Magic Burns kd-2 Read online

  The axe whistled past me, once, twice. I kept dancing, too fast to catch, but too precise to ignore. I watched his eyes, I watched his feet, I struck at his face to keep him busy. He swatted my short blade aside and cleaved at my side. I saw the axe come in a great shiny arc, a bright star of reflecting sunlight riding its edge. He had expected me to jump back but I went forward, along with the shaft of the axe, to stab at his throat.

  It was a cat-quick stab, but somehow I missed. Slayer’s point sliced a red line along Morfran’s neck, and then his boot rammed my stomach. The world swam in a watery, painful haze. I crashed into the dirt. He was on me in a second. The axe bit into the ground between my legs.

  I rolled and lunged from a half crouch, thrusting both swords deep into his chest. My steel met no resistance. Morfran collapsed in a flurry of feathers. I slashed at them, spitting wordless growls like a dog. The feathers streamed between my feet, flowing into the clearing formed by the Fomorians. I chased them, but they were too fast.

  In a blink Morfran re-formed. The axe gleamed in his hands. I charged and saw Bran rise behind Morfran. Bran’s head glowed bright white. He bled from a dozen places, where huge gashes split his warped body. The heat emanating from him dried his blood into brown streaks on his skin.

  “My tuuuurn!” The Bran thing whipped its arm and backhanded Morfran. The Great Crow slid across the trash. Bran chased after him, swinging and kicking in deranged fury, swinging a huge spear he must’ve taken from one of the demons.

  Morfran’s axe ripped through the air with an eerie whistle. The hit split Bran’s spear shaft in half and plunged into his shoulder. Blood spurted. He wheeled, unnaturally quick, plucked the axe from Morfran’s hands, and snapped the wooden shaft.

  Morfran’s body fell apart into a tempest of floating black feathers. The feathers sucked themselves upward in a reverse tornado and solidified into an enormous black crow. Cold magic flooded us. Devoid of life, it may as well have spilled from outer space through a crow-shaped hole in the atmosphere. Frost licked my skin.

  The crow’s claw gripped a huge bronze cauldron.

  Bran scooped a handful of metal garbage and hurled it. Jagged metal trash bit into the crow, puncturing his neck and back with a hoarse whine. Dark blood rolled from the jet feathers in fist-sized globules. The spheres detached from Morfran’s flesh and hung in the air, shimmering in the light of the dying sun.

  Bran hurled the contents of his other hand. A single piece sparkled and bit deep into the crow’s back—Morfran’s own axehead.

  The crow screamed.

  Like a drop of molten metal, the cauldron fell from his claws. A wail of pure rage sliced across my mind.

  Beneath the cauldron’s feet the earth sighed, opened like a hungry mouth, and belched more Fomorians into the light. They swarmed Bran.

  I hacked into them. Beside me the shapeshifters tore them to shreds, but there were too few of us and too many of them. I could not longer see Bran—he was buried beneath a heap of Fomorian bodies.

  The heap of demons fell apart. Bloody and battered, Bran heaved an ornate lid free of the dirt. It looked so tiny in his giant hand, no bigger than a Frisbee. Enormous pressure clasped me. My chest constricted. My bones groaned. Around me the shapeshifters and the Fomorians fell screaming in pain.

  Bran strained. Blood gushed from his wounds and with a terrible bellow he slammed the lid down onto the cauldron.

  The pressure vanished. Bran grinned, pulled the lid open, and vanished in a puff of mist. The lid went with him. That’s it, I realized. He has returned the lid to Morrigan and now he was done. But we, we still had a field of demons to clear.

  “Kate!” The howl made me turn. Thirty yards away I saw Derek pointing a bloody clawed hand behind me. I spun and saw a familiar little figure on the cross, thrust into the ground only yards away. Julie.

  I scrambled over bodies to get to her. A shadow fell over me. I looked up in time to see a huge beak the color of polished iron strike at me. Morfran, still a crow. Boxed in by the Fomorians, I had no place to go. I dropped to my knees, ready to plunge Slayer into Morfran’s gut. The crow blotted out the sun and froze as huge clawed hands clasped its wings.

  With a roar that shook the Fomorians, Curran ripped into the crow. “Go!” he screamed. “Go!”

