Whatever The Company did wouldn’t actually damage him. The services he rendered to The Company were valuable enough that they wouldn’t want to keep him off active duty. No, the worst thing they would do to him would be to send him in for retraining.
Fourteen managed to contain the shudder that tried to ripple through him at the thought.
“I know you want to help, and I appreciate it. It’s super nice of you, but really, you need to go.” The boy stood up slowly, as if testing his legs. Fourteen assumed they held firm since he didn’t fall back down. “It’s been nice meeting you under the circumstances.”
Nice? Fourteen watched the kid make his way off the porch, not offering to help when his hair snagged on a nail. Instead, Fourteen observed quietly as he fought his way free and stumbled down the steps into the night. Fourteen didn’t do nice; he didn’t know what nice was.
He gave the boy sixty seconds and followed him.
The boy continued in the direction they had been running, but instead of choosing deserted streets as an amateur might, he chose streets with people on them. He did his best to stick to populated areas, but eventually, he trudged down a dark street with no signs of life, his heavy steps showing his reluctance. He moved with extreme caution, forcing Fourteen to stay well behind him to remain unseen.
If Fourteen had been closer, he might have mistaken what happened for an explosion, but, from a distance, it was obvious to him that it was something completely outside his expertise.
It was as if all the shadows had peeled away from between two buildings and jumped at the boy. He sensed it at the last minute and hit the ground rolling, landing between two parked cars. When the shadows hit the wall next to where he had been walking, the brick exploded and dust billowed out, covering the street and bringing visibility down to nothing.
Fourteen darted into the cloud and aimed for the cars the boy had tucked himself between. On a whim, he went around to the other side of the cars and found the boy crawling on his hands and knees, directionless and coughing hard enough to break a rib.
He bent over the boy, ready to scoop him up and run, when he saw a hole appear in midair. It floated toward them slowly, its edges shimmering in the dust and gloom. In its center, he could just make out something resembling a glowing ball, but instead of creating light, the ball seemed to be stealing it from its surroundings. When its antiglow intensified, he instinctively jumped between the boy and the mysterious hole, taking the blast himself.
A crackling distortion streaked through the air, flowing around and over him, but it hovered several feet away from his body. Then, as though it had decided to give up, it swirled up and away, dissipating into nothingness.
The boy behind Fourteen was still gasping and choking, but he managed a strangled, “What . . . are you doing?” and something that sounded like, “Get out of here—”
He gave the boy a dirty look he probably couldn’t see and glanced back at the hole and its glorified raver toy. He couldn’t tell if the attack had done what it was supposed to do or not, but he didn’t plan to see what would happen if he got hit with it again. He pulled out his SIG P220, fired six shots at the center of the hole, and heard a very human yelp of pain. The hole closed abruptly with a sharp shriek reminiscent of metal on metal.
Silence fell around him, and the senses that had gotten him through many dangerous missions told him he and the boy were alone. Only two heartbeats sounded on the dark street, so they were probably safe.
Though after what he had just seen, anything was possible. And relying on probably safe tended to get people killed. He needed to question the boy somewhere less exposed to find out what the hell Fourteen had gotten himself into.
The boy was slowly pulling himself up, using the car beside him as leverage. “I don’t know if it was just him, but if it was, you’ve bought us a little time. Let’s go.” He turned and made it two steps before collapsing like a broken puppet. As shaky as the kid had been, it came as no surprise to Fourteen that he’d reached the end of his resources.
Steeling himself, he reached down to check the boy’s pulse. When skin brushed skin, he was engulfed with the sense-memory of sunshine on clean cotton. It made him think of bright, blue skies and wispy clouds. Made him think of… Mom?
Before he could cling to the forgotten memory, he was swept into another memory. He was high in the air and felt like he was flying. His small hand reached forward to steady himself, and it met his father’s head. Together they ran down a hill at breakneck speed, but instead of being afraid, Fourteen felt safe and confident. As long as his father was around, nothing bad could happen to him. They were a team.
Peace stole over Fourteen’s body, temporarily rendering him insensate to the outside world.
If an attack came now, he would be defenseless, but in that moment, he didn’t care. Walls that had taken years to forge through unbearable pain and anger had vanished. More suffering than most people saw in a lifetime had gone into building his barriers. And now they were gone.
