Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price (18 page)

Not that I had a plan for how to actually fight Leander and Isabelle without magic. At this point I think a few dozen snipers with high-powered rifles might not be out of the question.

Terric pressed his fingers gently on the center of my back. “Go ahead and get in, Allie,” he said softly. “We got you.”

Then he was past me, climbing into the van next to Shame. Collins had already wedged himself in the backseat next to Stone.

Not liking the idea of getting so lost in my thoughts I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around me. I took a deep breath and wiped at my eyes, then opened the door and got into the front seat.

Z
ay took the road at speed. The Faith well was clear across town on the west side. We had a half-hour drive time at least, if we were obeying the speed limits. I thought Zay was going to do it in fifteen minutes.

My phone rang.

I dug it out of my pocket past my seat belt, trying not to watch the cars that Zay wove in and out of, leaving millimeters between paint jobs.

“Beckstrom,” I said.

“Where the hell are you?” Davy asked.

“Headed to the Japanese Gardens. Where are you?”

“There now. Allie, I know you told us not to get involved, not to engage, but they are killing anyone who gets in their way.”

“Don’t get in their way.”

“We aren’t, but other people are. We won’t stand aside and watch people die. Sorry, boss. All bets are off. We’re going to stop them. Any way we can.”

He hung up.

“Damn it.”

“Who was it?” Terric asked.

“Davy. He said the Seattle crew is at the Japanese Gardens killing anyone who gets in their way.”

If they were at the Gardens, they were just steps away
from the Faith well, which was somewhere in the house built underneath the gardens—a house that used to be, and maybe still was, Victor’s home.

Zayvion floored it and rocketed through traffic, weaving through lanes.

My heart was beating too fast and the sword on my back dug against my spine and ribs as Zay narrowly missed every damn thing on the road ahead of us.

I stopped counting near misses. Stopped counting how much time we had left before Davy and the Hounds would be dead.

Instead, I took several deep breaths and let them out. What I needed was focus. We were hurtling toward a fight. I’d either have to use magic to defend myself or I’d have to use magic to purify the well.

Either way, I wanted to do what I could to make sure magic didn’t knock the crap out of me again. Being calm and centered before using spells was Magic 101.

Dad
, I thought,
are you there?

Nothing. Not even that stir of his awareness.

I took a deep breath again, two. Tried again.

Dad. I need you to wake up. We need you to use magic. To help us purify the wells. You’re the only one who knows which spells to use on Stone.

At the mention of Stone’s name, I felt the slightest movement, as if he were trying to drag himself up out of a deep sleep.

Or a coma.

Dad, we need you. Stone needs you. I need you.
Hey, I figured flattery couldn’t hurt. Plus, we did need him.

“We’re here,” Zayvion said, turning a hard corner into the parking lot. “Shame, Terric, keep the Void stones on,” he said. “I don’t care if you use magic to fight, but if you suck the life out of anyone here—especially us—I
will find a way to fuck you up from the other side of the grave.”

Wow. Guess who had woken up on the wrong side of the battlefield today?

“Wait here,” he ordered.

Zay swung out of the van, slamming the door behind him. I never had been very good at taking orders. I got out of the van too, but instead of storming off, which frankly, I was not up to, I leaned against the front bumper, assessing the mess we’d gotten ourselves into.

The Faith well was deep beneath the Japanese Gardens through underground tunnels that were locked down as tight as Fort Knox. This parking area, however, was open to the public. If Seattle had been stopped, this would be the logical place.

I didn’t see the Hounds anywhere. I didn’t see anyone from Seattle either.

Zayvion hadn’t stormed off far. He scanned the hillside.

“No one,” he said, heading back to the van. “They must be down at the well.”

We got back in the van and raced down the hard-to-see road that led to what looked like a garage, but was actually the access point for the tunnels that would open to Victor’s underground home, and somewhere beyond that, the Faith well.

Zay parked in the garage area and we all piled out and jogged to the first door, which was blown open and sagging on its hinges. The air stank of stale magic.