  I went, climbing over bodies, hacking, slashing, cutting, fixated on Julie. To the left, a clump of Fomorians broke from a vampire whose limbs they had torn and charged me.

  “Kill the child!” The Shepherd’s hiss pierced the clamor of the battle. The Fomorians reversed their course.

  Twenty yards separated me from her. I wouldn’t make it in time.

  Bran materialized by Julie in a puff of mist. He was back in his human form. He hugged the cross and her with it. Mist puffed and all of it was gone. The Fomorians howled in fury.

  Bran popped in front of me, his hands empty, grinned…

  A swirl of green tentacles burst through his chest. His blood splashed me. His eyes opened wide. His mouth gaped.

  “Bran!”

  He stumbled forward and fell on me, blood gushing from his mouth. Behind him the Shepherd hissed in triumph. I leaped over Bran, and slashed at the bastard’s face. Fish eyes glared at me with hate and then the top of his head slid aside and rolled into the dirt. His body stumbled. I cut it again, and again, and the sea-demon fell in pieces to never get up again.

  An unearthly cry rang through the field. Curran rose through the carnage, Morfran’s huge crow head in his hand. Covered in blood, he thrust the head to the sky and screamed, “Kill them! Kill them all! They are mortal!”

  The shapeshifters fell onto the Fomorians. I spun around and dropped to my knees by Bran.

  No. No, no, no.

  I flipped him over. He looked at me with his black eyes. “I saved the baby. I saved her. For you.”

  “Mist! Mist damn you.”

  “Too late,” he whispered with bloody lips. “Can’t heal the heart. Good-bye, dove.”

  “Don’t die!”

  He just looked at me and smiled. I felt a thin line of pain stretch inside me, strained to the breaking point. It hurt. It hurt so much I couldn’t take another breath.

  Bran gasped. His body went rigid in my hands and I felt the last of him fluttering away.

  No!

  I clasped onto that last shiver of life. With all of my magic, with all of my power, with everything I was I held on to that tiny fragment of Bran and I would not let it go.

  Magic churned around me. I sucked the power to me, driving it deeper into his body, holding on. It streamed through me in a flood of pain and melted into Bran’s flesh.

  I’m not letting go. He will live. I won’t lose him.

  “Foolish girl!” A voice filled my mind. “You can’t fight death.”

  Watch me.

  The spark of Bran’s life slipped deeper. More magic. More…Wind howled, or maybe it was my own blood filling my ears. I no longer felt anything except pain and Bran.

  I pulled harder. The spark stopped. Bran’s eyelids trembled. His mouth opened. His eyes fixed on me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. His heart had stopped and it took all of me to keep him.

  He looked at me with ghostly eyes. His whisper floated to my ears, each word weak but distinct. “Let me go.”

  “This is how undeath is made,” the voice said.

  And I felt deep within me that she was right.

  I would not become what I loathed. I would not become the man who sired me.

  “Let me go, dove,” Bran whispered.

  I severed the magic. The line of pain within me snapped like a broken string. It whipped back into me. I felt the spark of Bran’s life melt into nothing. Magic flailed in me like a living beast, trapped and tearing me apart to break free.

  In my arms Bran lay dead.

  Tears burst from my eyes, and streamed down my cheeks to fall on the ground, carrying the magic with them. The soil soaked in my tears and something stirred beneath it, something full of
life and magic, but it didn’t matter. Bran was gone.

  A Fomorian crept behind me, her blade ready to bite into my back.

  I rose, moving on liquid joints, turned, and thrust in a single move. The tip of Slayer’s blade punctured the Fomorian’s chest. It cut her green skin and sliced smoothly through the tight sheet of muscle and membrane, scraping the cartilage of her breastbone, sinking deeper, driven by my hand until it found her heart. The hard, muscled organ resisted for a fraction of a moment, like a clenched fist, and then the blade pierced its wall and bathed in blood within. I jerked the sword up and to the side, ripping her heart to pieces.

  Blood drenched my skin. I smelled it. I felt its sticky warmth on my hand. The Fomorian’s eyes widened. Fear screeched at me from the depths of her cobalt eyes. This time there would be no rebirth. I had killed her. She was dead, and the realization of her own fate made her terribly, painfully afraid.