He snatched his hand away from the boy’s skin, and the sensation disappeared. Hesitantly, he reached out and touched the boy’s cheek. It felt like his entire body had been plunged into warm sunshine after being cold for far too long.
It burned.
He wanted more.
Who was this boy?
Chapter 3
The Boy
When The Boy opened his eyes, he was facing an unfamiliar wall. He could see a heavily chipped, ancient porcelain sink with exposed piping underneath that was more rust than it was metal. Normally, waking up in an unfamiliar room would be cause for alarm, but the shabbiness of the room let him know his family didn’t have him. If they had, he either would have woken up in the suffocating luxury of his bedroom back home, or he wouldn’t have woken up at all.
Closing his eyes again, he listened to see if he was alone in the room. He couldn’t be sure, because even though he didn’t hear anything, it felt like he wasn’t alone.
With effort, he managed to get his mind to cough up a memory of the strange man from last night. He’d only gotten fleeting impressions of the man in the gloom and chaos of the night, but the feeling he inspired in The Boy’s gut was concrete.
Safe.
From the day he’d been stuffed into his gilded cage, to the moment he’d found himself running into a gunfight, safety had been as mythical to him as Santa Claus. The fact that his gut had decided to feel safe in the middle of a shootout next to a stranger told him that he needed his head examined.
He wasn’t even sure he knew what the stranger looked like. It had been too dark to know for sure.
He did know one thing. The man had shown no signs of the fiery anger The Boy was used to inspiring in others. Instead of coldly ignoring him or yelling at him or, even worse, attacking him like The Boy had grown accustomed to, the man had actually tried to help him. Twice.
Being close to him in the abandoned house had been intriguing. The gentle buzz of the man’s aura rubbing against his own had intensified his sense of safety, and—exhausted as he’d been—it had been tempting to stay with him.
But he couldn’t; he had needed to get away from the stranger. In his experience, there was no such thing as a safe person. If by some small chance of fate, the stranger was safe, The Boy didn’t want to bring the wrath of his family down on him. As capable as the man seemed, he wasn’t prepared for that. Even with The Boy’s untrained senses, he could tell the man was just a norm.
So The Boy had left him, intending to blend in with the crowd, but his growling stomach overrode his better judgment. Instead of taking a more populated route that would have taken him an hour to traverse, he’d chosen a shortcut that would get him to his last stash of supplies quickly.
His body had been shouting at him, using every available method to convince him it needed the contents of that backpack ASAP, and it had convinced him that as soon as he got a granola bar inside his belly and shoes on his feet, he would be able to think his way to freedom.
The fifty-dollar bill he remembered putting in there wouldn’t hurt his chances of escape either. And, of course, a change of clothes. He needed that the most.
That lapse in judgment had cost him, and now it would cost the stranger, too.
What he didn’t understand was why the stranger had followed him and saved him again. How had the man survived the spell Astin had thrown at him? The insane amount of power his cousin had used should have destroyed the stranger instantly. Instead, the spell had merely hovered around him for a moment like a confused dog, looking for the ball its owner had only pretended to throw.
“I know you’re awake.” The low voice of his savior broke him from his reverie.
The Boy gave up all pretense of sleeping and rolled over to examine his surroundings. The bed under him was a futon kept off the floor by old pallets. When he shoved aside the army-green wool blanket, he noted with relief that he was still fully dressed. So often in the stories he read, for some weird reason, people felt compelled to undress someone after they passed out. It was good to know it wasn’t a common practice in reality.
He wasn’t ready to look at his savior yet—wasn’t prepared to put on the mantle of boy on the run again, so he continued to inspect the spartan room to buy some time. It might have been an office or an apartment at some point in the distant past.
Two walls were lined with windows that looked out into complete darkness, and the other two were brick and unadorned. On either side of the bed were industrial shelves neatly arrayed with guns, ammunition, grenades, and other lethal-looking items he had no name for.
He probably should have been frightened or appalled by his circumstances, but the simple room felt honest to him. The plush décor of his own bedroom had always suffocated him, but this felt safe.
He shook his head at the fanciful thought. It was time to interact with his host so he could dispel the illusion of safety his mind kept taunting him with.