No one said anything. We ran down the next well-lit tunnel that seemed to stretch on forever.

My side hurt. My head hurt. In through the nose, out through the mouth. When was this tunnel going to end?

We heard the fighting before the open door was in
sight. Zay tossed one of the disks to Shame, another to Terric. I expected him to give me one. Waited.

“Zay?” I panted. “Disk?”

Nothing.

Oh, do not make me tackle you, Jones.

He stopped next to the door, up against the wall so he could look around it and through the second set of doors, which led to Victor’s home.

He glanced through the door.

“Shame, Terric, I want you to use Shield and Block. No attack spells. Collins, you and I hit them from two sides. I’ll take the right, you take the left.”

What? Wasn’t I good enough to be a part of this little plan? It occurred to me that Zayvion and I might be experiencing some difficulty in communicating.

I stopped beside him, but couldn’t see past him to the other room. I could hear the fight going on in there. “Do you want this well purified?” I said with the breath I had left. “Give me a disk.”

“No.” Zay pushed off of the wall and pivoted toward the room.

That was so not how this was going down.

I pushed in front of him, blocking his route into the room, and yes, putting myself in direct line of fire.

“You don’t make that decision.” I held out my hand.

Zay wrapped his hand around my wrist and yanked me toward him.

I lost what air I had left slamming against his chest, back in the hall and out of line of fire as he spun to put me against the wall, his body between me and the fight in the other room.

“Can’t you hear me?” He was as close to desperate as I’d seen him. “Magic is killing you.
Killing
you, Allie.”

I could feel the pain and fear behind those words as if
they were my own. I knew he wanted to protect me. I knew he didn’t want me hurt.

“This is a war,” I said. “In my city, hurting my people. I can’t stand on the sidelines while other people fight it.”

For a moment, for longer than that, he held me, searching my eyes for mercy. Only I had none. Not for myself. Not for him. Not for us.

I held out my other hand. “Give me the disk, Zay. Just one spell.”

The shattered look in his eyes nearly broke me, but I tipped my chin up a little, bearing the weight of our pain.

“One spell.” He drew the disk out of the bag. “God. Just one. Please, Allie.”

I nodded. “That’s probably all I’m good for. I can do this. I promise. Go.”

I didn’t want to think about the Death well that still had to be closed. Couldn’t worry about how I would survive that until I survived this.

I stuffed the disk in my coat pocket and stepped out of the way to draw my knife.

Zay looked at the others.

Terric and Shame had taken off all of the Void stones except for a single necklace they each wore against their chests. Collins had that open-mouth grin he always got when he sensed a chance for violence and pain.

“Keep it tight,” Zay said. “Let’s shut this down.”

Terric and Shame strode into the room, shoulder to shoulder, magic crackling like caught lightning against Terric’s fingers and burning black flames from Shame’s. The Faith well wasn’t closed yet, so it was easy to draw on the magic here.

Shield burst into the room in front of them, arcing to the ceiling and slamming down behind me.

Victor’s once elegantly decorated home was in
shambles. I took a quick head count. Davy, Jack, Maeve, Sunny, and other members of the Authority were on the left side of the room, casting magic, while twenty or so people I did not recognize—the Seattle crew—were on the right side, casting magic.

Outnumbered two to one.

We had to get across the room to the short hallway and door beyond to reach the well.

Zay and Collins were on Shame and Terric’s heels. They threw Impact, slicing through the Shield to strike at Seattle’s crew. Collins’ spells seemed to come with greater effort, while Zayvion handled magic with calm and deadly ease.

Strobe flashes of magic ricocheted around the room, blinding and confusing my vision.

A flash: brief images of people fighting. Darkness: nothing but chanting and yelling and screams filling the air.

Stone, beside me, grumbled and glowed.

The room burned with red light. The Seattle people all used magic, and were wrapped in the strongest Shield spells I’d ever seen.

Thick darkness burned my throat and collapsed my sight again.

Shame and Terric chanted just ahead of us. Magic, gold white, stained green and violet-black, rolled out at our feet, lighting the room, and taking the hard edges off both the darkness and light.