  It was a moment that lasted an eternity. I knew I would remember it forever.

  I would remember it forever because in that instant I knew that no matter how many I had killed and no matter how many I would kill before the day was over, none of it would bring Bran back. Not even for a moment.

  I ripped the sword free. Grief saddled me and rode me into the foray. I raged across the field, killing all before me. They ran when they saw me coming, and I chased them down, and I killed them before they could take someone else’s friend away from them.

  * * * *

  The night had fallen. The Fomorians were dead. Their corpses littered the ground, mixed with human bodies of the fallen. In death, witch, shapeshifter, or regular Joe, they all looked the same. So many bodies. So many dead. This morning they spoke, they breathed, they kissed their loved ones good-bye. And now they lay dead. Gone forever. Like Bran.

  I sat by Bran’s body. His midnight eyes were closed. I was very tired. My body hurt in places I didn’t know existed.

  Someone had made a funeral pyre. It glowed orange in the oncoming darkness. Thick greasy smoke tainted the night.

  I had taken Bran by the hand and dragged him back to humanity, back to free will and choice. And it, no, I, had gotten him killed. The fire had left his eyes. He’d never wink, he’d never call me dove again. I didn’t love him, I barely knew him, but God, it hurt. Why was it that I killed everyone I touched? Why did they all die? I could have fixed almost everything else, but death defeated me every time. What good is all the magic if you can’t hold back death? What good is it, if you don’t know when to stop, if all you can do is kill and punish?

  Someone approached and tugged on my sleeve. “Kate,” a tiny voice said. “Kate, are you okay?”

  I looked at the owner of the voice and recognized her face.

  “Kate,” she said pitifully. “Please say something.”

  I felt so hollow, I couldn’t find my voice.

  “Are you real?” I asked her.

  Julie nodded.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Bran brought me,” she said. “I awoke in a lake. There were bodies everywhere and a woman. He pulled me out and gave me a knife and he brought me over there.” She pointed back to where we had originally formed our lines. “I fought.” She showed me her bloody knife.

  “Stupid girl,” I said. I couldn’t muster any anger and my voice was flat. “So many people died to save you, and you ran right back into the slaughter.”

  “I saw the reeves eating my mom’s body. I had to.” She sat next to me. “I had to, Kate.”

  I heard a faint jingle of chains. Then a crunch of metal under someone’s feet. A tall figure came through the smoke.

  Nude, except for a harness of leather belts and silver hooks, her hair falling around her in black dreads, she stood smeared with fresh blood. The dark red rivulets mixed with blue runes tattooed on her skin. Her presence slapped me: glacial, hard, cruel, terrifying like a wolf’s howl heard at night on a lonely road.

  “It’s her,” Julie whispered. “The woman by the lake.”

  Her eyes glowed, streaked with radiant sparks. The sparks erupted into amber irises, suddenly as big as a house, all consuming, overpowering…The black bottomless pupil loomed before me and I knew I could sink into it and be forever lost.

  So that’s what the eye of a goddess looks like.

  She looked past us and raised her hand to point over my shoulder. Chains clanked. “Come!” I recognized the voice: I had heard her in my head.

  Red peeled himself from the pile of trash. I had known he was there for a while. He had crept in when the fight was almost over, followed me, and waited there in the garbage, while I sat by Bran, numb. Probably biding his time for a good chance to stab me in the back.

  Julie startled. “Red!”

  I caught her by the shoulder and kept her put.

  “You desire power…”

  Red swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Serve me and I will give you all the power you want.”

  He trembled.

  “Do you accept the bargain?”

  “Yes!”

  “Red, what about me?” Julie broke free of my grip. I didn’t hold her too hard. This was her last chance to be cured.

  “I love you! Don’t leave me.”

  He held his hand out, blocking her. “She has everything I want. You have nothing.”

  He stepped over Bran’s legs and trotted to Morrigan’s side like the dog he was. It had come full circle: from the ancestor who had broken free of Morrigan, through countless generations, to the descendant, who willingly put on her collar.

  Bran’s body had barely cooled. She showed no signs of grief.

  I looked at her. “You recognize me.”