Across from the bed, the stranger sat perched on the edge of a small desk in front of a window. A battered, bronze clip-lamp illuminated a strong, European brow furrowed over storm-gray eyes that focused on him with an intensity that brought heat to his cheeks.
The Boy fought the urge to shrink back from the intense regard. Instead, he stuck out his chin and asked, “Why am I here?”
The stranger’s gaze didn’t waver as he answered. “No one knows about this place, and it doesn’t have many neighbors. We should be safe here.”
The Boy felt as though the man expected him to do something and didn’t want to miss it. Was he waiting for him to try to escape?
The Boy sat up and asked, “Am I your prisoner?” He might as well start with the basics.
“You can leave if you want.”
Good. That cleared that up. The unflinching regard made him feel awkward, but awkward he could do—anything was better than the unprovoked violence he was used to.
“Why did you follow me?”
“Gut instinct. Other than that…” The man shrugged, and the black leather of his jacket creaked with the movement.
The Boy pulled his legs against his body and hugged them. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you did, but you didn’t have to. I wasn’t asking for your help.”
“If you had, I probably wouldn’t have helped.” A minute crease formed between the man’s eyebrows before smoothing away.
Silence filled the air. “You shot my cousin,” he said, trying to fill the void.
“The guy in the floating circle?” A brief smile escaped the man, lending a brief hint of warmth to his previously expressionless face. “I’m pretty sure he had that coming.”
The Boy glanced at the man’s eyes, pleasantly surprised by his levity, but saw no humor there. “It wasn’t a complaint. I’m just trying to process what happened.”
“You and me both, kid.” The stranger sat back but didn’t break eye contact.
The Boy’s eyes darted away, intimidated by the scrutiny, and fell silent as he tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do next. What was he supposed to do with this guy?
If The Boy left, would he follow him again? Would it be a bad thing if he did? He wasn’t acting like anyone The Boy had ever interacted with—most people couldn’t wait to get away from him. Was it because the stranger was a norm?
The Boy had kept all contact with norms as minimal as possible. And, for the most part, they hadn’t been too keen about him either. The last time he’d stood in the checkout line at a store, one by one, everyone had gotten out of line, as though standing near him was physically uncomfortable. The guy behind the counter had avoided eye contact with him and threw his change down so he didn’t have to touch him.
Finding out more about his new companion—the only person who seemed unaffected by his power—was tempting. The Boy hesitated but ultimately decided that bringing an innocent person—a norm, no less—in on his problem would be a crummy way to repay him for helping. Well, maybe not entirely innocent. The small armory surrounding them proved otherwise.
The Boy’s stomach growled painfully.
“Here.” The man threw a bag of trail mix onto the bed. “You need to eat more than you have been. When I carried you up here, you weighed less than my equipment bag.”
He cared that The Boy ate enough? What was he supposed to do with that?
“It’s probably why you passed out.” The man motioned for him to eat.
The Boy tore open the bag with too much gusto, and it fell apart, showering the bed with food. “I deduced that for myself, Sherlock.” Apparently, he was going to be an asshole.
Instead of being offended, the man gave another tiny smile that melted away as soon as it appeared. “What’s your name, kid?”
With shaky hands, he did his best to herd all the trail mix into a single pile on the blanket. “Name?” He thought he had a name once. Not wanting the man to call him The Boy like everyone else he knew, he dug into the parts of his memory he’d rather not access in an attempt to remember something… anything.
After a moment he came up with, “Cym?”
It wasn’t quite right, but it sounded familiar.
“Are you telling me or asking me?” The man stood up slowly and came over to his side of the room. The way he walked reminded The Boy—no, he could call himself whatever he wanted now that he was free—Cym of a swimmer getting accustomed to the temperature of the water before diving in.
Cym didn’t respond to the question but instead began stuffing his mouth with food. His hands trembled, so he kept dropping bits of fruit and nuts in every direction.
The man kneeled beside him, and his deep voice was soft when he asked, “What did they do to you?”
It wasn’t a question Cym knew how to answer, so he kept eating as fast as he could. The more fuel he had in his body, the sooner he could get out of there.
He couldn’t seem to stop himself from stealing looks at the man in between bites. Now that he had the time to process the information, Cym was a little awestruck by his appearance.