Shame and Terric were walking right down the middle of the room and had made it about a quarter of the way across it. Zay and Collins threw Hold, Freeze, Stun. Things to knock people out, knock them off their feet. Hopefully things that could get through those Shields Seattle held. Hopefully things that would end this fight.

There was no way we’d be able to purify the well in the middle of a war zone.

I didn’t even know where the well was in this structure. I’d been only in the main room, and then in that little closet where Victor and Shame and Zay had done their best to wrap Dad up in my head so he couldn’t use me anymore.

Which hadn’t worked for long. Obviously.

Although, right now, I wished Dad were a little more involved in what was going on.

Dad,
I thought.
You have to wake up. Now.
I mentally reached out for him, aiming for those parts of my head that felt “Dad” and dragging them closer to the parts that felt “me.”

I must have hit something right. He jolted awake in my head, and was suddenly standing next to me like I’d just dragged him out of sleep by his heels.

Allison?

Do you know where the Faith well is?

Even so obviously fatigued, Dad still had the sense to check his surroundings. Well, my surroundings.

There is a room. A small room with four doors.

I remember.

It is through that room.

Everyone around me seemed to be moving in slow motion. I didn’t know if one of the spells Zay and Collins had cast was doing that, or if my perception of reality was that far off.

My heart beat too loudly in my ears. I could taste the magic in the air. It stung my nose and bit at my skin, as if a thousand tiny needles were being thrown at me.

Magic skittered off the Shield around us. We’d made it halfway across the room. Three quarters of the way.
Zay and Collins finally, finally, blew through Seattle’s Shields.

The Hounds, Authority, and my friends hit the people from Seattle with everything they had.

Even wrapped in the Shield Terric and Shame were supporting, I hissed at the sudden pain of magic colliding with magic. Too many people. Too much magic. In too small a space.

I wanted to run, wanted to get out under an open sky where I could think, where I could breathe, where I could inhale without so many people and so much magic pressing in on me. Claustrophobia slowed my feet, threatened to freeze me in place.

Zayvion spun on his heel and wrapped his arm around me even while still walking, like a dancer moving to an unheard song, his steps locked with mine, guiding me forward, as he walked backward, his gaze on me, and only me, across the room.

Telling me we could do this. Telling me I could do this.

The sky opened above me, blue and clear and endless. Air surrounded me, like his arms, and sunlight warmed me, like the heat of his body.

I didn’t know if it was a spell or just his presence giving me that comfort, that illusion, that memory of a soft summer day with endless horizons.

But I held on to it. I wanted that sky, that air, that space.

I think it was him, just him, holding between me and the magic around us, giving me space, giving me what I needed so I could get through this. So I could stand strong when all the world was falling around me.

“The well,” he said, or maybe thought. It was hard to tell over the strangely muted sounds of the fight, of the curses and litany of spells all around us.

“Only one spell,” he said.

And then he was gone. His heat, his strength, his steady hand. And all the blue of my sky.

But that respite he had given me had been enough. I no longer felt like I was trapped, boxed in, suffocating. I felt like I was going to get this done so we could get out of here.

We jogged the last few paces across the living room and down the slightly curving hallway to the little room.

I didn’t like that little room. Painful things had happened to me there.

Right now, I didn’t have time to care about that either.

Shame kicked the door, then stumbled back, hopping on one foot. “Son of a bitch!”

Terric tried the handle, then rammed his shoulder into the door, which burst open. We rushed in, then through the opposite door to another space. Zay took point and Collins lingered behind, walking backward and talking to himself—no, reciting a poem…“The Raven” by Poe; I realized he’d been reciting it during the entire fight—watching our backs.

The room with the Faith well was fairly small. It didn’t have a high arcing ceiling like the other well rooms. It was a solidly built space, with wooden walls carved in a scattering of symbols, beautiful in their simplicity. It was serene here, a place suited for meditation. There were even lit candles burning in a row on the low shelves built across each wall.