  Chains jingled in agreement.

  “We meet again, and I’ll kill him.”

  “Fuck off. She’s too powerful for you. She’ll protect me,” Red said.

  “The blood that flows through me was old when she was but a vague idea. Look into her eyes, if you don’t believe me.”

  “We won’t meet again,” Morrigan promised.

  Behind her, mist swirled in a solid wall. It slunk along the ground, licked at Morrigan’s feet, wound about Red, and swallowed them whole.

  The tech hit, crushing the magic under its foot. Julie stood alone in the field of dead bodies and iron, her face numb with shock.

  Epilogue

  In the morning, when the witches came for Bran’s body, they found it sprawled among white flowers. Blazing like small white stars, with centers as black as his eyes, the flowers grew overnight, sending a spicy scent into the air. By the time the day was over, the flowers had been christened Morgan’s Bells and a rumor floated person to person that Morrigan was so distraught over her champion’s death, she had wept and the flowers sprang forth from her tears.

  Bullshit. I was there and the bitch didn’t shed a tear.

  The witches buried Bran in Centennial Park and built a cairn over his grave. I was told I was welcome to visit him anytime.

  The next two days were spent next to Andrea bent over the reports to the Order. We’d plugged every hole, smoothed every bump, and routed out every inconsistency, until she was pure human and I was just a blade-happy merc.

  It didn’t help that without magic in the world for the next few weeks, we had to resort to conventional medicine. I had a half dozen cuts, a couple deep enough to be bothersome, and two cracked ribs. Andrea sported a gash across her back that under ordinary circumstances would’ve healed with embarrassing quickness. Postflare, it took its time. She wasn’t accustomed to pain and she popped painkillers by the handful.

  After Red left, Julie had retreated deep into herself. She gave noncommittal answers and stopped eating. On Thursday I dropped off the last report together with a leave of absence request, loaded her into my ancient gas-guzzling Subaru, and drove down South, toward Savannah, where I kept my father’s house. Andrea promised to smooth things over with the Order when the knights returned.

  The drive took forever. I was out o
f practice and had to stop to take a breather. We passed the turnoff to my house and kept driving down along the coast to a small town called Eulonia, until we reached an old restaurant called Pelican Point. The owner owed me a favor or I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

  The restaurant sat on the edge of the river, just before the freshwater found its way through the reeds and mud islands to the Atlantic Ocean. We sat in the gazebo by the dock and watched the shrimp and fish boats meander through the maze of salt marshes and then unload their catch. Then we went inside, to a small table by the window, and I took Julie to the seafood buffet.

  Faced with more food than she had ever seen at once, Julie went stiff. I loaded her plate, got us some crab legs, and led her back to the table. She tried the fried shrimp and the blackened tilapia.

  When I cracked the second cluster of crab legs, Julie began to cry. She cried and ate crabmeat, dunking it in melted butter, licked her fingers, and cried some more.

  On the drive back, she sat sullenly in her seat.

  “So what happens to me now?” she asked finally.

  “Summer’s almost over. Eventually, you’ll have to go to school.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have a gift. I want you to learn and to get to know other people. Other kids and adults, so you can learn how they think. So nobody can take advantage of you again.”

  “They won’t like me.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “Is it going to be one of those schools where you live there, too?”

  I nodded. “I make a very bad mom. I’m not home enough and even when I am, I’m not the best person to take care of a kid. But I can pull off a crazy aunt. You can always come and visit me on holidays. I cook a mean goose.”

  “Why not turkey?”

  “I don’t like turkey. Too dry.”

  “What if I hate it there?” Julie asked.

  “Then we’ll keep looking until we find a school you don’t hate.”

  “And I can come to live with you when I need to?”

  “Always,” I promised.

  * * * *

  Three weeks later I dropped Julie off at Macon Kao Arts Academy. Her magic talents, combined with my dismal income, easily qualified her for a scholarship. It was a good school, located in a peaceful spot, with a decent campus that reminded me of a park bordered by nine-foot-tall walls and towers armed with both machine guns and arrow sprayers. I met every member of the faculty, and all of them seemed disinclined to take any crap. They had an empath as a counselor. She would help Julie heal. Can’t get better than an empath.